October 29, 1977
The corner of the library that James and his friends had carved out for themselves was relatively quiet, buried in the far back behind the stacks on treating Botobur pus wounds – not a subject many students were interested in pursuing. The privacy worked perfectly for James who wanted nothing to do with his fellow students that afternoon. Occasionally, a younger student would wander over, almost close enough to say hello, but they would always go running a minute later as they caught sight of James' unwelcoming scowl.
There was only two criteria to being allowed access to James' criteria, and yet there were currently only a handful of people at Hogwarts that fit them: they couldn't be annoying and they couldn't be in any way angry or disappointed in James.
As he worked furiously on his Potions essay, James was reconsidering whether Peter and Remus – the only two people sharing the table with him – still met those criteria. Remus had certainly chosen to be annoying against the rules of the corner, and James was debating whether he was petty enough to throw Remus out from the table. He decided against it solely because the way his day was going, they would probably have a friendship ending row if he tried it.
"I'm just saying, is there anyone at this school who doesn't hate you right now?" Remus asked for the dozenth time.
Since hearing what had happened with Lily and Sirius – a very, very abridged version of the events – Remus had been good-humoredly digging for greater detail. Gossip hound that he was, Peter leaned forward avidly each time Remus asked, like James might suddenly decide to start spilling his soul to them.
He wouldn't have even told them if he'd been thinking clearly. Not at first at least. Only, Remus and Peter had run into him fifteen minutes after he'd left Lily. They'd been able to read that something was wrong immediately, and James had still been too stunned to do anything but admit that he'd just chucked Lily. The truth about his argument with Sirius had come out a minute later when the lads had suggested that they find Sirius and get plastered. Sirius wouldn't be rushing to James' aid today.
So here they were. In the library for the seventh hour straight because it was the only place James felt like he could confidently hide from everyone else while numbing his mind through productivity to everything that had happened.
Answering Remus's question, James said, "You and Wormtail don't hate me. That's who, and if you disagree with that, you can find somewhere else to study."
"Can I still use your Transfiguration notes to work on my essay?" Peter asked, decapitating a chocolate frog with his front teeth.
"Sure."
"Then, I think you're aces," Peter grinned.
"I can't believe we live in a world where people are asking to borrow your notes," Remus muttered.
"I've gotta enjoy it while it lasts because it's all over now," Peter said, merrily flipping through James' notes.
"What'dya mean?" James asked.
"Well, you only took these because of that bet with…you know who, and I don't think you'll be bothering with that anymore," Peter said. James had repeatedly reassured Peter that Lily's very name wasn't forbidden, but he'd cagily refused to speak it since they'd entered the library. There may have been some sense behind Peter's recalcitrance because James had certainly been unpredictable that day. Still, he wasn't about to lose his temper over four letters – four letters that, yes, when strung together elicited thoughts of a very frustrated and maudlin nature, but still.
"Yeah, I guess not," James said.
The idea that the bet was officially over threw him. They were only ending things a few days early. Officially, the bet would have ended Tuesday at midnight regardless, but there was still something horrible about his failure to see it through to the end. James remembered how Lily had argued how much the bet had mattered on Friday, how they owed it everything, and his throat thickened.
"Sure, we're fine with you, but is there anyone else?" Remus continued undeterred. "You have all of Slytherin house out for your head right now."
"Bunch of wankers anyway," James said.
"Sure. Then you've got Evans, which means probably all the girls," Remus said it like a question, speculating about how that strange, foreign loyalty girls so often shared would manifest when the transgressor was one of their very own. "And then you've got Sirius. That's a lot of people, mate."
"Yes," James grit out. Though Sirius wouldn't stay angry with him once he heard about Lily. Their whole row was about her in the first place. He'd come running back full of apologies when he heard that everything was back to normal. They'd be fine.
He stabbed his quill into his essay so aggressively that the nub snapped off, and he had to root through his bag for one of the pens he'd bought form Mary. If he wasn't very much mistaken, Remus was taking a little too much pleasure in his suffering. He said as much to Remus.
"Sure, it's called schnaferfude, but I mean, obviously I'm sorry that you're going through so much," Remus said tactfully.
"Couldn't happen to someone less deserving," Peter added.
James nodded at that very true statement.
"You're right. I'm being a git," Remus conceded even though James hadn't argued the point. "I guess the rest of us have just been so miserable this month that it felt like it was your turn to share in the misery. I really am sorry for it though."
