Hi, everyone. I know it's been about six months since I last submitted (which, for you, must be like 500 years, but felt like 2 seconds for me). I guess you could blame school? PLEASE DON'T KILL ME. Also it was really hard to get inside James's head, and I have no idea why. Lily and Sirius were easy to write. Hell, Madam Pomfrey was easy to write. But James escapes me.
Anyway, here's the long-awaited (by both of us, trust me) Chapter 3!
Chapter 3: Part 1
James strode through Hogsmeade determinedly, checking inside houses and in alleyways, but other than the few Death Eaters he saw dueling students, there wasn't anyone there. He cursed under his breath, still searching for Snape. It was his fault they were in this mess, anyway.
Forcing himself to slow down a little, James tried to think. Where could Snape have gone? But his thoughts kept returning to the day before, when he'd first heard of the attack, though it seemed like months ago now.
Chapter 3: Part 2
Tuesday had been bad enough. James should've known it would get worse.
"Look, it's not going to help you if you mope around for the rest of your life," said Remus. "Just get over her! Padfoot'll come around. It really wasn't your fault."
'Her' was Lily, of course. It had been nearly five months since their fight, and James still hated himself for it. It was his fault, and if only he hadn't been so stupid – their growing (if grudging on Lily's part) friendship had ended abruptly.
"Whatever, Moony," said James, and he finished his Charms essay with a flourish. "I'm going to go work on the Map." He shoved the essay into his bag, swung the bag over his shoulder, and walked out of the common room.
Upstairs in the boys' dormitory, James pulled out an old-looking piece of parchment. Ignoring the urge to look around for intruders – he, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were the only ones who came in here, anyway – James tapped the parchment with his wand and whispered, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
It had literally taken Sirius and Remus months to figure out how to get the spell to work properly; James hadn't been much help there, because he wasn't very good at Charms. Well, no, that was a lie. He just wasn't as good as they were. He was better with Transfiguration, which had come in handy when they were trying to figure out how to fit all of Hogwarts onto one tiny piece of parchment that had to be easy to carry around, along with making everything the proper proportionate size.
Ink spread across the map like water. It twisted into words and shapes, and, finally, the dots that labeled everyone at Hogwarts.
They'd thought they'd completed it in their sixth year, but then in the beginning of this year when the new first years had arrived, none of them had shown up on the map. The Marauders had realized that they needed to charm the map so that it didn't just show the old students of Hogwarts, it showed anyone and everyone who ever went there. So far he'd succeeded in getting the younger siblings of everyone who'd ever gone to Hogwarts, but that still left a lot of the younger students, mostly muggleborns, off the map, and that was before they even considered the problem of future students.
The door opened, and James looked up from where he was lying on his stomach on his four-poster. It was Sirius.
He didn't say anything, just threw his bag onto his bed and stalked out of the room.
James had absolutely no idea why Sirius was taking Lily's side. For the past six years, Sirius had supported James in whatever he'd tried to do that pertained to Lily (though, admittedly, he had failed miserably every time). Was that what this was? Was Sirius trying to win her over for him? James doubted it. Something about the way he looked at James now told James that Sirius didn't want anything to do with him anymore.
James didn't feel like working on the map anymore. He shoved it onto Remus's bed and rolled over on his own, extinguishing his wand and falling asleep.
Chapter 3: Part 3
The next day was Wednesday. James hated Wednesdays; they were so uninteresting, stuck in the middle of the week, and that was the day the teachers dumped the most work on the students – though, admittedly, the seventh-years got more than their fair share of homework every day.
