Earthquake Drills

by ennabellapotter

Sequel to Summer Girl 1977. Summer is over. Lily Evans and James Potter are in their seventh and final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The world around the castle shifts, unmoored. Love and friendship become urgent, imperative concerns—become, perhaps, the difference between life and death.

13. Chapter 13

A/N: Darn but does winter drag me down. Look at me—I couldn't even choose between two lyrics to quote at the beginning, so I put both! Insufferable!

Having such kind readers makes even dreary cold much better. Thank you thank you for the support!

Just a reminder that if you'd like to follow me tumblr, I'm efkgirldetective 3

TW: A bit of violence / use of derogatory sexual language

---

13

I am a forest fire
And I am the fire and I am the forest
And I am a witness watching it

—Mitski, "A Burning Hill"

I'm afraid of pain
Both yours and mine

—Lucy Dacus, "Yours & Mine"

---

Lily

When I was six years old I fell out of a tree and broke my ankle.

I don't remember much about it, only slivers of sensation: Crisp autumn air, hair pigtailed and too short for my liking, dad's cry as he watched me fall. One slip of my foot and the rest of my body followed. It couldn't have been that of a fall; the tree was barely off the ground, a short, gnarled crabapple. I was cushioned, for the most part, in scattered leaves.

At first I felt nothing; I felt fine. I saw my foot lying at a strange angle, but there was a disconnect between the pain and the injury. Like the pain was somewhere else, somewhere in the atmosphere around me, nebulous. My dad rushed over, panicked but trying to maintain an illusion of calm, his voice a force of overexcited composure.

He asked if my foot hurt, and that's all it took: The pain slammed into me. I realized I was hurt. I felt it all at once.

This relationship to pain follows me the rest of my life.

---

It happens in the late morning.

The opener: Would this cluster of Slytherin seventh years mind not loitering in the middle of the History corridor during such a rush?

The response: Leering, cackles, the traditional "won't be doing any sort of half-blood bidding, actually."

The exhaustion: A surfeit, in my body (from the day, from the fight, from the history, from the life).

The request: Steadfast, calm. "No matter your house nor personal feelings toward me, I am the authority. I am in charge."

The fact: Of course this plays poorly, they are 1) shiny-haired, 2) small-nosed, 3) wearing glares that become their beauty rather than detract from it; their smirks implanted at birth.

The leader: Marlowe Pritchard, drawing herself up like a sleek swan borne from the water.

The question: "So what gives you the authority to fuck a pureblood, Evans?"

I know my skin goes deep and my self-worth, deeper; I know I have withstood callous remarks and disgusted stares and avoided duels and conflicts and futile squabbles countless times, even when beckoned, even when mocked, ridiculed, taunted. I have let it pass over me, unaffecting; I have spent myself on the pain, later, alone, tears hot and lonely and useless. I have let it make me stronger.

But here at the fringe of the group, visible among the gathered crowd, the shocked staring, the proud and daggering group of them: Kerstin Flinn, eyes downcast, looking uncomfortable.

Making no move to leave. Making no move to intervene.

I don't know why this is the day I lose myself. Any combination of years might lead to it. Any combination of exhaustion. I feel drained of the ability to deflect, to ignore, to cast-off. Something fiery down the hollow of my throat—and I'm becoming a bluer version of myself, dark blue, pulsing with fumes of cool fire.

I meet Marlowe's gaze head-on. "Does it make you feel better? To make me feel bad?"

Nostrils flare outward. Eyes roll, unperturbed. "Answer the question, slag."

The word bounces off. "Surely you can do better than that, Pritchard," I say, voice low and quavering. I watch her knuckles go white on the leather strap of her bag. "Nothing I haven't heard before."

She blinks, blank and elusive. Skin like snowfall. "What's the saying, girls?" she purrs, slight arch in one perfectly-shaped brow. "A half-bleed's only useful on her knees?"

A chorus of low snickers, surrounding. Kerstin's eyes flick to mine briefly. She looks away quick, right back to her feet. A grind of hot anger pulses at the back of my neck. I clench my jaw against it, keep my mouth shut.

"I bet he only does it from behind, doesn't he?" Marlowe bites. "So he doesn't have to look at you when he comes in your filthy little snatch."

Her eyes brighten. I know I am going red in the face from fury and humiliation. It prickles along my face like something alive. There's a growing crowd around us but I'm blind to anything but her pink lips, so self-satisfied and calculated. Marlowe steps slightly closer to me now; too close for comfort.

"Or maybe," she reasons evenly, "he just shoves his cock in that insufferable mudblood mouth of yours." Her eyes blown so wide they're almost all black. "Salazar fucking forbid you should get the idea you've any chance at bearing impure life."

The blue of blind rage swallows me and I feel it thundering, pressing in from every side. It's not me but a shadow of me that spits, "Fuck you."

Marlowe is visibly hit. "Excuse me?"

My arms shake. Skin erupting in heat. I am outside of myself. "Fuck." I sting even myself with the force of it. "You."

I see and hear the first hex, but barely feel my own counter-hex except for its taut echo in my head, like a tired reflex—a reflex not a millisecond too late, Marlowe barely flinching before she's thrown a second hex, this one unfamiliar, a flash of bright, brutal blue; it hits me square in the side of my abdomen. I gasp at the smarting burn. She is ecstatic, shock and triumph erupting on her face like its own loaded gun—and then her clamped and hateful jaw, her "you'll learn your place, Head Girl," her overzealous fist biting into the valley between my cheek and and eye, a wave of red flashing far back behind my eyes.