To a degree, James had missed it, just how truly awful the month of October had been for everyone but him. Remus had his breakup with Dahlia. Peter was in the hospital. Sirius was apparently emotionally wrecked though James hadn't seen many signs of it. Several times James had been faced with the kind of events that could have ruined his month – his realization about his former bullying, the business with his parents buying him the Headship – but Lily had always been there to cheer him back up again. For his friends, they'd just been trapped in their respective cycles of depression.
"Well, you're both due to be feeling better anyway," James said. "We can finally say that Pete's got his health and it's time for you to perk up and forget about Dahlia. A week is long enough."
Remus sighed. "I'm not…Truthfully, I'm kind of over Dahlia at this point. I mean, I still like her, and if I thought she'd take me back, well, I'd come running, but I'm not broken up about her anymore like I once was. I'm just miserable in general."
"That's not much better," Peter said, wincing.
"If not her, then what're you so upset about?" James demanded.
Remus looked at him like he was stupid. "All the reasons things didn't work with Dahlia are just going to repeat themselves. I'm mourning everything I won't have, getting used to the idea of a lifetime of loneliness."
Mentions of a lifetime of loneliness probably weren't appropriate just then considering James had been broken up with his girlfriend of less than a day for less than eight hours. James shrugged off the shiver of understanding that crept up his back in favor of focusing on Remus. He hated that Remus still let himself get caught up in the torturous thoughts that plagued him.
"Don't be stupid," James urged him. "You won't be lonely. We'll all get a house together, and you'll never have a moment to yourself. Trust me, you'll be begging for some time alone after a few months."
Remus smiled a touch sadly. "Thanks. It's not the same though, and you know it."
"Fine, then you just have to wait a little longer, maybe a year or two. Then, someone – maybe…L-Lily – will have come up with some sort of solution, and were – I mean, people with similar furry problems, will be coming out into the open. Then, you'll be able to find Dahlia or some other girl and be perfectly honest with her. It's just a while longer," James said.
"Oh will you lay off with that shite," Remus snapped.
Every hair on James' body stood at attention. His heart was clenched up from the stress of the day, and his adrenaline coursed closer to the surface than usual. Everything about him was primed and ready for another fight. If Remus insisted on taking that tone, James was probably going to start yelling.
Fortunately, Remus grew apologetic almost immediately. Sighing, he said, "I'm sorry. Just there's no cure or fix or anything else. For weeks now every time I try to talk about what I have to live with, you just interject with this pipedream about how none of my problems will exist someday. I want you to just shut up and listen. Try nodding. No potion, Lily's or someone else's, is going to work."
It was like being told magic wasn't real. James – already emotionally spent – deflated entirely. Somewhere deep down he'd always known as much, but the drive to feel like something could be done for Remus had blinded him. Maybe it was that he no longer had something to strive towards in order to help his friend. From fourth through part of sixth year, the Marauders had possessed a goal. Every time James worried about Remus, he was able to remind himself that things would improve soon. They'd all be animagi and Remus would hurt himself less. Problem solved. With that accomplished and the gains of being animagi no longer feeling like a rush so much as the norm, James had been desperate for a new sense of purpose when it came to Remus's furry problem.
Today was about losing things, however, so it was fitting that he lost that hope as well.
"Yeah, you're right," James said glumly.
Remus nodded sharply, but a sense of understanding filled the space. The issue could be laid to rest.
"I'm going to go smoke a blunt," Remus announced, standing up.
"You doing that again? What happened to quitting?" James asked.
"I quit because I wanted to lie to myself. Don't much see the point in that anymore."
With that, Remus left, and James couldn't begin to decipher whether Remus's change in stance represented progress or a regression. Maybe a little bit of both. Being human meant living in shades of grey, and being a werewolf only heightened that hopeless ambiguity two-fold.
Peter wasn't working on his homework, but he didn't make any moves to leave the table as James returned to his. There was a comfort in the silence, in the escape into the complicated history of ingredient imports from Thailand to the UK that was the subject of his essay. One of the great things about being friends with Peter was his keen sense for what anyone needed in a given moment. James didn't have the slightest sense of what he needed, but he knew that Peter did. So if Peter wasn't making any moves to initiate a conversation, it must be because James himself wasn't ready for it. Not needing to make decisions for himself was comforting too.
The safety of their silence began to diminish as the sun sank lower in the sky, and the natural light that illuminated the library began to dim. The lanterns that replaced it felt artificial. Worse, the setting of the sun indicated that time for dinner was drawing near. James would have to face the world again. Sure, he could skip dinner in the Great Hall and opt for a kip down to the kitchens instead, but that would only provide a temporary reprieve. Tomorrow would still come and with it classes and the increasing need to interact with human beings that didn't meet the criteria to enter his corner.
