The Year of the Revolution II. The Discovery of Friendship

14. Experimentation

They began, each one, with their routine.

Lily would receive a letter from Sev in the morning and housed the castle owl in Puck's cage, which she released to have a few flights. Although that Monday what she did was send him with her letter to Remus, who didn't live too far from her.

She right away began to answer the letter and sent the owl, after feeding it, immediately to the castle. Afterwards, she would go for a walk, if the weather was not too bad, until lunchtime, and by the river, she would review the movements of the spells learned in Dueling classes so as not to lose practice, using a twig as a wand, as she did as a little girl when she still didn't have one.

Also that Monday, upon returning home, she found a sealed Muggle envelope on her desk. Inside it was money, double the amount her parents used to give her for Christmas so she could buy clothes and get through the rest of the term. There was also a note from her father that said:

Honey, if you both need more, feel free to ask us. And do not think that because of this you will be left without a gift.

It's better if you don't say anything to Petunia, although I'm sure you already knew that.

And when you need to go back to Diagon, the same thing, we'll take you with no problem.

We love you very much, daughter.

From the plural of the first sentence, she understood that her parents must have realized much, much longer than she did, of Sev's serious financial difficulties.

She did not expect at all that they would give her so much money, but she accepted it, because that way she would get enough for what she needed to buy and for both of them to live comfortably for the rest of the school year.

After lunch she locked herself in her room to study. It was annoying not being able to do magic, because she could only learn the theory without putting it into practice, and she understood better Sev's decision to stay in the castle, surely he would be able to advance a lot in Transfiguration, which was what he needed the most.

She dedicated herself especially to Potions, Herbology, and Arithmancy, managing in the latter to understand much more for herself than she had expected, and she asked Sev to give her problems, she would solve them, send them to him, and he would return them corrected, accompanied by new statements.

After dinner she would study for a while or read, gradually devouring other Austen novels from the family library, always ending the day with the letter from Sev she had received that morning, and since they were uplifting and reassuring, she did not have berries every day. She had already realized that at first he gave her a few to ration them, since there would be no new ones until next September.

The next day she received a double reply from Remus with Puck, for her and for Sev, very grateful and telling them that he had already thought of a way to arrange a date for them as soon as they got back to the castle, since the quartet took turns exploring at night. He would take Potter's invisibility cloak and accompany Lily where necessary. He suggested agreeing on a signal to notify Snape in the Hall. 'Oh, Remus is getting quite the tactician too.'

Instead of going for a walk, she went shopping for Sev, which seemed more urgent, to a Muggle store downtown, choosing the same type of clothes that Eileen put in the bag, but nicer.

She was a little embarrassed to buy that type of men's clothing herself, but she got over it thinking that he would have been much more when in the future, which she hoped not too distant, the time would come to see him without an uniform.

She also bought him pajamas, guessing that he only slept in his underwear, for him to wear on the nights they slept together. She doubted whether green or black and in the end she opted for the second and for a dark green dressing gown.