Something More

by lone astronomer

Inspired by Might-Have-Beens by C. E. Grant, but you don't have to read that to understand it. It has Lily/Sirius written all over it... with a little bit of something more (James). Set in February of their seventh year.

Something More

~* - lone astronomer - *

Disclaimer: Everything property of J. K. Rowling, save the room behind the portrait of Sir Cadogan (which I invented, thanks muchly), and the idea, which I borrowed from Catherine E. Grant (yes, I did ask permission).

Random bit of info which you likely don't care about: I got a guitar the other day (yay!) so now my time is further divided. Heh, bet you're just thrilled. Janine keeps throwing her ideas for RoL4 (or is it 5? I've forgotten) into her trash bin and is cluttering up my mind because she's a lousy shot.

Author's note: I don't like this much; it turned out differently than I wanted it to but, maybe someone else will like it and leave me a nice review. I'm trodding on unbroken ground here, I think: has anyone actually tried to make Sirius hate-able before? Then again, it is yet another Lil/James fic, inspired by Catherine E. Grant's 'Might-Have-Beens' (which was awesome; go read it now!). McGonagall is a sort of, um, student teacher; she's about twenty-five but hasn't got the full-time teaching job yet. This one's somewhat 'She's All That'-esque; you can add it to the incredible, exponentially increasing list of movie parodies I've written, although the similarities aren't obvious at first sight. (Unpopular girl, incredibly popular male friend, betrayal by his friend, even 'sisterly' counseling by someone [jaws will drop] and a happy ending [NOT! We all know how the story goes].) Sadly, we won't be seeing James' backside, and there's no bet between bad friend guy and hero in my version.

Maybe next time.

This is also more angsty and a good deal less fluffy than I originally pictured. The introducing and ending scenes are written in the present tense, as are the first and last paragraphs of the actual fic, to fit better with Might-Have-Beens, which I'm acknowledging as canon. Without further ado…

Somewhere their speaking

Is already coming in

Oh, and it's rising at the back of your mind

You never could get it

Unless you were fed it

And now you're here and you don't know why

But under skinned knees and other

Skid marks

Past the places where you used to learn

You howl and listen

Send away for it

Echoes of angels that won't return

He's everything you want

He's everything you need

He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be

He says all the right things

At exactly the right time

But he means nothing to you and you don't know why

You're waiting for someone to put you together

You're waiting for someone to push you away

There's always another wound to discover

There's always something more you wish he'd say

He's everything you want

He's everything you need

He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be

He says all the right things

At exactly the right time

But he means nothing to you and you don't know why

But you'll just sit tight and watch it unwind

And show me what you're waiting for

And you'll be just fine with all of this, right

And show me what you're waiting for

Out of the island, into the highway

Past the places where you might have turned

You never did notice that you still hide away

Anger of angels that won't return

He's everything you want

He's everything you need

He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be

He says all the right things

At exactly the right time

But he means nothing to you and you don't know why

I am everything you want

I am everything you need

I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be

I say all the right things

At exactly the right time

But I mean nothing to you and I don't know why

-Vertical Horizon, Everything You Want

In a little town called Godric's Hollow, a fierce wind blows. It is a somber night, for the goings-on the previous few moments have stolen all joy out of it. Among the ruins of a modest household, silence hangs like a funeral shroud, only to be broken by sobs from one of two creatures in the night. One is a child, barely out of infancy, crying out into the night for he knows, beyond a doubt, that something is incredibly wrong.

The other is what used to be a man, reduced to little more than a shell, bent over a picture frame with a cracked glass pane. Tears fall like raindrops all around him, and even as the incredible sorrow threatens to overtake him, the memories swirl and dance inside his twisted mind. If any picture is worth more than a thousand words, it is this one…

*

She races into the Tower grinning hugely, blissfully unaware of how his heart constricts upon seeing her. Lily Evans stands in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, turning circles with her arms out at her sides. She laughs, perfectly happy, announcing to her best friend, "Sirius Black smiled at me!" as her heart threatens to explode.

