Voyeur

by scriibble

As his seventh year begins and the First Wizarding World grows outside Hogwarts' castle walls, James Potter has one goal in mind: to finally win over Lily Evans. The only problem? Accidentally seeing her with someone else, of course—but it's not like that will stop him. [L/OC to L/J; Marauders seventh year/intro to the First Wizarding War] [Winner of JilyAwards 2020 Fav Smut/NSFW]

17. Chapter 17

A/N: I always go back through reviews before posting a new chapter, and I'm blown away that I had two and a half pages of reviews since the last chapter. So endlessly grateful! I also found my fic mentioned ~in the wild~ on my own for the first time this week, which was quite a thrill. Thanks to the kind redditor who plugged this as a WIP they're currently enjoying!

Again, feel free to PM me if you ever feel like chatting! I never know if a logged-in reviewer would like a response or not, because I know some people are just very much not about receiving responses, but I'm always happy for any additional messages!

Chapter Seventeen

True to her word, Lily spent most of the next day working, pouring over a stack of Transfiguration books that nearly loomed over her seat in the library. Hestia worked alongside her, and although neither of them so much as suggested that James and Sirius join them, they did fairly shortly after breakfast without much discussion. Their stack of work did seem almost dauntingly high, and James found it a little odd without the girls around anyway. He wondered if Sirius thought what nettled him too: they'd become quite dependent on them since Christmas.

"It's a miracle, darling, isn't it?" Fleamont asked Euphemia over lunch, grinning. "Have you ever seen the boys so much as crack open a book? Jamie, I'd started to think you'd taken after my own dear mother and had never quite learned how to read."

"Is it better or worse that it turns out we're just lazy?" Sirius sounded genuinely curious.

"You know, I can't quite decide," Euphemia told him, and she appeared actually torn at the thought. "Although you two would only start to take school seriously with less than three months left. You would."

"In time for NEWTs. Only time that really matters, isn't it?" It dawned on James after he spoke that his mum and Lily had almost twin expressions of clear disapproval, which frightened him a fair bit.

He watched Lily closely all day with more purpose than usual. Watching her so intensely felt uncomfortably much like it had back in the fall, when he'd tried to track her every interaction with Morton, his eyes constantly scanning, searching, waiting to catch a moment between them. Instead, he watched for the way she looked at him, which he supposed made it better, although it left him somehow just as tense. He wanted to see if he could catch her with the expression on her face that he'd seen so briefly the night before that he'd become convinced, even minutes later, that he had to have imagined it. Yet the look never came. She appeared utterly wrapped up in her work.

Still, not too long after lunch, as she finished the first foot of her Transfiguration essay with a flourish, she brought the subject of dinner up before he did, inquiring in a few simple words if they were still on.

Sirius looked up from his book with an open mouth. "What now?" He glanced at Hestia, who hadn't paused in her writing. "Hess, did you know about this? That they're going on a date?"

"It's just dinner," Hestia said mildly, and James snorted with laughter at how easily she clearly followed the party line. Apparently she didn't hesitate to parrot what Lily wanted her to say either, at least publically. James knew how that felt all too well.

"'Just dinner'?" Sirius repeated, his voice thick with sarcasm. "Right. Evans, if you're taking applications for these casual dinners, I'm sure I could rustle up a few more candidates. Who's tomorrow night, Morton?"

Hestia looked up at that, and her mouth went flat and tight. Her eyes snapped between Sirius and Lily, brilliant and flashing, and she pressed a palm flat on the table, as if she expected that at any moment someone might stand up and flip it. She clearly anticipated chaos, and James didn't blame her. He knew it was still far too soon to take the piss out of Lily over Morton (truly, would it ever not be too soon?), and he didn't like it any better. Just hearing his name made James' neck tense.

But Lily just shrugged. "The odds aren't high on that, no." She picked up a book and leaned back in her chair as she opened it, crossing one leg over the other. Yet even as she looked the picture-perfect definition of carefree and casual, James noticed from next to her that she'd cracked the book open at random, and she didn't bother turning the page to where she might need to find something. Although her eyes moved across the page, he felt suddenly confident that she didn't actually read at all, and had gone through all the motions of reading just to act as if Sirius hadn't bothered her. "What time then?" she asked, and her eyes flickered to him with only the briefest of glances.

"Leave here at six?"

"That sounds good."

James considered catching Sirius' eye, considered mouthing something at him or making a face to show his serious displeasure, but he knew he didn't have to. The way Hestia looked at Sirius assured James that he'd get an earful from somewhere, and it would probably mean more coming from her. Still, it could hardly escape his attention that Sirius had decided to have a go at Lily again, as if he purposefully meant to upset the delicate balance that had formed between her and James.

"He's a bit of an idiot," he told her later as they sat tucked away in a booth in The Iron Phoenix, one of Diagon Alley's restaurants. "Sometimes I feel like I end up apologizing for him too often, but I know Remus apologizes for both of us even more, so I can't complain."

"Remus basically spent three years on an apology tour for you after he and I became friends," she said, and he marveled at the fact that she could suddenly smile about it all. "I don't think there's a single location at Hogwarts where he hasn't told me he's sorry for something you've done, save, like, my dorm and the girls' bathroom. Although it wouldn't surprise me if he had hollered some apology at me when I stormed into one or the other at some point, honestly."

"Remind me to never stop thanking him for that," he said, and even though she laughed, he meant it.

James had worried, just as he had in the Three Broomsticks on Christmas Eve, that things might go sideways between them when they found themselves alone, might turn uncomfortable and awkward with all the pressure of a date upon them. Because no matter what they had decided to call it, it absolutely was a date, and he knew that Lily knew it too. She'd done something different with her hair so that it curled softly away from her face, and she wore a soft white dress that bared her shoulders. Hestia had commented twice on how nice she looked before they'd left, and Sirius had given his whole-hearted agreement, although he made sure to add, "Smashing for what isn't a date, Evans, truly." He'd staunchly avoided the annoyed look James had shot his way.

Yet things never got uncomfortable in the time they spent dawdling over their meal. The more James got to know her as time went on, the more he understood that Lily just had a certain gift that put people at ease—at least when she chose to use it. She could carry a conversation swimmingly or prompt someone into happily doing so instead. And she somehow managed to make him feel like the single most important and interesting person in her life when they chatted, as he'd seen her do to almost everyone else around them—with his friends, with hers, with his dad, with professors, with other Hogwarts students. He told her that over dinner, and she looked genuinely flattered to the point that her collarbone flushed pink.

"Really?" she asked, and the way she bit the corner of her lip signaled to him that she'd gone past flattered into flustered territory, a true rarity. "I've never thought of myself like that with people I'm really close to. I mean, I do work at it with some people—I'm absolutely doing it with your parents, and I've done it a ton with lads—but I haven't with your friends. I haven't really tried to work them at all."

"That's probably part of why it worked," he told her, and he watched, amused, as she twisted her fingers together, apparently uncomfortable with his praise. "I mean, you've given Pete more solo attention than I think he's gotten from every other girl at Hogwarts combined. And you make it seem like you actually want to talk to him and want to get to know him."

"Because I do!" she insisted. "I really do think he's lovely. Although…of course, I do want him to like me, because he's important to you."

He tried not to let it show on his face exactly how happy that admission made him, although he could only assume that she saw it despite his efforts. "You don't have to try. He already does. Everyone does."

"Your mum doesn't," she said, with an unhappy pull to her mouth. "Or she might like me, but she doesn't like me for you." She recounted for him an entire conversation his mum had apparently forgotten to mention when she'd spoken to him in the kitchen, where she had asked Lily, bluntly, about the status of their relationship, and how she'd gone rather silent when Lily had responded with less than total enthusiasm. Things had gone chilly between them immediately afterwards and had never abated from the weird energy that he'd noticed the night before. "I understand her perspective," she added quickly when she finished describing their conversation, as if she thought he might take offense to her speaking about his mum in even a slightly annoyed manner. "I did ask you how your parents would react to you and Black bringing home girls neither of you are officially dating."

"What did you say? When she asked?" Just as Lily's blush had abated, James felt heat creeping up his neck and into his ears, embarrassed and annoyed at his mum's meddling. "No jokes," he added quickly, because her eyes had taken on a specific sort of sparkle that he'd come to recognize as that Sirius-like desire for levity.

She looked truly put out for a second. "I had so many good ones." Pushing her hair back, she sat up straighter, and transformed into someone more business-like and less intimate. "I told her that of course I like you—I wouldn't be at your house if I didn't—but that we both had a lot of things to consider, with NEWTs and job placement and everything that will change next year, so we need to make sure it would work between us before we start anything. And all of that is true."

His heart skipped a beat. "So—"

Just like that, her veneer faltered. "Maybe," she said quietly, but with a new staunchness he hadn't yet heard before, at least when it came to discussing them. He knew just from the way she looked at him that she knew what he meant to ask, what question he wanted to press home: did that mean they had a chance? "Probably, if I'm honest. But…I still need a bit. It's a lot to come around on, even if it doesn't seem like it to you." When she reached across the table to where his hand rested and slipped her hand in his for just for a moment, he caught it again, the tender look she'd given him the night before. To James, the mere flicker of it made everything seem quite right in the world.

But she threw him several dirty, disgruntled looks when dinner ended and she found out that he had quickly paid the bill after she'd excused herself to the bathroom. ("Completely underhanded," she tossed at him when he couldn't stop grinning, too pleased with his own cleverness. He only managed to hide his glee better when she added, "And such a Slytherin move.") Still, she perked up quickly when he suggested they stop in the Magical Menagerie and look at the cats, her recent conversation with Peter about magical creatures still on his mind.

"They're alright," he told her as she cooed over a cage full of kittens along the back wall of the cramped, noisy shop. He poked his fingers through the holes in the cage, and one of the kittens, small and black, came over to rub its face against him, and then quickly began to gnaw at his knuckle. "I prefer dogs."

