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Chapter Text

Lily had a sneaking suspicion that the night was going to end with someone attempting to dump her body somewhere inconspicuous.

Or, given the fact that she was in the end only a Class C citizen and her potential murderers were almost entirely Class A, and given the amount of money that was being thrown around, her body was entirely likely to be dumped wherever was convenient. Inconspicuous wouldn’t truly be necessary, not unless they wanted to lure in some other bright young stupid potioneer.

Going with a young man she didn’t know into the basement of a manor that belonged to another young man she didn’t know at night without backup wasn’t a scenario she could construe into anything even resembling sensible in her head.

But the money was good. The money was ridiculously good.

And if she was going to keep her tiny stall afloat – if she and Petunia were going to be able to eat and keep the shoebox of a flat they’d managed to rent so they’d at least have walls between themselves and the frost that had settled over the city – she needed to do more than sell pepper-up potions to the weary customers that came staggering up to her stall to argue over knuts with Petunia.

Making a back-alley deal with the nice young man who always looked a stiff breeze could push him over hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea at the time.

But Remus’s presence at her side as he led her to the backdoor of the sprawling house wasn’t as reassuring as it had been a few blocks ago. In daylight, he had always looked kind and comfortingly shabby; clothes scrubbed until the light bled through them, patched until the patches tore, mended with thread that almost-but-didn’t-quite match. It was the sort of shabbiness that Petunia worked furiously to preserve in their own clothes, lest they slip down one more rung on their tenement’s social ladder.

In the moonlight, she couldn’t help noticing the shine of the silvery scars that crisscrossed far too much of his skin. She was no longer quite so sure she could take him, if push came to shove; if he had survived whatever had given him all of those scars, she was quite sure he could survive any hex she could spew from her third-hand wand.

He kept glancing anxiously around: at her, at the windows of the other houses, at the nearly full moon.

Lily, for her part, was resisting the urge to throw anxious glances back at the wrought iron gate.

This was not Remus’s house. She was very sure of that. This was not the house of someone with comfortably shabby clothes, who had to carefully count out every knut for his once-or-twice monthly pepper-up potion, and who had once had to walk away when he couldn’t bargain Petunia down.

Tuney could pinch a knut until it screamed for mercy. But even she couldn’t keep them afloat much longer, now that the “compensation” money for Mum and Dad was running out, and this money could.

This money, which definitely did not come from Remus and perhaps came from whoever owned this house.

Remus looked grim when he at last rapped the knocker. Lily did not find this encouraging.

It opened at once to reveal a pale boy about her age with ridiculously messy dark hair and glasses that obscurely offended her. “I was starting to think you were going to stand there all night! Come in already.”

“If you knew he was there, you could have opened the door without waiting for him to knock,” Lily snapped without thinking about it, breath huffing out in a cloud in front of her.

She didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing, but it was probably better not to snap at the people who were offering to pay you obscene amounts of galleons to brew up who-knew-what in their basements.

But the boy just grinned at her. “But then I’d have lost the bet,” he said cheerfully. “Sirius reckoned he’d only wait three minutes on the doorstep. I bet five.”

“And I waited four to spite you both,” Remus said dryly before finally shoving his way in.

Lily followed after with one last nervous glance at freedom.

“Which means you get the winnings,” the boy said cheerfully.

Remus’s face darkened momentarily, and Lily’s fingers twitched nervously toward her wand.

She did not understand what was going on. She did not want to.

(That was a lie.)

She just wanted to make her potion and get out.

(That bit was . . . almost true. Remus had promised that the ingredients would be waiting for her. She hadn’t touched some of the ingredients since her apprenticeship had so abruptly ended. She hadn’t touched some of them at all.)

(She hadn’t admitted the last part to Remus.)

“Am I brewing in your kitchen, then?” she interrupted, her visions of a dark and dungeonlike basement slowly dissipating.

The boy smiled at her brightly, pointedly avoiding Remus’s glare. “That’s where Sirius is setting the cauldron up! There’s a good fireplace there for the brewing. We can move it elsewhere if you need us to, though. There’s a fireplace just about everywhere here, and we can conjure one up if we have to.”

