Chapter 324 - 18

699Chapter 18: Ch II,15: To Anticipate the Summer

A/N: So, after some nine months, welcome back to this developing mammoth of a story. It took me longer than I'd though it would, but at least I'm ready to start posting again, so... better late than never, I suppose. It should be a chapter every two weeks, just like before. And before anything else, just a word or two of adoration for my amazing quasi-beta, Moon999, who keeps putting up with my erratic writing schedule and constant repetition of which scenes remain to be written, with my idiosyncrasies and the little things I do that go on her last nerves. She's one of the most important people in my life, and I can honestly say that my life would be dimmer without her in it.

Summary of Part One of this story: Lily makes a small change in the order of sentences during a canonical fight with Severus, which leads to her learning about his run-in with Remus in werewolf form. This prompts Lily to confront Dumbledore about his lax punishment of the Marauders, in turn resulting in Dumbledore taking an interest in the fifth-year Slytherin. During their subsequent conversation, Dumbledore convinces Severus that he will have to choose sides in the coming war, and offers to teach him the Patronus Charm in an attempt to win him to the side of Light. Throughout the tutorship, Dumbledore helps Severus deal with some of his emotional difficulties, acting as a mentor/councilor. Meanwhile, Severus' relationship with Lily is still suffering as he's unsure how to treat her now that he is aware of how shaky their relationship is. Things come to a head when his Slytherin group attack four Seventh-years, including the Head Boy, and Dumbledore demands that Severus choose sides. Under pressure, Severus manages to conjure the doe Patronus, and agrees to become Dumbledore's spy. Lily witnesses the aftermath of the vicious attack and, shaken by it, has a massive row with Severus right before the O.W.L. exams. During the exams, the Marauders attack Severus by the lake, and Lily attempts to rescue him; however, James provokes Severus into calling Lily 'Mudblood', and Lily finally breaks off their friendship. During his attempted apology, Severus asks her to speak with Dumbledore, who reveals to her that Severus is working for him, which makes Lily reevaluate the situation. They share an emotional conversation in which Severus claims that Lily taught him (falsely) about friendship, and Lily comes to the devastating conclusion that she treats her friends horribly and that thus one of the cornerstones of her personality is actually false. They agree to rebuild their friendship, but neither is sure what that will mean going forward as Lily is unsure what type of person she is vs. what she wants to be.

Meanwhile, Lily becomes part of a secret club whose members go on to become members of the Order of the Phoenix and vows to improve her relationship with her girlfriends from Gryffindor, and Severus earns favour from the junior Death Eaters in Slytherin and makes some new friends outside that group. Additionally, Lily and Remus become good friends when she reveals to him that she knows of his condition, and under her influence, Remus gradually becomes less comfortable with the Marauders' actions, leading to him strenuously objecting to their attack on Severus during the O.W.L.s. His objections result in a fight that sees Remus ostracised by the rest of the Marauders, especially Sirius, who is starting to exhibit signs of increased stress due to having to return to Grimmauld Place for the summer.

Warning for Part II: triggers for heavy drug use by a side character (I'm taking liberties with all the holes we have regarding the teens' parents, and filling in the blanks between information already known).

PART II - GROWTH

Chapter 15: To Anticipate the Summer

"No running in the corridor!" Lily yelled as three pre-teens all but collided with her and knocked her off her feet. One of them shouted a 'sorry' at her, but they seemed to be otherwise a bit deaf, because they barely slowed to a fast walk as they hurried from one train car to the other, talking in painful decibels and cackling to each other.

Letting it go, Lily shook her head to herself and continued on her way to the Prefect's section of the Hogwarts Express in search of Remus, who'd no doubt taken refuge there from the other Marauders. She couldn't really begrudge the kids their excitement, given how ridiculously upbeat she herself was feeling about the coming holidays.

The main talk of the train was the apparent disappearance of their Defence professor, who'd, by all accounts, gone out for one last celebratory drink to Hogsmeade, and had simply never come back. They'd all expected something to happen, of course – the position was jinxed, everyone knew the story, and the evidence seemed to support it whole-heartedly – but this was the first time in which there were no answers to be found, at least not in the personal memories of the students still attending. For her part, Lily hoped the kind but relatively incompetent Professor Chainwaye had gone of his own accord, and had not, in fact, been abducted or killed.

Waving to Amir and Clara's friend Melissa as she passed them – this was their official last day as Head Boy and Girl, lucky them – Lily found Remus in the very last seat in the car. Though he had a book open on his lap, he was staring into the passing scenery, and when she dropped down into the seat next to his, he turned to her and offered a small but genuine smile.

"How was the round?"

"Loud," she said sardonically. "I think the heat's gotten to the youngest."

"Ah, yes, to be young and be energised by it, rather than turned into a melting puddle of lethargy," Remus said dryly, and Lily chortled in surprised laughter at his dry sense of humour, feeling good for having been validated in her belief that there was much more to Remus than his downer exterior.

"I know, right?! I have no clue how they have the energy to run up and down so much! I just want to sit in a tub of freezing water and keep my brain from cooking in my skull."

The summer solstice was around the corner, and it was already swelteringly hot. Lily dreaded to even think about how July and August would be; she loved the summer as much as any other girl who liked wearing dresses, but she was a January baby, a winter child at heart, and the heat would never be her preferred state of affairs.

"So, any plans for the summer?" Remus asked.

"Not too many," she answered. "The girls and me, we've agreed on the weeks for the vacation to Clotilde's cottage – if I can convince my mum to not make a big deal out of it – that's in August. Aside from that... think, mostly. Be friends with Severus again, properly this time. Maybe try to spend more time with Petunia and my dad."

"You think you'll work it out with him?"

"I'll try my hardest, and I know he will, too. It's complicated, that's all."

"May I ask you something, about him?"

Frowning, Lily cocked her head lightly to the side, her half-greasy ponytail tickling her shoulder.

"Of course."

"Do you not mind? His association with those bloodists?"

Ah. That.

Mary had asked her the same thing, the night after their big round of apologies and friendship reaffirmation. Lily had given her the roundabout answer and with it the wrong impression – that Lily didn't believe Mary could understand, when it was only about protecting Severus' mission – and it seemed to her now that this was already shaping up to be a recurring theme.

She had not wanted to start fixing her friendships with people by deliberately lying or obfuscating, but there really was no other choice to be made about this; Severus' allegiance needed to be the best kept secret of Lily's life, and so it would be.

"I do," she told Remus. "But I can't give him an ultimatum about it, Remus."

"Why not?"