Yet he found he warmed to cats significantly the more she exclaimed and fussed over them in a way that seemed entirely unlike her. Since Christmas, he'd seen her express tender affection towards Hestia and Marlene, occasionally Remus, and, increasingly, himself. But she went entirely, unashamedly soft towards the cats with no thought spared towards second-guessing herself, no attempt made to hold back as she typically did with people. When a particularly large gray and white cat stuck a fluffy white paw out of its cage towards them, James couldn't resist calling the shopkeeper over to ask if she could hold it.

"A quarter Kneazle," the shopkeeper said cheerfully, passing the cat over to her in a rather undignified manner, because it seemed to go entirely limp when he picked it up. "Male and intact. Got a great disposition, but he's not terribly bright—more cat than Kneazle, I suppose."

"Get him," James prompted when the large sack of fur turned into a prone, purring mass in her arms. "I'm about five seconds away from getting him for you myself."

"Don't you dare," she said sharply, but she handed the cat back with the greatest reluctance.

"I have to think about Hestia before I make any major decisions," she explained after they'd gotten drinks at the Leaky Cauldron and settled into a booth. She had slammed the gold down to pay for them both with alarming force before he could even think twice, and he'd let her, laughing. "We're planning to rent a flat together after graduation."

It occurred to James that he'd never given much thought to where he'd live once they left Hogwarts for good. And if he hadn't thought about it, he knew his friends—perhaps save for Remus—definitely hadn't either.

"No McKinnon?" he asked, mainly to drive away the uncomfortable bit of dread that had blossomed in the pit of his stomach, and she smiled over her spiced mead.

"She's in negotiations with Rooney to get a place together," she divulged. "Seems fast, I think, but she doesn't do anything half-arsed, you know? And they truly are in negotiations. Each has their own list of things they want out of a place, and what it means for their relationship, especially Rooney. He's so…methodical." The way she said it, it sounded like a bad thing.

"So they haven't started rowing?" Even in the dim, smoky lighting of the pub, he caught her surprised expression. "The lads and I have noticed that things seem sort of…off."

"Things have certainly changed," she said carefully. "But they'll be fine, I expect, so long as she wants them to be. As I'm sure you've noticed, she pretty much runs things." A little smile broke out over her face. "Don't look so disappointed."

"We have a bet going, the lads and I," he told her, and she laughed even as she swatted across the table at his arm in admonishment. "I'd hate to lose it, even if we haven't set the terms yet, so I wanted to know if I should stick with what I said to them. And…well, it'd be nice to get the Ravenclaws out of our lives if they broke up."

"We agree there," she said simply.

Frank and Alice arrived very soon after, and Lily stood to hug Alice immediately. The look of relief that flooded Alice's face was so palpable that even James felt it. "You are okay then," James heard her say over the din of the pub, passing a gentle hand over Lily's hair, and he remembered Lily's story of the last time Alice had tried to hug her, right after she'd gotten her curse removed, and how she couldn't stand it.

"Right as rain, just like I said," Lily assured her, all pretty pep, and Frank also looked relieved in the weary lines in his face that James had noticed the last time he saw him, which still hadn't abated.

They made small talk after Alice and Frank fetched drinks, just minimal chitchat that felt almost strange to James after the intensity of their last meeting. Frank asked about Quidditch, and then after James' friends, and Lily helped him regale the two with the unexpected burgeoning of Sirius and Hestia's relationship, whatever it was. Alice seemed truly delighted, and Frank clearly baffled, by the development.

"I hardly even remembered her from Hogwarts when we took your statements on Christmas Day," Frank said. "And I know you brought her around a lot when you dated Greg, Lily, but I just couldn't place her, really. I remember Marlene—"

"Everyone remembers Marlene," Alice pointed out, and something about the way she said it made James wonder just how she meant it, as a positive or a negative. He couldn't quite tell. "But Hestia's a hidden gem, I think. I always really liked her."

"A real Remus," Lily agreed, and Frank and Alice didn't have to ask what she meant.

Lily asked about their wedding plans, which made Alice reach subconsciously for the ring on her left hand James had noticed at Slughorn's Christmas party. "They're coming along," she said with a warm look at Frank. "We're having it at Frank's parents' house—and we absolutely bloody had to, because his mum insisted and wouldn't hear a word otherwise—but I don't really mind."

"It's important to pick your battles with her," Frank said solemnly. "She's a terrifying woman, and I say that despite having been raised by her—or maybe because I was raised by her. But she adores Alice."

"Must be nice," Lily said, and although she spoke neutrally, James didn't miss the glance she gave him. Clearly his mum's opinion of her still weighed on her mind.

"You're both invited, of course. It'll be July or August, depending on our schedules," Alice continued. "It's so hard to plan too far out, because of work and…the Order." She spoke the last two words more quietly than the others, although James doubted that anyone in the pub, filled with late-evening diners and early-evening drinkers, cared enough to listen in. "Which is why we asked you here tonight. Are you still interested?"

"Absolutely," James said immediately, and he watched Lily lean forward, rapt. Frank and Alice exchanged a significant look.

"Okay," Frank said briskly, and he drained the rest of his Dragon Scale lager. "Right. So, we'll need you both to come to the Ministry tomorrow at 2:00. You can Floo in, and Alice and I will meet you in the lobby."

"And Lily…" Alice gave Lily a sweeping look with an uncharacteristically critical eye. "Wear your hair like that, will you?"

"What?" Lily looked more dumbfounded than James could ever remember seeing her. "Wait, what?" she repeated, sharper than before. "Alice, I have about eight thousand questions, and what seems most important to you is to tell me how to wear my hair?"

"Yes." Alice suddenly sounded all business, and took on the sort of professional, detached tone that Frank seemed to have perfected long before. "Don't you think, Frank?"

"For sure," Frank agreed. "What did you say she should wear?"

"You had this dress you wore a few times our seventh year—green, sleeveless, belted at the waist, sort of boat neck. Do you still have it?"

Lily set her drink down. "Yes. Why?"

"Wear that."

When Lily sought his eye, it was all James could do to lift a hand at her and turn it over, a useless gesture of confusion. "Do you want to tell me what knickers to wear too?" she asked, and she began to sound cross. "Or tell James what to wear, maybe? I need to curl my hair, but he doesn't even have to comb his?"

Alice's professionalism faltered at that. "I'm sorry, Lily. I am. It absolute bollocks to be a woman sometimes. Most times, really. I know."

She sounded so truly empathetic, and her face looked so suddenly miserable, that Lily softened a little. "I don't understand," she said. "Will one of you explain to me what's going on?"

"What we can," Frank agreed. "But first, another round? James, come help me."

According to Alice's letter, James remembered, Frank intended to take the piss out of both him and Lily for spending the holiday together. As they made their way through the crowded pub and up to the bar, he fully expected the jokes and friendly accusations to begin, but the way Frank looked at him after they ordered quickly dissuaded James of any notion of banter. He asked James, with unusual curtness, "Are you and Lily dating?"

"Not…exactly," James said. Catching Frank's exasperated sigh, he added quickly, "I told you, she's not made things easy!"

"It's also nowhere near as difficult as you're making it sound," Frank said shortly. "Look, have you tried just asking her? With Greg—"

James cut him off, immediately irritated. "Things are different for her now." He didn't want to deal with Frank's ribbing about Greg, his jests about how love was like Quidditch and the need for healthy competition. But it only took him a single glance at Frank's face to see that he wasn't laughing, and didn't look amused in the least, but rather drawn and tired. "She knows how I feel," James said, and the words sounded flat, fell short of all the ways he'd struggled with her in the past months. "I'm still trying to get her to meet me there."

"So you're still after her, then?" Frank waved him off when James reached for his money pouch as Tom, the innkeeper, deposited their drinks in front of them. "No, I've got it," he said, and he pressed the gold carelessly into Tom's hand, his eyes never leaving James' face. "You're still keen? How keen?" he probed when James nodded mutely.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…" Frank pushed a hand through his hair. It had started to thin a little, James noticed, but high up on his forehead where his fringe still covered the loss. "I'm not going to ask you if it's like what Alice is to me now, because I've had longer with her, and it's different, it grows every day. But I remember seventh year. When we first got together, there were times I might look at her and think…this could be it. Or something that could change my life for at least a long while, even if not forever, although it did end up being forever for us. Is it like that? For you?"

James didn't have to look across the bar to Lily to know his answer, but he did anyway without thinking. He could see her, her face turned towards Alice's and her legs crossed under the table covertly in a way that would discreetly allow Alice to see the length of her cursed calf, bared by the short hem of her dress. Alice ran her hands along Lily's calf lightly, and James knew both from her motions and the gratified expression on Lily's face that she marveled at the difference from what she had last seen.

He picked up his ale and took a drink, his throat suddenly tight. "Yeah," he said to Frank as Lily smiled at Alice with a sweetness so genuine that it made his throat even tighter. "Yeah, it's like that for me." Worry overcame him when he looked back to Frank and saw not a stitch of the approval he expected on his friend's face. "Why?"

"Moody will want to know tomorrow," Frank said tersely, picking up his and Alice's drinks. "C'mon."

"Why?" James repeated, grabbing his and Lily's and sidestepping around a cluster of middle-aged witches in order to keep stride at Frank's side.

"A few different reasons. He'll need to know if you both end up in the department with us, of course, just like he needed to know about me and Alice. They keep close tabs on any interpersonal relationships in the department, because our work can get compromised so easily."

It sounded very plausible, and James had no reason to question Frank's word, but he still found himself doing exactly that.

"Frank, switch with me," Alice said, standing the moment they rejoined the table. "Look at Lily's leg."

Frank acquiesced, and swore loudly, louder than James had ever heard, loud enough that a few nearby tables turned to look, when he glanced rather carelessly under the table. "Is it entirely gone?" he asked Lily, dropping his voice down low. He stared at her with such all-encompassing intensity that it took Alice longer than necessary to pry her glass of wine from his clenched hand.

