Archive of Our Own ^beta

“not one girl I think

who looks on the light of the sun

will ever

have wisdom

like this”

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, t. Anne Carson

The first thing Lily notices when she steps into Professor Slughorn’s office is that the cactus on his windowsill is wearing a tiny sun hat. The second is that the cunning old man has some scheme tucked up his sleeve. He’s sporting a beaming smile that warns her she should turn on her heels and run while she can.

Slughorn waves her in, far too friendly for someone about to give her a headache. “Lily, my dear! Just the clever girl I wanted to see. Come, sit, sit. You’re looking positively radiant. Is that a new cardigan?”

Lily doesn’t sit. “It’s the same one I wore to your seminar yesterday.” He laughs like she’s told a joke. She narrows her eyes. “What is the matter, Professor? You said it was urgent.”

“It is, it is. Please, do sit down. There’s tea, if you’d like.”

“I’m fine,” Lily sighs, but perches on the edge of one of the two chairs buried under Slughorn’s extensive (and outdated) collection of scientific journals.

Slughorn leans forward. “How’s research going?”

“The same since our last check-in yesterday,” Lily quips. Years of tutelage have taught her not to indulge her advisor’s voracious appetite for small talk unless she has an hour or two or twenty to throw away. “Professor, I have a committee meeting in twenty minutes, a dozen lab reports to grade, and a chromatography run to prep tonight. Can we, please, make this quick?”

He sighs, ever the wounded artist. “You young people, always rushing, no time for a bit of cordial conversation.”

“Professor.”

“Yes, yes. All business.” Slughorn steeples his fingers under his chin, the classic setup to what Lily now recognizes as his I’m about to give you extra work and call it a compliment face. “You’re doing brilliantly, Lily. Top of the department, ahead on your thesis, loved by your peers—”

“Feared by your undergrads,” she mutters.

“—and that is precisely why I have a very small favor to ask.”

Oh, and there it is.

Lily narrows her eyes. “Define small.”

“Well.” He leans back in his chair, which creaks ominously under his weight. “What do you know about Pandora Lovegood?”

That catches Lily off guard. “The master’s student who set fire to the laminar hood last semester?”

“Now, don’t be harsh. It was more of a controlled singeing,” Slughorn counters good-naturedly. “And to be fair, her methodology was sound, just… enthusiastic.”

“She used my favorite autoclave as an incubator for sea snails once.”

“I believe they are sea slugs,” Slughorn says, as if that helps.

“There’s a rumor she swallowed a stirrer magnet instead of an aspirin,” Lily continues, huffing. “I have no idea how she still has access to the premises.”

“Ah, Pandora.” Slughorn clicks his tongue. “Such a brilliant mind, so imaginative. A bit unorthodox, yes, but the best ones always are. She’s working on something extraordinary.”

Lily exhales slowly. “Is this the part where you tell me I have to work with her?”

“Of course, not!” Slughorn says with mock offense. “You have the opportunity to work with her! I’d supervise her myself, of course, but between my knees and the new undergrad program—”

“The new undergrad program Severus is running?”

Slughorn waves a dismissive hand. “Regardless of my scheduling conflicts, Pandora needs someone sharp. Steady. She doesn’t respond well to traditional mentoring, but she respects your work, and you have a way of… commanding attention.”

Lily crosses her arms. “You mean I’m scary.”

“I mean, you’re capable.” Slughorn smiles. “I just want to shuffle the workspaces and timetables a bit, put you beside her to help her focus, keep her from blowing up any more equipment.”

“You want me to babysit the lab witch.”

“She’s not a witch, Lily. She’s a genius with unfortunate timing.”

“Her unfortunate timing nearly cost us the laminar hood!”

He waves her off like the loss of tens of thousands of pounds in lab equipment is a trifle. “Think of it as mentorship. Collaboration, even.”

“I have a thesis to finish.”

Slughorn sighs, placing both palms flat on the desk. “Lily, listen to me. Pandora is synthesizing a protein that stabilizes chloroplasts in bacteria engineered to biodegrade plastic. She is on the verge of creating an organism that can turn plastic into oxygen. This could be the breakthrough of the century!”

That gives Lily pause. “She has chloroplasts working in a prokaryotic cell?”

“Yes!” Slughorn confirms, genuinely excited about it. “Though for short periods only, which is why she’s working on stabilizing them. She’s close.”

Lily hesitates. “How close?”

Slughorn opens a drawer, pulls out a thin folder, and slides it across the desk. She flips it open and scans the first page, her brow furrowing deeper with each line. Lily doesn’t even notice when she starts chewing her thumbnail. The sequence design is messy, scattered, and annotated in multicolored ink, but the core idea is sound. More than sound. It’s brilliant.

“This can’t be real,” Lily huffs.

“It is.”

“She annotated the reaction cascade with a doodle of a hopping frog.”

“Creative visualization,” he says proudly.

Lily closes her eyes, massages her temples. “This could take years to refine.”

Slughorn’s voice softens. “Or months, with the right mind next to hers.”

There’s a long silence. Lily stares at the protein schematic. She can see the potential as clear as daylight. If she can get Pandora to focus, to follow protocol, and to stop treating the lab like a fairy garden…

“Just work with her,” Slughorn urges. “If you guide her, she’ll follow. Not to mention… If you help her in the breakthrough, co-authorship is only fair.”