This hit without reason or anticipation; bare flesh bolts on impact.

I blink through red and blue and black and see Marlowe's face spelling out her conquest. I see Kerstin Finn turn her eyes from me, silky white-blonde hair the only thing between me and the blur of the now-frantic crowd, exclamations and mumbling and noise just an angry smudge of birds, crowding me in, suffocating.

I have one thought only: Out.

Marlowe laughs. Just once, shortly—as if I'm not worth the rest. An unforgiving sound. Someone says, "Evans? Evans? Evans—" and here, I feel the pain. I hear my name and I feel. The pain.

I touch my cheek, find something too big to be my face; fingers wet. I swallow and feel the pain. It demands to be felt. I shift sideways, catch one last glimpse of white-blonde silk. I angle blindly through the mass, the collage of faceless frightened faces. My feet. Out. Everything swings on a harsh diagonal. I do what is demanded of me. I feel the pain.

---

James

I am not immediately startled by Lily's absence at the foot of the Astronomy tower. Sometimes she's late out of Arithmancy, or early to study period with Ingrid and Mary and Remus, or caught up helping a poor first year who's yet to figure out the nuances of navigating shifting staircases.

I feel minor confusion when I find Ingrid, Mary, and Remus already settled into study, sans-Lily. Sirius and Peter and I slide in, and I ask if anyone's seen her. I receive several distracted shrugs and a "dunno, probably lecturing an unlucky soul on the benefits of rolling one's shoulders back when walking" from Ingrid. I bristle and let it go and start in on Charms revisions with Remus.

Dorcas does a fine act of appearing calm when she arrives. She places a light hand on my shoulder and just says, "James, will you come with me?" Her tone, however: Instantly alarming. I turn, find a little burn of panic in her eyes.

There are notes of bewilderment and protest from the rest of the group, but I get up and follow her immediately, her pace hurried as we exit the hall. "Dorcas, what's going on? What's happened?"

She spares me a glance but doesn't say anything until we're clear of the hall entrance, halfway down the History hall. "Lily got in a fight with Marlowe Pritchard."

"What?" I hiss. Fear tightens my throat nearly closed. "When?"

"Just now. Between periods. I wasn't there, just caught the tail end of...well the crowd was frantic but Lily was already gone, and so were the Slytherins. I asked Penny, er, don't know her last—whatever, doesn't matter, she told me what happened. She said—" Dorcas stops, abruptly, arms drawn along her torso as if to protect herself. "She got hit by a bad hex and Marlowe punched her, too. Right in the face. She said it didn't...it look great."

"Fucking hell." A flare of heat and anger and dread wraps my neck and face. "Where is she?"

Dorcas' eyes shift uneasily. After a second, she resumes walking. We're rounding the corner to the connecter wing to the greenhouses, a corridor composed mostly of locked storage closets and unused classrooms. "I came right to find you, I didn't look for her, but I think she's probably—she used to come down here, sometimes, when she was really put out—er, Snape-wise." She swallows past something. Her face is reddening. "She didn't like us following her after a fight like that, and I suspect this is no different, but—" She pauses, again. "I don't know how to say this."

"What?" I demand, uncaring of my callous tone.

Her eyes focus somewhere beyond my figure. "Like I said, I wasn't there for the fight, but Penny made it sound like—" she shakes her head, as if she's physically unable to continue. "Shit. It's upsetting. I don't—I don't know how you're going to react."

"You're fucking scaring me, Meadowes, will you just spit it out?"

She sighs exasperatedly. "You're going to be angry, and you're going to have to fucking cage that up, alright?"

"Fine," I snap.

She swallows again, tightening her grip on her arms. "Marlowe was being really—derogatory, and foul about—the two of you. You know. Sleeping together." She winces and looks away. "Implication being...she's your—gods, but I can't say it."

A chasm of bright vehemence cracks wide open inside of me. "Where is she?" I manage to grind out between my teeth, eyes shifting frantically along all the row of unfamiliar doors. My anger is like an unattached thing, separate from my body. "Tell me which one she's in."

"James—" Dorcas begins, desperately. "You have to—I don't really know if she'll want to talk, after, I was just so worried, and I didn't know—"

"Please?" and I hope this note of misery, of despondency, will reach her.

It does. Her eyes on me are helpless but still she motions, glumly, to the third door down from where we stand. "I think, probably, there."

---

Lily

The room is an old refuge, from when Severus and I would row. Musty and unused. I transfigure a grimy chalkboard into a mirror so I can see what Marlowe has done to me.

I pull my shirt out of my waistband and find a violent stain from the hex. I pin my wand to the site and withdraw the abrasion; it threads out of me deep blue, clinging venomously to the tip of my wand, a swift and brutal pain washing up and down my side as it twists out. I bite my own fingers to keep from crying out. It leaves a shadow of itself on my skin; a nearly invisible bruise traversing ribcage and stomach. I breathe in deeply, let my shirt fall down.

The damage to my face is more obvious: A badly swelling welt where my right eye meets my nose, and a thin, bloody cut where a ring on Marlowe's finger snagged the edge of my eye.

For a moment I think I might throw up at the sight. My stomach heaves for a long, agonizing minute, throat gagging on nothing. I wipe at my mouth and stare at myself. Is this me? I take another deep breath—and then another.

This injury I decide to leave untouched.

