Author's Note: I'm so sorry for the delay! I've been quite ill, and the action scene in this chapter was a pain to write, but at least James gets to do something pretty cool on his birthday!

Chapter Four

The lost princess of Ravenclaw could dole out an insult with as much bite as his mother, was dangerously adept with her fists, and righteously indignant enough to cut through James's contrition and annoy him greatly. She spoke to him as if she thought he was thick, and had no qualms about barking orders in his direction like a skittish military leader, calling upon him to help her pack a variety of utterly useless objects that 'might come in handy,' from sweet-smelling soaps - carved into the shape of roses - to a jewel-leaden tiara that formed the head of an eagle.

One would have thought that she would be the slightest bit grateful to him for breaking the curse that had held her prisoner for a decade, but he felt as if she rather resented him for it.

She thought she was smarter than him, and wasn't shy about announcing it.

She was probably right, he moodily reflected, as he carted an armful of gowns from her wardrobe to his bag.

She was far too good for Snape.

It took ages to pack up her belongings because she was constantly stalling herself, throwing things into the bag and taking them out again, occasionally stopping to sit on the floor and take deep breaths, and debating the usefulness of things like quills and sewing needles for far longer than those items deserved. His opinion was never sought, which was fine by him because he couldn't see the use in anything she chose to take along, and if she hadn't been so set on snapping at him every few minutes for 'getting in the way,' it would have been a relatively painless experience. He supposed he should be grateful that she hadn't forced him to move the four-poster bed, or her large, copper bathtub, but as it was, the princess had succeeded in getting on his last nerve by the time she decided she was done.

The entire room had been stripped bare by the end. Even the footstool had been packed, which made James wonder if she was considering her things in terms of how effective a weapon they would make, and how much pain he would be in should she opt to use them. She had threatened him half-a-dozen times while they loaded the contents of the room into his satchel, and given what she'd done to his nose, he didn't doubt her ability to knock his block off should mood strike her.

She had pulled and fiddled with her braid so much as they packed that once they were finished, and she stood in the middle of the room, staring mutely at the wall, it was no longer tidy, and several long strands of red hair had escaped to frame her face.

"I suppose we should go now," she said quietly, more to the room than to him.

"That's the idea," he replied, shouldering his bag. It weighed as little as if she had packed feathers. "Unless you need a minute."

She looked around, her eyes raking over hanging tapestries on the walls, her undressed bed, the empty space where her bookcase had been. Her shoulders rose and fell just once.

"No," she said. "I don't."

Then she turned and walked right out of the room, and led the entire way down the stairs in complete silence, which might have made for a pleasant interlude after her barrage of scorn, but he found to his annoyance that he preferred her talking.

She was evidently distressed by the turn of events, which was concerning. James had seen many prisoners released from Pride Castle - those his parents had deemed undeserving of exile but befitting punishment - after long spells of incarceration. Many became so accustomed to the dungeons that freedom was an overwhelming struggle, and they were men far older than the princess, who had served less time. She had spent her formative years alone in a windowless room, and James couldn't begin to imagine what was going on inside her head.

He didn't know if he wanted to ask, lest she hand him an opportunity to care more than he already did.

At his best, James could often be overzealous, incautious, and prone to ignore the warnings his brain concocted, and for a moment - as he'd stared into a pair of magnificent green eyes that surely had no equal on earth - he'd been convinced that he'd just met the woman of his dreams. Then the princess socked him in the face, quite rightly, and with his tender, bleeding nose had come clarity, but even so, he had to be wary. She was deeply irritating, but beautiful, and clever right off the bat, which made for a rather appealing package despite her blatant distaste for him.

If James was to spend two weeks in her company, he'd need to be mindful of the direction of his feelings, and take care not to trip into some pointless, doomed infatuation. He was, unfortunately, a bit of a romantic, and had borne his fair share of teasing on account of it.

James had never been very good at being careful, but then, he'd never had a dying mother to think about.

A dying mother who'd never told him that she'd wanted him to marry this girl, and must have been serious about it, if she'd sent her husband to make a formal request. There wasn't a chance that his father would have made such a decision without Euphemia's input. Not so much as a menu had gone unapproved by the queen in the entire duration of her reign. It occurred to him that he ought to have words with his mother when he returned to Gryffindor, but he wasn't sure what he was supposed to say, aside from complimenting her excellent taste.

