Secret Boxes

Summary: "Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret." A late night stroll to clear the mind leads to an unlikely conversation between two friends, where walls that have spent years being built up are suddenly torn down.

Author's Note: All right, this story was written around a month ago, but it was only about 1000 words. After some editing and working on it, it became over 3000 words. A "Thank You" is sent to darkladyofslytherin of HPFF for help with the summary, as well as to Atomic01 of MNFF for a quick beta job. Now, I present for your enjoyment, Secret Boxes.

~**~


Secret Boxes


~**~


"Everyone is like a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."
~Mark Twain


~**~

The early January weather was just as cold as one would expect it to be. Fresh layers of gleaming white snow still covered the grounds of Hogwarts, the packed, white powder crunching underfoot as both humans and wildlife walked through it, and the lake remained hidden under a thin layer of sparkling ice, save for a small break where a tentacle of the giant squid could be seen every once in a while as it disturbed the mostly still waters. Twinkling stars littered the dark, night sky, their pale, feeble light not able to match up to that of the moon, with its half-full orb providing semi-decent light to the wintry grounds below.


Students had already returned from spending the Christmas holiday with their families, and all were now sleeping soundly in their beds; classes were scheduled to resume the very next morning. All was quiet in the ancient school, as it should be on such a night. The classrooms were dark and silent, the halls deserted. Very few ghosts floated along, and even the hundreds and hundreds of portraits were still and quiet. Hogwarts housed nothing but content and sleeping occupants, it seemed. At least, such was true for the most part.


Not everyone was asleep, however. On this cold, yet peaceful, wintry night, not every student was dreaming blissfully in his or her bed.


He had taken to wandering around the corridors or grounds on nights when he could not sleep but did not wish to remain in the common room. There was never a destination to his walking, never a purposeful ending that he was striving to achieve. Instead, he let his mind wander almost as much -- if not more than -- his body, heading wherever his feet carried him. It was a time for him to think, think away from everything else, away from all other forms of distraction. Most of the other students in the school -- and even the teachers and staff -- would never have guessed the pensive nature of this young man. They looked at his outside persona, his appearance, and made their judgements about him. And for the most part, he did not try to change their perceptions of him. Rather, he encouraged them.


Pretending and hiding made things a great deal easier, for the most part. It was simple, he knew. There was no reason for everyone to know the whole truth about him, and it was far easier for them to accept and believe in the part of himself that he projected than the other side of him. He showed the side of himself that made him happy, and while it was not a false image, he could not deny the entire truth to himself in the darkest hours of the night: His public persona did hide something.


It hid the conflicting parts of his soul that warred between darkness and light. He struggled to keep his past right where it was -- in his past. Forgotten, covered, ignored. The darker part of him would never be known, if he could help it, and so he hid it behind the part of him that he did like. It made his life so much simpler, really.


But hiding behind self-constructed walls of secrets was not something he could do forever. Thus, his night time wanderings and pensive dwellings began.


The quiet stillness of the castle was not uncomfortable to him -- like most silence was -- but rather, it held peaceful tranquillity that did not judge him; he was not expected to act a certain way, think a certain way, when he was alone at night. It was not necessary for him to put on the carefree attitude that people expected of him. He did not have to act like nothing upset him, like nothing bothered him, when he wandered around the castle. He did not have to pretend, or hide behind the jokes and laughter.


When he wandered through the ancient corridors of a school with over a millennium of history, he could examine the part of him that was buried beneath the emotional barriers he had built. He could give the carefree projection a moment's rest before it had to be put back in place for the next day. When the sun rose in the morning and he descended the marble staircase with his friends, the walls would be back -- complete and solid, unbreakable. He would laugh, he would smile, he would joke ... and everything would be simple.


But if he was perfectly honest with himself, the young man knew that his best friends were not completely fooled. They had seen his empty bed, had vaguely known about his wanderings ... but they did not fully understand. They'll know in the morning where I went, he thought, thinking of his three friends waking up and discovering his absence in the fifth-year dormitory. James and Remus, at the very least, will have an idea.