I stagger into a clump of desks and slide down against the leg of one. It's uncomfortable but grounding, the immediate stiffness in my back and neck a reminder that I'm only made of parts: Skin, muscle, bone. A collection of breakable things.

I squeeze my eyes shut and it stings.

I sit and listen to my wild pulse stilling. I tell myself her words have no effect on me. That even the physical pain isn't bad, or painful, really. The throb of swelling dulls to an amenable pulse along nose and cheek. The bloody cut dries to a crust. My throat burns no matter how many times I swallow. And something else, slithering underneath, itching under the skin of my arms, of my cheeks, of my elbows; seething, cracking, hot. Diverged from a hard and persistent need to be okay.

Of course she is wrong. But in a dark and skulking part of me, an uncertain voice: Maybe she's right.

I know it's only a matter of time before someone tells someone and that someone tells someone else and that someone tells James. I know he will be frantic. I know he will find me and look at me with horrified eyes and ask what happened.

And I know with chest-choked certainty that I am in no way ready for that.

The door creaks open and footsteps. "Lily?"

He is smart and able-bodied and finds my figure, slumped, desk leaning. Slow footsteps, sharp intake of breath. Maybe my lack of response, my lack of turning, my palm limp at my side, face-up, defeated. Maybe that is scary. My knees crooked to my chest and useless feet hit the leg of another desk. I can't imagine I look well.

"Are you hurt?"

His voice is gentle and calm and I want to resent him for it. I turn my face and see, now, in his eyes, how the wound must really look. He scrambles to his knees, crouching, gasping, "Fuck, Lily, fuck, your—"

"No." I say firmly. It's not lost on me that once these roles were reversed. It was him insisting he was fine, he didn't need help—and my panic was so full and immediate and pulsing that I needed him to let me help him, as much for him as for me.

"Don't touch me."

James does stop, one knee clumsily bent, face flooded in anguish. I maintain his eyes without waver. "I want it to bruise. I want it to be there, next time she sees me."

This is complicated for him. I see his throat at work; an interior battle. "Okay," he says quietly. "The hex?"

"Gone. I took care of it."

He wants to reach out; fingers twitch at his side. He is as nervous about my injury and demeanor as he is this tone in my voice, this tone cut in contempt. I do not sound like myself.

But if I were to let this reaction go—I don't want to face what real sorrow lies beneath.

I hear his pained breath as he works out what to say. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"You seem to want to."

His exhale isn't angry, or anxious; it's just air. He's no footing, here. If I were better, I would tell him that neither do I. But the heat on my face is an indication that my anger has solidified, heavily, into pain meant to be thrown off, thrown at others, boiled down to something hard and unforgiving.

Is this not just what they want? Marlowe, and the others?

If I were better, I would simply ask for help. But I am not better. I am in pain.

His voice is quiet. "You're not going to like what I have to say."

"Then why don't you save yourself the trouble and not say it all."

"You—" he tempers the bite of frustration he begins with into something even, something reasonable and soft. "It's never going to end well, engaging them."

"So you're here to lecture."

"No. No, I—" his tone is low and helpless. "I don't like seeing you hurt, Lily." The hurt pulses, contrary, along my cheek. "And I know that given the chance, they would hurt you much worse. Much, much worse." He adds, quietly, "I've seen it happen before."

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't remember?" I snap and shift forward on my knees, getting to my feet unsteadily, and I can tell this upsets him—his fingers, again, tensing at his side, face contorting in distress. He stands up, too. I waver where I stand and he reaches and I repeat myself. "Don't touch me."

His eyes flood with pain, but his hand snaps back.

"I have lived with this for so long, and I know—" my breath is aggravated. "I know that biting back is just what they want." I shake my head and turn my jaw into a hard line. "But you—you are not allowed to stand there and tell me not to fight. You've spent years doing just the same. I've watched you hurt yourself for lesser things."

"That's—" his brow a complexity of hurting. "It's different."

"Oh, it is? How?"

"It's—you—you're—"

"What? I'm what, James?" I feel the pain and the crawling underneath meeting in the middle, the fury I felt standing in front of Marlowe returning in some twisted maniacal way, flung outside of my body. "I'm weak? I need protecting? I'm vulnerable? I'm angry? I'm hot-headed? I need you to tell me what to do?"

"No, Lily, none of that's—"

"I am my own person," I retort, cutting him off, face heating immeasurably, throat closing in with anger and grief and irritation at him, at the fight, at Marlowe, at my eye and cheek, pulsing in pain and fresh heat—at the entire miserable state of things. Hot tears blind my vision but I'll be damned if I let them fall, here, now. "And just because I'm with you doesn't mean I will not or cannot fight for myself. I am sick of letting them win. I am sick of being the victim." I pin my eyes to the ground. I am ashamed and unable to stop. "And now it's not enough for them to taunt me just for being muggle-born, they've got to dig their claws into you and me as if—as if just I'm some—" a long and wallowed breath. "Something to you."

I look up and see the muted agony, see his mouth open to speak; I hold up a hand. "I know it's not true. I know it's bloody stupid to even give thought to insults that are meant to do just this—to get me angry." I touch the backs of my knuckles to the stinging cheek and see that I am, after all, crying. "But there isn't any good in ignoring the difference between us. Never mind there isn't any, really—there's scores of people who think there is. It isn't going to disappear. As long as we're together, it's there." I laugh, shortly, without humor. "A little hurt now is the least of my concerns. I won't sit by and wait to be killed. I won't."