Lily had no idea what sort of spell one might use to transfigure a fireplace into existence. This was, perhaps, one of the many differences between having a private tutor to teach you magic and having a half-drunk second-rate potions master teach it.

But while Lily’s spellwork might be shaky, her potions mastery was brilliant, no matter what the origins of it. If she could make pepper-up and stay-awake and antidotes to three different kinds of infection and four different kinds of rotten food and do it with half the ingredients missing and the other half near composting, then she could brew up anything else they asked of her.

“James, where’d we stick the boomslang skin?” a voice called from behind the door, and James flashed her another grin before leading them out of the foyer and into a warm room that she could only presume was the kitchen.

It was as large as her and Tuney’s flat, and the bright tile walls were liberally decorated with gleaming pots and pans. A roaring fire crackled in the fireplace that dominated the far wall, and a large cast iron cauldron was just waiting to be placed upon the hook within it. The table next to the cauldron was laden with ingredients and instruments that begged to be used.

The boy that had done the calling also had ridiculously messy dark hair, but his was long enough to be pulled back by a hair tie that was failing badly in its job.

His clothing, like James’s, was anything but comfortably shabby.

“Boomslang’s in the cupboard,” James said, gesturing at one, and the other boy slapped his forehead before dashing off to get it.

Lily took a deep breath.

They had, at least, clearly planned for her to prepare a potion. She hadn’t been a total idiot trusting Remus to take her here.

“So,” she said determinedly, “what am I making?”

The perpetual grin on James’s face went a bit plastic. The other boy froze in his rummaging of the cupboard.

Remus was the one who broke the grim silence. “Wolfsbane potion,” he said, refusing to meet her eyes.

Wolfsbane.

She had heard of it, briefly, in rumors. She knew what it did – or what it claimed to do – but she had never dreamed of making it.

“But it’s so expensive,” she blurted out before she could think better of it. Remus, with his comfortably shabby clothes, could certainly never afford it.

Remus, with his countless scars, and his very consistent timetable on when he would splurge on a pepper-up potion each month.

She was very sure it was Remus who needed it.

Remus flinched.

James waved a hand dismissively. “It costs less than good quidditch seats. And you get a lot more value for your gold.”

Remus opened his mouth.

The other boy, who was still half buried in the cupboard, called out, “Five sickles say the next words out of Remus’s mouth are going to be utterly stupid.”

The expression on Remus’s mouth immediately became dangerously pleasant. The next words out of his mouth were, “Sirius Black.”

Sirius finally emerged from the cupboard and made a face at him. It didn’t quite hide the flash of triumph in his eyes.

James covered this by moving on hastily. “And of course only the best can make it, and Remus said you were the best.”

Lily was very, very good. She was, without false pride, definitely the best potioneer in the rickety market that inhabited Bysm Ally.

She was very, very certain that Sirius Black and his friends could afford better.

But not, perhaps, better that they can trust to keep quiet.

Lily was young. Lily was desperate for gold. Lily was easy to bribe and, if worst came to worst, easy to keep quiet.

More than that – even if she did want to talk, who would she tell? What would she tell? She didn’t understand nearly enough of the lives of Class A citizens to guess what let them meet Remus in the first place, much less whatever undercurrents of danger had led them here to this.

So, “The very best,” she said confidently, and she made her way over to a cauldron to brew a potion renowned for its difficulty with the help of instructions she had never once seen before.

The potion took all night. At first, she paid close attention to where the others stood in the room; as nothing happened and her concentration was pulled ever toward her cauldron, she began to ignore them, and she jumped when James was at her elbow when she’d stoppered the last of the steaming potion.

“It smells just like the descriptions,” he said with far more delight than the stench deserved. He rubbed a hand through his hair, which had somehow deteriorated even further through the course of the night.

It did not help.

Sirius and Remus, she realized belatedly, were sleeping. Sirius was, in fact, snoring on the other table.

