Lily Evans had been shivering for well over half an hour, ever since she'd Apparated to the prison's official landing spot and had the happiness sucked right from the marrow of her bones. The chill that shuddered down her spine when she saw the prisoner she'd been sent to "interview" had nothing to do with the Dementors or the freezing, ever-blowing wind off the surrounding ocean, however.
He was huddled in the corner of his cell, knees pulled up to his chest, arms looped around his legs, head bowed so that long strands of tangled black hair – once silky and perfectly coiffed – obscured his face.
"Black," said the Hit Wizard sent to accompany her through the prison. He banged his fist on the bars of the cell. "You've got a visitor, Black."
Waiting for him to raise his head felt like the one time Lily had thought her sister was drowning. It took so long for the lifeguard to pull her up, to break the surface of the water, to help her take a shuddering, desperate gasp of air.
She shivered again as Sirius Black's tangled hair parted and his grey gaze met hers. There was a space of a breath in which they just looked at each other, her assessing, him stone-faced.
It had only been two weeks—two weeks of madness and cover-ups and inquiries, and God, the amount of Muggles that had to be taken to St. Mungo's for invasive Obliviation—
No. She wasn't here to call down judgment. She was here for the truth.
"I'm fine now, thank you," she said to the Hit Wizard. "Give me an hour with him."
The wizard looked between her and Sirius and nodded. "Sure. Just, er, don't get too close to the bars. Never know what a nutter like him'll do."
"Thanks," she replied, trying not to cringe. If he thought Sirius Black was a nutter now, he should've seen him in his heyday at Hogwarts.
Once the Hit Wizard was gone, Sirius pushed himself to his feet and sauntered over to the bars, every bit as arrogant and poised as he had been the last time she'd seen him, two weeks ago. Only now, his hair was unwashed and his skin had an unhealthy pallor to it. No matter how much he strutted, it couldn't be denied that Azkaban was taking its toll on him.
"Evans," he said, tossing her name out like a used napkin. "How nice of you to visit me in my new home. Do you like the decoration? I thought it was a bit drab at first, but I've found it's growing on me."
Lily frowned. The words were typical Sirius Black, but there was no spark of humor behind them, no life to give them buoyancy. It was like someone had taken the vibrant colors right out of Sirius and left just the line art.
"I'm here to interview you, Si—Black."
The corner of his mouth lifted and he grasped hold of the cell bars. Lily took an involuntary step back.
"Interview me? What, is Witch Weekly doing a spread on devilishly handsome convicts?"
"I'm here to write an exposé on your life. The Daily Prophet wants to know how you went from being the scourge of the noble house of Black to murdering one of your best mates alongside twelve Muggles," she countered.
Sirius leaned into the bars. "That rat bastard is not my best mate."
"Was," Lily corrected. "But it's funny you say that. Three weeks ago, you were best mates."
His jaw flexed. "Strange how things can change so quickly."
"It is, isn't it." She withdrew her wand from her robes and flicked it once while giving a silent incantation. "I hope you don't mind, but I'll be recording this interview."
Sirius waved a hand. "Be my guest."
Again, the words were all Sirius, but they came out flat, dead.
"I want to start at the beginning," she said, daring a step toward his cell. "What was it like growing up in the Black house?"
"Awful. Next question."
"No, no, it won't be that easy, Black. See, you're behind bars, without a wand, and with murder charges on your record, while I, though a Muggle-born, am allowed to be here as long as I wish to pester you with questions for as long as I wish." She gave him a sharp smile. "Now answer the question."
His eyes rolled toward the ceiling and he pushed off from the bars. "You know, for a ginger, you can be quite intimidating when you want to be."
"It's that whole lack-of-soul thing. I tend to find it works in my favor every so often."
A smile tugged at his lips. "Have you talked to James lately?"
The abrupt shift in topic sent her reeling. James? He wanted to talk about James Potter at a time like this?
Well, if that was what he wanted…
"We've been a bit too busy to get together and chat over tea and biscuits," she answered. "I don't know if you recall, but about two weeks ago, there was an attempt on a child's life and then you went a bit mad and murdered a handful of Muggles."
"I didn't—" He stopped and clamped his mouth shut.
Ignoring everything the Hit Wizard had said, she stepped right up to the bars and said, "Yeah, well, a lot of witnesses said you did, so if you want the chance to tell your story and prove your innocence, this is your best fucking shot, so get to talking."
His eyes flicked toward her wand. "Off the record."
"Sorry?"
Sirius swallowed and said, a bit louder, "If I'm going to tell you my whole life story, then it's going to be off the record."
"I'll still be reporting it," she warned him. "Whether I record it or not, it doesn't really matter—"
"Just don't fucking record it, Evans," he snapped.
Lily pursed her lips and flicked her wand again. "There. No longer recording."
For the first time she'd seen in—in years—Sirius slouched his shoulders and slumped down onto the edge of his cot. He'd always had an easy grace to his movements, a talent bred into him from years and years of aristocrats intermarrying, but up until sixth year, he'd always slouched and lazed about with his mates, all his breeding be damned. It had been four years since she'd seen him slouch. Four years he'd been holding his shoulders back and his head up, face blazing with determination and anger for institutionalized bigotry—bigotry he'd been raised to buy into, no less.
There was no way that man she'd seen him become was the same man who murdered thirteen innocent people.
"Sirius," she said, wrapping her fingers around the bars of his cell. "Tell me what happened. Please."
He leaned his elbows on his knees and nodded without looking up at her. "I will, just…just tell me about James first. I need to—I have to know he's all right before I—" He stopped again, a muscle in his jaw feathering.
Right. It made sense now, the abrupt shift in topic. She knew he'd moved in with the Potters in sixth year, and it wasn't hard to sort out why.
"I saw him last week," she said, gentling her voice and hoping he could hear that she understood exactly why he needed to hear about James before he spoke about his family. "He's confused, Sirius, we all are. And you know how he gets when he's confused."
Sirius huffed a short, half-hearted laugh. "So, he's on a rampage and starting fights with anyone and everyone stupid enough to engage him."
"On the nose."
"Idiot."
"Can you blame him?"
"'Course not." He lifted his head and met her eyes again. "He's brilliant, you know."
She resisted rolling her eyes. Barely. "Fairly sure everyone knows that. He didn't exactly make it a secret."
"No, I mean—I know back in the day he was a bit of a—"
"Raging twat?" she supplied.
"Right, but see, that's the thing: he did keep his true brilliance secret. While everyone thought he was a raging twat, the three of us that had the privilege of being his mates learned that the one thing James Potter will never be is an actual twat."
"It would be rather physically impossible, yes."
Sirius gave her a dirty look and she mimed zipping her lips.
"You don't know – or maybe you do, I don't know what it was like growing up with Snape for a best mate, but for me, growing up in a household where I never knew if I'd be allowed to eat any meals if I stepped out of line—" He shuddered and dropped his head between his shoulders. "James showed me there was more to life than fear and pain and darkness. He showed all of us that, in one way or another. And while he could be a bit of a ponce, it was never—it wasn't really him. He liked a laugh, but more than that, he liked making us laugh. Always said he reckoned we needed it."
"I already know he's kind under all that pomp and arrogance, Sirius," she said, furrowing her brow. "I was mates with him, too."
Sirius didn't say anything for a long pause, and when he did it was with a muted voice that he asked, "Does he hate me, Lily?"
When Lily thought of James hating anyone, she thought of Severus, not Sirius. Yes, James was upset and bewildered, but Lily highly doubted he could ever grow to hate Sirius.
"I don't think so, no."
"It's not in his nature," Sirius murmured to himself. "But if he truly thinks I did this…"
"Sirius, were you abused by your parents?" she asked, deciding to be blunt rather than dance around the topic.
"Depends on your definition of abuse," he replied, looking up at her through the tendrils of hair that had fallen in front of his face. Something in his eyes spoke of relief for the change of subject. Recalling his childhood was, apparently, less painful for him than the thought of his best mate hating him.
