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]

23. Chapter 23

A/N: Friends. I'm in the process of writing the final chapter.

I expected to get here. I planned to get here, because I started this with every intention to finish it. But it's still really bizarre to write that sentence, and then even weirder to read it back. This fic will end with chapter twenty-six, so we're three chapters—and therefore three weeks—away. That last author's note is going to be so fucking soppy. I'm already soppy.

There were so many instances from last chapter's reviews that I wish I could respond more fully! Freckles, what is this about a support group? Two questions: 1. Is this a thing? 2. If so, can I join? Guest (two of you!), who said they reread/come back to read comments, this easily made my week. I love seeing you all respond/react to each other. Min, Reese T, Guests, many others: Love the thoughtful discussion about Lily and her dynamic with James. Compliments or critiques, I'm here for it. Writing Lily is difficult, because we only see her through James' eyes, which means he views her in a soppy, frustrated, annoyed, lovestruck, etc. etc. way depending on the moment. The fact that readers feel those same ways towards her makes me happy even if she drives you absolutely mad. James is easy to love; Lily is difficult. We see James' inner thoughts, so we know his emotions and intentions and feelings and all the rest of it, as well as his perspective on Lily, which doesn't make any of the things he thinks about her necessarily true. He's an unreliable narrator for sure. But considering James is still figuring Lily out—especially figuring her out as a sort-of-but-not-really girlfriend—I know that makes it harder for the reader to figure her out. I appreciate the spirited discussion around her, because it makes me think more about her characterization. Literally everyone, your comments on the smut made me laugh and feel weirdly proud. Confession: this fic is the first time I've tried my hand at writing smut. I'm glad to know it's going well, even when a scene turns into literally almost 6k words of smut, like it does in this chapter. What is wrong with me. That bumped this into the longest chapter yet. Literally everyone again, as always I love seeing questions or theories or comments about where you this is going, because, again, you all are great at seeing the natural progression of the story. I love seeing questions asked that I know I'll answer—and I love seeing questions asked that I haven't answered, because it really gets me thinking.

A brief reading note: the end of this chapter flashes forward a little bit. You'll see what I mean when you get there. It flashes forward in terms of a theme, but the next chapter will pick back up where the main story of this chapter ends. I hope that's evident, but as I've edited and reworked this, I've started to question how clear that is. Basically, we're not to the end of the term yet!

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Oh yeah, they already know. You're fucked, mate."

Really, Sirius sounded a bit too pleased about the situation.

James had located Lily across the common room the moment he'd come through the portrait hole. She sat at a table near the fire, hair pushed to one side of her neck as she scribbled on a piece of parchment—the Transfiguration essay McGonagall had assigned that day, he assumed. McGonagall had hardly seemed to care that she'd assigned a massive one over break only four weeks earlier.

He couldn't see much of Lily's face at first, but he knew exactly how Sirius had recognized her anger. In between each word she wrote, she stabbed her quill at the parchment as if it had greatly offended her.

The parchment hadn't offended her. James had, of course.

The tip of her quill snapped, and something about the way Lily threw it down in disgust told James that it wasn't the first time.

When she looked up and saw the four Marauders across the common room, each sporting mussed hair, torn robes, slow-forming bruises and some dried blood, the irritation on her face increased tenfold.

"This is the day she kills you," Remus said confidently. He clapped James on the back, and James tried not to wince. He'd fallen spectacularly hard and still kind of ached. "We all knew this day would come. Wormtail, the date?"

"April 29th. We should note the time too, shouldn't we? For the obituary? It's 7:42 on the dot, in case."

"April's not a bad time to kick the bucket," Sirius told James. He looked as if he tried very hard to conceal a grin, which didn't work, but he succeeded more in keeping his voice quiet so only the other three could hear him. "Had a good Easter, didn't you? And after? At least you got to shag her plenty before she killed you. Imagine if this were fifth or sixth year and she offed you when she'd never gotten you off. That'd just be sad."

Sirius always had a strange, unique perspective, but in that case, he wasn't really wrong.

Remus tried to hide his own grin. "Music. Facing. Let's go."

"You're going to get the least of it," James said. It rankled. "She'd never go in on you." He paused. "Or Wormtail. She'll yell at Padfoot if he shoots his mouth off, but mostly at me. Watch."

She surprised him, of course.

Marlene watched them approach with a particularly vicious smile. She looked pleased, but even knowing that, her smile made James uncomfortable. He'd seen a similar smile a little too often right before she'd hexed him, and it made his hand itch for his wand even though she hadn't cast a single spell at him since the end of sixth year.

Hestia watched them approach with great curiosity, although James could hardly miss the way she scanned Sirius in particular, as if to assure herself that he was okay. Once she saw that he looked overall fine and in one piece, she relaxed a little.

Lily didn't do either of those things.

She repaired her quill deftly, lowered her head, and continued to write. She looked as pretty as ever, completely placid, but James had to reckon that lionesses waiting to strike often looked relatively harmless until they honed in on the kill.

"Brill," Marlene told them the second they reached within hearing distance. She looked…proud of them, an expression James had had trouble identifying at first. He'd never seen it directed anywhere near his way. "Absolutely brill. They're saying around here that a whole section of that corridor is blocked off now because the floor collapsed in."

"That's true." Sirius clearly liked the way Hestia looked up at him in concern. He slung an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him. "They'll sort it by tomorrow. Might have already, honestly. It'll only take Flitwick a second."

"I'm glad you're okay," Hestia told Sirius quietly, so much so that James doubted anyone else heard her. He felt uncomfortable hearing her himself, because she spoke the four simple words with such tender care that he felt like he overheard something very intimate.

The way he saw it, the situation shook out as such:

Marlene was absurdly proud of them in a way he had never thought possible. Although her smile still looked more than a little predatory, he couldn't help but smile back. She had that way about her.

Hestia was glad they were okay—or that Sirius was okay, at least. She'd given the other three a careful look, but her attentions clearly laid with Sirius.

Lily was…on another planet, apparently, because she ignored the whole scene entirely. She somehow managed to concentrate enough to write, but James noticed that her fingers had turned white from her tight grip on her quill.

Sirius noticed too. "Lily, love," he began with an ease James wished he possessed, "Do you want to yell at us now or later? I want to make sure I'm scheduling the rest of my evening correctly. I have time now or right before bed, but I have chess plans with Pete in the middle. If you can work around that, I'd appreciate it."

Neither his levity or his winsome tone had any effect on her. "What was your punishment?" she asked. She didn't lift her eyes off her essay.

"A month of detention," Remus told her. "They got the same. McGonagall said we're to serve separately from them, which was wise." He had the audacity to look sheepish when James felt anything but, too keyed up and full of adrenaline that had only increased around Lily. She might look mad, and she had that right, but he didn't regret a single thing, and it left him prepared for battle.

"That will make your last Quidditch practices difficult." It wasn't a question.

James tried his hand at answering. "Yes."

Then he ran out of things to say.

She pushed a hand through her hair, dragging it over her shoulder again, and close up, James could locate the exact spot beneath her ear that he had bruised so badly with his mouth four days earlier that it had taken her more than one healing spell to fix it. She hadn't seemed to mind.

She glanced up at the wrong time, just as he thought about the noise she would make if he kissed her there, and he had to assume she saw his thoughts all over his face. "That's the real punishment then," she said. She sounded all prim and proper Head Girl, not like the girl who had pulled him into a broom closet during his patrolling time so he could give her that bruise.

"And whatever you're doling out," Sirius said cheerfully. He pretended not to notice the look James shot him, and sat down on the couch to pull Hestia into his lap. He looked at Lily like she would provide him the height of entertainment, and he couldn't wait. "Go on, then."

His face changed immediately at her next words.

"You're all better than this," she said, chucking her quill down, and she leaned back in her chair as if defeated, which looked strange on her. "I know you lot have your little skirmishes in the halls with them all the time. Word gets around. I don't care. Everyone does that with them—I've gotten after them probably a dozen times so far this year. But no one heard about it. That's all I'm asking—a little discretion, and not the destruction of a corridor in a four-on-five duel with a bunch of Slytherin wankers who aren't worth your time. That goes double for you, James. You're Head Boy. You can't do stuff like that anymore, not so publicly, even though I understand the impulse all too well and I'm sure they deserved it. They always do."

Later, he would wonder how much of his behavior had upset her for the way he acted in that duel, or the way it reminded him of the way he'd bullied people in the past. He would end up assuming the latter, although he never would ask her, too afraid of her response.

He nodded slowly, unsure of any other plan of action. "McGonagall said about the same, just without the wanker part," he told her. He never would have added that even though McGonagall had turned a truly magnificent shade of scarlet with rage, hearing the words from Lily's mouth struck him harder. He found himself moving towards her, and he took up the empty seat at her side. At Lily's other side, Marlene gave him a look—eyebrows high, mouth quirked, head slightly tilted—that made him wonder if perhaps he shouldn't have made the move. "It really was deserved."

The second it left his mouth, he wished he hadn't said it, and he felt his heart sink down in his chest.

She laughed humorlessly under her breath. "Go ahead. Tell me."

A deafening silence followed.

Absurdly, Peter spoke up first.

"It doesn't really matter," he told her. He sounded just as James thought he should—eager, apologetic, honest—and the way he smiled at Lily had her smiling back in the gentle way she sometimes looked at her cat, Oliver. "We had a reason and I promise it was a good one, but it doesn't matter. Remus would swear it too, because I know you won't believe Sirius or James." He paused and glanced to James at that, and James hoped his expression conveyed his gratitude, because if anyone could soften Lily, it had to be Peter. The way Peter went slightly pink, as he always did when exceptionally pleased, let James know he got the message across, and Peter grinned. "Sorry she won't believe you, mate. Must be tough."

"It is," James assured him. Before he could go on, Marlene interjected, as she so often did.

"Enough with the secrecy. We'll find out eventually anyway. You know how word travels." She crossed her arms, her face set. James found himself almost convinced that he wanted to listen to her, even though he knew he really didn't. She had that way about her too.

"What could be that bad?" Hestia asked. Worry puckered her forehead. "Sirius, what—"

Sirius would later insist ad nauseam that he had cracked not because of Hestia in the least, but truly because of the accuracy of Marlene's words. James never knew whether to believe him or not. He certainly wanted to, because Sirius sounded so convincing, but he almost always did.

"It wasn't going to be a big thing," Sirius started, all prior humor gone, and Remus heaved a heavy sigh. He drew up a chair next to sit next to James and rubbed his temple. A long, thin bruise had started to form that. It almost looked as if he had fallen on a wand. Maybe he had. "Don't look at me like that, Remus," Sirius added quickly, because apparently he also noticed the shift in Remus' mood. "Look, Marlene's not often right, but she is here. They'll hear eventually—"

"Fuck off," Marlene interjected, clearly more out of routine than anything else.

Sirius went on unabashed. "—and then what?" He dragged a hand through his hair, and James had to resist the urge to do the same. He also had to resist the urge to look at Lily, because he didn't know what he'd see in her face and wasn't sure he wanted to find out. But Sirius looked right at her and only her. "We ran into those gits by accident—you know, Snivellus and Nott and Mulciber and Avery and Travers. Worthless sacks of shit." He couldn't seem to stop himself there. "I wanted to mess with them, because they've looked too happy of late and I don't like it, but I figured we'd get them later. You're right, four-on-five duel in a busy corridor is a dumb idea."

But they'd done it.

Sirius fell silent for a long while, and James watched him process what he wanted to say next. Sirius moved Hestia out of his lap to sit beside him, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. James could almost hear him thinking. "They said something about you," Sirius finally said to Lily, and only with the greatest reluctance.

Oddly, Lily started to laugh.

"They said something about me?" she repeated, and when James looked at her, he found she stared at him. "That's your good reason? They say things about me all the time. They say things to me all the time. That's nothing."

Sirius looked to James for help, and James wanted to give it to him, truly. But he just couldn't.

Sirius rubbed his face and sighed with resignation. "It wasn't nothing. Somebody threw out some stupid comment when they saw us, I don't even know who. We threw some back. Like I said, I wanted to fight them a little, but I didn't plan on it. We just kind of traded insults, like we do sometimes. But eventually, Nott said something to James like…"

"Just say it," Lily said when he faltered. She held her chin stubbornly set. "Say mudblood, say slag, whatever it is. Again, it's not something they haven't said to me before. I'm sure it's similar to what he'd been saying for years. He's hardly creative enough to come up with something new."

Suddenly, James had the impression that Lily refused to look at him, just as he had refused to look at her moments earlier. Maybe she worried what she'd see there if she looked at him, because he knew it probably read all over his face, the silent accusation of why didn't you tell me?

He hadn't heard a thing about Nott from her.

"Nott said something to James about how he heard that maybe he'd finally bagged you." Sirius wore the face of someone who had just swallowed something bitter. "Told him congrats and all that, said he understood and all why James…was after you." The last three words came out almost delicately, clearly Sirius' attempts to edit the harsh reality of the words, but then dropped the pretense entirely. "He went on a while about how fucking a mudblood is fine, but James shouldn't mess up his family line with dirty blood. He should use you and lose you, because that was the function of mudblood women. We'd all kind of started shouting at that point, but he added something about how he saw no reason for James not to give you want you wanted, because you'd been begging for it for years, and he'd always had half a mind to give it to you himself—and then I think Pete shot first."

James could still hear Nott's laughter and see the smirk on his face when he'd thrown out the last bit. It was clearly his parting shot, the piece he thought would rile James up the most, and he'd saved it for last, savoring it like a truly fantastic dessert after a decent meal. James hated hearing it, hated Nott's stupid face, and hated how, based on the way Nott's friends had laughed, they all clearly knew exactly the way to get under his skin.

The way under his skin sat beside him, looking not at all offended, but clearly stunned. She stared at Peter.

"Did you really?" she asked.

Peter had turned positively red, but he looked proud of himself. The expression suited him, James thought, although he didn't see it often. "I wasn't thinking. It just kind of…happened."

