‘If that isn’t Lily Evans, the queen in avoiding the pursuit of James.’

Lily rolled her eyes, but she didn’t stop. She continued walking down the corridor and then climbed up the stairs. She tried to hurry into the common room before the other caught up with her, but she had long since recognised the voice of her current pursuer.

It was Sirius Black. ‘You know, you could have waited for me,’ he panted when he arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady where Lily stood. ‘We could have gone up together.’

Lily shrugged. ‘How would I have known you were heading in the same direction I was, Black?’ She was then looking where the Fat Lady was; her portrait was empty so neither of the two teenagers could get into the common room. But Lily couldn’t find the guard to the Gryffindor Tower in any of the other portraits in that corridor. ‘Probably visiting her friend in the lower levels,’ Lily murmured but kept looking around, in vain.

‘Who are you searching for?’ Sirius asked curiously, not having heard her murmur.

‘The Fat Lady. She’s not there,’ Lily answered, pointing behind herself, and a moment later Sirius exclaimed, ‘I suppose we’re lucky then.’

Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s lucky about standing in front of the common room and not being able to get in?’

‘We have time to talk, that I call luck.’ Sirius smiled, then nodded towards the flower pot she was carrying. ‘May I ask what’s in there?’

Lily looked down. ‘Oh, that.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s just a young pumpkin. I’m going to take care of it. Professor Cabernach offered it to me to take care. Like kind of extracurricular project for Herbology.’

‘I see. You like that class, don’t you?’ Sirius inquired, sitting down on the floor. He leaned against one of the walls and looked up at Lily who stood in the middle of the hallway, appearing a bit uneasy about what to do.

‘Yes, I do. I like playing with the dirt.’ She laughed quietly, but what amazed her was that Sirius joined in. It wasn’t his usual bark-like, loud laughter, however, but a deeper, more serious one. ‘Don’t you, too? From what I’ve seen in classes you enjoy digging in the soil just as much as I do.’

Sirius shrugged. ‘It’s something I never got to experience so I enjoy it while it lasts.’

‘Oh? Didn’t you have a lawn or something where you could play with the soil?’ Lily asked, walking over to where Sirius sat. She crouched down, but not completely. She also kept a slight distance, still a bit wary about what would happen.

Sirius shook his head. ‘Yes, and no. We have a lawn, a big one, behind the house. But my parents never allowed us to play like we wanted to. Reg— I mean my brother and I got reprimanded a couple of times when we did play with the flowers and soil, until we learnt to not get ourselves dirty. Mother always preached about dignity and that being dirty takes away from it.’

Lily grimaced. ‘That’s not… a very nice thing to do from a mother,’ she said carefully; she didn’t know much about Sirius and his childhood because he never talked about it – not very much that is – but she also didn’t want to hurt him. ‘And your father?’

‘He was rarely at home, at best. He had always the one or other work to do with the Ministry. Often, it took him to travel to the continental Europe or even farther away, sometimes for weeks on end. We got to see him only seldomly. And when he was at home, he supported mother’s opinions on keeping the dignity and not getting dirty. “You are Blacks, pure-bloods, and we don’t dig in the dirt. That’s below of who we are.� That’s what he always used to lecture.’

Lily found Sirius looked sad, his voice far away from the outgoing, light-minded nature he usually was. ‘I had no idea,’ she whispered, feeling pity for Sirius. Maybe he only played the sunny boy to forget about the darkness he lived through in his childhood, Lily thought.

‘Well, I don’t go around and tell everyone about my family, do I?’

‘No, you don’t,’ Lily admitted. ‘Do your friends… know about that?’

Sirius nodded curtly. ‘Yes, they do. Not everything because that would be too much even for them, but… the general idea.’

‘I see. Is this reason that you’re in Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays this year?’

Sirius turned to look at her. ‘Smart thinking,’ he praised her, then added, ‘Yes and no. I couldn’t stand being around my parents any longer, or the entire extended family for that matter. It had become unbearable, especially when Bella and her husband came over for dinners.’ He grimaced at the mere imagination of meeting his cousin. ‘So I… moved out last summer.’

‘You… moved out?’ Lily thought she hadn’t heard correctly. ‘You couldn’t have been seventeen yet.’

Sirius shrugged. ‘That’s correct. I moved in with James.’ He smiled briefly.

Lily’s eyes widened a bit in comprehension. ‘That’s why you didn’t arrive with your family last September, like the years before.’ Sirius nodded. ‘But why aren’t you with James then? If his parents took you in, why would you spend your Christmas holidays in Hogwarts instead of with them?’

Sirius shrugged again. ‘They had booked a small holiday trip before I turned up at their doorstep and I didn’t want to impose myself on them. So I said I wasn’t feeling so well and stayed here.’

Lily bit back a snort. ‘Potter believed that?’

‘I have no idea. He left though, didn’t he?’ He didn’t wait for Lily’s reply and questioned, ‘What about you? Why aren’t you at home?’

Lily shrugged and looked away. ‘I couldn’t stand meeting my sister and her fiancé. Besides, Mum and Dad went on holidays a couple days before we would have left for the Christmas break so there was no chance of them fetching me from Kings Cross anyway.’

‘And your sister is at home?’

‘Yes. I guess she feels like the queen now, having the entire house at her disposal. I don’t want to know what she and Vernon are going to do in that one week of my parents’ absences.’

Sirius chuckled. ‘I’d never thought you hated her that much.’

‘I don’t hate her!’ Lily shot back, defensively, and Sirius held up his palms in apology. ‘It’s just… we don’t get along very well – anymore,’ Lily explained, a lot calmer again.