Lily looks up, squinting. “You’d put me on the paper?”

“As second author.”

It’s a trap. She knows it’s a trap, but it’s also everything Lily has always wanted: research that matters. Something that can change the world and put her name on the front page of Nature.

Damn Slughorn and his scheming.

“If she doesn’t listen to me, I’m walking,” Lily says, trying to hide her enthusiasm. No need to advertise just how thoroughly she’s been ensnared.

Judging by Slughorn’s sly smile, he already knows. “Splendid! I’ll forward you the details and tell Pandora to expect you.”

As Lily stands, resigned, she catches sight of the cactus again. It has tiny googly eyes glued to its pot.

This will be a mess.

·:❀:·

Lily arrives fifteen minutes early as always. Lab work is sacred, and she likes to take some time to assess the space (and snatch the good equipment) before other people contaminate it with their incompetence.

She’s halfway through sanitizing the bench top when the door bursts open, knocking against the perpendicular wall with a grating thunk. Lily doesn’t have to check to know who it is.

“Hello!” Pandora Lovegood chirps. “You must be Lily!”

Lily forces a professional smile onto her face and turns.

Pandora Lovegood is a sunbeam through stained glass; beautiful, colorful, and possibly dangerous to your retinas. She’s wearing a lab coat that looks like it was tie-dyed with chemicals. Her sleeves are visibly singed at the cuff, and something green and crusty is splattered across the left pocket. Possibly algae. Possibly pesto. She’s wearing her goggles like a headband, the PPE valiantly keeping her cloud of platinum-blonde curls from falling over her pretty, elvish face.

Lily opens her mouth, but Pandora barrels on.

“You look like a Lily. Very symmetrical.”

“…thank you?” Lily says cautiously.

“I’m Pandora,” she continues. “Slughorn said you were coming. He said you’re brilliant, precise, and a perfect match for me.”

Lily blinks. “What?”

“In a scientific way,” Pandora adds brightly. “Obviously.”

Pandora drops her messenger bag on the no-longer-sterile bench and offers her hand. Lily’s politeness is a well-worked muscle memory, so she instantly takes it. It also helps that she spent half her night reading Pandora’s research, which is indeed brilliant despite… well, everything.

The touch is warm and soft, especially in contrast to the dryness of Lily’s skin, mistreated by an overuse of hand sanitizer. Pandora’s nails are clipped short enough for lab safety, but each one is painted in a different pastel shade, polish slightly chipped at the edges.

Lily retracts her hand a bit too abruptly. “So,” she says, businesslike, “I have a few questions about the report Professor Slughorn sent me.”

“The one with the frog?” Pandora asks hopefully.

It is a herculean effort for Lily to avoid pinching the bridge of her nose in consternation. “Yes.”

Pandora nods, satisfied. “That frog understands enzyme kinetics better than most undergrads.”

“Right.” Lily can’t quite argue with that. She opens her notebook and flips to a prepared list of questions. “Why don’t you walk me through your current experiment setup? I’d like to see your controls.”

Pandora perks up. She guides Lily to where she keeps her sea slugs. “They do it naturally, you know,” she explains, crouching down until she is at eye-level with the aquarium. “They steal chloroplasts from algae and photosynthesize for months afterward. They are nice. I wish the bacteria were more like them, which is why I’m trying to combine their DNA.”

Figure 1: Elysia chlorotica, known as the eastern emerald elysia

Source: Author (2025)

Lily stares at the aquatic critters. They do look nice, even if… slug-y. “Which one of them is your donor? I suppose it’s the same one as your control for stability?”

“It depends on the day,” Pandora hums.

Lily exhales through her nose. “Pandora, a control is supposed to be—”

“I know, I know, isolated variables, statistical rigor.” Pandora rises to her full height. She looks at Lily, blue eyes wide and earnest. “I do try, you know, but sometimes the donors pick themselves. You can tell by their vibes. Some of them are just more… willing.”

“They are slugs,” Lily says flatly. “You can’t pick them based on their vibes. That’s not how science is made.”

“Maybe it should be,” Pandora replies like she’s offering revolutionary insight.

There’s a long pause.

Lily pulls out a pen and begins a detailed and quite extensive list of everything that must change before the next funding review. Pandora watches her scribble for a moment, then tilts her head.

“Do you always stand like that?” she asks.

“Like what?”

“So… vertical.”

“I stand like a professional,” Lily says defensively. “I took a seminar.”

“That can’t be healthy. You should relax, lie in a sunbeam for a bit.”

Lily glares at her, list forgotten. “I’m not a cat.”

“Pity.” Pandora shrugs. “You’d be a very pretty cat.”

“Okay,” Lily says, then clears her throat. “Okay. We’ll start with your protocols. I want everything written down step-by-step before we touch anything else.”

“Oh, I don’t write my protocols.”

“Excuse me?”

“I remember them,” Pandora replies. “They change depending on the day. Sometimes the protein expresses better when I use green coloring instead of blue.”

“That’s not a variable you’re supposed to change!”

“Well,” Pandora says, adjusting the goggles on her head, “the protein doesn’t know that.”

Lily stares at her for a long moment. Pandora stares back, bright-eyed. Lily opens a fresh page in her lab notebook and begins a new list:

1. Stabilize Pandora
2. Do not lose sanity

Pandora leaves her to it, humming as she fusses with the sunlamp above the slug aquarium.

“This will be a long day,” Lily mutters to herself.

