Novel Full Chapter 318: The Christmas Gift, Lily’s Longing
Chapter 318: Chapter 318: The Christmas Gift, Lily’s Longing
A short cry escaped Lily, more breath than voice. "...My god."
Mr. Evans crouched too. He didn’t know the breed. They’d never kept a cat.
His knowledge of cats ran to the fat orange thing the corner bakery kept and the long-haired gray creature next door that dozed on the windowsill year round.
But this one, he could tell, was not a cat that turned up on a street corner.
He glanced into the basket. A card lay pressed into the corner of the velvet. He reached for it, but Lily’s hand was quicker and already had it out.
He said nothing and rose slowly.
He looked at the side of his daughter’s face, his younger girl crouched on the step, one hand clutching the card, the other already in the basket, a fingertip rubbing lightly at the kitten’s head.
The kitten didn’t shy off and didn’t lean in. It only turned its head a little to let her finger trail behind its ear.
The look on Lily’s face, he saw it. The gladness of a gift received, the settling of something coming to rest.
Same as last year.
Mr. Evans looked at his own empty fingers, then at the back of his daughter’s head.
The Hogwarts boy’s present had arrived.
He had a great deal he might have said, and not one word of it would come.
What his daughter brushed against now had passed clean out of the range he could understand. A boy who could send a thing like this, what sort of household did he come from?
All he knew was that the vague scraps in Lily’s talk, pieced together, made a family of wizards top to bottom, a world set who-knew-how-far from their own Evans family.
He said nothing, turned, and walked back inside.
Lily stayed crouched on the step, finger working back and forth behind the kitten’s ear, several passes.
It went along with it, no flinching, no sound, but it didn’t push into her palm either, holding to that distance that belongs to cats alone.
It struck her as funny. The attitude was too familiar.
She was about to lift it out when something tugged at her, and she raised her head to look down the street.
Spinner’s End ended in a gentle rise, and at the top of the slope stood a bare oak, its winter branches reaching out into the sky.
Beside the oak stood a figure.
Not far, forty or fifty meters, in a long black robe, the cloth swaying lightly in the morning wind, out of step with everything on this street.
Seeing her look up, the figure took off his hat.
A dark bowler, the kind British wizards wore to formal occasions. He drew it off slowly, as if slowing the motion on purpose so she’d see clearly.
Then he gave a slight nod.
Too far to make out his face, but she caught something else.
On the left breast of his robe sat a small crest.
At that distance she shouldn’t have been able to make it out, yet she did. The outline of the crest sharpened in her vision, every line as though traced over once with a heavier hand.
She’d seen the crest before, though not quite this one. The one on Regulus’s robe was finer, the embroidery more intricate, the colors different.
This man’s was simplified, only the core figure. A Black family retainer, perhaps? Some kind of agent?
Enough that she’d seen it.
He set the hat back on, pressed the brim down, turned and took two steps, his shape blurring behind the oak, and then he was gone.
Apparition. Silencio.
Lily watched the oak a moment, confirmed the man had gone, then drew her gaze back.
A Black family retainer sent to deliver something, delivered to the doorstep of a Muggle household.
Regulus’s arrangement.
The Blacks were pure-blood, generations of them keeping clear of Muggles, on the surface at least. But a retainer wasn’t a family member, and a retainer’s stance was his employer’s stance.
Whoever Regulus had picked to run this errand was no one of importance, but no one snatched at random either. Sharp, at the least.
A delivery completed in a Muggle district, the recipient confirmed to have seen it, the crest’s detail brought clear to her from a distance by magic, a single look to confirm it, and the whole thing done without a word spoken, without a wasted motion.
Thorough. The courtesies all in place.
Crouched on the step, Lily felt the corners of her mouth curve up, her eyes bright.
She scooped the kitten out of the basket and gathered it against her, and the sudden move left it briefly stunned.
Four paws kicked at the air twice, then went still, one front paw hooking over the collar of her jumper, the deep blue eyes looking up at her from below.
She bent and met its gaze, then laughed and turned to run inside.
"Mum! Mum, look!"
One slipper flew off as she ran into the sitting room. She didn’t stop for it, one bare foot on the carpet, and held the kitten up in front of Mrs. Evans.
The commotion startled her mother, who set down her knitting and took it for a look.
"What kind of cat is this?" Mrs. Evans turned it over to see its belly. The kitten objected, kicked a paw, but kept the claws in.
"I don’t know the breed either," Lily said, snatching it back and tucking it against her again, fingers rubbing gently at the scruff of its neck. "But it’s definitely not an ordinary cat."
She sat down with it in front of the fire, and under her fingers she could feel something, very faint, like touching a warm stone with something inside it pulsing slowly.
