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Harry’s escorts leave him in a small clearing, a good ten-minute walk into the woods. Harry wraps his cloak around him to ward off the evening chill and tilts his head back to better feel the night breeze on his face. Around him the forest is oddly silent, seemingly holding its collective breath for the appearance of the beast Harry has been sent to meet.
“Creature?” Harry calls out. “I’m here, as our village promised. Are you nearby?”
Something - much larger than the fox or the badger Harry would normally expect to live in this type of woods - eases itself through the trees to Harry’s right. Harry turns to face it but does not try to run. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, and he’s no coward. He promised, and he’ll see this through to the end.
“Interesting,” the creature murmurs in a low, scratchy voice. “I did not think they would go through with it. And yet they have decided to send me this young man as tribute. What do they think I would do with him, I wonder?”
Harry rather suspects it’s talking to itself instead of him, but he replies anyway. “I was under the impression you had requested me,” he says politely. “Or, well, I was told you would probably prefer a red-headed young woman, but the only girl in the village with red hair is Ginny and she and Dean ran off together last night instead. Dean told everyone they were bastards for expecting her to kill herself for the greater good, and then they left without telling anyone where they were going. I don’t know what you want with me, but I’m here willingly.”
The creature freezes. “You understand me?” it asks.
“I… yes?”
“Fascinating.” It glides closer, and Harry realizes it’s more tail than legs. Possibly has no legs at all, from the sound of it over the sparse grass. It pauses in front of Harry, and Harry can tell it’s sizing him up. “You are blind,” it announces.
“Err, since I was very small, yes. Is that a problem?”
The creatures laughs, and Harry is startled to realize that the sound is both laughter and a hiss. “It is the very opposite of a problem,” the creature declares. “Tell me - do you know what I am?”
Harry takes a moment to answer. He’d hate to offend this creature now, when it seems more interested in talking than in eating him. “I only know the stories,” he admits slowly. “That you are very old, and have lived in these woods for a long time, and that anyone who ventures into your territory has a good chance of never coming home. I may not be able to see, but I can still hear the sound of your body as you move so I know you’re quite large and… do you have scales? Some sort of dragon?”
“I am a basilisk, child. If you could see me and we made eye contact, you would be turned to stone.”
“Oh!” Harry puts his hand to his mouth and bites down hard on his knuckle to stifle the urge to panic. A basilisk! They were all but legend, given how rare they had become over the centuries, but any given individual could live for hundreds of years and grow to an absolutely massive size if the stories were to be believed. This one sounded big enough it probably could take on a hippogriff if it wanted. That probably meant it was also quite ancient. Although it was also possible that “quite ancient” in human terms was nothing at all to basilisks. “If I may ask,” Harry says, “how old are you? I’m not a child anymore, you see, but I suppose if you’re a basilisk then most humans might seem like children to you.”
The basilisk chuckles again, another sibilant sound. “That is true for reasons you cannot begin to comprehend. But, as you are the only being who has been able to converse with me in well over a century, you may call me Severus. It would give me pleasure to hear my name again.”
“Severus,” Harry echoes. It fits him. “My name is Harry. Are… are you not planning to eat me?”
Severus huffs. His face is close enough to Harry’s for Harry to feel the soft puff of air against his cheek. “Tell me, Harry: how do you expect I would feed myself, if I ate humans yet any human who gazes upon me is turned to stone? No, although my bite is extremely venomous, my magic sustains me - I have not needed to eat for many years. And I don’t go around killing humans for fun, no matter what stories you may have heard in your village.”
“Oh! But my… my mother.” Harry takes in a deep breath, lets it out again. Maybe it was an accident? “She was a hedge witch, the only one in this part of the kingdom. She used to keep a beautiful garden and grow all sorts of herbs and plants for her remedies and potions. I sometimes came with her when she went into the forest to gather ingredients. One day she went without me and… she never came back. We all assumed the creature of the forest had killed her. My father never was the same after that.”