James had felt as stunned as she looked when he had seen a hex thrown from beside him that had flown right into Nott's face. It had tossed Nott backwards a good foot or so, and sent him knocking over Avery and Travers.

Then chaos had descended.

James hadn't minded. He'd enjoyed it, really, because he had no idea what he would have done with his anger if he had just walked away from them after Nott's words. At least he had a place to channel it.

Lily stood suddenly. She closed the short distance to Peter's chair, sat on the armrest, and reached down to hug him. James caught a glimpse of his face—pleased, embarrassed, even prouder—before it disappeared into the cloud of Lily's hair. He didn't seem to know what to do with his arms, and reached up to pat her back like he might clapped one of the other Marauders there, only gentler.

Who could blame him for not knowing what to do? James tried to imagine her randomly hugging him like that early in the fall term when they'd balanced just on the edge of brief friendship as Head Boy and Girl. After all, she and Peter had only just formed a friendship of their own, something still in its infancy.

Fucking hell, James would have lost it if she'd tried to hug him then.

She kissed Peter's cheek before she pulled back, and he somehow managed to turn redder. "It's not like I don't think you're capable of doing something like that," she told him when she went back to her seat. "Obviously you are. You've hung out with these idiots—sorry, these idiots and Remus—for almost seven years. Putting up with them alone takes nerve, besides all the other nonsense you all have done. I'm just…I'm surprised, because we haven't been friends long. You're very sweet to care about something like that."

At that moment, James decided later, Lily won Peter over completely.

Still, pleased for the boost to Peter's ego or not, he could hardly let it stand.

"You would have yelled at me if I'd started it," he pointed out, and she shrugged.

"Maybe, but I trust Peter not to fly off the handle all the time. He's rational, so he wouldn't always react in that manner, especially now that I'm asking him not to—which, for the record, I'm asking you all to do from here on out. Walk away or wait. But I don't trust you to ever do that no matter what I say, even though you should. I understand why you wouldn't want to walk away—honestly, I do—but it's not smart just the same." She hadn't leaned back in her chair, but sat on the very edge, her legs tense and her face pensive. "So where'd they go? I assume McGonagall hauled you lot away."

"Maybe the hospital wing, from the look of it." Having delivered the worst of the news, and seeing Lily no worse for the wear, Sirius leaned back as if he could relax. He smiled smugly. "They got the worst of it. I don't know what happened to the floor, but it just broke open under where they stood. I don't even really remember what all I cast, honestly—"

Marlene's face had gone sharp, somehow pointed, and her eyes looked darker than James had ever seen them. "Tonight, then?" she asked Lily. "You know you need to head this off before they gloat too much and try to figure out how to get to you even more."

Lily in her seat to check the timepiece on James' wrist. She touched him gently enough, much as she usually would have if he hadn't come traipsing in after a duel that had clearly infuriated her.

Maybe the worst had passed.

"Just past eight," Hestia said before Lily could speak. She'd edged forward on the couch, out from under Sirius' arm and on the edge of her seat like Lily. "It's eight o'clock on a Thursday. Where are they usually at?"

Lily's answer came immediately. "Library. They'll stay until curfew."

"Lily." She turned to look at Remus, who stared at her as if she'd grown a third eye. "Are you stalking the Slytherins?"

"We're stalking the Slytherins," Marlene corrected, and she looked rather proud. "Although I don't know if I'd qualify it as stalking. What makes something stalking, exactly?"

"If you have to ask, you're probably doing it." Still, Sirius didn't look displeased at the notion. In fact, he'd started to grin. "Wait, Hess, are you in on this? Is this something you lot do? Why was I never informed? Do you understand the potential of this kind of knowledge, and what we could do to them if we knew where they were all the time?"

"Why are you stalking the Slytherins?" Remus looked like he shared none of Sirius' glee. Instead, he'd gone slightly grey, worse by far than he'd looked after the duel.

Lily didn't answer for a while, and James knew Marlene and Hestia waited on her before saying anything, because they watched her too. Whatever part they played, it clearly came secondary to her.

"It's important to know where your enemies are, isn't it?" She reached up to plait her hair, caught herself in the nervous habit, and threaded her fingers together instead. She spoke very matter-of-factly, as she might answer a question in class. "I started doing it fourth year with the worst of them, because…there are Slytherin blokes you just don't want to end up alone with in a dark corridor at night, not if you can help it. Honestly, those years were worse. The seventh years now are nothing comparatively, and I know how to handle it now. Avery will throw a curse at me once in a while, but he's never hit me. Either his heart isn't in it or he has shit aim or both. Mulciber has taken to doing the same this year, probably because he thinks I mouthed off at Slughorn's dinner last term. His aim is better, but his execution is so obvious that he's easy to overtake. Travers just watches, but he clearly likes it. Still, he's never said or done a thing to me. Nott really only says things, which got to me more when he started it, but, again, he's not as bad as some of the Slytherins from years ago. It almost doesn't bother me now, and he's never initiated a duel with me, not once. I usually end up throwing something at him, and he'll return then, but he never starts it. I think he kind of likes watching me lose it, but I can't help but do it anyway. He's foul."

"And Snape watches too. He never tells them to so much as leave off a little." Hestia sounded more furious than James had ever heard her, a sort of repressed, quiet fury that clearly sat dormant in her chest, waiting to appear at the slightest provocation. "He always did, even when you were friends."

"They never do or say the worst things when he's around," Lily said quietly. She sounded almost as if she defended him even then, and caught herself at it in a way he could visibly recognize, because a brief look of disgust flashed across her face before she closed her eyes and replaced it with a much more neutral expression. "But you're right," she conceded when she opened her eyes. The pain in her voice just barely registered under the surface. "He just watches."

Snape hadn't just watched that evening after Peter had fired the first hex. He'd hurled a curse at James immediately, his face twisted into an enraged sneer, but James had expected it. How many times had they dueled? He knew Snape's habits almost as well as Sirius', and they'd partnered in Defense Against the Dark Arts for seven years.

Sirius had hit Snape with a trip jinx at the same time James had deflected his curse, which had flown into the wall with enough force that the stone seemed to vibrate. Sirius took to laughing the second he watched Snape collide with the floor.

It usually happened that way. Snape fired at James, James deflected, Sirius fired at Snape and hit. Then they laughed.

Or James fired at Snape, Snape deflected, and Sirius hit him immediately after. Then they laughed.

It worked out well, really. They almost always laughed.

"This is news." James chose his words carefully. His body still pumped with too much anger that had turned into adrenaline and then back into anger, and he could feel irritation towards her creep in and begin to fester in a way it might not have under normal circumstances. "Were you going to tell me?"

It had started to feel as if the had tables turned. Lily no longer looked mad at him, but he could very easily see himself getting mad at her.

"I didn't think to," she said, turning to look at him. He could see she meant it, and the expression on her face—slightly apologetic, slightly self-righteous, slightly unsure—made him believe her. Still, he couldn't help but sigh. "I mean it," she added firmly. "I really didn't think about it. You've never told me when you've fought with them either, remember, and I know you do. It's the same thing, and it's so routine now that it hardly even factors into my day when it happens. I just like to know where they are so I can avoid them or find them if needed. They're very into their routine, which helps. And…I let the younger muggleborn girls know their routines as well. An older girl did the same for me, because I got it worst around fourth and fifth year. That's held constant—older Slytherins always go after younger students. They leave off a little when you can handle yourself better and can fight back, but those years where you can't because you don't know enough…that's when it's worst. I want the younger girls to be able to avoid them if they want. That's all I wanted then."

Remus spoke before James could. "It's not the same," he said, which sent a fresh shot of vindication into James' chest that slipped past his anger. He hoped he didn't look smug. "What you're describing isn't the same as what we do, not at all."

"Is it just you?" Sirius asked. His good mood from the duel—busted with a month's detention or not—had vanished in recounting the story to Lily, and then transformed into something darker. "Hess, do they—" He didn't finish. James knew exactly how he felt.

"Not really," Hestia said, which said almost exactly nothing. She reached out and took Sirius' hand in her own, a silent comfort. "We all kind of end up in the line of fire, but they save most of it for Lily. Mar and I are purebloods, so we're traitors, but apparently that's not as bad."

"Are we going?" Marlene asked Lily. She looked about done with the conversation, and something about the way she looked at Lily reminded James of how Sirius often looked to him for permission—although not always, especially when he truly should.

It clicked, as it should have much earlier.

"Are you about to go find them?" James asked incredulously. Lily met his eyes, and he saw the answer there. "You are, aren't you? You're unbelievable. You get after me for this—"

"I told you—all I'm asking for is discretion. We'll do it quietly if they're there. It won't cause some big scene. It never does." She began to plait her hair then, as if she really couldn't help herself. "Who was the most hurt? Was anyone seriously bad off? Was Nott?"

"Not terribly." Peter looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or not. "You're not serious, are you?"

Lily didn't answer directly, although her words revealed enough. "He'll be in the library then. We have Potions tomorrow and I doubt most of them have finished their essays. Slughorn will already be mad about the duel, so he won't let them off if they don't turn something in. They'll be there." James had seen the look on her face many times before—jaw stubbornly set, eyes focused, mouth firm. Nothing he could say would talk her out of her decision.

He kind of loved it, in a way.

It was kind of hot.

It was also very annoying.

"Look, I can't let you—" James began, but he stopped. He could imagine her jumping all over that, the idea that he had some sort of power to control her when he very much didn't.

That was kind of hot too.

Fuck, he was gone. Done for. Completely.

But she didn't go in on him for his slip up. Instead, she smiled a little, although humorlessly. "They're going to ramp this up the second they think they've gotten to you or you're fighting my battles for me." She set a hand on his arm, fingers light against his wrist. She touched his friends more freely and openly than that, but he loved every touch from her all the same. Her eyes looked painfully bright, almost too green. "I can't let them think I need you all to protect me, and that's how they'll take this. And, really, you can't let all this bother you so much. This is just my reality, and it's going to continue to be my reality. You can't stop them, and things aren't going to get better after June, only worse. You can't go around fighting anyone who has called me a mudblood, or you wouldn't have time for anything else. All of this is just the way it is, and it's at a level I can manage, but I don't have the time or energy for them to get worse, and they will if I don't head this off." She stood. "I have NEWTs to study for, for Christ's sake. If I head it off now, I'll hear less about it from Nott for the next six weeks, about how the weak mudblood slag used her filthy cunt to get her boyfriend to try to teach them a lesson, and what kind of lesson he'd like to teach her in turn."

Marlene and Hestia didn't look the least bit phased by her words, although James recognized near identical stunned looks across his friends' faces. He assumed he looked the same.

"Hessie, I kind of think you should stay here," Marlene said, standing as well, and Hestia followed suit. For a second, James assumed that Marlene saw what he always did in Hestia—a sweet smile, a constant blush, a kind disposition—and wondered if she couldn't handle it. "I don't know if I trust you out there," Marlene added, and James really and truly saw the anger in Hestia he'd only encountered over break when talking about Lily's sister—and that anger paled in comparison to how she looked before him.

She looked furious.

Her face had gone pale, but her cheeks somehow went pinker than usual. She didn't clench her fists or grit her teeth or anything James knew he sometimes did when mad, but she stood as if every muscle in her body had tightened, drawn together so forcefully that they might snap at any moment. She might snap at any moment.

"I'm not fucking staying here," she told Marlene, her voice quiet but somehow more effective than if she'd yelled. Sirius looked up at her with his mouth slightly open, as if he didn't quite know what to make of her. She stared at Lily with such a fierce, intense loyalty that James suddenly agreed with Marlene that Hestia should stay behind.

He agreed with Marlene, who never held back and always seemed ready for a fight, the more violent or vitriol the better.

What did that say about her perspective on Hestia?

And his?

Terrifying. She was terrifying.

"We'll be fine and back in a bit," Lily said. The hair around her face had already begun to escape from her plait, and she pushed it back impatiently. Her right leg shook—not out of any sort of fear, James thought, but from her own surge of adrenaline. He would have bet that her heart beat nearly as fast just then as it did when she came. "They might not even be there, but we'll check."

She smiled at James before she left, and he nearly missed whatever she tried to convey there. She didn't look apologetic, exactly, but perhaps a little earnest.

She worried he'd get mad at her.

Really, he might.

"Are you going to use that spell to shrivel his cock?" he heard Marlene ask as they walked away, her voice vicious enough to cut. "You should. Let's see him talk about giving it to you then."

"No, I don't think—" he heard Lily answer, before her words were swallowed up in the general din of the common room.

The words did very little to ease the strange, hot anxiety that gathered in the pit of James' stomach.

"I didn't expect that," Sirius offered finally, after they'd watched the girls leave. "Any of it. Don't believe it, actually. Feels like they're having us on and they'll be back in a second."

They weren't.

"Do we watch the map?" Peter asked as the four of them sat listless and stunned. "Or is that worse?"

No one answered. There really wasn't an answer.

"I think I'd rather she'd just gotten mad at me." James wondered if he'd ever say those words aloud again. He pushed himself back in his chair, head pounding with the rhythm of his heart. "Because—what the fuck? What the fuck is all that?"

"Hess never said a word either," Sirius told him, as if to offer some modicum of comfort. It helped only a little. "And Lily's kind of right. We don't tell them when we get into it with those gits either. It's a good system. Or I thought it was, at least." He paused, perturbed. "We still don't have to tell them when we do it, right?"

He did indeed look to James as if for answers, just as Marlene had looked to Lily. James could only wave a hand in response.

They ended up in their dorm on the floor, crowded around the Marauders Map. Even a dot on parchment seemed better than no view of the situation at all. James had contemplated going after the girls, of course, and had even suggested it, but Sirius, of all people, nixed the idea.

"Let it play out." His eyes glittered a little as they did at the prospect of a good fight, but he mostly just looked curious. "I want to see what happens, and, besides, they'll kill us if we follow them. Let them put that rage on someone else, not us, and hopefully they'll come back nice and calm."