"Not entirely," Lily said, ducking her head. When James placed a new drink in front of her, the way she smiled at him in thanks, her cheeks pink and her eyes slightly bashful, did nothing to lessen the tightness in his throat. "I'd show you, Frank, if you hadn't just alerted half the pub to our existence."

"But how—"

"It's a potion. I tried to work out, numerically, everything I knew about the magical properties of the curse, and then I spent a fair amount of time fiddling, trying to brew something that would counteract those properties." She made the whole thing sound as easy as breathing. "It's topical, of course, so the fix is only cosmetic. I don't think there's any way to counteract dark magic that like that internally past what the Curse-Breaker could do, but aesthetically, I'm pleased."

"Don't downplay how hard you worked at it," James told her. "You really worked to crack it."

"Does it bother you still?" Frank asked. Although he ignored James' comment, Lily favored him with a smile at his praise, one that still looked almost shy. "Like it did?"

"No. Here—" Lily shifted, and James knew from the way Frank looked under the table that she'd drawn her leg up as she had for Alice so he could see. "It's like I told Alice—any residual pain faded really fast, within a few weeks. Go on, Frank, you can touch me. I've gotten quite used to it now, having strange men poke and prod my leg. Flitwick was absolutely the weirdest."

"Moody will want to see tomorrow, so you best stay used to it. That'll probably be weirder."

"And the nightmares?" Alice asked quietly, cupping her wine glass in both hands.

James watched Lily draw her hair over one shoulder. "Well, they're there," she hedged unwillingly. "But who's to say what that's from. Hogsmeade generally? The curse specifically? The Death Eater attack on Hogwarts? Anxiety over NEWTs? It's hard to know." She gave herself a little shake, and then rearranged herself in her seat, smoothing her dress down before she smiled at Alice. "But I'm fine, truly. Now will you tell me what the fuck is going on tomorrow?"

Alice opened her mouth to respond, but Frank cut her off with a look that seemed somehow warning.

"We can't say much," he said, and James understood that he expected Alice might give too much away. Frank gave a quick glance around to make sure all the tables around them seemed engaged before he dropped his voice even lower, and James had to lean forward to hear him. "It's ostensibly Auror stuff. We're looking to recruit you both, if anyone asks. And that is still what you want, right?" He waited for verbal confirmation from both of them, which he got instantly, before he continued. "Good. Moody wants to take measure of you both, see what he thinks, but as long as you don't bomb your NEWTs, he's made it clear you're both pretty much in since talking to Dumbledore. But really…" His expression became a little more closed off, a little more careful, and it worried James before he could even have a moment to relish the astounding news that he'd been all but guaranteed a spot in his dream profession. "It's about the Order. It's important that we have this chat at the Ministry, and that have a cover story for why you're there."

To James' surprise, he found Lily's hand atop his where he held his ale. He opened his hand automatically to take hers, and when he did she looked as surprised as him, as if she hadn't realized that she'd reached for him. "So why am I wearing a dress and curling my hair?" she asked, drawing her hand away, and James looked away from her to catch a glance pass between Frank and Alice. Frank looked professional and inscrutable, but James had just enough time to see something pass over Alice's kind face—worry? sadness? uncertainty?—before she snapped her expression closed like a vault door.

"We'll tell you everything tomorrow," Alice promised. "Just please do it. And afterwards I thought we could go have tea, Lily."

The proposition seemed to make Lily more suspicious and skeptical than soothed, no matter how winningly Alice put it. "Okay," she said uncertainly after a long pause. "We can do that."

"Do you have more of that potion?" Frank asked. "Moody would want to see it, I'm sure."

"Yeah, I can bring some." Lily's voice turned a hair more uncertain. "I just brewed more at the Potters', but that won't be ready for a few days. But I brewed extra before we left for break, since you'd mentioned maybe meeting up, Alice. I thought you could try it, if you wanted." Her fingers had gone almost unconsciously to the side of her neck, and Alice's migrated there too on herself, resting atop the thin fabric of her red turtleneck.

"Would it work?" Alice asked. Her eyes had gone wide.

"I don't know," Lily admitted. "I've only tried it on myself, and then Hestia after she got hit with—well, with something during the attack at Hogwarts. I got it to where it worked on both of us, so it seems more universal, which makes me think that it might work for you. It certainly wouldn't hurt. I've worked out any negative effects on myself already." She tried to make the latter bit sound light like a joke, but James failed to find it funny. He doubted he ever would.

"Tell us how it works," Frank requested, and she immediately looked flustered.

"Oh, I'm—I'm not sure how I could—"

"I know you've explained it to my dad," James said, but she waved an impatient hand.

"Yeah, but that's your dad," she said, as if that somehow made a difference, and she then struggled to explain what she meant. "Like, he knows all about potion-making and enough about Arithmancy that he could understand the parts I didn't explain well, and could push me through them."

"Try." Frank no longer made it sound like a request. "Moody might ask you tomorrow anyway, so you might as well give it a shot now."

So she tried. She'd make a shit professor, James decided quickly, because she'd characterized her poor skill at her explanation correctly. She clearly understood what she spoke about, but she had trouble distilling it down in a way that made sense to the other three, who had never taken Arithmancy and had only passing interests in potion-making. He found it felt almost good to watch her be bad at something and struggle, to get frustrated and annoyed when she had to backtrack to explain something clearer, because she typically made conquering everything academic look annoyingly easy. He'd also always liked watching her get mad, conditioned after six years of angry interactions with her to find the frustration on her face more than a little appealing. His appreciation for it apparently hadn't dwindled.

Frank and Alice leaned on her harder than he did, kept at her with clarifying questions or, in Frank's case, made pointed comments like, "That doesn't make sense," or, "I don't get it."

When he finally pushed her too far, asking for about the third time how and why numbers had magical properties, she threw up her hands. "I don't know, Frank!" she exclaimed. "It's just a basic tenant of Arithmancy! No one knows why magic works the way it does! Do you want me to theorize that for you too?"

"Kind of," he admitted with a grin, and he ducked the frustrated swat she aimed at his head.

They returned to the Potter house late, the windows darkened save for a light in his parents' bedroom. James wondered, although they couldn't see from the front of the house, if Sirius and Hestia both had lights on in their rooms as well, or maybe just in one.

"I'm going to make tea, I think," Lily told him, slipping out of her shoes at the door. They'd had more than a few drinks between the two of them, but her eyes had none of the soft, unfocused glossiness that James had come to associate with her drinking. She looked as sharp as ever, if weary.

He nudged her into the den and fixed the tea himself. When he brought it to her, he found her seated on the crushed velvet loveseat that Sirius and Hestia had taken to occupying in evenings, a single lamp lit by her side that cast strange shadows around the wide room. She murmured her thanks as he passed over a steaming cup, which she held delicately, clutched between her thumb and forefinger, as he sat down next to her. The second he settled, she curled up next to him as she so often did in the common room, her legs drawn up and laid sideways. Yet while in public she always took painstaking care not to lean too far into him, not to touch him too much besides maybe a gentle resting of her knees against his leg, she curled up intimately against his side, slipping under his arm as effortlessly as if they'd always sat as such, her nearly on his lap and her head rested against his chest.

"I could get used to this," he told her, and although it sounded like a joke, he meant it entirely.

She didn't answer, just nodded against his chest, he thought, although she might have just settled herself more comfortably against him. He couldn't tell. He stroked her arm in silence for a while, resting his chin atop her head, and she took two swallows of tea before she held it out to him. "I lied," she said. "I actually don't want this."

"I don't either," he admitted, and he took his cup and hers and set them on the end table next to him. He waited for her to stand up since she'd decided she didn't care for tea, but she didn't. She stayed tucked into him, and she didn't object when he used the hand newly-freed from his tea to trace the exposed skin of her leg from knee to ankle. In the dim lighting, he could just make out where her curse scars crossed in a woven web. "Agreeing to tea was my ruse to keep you longer," he told her after a long, companionable silence. She'd taken to fiddling with the fabric of his shirt on his chest, and he brought a hand up to take hers and still the motion. "What kind of ruse was it for you?"

"Something similar." She shifted against him, and drew away just enough that she could look up at him. "I had a nice time tonight. At dinner."

"And you look…sad about that." He touched her hair and drew his hand down the side of her face to rest his thumb where her dimples usually formed, which drew a small smile from her. "Why?"

"I'm worried about tomorrow. And don't you fucking dare kiss me. You have that look."

"Don't I always? Because I literally always want to kiss you. There isn't a time when I don't."

Her smile widened a little, although clearly against her will from the way she ducked her head briefly. When she looked back up at him, she'd lost the humor. "I suppose you do. But be serious for a minute. I'm worried."

James drew his wand from his pocket and summoned a knitted blanket that lay folded across the back of his mum's chair, mainly just so he'd have something to do, some excuse to take his hand off her face so he could focus more on her words and less on her lips. "Right." He tucked the blanket all around her as she so often did in the common room at Hogwarts, and found her far less distracting and less tempting with her legs covered up. "I'm listening."

"Did Frank ask you if we were dating? When you went to the bar?"

"That's what you're worried about?" he asked incredulously. "Just that?"

"No. But did he?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Alice asked me too." She exhaled a long sigh and then fussed with her hair, dragging her nails across her scalp so she could toss it to one side. The movement sent a faint wave of her perfume into the air, and James tried very hard not to even think about kissing her for fear she'd see it on his face. "What did you say?"

"I don't remember. Something like, 'not exactly.'" Really, all he could remember clearly about their interaction at the bar was Frank's insistent inquiry as to how keen he was about her. He wondered, with a fresh wave of hope followed by a fresh wave of anxiety, if Alice had posed the same question to her. "Why? What did you say?"