“Not if you find a sunbeam,” Pandora counters.

Lily refuses to acknowledge that.

·:❀:·

Lily oftentimes thinks of lab work as conducting a symphony. Every instrument has its time and place, coalescing into something cohesive and beautiful. In this lovely metaphor, Pandora Lovegood is one of those cymbal monkey toys, smashing the plates together with no rhythm or reason.

To her credit, Pandora tries to adapt. Her goggles are frequently worn on the right part of her face; her notes are alarmingly decorated but legible; she labels her sample tubes with the correct codes using Lily’s preferred colored lab tape; the newly written standardized protocols are now printed out in sensible Helvetica and neatly laminated, even if covered in random stickers.

There are many hiccups still, mainly when Pandora insists on some insanity, such as reducing incubation time by 20% because the bacteria seem more enthusiastic that day. When that happens, Lily’s will to live is reduced by a much larger percentage, though she adapts in turn, only asking Pandora to add these changes to their log for later statistical analysis.

Lily isn’t one to compromise, especially when it comes to research integrity, but she cannot argue with the results Pandora somehow produces. The chloroplasts begin to stabilize in the modified bacteria, and she runs out of ways to explain how that should not be possible. They have data. Every single one of Lily’s complaints is overridden by the fact that Pandora’s (un)scientific instincts work.

By their third week of so-called collaboration, Lily learns to keep some equipment labeled for Pandora only, supervise every Bunsen burner use, check broth concentrations before incubation, and just… let Pandora do her thing.

Lily hates to be idle, so she keeps working on her PhD research even if fungal pigment production isn’t quite as interesting. She repeats her tests until they toe the line between thorough and redundant, but it still isn’t enough to consume all the extra lab time because Pandora stays late more often than not. For someone so ditzy, she can be quite determined.

It’s during one of these late nights that they have their first real conversation. Pandora is transferring broth cultures to Petri dishes, humming something vaguely reminiscent of the Jurassic Park theme. Lily has finished running her new data through Minitab and is absentmindedly fidgeting with graph formatting when her curiosity gets the best of her.

She waits for Pandora to finish burning the inoculation loop to avoid any accidents, then says, “Can I ask you something?”

“Mm-hmm.” Pandora doesn’t look up, tongue poking out between her teeth. Sweat beads at her brow from the proximity to the fire as she waits for the incandescent metal to cool down before dipping it in the test tube.

Lily closes her laptop. “Why the time crunch? You’ve been running tests back-to-back, when the chloroplast integration alone is more than enough for a master’s thesis.”

“Oh, I know.” Pandora finishes spreading the culture over the agar, then turns the dish upside down to close it. She lifts her head at last, blinking at Lily with owlish eyes. “My master’s thesis has already been submitted.”

Figure 2: Culture isolation of modified Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Source: Author (2025)

“What?” Lily asks, bewildered.

“This is for my PhD,” Pandora says with a shrug as she extinguishes the burner.

“You’re in the PhD program?”

“Not yet,” Pandora replies, hopping off the stool to stretch her back. “I still have some class requirements to fulfill for my master’s, but I’m going ahead with the research.”

Lily stares. “How? No funding can be approved before all the paperwork is in order.”

“I have no idea. The politics of academic funding are my worst nightmare.” Pandora shudders, frowning in distaste. “That’s why I picked Slughorn as my advisor. He likes his name on publications without setting foot in the lab, so he is happy to use his network to handle all the bureaucratic stuff for me.”

“That’s a… remarkably strategic decision.”

“Thank you,” Pandora says, sounding genuinely flattered by the begrudgingly offered compliment. “I believe that’s why he sent you. He probably needed an actual PhD candidate to get the funding approved, and your name carries a lot of weight in this department.”

Lily can’t help but preen a little. It’s nice to know she isn’t just a glorified babysitter. “I’m happy to help,” she says, surprised by how much she means it. “Though that makes my question even more pertinent. Why the time crunch if you won’t have to present this for years?”

“The degree, the title, the deadlines… That’s just an afterthought for me. I love this research,” Pandora explains, her usually mild countenance burning with the kind of passion Lily knows all too well. “I want to, and I will help save the world with it.”

“Oh,” Lily blurts. “That’s quite ambitious.”

Pandora laughs at that, a bright, breathless sound. “Well, I believe you have to be quite ambitious if you want to make sun-fueled bacteria that can breathe plastic.”

Lily can’t help but laugh along. “That’s true.”

Pandora seems quite pleased with the agreement; a faint pink dusts her cheeks, and a slight skip livens her steps as she returns to her bench.

“How many more samples do you have to inoculate?” Lily asks, averting her gaze as she begins to gather her belongings.

“Just a couple,” Pandora replies. “I know it’s late. I can survive on my own for a bit if you want to go home.”

As if on cue, the sound of shattering glass tears through the lab. Lily whirls around to find Pandora staring at what used to be a bottle of ethanol, now puddling across the floor among amber glass shards.

“Oh,” Pandora breathes, shrinking her shoulders.

Lily quickly assesses the damage. Pandora isn’t hurt, the liquid didn’t spill over any cultures, and the burner is still unlit. The only losses are cheap solvent and glassware. It’s an accident born out of the carelessness that sets Lily’s teeth on edge, but Pandora looks so forlorn about it that Lily moves to grab cleaning supplies without a word of admonishment.

