"Prongs…you didn't. There is no way. You just couldn't have."
If James had been in a better mood, he might have laughed at the Peter's shocked expression. Or smiled back at Remus. Bad mood or no, however, he could not have begun to fathom the look of glee on Sirius's face. If anything, he had expected his best friend to be rather distressed by the news.
"Congratulations, James," Remus said. He sounded sincere, but the corner of his mouth was starting to twitch. So James waited. Three…two…one… "You're going to have a great time working with Lily this year."
Remus clearly expected James to have a much more interesting reaction to this, judging by his tone, but in this case James was happy to disappoint.
"I know," he muttered. "Lily told me in a letter earlier this summer. We've talked a bit."
"How did she take the news then?" Peter asked, still staring at the Head Boy badge on James's robes as though it were about to attack him.
"She, err…" James took a deep breath. "She doesn't know. I didn't say anything, and it's not like she had a good reason to ask me who – Sirius, what in the name of all that is good and right in the world are you doing?" He had spent the past few minutes doing his best not to look at his best friend and his best friend's shit eating grin, but when Sirius started to squirm, James really had no choice.
"Oh this just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?" Sirius's face was contorted in the kind of smirk he usually reserved for getting the upper hand in a duel.
"What are you on about?" James snapped. He was not in the mood for this. He had just recently discovered that he was going to actually have to punish rule breakers. With Lily. Who hated him. Or sort of hated him. Or at least wasn't in love with him like he wished she would be.
"You don't remember?" If it were possible, Sirius's grin would have gotten bigger. "Really?"
"I have no earthly idea what you're talking about. Do either of you?" James demanded, turning to Remus, whose watching this exchanged with raised eyebrows, and Peter, who was still gaping at the Head Boy badge.
"Does Dumbledore know you're the one who always puts a mouse in his tea cup on the first day of school?" Peter asked. He had apparently not been listening to the rest of the conversation.
Remus shook his head, exasperated. "I really don't know what either of them is talking about - although, someone is going to have to volunteer for mouse detail this year."
"Hang on a second. Sirius, no one has any idea what you're on about so you ought to explain yourself before I kill you. Remus, no one is taking mouse duty away from me. They can give me a badge, but they can't make me like it. And Peter, for Merlin's sake, I know it's astonishing, but close your mouth, you're freaking me out."
"Oh, this is going to be more fun than I think I can possibly stand," Sirius said quietly into the silence that followed James's outburst. He was still grinning.
"Will you please explain what it is you're talking about, before we actually see steam coming out of Prongs's ears?" Remus sighed, exasperated.
"Nope," Sirius answered firmly. "No way. If you guys don't remember, then you're just going to have to wait until we get to school. Then I'll have proof, and no one can get out of it."
Remus merely rolled his eyes in response. "Come on, James – we have to get you to the prefect meeting a few minutes early, or Lily is going to lose her head in front of a whole compartment full of people." And with that Remus stood up and pulled open their compartment door, with James following behind. James, however, paused at the door for just a moment to shoot a Jelly Legs Jinx at Sirius. The resounding "HEY!" and scramble for a wand made him smile, finally, as he slammed the door shut before making his way down the train.
When they reached the door that said Prefects' Compartment on the front, James stopped, waiting for a moment for Remus to enter first, as he was in front. But Remus just looked at him.
"Oh please, God, Moony, don't make me do this alone…" he groaned. Truth be told, he and Evans were getting along a lot better these days. One might be able to go so far as to call them friends. But that didn't mean he wanted to be the one to tell her she was going to have to work with a Marauder all year. Moony, however, didn't budge - didn't even change facial expressions. James sighed, rubbed at his temple with one hand and then pushed the door open.
In all honesty, he hadn't expected it to feel quite this dramatic. He and Lily had written each other over the summer. She had come to Sirius's birthday party in July and all the Gryffindor girls had met the Marauders in Diagon Alley when they had gotten their school lists. But the sight of Lily, standing by the window reading a piece of parchment, caused curls of panic to tighten in his stomach. She was biting her bottom lip, and she had kicked off her shoes in the corner of the room. As she leaned against the window sill, she rubbed one bare foot against the back of her calf.
James, who was normally brave and daring and loud as a good Gryffindor should be, found himself frozen to the spot. The very casual "Hey Lily," he was about to utter got stuck in his throat. They probably could have stayed there, in that silent moment forever, if Remus had not pulled the door shut with a very loud and violent click.
