9

Who knows what state is in store?
If they all turn, will you run?

If you need to, keep time on me

—Fleet Foxes, "If You Need To, Keep Time On Me"

Lily

December slips quickly through time's pale fingers, dappled in snow and dull cloudless skies and bone-deep cold. In and among nearly every night cooped up in the library prepping for exams, the crush of coursework, the dolling out of increasing amounts of Prefect patrol rotations—something about pre-Holidays seeming to encourage mischief-making tenfold—and the insistence of Marlene that I carve out "little times to spend with friends of old as opposed to new boyfriend," a half-part of me is devoted, steadfastly, to a new and invigorating academic pursuit: The Study of James Potter.

Of course, the study's been underway for months, or perhaps longer than that, perhaps years. But with all complications and tension cast off, I'm free of hesitation, free to wade past all the surface-level James'—Student James, Head Boy James, Gryffindor Quidditch Captain James, Blustery Self-Assured Marauders James—to the James beyond all that, the underneath James.

It's a crammer on body language and habits and eccentricities and gestures and each individual smile, on the way he holds himself in different rooms, around different people, on the James who's not quite in the classroom, his neck bent forward, distracted sketches parading down the edge of his notes: long sloping limbs of trees, thin, shaded hands, deer and dogs and flowers that bleed into other flowers that bleed into suns.

It's a study of moods, sometimes slow moving, sometimes purposeful, attitudes divulged in the lines of him or the notes of his voice or his posture; a brow pinched in grave concentration, serious effort; a finger roving constantly at the edge of jaw or along the side of the neck in anxiety or apprehension; the lethargic, antsy stretch of fingers outward, then into fists, clenched, restrained, to relay irritation, swelling, something that might simmer and dissolve, or burst, without warning, like a heart attack; gentle easy smile of uncomplicated joy; sliding loping grin of happiness stumbled upon, suddenly, a surprise; slow backward roll of shoulders and parting of lips to indicate need, affection, a wordless soundless touch; a light slip of three fingers down the back of my arm—meaning, I come to know, I miss you.

It's an exercise in annoyances, irritations—like "I will not kiss you prior to a match, absolutely not. Seems preemptive. Assumptive. When we've won, I'll kiss you. No, I don't believe you're going to break up with me because of this," like him watching me brush my teeth with a weird intensity that results in a shove out of the bathroom and a request for dental-hygiene-related-privacy, like sometimes he won't back me up in fights against Black—and it's an exercise in learning most rows feel almost immediately frivolous, energy ill-spent, frustration often disbanded in the name of lips and tongues, each surge of anger a chance to favor flirting over fighting—or, at the very least, a chance to know the struggle in differentiating between the two.

It's researching the unexamined routines and practices; the furious letter writing—weekly to his parents, biweekly to some cousins, monthly to Gertie and Diedra; the unchecked, boyish glee over Quidditch; the unchecked, boyish misery over Quidditch; the inclination to mumble under his breath when on the hunt for a forgotten incantation or charm; the impatience with inadequacy,

the striving high, then higher, a climb that will sometimes lead to slipping; the way he looks first thing in the morning, lovely, young, gold-eyed; the endless laying of his head in my lap so I toy with his hair; the encouragement for Peter, the patience for Sirius, the level-eyed-understanding for Remus; the cleverness of his mind, wicked, razor-sharp when it needs to be, tempered in empathy otherwise, a kindness that only comes from having seen some brutal unkindness; the wearing of cords, belted, shirt tucked in, begging to be pulled in by the beltloops; the way he looks to me, heart-first, from across a room.

It's a crash course in the cosmos he sometimes lands in, starstruck, starry-eyed, palms full of stars. For all his solidity, feet plant so firmly on the ground, this part of him feels mythical; unmoored from the rest. It's the part of him that believes with such ease in the future, in the tangled strings of human fate; the desperate and whimsical part that believes people are innately good, that the good will always cut through bad; the part that believes in deer and souls and gilded spilling light. This part I hold dearly, study relentlessly, irrationally, because it's the part of him I envy the most. I think if I could just listen close enough to the thrumming of his breath as he dreams, I could try and tune myself to the frequency; to the rugged, brutal heart of a believer.

It's a slow and curious thing, to learn this underneath James, this James that spins off under his own skin. Perhaps one day, I'll collect my miscellaneous data, the unquantifiable findings, unwritten notes, conclusions half-come-to, and send the collection off to a scientific journal about human behavior. I'll write to them: Will knowing him for even a lifetime begin to be enough?

James

Lily's skirt falls, fanned-out, over her bent knees. She's backing away from me, slightly, taking in what must be a look of unadulterated shellshock. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

She's backlit by a blue winter sun cutting in through a west-facing window. I'm staring, because she's just said that prior to being with me, she hadn't experienced what "most people would classify as an orgasm at the hand of another." The knowledge is slipping through me slowly, like the pesky drip of a sink not all the way shut off.

