DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters, nor the world itself. I only own the characters I have created.
Ember's eyes fluttered open as light shone through the draperies surrounding her bed and Lily's aggravatingly cheerful voice reached her muddled ears, "Wake up, sleepy head!"
A groan escaped her lips as the combination of light and noise seemed to trigger the horrific pounding in her head which Ember knew without a doubt was a result of the abundant amount of alcohol she consumed the night before. Twisting around to glance at the muggle alarm clock the redhead had gifted her nearly three years ago - whilst ignoring said redhead's amused smile as she waited expectantly by her bed - Ember let out a louder groan and pulled her pillow out from underneath her head to chuck it at Lily. "Bloody hell, woman, it's 9 am! Leave me alone."
Lily simply laughed at the expected reaction of her best friend, already quite aware of how grumpy she could be in the mornings, especially after a night of heavy drinking. She's been on the receiving end of the pillow many, many times in the past. It's almost become a morning routine for the two of them. "Merlin, Em, you absolutely stink. It's smells like a tavern in here!"
"As if you'd know what a tavern smells like." Ember grumbled as she slowly brought herself up into a seated position, grimacing as her stomach turned at the sudden movement. She reached for the glass of cool water sitting on her bedside table and gulped it all down, hoping it would subside the protest her body was declaring in response to her reckless behaviour the previous night.
Lily huffed indignantly as she spun around to search for something in her trunk, "I know what a tavern smells like!"
"Lily, the only tavern you've been to is the Three Broomsticks, and that hardly constitutes one." Marlene's voice called from the direction of the washroom as she waltzed back in, dressed and ready for the day.
Ember twisted around and set her feet on the ground, stretching her arms up above her to rid of the kinks in her joints. "So why'd you wake me up at ninea.m. on a bloody Saturday, Evans?"
Lily turned to face her with a roll of her eyes as she pulled out a pair of socks, "Well, Fawley, I thought you'd might like to join us for breakfast. We're heading down in a few."
Nodding appreciatively with a smile, Ember stood up, collected her clothes for the day, and began heading towards the washroom when Alice's voice piped up from where she sat on the ground against her bed with a Witch Weekly balanced open on her knees. "So where'd you disappear to last night, Em?"
Ember froze in her steps, her mind immediately recalling the unexpected turn of events after her departure from the party. Her lips against James's, their avid – and admittedly wet – snogging against the wall in an reclusive alcove by the Room of Requirement, and the frantic tearing off of each other's clothes in a desperate need to feel skin against skin. Ember swallowed nervously as her cheeks burned red at the mere memory of their heated tryst, his words still echoing in her recollection when their encounter had ended in euphoric bliss: "This stays between us, yes?"
Forcing a wide smile on her face whilst willing the heat to simmer from her cheeks, Ember spun around quickly and replied, "Oh, just went for a walk with James. He was feeling a bit down so we chatted for a while and, uh, you know – shared a bottle of Firewhiskey in an alcove."
Well, at least I didn't lie – only omitted. Better to stick as close to the truth as possible, she decided.
Lily's eyebrows shot up as she sat up quickly on her bed where she sat with her closed Transfiguration book lying by her side. Shock and judgement coloured her face. "You drank in public? Are you trying to get yourself expelled?! I am a prefect, you know. I should put you in detention to teach you a lesson."
Huh. Maybe I should have omitted that tiny detail too.
"Oh, relax. It's not like we were doing it entirely out in the open!" Ember replied quickly, flushing once again at her poorly worded retort that only she truly understood. "And stop threatening me with detentions, Lily. I'm bloody sick of it."
They glared at each other, Lily's previously joyful attitude giving way to a simmering rage.
"Well," Lily began with pursed lips, sitting back and opening her book pointedly as if to show that her final remark would be the end of the conversation, "I've said it before and I'll say it again. James Potter is a horrible influence on you."