It was just as well that he hadn't told the princess who he was, and not just because he didn't particularly want to spend their journey to Gryffindor discussing the fact that their respective parents had wanted them wed. The shame of losing his kingdom to the king of Slytherin, of all people, was a pain he felt every day, because he should have insisted that he be allowed to carry a wand into that banquet, as was his right as the crown prince of Gryffindor. He should have been able to protect his parents, and his home, and his people, but had failed on all three counts. His father was dead, his mother dying, his best friends rotting in a dungeon and his kingdom in peril, all because of James's negligence.

Breaking the curse, not that he knew exactly what that meant, had made him feel good about himself for the first time in months, but the princess seemed decidedly less confident in his ability to protect her. The last thing she needed was further reason to doubt his ability, and it was on this that he was ruminating when they reached the bottom of the stairs, and she scared the life out of him by letting out a high-pitched scream.

"What?!" he said quickly, and drew his sword from his back at once, but she didn't answer him, racing down the last few steps and off to the right. He followed at speed, and found that she had thrown herself to her knees beside the clawed foot of the dragon statue.

In her arms was a large, fluffy, decidedly orange bundle.

"It's a cat!" she cried delightedly, smiling for the first time since James had met her - the bright, excited, painfully pretty smile of a girl experiencing pure joy - though it was aimed entirely at the cat, and not at him.

"Don't shout like that!" he scolded her, letting his sword arm drop to his side. "Do you want to start attracting trolls?"

But she ignored him, her attention captured completely by the cat, who was snuggling into her bosom with great enthusiasm, purring as if he'd never known love before this moment.

The little shit had never shown James that much affection. He simply stared at him with cold, condescending eyes, until he got whatever he wanted, usually fish, or a two-hour nap beneath a tree. He had sacrificed time, energy and dry trousers, day after day, all for the sake of keeping that cat well fed, and not once had he gotten a cuddle.

"Aren't you the handsomest little man I've ever seen?!" the princess was cooing, as she climbed to her feet with the cat nestled happily in her arms. "Yes, you are! You're just the sweetest—"

"He's really not."

"—and you're so fluffy!" she squeaked, pressing her cheek to his. The cat's eyes locked onto James's, and he blinked in an owlish manner, as if to mock his jealousy - whether he was jealous of her, because the cat had allowed her to hug him, or of the cat, because of the attention this goddess-like woman was lavishing upon him quite undeservedly, he couldn't even tell - and that was the last straw. He returned his sword to its scabbard and marched over.

"That," he said haughtily, and snatched the beast from her arms. "Is my cat. Get your own."

The princess blinked at him. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

"It's just..." she said, and nodded to the cat, who was struggling to return to her embrace. "He doesn't seem to like you very much."

"I'll have you know that this cat loves me."

"Oh, so it's not just me, and you elicit this kind of hostility from your friends and loved ones?"

"You know - ouch!" he yelped, having received a vengeful claw to the arm. "Most people think I'm a delight—"

"That's difficult to believe."

"—and I'm personally inclined to think that this hostility you speak of is a ginger thing," he finished, and held the cat at arm's length. "Completely unconnected to me."

"Why?" she said, and crossed her arms. "Haven't you kissed the cat against his will?"

"You're never going to let that go—"

"I don't think he's yours at all," she interrupted. "I think he happened to be here when we came outside, and you're just being petty."

"You think I'd be petty over a cat?"

"It's highly unlikely that anyone would bring their pet on a rescue mission, and you haven't mentioned his name once, so yes."

"For your information, he followed me here, and he does have a name," James retorted.

"Which is?"

For a split second, he felt a thrill of sheer panic, but then he looked at the cat and the cat looked at him, and a name clunked into his brain with a stunning kind of certainty. "Algernon."

"Algernon?" said the princess flatly.

"It was a mutual decision," he continued, with a strange feeling that this was true. He held out the cat for her to inspect. "Don't you think he looks like an Algernon?"

"I think you're full of shit."

"I think that's awfully unfit language for a princess."

She looked for a moment as if she was about to smile at him, but instead she lifted a hand to scratch Algernon's chin. "I think, Algernon, that it's rather cruel of your pet idiot to deny me a cuddle when I love cats so dearly and you're the first one I've seen in ten years."

"Not true. I'd never deny you a cuddle, but you don't seem interested."

"You've done enough, thanks," she said, though a rosy blush crept into her cheeks, and James felt a different kind of thrill altogether, and this was an incredibly dangerous path to tread with his situation being what it was. He had his mother and Snape to think about, looming always at the forefront of his fears, and besides, she was haughty and unpleasant, and he didn't particularly like her.