For a moment, her eyes tracked the passing trees and fields as her own words and his natural follow-up question prompted a cascade of thoughts. An ultimatum had been on her mind on and off for almost two years, really, to say 'me or them' and let him choose. She'd never gotten around to doing it, though, postponing it for one reason or another, and by the time he'd called her 'Mudblood', it had felt like it was too late for it anyway. She'd gotten very close to it once, back in January after Mulciber's failed attack on Mary, but she'd held the words in; back then, it had felt like Severus deserved more time, or maybe Lily herself deserved it to try and convince him before drawing that line in the sand that couldn't be taken back. Now that she was secure on this point, though, it seemed to her that there had been another reason – had she really felt so little confidence in him, that she'd been afraid of him picking them over her to the point of it stalling her voice?

It was a conundrum, certainly. Her feelings on her friendship with Severus back then felt almost shamefully lukewarm to her now, and yet she'd always made excuse after excuse, given him in the privacy of her own mind another and yet another chance to perhaps change on that point, though deep down she'd not really expected him to. A week ago, it had felt easy to look at these two time periods – before learning of Severus almost getting killed and after – and see the disparity between them, but now it wasn't as clear, and it caused in itch in her mind that demanded she keep turning it over and over until she'd gotten it all sorted out.

Would he've chosen those Slytherins over her, really? In the last week, he'd kept careful distance from her, and Lily had at first thought that this was because she'd asked him for time; it had taken her a few days to figure out there was more behind his behaviour, and she'd for once decided to act accordingly; given the job Professor Dumbledore had entrusted him with, Lily thought it very likely that Severus was being doubly cautious to maintain his cover.

Had he needed to be as cautious before this? She remembered that argument they'd had back in April, or was it May, when she'd forgotten that they'd agreed to brew together and had arranged things with Remus instead. The Slytherins, Lily! It's about the Slytherins! he'd said. I need things to be easier, too, and you of all people should understand. She'd thought that she understood, but what if she didn't? What would that have been like for him, to be faced with the ultimatum? He'd made the choice ultimately, hadn't he, and he'd chosen her, but on the surface, he'd still kept both of these connections, and it still pained her every time to see him interacting with one of that group. If she'd been the one to put that choice before him, she'd have wanted it to be public, and obvious. And if he would have made the same choice as now... the realisation she came to quickly was chilling enough that it snapped her out of her thoughts.

Suddenly, the only thing she felt about the whole affair was undiluted relief that she'd not done it.

Remus was still looking expectantly at her, and she realised she'd zoned out quite rudely in the middle of their conversation. Shaking her head, she forced herself to refocus. "Sorry, I... we were talking about the ultimatum." Remus nodded to indicate that his attention was still on the topic. "I almost did it once," Lily told him, "but after what happened two weeks ago, I'm now very glad I didn't."

"That incident by the lake?"

She shook her head. "No, not... I meant, what happened with you and your friends."

Remus' face darkened. "You think he'd not see reason? That he'd choose them?"

"I..." voice stalling, Lily licked her lips as her heart gave a painful thump when the possibility manifested in her mind; yes, some proper consideration about this was due. For now, though, she chose to tell Remus the truth, because it felt like he was the only one of her friends who might understand more than the surface information she had to share about her friendship with Severus, who might even empathise. "No. I mean, yeah, I was... was terrified he'd choose them over me, but that's not what I meant. I meant, if he'd have chosen me over them." When Remus frowned, Lily laid her hand on his wrist lightly. "If he'd chosen me, then he'd have been in the same situation that you're in now, Remus."

As she knew he would, Remus inhaled sharply and paled, and his eyes went a bit glassy. She swallowed with some difficulty, remembering Severus' outrage at her comparing the two boys and their situations, last Saturday. We may have both turned our back on our friends, but only one of us can end up dead or worse because of it, and it's not him! Avery and Mulciber had been the ones who'd done such harm to Clara and her friends, and that had been mostly unprovoked. What sort of revenge would they have exacted on him, had he spurned them publically like she'd wanted him to do?

Thank Merlin things had played out as they had.

"I see," Remus said softly, pulling away from her and turning to the window, and Lily sighed soundlessly, heart twisting at his turmoil and distress. His conviction had seemed so strong two days ago, when they'd walked away from the Mirror of Erised, yet it seemed now that so little of it had remained. Unlike her, Remus seemed to have so little self-confidence that she wished she could just give him half of hers.

She couldn't, but there was something she could do.

"Remus, do you have a telephone at home?" she asked, and that drew him out of his thoughts enough to look at her in surprise.

"We do, though only Ma uses it. Why?"

"Well, I'd like to stay in touch over the summer, and I think it'd be easiest for you during that time of the month if I just rang you up."

"Oh, I..." Remus voiced, a little stunned by the suggestion. "I'd never thought about that."

"We don't, do we?" she noted, shaking her head. "We forget all about the Muggle world when we come here. I forget it so easily. But the telephone is easier than the Floo, and you won't have to write out your letters if you're feeling too exhausted, plus there's always a delay with owl mail."

"All right," he agreed, lips tugging into a tiny smile that she counted as a big win. "We can exchange numbers, and you can phone, but you have to let me explain it to my mum first. She knows witches and wizards don't use telephones."

"No problem," she agreed, jumping to rummage through her backpack until she found her self-inking quill and some parchment to scribble hers on. Cutting the parchment piece in half, she handed the quill to Remus, who neatly enough wrote his own home telephone number on the blank half. "And you call me too, if you want to talk, yeah? I mean it."

"I will," the sandy-haired boy promised, closing his book – Dostoyevsky, of all writers – and stretching until his bones started popping, loudly enough for Lily to hear. Really, how she'd managed to ignore the signs, she had no clue, but it was so very obvious that something wasn't quite right with him – though his face was mostly still that of a teen (barring the scarring he had and the bags under his eyes), Remus' body seemed thin and worn out enough to belong to someone twice his age. Wincing in sympathy, the redhead rose to her feet too. "Lily, thank you, for being there for me."

"You don't have to thank me for that, Remus," she answered before her brain caught up with her, "that's what friends are for."

She almost winced when the words registered, but Remus smiled, so even if she wasn't comfortable with that answer – that was what friends were supposed to be for, but who was she to act as if this was a given for her personally? – she said nothing else.

She may not have always been the epitome of that sentiment, but that was what she was determined to work towards, and in that sense, it wasn't untrue. It was certainly much more than Potter, Black and Pettigrew had done for Remus, in any case.

"I'm gonna make the rounds," he declared, "might as well actually be the prefect I supposedly am. Want to join me?"

"Honestly, not really," she answered with a grimace. "I think I'll go find Mary, Clo and Betts, sit with them a while. I'll see you later?"

They walked part of the way together, but quickly enough Remus got called on to break a fight, and Lily lost him in the commotion. She passed Severus in a compartment, seemingly in some sort of discussion with Zebadiah Thistletwaithe over a book they had open between them, though he caught her eyes immediately over the heads of other Slytherins occupying the remaining seats – all younger than them, with neither Avery nor that pock-marked boy, Philes, in sight – and nodded minutely enough no one who wasn't looking for it would have caught it. Lily answered in kind and moved on, waving and smiling lightly at people who greeted her, or whom she knew in passing, and almost surprising herself with how many times she did it from the prefects' car to the compartment her girlfriends had chosen.

