"You what?"
"James what?"
Lily smacked her head as Marlene and Hestia squabbled over what was more shocking gossip; the fact that Lily had been Head Girl and hadn't told them, or the fact that James Potter, famous troublemaker, had been chosen as the other Head.
"You know, you'll have to live with him," Marlene taunted, tossing her long blond hair.
Lily looked at her with a mixture of panic and alarm. "What?"
"Yeah, the Heads have their own dormitory," Hestia added, nodding.
"Oh, no," Lily groaned, while Hestia and Marlene giggled; they'd been trying to convince Lily to return James' obvious attentions.
"You will visit, won't you?" Mary asked anxiously.
"'Course," Lily said. "I still need to go to the common room."
"Oh, you're practically Mrs. Potter already!"
In another carriage heading up to the castle, another group of seventh years were also reeling from the news of the Heads. "First Moony, now you," Sirius complained. "We've got two Marauders on the enemy side!"
"We could use them as double agents," Peter proposed hopefully.
"Shut up, Wormy. We're not waging a war here, it's just school," James muttered, his eyes closed and in an apparent state of annoyance.
"No, but he does have a point. Heads and prefects can be out of bed late—that'll come in handy, I suppose," Sirius reasoned.
They all turned to James, waiting for him to contribute a funny remark, or act mock offended at the fact that Sirius only cared about his advantages for troublemaking. In earlier years James would have jumped at the occasion to make some sort of joke, but he only sat broodingly looking out the window.
Remus shook his head, wordlessly telling the others to leave James alone. He was obviously in one of his moods, which had been occurring with increasing frequency since the end of sixth year.
But when everyone had expected him to stay silent for the rest of the carriage ride, James spoke when they least expected it.
"Lily's going to hate me," he said.
"Why would she hate you?" Remus, the most sensitive Marauder, asked.
"When I told them I was Head Boy, she looked at me… she looked at me like it was my fault, like it was a personal insult."
"You know it's not you who asked to be Head Boy," Remus placated.
"If she's that huffy then maybe she's not worth the trouble…" Sirius muttered.
James turned an angry glare towards Sirius and James' best friend held his gaze. Peter looked between them with quickly, his eyes flickering with fear. It wouldn't be pretty if James and Sirius had a row in the carriage.
"I think Lily's very nice," Peter put in quietly.
This broke their intense staring match. "Shut up," they said in unison, then laughed together, the bubble of tension broken at last.
Peter frowned in his end of the carriage. They always dismissed his word like that, with some variant of "shut up," when it was he who had just averted the crisis. Peter looked to Remus for some support (the quiet Marauder was always kindest to Peter), but he was already engrossed in a book that Peter recognized from the train ride.
When the carriages halted in front of Hogwarts, James was already betting his Head Boy's badge in a game of Exploding Snap, Remus had reached chapter twenty-seven, and Peter still hadn't said a word.
! #$%^&*
"First years over here," Lily chimed, herding a mass of tiny-looking new Gryffindors. "The step there vanishes, careful," she added, steering a girl out of the way at the last second.
"Yes, what she said," James added miserably. "Careful, there—" he said to a boy who was poking a suit of armor, but he didn't seem to hear. The helmet slammed shut onto the boy's finger, and James sighed as he howled in pain.
He followed Lily and her overbearing instructions to the corridor in front of the common room. "The password is 'Mandragora,'" she told the first years. "It will change every once in a while, and mind don't forget it, otherwise you won't be able to get in. If you do forget, a prefect should be able to help, or you can come find me."
She left the first years to go to the other stairway that lead to the Gryffindor Heads' common room. The new Gryffindors were left staring at James, who himself was at a loss for what to do. "Yeah, I was going to say all that," he told them lamely. "Mandragora."
The portrait of the Fat Lady swung open and the first years all filed in. James turned to the stairwell into which Lily had disappeared into; wondering what kind of system was in place there to get in.
He knew how to get into the Hufflepuff common room; he'd overhead two lost first years discussing it a few years back. He'd never bothered to go there, James would much rather sneak into the kitchens with the help of his invisibility cloak. He knew that Ravenclaw Tower had some kind of puzzle they needed to solve to get in; and of course Gryffindor had the simple password.
James stepped into the alcove that he'd often seen in the past years but had never given much thought to. It was richly decorated in red hangings with delicate golden embroidery, and at the back of the alcove stood a plain, arched wooden door. It was made of strong, polished oak, and James felt it wonderingly as he tried to guess how to open it.
He knocked on the door experimentally; and as he'd expected it was solid. He trailed a finger all around the edges, trying to find a hidden groove or something. James thought he felt a section of the door that felt warmer to the touch, and as he kneeled down to inspect it, the door suddenly fell open in front of him. James thought for a second he'd found the key to opening the door; when he looked up to see Lily holding the door open.
"Oh," he said dumbly.
"Thought you'd be out here. Heard you knocking," she said shortly, a disapproving expression on her face.
"You didn't read to the end of the Head Boy letter, did you?" Lily asked. James shook his head sheepishly. "The password's 'Ginger Root,' but we can change it."
"Thanks," James said honestly. Lily's eyes narrowed suspiciously. In the whole of her conversation with James, he hadn't so far asked her out nor told her how great he was. Lily searched through the possible explanations and settled on some sort of trick on James' part.
Lily opened the door a bit wider and James stepped in. He looked round their common room while Lily shut the door. It was decorated in red and gold like the other common room, but this time in faded colors, with drapings and hangings covering most of the room. A fire crackled in an ancient stone fireplace, decorated with carved lions of wide snarls and roars and almost monkeyish expressions. The whole place gave off the impression of something very old and powerful, like the room had remained untouched since Godric Gryffindor himself.
Two thin, spindly staircases wound in opposite directions, twisting away from each other into what seemed like a second floor. Amazed at this whole section of the castle he'd never discovered, James stepped up the stairs that, if they mirrored the Gryffindor common room, led to the boys' dormitory.
On the top of the stairs was a door that said in faded, gold lettering: "Head Boy." James pushed the door open and saw that this room was decorated, in contrast to the abundance of red and gold downstairs, in a deep midnight blue, with shimmering drapes around the window and bed.
James smiled when he saw his trunk already there, waiting patiently for him in his new room. He opened it and flung out robes, shirts, spellbooks, and other assorted bits of rubbish until his fingers closed around what he was searching for. James pulled out the little rectangular mirror and sat down on his bed.