“How old were you?”
“Six, almost seven? It was twelve years ago.”
“I swear I did not harm her, and I regret that her loss has caused you sorrow.” Severus is silent for a long minute. Then… “Come, Harry. I didn’t know what to expect from tonight, but I definitely didn’t expect you. This may work very well.” Harry feels a nudge against his hand, something smooth and cool. Scales. “Place your hand on my neck like so, and I will guide you back to my home. Have you eaten recently?”
Harry shakes his head, but he does as Severus requests and starts walking, Severus guiding him as they go. “I was too nervous,” Harry admits. “And it seemed a bit of a waste, if I was coming here to be monster food anyway.”
“We’ll pass some apple trees on the way, then. I will help you find some fruit you can eat now and we’ll work out a longer-term solution in the morning.” Severus maintains a comfortable pace with Harry beside him. Harry occasionally stumbles and needs to lean a bit more heavily on the muscled body under his palm, but Severus doesn’t seem to mind. “Tell me,” he says to Harry a while later. “You said your mother was a hedge witch - did she teach you anything about herbalism?”
Harry nods. “She had the most wonderful garden, back before she disappeared. I’ve tried to keep up with it but my father says it’s not quite the same. He’s the village constable - he says that me pottering about picking flowers is no fit job for a man, but I’m almost as useless as my mother was and too damaged for real work so it’s the best I can do. I can hardly disagree with him.”
“Real work would involve using your fists and your brawn, I presume?” Severus asks.
“I’ve never… I’ve never fit in with the other lads, even aside from being blind,” Harry replies. “Honestly, I’ve always been happier alone with my garden. I can still make poultices and potions, even without my sight - I sell them in the square on Saturdays, and people come to me sometimes if they need something specific. If you’re not going to eat me,” he adds, “I can maybe make some for you too if you want them? I may be blind but I can still be helpful. I don’t - I don’t know what you’d need or even if they’d work on basilisks, but I’m willing to try.”
“I’m not going to eat you,” Severus promises. “I have no intention of turning you to stone, or of killing you by any other method. I am solitary by nature, and have always been, but it’s clear the imbeciles in your village do not appreciate you the way they should. Did you really come all the way out here intending to die?”
Harry sighs. “Someone had to, and no one else was likely to volunteer. There’s an old woman in the village, Grandmother Sybill, who is known as a bit of a seer. She’s the one who announced that you were due for another sacrifice. That you were - that you had cursed us, our crops, and that a red-haired young woman would appease you best. Except, there’s only one red-haired family in the village and they only have one girl, so Ginny knew Grandmother Sybill meant her. And she and Dean were getting close to announcing their engagement to each other anyway, so the two of them up and left in the middle of the night without telling anyone. Well, Ginny didn’t tell anyone - Dean left a rather crude sketch indicating his thoughts on the matter. And then this morning it was decided that someone would go, and Grandmother Sybill said I was the next best choice, and nobody really spoke up in my defense. Including my own father. And I don’t want to die, but I realized I didn’t want to stay either. They all see me as useless, never mind the herbalism, and maybe if I died I would get to see my mother again.”
“Let’s not hurry your death along, at any rate,” Severus says, and slows his pace. “We can revisit that all later, but for now we are approaching my home. This section here used to be an orchard - I have not had need of it in a very long time, but there are still always some trees with ripe fruit. The seasons don’t touch here quite the same way they do elsewhere.” He leads Harry in a meandering path over what feels like a mixture of loam and fallen apples. The smell of decaying fruit isn’t as strong as Harry would have expected for a neglected orchard - magic, perhaps? Severus pauses and his large form comes to press against Harry’s side. “This tree is ripe - can you sense it? There are a few apples on the lowest branch, just up and slightly to your left.”
Harry gropes over his head and comes away with two large apples. “Thanks.”