"Were you beaten?"
"Physically, no. Mentally, debatable."
"Yelled at?"
A caustic grin hooked the corner of his mouth. "That's putting it mildly."
"You said 'allowed to eat' just now. Were you refused food? Why?"
"Any number of reasons," he answered, grin drooping. "Usually it was for mouthing off, but every so often, it was something as simple as walking into a room uninvited."
Lily conjured a chair for herself and sank into it, knowing, somehow, that the deeper she dug, the more she would need the seat.
"How old were you when your brother was born?"
"Three."
"Did they treat him the same way they treated you?"
Sirius shook his head, mouth pressed into a thin line. "He learned from my mistakes."
"Meaning?"
His eyes were hard and cold as the stones beneath her feet. "Meaning I took the blame for him every chance I got."
"Your parents must not have liked that."
"My parents never knew," he replied sharply.
Taking a breath to settle her nerves, Lily leaned forward in her chair and clasped her hands between her knees. This was a stupid risk she was taking, talking to him as if any of this would ever reach the ears of the wizarding world. But Dumbledore—and James—had insisted she was the right one for the job. Her cover of working for the Daily Prophet as a journalist probably had a lot to do with that decision; she was the only one who could get inside Azkaban to talk to Sirius without raising suspicion, but that didn't mean there weren't still eyes and ears on her at all times while she was there.
"What beliefs did your parents push on you?"
"The typical pureblood rot," he answered, tucking his hair behind his ears and sitting up straight. "Pureblood wizards are better at everything, it's disgusting to mingle with those lesser than us, and anyone who chooses to consort with lesser mortals is a filthy traitor."
"So, you were raised to believe that people like me shouldn't even be allowed in the wizarding world for fear of polluting the purity of the society."
"Yeah, but anyone who's seen you duel would have to be a sodding idiot to think you're not just as talented—if not more so—than all the purebloods I've met."
Lily allowed herself a smile. "Did you think that way before you met me?"
Grimacing, he leaned back even further until his shoulders bumped up against the stone wall lining the back of his cell. "I don't know whether I ever believed my parents' drivel, but most of the time when I argued with them over it, I was just doing it to make them angry. Technically, I've been touting Muggle-born rights since I was seven."
"A rebel since birth, eh?"
"That's me, Sirius 'Rebel' Black."
A small laugh escaped her—and no wonder: some of the life had returned to his voice. There was sarcasm where just minutes before there had been only void.
"When I met James, though," he continued, unprompted, "that all changed. I'd never really had friends before I met him—just cousins, most of whom were rubbish and believed all the same shit my parents did—so when James came along, it just made sense. He was lonely, I was lonely – we teamed up, without consciously thinking about it, to combat that loneliness."
"Sorry, he was lonely?" she asked, even though he was speaking so freely and her questions about James had absolutely no place in this interrogation. "James Potter? The James Potter, mischief-maker, Quidditch captain, Head Boy James Potter? He was lonely?"
Sirius nodded, solemn as the day he'd returned from an Order mission to report that the McKinnons were dead.
"His mum was estranged from her family, and his dad was an only child, and as they were both already quite old when they had him, most of their friends were older and had children already in school or graduated. His best friend growing up was a house elf named Leopold, and when that house elf died in the middle of our fourth year, I heard James crying himself to sleep every night for a week."
He looked at her like he was waiting for her to laugh, but it wasn't funny, not even a little. She knew what it felt like to lose a best friend and she knew what it felt like to lose a loved one without ever having the chance to say goodbye.
"So, yes, Evans, he was lonely. Loved and spoilt, but still lonely."
"Sorry."
"I told you already, he's brilliant. That first day on the train, I thought for sure I'd only get those few hours to be his friend. I thought I was going to be Sorted into Slytherin and I'd never see or hear from him ever again, but when I put on the Sorting Hat that night, all I could think was, 'Not Slytherin, anything but Slytherin. Please don't let me lose the only mate I've ever had.'" Sirius was quiet for a moment, gaze trained on her, but not looking at her. "I think, if I hadn't met him, I would have been in Slytherin and I would have been miserable. I may have even been best mates with Snape, and if that isn't enough to give you nightmares, I don't know what is."
"You know, aside from his malicious and bigoted tendencies, he wasn't all that bad."
His only response was a loud snort.
"Okay, he wasn't bad at all the first few years at school. He was the only person I knew in the wizarding world and he helped me transition. He was sort of the James to my Sirius, I suppose. He made sure neither of us was lonely."
He looked at her with something like pity. It took her a second to place it, and it hit her after a few moments of silence: empathy.
"Anyway, yes, I could have made better choices in friends when I was little."
"Not your fault," he reasoned. "As you said, he was the only wizard you knew. You had no idea I existed."
A smile pulled at her lips. "Are you saying you, the lonely, pureblood boy from a family of blood purists, would have made a better friend to me, a Muggle-born girl?"
"At least I never would have called you a slur."
"Ah, yes, the moral high ground argument from the bloke who helped rile him into a blind rage."
Sirius lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. "Doesn't matter how angry I get, I don't call anyone anything they don't deserve to be called."
"What about Peter?" she asked, not expecting his face to turn a bloodless white. "You called him a rat bastard earlier. What did he do to deserve that?"
In a move so quick and so fluid, it almost startled her into falling off her chair, Sirius stood and stalked over to the bars. He crouched in front of her, putting his face on level with hers.
"How much of him did you find?"
Mouth dry, Lily stuttered, "A-a finger."
"That's it? Twelve dead Muggles and a finger?"
"Sirius, what—"
"The Killing Curse doesn't make people explode, Lily, you know that as well as everyone else does. So why the hell were there twelve dead Muggles—corpses fully intact—and just a finger of Peter fucking Pettigrew?"
The shivers were back, not from the cold or the Dementors, but from the chilling look of deadly calm in his eyes. There was something he was refusing to say, because he wanted her to figure it out.
Why were there twelve corpses and only a finger? It was a perfectly valid question. Unless he'd used some sort of explosion spell that made everything but Peter's finger disintegrate.
The thought was enough to make her stomach turn.
But no, that wasn't right either. Even in microscopic pieces, there would have been evidence of his body being—for lack of better word—splattered.
Lily stared at Sirius in disbelief, goosepimples rising up to cover every inch of her skin. "Where's the rest of him, Sirius?"
He clutched at the metal bars and leaned forward until the metal was biting into his forehead. In a low voice, he said, "Like I said, he's a rat bastard."
She shook her head. "I don't under—"
"Tell James," he interrupted. "Tell him it was never Moony, it was always Wormtail. Tell him for me, Lily, I'm begging you."
Shocked by the urgency in his voice, she nodded and said, "Yes, o-of course, I'll tell him as soon as I can. But Sirius—"
"The Longbottoms—Alice and Frank—are they…?"
Lily faltered, unsure of how to read him. One moment, he was desperate, the next anguished. And why didn't he know about the Longbottoms? Weren't they the reason he'd gone on a killing spree?
"They—they're dead, Sirius," she breathed.
His breathing turned harsh. In a choked voice, he asked, "And Neville?"
"Alive," she told him. "In hiding, just in case."
"Good," he managed, sinking to the floor. "Good."
"Sirius—"
"Miss Evans," said the Hit Wizard, strolling toward Sirius's cell. "It's been an hour."
She glanced over at him and back at Sirius. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, "He's disappeared." When Sirius looked up at her, she elaborated: "You-Know-Who. He's disappeared." She touched the pads of her fingertips to his knuckles, colorless from clenching the bars. "And we're going to get you out."
It took three days to find James.
Three damn days, and all she could think about was Peter Pettigrew's missing corpse.
