Author's Note: Sigh... The writers block continues. This was just something that I have been writing little bits of off and on for going on two weeks now, just trying to keep the creative gears going. I'm not even really sure what it is, but I thought I'd share it anyway, as someone might enjoy it, and its better than leaving it moldering away on the hard drive. It is LE/SS, unbetaed, slightly AU, and yes, I know that Bella was not a seventh year when Narcissa was a fourth year, but she is in this story.

One True Thing

“I thought you weren’t coming…” Severus let Lily know how displeased he was with his eyes, and his voice, with the scowl mixed with a pout he had been perfecting since he was four.

“I’m sorry. Mum was taking fresh biscuits out of the oven, and I wanted to wait until they were done.” Fishing into the pocket of her coat, Lily pulled out a small lumpy package wrapped up in a paper napkin. When she folded it back the biscuits were still steaming in the crisp winter air, and little bits of chocolate clung to the fabric. She sat down on the swing beside him, and passed him one. He stared at it longingly. “Go on, Sev, take it. They’re really good.”

He finally took it from her, but nibbled at it slowly, trying to make it last. “You’re still late…” he mumbled through a bite of biscuit, and then wiped the crumbs that spewed from his mouth in the process off the front of his coat.

“You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, Sev. It’s not polite,” Lily informed him before she kicked off from the ground, and began to swing slowly, taking a bite out of her own biscuit.

Wasn’t it? He never seemed to know what was and wasn’t considered appropriate.

Lily was always telling him little bits of information like this. When he was younger he used to think that she was just being bossy, but Narcissa Black, a fourth year in his house at school had started telling him the same thing this year. Her older sister Bellatrix told him he had best listen to her, because half-blood wizards such as himself had to work doubly hard just to convince the world that they were something more than a Mudblood. She was a seventh year, and he assumed that he should listen to that sort of advice if he ever wanted to get anywhere in the world, but he didn’t like the way Bellatrix said that word.

He stole a glance at Lily. Her lips were smeared with chocolate, and her dark red hair was streaming out behind her in the breeze as she swung higher and higher. Her eyes were green as spring leaves and sparkling with joy. She couldn’t jump now. Now that they were both going to Hogwarts she was forbidden to do underage magic when she was home for Christmas holiday, but it didn’t stop her from remembering. He could see the joy of the memory of hanging weightless for those few moments still shining in her eyes. How could any creature as bright and glorious as Lily be called something as dirty as ‘Mudblood’?

Even Narcissa, who noticed those sorts of things, had gently suggested that perhaps he might like to reconsider spending as much time as he did with the ‘little Muggle-born girl’ as she more discreetly referred to her. Lucius had taken him under his wing, but he would not be able to continue their association if he insisted on befriending students of such low birth and blood status, she had told him. He liked Narcissa much better than her older sister. She was pretty, possibly the prettiest girl in Slytherin house, and she always smelled clean and sweet, like flowers. But he still didn’t like it when she said things like that, nice as she was about them.

When they had first arrived at school, he had been terribly disappointed when Lily had been sorted into Gryffindor, and not Slytherin, but now that he had spent almost four months at school, he had to admit that it probably wouldn’t have been for the best if she had been sorted there. There were a few students in his house who were from Muggle families, and their lives were a daily horror. He had never been so grateful for his mother’s magical blood flowing through his veins in his life. He would have done his best to protect Lily when he could, but a lot of the other students knew magic much more powerful than he did (a situation he was working hard to rectify), and if he had been required to stand up for Lily all the time, it would have drawn the sort of attention to himself that he very much wanted to avoid.

He had thought when he had left home that he would be leaving the stress of constantly having to be on his guard behind him, but things had just continued on at school. Firstly there were those nasty Gryffindor boys who had decided to hate him before they had even been sorted (it was still hard for him to believe that Sirius Black was related to someone like Narcissa), and then there were the bullies in his own house. He almost had more to worry about now, than when it was only his father’s occasional binges of violent drunkenness or his mother’s acerbic tongue he had had to avoid. Being with Lily, away from it all, was the only time he felt truly at peace, truly happy.

He watched her swing higher and higher beside him. She looked down at him at the top of the swing’s arch upward, and smiled brilliantly. Her cheeks were rosy with the cold, and she looked like the very personification of happiness.

