Author's Note: Well, damn, Jennifer.
As it turns out, I may have been Jenn's Secret Santa but she was also mine, and this morning my sick day was brightened by the arrival of a Jughead Jones beanie AND blanket to snuggle up with. Which made me want to post early for Jenn, but I still want to stick to my Saturday schedule. So. I split chapter 2 into two chapters. This is fine because it was a long chapter.
So I guess this fic is four chapters now. No regrets.
chapter 2: now dash away! dash away! dash away all!
Lily, 2011
Lily is often forced to remind herself that it's worth putting up with this crap for Euphemia.
As it is, she tries to avoid visiting the Potters with her family whenever she can, and devotes a significant amount of guilt to this decision because her fear is that Euphemia will take it personally. It's easier to make excuses, now that she's a month shy of fourteen. She's got friends of her own, not to mention school, and tennis, and performing arts classes at weekends, but she still finds herself lying when she's got a clear schedule, and that makes her feel wretched.
She hopes that Euphemia can't tell, and that her parents don't give the game away with a casual remark – not that she ever tells them anything – because she couldn't stand to hurt her feelings. Euphemia's like a second mother to her. Lily really, truly loves her, and doesn't blame her at all for James. He's a product of nature, not nurture.
Euphemia is a loving, generous woman, but James is a shit. An arrogant, pigheaded little shit, who thinks that just because he's cute or whatever he can...
But Lily's not going to think about that. Her eyes refuse to see what her common sense can, so she ignores what they have to say. A polar bear is beautiful to look at, but get too close and it can rip your face off, or in James Potter's case, drop your plate to the ground as he hands it to you and pretend that it was an accident. He did that last year, got sent to his room, and acted like it was her fault.
Anyway, he's not even that cute. He's still shorter than her.
"Have I told you how Evans broke Christmas?" he's saying to his mate, Sirius. Lily doesn't recognise his face from previous visits, but apparently, he and James have been best pals for ages. Sirius gave her a quick, disapproving once-over when she and her parents walked through the door.
Sirius can piss off, as far as she's concerned.
"Yes," Sirius replies. He looks supremely bored, flipping through Euphemia's Lakeland catalogue. "About a thousand times."
"I didn't deserve it," James continues, in a pained, dramatic way, as if he's referencing a Great Trauma.
"Two thousand."
"I mean, I can't prove it but I think she was probably jealous because I had a better selection box, anyway -"
"Please shut up."
"I still don't understand why anyone would decide to tell an innocent little kid that Santa doesn't exist, for no reason at all. She wanted to ruin my life. That's what Evans does for fun, you know. She ruins lives."
He's trying to get a reaction, Lily knows. James Potter is many things, but subtle is not one of them.
Luckily, she has come prepared with one of her Adrian Mole diaries, and is very good at ignoring the words that tumble out of his idiot mouth. Her parents would freak out if she got mad at James in front of them. They freak out whenever she fails to behave in a ladylike manner, in accordance with her father's 'good old-fashioned' rules. When James acts like a prat, he's 'spirited,' according to Dad. When Lily scowls in public, she's got an attitude problem.
The worst thing about this situation is that Lily could be spending Boxing Day at Mary's sleepover, not stuck at the dining room table with James Potter and his mate while her parents drink wine and laugh it up with Fleamont and Euphemia in the kitchen. Her only consolation is that her awful sister was also forced to come and is more upset than she is, but Petunia is hiding in the under-stairs toilet, crying on the phone to Yvonne about some relationship drama she fabricated to make her love life seem more interesting, so she's no help at all.
"It broke my heart." James is still talking. The mileage he's gotten from this story, several years on, is almost commendable at this point. She can't even remember what he did to make her do it, but contends that it was probably deserved. "And afterwards, when I told my parents, she pretended it was an accident."
Sirius pretends to snore.
If he's bored by his friend's monologue, it's got nothing on the way Lily feels. She's spent countless hours listening to James harangue her over imagined insults. He won't forgive her for 'stealing' his mother's love. He won't forgive her for Algernon, as if she can help that his cat is obsessed with her. Nobody can hold a grudge better than he can. James used to break her things and make fun of her red hair, and she's gotten over that.
She still despises him, of course, but that's because of his constant, open refusal to give her a moment's peace whenever she's in his presence. When a person hates you with as much fervour as James does her, your only option is to hate them back.
Thank goodness for her book. She'll have to hide it in her handbag when her parents come in, but it's here for her now.