But for all that Sirius spoke of rage, Lily hadn't looked mad.

She'd come off more cross at the fact that the four of them had gotten caught in a brawl than she did about the things that happened to her that he had known nothing about. Those things she'd just seemed to accept as part of daily life, just another piece of her routine that she needed to maintain, as she'd apparently had to for years.

Fuck, he hated Nott. He hated them all, but in that moment, he really hated Nott, even more than Snape.

Had he ever given him even the slightest consideration before that day? They'd crossed wands, of course, as he had at some point with all five of the degenerates in their group. Nott had always liked to run his mouth, and he'd certainly mentioned Lily over the years, aware, along with the rest of the school, of James' crush. But he'd only ever spoke of her in reference just to the one word James hated most. That mudblood, Nott always called her, but he'd never gone further.

Really, Nott's words that day had stunned him. He hadn't expected it at all.

Remus dug a bar of Honeydukes chocolate out of his bedside table, and James didn't want any of it, but he ate what Remus handed him just the same. It helped a little, as Remus clearly presumed it would, but it felt ridiculous, eating chocolate while sitting tense on the floor of his bedroom, shoulder-to-shoulder with his mates, watching a dot marked with the name of the girl he loved get slowly closer to picking a fight with some of the worst people he knew.

"Nott, Snivellus, and Avery," Peter muttered unnecessarily after he'd worked his way past the mass of moving black dots to locate their names in the library, just as Lily had said.

She was truly scary good.

"Mulciber and Travers are in the Hospital Wing." Remus no longer looked sheepish, but actually almost pleased. When had he ever looked like that after a duel or skirmish or shouting match with the Slytherins?

Mulciber's name, of course, had left a sick taste in James' mouth the moment Sirius had first uttered it, a taste that he couldn't cover with chocolate. He felt similarly every time he saw him in the corridors or in class or in the Great Hall. His hatred had increased there too, although not out of anything the younger Mulciber had done, although he disliked him well enough on his own. The majority of James' rage focused intensely on Mulciber's father, and he hated the younger Mulciber even more than he thought possible just for his relation.

None of them spoke as the dots of the three girls entered the library. They hadn't really spoken before then either, but the silence felt more purposeful and tense.

The dots slowed inside the library, pace clearly more leisurely than the way they had navigated the stairs and corridors. They moved slowly past the dots with Nott, Snape, and Avery's names on them, never stopping, and James tried to picture what the scene might look like.

Did Lily throw something taunting at them as she walked by, or Marlene something savage and biting, or Hestia a furious glare? He could imagine that easily.

Did they ignore them completely? He could imagine that easily too. They might just walk by, Lily laughing and throwing her hair, Marlene speaking energetically with her hands, Hestia giggling, a trio of pretty bait.

The girls certainly wouldn't do a thing in the library. Lily would never jeopardize her access to books. He knew that for sure.

Then again, had he pegged her as the kind of girl who served out vigilante justice with such planning and precision?

You don't know me, she'd told him for months.

But he knew her and knew her well by then, near better than anyone else knew her. He did. He knew that.

He knew that romance novels made her laugh until she cried, that her sister uninviting her to her wedding at the beginning of the year had sent her to her bed in a depression that had lasted three days, that she hated any kind of seeded fruit with a strong passion.

He knew she exclusively drank vodka when she went out in muggle London, because it was the only spirit that had never made her sick after drinking too much.

He knew she'd broken her arm at ten by jumping out of a swing while trying to control her underage magic. She'd gotten too high to land without magic, but had floated down hundreds of times before. For some reason, she hadn't managed it then. Her dad, a muggle Healer, had fixed the break in the strange muggle way, which left her without the ability to use that arm for months. He knew the immobility had driven her mad. And he knew that she'd gone right back to the swing as soon as her arm healed, although she never jumped out again, even though she'd wanted to. Heights had scared her since, and he knew that fearing them still made her feel like a coward.

He knew nothing, not even heights, scared her more than losing someone she loved. Over the course of countless hours of conversation during break, he'd seen how even the thought of it sent her into some dark place in her brain that turned her quiet and introspective and sad in a way she hadn't—or maybe couldn't—articulate. He knew some of that had to stem from her sister, and didn't doubt that Snape played his own large part. When she went that way, he never knew what to say.

He knew she liked when he told her stories. She loved laughing at the tales of the things he and his friends had done (although never the worst things, which he never would tell her in the years to come), or things about his childhood, or memories he had of her. The latter always devolved into a series of compliments and always ended up making her blush, turning her shy in a rare way that he very much liked because he'd so rarely seen anyone else do it to her, and even then, hadn't seen it for years.

He knew she'd started to fancy him in the winter of sixth year, and that she'd hated herself for it. He'd said something that had made her laugh, a real rarity when she had usually scowled at his mere presence. He had prized those laughs, each one so hard-won. She admitted that she had looked at him while he laughed with her, and she had thought he looked good laughing when he didn't direct it somewhere cruel. Afterwards, he knew she'd beat herself up for weeks for finding him attractive even in the least, and set to ignoring him fully. He remembered those days, as he'd tried to rile her up even more simply because she ignored him, but she hadn't cracked. Days had turned into weeks, and he had taken another girl to Hogsmeade, Patricia Thimble, a pretty Gryffindor seventh year who served as their Quidditch team's reserve chaser. He'd liked her fine, liked snogging her better, and had liked shagging her above all else about her. He'd passed a few weeks that way, fooling around with her in the Trophy Room after hours, and she was nice and lived and breathed Quidditch and clearly liked him.

But she hadn't challenged him, not like he wanted.

Worse still, as he had shagged Patricia against a wall several times a week, his face in her neck and his cock inside her, he'd often thought of Lily. Every time after, he'd gone into a shame spiral that lasted hours.

Things had fizzled out on his end, as it always did. Patricia had taken it remarkably well.

He'd made Lily laugh again sometime later, brought about by some stupid, simple prank, the kind she liked where no one got hurt or embarrassed. She'd stopped ignoring him, although she never turned truly kind. Really, he hadn't given her much of a chance. Seeing her laugh, he'd wanted her all over again, and set out to get her attention however he could, once again more negative than positive.

He knew then, as he hadn't sixth year, that although it hadn't exactly bothered her to see him with someone else, she had certainly noticed.

He knew she started actually liking him early on in the previous fall term, in the middle of October, right around the time he'd first spotted her with Morton, but before he'd told her what he'd seen. The feeling started out small, almost unnoticeable. She had watched him in prefect meetings, and admired how hard he clearly tried, even though he was obviously in so over his head that he felt incompetent at it all. (Truthfully, she had admitted that she quite liked watching him struggle. His ego needed it, she had explained, and he saw her point.) Still, he'd done his best to keep morale high even if he could do nothing else, and the other prefects responded to his chat and his jokes, which had made them listen to him better—and to her, by extension. It was the first time she had ever thought of him as responsible in the slightest, and she had liked that.

When she had told him that in the wee morning hours over Easter break, he had laughed even as his heart had felt ridiculously full. "How very like you to find responsibility the sexiest trait," he had teased, and she had swatted at him, her face pink.

He knew her liking for him had grown after he had taken her to the kitchens, the feeling transforming from a tiny thought in the back of her mind to something more consciously perceptible. She'd seen his anger at her for setting him up to catch her with Morton, and then had watched as he'd immediately tried to take the heat for her from McGonagall and set to comforting her the best he could. Even angry, he still cared. That had unexpectedly touched something in her, and just as she'd felt when she first thought him fit, she'd beaten herself up for it.

But unlike sixth year, she hadn't pulled back.

He knew she'd stopped shagging Morton thereafter.

And he knew she'd come around almost fully by Slughorn's Christmas party. They'd had over a dozen prefect meetings by then, where she continued to watch how he truly tried, and how he truly struggled, to fit the role of Head Boy. He had started talking to her outside of meetings too, stopping her in the corridors or seeking her out in the common room or dropping in beside her to walk to their next class, and she hadn't discouraged him. He had worked to get her to laugh at every turn, and they had fallen into discussions of Head duties and courses and even bits about their days, as if they'd always spoken often and easily.

By the time he'd gotten her in the prefect's bathroom after Slughorn's Christmas party (although, truthfully, she had gotten him there), she had thought him fit and funny and shaggable, although she never intended to do a thing about it—or let him do a thing about it either.

Hogsmeade had changed that.

Hogsmeade had changed everything.

He knew that after that, as she said—she was in, even when she hadn't wanted to be, and even though she wouldn't admit it even to herself for weeks.

He knew she'd hated even telling him those stories, stretched out on his bed at his parents' house that last week of Easter break. Sex and sleepiness made her a little more vulnerable, and she usually only told him such things then, and even still it looked like it went against her deepest instincts to do so. But she'd told him anyway, her expression a little bashful, and he'd tried not to look too terribly smug about it, although he knew he had.

And he knew she struggled with expressing those sorts of really deep and feeling things, although that got a little better each day too, which made him cherish those vulnerable moments all the more.

He knew her.

But he also really didn't, because, as she'd told him over break, there were some parts of hers that were only hers. (He'd wondered even after she'd told him that, and would continue to wonder for years, if she recognized what he suspected and would later confirm: there were some parts of hers that also were but weren't hers, inaccessible even to herself.)

His thoughts swirled and the chocolate sat uneasily in his stomach as the three dots of the girls' names continued slowly through the library and out the door. For a moment, Nott, Snape, and Avery's dots stayed stationary. Relief spread slowly through James' veins. He felt his shoulders loosen, and then his neck, which had apparently tensed without his notice.

All of that tension snapped back tenfold when he saw Nott move.

"This is fucking stupid." The words burst out of him so suddenly that his friends all jumped. "This is so fucking stupid. Why are we just watching this? Padfoot, how can you be okay right now? They might not say shit to Hestia, but if there's a duel, you know she's involved. But you're fine?"

James' words looked like they surprised Sirius, but surprised him about himself. "Yeah, I am," he said, a small amount of wonder in his voice. He relaxed a little, as James couldn't, and bit into his chocolate with more gusto. "I think they've got it. I really do. If I didn't, I wouldn't feel like this. And if they don't have it, well…" The threat hung in the air, unspoken.

"We're getting them anyway, right?" Peter asked.

Remus answered first. "Of course we are," he said, so firm and certain that if James hadn't already planned on doing something to those dickheads, he would have joined Remus' cause in a heartbeat.

"I don't think I've ever seen you want revenge," James told him, briefly thrown off anger and frustration, and he lifted his eyes from the map to look at Remus.

"I don't think I've ever been this mad, at least not in ages." Sure enough, Remus' mouth sat in a tight, flat line, and his face remained washed of color. His anger had always dwelled beneath the surface until suddenly but very intensely unleashed. James hadn't seen him that way since he faced Sirius after the Whomping Willow incident with Snape, and he'd transformed into shouting and red-faced and intense in the blink of an eye, the kind, reasonable Moony gone mad. His expression took James back to that moment completely, the only time they'd ever had more than a hiccup in their collective friendship, and remembering the painful, horrible, agitating days that had followed the incident layered more distress on top of his already-present anxiety.

"Good corridor to take," Sirius noted quietly as they watched the girls turn the corner towards the twisting halls that led to the Arithmancy classroom, usually a quiet, untrodden area of the castle. The Slytherins followed. "Real quiet. Discreet, Lily would say."

They walked, passing through an empty hall.

Suddenly all the dots stopped.

James waited, breath stuck in his throat. He doubted his friends breathed either. He couldn't hear them if they did.

Not even thirty seconds later, the girls' dots began to move, approaching the Slytherins', which stayed still.

"That has to be good," Peter ventured. His chocolate sat half-eaten and melting in his hand. "Right?"

Not knowing but almost knowing suddenly felt worse than knowing nothing at all. James had the sudden urge to wipe the map clean, an urge that grew and grew—

After a couple minutes, the girls walked away. From beginning to end the slow stroll through the library to their exit from the Arithmancy corridor hadn't even taken ten minutes.

"I've never liked Hess more," Sirius announced as the girls headed towards the Grand Staircase. The Slytherins' dots remained immobile. A grin split his face. "I already liked her plenty, but that's it. She's done me in. I'm a goner. Did you see her face when she talked about Snivellus? Inspired. And how mad she got? I can't believe she hates them like we do. She's never said. We've never talked about them at all. This is incredible."

"You're going to start sounding like Prongs soon," Remus said dryly. He had started to relax a little, to sit up not quite as straight, and leaned back on one hand. Knowing Remus thought the trouble had passed gave James more comfort than he thought it would. It cued him to relax slightly as well. Hot, sweet relief suddenly washed over his body like a wave. "Don't go looking at her like Prongs does Lily. It's embarrassing."

Sirius snorted. "That's a different level of gone." He grinned at James, and James found himself automatically and genuinely grinning back. Sirius had that way about him. "Really thought she was going to go in on you, mate. Don't know how you dodged that one and they actually ended up going out to finish it for us. Turned out better than I ever dreamed. I did not see that coming."

"Same. Hard same." James rubbed a hand through his hair. "I still think it's bloody hypocritical for her to get mad when she's no better than us." He paused. "Not much better us."

She hadn't destroyed a great chunk of a corridor just hours before, after all.

Infuriatingly, in a total reversal of weeks past, Sirius took up for Lily.

"Nah, I get it," he said, and he spoke as easily as if he agreed with her often, maybe always. "She doesn't want us to fight her battles because she thinks it'll make her look weak. I think she's right that they'd probably see it that way, so I get it. Best for her to deal with it before it gets there."

For a moment, James almost missed Sirius' distrust of Lily. He would have sided with James immediately mere weeks befoe.

At least Remus sided with him.

"You can't act like you wouldn't kick off if it were Hestia," he insisted. "You would. I know you didn't like it when it was Lily, but when you asked Hestia if they did that to her, your whole face changed."

"Of course it would piss me off, but did you see her tonight, Moony? She can handle herself. If she told me to back off, I would, because she's terrifying." That pleased Sirius, clearly, and he amended afterwards, "Or I'd wait for a better time and place. That's all Lily meant."

