minnow // sirius black

twenty-one

"You can wear one of mine, Lily," She groaned. "Seriously, you can. Go ask Mum for a swimsuit, I have a ton, there's got to be a pair that you'll like."

"That's not the problem," She said quietly. I raised an eyebrow. "You are tiny."

I snorted. Lily had flinched, as if she were offending me.

It wasn't a compliment, but I wasn't hurt. I was extremely tiny. I was just a bit under 158 cm (about 5'2), and barely weighed 7 stone (100lbs). I'd gained a lot of weight since I was released from the hospital. Arlo wasn't as worried about my weight anymore, but he still suggested I ate a few hundred more calories than I normally would.

I'd been extremely small my entire life, being as sick as I was, and since I got so much worse when I was 13, I never got any taller than I still was at 17. My weight, however, fluctuated more than Arlo said was healthy. I went from 8.5 stone (120lbs), to just over 5 stone (around 70lbs), in less than two months this last year.

Very few of my swimsuits fit me now.

Lily, however, was extremely healthy. She was, at the time, 165cm (5'5), and a healthy weight. She wore a few pant sizes larger than I did, but I was insanely small - too small.

"I have a couple swimsuits from last summer," I said, smiling. "They should fit you."

"And if they don't?"

"Mum has some of her own," I shrugged. "There's a lot of swimsuits in the house. Mum nor I like to throw things away, and with my crazily fluctuating size, we try to keep as many of mine as we can."

"If you don't throw them away-"

"There is several Muggle shelters nearby, and two of them are close to community pools. We donate the swimsuits to those, and everything else we aren't keeping goes to other Muggle shelters, that's where my old bedroom suit went. Well, what wasn't covered in blood," I explained. Lily nodded, smiling. "The chair actually went to a wizard upholstery, Mum knows the owner and she said she could use the frame."

"That's good," Lily said, her cheeks turning red. "I was worried there was a hoarding room in the basement."

"Well, there is," I admitted. Lily's eyebrows shot up. "Stuff that has special meaning, mostly. I have a few boxes of clothes from my young childhood, as well as family hand-me-down toys. There's a few really old chairs, bed-frames and books. Most of the books are family history books, or family trees. We could go down some time."

Lily agreed, saying it sounded fun, before she went inside to ask Mum if there was a swimsuit she could wear.

I laid on the sheet, joining an umbrella covered James. He had said that he wanted to sit with us, but that he got enough sun playing Quidditch. I didn't really care, knowing that James was only out here because he wanted to spend time with Lily.

As soon as I saw her coming from the laundry room, walking to the downstairs bathroom, I rolled over three times. "What are you doing?"

"Testing a theory," I smirked. Now, James was sitting on one end, and I was laying on the other. I tucked my arms under my head, placing my wand beside me, and turned my head away from James.

I heard Lily open the door, and I could hear her internally cursing. She either laid between James and I, or she laid on the grass. I heard the grass rustling under her feet, and then it stopped.

I lifted my head, laying it back down while facing them. I smirked at James.

Lily was wearing a swimsuit I had never gotten the chance to wear, one from last summer. It was a two piece like mine, but the bottoms were shorts, and the top was strapless. There were more of a lilac purple, with black edges. Lily was slowly turning more, and more red as she sat beside James.