She certainly didn't like him, so he supposed it wasn't an issue.

"We should leave," he said, and set Algernon on the ground. The cat immediately sprang towards the princess and started to rub against her skirt. "Judging by some of the bodies I've seen around here, there are plenty of trolls in the area, and there are three hundred miles between here and the capital—"

"I'm not going to Gryffindor."

"Pardon?"

The princess lowered herself to her knees once more to stroke Algernon's fur, not seeming to care if she got her gown dirty on the dusty stone floor. Through the open wooden door that lay fifty feet behind her, he could see that the fog outside had thickened since he entered the castle. "Inside your bag is a map that Mary helped me to make. It shows the locations of all of the troll and warlock settlements in the Burned Lands that we can avoid—"

"There were none the way I came."

"But I'm not going back the way you came," she said, with a cold glare. "I'm going to Ravenclaw, through one of the hidden mountain paths that lie to the north of here, and back to the Palace d'Helene. You'll need to come with me, since you've got all of my things—"

"I know you want to see your sister—"

"My sister is the last person I want to see, believe me."

"So why—"

"I'll explain on the way," she said, and stood up, with the cat in her arms again. She pressed an absent kiss to the top of Algernon's head and spun around on her heel. "Get the map, would you?"

She strode away, trailing her skirts unconcernedly across the floor, and he sped after her at once.

"We can't go to Ravenclaw," he told her, when he caught up.

"Yes, we can."

"No, we can't, because I have to take you to Gryffindor."

"Just because you broke the curse, that doesn't make me your property."

"I never said it did!"

"You seem pretty confident in telling me where I should be going."

"Because I don't have a choice!" He was starting to feel slightly panicked. The princess didn't seem like the type to give in easily, and short of physically forcing her - which was the last thing he wanted to do - he didn't know what tools he had in his arsenal that might convince her to change her mind. "You don't understand how bad it will be for my family if I don't - Severus Snape said—"

"I'm not marrying Severus Snape! I'd rather eat my own head—"

"So don't marry him! Refuse him, if you want. You're a princess, he can't hold you against your will—"

"Oh, can't he?"

"He'd know better than to mess with a royal—"

"Except he doesn't," she said, and stopped short, turning towards him. They were outside now, feet away from a festering body, if James remembered correctly, though the fog was so thick and opaque that he could discern their location only by the sight of the crumbled stone archway that separated the castle courtyard from the outside world. The princess didn't seem to notice a thing, however; all of her attention was focused on him, as was a glaring Algernon's. "He murdered the king of Gryffindor—"

"You think I don't know that already?"

"I think you know more about it than you're letting on, actually," she said, with narrowed eyes. "And that's fine, it's your prerogative to lie if you want, you don't owe me anything, but I'm not going—"

"There's nothing to stop you from going to Ravenclaw once you've refused him—"

"I need to go to Ravenclaw now, before my sister finds out that I'm gone—"

"What is this thing with you and your sister—"

"She's the one who locked me up here, you idiot!" she cried, looking almost wild, as if it pained her to say it aloud. "And if she finds out—"

The earth shuddered beneath their feet with an almighty rumble, and they both jumped, startled.

"What was that?" said the princess. "Did you—"

He shushed her, which might have earned him a slap, but for the second tremor that ripped violently through the ground, and an even more thunderous din that surged up strong behind their backs.

James turned in the direction of the castle.

Something was moving inside it, unseen but coming closer - something great and loud and huge - scraping against the floor, knocking into the walls, sniffing as if to discern a scent. A third tremor jolted through the courtyard, sending a nearby pillar crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust, and a squirming Algernon suddenly leapt to the ground, and scurried off to hide.

"It doesn't want me to leave," whispered the princess, who had turned whiter than snow.

"What?"

"The castle," she said, staring at the creaking wooden door with frightened eyes. "My sister, she paid—"

The castle wall exploded in a burst of flame.

The princess screamed, and James darted backwards with a cry of his own, grabbing hold of her arm as he went to pull her with him, as an enormous stone dragon - once a statue, now very much alive - came clawing its way into the courtyard, the walls tumbling around its barraging body like tiny, falling pebbles.

Fear, such as he'd never felt in his life, caught his heart in a vice grip.

The dragon was dissolving - or at least, the stone around it was - as it transformed before his eyes, from a solid grey statue into a snarling, skeletal thing, all bone and sinew and thick, hard skin, ice white with deep blue scales along its back, its wings unfurling at either side, its eyes a bright, burning red. When it roared, it revealed fangs as long as a human arm, each one as sharp as a blade.