Lily jumped about a mile in the air, her hand flying to her chest in surprise. She whipped around quickly to see what had caused the noise and when her eyes found James's she relaxed, and sighed.
"Goodness, Potter. You scared me half to death. What are you…" but her voice trailed off as a glint of sunlight hit the Head Boy badge on his chest.
"Surprise," he said drily, glad to find his vocal cords working again. Lily burst out laughing - wild, gorgeous laughter for whole minutes at a time.
"Dumbledore is mad. I always suspected it, but never had proof until now," she said breathlessly, once she had calmed down, her voice lilting in a pretty and mocking sound.
"All the best people are," James answered.
"Fair enough. Since you weren't a prefect, why don't you just follow my lead for this first meeting, and then when we get to school I can go over everything in more detail," Lily said, shuffling the pile of parchment that was sitting on the main table.
"Uh, yeah…that sounds great." And with that baffled statement James sat down heavily in the seat behind him. Though the encounter had gone as well as he possibly could have hoped, he couldn't shake the feeling of being unsettled. The laughing made sense, but the good natured acceptance, the lack of lectures and rolling eyes - that was something from another Lily. Having achieved acknowledgment of her plan, Lily turned back to her parchment piles and didn't look up again until the prefects had started filing in a few minutes later.
A few of them sat down without a word, but the majority of them had something to say – either greeting Lily and sometimes James to share the requisite "How was your summer?" conversation, or exclaiming bitterly or brightly on the subject of James Potter's recent professional advancement. After a moment or two, James noticed that everyone who came in silently was wearing green and silver, and he felt his blood start to boil a bit. But before he could say anything, Lily got everyone's attention to begin the meeting.
He didn't pay attention. He made a good show of paying attention, nodding at varying intervals, keeping his eyes focused on sweeping over the room and watching Lily talk. But he isn't a Marauder for nothing, and the first skill they learned was how to make it look like they were paying attention when they were really doing anything but. Instead, James thought about Quidditch, about Sirius and his stupid cat that ate the canary face and about the first full moon in a couple of weeks.
He didn't think about Lily. He thought about not thinking about Lily. He thought that it would be a successful year if he could convince Lily that it was easy, effortless even, to not think about her. But he made sure to keep his thoughts away from how pretty she looked, how many more freckles she had and why she seemed to be fingering the bottom of her tie nervously.
So it wasn't until near the end of the meeting when Remus took a moment of increased chatter and cleared his throat that James noticed what was going on. The Slytherins in the back had taken to staring at her. Not blinking, not wavering even for a moment. Their faces, all six of them, ranged from outright malice to blank uncaring, but not one of them blinked.
A few minutes later Lily finished up and people began to pack away their things, talking animatedly about the coming year, the changes in policy and who exactly James Potter's parents bribed to get him to his current position. And the Slytherins were still sitting there, staring.
For a moment, James was uncertain as to what he should do. Lily had a habit of yelling at him when he tried to do anything remotely brave or heroic around her and he wasn't sure his headache could take that today. But when he looked at her, she was shuffling parchment around on her table, her fingers twitching nervously and a blood red blush was seeping up her neck and onto her cheeks. That decided the matter.
"Oy, you six – the meeting is over, didn't you hear?" He said loudly, walking up to the group of Slytherins. "You'd think you'd have noticed that, however, since you've been staring at the Head Girl for the past hour."
"Uh, Prongs…" Remus interjected warily. But James ignored him.
"That's not the Head Girl," said one of the seventh years, her voice oily and taunting. "Hogwarts has no Head Girl as long as Dumbledore continues to select those who are unworthy of their wands, let alone the Head Girl position."
For a second, her words hung in a completely silent room. Then, the few remaining prefects who had stopped to listen left hurriedly. What might have once been an entertaining confrontation had taken on a more malicious tenor since the Dark Lord's attacks had become more violent and more frequent over the summer.
When James answered them, his voice sounded as though low, cold fury was fighting with his urge to mock them. "Well if that's how you feel, then you obviously haven't noticed that Lily has the best marks of anyone in our year. Or maybe you have noticed, and you're all a bit jealous. It's not hard to see why. She's prettier than you, and smarter than you. And she's going to spend her whole life being way less imprisoned by you."
"Or she'll-" but the prefect didn't have the opportunity to respond, as James was not yet finished speaking.
"Regardless of the reason, you will all find yourselves in a very dangerous position if you so much as thinking of acting on your misguided idiocy. That will be all, now." Though the Slytherins still didn't move, one or two of them jumped when James leaned in close to shout his last word in their faces. "Shoo."