"About the same," she answered elusively, and she ignored the way he sighed to press on. "How did he ask you? Did he seem—like himself?"

"No. He seemed kind of down."

"Alice too, enough that it honestly scared me a little. So I did all this—" She sat up straighter, brought a winning smile to her face, and gestured down towards her legs, still covered by the quilt. "'Alice, look at my leg!'" she chirped, and the stark difference between her expressions, and the sheer believability of the happiness she'd conjured, nearly frightened him. "That got her back to normal," she said, and she returned to normal as well, to her more relaxed position against him, her mouth again slightly puckered with worry.

"It's weird that they'd act that way, but I don't see—"

"Why are they trying to pretty me up tomorrow?"

"You're always pretty."

She pushed away from him with a frustrated sound, and shoved herself out from under his arm and as far as she could from him on the loveseat. "Now who's jokes?" she asked irritably. "Is this your way of getting back at me for always trying to banter? Because I'm trying to actually talk to you, and you—"

"No, I'm not trying to get back at you. I'm sorry." She threw his arm off when he reached to pull her back the first time, but allowed him to draw her back into his side when he tried again, undeterred. "You're right. Tell me what you're thinking, since your question sounded rhetorical."

She glared at him for a moment, but then let the expression drop. "It's going to sound absurd."

"I'm listening. Try me."

For a moment, she pulled at her hair, silent, her gaze locked above the fireplace. "If I were going to set Marlene or Hestia up with a bloke, I would first have to figure out, if I didn't already know, if they were single or not. Which I guess with Hestia I might actually have to do, given that she and Black are nothing and everything right now. But then I'd also make sure that they looked their absolute best. What other reason is there to try to make me look my best if not to impress someone?" Her eyes snapped back to him so suddenly that the sheer vividness of their color startled him all over again. "But that's crazy, right?" She sounded a bit desperate. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It doesn't." He swallowed. "But also…"

But it also made sense in its own way, in a way that absolutely confused and confounded him more than ever.

"Frank asked me how serious I was about you, said that Moody would want to know," he told her, and she pressed a weary hand against her face.

"I don't suppose he told you more than that."

"No."

"But if it's for the Order—" She lifted her hand to look at him with more fear in her eyes than he'd seen since the attack at the Three Broomsticks. "What does that make me? Am I bait?"

xxx

Whatever her role, Lily seemed to have come fully around to it by breakfast the next morning. James didn't even have to ask, just had to glance at the resolute way she held her chin to know she'd made up her mind.

"It's fine," she told him when he finally managed to corner her alone in the library, no small feat. She nodded towards Sirius and Hestia nearby. "Don't act upset or they'll notice."

Apparently he found it more difficult than she did to lie to everyone. She'd dropped the bombshell about their Auror recruitment at breakfast with just the right amount of excitement, the right amount of nerves, the right amount of modesty. He'd struggled to match her energy, or rise to the occasion of his parents' praise or Sirius' enthusiasm.

"Aren't you happy, Jamie?" Euphemia had asked finally when he'd barely managed to muster a grin, and her own beaming smile had faded rapidly. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

"'Course," he had assured her, though without real feeling.

Lily, naturally, had come to his rescue.

"It's terrifying to think we'll actually be meeting with Moody, though," she had said, reaching over to take his hand. Even if she'd acted out the reassurance to cover for him more than anything, James had still found himself annoyingly comforted by her touch. "We couldn't stop talking last night about how nervous we are. I'm so worried I'll do something stupid and muck it all up."

"Same," he had agreed shortly. His parents and Hestia had seemed to accept that at face-value, although Sirius had regarded him for longer than he might have if he'd fully believed him.

Sure enough, as the day dragged on and James got more antsy and more incapable of focusing on his Transfiguration homework, Sirius clearly became more suspicious. He got right to it the moment Hestia and Lily ducked away after lunch, Lily muttering something about getting ready.

"I'd ask you if you had a good date last night, but I think you'd be happier if you did," he said conversationally across the chess board. He'd made his first move already, but James hadn't even glanced at the pieces.

"It actually went great," James answered, and he watched Sirius' eyebrows shoot up.

"So who pissed in your potion, then?"

"Moody." Which was technically the truth, James reasoned. Lily's worries, which had seemed unfounded, even ridiculous at first, had weighed heavily on his mind the minute she'd bid him goodnight. He couldn't get Frank's frustrated expression out of his mind, the way he'd looked so deeply disappointed when James had told him that, no, he and Lily weren't dating. Nothing about it tracked with the teasing way Frank had approached the same question only weeks before. "Just nervous, Padfoot. That's all."

"Sounds like you're a shoe-in. What's there to be nervous about?"

"You heard Lily at breakfast. I don't want to muck it up now."

Sirius stared at him. "No, that's not it. Don't lie to me. It's like watching McKinnon lie. You're shit at it, or at least you are with me. Is this because Evans ended up crawling in bed with Hess last night instead of you?" He shrugged when James looked at him questioningly. "Hess told me this morning."

"No."

"But did you try? To get her in there with you?"

"I asked. She said no. Pretty standard."

In fact, he'd asked her differently than usual and had tried to coax her into his room just to sleep and nothing more, because she still looked so worked up by the time they'd gone to bed, and he hadn't forgotten Alice's question about her nightmares. Although she'd eventually seemed to take him at his word that he wouldn't try anything with her, she had still declined. Even her kiss goodnight somehow seemed sad, and he could tell her heart wasn't in it, which gave him a strange sense of some relief mixed in with his disappointment at seeing her door close behind her. It meant that she didn't try to mask her feelings around him anymore, at least not as much as she once had, and not as much as she did around nearly everyone else. Watching her lie so easily and act happy so convincingly had done a number on his head, and made him question every smile she'd ever given him, every laugh they'd ever shared, every pleasant word she'd ever expressed.

At least he knew she didn't fake their physical connection, he'd thought when he'd gotten into bed, still worried and put out. He'd had his hand between her legs enough times to know and knew she wasn't that good of an actress, to be able to fake how wet he made her. But that had of course opened up a whole new line of thinking, and he'd finally fallen asleep only much later, still worried, sexually frustrated, and sore about the whole thing. The mood had followed him into the next morning unabated.

"What happened?" Sirius asked, characteristically candid. "Did she go off you? Or, wait, did you go off her?" He nodded thoughtfully when James shook his head, a mute no. "Yeah, didn't think so. Moony's right—you can't go off her at this point, I don't think. If it's coming from anyone's end, I know it's her who's making it all go to shit. Kind of what she does, innit?" James thought about pushing back, the constant baiting comments denigrating Lily perhaps just the thing that he needed to finally get mad and release some pent-up tension, but Sirius continued without pause. "So then what happened? Something must have changed, because things sounded very promising from what Hess and I heard after the Ravenclaw Quidditch match. I expected to never see the two of you once we got here, figured you'd just hole up in your room and scurry out for fifteen-minute breaks for food and water. I'd already concocted a bunch of absurd lies to cover for you to Effie and Flea."

"Thanks, mate." James rubbed at his face and did his best to smile and keep his voice light. "Doubt you'll need them, but you should tell them to me, because you'll get Jones there first, I reckon."

Sirius snorted. "Right. Sure, Prongs. Don't act like I don't know that Evans has moves."

James knew that, and it suddenly felt like he knew it a little too well, because he didn't want to have to think about what that would mean if Frank and Alice had set out to doll her up for some nefarious purpose.

Because they did doll her up, he saw when he joined her at the fireplace in the den at a quarter to two. She looked somehow prettier than the night before, when he would have said even twelve hours earlier, even a single hour earlier, that that wasn't possible. Her dress fit her perfectly and seemed to match her the color of her eyes exactly, which set her hair aflame.

Sirius gave a low, appreciative whistle when he saw her, clearly also not immune. "Is this somehow another non-date?" he asked, all good humor, apparently unaware of James' growing frustration with his clearly-not-joke jokes, even though James knew it had to read all over his face. "Because you're looking pretty good for some sort of casual Ministry trip, Evans, unless you're planning to seduce Moody while you're there, although I don't think you need to."

"Sirius!" Euphemia snapped, coming into the room behind him, Floo powder pot in hand and face in a scowl.

"Can you not?" Hestia asked just as sharply at the same time.

He held up his hands, all innocence despite the grin on his face. "What? I just meant that she's a clever enough witch to not have to rely on her looks, that's all!"

He clearly expected Lily to banter back and volley some shot his way, and looked fairly disappointed when she just smiled a bit, and said quite simply, "Cute." She smoothed down the front of her dress, which fell gently to just below her knees, and the motion would have looked self-conscious, James thought, if she seemed at all capable of such a thing. "Alice and I are going to some posh tea shop afterwards, to either celebrate or cry, however it goes," she explained, which was technically the truth.

"You look lovely," Euphemia assured her, punctuating each word meaningfully, and Lily seemed to take heart at the reassurance, perhaps just because it came from James' mum. "You look absolutely lovely and appropriate and Sirius is—well, he's just an arse, isn't he?"

Sirius cracked up, clearly delighted, and James knew he would have too if his nerves weren't so entirely on edge from the trip and Sirius' comments. He'd never heard his mum speak quite like that before.

"Bawl him out for me, will you, Jones?" he asked, and Sirius stopped laughing abruptly.

"Mate, that's really unfair—"

James didn't wait to hear the rest. He grabbed a handful of Floo powder and threw it into the fireplace, and the roar of the fire drowned Sirius out until he could duck into the swirling green flames.

The pandemonium of the Ministry of Magic atrium hit James almost before he stepped out of the fireplace. Even as he approached, spinning faster in the flames, he could hear a cacophony of echoing voices; smell bitter, perhaps burnt coffee; and taste his nerves in his mouth, which felt acidic on his tongue. He reached out an arm to steady Lily even before she came through after him, and she reached for it without question with a grateful smile, slightly unsteady on her feet.