He had heard some seventh year boys at school talking about creating something called a simulacrum when they didn’t think he was listening. They said a lot of things about it that he didn’t understand, but from what he could gather it was a magical replica of a girl you liked. You could make it look like her, talk like her. He had made a mental note to sneak into the restricted section and see if he could find the book they had mentioned. It might be nice to have a Lily he could keep in a box and take out when he was feeling sad.

“Take the biscuits, Sev!” She called down to him. He stretched out his hand and she handed them off to him as she swung past. She was swinging higher and higher—so high that the chain was starting to buckle.

“Don’t go so high, Lily. You know you can’t do magic outside of school.”

“Oh, don’t be such a ninny, Sev. It’s not that high, and I’m perfectly safe!” But at that moment, there was a loud creak and then a clank, as the bolt holding one of the chains in place gave way. It caught them both totally by surprise. Fortunately she was on the downward swing when it broke, but she crumpled to the sand with a cry, and rolled a couple of times before coming to a stop, face down in the sand.

Severus leapt off the swing, the napkin of warm biscuits falling forgotten to the sand, and dropped to his knees beside her. The ground was frozen and hard. It would leave bruises on his knees, he could tell, and he felt like someone had just bruised the rest of him as well. “Lily?! Lily!”

She was moving. Thank Merlin, she was moving. He was touching her everywhere, because he didn’t know where she was hurt, and he didn’t know what to do, and his mind wouldn’t work properly. She was rolling over now, and he saw blood on her cheek, blood with sand ground into it. He looked at it with horror, and she didn’t start to cry until she saw his face. Reaching up, she touched her cheek, and then pulled her fingers away, stared back down at the blood there and started to cry even harder.

“Don’t—don’t cry Lily. It will be okay. You’re okay.” The truth was, he didn’t know if she was okay, but he couldn’t bear to think of her in pain, or afraid.

“I want to go home…” She put out a hand to push herself up, but then cried out again, and crumpled to the ground, holding her wrist.”

“No—no, not to your house, Lily. Come to mine. Len can use magic to fix things. She’ll make you feel better, I promise.” This was, of course, a ridiculous assumption and he knew it. His mother never seemed to even notice when he got hurt, and he had been fending for himself almost since he was five years old, but he knew that his mother knew magic and used it on occasion. Once when his Da had come home from the pub late, and very drunk, and had accidentally pushed him down the stairs, she had used magic to mend his broken arm.

“No, I want my mum,” Lily protested, but he could see the curiosity in her eyes too. She had never been to his house, or met either of his parents. He had hoped to keep it that way, but he could see a sliver of her wrist just below her coat sleeve, and it was swelling fast. He was sure it must be broken just as his had been, and he knew how much it had hurt.

If they took her to a Muggle hospital then she would need to wear a cast for the rest of holiday, and she probably wouldn’t be able to be outside as much, and that would mean that he wouldn’t see her at all. That would never do.

“Please, Lily. I think your wrist is broken, and if you go to your house your mum will just take you to the hospital, and then…”

“Broken…?” She had been trying to rein in her tears, but her bottom lip had begun to quiver again at his words. “Do you really think it’s broken?”

“Well, let me look at it, okay.”

She nodded wordlessly, tears hanging like gems from the tips of her auburn lashes, and watched him closely, as he pulled back the sleeve of her coat as gently as he could. It was already turning purple, and it was swollen to twice its usual size. He heard her sniff, and looked up. She was staring down at the injured limb, her eyes wide.

He nodded, putting on his best serious face. “Definitely broken. Let me take you to Len. Da’s at work, so she can do magic. She’ll fix you. She has to!

Lily nodded. “Okay, if you think that will be better, but can we hurry. It—it hurts.”

“You have to immobilize it, though, or it will make it worse.” He liked using big words around Lily. It impressed her.

“What—what do you mean?” she sniffed.

“It means that you can’t move it. I’ll put my forearm out straight, like a board, like this—see…” He demonstrated what he meant. “And you lay your arm on top of mine so that your wrist doesn’t bend, and we’ll walk slow and be careful.”