James was holed up in a tiny flat in the heart of London. The welcome mat at the door pictured bundles of flowers with a curling overlay reading, 'Welcome.' It wasn't exactly what she imagined when she thought of James Potter's bachelor pad.
The front door creaked open just wide enough for her to see the right half of his face, the only visible hazel eye narrowed in suspicion behind his glasses.
"Took me three bloody days to find you, you twat," she said by way of greeting. "I've done what you and Dumbledore asked."
His eyebrow arched up. "How do I know you're you?"
"Aside from knowing what stupidly insane task you two gave me?" she snorted. "Let's see…something only you and I would know…oh! We snogged that one time in seventh year. Remember? In that hidden passageway behind the tapestry of Edmund the Rotund? Merlin's balls, we were drunk that night."
The door swung open fully and James stepped back to let her in. She brushed past him, taking only a moment to note how good he looked dressed like a Muggle in a simple white t-shirt and jeans before moving on to the more important observations, like, for instance, how he seemed to be living in an old lady's flat with approximately twenty cats.
"Er, James?"
"I know," he sighed, closing the door before one of the cats could escape. "I'm house sitting for a woman who mistook me for her grandson. I wasn't about to turn down a brilliant hideout, but I'm afraid I'll have to Obliviate her when she gets back."
"Or maybe you'll get lucky and she'll have Alzheimer's," Lily returned while she surveyed the living room. Everything that wasn't covered in cats was covered in needlepoint and abandoned knitting projects. "How do you even sit down in here?"
"Carefully," he answered. His fingertips touched her elbow and she turned back around. "You said you went to see him. How did he seem? Was he…?"
"He was fine," she assured him, fighting the urge to touch his arm as she said it. She'd never seen him more distraught than he was now, and that was a testament to how much he loved Sirius considering the amount of shit they'd seen in the last few years. "A bit pale, but fine."
"And? Did he do it? Did he say why?"
Lily searched his face, noting the new wrinkle that appeared vertically between his eyebrows and the laugh lines around his mouth that now looked more like frown lines. James had aged in the week and a half since she'd last seen him. She couldn't even imagine what it felt like to be him right then, with one best friend on the run, another (potentially) dead, and the third in prison for (potentially) killing the second.
"He said – and this is a direct quote – that Peter is a 'rat bastard.' He also asked me to tell you that it was never Moony, it was always Wormtail. Now, I'm not sure what that means, but…"
The words died on her tongue as she watched James's eyes go wide and unfocused. His lips parted and, on a breath, he said, "Oh, that bastard."
"Who, Sirius or Peter?"
His mouth closed with a snap and he sucked in his cheeks. It was such a familiar expression, but one she hadn't had the chance to see very often since seventh year. Back then, whenever he'd done it, she would reach over and poke the hollows of his cheeks to make him stop, and he'd always given her an embarrassed little grin. She wondered what he would do if she poked him now, if he would shy away or work up a smile. It was almost tempting enough to find out.
"I need to find Moony," he muttered, pulling her back from her musings. "If Sirius is right and Pete's still alive…"
"Whoa, whoa," she said, lifting her hands. "Who's Moony? And how would Peter still be alive?"
"Long story," he said, stepping around her and into the living room. He casually picked up two cats from the sofa and moved them off of a grey wool, 3/4 coat. "As for Pete, Sirius already told you how he's alive. He's a rat bastard."
There it was again, that emphasis on rat! Now both he and Sirius had said it that way and it was about to drive her batty.
"No matter how many times the two of you say it like that, I still won't know what the hell you're talking about," she said, following him as he shrugged his jacket on and passed through the living room to the kitchen. "But if Peter's still alive, we need to find him, yeah? If we can prove he faked his own death, we could at least get Sirius's sentence reduced."
James snorted and started pulling out random drawers and opening cupboards. "Won't be that easy, Lil. He's a rat, he could be anywhere."
"Okay, I'm getting that he's a terrible person all of a sudden, but seriously, what is with the rat-based name calling?"
He ducked to look at her from beneath a hanging cupboard. "It's not name calling." He returned to his searching. "Where the bloody fuck is my wand?"
"You hid your wand in the kitchen?" she asked, flabbergasted. "What would you have done if Death Eaters had shown up at your door? Asked them to hold off killing you while you searched the cupboards for your wand?"
"I'd have thrown a frying pan at them. Or a cat," he replied, crouching below the counter and out of her sight. "I've got quite the arm on me."
"Okay, you have a point there, but why didn't you grab your wand before answering the door for me?"
He lifted his head up enough to look at her. Cheeks pink, he said, "Couldn't find it and I didn't want you to leave if I took too long to answer."
"Merlin's sake, Potter," she muttered, dropping her purse on the table and joining him in the search for his wand. "Why couldn't you have hid it somewhere normal, like under your pillow or in the loo?"
James went very still, so Lily stilled, too.
"Bloody hell, the loo," he whispered to himself before shooting to his feet and disappearing down the hallway to the left of the refrigerator. He returned a moment later, twirling his wand in his fingers like he was some sort of baton leader. "Reckon I should have snogged you more than once, Lily Evans. You're actually quite brilliant."
"At snogging or in general?"
He winked at her. "Both."
She raised her hand to her forehead in a mock salute and said, "Cheers."
"So I think I might know where Moony is," he said, picking up her purse from the table and tossing it to her. "Did you know Muggle calendars keep track of lunar phases? What am I saying, of course you know that. Anyway, are you ready?"
Lily stared at him. "Ready?"
"To go," he clarified, without actually clarifying anything. "We can stop by your place if you need to grab overnight things, but I doubt we'll be getting much sleep tonight."
If it hadn't been for the complete lack of flirtatious vibes, she would have thought he was propositioning her. As he clearly wasn't asking her for a shag, this just left her further confused.
"Start over," she said. "Where are we going and why will we be up all night?"
"We're going to find Moony, and we'll be up all night because it won't be safe to approach him until the sun comes up."
"Oh, right, yeah, that clears it all up."
"I don't appreciate your cheek, Evans."
"Yeah, well, I don't like not knowing the whole plan when going into a potentially dangerous situation."
James sighed at her as if she was the one being unnecessarily difficult. "I know somewhere in there is a girl who thrives on dangerous adventures just as much as I do. Find her, Evans, and do it quick, because the sun sets in an hour and we've got work to do."
They arrived in the middle of the Hogsmeade high street as the sky was painted in shades of salmon, rose orange and soft yellow. A brisk wind cut through the town and Lily shivered, pulling the over-large cloak tighter about herself. It smelled like James, which was no surprise since it was his, but she found herself taking a deep breath just to smell it again.
His scent had changed.
They'd spent the majority of their seventh year together, and as such, she'd memorized most of his habits, vocal inflections and, embarrassingly, his scent. Most days he smelled like the earth after a day of rain, and fresh-cut grass and leather and wood polish. It had been his signature scent, something he didn't even have to try to obtain, and she'd become a master of smelling him without being at all noticeable about it.
Now, though, she smelled soap and leather and something spicy she couldn't quite name but could taste in the back of her mouth with every inhale.
"Hog's Head tonight, I think," James murmured, his hand on her lower back.
She didn't question the decision and let him guide her through the doorway of the dingy pub. There were only a handful of patrons in the taproom, none of whom found them interesting for longer than a few seconds. Behind the bar, old Aberforth nodded a greeting to them.
"Just a room for tonight," said James, sliding a couple gold galleons across the bar.
"Third door on the right," Aberforth replied, handing James a key. "Try to keep it down, if you can."
They'd all been in the Order long enough to know what that meant, but Lily forced a blush and a shy smile. "We'll try," she said with a wink.
James's mouth quirked into a practiced smirk as he slipped his arm beneath her cloak and ran his fingertips up and down her back. "No promises, though."
Aberforth rolled his eyes and turned his back on them. They took that as their cue to escape the taproom for the stairwell in the back of the pub. Lily led the way up the narrow, rickety wooden stairs, James's hand at her back the entire time, and down the corridor to the third door on the right.
