April first was James Potter’s favourite day of the year.

For this reason, fiery-haired, oft-wooed Lily Evans woke up early and ate breakfast while surrounded by early-rising first-years. As it was a Saturday, nobody older than a third-year was present in the Great Hall at that hour except for Lily and the Slytherin Quidditch team, which apparently hadn’t thought of James and his cohorts rigging the pitch. Lily had, but she wasn’t in a forgiving enough mood to save the team from embarrassment.

Besides, she was rather hoping Gryffindor could manage a Quidditch Cup this year.

She rose from her House table at the same time as the Slytherin team rose from theirs, and she followed at a distance to see what kind of trouble the pitch would cause for them. An Anti-Flying Charm, perhaps? An infestation of garden gnomes? The Snitch Transfigured into a golf ball? But then, she recalled, none of the Chosen Four would know what a golf ball was.

However, nothing happened to the team as they mounted their brooms. Nothing happened when they rose into the air, and nothing happened when they released the balls.

Lily felt faintly relieved as she walked away—and then suddenly apprehensive as she realized that the boys’ omission of that particular idea only gave them more energy to work on whatever else they were planning.

It was still some time before seven, so Lily returned to the castle and scooped some fresh rolls and sausages from the table into a napkin, which she Transfigured easily into something vaguely bag-like, with two handles.

The Slytherin team could still be seen going about their business, uninterrupted by magical pranks. Lily turned and walked in the opposite direction, with a precautionary umbrella swinging from her hand. Eventually, the scrubby growth of trees around the lake came into view, and she figured if she walked along the bank a while she might make it to a place where she couldn’t see the castle, and the castle couldn’t see her.

The trouble with being alone like this—though Lily didn’t like the company of other people all that much—was that one tended to have to think in order to occupy the time, and Lily had so much to think about. James Potter, for seventeen-year-old Lily, was not at the top of the list. As much as she wanted to avoid it, and avoid him, the top of the list was occupied by Severus Snape. She abbreviated his name when she spoke to him—“Sev” was a much softer name—but the serpentine name of “Severus” was beginning to suit him more and more.

It wasn’t as if she wanted to think about him right now. Or yesterday at lunch when she stopped talking halfway through a sentence, or last night when she felt suddenly lonely without knowing why. She never wanted to think of him, and yet thoughts of him were always there. He wasn’t attractive, and he certainly wasn’t nice. He was greasy and dark and even cruel, but it didn’t matter.

She started out with a specific purpose in mind: to decide how she felt about Severus Snape and then deal with whatever feelings she discovered in what she mentally described as a healthy way. She didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but it sounded like a good goal, and Lily was used to setting goals and then accomplishing them.

But she didn’t get very far. Severus is mean, she came up with. Severus is cruel. Severus' friends are awful.

He’s my best friend. He was friends with a Muggle-born. He knew about the prejudices and he didn’t care—well, until now. He’s smart and interesting and unassuming.

He’s in love with me.

She stopped walking and lay flat on her back in the grass. Her hand reached out, and she trailed it lazily in the water of the lake. It didn’t matter, she realized suddenly. It didn’t matter how he felt about her and how she felt about him, because what really mattered now was what side you were on. There were sides, and—though it was as dim as the stone castle in the distance—something was coming, something that would make those sides a lot more important.

She lay there for a long time, thinking and staring at the sky. She tried to think about other things—school, her friends, anything—but it didn’t do a thing. Her thoughts always came back to Severus. When the sun rose high and burning over the midday sky, she ate the rolls and sausages, which had spent the intervening hours drying into what made for an unsatisfactory lunch. After she ate, she managed to focus her energy on creating a satisfyingly large wave in the lake, but as soon as she congratulated herself on finding something else to do, her thoughts returned immediately to the topic she was trying to avoid.

“Lily?”

Startled, Lily’s eyes snapped open, and she pushed herself up into a sitting position. “Sev?”

He looked down, and his hair fell into his eyes. “Hi,” he mumbled. Lily wondered how it was possible to mumble a one-syllable word.

She half-expected him to apologise—for everything, or just for showing up unexpectedly—but he didn’t.

“Can I sit?”

Lily looked up at him with a pained look meant to hurt. “Fine,” she said softly.

He sat, crossing his bony legs and looking down at them rather than at her. After a few minutes of silence, Lily spoke.

“How did you know where I was?”

Severus shifted and chewed his lips. “I followed you.” He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Lily found herself saying, even though it wasn’t. “Why, though?”

He shook his head, still not looking at her. His hair swung in front of his face. “I just wanted to see you. I feel bad, or—I don’t know.” Barely audible, he added, “I missed you.”

Lily pressed her lips together. Finally she asked, “So what do you want me to do about that?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I’ll just go now.” He stood up, hesitating as if waiting for Lily to stop him.

She did. She hated herself for it—for being so weak, so stupid—but she let him stay. “No,” she said. “You can stay. But listen, Sev—after today, I don’t want to talk to you ever again, hear?”

“Right, right, fine,” he said hastily. “Anything—” He sat back down and looked at his knees again. Lily could see his normally pale face turning pink. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.” He was mumbling again.

“It’s fine.” She smiled, one side of her mouth pulling harder than the other, allowing a little happiness to spill into the whole stupid situation. “I kind of missed you, too.”