There are several beats of heavy silence. His fingers bunch at his sleeves where I know he wishes he could reach for me, still. I wish I were less of a complication. I can only swallow, and add, "It's shit to hear, but there's a part of me that will hurt in ways you won't understand. It's not your fault. It's just the truth."

Desperate, golden eyes, voice cracking in the center. "Lily—"

"I'm not really angry at you. I am angry, yes, at myself, at—her. At them. Fuck, does it hurt." I close my eyes. "I just need space. You don't need to worry about me, okay?" I open my eyes and look.

He does not want me to go. He is actively, deeply worried about me. He wants to explain to me every which way I am wrong. But he nods, slowly. He swallows hard. His voice an agonized thing. "I'm sorry."

"I'm fine." It sounds unconvincing even to my own ears. But I swallow against it and am walking out of the room before he can stop me, before he can convince me to stay.

---

James

I lay horizontally on my old four-poster, fingers sprawled in a sweaty clamp at my forehead, legs chucked over the edge. My body a chaos of nothing useless or clear. I feel dizzy. Throat unyielding. "Are you breathing, Prongs?" Someone pokes at my thigh. "I haven't seen your chest move in like, a minute."

I remove my hand for a second to find Sirius in his anxious, cross-legged perch, staring down with meteoric concern. Vision seems to make the spinning sensation worse, so I return my hand over my eyes. "I want to set the fucking dungeons on fire."

"We can definitely...see to that," he says, tone edged in hesitation. I've a feeling he's having some sort of eye-conversation with Remus, who last I checked is sat over on his own bed.

I can't stop seeing her turn to me from that shadow, looking like someone smashed her skull in against a jagged rock. I swallow back the horror of it. I try to quit hearing her thankless tone when she wouldn't let me touch her, heal her, help her.

"But just before," I spit. "I've numerous choice words for Pritchard."

"I mean, I've got an in, mate, last I heard she's taken up with that bastard brother of—"

A swift knocking at the door cuts Sirius off. I remove my hand from my eyes just in time to watch Peter open the door, letting in—"Where the fuck is she, Potter?"

Marlene, brilliantly red in the face, a brilliant fury blazing in her eyes, uniform disheveled, chest heaving. I begin to sit up, confused; exhausted. "I don't—"

"Marls, for fuckssake—" Mary rushes into the room so quickly that she bangs her head on the door, gripping it and immediately wincing while simultaneously attempting to tug at Marlene's arm.

"Geroff me," Marlene snaps, snatching her arm away. "He fucking knows where she is!"

I can't get a good grip in this moment on what I seem to have done wrong. "I actually don't."

"No, no, you do! You—" she rotates her head wildly, taking in the four of us, our nervous statures. "Dorcas said—"

"I saw her just during study, near the greenhouses," I interject. "But she said she needed space. Haven't seen her since."

Marlene falters, shifting her weight awkwardly. "Well—what the fuck?" she huffs a frustrated breath, looking desperately to Mary. "She's not—we looked— "

"Marlene." I recognize Mary's tone; it's the tone Lily sometimes takes with me when she is appealing to my affection, rather than my reason. "Let's go back to the room. You know how she—gets," she says, slanting her eyes sideways at me. "She'll come round when she's ready."

"Yeah, tough chance of that." Marlene replies, then adds, after a second, "In fact, sod that." Her eyes narrow and she stares brutally at a spot somewhere far away. "Think I'll pay a visit to the ice queen herself, down below. Work out all this maddening vigor."

Remus stands from his bed. "Is that the best—"

"Yeah, don't think I'll be taking advice from you lot," Marlene says, nose crinkling. "Given all vengeful plotting you've managed on your own time."

Remus turns to me desperately, as if he expects me to back him up, to try and stop Marlene. I probably should, but in this moment, I find myself lacking the willpower and rational thought to do either. "I'd never condone harm to an innocent party."

Marlene's eyes sparkle on me. Mary heaves an exasperated breath. Remus throws his arms up in similar frustration.

"Personally, I would suggest haste—and nothing that leaves a mark," Sirius offers, examining his fingernails in a grand show of neutrality. "Less evidence should you get caught. You know." He shrugs. "Hypothetically."

Marlene nods curtly, then spins on her heel and makes to leave the dorm, calling, "Coming, Mary?"

"I'm not—gods, Marlene—" Mary looks around at us, helplessly, briefly, before following with an irritated sigh and mumbling, "fat lot of good this was to the cause of waiting patiently."

"That ought to make you feel just a little better," Sirius says to me, uncrossing his tangled legs. "She's wicked quick with her wand. Ever dueled her in Defense? She's catty during, she's got a sharp tongue."

I bury my head in my hands and groan. "Might make it worse."

"Worse?" Sirius gapes. "Come on. Someone's gotta knock Pritchard down a notch, or six. Very well can't be you. Evans would never forgive."

"She very well might not be pleased to learn he didn't stop that," Remus adds quietly. I turn and look at him, a knot of that exact concern gripping at me, pulse stuttered.

Peter approaches from across the room, hands in his pockets. "To be fair, sounds like Lily didn't exactly stop herself from dueling, earlier."

"What a sodding mess," Sirius mutters. "Don't hate me for saying it, Potter, but I really wished I'd seen it."

"Might share the sentiment if I wasn't so keen on excommunicating an entire house from the Hogwarts ledger."