He threw his pen down on the table and sank back in his chair, a posture of defeat. On Mondays he shared several classes with Lily. Making exes sit in the same classrooms ought to be outlawed. Like a divorced couple they should get to divvy up their activities – Lily could keep their Head duties. James would take Transfiguration. Charms was all Lily's. And so on. Picturing McGonagall's face as he made this suggestion wasn't even enough to elicit a chuckle from him.
He didn't know what he could expect from Lily come tomorrow, and every possible scenario felt like a knife to the heart. Say she didn't show up for classes, then he spent the whole time worried that she was holed up in her room sobbing and that it was entirely his fault. Could he live with that? Could he live with if she showed up to classes like everything was perfectly normal? When her friendship with Shelia had collapsed, Lily had skipped the entire next day of classes. James liked to imagine he warranted a similar response. Seeing her bright and lovely on Monday morning would kill him, proof that things had never been serious between them. That 'they' had never even existed.
Like he was stuck on a swinging pendulum, James decided to get up and go to Lily every other minute. The next minute would then be spent reminding himself that he had ended things for a reason, and they should stay that way. Ended. Merlin, he hated the word.
"Okay, are you ready to talk about it?" Peter asked, interrupting a particularly miserable thought of James' about how truly devastated Lily had looked as she begged him for explanations as to how he could hurt her by going after Nott. The interruption was greatly appreciated, which didn't mean James knew the first thing to say.
"I don't know, Pete. I'm…I was really furious," James said.
"Well if you were that upset, I'm sure it was for a good reason," Peter said generously.
James had no idea how to respond because he wasn't sure any of his reasons actually were legitimate. To convince anyone he was right, he'd need to spend at least ten minutes framing the day's events so that the listener would understand his state of mind at the time of the argument. His father always said that if you couldn't convince someone that your side had merit in under thirty seconds, then your argument was never true to begin with. After twenty minutes of bickering – that was one thousand two hundred seconds – he hadn't been able to sway Lily to his side. Granted, she hadn't been able to convince him either, so James had no idea what that meant. Neither one of them was right?
Strictly speaking, James wasn't the most introspective person of his age. He relied on his immediate senses and his gut. The way he organized his reality was by looking at the objective, the indisputably real, and discarding the rest as excess frippery. While he was perfectly capable of deeper thought, he rarely partook in such thinking because the truths it unearthed – about society, the world, and James himself – were rarely pleasant, so his ability to access that part of his critical thinking was like an undertrained muscle. One he'd been refusing to utilize since his argument with Lily. Now though, he couldn't resist the urge to give it a little flex.
On the surface – the level James normally chose to operate on – his answer to Peter's question was: I broke things off with Lily because she accused me. One action begat another. Such an explanation was so insufficient compared to the depths of his feelings for Lily that he knew he had to dig deeper. It was no struggle at all to delve down another layer, where James could say that he broke things off with Lily because she accused him which made him angry. An action began an emotion, which resulted in an action. Here's where he typically liked to stop his thinking as it pertained to his personal choices, but this too was insufficient.
Why had he been angry? What Lily had accused him of had been perfectly true. Knowingly, he'd acted against her stated interests, while fully expecting her to become upset when she learned of it. James fundamentally disagreed with her decisions regarding Nott, but that didn't mean that her reaction to him ignoring her wishes was unjust. If Lily had meddled behind his back, he'd be annoyed even if her actions improved his situation because of the principle of the matter, the breaking of their implicit partnership.
No…he wasn't angry because Lily had objectively wronged him (and admitting that took some effort on his part). James had been upset because the consequences as she'd laid them out to him – the loss of her trust only hours after the breakthrough of the night before – had been too terrible for him to accept. There'd been no small amount of fear coursing through his system during their entire argument, manifesting in a dry throat and sweaty palms. The entire time, he'd been waiting on tether hooks for Lily to reject him. Even if she hadn't chucked him today, he thought it would have been a matter of time given that the trust was gone. Trust being one of those things that was far harder to earn a second time than a first.
So, by first, thinking his motivations over thoroughly and second, by being honest with himself about the conclusions he drew, James was forced to admit that he had ended things with Lily because he had been terrified that she would decide he wasn't worth the trouble. For someone who usually had a pretty high opinion of himself, it was a cognitively dissonant realization. Maybe all of that confidence only existed because he avoided any situation that allowed it to take a hit, never forming close enough romantic relationships that he could be hurt. Just about every rejection he'd ever sustained had come from Lily. She'd always been his one exception, the girl who was worth all that risk. But when it came down to it, he'd balked. Some Gryffindor indeed.
