On the morning of September first, Lily Evans stood gazing into a mirror for several long minutes, half-heartedly dragging a brush through her tangle of auburn hair. She was not, normally, the type of girl who spent much time in front of mirrors, and her presence before one now was more out of nerves than vanity. Putting down the brush, Lily glanced over her shoulder at her small but tidy room”her school trunk was packed and resting in one corner, her school things stacked neatly inside. She shook her head and turned back to her reflection.
“Get a grip,” she said aloud as she regarded herself, her vivid green eyes blinking out at her from the glass. Within the hour, her Muggle parents would be taking her to King's Cross station so she could catch the Hogwarts Express for the start of her seventh and final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Lily edged one ragged nail into her mouth and bit down nervously, tilting her head. This is ridiculous, she thought ruefully. I haven’t been this nervous to go to Hogwarts since my first year.
Scowling at herself, she turned away from the mirror, looking instead at the vanity table that stood beside it, and upon which rested the two objects that were the source of her skittishness. She picked up the first”a golden badge emblazoned with the letters “HG,” which announced her this years’ Head Girl. She held it up to her chest, as if to pin it on, but quickly put it down again.
The letter proclaiming her Head Girl, which had come midway through August, had, after everything, been a surprise. Straitlaced student that she was, she couldn’t help but remember how her prefect duties had fallen by the wayside halfway through the previous year, as she had embraced her more mischievous side.
With that thought, she put the Head Girl badge back on the table, trading it for her second source of worry”a small stack of photographs that her friend and fellow Gryffindor Prefect, Remus Lupin, had sent her earlier in the summer. She flipped through the photos fondly and not without some wonder; she had barely noticed Remus taking pictures during the year, but she was glad for them now. The first few were of Lily and her friend and year-mate, Mary Macdonald, sitting by the fire in the Gryffindor common room, or studying for their exams outside in the courtyard. Another showed Lily and Marlene Mckinnon, who had been the previous years’ Head Girl. Lily felt a pang of sadness as she flipped past a picture of herself, Marlene, and”someone must have coerced him from behind the camera”Remus, standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. A year ahead of them, Marlene had left Hogwarts, and Lily would miss her sorely.
Another picture showed Lily hitting Peter Pettigrew in the face with a snowball, and the one after that was a group shot of the students who had gotten together last term to practice extra Defense Against the Dark Arts spells. But it was the last photo in the stack that was the cause for her anxiety, and the one she pulled out now to examine.
Taken outside on the Hogwarts grounds near the end of last term, the picture showed Lily, her hair blown back lightly from her face by a breeze, flanked by two dark-haired boys. The one on the right was carelessly handsome as he laughed at something, a friendly hand resting on her shoulder. But it was the boy on the left that her eyes were drawn to”long, lanky, his black hair rumpled, glasses slightly crooked on his nose, a slow smile.
Like all Wizarding photos, this one was moving. Sirius Black, the right-side boy, was moving continuously”laughing, gesturing, sometimes running in and out of the frame. But his best friend, the boy on the other side of the picture, was standing relatively still, as was the photograph version of Lily herself. James Potter had one arm wrapped around her waist, and she had rested her hand on his side. The two of them seemed quite comfortable like that, and were watching Sirius’s antics interestedly, moving only to occasionally grin at each other.
It was strange, Lily thought, looking down at the photo, that this even existed. For her first five years at Hogwarts, Lily had made a point of avoiding both of these boys, disliking their attitudes, their egos, and their actions. In the past year, however, she had gone from hating them both to grudgingly respecting them, and then, finally, to actually liking them, as well as appreciating their talent at causing trouble.
She and James had gotten especially close; studying the photo now, she had to admit to herself that they looked like a couple. And now, with the start of their seventh year approaching, she found that, more than ever, she didn’t know how she felt about that.
Lily put the photos back down on her desk, blushing faintly at the memory of their last encounter. He had kissed her, then, back in June, and she had kissed him back, before asking for the summer to sift through her confused feelings. But summer had come and gone and she still, still, wasn’t sure what she was thinking or feeling.
Sighing heavily, she flung herself across her bed, her face in her hands, hoping vaguely that everything would come together when she saw him. But before she could start overthinking, as she normally did, there was a soft knock on her bedroom door.
Lily’s eyes flew open in surprise, and she sat up. “Tuney,” she said, startled, at the sight of her older sister standing timidly in the doorframe. “Come in.”
Petunia took a few cautious steps forward, just barely crossing into Lily’s room, and then stood, looking around warily, her arms crossed tightly. Lily regarded her a little awkwardly”she hadn’t seen her sister at all this summer, as Petunia was now living in London, and only a handful of times the summer before. In fact, aside from one highly uncomfortable Christmas dinner with Petunia, their parents, and Petunia’s unpleasant boyfriend, the sisters had had very little contact over the past few years.
“I’m not staying,” Petunia said coldly after a moment, eyeing Lily’s school trunk with distaste. She’d let her hair grow out since they’d seen each other last, Lily realized”her blonde hair curled gently past her shoulders, and she was wearing a neatly pressed skirt and sweater set. She looked quite grown up, and Lily suddenly felt rather childish in her jeans-and-t-shirt ensemble. Self-consciously, she picked up her brush again and began fiddling with it, waiting for her sister to speak again.
