He notices her, yes, and he watches like she's some famed television program—television is all the rage with muggles, he knows this, and he wonders if she watches it in the house he's created for her in his mind, but never mind—he'd really like to brush the hair from her face right now, and James knows that's creepy as fuck but he can't help it. It's not in a creepy way anyway, he swears, it's just another night in the Gryffindor common room, the fire in the hearth painting the walls a crimson of remembrance, and he's a bit unsteady from the butterbeer at the Hog's Head, and a bit unused to talking how Sirius and all his mates want him to talk, they're all nudging him now and getting embarrassed and downright annoying if he admits it. James just lets it wash over him, blend with the flickering shadows on the wall from the flames so hot no one could touch them and live, and thinks. It's like he's in a different reality, and he's always made fun of those dreamers hasn't he, but tonight damn it feels right.
It's not really wrong, he thinks, as she settles her head in the crook of one of her elbows, pulling the other into an angle as a safety net, to think so much on one person. It's not wrong to dream the night away in whatever strange net he's been caught in. He realizes this is what is wrong with the world, that no one can relax and just accept their feelings to themselves, accept that they can want and want and maybe get nowhere, really.
James settles back against the wall, which for a dizzying second seems to lurch away from him in a sudden gesture, but he catches himself, and the light blazes so much more gold on some strands of hair than others, making him imagine a field of gold, a rainbow of sobriety that outpaces this drunken heave (Sirius told him to down four, and he did, he can't have people thinking he's never drank before, shit, even Remus has at his family reunions, but his parents were always old-fashioned). He imagines what it would be like to say something really hard to resist, would you come to me tonight, and he imagines it would be taken wrong (in that quiet rational part) but the other side of his brain screams at him no, there would be conversation and the brain dawns on an empty room, full of leftover party favors and the light from five million candles and talking, talking about anything and everything, because James has never before realized that he would really like to take his guts, pull that invisible zipper and let them just spill everywhere, all over her, oh gods.
She shifts in her sleep, head hung over the homework she's only halfway through, and James thinks he might just approach again, can I help you with that, tilt of the head, suave smile, only now it will be different, this time everything will be different, and Peter nudges him, elbow hard in his side and says,
"Come on, James, exploding snap tournament, and Sirius says you said maybe…you know, that thing we planned...prefect's bathroom tonight?" Peter tips him a lewd wink which can only look comical on a face such as his own, and James painfully commandeers himself back to wakefulness, back to propriety, back to the way things go.
"Uh, yeah, Pete, you know it. Afraid?" he manages to tip a wink and is insanely gratified by his body's own chemical instincts. I'm good, I'm really good. No one will know I'm a little you know. Peter turns from him, a testament to his thoughts, wearing a grin as broad as the room.
"Hey Padfoot! Hey, Moony, midnight is on."
Remus starts to say something that sounds like a protest, and James sympathizes in the off-beat warp of his slow-churning mind. The others are moving off now behind him, and he is not ready, not yet, but they are heading for the dormitory stairs and James trails behind them, leaving the fogged potential he can feel hanging in the air. And as they cross the threshold into the boys' rooms, he begins to feel an excitement for tonight, and scrabbles to collect what he can remember of all they have planned.
"Boys, it will be a prank like no other," he says, stage-whisper, and they collapse laughing, even Remus betrays a glimpse of a smirk. They 're collapsing on themselves, all alone in the dormitories, and James knows it will be a while before he allows himself to sleep, a while before he dreams. When he does, he is sure they will be dreams of the open hallways, forbidden passages, and the mess they are going to make of the Slytherin prefects. There is no recompense in dreams, no raging reality, no
fires burning in the depths of soft silken hair, the wheels of fate behind two closed eyes in front of a crackling fire. He cannot remember the verse he's heard it from, the particular poem of rhyme, but he remembers the line clearly as in childhood, reverberating through his suddenly silent mind:
Desires in dreams, nightmares make.
a/n: I own none of the characters, etc. etc. Tell me what you think.