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]

19. Chapter 19

A/N: I knew the last chapter would be controversial! I nearly warned you all, but I like reader whiplash, so I didn't. (This may or may not be a theme. We'll see.) I get the disappointment, from those of you who weren't happy, and the concern as well over how problematic it all is. (Although I did laugh a lot that fewer people found the voyeurism problematic than people did the events of the last chapter. I'm not encouraging people to find either/both problematic or unproblematic, but there's something really interesting about that to me.) I also hear the concerns re: Lily's emotions. It's difficult to show them just yet, although I do hope they've already developed some over time so far. We're in James' head, after all, so we know all the things he thinks and feels, and that makes him easier to empathize with. Basically, I understand where you're all coming from, and I appreciate hearing that my concerns over these issues as an author are valid ones, because they're things I've thought over as well. Hopefully they're resolved well for you all by the end of this fic!

Basically, I loved every piece of feedback, good and bad. I especially really love when someone will ask a question or posit a theory and I already know the answer will come about in the next chapter or two or three. It makes me feel pretty good about my writing, and even better about the critical way that you all engage with this fic. You're all incredible.

Thank you for all of the kind, empathetic, and understanding messages about my personal life. In a year that's been shit enough, let alone with losses on top of the mess that is 2020, I really appreciated each one. It's lovely to see kindness in the world right now. (And lovely to see my fellow academics out here procrastinating like I am! Are we all just avoiding life with Harry Potter right now? At least it's not just me.)

I'm fairly happy with this chapter, especially in comparison to the last, but it's stupid long (the longest yet, which I hope doesn't put anyone off). The length made my editing kind of sloppy the final time around, so if you see any glaring issues, please let me know.

Love to you all!

Chapter Nineteen

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, James hardly thought about Lily.

He hadn't realized how much he'd needed a break, and not just from her, but from everything, save for the stupid antics of his friends.

They Apparated to the forests outside Hogsmeade and spent the day mucking about in the woods that spanned between there and Hogwarts. James, Sirius, and Peter transformed into their Animagi forms and ran speed and agility challenges against each other. James was the fastest, which he very well already knew, and Peter the most agile, and their abilities flipped vice versa. Sirius seemed quite content at performing dead center in both, as he'd always considered himself, as he said, "Not average, mind, but decent enough at just about everything."

Remus seemed quite content to watch, although James made a point to shift back a couple of times and sit with him, aware that he would have felt left out in Remus' place.

"You get to talk to Lily?" Remus asked the first time James collapsed next to him on the forest floor, winded.

"Bit," James told him, and he minded the stitch in his side much less, because it gave him an excuse to not have to say much more.

But Remus didn't let it drop. "And?"

"We'll talk tomorrow, she said. She and Hestia left pretty soon after I got back."

"She'll come around." He spoke with such certainty that James felt his spirits, already lifted from such a long run—and, at one point, pushing Sirius into a creek as payback for the same act a few nights earlier—lift higher.

"You think? Sooner or later, you reckon?"

"Hard to say. Didn't you once say she'll do the exact opposite of whatever everyone thinks she'll do?"

"Yeah. It's annoying."

"You wouldn't like her so much if it were easy," Remus pointed out, and James shot him an irritated look, not out of anger, but because he very much had a point. "What? You had loads of chances at easy. It's obviously not for you."

It hardly felt like the time to remind him of that.

"Yeah, well, McKinnon's a challenge, and I wouldn't go near her."

Remus chuckled. "She's different. But I see your point. It's not just the challenge."

But James almost wished it was just about conquering a challenge, as Lily had once thought he saw her, because his life would have been a lot simpler.

Hours passed. Eventually after several cleaning spells (and, in Sirius' case after the creek incident, drying spells) they wandered into Hogsmeade. Peter hadn't seen the festive beauty and then smoldering wreckage of the village on Christmas Eve, so the repaired shops looked very much the same to him, not physically changed at all.

But somehow, the village had changed, and he noticed it right away. "Feels kind of eerie here, doesn't it?" he asked, sounding nervous.

James had noticed it too, and was relieved to have Peter mention it first. Every shop they passed was open, even ones like Gladrags, which had been hit the hardest. There were people about, but James thought they walked a bit quicker than they perhaps had before, and with a bit more purpose. The atmosphere of fun and frolic that he'd come to associate with Hogsmeade had vanished. People no longer dawdled on the cobblestone streets, and customers in the shops they encountered looked more businesslike, as if they came to the village to shop for a few specific items and then planned to leave immediately.

"It'll be back to normal before too long," Remus predicted. "Diagon Alley is about back to itself, isn't it? It'll just take time, and some other horrific incident, and people will move on." Still, he and Sirius opted to stay in Zonko's when Peter suggested Honeydukes, and James quickly offered to pick them up anything they might want from the sweet store.

Yet when dinnertime rolled around, the other three exchanged uneasy glances when James suggested eating at the Three Broomsticks.

"You sure you want to, mate?" Sirius asked uncomfortably. "There's lots of other places."

"I'm going to have to see it sometime," James reasoned, and he hoped he sounded more confident in his decision than he felt. He watched Sirius and Peter both look to Remus, as if they expected him to make the judgment with James, their de facto leader, out of the running.

A smart choice, really. Remus was undeniably the most level-headed. They probably should have listened to him over James more often. Even James knew that.

"If you're sure," Remus said slowly, and he met James' eyes. "We can leave if it's…well, we can leave whenever. Don't stay for our benefit, Prongs."

But whatever Remus expected the Three Broomsticks might be—because he clearly expected it to be bad—James found it the exact opposite.

There was more standing and sitting room than usual for a Saturday evening, he knew from experience over the summer, but people had clearly returned to the establishment over the last few months. It looked much like James remembered it from the dozens of times he'd visited over the years—slightly smoky, cheerfully lit, and full of chattering voices. He looked automatically towards where he and Lily had sat on Christmas Eve, where they'd had their first real, extended conversation outside of the prefects' bathroom. The six-top table still sat there, holding a trio of middle-aged couples chatting amiably.

It almost felt as if everything that had happened on Christmas was nothing more than the most terrible of dreams.

"Drinks?" he asked expectantly, aware the other Marauders waited on him for a cue as to how he felt. Remus watched him the closest and with significant concern and tension, as if he expected that James' reaction might flip at any moment. He reached over to give Remus' shoulder a shake. "I'm fine, Moony, really," he said, and he heard some of Lily in his voice, because she always made sure to convince everyone—especially him—of the very same thing.

"Excellent," Sirius said happily, and he wanted to rub his hands together, James could tell just from the glee on his face and voice. "Because, hot damn, Rosmerta's here."

Sure enough, Rosmerta Mullins tended bar, wearing a sleeveless dress and a Three Broomsticks apron. She looked just as James remembered her—curvy, with a brilliant smile and kind eyes set in a pretty face surrounded by masses of blonde curls. A handful of years older, all four of the had admired her over the past couple of summers when she tended bar. She flashed them that brilliant smile when she saw them approach that James knew absolutely drew in customers, but it took a lot in him to smile back at first. He couldn't help but look at her face and try to see if he could recognize any part of Louisa Mullins in her, or her father, whose name he still couldn't place. Yet no matter how hard he tried, all he could remember of either of them was the brilliant green flash that had ended her mother's, and the screams of her father under the Cruciatus Curse.

"It's been a minute," she said, wiping the bar when they approached. "What, since last summer?"

"Flattered you remembered, Rosmerta, really." Sirius leaned his elbows on the bar. "How've you been?" The moment he said it, he realized what a stupid question he'd asked, and visibly cringed. "Well, I mean—"

Rosmerta waved off whatever (probably terrible and fumbling) explanation or apology that may have followed. "It's alright. It's such an automatic question. I get it all the time, and I never really have an answer. I wish I did. I wish there was some sort of formula on how to deal with all of this." Her face hadn't gone bleak, necessarily, but she did look slightly different as she spoke, more neutral than her customary warmth. "You know, I have some good days and some bad, but I try to have more good, especially because it's better for business. I'm here fulltime now."

"Guess we'll be in more often then," Sirius said after a beat, a clear attempt to break the tension and bring a smile back to her face, and he succeeded.

"Wouldn't say no to that," she replied, back to her customary cheer. Watching her, James had to wonder how much of that cheer she put on for show, just as Lily often did, but hers faked for the sake of business. He really couldn't tell. "I can always use a laugh. So, drinks? And I'm not serving any of you alcohol, before you ask. You've been telling me you're of age for years, and I don't believe a word any of you say. Not until after you're all out of school."

"Aberforth serves us," James pointed out, and she laughed.

"Abe would serve anyone. He'd serve his goats."

"I'm sure he has," Peter said, and he turned pink at the way she seemed to get a kick out of that.

They ordered food and Butterbeer and James led them to a table in an area he'd selected in his mind's eye before they'd even set foot in the door. He could still so clearly recall so much of the chaos and hell and torture of Christmas Eve, could almost see the way the Death Eaters had spread their torment around the room, even if the memories felt a bit dream-like, dulled with time. But he couldn't remember anything particularly horrible happening in a few specific sections, and he led them to one purposefully. He didn't want to sit anywhere near where Louisa Mullins had died; where he and Lily had laid, bleeding; where the mother and child had been tortured side by side; where the man in the Haileybury Hammers jersey splinched himself and nearly bled to death. Even if he felt fine, he didn't want to chance anything changing his mood.

And with Lily's cursed leg still so fresh in his mind, he especially kept them away from windows.

Sirius sat angled so he could see the bar. He watched Rosmerta give her signature smile and laugh to a couple of blokes probably in their early twenties, around her own age, who had clearly taken their place at chatting her up. "She is something," he said appreciatively. "First girl I ever fancied, I think. I remember coming here when she tended bar third year and thinking, yup, that's for me."

"Jones would have your balls if she saw you like that with Rosmerta like that, I'd image," Peter said with a grin, but Sirius just shrugged.

"Dunno, Wormtail. She doesn't seem to get bent out of shape if I banter." He gave James a pointed look that was impossible to miss. "Prongs, though—"

"I went to the Ministry yesterday," James offered quickly, because he found he'd much rather talk about that than listen to any of Sirius' very pointed comments.

Although Remus and Sirius had heard bits and pieces of the day, they looked almost more keen to hear the rest than Peter. They had good reason too, James supposed, since he knew no matter Sirius' promises to not poke and prod for information, he still absolutely wanted to know what had happened. Remus acted subtler and more understanding, but James knew him to be no less curious.

He told them what he could, breaking only briefly when Rosmerta brought their food over with a cheeky wink, and they all fell uncharacteristically silent to watch her leave.

Unwillingly even while admiring Rosmerta, he thought of Lily again and her own careful façade and charm. He wondered, yet again, how much of Rosmerta's actual self she ever put forward, and how much of her flirtation she feigned.

Maybe she hated blokes. She worked in a pub. It would have made sense.

He picked up the story of the Ministry again between mouthfuls of steak and kidney pie, and told them about how he and Lily had met Moody, that he'd offered them spots in the department as long as their NEWTs held up, and about the tour Frank and Alice gave them (at least so far as he could remember, because it truly did feel like a blur).

Reframing the day positively actually helped quite a bit.

"And then Prongs went and got absolutely smashed with Frank and ended up staying at Moony's," Sirius finished when he saw that James clearly hadn't planned to add that part. "Kicked him out of his bed and everything." Peter snorted into his Butterbeer.

That dimmed it a little.

"You're a saint, Moony, really," James said, thankful all over again even as irritation towards Sirius flashed across his mind. Sirius really did have a way of making him grateful for Remus, and often. Increasingly often.

