❝ he and i are closer than friends, we are enemies linked together, the same sin binds us ❞ | in which lilium snape is bound to harry potter by fate, destined to stand on either side of a war that will soon be waged. she is cursed by prophecy, or so...
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ACT TWO, chapter thirty—one : you can burn the skin i live in but you cannot burn the witch away
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12 august 1994 — fourth year.
Summer was nearly over.
As August was nearly halfway through, Lili could reflect that it had been a good one. One of the best ever, actually. She'd visited with Draco for the start of summer, running round with her cousin, being fussed over by Auntie Cissa, and reading in the massive Malfoy Manor library. Sev had picked her up at the end of two weeks, indulging in a nice tea with Auntie Cissa (Lucius was mercifully occupied at the Ministry).
While she was with the Malfoy's, Harry was forced to spend those two miserable weeks with the Dursely's to uphold the blood wards (according to Dumbledore), but then he was allowed back to the safety of Spinner's End and he refused to speak of what went on in his relatives' home in the meantime.
It was their home, not Harry's, never Harry's.
Maybe Spinner's End was the closest he'd ever had to having one, and wasn't that a distressing thought for him?
So, Harry was delivered to the Snape home by the Headmaster himself, and in fulfillment of Lili's demand, her friend spent most of the summer with them once more. They did their summer homework, swam in the river by their Big Tree, and generally explored Cokeworth — petting stray cats and shopping at the shop on the High Street and even getting permission to explore the old Evans house from the current elderly residents.
Their lives fell into a steady routine, a soft domesticity, that made Spinner's End feel like home. Here there was no pressure to fit the Gryffindor molds, expected to simply exist.
Harry took her for rides on his broom, and Lili hid shy smiles into his shoulderblade. She hadn't stopped sketching their time together, but she had started hiding a few of her more... embarrassing sketches. She had far too many sketches of a certain Potter boy hidden away in her potions box. They didn't stop gardening nor singing nor cooking meals all together.
Sev glared at them sometimes, when they sat a little too close on the sofa or when she wore Harry's dark blue zip—up or when they stared at one another for a little too long.
Something felt different between them this summer.
Not very different, mind, they'd always been close since First Year, true, but... now they felt closer than ever.
On the night of August 12th, her bedroom door creaked open, and a familiar messy head of curls peeked inside. She gave a brief wave in the moonlight, and on silent socked feet, the boy slipped across the room and crouched at the side of her bed.