She nodded in understanding. He didn’t understand why it gave him such a thrill when she eased her arm on top of his, or when she walked so close to him that he could smell her hair all the way home. It was a new and strange feeling, almost like butterflies in his stomach, and it both confused and exhilarated him.

When they finally got to his house he went around back, kicked open the gate to the small back garden with his foot, and then hurried to the kitchen door. Len was stirring something on the cooker when he kicked open the back door. She turned at the ruckus with a scowl on her face. “How many times do I have to tell you not to--” but her voice trailed off at the sight of Lily.

“Lily’s my friend from school,” he said quickly by way of explanation. “She got hurt at the park, and I need you to fix it.”

Len looked at Lily, at her pretty green coat, at her clean hair, and her tear and blood stained cheeks, and then she looked at him. “What happened?”

“She was swinging too high. The swing broke and she fell off. I think her wrist is broken.”

“Well, why did you bring her here? You should have taken her to her own parents, you daft boy. They’ll want to take her to the hospital, won’t they? I don’t know what you expect me to do!”

“Well, I—I thought you could use magic—maybe—like that time you did on me, when I fell down the…”

“I’ll look at it,” Len interrupted him. “You’re lucky your Da found work this morning and is away for the day, or I couldn’t even do that much.” Len looked twitchy and nervous all of a sudden, and her olive skin had grown pale. “Come here, girl.” Lily reached across her own body, and clung to the sleeve of his coat with her uninjured hand. He felt the same surge of butterflies, and a sudden fierce surge of protectiveness. “I won’t hurt you, girl. Come here,” Len insisted again.

Severus took a step forward, and then Lily seemed to suddenly find her courage too. He walked with her, and eased her arm off of his onto the table. Len pulled back her coat sleeve, roughly, and he heard Lily hiss in pain, but to her credit she didn’t cry. Len hated tears almost as much as his Da did. “Does it hurt?” Len asked.

Lily nodded.

“Can you move it?”

He saw Lily try, but she winced and then shook her head.

“It’s almost certainly broken. Severus, turn off that pot on the cooker. I need to go get my wand, and you had better pray to God above that your Da doesn’t get cut at noon and come home early, or we’ll all be certain to catch it.”

Len got up and left the room, and Lily looked up at him. “Is she angry?”

“She’s always angry,” he mumbled, suddenly very embarrassed, and regretting bringing Lily home, more and more by the moment. “But she’s not angry at you. It’s okay.”

Len had returned now. “I told you to turn off the cooker, Severus. Can’t you do anything right?!”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Lily looked up at him from under her damp lashes with a little smile that almost looked like sympathy. It settled like lead in his stomach and turned it sour. “Severus does a lot of things right,” she suddenly said brightly.

Len turned around from the cooker, and stared at her as though she had just sprouted a second head. “Is that so?” she said. Severus could hear the sarcasm, and slightly hard edge to her tone, but Lily seemed oblivious.

“Oh, yes. He’s ever so smart and good at magic, and when I fell just now, he im—immobilized my arm all the way home.”

“Did he now…?” Len looked over at him, an odd look in her eyes. “Well, that was smart thinking, I must admit.”

He was stunned. He couldn’t remember the last time Len had complimented him on anything. Len’s voice sounded different when she sat back down at the table. “You’ve cut your cheek too, girl. We’d better attend to that first. It won’t hurt, but you might feel a tingling.”

Lily nodded.

Severus watched as Len lifted her wand to Lily’s cheek, and the dirt and blood disappeared to reveal the scrape beneath, and then he saw the wound start to knit as well. Lily bit down on her bottom lip. He couldn’t guess why. It wasn’t supposed to hurt. When the wound was completely knit, Len leaned back in her chair and little and studied Lily carefully. “Shall I work on your arm, now?”

Lily nodded, without hesitation, and the look on Len’s faced turned to one that Severus thought looked almost like respect. “You’ll be alright. You hold fast to Severus’ hand and squeeze just as hard as you need to, if the pain gets too bad. But, I wager you’ll be fine. You’re stronger than you look.”

Len sat up, and pointed her wand at Lily’s wrist. A bluish white light emanated from the tip, and began to lick at Lily’s skin. He saw her bite down hard on her lip again, and then her hand shot out, and grabbed onto his. He squeezed it, and held on tight. The butterflies in his middle felt like they were dancing for joy.

