His Masterpiece

Chapter 3

Petunia was the one who showed her how to put on lipstick.

She traced Lily's lips with a tube of bright red paint and placed a tissue between her lips. When she pulled it back, there was a kiss pressed into it, her cupid's bow outlined in scarlet. "There," Petunia said. "Bet you magic couldn't have done a better job than that." Lily had grinned, she had been so happy.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub and watched as Petunia leaned forward to get a better look at herself in the mirror. She darkened her blonde eyelashes with mascara, blinked, cursed, and rubbed at the black smudge that had appeared on her eyelid. Petunia had a date, and Lily was feeling shy. She wanted to talk to Petunia like she used to. Wanted to tell her that she had gotten her period last year at school, in the library of all places, while studying with Sev. And he had been the first one to notice it. Lily had cried, and Sev, bless him, had quietly spelled her skirt clean.

Lily had so many questions, questions that she was sure Petunia would know the answers to. But they didn't talk anymore. Petunia hated her. And then Petunia looked down at her, took her chin with one hand, the tube of lipstick clutched in the other, and said, "Pucker up." Lily had felt transformed, as if she had just undergone an ancient initiation rite, the kind she had read about in her History of Magic class.

Lily stood in front of her mirror and applied the lipstick to her lips. It's stupid. She was being stupid. She had Potions first thing this morning and there was a good chance it would smudge between the fumes and the heat, and then Sev would definitely laugh at her. She put on the finishing touches and blotted away the excess with a tissue. "Go get him," her reflection cheered, and Lily smiled.

She hurried through breakfast, occasionally stealing glances at the Slytherin table, but Sev was nowhere to be seen. Potter was missing from the Great Hall too. If he's bullying Sev again... She frowned, shoveled down the rest of her food, and said goodbye to her friends. "Where are you running off to so early?" Marlene cried out.

"I have revisions to do. I'll see you at Potions!"

She hurried down into the dungeons, taking the steps two at a time and nearly ran right into Mulciber. "Watch it, mudblood."

Lily drew up short. She could feel her face grow hot. "Watch yourself," she snapped. "I'm a prefect."

Mulciber shrugged and shouldered past her. "Still a mudblood though."

"Five points from Slytherin!"

Mulciber lifted his fingers in a rude gesture and trudged up the stairs. Lily continued on, a little slower, her feet heavier. She kept replaying what had just happened in her head, wishing she could come up with some devastating insult that would have cut Mulciber to the quick, but her mind came up blank. She's not Sev. She wished she was at times.

She spotted Sev already sitting at their desk inside the Potions classroom. He was hunched over, his hair hiding his face, and bracing his elbows against the table with his hands cupping the back of his neck. Lily breathed a sigh relief at finding him alone.

She fished out a mirror, checked her makeup, and walked in, dropping in the seat beside him. "You'll get a hump if you keep sitting like that," Lily said, parroting her mother, as she flashed him a smile. She waited to see what he would say about her new look.

Sev jumped in his seat and turned to look at her with wide, terrified eyes.

"Are... are you okay?" She asked, the smile slipping from her face.

"Fine. I'm fine. How long have you been sitting there?"

Lily arched her brow. "Uh, I just now sat down. Did you fall asleep waiting here or something?"