The entire time James processed this, Peter waited for an answer. The boy grew increasingly alarmed as James' silence grew, hands fidgeting restlessly and eyes darting side to side. Just because James knew the truth now, however, didn't mean he could say it.
"Things just spiraled out of control. It was like one second we were fine and the next second I was walking out the door," James said, settling on something that was every bit as true as it was meaningless.
"And everything's back under control now?" Peter probed.
"I guess not." Yes, he was no longer shouting or storming about the castle in a rage, but that didn't mean he'd fully recovered. He'd made an impulsive decision and his center had been thrown off-balance as a result. He didn't know how to regain his orientation. Where he sat now – emotionally speaking, was foreign and his body was unhelpfully reminding him of the stress that came with the unknown every few minutes by spiking his heart rate and sending him debilitating rushes of anxiety.
Peter rubbed his chin, while giving James an assessing look, like a healer who was searching for a prognosis. "I think you made the right decision. Sure you've always liked Lily, but liking a thing from afar isn't the same as seeing it up close. As great as Lily is, she's high maintenance. A lot of work. You need someone who's easier, doesn't make you run back and forth. It was essentially what James had told Lily, that a relationship shouldn't be so difficult. Hearing it from Peter though, James just sounded lazy. Lazy at best! Entitled at worst, like he wanted a girl who was a blank page and never did anything pesky like have needs for James to meet. He didn't want to be that guy. Most of the time, he was positive he wasn't that guy. He'd been happy to adapt for Lily because all of her needs had been reasonable and she'd risen up to meet his without him ever having to articulate exactly what he needed. The only area she'd ever failed in was meeting James' need to feel like he was someone trusted, a protector who she could rely on. All James had failed at was earning it.
Worse, a tiny sliver of doubt about Peter and his motivations had infected him. Gone was the blind trust of a mere few weeks before. Then, he would have nodded along, knowing Peter had nothing but his best interests at heart. Hell, Peter had warned him about Lily before, and James had listened. Now, he couldn't help but doubt because Peter could be a little too eager to say goodbye to Lily and James as a couple out of his doomed crush on Lily. (And it was doomed. James couldn't believe he'd acted jealous of Peter of all people earlier. He'd been so desperate to find some way to accuse Lily of something in return that he'd crossed into the ridiculous.)
James shook his head like he could shake the traitorous thoughts away. Peter had done nothing to deserve this kind of suspicion. Crush or no crush, Peter understood loyalty.
Seeing him shake his head, Peter must have thought he was disagreeing because Peter rushed to add, "Besides, you need to think about Sirius. If you had to choose, Padfoot was always going to win."
"Of course," James agreed automatically.
Personally, James didn't think it would have come to that. Still, chucking Lily was a hell of a gesture, indicating how much James valued their friendship. Once Sirius heard, he'd come running to set things right. Once that was settled, then James could turn his attention to other things. First Sirius, then Lily.
It was the first time he'd admitted to himself that things with Lily weren't as over as he'd claimed that morning.
Rather than drag out their conversation, James told Peter they should go get some dinner instead. He had a plan of action now: fix things with Sirius. Just the feeling that he was making his own choices was enough to overcome his nervousness about what, or who, he might encounter in the Great Hall.
As it turned out, he should have been a little more wary of who he was going to come across in the corridors. The distance from the library to the Great Hall was so short that he'd thought his chances were pretty good. But as he was halfway down the one staircase from the library to the Great Hall, he ran into one of the people on his "Avoid at All Costs" list. Granted, the list was a little longer than usual, and Shelia wasn't even in the top five, but still.
Catching sight of him from the bottom of the stairs, Shelia's eyes narrowed. She appeared to be with a group of fifth years – a wee bit desperate if you asked him – all of whom she unthinkingly abandoned as she stormed up the stairs to accost him. As little as he expected to enjoy this conversation, James squared his shoulders and continued towards her, pace casual and unhurried.
"James!" she snarled.
"Marks."
"Don't just stand there all innocent. You broke Preston's leg. He has a concussion!" Shelia said.
"Huh, yeah I did."
