Extraordinary Boys and Serious Issues

October 3, 1977

"Lily Marie Evans, what do you know about Adrian Fawcett?"

"'Kay, that's not my middle name." Lily looked up from her book, blinking up at Fiona. "Fawcett…he's the Ravenclaw prefect, right? A...seventh year, isn't he?" She recalled dark brown curls and a strong chin. Seven years at this school, and that was all she knew about a boy. Was she a terrible person?

"Really?" Fiona cocked her head thoughtfully, then sat down next to her on the couch, curling her long legs under her. She shrugged. "Oh well. You got a minute?"

"What's up?" Lily closed up her book and set it down on the arm of the couch, settling in for one of Fiona's rants. They were in the common room (Lily had been here awhile, so she'd managed to nag the prime spot, in front of the hearth), surrounded by most of the rest of Gryffindor. "And what about Fawcett?"

"Nothing." But Fiona looked self-satisfied, like a cat that had gotten the cream. Clearly, she was bursting with news.

Lily sighed, world-weary. "All right. What happened?"

"Oh, Lily." Fiona let out a soft swoon. "How have we not crossed paths before?"

"You and him? He spends a lot of time studying, doesn't he? I see him in the library a lot."

"Ah, because you spend loads of time there yourself." Fiona pulled her hair out of her ponytail and shook out her curls, the blonde color catching the firelight.

"So. You and Adrian, then?"

Fiona nodded and stretched dramatically. "I've been partnered with him in Care of Magical Creatures for the last week. It was fate. Lily, he's so funny…and smart…and wonderful." Lily had stopped taking the Magical Creatures class in fifthyear, when she realized that getting bitten by strange creatures was probably not the best way to be spending her days. The same epiphany had occurred to both Emmeline and Isabella, so Fiona was the only one among them who was still taking the class. So, that was perhaps why Lily hadn't witnessed whatever interaction Fiona and Fawcett might have had.

"He asked you to Hogsmeade?" Lily asked dryly, only half-interested.

The blonde girl smiled saucily, batting her eyes. "This weekend. You know, I think he's the One."

"No!" Lily acted shocked. "He's truly extraordinary, is he, now?"

"Yup." She laughed, drawing the attention of other students.

Lily glanced around, seeing the Marauders off in one corner, huddled over something. Plans for a prank, possibly. On the other side of the room, Isabella was playing chess with Thom Lawson, and winning, judging from the smirk on her lips. "Well, I'm glad you found someone incredible. I hope he lives up to your expectations."

"Oh, he does." She squealed a little bit, and Lily rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. "I don't think you understand, Lily."

The redhead picked up her book again, opening it up to her page. "No, I clearly don't." This was only the latest in the series of blokes that Fiona went out with.

"Oh, Lily, Lily, Lily…" Fiona shook her head pityingly. "I can only hope that you find this happiness someday. I mean, I liked being single, but it's been a few months, you know? I forgot how wonderful it is to have an extraordinary boy around!"

"Mmm…" Lily tried not to think about Thomas, and how ordinary he was. Plus, all of his occasional letters that she simply didn't know what to do with, since he clearly still liked her and she, well, cared not one whit for him. It had already been a month, but he was still writing! Fiona had suggested that she ignore him entirely, but she didn't have the heart (or lack thereof) to do that. So she wrote back (though tersely), and regretted it, because he was sure to reply.

Well, it was a conundrum for another day. Around them, students were packing up their things and heading down to dinner. Her stomach growled. "Hey, Fee, want to go get some food? I missed lunch today." She'd been in the library, doing some advanced proofs for Flitwick.

"Yeah, sure. I told Emmy I'd meet her down there." Fiona leaped up off the couch, and Lily yawned, feeling exhausted by the sheer exuberance that Fiona was currently exhibiting. As they walked out of the portrait hole, she sent off a silent prayer to whoever was listening. Please let this Adrian Fawcett be the One for Fee.

ooo

Evans –

According to the schedule, we've got patrol tonight at 8. See you in 5.

