a/n: long, very juicy chapter ahead!

"What on earth are you crying for?"

"Sorry to be snappy, Professor, but I just watched my mother's casket be lowered into the ground for the third time tonight," I rubbed the wetness from my cheeks furiously. "Reasonably, I think it's safe to assume I have some guilt about that."

"Think about how easily a Dementor could incapacitate you, then," Professor Snape frowned. "This isn't meant to be a punishment. You must clear your mind and your emotions!"

"You make it sound so easy," I huffed, cold anger starting to take over. "Have you ever felt responsible for somebody's death, Professor?"

I wasn't sure exactly what happened then — there was a sharp pang in my head and my chest, and then suddenly I wasn't there anymore. It was nighttime — I was in the Astronomy tower.

A younger, much more gangly looking Snape was there. And so was my mother — now a teenager (maybe sixteen?). She wore her hair in two braids plaited over her shoulder, but she was dressed in pajamas like she'd just gotten out of bed. She looked livid. Snape looked afraid, but like he was ready to strike.

"I'm not sure why you brought me here. It's Potter you should be talking to."

"Oh, I've had my word with James." Emilie said coolly. "You're pathetic, the both of you. He's a conceited asshole, and you're not that much different. If you really loved her, you'd come out from behind your classist arse and act like it."

This nearly made me stagger backward. If you really loved her. What exactly had I walked into?!

Snape set his jaw. "That's just how things are."

"Only cowards are content to leave things the way they are!" Emilie snapped, and I realized distantly that I'd said the same thing to Malfoy. "I disliked you from the start, you know. But I listened to Lily, because between the both of us she's always had the better judgement." She frowned. "This time, I should have listened to Sirius about you."

Sirius? Like Sirius Black? It must have been — how many other wizards are named Sirius?

This seemed to infuriate Snape more than anything she'd said before. "You might wear those colors, but neither of you are any better than the rest of us."

My stomach twisted — he knew. Emilie reached for her wand, and Snape did the same.

"I should obliviate you now." She threatened, eyes hot and cold at once. "Was that your plan this whole time? Pretend to help so you could delve into my mind and unveil my secrets to your little friends? Or Voldemort himself? You slimy bastard!"

"You didn't have another choice! You were suffering more and more every day, you couldn't even come to class. Lily was so worried about you." Snape threw his hands up in exasperation. "True, I only helped you because I love her, but don't think I haven't made sacrifices either."

"You're one to grovel about sacrifices." Emilie said harshly. "You and James fight over her like she's property, like she's something to be owned. Neither of you even know her." She glared, cold and hard. "Neither of you have any idea what it's like, to love someone that much."

The scene switched. I was in a familiar house, and thunder boomed outside. I heard a baby crying, then a man sobbing, and nothing else. It was all so still.

Then, from the door:

"Severus?"

My mother was there again, now the closest to the pictures of her in my house that I'd seen. She looked tired, and the sight before her had taken the light out of her eyes.

Lily was dead, and a now-adult Snape was sobbing over her lifeless corpse. Baby Harry sat in the crib, wailing loudly. Now that I had spent more time in this moment, I could see that the roof had been blasted off — rain was streaming in freely.

"Oh, Merlin," Emilie breathed, gripping the wall for support. She took several shaky steps forward, eyes wide in horror and breaths coming in shallow gasps. "How did they— she can't—"

Tears began to pool in her eyes along with the rain now soaking her face. She sat silently beside Snape and together, the both of them shook with tears.

"Holmes?"

I stumbled backward back into the present. I then, quite gracelessly, threw up in a nearby cauldron. Professor Snape moved quickly behind his desk to fetch a pink bubbling potion. He brought it to me when I finished retching enough to sit up. I drank.

"Holmes." He repeated. "What did you see?"

"I—" I didn't even know where to start. "You and my mother, at first. She wasn't happy with you."

"She had good reason." Professor Snape twisted the cork back into the vial.  "I've— well, I've made mistakes."

Among the chaos, something struck me again.

"She mentioned Sirius Black. Were they—"

"Oh, they all were." Professor Snape scowled nastily. "Sirius Black, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Lupin." He laughed humorlessly. "A surprise to everyone but me, apparently, when Black turned out exactly the way we all expected him to be."

You might wear those colors, but neither of you are any better than the rest of us.

"I helped your mother with her visions as well." He said with a resigned breath. "Some days she was in so much pain she couldn't get out of bed. She hardly passed her fourth year. I'd been starting to dabble into Legilimency at that time, so I offered to help."

He grimaced. "That's why I've been so insistent on your progress. I don't want you to suffer the way she did. It's — well, the least I could do for her."

