Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

3 March, 1978 - Caution

The next time Lavinia encountered Evans other than moments in passing in classes and hallways, was when their schedules for prefect duty lined up. More than a month had passed between that late night incident and this one and both girls had largely ignored each other, which was easy enough since they were in different houses anyway.

Lavinia had spent much of that month recovering her trust for these boys. It had been easy enough work because at the end of the day, all the many things they'd done for her far outstripped the weight of this one mistake. But it had still taken time. Each day had been a little better and each day, the laughter they'd coaxed out of her was a little more real.

Her walks back to the dungeons with Sirius were now a nightly habit and their talk was usually light and easy. She learned about him, about the things he liked and loved. She learned he enjoyed muggle artifacts, a quality even he admitted he'd initially picked up simply to spite his parents. She learned he had a passion for Quidditch and though he didn't play, he loved to play. His favorite color was red and he hated fleas, a fact which came so out of the blue that Lavinia had nearly walked into a wall because she was so busy staring at him in shock.

In return, she told him more about herself. Nothing deep and nothing dark, just the surface level truths that they'd had so little occasion to share. She told him how she used to draw, how she'd loved to cook. She told him stories of when she was little, the styles she'd pestered her mother to put her hair in, how she'd loved the feeling of it drifting around her arms. She told him her favorite color was blue, the soft pastel blue of a midday sky. She told him she'd never flown on a broom because it wasn't 'proper' but she wanted to try. She thought she might like the feel of the wind in her hair and the world sprawled beneath her feet.

It was unexpectedly relieving, to be able to share with him the little things that didn't really matter but that proper friends knew about each other. It was relieving to have a normal relationship, with normal conversations and normal worries. So she came to cherish those late night walks where they weren't anything but two friends laughing at childhood memories or a shared joke about a professor's mannerisms. More often than not, it kept her from the fifth floor. Instead of falling asleep thinking about knives and scars she fell asleep thinking about what flying might feel like, or else wondering at the ingenuity of muggles.

The result was that for the first time in a long time, she felt like just another normal girl, with the same silly little cares as any seventeen year old should have. She felt almost good. Almost like she had been before... before everything.

So it was that he next time Lavinia saw Lily Evans, she was in as good a mood as she could be considering the circumstances and greeted the other girl with no trace of malice or resentment. They struck out from the seventh floor working the floors top down, per Evans's suggestion, to account for students who would need to go down floors to their dormitories.

Their silence was cordial and the occasional blip of conversation polite if not friendly. It was odd for Lavinia to be around the other girl now that Evans knew about her friendship with the Marauders and neither of them seemed to know how to behave around the other. So they stuck with silence, which was easier.

Lavinia, for her part, had no intention of forcing a relationship with Evans, for all that she supposed that was precisely what the Marauders would want them to do. She had no doubt it was difficult for them to balance friendships with two people who barely spoke. Lavinia knew from experience how strange it could be to spend time around two separate groups who each hated the other. But she also didn't want to pretend to be any friendlier with Evans than she was, not least because she was sure the other girl would be highly suspicious if Lavinia was overly amicable. So any relationship between them would happen naturally or not at all.