"What did you get for Christmas, Evans?" says James.
She focuses steadily on the page.
"Not a new personality, that's for sure."
She's not going to give him the satisfaction.
"I'll tell your parents if you ignore me."
This threat gives her no choice, so she looks up and arranges her features into something resembling civility. His hand jumps to his hair - he's always messing with his hair, though it doesn't need his help, being so naturally inclined towards chaos that it barely makes biological sense - and the triumphant grin on his face is so irritating that she would happily throttle him.
She can't believe that this is the boy about whom she occasionally has confusing, vaguely romantic dreams.
"I got an iPod and some new books," she says, forcing politeness out of her throat despite her baser instincts. "What about you?"
"What books?" asks Sirius sharply.
"Um." This could be part of some plot. One never knows with James. He swapped her Coke for malt vinegar the last time she came over. Whatever he's planning, Sirius is probably in on it. "A few Agatha Christies, the Adrian Mole collection, and then I got a few older books like Emma, and Frankenstein, and -"
"I love Frankenstein," Sirius interrupts. "Do you read a lot of horror books?"
"I mean, not really, but I wanted to try a couple out."
"It's a great book to start with."
"It's the most famous one written by a woman, and I'm trying to read as many female authors as I can. Dad thought I was too young to read Frankenstein, but my friend Mary bought it for me."
"Why? It's not even scary," Sirius scoffs.
"Yeah, well, my dad still thinks I'm nine-years-old." She glances at the kitchen door to make sure her father isn't hovering nearby. "He bought me the Twilight books for Christmas."
Sirius makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat.
"That's not even the worst part. The worst part is that he'd already bought me the same books for my last birthday, he'd just forgotten."
"Or he's really into books about pasty saps driving around in Volvos and crying about their emotional problems."
All the while, James has been watching her, and when she laughs – which she can't help – his expression darkens considerably. He probably thinks that she's hatching an insane plan to steal Sirius away. He always suspects her of working against him.
"I got a new football kit for Christmas," he says loudly. "And a bunch of Xbox games, and a phone."
She's too used to this behaviour to be startled by the interruption. "That sounds really nice."
"Nicer than what you got."
It rankles in her soul, especially since she's got the brains to wipe the floor with him. But her parents are in the kitchen.
"Yeah," she lightly agrees. "Probably."
His face twists in disgust. "You're such a liar."
"Pardon?"
"Lily?" calls her mother from the kitchen. "Could you come in here and help set the table?"
"See? This is what I mean, 'pardon,'" James spits, and leans backwards, tipping his chair towards the wall. She'd love for him to fall over but he won't, because she's not that lucky. "You're sly. You pretend to be all nice and polite when our parents aren't around, but really you're awful."
She blinks at him. "What are you talking about?"
"My mum thinks you're such an angel, but whenever she's not here you try to make me feel thick -"
"I don't try -"
"You do, and if I try to tell her the truth I end up looking like a liar, like when we were kids."
"Is this about that stupid Santa thing again?"
"It's about a lot more than that, but yeah, that's one of the -"
"Oh my god," she groans, her hands jumping to land on either side of her head. "Why can't you ever let anything go?"
"Because," says James, and lurches forward, all four legs of his chair connecting with the floor again. "You never apologised."
"For something I did when I was seven!"
"You were eight, actually. Old enough to know better."
"Lily?" calls her mother again. "Sweetie?"
"There must be something really wrong with you, Evans." James points to his temple. "In your head, if you can act nice around some people and evil around others. Psycho killers act like that. Are you going to murder us all?"
He's a shit.
He's such a horrid, unbearable shit.
Lily's blood is boiling, heat coursing through her skin so swiftly that it might be happening for real, another biological impossibility come to life. She wants to smack him right across the face, send his glasses flying, see an angry red mark upon his cheek.
So she stands up and leaves the room.
"There you are!" cries her mother, and hurries over wearing a harassed expression, her default setting. A glass of wine is dangling perilously from one hand. "Take that jug into the dining room, will you?"
"No, James can do that," says Euphemia from the stove. "Go back inside and relax."
Lily's mother immediately waves away the totally reasonable suggestion that the boy who lives in this house might be called upon to wait on one of his guests. "It's fine, Lily's happy to help."