James was going to count that as a victory. They were no longer staring at Lily and a quick glance at her told him that she was no longer nervous. He was going to make some stupid joke that Lily would hate as he escorted her out of the compartment. Remus, however, had other ideas. He set their chairs on fire.
"What?" he demanded, as James and Lily stared at him incredulously, having just watched the Slytherins run screaming from the room and Remus casually put out the fire and restored the seats. "Is James the only one who is allowed to lose his temper?"
With all the excitement of the of the prefect's meeting to share, and the opening prank to plan, James had completely forgotten about whatever it was Sirius had been so gleeful about. Throughout the feast, the sorting and the annual placing of the mouse in the Headmaster's teacup, James Potter thought of little else besides returning to his bed, prepared to enjoy his last homework free night for a whole ten months.
So he was not so happily surprised to find that when he reached the seventh year boys dormitory, Sirius was sitting cross-legged on James's bed. From the knowing and wary looks on Remus and Peter's faces, James assumes that they know what has had Sirius grinning like an idiot for almost the entire day.
Without a word, a still grinning Sirius stood up and handed James a piece of parchment.
I, Sirius Black, bet that James Potter will be named Head Boy in his seventh year, due to his inability to fail tests, his strange bouts of responsibility and his inane desire to NOT get detention. If I should lose this bet, I promise to propose to Professor Slughorn in front of the entire school.
I, James Potter, bet that if any Marauder is to become Head Boy, it will be Remus, seeing as he actually follows the rules and McGonagall doesn't hate him. If I should lose this bet, I promise to…
"Oh no, Sirius. Oh no. No way, not in a thousand years." James looked up from the parchment before he had finished reading it. It wasn't as though he didn't know what it said next. The memories came flashing back to him. How in first year, he postponed a prank until after a test, how that seemed to infuriate Sirius, and how what started as an argument turned into a bet.
"Finish reading the parchment, Prongsy," Sirius said, his voice eerily triumphant.
If I should lose this bet, I promise to ask out Lily Evans in front of the whole school.
At the time it had seemed like the worst of all possible fates. Lily Evans was a nagging, bossy know-it-all who hung out with greasy Slytherins and made it hard for James to be the top of every class. He wouldn't have wanted to ask her out if his life had depended on it.
Now, it was even worse. He would desperately like to ask out Lily. Only he had sworn to himself that he would stop doing that because a) it annoyed her so much that he was afraid she would actually stop talking to him and b) it sort of felt like she was punching him in the gut with a rock every time she said no, regardless of how creative she was about it.
"You really can't make me do this. It's going to ruin all of the hard work I've put into making her not hate me," James pleaded, sitting down on the floor. The parchment was still in his hands. If Sirius were any kind of best friend he would see how much James didn't want to do this, and he would back off.
"I absolutely can make you do this. Besides, who is it that never backs down from a bet? You wore a tutu for a week in fourth year to make that very point. Where would all that hard work be if you backed off from this now?"
"Remus? Peter?" James begged, turning to his two other friends. They were both grinning, though Remus at least had the decent sense to look sympathetic. But they both just shook their heads.
"A bet is a bet," Remus said, taking the parchment from James's hands. "Besides, you might have better luck with her now that you've laid off for so long."
There it was – that fickle hope that seemed to spring into his chest unbidden for the sole purpose of being crushed later on. It sort of infuriated him. It was never good to snap at your best mates on the first day of school, but in this instance, James had no choice. His voice was too brittle and loud.
"I'm not doing it. Because she will reject me again, and then you all will be responsible for the death of my relationship with Lily which, right now is the ONLY good thing I've got, seeing as my mates are complete rubbish." And with that completely useless retort, he stormed out of his dormitory. He was half way to the Room of Requirement before he realized it was after hours and he had neither his map nor his cloak with him.
He was just about to head back to the Gryffindor Tower, skirting along the edges of the hallway so as to avoid Filch, when he heard someone call his name.
"James?" He turned to find Lily strolling up the corridor behind him. "What are you doing out so late?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he answered, smiling; but in his mind's eye he pictured the parchment and Sirius grinning. He wondered how he could get out of making her hate him again, without Sirius turning it into some sort of war of will power.
"They didn't have treacle tart at dinner – I was going to go try and find some in the kitchen. It's kind of a first day feast tradition for me." She paused her speaking for a moment and looked uncertainly at her shoes before looking back up at him. "Want to join me?"