JP

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"Oy, Evans!" An unfortunately familiar voice hollered up the stairs of the girl's dormitory, the ring of the name winding all the way up the stairs and into the ears of the seventh year Gryffindor girls.

"You're quite wanted, Lily," Isabella said, leaning into the mirror to reapply a bit of blush and lip gloss. "I suggest you give the boy what he wants."

"Ew!" Emmeline shuddered from where she was lying on her bed, turning the page of her Witch Weekly. "All boys want one thing, and I hardly think that you should give it up to Potter."

Lily turned from the window, scrap of parchment in hand, to glare at her friends. "Oh, sod off, all of you. I'm stuck with him for patrols tonight. See you in a couple of hours." She stalked out of the room, ignoring the giggles and catcalls. As she clattered down the stairs and into the common room, she threw her hair up into a high ponytail, tugging a few stray strands out of her face.

He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, looking like he had all the time in the world. "Took you long enough," he said, eyes carrying a faint hint of bemusement. Life clearly had more things to do in its time than to be fair; James looked so put together and calm, with a perfectly mussed thatch of black hair, crooked glasses, and clean school robes. And here was Lily, with oily hair and a stain on her front pocket that was quite possibly pumpkin juice. She tried (and failed) to ignore the fact that he managed to look so flawlessly flawed and just so damn good. How was it that some people could make 'being messy' rather attractive and 'effortlessly nice,' and others, like her, just looked like a mess?

Lily said sharply, "I only got your note a second ago. I think your owl's a bit daft, if it takes five minutes for it to fly around the tower." She walked towards the portrait hole, not waiting for him to catch up. Not that she'd admit it to him, but she felt a faint trace of nervousness about this whole ordeal. These were the first words they'd exchanged since Friday afternoon, and they hadn't exactly been friendly ones either. What had happened to their agreement to be friends? To be a good Head Boy and Girl?

She didn't know.

Behind her, as she climbed past the Fat Lady and into the hallway, she heard him run to catch up. "Oy!"

"What?" She reached into the pocket of her robes and pulled out her watch, sliding it onto her wrist. Fiona had borrowed it earlier (something about practicing with Timed Charms), and Lily was glad that the other girl had remembered to return it. Fiona had a terrible memory.

"Slow down, will you?"

Lily, exasperated, blew out a puff of air, but she stopped in the center of the hallway and waited for him to catch up. When he did, she kept walking, not knowing what to say. Before this year, they'd hardly ever had conversations that lasted longer than thirty seconds (if you considered pick-up lines to be conversation, anyway). And now… like they had agreed, on the train, they would be friends. Now, they had meetings, and they talked in the common room, and made jokes in the hallways. Sometimes, they even walked to class together. And that was what friends did, right?

In light of their current 'fight,' she had realized that their friendship was strong enough for its absence to be noticeable. It was a strange realization; she wasn't sure how she felt about it.

"So…patrol is four hours, right?" His voice came out light and cautious. Clearly, she was not the only uncertain one around here.

She nodded tersely, fidgeting with her hands a little bit. What did she say? What could she say? What did you say in this sort of circumstance, when you were foraying into an uncertain friendship?

If you were brave, you started a conversation and you let the other person know that everything was all right, that there really wasn't anything bad between them (that was how she felt – after talking to Remus yesterday, she'd recognized that they weren't talking over nothing at all. And here she went, using negatives everywhere!). If you were brave, you just talked, and acted normal.

But Lily was a coward, so she said nothing, and fidgeted, and kept walking down the hallway.

Ten minutes later, James Potter made it clear that he was a rather brave person. "I – I wanted to say that I'm still sorry," he said softly. She peeked through her fringe at him – he was staring down at the ground, hands in the pockets of his robes. Okay, so maybe he wasn't terribly brave, but he certainly had more courage than her.