She'd managed to slip a note to Severus during their last Arithmancy class to meet her at the Astronomy Tower in the evening, and she'd been so stupidly nervous about it that she'd gone there half an hour beforehand and chosen to read her suffragette movement book in the light of the setting sun, just to make sure she'd not miss him. He'd shown up five minutes late and slightly out of breath, and had startled her so much she'd found her own tongue completely tied, and had felt an urge to smack her head with the palm of her hand for how silly she'd been feeling, because it was just Severus, for Merlin's sake, not some random, unknown person.

The reason she'd wanted to meet with him was to see about their travel back to Cokeworth – Lily was obligated to ride the Hogwarts train all the way to London, on account of being a prefect, but the train actually stopped at several smaller primarily-wizarding towns along the way for those who lived far enough north that going to London and then back up was too long or complicated a trip. Given that Cokeworth was relatively close to Stoke-on-Trent, about half-way between Manchester and Birmingham, she and Severus had usually just gotten off in that general area, rather than go all the way down to London, if his mother wasn't picking them up by Apparition (which she'd done only the one time anyway).

Lily had discussed the matter with her father last summer, after she'd found out that she'd been made a prefect, but a last-minute university conference he had to attend meant that she'd be taking public transportation back north instead. So she'd thought to ask Severus if he'd go with her, and though he'd apparently just planned to step off near Manchester, he'd agreed easily enough to ride with her back up instead. They'd arranged to meet up on the Muggle side of the Platform 9¾ entrance, and that little nod was to let her know that everything was still according to plan.

Mary, Bettina and Clotilde were playing Exploding Snap when Lily entered the compartment, and offered a general greeting; Lily had had to go patrol the train practically from the start of the trip and thus hadn't seen them since breakfast. Bettina seemed the most excited to go home of the three, but Lily knew they were all looking forward to the summer.

"How was your round?"

Lily groaned, throwing herself in the seat next to Bettina. "Ugh, it's too hot, and these kids keep running! How can they do it in this temperature?!"

"Apparently, we're in for a very warm summer," Mary informed them. "Mum said they were talking about it on the news. We might get a heatwave, at that."

"I guess lots of bathing, then," Clotilde noted with a wide smirk. "Think of all the view!"

"View?"

"At the beach, of course. Betts, you've never been to a Muggle beach, have you?"

The plump witch shook her head in confusion, and Lily's lightbulb came on.

"Oh, that view! She means because Muggle bathing suits are far more revealing, on average, than wizardwear for the beach."

Clotilde wiggled her eyebrows exaggeratedly, and Mary burst into a fit of giggles.

"Oh, Merlin, Clo, you're incorrigible. You better not find yourself a boyfriend while you're at it. I've had enough of Alice's moping for Frank last year."

"Who, me?" Clotilde asked, waving her hand dismissively in the air. "You know I'm a love-'em-and-leave-'em type of girl."

"But don't you want a long-term relationship?" Bettina asked her. "I don't think I'd like a casual fling."

"I wasn't impressed with them," Lily added her two Knuts. "It's just momentary fun, no substance."

"How did I end up being friends with you four commitment types, I'll never know," Clotilde commented with a shake of her head.

"It's because you were too bored by Sally, Neela and Janette," Mary reminded her. "We're far better company, anyway."

"Than those three? That's not all that hard to do," Lily pointed out. "Any time I've heard them talk, they're all about Potter and Black. Every – single – time!"

"Well..." Mary murmured, and Lily almost shot up from her slump to look at her.

"Oh, not you too!" she moaned.

"Hey, no, I'm just pointing out," the brunette defended immediately, more seriously than the redhead would have expected from the lightness of their conversation until now. "They're handsome and rich, and plenty of wizarding girls are mostly about settling down right out of school, being taken care of financially, having children, being good wives. You and I weren't raised that way, but you know most witches have."

"She's right," Bettina agreed quietly. "My mum was like that; it's horrible, all these expectations and norms that are placed on girls, especially in Pure-blood families. After Tin didn't get the Hogwarts letter, most of our mum's friends stopped talking to her, because they felt ashamed for her. It's only because of our dad that she's not taken it so hard, but from what Tin had written to me last, she's still occasionally complaining about him learning from my old books."

Bettina's younger brother Augustine was a Squib, which Lily knew first-hand had hit their family hard, and their mother the hardest. Their family was a bit of a mixed bag, with a Pure-blood mother who'd married wealthily but beneath her station according to Bettina's grandparents, a Half-blood father very successful in business ventures and extremely progressive in thinking, a younger child who was forced to contend with belonging properly to neither world at the tender age of eleven, and an older child who had always been quite sensitive and thus too sheltered before arriving at Hogwarts. Lily knew Bettina's parents only in passing, but Dumbledore allowed Augustine to come to Hogwarts over Christmas holidays, so Lily had gotten to know the boy that one year when she'd stayed there, too, and he'd proven to be exuberant, bright and extremely resilient, quite a stark contrast to his sister. Nevertheless, the love and closeness that existed between the two siblings had made Lily equal parts jealous and sad that she'd most likely lost that sort of relationship with her own sister long ago, if they'd ever really been that way with each other at all.

Sometimes, it was so hard to fight off the resentment that welled up when Petunia lashed out about Lily being a witch, and that winter it had been that much harder for witnessing another pair of siblings between whom the issue of magic appeared to be so non-existent, though Bettina always seemed as lost about Augustine's Muggle schooling as Petunia seemed to be about Lily's magical one.

"That... actually tells a lot about a whole host of things that are wrong with the wizarding world," Lily noted, frowning. "I'd always assumed that it was just hormones going to those girls' heads."

"I'm sure there's that, too," Clotilde agreed. "But it's certainly not only that. Take note that many of the girls considering Sirius Black in that way come from families that politically would not mesh well with his family's stances. But he's a Black; you know they're like the crème de la crème of British wizarding aristocracy."

"I imagine there's also an appeal in him being the only Gryffindor to come out of that family in generations," Bettina agreed. "At least to witches from more Muggle-positive families."

"Strong enough to overcome his personality?" Lily asked with utter incredulity. She personally would not have touched Sirius Black with a ten-foot pole, especially not after his behaviour towards Remus in the last two weeks.

"You'd be surprised," Mary noted dryly. "Now, come on, let's play another few rounds while Lily still has time for us."

They did, ending up almost covered in soot and laughing so maniacally that exactly three prefects came over to check on the commotion. By the end of it, Lily had no clue where she found the strength of conviction to actually go back to her boring job of patrolling, but she did, though she ended up cursing her previously coveted title of a prefect every single step of the way.

She'd not had that much fun with the girls since Alice had gone from Hogwarts.

