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C: Lily Evans. - Blog Posts
@asphodelroot
Early January, 1984. Spinner’s End.
The air was damp with the January rain, pouring over the streets of Cokeworth in relentless sheets. The windows of the old house were shut and sealed, the four walls wrapped in wards and heating spells. Brick and mortar didn’t hold magic the way old stone or pine wood did, and so the cold seeped through the cracks as it pleased, slow and unbothered.
When Severus claimed this house after his father’s passing, he’d done so with a bitter heart. He resented needing anything from his father, in life or in death, but by then he was tired of the bare room above the apothecary and had grown wise to the need for distance, for a space beyond the prying eyes of his Master. Thus it came to be that only three years after his dignified march out of Spinner’s End, bursting with pride and purpose, Severus found himself slipping back into his old home, silent as shame, even as the only witness to this humiliation was himself.
And now Lily, too. Who once was witness to all that Severus is and was and could be, thus it seemed fitting that she’d reclaim that role upon re-entering his life.
He set the pot of lentil soup upon the wooden coffee table, along the plate of cut bread, and poured a bowl for himself and another for Lily. They’d spent all morning and afternoon in the library beneath the house, pouring over books and spells as the row of cauldrons sizzled and rolled over a low fire. The scent of hellebore and rosemary drifted up to the living room. The fire crackled on in the quiet room.
He sat on the couch beside her and brought his knees up to his chest. He shook pepper onto his bowl and then lifted the shaker to his friend. ‘ Pepper? Or salt? ’
asphodelroot:
“I’d prefer avoiding all fights, altercations, and crossed words,” Lily snipped, crunch the remnants of the ice cube between her teeth. “Somehow I doubt that you occupying Sirius for the evening would a smart step towards that goal.” Especially with Sev admitting to be so totally ready to poke and prod at a werewolf under a full moon eclipse for the sake of trying make him have a violent outburst. For the thoroughness of the study, but still.
“Remus is plenty mentally present tonight.” Which might speak well to this variation of the brew, if not for all the other moon-mad symptoms itching at him. “Meaning problem is his calm. Just because he’s aware of where he is and what he’s doing doesn’t mean he can’t get angry and lash out about it.” But maybe that wasn’t something a potion could be relied on to regulate. Hell, perhaps it wasn’t even the lycanthropy’s fault. Remus could simple be angry and lashing out, because he was angry and lashing out. Not because of the moon or because he was bitten so many years ago (well, maybe because of that, but not in the usual, lunar sense).
Pursing her lips against the gloominess of symptoms she couldn’t help with a brew (and had thus far failed to help with anything else), Lily curled her arms around the plate of sausages and started munching on them. A welcome distraction, even if not the crisp burst of cherries she wanted. “Take me through the variations you’re going to try next,” she said, because losing herself in calculations and magical construction would also be a distraction from her irritation and the helplessness rooted beneath it.
Severus shrugged in a hey, at least I tried, sort of way, and didn’t press the issue.
Severus hummed in thought, half agreement and half introspection, eyes flitting about the room until they landed on the werewolf. ‘ He does, at that, ’ is all he said, but he wondered privately if some of the ingredients diluted within the potion mixed together wrong. If he’d made a mistake that enhanced the moon-madness rather than decreased it. He had such little room to test it’s effectiveness, a population sample of one, but he had done the best he could with what was available and whatever happened tomorrow night there would at least be able to collect more information to work on for the next eclipse.
Severus nodded at her request, leaned forward, elbows on the table, and began a thorough explanation of the current variation on wolfsbane he was working with, as well as the one he was going to attempt next (and next, and next, until it bloody worked). The chatter seemed to help her, and it helped him as well to reiterate and explain what was mostly buzzing about in his own head for months now. Lily was always a good sounding board.
Eventually, the chatter winded down, and Lily dashed off to find her wayward werewolf with renewed determination. Severus sighed, pulled his plate back in front of him, and resumed his habit of people-watching.
END.
asphodelroot:
Sausage rolls and fries were not enough to forestall the shocked look of betrayal she gave him. That had been her cherry! She needed those cherries—did he have any idea what sort of battle she had endured to secure them? Of course not, because Lily hadn’t told him. And she usually didn’t make more than a token fuss about food theft; Severus always needed more feeding, and if it required letting him feel like he was getting away with something via theft for it to happen, so be it.
Her cherries had never been intended to fall victim to that policy, but after a moment of hurt scowling, Lily let it go and focused on savouring the sole cherry left for her, tucked in the corner of her mouth. She didn’t have many close friends to start, and was on the wrong side of the majority of them; no matter how sacred her cherry had been, she wasn’t going to lose Severus over it. Not tonight. (Never again.)
Finally swallowing her cherry, she fished out a bit of ice to munch on instead. “We came together. He’s definitely got some bugbears behind the ears tonight,” she shared. “Snappish, grumpy, probably should have stayed home but even more bullheaded and stubborn than usual. I told him to avoid alcohol tonight—no idea if he’ll actually listen to that bit of advice.” Despite that grim debrief, Lily was willing to call tonight not a disaster thus far. Nothing broken, no one thrown across the room. Far from the bloodbath Lily hadn’t been expecting but hadn’t ruled out as a possibility. “Will you be tweaking the brew again, for tomorrow night? Maybe some hawthorn bark to help him stay calm.”
Severus blinked at her scowling for a few moments after she let it go, then pushed the plate of sausage rolls closer to her. He’d clearly misread the room. She was more upset than he realized.
‘ He’s always agitated before the full moon, ’ Severus said again, this time reassuringly. ‘ You should’ve seen him last month. Absolutely insufferable — still no violent outbursts. With me trying. He can keep it together for a few more hours. ’ Or else he wouldn’t have come at all tonight … hopefully. Severus was banking on the assumption that at least one of the four buffoons of his childhood had enough sense to stay home when they needed to. Especially if said buffoon had been dealing with the same pre-moon mood swings for as long as they could remember.
Which was, put like that, a rather tall order.
He looked at Black again, then said to Lily with a straight face: ‘ I could keep Black occupied for the rest of the night if you’d prefer. ’ He and Black going at each other would at least not be shocking. They’ve been practically exchanging friendship bracelets the last few months, it would just be setting the world back to rights, if nothing else.
He hummed. ‘ The problem’s not keeping him calm, it’s keeping him present. Mentally. I’ve modified the brew to keep him aware and in control through the eclipse. The calm will come with that. ’ He paused, casting his mind back to the multitudes of equations and ideas he went through to get to a result worth testing. ‘ It should work. ’ But they don’t know that. They won’t until they test it.
@asphodelroot
june 12th, 1984. the flaming dragon.
Severus didn’t initially plan on coming here at all — it’s a party, and the only way to get Severus to go to one was through the promise of information, opportunity, or a thoroughly studied campaign of coercion by the Malfoys. But he was here now, tucked into his usual table with a tall glass of butterbeer, eyes tracking the movements in the crowd with some interest. It was rare that a large number of the Order was in one place at once, and watching them move and blend together was it's own well of information.
Selwyn flitted through the room, wide smile, drinks sloshing about, but her eyes stayed alert. Jones was at the bar, taking shots with Potter. Lupin slipped through the crowd moments ago, still sour as a grape, and Severus had lost track of him. Severus leaned to the right. ‘ Nine sickles say Lupin’ll punch someone by the end of the night. ’
I would rather die on my two legs than slither on eight with you.
You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no.
Unknown (via wordsnquotes)
i live in constant struggle between “you’re wrong” and “but i don’t want to start shit”
Don’t look at me with those eyes.
