All Right, Evans?

Chapter 22: Bittersweet

January 30

There was an attack.

It was made to look like an accident; it was, after all, all in good fun, just another way to take out a few more Muggles "for the hell of it," as Mulciber said when the students at Hogwarts had received the news at breakfast the morning after. So many of them had subscribed to The Daily Prophet to keep up-to-date on their friends and family at home that the news traveled quickly, even by Hogwarts standards. It was all many of were talking about as they scanned the Prophet and muttered disparaging things under their breath.

Snape kept his eyes fixed on the Gryffindor table. He had a clear view of Lily's face as she looked over Alice Prewett's shoulder, sharp green eyes scanning the front page. After a second or two she had snatched the paper from Alice's hands and was tearing through it for the details (continued on page four). Snape didn't wonder why – the attack had occurred just outside her father's office in London. Ian Evans hadn't been involved; the attack piqued at seven P.M., two hours after Ian had left the building and gone home for the evening. He was safe and sound in his den when that car with a gas leak idled at a stoplight and someone dropped a match (the Muggle newspapers were quite wrong in their theory, as no simple accident could have elicited such destruction). Twelve people were dead, but none of them were Ian Evans.

Snape saw the relief wash over Lily's face as she determined that information for herself, but her hands still shook as she folded the Prophet and shoved it across the table away from her. Marlene McKinnon's back was facing the Slytherin table, but Snape saw her lean forward, presumably to talk to Lily, whose face was growing steadily pink as Marlene talked and Alice rubbed soothing circles over her back. Lily was nodding, her eyes closed; she said something – Snape couldn't tell what, exactly – and a small smile touched her lips, but still there was the unmistakable glisten of a few tears as they slid down her face.

Some birthday surprise, Snape noted privately; the fact that her father had been so close to death was a surefire way to thrust Lily into adulthood and if the tears were any indication, she wasn't handling it very well. Enter James Potter.

Of course. Snape's thoughts were derisive as he watched James straddle the seat on Lily's right. His hand was at the back of her neck, fingers kneading away the tension, as he whispered in her ear; Lily's smile widened and her body visibly relaxed under the influence of James's touch and words. Snape didn't think he'd ever get over the sheer shock and betrayal of it all; it simmered somewhere beneath the surface now, but it threatened to boil over every time he saw them together, every time she laughed at him or he placed a hand at the small of her back. Snape wouldn't even think of what he'd walked in on the train before the holidays; he blocked it out, shook it off every time it threatened to emerge.

"What are you scowling at?" Bellatrix's question jerked Snape out of his reverie. He swore at himself; Bellatrix was sitting almost directly across from him, of course she'd be eyeing his every move like a stinking, distrustful hawk.

"Nothing." Snape tore his eyes from the scene at the Gryffindor table; it had been making him rather ill, anyway.

"It's always nothing with you, isn't it?" Bellatrix observed. She had her chin propped up with the heel of one hand, the index finger of the other tracing the rim of her goblet. Her gaze was steady and unblinking on Snape's face, which was scowling again.

"Maybe it's just always something with you," he suggested harshly.

Bellatrix's mouth turned down in a pout. "Worried about your little Mudblood friend?" she guessed. "Don't know why that'd be, but you've always surprised me in the worst ways, Severus..."