"I'm sorry, I'm confused."

"On which part?"

I loosen my hands where they rest on her waist. They fall into the lap of her skirt like petals. "Didn't you, er, have sex with Owen?"

"Well, yes, but not to any good end," she's shaking her head and, inexplicably, laughing. "Shouldn't come as a surprise, given all I've told you about him, no?"

"Haven't said much about him."

She sighs. "Suffice it to say the sex felt...like it was for him, not for me." Her fingers spread down over mine. "Certainly may be hard for you to believe, given...well, given what I know about you...but most blokes aren't always concerned about the experience of the girl, especially compared to their own."

I feel a tiny burning anger at Flannigan, a tiny burning pride for given what she knows about me. She's right. The idea of unequitable gratification would never cross my mind. In fact, it would upset me. Especially—well, exclusively—when she's the girl in question.

She's looking at me now with anxious eyes. "What was it like with the other girls that you've—been with?"

"Um," I shift on the couch, unfolding one of my legs so that it squeezes past her. "Well, with either of them, er, there was never any real—" I swallow. "It's hard to know, I guess. I was never savvy or mature enough to talk about it, or ask if they were having...er, you know."

I meet her eyes and she's looking back, and there's the knowledge of all the you knows shared between us, grand and small an in-between and remarkable, each. "It's always felt easy, with you," she whispers. Her eyes are some shade of green I haven't seen yet, a green slipped gently from the rainy moss of a well-watered forest. There's something she's saying without saying it. "It's always felt...really good."

"Really very good," I revise, hands reaching back through her hair, so she sways against me with a rush of air through her mouth, a mouth I take without amending. Her arms circle my waist, spread up under my sweater, body relaxing into mine slowly, purposefully. We are well-practiced at the really very good, at the slowsoft kisses and unselfconscious yearning, lethargic and urgent all at once.

Lily leans away. Her hands have traveled to the middle of my back, come to a rest between my shoulder blades. She feels the bones underneath and holds my eyes in hers. My heart in hers. She asks, "Do you think it's like this, for other people?"

A torrent of heady, golden light fills every empty room inside my body. "No," I answer; persuade my heart a lesser thrum. "No, I don't think it is."

Lily

"Hi, hi, sorry I'm late," I scramble into the chair opposite Dorcas.

She shoots me a bemused look. "I'm not going to Marlene you, Lils, calm down."

I laugh, nervously, pulling my hair back into a twist and reaching into my bag for notes and ink and quill. "How're you?"

"Belgh. You wouldn't believe the pressure I'm under, Astronomy-wise. Can we get this done in under, say, an hour?"

"Yeah, of course, shouldn't take long," I assure, flipping rapidly through The Arbitration of Elements by one Mortimor Duluth, 18th-century Alchemist. "We're fairly solid on it already, no?"

"You're right."

"And I'm sorry about Astronomy, seems brutal. James' been spewing about it nonstop."

"Hey, he's been spewing about it nonstop?"

"Leave me alone."

"Absolutely never will I leave you alone."

I clip my response at its source, distracted quickly by a hunched figure emerging from a nearby stack—it's a girl I recognize, a third year Slytherin, Sophie Reynolds. I find that she's crying, silently, shoulders shaking. Someone rushes up behind her, takes her by the arm, murmurs something gentle in her ear before leading her off in the opposite direction.

"Awful godamn tragedy."

"What?" I ask, turning to Dorcas, who's looking at the retreating figures with a face full of sympathy. "What's happened?"

"Oh, shit, you didn't hear?" she says, uneasily. "Her parents were, um, killed."

"Killed?"

"Yeah. Death Eaters."

"Gods."

Dorcas shifts in her seat, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear. "Blood traitors, I guess. Her mum's a Delaney, and she married, y'know 'out of her own,' according to what's his fuck and that pack of loathsome goons."

My mind reels. News of killings like this shouldn't surprise me—they're splashed all over the Prophet, more and more each day, alongside disappearances and kidnappings and un-pinned robberies and sightings of black skull clouds dissolving into thin air—but to witness someone so affected by an attack, so close to home, a student, at that, just a young girl—feels different. Excruciatingly, unavoidably real.

"It's getting to be a real fucking mess, alright," Dorcas intones, mirthlessly.

I'm thinking of poor Sophie Reynolds, her parents dying what probably wasn't a quick or kind death. I shudder just to think of Sophie having to deal with that—and take exams? It seems senseless. Ludicrous, really. "Gods," I laugh, without humor, shortly. "Alchemy seems so fucking unimportant."

"Yeah," Dorcas shakes her head. "Do you think—" she closes her mouth, then opens it again. "Do you think it's going to be up to us?"

"Up to us?"

She shrugs. "To fight. Join the Order."

A sliver of fear spirals along my spine. "You think the Order is actually real?"