After a minute or so, Lily’s grip on his hand loosened, and the light from Len’s wand guttered and died. “Try and move it,” Len ordered. Lily did as she asked, bending her wrist every which way. She was still holding his hand.

“It works okay, now,” she said with a smile. “And it doesn’t hurt anymore either. Thanks, Mrs. Snape.”

His mother just nodded rather curtly, and got up from the table, and returned to the cooker, which she relit. “You had best not tell your parents about this, girl. Do you understand me?”

“Why?” Lily asked innocently enough.

Len scowled. “They’re Muggles aren’t they?”

“Yes…” Lily looked confused.

“Well then, I doubt they’d appreciate a strange witch performing unsolicited magic on their precious daughter,” she ground out bitterly as though the Evanses had already ostracized her.

“They wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Snape, honest. My parents like magic.”

Len didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Severus supposed that it didn’t really line up with how she expected Muggles to react to magic, and if she was judging all Muggles based on his Da’s usual response, then he supposed that he could see why she might think that way.

“Well I would still appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to them.”

Lily looked torn. She was the sort of girl who didn’t keep anything from her parents. After a moment, she removed her hand from his. He felt bereft. “Alright. I won’t tell.”

“Sit down,” Len ordered. “This soup is almost ready. You had best eat something after a shock like that, and then Severus can take you home.”

Lily took her coat off and draped it over the back of the chair. “Mrs. Snape?”

“Yes,” Len was stirring the soup.

“Do you think there’s time for Severus to show me his room?”

“I can’t see why not. I’ll call you when the soup is warm.”

Severus felt confused. It was as though Len and Lily had some sort of understanding now, something he didn’t understand in the least. He felt left out in the cold.

“There’s nothing so great about my room.”

“But I want to see it, Sev.” He cringed. He wasn’t sure he wanted his mother knowing that Lily called him that. It was like a secret, something special shared just between her and him.

“Show Lily your room, for heaven’s sake, Severus. I swear sometimes you are as stubborn as your father.”

He scowled at her back. “’M not…” he muttered under his breath, and then motioned for Lily to follow him into the sitting room. When they got there, he silently pulled out the book that released the latch to hidden door to the upper floor. Lily gasped, as the bookcase swung wide to reveal the narrow staircase that led upstairs. “It’s just like something from a storybook, isn’t it, Sev? How wonderful!”

He rolled his eyes a little. Lily got excited over the silliest things. She wouldn’t be so thrilled once she saw his room. It was pathetic compared to hers. Her room had nice squishy carpet, and ruffled drapes that matched the coverlet. His room had old yellowing pillowcases his mother had turned into drapes, hanging limply from the windows, and a threadbare coverlet that had been on the bed for as long as he could remember.

Stupid Len, making him show it to her!

He pushed open the door to their left when they reached the top of the stairs, and stood back letting Lily look inside. “Here it is.”

She walked in, looking around her and then plopped down on the bed, her red hair fanning out beneath her head as she stared up at the ceiling. “You haven’t got any pictures or posters on the walls,” she observed quite matter-of-a-factly. “I’ll draw you some. Or…” Her voice trailed off as though deep in thought. “You know that strange boy in my house, the one who is always sick?”

He shrugged and sat down on the bed.

She sat up beside him. “Remus is his name. Well he has a camera. Maybe when we get back to school after holiday I can get him to take our picture, and then you could put that up.”

“Maybe…” he said.

He didn’t like to think about her talking to other boys, especially not strange Gryffindor boys. He knew the boy she was talking about, and he made him nervous. There was something ‘not right’ about him, though he could never quite put his finger on what it was.

“I wish I could come over and sneak in your window at night, the way you sneak in mine,” she said standing up suddenly and walking to the window. She parted the pillowcase curtains a little and stared down at the street below. “But there’s no way up.”

“I like your room better anyway,” he admitted. And your bed is less lumpy.

She turned away from the window and rewarded him with a smile. “It was nice of your mum to fix my arm.”

He shrugged.

“She seems sort of—sad though.”

He just shrugged again. Len was always in some sort of a mood.

He heard the door to the kitchen slam below, and then the sound of his Da’s voice filtering up through the thin floorboards. “Shite,” he whispered.