Remus just smiled. "I can't lie, it was the most unexpected part of my break. It really helped cure some of the monotony of work. And I don't know if I've seen anyone throw up as much as you did this morning, Prongs. I think you'd still be at it if Lily hadn't sent that hangover potion."

"Probably," James agreed. "I don't know if I'll ever drink Firewhiskey again." Even the thought left him feeling ill, as if he could once against taste his sick.

"Lily stayed at Frank and Alice's," Sirius went on, chuckling. "Apparently she told Hess that Frank slept on the bathroom floor last night because she slept in their tub, and he wanted to keep her company and talk about her feelings. I just love the way the scenario looks in my head. Merlin, I wish I could have witnessed that."

Somehow, James strongly doubted that Lily wanted that knowledge out and floating around.

"You call her Lily?" Peter repeated with raised eyebrows. "When did that happen?"

"Literally yesterday. But Prongs is there now too. You should see his face when she calls him James—it goes all stupid."

Peter looked to James for answers, but James didn't know what to do but gesture (hopefully) carelessly with his hand. "Can't explain it. It just happened." But he could explain it, because he couldn't forget that she'd first called him James while wearing her Holyhead Harpies jersey, right after he'd gotten his hand between her legs and she'd taken herself off his lap. A familiar heat crept into his stomach, and he reached for his Butterbeer to try to hide his face as much as possible.

Sirius noticed, of course.

"Looks something like that, yeah," he said, nodding towards him, and James couldn't hold back a glare.

Remus clearly saw. "So Lily slept in a bathtub," he said conversationally with a bite of his chicken, and James felt another rush of gratitude towards him, even he knew Lily would not have cared that they'd circled back to that.

"She told me the same," James added quickly, relieved for the removal of any pressure, even if he knew it would embarrass her. She didn't have to know, after all. "Said on top of asking about her feelings, Frank talked her ear off about Quidditch, and has some weird opinions about Zimbabwe."

"Effie was so mad when neither of them came home." Sirius chuckled. "I mean, Hess was too, but more worried. Flea and I left them and went to play chess at one point, because they were just too much to deal with. Weird moment, bonding over the insanity of women with him. Never thought I'd have the chance, since Hess is so rarely that way. Anyway, based on the earful Effie gave Prongs when he got home this morning, I'm fairly certain I'm her favorite son now, which is nice. I'll enjoy it."

"Alright, so these are the updates as I understand them." Peter ticked off the points on his hand. "Prongs and Evans—Lily? Is that happening for me now too?—went to the Ministry. She is now officially Lily, I guess. That's an update. Prongs got drunk and slept in Moony's bed. Lily slept in Alice and Frank's bathtub. Anything else?"

Sirius set down his knife and fork immediately. "Let's see." He copied Peter's ticking motion, although his incidences quickly took up two hands. "Lily is Flea's favorite—no surprise there. Hess is Effie's favorite, edging out me currently, but I'm fine with that. I'll come in second to her. Prongs and I saw Lily in her knickers and a Quidditch jersey, and I thought he was about to blow his load in his pants when he saw her. We found out that Effie once wrote for Teen Witch Weekly, which I'm still not over, and you should have seen Hess' face. Lily decided to make it her mission to get me and Hess to shag—bless her for that if nothing else—although Hess can't know what she's up to, so don't any of you say anything. Oh, I body checked Prongs right into a creek when we were running about the other night—which, fair play, getting me back earlier, mate. McKinnon—Marlene? That is weird, Wormtail, you're right—got hit on by some muggle bloke, who I am personally rooting for over Rooney. Prongs and Lily went on a date. And then, you know, all the Ministry stuff, which is much less interesting." He looked to James. "Does that cover it?"

James didn't answer.

"Except for Prongs' invasion, I've literally just worked on schoolwork—mainly McGonagall's essay—and spent time with my family," Remus said, shaking his head. "Sounds a lot more interesting at your place."

"Come over then," Sirius suggested immediately. "Found out Hess is pretty decent at Quidditch, better than I thought at Christmas, so we play a lot. She and I also spend a fair bit of time watching Prongs and Lily, you know, trying to dissect it. We've decided they're 'a fascinating case study of compatible incompatibility.' That's more Hess' than mine."

"Clearly," Remus said wryly. "She's smarter than you."

"Monday, for my birthday, then?" James asked, because the alternative—following up with Sirius' comments about dissection—felt far too dangerous for his mental health. "You'll be happy, Wormtail—I told Lily to invite Marlene." Trying out her name felt weird in his mouth. "Apparently, her break has been something like Moony's—although worse, because it includes Ravenclaws—and she's not handling it quite as well as he is."

"Excellent." Peter chuckled. "She makes me laugh. I love how she decided off the cuff that she likes me because I rode the train with her and those gits, but that she hates Prongs, and she's just stuck to that and refuses to budge. Once she likes you, seems like she really likes you. But until then…well, you know, Prongs. You're there."

James did know, and he found it far less amusing than the rest of them. Then again, she had taken to treating them more or less kindly (kind for her, at least) with very little protest. She only held out on him.

He could hardly blame her. Lily had certainly hated him the most for six years. Of course she'd follow suit and hold onto it. Truly, Lily probably shouldn't have gotten over his treatment as quickly as she had.

How much of Marlene's dislike for him centered around the speed of Lily's forgiveness? He's never thought of it that way before.

"And she's fit," Sirius added. "You can say it, mate. That's why you like having her around. And she likes you for padding her ego. Works out well, really."

"I mean, I'm happy to do it." Peter drained his Butterbeer. "What is this about Lily in her knickers, now?"

Sirius had Remus and Peter rolling by the end of his retelling, which lasted rather longer than the actual incident itself. Despite the way Sirius took the piss out of him the entire time, even James couldn't help laughing at the way Sirius described Lily lobbing pillows at them from across the room, and how when Hestia had come upon them, she had "acted like it was just a regular Monday night," as Sirius put it. She really had taken it brilliantly.

"If Lily's staying in my room," Remus began when Sirius finally finished, mopping his eyes a bit, "I'd like to know why everything is jinxed. You said the dresser and the beside table, Prongs. What else?"

"She had probably already removed something from the desk," James admitted. "I did remember to warn her about that."

"If it makes you feel any better, Moony, we did the same thing to Wormtail's room," Sirius offered brightly. "Do you remember, Prongs? I think they were meant to come back last summer but they didn't, so we just kind of…forgot we'd jinxed a ton of things. Although, in my defense, I did remove everything from Hess' room, because I'm not a bloody idiot."

"You're lucky Effie didn't find them first," Peter pointed out. "Or even react to an explosion on the floor above their room. Although they're probably used to it. They're used to us. One jinx is quiet."

"Mum didn't say a word about it the next morning," James told them. "Hasn't mentioned it since." He still chuckled, mainly at the lingering affronted look on Remus' face, as if he hadn't dealt with such similar antics for nearly seven years. "I still couldn't believe Hestia just straight up refused to listen to Lily when she was mad like that. Just said, 'No, you can come to my room,' and left so calmly. I figured she basically always caved to Lily and McKinnon—Marlene."

Sirius grinned fondly. "I keep telling you, she's mad scary. It's not like Lily, where I feel like she's somehow fucking with my head all the time and getting me to act however she damn well pleases—and we all know that's exactly what she does to Prongs. But…you know, if I found out that one of the three of them had a violent criminal past, I'd immediately assume it was Hess." That seemed to please him, and he looked proud when Peter and Remus shrugged and nodded, ostensibly agreeing, although James just sighed. His good humor had vanished yet again. "If you don't believe me, just make her mad enough, Prongs," Sirius added, misinterpreting his sigh either accidentally or purposefully. Knowing him as he did, James had to assume he did so on purpose. "I'm sure you'll get there, or watch her have a go at me sometime. She really did bawl me out yesterday like you asked when I made that crack about Lily shagging Moody for the job."

Remus stared. "I should think she would. Are you mental? I wouldn't want to even possibly insult one of them in front of the other two."

"I didn't mean it badly!" Sirius protested, but James rolled his eyes. Remus followed suit.

"Right. Just banter?"

"Just banter," Sirius agreed, willfully ignoring the sarcasm in Remus' voice. "And, Merlin, you would have thought the joke I made about Morton was the end of the world to Hess—"

Had Sirius set out to provide a highlight reel of break, or a highlight reel of all the ways he'd made James mad over the past week?

Or were those two things one in the same?

Peter began to laugh, and James couldn't remember seeing Remus look quite as exasperated in a long time. His most reasonable friend looked the most horrified. Vincidation shot through James' chest. "You're absolutely mental. You thought it was smart to joke about that? At this point?" Remus looked to James. "Is this what he's like, when Wormtail and I aren't there?"

James took a deep breath and did his best to smile. He felt it struggle on his face, and knew Remus saw too just based on the way his eyebrows twitched in unasked questions, but he smartly didn't press it. "You really didn't realize it?" James almost believed the levity in his voice. "Moony, we've known that about you for years. We'd be dead about eight times over without your better judgment keeping us in check. Padfoot especially."

That didn't sound so bad just then.

No, he amended immediately. He didn't want Sirius dead. Clearly. He just wanted him…quiet.

Still, knowing him, that would probably only happened once he died.

Peter continued to chuckle for a long time. "Might tell Marlene your crack about the Lily sleeping her way into a job, Padfoot. We'll get to check if she's truly scarier than Hestia, because I can't remember, and she'd lost it. It's been a while since I've seen her fully kick off. I almost miss it."

They left the Three Broomsticks after dinner. Rosmerta called after them, her voice sweet and seemingly genuine, "Tell Abe hi, since I assume that's where you're headed. And come back soon. I need a laugh!"

Remus shook his head, laughing all the way to the Hog's Head, where they did indeed head. "She knows her business, that one," was all he'd say in explanation. "She's good."

Yes, Rosmerta rather did remind James of Lily.

Aberforth looked neither surprised or unsurprised to see them, just a true, blank neutral. His expression didn't even change when Sirius offered cheerfully, "Rosmerta said to tell you hi." (And, as Peter pointed out later, "If that wouldn't make a bloke happy, what could?" Remus replied, rather grimly, "Goats.")

"How's business?" James asked as Aberforth served them drinks. He thought Rosmerta might have a point, that Aberforth really would serve anyone without question. He'd probably draw up a pint even for any brave third-years that may have wandered in on a Hogsmeade visit.

"The same," Aberforth grunted, and a glance into the dank pub confirmed this. The Hogsmeade attack seemed to have hardly registered on the people who drank at the Hog's Head. James thought he could spot the same pair of card-playing wizards in the same dark back corner that he'd spied on New Year's Eve, as well as what looked perhaps, like a hag and a trio of wizards so elderly that they looked as if the only moisture they had in their bodies must have come from the numerous bottles that scattered their tables.

"Do the people who drink here really care about something like that?" Remus asked quietly when James made a comment about the lack of change as they settled at a table. "I mean, no one comes here for the cleanliness of the glasses or the quality of the company. I'm willing to bet most who come in here are either criminals or just have no sense. An attack wouldn't make much difference to either of those sets of people."

"And us," Sirius said, lifting his glass. "Although we have a bit of sense, Moony. We have you. And…wow, weirdly, Prongs now too, if he's going to be a career man. Wormtail, you're not going to abandon me to their side, are you?"

"Never," Peter assured him.

"About careers and all that—Padfoot, if you spill your Firewhiskey on me, I may quite literally kill you and save Hestia the trouble somewhere down the line," James snapped as Sirius swung his drink a little too close to him. Could Sirius have not chosen another drink? "Even the smell is enough to make me think about holding my head in that bucket in Moony's room today."