James stared at him for a moment, more than a little stunned, and then turned to look at Peter, who made a face James recognized, one that said don't make me choose. Even though the four of them disagreed so rarely that James almost never had to look at him that way, Peter still always very much hated making the choice between his friends. "I'm with Padfoot," he said after a long pause, and Sirius clapped him on the back hard enough that he almost knocked him onto the map. "I'm sorry, Prongs, because I started it all, but Lily has a point. We can't do stuff like that so publicly from now on. You heard McGonagall. She wanted to pull you and Padfoot from Quidditch."

"And lose the cup?" Sirius snorted. "She wouldn't." He grinned like a proud father and shook Peter's shoulder. "Our very own hotheaded Wormtail. Who knew? A bird's nice to him a couple times and he tears apart the castle for her."

He'd meant it as a jest, as he meant most everything he said, but Peter took it at face value, or at least made the point to pretend he did. "I wouldn't have liked it if it were Hestia or Marlene either," he said with a sort of honest simplicity that tugged unexpectedly at James' chest, residual anger or not. He clearly meant it entirely.

"Why are they going down and not up?" Remus asked suddenly. He'd put his hands back on the worn edges of the map, eyes following the girls' black dots closely. "Where are they going?" The girls had made it to the ground floor before any of them had noticed, and they watched silently as they stepped a floor lower still, into the dungeons. "Not the Slytherin common room, right? Do they even know where that is?"

Lily probably did, James knew, because as Head Girl she made the entire castle her business. But the girls went left when they should have hung a right, which clearly axed the common room as their destination.

"Potions room," Sirius predicted, and sure enough, he was right.

After entering, Marlene and Hestia hung back by the door of the classroom. Lily headed towards the students' supply closet without pause. Her name lingered there for thirty seconds, no more, and then she left the closet, and they left the room and then the dungeon.

"Do you think we should worry?" Peter asked. "That's a weird detour on the way up here, since it's, you know, down."

Normally Sirius probably would have razzed him a little for the obvious simplicity of the comment, but he didn't. "Nah." Still, he didn't look quite as confident as before. "If anything, we should worry for those bellends, not the girls. Still haven't moved, have they?" Sure enough, Nott, Avery, and Snape had stayed stationary in the Arithmancy corridor.

It wasn't a well-trafficked area, and every moment brought them closer to curfew. Would anyone find them before then, or would they wait in hopes of rescue from some patrolling prefect? Who was on duty that night? James couldn't remember, but hoped it wasn't anyone sympathetic to them. It would serve the Slytherins well to leave them there until the morning.

Still, hoping for that was one thing, but expecting it another. He'd already had a fairly lucky day, all things considered—after all, he'd gotten out of a duel without he or his friends serious injured and had somehow managed to avoid angering Lily over it all. If it were even an hour or two later, he would have called it a night, just to avoid pushing his luck and having something send the good day horribly awry.

On the other hand, he also knew he wouldn't rest until he saw the girls back in the common room and heard whatever tale they had to tell.

It took them longer to return than it should have. The Marauders had wiped the map and headed back to their the common to wait. Five minutes passed, then ten and fifteen, and after twenty had just ticked by on his watch, right as James had made up his mind to go check the map again, they appeared.

Marlene recounted the events in clipped words as she went back to her seat. "Disarmed. Full-Body Bind Curse. Conjuctivatis Curse for Nott, which felt too light. Let the other two off without anything else, which felt even lighter. Left them there. Questions?"

Just about four thousand.

They all appeared so outwardly normal. Hestia had gone a little more flushed, maybe, Lily's eyes looked bright and almost wild, and Marlene had the look of some sort of apex predator, but if he hadn't searched for those things, James knew he would have never seen them. They looked as if they'd never left the common room, and had stayed in to work on their essays or play chess or Gobstones or Exploding Snap or take the piss out of the Marauders or other mundane evening activities.

Absurdly, so absurdly, Lily sat back down in her seat, unwound her plait, and then picked up her Transfiguration book to continue her work unabated.

James stared at her for several long moments. "How often do you do this?"

"We rarely go looking for them," Hestia assured them. She'd tucked herself back under Sirius' arm, and smiled at James in her usual way, all sweetness, as if her terrifying expression had never come to pass. She looked like a totally different person. "Usually it's just something that happens in the moment. I think we've only gone after them a handful of times."

Marlene's face somehow sharpened even more. "Remember after Mary Macdonald?"

Neither Hestia or Lily answered, but James caught the way that Lily physically flinched, the slightest contraction of every muscle in her body. Just as he looked determinedly at her, she stared determinedly at her textbook.

"She gets it the worst, maybe the worst I've ever seen," she said quietly after a moment. Her eyes flickered up unwillingly to where Mary Macdonald, a pretty blonde sixth year, sat across the common room with her friends. "Mulciber clearly fancies her, and clearly hates her for it. They're relentless. It's never quite bad enough for expulsion—they're not stupid—but, oh my god, the things they've said and done to her. We fucking destroyed Mulciber after one really bad time. I'm so fucking sick of them all."

For a long time, none of them spoke.

"I was just telling the lads that I've never liked you more," Sirius told Hestia, his voice light. It cut the tension a little, as he'd clearly intended, and the way Hestia's blush increased until it covered her whole face, and the way she ducked her head into his shoulder, lightened it further. "I mean it. You went about fancying me for ages all wrong. If you'd come up and told me all of this fifth year, about your hatred of Snivellus and his stupid friends and the corridor justice you deal out, I would have asked you out immediately. You wouldn't have had a choice in the matter. I would have had to have you."

"Did she ever have a choice?" Marlene asked, but she smiled. "You and James are so relentless and entitled that you'd wear down any girl you think you should have. Literally any girl—how else did he wear down Lily? You two are ridiculous and insufferable and Remus and Pete deserve girls way more. They'd treat them better too. I'll die on this hill."

Peter grinned and Remus laughed, and her words deflated the tension a little more. A one-two punch by Sirius and Marlene usually had that effect.

Still, James couldn't help himself.

"Did it take you a while, or did you manage it easily?" he asked as Lily flipped a page in her textbook. He wanted to see if she'd tell him the whole truth, everything he'd seen on the map, and hated himself for testing her even as he said it. "It doesn't sound like they got much in, but you were gone a while."

"We took them by surprise," she said, not looking at him. "I think they thought they were being sneaky and we hadn't noticed them following us. I cursed Nott after they went down and had some things to say, Marlene broke his nose, and Hestia…" She paused, and she looked up then. Her eyes met Hestia's, who stared back at her resolutely, almost coldly, without an ounce of apology. "Hestia had words for Snape. She usually does."

Later, James would peg that moment as the one where Sirius began to fall in love with Hestia.

"You won't let me touch him, so what else am I to do?" Hestia shoved a handful of dark hair behind her ear, resurfaced anger in the motion. She was clearly entirely oblivious to the way Sirius stared at her, and James wished she'd turn so she could see it, because he looked positively enamored the more she spoke. "You let him off too easy. Always. You know that. If someone did to me what he did to you—acted like my friend for years, started going all pureblood supremacist when that group of people literally wanted to kill people like me, tried to pretend it wasn't a big deal for ages when I repeatedly expressed concern, called me something unforgivable that broke it all, and then still had the balls to try to justify it—you'd never give them a moment's peace. It's bad enough from the rest of them, but from someone who said they were your friend? That's a betrayal thousand times worse, and I watched you fall apart after everything he said and did, Lil, so you—"

Lily still hadn't said much to James about Snape at all, and he still hadn't asked, although he'd never stopped wondering. Hestia's summary, sparse as it was, clued him into more than he'd known before.

What on earth had Hestia said to Snape when he'd lied immobile on the ground?

"I get it." Lily shut her textbook with more force than necessary. "I get it, okay? I know who he is. I see what you see. I really do. But that doesn't mean I don't still think about who he was, because he was my best friend. I still see a part of that in him. It's just not a big enough part to matter, but once I care about someone, once they're my friend and they mean something to me—"

The final statement hit the hardest, even though she didn't complete it—maybe because she didn't complete it. It came from her mouth with the sort of reluctance James recognized from those vulnerable moments with her where she tried to reveal something about herself and she didn't know if she should, or even could. Still, it looked like it came easier to her then than it often did with him, despite the audience of their group, and he tried not to let that bother him. She spoke to Hestia no matter who else listened, after all, and Hestia had had almost seven years to crack her. He'd had only a handful of months.

Really, when he thought about it in those terms and watched her struggle with Hestia as she struggled with him, he saw that he'd made remarkable progress. She'd clearly tried very hard to get there with him.

Any and all chance at anger vanished, replaced by the sort of general longing and care he usually felt when he looked at her.

"Best friend?" Marlene repeated incredulously. "He was never your best fucking friend, not from the first night you roomed with me and Hestia. We're best friends. Fuck him. Are you trying to wind me up right now? Are you trying to make go off on all the reasons we're best friends so I can prove you wrong? Because I will, Lil. You know I will, and most of them are entirely embarrassing for all three of us. Do you want that?"

It could have come off as combative if Marlene had put it in any other tone, even in the one she normally used to speak. But she'd taken to smiling, and leaned towards Lily in such an engaging manner that showed she clearly bantered, and the words fell like the joke she intended.

Lily smiled back.

Suddenly, James appreciated Marlene much, much more.

"Can we circle back a moment?" Sirius' hand had migrated to the back of Hestia's neck, his fingers stroking absently. Even though James had seen them sit like that for months, and had just witnessed the most love-struck expression he'd ever seen Sirius make—even more love-struck than when he looked at a motorbike or a new broom, which James hadn't thought possible—such affection still looked strange. "Marlene, you broke Nott's nose?"

The way Marlene laughed, all exuberant beauty, broke the tension further.

Yeah, James understood her appeal.

"Yeah." She grinned at the look on Peter's face. "I did. I stomped on his face. Not particularly hard, not enough to really hurt him seriously, but…enough. I heard a very satisfying crack. Fucker."

"Lads, if we ever need to extract ourselves from these three, we're just moving countries. Maybe continents." Sirius sounded almost as if he meant it. Unlike Peter, he looked at Marlene as though her actions hadn't surprised him at all. He clearly thought her capable of physical assault. "Can you imagine what they'd do to us?"

"Best not hurt my friends then, yeah?" It came out of Marlene's mouth as decidedly not a joke. "Remus and Pete will end up okay from it all if you do mess up, though. I wouldn't hurt them." It was precisely what James had said when they'd entered the common room right after the duel. None of the girls would ever go in on Remus or Peter.

He really, really needed to take some lessons from them.

"But yeah, I stomped on his nose and told him I did it because I didn't feel like wasting any more magic on him," she went on. She smiled indulgently, and James assumed she'd fallen into the moment of remembering the pop of Nott's nose under her foot, but instead she turned to Lily. "Do you remember the time Charlie beat the shit out of Richard Jeffords for you? That's what he told me afterwards—he didn't want to waste magic, because Jeffords wasn't worth it, even though he had an infinite supply."

Lily's face had gone back to its usual expression, but James saw her leg shaking a little under the table, as it had before she'd left. Adrenaline again. Her eyes had looked wild when she had returned to the common room, wide and bright and flashing and somehow as dangerous as her glare, but her gaze softened then, and her mouth along with it. She returned Marlene's smile, visibly relieved to move past the tension and into banter, where she thrived. "Yeah. But it wasn't for me, Mar. I didn't ask Charlie to do it. He just did. But…Jeffords let me alone after that until he and Charlie graduated, and I knew how to handle things myself by then and didn't need anyone to fight my battles for me. Didn't Sprout threaten to not let Charlie play the next Quidditch match over it?"

"Yeah, but she would have never. They needed him." Marlene's words unknowingly echoed Sirius' from just a half hour before. "I'm pretty sure he helped Hufflepuff win that match, and he just got a fuckton of detention. He said it was worth it, though." She gave Lily a long, disbelieving look. "I know you didn't ask him to do it, but you had to know he would as soon as we told him what happened. If not for you, he at least did it about you, just like he would have if it were about me."

"Marlene's brother," Hestia explained. She'd gone sweet again and her voice gentle, maybe from the caress of Sirius' hand, and she smiled too.

James doubted anyone needed the clarification. Like Marlene, Charlie had been hard to miss at Hogwarts.

"I was so fucking mad at him when he took you by the hand and basically dragged you to the library after we told him why you were upset." It clearly no longer bothered Marlene, because she laughed under her breath. "Do you remember what he yelled back at me in the middle of the Great Hall?"

Lily rolled her eyes, even as the smile remained. Something about the way she touched her forehead made James think of embarrassment, although she didn't look it otherwise. "Wasn't it like, 'Don't worry, Marle, I'm not going to shag her'?"

"It was," Hestia said. Her smile turned small and private. "People stared."

"And your face!" Marlene's laughter continued. "I've never seen you so red."

"Well, what the fuck was I meant to do or say to that?" Lily ran a hand through her hair, and she looked like herself entirely as she laughed. Reminiscing looked good on her. James had to wonder if that was why Marlene had started the conversation in the first place. "Thank him for me when you write him next, Mar. I know I did, then and that summer too, but still. Don't thank him for Jeffords, but tell him he was really wonderful that day. That was the first time I ever broke curfew, after he'd taught and drilled me on hexes and curses until real late. Flitwick caught me sneaking back to the common room. He just winked and waved me on, bless him."

"Is Marlene's brother the reason you got so good at hexing the life out of James?" Remus looked as if he tried hard not to laugh. "Is making James miserable a McKinnon trait?"

"I should hope. I can't wait for you to work with Mum if that's true." James couldn't help but return Marlene's grin regardless of her words. She spoke them so much kinder than she had before break that they didn't bother him in the least. "But, yeah, that's Charlie's doing." She looked prouder than she ever had, with a warmth in her voice that James hadn't heard before. She clearly loved Charlie, maybe more than anyone else in the world. "I got after him for teaching her and not me and Hessie, but Charlie said he could only deal with one of us at a time and Lily got priority because of Jeffords. Lily taught us some anyway. He did try to teach us to physically defend ourselves that summer, though, remember? He did it for a laugh, but it turned out that Hestia has a mean right hook."

