Chapter Text
The door to the Hog’s Head Inn opened with a groan, letting in a spill of slushy snow and two laughing, red-cheeked teenagers. The handful of customers scattered around the barroom either regarded the cheerful newcomers with suspicion or pointedly ignored them. The old barman tried the latter tactic, at least until the boy staggered up to the bar.
“I need a bottle of elf-made wine—real bottom shelf stuff—Aberforth, and two glasses!” The young man shook black hair out of his eyes, flinging half-melted snow down the counter as he pulled a few coins out of a pocket.
“You’re already drunk, Black,” Aberforth grumbled, though he took the coins without hesitation.
Sirius Black grinned crookedly. “Of course I’m already drunk,” he said. “We’ve been down at the Three Broomsticks sharing a few bottles of Rosemerta’s lovely mulled mead. However, she can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to stocking really terrible wine, good old Aberforth.”
Lily Evans stayed a few paces back, taking in the rough wooden tables, the grimy windows, and the shifty-looking clientele with wide, uncertain eyes. Slush was dripping off the hem of her winter cloak and mixing with the dirt on the floor to create a puddle of mud around her feet.
From over at the counter, Sirius glanced over his shoulder and gave her an inebriated grin. “Grab us a table, will you, Lily?” He called out before returning to his negotiations with the barman.
Lily stepped out of her mud puddle and wandered across the room to a small table near a filthy bay window. She arranged her wet cloak to drape over the back of a chair before taking a seat. The world felt a bit steadier now that she was off her feet. Smiling to herself, Lily closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and enjoyed the sensation of the world rocking and spinning slowly around her.
The scrape of a chair brought her back as Sirius sat down across from her with a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and two dented pewter goblets. Lily frowned at the pair of goblets when Sirius set them on the table in front of her. She was certain there was a thin patina of oily grime covering them, but she didn’t want to touch one to confirm her fears. Instead, she turned her attention back across the table to Sirius, who was swearing as he wrestled with the corkscrew and the wine bottle.
The bottle was covered in a thick layer of dust. It left streaks of grey across Sirius’s robes as he shifted the bottle under one arm and yanked on the corkscrew. When the cork finally popped loose, he let out a whoop of triumph, causing a bit of wine to slosh out across his sleeve. It was amusing enough for Lily to forget her apprehension as she fell into a fit of giggles that ended in an undignified snort.
Sirius flashed her a crooked grin as he began to pour wine into both goblets. He filled them almost all the way to the top as he gave her a slurred lecture on elf-made wines. “Don’t take this bottle as—hic—an indicator of quality,” Sirius said, managing to sound like a pompous Pureblood even as he hiccupped halfway through his sentence. “The elf-made stuff is different from Muggle or wizard-made wines…a more complex palate...sometimes very bizarre…but it’s best for this ‘cause they ferment it in a way that leaves a lot of lees in the bottle—sur lie, as it’s called …”
He sloshed more wine across the table and Lily bit her lip to keep from giggling again. Her head felt light and full of bubbles, and it was incredibly entertaining when she moved it from side to side. She was drunk. She knew she was drunk because she’d been drunk once or twice before…just not this drunk.
She blamed Sirius for that. Sirius, and all the couples running around Hogsmeade cuddling and kissing and being all-around sickeningly romantic. They’d had to leave the Three Broomsticks because of all the stupid, sappy, sodding couples packing the place to the rafters and making it too warm. It was like she’d told Sirius halfway through her second cup of mulled mead: all the couples should be rounded up and forcibly shoved into Madam Puddifoot’s if they were going to be so…so public with their snogging and love and all that nonsense.
Yes, leaving the Three Broomsticks had everything to do with the crowds and romantic couples in general. It had nothing to do with Clarence St. Simon showing up there with Artemisia Weatherly giggling on his arm. It certainly had nothing at all to do with the way Clarence had unceremoniously dumped Lily right after they’d returned from Christmas break, or the rumor that he’d left her because his parents disapproved of him dating a Muggle-born. They’d only left because of the heat and the all-around insufferableness of other people enjoying the wretched holiday that was Valentine’s Day.
It wasn’t too hot or too crowded here in the Hogshead though. It was drafty and dirty and smelled like a barn, and Lily found it all rather thrilling. She never would have come in here on her own, or if she was sober, but Sirius’s enthusiasm and her own intoxicated curiosity had been enough to overrule her already half-drowned common sense.
“Hey, pay attention!” Sirius demanded petulantly. Apparently he’d continued to ramble about wine while Lily’s mind drifted and spun. “You’ve got to learn this stuff, Lily. You’re my last hope at having a friend I can enjoy good wine with. The other three are hopeless: James has the palate of a troll, half a glass of red makes Remus fall straight asleep, Peter’s actually allergic to wine, and not one of them can tell a Cabernet Sauvignon from a Cabernet Franc.”
“Neither can I,” Lily told him.
“Yes, but you’re smart. You can learn,” Sirius said earnestly. “Although not today, this stuff is going to taste like manticore piss.” With that lovely endorsement, he handed her one of the goblets and clinked it lightly against his own.