Sirius' leg was bouncing of its own accord, and he wasn't much in the mood to mind it, either. He knew he was sweating enough that James and Peter could see, but he didn't really care. The sick, twisted feeling in his chest wound up tighter with every mile that the train ate on its path towards London, and it was all he could do to stop himself from jumping out of his skin.

It was worse this time around than the previous ones; the Summer of Hell, he was already calling it in his mind, and it had not even formally started yet. Narcissa's wedding was a black cloud on the horizon, the storm that Sirius knew was going to dump all its shit on his shoulders, without even the reassuring presence of his uncle Alphard there to shield him from the worst of it.

If only his birthday had been five months earlier, he'd have been out of that hellhole so fast their heads would have spun. As it was, 3rd of November was the date, and this last summer was to be survived, because if Sirius was something, it was stubborn enough to keep going even when everyone wanted him to quit.

But he couldn't stop his heartrate from rising steadily the closer to London he got, nor could he ignore the dread settling like dead weight in the pit of his stomach.

"Padfoot."

Blinking, he turned to look at James, who had apparently spent the last who knew how long staring at Sirius with a frown on his face.

"What?"

"Do you want me to speak with my dad, get you to stay with us?"

As if that would have worked.

"No," Sirius answered, shaking his head and turning back to the window.

"It's your last summer, Padfoot."

"Exactly, James!" he shot back, smacking his hand on the seat. "It's my last summer, and my cousin is getting married, and there is no fucking way Orion's letting me out of that house! So all your old man will end up doing is making everything worse!"

"He can be p–"

"Fucking hell, James! Stop pushing already!"

Exhaling loudly in irritation, James finally shut up, and Sirius turned back to the window, begging James in his head to actually heed him for once and not put his nose where it didn't belong. There was nothing Fleamont Potter could do to get Sirius out of that house this summer, and if there was one person Orion couldn't stand, it was James' father. Things were already volatile enough without the Potters getting into the mix.

He wished this train ride would never end. He also wished it would end as soon as possible, because the expectation was always the worst part; when he was in the house, he was there, trapped and at least then, he knew how things would run, could fall into the routine that was home life. This, the time before, when he was hurtling towards the horror picture show that was his home life, Sirius hated that the most, because he kept getting ideas, unfeasible ideas, ideas that he refused to consider. Ideas such as running away, or, now that he'd learned how to do it, of simply turning into a dog and disappearing into the wilderness until his seventeenth birthday, when they'd not be able to legally touch him.

"Padfoot."

"What, James?!" he exclaimed, beyond frustrated with his best friend. "What?"

Raising his eyebrow, James looked at Peter and waved his head at the door. The pudgy boy blinked, before apparently understanding what was being asked of him and pulling out his wand to... lock the door?

"Turn," James said softly, and Sirius did a double take.

"What?" This time, the question was in confusion, not annoyance.

"You are ready to jump out of your skin. I may not be able to help you with your problems – because you won't let me – but I refuse to watch you act like this, too. So turn."

"And what happens when someone busts in? Your darling Miss-Perfect-Saint-Evans?"

"No one's getting through that door quicker than you can turn back," James pointed out. "And just to be on the safe side, I can cover you with my Cloak."

And damn him, it was a good idea, but it only made the temptation that much stronger. There were several stops between Hogsmeade and London, and Sirius wouldn't need for the train to even stop, just slow down a bit.

Exhaling loudly, Sirius gathered all the resolve he had and placed it into one order to himself – you are going to spend this last summer there, and then you're free and clear. By the time he'd done it, James had pulled out his Cloak of Invisibility, and, feeling the tension melting at the very thought of the relief that the canine shape would provide to his mind, he slipped into his second skin.

The world dissolved into a mass of yellows and blues and purples, and with the reds and greens went the sharpness of Sirius' problems in Padfoot's mind, too. Suddenly it was much harder to stress about something that wasn't happening right this moment, because he was feeling tired and hungry, and this seemed like a much more important direction for his focus.

Smiling, James dug a sandwich out of his pocket and, unwrapping it, offered it to the transformed Animagus. Padfoot jumped on his friend instead and licked his face sloppily to say his thanks before devouring it with lightning speed while James laughed and wiped the drool off his face.

The nag of dread was there still, of course; it would have taken an act of Merlin himself to make Sirius relax about going home. But where he'd felt an almost uncontrollable urge to just jump out of the window as a human, as a dog, that urge was, to his surprise, not amplified but weakened. What he did instead was curl up on the seat, let James drape the Cloak over his body, and settle in for a nap; he would need all the energy he could get for the time ahead.

Regulus' knock on the door woke him up, and just like James had promised, Sirius was back to his normal self and stuffing the Cloak behind his back when the door finally opened. The smell that had tickled his canine senses became less noticeable, but definitely far more recognisable – the smog of the King's Cross Station. He'd managed to sleep through all of the remaining journey.

"Kreacher will be picking us up," Regulus said, looking straight at Sirius and not acknowledging the other two boys. "Mother wanted us home as soon as possible."

"Of course she did," Sirius muttered as his younger brother disappeared back into the corridor. "Afraid I'd turn tail and disappear on her. Can't be having that."

When he straightened to his full height, he found James standing right in front of him with worry in his hazel eyes.

"If you need anything, Sirius..." James said, squeezing Sirius' shoulder with his palm with enough force that Sirius felt it even when the other boy removed his hand.

"I'll see you in September," Sirius replied, nodding. "Wormtail. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Yeah," Peter replied with a sickly smile. "Good luck."

And without another look at his friends, Sirius tugged his trunk out after him, intending to be the first off the train. As he did so, it came to him that he wasn't as panicked about this as he'd been three hours ago, because now that he knew the transformation could help with managing his anxiety, he felt a bit more confident that he'd make it through.

It was a bit more than two months, anyway. He'd done it four times already. He was going to be fine.

It was going to be the Summer of Hell.

The Platform 9¾ at King's Cross Station in London was awash with pre-teens and teens saying their goodbyes for the summer and children and parents reuniting with hugs and kisses and even tears all around him. Tugging his worn-out duffel bag out of the train, Peter looked from the train steps around the platform in search of that weathered, familiar face. It was the first indication of what sort of summer he'd be having, whether his mother had managed to drag herself out of their squalid flat to come pick him up.

This summer, it seemed, she hadn't.

Disappointment stung in his gut at the realisation, and he nearly sighed to himself, turning instead to find his three friends for one last look. Near the train entrance was James, the elderly Mr and Mrs Potter hugging him and clapping him on the back; Peter had met them a few times, and they seemed like the indulgent type, which made him dislike them to an extent, because it was something completely out of his grasp. And where James was all smiles and happiness, Sirius was all doom and gloom, as he and his brother waited in sullen silence near the far wall of the platform. As Peter watched, a craggy house elf Apparated next to them; probably their transport home. And as for the last one...