Insistent wasn't the word I'd have used, but I didn't remark on it. My mind was now distracted with the intertwined pasts of my mother and Snape and Harry's parents — not to mention Sirius Black.

"Perhaps we should leave it here for today," Professor Snape cleared the cauldron with a flick of his wand. "I'd rather not have to Scourgify any more of my supplies."

Once I returned, I knocked on the door to the boys dormitories after seeing Harry wasn't in the common room with the others. Ron answered the door in his pajamas.

"Lila," he greeted me, though he could tell something was off right away. "What's wrong?"

"I need to talk to Harry. And you, of course, but that's it. I don't want to burden Hermione with any of this right now — she's busy enough as it is."

I found myself at the foot of Harry's bed a few minutes later, drawing my legs to my chest. I recounted my vision as much as I could without giving too much away, also finally telling them the truth about where I went on Wednesday nights.

"What?" Harry's eyes went wide as dinner plates when I told him about my mum and his. "They knew each other?"

"Everyone did," I said. "Your mother and mine were best friends, apparently. But they were also friends with Sirius Black." I took out the picture Professor Dumbledore had given me and showed it to them. "Apparently he and my mum were close. He was close friends with your dad too, and Professor Lupin." I pointed them out on the picture. I couldn't believe I'd missed Black's striking face before — he was easily recognizable compared to the pictures of him after escaping Azkaban, even if he looked significantly more skeletal. "And some other guy. Peter Pettigrew, or something."

"Never heard of him," Ron said, squinting at the picture. Scabbers squeaked from inside his cage, starting to run around. Ron rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about him. He's been like this ever since Hermione got that cat — sends him into a tizzy every five minutes."

But Harry wasn't listening. He studied the picture closely, a strange expression on his face. I could only imagine we were experiencing similar thoughts. I hadn't told them about Snape's feelings for Lily, nor about the vision I'd had of them when she died. Even that was too painful for me to recount, and I didn't want Harry to have to deal with it either.

"Why'd he be out to kill me then, if he was best friends with my dad?" He asked. Biting my cheek, I told them what Snape had said.

"He might have started working for Voldemort afterward," I added. "He came from a long line of pure-blood supremacists."

I recalled Lupin's memory of James and Black meeting for the first time. They hadn't liked each other then, but eventually—

"Why don't you talk about your mum?" Ron asked me. The question caught me off guard. "That's why you didn't tell us where you went on Wednesdays, right?"

I bit my lip, feeling both of their eyes on me. Even Scabbers seemed to have stilled to listen.

"There's a lot about her that I'm just not ready to share yet," I said finally. "But I thought Harry should know about his dad and Black. It didn't feel right holding that from you."

"I'm really glad you told me, thank you," Harry eventually handed the photo back to me, and I shoved it in my pocket. "I'm tired of people keeping secrets from me. It's like they think I'm delicate, or something."

When I went to sleep that night, I thought I'd woken up the next morning in the courtyard. Everything felt too vivid and real. I realized I was having a flashback.

"Good to see you out of bed." I whipped around. The guy who spoke seemed to be looking right through me, so I turned to follow his gaze. It was my mother, younger than she was in Snape's memory.

"Thanks, Sirius. Migraine's going away, I think. Lily's been helping. Severus too."

That's when I realized who she was talking to. He looked almost just like he had in the picture I'd shown Ron and Harry earlier, but younger. She was wearing a Prefect badge — perhaps they were in their fifth year.

Black made a face at this news. "I'd love to know what that slimy git is up to. I don't trust him — you know that."

"Lily does," Emilie said insistently. "And he really has helped a lot. I've been out of bed more this month than I'd been all summer."

"Oh, so I suppose that's why my letters went unanswered?" Black's grin became something more teasing, flirtatious even, but Emilie rolled her eyes.

"I read them," she stated. "Gave me something to laugh at while my head felt like it was being nailed to the mattress."

Black's suaveness dropped instantly, humbled, but he still seemed amused. "So I'll take it as a no on the moonlit escapades to Hogsmeade?"

"I hate to break it to you Sirius, but you're really not my type," Emilie giggled.

He squawked, so dramatic it might have made me laugh if I didn't know who he was. "What about me isn't your type?"

Emilie smirked as she examined her nails. "Well for starters, I didn't think I was your type to begin with."

"What?"

"You know what I mean." She elbowed him playfully. "It takes one to know one, Sirius."

"Now what do you—"

"Emilie!"

The voice made both their heads turn in a snap.

"Lily!" Emilie stood immediately, face breaking into a broad grin. The two girls moved toward each other like magnets. Something finally clicked in my head. "Where are you coming from?"