He pulled the satchel from around his shoulders and tossed it to the princess. "Put this on."

"What?"

"Put it on," he repeated, and drew his sword. "Now."

She didn't ask again, but pulled it over her own body. "What now?"

"There's a shield in there," he instructed, and took several steps backwards - the dragon was moving closer to where they stood - beckoning her to follow, though she didn't seem to need his encouragement. "Run, somewhere safe, and get it out, and if I can find you—"

The beast caught sight of them, and charged.

"Never mind," he said, and shoved her away from him. "Run!"

She was gone by the time the dragon reached him, and James had but a split second to move, diving behind a pile of rusted old cauldrons, as the first stream of fire hit the ground where he'd just been standing.

Nothing, not so much as a spark, touched his skin, but he felt the heat from it all the same, blisteringly hot, enough to strip skin from bones. The cauldrons took on the heat immediately, and he ran out from behind them, lest they collapse upon him - one more tremor might have done it - and boil him to death, and immediately the dragon caught him in its line of sight, and swooped, its jaws snapping in its haste to pierce his flesh.

Without his shield, he'd take teeth over fire, but when he swung his sword at the dragon's head - once, twice, and a third time as it lunged and gnashed and did its best to swallow him - it merely bounced uselessly off its snout. Its skin was impenetrable, and James might as well have been smacking it with pillows, for all the good it did.

Its eyes, though, large and liquid, and redder than rubies, presented a clear weakness.

He was too exposed here. He needed cover.

He ran clean across the courtyard, in the opposite direction to where the princess had run, to the corner of the grounds surrounded by the sturdiest walls, which housed what must have once been a garden of ornamental statues, but was now a graveyard of pillars and broken marble figures. The dragon followed at speed, still keeping its head close to the ground.

Another streak of scalding fire shot past his elbow as he ducked behind a pillar, out of sight of the beast, and the dragon slowed his movements, crouching low, its wings tucked against its sides, creeping closer and closer to James's hiding place, sniffing the air as if it might inhale him. It wasn't a stupid animal by any means - it was a hardened predator, woken from stone after ten long years, and starving, and stalking its next meal.

When it was close enough for James to feel the warmth of its breath, he took his shot.

Springing into view, he swung for the dragon's eye, but missed, his sword colliding with an rock-hard fang, racing to the left when the monster drew back upon impact, crouching this time behind a one-armed statue. The creature, realising that it had not been hurt, ducked down again, a deafening snort blasting from its smoking snout, and was merely feet away when there came a clanging sound from the other side of the courtyard - the princess, perhaps, or Algernon - and it turned his head to inspect the source.

Not stupid, but very easily distracted.

He whistled loudly, successfully capturing the dragon's attention, and when it swooped down to find him again, its chin skimming against the ground, James leapt out from behind the statue and drove his sword right into one open, roving red eye.

The dragon flung its head towards the sky with a howl of pain, staggering back a step, and for a moment, James thought it had retreated, but then it it screeched and swung its tail towards him, long and hard as leather, curling round its body. It crashed into a chalk white pillar, and there was a noise like a volcanic eruption, and he felt himself being thrown backward, his sword flying out of his hand. His body, and the back of his head, hit the wall with a sickening crack, and he hadn't lost his glasses but everything was blurry, and something white and tall and solid was falling, falling, directly down upon him.

An excruciating pain tore through his left shoulder, and he was well-and-truly trapped, crushed against the wall by a fallen pillar, his sword lying several feet away, unreachable and useless, and the dragon reared back, tossed its head once into the air, jaws unhinging in preparation to strike, to burn him alive, or to swallow him whole, and this was it, he was going to die...

Algernon landed in his lap, and sprang, racing toward the dragon in a streak of orange fur.

The beast's head jerked to one side, its attention diverted, as the cat darted right and then left, zig-zagging his way across the courtyard, until he disappeared between the dragon's feet and it turned on its massive hind legs, the ground shaking beneath its clawed feet, determined to locate and kill this new distraction.

Then the princess was there, appearing as if out of nowhere, and dropped to her knees beside him.

"I'm going to try to move this off you," she told him, gripping the pillar with both hands. Her voice sounded very far away. The back of his head was throbbing.

"You're pretty," he told her dizzily. "Did you know that?"

"Now," she grunted, for she was pulling as hard as she could. "Is not the time to be romantic. You've got one good arm. Help me."

He pressed his right hand against the pillar, pushing with all the strength he could muster, and she pulled with just as much enthusiasm, her face turning red with the effort, until together they managed to shift it off him, letting it fall against the wall.