Severus nudges Harry’s side again and steers him forward. “Come,” he says. “You can eat while we walk, if you like. Do you cook?”
“I can.”
“I haven’t used it in ages, but I do have something of a kitchen. You’re welcome to prepare better meals for yourself there in the future.”
Harry blinks in shock. “What? I assumed you lived in a cave or something.”
Severus laughs, and Harry is once again aware that the creature isn’t speaking with a human tongue - there’s a long hiss underlying the sound. “No,” Severus says, “which is all the better for you since I did not expect to be taking in a housemate. If you had your sight, you’d see a large cottage ahead of us. This is Spinner’s End. It has been in my family since before anyone can remember, and it’s steeped in very old magic. I have mostly made do with the sitting room, given my current size and difficulties, but there are two perfectly adequate bedrooms that are probably still made up from… before.”
Harry doesn’t ask before what - if Severus had wanted him to know, he’d have said.
“A step up through the doorway, here,” Severus says briskly, and nudges Harry into the building before slithering in after him. It takes several seconds to get his entire body through the door, Harry notices. “There should be nothing here that will hurt you, so feel free to touch and get your bearings. To your right is the portion of the sitting room I have made into my nest, ahead is the fireplace and cooking area. To your left are the doorways that lead to the bedrooms. There used to be a privy in the back garden but I don’t know if the magic extends that far, so I will investigate to ensure it hasn’t fallen into disrepair while you familiarize yourself with your new home.”
Harry finishes the first apple and sets the core down on the closest surface - a scarred wooden table near the fireplace. It takes a fair amount of groping around to get his bearings. Part of him longs for the familiar layout of his single-room house in the village, but part of him is in awe of the size of this “cottage.” Severus’s family must have been rich, as well as commanding powerful magic. Maybe the two things went together. The way Severus mentioned his “current size” and the clearly human design to the house, Harry suspects the basilisk must have been human at some point? Or belonged to a human family, at any rate?
He feels his way to the doors Severus had mentioned and finds there are two next to each other in the center of the wall, each leading to a separate room. Both have a strange, dormant smell, as if they retained some memory of their previous functions but hadn’t been called upon for a long time. Harry chooses the one that feels warmer - and sure enough, as he feels his way around the edges, he discovers that it has a large window with real glass which lets in lovely rays of afternoon sunshine. Against the other wall is a wardrobe and a magnificently soft bed. He lays down on the quilt - not scratchy at all! - and sighs. Only hours earlier, he had been certain he was walking to his death. Now… what next? Harry eats his second apple slowly, contemplating.
“You have chosen, then,” Severus says from the doorway some time later. Harry hadn’t realized he’d been dozing, but the sudden voice startles him and he jerks to a sitting position.
“Oh! Yes, if this is all right?”
“My parents no longer have need of it and I certainly wouldn’t fit,” Severus says mildly. “I am glad to see the room get some use again.”
“Your parents,” Harry echoes. “You… lived here with them? You were human?”
“I was.” Severus’s scales slide on the wooden floorboards, and suddenly a large head depresses the mattress next to Harry’s hip. Harry can feel the soft breaths against his leg. “I was not much older than you are now when I… made a powerful enemy. One who did not tolerate defiance well. I was well on my way to becoming the most powerful alchemist in the kingdom, but in doing so I inadvertently caught his attention. He appeared at our door one day and demanded I brew him an elixir of immortality. I was young and brash and I refused him rather rudely.”
“Could you have done it?” Harry asks.
Severus makes a thoughtful sound. “I believe I was very close to that achievement,” he says. “I had been researching methods of doing so, and unfortunately my father had bragged about my efforts to the wrong people. In spreading his tales, he somewhat exaggerated my successes. The lord who appeared at our home believed I had already developed a potion that could grant eternal life. I might have managed, given another year or two to work, but I had no intention of sharing my findings with the likes of him.”
“And he got angry,” Harry guessed.