“How are your fr—”

“Don’t ask me those questions,” Lily interrupted sharply. “Don’t ask me how my friends are, because I don’t want to know about yours.”

“Then what do we talk about?”

“Anything else.”

Severus pushed his hair out of his face and finally looked up at Lily, but he didn’t say anything.

“You think you’re ready for your exams?” she asked. It was her default topic of conversation these days, now that they were so soon.

“Probably. I think Potions’ll be my best, except for Dark Arts—”

“Defence Against the Dark Arts,” Lily snarled.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, “sorry, Defence. And,” he began, once he was sure she wasn’t dangerous, “I’m going to flunk Care of Magical Creatures.”

Lily didn’t answer. She had gotten distracted by the way his dark eyes reflected the sky and they looked almost blue—almost gentle. She shook her head. “What?”

“Magical Creatures. I’m going to flunk my exam.”

“Shut up, Sev, you’re not flunking anything.” She grinned at him now, a little more relaxed. “You’re the smartest person I know.”

He might have opened his mouth to say something, but Lily didn’t know. She lay back again, and felt the dew of the grass soak into the back of her robes as she stared up into the sky.

She felt the grass near her left arm bend down as Severus lay beside her on the grass. “You ever looked for shapes in the clouds?” she asked.

Severus turned to her. “What?”

She shook her head. “I guess it’s a Muggle thing. You look into the clouds and see what shapes they make. Kind of stupid, but—well, I guess not, not if you’ve never heard of it.”

He stared at the sky intently. “I don’t see anything.”

Lily imagined tracing the shapes she saw with a finger: a dragon, a horse, a frog, a toadstool—Maybe over there could be a Kneazle, though how she could tell it from a regular cat— “Neither do I,” she said.

Lily and Severus each turned over on a side, so they were facing each other. Severus’ hair flopped in his face again, and he pushed it out of the way impatiently. “Lily,” he said, and she opened her eyes a little wider to show him that she was alert and prepared to hear whatever he wanted to say.

He never added anything. Just her name—“Lily”—like he loved it.

Lily closed her eyes. It was getting to be too much again, and she knew now she didn’t want to stop talking to him. If she weren’t this way, if he weren’t that way, if she hadn’t issued that stupid ultimatum just a few minutes ago—things would be different and they could talk whenever they wanted. But they couldn’t. She closed her eyes so maybe she wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t want to be around him anymore.

With her eyes closed, she didn’t have any warning as to what was about to happen. When she looked back on it, it was of course glaringly obvious, but at the time she was just trying to forget.

So Severus touched his mouth to hers. His lips were soft and thin and chapped and somehow cold, and by the time she opened her eyes, he was already gone. She turned over, and she could see him running, his cloak flapping behind him. Almost inadvertently, she grinned affectionately at how awkward and batlike he looked.

But then she rolled onto her back again and asked the stupid cloud-frog, “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

The sky was growing steadily darker, and Lily suddenly realized that the sun had set. She stood and walked away from the place where their bodies had flattened the new grass of early spring.

When she returned to the castle, she opened the doors to the Great Hall tentatively, a bit concerned about what she might find.

The Great Hall was pristine. There was no wreckage, no carnage left behind. Lily’s thoughts returned to the untouched Slytherin team that morning. She wondered if James was sick—surprised by the twinge of concern that idea sparked—and why, then, the rest of his cohorts wouldn’t continue without him.

Dinner was starting. The first students were filtering in, and Lily followed them, sitting down at a place at the long Gryffindor table. And there they were: James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, all entering the Hall looking simply mad with glee. Perhaps she hadn’t planned well enough—perhaps they had held off all day only to unveil their big prank at dinner.

To her annoyance, they seated themselves directly across from her.

“Hey, Evans.”

“All right, Evans?”

“How’s your day been, Evans?”

“Hello, Lily.” (That was Peter. He had detected the sarcasm in the others’ use of Lily’s surname. She thought she rather liked Peter.)

“You reckon we can tell her?”

“I think we ought to.”

“What do you think, James?”

James cocked his head, looking at her piercingly. “Hm…” he said slowly. “I think…mm…yes! I think we’ll tell her.” But nobody spoke up.

It took all Lily’s strength not to snap at them. “Tell me what?” she asked, with forced tranquillity.

They all looked as if they were about to burst into laughter at any moment.

“We’re not doing a prank!” Peter was unable to control himself any longer. He was ecstatic. The other three hushed him.

“Not so loud!” James hissed.

Lily shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“See, it’s like this—” James began, but Sirius interrupted.

“Can you imagine them all going crazy? Can you imagine McGonagall lying awake tonight, just staring at the ceiling and wondering when she’ll hear an explosion? Dumbledore trying to calm them all down? Snivellus sucking his thumb, rocking, waiting for us to do something?”

He had managed at least four jabs at Severus in one sentence, but Lily forced her jaw to unclench. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it, she reminded herself. And their plan—well… “It’s brilliant,” she told them. They all grinned with self-satisfaction, but James was positively beaming.

Lily looked past their faces for a split second. She caught eyes with a broken, anxious boy, and he shrugged his thin shoulders as if he didn’t care.