Beside her, her best friend, also known as James Potter, gave her a weak grin, patting her shoulder. "Good on ya, Lil," he said, turning away quickly to hide the tears. He briskly walked up the stairs to his dormitory, answering weakly, "Homework," when Lily asked where he was going.

"Oh," she said, slightly deflated. "What subject? I'll do it with you."

"Divination," James answered, because he knew that Lily despised it and thus refused to take it.

James takes Divination? Lily wondered to herself.

He knew everything about her, especially everything that had anything remotely to do with love. And James knew that Lily could love him, and that they could live happily ever after.

Except that Lily loved Sirius.

"Yuck," Lily said, spotting Minerva McGonagall, the Transfiguration apprentice, and Remus Lupin some distance away. "I'll catch you later, then."

James never answered, but Lily, in her excitement, hardly noticed.

She'll never know how I feel, James berated himself severely. Not at this rate. I have to do something. A fat tear rolled down his cheek, and he swiped it away, having long given up on telling himself that crying was for girls and babies, especially where Lily was concerned. However, he missed the one rolling down the other side, which splattered onto his essay.

It was not, as he'd told Lily, Divination homework, and if she had paid him half the attention he paid her she'd have known that he'd dropped Divination at the end of sixth year, when Trelawney became suspicious about all the Grims she'd 'seen' in James' future. Instead it was Transfiguration, to be handed in to the apprentice the next day. He didn't blot fast enough; the last sentence smeared almost beyond legibility.

I have to tell her, James resolved for the third time that night.

But not until she's ready to know.

Sirius was back from detention (restoring paintings in the Charms corridor) when James came down again with dry eyes and a fresh handkerchief in his back pocket. Sirius waved a friendly hello, and James nodded back, hoping it wasn't as meek an expression as it felt.

Lily Evans could not believe her good fortune. Sirius Black, arguably the most eligible bachelor in the entire history of Hogwarts, contested only by Amos Diggory (who had long graduated) and possibly his best friend, James Potter, had just asked her out in front of the entire common room.

She'd barely had long enough to accept before James came down the steps from his dormitory. Her fellow Head Student was looking down, but Lily knew how to cheer him up.

Or thought she did.

Lily felt Sirius' fingers intertwine with her own and gave James a helpless, happy smile as he flopped into a nearby chair.

A hundred tons plowed into James' stomach and he sat, his head spinning. No. He managed a grin and hoped it wasn't as transparent as it felt. Still, the smile grew: at least Lily was happy.

That was something.

James spoke up, rising off of the couch again. "A new love interest, Sirius?" he asked, raising his eyebrows nonchalantly. They didn't know it, but it had taken years to perfect that look. He'd been working on it since he fell in love with Lily back in their third year.

Sirius grinned. "Jealous, are we?"

"Not if I get to give her away at the wedding." Lily's parents; James', too; had passed away the year before, bringing them closer together.

Lily smiled. "Done. James, you're my only friend."

Sirius gave her a cocky half-smile and James saw Lily melt again. "I wouldn't go that far." He planted a soft kiss between her eyes and Lily turned a perfect shade of pink.

James felt his heart splinter into tiny little pieces. When she's ready, he reminded himself once more before he excused himself to go to the kitchens. He knew he had to hurry before the tears overtook him again: he'd long given up on the reasoning that it was childish he should cry over her; he'd never felt so helpless in his life. It was turning out to be a very bad day.

"James?" Lily called, breaking contact with Minerva, slightly concerned. "Aren't you, oh, forgetting something?" she asked, mouthing, 'the cloak.'

James smiled to himself: perhaps she knew him better than he thought. "Oh yeah."

He came down from the dormitory wearing it, but never left.

He awoke the next morning to a sharp pain in his leg. "Ouch!"

Remus stood up quickly, cursing. "What are you doing down here, James?"