"You need to stop going for its head - hey," said the princess urgently, and grabbed his face between her hands. "Look at me."

His head was swimming, but his eyes found hers, and she came into sharper focus.

He felt as if he already knew every detail of her face.

He felt like he'd quite like to kiss her again, before the dragon devoured them both.

"M'looking," he muttered.

"You'll never kill it if you go for the head, it's got too many teeth, and it's too dangerous—"

"So what—"

"You need to get underneath it."

"What?"

"Get your sword—"

"Its hide is thicker than a stone wall," James protested. "A sword won't—"

"A normal sword won't, but yours is fairy-made," she said. The world was starting to steady around them. "A dragon's chest and belly are weaker than its back. Get underneath it, and strike as hard as you can."

Behind her, the dragon had its back to them, and was thrashing with frantic speed, roaring its displeasure, desperate to get at Algernon, who was weaving speedy patterns across the courtyard, drawing him further and further away from them both.

"I know you're in pain," she continued. "I know it hurts, but—"

"I'm fine," he said. "Help me up."

She didn't need to be asked twice, but hooked her arm around his waist and helped him climb to his feet. He retrieved his sword from where it had fallen and held it up, then considered the shield, which she had brought, and laid next to him when she'd rushed to help. Luckily, his right arm had taken no damage, but his left shoulder was still in agony.

"I won't be able to hold the shield," he said, as this realisation struck him.

"You'll be fine," said the princess, and picked it up herself. "You won't need it. Just get underneath that thing."

"Underneath," James repeated. "And you're sure?"

"I'd bet my life on it," she promised.

He barely knew her, and barely knew if he could trust her, but he believed her.

He had no other choice.

Algernon, that genius animal, had succeeded in drawing the dragon to a comfortable distance away, and it was going out of its mind trying to catch him, so much so that it had stopped trying to seize the cat in its jaws and resorted to trying to roast him alive. Jets of white-hot flame were pouring from its mouth at intervals, leaving the ground beneath it scorched and smoking, and though Algernon was faster than his large frame would lead a man to believe, it was only a matter of time before he was caught.

With his mind clear now, James ran towards the dragon's retreating back with his sword in hand, his heart racing wildly in his chest. He had to dive to his knees and roll forward to avoid being lashed by its spiked tail, which was whipping back and forth, sending everything it touched hurtling into the air, then weave around one giant foot, twice as large as the thickest tree-trunk and crushing the skull of a fallen knight into dust, then finally slide beneath the lowest point of its hindquarters.

He was lying beneath a dragon. An actual, fire-breathing dragon. One day ago, he'd thought he'd never see one in the flesh.

James turned on his stomach and crawled, fast, to avoid being crushed, the sword clutched in his hand and scraping against the ground, until he reached the point where the dragon's body began to curve upwards.

He stood up, and Algernon saw him immediately, and stopped right in his tracks.

For a moment, neither of them moved, but the beast they'd wordlessly agreed to fight cared not for such delicate moments, and roared, its great throat rumbling with the promise of fresh flame, and James had to act immediately, or the cat - his cat - would be burned to death before his eyes.

So he turned on his heel, raised the sword above his head and sent it flying, straight and true, right into the dragon's chest.

It sliced through its hide like a knife through butter.

The dragon reared up on its legs and let out a shrill, prolonged scream - a nightmarish sound that could have shattered glass - then swooped down as if to crush its prey, and even though every nerve in James's body told him to run, he leapt, both hands closing round the hilt of his sword, then pulled, as hard as he possibly could.

Blood spurted out of the open wound, more than he'd ever seen from a person, showering him in scarlet, pooling on the ground like so many gallons of spilled wine. The braying beast teetered unsteadily towards him, its head swinging wildly from side to side, screeching in terror, and it was going to fall, and crush him soundly.

He dived sideways, landing on his bad shoulder, and rolled away, narrowly avoiding its stamping foot, scrambled to his feet and ran backwards, until he could taste clean air, until he was clear of its swaying shadow.

The dragon fell, slower than his father had, its neck and head forming a graceful arc through the swirling fog, then hit the ground with a deafening crash that sent a hundred cracks running through the flagstone, one great, blazing burst of smoke escaping its nostrils when it landed.

Then it was still, its forked tongue lolling useless from its open mouth, its blind eye bloody, its other as white and blank as milk.

Dead.

He had killed it.

He'd killed a bloody dragon.