“Indeed. I did not know he was a powerful sorcerer, merely a rich man, but he retaliated against my insolence by killing my father and trapping my mother in the form of a doe. She ran off into the woods and I never saw her again. I do not know whether she retained her human mind, as I did, or whether she truly became a wild beast in that moment, but I knew I was in danger. Before he could inflict a similar fate on me, I ran to my workroom and downed my most recent potion. I hadn’t tested it yet. One of the previous versions had unfortunately turned out to be incredibly flammable, which was less than ideal for a potion intended for human consumption, but I was able to incinerate most of my notes before he could take them by force.”
“Did… did the potion work, then? I assume you are very old.”
“I don’t know whether it was the potion or the spell he cast on me moments afterward or a combination of the two, but I soon found myself as I am now. I don’t think he predicted that.”
“It wasn’t on purpose?”
Severus hisses a laugh. “I very much doubt it. He turned to stone the moment our eyes met. You may find him in the back garden, if you wish to search him out. What parts of him are left.”
“And you have been stuck here ever since,” Harry concludes. “You must be very lonely.”
Severus is quiet for so long, Harry is worried he’s offended the creature. Then… “I have not thought about it in that way for many years,” Severus says, “but I suppose that is true. I have a confession to make.”
“Oh?”
“It’s about your mother.” Severus nudges Harry’s thigh with his scaled snout. “I believe I remember her. Your seer, the one who said I would prefer a red-headed young woman as tribute - your mother is probably why. For some strange reason, your village has been sending me ‘tributes’ every few decades. She is the only one who didn’t take me by surprise, and thus I was able to hide myself from her gaze. She wandered the woods for a while, then returned to her home. That was years ago, though, and I had hoped that perhaps she might tell the others in your village that I had no interest in their virginal women as sacrifices.”
Harry swallows hard against the sudden lump in his throat. “So when she disappeared… that wasn’t you?”
“No, child, I did not touch her. Nor did I turn her to stone. I do remember seeing her gathering herbs in the woods afterward, on several occasions. She was always singing. So full of joy… I sometimes hid myself nearby to listen, but I was careful to conceal my face. I never wished her harm.”
Harry stills. “You…” A tide of memories washes over him, sudden and sharp. “You talked to her sometimes, didn’t you? While she sang? Very quietly, but you sometimes sang along?”
Severus’s entire body tenses. “How did you know that?”
“I thought I had dreamed you,” Harry admits. “When I was young, and I used to go with my mother sometimes. I had an imaginary friend I used to pretend I played with in the woods. He was very shy, and my mother never saw him, but sometimes he would sing the next verse of my mother’s song when she’d get distracted and trail off before finishing. She never believed me that the voice was real. My father beat me for lying many times. I would pretend he was my best friend, a boy none of the lads in the village knew about, who didn’t care that I was blind and who wasn’t afraid to be in the woods alone. Sometimes after my mother disappeared I thought about running away and joining him, but by that point I knew the boy in the woods was probably a product of my imagination and didn’t really exist. And then I focused on learning herbalism more than making friends and that was that.”
Severus exhales, his breath warm against Harry’s skin. “I will be your secret friend, Harry, if you like. You may stay with me, share my house, grow things in the garden as you please, and keep me company. I do not know how you speak my tongue, but I am glad. I have been alone for so long… if you wish to go I will not stop you, but I did not realize how lonely I was until now.”
Harry lays his hand on Severus’s scaled head. “Severus,” he says, “I believe I would like that very much.”
********
Life with Severus settles into a comfortable routine astonishingly quickly. Harry gets up when he first hears Severus stirring in the other room, wanders out to the garden to relieve himself in the magical privy which somehow never smells or gets vermin, then comes back and usually has some fruit for breakfast while Severus asks him questions. Sometimes the questions are about Harry’s life in the village, sometimes they’re about stories and songs Harry has heard, sometimes they’re about his plans for the day. Harry then potters around the house and garden while Severus goes off into the woods - Harry isn’t exactly sure what he does there, but Severus usually comes home carrying a rabbit or partridge and Harry is able to make stew for supper.