He pulled off his hood a bit sheepishly.

Remus, observant as always, said, "You were in here all night again, weren't you?"

It was hardly a question and James didn't bother answering. "Sirius snores," he made up an excuse, pulling his feet up beside him on the sofa. "What time is it?"

Remus, a notorious early-riser, answered, "Quarter to six."

James, feeling as if he had a very bad hangover (which might have been the case had he actually gone to the kitchens the night before), put his hood up again and started a fire in the grate. He shivered in the cold. "Wake me when it's time for breakfast."

For the next few days, James and Lily drifted apart. This was due to many factors: Lily's relationship with Sirius took up a lot of her time, but mostly the separation was because of James' sulking and suffering broken heart, not to mention injured pride and hurt feelings. It would be sacrilege to over-break a heart, to say nothing of pouring salt on the wound.

He saw them together occasionally; laughing in the common room, kissing in a dark corridor when they thought no one was watching. James had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yet it was not Sirius; nor Lily; nor Remus, whom James would have deemed most observant; nor even little Peter, who was more adept at figuring matters of the heart than anyone would have guessed; who broached the subject of his behavior first. Rather it was the Shadow Queen, someone James would have thought outside his circle of perception if she hadn't been instrumental in his education.

It started innocently enough…

Minerva approached him after a Transfiguration lesson, asking him quietly to stay behind so that no one would notice. James gave her a questioning look, wondering if it was something to do with the two percent he'd lost in the course in a matter of days.

It was not.

The Transfiguration teacher left the classroom, and Minerva closed the door behind him. Suddenly not very businesslike, she sat delicately on the edge of her chair, watching him with wide, catlike eyes for a moment. Finally, she pulled a piece of parchment out of her rucksack and smoothed it onto the table. James recognized it as the essay he'd written the night Sirius had asked Lily out.

Yet it was not the grade (a mere A, unusually low for James in Transfiguration, or indeed any subject) which Minerva pointed out. It was the smudge that encompassed the last two words. She said nothing, merely waiting for an explanation.

When James offered none, she spoke for the first time since closing the door. "That," said McGonagall gently, "is a smudge from a fallen teardrop, James."

James looked up from studying his hands, expression indicating that he felt about as guilty as a child caught stealing from his brother's piggy bank. "Is it really?" he asked mildly, feigning disinterest.

Minerva nodded once. "Do you have any idea who could have been crying on your homework, Mr. Potter?"

"No," James said sullenly.

McGonagall just looked at him- the look that expected him to confess.

Prongs decided that he didn't like her anymore. "Yes."

Minerva let out a long sigh and leaned forward across the desk. "What's the matter, James?"

He buried his face in his hands. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

James fidgeted. "It's hard to explain…"

"Let me take a shot. You like this girl-"

"Correction: I'm in love with her."

Minerva's eyes widened, but her tone did not change and she repeated after him. "So you're in love with this girl, one of your best friends, but she doesn't know. You've wanted to tell her for a while, but she was always going on about this other guy, who happens to be your best friend. Now she's dating this other guy, but you're still in love with her, and it hurts. On track so far?"

James looked at her, somewhere between shocked and resigned. "How did you know?"

Minerva gave an uncharacteristic and unladylike snort. "Just because Lily is blind doesn't mean that I am."

A long pause followed her words, and then James finally spoke. "What should I do?"

McGonagall closed her eyes, looking older and more tired than her twenty-some years. "I wish I knew."

Time, as it does not matter, passes indiscriminately when you're heartbroken, and James was. An indiscriminate time period later, he was startled from his poetry-writing reverie by a shaky breath and the quiet swinging shut of the portrait hole.

She stood there, pale and disgruntled and seeming somehow very small in the emptiness that surrounded her.

James' mouth went completely dry. "Lily?" He was on his feet before he even had a chance to think about putting away his work. Lily'd proof-read similar poems for him before, anyway- and somehow had missed the fact that they were all about her. "Are you-"

His voice broke at her blank look, and she was suddenly snug tight in his arms. "What happened?"

