❝ 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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
ACT ONE, chapter seventeen : we are what we are, don't need no excuses for the scars from our mothers
ϟ
Lili was biding her time.
Now with Justin Finch—Fletchley and Nearly Headless Nick also being Petrified, Sev had taken to escorting her to their weekly dinners — picking her up at Gryffindor Tower or wherever she was to the dungeons, and then safely back again before curfew.
Their dinner had been a bit late tonight, though, as Harry had gotten into trouble again in Potions this morning (for nothing at all, really), and Snape had given him an evening detention full of scraping tubeworms off the desks. Yum. And of course he hadn't let the boy go without a string of scathing insults towards his heritage, intelligence, and general person. It was a real arsehole thing to do, really.
Now, she just had to find a way to bring it up to him — especially when everything was so fraught already.
Long ago, Lili had learnt things about Sev, just by watching.
She knew which potions he most liked to make, his favourite genre of books to read, how his face looked when it was pleased or annoyed or downright furious, that he preferred the winter season over summer, and that he'd rather take his meals with her in their quarters than with the staff in the Great Hall.
She also knew that pestering him whilst eating was generally a mistake (which many a new professor had made and soon regretted). Only once he'd moved onto a strong cup of coffee and was tutting in annoyance at some article in Potions Weekly was it safe to interrupt about things he'd rather not hear about. Of course this wasn't always a rule she adhered to, but it was one she followed scrupulously now.
So, Lili watched her father intently, remembering Sev's own words: 'If you observe carefully, you won't have to ask'.
Sev observed people, too.
Clients never had to request specifications or alterations to their ordered potions; Sev had noted and predicted their preferences long before. He consistently needled out who would be a troublemaker in his classes and he had an odd talent of predicting which professors were next to have a mental breakdown. Her father was an expert people—watcher (which was why she was so shocked by his utter density when it came to Harry Potter).
And because of Sev's words, Lili usually could read people quite well — even if she didn't often understand them. Sometimes she felt unable to speak, terrified to say the wrong thing and wound others with the slightest mistake. She wondered what people were thinking, but it always felt beyond her to guess.
Even Sev, sometimes.
Her father's face had often been shuttered to her, as uncommunicative as a closed door. But with Harry, it was different. He tended to be the only one who made sense to her most of the time. He was her exception. Fear, happiness, anger, pain, love — it was all plain to see, written in his expressive eyes, even when he tried to hide it.
