Jameson Hera Blishwick and BRÍGH ENNIS O'DALAIGH like this
Post by lily luna potter on Apr 11, 2021 13:56:15 GMT -7
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Fifth Year. The thought of being a fifth year at Hogwarts hadn’t really set in until Quidditch practice began for the Gryffindors. Her entire summer had been spent running drills with James, hoping to move her position as a reserve player up to being an active one as Chaser. She had hoped that her brother would end up being Captain, but Eddy Krum ended up with the title. The weeks prior to school starting had been accompanied by a lot of whining on her end, about how there were injustices in the Quidditch world, and that Krum had only ended up with the position because of his dad. It didn’t matter that the same could be said from a third-party, had James been named Captain, only getting the position because of name, versus merit. A quick reminder about this from a couple of her friends on the train ride to school, and she immediately shut-up. Edrik was Keeper after all, and Gryffindor historically named their Keepers as Captains. So it only made sense.
But after her rage over James not winning out subsided, she was presented with a new set of problems: time was running out. She came to realize that the real reason she was upset on her brother’s behalf was because it was his seventh year – his last chance at having his name as Captain in the annals of house team history. Sure, looking closely at the rosters and match results would display his name, but that was a far cry from being at the very top of each team list and seeing J. Potter. The only people that would care about the rest of the team would be historians looking back on their dad’s family life, and maybe future Potters. It became infinitely less difficult if James had simply been named Captain instead of Eddy.
And that was when the realization sank in that she was in an almost similar position. Lily liked to tout her flying abilities as much as the next player did, but the reality of it was that she was nothing more than uncontrolled chaos on the pitch. Growing up on toy brooms in the back garden of their home in Godric’s Hollow meant nothing at this level, especially when kids from the Krum and McLaggen families were on the house teams as well. Her mum may have been a quality player during her time on the Harpies, her dad a star on Gryffindor during his school years, but that meant nothing without proper discipline. Somehow, she still found a home with the house team, and they dealt with her nonsense as it came along.
The chaos was somehow part of their strategy, and yet Lily was already starting to struggle with how she could utilize that trait in a positive manner. Did she want to play professionally after school? Was she even good enough to begin with? Were the scouts willing to bet everything on a Chaser that played Quidditch to her own tune, rather than following strict plays and flight maneuvers? If she had been a super-star player, that would be one thing. She had watched enough professional Quidditch over the years to know that teams could be built around the very best. She, unfortunately, was not one of those. Going pro upon graduation was certainly a possibility, especially with three more years of practice and dedication, but it would mean nothing without a Captain title or a boost in her level as a Chaser. Even as an incoming fifth year, she was already starting to see the writing on the wall. The fact that James couldn’t do it, despite being amongst a team and class full of high-quality players, told her that her chances were virtually moot.
There were so many other things in life that she would probably end up finding herself distracted with that the possibility of kicking herself into gear to be the best player on Gryffindor, and a leader at that, was more than likely impossible at this point. She didn’t like dealing with absolutes like that – it was a toxic and negative way of thinking in her virtually perfect and positive life – but there were still instances where she had moments of clarity and the realistic sides of things broke through to her. This just happened to be one of the first realizations in a long line of them, that she would really sit down and think about hard. Without being the absolute best, was there really a point in putting her everything into it? She still enjoyed playing and practicing. That was something that would never go away. But there had to be a hard line where she would stop at, and this year, and with James graduating afterwards, seemed to be where that line started to draw itself.
Time was fickle and fleeting. These weren’t concepts that a fifteen year old only a little halfway through her magical school should have been worrying about, and yet they were. Cousins were graduating, Teddy and Vic were long gone, but Harper kicked off the start of the Weasley side of the family, and James went with her. From there it was like a mass exodus of her built in friends leaving her behind as one of the last. There were obviously still other Weasley cousins in her year, but the fact remained that they were all getting older and starting to focus on the things they liked the most. Time had left her as the joker, the one willing to do anything for a prank, or as a sub-par Quidditch player. Even worst though, as a horrid student. Consistently balancing that fine line of being in trouble and barely hanging on. Lily enjoyed that rush more than anything, and quite frankly it was only second to attempting a Wronski Feint maneuver during practice, much to the rest of the team’s horror.
When all of these quirks added up, her existence as Lily Potter was in full form. But was that really what she wanted? Calling this period of sudden self-reflection as anything but surprising wouldn’t make much sense, only because the writing had been on the walls for years. She had been hard-lining towards this exact dilemma for a while now, and being forced into thinking about it only made her head hurt. Her core essence, her personality, every little thing she did, was supposed to be done with a laugh and stupid antics. Getting back to that was preferable, but the ever looming thought of time running out scared her just as much as losing herself did. She didn’t even know what the concept of ‘losing’ herself was yet, but the seed of thought had been planted, and the beginning of her fifth year certainly didn’t help much with what it meant to lose out on the chance of completing mile points in life. The murder on the Hogwarts Express while going to school only solidified that there was a finite amount of time, and while she wasn’t necessarily running out of it, there had to be something that she could do to make the most of what she really wanted in life. Playing Quidditch professionally was one of those choices, and while it was certainly still a realistic goal if she put forth the effort, there were still strict guidelines that she needed to follow in order to achieve that. Her flippant attitude about everything, despite knowing what would be best for her, prevented that from processing the way that she really needed it to, and so she was left wondering as the fall term of the 2022 school year crept along, slowly and painfully.
Wracking her brain constantly over the first few months of school (which some fellow classmates and professors would probably claim was nigh impossible for Lily Potter on a fundamental level), as well as dealing with the horrid events of the train ride and current state of Hogwarts, Lily found a much needed distraction in her Gryffindor bestie, and classmate, Adrian Greyback. While they weren’t fast friends in first year, or even second, she knew what the power of a name meant. It was sort of a strange thing to feel and understand as an eleven year old, but she knew prior to going to Hogwarts that there would be whisperings and other students outwardly talking about the Potter name. That had always happened whenever her parents took the family anywhere. Most were in awe, as she had been caught up on the past well before attending school. Thus, she also knew what the Greyback name carried. There was more of a weight there than anyone else in the school could even understand, and more than she could really grasp at that age either. Lily simply liked being friends with anyone that was willing to give her the time of day. Talking the ear off of a fellow Gryffindor that didn’t have it as easy as she did so that he would seem normal was second nature, and something she wouldn’t really understand the power of until looking back on it years later.
Probably the most intriguing part about Adrian was the fact that he was a werewolf. Supposedly that was a minor detail that was supposed to stay quiet. Lily couldn’t even remember the first time she had sussed the secret out of him, but it had been a few years now. If she had to take a guess, it probably came out after punching him in the arm in the days leading up to a full moon. She wasn’t observant enough to take notice that he was sickly for a couple days each month, but giving him a nice slap in the arm when he was under the weather definitely made her realize something was off. Normally he fought back, albeit at a gentler level than she could ever bring herself to, or mouthed off, which was very indicative of their friendship in general. Not that time though. Nor the day after. And probably a few months of this repeat behavior later, she had dragged him into an empty room and played twenty questions with him until he spilled the beans. Taking advantage of the fact that he was in the throes of turning, Adrian gave it up quick, not wanting more of the torturous grilling that Lily was beyond capable of even at that age.
She should have been able to put two and two together by that point. Greyback was synonymous with werewolves. Her Uncle Bill bore nasty scars on his face, and Teddy’s dad had been a werewolf, according to years of childhood banter between the two of them. Knowing and having all the pieces of the puzzle fit into place were two different things though, and Lily was more of the type that needed to see it to believe it. Starting around third year, she commenced Operation Werewolf. She didn’t know how much the rest of the school knew about Adrian, and frankly, she didn’t care either. There were other Greybacks as well at Hogwarts, she would soon come to find out, and so it wasn’t like he was on his own. But he also needed someone in his corner at all times. That was something that Lily felt confident in. Nobody would dare cross him, because he had her. If they did, then she had her own personal army of redheaded cousins to back her up. In her mind, that alone would help make people understand that Adrian wasn’t a bad guy. On top of that, she decided to devote her time towards learning about werewolves.
It began with little questions here and there. Nothing too crazy, though they mostly had to do with the moon and how that worked. She didn’t feel the need to get a book on werewolves because she had her own personal information tap right in front of her. Obviously there were certain things that even Adrian didn’t know, like how the actual process of turning looked like to another person. He was always stuck inside the wolf, after all. According to him though, the Wolfsbane potion was a horrid substance that was required by law to drink in the week leading up to the full moon, and greatly hindered everything about the transformation.
That was the part where Lily got sort of lost. She understood that being a werewolf wasn’t Adrian’s choice. The same could be said about the other Greyback children that had been turned. They all treated the turning as if it was some horrible experience – and maybe it was. She didn’t really have a way of knowing exactly what they went through on a monthly basis, or how being normal one day and then a werewolf the next inexplicably changed their lives. Even imagining herself as a werewolf brought out a desire to be released from the chains everyday life. School, rules, the Ministry…nothing could stop the wolf, not even a potion that had been used for ages to quell the freedom that the moon beckoned. Laws and potions aside, getting held back for something that wasn’t even their fault sounded horrible and she couldn’t grasp the concept of not wanting to be free during the full moon. The lack of autonomy that being a werewolf granted once a month seemed to directly contradict what the Ministry wanted lycanthropes to do. That was where she got hung up on the whole thing.
So her own sense of justice for werewolves continued on, sometimes boisterously enough in a manner than scared her friend about his potential secret leaking. Lily was positive that more people knew than they let on. She was considered fairly dumb, in a lackadaisical sort of way, by her peers and professors, and if she could figure it out, than basically anybody could. Adrian had the disposition of a cute puppy, and that much had been made clear by the time they entered fifth year. Nobody was going to second guess that he was a good guy, even if he did turned into a bloodthirsty man-dog once a month that wouldn’t second guess ripping an unsuspecting victim apart if given a chance.