Pandora rushes to help her, and they clean in tandem, shoulders bumping and the scent of ethanol burning in their nostrils.

“Thanks,” Pandora says once all the evidence disappears into the hazardous waste bin, “for not yelling at me.”

That gives Lily pause. “Did you think I would?” she asks, almost offended. Lily might be stern, but she’s never yelled at a peer, not even those who committed much grosser mistakes.

“People usually do.” Pandora shrugs, shoulders hunched still. “I try not to be such a mess, I just… am.”

Lily watches her, and something tightens in her throat. Pandora is so unapologetically herself, it’s uncanny to see her so subdued.

“You’re not a mess,” she says before her brain agrees with her tongue. “You just made one, but it was an accident.”

Pandora stares at her.

Those bright blue eyes make Lily’s skin feel strangely thin. She clears her throat. “I mean it, you’re a good researcher. You are doing something most tenured professors in this department wouldn’t even try. That’s what matters most.”

The words don’t earn the smile Lily expects. Pandora averts her gaze, surprised and almost bashful. “Thank you,” she whispers. “You’re much nicer than you pretend to be.”

Lily huffs. “Don’t spread that around,” she orders, voice softer than she intends. “C’mon, finish your inoculations so we can go home.”

Pandora grins, at last. “Yes, ma’am.”

·:❀:·

They grow friendlier in the weeks after that, though Lily wouldn’t quite call them friends, not until a particular stormy night.

The rain starts just as Lily finishes locking up the lab; a sky-splitting downpour that covers the street and turns the gutters into river rapids mere minutes after the first drop falls. She wrinkles her nose in mild annoyance, as if the weather is a personal offense. The forecast did not warn her of such a storm, only a mild drizzle. Lily has her umbrella, and her boots are mostly waterproof, but some water is bound to weasel its way to her clothes while she walks to her car.

Alas, there is nothing she can do about it now.

She braves her way outside the building, wondering if she can get away with running down the front stairs without slipping. Lily ultimately decides it is better not to risk it. She is almost at the bottom when she hears a defeated little noise, barely audible against the raging rain.

Pandora stands beneath a tree that does little to protect her, head tilted toward the sky, hair flattening into pale, almost gray ribbons against her face. She isn’t wearing a jacket, and her socks are already soaked through her scuffed canvas shoes. She is unsurprisingly unprepared.

In long, hasty steps, Lily moves toward her until they are both sheltered under her umbrella.

Pandora blinks at her through wet lashes. “Oh. Hello.”

“Hey,” Lily greets, though they’ve said goodbye just minutes before.

“I forgot my umbrella.” Pandora grins sheepishly.

“Of course you did,” Lily says, but it comes out teasing instead of judgmental. She wraps one arm around Pandora’s bony shoulders so they can fit better underneath the portable, compact umbrella. It feels awkward until Pandora nestles closer in search of warmth. “Come on. You’re soaked.”

“I meant to bring it,” Pandora continues as they fight the waterlogged sidewalk to reach the parking lot. Lily can feel the ghost of the words against her neck. “The umbrella, I mean. I checked the weather, so I put it next to the door and everything, but then I remembered I’d left my lunch on the counter, and when I went back for it, I… Well, you know how it goes.”

Lily doesn’t, not really, but she only hums in acquiescence. “Where are you parked?” she asks, craning her neck in search of another car, but her beat-up hatchback is the only one left in the lot.

“I’m not,” Pandora replies. “I don’t have a license. Can you drop me off at the bus stop, please?”

“What?” Lily asks, bristling. “I’ve seen you get into your car before!”

“Oh, that was my friend’s,” Pandora explains, shivering against Lily’s side. “He likes to stay late, too, and always gives me rides, but he had a date tonight.”

It makes sense, now that Lily thinks about it, because Pandora might be the last person who should be behind the wheel. “I’ll drive you home, then,” she says, fumbling with the key fob inside her pocket to unlock the car.

Pandora turns to look at her, blinking hopefully. “Really?”

Lily averts her gaze to open the passenger door. “Unless you’d prefer to catch pneumonia at the bus stop.”

“No, no. Pneumonia sounds dreadful.” Pandora shudders, goosebumps rising in her forearms as she climbs inside the car. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Pandora lives near the campus, so it’s only a ten-minute drive, even if out of Lily’s way. Her building is old, the kind with tall windows and sprawling balconies but no lift.

“Do you want to come in for a bit?” Pandora asks when Lily parks in front of it. “You could wait out the worst of the rain. It must be awful to drive like this.”

Lily hesitates. She already has evening plans that involve a scalding shower, leftovers, and writing her thesis. However, the unrelenting rain prevents her from seeing more than a meter of the road ahead, and the streets are perilously close to flooding. It’s only logical that she waits, right?

“Okay,” Lily relents.

“Great,” Pandora says with a smile that lasts even as they climb the many stairs, wet shoes squeaking.

The flat itself is a bit more modern than the building, every inch covered in the sort of softly colorful, cozy decor that Lily has saved in many Pinterest boards but never found the time to replicate. The furniture is tastefully mismatched, and most available surfaces are covered in plants, from herbs on the windowsill to a succulent terrarium on the coffee table and even a potted lemon tree in the corner.

“You live in a jungle,” Lily comments playfully.

Pandora shrugs off the excess water like a disgruntled cat and kicks off her shoes, leaving them next to the forgotten umbrella propped against the wall. “I like the company.”