She's far from happy – in fact, she bloody well agrees that James should be made to get off his arse and do something, for once – but she obediently lifts the heavy glass jug which contains Euphemia's famous Christmas punch, and carries it into the dining room. Sirius has returned to the catalogue, but James has got her book in his hands, and is watching her expectantly.
"Well done," he tells her, smugly. "Aren't you just perfect?"
She hates him. She really hates him. She wishes she could throw the jug in his face.
She could.
She can.
No, she can't. Her father will lose his mind.
But James is such a shit.
He said she was sly. Called her a liar. Accused her of pretending to be a good person. And it's Christmas, she savagely recalls. She didn't buy him a present, so why not give him what he wants?
Two things make her decision for her. The first is that James laughs, a maddeningly conceited sound, because he clearly thinks he's beaten her, and she can't bear to be beaten. The second is Sirius, who lifts his head from the magazine and catches her gaze. Her eyes flit down to the jug, settling on the swirling, sticky, saccharine liquid contained within, and when she looks at Sirius again, he's wearing an evil smile that seems to suggest it. Like an unspoken challenge. Do it. I dare you. I bet you won't.
Now she feels giddily gleeful, so much so that she practically glides across the room despite the weight of the object in her hand. There's a light of curiosity in James's eyes, and he opens his mouth to speak, but never makes it, because she tips the jug forward and pours the whole lot right over his stupid, over-inflated head. A lot of noises seem to rear up around her – James yelping like a startled dog, a stampede coming from the kitchen, Sirius's deafening peal of laughter – but she doesn't stop until every drop is gone. James is drenched, as is the table. Her book is ruined and the Lakeland catalogue, thoroughly waterlogged, falls to the floor with an almighty slap.
"Lily!" cries her father.
The uproar has summoned all of humanity to the dining room en masse. Her father, predictably, has turned redder than his hair. Petunia comes skidding into view from the hall, phone clasped to her ear. Euphemia is stifling a laugh behind her hand. Sirius isn't attempting to stifle anything, but is gasping helplessly for breath.
She sets the jug down on the table.
"What on earth?" says her mother breathlessly. There's a blossoming red wine stain on her blouse.
"He deserved it," Lily explains. "He's a prick."
"Oh my god, Yvonne," says Petunia, and disappears back into the hall, cackling. "You'll never believe what my sister just -"
Her father, who looks as if he's experiencing an aneurysm, points an accusatory finger in her direction. "Young lady -"
"He hurt my feelings," she stubbornly insists. To hell with it. She's already attempted to drown him, so there's nowhere to go from here but up. What is her father going to do, confiscate Twilight? He'd be doing her a favour. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, Euphemia, but your son is a bully."
Sirius bursts into a fresh wave of laughter.
"A bully?" her father repeats, aghast. "You're the one who poured a jug of punch over his head!"
"Well, that's neither here nor there," she retorts.
"This is amazing," Sirius gasps, and thumps a stunned, silent James hard on the back. "Happy Christmas, mate!"
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but I really don't feel like dinner," Lily continues. "Can I be excused?"
"You most certainly can't -"
"I think that's a good idea," Euphemia interrupts, and holds out a placating hand. Lily's father gapes at her outstretched palm. "Lily, the spare bedroom across from the linen cupboard is made up for you. Why don't you pop upstairs and cool down?"
"She can clean this mess up first!" Dad cries. "Fleamont, Euphemia, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over her."
"Don't apologise. James can clean up the mess," says Euphemia. James gives a wail of anguish. "I'm absolutely certain that he deserved what he got."
"Euphemia?"
"Grace." Euphemia's tone is warning. "You don't know my son like I do."
"Mum!"
"You'll do what your mother tells you," says Fleamont sternly. "And no complaints."
"Go on, Lily," Euphemia instructs, and jerks her head toward the door. "I'll come see you after I've had a word with my son."
Everyone starts talking at once, but Lily has been given an out, and doesn't intend to stay for the conversation. She takes one last, satisfying look at James, staring at her with streaky glasses and hair plastered to his forehead, and flees the room as swiftly as a deer.
James, 2011
His mother is apoplectic when she finds out what he said.
Sirius is the one who tells her, not Lily, as he originally suspects. His mother brings a plate to her room, leaden with steak pie and crisp roast potatoes, and stays in there for thirty minutes, during which time James is forced to decontaminate the dining room before he's allowed to take a shower. It's a sticky, thankless job, and he's rewarded with a ham sandwich and a glass of water.