‘So you did get along when you were younger?’

‘Yes, before I came to Hogwarts.’ Lily put the pumpkin pot aside and sat down fully, crossing her legs at her ankles. She fiddled with her thumbs in her lap for a while before saying, ‘When I learnt that what I could do was magic, and Tuney was not a witch like me, we grew apart. She called me a freak, saying that all magic was evil and abnormal. She said Hogwarts is a school for deranged people.’

Sirius snorted and Lily looked at him curiously. ‘Excuse me for being blunt, but that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Hogwarts for deranged people.’ He laughed briefly and humourlessly. ‘That’s even more blatant than my parents with their beliefs of pure-blood supremacy.’ Lily didn’t reply, and after a while Sirius looked at her to see what the matter was. She looked all sad and utterly helpless. ‘Hey, I’m sorry for my blunt words. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ He reached out, but before he could touch her, Lily spoke.

‘It’s okay. I suppose I haven’t yet got over the loss of my sister who used to be a very close friend to me when I was younger.’

Sirius smiled genuinely. ‘I can imagine what you go through. It’s kind of the same with me and my brother.’

Lily looked at him. ‘What happened between you two? If I may ask, of course, and if you want to tell me about it, that is.’

He smiled, genuinely and sadly at the same time. ‘Well, standing between Regulus and me is me being a Gryffindor.’

‘What has that to do with anything?’

‘Don’t you remember when we met on the Hogwarts Express on the very first day, five and a half years ago?’

Lily didn’t respond at first, but eventually, she nodded slowly. ‘You said your entire family had been in Slytherin.’

‘Exactly. And seeing that I was the heir of the Black family and fortune, everyone expected me to be in Slytherin. Not only my parents, but everyone in the pure-blood world. I was foreseen to become a great wizard, a great leader of the pure-blood families once I leave school, but when I got Sorted into Gryffindor, I destroyed the hopes of many. They’re angry with me.’

‘Your brother, too?’

Sirius shot Lily a long calculating look. ‘Don’t take me wrong, but Regulus and you are similar on many levels.’

‘What –?’

Sirius held up his hands defensively. ‘Hear me out first, please. You told me that you and your sister were quite close when you were younger. It was the same with Regulus and me. But he and I grew apart when I got into Gryffindor, just like you and your sister grew apart when you went to Hogwarts. Regulus was disappointed in me; he never fails to show me that. And I think you’re disappointed in your sister for separating herself from you for being what you are, a witch.’

Lily had opened her mouth to snap back at Sirius, but once he finished his explanation, she saw the truth in his words. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she mumbled quietly and turned away from Sirius. He sighed, longing to touch her and comfort Lily in her sadness, but he refrained; instead, he sat silently, giving Lily time to compose herself again.

‘You know, I’d never believed you and I would sit here and talk about our families one day,’ Lily began after several moments. Sirius chuckled, agreeing. ‘You were always a prat I swore never to talk to,’ Lily admitted, blushing slightly.

He laughed his bark-like laughter, and Lily knew he was his usual self again. ‘That’s a first, Evans. No one has yet told me I was a prat and wasn’t worth being spoken to.’

‘There’s always a first time,’ Lily said. ‘And call me Lily.’ She held out her hand which Sirius took and shook.

‘Sirius. Nice to meet you.’ He spoke the words in honest sincerity as it meant a lot to him that Lily Evans had talked with him about her family’s problems, just as much as that he had been able to confide her into his.

‘My pleasure, Sirius,’ Lily said, smiling when they shook hands. ‘I suppose we’re friends now.’

‘Exactly what I wanted to say,’ Sirius replied, smiling, too. ‘Would you mind, though, and not tell anyone about what I said about my family? It’s rather… private, you know.’

‘I know, and I won’t go around and spill out your secrets. Just… keep mine secret as well, will you?’

‘Of course.’ Sirius smiled reassuringly, but then it turned into a grin. ‘The only one who could talk would be that formidable pumpkin of yours.’ He pointed to the pot with the barely two inches tall plant that stood in-between them.

Lily broke out in laughter and Sirius joined in. ‘I think I’ll have to keep it hidden away then, so that none of our secrets can get out.’ Her eyes twinkled with mirth.

‘You do that. And I’ll make sure that no one ever finds out where you hide the pumpkin.’

‘I count on you for that, Sirius,’ Lily replied just when a voice above them asked, ‘What are you doing out here on the corridor?’ Both looked up to see the Fat Lady having returned. They hurriedly scrambled up from their sitting positions, Sirius lending Lily a hand which she gratefully took.

‘Well, you were away and we couldn’t get in, so we decided to camp on the windy outside until your ladyness returned from her quest,’ Sirius offered playfully.

‘Funny,’ the Fat Lady replied curtly. ‘Password?’

Lily shot Sirius a conspiratorial look. ‘Pumpkin,’ she replied.

‘Go in then.’

Both Gryffindors climbed into the empty common room. Lily headed directly for the girls’ dorms, but Sirius held her back, the portrait shutting the entrance to the common room behind him. ‘Hey, Lily.’ Lily turned around, one foot on the stairs already. ‘He isn’t such a prat, you know. Give him a chance. His feelings in regard to you are honest. Trust me.’

Lily considered his words for a moment. ‘I’ll think about it. Thanks, Sirius.’ She then vanished up the stairs.

‘You’re welcome,’ Sirius murmured before heading towards his own dormitory. He couldn’t wait for his friends to return, but he also knew that the days until everyone would come back to Hogwarts wouldn’t be alone and silent when he knew Lily was around.