First, James had N.E.W.T. level Charms, and he turned in his essay to Professor Flitwick even though he knew it was a week early. The short professor beamed at him from atop the stack of books on his chair, and then taught them the day's lesson. James spent the whole class trying to convince himself that he was staring out the window under which Lily Evans sat instead of at her. After Charms was Transfiguration (again, N.E.W.T. level – every class James was taking was N.E.W.T.), in which James didn't even have to pay attention – Transfiguration came easy to him, almost like Quidditch. He doodled a few squiggles on his parchment just to look like he was taking notes, but stopped and crumpled up his paper when the squiggles started to look like two distinct letters. After Transfiguration was lunch, which was the only thing James could pay proper attention to because he was famished – apparently sadness made you hungrier. Then after lunch was Herbology (not that James had any idea why he was taking that class, and at the N.E.W.T. level, too), the only class James was taking Lily wasn't. He was grateful, he supposed, but there was a strange emptiness inside him when he looked over at the Venemous Tentacula and thought of a prank he, Sirius, Remus, and Peter had played on Lily in their second year, which may or may not have involved their putting the Tentacula's plant food in Lily's hair. After Herbology there was a half-hour break, during which James worked on the Map a bit more, and then he went with Remus to Defense Against the Dark Arts, which had gotten progressively harder as the year went on and was no different today. The students were attempting Patronus Charms, which James managed to do easily, but there was a single scary moment right before the silver stag burst out of his wand that he thought he wouldn't be able to do it. Finally, after Defense Against the Dark Arts was Potions, his last class. And that was when James's day had gotten interesting.
The class itself was excruciating, actually, because Felix Felicis was tricky to make and Potions was the only class that James didn't get within a second. Lily used to tell him that it was good for him and it might deflate his swelled-up head one day–
No. I'm not thinking about her right now.
James spent half the class trying to make his potion turn clear gold, as the textbook said, until Remus told him he'd forgotten to add alligator liver, and by then he'd let it sit too long. He turned in his potion at the end of class with a massive headache, and accidentally pushed over a jar of armadillo hearts.
"You go ahead," he told Remus, and then bent over to clear them up.
"Lily, could I talk to you for a second?" James started listening despite himself when he heard her name. Then he realized it was Snape's voice.
"What is it, Snivellus?" James grinned when he heard the amount of contempt she put behind the name.
"Alone?" Snape sounded hostile, the way he only did when he talked to one of the Marauders.
"No," came Sirius's voice.
"Just get on with it, Snape." Lily.
"Well, there's a Hogsmeade trip tomorrow–"
Lily blurted out exactly what James was thinking when he was only halfway through the thought.
"You can't possibly be thinking of asking me on a date?"
"No." Snape sounded embarrassed. "You just shouldn't go. It won't be safe for a Mu-muggleborn."
James balled up his fists and sat there, breathing deeply. He knew Snape had been about to call Lily a Mudblood again. He heard loud footsteps out of the dungeon, which he knew were Lily's without knowing how. Someone sighed, which he guessed was Snape, and James heard more people walk over to the same spot.
"Why were you talking to that Mudblood, Snape?" James turned his attention back to cleaning up the splattered armadillo hearts so that he wouldn't react violently, but he couldn't help listening to what the Slytherins were saying at the back of his mind.
"I-um, I wasn't." James heard the other Slytherins laugh.
"Sure, and my mother's a Mudblood," said Avery's voice, choked with laughter. "You'd better not have told her about the initiation tomorrow."
"Of course I didn't." Snape's voice sounded cold again. "I'm not stupid."
"Good. They'll be taken by surprise, then." This time it was Mulciber speaking, a dark and brutal-faced seventh year with hooded eyes. "The more Mudbloods get hurt, the better."
"And Malfoy is going to do it! We'll finally be one of his elite–"
The sound of a blow muffled the rest of Avery's sentence.
"Slughorn's still in here, you bloody idiot!"
James heard the Slytherins leave the classroom, and stood up with the fallen hearts in his hand.
What the hell is going on?
Chapter 3: Part 4
James flopped down onto the bed, pretending to work on the Map so that Remus wouldn't walk in and think he was moping over Lily again. Technically he wasn't, but he would never convince Remus of that.