Maybe that was why she liked being around him. The thrill of never knowing what could happen at a given moment, whether of her own doing or his, was a feeling that she refused to give up. Like her passion for Quidditch and the adrenaline it injected her with, her friendship with Adrian released a similar endorphin in her. The days of blaming the blast-beat of her heart when she was around him on the ten cups of coffee she may have had with breakfast, or the multiple bags of slithering sour gummy worms from Honeydukes, were long gone by fifth year. At the time, she didn’t know what the best way to describe it was, other than that Adrian was her person, and likewise, she was his.
Turning to him for help during that fall of 2022, when everything seemed to be up in the air and not really making much sense, was the only reasonable thing that she felt she could do. Lily wasn’t necessarily scared by the death of the student, as terrible and sad as it was, but it definitely made things more difficult when it came to trying to process her own qualms about life. It all came back to the fact that she was worried about time running out. Her time as a Gryffindor, as a Quidditch player, and her time to freely hang out with Adrian whenever she pleased. Blaming her fears on the former two made more sense than outright stating that she was more devastated by the fact that eventually she and Adrian would have to grow up and leave school. That everything they did here would come to an end and it would never be experienced again. There was a finality to it all, similar to the poor first year that died on the train. Once it was gone, it was gone.
Her proposal to Adrian about having him turn her into a werewolf did not go over well. The fact that she had been brimming with confidence that he would simply say yes to her request was most likely what did her in. See, those years of questions about werewolves and how things worked had ended up functioning like a double-edged sword when it came to her being serious about it. Adrian assumed she was joking, like she had countless times before in their endless discussions of what-ifs and werewolves. It didn’t help that an awkward giggle and bubble of laughter escaped from her as she waved it off as just another one of her jokes. She hadn’t seen the look of relief cross his face as she did so. If she had, she probably wouldn’t have kept prodding him about it over the next few weeks.
Like the first time she had found out he was a werewolf, Lily timed the full moon for her real attack. Adrian was easier to bully, in the nicest way possible, when he was off from the incoming moon. She learned that years earlier. Then again, he was almost always easy to push around if she really wanted to get something out of him. There were often times where she wondered if he liked it, and then when she got too personal, the cries for help or for her to stop what she was doing would ring out. Most of Gryffindor had given up, knowing that they would be next on her list of tickle torture or pranks. A sick Adrian was weak and willing, exactly how she needed him for the next round of her onslaught.
It started in November, three months after her existential crisis had first blossomed into a ticking time bomb. The first day of the full moon cycle, where he was actively drinking the Wolfsbane potion, her question fell on deaf ears. He wasn’t technically sick from the side effects yet, but she figured if she caught him in a foul mood from having to drink the potion, she could get him to rally around her plan. The already irritated Adrian brushed her off and went on to class, Lily following in his wake as she started to devise her plan for the next day.
He had to have figured it out by the third or fourth day that she was being completely serious about the entire thing. Lily hadn’t gotten down on her hands and knees and prostrated to him, but she was getting close to it. The joking nature of the last few times she had asked had turned into a downright pitiful display of begging, even going as far as to offer doing all of his school work for him. On that particular refusal, she couldn’t exactly blame him because having her do all of his homework would be like giving up on school in general. Her grades by this point were far from being exceptional, or even worthy of continuing on to N.E.W.T. level classes. But that wasn’t the point of her request. She didn’t have much to offer outside of doing the ridiculous and unimaginable (in this case, Adrian’s work for him), and her desperation was rearing its ugly head already. In Adrian’s defense, she never once actually told him her reasoning for wanting to be a werewolf. Her pleas were jabs at what he vowed to not do to anyone. Once again, that was something she would understand much later, and with years of hindsight. To chip away at that core belief system he held regarding lycanthropy, and what it meant to turn another person, should have been an incredibly hard thing to do without a good reason.
Lily’s was that she wanted to be free. She wanted to turn the bad into a little better. To erase what people thought of werewolves. It was everything that she had spent years already doing when around Adrian, to help other students not be on edge around him or his siblings. Her thought process was that if she could escape the choking pressure of time and become a werewolf, then the same could happen with the others too. It wasn’t an incredibly complex reasoning, nor even a good one, but it made sense to her. She had the drive and knowhow, and trusted Adrian, should he accept, to turn her into a werewolf.
When the day of the November full moon arrived, she had done considerable damage to him. She backed off the last few days even, to give him room to breathe and think. He would later tell her that by doing so, which was incredibly out of character for her, he realized that she was being completely serious about it. By not being herself for just a few days, she sealed her greatest victory ever. In her opinion, of course. There would be a lot of debate later on, mostly from her parents and the school, about whether or not she was accountable for her own actions, though that ultimately came down to the strength and validity of the lie that she and Adrian would begin to weave over the next few months.
Of course, he didn’t tell her that he was in on the plan until Christmas Break. An entire month and another round of shameless begging repeated in December, though Lily figured by that point that all thoughts of becoming a werewolf needed to be dashed or else she would get too obsessed and hunt down someone else to do it to her. The possibility of threatening Adrian with that hadn’t even crossed her mind, only because she wanted it to be him. No one else could do it, not even one of his siblings, who would more than likely be beyond opposed to the mess that the two of them were about to get themselves into.
She had made plans with him to meet over break, after Christmas had passed, mostly to just escape the sometimes suffocating atmosphere of the Burrow. While Lily loved all of her family members, there was always a lot going on. And she knew that she could be as much of a handful as the rest of them combined if she really wanted to be. Plus the ability to run off to Diagon Alley during break was the sort of responsibility she wanted to be allowed going forward. The fact that her parents allowed it had sort of shocked her at first. She was the one that had constant letters sent home listing her antics and detentions and always found herself in varying degrees of trouble whilst at home. Yet they found it perfectly fine to let her run off to Diagon with a boy they didn’t know, who bore the name of a notorious criminal. There were a lot of things that she didn’t understand about her parents, and that whole series of events was one of them. Their line of thinking was probably that she couldn’t get into too much trouble in the shopping district without someone stopping her first, and if something truly horrible happened while she was there, Uncle George was only a stone’s throw away at the joke shop. Lily practically went into the trip expecting to bump into her uncle at various points throughout the day, and even decided that the best way to get him to leave her alone early on was to check in right away, and make sure he wasn’t too intent on keeping an eye on her. The shop was packed with students, all holding onto their Christmas money with a fervor to spend it on something silly, and Uncle George could barely get a word into her as she waved to him from the jam-packed entrance.
They met up outside the Leaky Cauldron, originally intending to get lunch there, but like her uncle’s shop, the tavern was packed full with families going to and from the entrance that led to the muggle side of London. Lily had no need to travel via that spot, mostly because she utilized floo powder these days, and she threw a small fit in the doorway when Adrian returned from the bar and explained that the pub was full up, and intended to be for a while. There were other places to eat in Diagon Alley, though they weren’t as aesthetically grungy as the Leaky Cauldron was, which is sort of what she liked about the place; dim lights and sticky, beer-stained tables that were marred by years of tankard slamming and spell residue. Despite being a fairly popular place as far as she could remember, there was still something about whispering in hushed voices at a back table that made her giddy. Then again, Lily’s version of whispering was more of a husky yell, so it was no wonder that there were always heads turning in her direction whenever she tried to have super-secret meetings in public places. One of her professors even remarked during her first year that they may eventually have to install a permanent silencing charm on her whenever she went out of the castle.
That was why the Leaky Cauldron would have been a good option today, since it was crammed full of bodies and the incomprehensible buzz of voices was leaking deep into Diagon Alley every time someone opened the entrance between the two locations. Lily’s voice would still be heard over all of the din, if given the chance, but Adrian was right in wanting to go somewhere more secluded so that they could at least get served, and dragged her to a smallish café that she had never been to before. It was situated in a back corner of the shopping district, near the edge of the then quiet Horizont Alley, and there was heated seating outside. She made sure to give Adrian a nudge in the ribs with her elbow for knowing of such a great spot, since they could do whatever they wanted while outside, and there were very few people to bother at the same time. His privacy in that regard was admirable, and the choice of this café over any of the other places throughout Diagon soon made sense to Lily.
First came the process of getting her to actually pick what she wanted to eat, always indecisive and asking about food that wasn’t on the menu. Adrian shooed her outside with their drinks and ended up ordering for her. He had learned well from her mid-dinner attempts at storming the Hogwarts kitchens and asking the house elves to prep exactly what she wanted for the night (or even sometimes how she wanted ice cream sundaes for the following morning’s breakfast). The silence outside the café was palpable, and while it was clear that they were still in Diagon Alley, the few people that were walking in this area either seemed to be lost or were simply checking out what was actually around the corner. Lily happily waved at everyone that turned the corner, some shocked that there was actually a person sitting right there, others completely ignoring her. Adrian even asked her if she knew the woman she was waving at as he came out with the food, and she shrugged off his question as the woman awkwardly returned the wave. None of that really mattered to her. It was all a game to her in the end, a means to pass the time while she waited for Adrian, and more importantly, her lunch.
She was barely into the third bite of her sandwich when she noticed that Adrian hadn’t even touched his yet. That wasn’t exactly uncommon around her – she was constantly being told by a disgusted Albus that she devoured food like it was her last meal, and it made her look boorish. That typically elicited a full-mouthed laugh, and a dribble of whatever she was eating falling from her mouth. Not everyone had to be proper and have the disposition of a stick in the mud. Being turned off by her eating was definitely a possibility, so Lily finished the bite she was on, and instead of immediately stuffing more of the sandwich to replace what she swallowed mid-chew, she placed the sandwich back on the plate.
As if her doing so with her sandwich activated something within Adrian, he began to speak, explaining that he had done a lot of thinking about her previous requests for him to turn her. It came out in a slow, carefully worded statement, every bit of it chosen to keep her mouth shut until he was finished talking. She ate it all up, being the quietest she had maybe ever been, aside from the noises coming from finishing her chewing. His expert timing had her brain going a million miles per second, and she wasn’t sure if what he was saying was in jest, or if he was actually being serious about it for once. Entertaining her folly was admittedly dangerous, Adrian said as much throughout his speech, and that there would have to be a lot of precautions taken in order to make sure he didn’t accidentally kill her in the process of trying to bite her. Supposedly her rally of questions the previous month had really made him think about what having her as a werewolf could accomplish in terms of lycanthropy on a grander level. Lily didn’t really care about that now as much as she had at the time, preferring to just receive what she was now calling the ‘freedom bite’ in her head.