James was fairly surprised that Nott was telling people. Not because he'd thought Nott was incentivized to keep it a secret but because no professors had descended upon him yet for fighting in the corridors. That meant Nott must have only shared it with Shelia and wasn't reporting him. Possibly, Nott was trying to cover his own arse since his behavior with Lily would land him in trouble as well. That or he intended for his retribution against James to be a little more personal. James would need to be careful as he walked around after dark for a while.
"Yes! And how could you do that?" Shelia screeched.
"Well, the concussion's probably from when I slammed his skull off the wall," James answered cockily.
Shelia's hand flew to her mouth like she was disgusted. Even though Nott deserved none of it, Shelia clearly cared. A lot. "You're sick."
"Only as sick as your boyfriend," James quipped.
"Hardly. He's not parading through the school terrorizing people," Shelia said. "You know, I always used to defend you, but Lily had the right idea of it. You're just some kind of sadistic bully."
The dig rolled off him like the waning tide on sand. What caught and maintained his attention was Shelia's assertion that Nott didn't terrorize students throughout the castle. He'd kind of assumed Shelia knew, but then again, Nott had hidden his proclivities well enough that James hadn't realized Nott was such a threat before Friday. Being his girlfriend though, Shelia had to be close enough to recognize, at the very least, that Nott's opinions came with some disturbingly violent undertones. Right?
On the off-chance that she didn't know, James decided to help her out. "Shelia, your boyfriend's not a good guy. The psycho that's been terrorizing Lily? It's Nott. It's been him this whole time."
"Who? I don't know what you're talking about," Shelia said.
"She never told you?" James asked, secretly a little pleased that Lily had kept this a secret from everyone and not just him. "He's been torturing her for being a muggleborn."
This new information washed right over her, never taking root for even a second. Confronted with such unwelcome information, Shelia simply shut down. She wouldn't listen. Not to him.
"Your attempts to justify things are honestly pathetic," Shelia said, unshaken.
James almost chuckled at the depths of her stubbornness. "My justifications? Think about it for a minute tonight as you fall asleep, what's more likely that all your friends are involved in a vast conspiracy against you or that your boyfriend's evil?"
"Lily's always been competitive and jealous –"
James cut off whatever tirade that was going to be. "No, you've always been jealous of Lily. She's a competitive maniac, no doubt, but she also loves you. She wouldn't throw you out or try to ruin you because you found happiness, and deep down you know it. You know it because underneath all your insecurities, you love Lily too. You just need to remember it."
Both of them were pretty surprised in the wake of that outburst. All of James' focus on his own motivations had left him abnormally primed to sort through someone else's. At the root of everything it always seemed to come back to insecurity.
"You don't know anything about it," Shelia said, but her protest was weak. James was certain that he'd seen right through to the heart of her, and they both knew it.
With a scoff that was mostly for show, Shelia swept past him, all but knocking into Peter as she went.
Because James was still petty underneath all of his newfound insightfulness, he called after her, "Not even going to tell Peter you're happy to see him up and walking?"
Peter, who'd been cowering in the hopes of being forgotten all this time, threw James an alarmed look. By now, Peter ought to have been used to it. James had never been one to let somebody have the last word. (Lily could attest.)
Reluctantly, Shelia turned and congratulated Peter on his release from the Hospital Wing, perfunctory and unwilling. Peter nervously babbled his thanks. James rolled his eyes at Peter's long-running discomfort at even the smallest confrontation.
"Seriously, mate, you have got to grow a backbone," James said once Shelia was out of range to hear. He resumed his walk down the stairs, suddenly aware of how hungry he was.
"You're right, James," Peter agreed readily.
"See that doesn't reassure me," James laughed. "Come on, I'm hungry enough to eat a hippogriff."
As if his life hadn't been unexpectedly ravaged that morning, James walked into the Great Hall with all the comfort of a man who answered to no one. The rest of the school must have been fairly oblivious to the drama amongst the Marauders (a small comfort) because there was no great hush that fell or reaction to their entrance. James considered taking the cowardly route and finding some friends amongst the other houses to sit with, maybe announcing an impromptu Quidditch team dinner so that he could avoid having to approach the rest of his friends currently sitting at the Gryffindor table, but pushing off the inevitable had never been his style. Things were over with Lily and he and Sirius were on the outs, yes, but those things shouldn't affect his ability to share a meal with the others.
Just about everyone was there. Sirius with Marlene, Remus who was devouring everything in his path, Alice, and Mary. No Lily. James didn't quite know what to make of that. It was a Sunday though, so people would trickle into the Great Hall for dinner from five to eight. She could just be opting to eat later.