"I think I might burn the sheets you slept on," Remus said matter-of-factly. "You really did reek of it."

"Like he bathed in it, right?" Sirius grinned. "Like I told him, I realized today that Lily might actually like him a little no matter how she treats him all the time, because she let him near her before he'd showered. Although, was that why she was crying, Prongs? It was actually just her eyes watering?"

He would defend saying it as a joke, James knew, just like he did everything that James thought he took a little too far. He already looked quite ready to do so when Peter began to snigger. "You made her cry, Prongs?" Peter asked. "I still can't even imagine it. Bloody hell, between you and Snape she's having a hell of a month for crying. That's twice more than I thought her capable of."

Put on the same plane in her life as Snape.

Lovely.

"I thought you said you just planned to talk to her tomorrow," Remus said. "You didn't say anything about her crying."

"That's because—look, she slept in a bathtub last night! I probably should have splinched myself Apparating, and what a right mess that would have been!" James sighed and reached up to rub his eyes, which had never stopped burning from exhaustion, not really. "Yesterday was just absolute shit for both of us, and if Padfoot could stop taking the piss out of me or having a go at her for a single minute—"

"I'm done," Sirius said innocently, and everything about his tone tightened the tension in James' neck.

"Are you?" he demanded. "Because I don't want to talk about yesterday anymore. Fucking hell, we talked about this, Padfoot. I told you I couldn't get into—"

"Yeah, but I didn't know that meant not talking about her at all." It seemed to slowly dawn on Sirius just how genuinely frustrated James felt, and seeing the expression slowly come over his face only made James madder, since he apparently hadn't gotten it sooner. "Mate…" Sirius sounded suddenly genuinely concerned. "What did she do? You wouldn't act like this if—"

That was too much.

"Nothing," James told him. "Nothing, and that's the worst part about it, because at least if she'd done something or if I'd done something, I could be mad at one of us. But I can't be. And I told Moony that last night—"

"I'm not pushing it, Prongs," Remus said quietly, as reasonable as ever. "And Padfoot is done. He is."

But Sirius wasn't. "Are you about to have a go at me because I've made a couple jokes?"

That was really too much.

"A couple?" James set his beer down—or almost slammed it, more like, even though he hadn't planned on it. A week's worth of resentment—and a truly terrible twenty-four hours with very little sleep—drew forth everything he felt. "Mate, you've spent all break so far trying to wind her up, trying wind me up about her, or making little comments that show you don't like her, even though you act like they're jokes. There's no reason for any of it. I never asked you to get involved. I didn't ask you to confront her about how she feels about me. But you did. I didn't ask you to slag her off with my mum. But you did. I didn't ask you to make a joke about Morton hours before you knew she and I had a date. But you did. I didn't ask you to make that joke about her shagging Moody yesterday. But you did. I didn't ask you to make a crack about her crying just now. But you did. And do any of us laugh, when you do that shit at the house? Do I? Does Lily? Does Hestia? It's not a joke and it's not banter if no one's laughing. I don't even need to talk about all the rest, the doubting comments you toss out at me like it's nothing, but it's felt constant. You know, Lily was right, the other night—neither of us have ever set out to make things harder for you and Hestia. So why are you doing this?"

Sirius sat silently for a few moments.

"Volume, Prongs," Remus advised. James hadn't even noticed that he'd gotten progressively louder.

"I didn't realize you were keeping such a close tally of all the ways I'd pissed her off," Sirius said evenly. Despite his tone, a bit of color had risen in Sirius' face, although James didn't know if it came out of anger or embarrassment.

He also didn't really care.

"That's what I'm saying. It's not her, so why are you blaming her? She hasn't complained about what a git you've been at all, and even when I have, she's never joined in. These are the ways you've pissed me off. But it's like—okay, yesterday, for example. Last night, you told Moony that you could tell that she was nervous before we left for the Ministry, had been all day, and that I'd been mad. And you saw that in person explicitly, at least with me. You tried to talk to me about it over chess, remember? So then why would you make that comment about Moody when you could tell something wasn't right?"

"I didn't think—"

"I know. That's the problem." James stood abruptly, almost before he realized that he had. "I'm going home. No, it's fine, Moony," he added the moment Remus opened his mouth. He sighed. "You know how I slept last night, because I'm sure you did no better, which…I'm sorry about. Again. I'm exhausted, and, Padfoot, there's too much shit going on in the world for us to be like this. I just need to go home. I'll see you tomorrow." He patted Peter's shoulder as he passed him. "See you lads Monday."

When James walked past him out of the bar, Aberforth looked much the same as when they'd arrived. He still stood behind the bar, wiping down a case of brown bottles one-by-one, each by hand. Despite his attentions (probablybecause of them, really), they seemed to stay just as dirty as when he'd started. As James opened the door and went out into the Hogsmeade night, he heard Aberforth call after him, "Chin up, Potter."

In that moment, it meant more than it probably should have.

xxx

James almost expected Sirius to follow him, because it would have aligned so perfectly with his character to not let things go—like a dog with a bone, as they'd all said more than once. Really, he almost wanted him to, but whether he wanted to talk to him or swing at him, he didn't know.

"Don't slam the door!" Euphemia called sharply from the den the moment he closed the front door (admittedly rather hard) behind him.

James didn't really take the time to think about his actions, just followed through with the first thing that popped into his mind. He was impulsive, as he'd often told Lily, although she hadn't accused him of that kind of behavior in a while. But it had taken a scant few minutes to Apparate home from Hogsmeade and walk to the front door of his parents' house, and he hadn't had the time or good sense to take his frustrations out on anything before he heard his mum's voice.

"What's wrong?" she asked immediately when he went into the den. He found her and Fleamont seated in their usual chairs, each with a book in their hands and the radio on in the background. James recognized the sounds of a Quidditch match immediately, and caught, in a fraction of a second, that it was the match Greg and Frank had spoken of the day before, Zimbabwe against Hamburg. The knowledge that they sat together at Frank and Alice's, having a few drinks and probably talking about Lily, turned his dark mood darker.

"Sirius and I got into it." He took a seat on the loveseat he'd shared with Lily after they'd gotten home from drinks with Alice and Frank less than forty-eight hours earlier. "Mum, can I talk to you?"

"Since when do you and Sirius argue?" Fleamont asked with a careless glance up from his book. He did a double take at the sight of James' face, and James didn't quite know what he saw there, but assumed it had to be all of the tension he still felt in his neck and shoulders. After a brief second of observation, he marked his place in his book and set it on his lap. "Jamie, what's going on?"

"Mum, why were you slagging Lily off to Sirius?" he asked, and Euphemia set her book down too.

She stared at him, and then lifted a hand to her cheek. "I wasn't," she insisted. "Did he tell you that?"

"No, I heard him tell Remus last night that you basically told him that you thought she was messing me about. Did you?"

"No!" She dropped her hand and followed Fleamont's actions, closing her book rather sharply. "I mean, he and I did talk about it all, I did ask him what he thought of you and her—"

Fleamont sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture James recognized as one of his own immediately. "Darling. Why?"

"—but I never said she was messing you about. I basically told him exactly what I told you: that I think you're getting too serious about her when she doesn't feel the same. He agreed with me."

"Was this before or after you had tea with Lily and asked her what she and I were doing? And got all cold towards her when she told you we still had a lot to figure out? Because she told me about that at dinner, told me that it's clear you don't like her, even though you never told me about that conversation at all. And I see it, Mum, in the little things, the way that you treat Hestia compared to her."

Color had risen to Euphemia's cheeks. "I like her fine. I told you that."

"Just not for me, right?" James asked, recalling Lily's use of the same line at dinner.

"Well—Fleamont, don't look at me like that!" Somehow, Fleamont's frown seemed to bother her more than James' accusations. She picked up what looked like a long-forgotten cup of tea at her side and cradled it in her hands. "Jamie." Her voice became earnest as she leaned forward. "I like her, really. But I love you, and I don't want to see you get hurt. And the way that you are with her—Fleamont, help me."

She probably should have gone elsewhere, or nowhere, for help, because Fleamont's clear irritation hadn't left his face. "Effie. We talked about this the first night, after you saw Jamie get upset at her, and we agreed we wouldn't meddle." He didn't sound mad, James thought, but just audibly disappointed, and he tried to remember the last time he'd heard his dad sound that way.

"What, it's not meddling when you spend all evening with her in your potions lab?"

"Not anymore than it's meddling with you take Hestia to your greenhouses, is it? Have you asked Hestia what she's doing with Sirius? Have you asked Jamie for his opinion on it?"

For several long moments, Euphemia sat silently. When she pushed a hand through her hair, James recognized the gesture in himself immediately as well. "It's different," she said finally. "Jamie, you've talked about Lily for years, and so have your friends when they teased you. I've heard all that. I already knew when she arrived here that you were crazy about her. How else am I to feel, when she tells me she isn't sure where you're headed? Of course I'm worried for you. I'm your mother." She paused. "Is this what you and Sirius rowed about?"

"Yes, because he doesn't understand it either." James took off his glasses for a moment, his mind racing.

He decided, impulsively, to take a gamble.

"I'm going to tell you guys some things," he said, adjusting his glasses back on his face, and, for some reason, much of the tension left his body. With a decision came relief, even if he didn't know how things would pan out in the future, if his choices would have good or bad consequences. At least things suddenly felt slightly more within his control. "Three things. And the last of those things, you can't repeat. Ever. It can't leave this room. Because if it does, I'll not only lose my job even before I have it, but people could get hurt, even die. It's that serious. Do you understand? Can I trust you with this? Because if I shouldn't, for any reason, I need you to tell me right now. I don't have to tell you if it's too much pressure."

Fleamont didn't hesitate. "Of course you can trust us. We're your parents."

When James looked to Euphemia, he saw about a dozen unasked questions all over the worried lines of her face. "Tell us. Now you have to."

"And you won't say anything?"

"Of course not," she said, echoing Fleamont.

"Three things," James repeated. "The first two aren't secret, but they're no less important." After looking at his parents' faces, he took a deep breath and began.

He told them about all the ways he'd harassed Lily over the years from nearly the very start of their first year. They had already heard some, he knew, because Euphemia was right—his friends did like to take the mickey out of him for the many times she'd lost her cool and fired some hex or jinx or curse his way after he'd said done one thing or another. But he told them more than they knew. He told them about the many times he'd asked her out, which had gone from obnoxious to downright cruel. And he told them about the incident at the tree fifth year too, about how Snape had ended up calling her a mudblood, and how ashamed he still felt about all of that, the entire scenario from start to finish, even though at the time he hadn't even paused his bullying of Snape to express any of his regret. He told them about them about what he'd done to Greg, the two weeks of Puking Powder, just for liking her and dating her when he couldn't. (Although, he had to admit, he actually felt just slightly worse for Snape than he did for Greg, even though none of the hatred had cooled between them over the year. Snape just seemed, at the moment, like the lesser of two evils. Acknowledging that, even to himself, felt beyond strange.)

"After all that, I'm lucky she ever agreed to come near me," he finished. And he still wondered for the millionth time, an irritating tickle in the back of his brain, if that ever would have happened without Morton. "And Sirius is lucky with Hestia too, because it's not like we gave her an easy time of it, as Lily's friend. So if Lily's hesitant at all about us, I feel like that's normal after six years of what I put her through. But she's stopped holding that against me entirely. It's not something we even talk about anymore. The crazy thing is, all of that isn't even what's holding her back."