"Yes, Jesus, that's the only thing that makes me feel not just relentlessly miserable," she says, leaning closer to me on the table, elbows spread out toward me. "I know we are just full-on underage witches, but I think we might be the last great hope. I'm dead serious, Lils. I've heard—well, this is coming a bit from Doyle, who probably heard it from O'Connor, who is probably a piece of shit—but I've heard the Order is actively recruiting fresh grads."

"Fresh grads," I echo, nervously. "Marched right off to death."

"Well," she swallows, retreats on her forearms. "I'd rather die fully-educated than not acing this godamn test of the baser elements." She reaches for her own textbook, cracks it open.

I stare at the fluttering pages, imagining the future like a petrifying fog that settles over a dark forest of skeletal trees. To walk, willingly, into such a forest—would require tremendous amounts of idiocy and pluck. Young, angry hearts.

When I duck through the entryway into the heads quarters later that night, I entirely expect James to be off on patrol and am in fact quite looking forward to the alone time, and being able to contemplate the damning unknown of the future without having to talk about it. This expectation, as it turns out, is immediately shattered. I'm not four feet into the room when I have to stop where I stand, finding not just James in the common room, after all, but also Sirius, and Remus, and Peter.

I am, arguably, dumbstruck. "Um—hello?"

James leaps up from his half-lean on the arm of the couch, rushing toward me. "Okay, before you worry, I got Barnes to cover my patrol, and everything's fine."

I accept his kiss on the cheek, though my confusion mounts rather than subsides. I peer around him, take in the sight of Peter cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace, grinning up at me amicably; Sirius sprawled quite leisurely down the length of the couch, lanky figure barely leaving room for Remus, who's tucked in at the end, looking at me in apology, or else reassurance.

"Er," I say stupidly. "How did they get in here?"

For all the privilege private heads quarters afford, it does not allow outside guests, and even I can't even begin to imagine the complicated magic finding a loophole in the portrait/password deadlock would require. "Um," James pulls at his collar, and I can tell he's nervous, maybe a little bit scared. His voice is edging a bit higher than usual. "That...will be explained, soon, I promise."

I feel my eyebrows arching inward, pulse skittish at my neck. I swallow. Awkwardly readjust the textbook I've clutched in my arms. "Is this...some sort of weird Marauder ritual? Like, I'm to be the sacrifice?"

"Yes precisely," Sirius confirms from his lazy recline. "We need your blood to stay boys forever."

James turns to give Sirius a sharp look, then swivels back to me. "No blood. No ritual." He puts his hands on my shoulders, gently. "I know this is kind of a sneak attack, but, er—would you sit down, and just hear us out?"

It's near impossible to feel uneasy looking into his gold eyes, bright with affection, his fingers tracing an unseen pattern. "Alright."

"Brilliant." He kisses my cheek, again, and I can tell he wants to kiss my mouth, because he's right there, and he pauses, briefly, inhales—but then he pulls away, perhaps considering we've an audience. He releases me, reluctant. "You'll sit?"

I sweep a glance over the other Marauders, landing on Peter's face, the look of eagerness stretched across it. I step past him to the high-backed armchair and set my bag, book, and outer robes on the ground next to it. I sit, uneasy, feeling a bit like I'm about to be told a deep and deadly secret.

I watch as Remus spares a look to James, who has reposted at the arm of the couch. James looks back at him, and something is passed between them, some signal I can't interpret, don't recognize. I imagine they've all spent so long in each other's close company that they read one another very well, with incredible accuracy. I've witnessed this firsthand, of course, over the past weeks, time spent often in the company of the group—and am, in fact, envious of the closeness, that level of intimacy. Which is foolish, because I've got intimate friendships of my own.

But there's something about these four boys, the intensity of their bond to one another; a bond that speak less of friendship and more of brotherhood, of deep-rooted, everlasting comradery, loyalty and love so intrinsic to their connection that if one single strand of the four came unraveled, the tree of them would mold and die, its source of life cut out. It's a live-or-die friendship.

Remus turns to me, smiles in his gentle, self-effacing way, and the live or die feeling falls away. "I know this is a bit weird, but there's some things James left out when he—er, told you about my—you know the whole, erm, werewolf situation."

My mind scrambles to think what could have possibly been left out, landing on all sorts of outlandish possibilities, most of which include something even worse for Remus, and his illness, and his misfortune. But I do my best to construct my facial expression into one free of fear, filled instead with empathy.

"Okay," I say, and nod for him to go on.

"Well, as you might guess, my...it's quite painful, and rather a mess in terms of my control over myself. Thankfully there's wolfsbane, which helps me stay in my own head, for the most part, when transformed, but it's not foolproof—there's, er, often complications."

I swallow, slightly, trying very hard not to imagine the horror of his situation. I think of the cut down James' face the night we made up. I squeeze my ankles together, focus on the sensation of socks digging into my skin.