Lily could say nothing. Instead she only held him tighter.

Which was about the time Sirius, red-faced furious and perhaps even (Lily liked to think) embarrassed. James looked at him, then at Lily, and back at Sirius again, then gently untangled himself from her arms. He grabbed Sirius by the wrist and dragged him out the portrait hole again before his friend even had the chance to make a sound.

Outside the Tower, Sirius was about to be hit. Again.

"What," James asked, body stiff with a calm he hadn't known he'd possessed, "did you do?"

Sirius looked at him incredulously: James had never gotten 'involved' (as in, concerned himself with) Sirius' lovelife before. Taking the defensive, he raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Nothing I wouldn't do with any other girl-"

"Wrong answer," James said, grabbing a hold of Sirius' collar and slamming him up against the Fat Lady. "Lily isn't any girl."

Sirius shrugged, doing his best to look nonplussed when really his best friend seemed about to tear him to pieces. "Whatever. And anyway- she kicked me!"

James gave him a withering glare. "You deserved it."

"You don't even know what I did yet!"

James scoffed. "If that Earthbound angel in there just kicked you, then you deserved it. Don't you know anything about her? You're her first boyfriend, Sirius- it's supposed to be a good experience!"

Sirius shrugged again. "If she means so much to you, why don't you go out with her?" James said nothing as realization dawned on his friend's face. Sirius raised his eyebrows.

James gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

Sirius dissolved into a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush. Finally, "Oh…"

"Yes, oh. Now that I have your permission, I'm going back in here. And Sirius?"

Sirius looked up as James released him and let him slide down the wall to the floor.

"Stay away from that girl. Or I'll kill you."

James' anger vanished the moment he reentered the common room and saw Lily still standing there, forlornly. It looked like the initial shock of whatever-it-was had worn off, because instead of 'neutral' her facial expression read somewhere between 'heartbroken' and 'scandalized'.

James pulled her into a hug again. "I'm sorry. Did he hurt you?"

She shook her head no and James breathed a sigh of relief, stirring her hair. "Come talk with me a minute," he said, pulling her by the hand up the stairs of his dormitory.

It was when the door clicked shut that the floodgates broke.

Once again, like the countless times she had over the years, Lily found solace in James Potter's arms. Before, it had been other things which made her cry- the initial discovery of the cruelties inflicted upon Remus monthly had been a sore spot with her and had initially brought tears, as had news of the violent murder of their last Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and of their parents' deaths. And James had been there for her every time.

Yet this was somehow different. Matters of the heart: compassion, fear, and even the pain of losing a loved one differed from what she felt, and he knew her pain.

He knew, because he felt it every time he looked at her, every time she laughed, or cried, or smiled or breathed, he felt it. And now it felt like she was dying in his arms. They sat on his bed, Lily still safe inside James' embrace.

"Lily," James managed to say roughly, "tell me what happened."

So she told him. She told him everything: about kissing Sirius, about the room behind the portrait of Sir Cadogan, and about Sirius' improper advances.

Lily left out the details of her kick, but James inferred from Sirius' mood (and pitch) that it had been hard and well-aimed. And James thought to himself, He deserved it.

Lily's own tears subsiding, she noticed a sort of dampness atop her head and found, to her immense surprise, that James was crying. Concerned, she reached up and brushed a few salty droplets from his cheeks. "James, what's wrong?"

James laughed once, humorlessly, and looked away, using the back of one hand to wipe away the wetness.

When he moved his hand, Lily automatically shivered. It was an abnormally cold February and the window lay half-open, letting in a draft.

Sensing her discomfort, James put his arms back around her. Deciding to finally answer, he said, "I can't stand to see you hurt."

Oddly touched but incredibly unwilling to admit it, Lily reproved, "I'm a big girl, James; I can take care of myself."