“It needs to be drunk before the moon rises every night of the full moon,” she said quietly, in deference to their rest.

He nodded seriously, grin for once gone. “I’ll make sure he gets it. Oh!” He began patting his pockets. “Here.”

The bag he handed her certainly felt like it contained an obscene amount of gold. She briefly thought about counting it, but now that it was in her hands, all she felt was an itch to be gone.

It was as much as promised or it wasn’t; either way, she needed to go home.

“I hope it helps Remus,” she said quickly, and then she darted out the door.

It was an obscene amount of gold. A whole twenty galleons for a single night’s work. Tuney was delighted in between her bouts of shrieking about the many horrors that could have befallen Lily alone at night.

“I wasn’t alone, I was with Remus,” Lily pointed out with a shiver as they set up shop in the early hours of the morning.

“He didn’t walk you home, did he?” Petunia snapped as she slammed the wooden till down on the rickety counter of the stall. “And it wouldn’t have been any better if he had, who knows what he might have done . . . “

Lily generously put up with this, even though it had been nearly a week, and she really felt that she had more than put up with enough, because, after all, Tuney wasn’t wrong.

It was dangerous to go out on the streets alone at night; it was dangerous to go there with young men one really didn’t know.

It was dangerous to go anywhere near rich young men with pure blood and strong magic who could toss a few coins to cover a night of murderous mischief, and they had the dwindling compensation funds to prove it.

It was dangerous to the point of insanity, but it had worked, which Petunia would remember in a few minutes, and then they would begin the cycle all over again.

It was over. That was the main thing.

Until next month, at the very least. If Remus came again, she would –

James, she realized abruptly, was standing in front of their stall.

She was very certain it had not yet been a month.

James was not comfortably shabby. James was not shivering in the chill. James was wearing a thick woolen coat that all but shimmered with charms. James stood out in the broken-down market like a sickle in the gutter, and it was only thanks to the morning mists that no one had noticed yet.

Petunia’s hands had gone white around the till.

“What are you doing here?” Lily asked before the courtesy her mother had gently tried to lecture into her caught up with her, hand in hand with the common sense that reminded her of the possibility of twenty galleons a month, and she tried for some belated and begrudged politeness. “I mean, good morning.”

James fortunately appeared too buoyed by his good mood to care about her begrudged courtesy. “It worked!”

A shiver of matching delight went up her own spine, and she slumped a little in relief in its wake. “Of course it did,” she said. “I’m the best.”

“The very best,” he assured her. “I could kiss you right now, it was perfect.”

Petunia released her white knuckled grip on the till and snatched up the broken walking stick they kept under the counter for just such purposes.

James stepped back from its threatening loom hastily. “In an absolutely metaphorical and unobjectionable way, I promise you. Unless you’d like a kiss . . . ?”

“Tuney,” Lily said in some exasperation.

Petunia lowered the stick with pursed lips. “My sister,” she said scathingly, “sells potions. Not kisses.”

“Of course,” James said, hands still held up placatingly. “Absolutely. And, on that note, the rest of your payment.”

Lily and Petunia blinked in tandem.

“ . . . rest?” Petunia said faintly.

James, for his part, looked puzzled. “Because it worked?”

“You don’t have to – “

“Of course,” Petunia said over Lily.

James had the audacity to wink at Lily as he slipped the bag over to Petunia.

From the brief glimpse Lily caught of it before it was safely dumped and locked in the till, it put the previous bag to shame.

“May I have the pleasure of your company again sometime?” he asked Lily brightly.

“Same time next month?” she asked, already calculating. If he kept coming to her every month, she could get a bigger cauldron, start stocking better ingredients – they might could even afford a better spot for their stall, start bringing in more income from there too –

“Or sooner,” he said hopefully.

Lily’s calculations froze.

Whatever expression was on her face made James wilt a little. “Same time next month,” he agreed. “But maybe we could have breakfast? After?”

“Absolutely not – “ Petunia started to say.

But. Well.