"No pie for you," says his father, looking at him as if he'd like to kick him up the arse. So that's nice.
Lily's dad argues on James's behalf, for which he should be grateful, but it only serves to annoy him. Why isn't he sticking up for his daughter? Why did he buy her two copies of the same book in one year? It's not like she'd be difficult to buy for, she's always talking about books. Her father could have bought her Anne of Green Gables. Lily was talking it about a few weeks ago, said that she'd found the first volume in her grandmother's house, but never got to read the rest. James specifically remembers because she gets so excited when she reads about other girls with red hair, and he'd checked it out, and there are a whole bunch of Anne of Green Gables books. He found the entire boxed-set in Waterstones just last week, on sale for £45. Then he bought it.
He could have given it to Lily, but as he hates her, that might have sent the wrong message. It's hidden in his room under a loose floorboard, alongside a few other things he bought, regretted, and hid for the same reason. The whole process has been such a headache. His mother had him drug-tested because he couldn't tell her where his allowance was going.
James, his sandwich and his water are confined to his room for a really long time, which would normally be fine, but his dad takes his Xbox, Sirius isn't allowed in and Algernon is nowhere to be found. When his mother eventually makes an appearance, he's greatly relieved, until she reveals herself to be majestically enraged.
"You," she snarls, her voice low and deadly, as if she's casting a curse upon him. "I could kill you."
"Keep refusing to feed me me and I'll die soon enough," he retorts, and nods to the sandwich, which is sitting on his dresser. He elected not to eat it as a form of protest.
"Don't be dramatic," she snaps. "You're lucky I don't starve you for a few days to teach you a lesson."
"I already feel starved."
"I don't care, not after what you said to that poor girl."
"Whatever she told you -"
"It was Sirius, actually."
That hits him like a sucker punch. Betrayed by his best mate, twice in one day. Though Sirius maintains that talking to Lily about books is not a betrayal, it felt like one. Sirius was supposed to be sullen and unfriendly. He wasn't supposed to talk to her, and he certainly wasn't supposed to make her laugh.
"Lily wouldn't tell me what you said," his mum continues, as he has gone temporarily mute. "She was more concerned with apologising for her own actions."
And isn't that just typical of Lily Evans? Apologising for her own behaviour so as to make James look like even more of a villain? He can't explain how refusing to tattle on him plays into this master plan, but he's sure he can make sense out of it later.
"I wasn't trying to upset her."
"You certainly weren't trying to charm her."
"She doesn't care what I say. She hardly listens, most of the time," James argues. This, at least, is entirely true. "I was just winding her up. I didn't expect her to get upset."
"Why, pray tell?" His mother perches on the end of his bed, one eyebrow cocked as if to remind him of his incompetence. He's never been able to raise one at a time.
"Why what?"
"Why were you trying to wind her up?"
"I was - I dunno. I was bored."
"Or jealous," she delicately supplies, tracing a pattern on his bedspread with her fingernail. "Because she was talking to Sirius, and not to you."
James flushes immediately. "I wasn't jealous!"
"Oh, I think you were."
"How the blood - I mean - how would you know?"
"Well, to start with, you never stop talking about her."
"About her crimes against me!"
"And you're always trying to get her attention."
"That's not even -"
"I mean, I knew that you had a crush on her, but I'd hoped you would have behaved like more of a gentleman, and not a wild animal."
Lights explode behind his eyes, and he's so incensed that he tries to leap to his feet, but he's been sitting on his leg and it has fallen asleep, so he only succeeds in rolling sideways like a drunken mule.
"I don't have a crush on her," he hotly protests. "That is madness."
"Then what on earth was that little display in the dining room?"
"That was - I don't know, but it wasn't a crush." His glasses have slid down his nose as a result of his failed attempt to jump off his bed. He pushes them up with one finger and glares at his mother, who is maddeningly smug. "Maybe I am a bully, I dunno, but I don't like Lily and that's the truth."
"Well, here's another truth for you, young man." She points to the wall as if she's trying to puncture a hole in the plaster. "I fully intend to make that girl my daughter-in-law one day, and as you're the only offspring I've managed to eject from my cursed womb, you're the only hope I've got, unless I can somehow adopt Sirius, who seems a better prospect at this point, honestly."
Though he should be terrified by the truth of his mother's insane ambition to marry Lily into the family, James is, unfathomably, more bothered by the idea that she'd rather pair Lily up with Sirius. He doesn't even know how that would work. Setting Sirius on Lily Evans would be like sprinkling salt on an ice cream sundae.