"Have you been here before?" she asked with hushed awe the second she took in her surroundings. She looked like she may have wanted to tip her head back, to look up to see how far the cavernous atrium stretched, but she resisted. He doubted she wanted to look out of place amongst the milling masses who clearly knew where they headed and what they were up to, none of whom looked at all impressed by the ambiance.

"Once. My grandad was a member of the Wizengamot—not while I was alive or anything. But he brought me here when I was little, quite a while after he'd served, and he showed me around. Believe it or not, it seemed even bigger then."

She smiled at him, but the expression faltered a little when she looked past him and spotted Frank and Alice waiting for them near a set of golden gates. "I really thought about just throwing on my Harpies jersey and my worst jeans, tossing my hair up, and being done with it," Lily said to him furiously, even as she kept her expression neutral while they crossed the highly-polished floor towards the security booth.

"You'd still look great," he told her grimly, grim because he meant it and knew it to be true.

Once they'd had their wands registered and received small silver 'visitor' badges to pin to their clothes, they joined Frank and Alice near the lifts.

"I brought two different shades of lipstick, Alice, in case you wanted to approve," Lily said sarcastically, gesturing towards her handbag. She looked as if she promptly regretted her smart-aleck remark, because Alice nodded rapidly, as if that made total sense.

"What do you have?" she asked, holding out her hand, and Lily stared at her in disbelief before, with a rather resigned sigh, she reached inside her handbag to fish them out.

Alice chose pink over red immediately, a sort of soft rose that flattered Lily's skin tone well and made her look nowhere near as dangerous as the red James always admired. In fact, it had the opposite effect, and he thought she looked rather demure although that may have been the nerves he saw gathering around the tight corners of her mouth even when she smiled. He touched her back very lightly when they entered the lift, and she shook herself a little, as if she had only noticed how tense she was under his hand.

James couldn't remember a single thing about the Department of Magical Law Enforcement from the tour his grandad had given him as a child, but he suspected that, as arguably the most important of the various departments, it must take up a good portion of the Ministry. Still, he hardly expected the Auror Headquarters to dominate the second floor quite as much as they did, or for the chaos that awaited them past the heavy oak doors. The Headquarters spanned a narrow room, one so long that James could hardly see past the sea of cubicles and bodies to what waited at the other end. The whole vibe of the room was one of utter disarray, but apparently a chaos that functioned at least moderately well, because no one seemed put off by the shouts, laughter, and loud conversations that flew as freely as the owls which swooped in and out with alarming speed.

Frank and Alice seemed intent on introducing them around. James soon found himself lost in the number of names—Hamish Savage, Tobias Williamson, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Dominic Proudfoot, John Dawlish, Philippa Hammond, Tabitha Padilla, and on and on, the numbers seemingly infinite. Frank and Alice were perhaps the youngest Aurors, James noticed immediately, but he recognized another couple of faces at or near their age. He remembered Emmaline Vance, a stunningly pretty Ravenclaw who had finished up at Hogwarts his second year, although she seemed to have less memory of him and Lily than they did of her. Then again, James understood that he would hardly recognize half of Hogwarts' current second-year students either. And Hector Calderon, a Gryffindor from the same year as Alice and Frank, came along to wring both of their hands with a most wholehearted smile. James remembered him as particularly close with the whole group of friends Frank and Alice had cultivated, which of course had included Greg Gimble, the only bloke he knew that Lily had ever outwardly dated. For that reason alone, James didn't particularly like the enthusiasm with which he greeted Lily or the banter he threw at her that erred towards familiar inside jokes, but she seemed happy enough to see him.

Alastor Moody awaited them in a small conference room. Frank and Alice joined them inside, and when Moody shut the door, James suddenly realized just how small the room felt. Even before he reached out to shake their hands, Moody jabbed his wand at the door sharply. With the click of the lock, and the soft blue glow that briefly emanated, James knew they would be neither interrupted nor overheard.

He felt, then, really and truly trapped.

He felt trapped because Moody scared him, scared him shitless, past what he'd expected from all the stories, all the lore that the man had created in the scant twenty or so years he'd worked for the Ministry. Moody came from a long line of Aurors, his mother and father included, and he'd risen in the ranks remarkably quickly, although no one could cry nepotism in his case. He'd single-handedly run the investigation into the Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley two years before, James knew, and he recalled that Moody had decried the attack as one of Voldemort's long after the established story had shifted away from placing the blame on any one party. In coverage of every attack that had followed—on individual witches and wizards, on muggles sporadically, and on muggle communities—James had seen Moody's name mentioned somewhere, although reporters never seemed to actually catch him for a quote. He remained elusive and hard to pin down, which had only added to his mystique.

Over the next few years, James would watch Alastor Moody transform from a normal man in his early-forties, though perhaps a little haggard-looking and carrying a few scars, to more machine than man. Eventually, James would come to think of Moody's electric-blue magical eye, missing leg, and grizzled face as utterly and completely normal. But even years later, James would swear that Moody intimidated him most on the first day they met, when he had yet to bear any of those injuries.

He had a hand like a brick when he shook both their hands, James thought, and then he sat unceremoniously and beckoned for them to do the same around the conference table. "Tell me about Hogsmeade at Christmas," he ordered brusquely with no preamble. "I've read your statements already. But tell me about it."

He listened in a manner that seemed almost careless, nodding at times James found odd, checking his nails when Lily described some of the worst torture, clearing his throat as if to interject but then not adding a word. When they fell silent, Moody prompted Lily further, asked about the Death Eater attack on Hogwarts. And, finally, he pressed her on the curse on her leg. There she seemed to falter the most, and James tried his hardest (and succeeded, though just barely) to not reach out and touch her hair or take her hand to try to offer some sort of comfort. He did finally conjure her a glass of water, and she took it with a grateful glance. Her throat sounded as tight as his has felt the evening before.

"I came to see you, you know." Moody's voice came so abruptly that Lily jumped a little. "At St. Mungo's. Went around the all the rooms I could while the Curse-Breaker was there, tried to see what he did, how it went."

"I remember that, I think," Lily said quietly. She'd placed a hand on the table, as if to steady herself. "But just barely."

"I must have seen two dozen cases that month, and they all kind of blur together, but I remember you, Evans, because…" Moody drew a hand down his face, and a grin lit up his features that once might have been handsome, if stress and fatigue, and a long, deep scar across his cheek, hadn't taken their toll. "You were talking to him, the Curse-Breaker, when he started."

"I tried. It didn't last long." She hesitated for a moment. "I wanted to understand what he did, so I could try to work it out myself, what had happened. I did, at least a bit." Reaching into her handbag, she pulled out two green potion vials, the ones James recognized so well from her Dittany supply for Remus' full moons. She leaned across the table to pass one to Alice, who took it, and one to Moody, who didn't, so she set it in front of him. "This is what I used on my leg. Frank said you might want to see it."

Moody nodded, even as Alice unstoppered her vial to smell it cautiously. "May I?" he asked, and he didn't wait for her to answer, simply got up from his chair and went to crouch by her side. He took her leg between his hands, and James knew it should have looked strange to see him touch Lily like that, but the purely scientific look in Moody's dark, almost black eyes made it somehow nearly normal. He drew his wand from a holster at his waist and, after looking to Lily for only the briefest nods of consent, he began to mutter under his breath, tracing strange patterns across her calf. Nothing happened for several long, tense seconds, until Lily jumped suddenly, and James couldn't help it, he reached out to her then, but she waved him off, her movement unsteady but sharp.

"Are you okay?" Alice asked. She'd gone pale.

Lily had too, but she nodded, and James noticed that her hands shook slightly as she smoothed her dress down once Moody had released her. "Just fine, Alice."

"Looks a great deal better, but it's still there," Moody said almost conversationally as he returned to his seat. "Buck up. We'll all end up cursed sooner or later. You and Prewett just got it out of the way early." He picked up the vial in front of him and twirled it between thick, gnarled fingers. "But this did that, you say? Faded the black curse marks that significantly?"

"Yes. It took a little while." Lily's voice sounded stable enough, as if whatever had passed with Moody's wand had never happened. "I've been talking to James' father about maybe taking it to market. If we're all going to end up cursed, there has to be a need for this, right?"

"Slughorn will be furious you're not going through him," Frank said, and he looked pleased at the notion.

"Wait on that a bit," Moody said, as if he didn't hear Frank. "Let us think it through, before you get Fleamont too far on it." James started at the mention of his dad's name. "Aye, I know your father," Moody continued, and James found himself unnervingly the center of his attention. Moody's eyes crinkled slightly in the corners, as if he smiled, although his mouth didn't. "You look just like him. Act like him too, from the way Dumbledore tells it. How'd he put it last night, Longbottom?"

"He says you've got more bravery than sense, although you're working at getting better on the sense." Frank grinned proudly as Moody barreled on.

"He also says there's not a duel you can't win, based on your Defense grades, although I plan to put that to the test. I'm sure your dad is proud. Does he still fancy himself a dueler?"

"A bit," James said, and he marveled at the unreality of the situation—that he sat speaking to Alastor Moody, Head Auror, whose exploits he'd read about for years, just talking casually about his father—before he went on. "Always said he had a lot to prove, and a lot to defend, with a name like Fleamont."

Moody actually chuckled at that, the noise low and deep within his chest, as if it didn't get out much. "I believe it." His humor halted abruptly. "So you're in it, then?" he asked curtly. "The Auror business, the Order business? Dumbledore seems to think so, but I need to hear it from you."

"I—yes." James didn't know quite what else to say, how else to show that he committed to both unwaveringly and without question. "Yes, I am."

Somehow, that seemed nearly good enough for Moody.

"Well, we'll see if you've got the right make for the department," he said determinedly. He turned sharply to Lily. "And you?"

"Yes," she said with a certain quiet ferocity. "To both."

