A foregone conclusion [revised edition]

"What exactly happened between you two?"

The second full moon had arrived, and I was wondering whether I should get my hands on all the ingredients for the Wolfsbane Potion first when Lily asked me that question.

"What?" I was completely caught off guard. "What happened between who?"

"You and Black." Lily pointed at Sirius, who was sitting diagonally across from us, practically at the ends of the earth. "You two haven't spoken in almost half a month."

I was just as baffled when she brought it up. At the Owlery, I had made Sirius furious with the false confession from the option, and afterward, the Mirror of Erised had left him looking like he'd seen a ghost. Counting carefully, it had been nearly half a month since that night, and Sirius and I really hadn't exchanged a single word.

He was avoiding me, and I hadn't paid him any attention. If Lily hadn't suddenly brought him up, I'd have almost forgotten he existed.

"Oh, has it really been almost half a month already?" I took a sip of juice. "Isn't that pretty good? At least we haven't fought again."

Perhaps because my relationship with Sirius had deteriorated so badly, both Sirius and James had been distracted. As a result, their worst conflict with Snape so far had still been on the first day of school. Since then, they'd mostly traded the same old trash talk, rarely even coming to blows, let alone using jinxes.

That had also eased Lily and James's relationship considerably. At least now, when James greeted Lily in the morning, she would nod instead of ignoring him.

At this rate, I thought they might start dating a few years early. Lily had also been looking worried lately, as though she wanted to say something but couldn't, so I guessed she probably had complicated feelings about James and decided to take the initiative.

"More importantly, you've looked like something's been on your mind lately." As I spoke, I noticed James leaning closer and closer, practically pricking up his ears to listen to our conversation, so I pushed his head away, drawing a disgruntled protest from him.

"Is it about James? Don't worry, Lily, I won't object to you and him..."

Before I could finish, Lily's hand froze. Then she started coughing violently, giving me a fright, and I hurriedly found her cup and handed it to her.

"Don't say anything that horrifying while I'm eating again." Lily coughed for quite a while before she stopped, which made James even more eager to look over, so I had no choice but to force his head away. Honestly, turning my head to talk to Lily while holding James's head back with my hand was really awkward, so I signaled for Lily to pause and turned his head back toward me.

"You can't lean over and listen to us talking like that, James. It'll only make Lily dislike you," I told him seriously. "You need to learn to respect people."

"What does this have to do with Lily?" He actually looked baffled. "I heard her mention Sirius..." He pointed at Sirius, who was sitting silently beside him. "He's been acting really strange lately. I want to know what happened between you two as well."

"If I knew, I would've gone and sorted it out already." Then I realized something was off. "Isn't he your best friend? Why don't you ask him?"

At that, an oddly out-of-place shyness appeared on James's face. He scratched his hair, and his voice dropped several degrees. "I'm worried he might have something on his mind he doesn't want to talk about..."

"Get lost!"

I kicked James aside before turning back to Lily, who had regained her composure by then and looked exasperated.

"It has nothing to do with James, Lin. I'm not interested in him." Lily patted me on the head. "It's about Severus."

I immediately lost interest. I'd heard about Snape's affairs far too many times. Lily told me about them every time, and I felt like I knew him better than his own mother did. Well, it seemed any random student knew him better than Snape's mother did.

"If you don't mind, I know a place hardly anyone goes." I stared at Snape across from me and stuffed a chicken leg into my mouth.

I took Lily up to the Astronomy Tower.

Gryffindor Tower was visible from here. There was no Astronomy class today, so it was quiet, and all we could feel was the wind blowing from every direction.

Lily didn't speak immediately after we got there. She leaned over the edge of the Astronomy Tower and buried her face in her arms, making her cheeks look all puffed up. I couldn't resist pinching them, and her worried expression cracked at once. She raised her head to look at me, a little amused, her green eyes sparkling brightly in the moonlight. I copied her, leaning over the edge and blinking at her.

"A frown like that doesn't belong on your face." I smiled at her. "You should be happier."

"I want to be." Lily sighed. "But Severus... I always thought I knew him well, but now it seems that was just wishful thinking on my part."

"Did something happen?" I looked puzzled. "He seemed pretty normal when we went to the library together recently, didn't he?"

"Have you talked about anything besides studying?" I had a feeling Lily wanted to roll her eyes at me. "I'm starting to think all you know about him is his name."

"It's not that bad," I said rather proudly. "I also know he gets excellent marks in Potions Class and has a terrible relationship with James."

Lily: "..."

I also know he's always loved you.

I silently added that in my head. But I had never said anything like that in front of Lily, not once.

"Severus wasn't popular in Slytherin at first. Those people were always making fun of his background and his family." Lily frowned as soon as she mentioned it. I knew all about that, having been in Slytherin several times; you could say I'd been there and taken part on several occasions. "He finally made some friends in Slytherin recently, and I was happy at first..."

"Until I found out they seemed to be studying Dark Magic."

I was genuinely startled. Not because they were studying Dark Magic, but because school had only started a little over a month ago. How had they managed to start studying it already?