Wait until he told Sirius, he thought. And Remus. And Peter... but Peter was dead. Like his father. Dad was dead, too.

The whole world had fallen deadly silent, with nothing but the sound of James's pounding heart to fill the empty space the dragon had left behind, and he hadn't noticed it before, but his whole body was slick with sweat.

Algernon nudged against his leg, alerting him to reality, snapping him back to the present, and streaked off in the direction of the princess, who was standing on the other side of the dragon's head, staring at James as if she had just seen a ghost.

That was it. Princess. Tower. Snape. She was pretty, but he couldn't kiss her again. Snape wouldn't like it. His mother needed him.

After a deep, shuddering breath, and a slow rotation of his battered shoulder, he returned his now blood-stained sword to his back, wiped a hand across his face, and followed the path that Algernon had cut through the smouldering wreckage to where she stood, mute and awestruck. When he came to a halt in front of her, he fixed her with a look that invited no argument.

"We're going to Gryffindor," he said firmly.

She nodded, her eyes wide and boring into his, mouth slightly open, her voice barely rising above a whisper. "Okay."

He took her hand in his and led her quickly away.

He held onto her hand for at least a mile.

It wasn't possible to stop and take the breather that she so keenly felt she needed, not while they crossed a bleak expanse of stark, brown earth, while a suffocating fog still swirled around them and adrenaline pumped so hot through her veins, and his, she imagined. She couldn't believe what she had just seen. Dragons were so rare that they were almost extinct, residing solely in The Teeth, the mountain range that towered above the west coast of Ravenclaw, and the one she'd just seen bore no resemblance to the pictures she had studied in books about native breeds. It must have been brought from another land, no doubt enchanted by the warlocks in Petunia's employ to stand sentinel over her imprisoned little sister, or created by magical means.

Either way, James had killed it.

They didn't stop walking, with Algernon patrolling alongside them, until they could no longer see the castle over their shoulders, and James had led her into the forest, beyond the reaches of the fog. Here, the air was crisp, and the scenery a brilliant green, with merry daisies dotted in the grass and trees stretching tall towards a reddening sky.

He marched her to edge of a bubbling river and released her hand, then immediately threw his sword at his feet, followed shortly by the scabbard. His body appeared to be buzzing, as if he had a mass of pent-up energy, or anger, and had no idea how to release it.

"I feel disgusting," he said, apparently to himself, and stepped away from her. He pulled his tunic over his head, with sharp gasp of pain as he lifted his arm, and slung it over his shoulder, which was already starting to bruise. "That sodding dragon - I'm covered in blood."

"Close proximity to fire will do that, I suppose," said Lily, taken aback by the fact that he had stripped off his shirt in front of her, and that she very much liked what lay underneath.

"Whoever had you locked up - didn't you say it was your sister?"

She nodded, keeping her lips pressed together and her eyes trained resolutely on his face.

"Why?" he said, frowning at her. "Every time I've met her, she's been - wait, you have magic, don't you?"

Lily looked down at her feet, and stretched her fingers toward the ground, the way she'd done when she was very little, and could make the buds of flowers burst into colour. Nothing happened.

"I did, once," she said. "But the curse suppressed it."

"But that makes you the rightful queen, right?"

"According to our laws, which Petunia can't change without—"

"—Flitwick's approval."

"Which she'd never get," said Lily dryly. Ravenclaw had been desperate to return magic to its people since it died out, a mission that her parents, and Filius Flitwick, of the Council of Four, had been passionate about, once her powers had been discovered. "She was supposed to rule until I came of age, but I guess she liked the throne too much, so here we are now. Weren't you going to bathe, or is this some kind of seduction technique?"

He looked thrown by the sudden change of topic, his eyes dropping to his own body. "Oh."

"If it is an attempt at seduction, you're not very adept—"

"It's not," he said. "I need to wash. Myself. Alone. No seduction involved."

"That's a wondrous relief, I must say."

He hooked his thumbs beneath the waistband of his trousers, then stopped and looked up at her, seeming rather embarrassed. "Can you, um, look away or go somewhere else, please?"

Before she had been kidnapped, Lily's interactions with men had been quite limited. There had been father, with his kindly eyes and his bushy red beard, and sweet old Flitwick, who she had surpassed in height by the time she turned seven, and a multitude of guards she knew by name, many of whom treated her quite kindly, but for the most part, men had been about as important to her as curtains and carpets, quite simply there, and not worth her time, until she had been forced to entertain a parade of foppish, pretentious gits who strolled into her tower with great notions of romance and chivalry. Her teens had been sacrificed to solitude, and she'd never been given the chance to form an interest in a member of the opposite sex.