"She really does." The way Lily smiled at Hestia convinced James that the drama over Snape was completely water under the bridge. The ease with which it passed made him wonder how often they exchanged similar words. "You and I were trash, Mar, but Hessie…if I'm ever in a muggle fight, I want you there." Most of the tension had left Lily's body, although her leg still bounced. When she turned to smile at James, he wished he could reach out and touch her face quite badly. "So you have Mar's brother to thank for every time I put you in your place. You're lucky. He stressed over and over to never let your opponent have their wand—you disarm immediately and you don't let them get it back. I never did that to you, but we took their wands tonight and put them in different places around the castle on our way back up here. I hope they have fun finding them."

"And Lily went and hid half the ingredients in the students' supply closet the for the Oculus Potion Nott will need to cure the truly brilliant Conjunctivitis Curse she put on him," Marlene added. "She got you with that once, Sirius, didn't she? But she fixed it, while he'll have to go to Slughorn, which I really love. He'll never admit a muggleborn got the better of him. He won't be able to say a fucking word, and he'll look like the idiot he is."

Lily had told him the whole story without pause. She hadn't tried to hold anything back.

James let out a breath he didn't know he held.

"Slughorn will know it was me, but he won't do anything about it." Lily gave a look to Sirius. "You've taken the piss out of me for how much I like him—James, you have too, actually, you git—but there's a reason. I mean, I love Potions and he favors me for that, and he always has. But fifth year…" She smiled slowly, dangerous in a way that somehow looked nothing like the look she gave James in bed, suddenly terrifying rather than seductive. "I did this exact same thing to Nott—disarmed, Full-Body Bind, Conjunctivitis Curse, hid the ingredients. It's a classic for me, because it always works well and it needs a potion to cure, which is more difficult than a counter-spell. He clearly said something about me, because Slughorn held me back after our next lesson and asked if there was anything I wanted to tell him. I said no, of course. He kind of laughed, and then he handed me a book on offensive magic. He said he'd seen it at the bookshop in Hogsmeade, and even though he knew Potions was my game and he wanted it to stay that way, something about it made him think of me."

Sirius stared. "You're fucking lying."

She laughed, clearly gratified by his reaction. "I'm not. I hardly knew what to do, so I thanked him and made to leave. Before I got out the door, he said something like, 'You plan to replace the ingredients you took, don't you?' So we both knew without saying it. I took him into the supply closet, showed him that I hadn't taken them but just shrunk them down, and set them right. I've never seen him laugh like that."

James had seen Slughorn around Lily enough that he could imagine it all easily.

"He told me twice befoe I left that I should have been in Slytherin." Lily shook her head a little, still smiling. "He's lovely. I don't know what he would have done if I told him what Nott said that made me curse him, but I was never going to repeat it, especially not to a professor. Turning them in has never done any good anyway, and I would have given the man a heart attack. Still, he tried to help how he could, and Charlie did too, but it's just become a sick fact of life here and everyone knows it. I try to help out the younger girls. They all know where the best books on offensive magic are in the library. Mary and some of the others have even practiced with us a few times. She's good when she concentrates." She turned to James so suddenly that she startled him, and he drew back from her a tad, surprised. "Will you treat your antics with a little more discretion from now on, and do your best to not kick off when they get after you about me? I understand why it bothers you, really, but you can't cause a scene every time. Discretion and your best attempt at calm are all I'm asking."

He knew good terms when he saw them.

"I will if you'll tell me when this happens," he countered.

She hesitated. "I will if you promise not to go try to avenge my honor and you'll let me handle it myself unless I explicitly say otherwise."

Yeah, good terms.

"I'll leave avenging your honor to Pete," he told her, and she laughed. She cast Peter a warm look that turned him pink once again. "So…we're good?"

"Yeah, we're good."

Just like that, apparently.

The ease of it all made James' head spin.

"Pete, we need to play chess or something," Sirius said. He removed his arm from around Hestia and went to summon an armchair. "I can't watch these two act like reasonable adults. Where's the drama? Where's the yelling? Where's the storming off? Where's the miscommunication that I have to fix because only I understand them both? How dull. You've both gone dull."

"I'll row with you, if you like," Lily said to him, and he grinned in return with the sort of fondness James thought he'd never see expressed towards her.

"With my best friend? Never."

James watched Sirius and Peter set up for chess for all of three seconds before he reengaged Lily's attention. "You haven't stopped bouncing your leg since you got back. You were doing it before you left too."

"Oh." She looked genuinely surprised, and made the conscious effort to still herself. "I hadn't noticed. Observant, aren't you?"

It was one of his favorite compliments from her, the first one she'd ever given him. She clearly knew it too, based on the way she tipped her head and smiled at him. He watched her hair slide slowly over one shoulder and then fall down her back, and his fingers tingled with the suppressed urge to reach out and touch it.

"Just with you," he assured her. "I don't really pay attention to anything else."

"I know. It shows. The rest of your life is a mess from it, and you're not exactly subtle when you're observing me."

He loved that from her too.

"You two are disgusting," Marlene said. Indeed, she looked at them like a fascinating but horrific exhibit one might see at a zoo. "Truly disgusting. Shouldn't this be over by now, all this honeymoon stage nonsense? Don't tell me this how is how it's going to be from now on, because I'll never get used to it. Never."

"No one is asking you to get used to it," Lily said. She smiled. "And you and Luke are no better."

"Luke and I were no better. We're past that stage now. Let's hope yours lasts another week or two, tops, because I'm really sick of seeing you come back to the dorm with that satisfied smile on your face after you two go off somewhere together." Marlene had the sense to drop her voice a bit, even though they sat quite secluded from everyone else in the noisy common room with little chance of eavesdroppers catching a word. "It makes me have to think about James in a way I'd rather not. Ever."

Listening to Lily's exasperated sigh, James decided he definitely liked Marlene.

"Cheers, Marlene," he said, and she rolled her eyes at him too, even though she smiled.

"Like I've said, James just becomes very Zen." Remus' anger had passed with the tension, replaced by an amusement that James liked far better, even if it came from taking the piss out of him. "I've never seen him like it."

Sirius snorted. "He's too tired for anything but calm, I reckon. She runs laps around you, mate."

Really, he could hardly argue there.

"On that," he started quietly, and Lily immediately began to laugh, because she knew. "Go somewhere with me. You're still all jumpy and tense. I'll take care of that."

"Fucking hell, you two." Marlene pushed herself back from the table and walked away to join Hestia on the couch. "Talk about a need for discretion. I can't wait for this stage to end."

Looking at Lily, at the way her eyes flashed and her smile went dangerous in the way he liked rather than the way that scared him, he kind of doubted that what he felt for her was a stage.

"You have a pretty high estimation of yourself," she said to him, her voice soft and teasing. She'd turned to face him almost completely, as he'd sat towards her the entire time, and crossed her legs crossed in his direction. The conversation had become theirs entirely. "Mar makes one comment about my smile and suddenly your cock cures anxiety? Please."

He wanted to tell her that she should probably never say "your cock" in public, because it immediately sent a jolt through him in a way he very much liked. But because he liked it, he also didn't exactly what her to stop.

"It's adrenaline, not anxiety, and I'll do my best to wear it out of you. Even if I fail, you usually appreciate a valiant attempt, don't you?"

Watching her continue to laugh reminded him all over again of how much he'd cherished every single laugh she'd given him for six years. It hit him again how incredibly spoiled—and incredibly lucky—he was to receive them from her so freely, and only after a handful of months of (admittedly hard) work.

How had he managed it? It still didn't make sense.

"I do appreciate good effort," she said, and she made it sound so much like a reluctant admittance that he felt as if he'd won a concession from her, even though he knew she'd made it sound that way on purpose. That he knew didn't matter. She was that good. "But I'm busy with my own valiant attempt to get an 'O' on this essay for McGonagall, so I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"You have another week."

"You don't think we'll get assigned a ridiculous amount of new work between now and then? Come off it."

"I'll help you with it."

"It'll be a cold day in hell before I let you help me with courses."

He had no idea what that meant, but that didn't surprise him. Her muggle sayings made no bloody sense.

"You let Pete help you."

"Yeah, because Pete's lovely. You're insufferable."

Although he appreciated the privacy, James also kind of wished that Peter could have heard her then. He'd already had a good day, but James knew that would have brought it a bit higher still.

"That's a real indictment to yourself, you know," he told her. "I'm insufferable, but you like me? What does that say about you?"

"That I'm a sucker for a valiant attempt, and you going after me was the most valiant attempt I've ever seen. It kind of cancels out your other, less-desirable traits. Kind of."

"I'm sure you've told me all my undesirable traits over the years. Repeatedly. So what are my desirable traits?"

The look she flashed him under her eyelashes, one full of heat, sent his stomach swirling with desire even before she spoke. His pulse began to race.

Fuck, she'd conditioned him well.

He was suddenly very glad no one else listened.

"The only thing I can think of right now is that you're good with your hands," she said, and his stomach clenched almost painfully from pleasure. "And your mouth too, really. You've gotten very good at that."

He knew then that he had her and she was in, but didn't know how he could get her out of the common room fast enough. Knowing her, the more she knew he wanted it, the longer she'd make him wait.

He licked his lips and struggled to keep his voice as neutral as possible. "Just my hands and my mouth?"

"No, of course not. That's just what I'm thinking about right now. I've been thinking about it for a while, actually. But you're good with your cock too."

Yeah, he loved those words from her a little too much.

She continued almost casually, quietly musing. "I mean, I can use my own hands like you do yours. It's not the same, of course, but it's an option. But when you're behind me, you hit that spot in me that I can't get to, and I love that. That's why I ask you to bend me over so much, you know. You've gotten really, really good at making me come that way."

Fuck.

"Fuck."

It came out louder than James intended. He didn't actually intend to say it at all, but it flew from his mouth anyway, like words around her so often did. Their friends hadn't heard their conversation, he didn't think, although of course Sirius had positioned himself closest to them, and James didn't doubt he did so to try to overhear anything he could use to take the piss out of him later. Yet even though they didn't know the context, they heard his exclamation and could probably guess, and he heard Marlene and Sirius' immediate laughter joined by others who did so quieter, but he didn't care. The look on Lily's face when he'd said it, one of intense, blazing pleasure at having gotten to him, made everything else matter significantly less. He'd only just glimpsed it, the merest flicker of the expression, before she'd repositioned her face into something pretty and engaged but casual, not at all as intense as the change in the air he felt around them. He didn't have even half of her skill at acting at ease, or the presence of mind to even try just then.

"I'll do that right now if you'll let me," he said lowly, and he watched her shift in her chair. "Are you wet right now?" He regretted the question the second he'd asked it, because he could very well gather the answer without hearing her say it, and he knew how hearing her say it would make him feel.

"Of course I am. I told you, watching you get like this is one of my absolute favorite things. It always turns me on. I'd show you right now, if I could."

That did it. He'd had enough.

"Where?" he asked, and he heard the shortness in his voice. "Where and then I'm going there right now, because I can't look at you anymore. And if you say anything else—"

"What?"

He saw the challenge in her face, and he loved it even as he hated it. In that moment, he was frustrated enough to love her and also feel like he hated her just a little.

She'd probably laugh if he told her that, and take it as the highest of compliments.

"Where?" he repeated, ignoring her taunt. "Tell me where and I promise I'll make you stop doing that with your leg. You've started again."

He'd only caught seconds before how the leg she'd crossed on top had started to bounce, as if she meant to spring up any second. She ducked her head as she laughed, almost like she laughed at herself, but didn't bother to stop the motion.

"Will you use your mouth?"

Fuck.

He reached and pushed his glasses up to rub his face, determined to avoid the teasing glint in her eyes. "Try and stop me. Where, Lily?"

She didn't answer until he'd finally lowered his hands. "The prefects' bathroom?" she suggested like she might suggest a café for lunch, and he bit back the second loud fuck that threatened to escape from his mouth. He hadn't had her in there since returning from Easter break, although he'd thought about it plenty. "And will you actually get in the bathtub with me this time?"

He did swear then, although he managed to keep it relatively contained. He could almost picture her exactly as she'd looked after Slughorn's Christmas party, wet and glistening and covered in bubbles, her mouth painted a brilliant red, as she'd told him he could get into the water with her. It had served as one of his favorite fantasies ever since.

Yeah, he loved this woman.

"Try and stop me," he repeated, and she flushed a little in clear anticipation, and seeing that she so clearly wanted him only made him want her more. "I'm going. Leave in five minutes. Don't start your, 'I'll wait ten.' Five."

"That's hardly discreet—"

"I swear to god, Lily—"

As he stood, she laughed in clear delight that had nothing to do with his obvious frustration. "I've never heard you use that before," she said, and she beamed up at him affectionately. "That was very cute."

He didn't feel very cute. Even though she looked less dangerous, her affection made him want her even more, but in a different way. He wanted to fuck her, and then to hold her and stroke her hair, and then to fuck her again. He took a deep breath. "Five minutes," he said, and he didn't even look at their friends before he left.

Once he got to the prefects' bathroom, he watched the seconds tick by on his timepiece.

She made him wait almost exactly seven minutes, just a little past, as if to drive home that he couldn't tell her what to do.

Of course he loved and hated that too.

