Lily has always, in some ways, been happy to go back to Hogwarts when term begins again. She misses Hogwarts, misses her friends, misses magic, misses that whole ever-more-significant piece of her life.

And, this particular break, she has also missed James.

(Speaking of ever-more-significant pieces of her life.)

So, as much as she loves her parents, as much as she enjoys being home and spending time with them, it's with a certain amount of relief that Lily steps through the barrier, two steps ahead of her father, and onto Platform 9 3/4.

She might be standing up on her toes, just a bit, trying to get a better look at the crowd of students and parents waiting next to the Hogwarts Express.

Mr Albus Spenser
in care of Miss Lily Evans
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Here Be Dragons
Parts Unknown

Dear Albus,

Lily has asked me to consider your speculation that one Mr William Shakespeare was, in fact, a Wizard. I cannot say that it is a theory I have ever heard before, but then, I do not often have the opportunity to discuss literary theory with Wizards other than my daughter.

She also tells me that her, admittedly limited, search of what records she could access at Hogwarts did not reveal any mention of his having been a student, nor was someone with the curious sobriquet 'Nearly Headless Nick' able to shed any light on the subject when she asked him.

This puts us, then, firmly in the realm of speculation, but that is not an unusual place to be, where Mr Shakespeare is concerned. We know comparatively little about the good gentleman -- he was born on or around 23 April 1664 to a glovemaker named John Shakespeare and his wife, born Mary Arden, in Stratford-upon-Avon. There are no records of his having attended school (unless they are in that castle of yours somewhere), but such records would not likely have been kept, and their absense does not prove that he did not. He married Anne Hathaway, some eight years his senior, in 1582, and they had three children. There are no records of him at all from 1585 until 1592, when he was first mentioned as being in London, where he acted and his plays were performed. He retired back to Stratford around 1610, and died in 1616, leaving his wife his 'second best bed'.

As you can see, there are certainly gaps where history loses the trail of the gentleman, so I suppose it is possible that he was off attending Hogwarts or being tutored in magic, instead of attending the local grammar school or poaching on Sir Thomas Lucy's lands.

It seems likely to me, however, that if The Bard of Avon were known to be a Wizard, you would be anxious to claim him as such, and would perhaps even include a play or two of his in your curriculum at Hogwarts, which I daresay you ought to do, regardless.

Of course, there has long been speculation that The Man from Stratford did not write the plays, etc., that we attribute to him. That Mr Shakespeare was merely the front for another, unknown author, who had reasons to hide his identity. (Candidates for this unknown author include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere the Earl of Oxford, and even Queen Elizabeth I herself.)

There is, therefore, a possibility that Mr Shakespeare of Stratford was the public (Muggle) face of a Wizard who, for some reason, decided to devote his days to writing plays for the Muggle theatre but did not wish to have this fact known.

This is a very intriguing notion, but it would, I fear, be very difficult to prove.

Still, should you find any evidence that Mr Shakespeare was a Wizard -- or the Earl of Oxford or Queen Elizabeth I -- I should be delighted to know of it. Perhaps you will make the literary discovery of the century.

I wish you luck with your search.

Yours sincerely,
Adrian Evans

It's a solidly good production -- simple sets, straightforward production, nothing terribly innovative (but also nothing innovative for the sake of being innovative), an amazing Oberon balancing a slightly weak Bottom.

Adrian, as is his habit, keeps up something that is part review, part commentary, and part classroom lecture on the way home. Lily and Geraldine have both heard most of what he has to say about A Midsummer Night's Dream before, but it's new for Albus. And maybe it's the new audience, but Adrian seems even more animated than Lily thinks he usually is, and by the time they're back home, Albus and Adrian are deep in conversation and promptly vanish into the back room that essentially serves as Adrian's study.

Lily looks in on them three times, over the next couple hours. An increasing number of books seems to have been pulled from the shelves all around the room each time. Lily's not completely certain either of them even noticed her in the doorway.

"I do hope your father isn't boring that young man," Geraldine says, as Lily helps her get dinner together. It hasn't quite been discussed, but it seems to have been assumed that Albus will stay for dinner. (And at this rate, Albus may wind up having to sleep on the disreputable-looking but very comfortable couch in Adrian's study, because it's going to get way too late to pretend he's off to catch a train.)