"When I came to Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore was sympathetic to my situation and set up accommodations for the monthly absences," he continues. "And for a while, that was okay, but once I became closer friends with—" he motions to the Marauders. "This lot, it became hard to come up with excuses that made sense."

"Plus he's a shit liar," Sirius adds kindly.

Remus gives him a look before continuing. "And so, eventually, second year, James sort of sat me down and asked me, point-blank, about it, he'd figured it out because of, well—"

"—moon cycles," James says.

"Yes, that, and, turns out, I'm a shit liar."

There's a general laugh among the four, and I start at the sudden, easy sound of it, looking down at Peter, staring at the neat tuck of his tie into his collar. I focus on the gold-and-maroon stripes, their bold stay against the dull grey of the uniform sweater.

Remus goes on. "And so after that, wasn't long before Sirius and Peter knew, and they all wanted to, um, help."

I look up. "Help?"

"I didn't think he should have to go through that alone." I look to James, who's staring intently at his feet, jaw tense, voice low. "Seemed like a horribly lonely, awful thing. Didn't feel right to have a friend experience that, and not at least try to be there, and help, if we could."

"As smashing as company sounded, it wasn't entirely realistic," Remus leans his elbows and forearms down on his legs. "Given I'd likely tear them all to pieces if they were around me when I changed."

Sirius sits up on the couch, grins at me, shakes a restless hand through long inky hair. "We had to do some creative problem solving." His eyes glitter like jewels. "Evans, you're about to be so impressed with us."

"Or very cross," James amends, and I see that he's now buried his face between hands.

I look to Remus, who clasps his hands together and gestures them toward me. "You're familiar withAnimagi?"

The swell of reaction that bombards me is so powerful that I stand up without even realizing I've moved. One second I'm seated, the next I'm standing; swaying with the force of my rising, four pairs of eyes glued to me in various mixtures of concern and surprise—or, in Sirius' case, complete satisfaction.

I stare at them, stupidly, unable to comprehend what I assume I'm about to have to comprehend. I bring a hand to my throat, absently, frantically flipping through my mental recall of the process of becoming an Animagus, the particular skill, practice, and patience it requires—and, beyond that, the intensely small margin of success in even full-grown wizards and witches.

"Very complicated, dangerous magic," I whisper.

"We went about it rather fearlessly," James says. "With no guidance." I look at him, frightened. "It took three years, anyway." He looks back, desperate. "Very complicated and dangerous magic."

I feel the hollow of my throat dry out, like some cold and thankless wind ripped me open. "I don't understand."

"We're Animagi, Lily," Peter offers, perhaps truly thinking I need to be told this. He looks very young to me, quite suddenly, and in all of an instant I can't help but be uncomfortably aware of how young they all are; boys, playacting men.

We're Animagi, Lily. It echoes through my head like a dull thud. I feel the blood run from my cheeks.

"But—" I begin, but there's no but. I am seized by something fearful and gigantic and painful, like being submerged in freezing water.

I feel their expectant eyes. I inhale deeply. Talk myself into staying calm. I return to my seat, tuck my legs behind me as I sit. Have to consciously remove the worried hand from my throat. I nod gently, mostly to assure myself I can still feel okay. "And—all of you?"

Sirius and James nod in tandem. I slide a hand onto the arm of the chair, look at its intricate pink-and-green embroidery, forming tiny links of color where the pinned fabric meets. My nails are getting a little long. Could stand a cutting. I nod again. Self-reassurance. I look back up at the boys.

James looks like he's ready to launch himself from the edge of the couch, catch me if I swoon. But what I'm not going to do is swoon. I'm going to keep listening. "Dumbledore knows?"

"No," Sirius says. "He's—he'd be liable, if he knew. Given we're hellishly unregistered. Rather underage."

I swallow this down. Save those questions for later. "And every month you—?"

"Use the map to make sure hall's clear, bring the cloak, leave through the passage, join Moony at the shack," Peter gushes, rapidly, in a clear effort to be helpful, though the speech serves mainly to confuse me further.

"Lots of words in there I don't understand," I tell him, softly, apologetically.

He nods. "Right. Sorry. Erm," he twists his body, reaches for a piece of parchment lying not far from him on the ground. He rises, hands it to me. "Okay: Map."

I handle the piece of paper carefully. It's folded complexly, four or five times, two folds meeting in the center. As for its map-like qualities: None at all. The parchment is blank.

I look up at Peter, confused. He blanches, taps his wand to the paper, and intones clearly: "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

A design begins unraveling down the surface of the parchment. First, an ornate banner, laced in two Latin words: Tinerarium Maraudentium. Then, a block of lavish script:

Messrs

Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs

Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers
are proud to present

And at the very center of the page is a meticulous sprawl of the castle's exterior, resplendent in its miniature detail. Penned in the shaded interior:

THE MARAUDER'S MAP

I spare an upward glance to the Marauders in question. "What is it?" I ask, more than a little afraid to find out—though I can't stop, or even help, an underlying bite of curiosity.