The squeal of excitement that came out of her after he finally finished talking and took a chance to breathe in the weight of what he had told her would have drawn every head in the Leaky Cauldron, had he broke the news of his decision there. The emptiness of the street they were on was perfect for Lily as she jumped out of her chair and immediately ran to the other side and back, grabbing onto Adrian in a bear hug as she thanked him profusely. She had virtually given up, in the sense that she was going to give him a few months of reprieve before jumping right back into the grilling. Having known him for as long as she did, she knew that he would eventually give in, and it seemed to have worked a lot faster than she originally thought it would.
Of course, Adrian wanted to wait until the summer, that way her first few months of turning could be under close supervision and with the help of mediwizards if needed. She quickly denied that plan, and demanded that it happen as soon as possible. Lily would have assumed that the pale pallor that her friend’s face turned to when she asked to expedite things was due to the oncoming full moon, if it wasn’t two weeks away still. She knew that it was a lot to ask of him, especially with all of the problems that could happen once the night of arrived. But that was part of the excitement too, wasn’t it? There were so many uncertain things going on around them at school, throwing a planned life or death situation into the mix only seemed like the right thing to do. It solved a lot of the problems that she had been dealing with mentally, and Adrian would have more than just his siblings to rely on when the moon came calling every month. In actuality, Adrian was hoping that she would forget by the time summer rolled around. The spring term would bring end of year exams and O.W.L.s, and in his own forgetfulness, neither of which Lily really cared about. She was hell-bent on getting what she wanted, and he had finally offered up the option of following through with it.
The remainder of the day was spent at that little café, discussing what the plan would be going forward. The next full moon was on January 6th, which was just about two weeks away and after they would be returning to Hogwarts. Lily pressed for it to happen then, and despite Adrian’s squirming and reasonable uneasiness about doing it so soon, she felt that the sooner was absolutely better. Hogwarts was always engulfed in chaos the first week of term, with students shirking off classes so they could spend time with friends they hadn’t seen since before break, so it made sense to get it done then. She didn’t really add end of term exams into her end of the equation, though Adrian pointed out that January would provide her with the most recovery time before they happened, and then he proceeded to reiterate that the summer would still be better than during school. Her counter-argument to that was that she wouldn’t be able to sit through exams knowing what was coming after them, and that seemed to make sense to him. She could never go through a test without wiggling in her chair or humming to herself anyways, so it wasn’t like this would be that much worse if she had to wait. She simply didn’t want to push it off any longer.
With that, the plan was sort of set in stone. A date was determined, and it was going to happen in the Forbidden Forest. They had built a secret fort of sorts during their third year in there, improving on it every so often to the point that there were two separate rooms now. It was a pseudo-treehouse, and it would be perfect to have Adrian turn there instead of in the mandatory spot provided by the school. In his words, they didn’t really check up on the sleeping wolves because they knew they were all set and not harmful after taking the potion every day the week prior. At the time, there was only him and his half-sister, Jamie, being locked up, and he said that she followed the rules as much as possible, usually locking herself up a good amount of time before he ever got down to the dungeons. The idea was to have him take the potion as normal, so that he wouldn’t be as vicious and of a sound mind, and then to sneak out of the dungeons prior to the moon rising, where he would meet Lily in the forest at their secret base. From there, she would tie him up with a rope charm that she had been taught in third year but she had just mastered during the fall term, and keep him at arm’s length from herself. The bite would then happen, and she would book it back to the school and hospital wing before the side effects of the bite kicked in, whatever those would end up being. Adrian wasn’t exactly clear on what could happen, aside from that they wouldn’t know until the following month, and the books she had read never got into the finer details of what the bite was like. Apparently nobody had an interest in reading about werewolf bites, or she was in the wrong section of the school library for it. The professors would never let her pull something from the restricted section, because that would only spell disaster.
The last week of break was unbelievably difficult for Lily. She couldn’t sit still at all, even more so than normally, and her parents chalked it up to being worried about going back to classes. They had seen her grades from the fall term, and they were far from being exceptional. She sort of felt bad about that, having nixed most of her schoolwork near the end of term so that she could bug Adrian about the werewolf thing instead, but it was what it was. Poor grades weren’t anything new for her, and they would soon forget about it the second they found out that she was bit by a werewolf whilst at school. The story that she was planning on using was that she snuck out of the castle at night to explore the forest, where she would unfortunately run into a werewolf. By the time the school dealt with her injury, Adrian was supposed to be sneaking back into the dungeons in the morning, where he would lie about being the entire night. Asleep in his wolf form. He had brought up a good point that the school and the Ministry would probably come asking questions, for both of them and Jamie as well, but as long as she played it cool then it wouldn’t be much of an issue. Apparently there were tons of loose werewolves about, so thinking it was one of the ones at Hogwarts wouldn’t even cross their minds. Even if that wasn’t true, Lily didn’t care much. The worst they could do was expel her and Adrian for being idiots. Her parents would be disappointed, but they wouldn’t disown her for being bit by a werewolf. That would contradict everything they had taught her growing up.
The first week of the spring term wasn’t much better either. Being distracted was typical for Lily, but this was just more of what she had been experiencing at home. Her first class of the term, and she had warnings already about getting a detention. That sort of thing didn’t matter to her anymore. And what was another one or two onto the dozens that she had already received over the years? Like with her parents, the school would forget about her being in trouble and her grades the second she got nipped by the werewolf. It all made sense in her head. Adrian’s warnings of how they (meaning the school) would pay even more attention to her after the bite didn’t click in her head until much later, like most things did with her. Every day, she made sure to hound Adrian over the fact that he needed to be drinking the Wolfsbane, even going as far as to wait for him outside of the Hospital Wing during the last few days. She couldn’t tell if he was sickly like normal, or if that was due to the fact that he was about to go through with the dumbest plan in the world.
Her reassurance that everything would be fine continued throughout the week, and finally the fated day arrived. January 6th was a Friday, and she couldn’t have picked a better day to be bit. With the weekend following it, she would have a few days to get used to everything, whatever that meant, and it would give her time to deal with her parents. All she had to do was make sure they didn’t break past her fake story after it was all said and done. She managed to gobble down breakfast and lunch, but by the time dinner rolled around, she was starting to feel the jitters take over. The normal tingly sensation in her fingers, and the butterflies in her stomach that accompanied it, that she got from playing Quidditch were in full force, and Lily could barely keep herself from running straight out into the woods. Adrian was already out there supposedly, as according to him, he had planned ahead of time to draw attention away from the lock-up and Jamie. She hadn’t seen her friend almost all day, probably both knowing that if they did, one of them would try to back out last second. Technically there was still time to do that, and as long as she never walked into the forest, she would not become a werewolf tonight. But that wasn’t a very Lily thing to do either. Her months of worrying about running out of time had come to a head now, and she was finally staring at her escape. She trusted Adrian more than she trusted herself, and knew that he wouldn’t willingly go through with the plan if he thought something would go wrong with it.
With time before curfew started, Lily snuck out of the castle and stealthily made her way down to the forest, and along the path that they had made to their hideout. She had never been there during the night, so it was hard to find her way after getting far enough in. The artificial night created by the canopy overhead creeped her out. It made it difficult to tell if the sun had set yet, causing her walk to the base to come to a progressively slower crawl. There were reminders of her many what-if scenarios from years earlier, where she asked Adrian what it was like for a werewolf to run free, or what he knew of people being attacked by them. If he had somehow already turned and broken from his restraints that she had placed a day earlier, and if the potion hadn’t worked as it was supposed to, she would be in real trouble. She realized that she probably should have brought a broom with her, at least giving her the advantage in height and speed if things turned sour, but it was too late to go back and grab it now. Plus it would seem sort of suspicious to have a broom with her in the forest after dark. A good thought, maybe, but bad in theory.
Her stroll through the forest eventually led her to her destination, after what seemed like an hour or so. There Adrian stood, arms tied up and still in his human form, underneath the tree that housed their secret fort. She wanted to utter words of reassurance, but found herself at a loss, only because she didn’t know what to say in the moment. He was about to do the worst possible thing he could to her, and they were both willing to allow it to happen. Instead of sitting down and gabbing with him as they waited for the moon to start the change, Lily stood a reasonable distance away from him and stared in his direction.
Whatever it was that she expected the werewolf transformation to look like, this wasn’t it. The scream of agony that rippled out of Adrian turned into an in-human howl as every muscle in his body flexed and arched at the same time. Lily stood her ground, one hand over her mouth to hold back her shock, the other hand tightly gripping her wand. The crackling of the ropes against the tree trunk as the turning Adrian yanked on them caused splinters of wood to shoot everywhere. She backed up around the tree that she had been up against, and watched from around it as he went through the change, sometimes staring in awe, but most of the time in horror. The beast within him was more animalistic than anything he had described to her or what she had read about. The gangly limbs didn’t seem happy that they were restrained, and even in the werewolf’s currently passive state, it tugged at them and tried to remove them immediately upon completing the transition. If this was a werewolf that was dulled and held back by Wolfsbane, she realized she didn’t want to encounter one without it as a human.
That didn’t stop her from approaching Adrian though. Stepping around the tree she had squirreled away behind, her position was given away immediately as small conifer twigs snapped under her shoes. He definitely knew she was there before that, but hadn’t seemed interested in the slightest, the wolf being preoccupied by the ropes holding it back. The wolf’s head snapped onto her instantaneously, and the sudden awareness that it was looking at her caused her to step backwards and trip over her own feet. Even though Adrian’s wolf looked dog-like, it was far from the family dogs she had grown up with. Only the narrowing of its eyes as it tried to figure out what she was doing seemed familiar, sort of like what her dogs did when she got down on the ground and tried to wrestle with them. Hopefully that wasn’t going to be happening tonight, because she definitely wouldn’t be able to win.