Magic. There was no mistaking the feel of it.
She made no fuss over it. It came from Regulus. It would be stranger if it weren’t unusual.
She scratched lightly under its chin, and the kitten narrowed its eyes, lifting its chin a fraction to show a small patch of paler fur beneath its throat.
The fur there was dark gray, glinting faintly blue in the firelight.
"You’re definitely no ordinary kitten," Lily said softly.
The kitten gave her a glance and shut its eyes again.
She set it down on the blanket and unfolded the card.
A sheet of parchment, no signature, a faint patterned watermark pressed into the corner, the same as the note last year.
She knew this parchment. Regulus often used it for writing, and the hand was the same.
This one’s easy to keep, friendly enough. Don’t overfeed it. Happy Christmas.
Lily read the line through once, then again.
She smiled, folded the parchment, and slipped it into her jumper pocket.
Then she lifted the kitten and ran a finger from the crown of its head all the way to the tip of its tail, the small tail thin and long, the end hooking once round her fingertip before letting go.
Petunia had seen the kitten.
The little black cat curled in Lily’s arms, lit by the fire, the silver at the tips of its fur flickering, the deep blue eyes half shut. Too lovely to look at.
She liked cats. Pretty little creatures, who didn’t?
But she didn’t want to go over, because every time she came near a thing like this it reminded her that it wasn’t her world, that it had nothing to do with her.
Petunia balled the sweet wrapper in her fist and clenched it in her palm, her eyes going dark.
Lily looked over then.
She’d been about to call Petunia to come see the kitten, her mouth half open, when something came to her.
The kitten. The parchment. That line of writing. Regulus.
And thinking of Regulus, the first image to rise was that abandoned classroom, the silver light, and the things he’d said.
The Patronus.
"Forward is longing, backward is memory."
"The thing you most want to protect isn’t necessarily your happiest moment. It’s the thing you least want to lose."
She stood by the fire, looking at Petunia.
Her sister sat at the table, the wrapper crushed in her hand, shoulders drawn in a little, not looking at her.
Lily had always known what was in Petunia’s heart.
From the day her Hogwarts letter came, Petunia had changed.
Before that they’d shared a bedroom, hiding under the covers at night telling ghost stories, going into town together on weekends for cheap hair clips.
Summers spent rolling on the back lawn, grass stains all over their clothes, their mother chasing them the length of the street, scolding.
Then Lily went to Hogwarts and Petunia went to the secondary school in Cokeworth.
One learned to make a leaf dance in her palm. The other learned how to pretend she didn’t care.
She knew Petunia had written to Dumbledore, begging him to take her into Hogwarts too.
She knew that after the refusal Petunia had cried a whole afternoon, shut in the bedroom and not coming out, tearing the reply into shreds and piecing it back together, piecing it back and tearing it apart again.
She knew that what filled Petunia’s dislike wasn’t hatred but the ache of wanting something she couldn’t have.
She wanted to mend it.
She’d thought before that there was no way. She couldn’t share magic with Petunia, couldn’t pretend she wasn’t a witch. The crack was there from birth, and no one could patch it.
But the things Regulus had said came back into her head.
He’d told her to go and find that longing, and she’d turned it over a long while without coming clear on it.
Now, watching Petunia sit there, watching the careful coldness her sister held on her face and the thing underneath it she couldn’t hide, it struck her that maybe some longings weren’t far-off things at all.
Petunia was her sister. She wanted Petunia to know that some things hadn’t changed, that even if Petunia never set foot in that magical world, she was still her sister.
She didn’t want to lose her.
She didn’t know if it counted as a longing, but she wanted to try.
Holding the kitten, Lily crossed to Petunia.
Petunia watched her come, the instinct to frown rising, and held it down.
Lily reached her and held the kitten out a little. "Tuney."
"Let’s give it a name," she said, smiling.
Petunia froze.
She looked at Lily’s face. Lily smiled at her, eyes curving, the very same as when they were small.
She looked at the kitten again.
It tilted its head, as if taking her measure.
Petunia’s gaze moved off the kitten to their parents across the room.
Her mother watched her, smiling. Her father watched her too, and gave a nod.
Petunia looked back at Lily.
Her lips moved, her expression swinging between stiff and soft, settling at last on a smile that didn’t sit quite naturally.
"You’ve always been terrible at names." Her voice came a little hoarse.
Lily’s smile widened, and she pressed the kitten straight into Petunia’s arms.
Petunia caught it in a fluster. It kicked once in her hands, then settled, a front paw hooking over her wrist, the tail brushing lightly across her forearm.
She bent her head over the cat and touched a finger to its back, then snatched it away as if she’d touched something scalding, then put it out again and stroked, gently.