"Go on," Sirius nods, looking far too content. "Open it."

Against my better judgement, I unfold the parchment. Inside, I find the map.

It's an impossibly exhaustive blueprint of the school: right down to individual toilet stalls, individual four-posters in individual dormitories. Not only does it show every classroom, every hallway, and every corner of Hogwarts, but also every inch of the grounds, and surrounding locale, as well some rather unfamiliar locations within the walls of the castle—several of which boast to be secret passages.

Perhaps even more astonishing—or else, disconcerting—are the hundreds of tiny roving footprints and banners of identification floating alongside, tuckering about the mock-castle like ants. Except they're not ants—they're undeniably meant to signify people. I scan the wings furiously, till I land on the heads quarters and find precisely what I'm looking for: James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, Lily Evans.

Five sets of unmoving footprints.

Unfortunately for my own principles, my primary reaction is envy. The document in my hands is, without a single doubt, the product of painstaking skill, meticulous attention to detail, a sophisticated and finnicky magic. It's a masterpiece. An abomination of personal privacy, sure—but, irrefutably, a masterpiece.

"You made this?"

"Group effort," Sirius says.

"James and Remus did it, mostly," Peter amends. "Though I did the script, I'm aces at calligraphy charms."

"This goes against every I stand for, ethically," I murmur. I glance from the tiny map versions of us, stationary footprints up to the living, breathing creators. Poised on the precipice of greatness. I can hardly breathe for my strange mixture of pride and wonder. "How long did this take?"

"Years," Remus says. "Only really finished up the final touches the last few months."

"And it's, what, Homonculous? To track movement?"

James flashes me a smile, but Sirius shudders. "Nasty tricky charm. Very hard to pin down to the page."

"What if you lost it?" I wonder. "Someone else picks it up—how have you not been expelled for this?"

Peter grins at me. He taps the parchment again, says, "mischief managed," and the map and ink and moving footprints dissolve before my eyes, the paper folding itself inward till I'm left with only blank parchment.

"Bloody hell," I breathe out. "So this is how you manage to sneak out, er, during—?"

"Well that, and the cloak." Peter takes the map, sits back down in the front of the couch.

I pinch my nose between my fingers. "Cloak. Right."

Sirius leaves the couch, bends over a chair near the table, and retrieves a spill of silvery fabric that seems to sparkle without light. The cloak, I presume. Sirius spins the fabric around his body, and then—well, his body disappears.

A laugh bubbles up from my throat of its own accord. "Of course! Why not! You've got an invisibility cloak!"

Beaming down at his not-there torso and legs, Sirius says, "fetching, isn't it?"

"I don't suppose this was acquired through legal means."

"Actually, it's mine." This comes from James, who sounds almost bashful. He runs a nervous hand around his neck. "Family heirloom."

"Family heirloom?"

"Jamsie never mentioned his relation to the illustrious Peverell line, eh?" Sirius twirls the invisibility cloak off his body, tosses it carelessly back on the table. "Figured that's how he got you into bed in the first place."

"Padfoot, you fucking dolt—"

I barely hear the thud of James' foot against Sirius' leg. I'm jolting through my interactions with the Potter family, straining for any circumstance in which James, or his parents, for that matter, might have mentioned being related to the fabled Peverells. I don't doubt the sincerity of Sirius' statement—disregarding the saucy jab—because the strength of the magical blood in the Potter family alone is renowned, their prestige, wealth, and power something not uneasily gleaned, even for someone so Muggle-born as myself. This is partly thanks, I'm sure, to James' own spouting of the information as a preteen, some early and misdirected attempt to impress.

I shake thoughts of pureblood lineage from my head and am up on my feet again, this time pacing the length of the common room, hands pinned to each opposite elbow, arms bound across my stomach. My head is whirl of information. All of it difficult to process; all of it unthinkable. Impossibly reckless. Unimaginably irresponsible.

"Can we circle back, for a moment, to the illegal Animagi business?"

James asks, "What do you want to know?"

"What's yours?"

He pauses, just for a second. "Stag."

I stare. "Deer?"

Behind his eyes, a prism of light. "Deer."

"I'm a dog," Sirius cuts in, grinning wide.

"Rat." Peter raises his hand.

I quit pacing near the empty fireplace. "Moony," I say, pointing to Remus. He nods. "Wormtail," to Peter, "Padfoot," to Sirius, and "Prongs," to James. "Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers." I add, drily. How carelessly self-assured they are in their own abilities, how blindly faithful in one another. Tragic and beautiful and, objectively, melodramatic.

Remus laughs. "It's all a bit pomp and circumstance, I'll give you that."