Lily wrinkled her nose but reminded herself they weren’t here for the taste, they weren’t even here to get drunk…well, drunker. They were here so Sirius could tell her fortune. Yet another thing Lily wouldn’t have entertained while sober. Divination had always seemed dodgy to begin with. Drunk divination seemed even dodgier, although much more fun.
“I have to drink the whole thing?” Lily asked, eying the very full goblet suspiciously. Sirius nodded.
“Leave about half a mouthful at the end. Swirl it three times clockwise then turn it over and let the last bit of wine run out—”
“Onto the table?” Lily interrupted, aghast. Sirius gestured to the barroom around them.
“Do you really think they care here?”
Lily touched the tabletop with a fingertip and found it already sticky with the remnants of long spilled drinks. She wrinkled her nose at it, but didn’t complain. Well, if a posh bastard like Sirius didn’t mind a little filth, then she wasn’t going to be the one to whinge about it.
“Ready then?” Sirius asked, his goblet hovering near his lips. It sounded like a challenge when he said it. Lily raised her own, nodded, and as one they tilted back and gulped.
Lily swallowed mostly out of surprise. This did not taste at all like the occasional small glass of wine her parents had allowed her to have at holiday dinners, or like the bottle that Mary had snuck into school back in September. The elf wine had an aggressively acidic bite with an aftertaste that reminded Lily of sand and salt with just a hint of seasickness lingering on the back of her tongue.
She emerged coughing and gagging. “Ugh! Why didn’t you warn me it was going to be all weird and magic and taste like a bad day at the Brighton Pier?” Lily sputtered.
“I did,” Sirius replied. It gave her some comfort to see his own face was contorted with disgust as well. “You weren’t listening. Did you finish?”
Lily shook her head and wrinkled her nose, but when Sirius raised his glass to drink again, she braced herself and drank deep again. It took another three swigs before Lily reached the bottom of the goblet, and by then her head was spinning even when she didn’t move it from side to side.
“Upside down…” Sirius slurred. “Turn it down…upside down—Oh! Don’t forget to swirl first though!” He demonstrated, counting out loud as he clumsily tilted his goblet in three uneven circles before upending it onto the table with more force than he’d probably intended. Lily mimicked his motions, though she knocked her goblet on its side before hastily turning it properly upside down.
A thin trickle of ruby liquid leaked out beneath one edge and ran across the table, small rivulets getting caught in the scratches and cracks of the wood. Someone, Lily noticed, had carved two sets of initials into the tabletop. “EK+BG” it read, surrounded by a shaky, lopsided heart. Lily rolled her eyes. She couldn’t escape romance even here it seemed.
“Ok, now turn it back over,” Sirius instructed. They both righted their empty goblets and Lily peered curiously into hers. There were small patches and trails of pinkish-purple silt stuck to the insides of the goblet’s bowl, the lees Sirius had been going on about, Lily presumed. He claimed he could read the future in their shape and placement. It was rubbish of course, in part because divination in general was rubbish, but mostly because if anyone could see the future it would not be Sirius Black. Still, Lily couldn’t quite squash her inebriated curiosity.
“Right, give it here,” Sirius said, beckoning for her glass. Lily passed it across the small table to him. Sirius squinted and tilted the goblet so the light from the stubby candle in the middle of the table could shine into the bowl.
“Well now, that’s interesting…” Sirius mused, bending even closer to examine something. Unable to help herself, Lily leaned in closer as well. “Veeerry interesting…”
“Sirius, I swear to Merlin, Morgana, all four Founders, and the Minister for Magic himself, that if you use this as an excuse to tell me I’m going to fall in love with James Potter I will hex your underpants five sizes too small,” Lily warned him.
Sirius gave a bark of laughter and winked at her. “Your first mistake is assuming I’m wearing pants at all, Lily darling. Secondly, I promise I won’t. Besides, he’s been good lately, you have to admit he has.”
Perhaps it was because she was drunk, but Lily had to admit he was right. Since coming back for their sixth year, Potter had slowly backed off his obnoxious campaign of flirtation. When she’d started dating someone else he’d stopped entirely and hadn’t even tried hexing Clarence while they were dating or after. It was almost suspiciously mature of him.
“That being said,” Sirius continued. “This bit right there does look an awful lot like James’s hair…”
He tilted the cup so Lily could see a spiky shaped patch of lees clinging to the inner wall of the goblet. Lily let out a startled burst of laughter. “Oh Merlin, it does!” She said. “That doesn’t mean anything though!” She added quickly, poking Sirius hard in the shoulder to emphasize her point.
“Nah, ’s probably a hedgehog anyway,” Sirius assured her. “I regularly confuse the back of James’s head with furry woodland creatures.”
Lily had to clap a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles threatening to tumble out of her. “What’s a hedgehog mean then?” She asked once she had herself under control again.
Sirius’s brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “They can be a sign of defensiveness or shyness about something, possibly over-sensitivity. Alternatively, it refers to losing your soul.”