“Do you need any poultices?” Harry asks one day, when his garden is overflowing with herbs and vegetables in ways it really shouldn’t, given how recently he started tending it. “I haven’t brewed anything since I came here, and it feels like a waste of all these ingredients. Do you ever get itchy or sore or tired?”
Severus hisses in a way Harry now associates with laughter. “I do not, little human,” he says, “but make your poultices and remedies anyway. The magic here will preserve them for if they’re ever needed, and you will benefit for the making. The enchantment gives me everything I need.”
“Not everything,” Harry says. “You were more lonely than you let on. And you miss your human life sometimes, I can tell.”
Severus stills, his head on Harry’s thigh as has become routine in the quiet evenings. Harry eats his supper and then sits on the floor in front of the fire with Severus coiled around him. Severus claims the warmth is comfortable, but Harry suspects the need for touch may be more than that. As summer fades into autumn, the air gets cooler and Severus coils tighter against Harry’s skin. Harry gently rubs Severus’s scales and Severus all but purrs.
Tonight, though, Severus shakes his head irritably and huffs. “I admit to appreciating your company,” he grumbles, “but I barely remember being human. I can hardly miss it.”
“Bollocks.” Harry may be blind, but he still observes. “You miss eating food, you miss sleeping in a bed, and I’m guessing you miss your alchemy research. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you nosing around in the garden beds when I’m not there - you’ve been bolstering the plants that have alchemical properties. You could teach me, you know.”
“I… I could,” Severus says slowly. “I could read for you my notes, the ones which have survived, and I could walk you through how to recreate some of my work. My equipment is still out in my workshop, I presume. I have not looked in a long time.”
“Do you want to teach me?” Harry asks. “We don’t have to, if it would make you sad.”
“Nothing about you could make me sad,” Severus declares. “I will instruct you.”
***
And so he does, teaching Harry the secrets of alchemy little by little as autumn ebbs into winter and then flows into spring and summer again. The orchard is never depleted of fruit, Severus never fails to find some small game animal for Harry to cook, and Harry finds himself utterly content. The second bedroom becomes a potions storeroom, with hanging strings of herbs drying from the ceiling and Severus’s childhood bed layered high with crates of glass bottles.
Harry never goes into Severus’s old alchemy workshop, but Severus periodically brings out equipment or more bottles and Harry incorporates them into the jumbled mess of apparatus which has taken over the old kitchen table. Harry prefers to eat on the floor, anyway, where he can lean back against Severus’s comforting coils and there is never a cold breeze despite the snow falling outside. Nevertheless, Harry spends one long December day dragging all the assorted bits of Severus’s nest into his bedroom and arranging them carefully in the space between the bed and the window. From that night onward, Severus sleeps in Harry’s room with his head resting on the blanket covering Harry’s feet. It’s a comforting weight through the long winter nights. Even once the weather gets warmer, Severus stays. Harry sleeps better hearing the steady, even breathing of a deadly monster beside him, not that he’s likely to have anyone to admit that to. Severus seems to sleep more comfortably, too.
It’s not all sunshine and roses. Harry discovers that Severus has a rather short temper, especially when Harry is being obtuse. Severus was clearly a brilliant alchemist back in the day, and frequently despairs of Harry ever making the ridiculous leaps of logic he seems to find so instinctive. When Harry does, though, he can practically sense the pride radiating off his tutor. It makes him nostalgic for his time spent learning herbalism at his mother’s knee. Except not quite, because with Severus there’s always an element of something more. Something Harry certainly has never felt for his mother, nor for any woman.