He was right. She was tense and she did need it, but he knew he did too. He didn't even wait to remove a stitch of their clothing besides her knickers, just pushed her up against the wall the second she entered the bathroom, and for all her teasing in the common room, she grabbed him tight and held him to her with a need she hadn't expressed, a need that didn't surprise him anymore no matter how she made him wait. When she came against his mouth, he swore he felt something physically unhinge in her, something built up from all the adrenaline of the evening. He stood and waited for her to relax against him, certain from the way she'd cried out as she came that she'd need him to hold her there for balance, but she understood his intention and shook her head wordlessly. Her hands went to his belt, and his body moved almost outside of his control, set on getting her out of her clothes as quickly as possible before his brain even consciously recognized the decision. When he'd removed the last piece of clothing (her skirt, which would need a serious mending charm before she would be able to put it back on), he had only a few delicious seconds where he pressed up against her, skin on skin and her mouth on his ear in a way that he wished he liked a little less. He wanted to take his time with her, and her lips and her breath and her teeth combined with everything she'd said to him in the common room made that very hard.

But she had other plans.

In the blink of an eye, she had him away from her with one of those gentle pushes on the chest that somehow always got him to release her no matter the state of his arousal. That didn't mean he liked it, and he told her as much by snapping something that he thought might have been fucking hell, what? based on the way she laughed. But his stomach flipped, pleasure upon pleasure, when he saw how she looked up at him—eyes narrowed, smile slow, expression entirely promising of everything he wanted, even the things he hadn't realized he wanted yet. Sure enough, he heard himself swear again, a quiet, clear fuck, when she took him to the bench and sat him in exactly the same spot where, over a month before, he'd stopped her even as her climax neared, certain he couldn't handle shagging her without falling in far too deep.

As it turned out, he'd been right, although he'd fallen in deep even she'd finally gotten into his bed.

He waited for her to repeat the position, to straddle his lap and take him inside of her, or, more likely, to torment him endlessly until she finally gave in. Instead, she snagged her jumper up off the ground from where he'd thrown it and placed it under her knees to kneel in front of him. She looked up at him for a moment, eyes glittering, and rested a hand atop his leg almost carelessly.

"I know Nott said I was begging for it, but I'd rather hear you beg," she said, her voice soft and silky. She reached for his hand and pushed it into her hair, which felt like satin between his fingers, and he wanted to tell her that she'd have a very short time of it, because her words alone had him about halfway there, but he couldn't find his voice. His throat had stopped working for anything except uneven breaths. "But try not to. I want to see how long it takes to get you there."

Based on the way he felt just then, probably about thirty seconds.

She didn't even have to put her mouth on his cock to make time stop. She pressed a heated, open-mouthed kiss near the base, and that was enough for him to immediately lose any conception of how time passed. He gripped her hair instinctively, his other hand curling around the edge of the bench, but he let her hair go the second he caught himself. Her eyes hadn't left his face, and she paused in running her mouth down the crease where his leg met his pelvis. "I want you to," she said, and it took him a second to realize what she even meant. "I put your hand there for a reason. Show me how you feel."

And that—fuck—that hardly helped matters.

Then she went to work.

It didn't look like work, because her expression made it look like she played. Her mouth was everywhere and nowhere at once, hot and wet and skilled and nowhere near where he wanted it most. Her fingertips traced soft patterns against his hips as she kissed a slow, infuriating path up his thigh, her mouth ending just close enough to his cock that he could feel her breath, and he fought the urge to just bring her where he wanted. It would have taken nothing—pulling her head towards him with the hand already in her hair and pushing his cock into her mouth. He'd thought about doing that many, many times before for literal years. In that time, the time Before Lily, he'd thought of her in every way he could imagine. Most often, he'd jerked off to the image of her on her knees, longing and eager and desperate to please him as he'd always felt towards her, even when he'd made a career out of annoying her—no, especially then. In those years, he'd watched her face flush dark when he made her angry enough that she finally snapped, and he loved those moments, because she felt something towards him, and so strong she couldn't control it. Over and over, from fourth year on, he'd fantasized about that anger turning into lust in the flick of a switch, with her suddenly aggressive in an entirely different manner. She would go into it with all the passion she exhibited in her anger, and she would end up on her knees with his cock in her mouth and her eyes on his face and his hands in her hair, and fuck it all if she hadn't recreated that exact fantasy out of anger, even if that anger came at Nott's taunt and wasn't directed at him at all.

He told her something about it, about how often he'd thought of her on her knees. At first he tried not to sound too crass, although he didn't understand then or later exactly why he wouldn't want to say "blowing me" to someone about to do just that. That collapsed almost immediately, and he told her all the things he'd imagined about her lips and her tongue and her throat without holding back. She made a soft, pleased sound that he swore spread from her mouth through his entire body, and she bit her lip for a second as she looked up at him.

"I really love when you talk like that," she told him, and just those words made him want to never, ever stop talking again.

Despite that, she knocked the words out of him again when she restarted all her soft, tormenting movements of her mouth, and it took him a while before he could ask her if she'd ever fantasized about him like he did her.

She smiled even as she continued to move her mouth. "Before Christmas? No. I mean, I definitely fantasized about you after you'd make me insanely mad, but those were all violent fantasies and I didn't get off on them, although they were satisfying in their own way."

"After Christmas?"

"Well, yeah, of course." She made it sound entirely obvious, and maybe it was, but the admission made his already-racing pulse skyrocket even more. Maybe she felt it in his femoral artery, her mouth near where it throbbed in his thigh, because she smiled. "Did you really think I didn't? I've told you I did."

"Yeah, but—" It was different somehow, her telling him those things in scattered moments which had still left him stunned and speechless and longing, versus her making the admission on her knees in front of him after he'd just relayed his own constant fantasy of her. He wanted to tell her that, but he lost the strand of thought completely as her hand went down to slowly caress his balls. "Lily," he managed to push out, "Will you just—"

"Will I what?" she asked, and she smiled as her mouth joined her hand, all deliberate, planned movements of her tongue that had him pushing his other hand into her hair too to hold her there. Her mouth felt almost like a reward for the way he'd started and then stopped his request, or maybe a punishment, like she meant to push the question out of him by destroying the capacity he'd had to stop talking. Something about her face read of the old look of challenge she had once given him regularly when she'd yelled at him up until seventh year, although the look had transformed into something dangerous in an entirely different way.

Fuck, he loved this woman.

If he hadn't already, he thought he would have fallen then, for reasons that had everything and nothing to do with her position on her knees, but more so all things he'd witnessed from her that very evening, the same things he noticed near every day.

He loved her fearlessness even as it drove him mad with worry. He loved the careful, meticulous way her brain worked inside the classroom and in the world at large, but especially in their private moments, because he didn't doubt that she had planned getting him back to the prefects' bathroom since even before they'd returned to school, and that she knew exactly what she wanted to do once she did. He loved her passion—for him, certainly, but also for all things she considered right and just. He loved her kindness, evident in spades once he'd won her over into friendship, and something she exhibited especially to people like Remus or Peter, people who needed it more than most. He loved her selflessness that went along with that kindness, even if it hurt her sometimes. He loved her sense of humor, as she'd always had a biting wit, and had aimed it his way countless times over the years in a way that had always sent him laughing. She still made him laugh, only she had turned her wit somehow softer and sweeter, at least towards him. And he loved her stubbornness, although that drove him mad in a different way than her fearlessness, sometimes in a way very, very bad, and other times in a way very, very good, like how he knew she would wait for him to break and beg her even if it meant hours on her knees.

He kind of wished it would take hours, even though he also wanted it over and done with, because wanting her so badly had almost started to hurt, and in a way he knew wouldn't dissipate until he came.

He might have told her all that if she'd so much as pushed him with even the smallest question, because he doubted he had the ability to deny her anything just then. All of those reasons he loved her flickered in his mind in a single, short burst, somehow making it past the intense haze that pleasure had cast over his brain, but then they were gone, replaced with something different entirely with the question she asked instead.

"Will you tell me more?" she asked. "How you've thought about me?"

It didn't matter if she really wanted to hear it or if she'd asked just to ratchet things up and push him a little further towards begging—he liked it just the same. Maybe she intended it as a little of both, because her flush looked genuine, but she'd slipped her fingers behind his balls when she said it, stroking the bundle of nerves there, and he heard the sound he made in response, one he hadn't planned that flew from him anyway, deep and tortured and pleased.

"Yes." The word came out harsh and bitten, barely managed past his throat. "Later. I promise. I need—" She looked triumphant at his tone even before he'd spoken, and that cut him off even as it made him want to go on. The next words came out without planning, as they so often did around her, but especially when she had him as she did just then. "What did you think about after Christmas when you thought of me?"

He wished immediately that he hadn't asked, because an answer required her to slow the way she kissed up towards his cock in a very promising way that he knew she didn't mean to fulfill, but he enjoyed just the same. Still, he was curious. He'd never asked her the specifics of what she thought about. That he had never inquired struck him as truly stupid, but really, he'd never thought to ask.

"This," she told him simply, and he knew she had him then and he'd beg her to take him in her mouth the second he found his voice, because she'd wanted the same thing he had, something he'd never considered even after they'd gotten together. His fantasies about her had always seemed very much his. After all, he'd all but grown up with them, and in all those years, he had basically accepted that she'd probably never want him in the same way, especially because going down on him seemed so submissive and focused on his pleasure. Back then she'd hated even smiling his way. Of course he knew that she wanted that with him by then, as she'd shown all of Easter break, but to hear her say it, to know she'd wanted it enough to think about it just past Christmas when they'd only kissed, to imagine her in her four-poster bed or in the shower or wherever girls went to get off—

He'd almost started to wonder if she'd even need to put his cock in her mouth for him to come.

"Not always this exactly," she went on, remarkably calm and composed, whereas he'd started quietly swearing under his breath, something he only caught halfway through a word he had no idea he'd started. "Although sometimes exactly. But I always thought about making you miserable like this. You always had control over the years, and I just ended up reacting to the things you did and the ways you infuriated me. I always wanted to take control. And even after I stopped hating you, I still wanted to take control by making you want me and not be able to do anything about it so you would suffer until I decided it was enough. I still want that. It's my own version of vengeance."

She didn't see going down on him as submissive at all, but the opposite entirely.

Yeah, he loved this woman.

Her words broke him.

"Pay me back as much as you want," he said as she ran her tongue slowly up his erection, and his tone transformed into something heated and desperate, a tone he hadn't ever heard from himself before her. "Lily, please. Please. I'm begging you. I don't know—what else do you want me to say? I can't fucking think of anything else, not when you're—"

She repeated the motion of her tongue, stopping again just before the head, and frustration closed his throat momentarily. "Tell me you want me," she said, and she wrapped her hand around his cock and began to move slowly. She slid her mouth disappointingly—but also wonderfully—back to his balls.

"I want you all the fucking time." His throat had unstuck, frustration breaking the block, and his body seized with tension to where his shoulders had started to ache. He knew he sounded cross, but he was, because she didn't need him to tell her that to know. Her eyes narrowed up at him teasingly at the shift in his mood, which hardly helped. His words came out rushed, speeding up, with anger—or something like it, although not quite—increasing with each one. "I thought about you blowing me at breakfast this morning when you were just sitting there eating. I had no reason to think about that, but it kept at me the whole meal. During History of Magic today, I couldn't stop thinking about shagging you four nights ago—and I know it was four nights ago, because I've counted, and that's too long to go without you. We need to fix that. I'd already planned on convincing you to go off somewhere with me before the duel happened, because I didn't think I could stand sitting next to you in the common room, smelling your perfume and watching you smile, without losing my mind. I'd made up my mind I'd keep at you for as long as I needed to if you were clearly keen but just acting difficult, because you're always fucking difficult, you always want to make me wait—"

"Not always," she corrected, and he knew her to be right. She often initiated herself, or gave him a sort of longing, heated look that made him go after her immediately, and she never teased him then. "And, besides, you love it. It makes you feel like you've won something when you get your way. You love a challenge. You wouldn't like me if you didn't."

She was right overall, but in that moment she was very, very wrong—or at least that's how it felt.

"Fuck challenges. I want—just give me what I want." He knew he sounded spoiled and entitled and demanding, but he didn't have the brainpower to care. She laughed against him, something soft and under her breath, so he knew she heard the same in his voice that he did. "What do you—are you touching yourself?"

It wasn't a question he needed to ask, because he could see for himself that she was. He'd closed his eyes at some point during his tirade, something he hadn't planned, and he'd opened them to find her free hand slipped between her legs, the motions of her fingers slow, almost lazy.

"Yes."

"Seriously, are you trying to kill me?" Nothing else explained it. "What do you want me to say? If you don't tell me, I'll—fuck, do you want me to shove you up against the wall and fuck you? Because that's how this is about to go, Evans. I'm about halfway there." She truly was Evans then, desirable and maddening and somehow still out of his reach even on her knees, and he fell into calling her that without thinking. He didn't know if he'd ever put shagging her almost as a threat before, and he groaned at the way it made her breath hitch, clearly pleased rather than put off. It shouldn't have surprised him, but he hadn't thought of how she'd react. He couldn't really think of anything, but knowing she'd liked it—

Yeah, he loved this woman.

"Say the word," he pressed. He felt his grip on her hair tighten to where he almost hurt himself, although he knew she couldn't feel it. His fingers clenched around the length of her hair, but he couldn't release when he tried. "Say you want it I will have you up against the wall, and I'll—"

He didn't even really know what he intended to say, and never found out, because she closed her mouth around his cock with no more teasing and no warning, and he thought in the first few moments that he might never speak again.

Maybe it was work, he decided once his brain had started processing at least a little something, although it wasn't work because she made it look that way. It was work because she'd certainly worked at it, trying from the first time to figure out how he liked the speed and pressure and movement of her tongue and hands. She'd wanted to perfect it, and she had experimented with her mouth with the same pleasure and work ethic that she went into brewing a potion, intent on finding just the right combination of things, as he'd taken to trying on her in turn. Since break, every time she had gone down on him she had asked him what he liked and what he didn't, if he liked one way or another better, if there was anything she hadn't thought of that he wanted. Her almost academic curiosity could have taken all the fun out of it (although he doubted anything could take the fun out of it, really), but she asked the questions much in the way she had just spoken to him, with her mouth on him and her voice soft and teasing. He couldn't find a single thing academic about that. In the end, she'd perfected it in the weeks that had passed since Easter, and had taken things from already pleasurable and exciting into the realm where just watching her eat toast made him want her on her knees under the table in the Great Hall.