Brushing her backside off as she got to her feet once more, Lily inched her way towards Adrian, whispering to him that it was just her, and that he had to remember the plan. She had no way of telling if he truly understood what was going on while in the werewolf form, but it eased her own worry over the whole situation. He said that the potion usually let him think for himself while turned, though most of that time was spent sleeping. The wolf didn’t look like it was tired to her, yet she still got closer to it.
Rolling the left sleeve of her jacket above her elbow, she took a deep breath and stuck her wand in between her teeth to keep herself from screaming out when he inevitably bit her. It was now or never, and she quickly pushed her arm in front of the werewolf’s mouth and closed her eyes. The huff of hot air from his nose had her gritting down harder onto the wand, just in time as the vice-like pain of his fangs pierced into her forearm. She had been bit by the family dogs before, but that had been during play. This was something completely different, and she could tell that the werewolf had zero intention of letting go unprompted. The bite brought a river of pain-filled tears down her face instantly, and Lily started to struggle as her small arm was being savagely chewed into by Adrian’s wolf. She tried prying at the jaw with her free hand, but she should have known that would be impossible. Even a hindered werewolf was stronger than a fifteen year old witch.
So she punched him in the eye as hard as she could. She was lucky that his arms were restrained, because she felt the heave of his strength pulling against them as he leaned into her when the fist made contact. The pain was indescribable, and not even the worst injury she had received playing Quidditch came close to it. The wolf refused to relinquish its hold on her arm, and she started to panic that it was either going to rip it off completely, or she was going to pass out right in front of it.
So she punched him again. And again. Each felt weaker than the last, and Lily felt herself starting to lose a grip on what was going on. She even pulled the wand from her mouth to plead with Adrian to let her go, but the wolf refused. In a moment of panic, she shoved the wand into his chest and cast a burst of red sparks at him. She heard the yelp before she realized that she was free. Her own whimpers as she dragged herself across the rough forest floor were drowned out by the werewolf’s howl as it became aggravated by her attack on it. She managed to get to her feet, wobbly at first, and turned her back to Adrian as she ran as fast as she could away from the hideout and towards the edge of the forest.
Her flight through the Forbidden Forest came in the form of faded moments of lucidity. Her brain buzzed with a mix of adrenaline fueled fear and the fact that she didn’t know if her arm even existed anymore. Looking at it as she ran, all she could see was a bloody mess. There were not often times where she wished she remembered how to cast healing charms, but this was one of them. The problem with that though, was that she didn’t know if the werewolf had broken free and was chasing her down. She could hear the howling as she stumbled through the brush, but turning around to check wasn’t an option at this point. Doing so only led to low-hanging tree branches to smacking her in the face, slowing down her escape. Aside from moments like that, the rest sort of blended together into a giant mess of tripping over roots and running blindly into hidden trees.
She woke up in the hospital wing an unknown amount of time later, and thus started her horrid drift between sleep and consciousness in the early hours of the following morning. It made her time running away feel more dream-like than reality, and all she knew was that the bed in the hospital wing was absolutely heavenly. That and whatever they had forced her to take for painkillers and charmed her wounds with. It beat the nightmares of a comically large werewolf bearing the head of Adrian chasing her through the trees, always catching her in the end and eating her whole.
By the time she actually woke up, it was in a panic. She knew she was safe where she was, those brief moments of awareness helping her out a bit, but it still shocked her that she had actually made it back to the castle in one piece. Her hand wandered over her bandaged up left arm, and she traced the outline of the gauze patch with her fingers. A crazed smile spread across her face as she stifled the laughter that wanted to come out of her dry throat. She had actually done it! Obviously there was no telling if it worked until a month from now, but the arm was bandaged up where she remembered being bitten by Adrian hours earlier. That much wasn’t a dream, at least.
It scared her how stupid it had been to attempt it, but she bore the mark of a werewolf bite. That meant she was as good as one now. The conflicting emotions had her wanting to jump out of the bed and immediately run off to tell Adrian. She was sure he was back to normal by now, assuming he wasn’t still tied up to the tree. The mere thought of him being stuck there until she went to his rescue made her laugh, and that caught the attention of the nurse, who immediately shushed her and came over with an unknown potion and a glass of water. Lily diligently drank the potion down, sticking her tongue out in disgust at the nurse, and then sipped gently on the water as the older woman left and headed towards the front of the hospital wing.
She didn’t think much of the fast paced footsteps approaching her bed as she happily sat in bed and drank her water, finally feeling like she could yell at the top of her lungs again if she so pleased. The first set of shoes that she could see belonged to James, the second by a much slower Albus. They both questioned her about what had happened, and she flubbed through her words because she hadn’t prepared to be bombarded by her family immediately upon waking up. This was the part she had admittedly spent more time planning for beforehand, and it already seemed like it was ready to fall apart if she even dared to attempt to lie to her brothers. James was clearly concerned, taking the seat next to the bed, and giving her a careful. Albus wasn’t as concerned, as per usual, and seemed to think that she was in the hospital wing so that she could avoid going to class. Trying to lift her left arm up to show him, and failing to do so, she wanted to argue with him about why she was actually there, but was cut off by another two sets of hurried steps across the marble floor.
Her mum and dad appeared around the curtain, looking about as concerned as James did. She gave them a big grin, and slid herself into a seated position as they individually asked her what had happened. From the sound of it, the school hadn’t actually clued them into it being a werewolf attack yet. That seemed very Professor Longbottom-like. If he owled her parents, they probably would have burned down the Forbidden Forest in an effort to take out the werewolf before they showed up at the hospital wing to check up on her. She hoped Adrian had made his escape back to the dungeons when morning came, because they definitely wouldn’t be letting her hang out with him in Diagon Alley anymore if they really knew.
And so her poor explanation about what ‘happened’ began: how she had been scouting out the woods for a secluded place for a friend, and that when she got lost as night fell, she ran smack into a werewolf that was prowling in the woods. She said it with as even as a voice as she could, starting out initially with a hint of excitement about her supposed assistance for her mystery friend. James seemed skeptical about her decision making process, but none of her family members pressured her about who the friend was or how she had managed to escape the werewolf and the woods with only a bite on her forearm. That was probably the most unbelievable part now that she thought about it, but this was also her they were dealing with. They were more worried about her injury and whether or not she was in pain at all. Albus immediately got James off her back by cracking a joke about being able to play with the dogs now, and how they needed to get her a giant bone. She wasn’t sure if her parents were fine with the relaxed conversation happening when this was a pretty serious ordeal, but they allowed it since she kept repeating that she felt fine.
She only stayed in the hospital wing for that day, the nurse deciding that she was fine to leave the next morning, as long as she was able to eat her breakfast. Lily felt ravenous, and gobbled down the beans and toast, and asked for thirds on the blood sausage that had been served that morning. The looks that her parents gave her that morning as she ate were certainly ones of concern, and they explained that they would help her going forward, should she end up turning the following month. They explained that the same problem had arisen with her Uncle Bill following the war, and how his cravings for raw meat and wolfish appearance made them think that he would turn as well. He managed to avoid it though, and she could tell that her mum and dad were already hoping she would be the same way. But there was only one way to tell, and by the time she had finished breakfast, hugged her parents, and skipped off to the Gryffindor common room, Lily was already looking forward to the next full moon.
Before that though, she had to find Adrian. He was nowhere to be seen in the common room, and after asking around, it seemed like nobody had seen him at all that morning. James wasn’t much help either, and kept a watchful eye on her as she wandered around the common room trying to figure out where her friend was. After a few hours of searching, and a meat-filled lunch, she happily bounced down onto the castle grounds and towards the forest. She almost expected a professor to descend onto her to keep her from going back towards the tree line, but no one showed up. It made the whole ordeal seem like they didn’t care, or at the very least, were being diligent about keeping what had happened a secret from the general populous. They were going to have a lot of difficulty now that her big mouth was potentially a werewolf. The news would pass around her family members incredibly fast, and she was sure that Albus would nonchalantly spill the new secret. She gave it until the end of the week before the entire school knew about her newfound shape-shifting ability. And if the school were none the wiser, they would probably assign Adrian and Jamie to help her in understanding what the change was like. She giggled to herself at the irony of that, and hoped that her new wolf-sister wouldn’t want to strangle her and Adrian the second she found out that he was the cause of it all.
Lily found him leaning up against a tree, his back to the castle, in a far removed corner of the grounds. Her ability to locate him felt almost second nature, and while she prided herself on her hide and seek skills, this felt like something else altogether. Like a new sense. A tingle that alerted her in the smallest part of her brain. She simply knew where he was the second she was in the same vicinity as him. It wasn’t via sight or smell though, the shivers it sent throughout her whole body made her just know that there was another werewolf nearby. If that and the hunger for meat wasn’t an indicator that the plan had worked, then she wasn’t sure what was.
She had no idea if he possessed the same unnatural ability to know she was there, but to make herself known, she ripped the bandage off of her arm and bundled it up, before launching it with a levitation charm in the direction of where he was. It bounced off the side of the tree, and he stood up and grabbed it, before throwing it back at her. She stuffed the gauze ball into her pocket and ran at him, holding out her arm so that he could see the mark left by his bite. To her, that was the sign of victory. Their unbelievably stupid plan had worked, at least to the extent that she was still alive, and that she had the potential to be a werewolf.
There was a lot that still had to happen, like how that first full moon would turn out for her, but she was glad that it seemed like Adrian hadn’t beaten himself over the last day about what had happened. She had so many questions about what was going through his head, if anything, during the transformation, and if he felt her punching at him before she cast the spell. There were more questions now that came to mind than she had prior to going through with it, and she was sure that the Ministry would soon come knocking to explain to her the transformation process and what she needed to do going forward. The Ministry could exercise whatever rules and laws they wanted over her, but that wasn’t going to prevent her from doing what she wanted to. None of that really mattered though, because she was more excited about the fact that she got to be a werewolf with her best friend. She had resolved herself long before that they wouldn’t get away with that. Restricting her freedom was completely out of the question.