Looking every part the amorous couple escaping civilized public for the night, James reached around her to unlock the door, his lips warm and laying open-mouthed kisses on the side of her neck. The door opened inward and James guided her inside the room with his palms molded to her hips.
The moment the door closed, James released her and strode over to the window overlooking Hogsmeade to close the curtains.
"Wonder who it is," Lily said, removing the cloak from her shoulders and setting it on the bed.
James shook his head, peering intently through the crack between the sage green curtains. "Someone dangerous enough to warn us. Maybe a supporter lying low while the Ministry recovers."
It had become code for the Order members passing through the Hog's Head. If Aberforth gave out the key to this room, he'd seen something strange in the village. If he asked for quiet, there was someone in the pub who couldn't be trusted. The fact that he'd used both codes tonight set Lily, and James, on edge.
"It's been over half a month since he disappeared," James murmured. "They're bound to be getting restless, especially without any high profile arrests since Sirius's."
"Hat's off to the ministry for arresting the one innocent man in all of this," she mumbled to herself as she sat down on the end of the creaky bed. "What's the plan from here?"
James turned around, leaning back against the window, fingers curled around the bottom edge of the frame. "We wait and we listen."
"For?"
"Moony."
Lily glared at him. "Stop being so fucking cryptic, James. What are we doing here?"
He sucked his cheeks in while he studied her, and just as she was becoming annoyed enough to break the silence, he said, "I can't tell you everything, okay? I swore an oath of secrecy years ago and I'm not about to break it."
At least it was something.
"Just tell me what you can," she urged, lowering her voice. "I need some idea of what we're walking into."
James nodded and stepped to the side to pull back the curtain. "You know the Shrieking Shack is haunted," he said. When she confirmed that yes, she did in fact know that, he continued, "Well, it's not. Not really. What the villagers hear in there—it's not a ghost. It's Moony."
"Who the hell is Moony?"
The curtain fell back into place. James crossed his arms over his chest, hazel eyes peering steadily at her like he was trying to use telepathy to physically drop understanding into her head.
"You know who Moony is. Just think about it for one second. If two of my best mates are off the playing board, who's the last person I can call on?"
Remus.
The answer was so obvious, she almost slapped herself for being so thick.
But Remus had disappeared three months ago during an Order mission. Dumbledore himself had been the one to inform them all that he'd left mid-mission and failed to return any communications. Though Lily remembered that James, Sirius and Peter hadn't seemed at all surprised to hear the news, no one had seen or heard from Remus since.
"What makes you think he's here?"
"He isn't," James answered. He jerked his chin toward the window. "He's in the Shrieking Shack."
"You know that for sure?"
"Well, no, but that's why we need to listen."
Knowing who Moony was cleared up that spot of confusion, at least. If he was in the Shrieking Shack, they would know shortly after sunset. As for what they were going to do once they knew, Lily still had no idea, but James hadn't yet removed his cloak.
"So if he's Moony, who are you?"
"Oh, come on, Lil," he said, smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You hung 'round us for two bloody years, you know what we called each other."
"You realize that I mostly hung 'round with you, not the rest of your mates," she pointed out. "At least, not all together."
"Huh." James turned sideways and peeped out the window again. "I suppose that's true. We did spend an awful lot of time together, didn't we?"
"Well, I was half in love with you, so I wasn't exactly complaining about your appointment to Head Boy and the resulting hours spent in seclusion in the Heads' Office."
He grinned to himself and glanced over at her. "Only half?"
"Sod you," she laughed. "It's your fault for looking so damn fit in Quidditch gear."
James uttered a small laugh. "That's right, you snogged me after we won that match against Ravenclaw."
"To be fair, we were drunk and you were still soaked through with rain. It was far too much for a mere seventeen-year-old girl to handle."
"And I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with how badly we trounced your ex-boyfriend's team," he shot back, grinning even wider now.
Lily smirked. "The thought never even crossed my mind."
Chuckling, James turned away from the window and joined her on the end of the bed. "I'd nearly forgotten how much I like you, Evans."
She bumped her shoulder into his. "We did make quite the team back in the day. It helped that you stopped being such an—"
"Arrogant, bullying toerag?" he supplied, his grin now self-deprecating.
"I was going to say immature tosser, but that works, too."
His grin faded a bit. "Had to grow up eventually," he said. "I almost wish I hadn't done until…I mean—"
"I know." She gripped his fingers tightly within her own. "We all grew up too fast."
James dropped his gaze to their intertwined fingers, frowning. "You were right, you know. I was an arrogant bully."
"I wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true," she said lightly. "Just another thing Sirius and I have in common, I suppose."
"You're a bit kinder, though."
"Oh, well, thanks," she said, rolling her eyes.
His smile disappeared as quickly as it had manifested. "I mean it, though. You shouldn't have even wasted a single breath on me after that fiasco by the lake."
"I almost didn't," she admitted. "I'd actually made this pact with myself over summer that I was going to find a new best mate, one who didn't have a single malicious bone in their body, and I wasn't going to deal with anymore bullies or lost causes."
"And I fit under both those categories."
She nodded. "You did, until…" Lily chewed her lip, staring down at their hands. They both had little white lines dotting the skin of their knuckles and the backs of their hands, battle scars left over from the worst night of her life. They'd barely been two weeks out of Hogwarts when Dumbledore had sent the call to arms. She and James had been the first to respond, two fully underqualified wizards sent out to face grown Death Eaters and, as they found out too late, Voldemort himself. They'd barely escaped with their lives, thanks to James's quick thinking and a running jump through a fourth floor window.
"There was this little Hufflepuff first year," she said quietly, still staring at their matching scars. "She was crying because she couldn't find the Transfiguration classroom and she was absolutely terrified of Minerva, but before I could do anything to help her, you swooped in and took her to the classroom and explained to Minerva that it was your fault your 'protégé' was late to class and that if she was to dock any points, it should be from Gryffindor."
James huffed a short laugh through his nose. "I ended up tutoring her the rest of the year instead."
"She finished top of the class that year," Lily recalled. "In another life, you'd make an excellent teacher."
"If only fighters weren't in such high demand," he sighed, and rubbed the pad of his thumb along the side of her hand. "I never saw myself as a teacher, though. That always seemed like something Moony would be good at."
Lily swallowed thickly and whispered, "Even though he's a werewolf?"
He stiffened, his thumb coming to an abrupt stop. He didn't even breathe.
"I've known for years," she confessed, keeping her voice so quiet she wasn't even sure he'd be able to hear her. "We covered werewolves in sixth year and I'd noticed that Remus was always ill around the full moon, and the lot of you were always half asleep the day after a full moon. It wasn't hard to put two and two together."
"Does anyone else know?" he asked hoarsely.
"I never told anyone, if that's what you're asking."
Just then, an ear-splitting howl filled the silence of the night. James was off the bed in a blur of movement and standing at the window.
"That's him," he said, keeping his back to her. "I'm going over there. You stay here."
Lily rose from the bed and swept her borrowed cloak over her shoulders. "If you'd wanted me to stay clear of danger, you wouldn't have brought me all the way to Hogsmeade," she said. "I'm coming with you."
Whirling on her, face pale, James said, "You realize I'm about to face off against a full-grown werewolf, don't you?"
"And?"
"And?" he echoed incredulously. "And you have no way of defending yourself against him!"
"And you do?"
"Yes!"
Lily threw a look toward the door, mindful that just about anyone could be standing outside their room listening in on this conversation. James followed her gaze and took a steadying breath.
"Do you trust me, Lily?"
The immediate answer was yes – he'd never let her down in the years they'd been fighting at each other's side – but she hesitated. James hadn't been clear-headed since the day Sirius had been packed off to Azkaban, and even though he'd settled a bit since learning of Peter's faked death, he was still too liable to make a rash decision.
