The next day passed with a tension Elias couldn't quite name. School felt longer, louder, and more suffocating than usual. Severus sat beside him through arithmetic and history, scribbling distractedly in the margins of his book, clearly thinking of Lily and the river and the notebook of magical questions she carried everywhere now. Elias listened to the teachers drone, calculated sums in his head automatically, and said little. His mind was elsewhere.
Specifically, it was on Lily Evans and the way she had stood in the alley the night before—hands clasped, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with something like stubborn hope. He had replayed her words more times than he cared to admit.
One day something good will happen because of you, not despite you.
He didn't know what to do with that sentence. It tugged at him uncomfortably throughout the morning, like a loose thread he couldn't stop touching.
At lunch, Severus lowered his voice and leaned in conspiratorially.
"She'll be waiting by the bridge after school," he whispered. "She always does when she says she will."
Elias closed his book with a quiet snap. "I know."
Severus hesitated. "Are you… annoyed? That she keeps joining us?"
"No."
"Then why are you being so quiet today?"
Elias didn't answer for a moment. He had no vocabulary for explaining the knot of dread and something like anticipation wound together beneath his ribs. Finally he said, "I'm thinking."
Severus groaned. "You think too much."
"And you don't think enough," Elias replied automatically.
That earned him the first smile from Severus all morning.
When the final bell rang, the two brothers left the schoolyard without speaking. They both knew where they were going.
As they turned the last corner near the river path, they saw a familiar flash of copper-red hair. Lily stood on the bridge, balancing precariously on the bottom railing with her arms raised like wings. A thrill of panic, sharp and instinctive, shot through Elias before he suppressed it.
"Lily!" Severus shouted. "You'll fall!"
"I won't!" she called back, lifting her chin.
Her foot slipped.
Elias moved before he thought, darting forward with a speed he didn't know he had. His hand shot out, fingers closing around her arm just as her boot slid off the wet metal. Lily gasped—and then burst into breathless laughter.
"You have very fast reflexes," she said as he steadied her.
"You have terrible balance," Elias replied, more harshly than intended.
She grinned anyway. "Not my fault the railing is slippery."
Severus jogged up behind them, panting. "Lily, don't do that!"
"I wasn't going to fall." She said it as if it were obvious, despite clear evidence to the contrary. "And even if I did—Elias caught me."
Elias released her arm slowly. His heartbeat felt loud in his ears.
Lily adjusted her bag and hopped down onto the path. "Come on. I want to show you something."
They followed her through the narrow footpath along the river, past the half-sunken rowboat and the skeletal willow tree. Lily led them to a small clearing Elias had never bothered to explore before—an indentation in the land where tall grasses bent in the wind and a wide flat stone jutted up from the earth like a primitive table.
"This is my favorite place," she said, dropping her bag. "No one ever comes here. It feels like it belongs to us."
Severus sat immediately, eyes alight. "It's like a secret hideout."
"Exactly." Lily plopped down next to him, unrolling her notebook. "And today I have questions."
Elias felt a reluctant thread of amusement. "You always have questions."
"And you always answer them," she countered. "Which is why I keep asking."
She tapped her pencil against the page. "First: why do some people say wizards can do magic without wands? And is that true? Sev said accidental magic counts, but what about when you mean to do it?"
Severus opened his mouth to speak—but Lily looked directly at Elias.
He froze.
Severus noticed and frowned slightly, but Lily wasn't impatient. She just watched, waiting.
Elias glanced at the trees, at the river, at the muddy ground between them, trying to find a reason not to answer. But her expression was too open. Too trusting.
He exhaled.
"Some wizards," he began slowly, "can shape magic directly. Without a wand."
"How?" Lily asked softly.
"It depends on the wizard," Elias said. "Emotion. Will. Control. Some combine all three. Others… have instincts."
"Like you," Lily murmured.
Elias's fingers curled reflexively.
Severus leaned forward. "Mum said Elias did wandless magic before we could speak properly. She said he would make toys float when he got bored. And when I was sick once—do you remember?—he calmed me down just by being near."
Elias frowned. "That wasn't magic. That was comfort."
"It was magic and comfort," Severus argued. "Mum said babies don't control accidental magic on purpose. But you did. Somehow."
Elias didn't remember it.
But that didn't mean it wasn't true.
Lily scribbled quickly, eyes darting between the brothers. "Okay," she said, "but what about…"
She hesitated.
"What?" Elias asked.