Thankfully, Adrian had opened himself up to her crazy, dumb idea and was a trooper for it. She already felt her quandary of the prior term dissipating, her worries about running out of time for the things that she wanted to do dissolving. There were still problems out there that were unavoidable, and she knew that committing to her selfish act only solved her issues, but it gave her back the control that she felt was slowly slipping away over the last few months. While there were new rules and restrictions that she had to abide by, she felt that the decision to become a werewolf was solely hers, and hers alone. Even while she was laid up in the hospital wing for the entire previous day, she was already starting to mentally game plan all of the cools things she could do with Adrian now that they were tied by their little string of fate.
But after her rage over James not winning out subsided, she was presented with a new set of problems: time was running out. She came to realize that the real reason she was upset on her brother’s behalf was because it was his seventh year – his last chance at having his name as Captain in the annals of house team history. Sure, looking closely at the rosters and match results would display his name, but that was a far cry from being at the very top of each team list and seeing J. Potter. The only people that would care about the rest of the team would be historians looking back on their dad’s family life, and maybe future Potters. It became infinitely less difficult if James had simply been named Captain instead of Eddy.
And that was when the realization sank in that she was in an almost similar position. Lily liked to tout her flying abilities as much as the next player did, but the reality of it was that she was nothing more than uncontrolled chaos on the pitch. Growing up on toy brooms in the back garden of their home in Godric’s Hollow meant nothing at this level, especially when kids from the Krum and McLaggen families were on the house teams as well. Her mum may have been a quality player during her time on the Harpies, her dad a star on Gryffindor during his school years, but that meant nothing without proper discipline. Somehow, she still found a home with the house team, and they dealt with her nonsense as it came along.
The chaos was somehow part of their strategy, and yet Lily was already starting to struggle with how she could utilize that trait in a positive manner. Did she want to play professionally after school? Was she even good enough to begin with? Were the scouts willing to bet everything on a Chaser that played Quidditch to her own tune, rather than following strict plays and flight maneuvers? If she had been a super-star player, that would be one thing. She had watched enough professional Quidditch over the years to know that teams could be built around the very best. She, unfortunately, was not one of those. Going pro upon graduation was certainly a possibility, especially with three more years of practice and dedication, but it would mean nothing without a Captain title or a boost in her level as a Chaser. Even as an incoming fifth year, she was already starting to see the writing on the wall. The fact that James couldn’t do it, despite being amongst a team and class full of high-quality players, told her that her chances were virtually moot.
There were so many other things in life that she would probably end up finding herself distracted with that the possibility of kicking herself into gear to be the best player on Gryffindor, and a leader at that, was more than likely impossible at this point. She didn’t like dealing with absolutes like that – it was a toxic and negative way of thinking in her virtually perfect and positive life – but there were still instances where she had moments of clarity and the realistic sides of things broke through to her. This just happened to be one of the first realizations in a long line of them, that she would really sit down and think about hard. Without being the absolute best, was there really a point in putting her everything into it? She still enjoyed playing and practicing. That was something that would never go away. But there had to be a hard line where she would stop at, and this year, and with James graduating afterwards, seemed to be where that line started to draw itself.
Time was fickle and fleeting. These weren’t concepts that a fifteen year old only a little halfway through her magical school should have been worrying about, and yet they were. Cousins were graduating, Teddy and Vic were long gone, but Harper kicked off the start of the Weasley side of the family, and James went with her. From there it was like a mass exodus of her built in friends leaving her behind as one of the last. There were obviously still other Weasley cousins in her year, but the fact remained that they were all getting older and starting to focus on the things they liked the most. Time had left her as the joker, the one willing to do anything for a prank, or as a sub-par Quidditch player. Even worst though, as a horrid student. Consistently balancing that fine line of being in trouble and barely hanging on. Lily enjoyed that rush more than anything, and quite frankly it was only second to attempting a Wronski Feint maneuver during practice, much to the rest of the team’s horror.
When all of these quirks added up, her existence as Lily Potter was in full form. But was that really what she wanted? Calling this period of sudden self-reflection as anything but surprising wouldn’t make much sense, only because the writing had been on the walls for years. She had been hard-lining towards this exact dilemma for a while now, and being forced into thinking about it only made her head hurt. Her core essence, her personality, every little thing she did, was supposed to be done with a laugh and stupid antics. Getting back to that was preferable, but the ever looming thought of time running out scared her just as much as losing herself did. She didn’t even know what the concept of ‘losing’ herself was yet, but the seed of thought had been planted, and the beginning of her fifth year certainly didn’t help much with what it meant to lose out on the chance of completing mile points in life. The murder on the Hogwarts Express while going to school only solidified that there was a finite amount of time, and while she wasn’t necessarily running out of it, there had to be something that she could do to make the most of what she really wanted in life. Playing Quidditch professionally was one of those choices, and while it was certainly still a realistic goal if she put forth the effort, there were still strict guidelines that she needed to follow in order to achieve that. Her flippant attitude about everything, despite knowing what would be best for her, prevented that from processing the way that she really needed it to, and so she was left wondering as the fall term of the 2022 school year crept along, slowly and painfully.
Wracking her brain constantly over the first few months of school (which some fellow classmates and professors would probably claim was nigh impossible for Lily Potter on a fundamental level), as well as dealing with the horrid events of the train ride and current state of Hogwarts, Lily found a much needed distraction in her Gryffindor bestie, and classmate, Adrian Greyback. While they weren’t fast friends in first year, or even second, she knew what the power of a name meant. It was sort of a strange thing to feel and understand as an eleven year old, but she knew prior to going to Hogwarts that there would be whisperings and other students outwardly talking about the Potter name. That had always happened whenever her parents took the family anywhere. Most were in awe, as she had been caught up on the past well before attending school. Thus, she also knew what the Greyback name carried. There was more of a weight there than anyone else in the school could even understand, and more than she could really grasp at that age either. Lily simply liked being friends with anyone that was willing to give her the time of day. Talking the ear off of a fellow Gryffindor that didn’t have it as easy as she did so that he would seem normal was second nature, and something she wouldn’t really understand the power of until looking back on it years later.
Probably the most intriguing part about Adrian was the fact that he was a werewolf. Supposedly that was a minor detail that was supposed to stay quiet. Lily couldn’t even remember the first time she had sussed the secret out of him, but it had been a few years now. If she had to take a guess, it probably came out after punching him in the arm in the days leading up to a full moon. She wasn’t observant enough to take notice that he was sickly for a couple days each month, but giving him a nice slap in the arm when he was under the weather definitely made her realize something was off. Normally he fought back, albeit at a gentler level than she could ever bring herself to, or mouthed off, which was very indicative of their friendship in general. Not that time though. Nor the day after. And probably a few months of this repeat behavior later, she had dragged him into an empty room and played twenty questions with him until he spilled the beans. Taking advantage of the fact that he was in the throes of turning, Adrian gave it up quick, not wanting more of the torturous grilling that Lily was beyond capable of even at that age.
She should have been able to put two and two together by that point. Greyback was synonymous with werewolves. Her Uncle Bill bore nasty scars on his face, and Teddy’s dad had been a werewolf, according to years of childhood banter between the two of them. Knowing and having all the pieces of the puzzle fit into place were two different things though, and Lily was more of the type that needed to see it to believe it. Starting around third year, she commenced Operation Werewolf. She didn’t know how much the rest of the school knew about Adrian, and frankly, she didn’t care either. There were other Greybacks as well at Hogwarts, she would soon come to find out, and so it wasn’t like he was on his own. But he also needed someone in his corner at all times. That was something that Lily felt confident in. Nobody would dare cross him, because he had her. If they did, then she had her own personal army of redheaded cousins to back her up. In her mind, that alone would help make people understand that Adrian wasn’t a bad guy. On top of that, she decided to devote her time towards learning about werewolves.
It began with little questions here and there. Nothing too crazy, though they mostly had to do with the moon and how that worked. She didn’t feel the need to get a book on werewolves because she had her own personal information tap right in front of her. Obviously there were certain things that even Adrian didn’t know, like how the actual process of turning looked like to another person. He was always stuck inside the wolf, after all. According to him though, the Wolfsbane potion was a horrid substance that was required by law to drink in the week leading up to the full moon, and greatly hindered everything about the transformation.
That was the part where Lily got sort of lost. She understood that being a werewolf wasn’t Adrian’s choice. The same could be said about the other Greyback children that had been turned. They all treated the turning as if it was some horrible experience – and maybe it was. She didn’t really have a way of knowing exactly what they went through on a monthly basis, or how being normal one day and then a werewolf the next inexplicably changed their lives. Even imagining herself as a werewolf brought out a desire to be released from the chains everyday life. School, rules, the Ministry…nothing could stop the wolf, not even a potion that had been used for ages to quell the freedom that the moon beckoned. Laws and potions aside, getting held back for something that wasn’t even their fault sounded horrible and she couldn’t grasp the concept of not wanting to be free during the full moon. The lack of autonomy that being a werewolf granted once a month seemed to directly contradict what the Ministry wanted lycanthropes to do. That was where she got hung up on the whole thing.
So her own sense of justice for werewolves continued on, sometimes boisterously enough in a manner than scared her friend about his potential secret leaking. Lily was positive that more people knew than they let on. She was considered fairly dumb, in a lackadaisical sort of way, by her peers and professors, and if she could figure it out, than basically anybody could. Adrian had the disposition of a cute puppy, and that much had been made clear by the time they entered fifth year. Nobody was going to second guess that he was a good guy, even if he did turned into a bloodthirsty man-dog once a month that wouldn’t second guess ripping an unsuspecting victim apart if given a chance.
Maybe that was why she liked being around him. The thrill of never knowing what could happen at a given moment, whether of her own doing or his, was a feeling that she refused to give up. Like her passion for Quidditch and the adrenaline it injected her with, her friendship with Adrian released a similar endorphin in her. The days of blaming the blast-beat of her heart when she was around him on the ten cups of coffee she may have had with breakfast, or the multiple bags of slithering sour gummy worms from Honeydukes, were long gone by fifth year. At the time, she didn’t know what the best way to describe it was, other than that Adrian was her person, and likewise, she was his.