Then there was this one, black-haired and vaguely resentful, whose hand felt as if it had been shaped just to hold hers, who had killed a dragon before her very eyes, whose skin was dark and damp and gleamed in the early evening sun, and there she was, entranced by his half-naked body, even though she had willed herself to dislike him most thoroughly.

"Please don't embarrass yourself by assuming I've got any interest in what lurks beneath your clothes," she flippantly lied, with an arched eyebrow for good measure. "What's the matter, anyway? Haven't you ever been nude in front of a girl before?"

"Not that it's any of your business," said James coldly. "But no, I haven't, and I'd rather keep it that way for now."

"You haven't?" she said, surprised. "Really?"

"Really."

"Even though you look like that?"

He eyed her suspiciously. "Look like what?"

"It doesn't matter, this merely confirms my theory that there's something terribly wrong with you beneath the surface."

"Princess—"

"It's Lily."

"—I need to wash the smell of dead dragon off of me," he said tightly, though he looked as if he would love nothing more than to strangle her. "Could you please give me some privacy so I can take my clothes off without feeling like a deviant?"

"You mean, more of a deviant than before?"

"For the love of Merlin—"

"Aren't you afraid that I'll run away if you leave me alone?" she said, and cocked her head sideways, her eyes sliding over his bare chest in a way that she hoped did not betray the strange and unfamiliar stirrings she was feeling.

"If you run away," he said. "I'll catch you."

"Even though you'll be naked?"

"I'll still be faster than you."

"I'd be inclined to agree, but haven't you just spent a fortnight walking to get here? I imagine you must be tired by now."

"Oh, I'm exhausted, but I'm not the one wearing a heavy dress."

"You seem think an awful lot of yourself."

"I did just break your curse," he reminded her. "And I slayed a dragon, dunno if you noticed—"

"Oh, slayed a dragon!" she repeated, derision dripping from her voice. "You could have just used the word 'killed,' but no, you have to be particularly ostentatious in your self-praise. What exactly do you want, a round of applause?"

"No," he said loudly, with a scowl. "But would it kill you to be nice to me for five minutes? I'm starting to wish I'd left you in that castle, honestly."

"Maybe you should have."

"Maybe I should have," he agreed, and stormed off, kicking at a pile of pebbles as he went, several of which landed in the water with a series of plops. "I'm going downriver, stay here."

He had no right to tell her what to do and she should have reminded him, but the energy required to follow him and start another argument flew from her bones, so she sat down by the water's edge and kicked off her slippers. They were pretty, the colour of pearls, made to be elegant and dainty, and completely impractical in every other sense. She wanted to throw them into the water and climb to her feet and run, free as a bird and silent as a ghost, through the dark woods, until she found somewhere safe, and warm, and someone who cared about her, Lily, not about an ancient magic they were trying to safeguard, or about some promise they'd made to a conquering king who needed a princess to marry.

But her mother and father were dead, and her sister saw her as a threat, and all the friends she'd known had surely forgotten her.

She was free, but alone still, and that should have made her feel something - sadness, or anger, or fear - but a cold, empty mass had settled in her gut, pushing everything else out.

Lily slipped her feet into the water.

The sun was preparing to set, dipping lower in a vivid orange sky that reflected in the river, shining and brilliant, and she heard a splash from far away - James had probably jumped in to wash further down - but otherwise, all was fairly silent. A light breeze rustled through the leaves, and her hair, and the water was cold, lapping against her ankles. The grass was slightly damp beneath her fingers. Things she hadn't felt in years.

Once upon a time, she had felt so connected to all of this. She could have made the leaves still in the wind, or shifted the earth beneath her, but as she held one hand out in front of her, fingers bent towards the water, and tried to muster a pull she hadn't felt in far too long, nothing happened at all. The curse had suppressed her powers, that she'd always known, but she'd always thought she'd feel them again - that strong, comforting warmth in her core - once she got out. There was nothing there. Not one hint of who she'd been before.

A movement near her elbow made her jump, but it was simply Algernon, who crawled into her lap and looked up at her with eyes as green as her own. She ran her fingers through his warm fur, and his plump little body vibrated happily at her touch.

He was real, and living, and close to her. And that was something.

"We're friends now, aren't we?" she said, and hugged him close to her chest.

He responded with a contented purr, a shaft of light cutting through the void the day had left inside her.

"Yeah," she whispered. "We're friends. I need some of those."