"Uh…"
"No I'm sure you've got something up with the rest of your gang, haven't you? Maybe next time?" and then she was trying to slip past him. For a moment he just let her walk by, certain that any quality time spent with Lily would be a disaster. And then a voice that sounded suspiciously like Sirius echoed through his head "If you don't go after her, you incompetent, ignominious disgrace to Marauders everywhere, I will personally see to it that you don't can't play Quidditch for WEEKS."
There was really nothing else for it but to run after her. Even the Sirius in his head had a nasty habit of keeping his threats.
"Wait up, Lily," he called out, jogging up to her. She raised an eyebrow at what appeared to be a sudden change of mind. "I meant to say yes when you asked, but I was so startled by the Head Girl being out after hours that I was momentarily struck dumb."
"Well, James," Lily answered, smiling slyly. "If you knew anything about being Head Boy, you'd know that we have a later curfew than everyone else, as it is expected that sometimes we'll be in the heads' office, working very late."
It was here, he thought, that he might of once made a dirty joke about what exactly they'd be doing in the heads' office until the early hours of the morning, but last year, he had turned over a new leaf, and even though the joke was on the tip of his tongue, he distinctly remembered how much nicer it was to have Lily laugh with him than yell at him and so he aimed for a less offensive comment. "I guess you'll just have to teach me everything you know," he said, grinning.
"But I just know so much!" Lily answered, laughing. "That might take a very long time."
"Oh ho, who is the arrogant one now?" As the tickled pear transformed into a door knob, James pulled the frame forward and held out an arm to usher Lily into the kitchen. She glanced at him, nervously, to judge whether or not his comment was made goodnaturedly. Finding him still grinning, she smiled back and went through the door.
When he finally got back to the boys dormitory later that night, Remus and Peter were asleep. But Sirius was lounging on his bed, with the all-to-forced casual air of not waiting for James. He was reading the Daily Prophet, which had gone ignored that morning in the Potter household with all the excitement of leaving for the train station.
"Get off my bed, Pads," James hissed, pulling his pajamas out of his trunk.
"Now that's no way to greet your best mate. Where've you been?" Sirius made no move to get off of the bed, but he did fold up the newspaper.
James didn't say anything. Sirius knew exactly where James had been. He had the map after all, and it wasn't exactly like Sirius to give anyone any privacy.
When James didn't answer, Sirius continued. "It seems as if you and Lily are getting off to a great start this year. You spent a whole two hours together and you still appear to have your head."
James made his way into the bathroom. When he came out, Sirius had still not moved from his bed.
"One might go so far as to say that she's warming up to you."
James put his clothes in his trunk, being sure to fold them nicely, since he didn't have anything else to do at the moment.
"She might even like you."
James rearranged the pile of books next to his bed in alphabetical order.
"So why exactly is it you won't ask her out again?"
James took a deep breath. For a moment he considered just knocking Sirius off his bed. But then he answered and even then he wasn't really sure why. "Because according to that bet, I have to do it in front of everyone, and even if I didn't, Lily doesn't want to go out with me. Trust me, I've been on the lookout for it so long that I'd know if she did. And this is just going to ruin the precarious friendship that I've built with her. Don't. Make. Me. Do. This."
He said each word of the last sentence very slowly, with heavy emphasis, but the expression on Sirius's face didn't change. He was still grinning, sort of patronizing and sort of maniacal. When James had finished speaking he sat there in silence for a few minutes.
"James Potter never filches on a bet, right Prongs?" he said, his tone giving voice to his smile. And then he casually rolled off of James's bed and made his way to his own, ruffling James's hair as he went. When James had closed the curtains around his bed and turned off his light, with the understanding that now was the time for sleeping, Sirius broke the silence. "You've got by the end of All Saints to do it, Prongsy."
James shut his eyes. Something sort of like dread was curling in the pit of his stomach. Hours later when he had meant to be asleep, but wasn't, he thought that perhaps he should consider himself lucky. He was, after all, worried about what a girl would say when he asked her to Hogsmede (though he comforted himself in that he had two months left to convince Sirius that he was sending his best friend on a suicide mission) as opposed to worried that he was going to be attacked in his sleep. This didn't comfort him as much as it probably should have.
The next morning he woke up to a cheerful, patronizing grin from Sirius and a spike of anxiety. And the next morning it was the same, and the following morning it was the same. The mornings where he wakes up after a miserable hour's sleep after the full moon, the mornings he wakes up after spending hours in the heads' office with Lily (sometimes working, sometimes talking), the mornings he wakes up at dawn to lead his surly team in an extra practice, the morning he wakes up after their practices paid off in victory over Slytherin, the morning he wakes up to find itching powder sprinkled in all his clothes, the morning he wakes up early to make sure he catches every single Slytherin's sleepy eyed glare as they find themselves pursued by proposing suits of armor first thing in the morning. They are all the same.