But, like, the worst kind of ice cream. She's the kind of ice cream James hates. Lily isn't cookie dough or double chocolate or mint chocolate chip. Lily is... licorice. Licorice flavoured ice cream.
"Sirius," he loftily begins, unsure of his destination. "Is a confirmed bachelor."
"Sirius is fourteen."
"And I'm thirteen," James reminds her. "Why are you trying to marry me off?"
"Because I'm your mother and I know what's best for you and it will be better for us all in the long run if you let me pick your girlfriends."
"I don't even want -"
"I thought I'd raised you better than this. It's not acceptable or clever to be cruel, especially not to a girl you like, and even more especially, not to a girl like Lily. She is a sweet, kindhearted –"
"No she isn't."
His mother presses her lips together, as if she's holding back a diatribe she's bound to regret, or urging herself not to murder him.
"She is a sweet, kind girl," she repeats, louder and firmer this time. "And her family have been very nice to you, even that idiotic father of hers. There is no reason whatsoever for you to behave like a baboon whenever she's in the house."
A baboon! When James has never shown Lily his bottom. Not since that time - but he was really young then, and anyway that's hardly relevant.
"It was funny when you were children and you used to run around playing tricks on one another, but you're nearly fourteen-years-old. I understand that your hormones are a maelstrom –"
"What's a maelstrom?"
"And I know it's difficult to know what to say to a girl when you've got a crush on -"
"For the last time," he protests, his cheeks hot with embarrassment. "I don't have a crush on her!"
James does not have a crush on Lily. He hates Lily. He always has, he always will, and there isn't a force on earth that could change his mind. She's far too proper, and boring, and obsessed with books to the point where it drives him up the wall. What kind of person reads that much? Every time she visits his house, too, as if there's nothing else she could possibly be doing with her time. There's nothing more infuriating than watching Lily sit there with her nose in some novel, ignoring every attempt he makes to get her to talk to him, or even look at him.
She's perfect, and that's what he hates the most about her. Sweet, faultless Lily, who gets brilliant marks at school and wins tennis tournaments without breaking a sweat. She makes him feel like an idiot, helpless and clumsy and half-panicked, most of the time, like his brain is a janky old computer, running too many programs, overheated and struggling to reboot. And what's truly maddening, what really drives him nuts, is that it makes no sense at all. James is top of his class at school. He's captain of his football team. He's got loads of friends, everyone likes him – his teachers tell him that he's too confident, for crying out loud. Then she turns up at his house, tucks her hair behind her ears and wordlessly knocks it all out of his head.
James has been trying his best, for years, to prove to himself that Lily is not as spectacular as she makes out, but she just gets worse. Better. Smarter. Sweeter.
Prettier.
He's been stewing, sullenly, for about half a minute, while his mother watches in silence, and it occurs to him now that he really doesn't want to carry on this conversation.
"I'll apologise," he murmurs.
His mother cups her hand to her ear. "What was that?"
"I said I'll apologise," he repeats, and his heart's clanging against his chest like a pinball machine, but damned if he's not going to scowl. "On one condition."
"You don't get to give me conditions, James."
"No, it's not - I just need you to leave the room for a minute, and then I'll come out," he explains, and scrubs a hand through his still-damp hair. "And I want you to - to please not mention anything I might be carrying, or that I, just -"
"Is this about the stash of presents you've got hidden under your floorboard?"
"What?!" His eyes expand to the size of planets. "How did you know about that?"
"Because I gave birth to you, and because you're horribly transparent."
"Oh."
"I know about those beers you and Sirius sneaked into his room, too," she continues. "A bottle opener might have been useful, but who am I to tell you two geniuses what to do? Your father was certainly happy to find that you'd warmed up all of his Budweisers."
The world has turned upside down. His best friend is betraying him left, right and centre. His mother knows all of his best concealed secrets, he still doesn't know what beer tastes like, and he might have a crush on his worst...
"I don't -" he begins, and swallows a lump in his throat. "Did you know about this the whole time?"
"Obviously."
"So why did you make me wee in a cup to test for drugs?"
"Oh, that," she says, and laughs, high and cruel. "I didn't actually have your urine tested, I just did that for a laugh."
"You're evil," he accuses, begrudgingly admiring this prank.
"I know," she replies, with a wide, malicious smile. "Where do you think you got it from?"