"Um, are we going to dinner?" Peter asks, clutching at his stomach. "Not that this isn't important, Prongs, but—" his stomach makes a strange gurgling, emphasizing his point on dinner.

I sigh into my hand. "You all go on. I'm not hungry. I'll—I'll just go back to the Heads and wait for Lily."

Sirius clasps his hand to the back of my neck as he climbs down from the bed. "Cheers, then."

"Lads, I don't think James is in any state to be alone at the moment, actually," Remus says, sending him a swift and pointed look. "And I don't suspect the great hall is such a grand plan, either. Given the...company."

Sirius pauses, hand still on my neck, and examines my face. I don't meet his eyes. "Fucking hell, man. Fine."

"Then I'll go smuggle from the kitchens, yeah?" Peter offers brightly. "Dot and Millie owe me four or five favors, give or take."

"Kitchen elves, Pete?" Sirius asks, befuddled. "Owing you?"

"Oh, piss off. Unlike the mass majority of tools at this institution, I don't discriminate against a creature just because they're indebted to serve us three meals a day. Dot and Millie are friends, alright?"

Remus throws a pointed look in Sirius' direction, then says to Peter, "You're a saint. Want help?"

Peter's quick to shake his head. "Nah, they're more likely to sneak me off a package alone." He snags his wand from his bedside table and snoops around to Remus' trunk, rifling till he finds the Invisibility Cloak, and asks, "Map?"

Sirius flops over his bed, rummaging through his own mess of belongings for a second before finding the parchment and tossing it in Peter's direction. "Thanks. Back soon." He makes for the door, then glances to Sirius, calls, "Will only be getting cranberry fizz for drink! I know you've been dying for it!"

"Then you can perform the nasty complex antidote, arsehole!" Sirius calls after him. To Remus and me, he grumbles, "What kind of idiot develops a cranberry allergy at eighteen, anyway?"

"Idiot being the operative word, yeah?" Remus muses, but he's sat down right next to Sirius and his grin is one crack away from flirtatious.

"Yeah," Sirius says distractedly.

"As if this is better than being alone?" I snap, and they both turn to me, flustered, as if they forgot I was in the room.

I look between their bewildered eyes for just a second, then exhale. I stand and move one bed over, slumping into the east-facing window seat. "Sorry," I apologize quickly. "Actually might feel better if the two of you held hands."

"She's going to be alright, James," Remus says firmly. I note, briefly, that Sirius has, indeed, taken his hand. "She's headstrong, but she's also strong."

I believe him only halfway.

"And she'll come back, and she'll be fine, and you'll snog and disappear for a couple of days to stare into her eyes." Sirius adds. Then his eyes widen, inexorably. "Wait. Hang on. You taken 6,000 house points from Slytherin, yet?"

---

After spending just as much nervous energy as I can in Gryffindor tower I make my way back to my own dorm. On the other side of the hall, Lily's room is dark and empty.

I try to put it out of my mind.

I fail magnificently, of course, but sit myself down at my desk and embark on a treacherous journey through Potions, then Charms, then Transfiguration. In the sliver of mental capacity remaining three hours later—the clock boasting quarter past eight—I begin on what I mistake to be a rather simple Astronomy assignment. Somewhere in the tangle of star systems, there's a knock at my door.

My heart slams head-first into ribs. Before I've even moved a centimeter, the door opens and Lily pokes her head in. She sees my move to stand and says, "Don't, it's okay."

I settle my tense body back into the chair. I am not unaware it's the second time today she's told me to stop, to not approach. She comes in and closes the door behind her and stands there staring at me from across the room. For a split second I convince myself she's here to tell me we're over, we're through.

But then she walks over slowly and leans against the desk and looks at me with an unreadable face. The swelling red and black welt on her right cheek has gone down immensely since I saw it not hours ago. Just below her eyelid is a jagged cut I hadn't noticed before. It is nearly scabbed over.

It takes every ounce of my resolve not to seize her and demand a visit to the Infirmary.

Instead, I wait. She looks down at my hand, resting apprehensively on the desk. She reaches out to covers it, tentatively, with her own. I almost exhale in relief—but still, I wait.

"I'm sorry," she says plainly.

I shake my head. "What for?"

She takes in an unsteady breath. "I don't know."

A valley forms between my eyes for all my tension. "Lily."

She slips just barely forward and winds her arms around my neck. She buries her face in my shoulder and I finally exhale the breath I've held since I first saw her, shadowed, hurt, blank-eyed. I encircle her gently with my arms; inhale the sweet scent of her hair, press a silent kiss to her shoulder. Her fingers grip my shoulders, tightening. I feel eyelashes nicking at my jaw.

We sit like this for a while. She breathes in great swathes. I run through a million things I could say; I don't say a single one of them, knowing that it's not the right time. Not yet.

Eventually, Lily inhales deeply and emerges from my neck. "I know there are things to talk about." She looks immeasurably tired. "But can we do that later?"

I nod automatically. For all the questions and fears roiled inside me, nothing is as important as having her here, seeming just a bit more like her normal self, letting me hold her. The green of her eyes is offset by the discolored swelling. I want to kiss the injury, but I do not want to hurt her.

She says, "Come take a shower with me."

---

Lily has done remarkable spellwork to her shower that I never noticed on cursory glances. She expanded it, for one, into a wide rectangular stall rather than the tiny square corner mine takes up, just a wall away. She's ensconced multiple small shelves into the tiled wall to hold all manner of bottle and soap and scrub. The tiles themselves—a rather dull yellow in my own— she's spelled into an iridescent sapphire that evokes a high-summer wave, shimmering without light.