She approached it all like she strived for an 'O' on her NEWTs, he'd thought before, and he knew he'd said as much to Sirius. But he'd told her that once too, that he had given her an 'O' in his book. He'd refrained from adding that he'd gotten his own 'o' from her, a very different one, but he knew she thought it too just by the way she rolled her eyes and pressed her lips together, as if to suppress a smile.

She fell into the rhythm of it easily, of her mouth around him and one hand working his shaft while the other moved slowly around his balls. She set to doing precisely what he liked, and she executed it all perfectly, from the way she worked her tongue against his head to her eyes never once leaving his face. He dropped her gaze occasionally to admire the arch of her back or the view of her arse or the movement of her breasts as she worked. Sometimes he just had to close his eyes when she moved her tongue in just the right way that made it almost all too much, the sight of her and the feel or her mouth, which was somehow every bit as warm and wet as inside of her, but also somehow entirely different. The difference never ceased to amaze him, and he never would decide which he liked better.

As he expected, it took her very little time at all to get him close, and she pulled it off as easily as she might cast a first-year charm. She got him close, and then closer still, and he told her as much, which he regretted as soon as the words left his mouth. Another fifteen or twenty seconds would have done it, but she slowed the pace and pressure of it all—her mouth, both her hands, her tongue. Looking down at her, he thought she would have smiled if she could have, because she looked positively pleased, almost smug, and he knew then what he should have known all along.

She wasn't about to make it that easy. Clearly, he'd hardly begged her enough.

He gave her what she wanted immediately, and he heard the frantic note in his voice without the presence of mind to care. As he'd told her before, he didn't know what she wanted him to say, but suddenly that hardly mattered, because he had already made the unconscious decision to tell her anything and everything he could think of to get her to finish him. He asked her in just about every way he knew how, and the pendulum swung from a tender plea to an almost angry demand and then back again when she brought him slowly back up him back up and then down once again.

The third time around, he decided that, yes, she actually was trying to kill him.

He told her that, and he knew how ridiculous and dramatic it sounded, but he would swear then and later that he truly felt it. She fucking loved it, of course, which surprised him not at all. She toyed with him, just like her cat Oliver toyed with any poor, unsuspecting bug he came across, letting it just out of his paws before snatching it back. It felt like that each time, like he'd finally gotten almost to where he needed to be, and then she'd trap him again, and the whole excruciating, incredible process would start all over again. She'd toyed with him similarly before, but never with her mouth the entire time, and there was something to the constant, uninterrupted pleasure and pressure and heat that made things better and worse all at once.

He kept at begging, even though he wondered in the back of his mind if it truly had any effect on her, or if like Oliver, she'd finish tormenting him when she got bored, and only then.

Later, he would try to remember exactly what he had said to her right before she let him come, but he never could recall. He'd had very few words he could come up with towards the end, his brain shot, more blank than he'd ever felt it, absent of everything save for a clawing, desperate need for her. Still, he tried, although his words came out as little more than a string of panted affirmations or desperate swears alternated with her name. He'd stopped telling her when he got close, because she clearly knew anyway, but he heard himself tell her the final time she got him dangerously near the edge. Once she'd pushed past the ledge he'd teetered on before, he couldn't help but tell her, and it didn't matter anyway, because he was past the point where she could have ever brought him back down.

After they'd shagged for the first time, he had told her that he felt like he came hard enough for the four years he'd wanted her. She had laughed him off, although he'd really kind of meant it.

That day in the prefects' bathroom, looking down at her as he'd so often imagined, he absolutely felt like he came hard enough for four years of wanting her, no question about it.

She'd made him see stars before through similar tactics, and it felt like that then, although he also felt as though he'd physically left his body. He was just utterly gone, beyond anything else he'd ever felt in his life. Over the years to come, she would get him there again more times than he could count, and sometimes even more intensely, something he couldn't even contemplate in the moment. Perhaps even better, he would learn and then perfect how to get her there as well. But that first time was perhaps the best, and not just for its novelty. It came from the entire events of the day—his destructive duel and how it hadn't truly angered her, her own corridor justice that seemed so unlike her but that he'd undeniably liked, the way she'd spoken to him in the common room after, how easily he'd gotten her with his mouth, her much more laborious reciprocation, and the bath to follow that he'd forgotten about entirely the second she'd gotten on her knees.

He'd thought he'd had a fairly lucky day before she'd even returned to the common room after she went looking for Nott.

Past James was an absolute idiot. He hadn't known what lucky was.

He would have told her as much if he'd had the breath or energy or capacity to form words, because he lacked them all in the moments afterwards. It actually took him significant concentration to come back to himself enough to see that she'd gotten up, retrieved her wand, and magically opened the bathtub's taps.

Watching her, he remembered the bath, and he felt lucky all over again.

What the fuck was Felix Felicis like if he could manage that sort of luck on his own? What kind of insane day would that give him?

Fucking hell, what would she do for him then?

"Will you come here?" he asked, and his voice sounded off, but he didn't care. He remembered her affectionate excitement over the strange muggle threat he'd used in the common room, one of the many she'd snapped at him over and over through the years, and recalled how badly it had made him want to hold her. That desire hadn't abated, but he didn't have it in him to go to her just then.

She smiled, and he thought she'd never looked prettier, her mouth a glorious red and her hair mussed about her face. He told her that after she'd gone back to him and he'd pulled her down into his lap facing him, her legs on either side of his hips.

She laughed, although at his words or at the way he'd immediately taken to kissing her neck, he couldn't tell. "Of course you think that," she said, her fingers soft and stroking in the back of his hair. "You did this, and it's all ego with you all day, Potter. Insufferable." She looked at him with all manner of tender care, the look he loved but she could only give him in private, and smiled at him with a similar sort of softness. "You're always very sweet after you come, but you look like I'm going to have an especially hard time detaching myself from you tonight."

He saw no reason to deny it. He did feel exceptionally warm towards her. "Do you mind?"

"No. I don't mind." She glanced over her shoulder towards the bathtub, which filled quickly, and she spoke in that direction, perhaps purposefully. "But you're looking at me like you do again. It's not always after we shag. You do it a lot. Like, you looked at me like that in the prefect meeting the other day when I shut down Wharton's complaints and kept them down. So it's not just after we shag, although you always look it then."

He really had loved watching her get after Slytherin prefect Idony Wharton for her scheduling complaints. "Maybe we'd let someone else patrol the lower levels if we trusted your fucking housemates to leave them alone in the dungeons," Lily had snapped eventually with the anger James loved. Wharton hadn't gone red—the snake she was, James doubted she had enough blood for that—but she had tinged pink. "Until then, you can either listen to us or you can go explain to your concerns to Dumbledore. If you choose that route, we're happy to explain the same to him from our perspective."

Wharton hadn't said another word.

He should have caught it then, the obvious reference to something darker and worse than he'd imagined, but how could he have known what she meant? The words had passed over his head quickly, heard and then forgotten except for the way she'd presented them as a united front, , a unified "we" and "us." He'd liked that. A lot.

"Did Morton notice?" Even then, he couldn't help himself.

She flicked her wand to turn the taps off, and gave him A Look when she turned back, proper noun, because she'd packed a punch into it, although it didn't dim his grin. Very little probably could. He'd started grinning in the seconds after he came, and even thoughts of the Slytherins hadn't chased it away. That would come, he knew, but he planned to enjoy his Zen state until he had to really think about them in depth.

"Everyone noticed." She stood up and stretched, and he watched her with great interest, the novelty of her nudity somehow still in full force after hours and hours with her undressed. He doubted it would ever fade entirely. "You're not a bad liar overall. Not as good as Sirius, mind, but I've seen you lie to professors until you're blue in the face, and listening to you nearly swayed me a few times, even when I knew you were full of shit. I know you can control your face and sound convincing and all that. You're just really, really bad at it when it comes to me."

She didn't look particularly displeased about that, no matter the need for discretion.

"Now, up. You've owed me this bath for three months, Potter."

He'd thought about loving her so many times that day that it only felt like a matter of time before he said it on accident, but that time she got to him the most. There was something ridiculously appealing and entirely her presentin the cheeky way she demanded it; the smile she flashed him, all pretty dimples; and the sweetness in her gesture as she took his glasses off for him and set them on the bench next to her wand.

She was absolutely everything he'd ever wanted.

To compensate for those dramatically lovesick thoughts, he waited until she neared the edge of the bathtub and he pushed her in.

Fortunately, she came up laughing. Only after he'd watched her fall towards the thick carpet of bubbles did he contemplate that she very possibly might not.

"Three months!" She swam to the side, grabbed his calf, and pulled him in, but he'd expected it and had better time to prepare himself than she did. The second he resurfaced, he found a veritable tsunami pushed into his face. "Three months since Christmas, when you acted like you might spontaneously combust because you wanted in here with me so badly, and now that you have me here, this is how you want to play it?"

"When you put it that way—"

But that absolutely was how he wanted to play it, because she looked so stupidly good with a patch of bubbles clinging to the side of her cheek and her hair slicked back and her face laughing, and he could see all that even through the blurriness of his vision without his glasses.

He dove towards her, and she somehow managed to evade him as easily in the water as she often did when he reached to grab her on land. She had always twisted and spun away from him effortlessly, all grace, and she even looked graceful in the water, her movements apparently unhampered, whereas his felt sluggish.

Then again, she'd made him sluggish by getting him to his Zen state, so he couldn't really complain.

At his parents' house over Easter, he'd only ever caught her when she let him, something she'd never said but he'd still known. That held true in the water too, because even though he had longer arms and presumably more power behind them, she ran laps around him, as Sirius would say.

And, her being her, she teased him as she did.

"What happened to all those promises of a valiant attempt?" she asked at one point after he'd chased her for long enough that he'd entirely lost his breath and his arms almost ached. He'd already laughed, but he laughed more at that.

"I don't have to really try," he told her, even though he still did try and figured he always would. "I already have you."

"The fuck you do!"

He expected her to keep it up even longer for his words, but she let him catch her shortly after.

He liked a challenge, she had said, because it made him feel like he won something when he got what he wanted.

Out of the heat of the moment, he could appreciate that she'd absolutely spoken the truth. It felt every inch a personal victory when he eventually found himself seated on the tub's submerged bench, unsure if he'd taken her there or if she had him, her mouth on his, her nails sharp and pleasant against his shoulders, and her breath coming every bit as raggedly as his from the many, many laps they'd swum. He'd felt bone-tired before he even got in the bathtub, and more tired still when she slid onto his lap, but touching her under the water, her skin slick with bubble bath and bare and entirely available to him and even better than he'd ever imagined in countless extensive imaginings—that victory was one of the sweetest he'd ever known.

He would have made an absolute fool out of himself if he would have made any attempt to get in the water with her after Slughorn's Christmas party. No question.

"How do I look at you?" he asked after he'd touched her everywhere he could think of except inside her, and three times over at that. He started the process all over again, his desire still unabated. Still, he needed to know. After all, even Remus had started calling him on that apparently obvious expression.

"I told you." She ran her fingers through his hair, and he might have closed his eyes if he didn't enjoy looking at her so much. "Like I'm miraculous."

"That's not exactly descriptive."

She sighed once, and then a second time with pleasure when he pushed the heavy length of her hair off her neck so he could rub her there as he had so often witnessed her doing to herself during particularly long study sessions. "Oh, I like that," she said softly, and she leaned down to press her forehead against his shoulder to give him better access. Her words didn't sound sexual, not exactly, but contented in a way perhaps adjacent to that, and it made him feel as he had when watching her vacillate between seductive and affectionate in the common room. It made him want to hold her and stroke her hair, and he couldn't imagine a better place for it than where he sat just then.

"You said you like my hands."

"I meant it, and that was before I knew you'd rub my neck for me. Now I really mean it."

"You could have just asked me. I would have." He knew even as he said it that that wasn't her way. She would ask him to do whatever she wanted in bed—or tell him to do whatever she wanted, which he might have liked more—but she'd never once asked him for physical affection otherwise. She acted physically affectionate, of course, and she reciprocated when he did, but saying the words seemed beyond her.

At least for the moment. He absolutely planned to get her there.

"How do I look at you?" he asked again after she'd all but melted into him, settled across his lap with her chest against his and her body soft and relaxed in a way that astounded him. He always reached to hold her after sex, and she let him and ostensibly liked it, but she usually preferred to lay just away from him, independent to the last. If he'd known he could get her to relax against him like that with just one hand on her neck, he would have never stopped doing it.

He absolutely planned to never stop doing it, and to exploit such newfound power.

She kissed his shoulder, her mouth gentle and the gesture almost mindless, as if she hadn't thought to do it. He loved everything about that, because it meant that her neurotic, ever-moving brain didn't even need to process the thought of sending affection his way. She had done so almost on muscle memory alone. "If I tell you, you're going to get after me for my ego."

"That's fair though, isn't it? You just went at me for mine. Come on, Evans. Let's hear how it's ego all day for you too."

She laughed and he laughed with her, and the sound bouncing around the cavernous room sounded almost like music to him. "Stop," she said, although clearly more out of principal than any real ire. That sounded like muscle memory too. "I'm used to blokes looking at me like they want to shag me," she said after a moment. "So, ego all day there. It happens here, but I'm really used to it in the muggle world, because Mar and Hestia and I will go out with my muggle friends, and I'm not Head Girl then. I'm fun, believe it or not."

He'd heard enough stories—although also hardly any at all—to believe her entirely.

"I've gotten good at recognizing it, so I know that look well," she went on. "It doesn't bother me, so long as the bloke takes a fucking hint and backs off when he tries and it's not reciprocated. But…you don't look at me like that. You don't even look like that when I'm on my knees in front of you or you're inside me. You look like…"

She trailed off, and she went silent for long enough that he wondered if she'd ever complete her thoughts, or if she'd locked them up in her mind again, inaccessible to both him and herself. He rubbed down to her shoulder, and she made a quiet sound that leaned less adjacent to sexual and much more in that direction, which derailed him briefly, and he set about to get her to make that sound again.