Black and I had the same reaction, though he couldn't see me. We both stood there with our jaws agape as we watched the two chat away like they hadn't seen each other in years.

It made so much sense now, seeing how heated she'd been at Snape for whatever he'd done. All her talk about love and sacrifices. The way she was looking at Lily now.

Does it run in the family? I thought distantly as I stood beside Sirius, watching the two of them converse — Emilie playing with the ends of Lily's hair, brushing her curtain bangs from her eyes. Lily looking at Emilie with flushed cheeks, green eyes sparkling.

"I told you that wouldn't go well."

I recognized Lupin instantly. Despite the scars across his face and the fact he looked like he hadn't slept in weeks, he was quite good looking in this time.

"Ah, my Moony," I watched as Black seemed to soften like ice cream in the heat. "I missed your snark. Always makes me feel better after a rejection."

"Is it odd that I can feel it whenever you're about to be a moron?" Lupin leveled him, but I watched the two of them start to inch closer together. "I felt it just now, as Lily and I were leaving the library. I used to think I was having a stroke, but I've concluded I'm too young, and it happens much too frequently—"

The more I watched them converse, the more I felt like I was intruding. Professor Lupin and Sirius Black? I could hardly comprehend it.

I didn't have time to, because the scene switched again and I was back in the Potter's soaking, battered house. My heart sunk immediately, though I found I was starting to get used to the emotional whiplash.

Where Snape's memory had cut off, there now was the sound of a motorbike outside, then a clamor of a crowd. Snape seemed to hear it, and a panic made him stiffen. He looked my mother directly in the eye.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"Severus?" She questioned, realizing what he was about to do. "Wait!"

But he disappeared, and right on time, because someone else came running up the stairs and through the door.

"James?" He cried. "Lily?"

This Sirius Black looked more like the one I'd seen in the papers. His hair was matted, clothes a mess. The unfamiliar part was the distress and fear in his eyes. They settled on Emilie, now standing by Harry's crib.

"Em," Black said, his voice so soft. He kept his eyes on her, seeming unable to look down. She walked unsteadily toward him, eventually collapsing into him in a desperate embrace, sobbing into his soaked shirt.

"You shouldn't be here." He told her.

"He's dead, isn't he?" Emilie replied emptily. "And you haven't spilled, have you?"

His hands seemed to tighten on the back of her shirt, his expression suddenly morphing into an angry scowl. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Emilie seemed to sense this. "Sirius? What's wrong?"

He never said, because Hagrid came through the door, holding James' body that had been lying elsewhere. He set it silently, defeatedly beside Lily's.

"I can' believe it," Hagrid too was in tears. "He can' have done it. They're not — this isn't right—"

A loud wail interrupted their collective grieving. Harry was shivering and wet in his crib, his new scar brilliantly red against his pale skin.

Slowly, Sirius moved over to him, picking up the infant and letting him rest on his shoulder.

"Oh, Harry," he said quietly. "Harry, I'm so sorry."

Emilie moved toward him, running her hands gently and soothingly over the soft wisps of Harry's hair. She'd never know that it would become the rowdy mess that James' had been.

"I don't meanta stop you, Sirius, but I havta take him," Hagrid said reluctantly. "Dumbledore's orders."

Black frowned at this. "Hagrid, I'm his godfather." He said firmly, though his voice was shaky. "Please! I'll raise him like my own! He— he is my own."

Hagrid wiped the tears from his face and held out his hands. "Really, Sirius, I haveta."

Lip wobbling, Black finally shook his head. "Alright, but let me hold him until we get outside."

But on the walk out, his expression hardened further and further. With one last longing look at Harry and a pat to his head, he gave him to Hagrid.

He suddenly turned and hugged Emilie, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"This might be the last time I see you," he said with a frightening level of calmness. "So please, take care of yourself. Your secret will always be safe with me. I've got a slimy, rat-faced traitor to track down."

Emilie's eyes widened. "Traitor? Sirius—"

But he broke away from her and nodded his goodbye, mounting his motorbike and taking off against the pouring rain.

Hagrid watched him go nervously. "He's not talking about Snape, is he?"

"He wouldn't have. Severus loved her like I did." Emilie looked back up at the house mournfully, then at the baby in Hagrid's arms. "I can take him, Hagrid. I'd do anything for Lily — anything to make up for only visiting her after she's — after—"

She broke into tears once more."I didn't even come to her wedding. It was such a small thing, all the safety measures in place, but I couldn't bring myself to. I — I loved her so much, Hagrid. So much."

Hagrid stepped in to hug her, letting her hold Harry for some time as the rain beat down on their shoulders, taking their tears with it down the storm drains and into the pavement.