Ember felt the familiar warmth of anger at Lily's scathingly critical comment. Despite their strong friendship which overcame many hurdles in the past – most of which revolved around the messy-haired boy in question -, it still irked her just how much Lily objected her closeness with James. She tried to explain it to her on many different occasions, but Lily always chose to turn a blind eye and judge him – and by extension her friendship with him – simply by what she witnessed on school grounds. While Ember acknowledged that James almost always seemed to act on impulse around Lily, seemingly forgetting all of the manners and etiquette that were drilled into him as a child by his parents, Ember also knew that Lily barely, if ever, gave him a chance to redeem himself. Sadly enough, although she considered Lily one of her best friends, she could almost feel the drift that was slowly but surely pulling them apart, and it broke her heart to admit that it was almost entirely the fault of her friendship with James.
"Just drop it, Lily. Merlin, you're such a bitch sometimes." Ember snapped, whirling around and storming into the washroom. She slammed the door behind her for effect, disregarding the loud retort that followed.
Ember took a little bit longer than usual to get ready, knowing that it would annoy Lily to no end. Lily hated waiting – her patience was very short, which Ember liked to use to her advantage sometimes. Yes, it was petty, and yes, it would most certainly escalate the already growing conflict between the two, but Ember's hangover-addled brain refused to care in that moment.
By the time she left the confines of the washroom twenty minutes later, only Alice remained in the dorms. "They couldn't wait any longer so they headed down already. Lily was really hungry." Alice explained meekly as Ember looked around the room with displeasure.
Ember let out a laugh of disbelief as she folded her sleepwear on the bed and pulled her shoes on, "Lily was really angry, you mean." Alice grimaced in response, and Ember felt a twinge of guilt for dragging her in the middle of what was becoming a constant feud. "Sorry, Al, it just… it just really irritates me how much Lily badmouths my friendship with James. I know she hasn't outright said it, but it just feels like she wants me to choose between them and I – I don't want to do that."
Alice nodded understandingly as they headed towards the door and descended the stairs. "Of course. You'd never be able to choose between the two, they're both your best friends and that's an incredibly difficult decision to make."
"That's not true," Ember replied with a shake of her head as the common room came into view. Her heart clenched tightly in her chest at the thought of having to choose between them. And while she hoped it never actually came to that, she knew that it was becoming more likely by the day, and the decision wouldn't be as difficult as Alice assumed. She loved Lily with all her heart, and the years they spent together were absolutely wonderful, but James was her childhood. He was the person she'd experienced nearly every first with; the person who comforted her in times of trouble. He was her home away from home, and her source of laughter when all she wanted to do was cry. But most of all, he was her anchor, and that was more than proven as fact when he kept her afloat despite her desire to drown after her mother's death.
"What do you mean?" Alice questioned, biting her lip with apprehension as though she already knew the answer.
Ember hesitated for a moment and then replied in a quiet but firm voice: "If it came to it, I would choose, and I don't think Lily would be very happy with my decision."
It will always be James.
For many years, the students at Hogwarts were convinced that Ember and James's relationship wasn't entirely platonic. Despite their constant insistence that they were nothing more than friends, the rumours would still swirl, and the curious stares that followed them everywhere would still remain. No one believed them, and that was largely because they never really tried to dissuade it. The way they treated each other alone would fuel the fire, and that was due to the fact that their bond was not lacking in physical warmth. Since both of them grew up in highly affectionate households, they seldom held back any affection with one other. Hugs were always shared, and the occasional peck on the cheek were planted. He would often throw an arm around her shoulder as they ventured from class to class, and she would habitually run her fingers through his hair as they lounged in the common room.
To everyone else, they appeared as lovers. To them, it was simply the way their friendship worked.
While the endless gossip certainly irritated them beyond belief, they never gave it much of their attention, so they allowed them to fester until some other subject emerged. But that was few and far between. The rumours would start off as harmless gossip shared in the lavatories of the girls' washroom, weeks after the last one had died off, but soon – as it often was in Hogwarts – everyone would be talking about it.
Ember sometimes wondered why rumours were never spread about her and the other Marauders, but she knew that was because she never had that close of a relationship with them as she did with James. Yes, they were on very friendly terms, extending from the foundation of her relationship with James himself, but the affection ended there. They rarely if ever showed any physicality with one another, and Ember was okay with that.