And he told them the second thing, about her fears about living in a world where muggleborn witches and wizards faced growing persecution, torture, and even death as Voldemort's violence increased and his followers grew more brazen every day. He told them how she'd decided she was done dating, intent on keeping any potential partner from suffering alongside her for her blood status, and how the more he thought about it after Christmas Eve, the more he understood her logic. He went through it all with them, the entire Hogsmeade attacks—the torture they'd witnessed; Louisa Mullins' murder; the way her husband had screamed while on the receiving end of the Cruciatus curse, cast for his 'blood traitor' status; and how it felt to lie there, injured, to have to see it all. He added how much he'd worried for her—and how she seemed to worry for him too, even though nothing had passed between them yet besides conversation, and how frantic she'd looked as she'd healed him as best she could the moment the pub cleared. He sketched, briefly, how her leg had never healed—none of the details of the curse, of course, just that it hadn't ever really passed—and how she'd ended up in St. Mungo's for eight days, and what that felt like for him, to have to wonder how she was and when she'd be back—or, truly, if she'd be back. A sort of grim understanding passed over Fleamont's face as he spoke, and James knew he thought about Lily's thick stack of parchment that detailed her attempts to fade the marks on her leg, and knew that he thought about the silvery potion sitting in his lab even as James spoke. And then, he told them how she'd somehow managed to catch a break for once during the Death Eater attack on Hogwarts—if minimal injuries in the face of a deadly assault could count as a break, although after her leg, he considered it a win. He explained how Marlene had gone down, how Hestia had gone down, and how Lily would have been next, absolutely, if Professor Sprout hadn't shown up just in time.

But Euphemia picked up less on Lily's anxieties than James' trauma. "Professor Dumbledore wrote us after Christmas and told us there had been an attack at Hogsmeade, but nothing like that." She rounded on Fleamont, her face white, her lips shaking and furious. "I told you we should have gone there as soon as we got the letter. I told you."

"And done what, darling?" Fleamont asked soothingly, although he'd gone pale too. "What could we have done that would have made a difference? And if Jamie plans to take this position as an Auror…" James could see him swallow, and thought he could almost hear it even over the Quidditch game. "That's par for the course, isn't it? He'll have to head into situations like that all the time."

"Do you—" Euphemia began pleadingly, but James cut her off, aware, even from those two words, where the question would end up.

"Yes, Mum, I do have to be an Auror. It's what I want. It's what I've wanted for years. I want to help people."

It was privilege, Lily had told him on New Year's Eve, that he got to choose whether or not he cared about the growing divisiveness of blood purity in the magical world. He saw that in action, suddenly so loudly and clearly, in the way neither of his parents spoke in concern for her as muggleborn, or about her worries for a potential partner just by association. Maybe, he thought later, playing it back, they didn't comment on it simply because blood purity didn't matter to them any more than it did to him. Maybe their concern for him in that moment trumped any sympathy they otherwise would have felt for her. Or maybe they just didn't think about such things, didn't really take the time to consider what Lily's fears meant to her and how deeply they went, just as he once had, because it was something that would never concern them as purebloods.

When James realized that, he felt guilty—suddenly, overwhelmingly guilty—for not trying to understand her better when she'd first confided those fears in him, and for pushing her so hard ever since.

But he went on. "An on that, on being an Auror…" He hesitated. He had wracked his brain all during his first two points, even as he spoke, to try to come up with the most he could tell them about the previous day without giving away anything confidential—or, at the very least, with giving them the smallest amount of confidential information possible that would still impress upon them how absolutely sideways things had gone. "Remember, you cannot repeat this. Remember that. I've never been more serious about anything in my life." He paused to take a breath, and then continued more carefully than before, more carefully, he thought, than he'd ever spoken before. "It has been decided that, for the indefinite future, Lily should appear to be single. It's something that's apparently been in the works for a while, but was confirmed to us yesterday."

James waited for one of them to say something, and after a long silence, Euphemia got there first, of course. "Why?" she asked, just as carefully, but watching her face, James thought she might have already have guessed.

"Because she's…how did they put it? Pretty and charming and young,a nd it's thought that she'll have an easier time of things, of…some of the work she needs to do if there's no boyfriend lurking in the background. And, before you ask, it did have to be her. I had the same question, believe me, but…there was no way around it being her."

"And she agreed," Euphemia said, after a long pause, more of a statement than a question. She didn't seem surprised.

"After the way it was put to her, I told her to agree. And I can't tell you anything about this—I shouldn't be telling you any of this at all—but do you know what she asked me this morning when I told her that none of what happened yesterday, or what would happen in the future, changed how I felt? First she asked me if I could handle it, what it would all really mean, to be with her while she did this. And then all she fucking asked was we'd explain it all to you guys, and after that, how we'd explain it to Sirius." James rubbed his face, waited for Euphemia to snap at him about language, but she didn't. "She didn't say anything about herself. That's who she worried about—me, and what I'd feel, and you guys and Sirius, and what you'd think."

For a long time, they sat in silence. Zimbabwe had taken a significant lead in the Quidditch match, James heard on the radio, by some two hundred points. He wondered if Frank was pleased or not—he'd thought they would win, James remembered, but he couldn't recall if Frank seemed like he wanted that to happen.

"So you're serious about her, then." Just as Euphemia had before, Fleamont threw it out as a statement, not a question. James wished he could read his face. "I thought you must be, but…this sounds very serious."

"I love her," James admitted, but without reluctance. Saying it aloud for the first time felt as natural as breathing. "I thought I probably did, and especially quite a lot once we got here, but yesterday…that really showed me. Because if I still feel like this knowing what the foreseeable future looks like with her, and I still would want to be with her and no one else, what else is that?"

Another silence fell.

"And she?" Euphemia asked. Her voice had changed and become slightly strained, as it hadn't even when she'd spoken after James' description of the Hogsmeade attack.

"Told me all this week that she's not going anywhere, and that she wants to be where I am. But after yesterday…she's worried if I can handle it. And we don't even really know what 'it' is. I mean, they're not sending her in to shag anyone, but…definitely to flirt, definitely to seem available." He'd never said 'shag' in front of his parents before, had never even alluded to any sort of knowledge of the word, and it would have made him more uncomfortable to make the clarification to Lily's role if he wasn't so tired. He felt a great wave of relief at the way Euphemia's face relaxed, glad he'd said something, when he realized how necessary the clarification had been.

Even still, he remembered Moody's expression when he'd let the question hang in the air: if it came down to it, would she?

Yeah, he still had energy enough to feel a bit sick.

"I'm sorry, Jamie. Really. Truly." Fleamont scratched his head. "But…these are hard times, and if it's as important as you say it is…that's quite a sacrifice on her part. And on yours, given how you feel."

James smiled humorlessly. "After everything was explained she said she had no choice. Gryffindor, you know?" He looked to Euphemia, who still clutched her teacup. Her hands had gone as white as her face. "So can you stop having a go at her with Sirius, Mum? Because it's bad enough coming from him. He doesn't know; none of the lads do. You two are the only people who know, and, again, you can't repeat anything I've said. I haven't told him about any of this—her fears about being muggleborn and what that would mean for any partner she would have, or what she's expected to do once we graduate. And all break he's just been dropping these—these little comments, things he thinks are jokes, or questioning to her face or mine how she feels about me. It's made things even harder than they already are. I can't take that from you too, Mum."

"I'm sorry." Euphemia set her teacup down abruptly, and stood up even more suddenly, so quickly that her forgotten book fell to the floor. She didn't seem to notice, and crossed the rug to sit next to James on the loveseat. She wrapped her arms around him, and, hugging her back, James noticed how frail she felt. She neared her mid-sixties, he knew, but he never really thought of her as old. Still, something in the wan expression on her face aged her—or perhaps just revealed her age. "I didn't know, and, before you say anything, I know I also shouldn't have assumed. And I did tell you that I like her. I meant that. Like I said, she's very vivacious—"

James knew, even as she spoke, that she'd had a complete change of heart.

xxx

James had just enough time in the shower to worry and second-guess if he'd said too much, even though he hadn't mentioned the Order, hadn't given any names or specifics, and trusted his parents completely, before he stepped back into his bedroom and found Sirius waiting in his desk chair.

"Hey, mate." Even from the simple greeting, James recognized that Sirius had none of his customary ease. He still had a bit of mud on the hem of his jeans, as if he'd come straight to James' room after getting home. "Can we talk?"

"Yeah." Throwing himself onto his bed, James realized he couldn't muster an ounce of anger towards Sirius anymore. It seemed to have gone all down the drain in the shower, along with all the bits of mud and twigs and grass from running in the forests outside Hogsmeade. "Sorry I blew up like that. I've not really been mad at you, it's just—"

"No, I've been a right bellend." Sirius dragged the desk chair closer to James' bed and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He sat, James recognized, much like Remus had the night before when he'd watched James in his bed, desperate to understand his turmoil. His eyes looked unnaturally bright, and, with a twinge of discomfort, James realized he looked nervous. He couldn't recall the last time Sirius had given off anywhere near that kind of energy. "Listen, Prongs—" Sirius began, but then hesitated. He licked his lips before he started again. "I felt bad the second you left, and I followed you pretty close. And…I heard you talking to your parents." The final sentence came out almost as one big word. "I didn't mean to, I swear, I just heard voices and started listening and, you know how that is, mate, how it's hard to stop once you start hearing something—"

James' stomach twisted, and then roiled queasily. He felt much as he had that morning, his head bent over the side of Remus' bed in the bucket, and it wouldn't have surprised him an ounce if he threw up. He no longer felt an ounce of the exhaustion that had made it so hard for him to climb the stairs.

Fuck.

"Fuck." He bolted upright and sat to face Sirius. "Padfoot, you can't—you weren't supposed to know, no one was, I shouldn't have even told them—"

"I know. I know, I heard you. I won't say anything. You can trust me." His words did nothing to abate the frantic pace of James' heart, or the cold sweat that had broken out across his bare back and palms. Sirius seemed to understand that, and also take no offense, because he offered a smile unlike one James had ever seen—reassuring, almost gentle, the way he must smile at Hestia sometimes, James thought later—and reached out to shake his shoulder. "I've never told anyone about Moony, have I? I haven't told anyone about the stuff you told me about Lily and Morton either, not even Hess. And from the way you sounded, this is more important than those things combined."

"You sent Snape under the Willow," James pointed out sharply, "Which blew Moony's cover. Did you forget that?"

Sirius had the decency to flinch, and it reassured James more than the way he smiled, because he clearly did feel bad about what he'd done. They'd never really spoken about the event again after that night, once James and Remus had gotten over their individual, considerable anger. James had even wondered as recently as Christmas break if Sirius would have felt any hit to his conscience if things had gone the way they very nearly did, and Snape had gotten to Remus before James had pulled him back into the tunnel under the Whomping Willow. At least it seemed like Sirius would have regretted that, and regretted that it even happened as it did. James wiped his sweaty palms on his pajama bottoms and tried to breathe as normally as possible.

"No. I haven't forgotten. Don't think I could." Sirius looked away. "I know it's not an excuse, but…that was two years ago, Prongs. I'd like to think I've become a little less reckless. Just a little."

"You have," James agreed cautiously. He assumed that Sirius' affection for Hestia—or fear of, or distraction by, or, most likely, all three—had something to do with that. "But, Padfoot, this is…" He didn't have the words, and didn't even know if they existed in the English language, to describe how he felt about it all, how important Sirius' silence was, and how guilty he felt that he'd said anything to his parents in the first place.

"I get it," Sirius said quietly, and James couldn't help but shoot him a look. "I mean, I know I don't get it, but…I get how you sounded. And I know you. If it sounds that serious, it is. I don't think I've heard you talk in that voice since the Snape incident, honestly. Scared me a bit."

"It's got me scared too."

