a dance with destiny

xiv

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the order these words are in, everything else belongs to JKR.

A/N: Oh. My. Fucking. God. Y'all. 27 THOUSAND views?!! 1 THOUSAND votes??! What world am I even living in?? Thank you so, so, freaking much!

December 5, 1977

Gryffindor Common Room, 5:00 pm

3rd Person POV:

Lily felt like throwing up. The word Mudblood would probably haunt her forever. Sure, in the past, she had been hurt when people had called her the slur. Losing your best friend because he was a bigoted jerk wasn't exactly something that healed overnight. Especially because of how close she and Severus had been.

He had been her first friend. The person who told her all about Hogwarts. He, quite literally, had brought magic into her life.

When he had used it, the word had felt like a knife. She thanked Merlin she didn't actually know what it was like to have a knife in her arm.

As she stood there with the remaining Marauders, frozen with shock over what had occurred, she was coming to the realization that the pain she had felt was probably miniscule compared to Hermione's.

After what felt like an eternity, Sirius finally spoke up, "Fuck."

Immediately, Lily turned her glare on him, "Yeah. Fuck. What the hell did you do that for?"

He looked guilty, "Uhh, I-I dunno."

"Really? You just decided to fucking do, well, whatever the hell that was, and you don't know why?!" Remus all but shouted at him.

Sirius winced, "I, I uh thought she might be a Death Eater." At Remus's incredulous look, he suddenly remembered something, "Hey! You and James thought she might be a Death Eater, too! It wasn't completely my idea!"

Lily's eyes widened and James sighed, sitting down on the table, "No, Pads, but we agreed to be friends with her. We agreed we would just keep an eye out for any suspicious stuff coming from her. What we didn't agree to do was to practically ambush her and then injure her!"

"We were doing those glamours in Charms, and I saw something on her arm! I thought it might be, well, y'know, a Dark Mark or something. I didn't mean to hurt her!"

Lily finally spoke up, "We know that Sirius. She probably knows it, too. However, that doesn't change the fact that what you did was horrible. You're going to have to have a damn good apology."

"I know that!" He groaned, burying his head in his hands.

She awkwardly patted his shoulder, "We all screwed up, we're all going to have to apologize."

"Well," James started, "if there's one thing we did learn, it's that Hermione is definitely not a Death Eater."

Sirius groaned again, "Yeah, Death Eaters probably fucking did that to her."

Lily shivered involuntarily and couldn't help but lean into James when he pulled her closer to him and whispered, "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

Glancing at the clock, Remus stood up, "Well, it's getting late, I'm going to bed. I don't think there's a point in finding her and apologizing right now. We should give her time to recuperate after what happened. Y'know, some time to herself."

Nodding, Lily made her way to the stairs to the girls' dorms, "Yeah, we'll find her during or before breakfast or something and apologize then."

The two were soon followed by James and Sirius, and they all lay awake in bed until much later that night, thinking about what had happened.