Although Ember and James both agreed that their friendship would remain the same in spite of their evolvement the night before, she knew that the moment the news got out, if it ever got out, their bond would be twisted and turned to something it was not, and that could very possibly be the catalyst that breaks them.
As Ember and Alice entered the Great Hall, Ember almost expected every eye in the room to land on her as whispered words were exchanged about what took place last night. She knew that she was being irrational and slightly paranoid, which she would attribute to the incessant gossip she endured over the years, but she couldn't help but feel slightly nervous of the results from last night.
However, no eyes landed on her and no whispered words were exchanged, and Ember sighed in relief as the paranoia faded.
"Oh, I see Marlene and Lily! Let's go sit, I'm starving." Alice exclaimed loudly, interrupting Ember's thoughts and causing her to flinch at her volume.
Ember followed the direction Alice was pointing at and paused in her step, grinding her teeth at the glare directed towards her from a pair of familiar visceral green eyes. Glancing up and down the table, she spotted the Marauders sitting towards the end of the table, far enough away from the deadly stare of Lily Evans, and made her decision. "I think I'm going to sit with the boys, Al. I'm sorry, I just don't really feel like dealing with Lily and her comments right now."
Alice smiled in understanding and quickly made her way towards the other two girls, leaving Ember standing in the middle of the Hall awkwardly.
Ignoring the sudden onset of nerves that seemed to vibrate through her body, Ember slowly strode between the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor tables, watching with apprehension as the boys leaned close together, whispering furtively to each other. She briefly panicked, wondering whether James was sharing the details of last night with his friends, when she caught his eye and he gave her a reassuring smile, inclining his head to the empty seat next to his.
A small smile spread upon her lips. That was James's way of telling her that everything between them was okay, and no matter what happened last night nothing would change.
"Good morning, lads!" She said as she came up behind James and Remus. Using James's shoulder as support, she slowly lowered her tired and aching body to the seat, not wasting any time as she filled up her plate with the essentials to cure a hangover.
A round of pleasantries were returned as Sirius smirked at her from across the table. "Someone's a happy camper this morning. Did you finally get a good shag last night, Fawley?" He wiggled his eyebrows up and down suggestively, barking out a laugh.
Ember immediately froze in her seat and felt James do the same, but shook it off quickly, hoping it went unnoticed by the others. Rolling her eyes at Sirius, she plopped a grape in her mouth. "Don't be ridiculous, Sirius. All the blokes in this school are either absolutely nasty, or just plain annoying. None worth shagging, honestly. Including you lot."
She heard James quietly snigger beside her and held back a laugh of her own, smiling widely instead at Sirius's offended huff.
"Besides," She continued, "I'm not happy. I'm bloody hungover. I literally cannot breathe without feeling the urge to vomit."
Peter gagged and gave her a withering look, "Please don't." They were all very aware of Peter's deeply rooted fear of vomit. He suffered from what they called 'sympathy vomiting', and unfortunately they all had to witness it first hand in 4th year to believe it when Remus upchucked half of his dinner one night in the common room, only for Peter to follow by the fireplace.
"You should've seen these two when we got up," Remus said, pointing first at Sirius and then at James. "James was whining about his headache for a good hour like a bloody toddler, and Sirius here spent the better half of the morning bent over the toilet seat."
"Hey!" Sirius grumbled, "We agreed that would stay between us!"
"We did no such thing." Remus replied with a mocking grin.
As the two of them proceeded to argue about their supposed agreement, with Peter jumping in occasionally with a quip or two, James leaned into her with a questioning look and whispered, "We good?"
Ember grabbed his hand underneath the table and squeezed, giving him an assuring smile, "We're good."
By nightfall, the group of five could be found sitting by the fire in the common room in the exact same position they were in following their return from breakfast. They had decided to forgo lunch and dinner in the Hall entirely – due largely to the still persisting hangover some of them suffered – and agreed that one of them would bring down some food from the kitchens when the time came. James, Sirius, and Peter were partaking in a rather lively discussion about the upcoming Quidditch tryouts which James as Gryffindor Captain was holding the following weekend, and Remus broached the topic of their Arithmancy homework due the following day with Ember.