"I'm not going to say anything. I promise. And I wouldn't go back on my word, not to you. You know that."

James swallowed. "Yeah. I know."

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

"I've been a right bellend," Sirius said again. "Prongs, look at me," he continued after a beat, when James didn't look up from where he'd buried his head in his hands, his elbows on his own knees. Sirius looked pale, and oddly pleading. The expression sat strangely on his face. "I'm sorry," he said, and James recognized Sirius' expression for what it was: remorse. He saw it so rarely on his friend's face that he'd forgotten what it looked like. "You were right, I have been having a go at Lily. I felt bad as soon as you left the Hog's Head. I feel worse now."

"What's your deal? You've said you like her."

"And I do, mate. I honestly do. I see all things your mum mentioned that she likes about her. I've said them to you before. She's smart and she's funny and she's stupidly good-looking. She's fun when she's not in a mood—although she's been in a fair few of those this year, you know she has. She's been a huge help to Moony, and she tries to help Wormtail as much as she can in courses, although he's kind of hopeless. She actually tries to talk to him too, and acts like she's interested in whatever he goes on about."

Despite himself, James nearly smiled. "I said the same thing to her about Wormtail. She swears she does actually care about what he says and wants to get to know him. Imagine my shock."

From the way he grined back, James could tell that Sirius took heart from the slip of a smile. "Color me shocked too. Truly." His face fell back into its somber expression. "I get why you like her, Prongs. I do. I get why you'd want to put the work in, even though she's been hard work. I guess I…I didn't think about why she's hard work. You know, like she said the other night, I just kind of assumed I knew. And it's been grinding on me since we got here—not all the time, mind, but every once in a while. I worried she was giving you false hope by coming home with us, because…it reads all over your face when you look at her. I didn't see that with her. I get why now. I'm sorry."

James nodded. "Thanks."

"Hess has said things sometimes that makes me think she wanted me to know, like if I'd say something about you and Lily and she doesn't like it. Like, remember what she said over Christmas break, after the Hogsmeade attack? Something about how Lily was tough because she had to be, because she had more to worry about than the rest of us."

Sirius had listened to Hestia so closely that he'd committed something like that to memory?

Shocking. Truly.

"She's the only one of us without at least one magical parent, isn't she?" Sirius went on. "Although who knows where Moony will land in all this shit—is there something in Voldemort's nonsense about blood purity when it comes to werewolves?"

"I've never thought about it," James admitted, and then felt instantly terrible that, so wrapped up in his own life, he hadn't considered Remus' safety, but Sirius continued.

"And sometime after Hess and I both realized that we knew about Morton and that whole situation, I made some comment sometime, I don't remember what, and she got kind of snippy with me. She said Lily said the year before, when she'd first told Hess about her and him, that she got her emotional needs met by Hess and Marlene, and got the physical where it was easiest, or where she didn't need the emotional too, or something like that. I said that that was stupid now, because you were clearly up to do both, and she said, real simply, 'She's scared.' I thought she meant, you know, scared that you'd fuck her over or something, which I thought was even stupider, because you're visibly crazy about her. Visibly. And Hess looked like she wanted to keep going when I said something to that effect, but then she shut down. You've seen her do it. Mind like a vault."

Three days earlier, those very real fears of Lily's, about her blood status, seemed like a difficult enough obstacle.

Merlin, he missed just dealing with those worries.

"Prongs, are we okay?"

"Yes," James said, and he watched as Sirius leaned back, relieved. "But you can't shoot off at the mouth about this, about any of it. No taking the piss out of her. No saying something about what you heard that you want to take back, because you won't be able to take it back, and Lily and I will both be fucked—but especially her. No telling Hestia, even. I can't stress to you enough how important this is."

"I know," Sirius said, and he looked like he meant it. He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable again. "Mate, I know I can't ask what she's meant to do. I know that. But…what the fuck, seriously."

James shrugged and spread his hands out. He hoped the gesture said exactly how he felt: what can you do?

"Makes sense why you both lost it yesterday, though. And…she really must care. Hess told me that Lily told her that as soon as she got to Alice and Frank's, she cried until she threw up. Which, did you know that was possible? Because—" Sirius froze suddenly, and a new dawning horror overtook his face. "Prongs," he began slowly, as if he regretted every word, "What I said yesterday—about why she looked nice—"

"You didn't know," James said quickly, because Sirius looked as James felt every time he thought about what Lily had to do: just entirely sick. "Frank and Alice asked her to look like she did—dress, hair, Alice even picked out her lipstick." It seemed safer, somehow to say Frank and Alice's names to Sirius than it would have to his parents, because he knew he couldn't deny their role to Sirius when he already knew who both he and Lily had been with the day before. "So we were both a little touchy about it, I think. Still, she didn't say anything after you said that…about Moody. Like I said, she's acted pretty unbothered by you, although she did ask if I'd been having a dig about her to you, and that was why you came at her in the hall about how she felt about me. She figured you must have heard it from me complaining about her."

"I'm a git."

"Bit, yeah." James sighed. "And I heard you and Moony talking last night. I wasn't passed out. I really wanted to pass out, so of course I couldn't. That's how I knew you and Mum had talked about Lily. I didn't want you to think Moony told me or something. He didn't."

"Good on him." Sirius made a face, another tinged with remorse. "And…sorry, if I said anything stupid. I probably did. Like you said, I don't think. I will now."

"Better late than never." James paused. "Your earthquake crack was pretty good, I'll admit," he said, and Sirius grinned, relieved and pleased.

"Thanks. I was kind of proud of that. You should have seen Moony turn purple. But… you're still keen, then? This…this whatever she's meant to do, it's not put you off?"

"No." James rubbed his eyes. They'd started to hurt again, or maybe he'd just noticed they'd never stopped since most of his anxiety—at least in regards to Sirius—had melted away, although his guilt had stayed, even increased. He hated how much better he felt, knowing that Sirius knew at least enough to understand, when he wasn't meant to say anything to anyone. "Frank asked me when we went out for drinks with him and Alice if I ever looked at her and thought, you know, this could be it. And I hadn't really thought about it like that, but as soon as he said it, I knew that I did. I mean, who knows. That's a long way out. But Frank says war speeds all that up, how you feel about someone, and I get it. I've been obsessed with her for how many years now? And then I've spent the past four months shitting myself over her, worrying about one thing after the next—Hogsmeade, St. Mungo's, the Death Eater attack at Hogwarts. And each time, I felt like I might go mad from it, how worried I was about her." He laughed weakly. "And now this. Seems like I can't catch a break, but nothing has put me off her. Nothing can."

He felt Sirius pat his shoulder. "Go to bed. You need it."

But of course once Sirius left, sleep eluded James for the third night in a row. He could only think about Lily at coffee with Greg sometime that week, and wonder and worry about what they would tell their friends. How was he meant to act when it finally came out that she had casually started seen another bloke—and not just any bloke, but her ex? How could he get around how everyone, minus Sirius, would expect him to act with total rage and jealousy?

A knock came some time later, although how much later, James wasn't sure, because time had seemed to lose all meaning. Later, he didn't who he expected to find on the other side of his door. He would have placed his money on Sirius returning, probably, or maybe even his mum or dad, who may have tiptoed up to check if he was alright, although they hadn't done that in years. He didn't expect it to be Lily, wrapped in her bathrobe with her lower lip between her teeth.

Really, Hestia may have surprised him less.

"Did I wake you?" she asked quietly, and looked relieved when he shook his head.

"What happened to Marlene's?" he asked, and if she was surprised over his use of her first name, she didn't look it.

She lifted a single shoulder in a shrug. "Long story. We came back early. I'll tell you later, if you want." He watched her shift her weight on bare feet. "I just need to know—did you think about what I said?"

"Obsessively." James started to wonder if it was all some kind of very vivid dream, or if he'd maybe finally broken from reality from the stress of it all. He still continued anyway, despite those very real possibilities. "Nothing has changed from what I said when you left. I don't care about any of it. I want you, whatever that looks like, and…we can figure the rest out together."

She searched his face like she had so many times before, and he wondered, as he had so many times before, what she looked for. But she must have found it, and his stomach flipped as she said with astounding simplicity, "I want that too. I have for a while."

Yeah, he very well might have dreamt her there.

He reached out to touch her hair, and it felt like it usually did under his hand, although he wondered exactly how much that meant. He'd had very vivid dreams about her before, after all.

But still...

"Yeah?" he asked, and he heard the skepticism in his voice, although at her or at his increased consideration that he might not have dreamt her there after all, he didn't know.

"Yeah." She smiled a little, and tipped her head into his hand a fraction of an inch, as if she hadn't made the move consciously. She waited for him to say something, and he could see that, but he couldn't summon a single word. Finally, she asked politely, "Can I come in?"

He didn't answer, just stepped back to let her in, and it dawned on him again—as she went around to the side of his bed where the covers still remained a bit tucked, clearly the side he didn't sleep on—just how utterly unreal the situation was. He'd had her at his house for nearly a week, and he hadn't managed to get her to even step foot inside his bedroom even during the day, because she'd cast him a suspicious look at the mere suggestion. But she suddenly acted almost at home, and hardly gave a glance around the dark room as she tugged back the covers. Watching her, he wondered what she would have thought if she'd known just how many nights, for how many years, he'd laid in that very bed thinking about her.

His breathing altogether stopped, and every muscle seemed to seize, when she removed her robe and he could just make out that she wore the Holyhead Harpies jersey he loved so much, and a pair of knickers that looked quite similar to the pair he still kept inside his dresser, only white rather than black. But she gave him the time, the five or ten seconds he needed to collect himself, when she turned away from him and went to sling her robe over the back of his desk chair, which Sirius had replaced before he'd left. By the time she came back, he'd already gotten in bed, faced towards her uncertainly. She followed suit with much more certainty, slid across the mattress to join him on his pillow, and kissed him.

He grabbed her immediately to drag her closer if he at all could, and she pulled herself against him with what felt like the same eagerness, her arms around his neck. She made a tiny, impatient noise when he pulled back slightly, just enough that he could look at her.

"Are we—"

"Yes." She made no move to kiss him again, but she shifted against him and slid her leg over his waist. That was worse—and also better—than if she had kissed him again, because he could feel the warmth of her pressed up against where he'd already grown hard just from the sight of her, and if he knew her knickers as he suspected, he knew how little there was to them.

"You don't know what I'm going to ask."

She switched gears and went to kiss up his neck towards his ear as she knew he liked. "I figure it's one of two things," she said, and he bit back the noise that threatened to escape his throat when her teeth traced his earlobe. "And the answer is yes. Are we about to finally shag? Yes, if you still want to, and it feels like you do. Are we together after this, at least as together as we can be, with everything that's changed? Yes, if that's still what you want, and you just said that it is." She pulled back suddenly, her mouth from his ear and her body from his, just a few inches, just enough that he missed the heat of her, the pressure of her leg, and the promise of her mouth quite badly. "How did you put it the other day? I'm—I'm in, okay? I'm in this. I want to be with you, whatever that looks like, until we can be officially, publically together. Is that enough?" She sounded cross for a moment and he understood, even though she never said so verbally, then or ever, that all the torment she'd put him through for months had finally gotten to her too. He wondered later if she might have started to tell him that, but she didn't get very far. "Can we talk later? After? I want to talk to you, I really do, but I've been lying awake in my room for over an hour, and all I could think about was getting in your bed—"

He wanted to tell her that it was enough, but words had stopped seeming very important the moment he heard her say that she was in. He also wasn't sure, all things considered, if he would have managed to form the right words just then anyway. He kissed her again and dragged her back to him, and he didn't take the time to even consider how hard he grabbed her until he felt his fingers dig into her hip in a way that almost hurt him, so he knew it must have her. Yet she didn't acknowledge it, not with a noise or a movement of any kind. She just all but melted into him, soft and supple, when he'd never felt more tense, more keyed up in his life, like every inch of his body was electrically alive and desperate for her.