I breathe in deeply. I feel as though I've run miles and miles and just only now discovered I've been running in circles. Right back where I began.

"Are you going to give us detention?" Peter asks, and I don't think he's joking.

"No," I say, sighing. "But I am a bit interested in shaking you all by the collective collar and admonishing you for all this stupid bravery."

"I'm going to take the bravery bit and run," Sirius proclaims, standing up wildly. I'm surprised when he approaches and reaches toward me, grasps my hand, turns it over solemnly in his own. "Listen, I'll say this as lightly as I can, although it's actually very grave indeed."

"Okay," I say, heart in throat.

"You've been let in on the inner-circle by virtue of you might be smarter than all of us combined," he stares at me intently, voice taking on an earnest tone I've not heard from him, before. "If there's to be some sort of squabble over who's good and who's bad, y'know, out there, I would be foolish not to want you on my side. I've watched you duel just for practice and quite nearly pissed my pants. Statistically, I think, as well as emotionally, if you will, you're person most likely to survive an actual defense against the dark arts scenario."

"Sirius, that's really—"

"I mean it, Evans," he squeezes my hand. Releases it. "Welcome to the club."

My heart batters in my chest, because I haven't heard that many kind or genuine words from Sirius Black perhaps for all the time I've known him, and though he can be a prick and a tease and a taunt, he's got something in the core of him that hurts, I see it in his eyes; a part of him that's known the violent poison waiting in the out there.

I want to say something to him, like, I'm sorry, or you're a good person, but then James is standing up from the couch and saying, "Alright, pals, maybe—?"

"Yeah, let's get food." Remus nods, standing up and offering me a kindhearted smile. I remember, suddenly, James telling what he'd seen while touching Remus' neck in Divination: someone's fingers through the fur of a dog. Padfoot.

I begin, "Remus," but he just shakes his head at me. As if all the pain in the world could be on his shoulders and he'd still say, no, let me carry it.

Peter follows as Sirius and Remus head for the entrance, invisibility cloak swept up from the table. He walks backward for a moment, inclines his head at me. "We didn't get to choose our transformations, just so you know. I wouldn't have picked a rodent."

"Rats are incredibly intelligent creatures," I respond, smiling.

He smiles back. "Alright. Hey, thanks."

And then the three of them are gone and I'm left with the boy who started it all. Tall handsome owner of horn-rimmed glasses and a foolish quick-moving heart. Splendid hands. Beautiful eyes. He's staring at me with those eyes, anxious for some kind of a comment, or perhaps he thinks I'm going to scream, or cry, or shake him by the shoulders until he comes to terms with all he's done wrong.

At any given moment in our timeline I might have done all of these things, for a variety of reasons. But now I just say, "It's a lot to take in."

"I know."

"It's overwhelming."

"I know," he says, again, sighing, upset. "And I'm sorry if this was too much, I just thought it would be good to get it all out in the open, so you could know, and so—"

Having strode toward him and having taken his face in my hands, I cut him off with a kiss, a deep kiss, windblown. "I think your reckless band is rather remarkable," I admit, breathlessly. "And you've broken every rule, certainly, but I can hardly chastise the reason." I trace a thumb over his lower lip. His hands flatten against my back. "And I'm feeling like an amateur witch, now, compared to all you've managed to accomplish outside of class, on your own."

"Amateur," he scoffs, pulling me closer. "You heard Black—you're worth more than the lot of us combined and stuffed for spells."

My chest pounds ferociously with the beat of my heart; an irrational devotion pours through me. "I'm shaking," I observe, watch the wobble of my hand near his cheek.

His brow furrows, a hand of his clutching mine. Steadying. "Okay?"

If you left me I would melt through the cracks of floorboards, useless. I am frightened by the density of my feelings for him. The tug of illogical need. The blast of my ineptitude to think straight, my foolish teenage whimsy, all the heat and the break of blood inside my body.

Perhaps, this feeling, in the face of all other unknowns, is a necessary failsafe; something I can hold onto when all else slips through my fingers. I say, "I'm full of things I can't begin to dissect."

"What, like heart, lungs, pancreas?"

I laugh and exhale and kiss him hard, angry with myself and my inability to say something as simple as I love you. I am a slow swimmer. I have not reached the shore. "I'm useless," I vow against his mouth. "I'm a shitty Gryffindor. I've never broken a rule."

His laughter is a throat-sound and a jumbling of tongues, our hands a sweaty tangle at his cheek. "If you want to break a rule, Lily, I can help you with that," he grins, kisses my cheeks and my lips and my nose and my hair and my chin. "All you have to do is ask."

James

"Whatever happened to you wanting to have a professional meeting about our relationship?"

We're tangled atop covers, attempting, in Lily's words, a "post-week de-stress nap." It's the Friday before pre-holiday exams and there hasn't been a single second to either de-stress or nap or do much of anything besides study, for that matter.