Try as she might, Ember had a difficult time focusing on Remus as he spoke. The OWL posts had arrived not long after Ember had entered the Great Hall for breakfast earlier that morning, but the letter that was delivered to her by her family's owl, Hermes, remained unopened, sitting on the table in front of her, taunting her with its contents.
Although she gave a feeble attempt at maintaining conversation with Remus, her eyes would drift off towards the envelop with illogical worry flooding her mind, her attention wandering more and more frequently as time went on. After the incident over the summer, Ember was almost always worried about one thing or another when it came to her family.
"…but Vector said that we don't need to discuss the properties of – oh, bloody hell, Em. Just open your ruddy letter before your eyes fall out of their sockets."
Ember grimaced and gave Remus an apologetic look which he waved away with a smile. Reaching for the letter, she slowly inhaled, swallowing back the hesitation, and opened it up.
Hey sister,
I thought I'd write you to check in. I haven't heard from you in a while and I can't help but worry about how you're doing! But before we get into that, I'll give you some updates on how things are going on our end.
It's been quite busy at work these days. With the rise of attacks that have been happening lately, St. Mungos has become a madhouse, and all of the healers have been assigned extra shifts to deal with the sudden onslaught of patients that have been coming in. Suffice it to say that I'm constantly exhausted, I've seen Colin approximately once in the last ten days – which he is incredibly unhappy about, of course, that needy bloke – and I've barely had time to finish planning the wedding which might I remind you is only two months away!
I wish mum were still here. She'd have been more than happy to help me out with that. Knowing her, she's probably had our weddings planned since we were little.
On a happier note, Eddie's been doing much better. He no longer cries himself to sleep every night, which makes things slightly easier for me because that means I get more hours of sleep myself. He's smiling a lot more, too. I think he's still a bit too young to understand what's happened, but mum's absence has definitely affected him some. He definitely bounced back quickly, though, and that gives me one less thing to worry about.
Mrs. Potter stopped by a few times to check in. She brought a couple of pictures from her and mum's Hogwarts days – you'll have to remind me to show you over Christmas break! Mum was absolutely gorgeous, even back then. You look exactly as she did at your age, it's uncanny. She's tried to sit with dad a few times, but he wouldn't talk much. I think her presence alone helps him feel slightly better, at least. That woman is a blessing, I swear!
Speaking of dad, unfortunately I don't have a lot to share other than what you already know. As much as I want to keep you away from all this so that you could focus on school, I know you'll only worry more so here it goes. His condition hasn't changed much since you last saw him. Yes, Mrs. Potter's visits lifts up his mood, but only slightly. They talk about their Hogwarts days a lot, and while I've seen him smile once or twice, he always withdraws back into himself once she leaves.
He's depressed without mum, Em, and I don't really know what to do about it. I've tried everything, but that man does not know how to live in a world without her and it absolutely breaks my heart. A part of me – a selfish part, I know – wishes that he would get it together, if not for himself but for us. It's like he's forgotten that we exist now that mum's gone, and I think Eddie's starting to catch on to that. He's too young to not have both his mother and father, but I'm at a loss of what to do.
I'm sorry for being the bearer of bad news, but I thought you'd like to know what's going on at home.
How are you doing? I know it was tough for you the last couple of weeks, but I'm hoping that being back in Hogwarts and around James and your friends would lift up your spirits a bit. There's nothing wrong at all with grieving, but I only hope that you're coping better than the rest of us.
Please keep in touch, Em. And let me know when your next Hogsmeade visit is scheduled for, maybe I'll drop by for a bite to eat at the Three Broomsticks. Merlin, I miss that place.
Lots of love and kisses.
Your sister,
Penelope
Ember finally released the breath she'd been holding since opening the letter, but the weight on her chest that seemed to grow ever more prominent with every word she read did not dissipate. Tears prickled her eyes at the thought of her father, the loving, caring, and funny man she's known all her life, festering in his depression.