She let him bring her closer still, pull her with him as he moved onto his back, and the way she adjusted herself automatically, disentangled her legs with his so that she could straddle him, felt like she absolutely belonged there, fitted against him perfectly. He pushed his hand under her jersey and stroked her breast in the way he knew that she liked most by then, with his thumb against her nipple and his fingers brushing lightly against the sensitive skin where the curve of her breast met her ribcage. She made a soft noise against his mouth, and then another more insistently when he pulled his hand away to reach towards his bedside table.

"Fucking hell, what?" she demanded, breathless and really, truly cross. She leaned her head down, her forehead against his chest, took a deep, unsteady breath. Her hair tickled his chest as she clearly forced herself to sound more reasonable. "I'm sorry. We can stop, if you want—"

"No, no, no, shut up with that and hand me my wand." He waited for her to take offense at how sharply he spoke, but she didn't, just sat up, leaned towards his nightstand, and pushed his wand into his fingers. It took a great deal of concentration—and significantly more than he had already expected, because he had to grab her halfway through when she shifted as if she meant to slide off of him—but he managed in the end and got his lamp to light dimly next to his bed. "I want to see you," he told her, dropping his wand carelessly to the floor as she lifted a hand to her eyes, clearly surprised by the sudden light, however weak. There might have been more he would have said, but his throat seemed to close at the sight of her, her hair a soft cloud around her head and her lips rather swollen, wearing a Quidditch jersey astride him, like a fantasy he'd conjured to life.

In fact, he had had similar fantasies, especially in recent days.

He wondered, again, if he might be dreaming.

But she smelled like her, he realized, and she felt real enough, her legs smooth and warm and impossibly soft. She looked real, too. He watched her bite her lip, just as she had when she'd come through the door, as he drew his hands up over her hips, intent on discovering if her knickers felt the same as the ones she'd given him. "Don't look at me like that," she said, gently scolding, her nails briefly sharp against his bare chest.

"Like what?" he managed to ask, although forming the words took considerably effort.

"Like—" Her cheeks had gone pink, which he knew that meant her collarbone must match, and he'd never wanted to check so badly in his life. "Like I'm miraculous or something."

James laughed, for louder and longer than he intended or thought he would, even as he tried to stop quickly so he could tell her he didn't laugh at her, but at himself. Yet she seemed to understand regardless, or to not quite care, because she waited, if impatiently, and finally rolled her eyes and bent to kiss his chest. He stopped laughing the moment her lips grazed his nipple, and he could feel her smile as his stomach swirled with heat. He ran his hands over her back, and she sat up.

"Are you done?" she asked, drumming her nails against his stomach just above his navel, and he found that he even liked that, that it seemed to send tiny shockwaves through his body.

Was there anything she could do that he wouldn't like?

At least in that moment, he very much doubted it.

"Yes. I'm sorry." It seemed safer to apologize than to antagonize her, even though a part of him loved how irritated she looked with him. His mind had been conditioned after so many years of annoying her to find that expression almost as erotic as the one that came over her when that expression broke and became frustrated in an entirely different way as he slipped a hand back to her breast. He did his best to sum up his thoughts when she'd first approached his bed. "It's just—do you know how many years—literal years—I've thought about you in this bed? And now you're here and—if that's not a miracle, I don't know what is."

She began to move against him, perhaps unconsciously at first, because she looked surprised at the intensity with which he moved both of his hands abruptly back to her hips to pull her against him harder, desperate for more friction, although he knew what he really wanted was to be inside her, and so badly it hurt. With a laugh of her own—hers softer and lower than his, the teasing laugh he loved—she warned, "It can't be as good, you know. I can't live up to that, to everything you've thought about."

But even as she spoke, even as he tried to come up with how he could argue with her, she pulled her jersey up over her head and tossed it to the floor to join his already-forgotten wand.

It knocked the wind out of him.

Although he'd find the words later (and would tell them to her over and over again for years), looking up at her then—her knickers slung low around her hips, her nipples hard and rouged as pink as he remembered from the previous fall, her face flushed—he knew she'd already surpassed anything he'd ever dreamed about before. Yet he thought she caught his thoughts by the way her expression softened just briefly before he couldn't handle the sight of her, and he pushed her over onto her back so he could roll himself on top of her and kiss her.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he promised himself that he'd take his time with her the next time and linger over all of the new parts of her he'd never seen before, had only felt under a layer of her clothes at best. He thought he may have told her something like that from the way that she laughed as he traveled from her mouth to her neck and down her wonderfully flushed collarbone, but he didn't know, because he didn't plan on saying it, and didn't hear himself if he did. Her laughter transformed when he reached her breasts, and he managed to pause there and halt his nearly manic desire to tug her knickers down, distracted enough by the soft sounds she made, gently in tandem with the pressure of her fingernails on his shoulders, when he used his lips, and then his tongue, and then his teeth, on every inch of her he could find. He came back to himself a bit—but also, somehow, further away—when she pushed a hand down the front of his pants.

He could swear that the earth stood still when she wrapped her hand around his cock.

"You can't," he told her, and he sounded choked, strangled to his own ears. He meant to pull her away, but the movements of his body didn't quite match up with the thoughts in his mind. Instead, he pushed into her hand and, a second later, helped her pull his pants down and off. For once, he would recognize later when he played the whole thing back in his mind, her movements as she did so seemed every bit as rushed and hurried as his own.

"Why?" she asked, and she still sounded remarkably collected. It infuriated him, at least the piece of him that could still recognize those sorts of thoughts. She laughed as he swore and grabbed her neck to kiss her, and he knew she knew why when she pulled back a moment later and used her free hand to hold him just away from her. She knew that he would have to watch her touch him, that he wouldn't be able not to, and he did for far longer than he planned, uttering cross swears he later couldn't recall. The sight of her hand sliding up and down his cock, the way she watched him, and the way her skin seemed to almost glow, completely exposed save for the tiny, frustrating slip of knickers between her legs, brought him dangerously close.

Fighting against every urge in his body, he reached down, stilled her hand, and brought it away from him. "I want to come inside you, and I'm not going to able to do that soon," he told her shortly, past the point of creating any answer to her question other than the truth. But she loved the truth, he could tell, because her breath caught and she smiled, slow and dangerous.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked, and she brought his hand down to rest low on her stomach, more on her knickers than skin. He could feel her heartbeat there, racing. "If you're worried about me, about if I'm not ready too—I absolutely am. What do you think I was doing in my room before I came over?"

She clearly anticipated that that would get him before it dawned on him what she meant, because she'd lifted her hips even before he managed to get both hands to her to wrench her knickers down. He slid his fingers over her and found her wet—wetter than she'd been in the prefects' bathroom, even right before she almost came; wetter than she'd been astride him a few nights before, before she'd pulled away—and he tried to remember quite what she liked when she'd guided him before, before she sighed. "Fucking hell, Potter," she almost snapped, her voice sharp. "I'm not asking you to be gentle, seriously—" The way she said his name, with the same frustration she had used for years, made him lose it. Later, she would admit that she thought that it might.

He pulled his body over hers, intent on watching her face as he pushed into her finally, after so many weeks and months and years of desire, but he had to lean down almost immediately so he could bury his face into the pillow underneath her head to muffle his voice. He knew he said something there, something loud and rough and coarse, but he didn't know what. He couldn't think of anything past the feel of her teeth on his shoulder and her nails in his shoulder blades, and how ridiculously, desperately good she felt as he gripped her hips, determined to thrust into her as far as he could go. She responded in kind and wrapped her legs around his waist, and he thought he felt one of her heels press into his backside before she shifted her hips, moved against him, and the second he withdrew and thrust into her again, the rest of the world vanished immediately.

Moments came to him in flashes. He heard her breath, soft against his ear, as she whispered what sounded like a quiet symphony of yeses, and then, sometime later on later on, heard her say, her voice tight, "Shh, we'll wake them!" He knew she meant Hestia and Sirius, who slept in rooms just across the hall, but he didn't know who she scolded—herself or him or, more likely, both of them. He knew he could have kept quieter as heard the sounds he made and words he spoke just as he did hers, although his brain didn't even seem to register his own either in speaking or in hearing.

She seemed to forget her own rebuke immediately as well. The world became real again—horribly, almost painfully real—when she stopped him suddenly and pulled away. "Hold on," she said sharply, because he knew he swore at her even though he didn't mean to. He counted the seconds, each one somehow longer than the last, as she reached for the pillow on her side of the bed and slid it underneath her arse. "You'll like it; the angle's better," she promised hurriedly, pulling him back into her, and he found that he did like it, both because he felt like he could push down into her further, and even more for the way she tightened around him and swore into his neck with no attempt to hide it, a single clear, ringing, "Fuck."

He knew he said something back, and knew he said more the closer he got to the edge. He fell back into calling her Evans, he knew, and she didn't seem to mind it, which she later confirmed, smiling a bit shyly. But she seemed anything but shy in the moment, especially when he could feel his balls tightening, knew he was nearly there and slowed, focused on bringing her with him. "Don't you fucking dare," she said with breathless fury, the same line she'd said to him so many times in anger over the years, but it had never sounded quite as it did then, and he knew he'd never hear it in the same way after that. She pulled his head above hers to look at him, and none too gently, but the way she ran a hand through the side of his hair felt almost tender. "I'm so close, you don't understand, if you stop—" He never knew what he liked best—the way she looked up at him, the frantic cadence to her voice, or the way she contracted around him as he thrust into her more resolutely than ever—but she came even as she spoke, and he caught just a brief flash of her face, brilliant and beautiful, before she pulled his face back into her neck, and he followed her seconds later.

The world stilled, more peaceful than he'd ever known it.

Afterwards, his brain came back to his body in pieces, back to the feel of her hands, gentle and soft as she stroked his back; to her mouth, less insistent, almost lazy, brushing against his ear; and to the sweet aftershocks that continued to course through his body as he lay still buried inside her. But after a few long, blessed moments he felt her reach to his chest, and he moved off her when she pressed upwards very slightly just once. He missed the warmth of her immediately, even though he realized, belatedly, how hot he'd become.

"Is there a loo in here, or do I need to go down the hall?" she asked, and she sounded almost a bit stilted, her voice so different from how it had sounded only moments before.

"It's that one," he answered, gesturing to the door nearer his desk.

Did he sound strange too? He almost thought he did.

She got up and disappeared inside. He watched the light sputter on under the closed door, saw it without really seeing it, without really seeing anything. When she came out a few minutes later with her hair back into a considerably neater state, she didn't say anything. After collecting her wand from the pocket of her robe, she returned to her side of the bed and conjured herself a glass of water.

Yeah, it was already her side of the bed. He'd decided.

Admiring the flat plane of her stomach and the soft, graceful curve of her backside, he told her quite seriously, "I feel like I just came hard enough to make up for how bad I've wanted to shag you for four years."

If something weird had come over the room—and had it, or if had he imagined it?—it broke as she laughed into her glass so hard she nearly choked. "Jesus Christ, can you not?" she asked. "What, we shag once and I've serve my purpose so it's okay to try to kill me?" Still laughing, she looked for a moment like she didn't know if she wanted to dump her water on him or offer it to him, but she did the latter, and he sat up to drink it. As he drank, he watched her spread out next to him on her stomach and snatch his pillow away with a smile. "Don't you dare try to hold me, I'm still too warm," she said when he settled in next to her, but she let him rest his head near hers, and even made a soft humming noise when he began to run his fingers absently across her back.