Like the morning he woke up to find that their charms and potions had worked. Instead of putting his feet on the floor, he changed into the robes he had been hiding under his pillow and then gingerly stepped into the canoe next to his bed.
"POTTER!" Lily had yelled, her voice cracking in an effort to be as loud as possible. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Why, Lily darling, would you like me to canoe you to class?" he had asked, charmingly choosing to ignore her question.
"The professors have CANCELED class today, Potter, seeing as NO ONE can get out of their BEDS."
"That's not entirely true. Most everyone, fourth year and up, should have learned how to conjure a boat, and we left third year and below water slides and shallows because we weren't sure how many of them could swim. You have to admit that was mighty considerate of us." He was goading her at that point. But he hadn't seen her yell in a while, and it was much more amusing when she was treading water.
But if he had expected her to keep yelling, he was sorely mistaken. He wasn't the only one who had changed in the past year or so.
"…there are water slides?" she had asked hopefully. He didn't even bother to answer her. He just scooped her up into his canoe and spent the day as her personal gondolier just so he could hear her laugh wildly as she went round and round their slides, or smile brightly at him as he argued with the other Marauders about exactly who had won their race down the main staircase to the Entrance Hall. To high five her after they won their third chicken battle in a row was such a heavenly way to die.
Or the morning he woke up to Lily smacking him repeatedly because she had for some reason fallen for his logic that you can't study for a practice NEWT that's supposed to judge where you are. Otherwise you'd be cheating. She was sure she was going to fail. It was nice though, when Remus got some of her wrath for laughing at her. He had more than enough experience with James's pecuiliar brand of logic.
There was also the morning he woke to Peter and Sirius chasing Remus around the dorm room because he had charmed their robes hot pink and they couldn't figure out what the counter charm was.
But it's the morning he wakes up to violent headlines and black envelopes that finally changes his mind. Because this is a war, and wars are nothing if not clichés – men finding god and marriages made too young, divided siblings and sobbing mothers who must fight their desire to give in to save their children, soldiers who laugh at death and soldiers who run and friends who clasp hands and laugh as they face the onslaught of dark.
Lily was sitting next to him, on a bright, cold day in the middle of October, her hands gripping the table so hard that James was sure that she was going to fuse her skin to the thick wood below. Beside her Mary was trying to eat her breakfast as nonchalantly, as hopefully as possible, but her fork clattered dangerously against her plate as her hand shook. Marlene and Alice had guilty confidence plastered across their faces, impossible to deny or hide as their refuge was in their blood status. Sirius was mutinous, Peter staring blankly at his plate and Remus was in the hospital wing. James wondered if blind fear for his friends families was present in his expression or if he looked the same as Marlene and Alice, knowing his parents were safe and hating himself a little for it.
"It's safe," he said quietly to the table as Professor Dumbledore moved past them with his sheaf of black envelopes. The table was silent for a few minutes as Mary's fork stopped clattering and the rest breathed shakily in relief or continued to stare mutinously at the table across the way.
"We'd better go talk to Dumbledore, James," Lily said after a minute. He could detect the leftover fear in her voice, the shades of tremulous relief she was trying to hide, but he figured that was probably only because he knew Lily's voice better than his own. "I think some prefects got letters, and he'll probably want us to help with some of the younger kids when they get back on the train to go to the funerals."
She stood up, and James was about to follow her when sparks started shooting out of Sirius's fingers, one of them catching on a napkin and lighting it on fire.
"On second thought," she said quietly. "Why don't you stay here? I'll let you know if I need anything." And with that she was gone and James was left to sit next to Sirius, his hand on his friend's back, grateful for the wall behind them so that Sirius wouldn't get embarrassed and shake it off. It was a full minute before the sparks stopped shooting out, and only then did James's suggestion of visiting Remus before their first lesson have any hope of succeeding.
Later that night, he found Lily alone in the heads' office.
"You alright?" he asks after a moment of protracted silence. She doesn't seem alright. But she hasn't lost anyone today and her eyes were clear and dry and so he really couldn't be sure.
"Today was bad," she answered. "Today was awful because it was such a big attack. The Daily Prophet said it was probably an initiation event since it was so widespread. And since it was an initiation, the new Death Eaters were probably going after their old Hogwarts fellows' families."