Casually, James plopped onto the bench beside Sirius. It had been left empty as always because it was naturally James' spot. With a side-long glance, Sirius regarded him like he couldn't fathom what James was trying to do. Less subtly, Marlene craned her neck around her boyfriend to give him her fiercest glare.
"Can we talk after dinner?" James asked. "I think we need to."
"I think we need to talk too," Sirius agreed. James breathed a sigh of relief, unfortunately Sirius was not finished. "But the time for that kind of came and went."
"Listen, I got caught up with something, and I'm sorry. Can't we just talk tonight," James whispered, unpleasantly conscious of the listening ears around them.
"Actually, we have plans," Marlene answered instead.
James could remember the catty kind of interference Marlene ran against Alice when she was on the outs, and he could hardly believe the situation had progressed to the point that her passive-aggressive ire had been transferred onto him. He waited for the moment that Sirius would correct Marlene, inform her that sorting things out with James would take precedence, but it never came. The silence stretched out between them uncomfortably long.
"Are you meeting to interview Erik?" Mary asked, fully focused on Marlene.
"Yes! I think I'll have what I need to start writing by the end of the night," Marlene said.
"What are you writing?" Peter asked. James was grateful because it kept the conversation going and prevented James from having to ask himself. He was fairly certain Marlene would ignore any questions coming from him right now.
"A revised take on my last article on blood politics at school," Marlene said. "Lily set me up with Erik Carmichael. Between conversations with him and Sirius, I feel I've really gotten a better understanding on different views at Hogwarts. Rather than just detailing the social break down at Hogwarts, I'm going to actually interview different students. It's a more mature take on the subject, closer to investigative journalism. If it turns out well, I'll probably send a copy to that reporter from the Prophet."
"Congratulations, Marlene," James said.
Everyone stared at him.
"I'm actually finished. You?" Sirius asked Marlene.
She nodded and the two took their hasty leave. James could hardly believe that his mere presence had been enough to chase Sirius away from the table. Looking for support, James raised his eyebrows at Remus. The other boy took no notice, however, too busy munching on a brownie like he'd never tasted chocolate before. So James was stuck with the awkwardness of the silent table once again.
He should probably just be grateful that the other girls hadn't tried to banish him from the table or something equally dramatic.
"So DADA tomorrow? Things have been weird since last Monday, huh?" James tried.
With a deep sigh, Mary looked up from her plate. Apparently she'd decided that completely ignoring James wasn't going to accomplish anything. "I'm considering dropping the class actually. Since she's started, Ames has been invasive and frankly unprofessional. I talked to McGonagall about it and everything. While she obviously didn't want me to drop the class, she did agree that I could study along with the course materials and then take the NEWT at the end of the year."
"No way! Does Marlene know?" Peter asked eagerly.
"No, but I figured I wouldn't tell anyone until I had made a decision. McGonagall said I need to meet with Ames at least once before dropping the class, give her a chance to convince me to stay. Our meeting's tomorrow, so once that's out of the way, I'll tell everyone."
"I think you're making the right decision. School's a waste of time, anyways," Alice said, pumping her fist in the air.
"I don't know if you can call Defense a waste with a war on," Remus mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.
"That's why I'm not going to stop studying altogether," Mary said shortly.
The conversation died out again while they all mulled over Mary's choice. James figured he would react in a more extreme manner if a professor had interfered in his life to the same extent that Ames had in Mary's. But DADA was such an essential course…
"So get up to anything fun today?" James asked Alice, looking to restart the conversation once more.
Alice raised her bushy eyebrows at him. "What are you trying to do, Potter?"
"Umm…talk to my friends," James said uncertainly.
"Well, stop it. We're all cross with you. Eat in ashamed silence like you should," Alice ordered.
"Listen, I get it. Lily is your friend, and she's hurting right now. I mean, she's not here, so I can only assume she's up in her room crying or something, and that must be pretty difficult –"
"Crying? Lily's not crying!" Alice said fiercely. "In fact, she's only not here because…because we forgot to tell her we were coming down for dinner. Mary, so forgetful, you were supposed to go get Lily." Alice sent Mary a very pointed look, and Mary stood up to fetch Lily with a less than subtle roll of her eyes.
"Alice –" James tried again.
"She's fine. We just forgot," Alice insisted.
Peter grimaced at James. Maybe it made him an arrogant bastard, but James highly doubted they'd just forgotten to tell Lily about dinner. The girl still owned a watch. More likely, she was upstairs crying as James had said, and the girls didn't want him to know about it. Pride was a funny thing like that. And James knew he wouldn't want Lily to know if he'd cried, so it made sense that the girls would go to such lengths to cover it up.