"I very much forgot about that," she admits, now, fingers feathering gently through my hair, sending swathes of warmth down my spine.

My head is rather pleasantly cradled against her breasts, legs threaded through hers. "I've never heard of you forgetting about a single thing in your life," I say, slipping a hand under the waistband of her sweatpants, fingers sprawling hip-skin. "You've a terrifyingly good memory."

"Maybe whatever I wanted to talk about worked itself out."

Her bedroom takes on a grey-blue tone, one window curtain fully drawn and the other half-drawn, making a sort of artificial afternoon shade. "What is it you would have said?"

Her lips edge my forehead. Goosebumps along the plane of my neck. She sighs, then says, "That just because we were going to be dating each other didn't mean I was going to give up my identity as an individual, or that I wasn't going to continue focusing very seriously on school, and being a Head, and that I couldn't go about spending every second of my time with you, like in summer."

I shelve my smile at her collarbone. "And it all worked itself out?"

"Well, not really, it all rather went to shit, I'd say."

"Went to shit?"

"Yes," she affirms, fingers spreading along the back of my neck, twirling strands of hair into little loops. "I suppose I've retained my identity as an individual and dedicated student and Head, but, alas, I've really taken to spending every second of my time with you." I laugh and look up at her from my precarious vantage point, head pillowed on her chest. She arches her neck so she can kiss me, stupidly sweet, soft. She releases my lips and asks, a note of apprehension coloring her voice, "Do you think we spend too much time together?"

I knit my eyebrows together and shake my head vehemently. "I, for one, have a lot of time to make up for. Maybe six or so years from now we could have a weekend apart."

Her laugh is bright. "Marlene is going to be really upset about that."

"Oh, Marlene can hang out with us while we neck, I don't care." I pause, then add, "Do you think we spend too much time together?"

"No," she says, sighing. "I'm grossly besotted."

"Grossly." I close my eyes and press my lips to the skin above collarbones.

"It's a compliment, Potter. I like you very much. I think of you often when you're not around."

A thrill runs through me and I crane upward, kiss underneath her chin. "If you don't stop saying these affectionate things I'm going to start crying, or get hard, or possibly both at the same time."

She cranes her mouth toward mine and the possibility of either reaction remains viable, given the sugary warmth of her lips and the feeling of her body all along mine and the knowledge that she likes me very much.

After a minute, she tucks her chin back to the top of my head, exhales appreciatively. "There's something else I would've said." Our socked feet are a jumble at the end of the bed. "I would've said that for all my fixation on combustion, I don't think we're flammable. I think we balance each other, well."

"Yes," I agree, adamantly, a hand trailing up the front of her sleeveless-white-something-soft-and-see-through top, slowly enough to receive her low moan. "Well-balanced. Partners." I shift my body upward, now, till we're eye-to-eye. Her hands lift from my hair and rest below my neck. "You're aces at Herbology, I'm always topping your Dark Arts scores. Equality."

"Oh, fuck off," she cries, but she's gathering my shirt in fists, pulling me closer, kissing me.

I smirk into her lips. "Don't you wanna know what I would've said at this meeting? Professional? Over tea? Fully clothed?"

She rolls her eyes, spreading her hands down my shirt. "Do tell."

"I would've said, please don't call me 'sweetie.' It's what Mum calls dad when she's cross."

Her hands are slipping under my shirt, now, and downward, edging the sensitive area just along my waist. "That's a real bummer, actually," she says. "I was just about to call you sweetie."

A hand slips past the elastic waist of my pants. My legs tense and I swallow, hard. She presses her mouth softly just along my lower lip because she's trying to murder me, and she knows it's the perfect crime. "What am I allowed to call you?"

"James Potter, only."

"Only." Her fingers find an exceptionally excited section of my anatomy; take a soft hold.

I stand my ground. "Or, Head Boy. Or—okay, you can call me sir."

She finds this immensely amusing and isn't afraid to tell me so with a sort of jerking motion that causes my throat to tilt open, an embarrassingly eager groan falling into her mouth from mine. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard," she says, drawing her tongue across my jaw. "I'm only going to call you sweetie if you don't take that back."

I give in, given her hand and its slow up-and-down agenda under my pants, an agenda that makes it difficult to maintain any kind of composure.

She scoffs and takes my tongue between her teeth and pushes her thumb over the head of my cock and I feel my thighs rattles into hers, and she smirks; all-powerful. I drag a hand up and under her shirt, feeling the warmth between breasts, and she whines, taking a long, clutching trip down my length. "How about," she murmurs. "I call you Jimmy."

"No," I growl, and her wrist jerks, fingers tightening around me. "My great uncles call me that."

"You have multiple great uncles?" she's laughing, a bit, and the thought of any of my great uncles in this moment is impossibly unwelcome given the part of me sliding through her fingers.