James didn't quite know what to say about that. He hadn't read the article; he had been too busy making sure Sirius didn't kill anyone. He opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out, but Lily continued to speak, her voice dry and detached and the most terrible thing he's ever heard.
"But every day is like that, you know? Every day is the same awful anticipation and the shaky, temporary relief, and then guts wrenching nerves. And it completely and totally sucks, and is exhausting and I can't sleep." By the end, her voice started to take on some feeling, some emotion until it spiraled into this desperate pleading so that he couldn't possibly hold himself back.
After a moment she was in his arms, sobbing and he was doing his best not to grip too hard. It took until her violent shaking had stopped, for her hiccupping sobs to fade before he was able to think of something worth saying.
"I would carry that for you, if I could," he said quietly. She stilled completely. He knew she was listening. "And really, it sort of kills me that I can't. But you can hold my hand and break my fingers anytime you want."
She rewarded him with a soft watery laugh and a kiss on the cheek. He made up his mind right then and there that Sirius was actually a genius. Of course, Sirius would have to live his life completely ignorant of this fact because James wasn't stupid, but it was enough to feel a kind of grudging admiration in his head for a month and a half's worth of waking up to stupid, knowing and patronizing grins.
It was another two weeks before he actually got around to it though. He delighted in making Sirius nervous. The patronizing grins became slightly more nervous as the boy wearing them had to decide exactly what he was willing to put his best friend through, and how exactly he would go about making him comply with the terms of the bet. Plus, James wanted to do it in front of every single person in the school. Everyone in the school deserved a laugh at James Potter's inevitable humiliation, or deserved to know that James Potter wouldn't back down from a fight just because the world had gotten so dark and serious. Here's lookin at you, Snivellous.
It was the night of the Halloween Feast and she sat down right next to him in the space left by the sixth year girl along the table. Sirius was fidgeting and Remus and Peter were grinning, whether because they knew what was coming next or because Sirius was being ridiculous about this bet, neither of them seemed quite sure. It was only when the pumpkin pies had appeared on the table that Sirius, his nerves getting the better of him, elbowed James in the side.
"If you don't do it right now, I'm going to tell everyone that James Potter filches on his bets, and then I'm going to put a permanent sticking charm on you and…uh, hi Lily," he trailed off as he found her staring at him, her eyes narrowed and waiting for exactly who he was going to stick James to.
"What's he talking about, Potter?" she asked lightly. "I thought you were a Gryffindor and 's no honor in fliching…"
James only shook his head. "I'm sorry about this," he said. And then he stood up and climbed on the table, Sirius so very helpfully moving the pies out of his way. He got down on one knee right in front of Lily and clasped his hand in front of him. He only hoped that she would take this as the joke that it was and reject him lightly. And that Sirius would keep quiet over the next few days, because James might just need to take this self-inflicted humiliation out on someone.
"Lily, would you please do me the honor of putting me out of my misery and accompanying me to Hogsmede, not as a friend or as a fellow head student, but on an actual and hopefully romantic date?"
There were chuckles echoing around the Great Hall as he closed his eyes and screwed up his face, mock waiting for the blow that was in reality sure to come. It seemed as if the whole room was waiting with baited breath to see how exactly Lily Evans would say no this time.
"Yes."
The gasp that resounded through the room was audible. James's eyes flew open, his head jerked around to see whether or not this was a prank, cleverly concocted by his friends who might have been studying up on voice imitation charms without his knowledge.
People were talking excitedly. A few had cheered, a few had catcalled. Lily was staring at him, wide eyed and smiling and waiting for his response. She was waiting for him. As happened so often with Lily, however, his vocal cords seemed to be broken, swollen or snapped in two. He stared at her for a minute. And then he did something really, really stupid, considering his recent good fortune.
He kissed her. Only to find it wasn't really stupid at all. She kissed him back and he ended up with pumpkin pie on his knee and she had whipped cream in her hair from leaning forward.
When they finally broke apart, the whole Hall was cheering loudly. He got down from the table and sat next to her, weaving his fingers through hers, hoping against hope that his grin was neither as silly nor as stupid as it felt. His friends were grinning widely, high fiving each other and joking about a fifth marauder.
It was only then, only after six weeks of sort of hating Sirius and sort of dreading his stupid face, that James realized that his friend must actually, really, be a genius. He thought about telling Sirius this before realizing that Sirius already knew. How else could he have been so sure that Lily would say yes.