They hadn’t inconspicuously dumped her corpse last time.

And she thought she was curious about the sort of boy who had gold to burn and spent it on wolfsbane potion for a friend he’d had no logical business making, who made mildly illegal deals with strangers and spent the whole time smiling like it was the most delightful thing he’d ever done.

It wasn’t enough for much, but it was enough for breakfast, so she said, “Breakfast. Next month.”

James’s grin put all his previous ones to shame.

Chapter Text

Petunia could have convinced the apothecary to sell them half a boomslang skin. Petunia might have been able to argue him down so that they could have afforded the full thing.

But Petunia was currently laid up in bed, scaly patches slowly spreading across her skin, and not currently able to convince anyone of anything, which meant it was up to Lily to somehow squeeze gold from stone.

The rent money went into one pile, inviolate. The money for the stall’s license, likewise. And the rest -

There just wasn’t much rest, even with the monthly money from James. Not after the healer and the first dose of medicine. Not after paying the new taxes. Not after -

If they could just make it to the next full moon, it would all be fine.

Lily didn’t think Petunia could wait until the next full moon.

But no matter how she stared at the small piles of coins in front of her, they stubbornly refused to multiply.

James could help, came the treacherous thought. James would help, probably. It wouldn’t even be charity, really - it could just be an advance on next month’s wages.

Or - better yet - James had boomslang skin. She’d seen it in his kitchen last month. James would sell her half a skin, she was sure of it, and she could pay for it right now.

She scraped the sickles she’d tried to buy the skin with into her purse. They’d be eating cabbage soup for the rest of the month, but that didn’t matter as long as Tuney pulled through to eat it.

She pushed herself to her feet and all but ran for the door. She paused just outside it and turned back to the curtained off section in the corner. Petunia was under every blanket they had, and she was still shivering in her sleep.

“I’ll be back soon,” she promised.

She had to be.

Approaching in daylight felt even more dangerous than approaching after dark. At least in the dark no one could see her, and if they did, they might not realize too quickly that she didn’t belong.

Now all she could do was march down the street with as much starch in her spine as she could and hope that anyone looking out the windows of the great townhouses paid more attention to her wand than to her patched skirt.

She had come by the back way Remus had shown her; that should help, but she couldn’t shake the fear that someone would see her and know she had no proper business here.

James’s back door was a relief even as it tied her stomach into knots. She wouldn’t be stopped now, surely. But if he said no -

She slid her wand back up her sleeve and knocked on the door.

A very wizened house elf answered.

All of Lily’s plans flew out of her head.

Of course he had servants. Of course he was only in the habit of opening his own back door when he knew there were secrets to keep.

“We is not buying anything,” the house elf squeaked.

“No,” Lily hurried to say. “No, I - “ What could she possibly say? “I’m here to see Mr. Potter,” she blurted. “About our breakfast.”

It wasn’t pure nonsense - she had gone to breakfast with him twice now - but it sounded like it, and she winced in anticipation.

But the house elf was widening the cracked door. “You is Mistress Lily?” she checked.

“Yes,” she said in relief. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Mistress Lily should come to the front,” the elf said firmly, starting to shut the door. “Inky will open it for you.”

“No!” Lily lunged forward, jamming her foot into the door. “No, I mustn’t, Inky, I’m not - ” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, though surely it must be obvious. Even Severus had known it.

Mudblood. Second rate. Doing you a favor -

She was not a front door kind of girl. Not in this part of town.

Inky frowned. “Master James say this?”

Well, he hadn’t, exactly, but Remus had always led her here, and, “It’s secret, Inky,” she said desperately before realizing that she had just given Inky entirely the wrong impression.

“Mistress Lily will come in,” she said firmly and led the now familiar path to the kitchen.

Lily stumbled after her, trying and failing to think of a way to explain that she wasn’t - she didn’t -

But you have breakfast with him, and you know what he wants. And you know how this ends, and it’s not with rings. Not for you. Not with him.

By the time she reached the kitchen, if it hadn’t been for Tuney, she would have transfigured herself into a teacup.