"Can we not—" I break off, a strangled sort of breathy moan leaving me, "not talk about—"

Lily retreats entirely now, hand sliding out from my pants as she sits up, pushes me onto my back, and pulls my sweatpants down to my knees, the unfortunate evidence of her ministrations borne for all the world to see. She rubs her lips together. She pushes at my knees impatiently till I get her drift and sit up against the headboard as she climbs over me, smiling.

"I never realized you have such a fixation on you are and are not called," she says, pulling her shirt down so she effectively spills right out. I suck in a breath. With a hand on the back of my neck she encourages me face-first into bare tits, and seems, for a second, to agree with my immediate attentions, fingers and lips and tongue and all; she hums approvingly. But then she tips my chin up and away, asking, "What do I usually call you?"

Now her hand is back where it began, and this sight—loose breasts and pink cheeks and hair running along her face in wisps—is brutal on my senses. I release an unsteady breath. "Well," I begin, uneasily. "On regular days, you just say 'James,' which is, of course, my Christian name." She rolls her eyes and increases fingers-on-cock momentum, seriously and rapidly enough that I have to wiggle in frustration, readjust my hips beneath me. "And sometimes, you say it with a rather condescending, you're stupider than me and I'm going to tell you why sort of tone, which is actually rather endearing—and of course there's when you're half-asleep, that's a wonderful way to hear it, and—oh—" an involuntary gasp erupts because she's gone and touched her lips down onto me. "Jesus."

She releases me and looks up, nonplussed. "And?"

I stare at her. She's incorrigible. "And, um," I continue, though I am inoperable, basically, inexorably unstable, buzzing; my head a foggy pathetic mess of nothing but the feeling of her fingers sailing down, yanking up, pausing; repeating. "You call me Potter more often than I think you're aware—force of habit, I, er, assume."

With a smirk, and a mouthed Potter, she bears down on me with ferocious enthusiasm, and I clench my jaw and let my head fall against the headboard and cast up a prayer to any deity undignified enough to be overseeing such a sight. Time has now taken on a very train-has-left-the-station sensation and though I am ill-prepared to do any sort of embarrassing thing to the back of Lily's throat, it's very much happening and I am left only to my groans as I stare in disorderly gratification and horror as she sucks me right up to the verifiable point of no return—a moment in which she comes up for air, asking, "Anything else?"

My lungs are heaving. "Sometimes, when you're really uninhibited," I breathe, unable to look away from her mouth. "You call me baby." She blinks, slowly. "And that usually, just, immediately makes me come."

The subject is sore because I am poised quite firmly on an exact such precipice. I feel myself wince as she rubs an infuriatingly lone finger over my tip, all the way down; and she's leaning in, face along my face, lips at my ear. "Would you come in my mouth, if I asked nicely, baby?"

The effect of this, irreversible: She's back between my legs and I reach out, cradle her head in my palm, issuing a frantic, "Lils—" but she's got her lips full of prick and I scramble for her hand where it lays on my thigh, threading our fingers together, hurled into a real high speed chase between what feels like an exceptionally depraved desire and the undeniable truth that I have avoided this blowjob for many months and now that it's here it's better than I could have possibly imagined and the echo of baby knocks around like a shot of ecstasy through my skull and I've barely had time to contemplate what's about to happen before I hear my own stifled cry and feel the jolt of familiar exertion and am spilling, uneventfully, awash in painful heat; her tongue skimming this undoing, warmly, wetly, a sound of pleasure undeniably her own assailing my ears—and as if this isn't enough, she's got to go and swallow, exaggeratedly, eyes flicking up to mine, as if to say, are you watching?

Then she leans up, shifting backward on bent knees, and, eyes still on mine, wipes delicately at her mouth with one hand.

I have to cover my face in my hands and groan for all my embarrassment.

She scrambles back on top of me, fingers pulling mine off, and her mouth, so recently my downfall, presses endearingly to mine; and I can only sigh into her, unwilling—possibly ever—to let her go. She slows, breathes in deep, finds me with closed eyes. A finger traces from cheek to jaw. "Are you angry with me?"

I open my eyes and say, "No, Lils—angry?"

She bites her lower lip. "I just wanted to try."

"I—" I kiss her, then tear away and shake my head and laugh. "You're so—I can't—try. Try, she says!"

"James," she groans, almost pouting, red-cheeked and bright-eyed and exquisite, pressed into me, swollen-lipped.

I round my fingers at her hips. "You're unbelievable. You're beautiful." I lean my head back. "I'm unworthy."

Her exhale is immense. Satisfied. She tugs on my hand, brings it under her own waistband, between her legs. "But look how much I enjoyed it," she grins, sinking down onto my fingers. I crane my neck for her lips, but she backs away.

"Let me taste you," I beg.

"Let you," she muses, flopping off of me, onto her back, keeping my eyes as she maneuvers completely out of her pants, grappling for my hands, pulling me down. "Baby, I insist."