Of course his friends would know. Completely hiding anything from the others was nearly impossible, after all, as Remus had discovered three years ago. They would not approach him about it -- Oh no, fifteen-year-old boys did not do such things -- but they would know. They would guess -- quite accurately -- that his family had played a large part in bringing about tonight's wanderings. It would not be the first time, after all, that the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black caused him a sleepless night and hours upon hours of brooding thoughts. His nightly wanderings always seemed to increase after spending holidays with them.


He did not really know why he kept going back, year after year, nor did he understand why his mother and father kept ordering him back. It was a question he had asked himself each time the letter came in early December, reminding him that his presence was required at home for the holiday. And no matter how many times he asked the question, no matter what angle he attempted to arrive at an answer, the young man had been unable to find one. His family's dislike of him was apparent, and the Christmas season was not any different than the summer time, except in the minor matter of length. And if he did not know that the summer would be harder if he did not come home for Christmas, then he probably would have just stayed at the school.


Like it matters, he thought to himself, heading through the castle's front doors and outside onto the snowy grounds, his wandering feet taking him towards the lake's shore.


The grounds were just as silent as the stone corridors of the school. Most of the animal life was subdued in honour of the wintry weather, though a few owls could be heard as they left the Owlery to hunt. The lights were out in Hagrid's hut, and the trees bordering the Forbidden Forest barely moved, no wind sweeping through their branches on this particular evening. The main exception to the quiet plant life was the massive Whomping Willow, whose heavy and powerful limbs creaked menacingly, with or without wind to help it. Icy waters that made up the lake remained completely still as well, the giant squid just as unresponsive as the rest of the creatures tonight.


Good, he thought, believing himself to be alone. And he continued down the front steps, his gaze focussed on the lake as he passed a nearby beech tree.


He was not aware of the single figure already sitting beneath the tree's snow-covered branches until she spoke, her voice causing him to turn instantly around.


"Black?"


"Evans?"


Sirius and Lily just stared at each other for a moment, completely silent, each slightly surprised and shocked by the other's appearance. (Although, as far as Sirius was concerned, he had a greater right to be shocked about Lily's being out-of-bounds than she had about him breaking the rules.) But they both seemed to get over their surprise at similar moments.


"What are you doing out here?" said Lily.


"Thinking," he replied immediately. "You?"


"Same."


He waited for more: a disbelieving look and question about what he was really doing, a comment about how she would not have figured he did a great deal of thinking, a statement concerning how he was breaking the rules by being outside this late ... And Sirius was ready with a response to that one.


But no more came from the redheaded girl by the beech tree, and silence fell over them once again, returning the quiet night to its previous volume. It was not an uncomfortable silence, no, and Sirius headed over towards the tree, taking a seat in the snow next to Lily. A distant part of his mind thought that his clothes would get wet in their contact with the powdery precipitation, but he didn't care. The other part of him was somewhat surprised that Lily did not automatically either tell him to leave or leave herself. Whatever her reasons, Sirius decided to take advantage of the situation and perhaps have a normal conversation with the girl his best friend was so fixated on.


"Do you always wander around the school grounds in the middle of cold winter nights, Evans?" he said, glancing at the girl to his right.


"You know, I could ask you the same thing, Sirius," she answered, breaking her stare at the lake for the briefest of moments as she brought her eyes to look at him, before she returned them to the icy waters. "But no, to answer your question.... I've just had a lot on my mind recently."


Lily, whose gaze had remained on the lake's frozen waters as she talked to Sirius, now brought her emerald eyes to look at a small object in her hands. Sirius followed her stare and watched as she ran her fingers over the light-coloured wood, opening and closing the cover of what appeared to be a small, simple box -- much like the one that his Aunt Druella would place her special jewels in. There did not seem to be anything special about the box; it was not even decorated in any way, as far as Sirius could tell. Only about the size of a handheld mirror, the sole thing marring the smooth wood was the hinge needed in order to open it. His aunt's had miniature diamonds that surrounded the border of the cover, and an ornate etching of the family crest was located in the very centre of the box; Narcissa had admired the diamonds, Bella had admired the crest, Sirius remembered irrelevantly. Sirius tore his mind from the memories of his family, afraid he had missed something that Lily might have said as his brain soared through the past.