"Alice, I'm not trying to be a jerk here," James said.
"Then don't," Alice shot back fiercely, leaning across the table to glare at him.
Censure coming from Alice hurt worse than coming from any of the other girls. Since they were young, Alice had always been his favorite of the Gryffindor girls in their year, excepting Lily of course. She was irreverent and funny and not afraid to get her hands dirty in the name of a good prank. They had a friendship separate from the group, which James couldn't say really existed between him and Shelia, Mary, or Marlene.
"Come on, you think that all this teen dating stuff is stupid," James said.
Alice gave him a very dirty look. "Yeah, I do. Want to know why? Because I was brutally taught that teenage boys are awful and mean and will discard you like a broken broomstick the second a new model comes along. Love is stupid because it's not real. Doesn't mean I wanted Lily to learn that."
"Rory really fucked you up, didn't he?" James asked, not unkindly.
"I'm not pretty or delicate or any of the other things boys want. Lily is though. I guess I just thought…" Alice swallowed and took a moment to decide on what to say next. "I thought if love was going to be real it would be the two of you. That you wouldn't treat her the way other boys would. That you're an actually good guy who'd respect her and meet her halfway."
It was James' turn to swallow heavily. "The problem was never respect. We weren't like that, whatever you're imagining."
"Tough love time, Potter," Alice said. "Did you or did you not beat on Nott, knowing it was exactly what she didn't want you to do?"
At this point in the conversation, Peter leapt up from his seat beside James to move next to Remus. It put several seats between the two pairs and at least the illusion of privacy. From the way Peter was leaning slightly to the right, however, James had no doubt he was still listening with his undivided attention. James was too overwhelmed to feel bothered by the invasion.
"Come on. Don't act like you'd act differently if you found out," James protested.
"I've known since Thursday," Alice countered triumphantly. "And I wanted to go kick Nott's arse in as well, but I didn't because Lily asked me not to, and I could tell it was important to her."
"Okay, that's it!" James threw his napkin down on the table in a dramatic gesture to indicate that the lay into James train was officially over. "Yes, I fucked up, and maybe I then overreacted, but Lily's not blameless in this either. She's refused to open up. Every time I take a step forward, she takes six back. We'd still be at the hand-holding phase if she had her way. Yes, I didn't do what she wanted, but that's because she's so bloody closed off about everything. How am I supposed to know what she thinks or feels?"
His napkin had landed in the baked beans. Carefully, Alice extracted it and flung it back onto his plate. He looked down on his now tainted broccoli – tainted because the baked bean sauce was on it – and frowned. From years dining together, Alice knew perfectly well how much James liked to keep his foods separated, especially sauces. The joy came from mixing them together in the perfect proportions.
"James, I've been living with Lily for over six years. You're not telling me anything I don't already know, but that's who Lily is, and you don't get to be angry about it. She didn't show up here at eleven with this huge mistrust of everyone's motives. People let her down over and over again until she developed one. That's how human beings work. There's so much out there that we don't understand, so our idea of what the world is and how it operates is based solely on our own experiences. For Lily, her experience is that someone can love you and still throw you away. And I think it's perfectly shitty that you get to be just one more person in her life who proved her right," Alice lectured.
"She can't expect people to run a marathon just to get her to open up," James argued. "All it does is make people resentful. I do understand that she has some issues from Snape and the sister, but it's not fair to everyone else."
Alice sighed. "No, it's not. But it is what it is."
He was talking himself in circles, but the foundation of their problems together weren't going to change just through his rationalizations. Once James began to care about someone, he trusted them. End of story. He considered it a betrayal of the relationship to cast any aspersions on a friend's intentions. Comparatively, Lily didn't trust anyone completely. Not even her closest friends. They were fundamentally incompatible, and unless one of them was willing to compromise, they were never going to make it work.
"When'd you get all wise about this shite?" James asked. The bizarreness of hearing Alice dissect other people's motives in such a reasonable fashion had just caught up to him.
"For my birthday this summer, Mary sent me all these books on muggle psychology. I think it was a less than subtle attempt to get me to psychoanalyze myself and stop being such a bitch just because Rory chucked me. Didn't work until, well, I had a lot of free time open up this month with the girls not talking to me, and I stopped doing my homework, which meant I needed something to fill my time," Alice explained.
"So, what? You're just brilliant and wise now?" James asked.