Peter found Remus exchanging goodbyes with Lily Evans, as Mr Lupin waited patiently with Remus' belongings. Suddenly intrigued, the rat Animagus searched the sea of people before him for yet another familiar face, and found the greasy-haired Slytherin loitering almost unnoticeable by the platform entrance. James was still under the impression Lily was shunning Snape, but Peter had heard them discussing taking the train from London to Manchester together when he'd been sneaking around the castle as Wormtail, so he thought it safe to assume the red-haired girl had forgiven that afternoon by the lake.

Shifting in momentary discomfort, Peter discarded the thought. He wasn't very keen on remembering what had happened afterwards that night, how Remus had voiced his displeasure and gotten kicked out of their group for his troubles, or that last transformation, when Remus had done all in his power to break Peter's little rat spine – or perhaps just scare the life out of him, it boiled down to about the same thing. This rift in their group was something he knew he needed to take into consideration, but for now he was almost compulsively letting it lie.

The more pressing matter was the fact that his mother hadn't shown up this time. Lifting his duffel-bag – Feather-Weight Charm was probably one of the smartest inventions ever created – the pudgy boy began his walk out of the Platform 9¾ towards Muggle London. He ended up having to wait only a few minutes for the correct bus, and when he was finally properly seated, he could exhale all of his disappointment and prepare for what he knew he'd find at home.

The bus ride was thirty minutes, and he barely found enough change to pay for it, but it got him home faster than anything else would have. Still, he was really looking forward to learning to Apparate next year; slipping back into the Muggle world ended up only chafing more and more the older Peter got.

He had to walk another ten minutes or so to reach the council housing, and climb up a flight of stairs, and each step he took was heavier than the last. When he was in front of their flat door, he had to dig out his long-forgotten keys from the depths of his jacket pockets to let himself in.

The smell was what always fully brought him back out of the world of magic, and it did so this time as well, perhaps even more effectively considering that this time last year, he'd not been able to turn into a rat and so his sense of smell hadn't been as good. The air was stale, sour with sweat and rotting food and vomit and urine, and he'd have gagged, had he not been expecting it. It meant his summer wasn't going to be a fun one, and he sighed, pinching his nose shut as he kicked the door closed with his heel and hurried through the narrow hallway to the sitting room to open a window.

The darkness of the flat was near-total, and for once he was too annoyed with his mother to be delicate, yanking the curtains aside and flinging the window open. A weak moan of protest let him know that she was, indeed, in the room, and when he turned, Peter found Lauris Pettigrew sprawled out on the ugly, lumpy thing they called a couch with the rubber tubing still loosely encircling her outstretched forearm and the needled syringe lying haphazardly on the dirty, carpeted floor.

That cinched it; it was going to be that kind of summer.

The Muggle side of the passageway connecting the Platform 9¾ with the rest of King's Cross Station was depressingly mundane, but for the first time in his life, Severus found himself actually enjoying it. He was not particularly looking forward to being home for the summer, but he'd brought Tobias Avoidance to an art form a long time ago, and besides, he was not planning on staying there for the whole two and a half months anyway. He'd had his last meeting with Dumbledore yesterday evening, and the Headmaster had suggested that it would be the smartest course of action for Severus to perfect his Occlumency before the next school year and his true work as Dumbledore's agent within the Death Eater recruitment group started. To this end, the old wizard had invited Severus to stay at Hogwarts for three weeks in August. Severus had accepted with barely a thought in spite of his lingering doubts about the Headmaster, which had now been temporarily put to the back of his mind.

There were more pressing things to think about anyway, like how he and Lily were going to figure out how to be friends again, or whether any of his new acquaintances would be contacting him over the summer. He thought Rosier at least would want to keep in touch, whether through Wilkes or in person, and Severus didn't even want to consider the possibility of owl post anywhere near his father. Michael and his friends, at least, would know to use the Muggle post, and wasn't that a strange thought, that Muggle post was far more acceptable to him than owl post. He certainly had never thought he'd prefer anything Muggle to wizarding in his life, yet here he was.

And speaking of Michael and his friends...

"Don't you live up near Birmingham?" Michael asked, voice so near that Severus nearly jumped in fright at getting caught unawares. Instead, he turned to his new friend with a cutting glare, noting with a part of his mind that Stacie and Ash, in Muggle clothing just like Michael and Severus himself, were only a step behind him, pulling medium-sized Muggle suitcases behind them.

"Manchester, actually."

It wasn't exactly true – Cokeworth was about half-way between the two cities – but Severus would be damned if he associated himself with Brummies.

"Huh; wouldn't have pegged it by the accent," Ash commented, taking the cigarette out of his mouth to shake the ash off.

"Good; I worked hard enough to get rid of it," Severus answered snappily enough that the older boy lifted his hands, palms open, in the air and smiled.

"Waiting for your Gryffindor princess?" Stacie asked him, dark eyes dancing in amusement that Severus had found was quite usual for the girl, and that always made him feel just a tiny bit on edge, because Stacie was in general quite easy-going, but she was in Slytherin for a reason. From what Severus had gathered through their various stories, you did not want to get on her bad side.

"Why do you care what–"

He cut himself off as familiar deep red hair colour caught his eyes, feeling a relieved smile tug on his facial muscles as Lily finally walked through the brick wall and made a beeline for the spot where he and his three new friends were standing relatively obscured from the view of the emerging wizarding populace. She faltered only slightly as it registered that the other teens weren't, in fact, simply accidentally there, but were actually waiting with Severus; by the time she reached the group, Lily was offering a tentative, friendly smile to everyone.

"Hello, I don't... Michael Stone, right?"

"Yes," Michael answered with enough warmth in his voice that Severus frowned at him. "I don't think we've ever actually officially met, though."

"Yes, no, sorry, of course," Lily said in one breath, shaking her head and letting go of the trolley to extend her hand. "Lily Evans."

"Michael Stone," the dark-skinned boy answered, shaking her hand. "And these are my friends, Ash Morgan and Stacie Monroe."

"Lily, nice to meet you all."

Ash pushed his messenger bag back and stuck his cigarette in his mouth in order to free up his hand, and Stacie placed her own purse on her suitcase to do the same while Lily waited politely for them to exchange handshakes. When the round of introductions was completed, Lily looked at Severus with open curiosity on her face, and the greasy-haired boy found himself suddenly quite eager to be away from his new friends and London.

"Are you friends of Severus'?"

Stacie raised an eyebrow at Severus, even as she nodded. "We are; it's a recent acquaintance."

"We studied together," Severus explained. "When's the train leaving?"

"Oh, er, we should have ten or so minutes, I believe," his first friend answered.

"Best not be late, then; I don't fancy having to arrive home after Tobias," he muttered darkly, reaching for his trunk. To his surprise, it was Stacie, rather than Lily, who said something to this very obvious attempt at cutting this meeting short.