“This is peaceful,” Harry says one summer morning. They’re together in the garden, Harry seated on a soft patch of grass and Severus curled lazily around him. The morning sunshine is warm on Harry’s skin, and he turns his face upward to better appreciate it. “I never thought I would have someone to be with like this.”
Severus hisses contentedly. “Never had your heart set on a pretty girl in your village?” he asks.
Harry shakes his head, knowing Severus will feel the motion even if he’s facing away. “I never really understood what all the fuss was about,” he admits. “Maybe it’s because I couldn’t see their faces, so I didn’t know which girls were beautiful and which weren’t, but I… don’t think I would have be interested in marrying one even so.”
“What about the boys?” Severus asks nonchalantly. As if that’s a totally reasonable thing to ask. “Would you have preferred to marry one of those?”
Harry stills. “That’s not…”
“Not allowed? Not a thing you were permitted to dream about?”
Harry shakes his head again, slowly, and closes his eyes. “Who would want me?” he asks quietly. “I’m broken.”
“You are not,” Severus replies indignantly. “You are blind, but you are not broken. You are an intelligent, diligent young man who deserves better than those idiots who rejected you. Shall I tell you what I see?”
Harry hesitates, but then nods. “I suppose, if you want to?”
Severus coils closer, so the tip of his nose bumps Harry’s shoulder and his breath is gentle on Harry’s neck. “I see a handsome young man, Harry,” he whispers. “I see wavy black hair and strong muscles and a ready smile. I see sun-bronzed skin and dextrous hands and a quick mind that’s always eager for learning. I see a man who is quiet but resourceful, who does not judge me for my current form, who shares both his life and his touch freely with a monster. I, also, was never interested in marrying a woman… but I find myself enchanted by the idea of sharing those sorts of intimacies with you, and I curse my pride for causing me to be stuck as I am because it means I have no arms with which to hold you the way you deserve. I would do anything for you, my beloved Harry. I simply thought you ought to know that.”
Harry sucks in a breath, emotions swirling with in him. “You… with me?”
“You doubt my sincerity?”
“No, no. I just… me?”
“Harry,” Severus says in a low voice. “On the outside, I am a monster. On the inside, I am still very much a man. And you are beautiful. It makes my soul ache to look at you. Does that frighten you?”
“I’m not afraid,” Harry says. He’s a little bit surprised to find that it’s true. “I’m not afraid of the monster, and I’m not afraid of… of your attentions.” He’s silent for a long moment. “I wish you were human again,” he adds, “because I’m not sure what we could do about it otherwise.”
Severus sighs. “I wish I were too.”
“Do you think… maybe there’s something in your old journals that could help? Like, a reverse-basilisk potion that I could make for you?”
Severus’s entire body goes still. Then… “Perhaps,” Severus murmurs. “It would be difficult, and dangerous, and there’s no guarantee it would work, but… perhaps there might be.”
Harry throws his arms around Severus’s neck and buries his face in the smooth scales. “I want to try,” he says. “Please. We have to try.”
“All right.”
***
The preparations are finicky and take nearly two months, but luckily Harry’s garden seems to understand what they need and provides them with the correct plants in the correct stages of growth. Severus retrieves his notes from his workroom and he and Harry spend many an afternoon together, Severus reading out loud and Harry laying out and preparing ingredients in ways he’ll be able to finish on his own later without Severus’s sight and voice guiding him. It’s a slow process. They have no way to annotate their progress, with Severus unable to write and Harry unable to see the page, so every morning they talk over the day’s tasks and ensure they both know what to do before starting.
Ultimately, Severus determines they’ll need to do a combination of an ingested potion and a topical soak, which needs to cover every last scale. He leads Harry to a pond in the forest, large enough for him to submerge his entire body but small enough they don’t need more than an armload of each ingredient to get it to the proper potency. Harry spends the final three days reducing the fiddliest ingredients in Severus’s large stew pot until they’re a concentrated sludge, which will more evenly distribute than dry leaves would. The result should be capable of changing a sentient being from one form to another intentionally, but they have no way to know for sure except to try.