Avery had said that they – the Slytherins – were going to do something that would obviously have a negative impact on the muggleborns. He'd also mentioned Lucious Malfoy. James didn't remember him too well, but he knew that Malfoy had been a prefect in James's first year. In a few of the conversations he'd had with Sirius before James and Lily's fight, they'd mentioned him a few times. Sirius had said more than once that Malfoy knew his younger brother Regulus. It had always been with the same distasteful expression that James had come to associate with Death Eaters, Voldemort, and Slytherins. Since Malfoy had left Hogwarts four years ago, James guessed that Malfoy was a Death Eater now, which would make sense, because Regulus was one too. And he'd said something about become someone's "elite" – did that mean they were going to become Death Eaters?
They are going to attack Hogsmeade and kill all the muggleborns. They are going to kill Lily, the way they killed my mother.
James dropped his head into his hands and closed his eyes.
Shit.
His eyes opened, unfocused.
No. I lost my mum already. I am NOT going to lose Lily.
James let his eyes focus on the Map. He needed some work to distract himself from what was going on.
It was open to the Slytherin common room, which was mapped out to perfection thanks to the Invisibility Cloak and Sirius's constant knowledge of the Slytherin passwords. It was empty – no, wait, there was a person sitting behind one of the couches, pushed against the wall. James peered closer, confused. Why would anyone sit there? It must be uncomfortable, and there was nobody else in the room if they were having a cry.
It wasn't one dot. It was two, so close together that they overlapped and looked like one. The names beneath them read Sirius Black and Lily Evans.
James pushed the Map onto the small table next to his bed. He remembered a conversation he'd had with Sirius last year, when they were scoping out the Slytherin common room for the Map. Sirius had told him that since the room was so empty it would be easy to bring a girl in here and make out with her. No one was ever in the room anyway.
James had laughed. "What if you were caught, though?"
Sirius had looked around. "There." He'd pointed to a couch, the same one he was kissing Lily behind right now. "We'd just hide there."
So that's why Sirius had taken Lily's side. They were together. Romantically. Sirius had succeeded where James had failed.
If he hurts her, I swear I'll kill him.
But other than that, he couldn't think of anything to do. If Lily was happy, James wouldn't interfere. He loved her too much for that.
Do I really love her enough to let her go?
He curled up on his side with his back to the door and extinguished the lights with a wave of his wand.
James felt the first tear slip sideways down his cheek.
Yes. I do.
Chapter 3: Part 5
James wrenched himself out of the memory. He didn't know why he was still walking, but something was propelling him away from Hogwarts, from Lily. He couldn't think, couldn't understand anything around him, just kept walking on and on.
There was a light in one of the intact shops ahead, and James veered towards it instinctively. He burst into the door.
Severus Snape was standing at the other end of the room with a bandage around his left forearm. Before he could raise his wand, James had disarmed him, bound him with invisible cords, and hoisted him into the air.
Snape looked scared. "What's the matter, Snivellus? I thought Death Eaters were supposed to be brave, but maybe they overestimated you. You're still nothing but a sniveling coward."
"She's dead, isn't she?" That wasn't the response James had expected.
"What?"
"I noticed you stay behind yesterday. You heard me talking to Lily and Black. You knew about this, didn't you?"
James nodded, unable to see where this was going.
"Is she dead?"
"No," James snarled, "but she almost died. And it's your fault."
"You should get her up to the castle! She could be healed!"
"I already did. And I don't know what's going to happen." Snape looked a little relieved, which confused James. "What do you care, though? You haven't spoken in years. You're a Death Eater, I see that thing on your arm. Why would you care about her? She's a muggleborn, and the only reason people like her are targeted is because of people like you."
Snape didn't have an answer for that. James tried to control his anger, but it bubbled out of him like hot lava. He punched Snape in the stomach, in the face, kicked him, feeling as if every moment of pain he put Snape through was revenge for all those years he spent poisoning Lily's mind against James, driving a rift between them that now James could never repair.
The door burst open behind James, and he spun around. Sirius stood framed in the door, and then Sirius ran across the room and dragged James out.
"He deserves it. But you can't hurt him, Prongs. Lily wouldn't want you to stoop to their level."
James broke away from Sirius's grip. "It doesn't matter what she would've wanted." But he turned away from the shop, trudging back towards the school.
Now he had to go make sure that Lily was all right.