Man up, Evans. She shrugged, her hands busy with smoothing down her robes. Then, tilting her head to look at him, she said, equally softly, "I'm sorry too, Potter." What? This was probably the first time she had ever apologized to Potter, and meant it. Looking back, she felt like she'd probably overreacted to the entire situation. And now she was tired of dealing with its consequences. Hesitantly, she added, "Let's just…move on, and forget about it, okay?"

He looked down at her and nodded his head slowly. There was something inscrutable in those hazel eyes, something rare and ineffable.

Right. That was settled then. After a long, wordless moment, Lily yanked her gaze away from his own and focused on her shoes. The matter was settled, but was it forgotten? She tried not to step on any cracks, counting the number of flagstones under her feet as they strode through the corridors, flashing their badges at the students who were out past curfew. One tile, two tiles, three tiles, four. Five, six, seven…

"How's that Auror application treating you?" She couldn't help but gape at him, feeling a little incredulous. Here she was, trying to deal with the finality of the end of her and Severus, as well as feeling flattered that James would leap to protect her at the slightest provocation. Perhaps he was merely trying to have a reason to hex Severus, but it was true that there had been no incidents between the two boys since last November. What had even happened then? No one knew, save for the people involved, of course. The whole situation, and her feelings about it, was all immensely complex, and she felt completely muddled, and here he was, switching subjects with the ease of the dull-witted, which he wasn't.

Did all boys have the emotional range of rocks?

She muttered something incoherent. In truth, that application was still tucked between two textbooks, still unfilled. What did it matter? She wasn't due to meet with McGonagall for another few days, anyhow.

"You know it's due soon, right?" His voice was light and teasing once more, like it used to always be. Before this Severus thing, and before they'd been given responsibilities…before whatever bonds they shared had been serious. "I think the deadline is January first."

She scoffed. "That's not soon. I have like" – October, November, December – "three months. That's a long time."

That cocky grin of his appeared, his white teeth flashing in the dim twilight. It was all too familiar. "Procrastinating, aren't you?"

"Ah, yes." She felt the mood tangibly lighten, and she was glad for the change. "Just once in awhile, of course."

"Need any help with that? There's always tomfoolery to be had." She noticed that his eyes sparkled when he was in a good mood.

"The Secret, wasn't it?" A stray remark that Remus had made last night echoed in her ear. She furrowed her brow. "Remus was going to tell me something last night, but he couldn't because I didn't swear the 'Marauder Blood Oath.' You lot have an oath? Isn't that a bit cultish?"

"Well, aren't we a bit of a cult?" he replied, a dimple appearing at the side of his mouth.

She smiled. "I suppose so. A very exclusive cult. With code names and everything." They went up the stairs, stopping briefly to pull a poor first year Hufflepuff out of a trick step before continuing on their way. "You lot also gossip worse than a gaggle of third year girls."

"That's right." They stopped in front of an alcove and he loudly cleared his throat, startling the two – Ravenclaws? – who were apparently having a bit of a private snogfest. They looked up, blinked briefly, and scuttled out of sight, hopefully to their rooms. Lily forgot to dock points. "So…I hear you're jealous of me, Evans?" There was that grin again.

"Wh-hat?" Then she remembered. "See? Case in point. You four share way too much with one another. I only talked to Remus yesterday!"

"Moony is always a relative fountain of information."

"Yeah, well, either he told you wrong (which is unlikely) or you heard wrong. I didn't say I was jealous of you, Potter."

"Ouch! That hurt."

"Oh, sod off." She shoved him lightly, laughing when he stumbled to the left. "I said that I was just jealous of what you lot have."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Well, this!" She waved her arm around for effect. "That bond you have." He just looked at her, and she felt at a loss for words. "It's like, okay, look. You'd die for any of them, right?" He nodded, and both of them smiled when they passed Professor Flitwick. "And they'd die for you. Cor, they'd father your children for you if necessary!" She looked down at her shoes as she repeated the same sentiment she'd expressed to Remus. "Fee and Bella and Emmy are lovely, but when it comes down to life-changing decisions, I don't know if we're all united like that." Why was she telling him this?