Lily steps inside, unzipping her jacket. “You must have quite the green thumb to care for them all,” she continues, almost jealous. Every single specimen is verdant and vivacious, even if wild and unpruned.

“Not at first,” Pandora admits, padding into the kitchen. “I had to do a lot of research about each species. They have such different needs! Some almost died. It was quite awful, but I figured it out eventually.”

Lily can’t relate to that. “I’ve killed three cacti,” she says with a grimace. “I heard they are quite independent, but turns out they are not that independent.”

Pandora’s laugh echoes from behind a cupboard. “I promise not to judge you for it. Tea?”

Lily nods, then belatedly realizes Pandora can’t see her. “Yes, please.”

She watches as Pandora puts on a kettle, bustling around the small kitchen much like she does in the lab. She prepares two mugs, mismatched and hand-painted; one has golden stars all over, and the other has a badly-drawn slug above the words slow and steady and slimy.

Lily is offered the stars, then settles on the couch to nurse her drink while Pandora disappears into the bedroom for a quick shower and dry clothes. She returns wearing pink fleece pajamas and her hair precariously wrapped in a lopsided towel.

“More tea?” Pandora asks.

“No, thank you,” Lily replies. “I’m good.”

Pandora hums, folding her legs beneath her as she joins Lily on the couch. She doesn’t say anything else, content to watch as Lily finishes the beverage. It should be uncanny to have those large blue eyes locked on her, but Lily doesn’t feel uncomfortable, only… self-conscious.

Lily glances at the plants again, hoping the flush in her cheeks can be blamed on the heat from the tea. “Why so many?” she asks because it’s the first thing that comes into her mind.

“Well,” Pandora sighs, then scoots closer as if to spill a secret. “I wanted a pet — a cat or maybe a rabbit — but it wouldn’t be fair to adopt one when I can’t properly care for them with my hours at the lab.”

“Oh,” Lily blurts; that’s remarkably responsible. “So, the plants are…?”

“A compromise, but don’t tell them that,” Pandora whispers. “They don’t mind if I’m gone all day as long as I give them what they need when I’m home. It’s nice to have something alive waiting for me, waiting for my help to grow and flourish.”

Lily remains quiet for a minute, brows furrowed as she swirls around the tepid few sips left in her mug. It’s nice tea, some floral blend she doesn’t recognize but feels familiar still.

“You care a lot about everything,” she says at last. “Plants, slugs, bacteria, the ocean, the world.”

“I suppose I do,” Pandora hums.

“Doesn’t it get exhausting?”

Pandora seems genuinely startled by the question. “Sometimes,” she confesses, “but someone has to care, and I’m happy to do it. I would care even if I knew how not to.”

That lands heavier than Lily expects, a bone-deep sort of confession that isn’t dramatic, just sincere. “If it helps,” she finds herself saying. “I care, too. Maybe not about everything, but…”

“Oh, I know,” Pandora says, lighter now. “That’s the only reason I let you clean the slug tank.”

Lily laughs. “Quite an honor.”

“It is,” Pandora confirms, no trace of sarcasm in her voice.

Silence lingers for a moment, only broken by the rain that has now faded from torrential to a dull patter against the windows. Lily watches the towel slowly slipping from Pandora’s head, revealing soft blonde wisps, still damp. She clears her throat and checks the time. It’s later than she thought.

“I should go,” Lily says, even though the couch is soft and the room is warm and she doesn’t quite want to leave.

Pandora doesn’t argue. She only nods and walks Lily to the door, barefoot on the wooden floor. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Thank you for the tea.”

“Anytime,” Pandora says, and it sounds like more than a mere pleasantry. “Text me when you get home?”

Lily smiles. “Will do.”

·:❀:·

After the precedent is set, Lily drives Pandora home every other night. Regulus, her usual ride, might like to stay late, but Pandora often tears herself away from her work only because he texts her that he’s leaving. When Lily notices this, she offers to take her instead, claiming it isn’t much of a detour. (It is.)

The arrangement is not quite as altruistic as it seems. Despite her incessant attempts to be a morning person, Lily has always thrived in the small hours of the night, and she’s not above abusing her position as the department’s darling to stay past the appropriate time. It is validating to have Pandora there with her; they both enjoy the peace that can only be found when the lab is drenched in silence that only exists when the rest of the campus has long since been vacated.

Lily doesn’t think it’s peaceful tonight, though.

It’s after midnight, the silence is a constant pressure in her ears, and the overhead fluorescents have started an annoying flicker, as if the bulbs themselves are losing interest.

Her eyes sting.

She’s been staring at the same line for what feels like an hour. She changes the word notable to significant, then back again, then deletes the whole sentence and tries to rewrite it from scratch. It ends up reading worse.

Her thesis is finished. Lily has already gone through Slughorn’s suggestions for improvement in her final draft, few as they were. She should let the paper rest, but she still has a couple of weeks until the deadline, which means triple-checking every citation and obsessively fine-tuning her wording until she can no longer tell a good sentence from a bad one. It’s all just letters now. Vowels and consonants and punctuation marks drifting around her brain like soup.

She presses her fingers to her eyelids until they burst into a kaleidoscope.

“Lily?” comes a quiet voice.