Lily’s eyes got a little wide. “You shouldn’t say that, Severus.”

“My Da’s home. He must have got cut early. He’ll be in a foul mood. We should go back to the park.”

“Get down here, boy! Yer mother’s got yer dinner on the table!” his Da’s voice bellowed up the stairs.

He cringed a little, and looked at Lily. She looked so pretty in her jeans and her burgundy jumper. He hated that he had brought her here, that she had to see all the ugliness in his life. He had always tried to keep Lily and Spinner’s End separate. He would tell her little things if he thought it might win him a moment’s affection, but he had never really wanted her to know all the details, everything, like she would now.

“We’d better go down,” he said weakly. “Stay close to me, okay.”

She nodded. He sensed that she could feel the undercurrent of discomfort and even fear he was putting off. His Da sounded sober, and it was too early in the day for drinking, even for him. He usually waited until after tea. But even sober, Tobias had an abrupt manner. Tobias and Len together in the same room was even more of a disaster waiting to happen. He could only hope and pray that they would both be on their best behavior.

“…be on your best behavior, mind…” he heard his mother saying as they entered the kitchen. His Da was sitting at the table with a bowl of steaming soup in front of him. He looked up as they entered, and looked slightly surprised. Severus knew why. It was Lily. His Da didn’t think that a girl that pretty, that perfect would ever be friends with the likes of him. Well, he could think that all he wanted. Lily was standing here beside him now, contradicting that assumption brightly, with her glowing copper hair and sparkling eyes.

“This here’s Mr. Snape,” Len said from the cooker, nodding toward his Da.

Lily smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too, lass,” his Da replied, with a strange sort of look on his face. “You’ve got very pretty manners. And where did you meet our little Tom, hmmm…?”

Severus felt his face turn bright red. Why was it that his father refused to use his given name, his rightful name? He was always so insistent on using his middle name. It sounded more respectable, he always said; made him sound like less of a poofter and more of a man. Lily looked back and forth from his red face to his Da for a moment, but then seemed to catch on.

“We went to school together before Hogwarts, and now we go there together as well. We’re not in the same house though, but Severus is still my best friend.”

“And yer inta all that magic nonsense as well, I suppose?”

“Yes, I can do magic.”

“Well, we don’t do magic in this house, lass. Do ya understand?”

Lily nodded. “We’re not allowed to do magic outside of school, now that we are of age to attend Hogwarts. I won’t be doing any magic, Mr. Snape.”

He nodded. “Well, see that ya don’t. Now sit down and eat this fine soup here, before it gets cold.”

Lily did as he asked, sliding into a chair beside him. Severus, slid into the one next to her. Most children would have been afraid to sit near his da, with his burly build and brusque manner, but not Lily. She took a delicate sip of her soup, and when she found it just right for eating, tipped another spoonful into her mouth. “Severus said you got cut, this morning. What does that mean?” she asked innocently.

Len’s head snapped around at the cooker. “Mind your own business, girl?!” she snapped. Severus could tell she was worried about Da drinking.

“Leave her be, Len. She’s not done any harm,” his da scowled back. “You’re just a curious one, aren’t ya, lass? I saw that the minute I laid eyes on ya.” He smiled at Lily—actually smiled at her. Severus just about choked on his soup. Len scowled. “I work by the day, lass. When they closed down the factories, my livelihood went with it. Now I get work as I can, but day work can be tricky. You wait down at the stockyards or at the rail station in the mornins and folk’ll come by and hand pick a lot of us, but sometimes they pick too many, and then come dinner time, they’ll cut a few. It’s random mostly. Ya try to stay out of sight, so ya don’t get cut, but yer not always lucky enough.”

“Oh,” Lily said, nodding her head, and picking up the piece of bread that Len had just slapped rather violently down on her plate. “Well, I’m sorry you got cut.”

“’Tis alright, lass. There’ll likely be work tomorrow, and a half day’s work is better’n nothin’.”

“Oh, yes,” Lily agreed, taking a bite of bread.

“Now, ‘sides all that magic nonsense, what subjects, do ya like in school?”

Lily lit up. “I liked Literature, very much—and science.”