His eyebrows drew together and he pursed his lips, thinking. Finally, he said, "You mean, about the war."

"Eh?"

"Well, that's the first instance that I could think of in which anybody might be dying." His teeth flashed in a quick grin.

What was it with blokes and completely surprising you with where their minds went? It was so tangential, so illogical, so…right. "I guess so," she said thoughtfully. "But then, almost everything relates to the war these days, doesn't it?"

He chuckled darkly. "They still have yet to declare it as such, have you noticed?"

"Yeah, in the Prophet, it's just 'mysterious attacks' here and there." Every day, it seemed like there was a new article in the paper. At first, they'd been featured on the front page, but as time went on, the articles steadily wound their way from the headlines, to the back pages. They were so prolific now, those reports of attacks. Mostly Muggles, or Muggleborns – blood was apparently a large factor.

"So, you mean that you don't know where they stand?"

"What?"

"Adler, and Vance, and Marquez," he said, returning to the previous subject. "You're the only Muggleborn in the lot, aren't you?"

"I guess so," she repeated. Where did they stand? "Isabella has ties to the Ministry, especially to the Wizengamot, and her dad's a diplomat, so she leans more anti-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; and Emmy's simply not interested in politics, wizarding or otherwise. And Fiona…" she blinked. "I don't know about Fee." How could she not know something so important about someone, something so integral to a person's personality? And Fee was everything to her. But her background, her beliefs…did they have only a superficial friendship? No, that couldn't be true. She and Fiona talked about everything, really.

Everything, but their families, their backgrounds. Lily remembered when Fiona had come over unexpectedly, and Lily hadn't been there to prepare her family. That had almost been a disaster. If it had been any other friend (poor Alice Prewett had gotten into a shouting match with Petunia, the one time that she came over), things wouldn't have gone over so well. Not that things went smoothly then, either.

"Do you know who Adler's parents are?" James said, voicing her thoughts.

She shook her head. She'd seen them at the train platform, of course, and they'd looked like ordinary wizards, with plain robes and conservative haircuts. And she knew that Fiona had an older brother, Logan, who was in training right now for…Auror? Cursebreaker? She couldn't remember.

"Adler is Pureblood through and through," he informed her, as they finished their rounds of the second floor and climbed up to the third. "Her parents don't like Muggleborns, but they don't believe in killing them or anything drastic. That's probably why you haven't really heard about them. So they're staying neutral at the moment. And Isabella's a Half-blood, I think, so she's leaning against Voldemort. You're right about Vance, even though her family is on our side. She's technically a Half-Blood, too, because her mother is a Muggleborn witch."

That was a lot of information to take in all at once. They walked in silence as she processed what he'd just said. Finally, she asked, "What do you mean by 'our side'?"

He shrugged, with that easy confidence that came (she knew instinctively) from being a pureblood wizard. She'd always thought that wizards never realized what Muggleborns had to go through, being thrown into a new life like this and being forced to adjust. Seven years later, there were always occasional moments when she'd realized that she was, in fact, an immigrant to this Wizarding world. Moments like this – she supposed that there were moments in the Muggle world where it was your heritage that mattered, but that had all been decades ago, hadn't it? Things were different now, right?

Apparently wizards were a bit backwards. She knew that, but sometimes she forgot. "You know. The anti-Voldemort and Death Eaters side."

"Aren't you pureblooded though?" she asked. "I mean, why are you throwing in with, well, this lot, as opposed to theirs?"

He just looked at her for a second, and she realized suddenly that their conversation had gotten rather serious. This was all the stuff that mattered, though, wasn't it? Then he shrugged again. "The way I see it, Voldemort's a bit daft, really."

"But he's got all of this power; he must have accumulated it somehow!" she protested.

He shook his head. "You're not seeing the bigger picture. His whole…ideological motive, I guess, is grounded in the fact that he thinks Muggleborn wizards are inferior to pureblooded wizards. And that's hardly true."

