Chapter 270: How Romantic, How Sad [bonus]

"But there’s nothing wrong with that," Regulus continued. "Many exceptional wizards summon their Patronus through memory. Their memories are powerful enough to sustain anything."

Lily’s green eyes blinked, and relief loosened something in her chest. She’d thought he was about to dismiss everything she’d practiced.

"But there’s another way."

Regulus looked at her. His grey eyes seemed deeper in the dim light.

"Not looking back at the past. Looking forward. Wanting what’s ahead."

Lily’s lips parted. Green eyes fixed on him.

Regulus slowed down. "Places you haven’t been. The person you haven’t become. Landscapes you haven’t seen. Let those things pull you forward."

"Memory faces backward," he said. "Desire faces forward."

Lily stood still, gaze resting on his face.

His voice came again, carrying a trace of amusement. "Which one do you want to try?"

Lily opened her mouth to answer, then realized she couldn’t. She didn’t know how.

Happy memories, she had plenty. The day her Hogwarts letter arrived. The first time she held a wand. That afternoon Slughorn praised her talent for potions.

She’d tried all of them. They worked. They produced silver light.

But desire?

What did she desire?

She wanted to be powerful, to learn more magic, to stand up to people who bullied others.

But did those count as desire? Or were they just... wanting things?

What was the difference between desire and wanting?

Her thoughts spun faster and tangled worse, a snarl of thread with no loose end to pull.

She thought about all the preparation she’d done. She hadn’t stopped at Professor McGonagall. She’d gone to the Library and dug through three books on the Patronus Charm. One was a Chapter from an advanced charms textbook, another a section in A Guide to Higher Defensive Magic, and a third covered the history and recorded cases of the Patronus.

She’d even tracked down a seventh-year, the only Gryffindor student who could produce a fully corporeal Patronus. A cat.

She’d asked her how she managed it. She said she thought of the happiest thing she could, focused until the feeling filled her completely, and spoke the incantation.

Lily asked what she thought about. She smiled and said it was a summer when she and her little sister chased fireflies in their garden.

Everyone said the same thing.

Happiness.

Nobody had ever mentioned desire. But Regulus had.

She believed him.

That didn’t need a reason. Or rather, there were too many reasons to bother counting. From second year to now, every word Regulus had spoken to her, every thing he’d taught her, every piece of advice he’d given, not once had he been wrong.

Regulus said there was another path. Then there was.

She couldn’t make sense of it, but that was fine. She could ask.

The person to ask was standing right in front of her.

Lily raised her head and looked at him. Her green eyes held a flicker of confusion, but far more trust.

"How do I find what I desire?" Her voice was serious. "The thing you’re talking about. The kind that pulls you forward."

Regulus looked at her and shook his head. "That’s something I can’t tell you."

Lily’s mouth pushed forward in a pout, her eyebrows scrunching together, half frustrated, half defiant. "I can’t figure it out on my own."

She’d drifted a little closer as she said it, her voice going softer, as if closing the distance might let the answer drift over from him.

Regulus smiled, the corner of his mouth curving wider than usual.

"That’s exactly right," he said. "If you could figure it out instantly, it wouldn’t be desire. It’d be a wish."

Lily glared at him, but deflated a second later, because he had a point.

His tone eased. "Summoning a Patronus is really a conversation with yourself."

He held her gaze. "Asking what you truly want. Nobody else can tell you that. It has to be something that grows from inside you."

Lily listened without a sound, her expression shifting from frustration to focus.

"It can’t be rushed," Regulus said. "Some people know what they desire early on. Others walk a long road before it becomes clear. But as long as you keep searching, it’ll surface."

Lily replayed those words in her head, then nodded, slow.

Then she tilted her head and asked a question he hadn’t expected. "Last time you said you were teaching me the Patronus because I’d need it later, not because of Dementors?"

"Not entirely."

"Then why?"

Regulus thought for a moment. "A Patronus is something real inside you, turned into magic."

"Learning this spell isn’t just learning a defensive charm. You have to look inward, find the things that are vague and hard to name, and give them a concrete shape."

He raised one finger and tapped his own chest. "That process itself makes your mind stronger. By the time you can summon a full Patronus, your sensitivity to magic, your ability to channel emotion, your understanding of yourself... all of it rises to another level."

He added, "When you get there, blocking Dementors is the most basic thing it can do. A Patronus is capable of far more than you’d think."

Lily didn’t fully grasp it, but she filed the words away. She’d digest them later.

She stood thinking for a while, then raised her wand.

Eyes closed. Breathing slowed.

The happy memories were still there, but she didn’t reach for them. She let them drift on their own, neither grasping nor pushing.

She searched for something else.

What it was, she didn’t know. But she searched.

"Expecto Patronum."

Silver light spilled from the tip, smaller than before, dimmer too. Roughly a third-setting Lumos.

Lily opened her eyes and looked at it. Her brow creased.

Beside her, Regulus swept his magical sense across it.

The light was weaker, the volume smaller. By appearances, it fell short of the previous attempt.

But what was inside had changed.

This silver glow was much smaller, yet the density of magic within it had climbed a fraction. The edges were slightly sharper, as if mist had begun to condense inward, slowly solidifying.