Clothes already ditched, I climb through the sliding glass door and reach to turn the spout. The spray must also be charmed; it's less harsh and direct than the pressure in my own shower. "Like a spa in here." Her answering smile is small, but it's a smile, and it breaks me minutely to see. I offer a hand to her as she steps in.

"What's that I smell?" The aroma seeming to rise from the growing billow of steam is fresh and earthy.

"Eucalyptus," she replies, reaching to slide the door shut. "I owe the charm to Mary, she used to make our dorm showers smell really lovely."

I see now where Pritchard's hex hit her. There's a faint purple mark reaching up her left side. It spans wide, but is shallow. Lily sees what my eyes have found and says, "It's okay." I want to say no it's not, it's not okay but I just stare at the shadow under her ribs, as if I can make it go away just by looking.

She touches a finger to my chin, averts my eyes. "Can I wash your hair?" Her voice is gentle and I would do anything for her, anything. I nod.

I step into the spray of water. It feels like gentle rain. I watch as she reaches for a bottle and dispenses shampoo into her palms, rubbing them together and reaching up to my wet hair. I close my eyes to the touch. Her fingers are slow, massaging the fragrant shampoo into a soapy lather. It feels unreasonably good. "What's this flavor?"

Her laugh falls soft amidst warm water. It is such a real sound that I'm punctured by it. "Scent is camellia and lily. The, er, flower. Not me."

"You smell just as good," I assure, the back of neck relaxing infinitely with the feel of her hands sweeping back along my hairline. Her thumbs stroke firm circles above my ears and tingling warmth spreads over my scalp. The shampoo rinses off of me down the sides of my neck, drips down my chest. I feel her move closer to me, body near without touching. Her fingers spread back right at my forehead, lingering; she lets them fall along the side of my face, the wet, rinsed hair flopping back down uncooperatively. Here she loiters. Touches fingertips to the space below my eyes. I can only hear the water. She turns her hands so the knuckles brush over my cheeks; lips part instinctively. Thumb along my mouth. I open my eyes and blink rapidly through falling water.

"Can I do yours, now?"

She nods and turns from me, stepping out of the stream of water, and brushes the thick curtain of hair over her shoulders. I bend for the bottle and pour a few drops into my hands, mimicking her palm-rubbing motion. I begin kneading my fingers over her scalp, digging gently downward through heavy sections of strands to disperse the suds evenly. Her hair is much longer wet, the edge of it reaching down past shoulder blades.

"Will you come back to the water?"

Just before she does, she reaches onto the shelf for a wide-toothed comb, which she hands back to me. I run a careful hand under the shroud of hair, lifting it off her shoulders so I can run the comb along its length to rid it of shampoo. I keep the motion of the brush gentle and slow, wary of catching tangles or tugging at her scalp as the lather rinses out. The teeth run through each section of strands, and when I've made it to the other side, I repeat motion backward, bringing the teeth under the hair and moving down.

I hear her exhale, and something in it snags at me. My hand pauses at her shoulder, tentative. "Alright?" I am startled to find that under my fingers, a rattling; small, but persistent. "Lils?"

Her hands are brushing at one hip, knotted together, chattering at the skin like teeth in the cold. I catch just the hint of a breath, deep and uneven, and I turn her body toward me gently, brush clattering to the tiles below.

Lily's arms are trembling, her face gone slack and agonized, lips rubbing together feverishly, as if to keep herself from speaking. I go instantly cold, and bring my hands to her wrists, stop their shaking. "Lily?"

She swallows convulsively, mouth parting for unsteady air, and she shakes her head, wordlessly, again and again and again.

"Okay, okay, it's okay," I say gently, though the tide of desperation and sorrow pitching over her is a force that frightens me beyond my earlier fear—and of course she's unmoored, here, cast away from herself. I see her resolve to remain defiant, to be brave. I see, too, beyond the veneer to a shaky vulnerability beneath, an impulse to crack needling at all of her edges.

"I'm here," I whisper. "You can let go."

There is a sound—cut between a breath and a gasp—and then whatever composure kept her crumbles and her throat opens, raw and sudden with sobbing, body shivering violently under the spray of water. She plummets face-first into my chest, the force of her anguish driving her hands down to the bones of my shoulders, pressing hard; I step backward, urged to the wall behind, clutching at her back and neck to subdue her shuddering; to hold her. She turns her cheek against the wet of my chest and heaves her startled cries, lungs tortured for air, fingers curling harshly at my collarbones, grasping for something to hold. I press my face and lips to her wet hair and murmur it's okay, you're safe, I'm here, it's okay, it's okay.

Her grief is an animal. I feel it thumping in her neck, in her ribs. Screaming for release. The spray of the shower thrums distantly. My own heart nothing of use; no weapon or killer. I wish for all the world I could cut it right out of my chest, let the animal feed on it. What does pain love so well as other pain?

Lily turns her lips to the middle of my chest and gasps something inaudible, something caught between the shaking and the blade of my pulse. I clear plastered strands of hair from her face, flushed and knotted in misery, from the billow of steam. She raises her head, eyes blurry and red-rimmed, still—and always—beautiful; three little freckles, along the nose. I kiss them before I even have the thought to. She clambers at my shoulder, gasping. I run my thumbs along curving jaw and see in her eyes something that doesn't require explaining. I press my lips to her forehead briefly and reach behind me, awkwardly, to turn off the water. "Lemme get a towel," I murmur, her eyes following me helplessly as I slide open the glass door and reach for a towel on a nearby rack.