"I've argued with him about it several times." She looked at me worriedly. "He said they were just curious and wanted to study it a little. Who could believe an excuse like that?"

"How far have they gotten?" I tried to find out where the plot stood.

"They should have only just started. He said they haven't even gotten hold of any books on the subject."

It seemed the timeline was still normal. Thinking that, I almost laughed. So what if it wasn't normal? I couldn't change anything.

Snape...

I'd tried many times to get Snape to give up Dark Magic or stay away from the Death Eaters, but unfortunately, every attempt had failed. I'd also tried to stop Lily from breaking with him, but that was even harder. Even when I prevented the incident in fifth year, it only delayed their falling-out by a few days. After all, the root of the problem remained unresolved: Snape and Lily's fundamental values were entirely different, and their conflict would erupt sooner or later.

After Lily died yet again, I found a distraught Snape and demanded to know why he had to join the Death Eaters, why he had to follow Voldemort. Did he long for great power that badly? Enough to give up everything for it? He stared at me with hollow eyes and never gave me an answer.

His feverish mind couldn't settle down until he'd paid the price. The only workable solution I could think of was to tell him about the future and the consequences in advance. I did try that, but he didn't believe me at all. After Lily died, he remembered what I had told him, suffered a mental breakdown, and immediately took his own life, making the ending fall apart even further.

Any change I made would only make the ending worse. All my efforts to make things better couldn't change the foregone conclusion, and my struggles seemed so ridiculous before a fate that had already been written.

"What should I do, Lin?" Lily asked me.

I don't know either, Lily.

I don't know either.

The pain I had suppressed seeped out from every part of my body like water. The intense, suffocating breakdown nearly set my ears ringing. I buried my head in my arms and breathed deeply as the system's warnings rang out in my mind again and again.

[Abnormal emotional fluctuations detected!]

[Suppressing emotions...]

[Rollback successful]

The emotions flashed through my mind like a fish, leaving only rings of ripples behind. Those intense feelings soon vanished without a trace.

"Lin?"

Lily instinctively reached out to me. "You don't look well. Did something happen?"

"I probably didn't put on enough clothes." I shook my head, badly wanting to tell Lily that there was really no need to worry so much about Snape. He wouldn't change; no matter what, he'd follow that path to the bitter end.

I had always believed that everyone's personality was connected to their past experiences. Take Snape: his parents were always arguing, sniping at each other with the cruelest words, so he had learned that same cruelty, as though he could never speak normally.

His mother, Eileen Prince, had once been an excellent witch. Later, she ran away from home and married an ordinary person. Now their feelings had faded, and they had become a resentful couple, yet all sorts of entanglements kept them from divorcing, and she could no longer return to the wizarding world. Parents tormenting each other were a kind of hell for a child, even without violence.

In a previous loop, Snape once told me after getting drunk that he didn't understand why Eileen wouldn't divorce-"They clearly don't love each other anymore." He dreamed of Eileen being a Prince, so he could be a Prince too, instead of a half-blood looked down on by Slytherin.

Even now, I still didn't understand why he absolutely had to join the Death Eaters. He always said Lily would like him if he did, yet he never made even a single change while she was alive.

After our conversation, I walked Lily to her dormitory door. When Mary saw me, she couldn't help teasing that I was "like Lily's partner, walking her back to her room every day." I was baffled. My dormitory was the last one, so I had to pass everyone else's. Surely that didn't mean I was walking everyone back to their rooms?

After Lily and I wished each other good night, I wasn't sleepy at all, so I continued wandering outside. Come to think of it, breaking curfew had become as natural as breathing to me, so whenever I couldn't sleep, I'd wander around outside in the middle of the night.

The nights in mid-October had already grown a little chilly. The full moon hanging overhead gave off a cold light as I wandered aimlessly, and by the time I came to my senses, I had reached the Whomping Willow.

The night was quiet, without even a hint of wind. The Whomping Willow stood there peacefully, looking no different from the other plants around it.

I'd been thinking about a question ever since my conversation with Lily: when the ending was already set, was there any point in changing what happened along the way? For the people living in the story, it would definitely mean a great deal. Whatever the outcome, at least the journey would be much easier.

But for me, who kept starting over, it felt meaningless. After replaying a game with the same plot several times back-to-back, I'd already be too bored to watch the details and would only want to fast-forward. Stuck inside the story, I had to live through all twenty-four hours of every day and all 365 days of every year. At most, I could change my own surroundings to give my life a little variety.

I picked a spot on the grass and sat down facing the Whomping Willow.

Perhaps I should gather my energy and do something else.

The night grew darker. The faint chirping of insects sounded from time to time, and the branches of the trees' shadows curled in the darkness, as though they had fallen asleep.

I gazed at the moonlight in the sky for a long time, until I too fell asleep.

─────

[Aside]

★Tip★

When pursuing Lily, Snape is always a part of her route that can't be avoided. Be sure to handle the relationship between the two of them carefully.

★Side quest reminder★

*Congratulations on unlocking Lily's main romance quest-[Lily's worries]