"Comparatively speaking," Alice grinned. James chucked her under the chin.
Like he'd cast a tracker spell on her, James felt suddenly compelled to look up towards the double doors. Sure enough, there was Lily. She looked to be trying to battle her way out of the Great Hall, while an incorrigible Mary dragged her forward by the arm. Few people could pick a battle with MacDonald and win, so it wasn't much of a surprise when Mary managed to overpower her and pull her slack body towards the table.
"Slide down to sit with your friends," Alice ordered once she caught sight of the approaching girls.
Breathing a sigh of relief, James did as he was told. He hadn't been sure whether or not Alice intended for him to sit through a dinner with Lily by his side. That would have been a recipe for misery. Not that a few meters between them was going to make too much of a difference, but he'd cling to that buffer zone for as long as he could.
He was hyper-aware as Lily took her seat – far enough down the table that six people could squeeze between them, on the same side of the table with him, and Alice's body in the middle as a buffer. Keeping his eyes on Peter directly across from him, James couldn't so much as make out the outline of Lily in his peripheral vision. Which…if he was being perfectly honest, wasn't ideal for him either. The possibilities were almost as painful as the knowing. Could he crane his head around Alice to take a look without it being too obvious?
Attempt one did not go so well. He slowly inched closer to the table until his chest was resting almost halfway across the table. Peter's breath blew hot across the crown of his head because he'd inched so far into Peter's space. In this position, James was able to catch a quick glimpse of Lily, looking down at her plate so that he couldn't make out much about her face – Was she sulking? Any evidence of tears? Had her friends succeeded in keeping her distracted? This glimpse lasted less than a second before Alice had pushed her body forward in a similar fashion so that Lily was completely blocked off from view. She turned and scowled at him, until James reluctantly returned to his former position.
For attempt two, James decided that he was just approaching the issue from the wrong angle. He needed to view this like he would a prank. The goal: get a look at Lily. The obstacles: Alice and his own pride in not wanting to be caught out by Lily. All he needed to do was come up with an effective bit of subterfuge to account for the situation.
With a less than subtle flick of his wrist, James succeeded in flinging his fork backwards behind him. Alice looked up at the clatter, but James looked around him as if he was genuinely confused where his fork could have fallen until she returned to her food. Then, he dove to the floor to continue his search. It took very little effort to find the fallen fork as it was laying in the middle of the floor with nothing to cover it. He took his time picking it up so that he could take a look at Lily from his now unblocked view.
Well, his view to Lily was unblocked. Unfortunately, she was facing forward, so that meant what he could see was still somewhat limited. Her hair was down, unstyled. In fact, it looked like the tips were still wet from a shower. That was telling. Lily didn't like to go out unless she was perfectly made up, so either she was too depressed to care, or Mary had caught her out of the shower and forced her to come down before she was ready. There were too many possibilities between those two scenarios. It didn't do much to answer his pressing question: how was Lily holding up?
Unthinkingly, James squeezed down around the fork, which was an unfortunate mistake as he was currently holding it by the prongs. He gave a startled yelp that had just about every head turning in his direction. Including Lily.
He wasn't able to piece together much from her appearance. She looked like Lily. Not being an expert in these things, James wasn't sure, but he thought she was wearing at least a little bit of makeup, so he couldn't hypothesize that she was so overcome with misery that she couldn't manage simple tasks.
Her expression told a bit more of a story. She was looking at him with an expression that was oddly blank. There was the expected inquisitiveness there, the question of just what he was doing yowling on the floor, but beyond that, there wasn't anything to glean from her. Lily and her feelings were carefully hidden away where he couldn't hope to access them. Throughout the entirety of their explosive acquaintance, James had never had to guess what Lily was thinking about when it came to simple moments like these. It startled him.
"Um, I stabbed myself," James said, holding up the fork so that everyone could see. He spoke directly to Lily though.
Her eyes darted to the side to Alice for a moment before returning to him. Rather pointedly she appeared to avoid meeting his gaze, instead looking at his chin. Her only response to his explanation was to nod. Then, she turned back around in her seat to her food.
James was left on the floor, staring at the back of her head like an idiot. He didn't know whether calling things off with Lily was the right or wrong decision. There were too many factors in play for the answer to be obvious. What he did know, however, was that this – the lack of understanding, the wanting not at all dimmed – couldn't be where they ended things.
A/N: Poor James got beat up on a bit this chapter. Next chapter we get to switch perspectives and see the fallout on Lily's end. Though I bet most of you can kind of predict what that will look like. Thanks for reading!