When I turn she is still standing in the shower, face an exposed thing, looking to me with such unpretentious frailty that I feel my heart rift through with it. She steps out into the towel I hold open. I wrap it around her tightly, summoning my wand to conduct a drove of drying and warming charms. Her hair billows out in sweet-smelling waves, skin evaporated of droplets.

She stares at me almost catatonically now, tears overflowing silently. I inhale and bend myself slightly, lifting her gently with an arm under the knees. Her arms instinctively reach for my neck. "There we are," I say, kicking past a pile of clothing to step into her bedroom and place her down on the bed. She looks misplaced in the towel; smaller than she is. "Let's get you in some clothes. Sound good?"

Her nod is small, but affirmative.

I rustle quickly through her chest-of-drawers, mindlessly pulling at cotton knickers, a pair of sweatpants, a wooly jumper I recognize as my own. These I bring to her and find new tears, a kind of harried swallow-breathing moving through her lungs; I scrap the clothing and kneel next to the bed, holding her cheeks in my fingers, saying, "Lily, it's okay, breathe, breathe." Her lips part to breathe and instead she sobs, once, a hollow, aching sound, craved out from something deeper. "I know, I know," I murmur, mindlessly, though I'm not sure I do know, I just know she is somewhere I can't pull her from alone, not fully, not ever. One deep breath and she closes her mouth into something like silence, chest hiccupping unevenly. "That's it—you're safe. Deep breaths." Another deep breath, another. Her eyes close and her hands attach to my wrists, thumbs spanning my thumbs.

I sit in her re-steadied breath without moving. I know she needs an anchor. When her eyes blink open, the green seems a small amount brighter, and I will take this. Anything. I reach for the underwear and pants, help her step into them, maneuver them up around her hips, hands steadied on my shoulders. She takes the jumper down over her head and swallows, lifting her eyes to the ceiling.

"Little better?"

She looks down at me and nods and brushes wet hair off my forehead and nods again. "Will you lay down with me?"

I nod. "Let me just find pants."

She shuffles back onto the bed, slipping beneath the coverlet and quilt. I perform a much shittier drying spell on myself, one that leaves my hair slightly damp; I couldn't care less. I scan the room for a pile of my clothes I know to be hanging about and alight on the stash near the window seat. I rifle through for sweatpants.

When I slide into the bed next to her, her legs stretch out, interweave my own. She breathes, for a moment, at my throat. "Don't go," she whispers. "Don't go." I spread fingers tightly at her back and nestle so close to her hair that blinking entangles lashes in strands. I blink. I blink.

"Not going anywhere."

---

Lily

I wake slowly and hours later. A deep purple haze shelters me still, sticking along my eyelids. Sometime in my sleep I turned onto my back. James is curled around me, arms heavy on my waist like anchors. Steadfast. I stare at him in the dark and listen to his even breathing. How intimate the act of seeing him sleep. How severely I ache for him, even when he is close. I move out from under his arms and he adjusts, slipping onto his back, head turning away from me, chest emptying with a long, full breath.

I sit for a long second at the edge of the bed, feet flat on the floor. I close my eyes and find the grief and anger slower; snarled words from an old story. Heartbeat even and calm. I remember the cracking inside, in the shower, a dam breaking in favor of thick, vibrant pain. I find the pain a calmed river, now, water frozen over with resignation.

I go into the bathroom. I use the toilet and clean my hands and organize the mess of clothing on the floor into neat piles. I find myself in the mirror. My injury has changed to the purple of early twilight, a breath from blue. The cut is red, still, bright red. I blink along it and barely feel anything. I suck in a breath and tie my hair back and wash my face in cold water. I feel okay. I remember, now, James holding me in the shower, his eyes on me, him seeing me, and then carrying me out—it feels like many years ago. It thrums through me, shimmering, like a protective spell.

I brush my teeth and rub a smidgeon of healing balm over the injured cheek. I don't want it to fade completely, but I don't want to cause myself further damage. I decide this is a healthy conclusion to come to, given the turmoil of unhealthy emotion that ransacked my afternoon and evening.

In the dark slip of room my coming back wakes James, his back shifting, brow pleating, arms reaching out. "Mmmurgh, Lils? What's—?"

I kiss his jaw once, twice. Slide into the refuge of his body. "Shhh. Go back to sleep. Everything's okay."

Despite this, his eyes creak open. He swallows and shifts closer, lethargic, warm beneath covers. Even in this dark he finds my cheeks. I am close enough to see his bleary eyes. He stares at me a long time. He inhales deeply, and I am rinsed in the tide, laid bare.

"You aren't weak." His voice roughened by sleep. "I know you don't need me to protect you."

"James."

He shakes his head; strokes my jaw with gentle hands. "The impulse won't leave me, but I can learn ...I can't stop being afraid for you, but I can trust you." I reach for his neck. "I do trust you. Unquestionably." When he gulps I feel it under my fingers. A sigh of quiet exasperation. "I don't know how to wrestle these inequalities. I want to fix them. And maybe there'll be a chance, but—" the exasperation simmers, lingers. "I know it's going to be brutal."