They'd have to talk about it all eventually, about everything that had happened over the past few days. He knew so much still had to be said, so much to be figured out, but he didn't care.

He couldn't remember ever feeling so tired, so worn out, or so stupidly happy.

"I love your freckles," he told her as he ran a finger up her spine. She had closed her eyes at some point, and they looked soft and unfocused, softer than he'd ever seen them, when she opened them and lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. "You have them on your shoulders, and a few down your back, and some just here." He pushed aside the heavy curtain of her hair to caress the nape of her neck. "I remember trying not to stare when you wore those red dress robes to Slughorn's Christmas party, because you had your hair up and I just…I got a bit lost looking at your freckles."

"You should have kissed me that night." Her eyes had gone softer still, and she pressed her lips together as if to hide a smile. "I was so furious you didn't, and even more furious because I hated that I had wanted you to so badly. I was in such a state that I accidentally woke Hestia up when I got back to our dorm."

James had to wonder—couldn't help it, couldn't keep it off his mind—if her conversation with Morton after she'd left the bathroom had had anything to do with her bad mood. He couldn't remember if he'd ever told her he'd overheard it, but then again, it suddenly didn't seem to matter so much. The specter of Morton, the shadow that always seemed to loom over them, felt small, smaller than ever before.

"You should have known I wanted to kiss you," he told her, and it felt unendingly strange, and unendingly incredible, to be able to lean over and kiss her bare shoulder as he said it. The unreality of the situation hit him again, and the absurdity of it all—that he could run his hand down her back and she would not only let him, but smile at him while he did it—fairly blew his mind. Would he ever get used to it? "I've wanted to kiss you basically every day since I figured out that that was something I wanted to do with girls. I told you, I just came for four years—"

"You did not want to shag me at thirteen!" she insisted, laughing again.

"Maybe not thirteen, but fourteen? Do you have any idea what I thought when I saw your legs after we came back to school from the summer? Which, fucking hell, your legs…" He watched her squirm a little under his gaze, and under the way he reached to stroke where the back of her thighs met her arse. "I'll write sonnets about your legs, if you'll let me."

She continued to laugh, but she reached down to grab his hand to pull it up again to her back, and he thought he caught a flicker of embarrassment, an almost bashful glow to her face, before she leaned over to kiss him. "Stop. Let me alone. Close your eyes; I'm going to. Let me know when you're ready again. I'll let you decide how to wake me."

Her watched her stretched, slow and almost cat-like.

Yes, e could absolutely become a cat person. It felt like the conversion had already started.

"Wait, just because I can't—could I get you again?" he asked, immediately intrigued. "Right now?"

Pushing her hair further away from her face, she looked as if she thought deeply about it, but he caught the way her eyes narrowed in jest. "Possibly. Probably. You're welcome to try."

Yeah, he loved this woman.

"Roll over," he told her, and felt no small measure of surprise when she listened and complied without a word of complaint, just a smile. "I feel like I should get a lay of the land first, you know, see what I'm working with. You have this spot on your sides I want to find. It's madeyou jump a little every time I've had my hands under your shirt—"

She did squirm, but not from his touch, he thought, which she confirmed with her words. "I'm not objecting to this—"

"That's excellent news."

"—but can you not look at me like that?"

He didn't have to ask what she meant a second time. He wished he could see it, though, the expression that so bothered her. "This is just the way I'm going to look at you from now on, so you should get used to it." He managed to find the spot along the right side of her ribcage with very little effort, having committed every inch of her to memory that he'd managed to discover back at Hogwarts, and shifted down to kiss it. The noise he got in return was somewhere between pleased and displeased, a combination of both, and he didn't know if it came at his words or his kiss. "You have surpassed everything I ever thought about you—and I can't stress enough, again, how often I've thought about you like this. Daily. For years. But everything about the way you look and feel and sound—"

"I get it," she assured him. He felt her hand on his cheek from where he bent to kiss around her navel, and when he looked up at her, he saw that her color had gone slightly pink again, her expression once against bashful. "But you're acting like a real melt."

"I don't care," he told her. He traced his fingertips across her hip bones lightly and found, to his delight, that it made her twist in a very promising way. "I'm happy. Let me have this."

She did.

xxx

James knew he slept at some point much later, because he came to when he felt Lily slip back into bed, although he hadn't noticed her leave. He realized groggily that he'd never shared a bed with another person before, but watching her stretch out beside him, again on her stomach, he thought he could get used to it easily.

When he touched her back, she turned her head to face him, and she already smiled even before she saw him. He pulled at her waist lightly, and although she rolled her eyes at his silent demand, she took the hint and slid over to curl up in his side, throwing first an arm over his chest and a leg across his waist. After brushing her hair away from his face, he reached to run his hand down her bare side, and he felt her nuzzle against his neck very lightly.

"Did you sleep?" he asked, watching as her hand began to play patterns across his chest.

"Some. You slept like the dead, though. I wore you out."

"You did," he agreed honestly, and he felt her laugh against his neck. He felt a bit ridiculous for it, because she apparently hadn't felt the same, even though she had done most of the work the second time. He found that she liked being on top entirely as much as he had expected, and that, to no surprise, he loved it too. Yet when he'd asked her afterwards if that was her favorite position, she'd answered, closing her eyes, "I have lots of favorites." Everything about the way she'd said it, and the way she'd smiled, as if she knew his expression without even looking at him, had made it a little hard for him to sleep at first. He'd wanted to ask her more, interested past exhaustion, but when she stayed still and silent, he did too, and the past couple of days caught up with him quickly.

"Ask me why Hestia and I came home," she prompted, and she leaned back to look at him.

Home.

He couldn't quite read the expression on her face. "Why did you come home?"

She rolled back onto her stomach, as she apparently preferred to lay, and she reached the few inches to stroke the side of his hair, as he often did to her. He found the mirroring of his own affection oddly comforting. "Well, my heart wasn't in most of the night anyway, once we left my parents' and got to Mar's. We stayed in, thank god, because Mar had talked about maybe wanting to go out, and I would have absolutely projectile vomited if she tried to make me drink after last night. But I got her the right amount of drink—which is three glasses of wine, no more than three and a half, tops—and then I told her that I liked you."

Staring at her, dumbfounded, he wondered for the billionth time if she'd ever cease to surprise him.

"She sort of looked like like that, yeah," she said with a slow, satisfied smile. She clearly relished knocking him off his feet. "I'll wait and let you digest it."

Rather than digesting, he savored it.

"I really didn't expect that," he told her. "You could have told me, I don't know, that she and Hestia had a threesome with that muggle tea shop bloke and I would be less shocked."

She laughed. "No, they definitely disagreed on him. Although, as far as types go, Mar and Hestia might go for the same guys, and Mar and I might, but Hestia and I rarely cross—I think we've only ever fancied maybe two or three of the same lads. So she and Mar are fairly likely to typically fancy the same bloke, just not him." James filed away that curious new piece of information to share with the lads, but let her continue. "But yeah, I told Mar. Hessie knew I meant to tell her, depending on her mood, and had her wand held under her leg the whole time, I think, just in case."

"So…you came home because you rowed?" How strange was that she had fought with her friend who acted so much like Sirius on the same day he fought with the man himself?

Incredibly, she shook her head. "No. She took it rather well." She bit back a smile, literally, as she surveyed his face. "She did look like that too, though. Just well and truly floored."

"What did she say?"

"Well, she looked floored, and she acted it for a while, but then she had to go on the defensive and say that she had known for months. God forbid she admit to not knowing something—so like Sirius there too. She claimed that you'd looked—direct quote—'too stupid and smug lately for something not to be going on,' and she knew we were secretly shagging. That sent me, because when I told her we weren't shagging, she looked even more shocked than before. And then she asked—" She broke off from laughter, pressed her face into the pillow, and visibly shook with it. "She asked so seriously and in the most Marlene way I've ever heard—another direct quote—'Then why the fuck would you like him?'"

When he started laughing, her laughter renewed, and he rolled back onto his side to stroke her back again. "I'm honestly kind of flattered that she thinks that would do it and get you to like me." Remind me to thank her for having confidence in one of my abilities." Still laughing, she turned to look at him just to roll her eyes, and he swept her hair across her shoulder, grinning. "So, what, you wanted to come see if she was right? Because remind me to really thank her, if so. I now absolutely like her better than Hestia. Hands down. It's not a contest."

"Neither of them would be happy about that reversal," she told him. "No, she responded pretty positively, mainly just dead curious—wanted to know when I started fancying you, why, how on earth you managed to change that into me actually liking you, how you hadn't fucked it up yet, if I'd gone to Madam Pomphrey to have my eyes and/or brain checked—"

"I would also like to know these things. So would the lads, I'm sure."

She placed a hand across his mouth. "I answered some of them, and she took my answers well. I was so pleased, and Hestia got to put her wand away. But in the midst of all of it, an owl came from Sirius, asking me to come home."

Fucking hell.

He was going to kill Sirius.

The second she saw her words had registered, she removed her hand.

"And you're just telling me now?" he asked sharply, and sighed when she shrugged. "Typical that you'd hold this back. You love this, don't you?"

There was something annoyingly attractive about the way she pushed the covers off herself with her feet and began to alternately swing her legs, bending up at the knee in a gentle kick, the motion lazy and a little hypnotic. From the smile she gave him he had to assume she knew it too, although that may have had more to do with his inability to keep his hand from sliding down the length of her back, over her bum, and down her leg before he pulled it back up. As he continued the caress repeatedly, he found that that motion quickly became hypnotic as well.

"I didn't think about it until now," she said, and the way she ducked her head a bit into the pillow for a moment looked a little shy, even if her body language gave off the exact opposite message. "I had a very specific goal when I came here, which made me soft afterwards, and then you started touching me again and I kind of…forgot. Which, fucking hell, is honestly pretty bad—yes, look smug, are you pleased?"

"Very," he assured her, mollified. Still, what kind of new power did she have, suddenly able to assuage annoyance with a single bashful look and a compliment at his sexual prowess?

He could never tell her.

"But—what did he say?" he asked quickly, because in the next moment, admiring her or not, he remembered the sheer number of things that Sirius knew and felt a hot stab of panic.

"Why, is there something you should have told me before now?" she asked pointedly, and he knew then that she knew at least some of it all. "Like, I don't know, that you told your parents a lot of shit that they didn't know, and some things they weren't supposed to know by express order, and Sirius overheard and he felt real fucking bad?"

She clearly waited for an answer, one that he didn't want to give. "Yes," he admitted finally, once he saw that she absolutely wouldn't continue until he said something. "In my defense—"

"—you're a right proper hypocrite who has no room to accuse me of keeping things from you?"

"—you were wearing a Quidditch jersey in my bed. You knew I wasn't going to—"

"I'm having you on," she told him, laughing, and then physically ducked the look he gave her. "I knew exactly what I meant to do when I came here, like I said, I had a goal—" She broke off and devolved into more laughter when he grabbed her and pulled her to him, and then rolled her with him, back atop him. He moved to kiss her, but she got there first and bent to his mouth so that her hair draped all around his head like a soft, perfumed blanket. "We're having a talk, so I'd appreciate if you'd let me go," she said when she pulled back. Still, she pushed her face into his neck and made no move herself, so he didn't. "I can't even get mad at you and say anything harsh right now, because you'd honestly like that better."

"I do like it," he confirmed, despite knowing he didn't need to. "I don't know about liking it better, but…I think it's pretty hardwired in my brain by this point to love it when you're angry, because that was the only way you'd talk to me for years."