He'd taken it the hardest, of course. That's not to say that their children didn't suffer from their loss; but for him, his wife's death was like losing a part of himself. They'd been so in love – even around their children, they would act like there was no one else in the room. Ember always admired their relationship, hoping that one day she may be able to have one of her own that reflected that of her parents, but now the image of the two together seemed to be fading from her memory with each day that passed.
And it hurt. Merlin, it hurt so much.
"Hey Em, you okay?" James called out from his seat, having caught sight of the tight grip she held on the letter and the pinched expression marring her face. Sirius, Remus, and Peter snapped their focus to her.
Glancing up quickly and willing the tears away, she gave him a smile, hoping it would be enough to turn their attention away from her. But they all continued to stare at her with concern, James leaning forward with his eyebrows furrowed.
"Um," She muttered, standing up and folding the letter into her pocket, "I think I'm going to go for a walk, clear my head."
James stood up quickly, his furrowed eyebrows deepening, "You want company?"
Ember shook her head rapidly, waving a hand in dismissal, "No, no, stay here. I want to be alone for a bit."
She turned quickly and beelined for the portrait hole. As the entrance closed behind her, the last thing she heard before she turned the corner was James's troubled voice asking, "What's wrong with her?"
It could've been minutes, or it could've been hours – Ember didn't know how much time had passed since she escaped the common room, and she definitely knew she was out way past curfew, but she couldn't find it in her to care.
The letter from her sister stirred up a plethora of emotions inside her. Worry, of course, was at the forefront of those emotions. Her father had always been her rock, and now to hear that he was slowly withering away was a bit too much for her to bare.
Ember looked up at the sky, gazing at the surplus of stars that littered the black canvas as she leaned back against the wall in a far off corner in the Astronomy Tower.
While many other people – couples, in particular – typically came up here for less than decent reasons, Ember simply enjoyed the peace and tranquility she found in the breezy tower. She would always journey to this particular spot when she was feeling upset or contemplative. It provided the perfect blend of quiet but noisy. The sounds from the distant village of Hogsmeade would drift up to the tower as the wind howled in the background, the occasional call of an animal mixing in.
Ember absolutely loved this place, and it was without a doubt her favorite spot in Hogwarts.
Unfortunately, James was very aware of that fact because it was not long until he found his way to the secluded spot she often occupied.
She felt his presence before she heard him. He lowered himself down onto the ground beside her, his shoulder brushing up against his, and leaned back.
After a few moments of silence, he reached for bent knee and gave it a squeeze, finally murmuring the words she needed to hear in that very moment: "I'm here."
Slowly, reflexively, Ember turned to face him, and despite the darkness surrounding them James could clearly see the tear tracks on her cheeks. Reaching up, he wiped away the remnants of her sadness, but instead of letting his hand fall away from her face, it remained unmoved.
"I'm here." He repeated with more conviction, staring into her eyes with meaning.
Swallowing the hardness that seemed to be perpetually lodged in her throat, Ember gazed back at him in understanding. With a small inhale, she leaned forward and planted her lips delicately upon his.
This time, their kiss was unhurried. The light pressure placed upon each other did not convey the desperation of both, nor the unrequited feelings of one, nor the vacant loss of another. Last night's frenzied display gave into delicacy, companionship, and warmth.
And as they slowly undressed each other and gave into another moment of well-needed relief, Ember couldn't help but think that, despite both of their insistence, things had in fact changed between them. Not in a romantic sense at all, but in a way that truly solidified the importance they felt for one another.
In that moment, they were stronger than ever.
A/N: Well, here it is! Chapter two. I really enjoyed writing this, and although we're only two chapters in, James and Ember's friendship is really growing on me.
I know right now the story is focusing on the two of them rather than on Sirius and Ember, who are in fact endgame (as I indicated in the relationship section), it is important to show the evolvement from James to Sirius. And rest assured it WILL happen, but not for a while.
Anyway, I hate to seem like I only care about reviews but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! They literally make my day and make me want to write more and more. The updates will be a lot more frequent, that's for sure.
I'd like to thank the 10 wonderful reviewers I received in the first chapter. And thank you to everyone who favorite/follow the story as well! You're all really appreciated xx
Until next time,
Mar.