"You look at me like you care," she said finally. It was the simplest of sentences, the most basic of statements, but she spoke it like something deep and significant that she'd painfully wrestled from her brain.

Of course he fucking cared. He loved her.

Yet on the term 'miraculous,' that was how she made it sound—like his care was some sort of miracle that she couldn't fully comprehend and didn't know how to handle.

She was the brightest witch he knew, or at least the hardest-working. She was way too smart to have not already realized that he cared, even without analyzing his expressions.

He wanted to tell her that, but she sounded and felt vulnerable in that moment, and nothing could persuade him to tease her when she got in that rare mode.

"I'm not used to care," she continued after another long pause. Her fingers painted patterns on the back of his neck, patterns as soft as her words. "All of that is on me, because it's not something I've wanted, to lay around and cuddle and get soppy, so I'm not complaining. I made blokes not care about me by design. I'm just not used to seeing a look like yours, I guess, because even a flicker of that would have made me think about bolting with anyone else. And…even blokes that have looked at me that way never looked it when we kissed or snogged or shagged or whatever. There was a different look then, that wanting look. But you still just look at me like you care, even when you look frustrated or almost furious from wanting me. It's bizarre, because it makes it look like you see shagging me as some sort of extension to when I put Wharton in her place or ask Peter to help me with Transfiguration or banter with Sirius until he laughs enough to cry or tell you I miss you when we've not been alone for a bit. There's more to your look than that—there's also just a ton of disbelief in there, like you're still blown away by me or us or something. So, just—the care, the disbelief, the constant state of it—I don't know. You look at me like I'm miraculous. I don't know how else to put it."

He let out a breath he hadn't known he held.

Clearly all of that showed he loved her, didn't it? How could she not put that together? Had she put that together and just didn't want to say the words?

"All of that is true," he told her. He ran his free hand up and down her back, certain he could locate each of the few scattered freckles there without looking. She had twelve along her spine. He had counted many times over break.

"I don't know how to handle it."

"You're doing great."

She laughed at that, her breath soft against his shoulder, and then she made another noise like the one he'd liked before when he zeroed in on a particularly tight spot between her neck and shoulder. "I would never let any other bloke do this to me," she said quietly, and she kissed his shoulder again, but more purposefully than before. She'd set out to do it then. "I would have written off anyone who tried."

She'd told him a lot of things by then that he held dear—what she thought of him, how she felt about him, how much she liked them together—but he'd usually tugged those out of her one way or another. That admission, freely given, somehow meant more than all the rest.

"I would kiss you if you didn't seem like you'd rather I do this," he told her, his thumb in that tight spot, and she rewarded him with something akin to a breathless moan that flooded his stomach with heat. "I'm also definitely enjoying your reactions."

"Unsurprised. Ego all day, remember?" He could hear the smile in her voice, and then, after that, an almost inaudible note of hesitation. "Will you do my other shoulder too?"

A question had never sounded more like progress.

"Have I ever said no to anything you've asked me to do to you?" They both knew the answer to that. "And after the way I just came—I'm going to need to rub your neck for years to pay you back."

"I'll hold you to that." She made it sound like a threat, although he very much hoped it was a promise. Her fingers became a little more insistent against the back of his neck, and the way she ran her nails gave him goosebumps no matter the temperature of the water. "You got very mad."

It sounded like it pleased and amused her more than anything, but he still felt compelled to offer an apology, although it came out half-hearted, almost worse than if he'd said nothing at all. All things considered, he just didn't have the care or energy to sound genuine when she'd clearly set out to make him that way.

Sure enough, she laughed against his skin, and then moved her head a little so he could start on her other shoulder. "Was it worth waiting and getting mad like that?"

He didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"Are you going to get mad like that the next time I do it?"

He didn't hesitate there either. "Yes."

"I expected as much. I don't mind it. Like I said, I really like it when you're miserable in that way." She murmured softly when he located another tight spot, and he realized, from the pressure of her thighs on the outside of his legs, that he'd pegged the transformation in her sounds correctly. "Thank you for distracting me," she said, and he gave a snort of laughter.

She was thanking him?

His amusement ended immediately when she went on, clearly serious. "What? You were right. I needed it. And…it's going to sound strange, and it probably is, but I feel better for having had this with you. Like I said, I don't think much of the way they treat me anymore, Nott and them. I really hate it for the younger girls, but I can deal with it. But dealing with it with you, feeling in control again and knowing that my sexuality is mine…I feel better."

Was it weird that he almost wanted to thank Nott for the way he just came, even while he wanted to wipe him off the face of the earth?

He almost entirely felt the latter, but the prior still tickled the back of his mind. Hell, he probably would have thanked Voldemort himself if he'd contributed as Nott had.

He didn't know it at the time, of course, but later down the line, Voldemort would perform the same service many times over.

"I'm going to need you to grab me any time you feel out of control for any reason at all," he told her, and she kissed the side of his neck in response.

"It's constant these days."

"That's fine. Don't act like I'd mind that."

She wanted him again. He could tell not just from the pressure of her thighs, but also from the way her nails had remained light and teasing against his hairline. He knew she meant to take things somewhere more intense even before she spoke, and just the knowing—even before she said a word—made his heart flip in anticipation.

"I really would like you to tell me more about how you've thought of me," she said, and her voice had changed in some imperceptible way, just as her body had too. She still felt soft, but had a newfound tension that he couldn't attribute to any one part of her. "You said you've thought about me for years. I want to know the things you thought about, because I'd like to do more of them with you. Watching the way you got off tonight because you'd wanted me like that before—I loved that. And I loved the idea of you pushing me into a wall. I know you've done that before, but never when you're so worked up like that, and…I liked it, the idea that you couldn't help yourself and had to have me. I really wanted to see what you'd do to me then. I know that's what I'll be thinking about on the nights I don't see you."

"Fuck, Lily—"

How many times could he say that without it becoming routine? It felt almost constant in the days since she'd first gotten into his bed, and it should have lost all meaning, but he didn't have other words just then, as he normally didn't around her. And she clearly hadn't stopped loving it, because he caught the pleasure on her face before he kissed her. He had to break away almost immediately, because he'd slipped his hand between her legs and somehow found her warmer and wetter than the bath, which didn't seem possible, and it left him momentarily frozen and entirely stunned.

Like most things with her, although he'd imagined the very same scenario countless times since Christmas, she somehow made the reality better. He'd always thought his imagination pretty creative and skilled overall, especially when it came to her, but reality won out every time.

"Name something and I've thought of it," he told her once he'd regathered himself enough to speak. She'd transitioned to kissing his neck by then, and he busied his hand between her legs as the other migrated up to her hair, slick and damp under his fingers. "I've thought about pushing you up against a wall when I'm mad and you're mad and just working it out that way. I've thought about waking up in the middle of the night to find you in my bed in my dorm, naked and already wet and desperate for me. I've thought about this exact moment a thousand times since Christmas, and it's—fuck, talk about miracles, because it's happening and it's better than I thought it could be. I've thought about shagging you in every place we ever snogged and even places where we were together and we didn't even touch—up against the tree by the lake and in the common room and in every secret passageway we snuck to before Easter, but also in that first passageway I took you to where you tried to hex me and the kitchens and the Transfiguration room. Just everywhere we've ever been together. I've thought about you coming into the Quidditch locker rooms after a match, and—"

"I'll do that if you win the cup."

The world stood still.

He stopped the progress of his hand, and she gave a sigh against his ear, something heated and impatient, as her hips moved. The sigh transformed into one still heated, but much more gratified, when he drew a slow circle around her clit as she'd shown him she liked. Her mouth went back to the soft, teasing kisses around his ear that she'd begun just before, and between that and her words and his fingers inside her, he was determined to shag her before they left the bathroom, whereas before he'd just wanted it.

"You will?" he asked, and his voice came out tight, his throat restricting at the thought.

"Yes. But only if we win."

Competitive to the last. He couldn't help but admire that about her.

He knew then that Gryffindor would win the cup. He'd already planned on it, intent on putting his team through the wringer in order to finish out his winning streak as captain, but he knew then that they would win, even if he had to play every position himself.

It had started to feel like an unbreakable mantra, a loop he couldn't escape, not that he cared very much, but—fuck, he loved this woman.

She didn't tease him at all that first time in the bath, instead sinking onto his cock as soon as he'd recovered enough to get hard. After all the horrible, wonderful torment she'd put him through before, he relished the change of pace. She slid his hands to her hips and encouraged him to move her as he wanted, and she worked at the rhythm he set, rolling her hips in a familiar, incredible, heart-stopping way. She had less to say then as she had before, which almost relieved him. He had run out of words too.

xxx

Things went mysteriously, outrageously awry for Slytherin house until the end of term.

Their common room flooded not once, not twice, but three times over, all several days apart, just when a very irritated Filch and equally frustrated Slughorn had set things right.

The entirety of their table in the Great Hall broke out in painful, pus-filled boils one innocuous Tuesday evening, the likes of which Madam Pomphrey had never seen. It took her nearly twenty-four hours to crack how to heal them all.

The seventh-year boys in particular had a hard time of it.

Travers found himself without robes in the middle of class. Twice.

Snape inexplicably lost his hair four times over—an improvement, Remus commented, his tone very mild and almost polite.

A series of objects continually materialized to follow and hit Mulciber. A book on manners, which collided so hard with the back of Mulciber's head that he fell over, made Sirius laugh the hardest.

Avery continued to show up in the strangest places with no recollection how he got there—the middle of the Quidditch pitch during Hufflepuff's practice, a Charms lesson full of second years, the girls' bathroom on the third floor. McGonagall found him outside her private chambers enough times that she finally held the Marauders back after Transfiguration.

"This will stop," she said, nearly shaking with rage.

"Why do you think we have anything to do with it, Professor?" James asked.

He'd never been happier that he could lie and control his face with troublemaking as he couldn't when it came at all to Lily.

She swelled indignantly. "Who else would it be?"

But she had no proof, because there was no proof, and so she had to let them go.

Discretion.

Nott got hit last.

He ended up in the Hospital Wing one afternoon, sporting a fractured collarbone and a concussion from a nasty tumble down a flight of stairs.

In the common room that evening, James went right to Lily. "We didn't do that one," he told her, the first time he had actually admitted that he and his friends were behind it all. She, Marlene, and Hestia knew, of course, but they'd never explicitly asked, so they had never explicitly told them.

"Yeah, that was me," she said almost casually, eyes on her parchment and the end of her quill between her lips. "I planned to tell you when I saw you, but I haven't seen you since."

Sirius began to laugh. "On a public staircase? What happened to discretion, Head Girl?"

"No one was around, and he'd said enough," she said simply. "For what it's worth, I didn't intend for him to go down the stairs. I completely underestimated how far I'd throw him. I put more behind the spell than I should have, and I felt a little bad about it."

Still, she didn't look particularly upset.

"There's a rumor going around that he has a shrunken hand that Pomphrey can't fix." Remus looked as if he almost didn't want to ask, but couldn't help himself. "What did you do?"

Hestia buried her face in her hands.

Marlene began to cackle. "I'm so, so fucking mad I wasn't there."

"It's actually just a finger." Lily continued to look at her essay, and scratched out a word with the tip of her quill, clearly editing as she spoke. She lifted her left hand and wiggled her fingers briefly. "His wand hand. Hessie found the spell."

"It's an old, old spell used to dry or dehydrate plants or fruits or vegetables. I found it in an obscure Herbology book. I'd never even heard of it, because no one uses it anymore, as there's better magic—well, that's not the point. Basically, it's old enough that removing it will take a bit, because it's not a common spell." When Hestia looked up, her face had gone entirely pink, although clearly from laughter she'd suppressed. "It takes all the moisture out of something. So we thought about it—"

"You thought about it," Marlene corrected her. She looked supremely proud. "Lily might have used it, but you're the one who found it, and the one who took us to the kitchens to test it on a sausage, and the one who said that if he wanted to say that sort of shit to her—" She let the threat hang implicitly in the air.

James flinched. He could almost feel his own cock recede at the thought.

Sirius looked as if a push with a single finger might had knocked him over. He stared at Hestia, dumbstruck. "Who are you?" he demanded, but he didn't look displeased.

"I'm hoping the threat and example of a finger is enough, because I don't think I could ever actually use it in Hestia's very creative way," Lily said as Hestia flushed from pink to red. "Even if he might deserve it, that would just be…really horrible to do to someone. I don't think I have it in me. Although we know it works now, so that's a bonus." She scratched out an entire sentence, and her tone turned brisk, clearly ready to move on. "Anyway, that's that. I hope the message sticks until the end of term. He only has to let me be for thirty-one days. I hope he can manage that."

"Can I ask what he said?" The words tumbled from James' mouth before he could stop them.

She shook her head silently in response, and her expression didn't change a fraction of an inch. She'd clearly anticipated the question.

He let it go. For then.

In the days to come, they still got Nott, of course. James had never stopped pranks already in motion before, and Remus, normally the voice of reason, didn't so much as suggest letting him off the hook after Lily's own vengeance. That gave James all the go-ahead he needed.

Starting the next day, Nott's possessions began to mysteriously explode. Not constantly, or with any consistency, or with enough force to truly hurt him, but enough that it singed his eyebrows off repeatedly, and made short work of the his attempt at a beard—although that was probably counter to their plans, Peter noted, because he'd looked even stupider with it.

Watching Nott's increased jumpiness over the next thirty days made McGonagall's subsequent hour-log lecture entirely worth it, James decided even in the middle of said lecture, especially because she couldn't manage to officially place the blame on the Marauders.

And watching Lily when Nott's Potions textbook went up with a great boom during their final Potions lesson (their final Potions lesson ever, which felt almost unreal), he saw her laugh even though she clearly tried not to. He found her eyes on him, and the laughter there—well, it made everything all the sweeter.

He got her to come around on his pranks in the end.