"You know I do," she answered.
Maybe he could sense the silent 'but…' at the end of that statement, because he sucked in his cheeks again.
"I can't let you go alone," she continued. "As far as I'm concerned, we're partners now, and partners don't leave each other behind, especially when there's a Dark wizard downstairs and a werewolf across town."
James sighed through his nose. "Damn you."
"You know I'm right."
"I know, damn it."
"I'm coming with you," she insisted again.
He nodded jerkily and strode toward the door. "Fine. But you'll have to follow my orders. If you get hurt…"
He didn't have to finish his thought for her to understand.
She joined him at the door, wand already in hand. "We've faced You-Know-Who himself, I think we can handle a werewolf who folds his pants."
"I don't want to know how you know that."
Lily touched his arm, stroking her thumb along his bicep. "Never play truth or dare with Sirius Black."
It was just enough to make him smile again, even if the smile only lasted a few seconds.
"All right, fine. We'll go under the cloak, then."
From his coat pocket, he pulled out the invisibility cloak. Lily let go of his arm to brush her fingers along the fabric.
"I thought Dumbledore had it."
"He returned it after…"
She nodded. "Right."
James breathed in sharply and held it for a few moments, then he shook out the cloak and tossed it over their heads and shoulders. They barely fit under it and James had to crouch to keep their feet from showing.
"So," she whispered, "how do we get into the Shrieking Shack?"
"First thing's first," he said. "We have to get into Hogwarts."
Choosing the Hog's Head made much more sense once James directed her into a secret tunnel hidden beneath the bins behind the bar. Once safely inside, James removed the invisibility cloak and tucked it back into his jacket.
"We follow this up to the school," he explained as he lit the tip of his wand. "It lets out near the edge of the forest, not too far from Hagrid's, so we'll have to put the cloak back on once we get there."
"Then what?" she asked, holding up her wand and lighting it with a nonverbal, "Lumos."
"Then comes the fun part," he said, grinning.
Together, they trekked through the tunnel, which looked to have been dug out by a massive gopher. Tree roots hung in tangled ropes from the ceiling, catching in her hair more than once despite how far she ducked to avoid them. At times, the tunnel narrowed and she was forced to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with James, which she didn't mind. What she did mind was the silence.
It was an easy silence, but the farther they hiked, the more aware of her own breathing and heartbeat she became, and then she started thinking about what it would be like to face off against a werewolf—a werewolf she'd known for years to be a mild-mannered young man with a weary set to his shoulders and a wry grin.
To distract herself, she asked James, "So what did cause you to grow up?"
James chanced looking down at her and almost got his glasses knocked off by a dangling root. He ducked just in time and, after righting himself, answered, "Summer before sixth year, my dad gave a series of talks throughout western Europe on behalf of Muggle-born rights and the fallacies of blood purity. We started in Germany and ended in Portugal and it took us about two months." He dodged another root with ease. "We were about to Portkey back home when my mum received an owl from the Portuguese ambassador to the ministry. He said the Portkey had been disabled and that we were to Floo back to London instead."
"London? I thought you lived in—"
"Gloucester, yeah. We were confused, too."
"London's just a bit out of the way. And how exactly did you manage to Floo from Portugal to England? I thought international Floo systems could only be set up between foreign ministries."
James tapped the tip of his nose. "Exactly. We went straight from Portugal's ministry to England's. My mum had done a lot of work for the ministry's Department of Mysteries and the minister at the time had been friendly with my dad, so he thought he'd give us the news himself."
The tunnel raised into a steep incline and Lily struggled for breath as she asked, "News?"
It took him a moment to answer, and when he did, his voice was so raw and unchecked that it threw her off balance: "They burned our house to the ground."
"What?!" She stopped walking and grabbed his arm to stop him, too. "Hold up, James. Let me catch my breath."
Nodding, he leaned back against the tunnel wall. Lily watched him while she regulated her breathing, noting the solemn set of his mouth and the way his brow puckered in the center. No wonder he was only twenty and had wrinkles. Not that she was any better, mind. The war against Voldemort had ripped the youth right out of them.
"Who burned down your house?" she said once she had the breath to ask.
"You-Know-Who supporters," said James. "Apparently, they didn't like the things my dad was saying."
Lily gaped up at him. "You weren't even in the bloody country! What did they care?"
"Still, it went against their blood purist propaganda," he said with a shrug. "No room for expansion outside of the UK if someone's already convinced them of Muggle-born importance to wizarding society."
"So they burned your house down," she said, voice tight from the molten anger spilling into her gut. "Those fuckers."
"Yeah, well…" He pushed off from the wall and continued up the tunnel. Lily scrambled to catch up.
"You must have lost everything," she said, reaching for his hand. "I'm so sorry, James."
If he was surprised to find her hand tucked inside his, he didn't show it. He just said, "I didn't lose the most important things. My parents and Sirius were unharmed, so…so it was fine, but I – I was angry, Lily. Do you know what it's like to watch someone age twenty years in a day?" He exhaled sharply and shook his head. "My dad's library went up like kindling, and all my mum's work—gone. They were already old, but seeing the ruins of our house just…"
Lily squeezed his hand. "Were you able to recover anything?"
"A couple photographs," he said. "A goblin-made tea set, not that it mattered much at that point."
"Is that when your parents got sick?"
He cleared his throat and refused to meet her gaze, but his hand clutched hers just as tightly as she clutched his. "They—my mum's health was already—but after the fire, they – they deteriorated much faster."
"I'm sorry."
"I saw you at the funeral, you know," he murmured. "You sat in the back, but I still saw you."
"Of course I was there," she said gently. "I didn't want to intrude on your mourning, but I wanted to be there for you."
"I loved you for it."
Lily's stomach swooped up into her throat.
"You were wearing white," he continued, utterly unaware that Lily's lungs had ceased functioning. "In a sea of black dress robes and cloaks, you were wearing white, and you were crying, and I couldn't believe you were there, actually there, and crying over people you'd never met."
"I'd just lost my parents, too," she breathed. "And I was so bloody tired of wearing black."
"You were the only thing about that day that stuck in my mind," James admitted. "Everything else was a blur of faces and names, except for you in that white dress."
Lily wiped at her wet eyes and laced her fingers with his. "I loved you, too, you know."
James ducked another root and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Yeah, I know."
They walked the rest of the tunnel in silence.
"Of course you're a bloody Animagus," Lily mumbled through numb lips, staring at the stag that stood before her. Just a minute before, it had been James Potter standing there informing her of his "furry little secret." Honestly, she'd thought maybe he'd brought one of the cats along in his coat pocket. And then he'd transformed. Into a bloody stag.
"Never thought I'd say this, James," she said, "but you've got a magnificent rack."
He tossed his antlers and gave her a decidedly unamused look (which looked very, very odd on a deer).
"Sorry, dear, I just couldn't help myself."
James the Prancing Stag stared at her for half a second, then turned tail—literally—and walked away from her. Holding back a hysterical giggle, Lily slung the invisibility cloak over her head and followed him.
The castle loomed to their right as they left the protection of the forest and Lily worried someone might notice a bloody great stag and mysterious footprints making their way across the lawn, but James didn't even falter. Like always, he just strutted on like he was daring any one person to question his right to be there. She'd always admired that quality, but it was surreal to see a deer acting so…James Potter-ish.
Or maybe all deer were like that. Lily wouldn't know, she didn't make a habit of hanging 'round them.
It had to count for something, though, that they made it all the way to the Whomping Willow without a single disturbance. The fact that it was bitterly cold outside might have had something to do with it. Knowing James, though, he'd chalk it up to his many years of mischief-making and sneaking around.
James stopped just shy of the swinging branches and waited.
Like he'd instructed, Lily used her wand to levitate a stick off the ground and aim it for the knot in the trunk. She hadn't believed him when he'd said it, but the tree's branches did actually freeze. James rushed for the base of the tree, shifting back to human at the last second, and disappearing down yet another secret tunnel.
