Disclaimer: It's JK Rowling's characters and world, I'm just playing with it. It's all hers, not mine.

Seating Arrangement

James flicks one of the newt eyes at Sirius. It soars with precision, straight to the back of his head, sticking in his hair, and he doesn't even feel a thing.

I wonder how many more I can get to stick before he notices?

Quite a lot, he imagines.

Sirius is in a heavy discussion with Delilah Van, the Hufflepuff girl that has take up the seat in front of them for their sixth year of Potions. She's fair-headed and bubbly, always smiling. She's also sharp as a hippogriff beak and therefore a good resource to have in a class which requires the sort of tediousness James feels dominates Potions.

Not that either one of them is particularly bad at Potions. They excel at everything they do; they would tell anyone that would listen just that. Potions is simply not theirbest subject. Everyone is bound to have one.

He's on his seventh newt eye when the door to Slughorn's dungeon classroom opens and Snape skulks in, his greasy hair in his beady little eyes. James frowns to himself, it would've been too much to hope the little blight would move to another country and save James from having to see his smug face for another year.

A few minutes pass and the door opens again, this time a group of Ravenclaws shuffle in. At the back of the group, listening to Ether Blishwick exhort the many wonderful uses of hippogriff dung, are the lone pair of Griffindor.

Addy, dark hair in a long plait down her back, crosses the room, past James and Sirius, to the seat diagonally and to the left of the boys. Where she'd sat for the previous five years.

She notices Sirius' newt eye covered hair, nods her approval to James, then sits. Her former table mate, Mary MacDonald, is no longer taking potions, so she throws her books into the empty seat. James flicks a newt eye at her, but she bats it away with a grin.

Lily is still standing with Ether, listening, the girl has moved on to a new wizarding band, but Lily isn't paying her much mind. She's eyeing the room with discomfort. Her gaze freezes and James follows the line of her vision.

Snape.

James notices Snape has left Lily's seat empty. The side of the table she had shared with him for the past five years of Potions is ready for her. It sits, cleaned and expectant of her arrival. Snape's eyes are wide, there's a sense of hopefulness in them as he holds her gaze.

Quickly, James scans the room. There are plenty of empty tables, the sixth year class is much smaller, more selective. Everyone can have their own table should they so want, and there are clearly a few who do. They, like Addy, have sat books in the empty seat and are spreading supplies out broadly, making it abundantly obvious they are more than happy to have the extra space.

Ether takes her leave of Lily, takes the seat next to the bubbly Delilah.

Lily still stands by the door, hesitantly scanning the room. James can see her examining the empty tables. Then her search ends at the back of the room and she sets her face in determination.

James assumes she's taking the vacancy over and up from he and Sirius when she breezes past him, a decision he's both happy and annoyed with. Happy he'd have a better view of her, and annoyed because Potions is enough of a bother without her so near him and being a distraction.

She doesn't turn up the row, though, but down.

"Can I sit with you, Adelaide?"

Addy has stretched her short legs out and propped them up on her books in Mary's old seat. She's silent for a moment, they're hardly friends, just seemed to tolerate one another most of the time.

James catches Lily glancing up to where Snape is sitting and Addy apparently does too. She frowns slightly, sighs, and kicks her books from the seat.

"Take it."

James notices, though, that she hadn't spread her supplies out. He wonders if she might've expected Lily to ask to share her table.

Lily smiles brightly as she places her books down and begins unloading her supplies.

It's a shock, her moving seats. James hadn't realized just how deep the rift between she and Snape was until now. She'd gone out of her way to find another seat.

No, not just another seat. Sitting at an empty table would've been one thing, Lily has chosen another occupied table, a table with another Griffindor. One near enough to James, and, okay, near Sirius too, that she might even have to ask to borrow supplies occasionally.

She's settled herself firmly on the side of a line that Snape won't cross.

Snape scowls at her back as she straightens her new table, turning roughly in his seat when she turns and looks up, catching him watching her. In a bit of a tantrum he begins spreading his things across his own table, now with an entire side for him to use for himself.

James' stomach sinks a bit.

He'd helped cause the rift, the destruction of the two's childhood friendship, and he feels more than little guilty at stealing what had been such an important relationship to Lily from her. Even if he didn't understand it in the least. He hadn't, though, forced Snape to say that awful thing, hadn't made him be friends with those pureblood fanatics, and hadn't made him choose them and their twisted views of muggleborns over Lily. Snape had made those decision all on his own, and now he's living with the consequences.

Sirius lets out a low whistle.

"That was a bit intense."

James nods.

Sirius sits back in his seat, propping it up on the back two legs. "Meant to make a statement, didn't she?"

"Yeah," James nods. "She did."

Sirius makes a gagging noise and James looks back at him. He pulls his hand from the back of his head, where he'd apparently been putting it during his relaxing, and examines it.

"Newt eyes?"

James gives him a look of complete innocence.

"How did you manage that?"