She heard another splash in the distance. James again. They'd been at each other's throats all day, which all seemed rather pointless, in the light of what he'd done for her.

He was meant to be the love of her life, but it felt surreal, as if she was watching it happen to somebody else, or reading about a character in a novel. And he was immensely puzzling, insecure and arrogant all at once, as tightly-wound as if he was carrying some great pain, entirely vexing, yet somehow more likeable than she wanted him to be. And handsome. Far too handsome.

"He certainly makes me feel something," she quietly confessed, while Algernon nuzzled his head against her shoulder. "Irritation, mostly, but he's alright, I think. Do you trust him?"

Algernon simply purred again, though Lily got the sense that he'd given her an answer.

She fell silent, then, and felt grateful to the world for welcoming her back with so much beauty. It could have been cold, and raining, and a sad, gloomy grey, but it had given her a sunset instead.

That felt, almost, like something hopeful.

Eventually, James came back, dressed in the clothes he'd been wearing earlier. He looked as if he'd climbed out of the water and let himself dry off, for his hair was still wet, and there were damp patches on his thin, blood-stained tunic.

"Is the smell of dead dragon gone?" she said.

"For the most part," he replied, and sat down next to her. He seemed calmer than he had been before. "Thanks for not running away."

"Being chased through the forest by a naked man didn't sound all that appealing," she admitted, and allowed Algernon to slip from her arms. He settled on the grass between them, and James began to scratch his head. "Do you need something to dry your hair? I packed cloths—"

"Nah, it's alright."

"You should probably wash your clothes, too."

"I would, but I don't have any others."

"Where's the nearest village?"

"About fifteen miles from here, we should reach it tomorrow."

"Get hold of some fabric and I can make you something, if you want," she offered. "And use the clothes you have now for a pattern."

He looked at her with raised brows. "You can do that?"

"One's range of pastimes are rather limited, when one is locked away for a decade."

His mouth opened, and closed again, and he gave her a look that seemed like contrition, but he couldn't understand and she never would have asked him to, so they both turned their gazes to the river, and sat in a comfortable sort of silence while the day bid its goodbyes to the world.

"I thought I'd die in there, you know," she said, after a while, when the sun had sank beyond the horizon and the sky was a dusky violet.

"You did?"

Lily nodded. "I thought I'd turn to bones, and dust, and become nothing but a story people told their children."

"We'll all be stories, one day," said James.

She wondered if she'd ever find the energy to cry, but it felt like such a feat right now, when the air was so still, and twilight had fallen upon their heads with the soft docility of a fairy's footprint. "I never wanted to be the victim in mine."

"You're not a victim."

"Only thanks to you," she said, and turned her head to look at him. "You broke the curse."

"I pulled you through a door," he said blandly. "And broke the curse, yeah, which I think means I'm incredibly brave and worthy—"

She laughed.

"—but it's not your fault that it was built that way, and you'll figure out the rest on your own," he finished. "Also, if it helps, you've got a cracking right hook."

Lily smiled at him, and he smiled back.

He was being nice, even though he didn't like her, but that was her fault. She'd been unfair to him.

"I know this will sound strange," she said quietly. "Considering how you found me, and all that impressive dragon-slaying you just did, but I'm really tired."

"We can sleep," he offered immediately. "It's fine, getting dark anyway."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, but not here, the ground's too damp." He climbed to his feet, brushed nonexistent dirt from his grubby trousers, and held out his hand.

She took it, and allowed him to haul her up. "Also, we'd probably roll right into the river."

"Drowning wouldn't be the ideal way to celebrate your first day of freedom."

"No, it wouldn't," she agreed, and dropped his hand. "I'll be nicer to you tomorrow, James."

The sound of his name seemed to stir something soft in his expression. "You promise?"

Lily drew an X upon her chest with her finger. "Cross my heart."

"In that case, I promise not to wake you up by kissing you."

"Was that in danger of happening?"

"I always imagined my first kiss would be with a girl who actually wanted to kiss me," he said, with a self-effacing grin that threw, into sharp relief, the reality of just how lovely a face he had. "So no, not really."

"That was your first kiss?"

He nodded. "Yours too, right?"

"For obvious reasons."

"Then I've been an absolute cad, and we'll both have to be better tomorrow," he said, and held out his hand once more, this time for her to shake in agreement. "Deal?"

He was supposed to be the love of her life, and that still felt as if it couldn't be true, but it wasn't entirely awful.

"Yes," she agreed, and shook on it. "Deal."