Knowing she only had a few seconds until the branches came back to life, Lily hurried after him.
It was a short drop to the bottom and James greeted her with a lit wand and a grin.
"You're as bad as Sirius," he remarked, taking the invisibility cloak from her and folding it. "The moment we mastered the transformations, I never heard the end of the deer puns."
"Well," she said, smirking, "your Animagus form is quite…staggering."
He groaned, but it turned into a laugh halfway through. "Merlin, once we get Sirius out, I'll never be able to leave you two alone together."
"If we get Sirius out."
Lily hadn't meant to ruin the mood, just bring it back to focus—there was a werewolf at the end of the tunnel, after all—but she regretted it the moment the light died in James's eyes. His smile lingered a moment more, but it was a mere ghost of its former self.
"Right," he replied heavily. "If."
"I gather this may be a delayed realization, but when you said Peter was a rat bastard, you were being literal, weren't you?"
"Mm." James rolled the folded cloak between his hands, watching the light from his wand reflect off its surface. "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. Remus the wolf, Peter the rat, Sirius the dog, and me, the stag."
"You know, when you said the fun part would begin once we were in the forest, I thought you'd meant something a little more…legal."
He snorted and looked up through his fringe to give her a caustic grin. "What part of 'James Potter' and 'fun' didn't spell out illegal hijinks for you?"
"Well, I was going to say that we had plenty of fun behind that Edmund the Rotund tapestry, but then I remembered it was two in the morning and definitely past curfew."
It wasn't as lighthearted as before, but Lily had repaired the mood enough to get James smiling and laughing again.
Another shiver-inducing howl broke the silence of the night.
James glanced back into the tunnel, sucking in his cheeks. She knew what he was going to say, and she knew he expected a fight, but this was one battle she knew she couldn't win, so when he turned his gaze back to her, she was already shaking her head.
"He needs you, James," she murmured. "Go. I'll be fine."
"You're sure?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "I know how to start a fire and cast warming charms. I'll be fine. Go help Remus; I'll be right here when the sun comes up."
Still, James hesitated.
"No matter what you hear…"
"I won't come near, I swear it." Lily offered up her best smile and placed her hands on his arms. "But just for added incentive, if we both make it through this night alive, I'll snog you again. Maybe I'll even ask you out."
A smile flitted across his lips. "Lily Evans, if this works and we can find a way to save Sirius, I'll bloody marry you."
"I'll hold you to that, Potter," she replied with a wink.
Chuckling, James leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. "I'll be back in the morning. Stay safe."
His final two words played on repeat in her head as she curled up on the ground, enveloped in his new scent, and cast a warming charm on the cloak.
It was going to be a very long night, she thought, as the sounds of hooves and howls filled the tunnel.
She was awoken from a rather inappropriately-timed dream by the sound of approaching footsteps and the quiet murmurings of two men. Switching from shirtless, imaginary James to fully-clothed, exhausted, real life James was disconcerting at best, and Lily handled it with all the grace of a thirteen-year-old boy with a crush: her face and neck grew unbearably warm and she was desperately happy her over-large cloak was wrapped so tightly about her torso, covering up any physical markers of the heat saturating her veins.
Here she'd thought three years would be enough time to move on, but no, one night wrapped up in his cloak and she was right back where she started in seventh year.
"Morning," she croaked, pushing herself upright. At some point during the night, she'd curled up on her side and passed out, and now her neck was stiff and aching. She rubbed at it with one hand while the other kept the cloak firmly secured around her chest.
James eyed her hair and her red face and wisely chose not to say a word. Remus, however, took one look at her and backpedaled. His legs shook, though, and almost gave out, but James caught him under the arms and muttered something to him.
Wan as the moon he was cursed to transform under, Remus met her eyes and said, "Lily."
"Morning, Remus. You look like hell."
"You could use a mirror yourself," he returned, sagging into James as if the effort of being snarky cost him too much of what little energy he had left.
With a soft grunt, Lily managed to get to her feet and stagger toward the two men. The cloak and the warming charms could only do so much to ward off the cold of the underground tunnel, but walking, even just a short distance, brought some of the feeling back to her toes.
Remus was trembling and there were half-healed scrapes on his arms, and his hair was shaggy and his eyes dim with fatigue, but it was the first time she'd seen or heard from him in months, and damn it, anything was better than seeing him dead. She opened the cloak and enveloped him in the tightest hug she could muster.
"You run away without warning again and I'll hunt you down and kill you myself," she said. "I can be quite handy with a gun, and I don't know where I'd find silver bullets, but you can bet your arse I'd get my hands on some somehow, so don't think of disappearing again. Got it?"
He nodded and let out a weary chuckle. "Sorry, Lily."
"Not half as sorry as you will be once you're back in proper health," she assured him as she pulled away. Her gaze settled on James next. "How are we supposed to get him off school grounds without anyone seeing us?"
"Slowly and with a fair amount of effort on both our parts."
She discovered what that meant once they were out on the Hogwarts grounds in the soft light of dawn. The cloak wouldn't fit all three of them, so she supported the majority of Remus's weight under the cloak while James walked beside them as a stag, close enough for Remus to hold onto when Lily staggered or lost her balance.
It was an agonizingly slow process, and it wouldn't have been so bad if Remus weren't so damned heavy. Her legs burned with the effort it took to keep him mostly upright, and every time the invisibility cloak started to slip, she had a minor panic attack.
Halfway through their trek back to the tunnel, Lily realized they were headed a different way.
"James," she hissed. "Where are you going?"
He gave a horse-like snort, which would have been more disconcerting coming from a deer had she not been about to collapse under the weight of a fully-grown man she had no desire to be crushed by.
"Gates," Remus mumbled. "Disapparate from the gates."
"You're joking," she gasped. "James, you can't be serious, look at him! He's far too weak to Apparate!"
"'M fine," sighed Remus. "Done it before."
"If either of you gets splinched, I will have absolutely no sympathy for you," she hissed.
Being irritated with the pig-headed men she was stuck with actually helped her, though. While she was busy stewing over their combined stupidity, she didn't have much mental room left to think about how much her legs hurt or how hard her heart was beating just to keep her body functional.
They reached the gates to the grounds sooner than she'd anticipated, and after that point it was a simple matter of stepping past the Anti-Apparition boundaries and moving into the camouflage of foliage beside the road, just long enough for James to transform and join Lily and Remus under the cloak. It didn't cover their feet and ankles with the three of them beneath it, but that hardly mattered anymore.
"We're aiming for the bins out back behind the Hog's Head," hushed James as he wrapped his fingers around Remus's wrist. "Follow my lead and don't let go of him."
Lily clamped both hands around Remus' arm, trusting James to keep hold of the cloak, and on the count of three, they all twisted.
The pop that sounded when they appeared beside the rubbish bins sent a few cats yowling as if they had been personally offended, but their presence otherwise went unnoticed.
Stealthy as they could be with a half-conscious man, Lily and James hoisted Remus through the back door of the pub and up the stairs to their rented room. James was about to open the door, but Lily reached out and grabbed his wrist to stop him.
"Something's off," she breathed, staring at the door and trying to discern just what was giving off the sinister sensation she felt radiating from their room. "Someone's been here. We put an Imperturbable on the door, didn't we?"
James nodded and prodded the door handle with the tip of his wand. It twisted and the door creaked open.
The room had been tossed. The mattress was in shreds on the floor, the blankets heaped in a pile in the corner. The drawers of the nightstands had been ripped out and left on the ground, and the closet door had been halfway torn off its hinges.
"Good thing I came with you, then," Lily whispered, staring at the destruction with wide eyes.
James didn't say anything, but she could tell by the tightening of his jaw that he was brassed off.
"We need to get out of here and get Remus somewhere safe," she reminded him in a muted voice. "We can Apparate to my flat, it's not too far from here."