She lifts her head, blinking blearily. Pandora is sitting on the floor near the simulation station, laptop open in her lap, knees drawn up beneath her like a child on a play mat. Her braid is half-unraveled, a few blonde strands curling around her cheeks, and her oversized jumper in lemon yellow has its sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

Pandora looks infuriatingly cozy.

“You okay?” she asks, gentler still. “You’ve been glaring at that screen for a while.”

“I’m editing,” Lily mutters.

“Are you, though?”

Lily frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Pandora tilts her head, watching Lily, much like she does her slugs when they are particularly uncooperative. “You’re not editing. You’re spiraling.”

“I am not spiraling,” Lily argues, though her haughty tone sounds only exhausted.

“Maybe it’s time to give it a break,” Pandora insists, then waves a hand to call Lily over. Her nails are covered in glitter polish this week. Lily watches the dancing sparkles until Pandora sighs. “Come over here. I want to show you something.”

Lily doesn’t move at first. She stares back at her glowing screen, cursor blinking at the end of a paragraph she’s rewritten five times tonight.

“I could really use your help,” Pandora adds.

That, more than anything, snaps Lily out of it. She closes her thesis and finds her way to where Pandora awaits with her laptop half turned toward Lily. The simulation window is open, half the screen cluttered with raw data and code annotations, the other half frozen mid-render.

“I’ve been trying to model the chloroplast behavior post-plastic-breakdown,” Pandora says, tapping a key. “But it keeps destabilizing after the third cycle. I’ve run it with every adjustment I could think of, but the efficiency still dips to negligible.”

Lily folds her arms, watching the animation loop on-screen. “What about the electron transfer?”

“Stable. Mostly. It’s the carbon fixation step that breaks.”

“What are your input parameters?”

“See for yourself.” Pandora hands her a sheet of loose paper covered in three colors of pen and decorated with a sticker of a very angry-looking daisy.

Lily bites back a smile and scans the data.

They start from the beginning. Lily sits beside her, skimming logs and tracing the lines of code dictating the simulation loop. Pandora talks through her logic, which comes out in half-thoughts that Lily somehow follows. It’s madness, but somewhere inside that madness is something. Insight.

“Wait,” Lily says suddenly, grabbing the mouse. “What if you’re hitting a metabolic bottleneck because the plastoquinone is maxed out too early? You’re pushing too much energy into the system without allowing it to offload.”

Pandora blinks. “So, I should add a regulatory loop?”

“More like reroute it entirely.” Lily frowns, dragging open a secondary window. “Let it cycle through a slower channel after the second reaction, like a controlled exhale. It’s breathing, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” Pandora’s eyes light up. “Yes. Yes. That might actually work.” She scrambles for her keyboard, typing away with frantic joy. “Okay, okay, let me just— Hold on—”

Lily watches her for a moment, then leans in. “That input order’s going to crash your whole system.”

“Damn it.” Pandora backspaces furiously. “You’re right.”

“Let me do it.”

Their fingers brush as Lily takes the keyboard, and something sparks in the space between them. Just a flicker. Barely noticeable. Except Lily does notice it.

She clears her throat and focuses on the code. “You spelled ‘chloroplast’ wrong. Twice.”

“Intentional,” Pandora says, chin on her knee now. “That’s the string tied to the data set. I have to remember it every time when I’m typing, and it keeps me from slipping into autopilot.”

“It makes sense,” Lily sighs, “and I hate that it makes sense.”

“No, you don’t.”

They work like that for a while. Lily types, Pandora guides, and both of them grow giddy with anticipation. It’s late, they’re exhausted, and maybe hysterical, but it doesn’t matter as energy crackles between them every time their thoughts overlap.

“Okay,” Pandora breathes. “One last try.”

Lily hits the return key.

The simulation runs.

The chloroplasts cycle through once, then twice. Lily waits with bated breath for the third loop.

She blinks at the screen. “That’s… is that right?”

Pandora doesn’t answer. She only watches as the output curve rises, plateauing at a higher efficiency than predicted, going far past the third cycle. Her breath stutters. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” Lily echoes. “It worked.”

They stare at the screen, motionless, then turn toward each other at the same time.

Pandora’s face is full of relief and wonder. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted slightly, and she’s looking at Lily like she’s something rare and remarkable, like she has a greater part in this than an obsession for lab safety and one disruptive suggestion.

“Lily,” she says, voice almost too quiet to hear.

Pandora’s eyes are very blue.

Have they always been this blue?

Lily swallows. “Yeah?”

Pandora doesn’t finish the thought, maybe she doesn’t need to. Whatever hovers between them is beyond the spoken word.

They just sit there, staring at each other, breathing in the discovery and the quiet.

Lily looks away first. She exhales a stuttering breath. “You should save the output before the program crashes.”

Pandora smiles. “Good idea,” she agrees, but doesn’t move. Not for a long moment.

·:❀:·

In the weeks after the simulation breakthrough, Lily’s brain often wanders to the department’s moniker for Pandora: the lab witch.

It started as an unkind and dismissive joke, and Lily hates that she once uttered it as such. She wants to find the people who came up with it and shake them until they realize they will never be the tiniest fraction of the scientist that is Pandora Lovegood.

Lily watches her now, leaning over one of their test subjects, humming and telling the bacteria just how good they did as she scribbles a mess of numbers in her notebook.

The fond smile stretching on her face catches Lily by surprise, but she doesn’t bother to wipe it away.