His da smiled again. Severus had stopped eating now, and was simply watching. He knew that Lily had a way of bringing out the best in people. Her mere presence seemed to do it at times, but he never would have guessed that she would have softened his da up so fast. “Just like our wee Tom here, then. He’s a right good writer, too!” He could hear pride in his da’s voice, and it made him feel warm inside.

“I’ve told you not to encourage that foolishness, Toby. You know he’ll come to no good by it. Look at all the good that scribblin’s done you!”

Len didn’t like Da writing. She always shooed him off the couch when she’d catch him with a pencil and a spare piece of paper, telling him he had better things to do than to be wasting his time on such foolishness. Severus had snatched up a few of his da’s scribblings once, before she tossed them in the hearth, and had found poems, and small stories. The sorts of things that seemed dark and sad, and yet somehow lit up your imagination with all sorts of fantastic images as well. His da had a way with words, it seemed.

He’d saved the poems and stories in the bottom of the trunk in his room. Sometimes he took them out and read them under his covers at night, by torch light, especially on nights when Len and Da argued. It helped the buzzing in his head go away and calmed him.

Da scowled at Len, but then winked at Lily before going back to eating his soup. Lily smiled back and Len silently fumed from the cooker. Severus could sense a mighty row building. He hoped that his da wouldn’t decide to go to the pub this evening, because he could tell that Len wanted to get into it, and if she started in on him when he was drunk she was likely to have a black eye to show for it in the morning.

Len strode over and snatched up Lily’s bowl. “Well, no doubt you’ve eaten your fill. You had best take her back home, Severus. Her parent’s will be starting to worry, and it wouldn’t do to give them cause to start tossing accusations about, now would it. Off you go, then…”

It was quite clear they were being kicked out. Len had something she wanted to say to Da, that was clear as day, and he, and especially Lily, were just in the way. Lily looked momentarily confused, but she slid off the chair and started to shrug back into her coat anyway. “Thank-you for lunch, Mrs. Snape, and for—well, for everything.”

Len just nodded curtly, and went to the sink, where she dumped out the rest of Lily’s soup and started rinsing her bowl. Lily turned to his da. “It was nice to meet you too, Mr. Snape.”

“As it was to meet you, lass. Tom should have more friends like you, he should. Yer like a breath of fresh air for him, I ‘magine.”

Lily’s cheeks turned a becoming pink, and she smiled shyly. Len’s face turned purple at the sink. Severus grabbed Lily’s hand and yanked her out the door. He heard the first crash of crockery against the linoleum floor before they had even left the gate.

Lily cocked her head a little. “What was that?”

“Nothin’,” he mumbled, and picked up his pace, as he practically dragged her down the street back toward the park.

When then got there they walked over to the swing set. It only held two swings, and since one was now broken, and for Merlin knew how long, there would be no more swinging for them. A flock of birds had been pecking at the biscuits that Severus had spilled in his haste to get to Lily earlier, but they scattered as they approached.

“I should go home, Sev. It’s getting late, and Mum will be worried.”

Severus felt his heart plummet. He knew what was probably going on at his house, and he didn’t want to go back, and yet he didn’t want to beg her to stay, either. It was getting cold, and the sun set so early this time of year, it would be dark soon as well. The inner conflict must have shown on his face, because Lily took a step toward him, a sympathetic look in her eye. “Really, Sev, Mum must be so worried by now. I do have to go.”

“Yeah, fine,” he shrugged. “Do what ya want.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking for all the world like she really meant it.

He just shrugged again and drove his toe hard into the frozen lawn, kicking up a piece of sod in the process. “Well go then, already.”

She hesitated a moment more, and then suddenly he was smothered by a nose and mouthful of copper hair, as she wrapped her arms around him in an almost fierce hug. “Thanks for taking care of me today. Really. Thanks.”

He didn’t know what to do. His arms hung limply by his sides. The butterflies in his middle were going mad. She smelled like sweet biscuits, and his house, and fresh winter air all combined into one, and it made him feel tingly and funny, but happy somehow too. And then she pressed her lips to his cheek for the briefest of moments before pulling away. He felt his face turn hot in the cold air, and her cheeks had colored a little too, now that she saw how he had reacted. She giggled a little, and dropped her eyes to the frosty grass beneath their feet. “I—I’ll see you tomorrow, okay. Maybe you can come to my house.”

He nodded.