With a sharp nod, James said, "Okay."
Lily left the door key on the floor and regrouped for the trip back down the stairs.
By the time they got back outside, Remus's head was lolling onto James's shoulder and his body was deadweight dragging them both down.
"Let's take a rest," she suggested.
Thankfully, James agreed and they sat Remus down in a corner shaded by the overhang of the pub's roof. James covered him with the cloak and sat down beside him.
"James."
"Hm."
"Let it go." She crouched in front of him and placed a hand on his knee. "We have more important things to worry about than whatever tosser destroyed our room. And look at the bright side: neither of us were there when it happened and we certainly didn't leave anything behind for them to find. So let it go."
His hand came to rest on top of hers, his thumb brushing along the length of a white scar. "I almost left you behind last night."
"Please, you knew I was too stubborn to stay behind," she said. "The argument was just perfunctory at that point."
"You could have died."
"After all the times I've heard you say that over the years, it's sort of begun to lose its meaning."
James's eyes bore into hers, clearly nowhere near inclined to laugh or view this as light-heartedly as she was. But she had to at this point. She had to make light of the situation or else panic would settle in behind her breastbone and it would cost her too much time and effort to overcome it.
"Let's focus on getting Remus to safety, okay?" she said. "Then we can talk about what happened. One crisis at a time, Potter."
Relenting, James dropped his gaze to the invisible lump of a man beside him. "Fine. How far is your flat?"
"Edinburgh. I should be able to get all of us there safely."
He nodded and lifted the cloak off of Remus. "Quickly, then. Let's get out of here before people start to wake up."
Lily helped him haul Remus upright and pulled Remus's arm around her shoulders so he was propped up between them both, albeit a bit lop-sided with their height differences. She wrapped an arm around Remus's waist and gripped the edge of James's shirt in her fist.
"On the count of three…"
Lily might have been embarrassed over the untidy state of her flat had she not found James's swarming with cats, and if she'd been a little less worried about the unconscious werewolf on her sofa.
"You're sure there's nothing we can do for him?" she asked as she entered the living room and handed a mug of hot tea to James.
He took it gratefully and wrapped his fingers around it. "He'll sleep for a day or so. The best thing we can do is have food and water ready for him when he wakes up."
Even though she'd known about Remus' affliction for years, it was something entirely else to see him recuperating from it. Her chest ached to see him looking so fragile and she wanted to do something for him, anything at all, to ease his suffering.
"Lily," said James, the solemn note of his tone garnering her full attention, "we need to talk about the pub."
She looked back at Remus and nodded. "Not here. I don't want to disturb him."
James followed her wordlessly through her apartment to her bedroom and didn't wait for an invitation to take a seat on the end of her unmade bed. He cradled the mug of tea in his lap and watched while Lily picked up various articles of clothing from the floor and dumped them into her hamper.
"I wasn't expecting company," she explained, looking anywhere but at the man on her bed. After the dream she'd had about him, seeing him there would render her entirely useless and they were trying to have a serious conversation. "But anyway, the pub: someone recognized us and destroyed the room."
"Lily."
She continued tidying the room and avoiding his gaze. "There weren't many people in the pub when we arrived, so I'd reckon Aberforth knows exactly who did it. He may be miffed about the costs of the damage, though."
"Lily," he said again, this time as a sigh.
"Point is, we can track them down later, or alert the Order, since we have a much bigger issue to deal with," she went on, straightening the picture frames and knickknacks on top of her dresser. "Finding Peter should be our first order of business, really; whoever trashed our room at the inn is practically nothing to us in the grand scope of things, and—" She broke off into a startled squeak as James set the mug down on the dresser.
"Lily, look at me."
Chewing her bottom lip, she turned around and stared at his chest. His warm, callused fingers touched her chin and tilted it up so she had no choice but to look directly into his hazel eyes.
"I could have lost you tonight," he murmured. "I've already lost too many people to this fucking war, Lily, so forgive me if I take your near miss with death very seriously."
"No – James – I understand, completely," she assured him. "But you'll have to forgive me because I can't take it seriously."
He nodded and let his fingers fall away from her chin. "You would think with him gone that I could stop worrying about…everyone."
"I don't think he's really gone," she whispered, voicing the one unspoken fear she'd had running through her mind since the night the Longbottoms died at Voldemort's hand. "Weakened and hiding, yes, but gone? A wizard like him doesn't go down that easily."
"I think you're right," James agreed.
Lily didn't know what to do with her hands. They were so close together that she could feel the heat from his body, and she wanted to reach up and touch him, but she wasn't sure she should, and she wanted to hug him, but she didn't know if he would want that from her.
To her relief, he broke the tension by reaching for her first.
"Lily," he rasped, his hands at her waist, "can I hold you? Please, just for a little while."
Her answer was to wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face in his neck. James squeezed her tight to his chest, his nose in her hair and his lips brushing the shell of her ear.
"We're going to save Sirius," she promised him in a whisper. "We're going to find Peter and we're going to save Sirius and we're not going to lose a single goddamn person to this war again."
She felt him shudder and then his lips were on her cheek and trailing along her jaw. Lifting her head, she met his questioning gaze and nodded to him.
"You're sure?" he whispered.
"Would you like me to ask you out first, make it nice and proper? Or will you just snog me already?"
His lips curved into a smile as they descended on hers.
It was better than she remembered, kissing James. For starters, they weren't drunk and sloppy this time around, and that helped immensely, but the biggest change was the intensity of everything. They weren't teenagers fooling around anymore, barely touched by the grief of war. They had fought and nearly died at each other's sides, and they had the twin scars to prove it, but more importantly, they had lived and survived together through the darkest age the wizarding world had ever seen. The bond that sort of shared suffering and endurance created was indestructible and she could feel it like electricity buzzing between them, wherever their skin touched.
His arms tightened around her waist, lifting her up onto tip-toes, and she basked in the feeling of stretching along the length of his body, yearning to drown in his kisses.
"James," she mumbled, her lower lip caught between his teeth.
"Mm?"
She threaded her fingers through his hair and knotted it within her fists. "Bed," she commanded.
The noise he made in his throat made her ache for him, and the way he gripped her thighs and hoisted her up onto his hips made her burn for him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and rocked her hips against his.
He stumbled backwards toward her bed and sat gracelessly on the end of it. Lily let go of him just long enough to pull her shirt off and toss it aside, and then she buried her fingers in the thick tangles of his hair and tilted his head to the side so she could taste every inch of his neck and feel the light scratch of his stubble on her cheek.
"Merlin, Lily," he groaned, his hands traveling the expanse of her back, fingertips tracing the bumps of her spine from her neck to the waistband of her jeans, pausing only briefly to undo the hooks of her bra. "You're so bloody gorgeous."
She lifted her mouth from his skin to press a kiss to his lips. "This coming from the man whose hair I've wanted to run my hands through since I was fourteen."
"Six years?" he asked breathlessly. "Bloody hell, Lily, all you had to do was ask." He dropped a few kisses on her mouth in quick succession. "Actually, you didn't have to ask at all."
"Sure about that?" she asked, grinding her hips against his just to hear him groan.
"You're right," he said, pressing his palms to her shoulder blades and sliding them down her arms, dragging the straps of her bra with them. "I'd have came in my pants on the spot if you had."
Laughing, Lily surged forward to meet his mouth, her hands tugging at his t-shirt. "See, I was just thinking of you," she purred as she dragged his shirt up to his shoulders. He lifted his arms indulgently and she pulled it free from him. She dropped it behind her and tossed her bra away with it.
James's warm hands covered her breasts and gently squeezed, and his mouth swallowed her answering moan. She lost all sense of herself when he touched her, and the energy pulsing between them became a wild, crackling thing.
Barely in control of her own thoughts, Lily pushed him down on the mattress and reached for the front of his jeans. James watched her undo the button and the zipper, his chest heaving and his pupils blown.