"We'll walk you to your platform," she suggested, offering an innocent smile to Severus when he glared at her. "Are you happy with your O.W.L.s?" she engaged Lily in small-talk. "I have to take them next year, but I've spent the past two years listening to Mickey and Ash talking about how hard they are."

"They are, but I think they're more than manageable nonetheless," Lily answered, and they all began walking as a group as the two girls lead the way. "I just wouldn't recommend being a prefect if you're the type of person who needs time to feel comfortable with the material."

"Oh, Stace is quite efficient with learning," Ash assured her, swinging his arm over the Slytherin girl's shoulders and tugging her into a side-hug that she returned with a smile. "I'm the slow-and-thorough type, she and Mickey are the ones with the quick intelligence here."

"Slow and thorough wins the race," Michael threw out.

"I think the expression is 'slow and steady wins the race'," Severus pointed out.

"Same difference, isn't it?" Lily asked with a raised eyebrow, and Michael grinned.

"Well, I prefer the first option, personally," he explained. "Steadiness is all well and nice, but the details are what's most important. Especially in some situations and environments, if you haven't been absolutely thorough, you'll still lose, even if you're steady enough to get to the finish line."

"Like what?" Lily challenged him, and for a brief moment, Severus wondered if Mickey would reveal the primary 'situations and environments' he'd meant, before discarding the thought as absurd – friendly or not, Michael was a Slytherin, and Lily had done nothing yet to earn his trust, beyond perhaps remembering his name, which was something one would expect from one's yearmates anyway.

"Well, any sort of debate qualifies, of course. Politics are a good example of such a field, too; it's why there are so many Slytherins choosing to go after high governmental positions. In general, any area of interest where winning isn't defined by actually completing one's set task, but rather how craftily and well it's been done."

Looking thoughtful, Lily nodded in response.

"Still, though," she answered, "there's not much good in being thorough if you don't finish whatever you're doing, which is what that fable is about anyway."

"I think it's safest if we say that they're both right and move on," Stacie interjected. "And speaking of moving on, I'm assuming this is your train?"

Thank Merlin, it was. Having cast a weight-lightening charm on his trunk this morning, Severus had no problem dealing with his own, while Michael and Ash each grabbed one handle of Lily's and the three boys made quick work of stowing them away while the girls kept watch over the belongings of the grifter group. Once they disembarked, the group of three finally began showing signs of taking their leave.

"It was nice meeting you, Lily," Stacie said as she shouldered her purse.

"You too," Lily answered. "All three of you."

"Have a good summer, both of you, and I will see you come September, Severus," Michael said, nodding in parting. His two friends echoed the sentiment, turning to follow Michael towards the Station exit, with Stacie turning around to wave and throw out after they'd gotten some distance: "And if you're ever down here, let us know so that we can show you around the real London."

Only when they were lost in the crowd did Severus feel his shoulders slump. He wasn't quite certain why this had caused such tension for him, but if he were to take a guess, it would be because Lily had not approved of any of Severus' previous friends, and Mickey's group certainly didn't have a positive reputation (though not a negative one, either; apparently, they were as happy to help others as to fleece them, so it balanced out for them on the whole).

"Everything all right with you?" Lily asked once they'd boarded the train and moved for their own seats.

"Fine," Severus answered with a light shrug. "The old man wants me to stay at Hogwarts for part of the summer."

"Really? Why?" she asked, surprisingly brightly. Severus took a moment to study her, for the first time truly noticing the drastic change in her mood from last week – he'd been watching her as much as he could manage to without being caught by anyone, and she'd definitely still been struggling with what had happened on Saturday. It felt shockingly good to see her smiling again, even if it was only a small upturn of lips rather than the full-blown grin.

"To master Occlumency; he feels it'll be necessary as soon as the schoolyear starts."

"It's getting worse, isn't it," she murmured, pinching her lips worriedly.

"Depends on whom you ask, I imagine," Severus answered darkly, and that effectively brought the topic to a close.

They remained silent for a while, and Severus found himself enjoying it. It had been a long time since they'd simply existed in the same space together, and he'd missed it more than a little, even if it was a bit more strained than it had been before everything. He hated the feeling that they didn't know each other, that they were acting like acquaintances instead of best friends, but he also understood very starkly that this wasn't something they could just ignore, like they'd been ignoring most all of their problems until this spring had brought them to the surface. Lily had been right, they needed time, and for him personally, simply sitting next to her in silence with no conflict brewing behind it was soothing an ache that had been plaguing him for so long he'd almost stopped noticing it.

"When did you start spending time with Michael Stone's group?" Lily asked once they'd left London behind them. Severus made sure that no one was listening in before answering, cursing the stupid Trace in his head for preventing him from casting privacy spells – this was not a discussion he wanted anyone to overhear, and he couldn't help but be cautious even though it was a Muggle train and most of the people he associated with wouldn't be caught dead in one.

"In March; the others were starting to get suspicious about my meetings with Dumbledore, and I needed a cover story. Michael was willing to help out."

"Just like that?"

Severus gave her an incredulous look. "Lily, he's a Slytherin. Of course not just like that."

"Oh." She sounded genuinely disappointed.

"But it's not... he wanted to do it to help me, as well. And I did actually study with them; the cover wouldn't have worked unless the others could actually confirm it as the truth. They're more... genuine, than Avery and the others."

"Genuine how?"

"With each other. Michael and Stacie are Slytherins, and Morgan is a Ravenclaw, and from what I've gathered, they'd known each other before Hogwarts, or just about, same as Mulciber and Avery. But where those two ended up with one stabbing the other in the back, I don't believe that the same would happen with Michael and Morgan. It doesn't feel like they are trying to... to surpass each other, I suppose."

"Why would they want to surpass each other? In what?"

Helplessly, Severus shrugged. "It's how things work in Slytherin," he only said, too wary to delve into a topic that had been one of those where they always seemed to clash without any resolution. "You must have the same thing happening in Gryffindor, as well; proving oneself as the best, attaining uncontested dominance over one's peers."

"Yes, but it's not... it's not sinister," she finally chose her word. "When someone's better than you in something, you acknowledge it honestly, that's the honourable thing."

"Honourable," Severus almost sneered, unable to stop himself as the disgust with the word and the concept behind it bubbled up. "And you also think that honour can keep you warm at night with food in your stomach, too?"

"I think there's no need to behave dishonourably to be comfortable, and it certainly makes me sleep better at night, yes," Lily replied sharply, and Severus narrowed his eyes at the unspoken angered challenge behind her words, the way she'd sounded in the last two years when her hackles had been raised in their arguments.

"You're more fool for it, then," he said just as harshly, falling unconsciously into the old pattern of behaviour too. "Because there is no self-preservation in doing 'the honourable thing', and you'll let everyone else run you over, all for the benefit of a pearly white conscience, never mind that they'll crush your soul in the process."

"There is more to life than self-preservation! If you only ever think of your own self-preservation, your own benefit, your own gain, you may come out on top, but you'll be very, very lonely when you get there, Severus."