Turning to him for help during that fall of 2022, when everything seemed to be up in the air and not really making much sense, was the only reasonable thing that she felt she could do. Lily wasn’t necessarily scared by the death of the student, as terrible and sad as it was, but it definitely made things more difficult when it came to trying to process her own qualms about life. It all came back to the fact that she was worried about time running out. Her time as a Gryffindor, as a Quidditch player, and her time to freely hang out with Adrian whenever she pleased. Blaming her fears on the former two made more sense than outright stating that she was more devastated by the fact that eventually she and Adrian would have to grow up and leave school. That everything they did here would come to an end and it would never be experienced again. There was a finality to it all, similar to the poor first year that died on the train. Once it was gone, it was gone.
Her proposal to Adrian about having him turn her into a werewolf did not go over well. The fact that she had been brimming with confidence that he would simply say yes to her request was most likely what did her in. See, those years of questions about werewolves and how things worked had ended up functioning like a double-edged sword when it came to her being serious about it. Adrian assumed she was joking, like she had countless times before in their endless discussions of what-ifs and werewolves. It didn’t help that an awkward giggle and bubble of laughter escaped from her as she waved it off as just another one of her jokes. She hadn’t seen the look of relief cross his face as she did so. If she had, she probably wouldn’t have kept prodding him about it over the next few weeks.
Like the first time she had found out he was a werewolf, Lily timed the full moon for her real attack. Adrian was easier to bully, in the nicest way possible, when he was off from the incoming moon. She learned that years earlier. Then again, he was almost always easy to push around if she really wanted to get something out of him. There were often times where she wondered if he liked it, and then when she got too personal, the cries for help or for her to stop what she was doing would ring out. Most of Gryffindor had given up, knowing that they would be next on her list of tickle torture or pranks. A sick Adrian was weak and willing, exactly how she needed him for the next round of her onslaught.
It started in November, three months after her existential crisis had first blossomed into a ticking time bomb. The first day of the full moon cycle, where he was actively drinking the Wolfsbane potion, her question fell on deaf ears. He wasn’t technically sick from the side effects yet, but she figured if she caught him in a foul mood from having to drink the potion, she could get him to rally around her plan. The already irritated Adrian brushed her off and went on to class, Lily following in his wake as she started to devise her plan for the next day.
He had to have figured it out by the third or fourth day that she was being completely serious about the entire thing. Lily hadn’t gotten down on her hands and knees and prostrated to him, but she was getting close to it. The joking nature of the last few times she had asked had turned into a downright pitiful display of begging, even going as far as to offer doing all of his school work for him. On that particular refusal, she couldn’t exactly blame him because having her do all of his homework would be like giving up on school in general. Her grades by this point were far from being exceptional, or even worthy of continuing on to N.E.W.T. level classes. But that wasn’t the point of her request. She didn’t have much to offer outside of doing the ridiculous and unimaginable (in this case, Adrian’s work for him), and her desperation was rearing its ugly head already. In Adrian’s defense, she never once actually told him her reasoning for wanting to be a werewolf. Her pleas were jabs at what he vowed to not do to anyone. Once again, that was something she would understand much later, and with years of hindsight. To chip away at that core belief system he held regarding lycanthropy, and what it meant to turn another person, should have been an incredibly hard thing to do without a good reason.
Lily’s was that she wanted to be free. She wanted to turn the bad into a little better. To erase what people thought of werewolves. It was everything that she had spent years already doing when around Adrian, to help other students not be on edge around him or his siblings. Her thought process was that if she could escape the choking pressure of time and become a werewolf, then the same could happen with the others too. It wasn’t an incredibly complex reasoning, nor even a good one, but it made sense to her. She had the drive and knowhow, and trusted Adrian, should he accept, to turn her into a werewolf.
When the day of the November full moon arrived, she had done considerable damage to him. She backed off the last few days even, to give him room to breathe and think. He would later tell her that by doing so, which was incredibly out of character for her, he realized that she was being completely serious about it. By not being herself for just a few days, she sealed her greatest victory ever. In her opinion, of course. There would be a lot of debate later on, mostly from her parents and the school, about whether or not she was accountable for her own actions, though that ultimately came down to the strength and validity of the lie that she and Adrian would begin to weave over the next few months.
Of course, he didn’t tell her that he was in on the plan until Christmas Break. An entire month and another round of shameless begging repeated in December, though Lily figured by that point that all thoughts of becoming a werewolf needed to be dashed or else she would get too obsessed and hunt down someone else to do it to her. The possibility of threatening Adrian with that hadn’t even crossed her mind, only because she wanted it to be him. No one else could do it, not even one of his siblings, who would more than likely be beyond opposed to the mess that the two of them were about to get themselves into.
She had made plans with him to meet over break, after Christmas had passed, mostly to just escape the sometimes suffocating atmosphere of the Burrow. While Lily loved all of her family members, there was always a lot going on. And she knew that she could be as much of a handful as the rest of them combined if she really wanted to be. Plus the ability to run off to Diagon Alley during break was the sort of responsibility she wanted to be allowed going forward. The fact that her parents allowed it had sort of shocked her at first. She was the one that had constant letters sent home listing her antics and detentions and always found herself in varying degrees of trouble whilst at home. Yet they found it perfectly fine to let her run off to Diagon with a boy they didn’t know, who bore the name of a notorious criminal. There were a lot of things that she didn’t understand about her parents, and that whole series of events was one of them. Their line of thinking was probably that she couldn’t get into too much trouble in the shopping district without someone stopping her first, and if something truly horrible happened while she was there, Uncle George was only a stone’s throw away at the joke shop. Lily practically went into the trip expecting to bump into her uncle at various points throughout the day, and even decided that the best way to get him to leave her alone early on was to check in right away, and make sure he wasn’t too intent on keeping an eye on her. The shop was packed with students, all holding onto their Christmas money with a fervor to spend it on something silly, and Uncle George could barely get a word into her as she waved to him from the jam-packed entrance.
They met up outside the Leaky Cauldron, originally intending to get lunch there, but like her uncle’s shop, the tavern was packed full with families going to and from the entrance that led to the muggle side of London. Lily had no need to travel via that spot, mostly because she utilized floo powder these days, and she threw a small fit in the doorway when Adrian returned from the bar and explained that the pub was full up, and intended to be for a while. There were other places to eat in Diagon Alley, though they weren’t as aesthetically grungy as the Leaky Cauldron was, which is sort of what she liked about the place; dim lights and sticky, beer-stained tables that were marred by years of tankard slamming and spell residue. Despite being a fairly popular place as far as she could remember, there was still something about whispering in hushed voices at a back table that made her giddy. Then again, Lily’s version of whispering was more of a husky yell, so it was no wonder that there were always heads turning in her direction whenever she tried to have super-secret meetings in public places. One of her professors even remarked during her first year that they may eventually have to install a permanent silencing charm on her whenever she went out of the castle.
That was why the Leaky Cauldron would have been a good option today, since it was crammed full of bodies and the incomprehensible buzz of voices was leaking deep into Diagon Alley every time someone opened the entrance between the two locations. Lily’s voice would still be heard over all of the din, if given the chance, but Adrian was right in wanting to go somewhere more secluded so that they could at least get served, and dragged her to a smallish café that she had never been to before. It was situated in a back corner of the shopping district, near the edge of the then quiet Horizont Alley, and there was heated seating outside. She made sure to give Adrian a nudge in the ribs with her elbow for knowing of such a great spot, since they could do whatever they wanted while outside, and there were very few people to bother at the same time. His privacy in that regard was admirable, and the choice of this café over any of the other places throughout Diagon soon made sense to Lily.
First came the process of getting her to actually pick what she wanted to eat, always indecisive and asking about food that wasn’t on the menu. Adrian shooed her outside with their drinks and ended up ordering for her. He had learned well from her mid-dinner attempts at storming the Hogwarts kitchens and asking the house elves to prep exactly what she wanted for the night (or even sometimes how she wanted ice cream sundaes for the following morning’s breakfast). The silence outside the café was palpable, and while it was clear that they were still in Diagon Alley, the few people that were walking in this area either seemed to be lost or were simply checking out what was actually around the corner. Lily happily waved at everyone that turned the corner, some shocked that there was actually a person sitting right there, others completely ignoring her. Adrian even asked her if she knew the woman she was waving at as he came out with the food, and she shrugged off his question as the woman awkwardly returned the wave. None of that really mattered to her. It was all a game to her in the end, a means to pass the time while she waited for Adrian, and more importantly, her lunch.
She was barely into the third bite of her sandwich when she noticed that Adrian hadn’t even touched his yet. That wasn’t exactly uncommon around her – she was constantly being told by a disgusted Albus that she devoured food like it was her last meal, and it made her look boorish. That typically elicited a full-mouthed laugh, and a dribble of whatever she was eating falling from her mouth. Not everyone had to be proper and have the disposition of a stick in the mud. Being turned off by her eating was definitely a possibility, so Lily finished the bite she was on, and instead of immediately stuffing more of the sandwich to replace what she swallowed mid-chew, she placed the sandwich back on the plate.
As if her doing so with her sandwich activated something within Adrian, he began to speak, explaining that he had done a lot of thinking about her previous requests for him to turn her. It came out in a slow, carefully worded statement, every bit of it chosen to keep her mouth shut until he was finished talking. She ate it all up, being the quietest she had maybe ever been, aside from the noises coming from finishing her chewing. His expert timing had her brain going a million miles per second, and she wasn’t sure if what he was saying was in jest, or if he was actually being serious about it for once. Entertaining her folly was admittedly dangerous, Adrian said as much throughout his speech, and that there would have to be a lot of precautions taken in order to make sure he didn’t accidentally kill her in the process of trying to bite her. Supposedly her rally of questions the previous month had really made him think about what having her as a werewolf could accomplish in terms of lycanthropy on a grander level. Lily didn’t really care about that now as much as she had at the time, preferring to just receive what she was now calling the ‘freedom bite’ in her head.