Subtle. Easy to miss if you weren’t looking. But Regulus saw it.

Lily lowered her wand. The silver glow dissolved. She stared at the tip for two seconds, and her expression crumbled.

"Why does it feel worse than before?" she muttered, her voice caught between disappointment and stubbornness. "At least it was bright last time. This one barely glowed."

Regulus looked at that expression and felt his mouth twitch upward. "Funny. Looked brighter to me."

Lily didn’t lift her head. A flat "hmph" escaped through her nose, muffled.

She knew he was comforting her. Or maybe he wasn’t. He talked like that, and she could never tell whether he was serious or stringing her along.

But every time she thought he was stringing her along, he turned out to be right.

Lily sighed, raised her head, and wore the look of someone who’d given up fighting. "Fine. It was brighter."

Same tone as every other time she’d lost an argument with him. Glare first, huff second, concede last.

What else could she do?

Regulus laughed aloud.

The tips of Lily’s ears went pink. She turned away, pretending to look out the window.

Nothing out there. Just dark.

Regulus glanced at the standing rack by the windowsill. The two scarves still hung side by side, one dark grey, one Gryffindor crimson and gold.

"That’s enough for tonight," he said. "Go back and think it over. No rush. Take your time."

Lily turned around and gave a small sound of acknowledgment.

She walked to the rack to retrieve her scarf, wound it twice around her neck, then eyed the dark grey one beside it.

She reached out and touched it. "So when’s next time?"

Regulus’s voice came from behind her. "We’ll figure it out."

Lily’s mouth twisted to the side.

She crossed to the door and pulled it open. The hinges groaned once.

She spun around, waved at him with a big sweep of her arm and an equally big smile. "I’m off then, Professor Regulus."

Regulus raised a hand and gave it a lazy shake. "Off you go, Student Lily."

The door shut. Footsteps echoed down the corridor, growing fainter, then gone.

Regulus stood in the middle of the classroom, watching the closed door, and was quiet for a while.

He was thinking.

In the fate that was supposed to be, Lily Evans’s Patronus was a doe.

A female deer. Gentle, watchful, maternal.

And James Potter’s Patronus was a stag.

Stag and doe. A matched pair. Destined.

How romantic.

Their soul projections had been paired for them before they’d even chosen. Even the Patronus said it: you two belong together.

Regulus’s mouth pulled to one side. However romantic that was, it was equally sad.

Lily’s Patronus had been defined by a relationship.

A witch’s deepest projection of her soul, something that should have been hers alone, reduced to someone else’s counterpart.

A doe. A female deer. The stag’s mate.

There was no Lily Evans in that.

What existed was Potter’s wife. Harry Potter’s mother. The light Snape could never reach.

But Lily herself?

Her talent? Her temper? Her green eyes and red hair? The serious way she turned pages by the Library window? The courage that sent her charging forward when someone was being bullied?

In the fate that was supposed to be, all of it exited the stage.

Her entire life was spent responding to other people.

Responding to Snape’s obsession. Responding to James’s pursuit. Responding to Voldemort’s hunt.

Alive, she was Snape’s Mudblood friend, James’s Gryffindor flower, Harry’s mother.

Dead, it got worse. She became the ghost Snape mourned for twenty years without stopping. An old photograph. A reflection in the Mirror of Erised. A footnote in someone else’s story.

She never had a story of her own.

The Lily he knew was a third-year. Thirteen years old.

She glared at him when he half-assed an answer. She lit up in secret when he praised her. She’d ambushed him mid-sentence during a duel. She’d gone to McGonagall on her own to ask about the Patronus.

This was a living person. A young witch with her own mind and her own temper.

Why should her soul be an accessory to a relationship that hadn’t even happened yet?

He was here now. These things should change.

But Regulus was also clear about what he wasn’t doing. He wasn’t turning Lily into a second version of himself.

He didn’t need her to think the way he thought, act the way he acted, see the world the way he saw it.

What he was doing was simple. Show her a bigger world. Give her enough strength and understanding. Then let her choose.

What she chose was her business.

Maybe she’d still marry James. Maybe her Patronus would still be a doe. Maybe fate’s momentum was stronger than he imagined.

But at the very least, it should be Lily’s own choice, made after she’d seen every road laid out before her. Not something decided for her.

See the world first. Then see yourself. Then choose.

That was what he could give her.

Regulus walked to the rack, took down his scarf, wound it around his neck, and pushed through the door.

Half the torches in the corridor had guttered out. The light was dimmer than when he’d arrived. He followed the passage toward the Slytherin common room, his footsteps echoing softly off the stone walls.

He wasn’t sure that even without tonight, Lily’s Patronus would still have been that doe.

Maybe it wouldn’t be. Not anymore.

Some things had already been changing. His arrival was the largest variable of all.

He and Lily were friends. A Pure-blood Slytherin heir and a Muggle-born Gryffindor witch, friends since last year. That fact alone was absurd enough.

Someone who was never supposed to be part of her life was standing in it.

This person taught her magic, shored up her foundations, had her practicing the Patronus, told her there was a path beyond memory.

These things would leave marks inside her, and those marks would send her down a different road.

Where she ended up, what she became along the way... that was Lily’s own affair.

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