"Alright then." Moody rubbed his hands together, and his entire demeanor changed. He leaned forward, no longer careless, but alert and engaged with an intensity that fairly crackled. "Dumbledore says you're bright, Evans. Tell me why you're here."

Lily's looked suddenly timid. But then she leaned forward, towards him as well, and arched an eyebrow. "Why am I here, or why am I here dressed like this? Because, to the latter, I feel like bait."

James watched for Frank and Alice's reactions more than he did Moody's. Alice rested her face in her hand, and from what he could see of her, just from the nose down, she somehow still managed to look apologetic all in the way she held her mouth. Frank nodded, just once, his jaw set, and he stared resolutely at Moody, not Lily.

"You could say that, I suppose," Moody agreed, again with that strange twist of a grin. "You see, we're fairly certain Voldemort has followers—or servants, or Death Eaters, call them as you like—within the Department of Magical Transportation." He hardly took a second for that to sink in. "Someone there had to have altered the wards around Hogsmeade on Christmas Eve, made the place impenetrable to Apparation or Disapparation—you both saw that yourselves. Transportation takes that seriously, the kind of magic it takes to do something like that. It's closely-guarded. And after the attack on Hogwarts, well, we can safely assume that only someone with a complex understanding of wards could get through what Dumbledore had already put up. It was a reconnaissance mission, we think, a couple Death Eaters sent out to probe where they could, see if they could get through. And they did. Again, how to manage that isn't common knowledge."

He paused, seemed to wait for Lily to speak up, perhaps to ask a question or to make some motion to show that she followed his line of thinking. She nodded, but otherwise remained silent.

"You understand how serious that could be," Alice said, leaning forward, her face earnest, but also, James thought, miserable past her words. "Think about it—Transportation regulates everything—the Floo network, Portkeys, Apparation, all of it. If Voldemort has spies there—"

"They can monitor everything we do at the Ministry and in the Order," Frank broke in. He, too, had leaned forward. "They could track where any one of us Apparates and send Death Eaters right there. It would pick us off one-by-one. We'd be confined to travel by broom, and even then, Transportation regulates Broom Control as well, so we'd have to slip around them, and they'd be vigilant."

"So there seems to be a plan here," James said, and he shifted uncomfortably as all eyes turned to him. Lily's, he thought, looked a little pleading, although he wasn't sure what it was she wanted from him. He absolutely would have given it to her if he'd known. "Because this seems like a pitch."

"It is. We can't do much about it in the Auror Department, past the investigations we've already put out that went nowhere. But in the Order…well, we have other hopes, although we're playing those cards close to our chest. Still, it's all we've got." Moody took a breath. "Evans, Longbottom and Prewett here say that you're well acquainted with Gregory Gimble."

The mention of the name locked James' stomach into knots.

"Yes," she said guardedly, clearly perplexed, before understanding broke out over her face. "Oh, Frank, you can't think—you know he wouldn't—"

"We don't think he's a Death Eater, no," Frank said quickly. "Or that he's involved, at least intentionally. But Greg just got promoted, see. He's head of the Apparation sector—"

"That's absurdly fast," Lily cut in, still openly distressed, but Frank shrugged. He looked hardly more composed.

"He's well-liked there, and he's done well. I'm not surprised. But…" He cast a sideways look at Moody, who nodded. "That means he reports directly under Theodore Mulciber, and we're fairly certain he's who we're after, or at least one of them. He's got a son your year, I think."

James could easily draw Walden Mulciber to mind, with his slicked-backed hair and smarmy smile, who spent his time with Snape and the other lot of Slytherin degenerates. He'd never forget how Mulciber had spoken to Lily at November's Slug Club dinner, how furious he'd acted when she laid bare the facts of rising dark activity. Frank looked at him and nodded in understanding, knew that he recognized the name.

"So the Order needs eyes in Transportation," Moody said shortly. "And, we thought, since you already know Gimble—" He didn't finish.

But Lily wasn't about to let that hang in the air. "I'd what?" she asked sharply, but she knew, James could tell, just as he knew, and he suddenly felt sick. "Say it, so I know exactly what you mean."

"He'd talk to you—" Frank began, but she cut him off, clearly unsatisfied.

"He'd talk to you, Frank. You're his best friend, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah, but—" Frank looked to Alice, and then to Moody, for help.

But Moody didn't look a smidge flustered, as Frank clearly felt, or even slightly bothered by the growing crossness on Lily's face. James could swear he snorted under his breath. "They weren't kidding," he said to Lily. "You are hard work." James hardly had time to digest that—to wonder where he'd heard such things, and if he parroted back some of the words he had heard from Frank, repeated from James' mouth—because Moody moved on swiftly. "Gimble can talk to Longbottom, and he does. But we need someone who can be physically there, actually present in the Department of Transportation when we need eyes on the ground. There have been so many incidences already where if we could have just sent someone up there—" He stopped himself, and the way he shook his head resonated nothing but disgust. "Longbottom can't go there too often, you see. Mulciber would suspect something. Same if we sent Prewett, or Calderon, any of the people in our department that he already knows. We've raided his house more than once, and fined him a great deal for a good amount of dark paraphernalia that he should not have had."

"But he doesn't know you," Alice put in.

"And you're—" It seemed as though Frank couldn't finish any of his thoughts, and it clearly frustrated him. He threw his hands into the air, and then pushed one through his hair. "Alice, help."

"And you're very pretty," Alice supplied, and Frank nodded. James almost thought Moody did too. She spoke carefully, as if she treaded upon dangerous, possibly jinxed territory. "And you're young. And you're very charming, when you want to be. Mulciber wouldn't suspect a thing if you were to go hang around Greg sometimes, and…he might like it. He probably would. He's always considerably nicer to Emmaline, so we've been sending her 'round, but we have no excuse with her as to why she'd be there. We just end up sending her on fake errands—carrying interdepartmental memos, asking questions, all that. We know he's happy to have her around because she's stunning. He'd be much the same around you, but because he doesn't know you, because you'd be just out of Hogwarts, he'd underestimate you entirely."

Lily propped her elbows onto the table and dug her nails into her hair. Watching her, James thought it looked almost painful. "So you asked me to wear this dress—" She didn't finish.

"Because Greg will recognize it, yes." If Alice sat closer, James thought she would have reached out for Lily then, to perhaps hug her or stroke her hair. But she didn't, so she settled for a quiet, sincere, "I'm sorry."

Lily didn't look up. "Tell me what it is you mean for me to do."

Although Lily didn't see, James watched as Moody gestured towards Frank and Alice. He looked much less frightening, because the motion seemed almost unsure for the first time, as if he suddenly didn't know how to quite deal with the situation, to spell out precisely what he wanted.

"Rekindle things with Greg a bit," Frank said hesitantly.

"To what end?"

"To find out what he passes on to Mulciber, what he knows about the workings of the department. He'd ask too many questions if I suddenly went in like that, because I've never cared about his work until just recently, but if you did it slowly, worked your way up to it…it would work better. And to be there as much as you can, physically in the Transportation Department. We can come up with some excuse for your presence if we need to, so you can keep tabs on Mulciber and get out of him what you can. We want to know who he talks to, what he talks to them about, where he goes, what he does, all of it. Greg would tell you that too, if you played it right. I expect he'd tell you about anything."

James heard his own voice before he even thought about what he might say.

"I'm sorry, but this is several different kinds of fucked up," he said loudly. The way Moody looked at him, he thought he seemed almost amused, which did nothing to quell James' anger, which broke over him like a wave. "'Rekindle things a bit'—what does that even mean, Frank? What's expected of that? Is Lily meant to date him, snog him, shag him—"

"No one's suggesting that," Moody barked the second the word 'shag' left James' mouth. "We're not suggesting or condoning that at all. Although…if it came down to it…" He let the thought hang there, more of a question than a statement, asking, would she?

"Alastor, no one said anything about that," Alice said fiercely, and the use of his first name seemed to sit weirdly of Moody's shoulders, because he bristled.

"And no one would ask Alice to do this," James continued, before Moody could cut in and throw something back at Alice as he clearly planed. "No one would even think—"

"Are you and Evans engaged?" Moody asked harshly and rhetorically. "My understanding is that the two of you aren't even dating."

"So then why am I here?" James demanded. "If this is all put on Lily, why even include me in this?"

"Because Dumbledore wants you both for the Order, and I was told you'd react like this—and worse—if you weren't involved." The look Moody cast Alice and Frank clued James in immediately as to who had made that clear. "Look, Potter, I understand—"

"Do you?" Later, even years later, James would think back to that moment, to the fact that he'd raised his voice to the most famous dark wizard catcher of their time, and wonder how on earth he'd done it. "Do you really?"

"You think I've never cared for a woman? You think I don't know what that's like? Of course I have, and of course I do. But I also understand that there are things more important than that." Moody growled out each word, almost as if they made up their own sentences. "There are things greater than whatever you two are doing, things past your Hogwarts bubble, things that you don't understand yet. And I know, beyond what you do, that sometimes you don't choose the assignment, it chooses you, and you have to take it, even if you don't want it!"

"So I'll apply to Transportation to work." Compared to James and Moody, Lily sounded composed and reasonable. "I'll have the NEWTs for it. I can apply just about anywhere."

"We thought about that," Alice said quietly. She sounded almost painfully rational too. "We knew we'd lose out in the long run, because you're needed here, in our department. Dumbledore agreed."

"And you want to be an Auror." As he spoke, Lily turned to look at James for the first time in a long while, and he no longer thought she seemed so composed. She looked, in the eyes, as trapped as he had felt when Moody had locked the door. He fought down a lump in his throat. "So you have to do this. Because that's what you want, isn't it?"

She nodded, however reluctantly. "Yes, but—" Her right hand moved, and he thought, for a second, that she might reach out to take his, but she seemed to think better of it. Still, he thought he saw it in the motion what he wanted to see, and he hoped he didn't imagine it. The but, her face seemed to say, was him.