But it appeared that Lily had not said anything else. When the young man had returned his focus to her, she was still gazing at the box, running her fingers over its surface, opening and closing the top almost without thought. Sirius, now intensely curious about the object, could not take the silence any more.


"What's that you're holding?" he asked, startling Lily out of her own thoughts. She had just opened the box and its cover fell closed with a thud at her surprise.


"My dad gave it to me for Christmas," she said, her gaze never leaving the smooth wood. "Actually, he gave one to me and one to my sister, but she didn't want hers and gave it to me as well...."


"So, your father gave you an empty box for Christmas?" said Sirius, his eyebrow raised in slight disbelief. Surely her Christmas wasn't that horrible?


Lily glared at Sirius, appearing angry he had interrupted her story -- a story that Sirius himself was actually surprised she had started telling in the first place; he was almost as shocked with this event as he was with discovering her on the grounds in the middle of the night. Usually, she and he would not have such a close (and quiet) conversation, as yells and hexes were often involved. First she doesn't tell me to leave when I sit down and now this?


"He likes to make things, my dad," she said. "With his hands, he'll carve or paint or do something like that for one of our presents.... It's something that he's always done, for as long as I can remember...." Lily's fingers traced along the smooth corners of the small box, and her hands ran over the perfect wood as she spoke. "He said it was a secret box, a memory box," she said. "'A place to keep all of your memories and secrets safe,' he said."


As Lily's eyes returned to the box, her smooth, elegant hands running over the light wood, Sirius was overcome with curiosity once again. He desperately wanted to ask her more about this box -- Why had her father given it to her, other than the reason that it was apparently a tradition in the Evans' household? What sort of secrets would she have to keep safe? Why was she even out on the grounds on the night before classes?


But he did not. His mouth started to open, the words on the tip of his tongue, but he kept them from proceeding any further. Instead, Sirius just watched Lily. Never before had he really understood what had his best friend so obsessed with Lily Evans; what had James so fixated on Know-It-All, rule-abiding, not-a-care-in-the-world, life-is-great, Little-Miss-Perfect Lily Evans.


But as Sirius watched her tonight -- as he saw the moon's beams give light to her flowing red hair as it fell around her face, saw her strong and intense emerald gaze focus on the wooden box, saw her perfectly smooth hands run over the object, gliding gracefully around the corners -- Sirius understood. He saw Lily as someone who was not perfect, someone who had secrets and fears just like everyone, someone for whom life was not always the best. He saw someone who loved, who hurt, who smiled, who frowned. After over five years of knowing her, for the first time, Sirius saw Lily Evans as a normal teenage girl.


"Lily," he started, but his original sentence was cut off as she thrust an object into his own hands. Glancing down, he saw a wooden box matching the one that she still held. "Why are you giving me this?" he asked, bringing his eyes from the box in his hands to Lily's face.


"You have secrets, Sirius," she whispered, her own eyes meeting his. "I don't know what they are -- and it's really not my business to know -- but I do know they played their parts in causing you to wander around at nights. Your secrets could be connected to your family, or not, but they cause you to pretend too much, Sirius --"


"I don't pretend --"


"Yes, you do," she muttered. Her gaze never left his face, though Sirius himself turned away slightly, allowing his eyes to roam the lake's shore, though he was not really seeing anything. His mind could not focus on anything other than the words coming from the girl next to him. "The laughter, the pranking, it isn't all of who you are. It's true that a part of it is, yes, but it also hides something; you're using it to hide, Sirius."


Arguments were on the tip of Sirius's tongue and ready to be fired out -- How dare she presume that? What does she know? There's no way she could ever understand me! -- But he stopped them before the first syllable could be uttered. It did not seem possible. Years, it had taken him, to be able to project the persona that made life simpler, the one everyone expected of him. He was Sirius Black, the elegantly handsome, carefree prankster who was able to charm his way out of anything. That was what everyone saw; that was all he wanted everyone to see! Countless times he had pressed the darker part of his soul down, pushing his past further and further into the back of his mind. How was it possible that in one night, in one conversation, one girl was able to destroy it?