"I heard you told your parents that was entirely your fault," she said, and he heard the smile in her voice, and then saw it on her face, when he sighed and let her go.

"I could do without you mentioning my parents when we're in bed, just for the future."

"I could do with you explaining to me what the fuckyou were thinking, telling your parents what we spoke about with Moody yesterday." The smile had dropped from her face rapidly, but she didn't look mad, just worried. She touched his face to hold him there to look at her after she resettled on her stomach. "And not just them, but for Sirius to overhear—listen, I know you love him and trust him, and I understand why, because he's devoted to you. But he's—well, he's not stupid, but he is dumb, and there is a difference. If Moody finds out—"

"Moody's going to have to tell us something to say to our friends, isn't he? Because they know that we've at least been seeing each other a little. What are they going to think when you start going out with Gimble?"

"I'm not—that's not my plan, to go outwith him. I will find a way to keep it from getting that far. Come June, Alice has agreed that she'll start inviting me to hang around with her and Frank and their friends again, and that should be enough for a while—a long while, if I play it right, and besides NEWTs, planning that is basically all I plan to do between now and then."

His shoulders unhinged just a little. "But you don't think word of that will spread? What if Marlene's mom sees you two together at the Ministry? You don't think she'll tell her? And, even if not, how do we convince our friends not to tell people that we're together?" For a second, he faltered. "I mean…that's what you'd consider us, right?"

She gave him that look then, that tender look that softened her worry, although it didn't quite chase it away. "That's what I'd like, yes. You know, I…" She broke off and pulled her hand from his cheek to run through her hair, and looked past him slightly towards the wall. It almost looked like she couldn't both look at him and say what she wanted to say, and when she started to talk and he heard her express her feelings with unease, but considerable more ease than he was used to, he saw he'd pegged it right. "I really did mean what I said about the reason I was done dating, and I still feel that way. That fear hasn't gone away. I don't think it ever will. It did help that those thoughts were easy to stick to before, since there was no one around me that I really wanted to be with, at least until you stopped being a pain in the arse and I realized…I could maybe like you. I just didn't want to make any decision until I was sure, really sure, that it was what we both really wanted, and that I wouldn't be endangering you, because you'd be fine as a pureblood if you stayed away from me. But since you're a stupid idiot who's endangering himself—" She paused and nearly smiled at that, although she still looked worried. Her eyes went back to his face, and her forehead puckered a little more from looking at him. "Things seemed to be pointing that way, with you talking about wanting to be an Auror and Dumbledore's invitation to the Order, because if it was your choice to endanger yourself—"

"It would have been my choice, just the same, to be with you without all that."

"But not because of me. It's different. You might not see it, but it is. Because—" She broke off again and thought. "Let's say something happened to me because of what I'm doing for the Order. How would that compare in the way you would feel to if something happened to me that directly resulted from us being together? Would you blame yourself more if it related to us?"

"Yes, but something would have happened to you all the same." When her eyes took on the steely glint he knew well, the one she got before she argued, he put his hand across her mouth as she had done to him moments before. "But I get it. I get what you're saying. I felt like shit tonight, because I realized how much I've pushed and pressured you to let go of feeling that way. I'm sorry for that. But…you know how you said that you didn't have a choice but to take the assignment Moody gave you? That's how I feel about you. I don't have a choice. I wouldn't choose differently if I did, but…how I feel about you has been out of my hands for a while."

She had removed his hand as he spoke, and shifted it to her cheek to rest there. "I really believe you mean that," she said after she'd watched him for a few moments, and she looked at him with such intensity that he almost felt uncomfortable. There was wonder in her voice. "And I understand, I think. I've tried very, very hard not to feel like this about you." He wanted to ask her exactly how exactly she classified how she felt, but found that the question frightened him even then. A certain amount of relief came over him—and, also, a certain amount of disappointment—when she moved on. "We should see if we can talk to Moody, and maybe to Dumbledore too, and figure out what we're meant to tell the people who already know about us. And we'll need to tell Sirius and Hestia not to say something to everyone else, because…they absolutely know by now. We've not been quiet."

He'd never cared about anything less.

"I'm sure Sirius expected it. He told Remus the other night that you had me worked up enough that all of Britain would know when we finally shagged. He said I'd cause a category ten earthquake from coming so hard."

She laughed so earnestly that he found the entire thing funny all over again. "He's such a poet," she said fondly, fonder than he'd ever heard her speak of him before. "What a way with words."

"He wasn't wrong."

"He wasn't. It felt a bit like that for me too. It was a very long time, well, coming." He knew his pleasure had to read all over his face at that, and she continue to laugh a little, almost at herself too. "Ask what he wrote when he owled me at Mar's. Ask me what he said to me when I got back. Because if you're grateful to anyone—"

If Sirius hadn't already been his best mate, hadn't occupied that position for years, James would have absolutely awarded him that top spot immediately.

"Tell me everything," he said, more of a command than a request, and she did.

Sirius had written that everything was fine and nothing was wrong, she explained, but that he'd like her to come home so he could apologize for some things, and because James was, in his words, 'a right soppy mess.' He'd kept the whole thing purposefully vague to picque her interest, she thought, although he couldn't seem to resist adding a postscript, which had read, in full: 'And will you please just shag him already? It's getting ridiculous and we're all miserable.'

What the fuck.

"And that worked?" James demanded. "After everything I've said and tried—all the months—all the torment—that worked?"

"It got my interest up," she said innocently, and she kissed him, ultimately because she'd seen the disbelief on his face turn to frustration at how impossibly easy it had apparently been for Sirius. To no surprise at all, he found that she could silence and distract him even easier with a kiss without clothes, and from the way she smiled at him after he tugged her off her stomach onto her side and flush against him, he thought she knew it too. "If I stay like this, will you actually listen while I tell you the rest?" she asked, draping an arm easily around his neck.

He hadn't exactly known he'd had a choice, which derailed things briefly.

"Yes, if I can touch you," he told her. He didn't wait for an answer before he pulled her leg up and across his waist so he could again trace the route he'd found he loved so much, from the back of her knee, up her leg and over her bum, and along the line of her back.

"Only like that?" There was a certain air of negotiation in her tone.

"For now." When she didn't appear to protest that, he pushed on. "So you came back. How much did he embarrass me by whatever he said?" The worry still weighed on his mind, despite the distraction of her closeness, and the smell and feel of her skin.

"Really, hardly at all." She lifted an eyebrow when she felt how much he physically relaxed, and looked as if she very much wanted to question why, but thought better of it. "We really didn't chat very long. Hestia and I came back and he hardly greeted her before he dragged me to my room and shut the door. He told me he'd overheard you talking to your parents about all kinds of things, basically going in on your mum for not liking me, which you really didn't have to do for me. That's not what I wanted. Honestly."

"I know. I wanted to."

The kiss Lily gave him, soft and sweet, felt like a reward. "You still didn't have to, but thank you all the same. Then he said…well, he said there was a lot he wanted to apologize for, and that he would later, but mainly that he felt bad that he'd never considered why I was so resistant to it, to me and you." She laughed a little, under her breath. "And I swear he went into talking points after that, like he'd planned out all the things he wanted to say in the time it took for the owl to get to Marlene's. I think he put more preparation into that than I've ever seen him give to any piece of schoolwork. He told me how much you liked me and always have, and how that hadn't changed at all after everything at the Ministry that he'd overheard tonight, which you'd confirmed to him afterwards. I pulled out of him exactly what it was he did know pretty easily—I think he would have told me about anything just then because he felt so badly and wanted me to 'fix you,' as he said more than once. He told me what he'd overheard nearly verbatim, so I knew you hadn't said a lot, and no specifics about the Order or anything. But…he was still pretty torn up about it, even though he didn't actually know much at all about what I'm meant to do. When I told him that I saw that, that he was upset, he said that you were way worse off than he was, so he knew it wasn't good, whatever was planned for me."

James nodded mutely. He really wanted to know if Sirius had repeated what he hadn't even admitted that he'd overheard, that James had told his parents that he loved her. But he couldn't think of any way he could find out without admitting it to her himself.

"We went back and forth for a while," she went on. "I told him some of the things I worried about—at least what I could without saying too much—and he tried to convince me why I shouldn't worry about whatever I said. Like I said, he put a lot of effort in. He's quite convincing, and that doesn't usually work on me."

"I've thought before that, between the two of you, you could probably talk anyone into or out of whatever you wanted," James told her, and she smiled. He waited for her to tell him what she had confided in Sirius, what those worries were that she could seemingly express without telling him any specifics of the Order. Were they different than the things she had told him, and had asked him to think about before she left?

She didn't tell him, of course.

She did, however, begin to run her nails across the back of his neck, where his hairline met his skin, as he'd always liked when they'd kissed. "Eventually he told me that you'd said that all of this at the Ministry yesterday had shown you how much you'd wanted to be with me, in his words, 'for the thousandth time.' And he got it out of me that that I'd thought the same, and had said as much to Alice immediately afterwards—and several times later. I got very drunk and very repetitive, but she listened so patiently, bless her. After that…I don't know." She passed a hand over her face. "He said some final parting things and left, and I planned to just go to sleep and talk to you in the morning. But I was just so bothered, and so I figured if I got myself off that I'd have a clearer head—"

Suddenly, whatever Sirius had told her no longer seemed quite so interesting.

He kissed her, and he knew that she had expected him to based on the way she laughed against his mouth. "Show me."

"Don't look like that. I already told you what I was doing before I came over here!"

"Yeah, but to hear you say it like that—" He knew he didn't have to finish, didn't have to tell her it was not only that, but everything about having her wrapped around him so intimately, having such unfettered access to kiss and touch her, and realizing that she'd apparently caught him up to everything he needed to know. "Show me," he repeated after he'd kissed her again, and for so long and so intensely that he recognized that his voice had gone strange. "I want to see how you do it so I know what you like."

"That's why?"

"Well, partly," he admitted so unashamedly that she laughed. "I want you to show me all the things you like. You said there's a lot. Seems a good place to start."

"I had planned on sleeping a little more," she told him, but she didn't bother to even try to tease him with feigned reluctance, and he relished the change of pace. She leaned onto her back and pulled him with her, her hands still in his hair. "I'd like to get up a decent time, and I was rather hoping you'd shower with me before breakfast."

Yeah, he absolutely loved this woman.

The mere suggestion would have been enough to get him excited during a normal time, even if they sat fully clothed and in public (or maybe, the thought occurred to him, maybe especially then). But naked and nearly on top of her, the way she looked up at him with her eyes blazing made him a bit frantic. "We can do that," he promised, swallowing thickly, his heart in his ears. "But first—show me."

"When will you show me what you like?" she asked, and she smiled at the noise he didn't intend to make, something frustrated and needy, as he took her hand from his hair and put it on her stomach.

"I like watching you come." He thought she probably laughed at the ringing honesty and desperation in his voice. "I don't care about anything else right now. There's nothing I can imagine that I wouldn't like with you. I'll come up with something I want later if it's important to you."

She seemed to think that through, although he couldn't help but feel like she did so to torment him a little longer. "Yeah, alright," she agreed almost casually, although that gave him absolutely no relief. She'd started to play little patterns with her fingers across her stomach the way she had on his chest, and the sight of that alone, he thought, the promise in her movements, was ridiculously erotic. "I'll tell you when I'm ready, and then I'd like you to be behind me, I think." She seemed satisfied when he looked at her, and he knew his desire and sheer excitement had to show all over his face. "It's one of my favorites."

He thought he might have told her he loved her at some point later, his hands on her hips and his face pressed into the back of her neck, because he absolutely thought it.

But he couldn't be sure, and she didn't mention it.