The squeal of excitement that came out of her after he finally finished talking and took a chance to breathe in the weight of what he had told her would have drawn every head in the Leaky Cauldron, had he broke the news of his decision there. The emptiness of the street they were on was perfect for Lily as she jumped out of her chair and immediately ran to the other side and back, grabbing onto Adrian in a bear hug as she thanked him profusely. She had virtually given up, in the sense that she was going to give him a few months of reprieve before jumping right back into the grilling. Having known him for as long as she did, she knew that he would eventually give in, and it seemed to have worked a lot faster than she originally thought it would.
Of course, Adrian wanted to wait until the summer, that way her first few months of turning could be under close supervision and with the help of mediwizards if needed. She quickly denied that plan, and demanded that it happen as soon as possible. Lily would have assumed that the pale pallor that her friend’s face turned to when she asked to expedite things was due to the oncoming full moon, if it wasn’t two weeks away still. She knew that it was a lot to ask of him, especially with all of the problems that could happen once the night of arrived. But that was part of the excitement too, wasn’t it? There were so many uncertain things going on around them at school, throwing a planned life or death situation into the mix only seemed like the right thing to do. It solved a lot of the problems that she had been dealing with mentally, and Adrian would have more than just his siblings to rely on when the moon came calling every month. In actuality, Adrian was hoping that she would forget by the time summer rolled around. The spring term would bring end of year exams and O.W.L.s, and in his own forgetfulness, neither of which Lily really cared about. She was hell-bent on getting what she wanted, and he had finally offered up the option of following through with it.
The remainder of the day was spent at that little café, discussing what the plan would be going forward. The next full moon was on January 6th, which was just about two weeks away and after they would be returning to Hogwarts. Lily pressed for it to happen then, and despite Adrian’s squirming and reasonable uneasiness about doing it so soon, she felt that the sooner was absolutely better. Hogwarts was always engulfed in chaos the first week of term, with students shirking off classes so they could spend time with friends they hadn’t seen since before break, so it made sense to get it done then. She didn’t really add end of term exams into her end of the equation, though Adrian pointed out that January would provide her with the most recovery time before they happened, and then he proceeded to reiterate that the summer would still be better than during school. Her counter-argument to that was that she wouldn’t be able to sit through exams knowing what was coming after them, and that seemed to make sense to him. She could never go through a test without wiggling in her chair or humming to herself anyways, so it wasn’t like this would be that much worse if she had to wait. She simply didn’t want to push it off any longer.
With that, the plan was sort of set in stone. A date was determined, and it was going to happen in the Forbidden Forest. They had built a secret fort of sorts during their third year in there, improving on it every so often to the point that there were two separate rooms now. It was a pseudo-treehouse, and it would be perfect to have Adrian turn there instead of in the mandatory spot provided by the school. In his words, they didn’t really check up on the sleeping wolves because they knew they were all set and not harmful after taking the potion every day the week prior. At the time, there was only him and his half-sister, Jamie, being locked up, and he said that she followed the rules as much as possible, usually locking herself up a good amount of time before he ever got down to the dungeons. The idea was to have him take the potion as normal, so that he wouldn’t be as vicious and of a sound mind, and then to sneak out of the dungeons prior to the moon rising, where he would meet Lily in the forest at their secret base. From there, she would tie him up with a rope charm that she had been taught in third year but she had just mastered during the fall term, and keep him at arm’s length from herself. The bite would then happen, and she would book it back to the school and hospital wing before the side effects of the bite kicked in, whatever those would end up being. Adrian wasn’t exactly clear on what could happen, aside from that they wouldn’t know until the following month, and the books she had read never got into the finer details of what the bite was like. Apparently nobody had an interest in reading about werewolf bites, or she was in the wrong section of the school library for it. The professors would never let her pull something from the restricted section, because that would only spell disaster.
The last week of break was unbelievably difficult for Lily. She couldn’t sit still at all, even more so than normally, and her parents chalked it up to being worried about going back to classes. They had seen her grades from the fall term, and they were far from being exceptional. She sort of felt bad about that, having nixed most of her schoolwork near the end of term so that she could bug Adrian about the werewolf thing instead, but it was what it was. Poor grades weren’t anything new for her, and they would soon forget about it the second they found out that she was bit by a werewolf whilst at school. The story that she was planning on using was that she snuck out of the castle at night to explore the forest, where she would unfortunately run into a werewolf. By the time the school dealt with her injury, Adrian was supposed to be sneaking back into the dungeons in the morning, where he would lie about being the entire night. Asleep in his wolf form. He had brought up a good point that the school and the Ministry would probably come asking questions, for both of them and Jamie as well, but as long as she played it cool then it wouldn’t be much of an issue. Apparently there were tons of loose werewolves about, so thinking it was one of the ones at Hogwarts wouldn’t even cross their minds. Even if that wasn’t true, Lily didn’t care much. The worst they could do was expel her and Adrian for being idiots. Her parents would be disappointed, but they wouldn’t disown her for being bit by a werewolf. That would contradict everything they had taught her growing up.
The first week of the spring term wasn’t much better either. Being distracted was typical for Lily, but this was just more of what she had been experiencing at home. Her first class of the term, and she had warnings already about getting a detention. That sort of thing didn’t matter to her anymore. And what was another one or two onto the dozens that she had already received over the years? Like with her parents, the school would forget about her being in trouble and her grades the second she got nipped by the werewolf. It all made sense in her head. Adrian’s warnings of how they (meaning the school) would pay even more attention to her after the bite didn’t click in her head until much later, like most things did with her. Every day, she made sure to hound Adrian over the fact that he needed to be drinking the Wolfsbane, even going as far as to wait for him outside of the Hospital Wing during the last few days. She couldn’t tell if he was sickly like normal, or if that was due to the fact that he was about to go through with the dumbest plan in the world.
Her reassurance that everything would be fine continued throughout the week, and finally the fated day arrived. January 6th was a Friday, and she couldn’t have picked a better day to be bit. With the weekend following it, she would have a few days to get used to everything, whatever that meant, and it would give her time to deal with her parents. All she had to do was make sure they didn’t break past her fake story after it was all said and done. She managed to gobble down breakfast and lunch, but by the time dinner rolled around, she was starting to feel the jitters take over. The normal tingly sensation in her fingers, and the butterflies in her stomach that accompanied it, that she got from playing Quidditch were in full force, and Lily could barely keep herself from running straight out into the woods. Adrian was already out there supposedly, as according to him, he had planned ahead of time to draw attention away from the lock-up and Jamie. She hadn’t seen her friend almost all day, probably both knowing that if they did, one of them would try to back out last second. Technically there was still time to do that, and as long as she never walked into the forest, she would not become a werewolf tonight. But that wasn’t a very Lily thing to do either. Her months of worrying about running out of time had come to a head now, and she was finally staring at her escape. She trusted Adrian more than she trusted herself, and knew that he wouldn’t willingly go through with the plan if he thought something would go wrong with it.
With time before curfew started, Lily snuck out of the castle and stealthily made her way down to the forest, and along the path that they had made to their hideout. She had never been there during the night, so it was hard to find her way after getting far enough in. The artificial night created by the canopy overhead creeped her out. It made it difficult to tell if the sun had set yet, causing her walk to the base to come to a progressively slower crawl. There were reminders of her many what-if scenarios from years earlier, where she asked Adrian what it was like for a werewolf to run free, or what he knew of people being attacked by them. If he had somehow already turned and broken from his restraints that she had placed a day earlier, and if the potion hadn’t worked as it was supposed to, she would be in real trouble. She realized that she probably should have brought a broom with her, at least giving her the advantage in height and speed if things turned sour, but it was too late to go back and grab it now. Plus it would seem sort of suspicious to have a broom with her in the forest after dark. A good thought, maybe, but bad in theory.
Her stroll through the forest eventually led her to her destination, after what seemed like an hour or so. There Adrian stood, arms tied up and still in his human form, underneath the tree that housed their secret fort. She wanted to utter words of reassurance, but found herself at a loss, only because she didn’t know what to say in the moment. He was about to do the worst possible thing he could to her, and they were both willing to allow it to happen. Instead of sitting down and gabbing with him as they waited for the moon to start the change, Lily stood a reasonable distance away from him and stared in his direction.
Whatever it was that she expected the werewolf transformation to look like, this wasn’t it. The scream of agony that rippled out of Adrian turned into an in-human howl as every muscle in his body flexed and arched at the same time. Lily stood her ground, one hand over her mouth to hold back her shock, the other hand tightly gripping her wand. The crackling of the ropes against the tree trunk as the turning Adrian yanked on them caused splinters of wood to shoot everywhere. She backed up around the tree that she had been up against, and watched from around it as he went through the change, sometimes staring in awe, but most of the time in horror. The beast within him was more animalistic than anything he had described to her or what she had read about. The gangly limbs didn’t seem happy that they were restrained, and even in the werewolf’s currently passive state, it tugged at them and tried to remove them immediately upon completing the transition. If this was a werewolf that was dulled and held back by Wolfsbane, she realized she didn’t want to encounter one without it as a human.
That didn’t stop her from approaching Adrian though. Stepping around the tree she had squirreled away behind, her position was given away immediately as small conifer twigs snapped under her shoes. He definitely knew she was there before that, but hadn’t seemed interested in the slightest, the wolf being preoccupied by the ropes holding it back. The wolf’s head snapped onto her instantaneously, and the sudden awareness that it was looking at her caused her to step backwards and trip over her own feet. Even though Adrian’s wolf looked dog-like, it was far from the family dogs she had grown up with. Only the narrowing of its eyes as it tried to figure out what she was doing seemed familiar, sort of like what her dogs did when she got down on the ground and tried to wrestle with them. Hopefully that wasn’t going to be happening tonight, because she definitely wouldn’t be able to win.
Brushing her backside off as she got to her feet once more, Lily inched her way towards Adrian, whispering to him that it was just her, and that he had to remember the plan. She had no way of telling if he truly understood what was going on while in the werewolf form, but it eased her own worry over the whole situation. He said that the potion usually let him think for himself while turned, though most of that time was spent sleeping. The wolf didn’t look like it was tired to her, yet she still got closer to it.