"So where's the limit? Where's the line you draw?" he challenged her. "Or are you telling me you have any interest in being a martyr at the altar of naïve ideals?"

"Are you telling me you'd sacrifice your conscience – your soul, because you know full well that a soul can be destroyed with a black conscience just as easily as by life miseries – for a place at the top? Where's your limit, Severus?"

And this was exactly what they always broke over, because her lines in the sand were not even close to his, and Severus didn't know how they could ever bring them together. It was more than enough to bring back everything that had happened in the last couple of weeks, in the last few months, and leave him feeling panicked at how utterly unchanged this conversation felt from all the ones they'd had before. Swallowing, he pulled away, from her and from their debate-cum-argument, and fell into a brooding silence; they'd both agreed that they'd try harder at being friends, that they'd change, and yet, what they were doing? The first true chance they got, they were squandering.

He had to find a way of preventing this, had to. This was his last chance, and he couldn't let it go to waste. He was going to need to think about it very carefully when he had the proper time and privacy for it.

Lily sighed and resettled on her seat, too, and after a moment Severus felt a tentative brush of fingers on his wrist. A little stunned, he turned to look at her; she was staring intently at where her fingers rested, and seemed absorbed in putting rhythmic pressure on his pulse point, for some to him incomprehensible reason.

"You're right," she said after a moment of pregnant silence. "It's naïve to think that one should put honour before survival. But I still think you're wrong, too; there is a way to preserve oneself and one's ideals, even when you're the only one in the world who holds onto them."

"I know," he offered his own olive branch with sincerity, not daring to twist his hand and link their fingers together; it would have been too personal, too intimate. "At least, I understand that... that there is more to existence than survival or personal gain." He'd certainly learned his own truth in this, that day a month ago when Dumbledore had put him to that final test. "But I don't think you can stand defiantly against the world, rigidly against the world, and survive. At some point, you'll either have to compromise your ideals, or perish, and Lily, I..."

He couldn't complete his sentence, and fell silent. Lily nodded, as if understanding better than him what he'd meant to say, and with no trepidation or hesitance that kept Severus frozen, always frozen when it came to their personal space and physical contact, she let go of his wrist to firmly squeeze his hand.

"It's like that fable, The Oak and the Reed. You bend or you break, and so you think it's smarter to bend than break. But I think that sometimes, some things aren't worth bending, no matter that you may perish if you don't."

Why? Severus wanted to ask her. Do you think that dying valiantly, defiantly, is better than appearing to capitulate in order to be able to fight another day? But that was the exact difference between her and him, between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin, and he knew her answer already, because she'd said it – in some things, to her, it was better a grave than a slave; Severus didn't believe he'd ever be able to think in that way.

He didn't know how Lily decided to take his silence, but she gave his hand one last squeeze and turned to rummage through her backpack for, apparently, a sandwich.

"So, Michael Stone and his friends are different from Mulciber and Avery?" she asked softly, offering him a sandwich as well; Severus had his own food, of course – practicality before all – but there was unexpected pleasure in accepting something she'd shared so freely with him.

"Yes. They're trustworthy," he answered ultimately, with that same thought that had made him suggest Mickey to Dumbledore, all the way back at the beginning of everything.

"So does that mean you now don't think that of Mulciber and Avery and the others?"

"I..." he paused for a moment to consider the question, and found himself surprised with his own answer. "I think I've always known that my old friends weren't, but it's never seemed like relevant, before."

"But trust is the fundamental part of any genuine relationship!"

"Oh, there was trust," he answered with a cynical smile. "I trusted them to be interested in my inventions, to always look for an angle in any situation, to include me in any group activities – and by that I mean activities related to our Houses' power hierarchy, not anything so insignificant as studying together – and to stay true to their beliefs and upbringing."

"But that's..." Lily looked pale as she stared at him with big green eyes, and Severus wondered at what he'd said wrong, because it was obvious he had said something wrong. "Trust should be about safety," she whispered ultimately, and he froze in confusion. "Trust is... is faith, that the other person won't hurt you, won't disappoint you, won't behave outside of your expectations."

That... sounded so absolutely wrong Severus found his mouth hanging open for a moment. "What?! No! Lily, no. Trust is not faith! Faith is belief without evidence... no, belief in spite of lack of evidence! Trust requires evidence. If trust were faith, you'd not need to earn it from anyone, it would be freely given. Do you give your trust freely?"

She blinked and pulled back a bit, obviously as caught by his words as he'd been by hers. "But... but trust isn't certainty! Otherwise no one would ever be able to break it!"

She was right; Severus knew better than most just how fragile trust truly was. His father had broken Severus' ten years ago, when he'd begun hating him for being his mother's son; his mother had broken Severus' trust, too, by disappointing his expectations in her role of a mother.

He shook his head. "It's not certainty, either," he agreed. "And that's exactly why trust is the opposite of safety – because safety requires absolute certainty or blind faith, and trust is neither of those things."

Lily licked her bottom lip distractedly, then bit it, her eyes glassy and unseeing. Severus' mind wandered onto a forbidden path for a moment, into far more pleasant and at the same time quietly painful direction – what would it feel like, to press his mouth to hers, to feel that lip between his own – before he wrenched it firmly back.

"If... if this is what you think, then what makes Michael trustworthy, when they aren't?" she asked in a dusty, hoarse voice. "What makes trusting him different from trusting things you know about him?"

And Severus drew a blank for a moment, as the question suddenly laid bare the sheer vulnerability that lay behind this feeling he'd had of his new friends, because what did that truly mean, that he consider Michael trustworthy, what did it mean for Severus personally?

"Severus, consider," she urged. "With those boys, what you trusted wasn't them, it was your own ability to know and predict them. You trusted yourself. But in this case, you trust Michael, which is a completely different thing, because you're... you said trust isn't certainty, but when you trust yourself, you at least have a very strong basis for it, because you know yourself best – it's subjective, skewered evidence, but it's the strongest evidence you'll ever get about anyone. And you said trust isn't faith, and I agree, I'd not thought it through properly, but when you trust another person, your evidence will never be as strong, and so you go by your gut instinct; you believe that they'd not deceive or betray you, that they'd have your best interests at heart, that they would trust you in the same way. That's what friendship really is, not just knowing how to use and get something from the other person and knowing they'd do the same thing to you."

He'd not thought these to be different things, but the way Lily explained them, Severus found himself hard-pressed to find counter-arguments, because he understood on a fundamental level what she was saying – he'd known, even as he'd argued with her in the last two years over what he saw in his friends, that there were certain things he could never depend on them for, and doing anything selflessly for him was one of those things. It was what Lily had always had trouble understanding, that he'd never needed such conviction from his chosen friends, because he'd always known that it was a fickle thing. People were selfish, whether they were Slytherins or not; the only difference was that Slytherins did not pretend the selfishness didn't exist in them. It had always been far safer to give people a concrete reason to come to his aid, than to hope for such a nebulous thing as emotions to make them decide in his favour.