He laughed softly. "But you'll always be my little Lily, and I don't intend on sharing anymore."

Such an only child there never was, came a thought that didn't quite belong to either of them.

Well, that was unexpected.

"James?" He smiled gently down at her and managed to give Lily's heart a squeeze, Sirius-style. Since when has he had that effect on me?

"Valentine's day is tomorrow, Lily," James said, gazing directly into her eyes. "And we are both, as far as I know, effectively Valentine-less. So… be mine?"

Just say yes, Lily told her pounding heart furiously. "Forever and always." She had the sudden urge to slap a hand over her mouth. She'd not meant to say that aloud…

James, looking every bit as startled as she, removed his glasses and peered at her more closely. He bit his lower lip. "Do you really mean that?" he asked.

His eyes are amazing, Lily thought involuntarily. Stop that. He's James, for crying out loud. Your friend. Remember? … "Absolutely," she breathed, still not quite able to understand the rapid beating of her heart.

And then he kissed her.

No way.

The kiss was unlike everything Sirius had shown her- lustful, passionate kisses between young lovers interspersed with somewhat less messy public affairs. This kiss was soft, delicate, a kiss between friends.

Or at least, it started that way. Kisses in fairy tales have a strange habit of starting out as something and turning quickly into something else. This time, when James drew away, the kiss ended: a kiss between two much more than only friends.

His lips left hers and Lily realized that she was holding his hand. Dark tan skin against perfect pale white, one could not exist without the other. With this realization came understanding, the understanding that things would never be the same. She voiced this opinion.

You've got that right.

James smiled wanly. "All for the better. Even if I will miss the 'good old days'."

Not much good about them, is there? As they leaned in for another kiss, however, Peter promptly lost his balance. He hung for dear life onto the windowsill above the door until Remus grabbed him around the waist and gently set him on the ground.

"Well?" someone asked, raising his eyebrows.

Peter looked from Remus to Sirius (who was waiting patiently and expectantly) on the other side of the landing. He thought to himself, He's going to be a bit disappointed. "Sorry, Sirius. See for yourself."

Sirius picked up the broomstick and floated up to the window above the door for his own peek, looking resigned and reproved as he landed again. He pulled a few coins out of his pocket and handed them to Peter, then gave a few more to Remus, who just grinned apologetically at him. "If I'd known I was going to lose, Moony, I never would've asked her out."

Peter, in an unusually poetic moment, said softly, "And that is the difference between you and James."

Sirius looked to Remus for an explanation.

"James would have fought tooth and nail for her. Because he loves her, Padfoot."

Sirius looked at his feet.

"And you don't."

Padfoot nods, and the three of them fade away into the background, leaving the landing by the seventh years' dormitories to commit some form of mischief in a less sparsely populated area of the castle, perhaps never to be the same again.

*

And in the wreckage a man thinks, But I did, Peter, and for that you will pay, and tucks a photograph with a broken glass pane, all that remains, back into her cold hand. In it, two seventeen-year-old lovers share a tender moment, neither looking at the camera but rather each at the other, lovingly. In one corner is a small, heart-shaped valentine with three little words, not quite what was to be expected yet somehow every bit as poetic.

Forever and always,

And, squeezed into the bottom of the photograph,

Lily and James

Somewhere, a baby cries into the night, grown men weep, and somewhere, a rat cowers in fear. Somewhere a man comforts his crying wife, for she despairs for their only son. Somewhere they two dance far into the night, somewhere they laugh at their friend's antics, somewhere they help each other with homework in a fire-lit room. Somewhere they kiss in a darkened hallway, without a care in all the worlds.

But we find them here, watching over the man and the child, and as fingers intertwine we hear him whisper, tears in his eyes, "Forever and always."

Would you know my name

If I saw you in heaven

Would it be the same

If I saw you in heaven

I must be strong

And carry on

Cause I know I don't belong

Here in heaven

-Eric Clapton, Tears in Heaven