She looked up again. “Okay then. Well—good-bye.”

He watched as she dashed off in the direction of her house. He watched until he couldn’t see her anymore, and then he wandered over to the lone swing blowing slightly in the wind and sat down on it. It was getting cold fast, and he would have to go home. He didn’t want to go home. Len and Da would be fighting all night, most likely, and Da would probably end up going to the pub, and then coming back to fight some more.

He sighed, and then lifted a hand to his cheek, where her lips had touched. It still felt warm and a little tingly, like she had somehow branded his flesh. He wondered if it had left a mark, and if Len would see it when he got home and box his ears for it.

Len didn’t even seem to notice when he finally walked in the door after dark. Da was gone—to the pub, no doubt. He went up to his room and buried himself underneath the covers with a torch and a book he had snatched off the bookshelf in the sitting room below. It was one of the forbidden books, the ones about magic his mother said was dangerous, but it soothed him to read about such magic, to think about having that kind of power, and control.

This particular book was talking about putting a stopper in death. There was important information in the book. He was writing in the margins with a pencil he’d snatched from the table beside Da’s chair in the sitting room.

He had discovered something very important today. He had to have Lily in his life. Like a person needed water to drink or air to breath. There were a lot of things that could come between him and that goal, but he was determined to plan for each and every one. This book told him how to slow down, and possibly even stop death, so that was one eventuality planned for. There were other ways he could lose Lily too, of that he was well aware. Those he would have to think on a little more, but for now the book in front of him soothed him.

When Da came home it woke him out of a sound sleep. Len was yelling again. There was a girl Da had liked back in Ireland years before; before he met Len. Her name was Brigid and she had been fair, and pretty, with long red hair. From what he could gather the girl could not love him because her religion had been different from his. Len and Da fought about this often, especially since Len had found letters hidden in a shoe box in the back of Da’s closet a few years before and burnt them all in the hearth. That was the only time he had ever seen his Da cry.

It occurred to him, suddenly, that perhaps that was why Len was angry that Da had liked Lily so much. Lily was fair, and pretty too. She had long red hair. He thought about losing Lily, about having a box of letters from her, and of someone burning them all up in the hearth, and he felt a sudden deep twinge of sympathy for his Da.

The hammer of drunken footsteps on the stairs, made him hold his breath. He extinguished the torch, and slid the book under his pillow, before curling up tight beneath the blankets. He waited. The footsteps stopped in front of his door, and he shivered. It was times like this when he wished that he was allowed to use magic outside of school. But he heard the sound of something sliding over the door for a moment, and then the footsteps disappeared into the master bedroom, before the door clicked softly shut. Len was sobbing downstairs.

Pushing the book aside, he buried his head under the pillow and screwed his eyes shut. He thought of Lily swinging in the winter wind, her cheeks rosy, her lips smeared with melted chocolate, her spring-green eyes bright with pure joy. He focused only on that until the happy tingly butterflies returned, until he could remember the sensation of her arms around him, and her hair in his face, and even the feeling of her lips pressed against his cheek so vividly, it was almost like living it all over again.

Something like the light he seemed to always sense when he was with her, raced through him, and he felt his hammering heart calm and then pick up again, but with something different from fear. His cold hands warmed, and he felt the numb, dark thing he supposed was his heart light up just enough so that he knew he could sleep without nightmares.

He remembered Lily lying on his bed a few hours before, her red hair spread out like flames around her face, and he pictured her there again, now, lying beside him, looking up at him with her happy eyes. “I love you!” he whispered fiercely, and felt a tight, answering twist in his center.

It surprised him, and made him feel very odd, but there was a rightness in it. “I love you,” he whispered again, rolling onto his side, and hugging his pillow up against his chest. He imagined he was in Lily’s pretty, clean room at her quiet house. He imagined the pillow was her. It smelled like her, he suddenly realized; probably because she had lain on in briefly that afternoon. He breathed in the scent of her, and let his eyes slide shut.

Len continued to sob downstairs, and he could hear the occasional crash from the master bedroom, but it didn’t seem to bother him anymore. He loved Lily Evans. He had never known anything so certainly in his life. Everything else in his life could be broken. It could all be nothing but illusion and lies, but never this—never Lily. She was and always would be his one true thing.