"Well, how can you know that?" she pressed. Wizards often had all the advantage in the magical world; natural-born citizens did much better than immigrants any day. "What makes you so sure that he's wrong?"

Behind her, James was snorting, but she'd just noticed that a door to a deserted classroom was ajar. She opened the door and ushered a third year couple out of it, warning them that if they got caught again, she'd dock ten points. Needless to say, this was already the fourth time she'd caught them this year, and she'd yet to dock them any points at all. When she turned back to look at him, he was gaping at her incredulously.

"What?" Lily looked down at her shirt to see if there was a stain or something. No stain, but she was missing one of the middle buttons on the shirt. She blushed and drew her robes closer around her body.

He'd stopped walking. "Lily, just look at yourself."

She did so. "Is that pumpkin juice on my robe pocket really obvious? Because I didn't have time to wash my robes before I got your bloody note."

He laughed. "You look great, as always." She stared down at her feet, feeling her cheeks light up a little. "But seriously. You're Head Girl, and you're smart, and pretty, and you're clearly going to be successful, you know?" She scoffed, but he shook his head, his eyes very serious. "People like you are proof that he's completely wrong. There's no superiority in being a pureblood; it's about what you have as a person that determines your success, innit?"

When was the last time someone had complimented her so much? She couldn't remember. "You look great as always…you're smart, and pretty." Was that what he really thought about her? She stared at her shoes. Since when had she cared what he thought, anyway?

He was squirming uneasily by the time she looked up at him. "Anyway, I'd rather be a blood traitor than support people who believe that killing and terrorizing are the only answers to everything." Lily nodded, saying nothing, and he looked at his watch. "Cor, it's almost midnight. I think we can call it a day, don't you?" He peered down the darkness of an empty hallway. "There doesn't seem to be much mischief-making tonight."

"Sure," she muttered, her hand going up to her ponytail to twirl it nervously. James and her didn't seem to fall into any of the ordinary courses for a boy-girl friendship. Not that boys and girls were generally friends anyway. She had Remus (but that was always off-and-on), and Peter (who she tutored, and talked to, once in awhile), and that Alexander Goshawk technically counted (as in, he followed her around a lot and she generally ignored him). So she and James were in uncharted waters, and she wondered where they were going. They were civilized, they joked around, and now they were dealing with serious issues, like war, and blood status, and other things (like the fact that he thought she was pretty).

…"her family is on our side." "What do you mean by 'our side,' Potter?"

"Hmm?" He was staring off into the distance, completely relaxed. Watching him, she thought that he looked completely at home here, arms swinging, head tilted, framed by the stone walls and portraits.

She repeated herself. "You said 'our side.' We're on the same side?"

"Of course."

"Well…how do you know that?" she found herself asking.

And then there was that grin again (she still wasn't sure what she thought about it), his eyes sparkling in the torchlight. "Lily, no matter what, we'll always be on the same side."

Lily faced forward again, but as they climbed the stairs to the tower, she felt a trace of a smile playing about her lips.

ooo

Ministry of Magic

Application for Auror Training

(Page 1 of 12)

Name: Lily Evans

Age: 17

Hometown: Blackheath

School: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Why you want to be an Auror (in 250 words)? I want to fight on the right side of the war. And I want to help fight Voldemort and his ideology, because his ideology is idiotic and entirely untrue. So, I want to disprove it. Also, post-war, I want to make the world a better place and I believe in the law…

Who recommended you for Auror Training? Professor Minerva McGonagall

Letters of Recommendation: Professor Minerva McGonagall and Professor Filius Flitwick

What skills do you bring to the Auror field? I don't know about skills, but I have high marks in Charms, Arithmancy, and Potions. I am currently considering developing a senior project that utilizes Arithmancy in combination with advanced Charms in order to predict the efficiency and effectiveness of a Cheering Charm. In conjunction with Professor Flitwick, I will be …

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