Petunia took several short breaths before announcing, without preamble, “Vernon and I are getting married. We just came by to tell Mummy and Daddy, and they seemed to think that you should hear it from me. So, that’s what I came up here to tell you.”
For a moment, Lily was at a loss for words. She couldn’t, in all honesty, be happy for Petunia”she had met Vernon Dursley, and she despised him”but a simple “Congratulations” seemed too formal. She supposed, as Petunia’s sister, she should probably jump up and down and squeal and demand to see the ring, but the two of them had been at odds for too long. Instead, she blurted out the first thought that came into her head.
“But you’re so young!”
Petunia narrowed her eyes. “I’ll be twenty next month,” she snapped. “And it’s not as if it will be a quick engagement, I’m not hurrying into anything here.”
Lily opened her mouth, then closed it again, still speechless. After a beat of silence, Petunia spoke again. “Don’t worry,” she said dismissively, “I’m not going to ask you to be my maid of honor or anything. And you don’t even have to bother coming to the wedding, I’m sure you’d rather spend time with your freak friends.”
“No!” Lily protested, sitting up straighter. “No, Tuney, I want to come!”
“You do?” said Petunia, sounding unsure.
“Of course I do,” Lily said. “You’re still my sister, you know.”
Petunia rolled her eyes. “I know,” she said, and for a moment, as they looked at each other, a sudden warmth burst between them for the first time in years. They smiled at each other cautiously.
“So,” Petunia said, edging a little further into Lily’s room, “you wouldn’t be bringing that Snape boy, from Spinner’s End, would you?”
Lily inhaled sharply. “Oh,” she said levelly, “I haven’t spoken to Severus in over a year. We…grew apart.”
“Good,” Petunia said succinctly. “I never liked him.”
Surprised, Lily laughed, then shrugged, and Petunia again took a few steps nearer. “Mummy did mention that he hasn’t been around lately,” she said softly.
Lily waved a hand at her. “It’s old news,” she said. “He changed, in the end. Got kind of nasty.”
Petunia nodded sympathetically, and Lily hesitated for a moment. It had been so long since she’d talked to her sister”really talked”but suddenly she wanted to, desperately. “Actually, Tuney,” she said slowly, “there’s this other boy.”
Petunia just barely raised her eyebrows, the hint of a smile playing about her lips. “Oh, really?” she said, sitting down on Lily’s bed beside her sister.
Lily nodded. “I’m trying to figure out how I feel about him, really. I used to not be able to stand him, and then somehow he ended up being one of my closest friends, and now I can’t figure out if I’m in love with him or not. It’s all very complicated.”
“It’s funny how that happens,” Petunia said and she laughed mischievously, actually laughed, like she had when they were children, before saying, “Well, what’s his name? And do you have a picture?”
Lily felt her throat go dry, and blinked hard, wondering why she suddenly found it so difficult to say his name. “James,” she said, swallowing. “James Potter. And I do have a picture, it’s right here.”
She leaned over to her bedside table and slid out the photo, passing it to her sister. Petunia studied it. “The one on the right is cute,” she said after a moment.
Lily grinned. “Yeah,” she said. “He knows.”
Petunia grinned back at her. “Oh, I hate that,” she said, shaking her head. “So the other one is James then?” She considered him as Lily nodded, and then said, “Well, for what it’s worth, he seems to really like you.”
“I know,” Lily said. “He does, it’s wonderful, and it’s not that, it’s just””
But she stopped speaking as Petunia suddenly gave a little gasp and dropped the photo. The Sirius in it had just given her a feisty wink, and it seemed to have reminded Petunia just exactly what her sister was. “Photographs,” she said stiffly, getting to her feet, “aren’t supposed to move.”
The warmth that had fizzled between them died as Petunia smoothed the front of her skirt with her hands and walked towards Lily’s bedroom door. “Tuney, wait,” Lily said desperately, but as Petunia turned to look at her, she was wearing such a cold expression that Lily stopped speaking at once.
“No, Lily,” she said bitterly. “I’d forgotten for a minute, but you’re not my sister. Not really. Take your freak pictures back to your freak friends at your freak school. Things are better when you aren’t around.”
Lily took the blows stoically, willing herself not to cry as Petunia swept from the room. She heard low voices from downstairs”Petunia and Vernon making their goodbyes, she supposed”and then the front door opened and closed. After a while, she heard her parents calling her, telling her to hurry or she’d miss the train. Slowly, she walked over to her school trunk, gathering her things to haul down the stairs to her parents’ car.
In a way Petunia was right, she thought. She didn’t really belong here, in this house, in the Muggle world. Where she was heading now”that was home.
Stars Apart by Willow Rosenberg
Story Notes:
June 2012: and it's COMPLETED! (Finally) Wow, and thanks so much for everyone who has followed this. Notes on the upcoming third and final installment are before the last chapter :)
Okay. Hi! So this is the sequel to "Trickster." It picks up approximately two months later, and will go through the end of seventh year.
A note on the categories: I had the worst time trying to decide if this was a James/Lily romance fic or a Marauder Era, because, while the James/Lily storyline is one of the main ones, unlike in "Trickster," it isn't the only one. Sirius definitely gets his own storyline fleshed out more, and Remus and Peter both have more individual plotlines. It ended up being James/Lily (because it always comes back to them) but, just for the record, know that there will be a little more of everyone else, and some opening up of the story. Enjoy!-----------