"Lily," he managed as she stood up from the bed. While he lifted up onto his elbows, she grabbed hold of the side belt loops of his jeans and tugged. The jeans pooled at his ankles and he kicked them off the rest of the way. "Christ, Lily, hang on."
Her heart was beating out a frenzied rhythm, perfectly matching the maelstrom of her mind. She had only one clearly defined goal at that moment, and it was to act upon every desire she'd repressed for the last three years.
However, when she went to undo her own jeans, James sat up and grabbed hold of her wrists to stop her. His touch both calmed and excited her, which didn't exactly help with the chaos of emotions and thoughts swirling through her brain.
"Hey, hold on," he said, his tone gentle. "I've been waiting for this for years; the least we can do is take the time to enjoy it."
She swallowed hard and nodded, trying to calm the tattoo her heart was banging against her ribs. "Trying not to rush," she said with a breathy laugh. "It's hard."
James's hands slid down to cover her own. He smiled up at her, that same silly, crooked grin he'd given her when they were seventeen and too afraid to ruin the easy friendship between them by turning it into something more. Every time they came too close to saying or doing something they couldn't come back from, James would give her that smile.
But they weren't seventeen anymore.
She pulled her hands free from his and touched his cheeks, his lips, the curve of his ears and the stems of his glasses. They came to rest on the sides of his neck, thumbs brushing the underside of his jaw. She took a half step closer to him, so his knees pressed along the outsides of her thighs. With nowhere else to go, his hands came to rest on the front of her jeans, fingertips ghosting across her skin.
"Why don't we take our time after my trousers are off?"
Chuckling, James unhurriedly popped the button of her jeans free and pulled down the zipper. Lily thought dragging Remus across the grounds had been slow torture, but it didn't compare to the torment of James inching her jeans down her hips and thighs, his mouth following their path down her legs. The jeans loosened at the knee and slumped to the floor, and James shadowed them, sinking to his knees in front of her.
Lily held her breath as he trailed kisses soft as fluttering butterfly wings up her left leg and then her right. His hands—and Merlin bless rough Chaser hands large enough to catch and hold Quaffles—blazed trails up her thighs to the sides of her knickers. His lips reached the joint between her hip and thigh and her breath whooshed out of her as he jerked her knickers down and buried his face in the juncture of her thighs.
"M-Merlin's balls, James," she stuttered, even as her hands found purchase in his hair and tugged.
His lips and tongue were performing some sort of wandless magic – there was no other explanation for the melting of her bones and muscles under his ministrations. A low sound rumbled from his chest and she curled in on herself, huddling over him, one hand still in his hair, the other gripping his shoulder, completely undone by the vibrations.
He didn't stop until she was a quivering, boneless heap of a woman, barely able to remain on two feet. With her flushed skin hyper-sensitized, every brush of his hands on her skin, every wet, open-mouthed kiss pressed to her stomach and ribs, sent zillions of jolts at a time along her nerves, and she knew she was making some very embarrassing noises, but she had no control over what came out of her mouth anymore. The sounds manifested into something more primal when his teeth grazed her nipple and then clamped down around it. Clenching her fist in his hair, she held him firmly to her breast and dragged her nails across his back.
To his credit, the only other time she'd seen James look so happy was when she'd presented him with treacle tart after winning a match against Slytherin.
He shifted so his arms encircled her legs right beneath her bum, and a high-pitched squeak escaped her as he lifted her off her feet. Turning, they tumbled onto her bed together, limbs tangling, all thoughts of taking it slow forgotten as Lily pushed at the waistband of his pants and hitched her right leg onto his hip.
"Mmph, Lily," he panted, helping her remove his pants. "Need lotion."
Lily grabbed his face and pulled it toward hers, catching his lips in a desperate, needy kiss. "In the loo. Top shelf of the medicine cabinet."
He rolled off of her, pausing only to kick off his pants, and strode into her bathroom stark naked and determined. Lily watched him searching through her cabinet, noting how his skin stretched a little too tightly over his ribs. He'd always been skinny and lanky, but sometime during sixth year, he'd grown into his height and become more lean than gawky. Now, though, he was edging back into skinny territory and she wondered just how little he'd been eating, or if he was like her and simply forgot to eat when he was stressed.
Whatever the case, as soon as the fire in her bones was satiated, she was going to cook him and Remus a massive feast, one worthy of Hogwarts. They needed it, but beyond that, they deserved it.
James returned with a little blue tub of lotion. "I hope you don't mind if my cock smells like" – he squinted at the lettering on the tub – "Night Magic Evening Musk."
She shook her head, grinning, and beckoned him back into bed, but he stopped at the edge of the bed and looked at her. Shaking his head and smiling, he crawled onto the mattress over to her and pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose as he set the lotion on her nightstand.
"I'm certain the Lady of the Night won't mind what your cock smells like," she assured him, splaying her fingers so they fit in the dips between his ribs. Now that she'd touched him once, she couldn't seem to stop.
His mouth quirked up on one side. "You've named it, then?"
"'Course I've named it. The Lady and I are on a first-name basis, I'll have you know."
James laughed as he settled himself between her legs, propped up on his elbow so he could brush his knuckles along her cheekbone and caress her hair. "Does that mean I'm on a first-name basis with the Lady as well?"
"After you made veritable love to her with your mouth?" She pressed her lips to his and circled his hips with her legs, crossing her ankles at his lower back. "You've moved way past first names. She's damn near purring for a petname."
"Ah, well, I wouldn't want to upset the Lady," he said with mock solemnity. "Shall I put on some Night Magic and let her meet Prongs Junior?"
Lily was giggling too hard to answer—honestly, Prongs Junior?—so she just grabbed the lotion and unscrewed the lid for him.
It was later—much later, judging by the dim light of dusk streaming through her blinds, though she had hardly noticed the time passing between curling up with him, sleeping with their limbs all tangled together, and waking up to do it all over again.
She had her head on his bare chest, listening to his steady heartbeat pulse under her ear, when she thought to ask, "So, is that offer of marriage still on the table?"
The hand that had been stroking her hair stilled. His chin brushed her forehead and she could practically hear him sucking in his cheeks. After a slight, hesitant pause, he said, "It can be if you want it to be."
"I mean, I know that offer had a rather hefty condition attached to it," she said, refusing to look up into his face and instead focusing on tracing letters on his stomach with her fingertips. "It may take us years to find Peter and save Sirius from Azkaban, but I thought, you know, since we're still clearly not over each other—"
"Lily," he interrupted, voice rumbling from deep in his chest. "I don't care if we free him tomorrow or ten years from now, the offer will still be on the table."
"Yeah?"
His shoulders shook and jostled her when he chuckled. "I'm not saying we should get married tomorrow," he answered. "We can take smaller steps first. But yeah, Lily, that offer's going nowhere."
She realized she'd been writing "I love you" across his abdomen, but she didn't stop.
"Okay. Good."
"Yeah?"
Lily nodded. "Yeah."
The hand in her hair continued stroking, but the other one caught at her fingers and stopped them in the middle of tracing the 'e' in love.
"Lily," he murmured, and she heard his heart beat faster.
"James?"
The smile in his voice was tangible when he whispered, "I love you, too."
AN: Like, four months ago I was given a prompt to write how Lily and James would have handled Harry's rollercoaster of emotions his fifth year had they lived, so like any sane person, I wrote the back story first, liked it too much to not share it, and decided to make the answering fic a two-parter. I figured, given how long I've had this fic sitting in my docs folder, Valentine's Day would be an apropos time to finally post it. :)
Massive thanks go out to Kristina for helping me find the perfect balance for smut and encouraging/reassuring me when I changed a single line of dialogue literally twelve times. Without her, I'd probably still be writing deer puns and unexplained prose.
Part two is still in the works, but I should have it ready to post within the next couple of months. Thanks for reading, loves!