“Who was it, Inky?” James called, voice muffled by a stack of cookies in his mouth. He spat them out, wide eyed, when he saw them. “Lily!” One hand scrubbed for crumbs desperately while the other futilely tried to pat down his hair.

He got the crumbs. The hair just got worse.

He gave up on the hair and leaned against the counter with exaggerated casualness. “Lily. Hi.”

“Master James’s mother is rolling in her grave,” Inky said, cleaning up the crumbed up plate with a furious snap of her fingers. “Mistress raised him better than this, oh, yes.”

“You like Lily,” James said, shooting her a look of desperate embarrassment.

“Mistress Lily, yes. Master James is a shame to his ancestors.”

“Me?” James yelped. “What did I do?”

“I’m not his mistress,” Lily finally managed to blurt out. “It’s just breakfast, I swear. And boomslang skin.”

James went scarlet. “What - no, Lily, I swear she didn’t mean it like that, it’s just a respect thing - “

“I’m not a complete idiot,” Lily said over him. “It’s not that, it’s - something I said earlier. Or she did. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, Tuney’s got dragon pox, and you’ve got boomslang skin. I need it for her potions, can I have some?”

James gaped at her.

“I’ve got money,” she added hastily. “If it’s not enough, you can take it out of next month’s wages.”

James blinked and jolted back into motion. “Dragon pox?” he asked, already going for the cupboard. “Dragon pox, you’re sure? What are the healers saying?”

“I got one in when she first got sick,” Lily said, looking with concern at Inky, who had stopped stomping around the kitchen and was now wringing a tea towel far too tightly. “He said it was the pox, definitely, and told me potions she needed, and I managed one batch, but she’ll need at least three - “

James emerged from the cupboard with what looked like half the contents. “Five, at least,” he countered. “That’s what they said for my parents when . . . “

Lily was abruptly reminded that there was a reason James was free to have disreputable callers at all hours without particularly worrying about the noise.

James’s voice had trailed off painfully, but he regained it quickly and brushed past the moment like it had never been. “What’re the healers saying now?”

She shook her head helplessly. “I thought paying for the medicine was more important. Was I wrong?”

He looked up from the piles of ingredients he was building. For one moment, his face was blank with incomprehension before the sickle dropped.

“Right,” he said. “Right.”

She could see the boomslang skin behind him. Fresh and perfect and utterly unlike the tattered thing the apothecary had refused to sell.

James ran a hand through his hair. “Right, so - right, my parents died of the pox, and it will be - just, extremely traumatic for me if anyone else I know ever dies of - frankly, anything, but especially dragon pox, which is why we are going to apparate Petunia here where it’s warmer, and Inky is going to go get the family healer, and you are either going to brew up the potion from the freshest ingredients I can scare out of the apothecary, or I am going to pay the best brewer in St. Mungo’s to do it for us.”

This was apparently enough of a direction for Inky, who vanished with a pop.

“I - “ Couldn’t turn that down. Not really. Not for Tuney. “I’ll do the wolfsbane for free until I’ve paid you back.” That let her feel like her feet were a little more underneath her, at least, but how long would that take? Years, surely -

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not docking your pay just because I’m having a selfish tantrum over here.” He was moving again, sending everything they couldn’t use back into the cupboard with a brisk wave of his arm, stoking the fire with another wave, stepping forward to offer his arm for side-along -

“I’m not an idiot,” she snapped again. The world was tilting under her feet, and she was terrified of what would happen when it dropped away entirely. “And I’m not your mistress.”

He stopped then, for just a moment. “No,” he agreed. “You’re Lily Evans, and you’re the most brilliant potions master I know, and you’re probably half the reason Remus has made it as far as he has, and you’re wonderful even without that, and frankly so is your sister, even if she scares me a little, so please, please, please, just tell me what I have to say to make this alright.”

One step at a time. That was how they survived.

She couldn’t see to the end of this path. But this step - this step would hold.

She looped her arm through his, and with a pop they were gone.