Rolling the left sleeve of her jacket above her elbow, she took a deep breath and stuck her wand in between her teeth to keep herself from screaming out when he inevitably bit her. It was now or never, and she quickly pushed her arm in front of the werewolf’s mouth and closed her eyes. The huff of hot air from his nose had her gritting down harder onto the wand, just in time as the vice-like pain of his fangs pierced into her forearm. She had been bit by the family dogs before, but that had been during play. This was something completely different, and she could tell that the werewolf had zero intention of letting go unprompted. The bite brought a river of pain-filled tears down her face instantly, and Lily started to struggle as her small arm was being savagely chewed into by Adrian’s wolf. She tried prying at the jaw with her free hand, but she should have known that would be impossible. Even a hindered werewolf was stronger than a fifteen year old witch.
So she punched him in the eye as hard as she could. She was lucky that his arms were restrained, because she felt the heave of his strength pulling against them as he leaned into her when the fist made contact. The pain was indescribable, and not even the worst injury she had received playing Quidditch came close to it. The wolf refused to relinquish its hold on her arm, and she started to panic that it was either going to rip it off completely, or she was going to pass out right in front of it.
So she punched him again. And again. Each felt weaker than the last, and Lily felt herself starting to lose a grip on what was going on. She even pulled the wand from her mouth to plead with Adrian to let her go, but the wolf refused. In a moment of panic, she shoved the wand into his chest and cast a burst of red sparks at him. She heard the yelp before she realized that she was free. Her own whimpers as she dragged herself across the rough forest floor were drowned out by the werewolf’s howl as it became aggravated by her attack on it. She managed to get to her feet, wobbly at first, and turned her back to Adrian as she ran as fast as she could away from the hideout and towards the edge of the forest.
Her flight through the Forbidden Forest came in the form of faded moments of lucidity. Her brain buzzed with a mix of adrenaline fueled fear and the fact that she didn’t know if her arm even existed anymore. Looking at it as she ran, all she could see was a bloody mess. There were not often times where she wished she remembered how to cast healing charms, but this was one of them. The problem with that though, was that she didn’t know if the werewolf had broken free and was chasing her down. She could hear the howling as she stumbled through the brush, but turning around to check wasn’t an option at this point. Doing so only led to low-hanging tree branches to smacking her in the face, slowing down her escape. Aside from moments like that, the rest sort of blended together into a giant mess of tripping over roots and running blindly into hidden trees.
She woke up in the hospital wing an unknown amount of time later, and thus started her horrid drift between sleep and consciousness in the early hours of the following morning. It made her time running away feel more dream-like than reality, and all she knew was that the bed in the hospital wing was absolutely heavenly. That and whatever they had forced her to take for painkillers and charmed her wounds with. It beat the nightmares of a comically large werewolf bearing the head of Adrian chasing her through the trees, always catching her in the end and eating her whole.
By the time she actually woke up, it was in a panic. She knew she was safe where she was, those brief moments of awareness helping her out a bit, but it still shocked her that she had actually made it back to the castle in one piece. Her hand wandered over her bandaged up left arm, and she traced the outline of the gauze patch with her fingers. A crazed smile spread across her face as she stifled the laughter that wanted to come out of her dry throat. She had actually done it! Obviously there was no telling if it worked until a month from now, but the arm was bandaged up where she remembered being bitten by Adrian hours earlier. That much wasn’t a dream, at least.
It scared her how stupid it had been to attempt it, but she bore the mark of a werewolf bite. That meant she was as good as one now. The conflicting emotions had her wanting to jump out of the bed and immediately run off to tell Adrian. She was sure he was back to normal by now, assuming he wasn’t still tied up to the tree. The mere thought of him being stuck there until she went to his rescue made her laugh, and that caught the attention of the nurse, who immediately shushed her and came over with an unknown potion and a glass of water. Lily diligently drank the potion down, sticking her tongue out in disgust at the nurse, and then sipped gently on the water as the older woman left and headed towards the front of the hospital wing.
She didn’t think much of the fast paced footsteps approaching her bed as she happily sat in bed and drank her water, finally feeling like she could yell at the top of her lungs again if she so pleased. The first set of shoes that she could see belonged to James, the second by a much slower Albus. They both questioned her about what had happened, and she flubbed through her words because she hadn’t prepared to be bombarded by her family immediately upon waking up. This was the part she had admittedly spent more time planning for beforehand, and it already seemed like it was ready to fall apart if she even dared to attempt to lie to her brothers. James was clearly concerned, taking the seat next to the bed, and giving her a careful. Albus wasn’t as concerned, as per usual, and seemed to think that she was in the hospital wing so that she could avoid going to class. Trying to lift her left arm up to show him, and failing to do so, she wanted to argue with him about why she was actually there, but was cut off by another two sets of hurried steps across the marble floor.
Her mum and dad appeared around the curtain, looking about as concerned as James did. She gave them a big grin, and slid herself into a seated position as they individually asked her what had happened. From the sound of it, the school hadn’t actually clued them into it being a werewolf attack yet. That seemed very Professor Longbottom-like. If he owled her parents, they probably would have burned down the Forbidden Forest in an effort to take out the werewolf before they showed up at the hospital wing to check up on her. She hoped Adrian had made his escape back to the dungeons when morning came, because they definitely wouldn’t be letting her hang out with him in Diagon Alley anymore if they really knew.
And so her poor explanation about what ‘happened’ began: how she had been scouting out the woods for a secluded place for a friend, and that when she got lost as night fell, she ran smack into a werewolf that was prowling in the woods. She said it with as even as a voice as she could, starting out initially with a hint of excitement about her supposed assistance for her mystery friend. James seemed skeptical about her decision making process, but none of her family members pressured her about who the friend was or how she had managed to escape the werewolf and the woods with only a bite on her forearm. That was probably the most unbelievable part now that she thought about it, but this was also her they were dealing with. They were more worried about her injury and whether or not she was in pain at all. Albus immediately got James off her back by cracking a joke about being able to play with the dogs now, and how they needed to get her a giant bone. She wasn’t sure if her parents were fine with the relaxed conversation happening when this was a pretty serious ordeal, but they allowed it since she kept repeating that she felt fine.
She only stayed in the hospital wing for that day, the nurse deciding that she was fine to leave the next morning, as long as she was able to eat her breakfast. Lily felt ravenous, and gobbled down the beans and toast, and asked for thirds on the blood sausage that had been served that morning. The looks that her parents gave her that morning as she ate were certainly ones of concern, and they explained that they would help her going forward, should she end up turning the following month. They explained that the same problem had arisen with her Uncle Bill following the war, and how his cravings for raw meat and wolfish appearance made them think that he would turn as well. He managed to avoid it though, and she could tell that her mum and dad were already hoping she would be the same way. But there was only one way to tell, and by the time she had finished breakfast, hugged her parents, and skipped off to the Gryffindor common room, Lily was already looking forward to the next full moon.
Before that though, she had to find Adrian. He was nowhere to be seen in the common room, and after asking around, it seemed like nobody had seen him at all that morning. James wasn’t much help either, and kept a watchful eye on her as she wandered around the common room trying to figure out where her friend was. After a few hours of searching, and a meat-filled lunch, she happily bounced down onto the castle grounds and towards the forest. She almost expected a professor to descend onto her to keep her from going back towards the tree line, but no one showed up. It made the whole ordeal seem like they didn’t care, or at the very least, were being diligent about keeping what had happened a secret from the general populous. They were going to have a lot of difficulty now that her big mouth was potentially a werewolf. The news would pass around her family members incredibly fast, and she was sure that Albus would nonchalantly spill the new secret. She gave it until the end of the week before the entire school knew about her newfound shape-shifting ability. And if the school were none the wiser, they would probably assign Adrian and Jamie to help her in understanding what the change was like. She giggled to herself at the irony of that, and hoped that her new wolf-sister wouldn’t want to strangle her and Adrian the second she found out that he was the cause of it all.
Lily found him leaning up against a tree, his back to the castle, in a far removed corner of the grounds. Her ability to locate him felt almost second nature, and while she prided herself on her hide and seek skills, this felt like something else altogether. Like a new sense. A tingle that alerted her in the smallest part of her brain. She simply knew where he was the second she was in the same vicinity as him. It wasn’t via sight or smell though, the shivers it sent throughout her whole body made her just know that there was another werewolf nearby. If that and the hunger for meat wasn’t an indicator that the plan had worked, then she wasn’t sure what was.
She had no idea if he possessed the same unnatural ability to know she was there, but to make herself known, she ripped the bandage off of her arm and bundled it up, before launching it with a levitation charm in the direction of where he was. It bounced off the side of the tree, and he stood up and grabbed it, before throwing it back at her. She stuffed the gauze ball into her pocket and ran at him, holding out her arm so that he could see the mark left by his bite. To her, that was the sign of victory. Their unbelievably stupid plan had worked, at least to the extent that she was still alive, and that she had the potential to be a werewolf.
There was a lot that still had to happen, like how that first full moon would turn out for her, but she was glad that it seemed like Adrian hadn’t beaten himself over the last day about what had happened. She had so many questions about what was going through his head, if anything, during the transformation, and if he felt her punching at him before she cast the spell. There were more questions now that came to mind than she had prior to going through with it, and she was sure that the Ministry would soon come knocking to explain to her the transformation process and what she needed to do going forward. The Ministry could exercise whatever rules and laws they wanted over her, but that wasn’t going to prevent her from doing what she wanted to. None of that really mattered though, because she was more excited about the fact that she got to be a werewolf with her best friend. She had resolved herself long before that they wouldn’t get away with that. Restricting her freedom was completely out of the question.
Thankfully, Adrian had opened himself up to her crazy, dumb idea and was a trooper for it. She already felt her quandary of the prior term dissipating, her worries about running out of time for the things that she wanted to do dissolving. There were still problems out there that were unavoidable, and she knew that committing to her selfish act only solved her issues, but it gave her back the control that she felt was slowly slipping away over the last few months. While there were new rules and restrictions that she had to abide by, she felt that the decision to become a werewolf was solely hers, and hers alone. Even while she was laid up in the hospital wing for the entire previous day, she was already starting to mentally game plan all of the cools things she could do with Adrian now that they were tied by their little string of fate.
lily luna potter ● 10,016 ● lots of songs by lots of artists
MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0
