Lily knows her parents know something is wrong.

They know when they meet her on Platform 9 3/4, and her father asks where Severus is, and Lily says, "With his other friends, I guess. Shall we go?"

They know when, instead of prattling at them all the way home about everything she's done and learned since Christmas, Lily pretends to fall asleep just north of London. When she goes to bed straight away after supper.

And they know the next morning when, despite the fact that she's done nothing but 'sleep' since they picked her up, she's bleary-eyed and yawning and distracted at breakfast.

She blames her upcoming OWLs, and they look at her closely, but accept the answer. Her mother goes so far as to assure her that she can study all she needs to while she's home and they won't interrupt.

Lily feels horridly guilty about lying to them, but what is she supposed to say? That the problem is that in the eyes of something like a quarter of her schoolmates, Lily's greatest liability is that her parents are Adrian and Geraldine Evans?

That Severus is friends with some of them?

They's be so hurt.

And maybe they'd wonder if she was ashamed of them and she's not. She never has been, she never will be. She wouldn't trade them for the two purest purebloods in Britain, or for anyone else, either.

So she blames the pressures of OWLs, and she takes the 'studying' excuse to vanish back up to her tiny room. And she lies on her bed and stares at the cracks across the ceiling, listening to ABBA come through the wall from the room she used to share with Petunia, back before she knew what Muggles were.

And that's where her mother finds her, late in the morning, to tell her that Severus is here to see her.

And since Lily can't say that she doesn't want to see him without saying why she doesn't want to see him, she gets up and goes downstairs, past Petunia's room and the still-blaring music.

Mamma mia, here I go again.

Severus waits awkwardly just inside the door.

It's odd to see him there.

Theirs has always been a friendship based in neutral places, ones that either both of them could claim or neither of them could. The playground, the riverside, the courtyard, the Potions classroom. They don't go to each other's houses, or Houses.

"We're going to go for a walk," Lily tells her mother, and her mother waves them off like this is no different than any other walk Lily has ever taken with Severus.

He walks next to her, close enough to take her hand, though he doesn't try and she doesn't offer. They don't talk at first. The sky is the dull lead grey that means it'll be raining by nightfall.

And no sooner has Lily thought this than Severus says, "It looks like rain."

Lily looks at him for the first time since they left her parents' house, green eyes narrowed, suddenly furious. "The weather, Severus? You came to talk to me about the weather?"

"No, of course not," he says. "I came to ... " He trails off, looks back up at the clouds.

"To what, Sev? Why are you here?"

"I came to apologize," he says.

"For what?" Lily asks.

"Come on, Lily, you know for what," he says.

"I know what you need to apologize for," Lily says. "I don't know what you're actually apologizing for."

And one part of her thinks she should be making this easier for him.

And one part of her knows she can't.

Severus stops walking and looks down at his feet. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that Gibbon said those things and that you were upset and all."

He looks up at her, with a hopeful expression on his face.

Lily shoves him in the shoulder, hard as she can, and walks away much more quickly than the pace they'd been setting a moment before.

After a stunned second, he runs after after her. "Lily, what was that for?"

She stops again, whirling to face him. "I don't care two pins about Rafferty Gibbon, or what he said," she says. "I care about the fact that when he said it, you just stood there. You didn't say anything, Sev, you didn't do anything, you just stood there. You're supposed to be my best friend and we went to that party together, and that was your idea, and you just stood there."

"I didn't," he says. "I mean, not after you ... you were handling it and I thought maybe it was better to let you. I'm sorry if that wasn't what you wanted me to do. I thought it was. And then I tried to walk you back, remember? But Rivers sent you with Blane and you wouldn't talk to me. And I did say something before that. I told him that you weren't ... that it's not like that. You're not a ... I don't see you like that."

"But you spend your time with people who do, Severus."

"I don't spend my time with Gibbon," Severus says, and there's a note of contempt in his voice.

"What about Rosier?"

"What about Rosier?" Severus asks. "He wasn't even there."

"After Potions last month," Lily says.

"But I told you then," Severus says. "I told you to ignore him, that you're better than any of them."

"And did you tell him that?"

"What?"

"Did you tell Rosier that, or just me?"

"I ... "

"Just me, then," Lily says.

"Look, Lily, I -- "

"I just don't understand, Sev. I don't understand how you can be friends with people like Rosier and Mulciber and Avery. The things they say? The things they do? You're not like that. Are you?"

"No," he says, very quickly.

Too quickly.

"But, Lily, look, we're all in the same House," he says, words rushing into each other. "I have to talk to them."

"You choose to talk to them."

"Could you do it? If I told you I was worried about your Gryffindor friends," he demands. "That I didn't want you to talk to them any more."

"It's different," she says.

"How is it different?"

"Because my friends don't use Dark Magic, Sev."

"Potter and his friends come close enough, and do enough damage with -- "

"Don't you dare," Lily says. "Don't you dare make this conversation about James Potter. He and I are not friends."

They may not be enemies, but they're still not friends. Lily's not sure what the word is, but she doesn't think it's 'friends.' Not quite.

Besides, James Potter is really the last person Severus needs to be opening himself up for comparisons to on this subject right now. Not after what happened on the train yesterday. Because Potter certainly didn't just stand there.

"But -- " Severus says.

"Don't," Lily says, again. "My friends in Gryffindor, if you're drawing comparisons, aren't Potter and his lot. They're people like Mary Macdonald. And Cliona Byrne. And Glynis Cadwallader, and can you imagine someone less likely to get tangled up in Dark Magic than Glynis Cadwallader?"

Severus snorts. "She'd hardly be able to manage it if she tried."

Lily freezes.

"I didn't mean it like that," Severus says. "I just meant, you're right, she's not likely to join You-Know-Who."

They've reached the riverside. Lily looks into the black eyes of the young man standing next to her and tries to see the boy who sat here once and assured her that magic was real for them.

She can't decide if she can still find him or not.

"All I know, Sev, is that you're going to have to make a choice one of these days. And when that day comes, I hope you make one we're both happy with. But if you don't, I won't try to be."

Severus looks at her, searches her face like there are answers written there and he's trying to read them. "But we'll always be friends, right?" he asks, and there, there is the little boy she met all those years ago.

"I hope so," Lily says. "I really hope so."

Sev reaches out to take her hand, and Lily lets him. "I'm so sorry I disappointed you, at Professor Slughorn's party. I'll try not to do it again."

"Thank you."

"I'll walk you back."

"Thank you," Lily says.

The walk back is silent, but not unpleasant.

At least for now, they can still find the neutral ground between their houses.