Eventually Severus pronounces the preparations adequate. He and Harry return to the pool one final time at midnight, the water now thick and smelling strongly of magic. Harry pours the pot of concentrated ingredients in. Severus eases himself in after it, mixing the water with his coils as he adjusts himself until all except his head is submerged.
“Ready?” Harry asks him.
“Ready.” Severus sinks lower, then pokes his nose back up and opens his powerful jaws.
Harry fumbles with the ingestible potion. It needs to be taken all at once, but Severus won’t be able to see or hear because the rest of his head is below the surface. They had finally settled on Harry hollowing out an apple and filling it with the thick mixture of herbs. Severus would be able to feel it hit the back of his throat and know when to swallow. Apple heavy in his right hand, Harry gropes out ahead of him with his left for Severus’s jaw so he can aim his throw–
“Ouch!”
The pain is immediate, although Harry doesn’t initially realize what had happened. The back of his hand is throbbing too hard to think. Through the waves of dizziness, Harry realizes perhaps he miscalculated the distance between his hand and Severus’s teeth. Severus’s giant, venomous basilisk teeth, which are capable of stopping a hippogryph in its tracks.
“Severus, I think I…”
Severus must notice something is wrong, because there’s a splashing noise and then a pressure against Harry’s hip. “Harry? Harry!”
“Hurts,” Harry slurs. “Cold.”
“No. Nonononono.” Severus splashes some more, and Harry realizes they must both be lying on the ground because he feels the length of Severus’s body against his own. “Harry. Please move.”
“Sev’rus, ‘sokay. Humans don’t live f’rever… unlike bas’lisks. You live long, stay brilliant.”
“I don’t want to live longer without you!”
“Don’t have choice,” Harry mumbles. “My fault. Clumsy.”
“You are utterly perfect just as you are,” Severus snaps. “And I’m not going to let you go.”
Harry doesn’t resist, can’t resist, as powerful coils drag him underwater. Something forces its way into Harry’s mouth, crunchy and bitter, and he swallows reflexively. The water is strangely viscous and thick with magic. Harry’s last thought is at least Severus is holding me while I die.
***
Lily Evans lives in a small house, some distance into the woods from the rest of the village. Her hair is streaked copper and grey and she wears it loose around her shoulders. There are always rumors about her, about her mysterious past from before she walked out from the deepest part of the forest and settled into becoming the local hedge witch, but she never acknowledges any of them. Over the years some of the men in the village make half-hearted efforts to sway her to their beds, but she merely greets them politely and then goes home alone. Mostly alone - there are rumors, too, of magical familiars, two gigantic snakes who come and go from her house and actually speak to her in snake language, but most of the adults in the village feel this is a story the boys make up to scare each other rather than actual fact.
These adults do admit, though, that around the time the sightings of her so-called familiars started, Lily Evans started brewing phenomenal potions. She sells them in little glass bottles, finer than any others found in the village, and her potions work far better than any seen before. Her little garden thrives, far later into the season than it should, and she seems… happy.
One chilly March day a little boy wanders into the forest alone, lost. He is brought back by Lily the next morning. He tells a fantastical tale of being found by a massive snake with milky white eyes. The snake took him to a second massive snake, this one wearing a peculiar hood over its head, who was lying in a orchard thick with fruit despite there still being patches of snow on the ground left over from the winter. The hooded snake lifted the boy up to pick apples and let him eat until the milky-eyed snake returned with Lily Evans in tow. She took him to a strange cottage, put him to sleep in a real bed overnight, and walked him back to the village after sunrise.
Nobody believes the boy, of course - why would a snake wear clothing, or live in a human cottage? - but the rumor persists and grows in the telling. Strange magic, the villagers say. As befitting their mysterious hedge witch.
Lily Evans smiles, and smiles, and admits nothing at all.