“Losing my soul? What the fuck, Black?” Lily demanded. The absurdity and unexpectedly dark turn of that interpretation momentarily cutting through the haze of drunkenness to startle her.
“It’s probably not that one,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Let’s see what else you have in here besides a soul-stealing hedgehog…”
He ran a finger around the rim of the cup as he peered inside with an intensity Lily didn’t think was entirely alcohol-driven.
“You really believe this stuff, don’t you?” Lily asked. It was perplexing, because divination was pretty much rubbish, but also endearing.
Sirius looked up from the cup and shrugged, though the wistfully contemplative look on his face undermined the casual gesture.
“I like the idea behind it all,” he confessed. His words were slurred, but sincere. “That there’s something more, some sort of plan or rhythm…or whatever…to everything out there. I’m not a seer, I’m never going to speak prophesies or discover great truths…but sometimes I can see hints of it in the movements of the stars and planets or the dregs at the bottom of a cup of tea. It makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself and what I can see around me.”
“Wow,” Lily replied. “That was…deep…”
Sirius wrinkled his nose at her. “That was nothing, you should hear Peter when he’s stoned, bloody sage he is.”
Still, when he turned his attention back to her goblet, Lily paid a bit more attention to what he was doing.
“A cup, meaning celebration…these lines here symbolize change…you do have a heart in here, which means love, but I don’t think it’s for you…hmm…”
“Another lonely Valentine’s Day then,” Lily said with a sigh that was only half exaggerated. She would tear out her own tongue before admitting it, but Lily wouldn’t have been particularly opposed if Sirius had found a little romance for her in the cup, just so long as it wasn’t with Potter, or Clarence St. Simon.
Sirius studied the cup for another minute before sitting back and tilting it for Lily to see. “So, there’s going to be a change in your life, a celebration related to love, but it won’t be wholly welcome. You’re going to feel defensive about it, possibly even hurt by it—hence the hedgehog—but you also have a crooked sun here, so there will still be some happiness in the outcome, even if it isn’t for you directly.”
“Well, that’s not exactly heartening,” Lily said, taking her cup back from him. It wasn’t that she suddenly believed Sirius could really tell the future, but still, it would have been nice to hear something nice, like she was going to become head girl and ace all her N.E.W.T.s next year, or perhaps meet a devastatingly handsome and intelligent wizard from some Mediterranean country.
“I don’t make the fortunes, I just read them,” Sirius said with a shrug.
“Any ideas what it actually means then, Mr. Seer? Is Clarence going to ask that bint Artemisia to marry him or something?” She scoffed as she reached for the bottle of wine and poured herself another half glass, washing away all the symbols and signs.
“Because I wouldn’t feel defensive about that! I wish the two of them the best,” Lily continued, pausing to down a gulp of wine, grimacing at the aftertaste of low tide at the seashore. “They deserve each other.”
“So you’ve said,” Sirius replied. “Many times. Are you sure you don’t want me to jinx him? I learned this really good one that would literally make him talk out his arse.”
Lily broke down in giggles again at the mental image, but resolutely shook her head. “No! No retaliation. I’m the classy one in this breakup, not him.”
Sirius waved her objections away with a dismissive hand gesture. “Fine, enjoy the view from the high road.”
“I will, it’s quite nice, not that you’d know,” Lily replied, forcing herself to sip her wine primly without pulling a face. Sirius grinned and directed a very rude hand gesture in her direction.
“All right then, what’s your cup got to say about your future?” Lily said, trying to get their conversation away from her ex-boyfriend.
“Let’s see…” Sirius picked up his own goblet and stared into it. Lily watched as his brow wrinkled and his eyebrows drew together in a muddle of confusion and dismay.
“Well,” Lily pressed. The wine was beginning to hit her by now. Her face felt hot and the giddiness was returning stronger than before.
“I’m…not sure how to interpret this,” Sirius said uncertainly.
Her curiosity caught, Lily snatched the goblet from his hands and peered inside herself. She didn’t know the first thing about reading or interpreting what she might find within, yet even to her inexperienced eye Sirius’s lees seemed to have formed a very strange pattern…a very repetitive pattern.
“Sirius, why’s your cup so full of moons?” Lily asked, leaning so close her nose hit the rim of the goblet. The bowl was littered with crooked little crescents, almost exclusively, though there appeared to be a few other more blobbish shapes mixed among all the moons. “Oh look! You have a few hearts too—though that one looks like it might be broken. What does it mean?”
Before she could contemplate it any further, Sirius snatched the goblet back out of her hands and poured the last of the wine into it. “It means we need to keep drinking,” he said hastily.
If her head was on straight, Lily never would have let him get away with changing the subject like that. However, she was a long, long ways from sober, and so his suggestion seemed perfectly logical. She gulped down another mouthful, barely wincing at all this time. Across from her, Sirius guzzled his own wine like he wanted to swallow down the evidence of all those moons plastered to the sides of his goblet.