He had no idea how Lily had managed to see through the façade that he had built up around himself, the walls he had constructed to hide behind. But she had, and he realised that she was right, that she had seen the deepest part of him and completely knew everything about him, without his having to say more than a few words to her. Not even James, Remus, or Peter fully understood, but somehow, Lily did. And for some reason, Sirius did not have a problem with it; he did not want to deny anything tonight. He did not want to pretend to the one person who knew the extent of the lie.


"Everyone has secrets, Lily," he said, his grey eyes staring directly at the girl in front of him. He knew her stare had not wavered from his face at all while she spoke, though knowing that he would meet her eyes still did not fully prepare him for their intensity. "Are you going to give secret boxes to everyone?"


"No," she muttered, her eyes matching his intense gaze like she was staring through everything and right into the hidden depths of his soul, a feeling that would normally have felt slightly unnerving to Sirius, but for some reason, it did not bother him. "Not everyone ... Just you."


Silence descended on the two once again for the briefest of moments, before it was broken by Lily's slight movements as she started to get up from the snow, intent on making her way back towards the castle steps. Her progress was halted almost as soon as it began, however, as Sirius reached out and grasped her wrist, pulling her back down to the snowy earth below the beech tree. Lily had her eyes averted from his face at first, but when she turned around to face him, their eyes locked, emerald meeting steel. Neither Lily nor Sirius stopped the other as they moved closer together, their lips finally connecting in a kiss.


It was a brief kiss, like one that is shared more between close friends than actual lovers, but it was enough for that night. The small kiss, so innocent as it was, gave each of them what they needed, what they required. The two of them had needed love, understanding, acceptance, truth ... And that tiny action -- a short, chaste kiss -- gave them that. A connection was formed between the two of them, and both Lily and Sirius could feel it.


But that connection was not one of soul mates. It was not a connection formed between two lovers that destiny has placed together, and the fates have foretold. They were not the Romeo and Juliet, the Antony and Cleopatra, the Paris and Helen, of the present -- two people who shared a love above all else, a bond heralded by the stars, by destiny. Their connection was something else, and as they pulled apart, their eyes met and both understood -- that kiss would be both the beginning and the end.


"Goodnight, Sirius," whispered Lily, rising from the ground and walking slowly across the snowy grounds. Her thick cloak fell around her, a few places of fabric damp from the snow, and she shoved her long locks of red hair behind her ears. The snow crunched under her feet as she walked, such a sound being the main one disrupting the thick silence that fell over the grounds in the late night. Lily's fingers continued to run over the smooth wood of the box until she placed the object inside her pocket. She walked and walked, but she never turned around and looked back to the beech tree by the lake before entering through the heavy oak doors of the castle and disappearing from sight.


Sirius stood beneath the tree for a moment more, the thought of Lily's words floating in his mind, and the wooden box held in his hands. He watched Lily as she entered the castle, watched as the oak doors closed silently behind her, before his gaze drifted out across the icy expanses of the frozen lake. It was perfectly still, just like it had been all night long, and now that Lily had left the grounds, the sounds muted back to their silence, the crunching of the snow notably absent. A sigh escaped him as his gaze left the lake and the trees and he stared at the box clutched in his hand.


It was an exact copy of Lily's box. There were no markings or decorations, no symbols or jewels. A small hinge was the only thing that took away the beauty from the smooth, light wood of the box, a box that Mr Evans had crafted for his daughter, who had turned it away. This box was given to him by a friend, by the one person who knew everything about him, the one who had discovered all of his secrets in one night's conversation. "You have secrets, Sirius," she had said. And it was because of those secrets that she had handed over the box.


His eyes still focussed on the small box, Sirius's mind remembered Lily's words about the gift, and he found himself muttering them to the night as he pocketed the single object.


"A place to keep your memories and secrets safe."

~**~


"Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret."
~Jean de La Fontaine


~**~

Author's Note: Well, I hope you enjoyed this story, as I had a great deal of fun writing both of these characters. This one-shot was originally written for the generator game in the "Romance O.W.L" class on the MNFF forums. The things I was given were Sirius, Lily, and a box. Thus, this story was born, though it was quite an interesting experience, as I had never before written Sirius in a romance or Lily as a character ... especially not the two of them together. (Most of my ships tend to be canon ones, anyway.)

As such, I would greatly appreciate your opinions on the piece. What works? What doesn't work? Let me know.

~Megan