Their research — and it truly is their research now — has been moving fast. The real-life bacteria increasingly behave like their digital counterparts, microplastics degrade, and stabilizing enzymes hold it all together. Every test is cleaner than the last, every control holds, and if Lily hadn’t believed in magic before, she’s not so sure now.

What she is sure, though, is that the lab witch’s powers are not limited to research.

Through the most intense, maddening, delicate stretch of her academic career, Lily hasn’t unraveled. Not once. Not even when she rewrote her introduction four times, or when her committee chair moved the defense date up, or when she spilled coffee on her notes at three in the morning.

Somewhere along the line, Pandora became the reason she hasn’t lost her mind.

It’s the eve of Lily’s thesis defense, and not one of the butterflies in her stomach is academic.

Lily shakes her head. It’s not the time for that.

While Pandora finishes labeling the cultures for incubation, Lily does her usual circuit of the lab, checking labels and lids to make sure nothing is leaking, bubbling, or otherwise threatening catastrophe before they leave for the night. They’re wrapping up at a reasonable hour since Lily needs a decent night’s sleep if she’s going to stand in front of a room full of experts and defend her thesis without dissociating.

“Ready to go?” Lily asks once she’s sure everything is in order.

“Almost,” Pandora chirps, “just one more thing.”

Lily waits by the light switches, watching curiously as Pandora retrieves a paper bag, which she had abandoned on one of the side desks earlier.

“This is for you,” Pandora says, beaming.

“Oh?” Lily takes the bag automatically. It’s heavier than it looks.

“Be careful not to hurt yourself,” Pandora warns.

Lily peeks inside warily, then laughs when she identifies the contents. Carefully, she extracts a cactus. It’s tiny, round, and spiky, resting in the center of a comically oversized pot hand-painted with dozens of brightly colored flowers.

The pot isn’t even the most remarkable feature of the plant.

Lily blinks. “Is it wearing a beret?”

“He’s French,” Pandora says seriously.

“He?”

Pandora hums. “His name is Regulus.”

Figure 3: Regulus, the cactus

Source: Author (2025)

Lily looks up, eyebrows raised. “Like your friend Regulus?”

“Yes,” Pandora confirms, “I thought naming him after someone you know might spur you to follow the guide and keep him alive, but using one of your friends as the metaphorical hostage seemed too aggressive, so I chose one of mine.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that. “Guide?” Lily asks.

“I wrote a guide on how to best care for him,” Pandora says matter-of-factly. “I’ll email it to you.”

Lily nods. “And the beret?”

“Regulus, the person, is also French.”

“Oh.” Lily blinks. That makes some sense. “Okay. Thank—”

“Paulo Freire was Brazilian, but I’m sure he wore berets sometimes.”

And Lily is lost again.

“Wait, what? What does Paulo Freire have to do with this?”

Pandora brightens. “It’s his second name.”

“The cactus?”

“No, Paulo Freire. His second name was Regulus,” Pandora explains. “Well, sort of. The spelling’s different because it was misspelled on his birth certificate. Did you know that?”

Lily suddenly feels… a lot. She inhales a deep breath. “Pandora?”

Pandora tilts her head, smiling softly. “Yes?”

“Thank you,” Lily tells her. She holds Regulus, the cactus, closer to her chest. “I love him.”

“I’m glad,” Pandora says, glowing with it. “He’s a good luck present for tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?

Oh, right. Her PhD thesis defense. Her entire academic career condensed into a couple of hours. Totally forgettable.

Get it together, Evans, Lily tells herself.

Lily does not, in fact, get it together. Pandora reaches out, layering her hand where Lily is holding the pot, and her brain bursts at the contact, reduced to fireworks in a very specific shade of blue.

“You’re going to be brilliant,” Pandora says, still smiling. “I know it.”

Thankfully — regrettably — Pandora retreats her hand. Lily misses the warmth, but it gets minutely easier to think.

“I appreciate the confidence,” Lily replies breathlessly. “I also appreciate everything you’ve done for me these past few weeks. You’re the only reason I’m still sane.”

Pandora giggles, light and musical as the loveliest of wind chimes. “I bet your past self would faint if she heard that.”

“Yeah, probably,” Lily admits. She laughs as well, her mirth mingling with Pandora’s.

Once it dwindles, Pandora says, “It’s exciting. Next time we see each other, you’ll be Dr. Evans.”

Lily tries to stifle the surge of… something when she hears the honorific in Pandora’s voice. She hums. “If everything goes right.”

Pandora leans forward, and Lily almost drops poor Regulus until she realizes Pandora is only reaching for the light switch. The lab descends into a soft penumbra, faintly illuminated by the glow seeping from the corridor.

“It will,” Pandora says, voice quite close to Lily’s ear until she fixes her posture. “I’ll be right here, working on our research, and rooting for you.”

Lily looks down at the cactus, the beret a inky smudge in the low light. “Will you come watch? My defense?”

Pandora jerks her head up. Her eyes widen like she’s just been offered a ticket to the next moon landing. “Wait— Can I?”

“Of course you can,” Lily replies, then adds in a rush, “If you want to.”

“I would love to,” Pandora says immediately. “I’ll be there.”

The next day, Lily stands at the front of the seminar room in her best blazer, her notes crisp, her slides clean. She presents her research with hard-earned confidence and nails every single question the committee sends her way.

Through it all, Lily ignores the smug little smile tucked under Slughorn’s bushy mustache. She knew he would be insufferable the moment a slightly winded but punctual Pandora entered the room, earning a fond head shake from Lily.