"This is why Dumbledore asked you to join us," Moody told her, and if he thought the fact would please her, he got the opposite reaction.

"This is why?" she repeated. "Because I dated Greg? And because I'm—what did you say, Alice? Pretty? Young?"

"And smart," Alice added. "And brave. And loyal. We wouldn't trust you with this—would even ask you of it—if you weren't."

Lily met her eyes across the table, and they stared at each other for so long that James began to grow even more uncomfortable, and could feel the palms of his hands start to sweat from the tension in the room. He often thought that Lily could communicate with Hestia and Marlene with a glance, the same way he could with his mates. He didn't think she and Alice could manage that, but something did seem to pass between them, a moment almost like a whisper he couldn't quite hear.

"You don't think this is cruel to Greg?" Lily asked. "I mean, assuming he'd even go for me again—"

"He would," Frank assured her immediately. "We've talked about you. He would. And we're not asking you to date him, really. Just…flirt with him, keep him interested, but don't go further than that if you don't want to. I've seen you do that with blokes. Hell, I've seen you do that with him. I know you can."

Her moves, James thought grimly. She had moves.

"Be friendly," Alice continued, and Frank nodded encouragingly, gestured for her to go on, perhaps because then he didn't have to. "Enough that you can excuse popping up to say hi to him so you can hopefully run into Mulciber, because we hope you can build a rapport with him."

"He'll know that I'm muggleborn," Lily pointed out, and the next words she spoke came repeated straight from his dad, James recognized. "The wizarding world is a small one, and there aren't any Evanses around." She paused, and James thought he should have anticipated her next point long before then. "On top of that, if Mulciber is a Death Eater and knows I'm muggleborn, isn't that just putting Greg in danger, having him connected to me? That's blood traitor territory, and I don't want—"

"The fact that you're muggleborn means he'll underestimate you further," Moody said brusquely. "And if you're not outwardly dating Gimble, he'll be fine. Even if you were, I expect he'd be fine all the same. Half the time Death Eater dogma matters much less than personal connections these days, and Mulciber favors Gimble. I don't think they'd touch him. Besides, if it doesn't work after you start here, if you get nowhere a few months past June, we'll pull you out. You can drop him then if you're so concerned for his safety."

"But Greg—" Lily stopped for a second, as if to collect herself, and cradled the bridge of her nose. James saw himself in that gesture, his own anxious manifestation just as fussing with her hair was hers, and knew he would have found it unendingly cute in any other situation. He could only assume she'd gotten it from him, since she made him do it so much. "I still think this is cruel. If you're right, Frank, and he'd want to give this a go, that's so fucked up to make him think—"

"Your compassion is touching, Evans, truly." Moody's patience had apparently worn thin, his words bitten out harsher. "But Dumbledore was wrong about you entirely if you're willing to put the feelings of one man above the lives of thousands. Do you think we'd ask this of you if it weren't important? Do you think I want to send some fresh, untrained, emotional eighteen-year-old to monitor what might be the most pressing case the Order has to cover? Do you think we haven't thought about this a hundred different ways, tried to come up with a hundred different solutions? This is the way it has to be. It's you or it's no one. Make up your mind."

James knew what she'd say even before Moody finished speaking.

"Yeah, alright." The tension seemed to leave Lily's body with her acceptance, and she leaned back in her chair, slouched as much as he'd ever seen, the antithesis of her usually perfect posture. "I haven't got much choice, have I?"

"We all have a choice," Alice said sharply. Her lower lip had gone rather red from the way she'd chewed on it. But she looked relieved too, the same look that echoed on Frank's face, and that may have on Moody's, James thought bitterly, if he'd been capable of more complex emotions.

"No, we don't. Not when it's as important as you say this is. It's just what we have to do." Lily would have appreciated Moody's approving nod under any other circumstance, James knew, but she seemed entirely unaffected as she stared at him. "Tell me what I have to do today."

And so, after an overview of their plans and bidding Moody goodbye, Frank and Alice swept them off on a tour of the entire Ministry.

"We don't want it to seem targeted, that we're taking you just to Transportation," Alice explained before they left the conference room. "Even though we could probably work with it, say you asked to see Greg specifically—but we thought this might make you seem less keen, so you have more to build up to. That's why it was important that we meet here, and have Auror recruitment as a cover, so no one could question anything when we bring you to him. All of this needs to be kept entirely secret, even from the department. This is strictly Order business, and no one can know."

Because of that, Frank and Alice continued to go out of their way to introduce them around, to make it look like Auror business. It wasn't a hard task, James saw, because almost everyone seemed happy to hail the friendly couple and spend a few minutes chatting, but James found it much harder than anyone else appeared to, and struggled to keep his feelings under control. Moody's comment about Lily's emotions would have made him laugh at any other time, because she appeared to have a much easier time with it all, acting friendly but professional the moment they left the conference room.

Her practiced smile did break a little and shift slightly when they ran into Esme McKinnon, Marlene's mother, on their way out of Auror Headquarters. She greeted Frank and Alice rather coolly, and James recalled, from the chilly look that passed between her and Alice, that they'd gotten into an argument only weeks earlier as to who would follow up with Lily about the Hogsmeade attack. But she exuded all warmth when she swept Lily into a hug, and she chattered much in the same excited manner that James knew well from Marlene. She looked much like her, too, with Marlene's tight curls, flashing eyes, and warm brown skin, but she stood several inches shorter, quite petite, whereas Marlene's height matched Peter's.

"Marlene says you and Hestia will be over tomorrow," Esme said cheerfully, which was complete news to James. But her face quickly went somber, and the look sat strangely on her features that so echoed Marlene's, because she had a mouth made for smiling. "It will be good to see you both, but Hestia especially. How is she? Given…this time of year?"

"Quite good, better than I'd hoped," Lily told her. Her smile became more genuine at the motherly way Esme patted her cheek. "It helps, I think, that she's got a boy to distract her."

"Marlene told me about that—how absurd! I expect to hear all about it tomorrow. And speaking of—" She sized James up for the first time, and despite her diminutive stature, he found she had the same intensity that made Marlene so formidable. "You must be James Potter, because you look just like your father. Marlene cannot stand you."

And, despite himself, despite it all, James had to laugh, because Marlene had apparently inherited all of her blunt energy from her mother.

But he found himself much less amused on the rest of their tour. In June, when he would start training in the Auror Department fulltime, he would realize that he recalled absolutely nothing about where Frank and Alice had taken them, or who they'd introduced them to, on that initial day. He would get lost in the Ministry's twisting corridors more than once, and come across a section that looked almost familiar, as if he'd visited there once in a dream, and he felt certain that he must have been there before. But his misery after they left the conference room, so all-encompassing and abject, clouded his mind in much the same way that sleep did, and he passed the whole thing in a daze, at least until they got to the sixth floor.

Because once there, everything seemed to come sharply into focus, sharper than he wanted. He yearned for that stupefied feeling to return when he had to watch Greg step out behind his desk after they knocked on the door of an office with his name on it. He had to watch the surprise on his face turn to delight at Lily's smiling greeting, and then saw swift admiration overtake his face as he took in the sight of her fully. He had to watch the way Greg's hand lingered familiarly on her waist when he stooped to kiss her cheek. And then he had to grin as best he could when Greg reached to shake his hand, and offer some meaningless pleasantry in return to whatever it was he said, because James didn't bother to listen, and never could recall his words.

"Giving them the whole Ministry tour because we're trying to recruit them," Frank explained, slipping an arm around Alice's shoulders, his face all open friendliness. "They've both expressed interest, and Moody's pretty determined to have them both on."

"What happened to Curse-Breaking?" Greg asked with a smiling, sideways glance at Lily. He'd gone to stand next to her, to lean up against the front of his desk as she did, near enough that they almost touched. "That was your plan, last I heard."

"Not enough excitement," she said simply with a shrug of one bare shoulder, and he laughed.

"Cursed tombs and graves and vaults aren't enough excitement for you? You'd be dead bored around here, then."

"Slughorn did suggest that I look into it here, you know," she said, and James wondered if that was true, or if she'd made it up on the fly. He couldn't tell. "Who did he brag you up to your seventh year? You told me, but—"

"Mulciber," Greg supplied easily, "Who's going to be right mad if Slughorn didn't put your name to him, given how cracking good you are at Charms. I'm sure he'd be willing to poach you from the Auror Department."

"You wouldn't dare," Alice said, but she laughed. James hadn't expected her to act quite so convincingly, but she looked entirely at ease, with none of the worry, none of the guilt, none of the apology that had read all over her face within the same hour.

"And sit behind a desk all day, Greg?" Lily asked archly, and she smiled in that taunting way James had come to love, and had come to expect to see only towards him. It felt like a physical blow to his stomach to see her look that way at someone else. "I think I'll pass."

"Well, there is more to it—" Greg began, clearly unruffled by her jest, but he stopped when Lily reached for his wrist to check his watch with accustomed ease. "Are you meant to be somewhere?"

"Well, the day's almost done, and we have more floors to get to. It's not a whole tour if we don't see everything." She stood up, smoothed her dress over her hips, and drew her hair over one shoulder. She looked, James thought, almost devastatingly pretty.

Greg clearly thought so too. "Stay a bit," he coaxed immediately. "I'll show you around, show you it's not just a desk job. I mean, if you'd like." He seemed to have caught himself suddenly, and didn't want to sound too eager. He looked to Frank, his eyebrows raised. "Is that alright, mate? Can I return her to you in a while, or are you too afraid we'll poach her?"

"Nothing has ever concerned me less," Frank threw back, all friendly banter. "We know what your job is like. You'll have her bored and out the door before too long." He gave Alice's shoulder a squeeze. "Canteen after the final floors, you think? You can bring her down when you're through, Greg, if she doesn't escape before then."