She bit her lip. "Yesterday. When you told Mr. Pruitt to go inside. He looked… almost hypnotized."
Severus stiffened.
Elias felt his pulse spike. "I didn't do anything to him."
"But he listened," Lily insisted. "And he never listens to anyone."
Elias said nothing.
Lily closed her notebook gently. "Elias… I'm not stupid. I know you're different."
The words made him flinch.
Different was not a compliment in Spinner's End.
Different got children labeled.
Sent away.
Feared.
But Lily didn't look afraid. She looked… curious. Deeply, intensely curious.
"What exactly makes you different?" she whispered.
Severus swallowed, eyes flicking nervously between them.
Elias turned fully to Lily, the late afternoon light catching in her hair. Her eyes were steady, green and bright as polished stone. She didn't lean away. She didn't shrink under his gaze. She leaned in.
That was what frightened him.
"Some magic," he said carefully, "is older than wands. Older than spells. It comes from the mind instead of the hands."
Lily inhaled. "Mind magic."
Elias hesitated. "Yes."
"Is that what you have?" she asked.
He didn't answer, but she read the silence like a book.
Severus watched Elias's profile with something like awe and worry intertwined. "Mum says mind magic is rare," he said softly. "Most wizards don't have it. Some barely believe it exists."
"She told you that?" Lily asked, blinking.
"No," Elias said quietly. "She told him."
Severus nodded. "She's scared of it. Scared of what people would say if they knew."
Lily looked at Elias again. Really looked. "Is that why you keep things hidden?"
"Yes," Elias said.
And then, because something in her expression demanded truth, he added:
"And because I don't want to hurt anyone by accident."
Lily's face softened. "You wouldn't."
"You don't know that."
"I do," she said, with absolute conviction.
Elias froze.
No one had ever spoken to him like that—certain, calm, unshaken. Most people either feared him or ignored him. Lily Evans did neither.
Severus broke the silence with a nervous laugh. "Lily believes in everything," he teased, nudging her shoulder.
"I don't believe in everything," Lily said indignantly. "Just—well—some things I'm sure of."
"Like what?" Severus asked.
She pointed her pencil at Elias. "Like him."
Elias looked away sharply.
Severus's eyebrows rose in surprise.
Lily rummaged in her bag and pulled out a small tin box. "Here," she said, offering it to the boys. "Biscuits."
Severus's face lit up. Elias stared at the tin as though it might bite him.
Lily held it out more insistently. "Take one. Both of you."
Elias accepted a biscuit, holding it carefully between two fingers like it was something fragile. Severus was already chewing happily.
"Next question," Lily said. "What do you think Hogwarts will be like? Sev says the library is huge. Bigger than the school."
"It's true," Severus said eagerly. "I read that it has restricted sections. Books students aren't allowed to read unless they get permission."
"What kind of books?" Lily gasped.
"Dangerous ones," Severus whispered.
Lily's excitement was infectious. She leaned closer. "Dangerous how?"
Severus launched into a dramatic explanation of cursed books, self-updating tomes, and secrets hidden in magical ink. Lily listened like a child listening to a bedtime story.
Then she turned to Elias again.
"What about you?" she asked. "What do you think Hogwarts will be like?"
Elias watched the river churn, brown and relentless, just beyond the grass.
"A place where we won't be helpless," he said quietly. "A place where we can learn enough to protect ourselves."
Lily blinked at him. "That's… heavy."
"It's honest."
Severus nodded slowly. "I think he's right."
Lily looked between them, her expression softening. "Then I'll learn too. And I'll help. You'll see."
The promise was so pure Elias had to look away.
They stayed in the clearing until the sky dimmed to a soft violet. Lily packed up her notebook, Severus pocketed a few stones, and Elias made sure they were both steady on the steep embankment as they climbed back up.
When they reached the road separating Spinner's End from the Evans' modest home, Lily paused.
"Tomorrow?" she asked.
Severus nodded eagerly.
Elias found himself nodding too.
Lily smiled—once at Severus, once at Elias—and bounded up her walkway.
Her house glowed warm from within, a stark contrast against the dim, cracked windows of the Snape home across the road. Elias watched that warm light longer than he meant to.
Severus nudged him. "She likes you, you know."
Elias didn't respond.
"She really does," Severus insisted. "And you like her too."
"It doesn't matter," Elias murmured.
But the truth stirred inside him again, heavy as river stones:
It matters more than I want it to.