So what was even the point of this trust that Lily was describing, that she was naming as the difference between the 'true' and 'Slytherin' friendship? It was a risk, an uncertainty that could never be completely assuaged, and Severus had learned long ago to not put himself in a position where this was the only tool at his disposal. Even with Michael, whom Severus was suddenly horrified to realise he did trust beyond his own understanding of the boy, there was still the quid-pro-quo that felt like a comfortable Cushioning Charm at his back, because Michael was gaining something from their arrangement just as much as Severus was – Dumbledore's favour was a powerful tool that Severus had no doubt Michael would use to the fullest if need be. And even on their personal level, hadn't they agreed just last week on an arrangement? That they'd keep their silence and watch Severus' back, if he would be there for them in their time of need?

But Severus also remembered Ash's words, about friendships and their worth. You have to have people whom you can trust implicitly to be there for you in your worst moments and know they'd never use it against you. That's the better kind, if you ask me. It was exactly the same thing Lily had insisted on, last Saturday and just now, that there was more reward in being able to place one's trust in this dangerous, risky way in another person. But that was also giving power to one equal to himself without any sort of safety net, and even worse, becoming emotionally invested through it, because trust of this kind was an emotional concept, far more than a logical one. What Lily had called Severus' trust in his abilities to understand and anticipate others, that was clean, simple: the laws of probability, Severus' confidence in himself, and a general understanding of outside circumstances. He'd never been disappointed by his former friends in any sort of painful way, not even by Avery's indirect backstabbing during the attack on the seventh-years. He'd been furious, yes, and he'd grown to hate Avery; but disappointment? No, that would have required more than Severus had ever given the other boy.

Lily, though? If this was the case, what did this mean for his friendship with Lily? He'd never given much thought to how it differed from all his other relationships, because his feelings for her precluded any necessity for it – it was different because she was Lily, end of story. He'd never thought about what his trust in Lily was, beyond that earth-shattering understanding that had ultimately prompted his change in allegiance, that she was far from perfect, that she wasn't the girl he'd thought her to be just half a year ago. But now, as he went back over it, he found his answer in that event to the question that had imposed itself with their conversation.

He did trust Lily, in that visceral, personal level that she held as integral to a genuine friendship. He did, otherwise she would never have been able to hurt him the way she had that day. And he'd chosen, afterwards, to hold onto that trust in spite of his doubts, because she'd proven to him that she cared. Whether or not her feelings for him had waned by that point, she'd still cared enough to fight for him, to buy him that little window of opportunity in the form of Dumbledore's offer of tutorship in the Patronus Charm to prove to her that their friendship meant to him as much as it ever had.

No, the reason why they were sat in the train to Manchester right now wasn't his commitment to the side of Dumbledore and Light in this brewing conflict; the reason was that even when she'd pulled away from him emotionally, when she'd thought that she'd stopped caring, Lily had still fought for him and for their connection. It was this act of fighting that was what had truly granted them another chance to do this right, and this was stronger validation of his trust in her than anything else that had ever transpired between them.

But it still didn't prove to him that this sort of trust made for a better friendship, or that the risk was ultimately worth it, because even with that trust there, he and Lily still felt as far apart as they ever did, stumbling around each other and tentatively trying to find ways of repairing something that had been all but forever destroyed not two weeks ago.

Trust certainly hadn't stopped them from hurting one another very seriously so far. But, it did make for a more emotionally valuable connection, because Severus would never, ever have felt as desperate about repairing his friendship with anyone else the way that he'd been about his relationship with Lily. And even had he not been so wholly in love with her, Severus knew he would have fought with just as much desperation and ferocity as he was doing right now, for one fundamental reason – Lily had been, since that day when he'd seen her jump off that swing seven years ago, the one thing that made Severus see the world as worth a damn, see life as more than simple existence. And he doubted this would have been the case, had that trust between them never existed.

"What are you thinking?" the girl currently at the forefront of his thoughts asked, and Severus ran his hand over his face to move the greasy strands of black hair out of the way.

"You're right, there is a difference," he told her. "And I– I trust you, Lily."

The redhead blinked, and to his surprise, her face twisted into a momentary expression of sorrow.

"Do you really?" she asked, and Severus could have sworn he heard insecurity in her voice. "After... after everything?"

Everything? He frowned, wondering briefly at what 'everything' was supposed to be.

"Yes, Lily, I do," he answered her question instead, putting his curiosity over that word aside, because there was something much more important he needed to know. "Do you – trust me?"

She licked her lips and after a moment nodded.

"Yeah. But... I'm sorry, Sev, but not as much as I had before. Not yet."

"But more than at the beginning of the year," he guessed for her, understanding it in a way she perhaps couldn't know he did. He'd failed her trust utterly, had dismissed her complaints about the Slytherins and even insulted her in such a humiliating, horrific way in public, while she'd been trying to protect him from her fellow Gryffindors. That she trusted him at all meant everything to him. And yet, he imagined that it was all quite the same as his own feelings of trust in her, that she'd shaken so badly in March and that had not had an easy time of reaffirming themselves in the months following, with her reciprocal refusal to hear him, with her ease of dismissing her forgotten arrangement with him in favour of spending time with Lupin, with her absolute condemnation of his feelings and his view of the world. With his doubt that she'd forgive him even with Dumbledore explaining about Severus' chosen allegiance. With her own half-spoken admittance that she'd known about his feelings for her, that she'd even used them for her own gains.

Lily didn't trust him as much as she had, once upon a time. But Severus didn't trust her as much as he once had, either, so it was only fair.

"I– it's different, to before," she said. "Everything that happened in the last two weeks, I think it's changed so much between us." She stared for a moment at her fingers, laced tightly together in her lap. "You don't trust me as much as you once did, either," she echoed his thoughts, a little sadly, though when she looked back up, there was determination written over every facial feature. "I want to learn to trust you again; do you?"

"Of course I do, Lily, you know I do."

"Then that's what matters most," she declared, then smiled slightly. "And so far, we're not doing half bad, either. Right?"

Severus returned her smile, even as he settled the topic of trust into a partitioned corner of his mind, where he could easily pull it out later and reanalyse it.

"We've not begun yelling at one another, and it's been an hour or more; yes, so far, I think we're not very bad at all."

A/N: So, repeating it again - I'd really appreciate a Britpick on this thing, as neither I nor Moon999 are British, or even native speakers, really. We've got the language thing covered, but the Briticisms are something of a hit and miss, I feel - certainly my English is heavily stained by Americanisms that I don't always recognize as being such.

Also, since I can neither embed them nor put their links here, for those who want to know what Mickey, Ash and Stacie look like (remember, they're not my OCs, but rather characters from a British TV show called Hustle), go to this chapter of my story on AO3 (work number is 5803846), the pics are there.