Lily nodded her consent, all cool nonchalance. James caught her eye only briefly while Frank ushered them out the door, and before they'd left the Department of Magical Transportation, he could hear her laugh.

xxx

Frank and Alice both got coffee in the canteen, but Alice seemed to do so more out of the need to hold something in her hands than she did out of any desire to actually drink it. Frank, on the other hand, finished his within minutes, and only then did he speak, his voice purposefully low.

"I'm sorry, mate," he offered to James, and while he seemed to know that that covered absolutely nothing, didn't make a single thing better, he did look it. He gave a covert glance around, even though they sat well away from the handful of other Ministry employees who frequented the canteen at an hour so near five o'clock. "We knew there'd be no changing Moody's mind, but we'd hoped, if you were officially together, that might…"

James watched him spread his hands apart, as if he didn't know how to go on. "What, that it would soften the blow, if she were my girlfriend, that you're sending into some other bloke's bed for pillow talk about Ministry secrets? That would make it better, Frank?"

"It won't come to that—" Alice began, but James cut her off, and he didn't care that she flinched at the harshness in his tone.

"You heard Moody—what if it does? But even if it doesn't, I'm supposed to be okay with all the rest of it? The flirting, the dates that he'll definitely push for, anything else that follows?"

It would absolutely help, he knew, if Greg were maybe half as good-looking; half as personable; half as clearly smitten with her, even after nearly two years apart; and had absolutely none of the history that he had with her.

Frank seemed to know his thoughts exactly. "It had to be her, James." He leaned forward, his brown eyes unnaturally intense. "We tried to work it out any other way. Hell, we sent Emmaline up there, and you've seen her, that should have worked, but she's just not as…"

"Not as charming as Lily," Alice finished for him when he seemed unsure of exactly how to qualify their differences. "Even if she is just as pretty. Greg didn't take the shine to her we hoped. We even had them both to ours a few times, tried to set them up outside of work, but it didn't take."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" James asked sarcastically, but she nodded, eagerly earnest.

"Yes. Because you saw him—that means this will work, and we need it to, desperately. I can't explain to you what it's been like the past year or more—the things we've run into, the battles we lost because they seem to know our every move—but if she can find some of that out, any of that out, it could save lives. And she knows him," she added, as if to mollify him further. "She knows how he works, and she knows why it doesn't work between them, so there's no chance—"

"What if it just didn't work then, but it works now?"

"It won't," Alice said immediately. "It won't, because she's already decided that it won't, but also because of you." She moved out from under Frank's arm and leaned across the table to grasp James' hand, which she squeezed to punctuate her words. "You know that, right? She's told you how she feels? Because she's told me."

"What did she say?" James asked quickly, his heart in his mouth, and he knew he sounded desperate, but he didn't care, because he was.

Alice hesitated. "Just—do you know? That she cares for you?"

"Yes."

"Well, then that's enough." And she sounded so certain, so convinced, that he nearly believed her for all of a fraction of a second.

"It is?"

"Absolutely." The way she said it, so firmly and with such finality, James knew that was all he'd get out of her.

Frank tried his best to draw James back into conversation as they waited for Lily. He tried to explain several instances where he'd had to see Alice sent into a dangerous situation with no way of knowing if she'd be okay, or if she'd even get out alive. Later, James would appreciate that Frank took the time and the effort to try to empathize with him, to share the situations that had to be some of the hardest of his life, but in the moment, he couldn't muster the energy. Finally, clearly fed up, Frank asked, with rhetorical directness, if he thought the entire situation were easy for him, since he had to lie to his best friend, and asked if James would be able to do the same to Sirius. That changed things a little, shifted some of James' anger away from Frank, because he didn't know if he had the strength to manage that, what Frank clearly must have to go through with Greg for this to work. Regardless, he still didn't feel much like talking.

And he felt even less like it when Greg finally returned Lily a good forty-five minutes later, because he looked particularly pleased in a way that made James want to punch something, preferably him.

"Drinks in a bit?" he asked Frank when they approached. "Lily says she and Alice are off together, so it only seems fair. You should come too, Potter," he added as an afterthought, and James wanted to shoot off at the mouth, to say something about how magnanimous that was of him, and might have, but Frank seemed to anticipate it and got there first.

"Can't, loads of paperwork tonight. You're still coming over tomorrow, though? We can have a few and listen to the Quidditch match. Everything I've read makes it seem like Zimbabwe has it in the bag."

"Sounds a good plan. Alright, I'm off." Greg kissed Lily's cheek, and he left his hand across and down her shoulder, where he'd pushed aside the heavy curtain of her hair to do so. "I'll owl you, see when you're free," he promised, and he grinned at the way she smiled back. Then he turned to shake James' hand, either oblivious or uncaring to the loathing that James knew must escape his every pore to permeate his body like a cloud, and took off with a wave.

Alice drew Lily down next to her as soon as Greg disappeared back into the lift. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We didn't want Moody to spring it on you like that and send you directly in, but he insisted, and we couldn't—"

"It's okay. I'm alright. No, Alice, really." She brushed off Alice's hand, which had gone to smooth back her hair, but took it in her own, as if to reassure her. "I'm fine. Truly. It's…it's just Greg, you know? I can handle him—and I'm honestly better at it that I was before, back before I understood lads at all—it's just…I don't know how I'll get through it without feeling so bloody guilty." She let go of Alice's hand to pull through her hair, and then looked to James for the first time since she'd stepped off the lift. He found almost hurt to meet her eyes. "Are you okay?"

"No." There didn't seem any reason to lie.

"I thought not. I don't think I would be, either, if this were somehow reversed." That admission would have pacified James on any normal day, would have given him a shot of positive adrenaline in a way he desperately needed, but in his current state it hardly managed to register. "I met him," she added to Frank and Alice, and she didn't need to specify that she meant Mulciber. The three words alone were enough.

"Tell us," Frank commanded. "Quietly."

Lily lowered her voice further. "Greg introduced us. Mulciber got quite keen when I told him I knew Slughorn, because they're mates—I think Slughorn may have helped get him his start at the Ministry, from what Greg told me once, but I don't know, I can't remember. So I made some joke—I can't recall quite what, just something about Slughorn's spider web of connections—and he liked that, he laughed. I tried more banter about Slughorn, and when he responded well to that, I said the same thing to him that I did to wind up Greg—that Slughorn had suggested Transportation to me but I thought it dull—"

"Did he actually?" Alice asked, clearly intrigued. "Because that was brilliant."

"Yeah, he mentioned it off-handedly, back fifth year when he started pushing Greg that way. He said it more than once, never real seriously, but enough that if anyone asked him he'd probably remember. And, well, once I said that, wound Mulciber up—" Lily broke off to sigh, and Alice seemed to understand, by the way she smiled at her sadly and touched her back. Lily didn't brush her off again.

"He liked it, of course," Alice finished matter-of-factly. "Like I said last night, it sucks to be a woman sometimes, but…it can also help, and that's not a bad thing, no matter how it feels. You're there for a reason."

Lily drew herself up. "Which I'm still not happy about, for the record, that this is apparently all I have to offer—no, never mind, I'll shout later. Let me just finish. I'd like to leave."

"We can go now," Alice suggested, but Frank shook his head.

"Tell me the rest."

"Well, he took me around, showed me everything Greg already had, even brought me into a few places Greg hadn't, one where they had a big map of the Floo network—"

"We haven't been in there, have we?" Frank asked Alice sharply. "No one?"

She shook her head, her expression more intent than James had ever seen it. "Could you recall any of it enough to sketch it?" she asked. "Really, Frank, we need to teach them how to extract memories."

"I could try to draw it." Lily sounded uncertain. "We were in there for a while, because I threw out every question I could think of without coming off too suspiciously. But Greg, bless him, made a joke about what an eager student I still was, which helped cover up why I cared so much. He seemed to take it as scholarly interest." She leveled Frank with an inscrutable stare. "Mulciber really does favor him. I could tell instantly."

"Yeah, I know," Frank said, and he looked none too happy about it. "It's good, in its way—Greg has gotten higher up than he might otherwise be because of it—but the thought that he might be helping the other side, even unknowingly…" He looked slightly sick.

"We should go," Alice said after a worried glance his way, and it no longer sounded like a suggestion. "Lily, why don't you just come 'round to ours instead of us going somewhere? I'll give you something to change into, we can order takeout, get pissed, you can shout, whatever you'd like."

Lily's face crumbled a little, and then further still, as the placid veneer of her face dropped completely. She reminded James of the way she had looked only nights before in the hallway outside her bedroom at his parents' house: young, very young, younger than eighteen, without a doubt. "That sounds lovely," she said with a tremulous smile, and James could see her swallow when she looked at him. "Will you be alright?" she asked, and he knew, by the way she moved her mouth, that she found the words entirely lacking.

What could he say? What could he do besides assure her that he would be, when he felt pretty strongly that the exact opposite was true?

Frank answered for him and saved him from having to figure it out. He reached out and gave James' shoulder a companionable shake. "I'll take him. We'll go somewhere and give you girls your space, although I expect my apartment intact, and my fiancée without injury, when I get home."

"We can always repair whatever Lily needs to break," Alice said, and although she smiled at Frank's jest and the way he said it, James thought she meant it. "I'll have her home to you tonight, James."

James added her statement—the addition of Lily's name to the concept of home—to the growing pile of things that would have pleased him on another day. "Right." He forced himself to smile at Lily, but knew by the way she looked at him, and the way that it felt on his face, that he failed miserably. "We'll talk then. Go. Have fun. I'm fine."

She squeezed his hand before she left, and James knew that he hadn't convinced either one of them with his words.

"So." Frank rubbed his hands together, almost as if he thought the motion might conjure some sort of joy or energy. "Drinks?"

James sighed. "I'm going to be shit company—"

"And that's different from usual how?" Frank asked, but his eyes were kind, almost pitying, which made everything suddenly feel somehow a whole lot worse. "If they're getting pissed, we might as well too. C'mon, I'm buying."