"I don't think he's bored at all, really," Lily says. "And Dad's enjoying himself, so we'll let them talk. At least until dinner's ready."

"And possibly all through dinner, too," says her mother, with a slightly wry twist to her tone that would sound not unfamiliar to almost anyone who has talked to her younger daughter.

Geraldine is, of course, right. The conversation stays quite literary all through dinner and pudding, and Albus will have to pretend to contact relatives to tell them that he'll be staying with the Evanses tonight, because there's no way he'd start a train trip at this hour. Adrian might have gone right on talking, too, except that Geraldine insists that he help with the washing up. "That young man did not come to visit you, darling," Geraldine tells him, as Lily and Albus leave the kitchen. (Even though Albus kind of did.)

"I'm going to get us some tea," Lily says, "but if you go back in there, we'll never get away. Up the stairs, last door on the right, and I'll be there in a couple of minutes."

Lily vanishes back into the kitchen, leaving Albus on his own in his great-grandparents' house.

"Lily," says her father, coming into the kitchen with the post in hand, "someone seems to have sent you a stamp collection."

Lily and her mother both look up. Geraldine Evans is laying the pieces of a pattern for dress robes across the dark green fabric spread out on the table. Lily is trying to translate the pattern's directions into things that can be done when the seamstress cannot use magic -- Witch Weekly has, understandably, assumed that its readers can achieve certain effects with Charms. Lily isn't sorry to have an excuse to stop for a moment.

"A stamp collection?" she repeats, and her father hands her a postcard.

The front is fairly standard, the sort of thing you could find in any rack of postcards anywhere tourists go in London. Lily turns it over and almost starts laughing. Crowded in above her name and address are a half dozen stamps, one of which is in pre-decimal currency, and which taken all together were probably enough postage to have mailed her a small paving stone, nevermind a postcard.

Lily is reading the message when Petunia comes in. "Who's that from?"

"Someone from school," Lily says, without looking up.

Petunia pulls a glass out of a cabinet. "So why didn't one of those stupid birds bring it?"

"Because he was proving a point," Lily says.

"'He'?" her mother asks. "Who's it from, dear?"

"Um, his name's James Potter. He's in Gryffindor with me."

"And, what, he doesn't know how to use stamps?" Petunia asks, leaning back against the counter, her arms crossed, eyes narrowed in the direction of the postcard.

"Well, it got here, didn't it?" Lily asks. "Besides, it's probably the first time he's ever used stamps. He's from an old wizarding family. I doubt he's ever sent anything by Royal Mail before."

"'Old wizarding family'?" Petunia says. "What's that mean?"

Lily's temper, which is uncertain at best around her sister, flares a little. "That if wizards had titles, his name would probably have 'The Honourable' in front of it," she snaps.

"So why's he writing to you?" Petunia asks.

"That's none of your business," Lily says.

"Lily?"

"Yes, Dad?"

"This young man ... "

"Yes?"

"Are you and he -- "

"No," Lily says. "Don't you think you'd know if I were going out with someone?"

"But he's writing to you over the summer?" Geraldine asks.

"It's just a postcard," Lily says.

"Protesting a bit much, aren't we?" Petunia asks, and waltzes back out of the room with her glass of water before Lily can answer.

Lily's parents exchange one of those Looks that for some unfathomable reason they seem to think Lily will either not see or not understand.

"Look," she says, "it's ... I told him I thought he should go visit some part of London that wasn't full of wizards, and so I guess he did, and he sent me a postcard to tell me liked visiting the British Museum, and that's all there is to tell, and can we please talk about something else?"

"Of course, dear," her mother says. And then adds, "Is he cute?"

"Mum!"

"Sorry," Geraldine says, though she neither looks nor sounds it. She and Adrian exchange another Look.

"If you're quite done," Lily says, "I'm going to go back to working on these directions, now."

She shoves Potter's postcard into the back of the magazine.

And that's the end of it, right?

Except ...

Well, really, it would be a bit rude not to write back.

Wouldn't it?

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.