Scheming bastard.

·:❀:·

One thing about Pandora Lovegood is that when she commits to an idea, she commits. It’s one of the traits Lily admires the most about her until Pandora commits to calling her Dr. Evans.

Lily thought it would pass, an ephemeral teasing quirk that would fizzle out in a few days. She has no such luck. Every time she enters the lab, Pandora lights up like a stunning but mischievous Christmas tree and chirps, “Hello, Dr. Evans,” in a voice that sounds suspiciously like flirting.

The worst part? It’s doing things to Lily. Unacceptable things like making her blush and smile and hide away in the autoclave room to scream muffledly into the curve of her elbow.

Lily tucks away her feelings beneath professionalism and protocol, but her denial slowly slips through her fingers. Between late nights and breakthroughs, Lily has stopped thinking of Pandora as simply chaotic and brilliant.

She’s started thinking of Pandora as hers.

Well, hypothetically, potentially, hopefully. If Lily ever gets around to asking her out, which she won’t anytime soon because she might be the quintessential modern go-getter, but she’s also very aware that introducing romantic entanglements into their fresh and fragile lab dynamic is a terrible idea.

Her plan is to wait until the data is locked and the paper is ready. Then she’ll ask nicely, with a well-rehearsed speech and maybe some flowers.

Meanwhile, Lily looks forward to lab time as most people look forward to dates, quietly spirals every time Pandora says Dr. Evans, and bides her time.

Lily should know better than to expect Pandora to stick to the schedule.

Lily is halfway through cleaning the slug tank, gloved arms elbow-deep in saltwater. She is murmuring a reassurance to a particularly fussy slug when a loud yelp emanates from the main lab.

“Pandora?” she calls, alarm coiling in her gut.

No answer.

Lily yanks off her gloves and sets them on the edge of the tank. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll be right back,” she tells the slugs and bolts down the hall.

Pandora is standing by one of the main benches, utterly still. She’s staring between her computer monitor and a freshly printed test sheet, mouth slightly agape, face unreadable.

Lily’s steps slow, though her heart doesn’t, as she searches Pandora for signs of injury. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

Pandora doesn’t look at her, and when she speaks, her voice is oddly flat. “We did it.”

“What?”

“We did it,” Pandora repeats. She finally turns, and the shock on her face melts into something luminous. Triumph. “Lily, we reached optimal efficiency.”

Lily blinks. “What?!”

“Come here.”

Pandora shoves the paper into her hands. Lily takes it with slightly trembling fingers. She scans the concentration measurements in their last test tank. Once, then twice, slower because her brain refuses to believe her eyes because, holy shit—

“We did it,” Lily breathes.

Pandora chokes on a disbelieving sound and repeats, “We did it.”

Then they collide in a blur of limbs and laughter, almost toppling over from the momentum. Lily holds Pandora close, staring at her flushed face as the marvel it is. They spin, off-balance, and somewhere in the middle of it, Pandora kisses her.

There is no preamble, no warning, just a rush of joy, and then Pandora’s lips are on hers. They are soft and warm and—

Gone too soon.

Pandora pulls back, mortified. “Oh shit— I’m sorry, I—”

Lily doesn’t allow the apology to go any further. She grabs the front of Pandora’s lab coat and kisses her back.

This one is not soft.

This one is everything.

It’s eager and heady and slightly messy. Lily buries her hands in Pandora’s curls, dragging her closer, closer, closer, as if she could crawl inside her ribcage and live there forever. Pandora opens her mouth beneath hers, and she sighs into the kiss like she’s been holding her breath for weeks.

Lily forgets where they are. She forgets the lab and the dozen safety protocols they are violating by kissing in it. All she knows is that Pandora tastes like sugar-free gum and that Lily is never ever letting go of her.

When they finally break apart, breathless, Lily clutches at Pandora’s clothes and rests their foreheads together. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” she says.

Pandora’s eyes widen. “You have?”

Lily hums. “For weeks now,” she confesses. “Months, if I’m being honest.”

“But you— you never said anything,” Pandora huffs. “I’ve been flirting with you nonstop, and you never said anything.”

Lily can’t help but laugh at her disbelief. “I was waiting,” she explains. “I wanted to wait until we were done with the research before I asked you out.”

Pandora gasps, delighted. “Yes!” she shrieks, doing irreparable damage to Lily’s eardrums as she throws her arms around her shoulders. “Yes, I’ll go out with you!”

“Well,” Lily says with feigned seriousness. “I haven’t asked yet.”

Pandora squirms and drops her hold. “Then you just lost the opportunity.”

“Wait, no! I was jok—”

Pandora shushes her. She steps back and straightens her spine, holding Lily’s hands between them. “Dr. Lily Evans,” she says, solemn. “Will you go on a date with me?”

Lily doesn’t even hesitate.

“Yes, please.”

Pandora surges forward and kisses her again, and this time there’s no hesitation, no apology. Just hands and lips and something that feels a lot like falling.

Their research isn’t finished. They still need to run at least five more rounds before publication. The pathway still needs refining. Their bacteria might mutate under stress conditions and ruin everything.

It doesn’t matter.

Lily has a breakthrough in her pocket, the taste of Pandora Lovegood on her tongue, and a cactus in a beret waiting for her at home.

She has everything she needs.