My fingers edge up through his hair. I can see, just barely, the crack along his forehead, his worry and fear. I lean closer and press a hand to where his heartbeat thumps. "I'm sorry. My instincts are privileged. I forget the hurt they put you through, just because they can." Blustering breath. "I can step away from myself and be there, when you need me. It's not—I just—your pain hurts me, too, and I can't do much about that, but I need to listen more and just—be there. I will be there, I promise, if that's all I can promise you, truly."

I am weak, despite what he says, despite what I think, and all I can do is a shake of the head, feel the steady thrum under my hand, find his mouth with my mouth, slow and fleeting. "Thank you." I breathe, and lean in, forehead caught by his. "Thank you, but you're too hard on yourself. You take the hurt away without doing anything, just being here." He kisses me fuller, now, like a reverberation of light tugging free all my loose ends. "It's a shit world," I murmur around his lips. "But much less shit with you."

I move my body over his; his hands rush up my back to steady. He looks up at me like I'm moonlight. He has dressed me in his own jumper, one I nicked—and it smells like him, smells just like him, under me, blinking. I stare at him for a while, as he did not a minute ago, debating whether or not I should open the floodgates I'm about to open.

"What is it?" he asks.

I sigh, and swallow, and steel myself. "Marlene bickered with Marlowe after dinner. She landed us all in the Headmaster's office."

"What?" James nearly coughs against his surprise, scrambling upward and taking me with him as his back chafes the headboard. "What happened?"

I settle a thigh on either side of him, adjusting to the sudden shift. "It wasn't nearly so physical," I motion toward my eye and he winces and reaches for my hand, clasping it tightly in his fingers, kissing my fingers. "But Marls screamed at her something horrible and it drew attention. Professor Gibbons heard and took their wands even before any spells were thrown, and then I got a summons from Dumbledore not soon after."

James' fingers tense on mine. "Marlowe's punished, then?"

I shake my head. "I have to go back, tomorrow afternoon. Dumbledore said he wants to have a look at the memory."

"What? How?"

"In a pensieve."

His head falls back against the headboard as he releases a shaky rush air. "Holy hell."

I share the sentiment. When Professor Dumbledore had requested I return to the Headmaster's tower the following day, a string of unease had unspooled in the pit of my stomach. "It's just that Marlowe wouldn't speak about what happened—she wouldn't even look at me. She denied everything." I shake my head, remembering my cold shock that she would lie so blatantly to Professor Dumbledore, who has the authority to expel her if he saw fit. "I'm not sure why she did that. It's only going to get her in worse trouble."

"She should be expelled," James says with a tone so contemptuous and bitter that I look at him sharply. "She attacked you! And not just with magic, Lily, she physically attacked you! He'll have to expel her when he sees that!"

I swallow. "He won't. He'll dole a harsh punishment but—you know he's a strong advocate for second chances."

James closes his eyes; perhaps the memory of Severus's own slip from expulsion too painful to contemplate. "Why does he let them get away with this? He's encouraging them, for fuckssake! He's rewarding their behavior!"

"I disagree." I say it quietly. James begins to shake his head but I seize his chin and say, "James, listen to me. He knows, as you should, too, that no punishment could rid them of what's inside of them—the rotten parts, inside. They're not looking to be changed. Expulsion would only create a worse fury." His head bucks against my hand, dregs of his own anger sketched all over his face. "It's—I know it's infuriating. I know."

"It's not fair," he whispers with such a lonesome helplessness that I want to cut it out of him and crumble it with bare hands. "I hate it."

"I know. I know." I press the back of my palms to his chest, which heaves in frustration. "But you said it yourself, earlier, didn't you? Nothing good comes from engaging them. It doesn't eliminate any animosity, it—it makes it worse. And besides that, it's exactly what they want. The only way to win, the rest of this year, at least, is to disengage." I laugh a little. "Which I need to internalize, myself, clearly."

James appears unconvinced "It's rubbish that you're using my own advice on me." He sucks in a breath, blinking as I stroke at his cheek. "Why's it got to sound so much more sensible coming from you?"

I laugh again, fuller this time. "I'm usually the more rational between us, remember? It's just I wanted to carry the 'poor impulse control' torch for a bit."

"Lily..."

"Okay, sorry. Scrapping the joke." I kiss his nose. "The good news, I can report, is that Marlene's not in any sort of trouble, actually, and she's terribly pleased with all she got in Marlowe's ears. So I suppose I should thank her—and also you, for not doing anything like that."

His eyes flash instantly. "I wanted to." The urge is still there, I hear, poised at the edge of his tone.

"That's why I'm thanking you." I brush our lips together, briefly. He hesitates, eyes wary, still licked in irritation. "You were respectful of something I didn't even ask. That means everything to me." I press my lips to his again, more insistently, firmly, and he finally relents, returning the kiss. I sigh against his mouth, wondering if he might be inclined as I am, increasingly, to leave this conversation behind in favor of something else.

"Blimey, Lils," he murmurs. "Did this all happen just today? You ought to get a week off of classes for what you've been through."

I rock backward on my thighs and reach my hands up over my head to stretch out my torso of soreness. "No way. Classes are my best distraction from any and all impending doom." His hand has crept up, brushed over my exposed abdomen, tingling on bare skin. I let my arms fall. "You are, too."

He looks away, suddenly, and heaves a complicated breath. I intuit this pause to be Marlowe, her desire to intrude—to pontificate, without permission—on our private sexual relationship. I close my eyes for a brief second. "She knew it would hit me the worst, saying you were just using me for sex."

James looks back to me, immediately, forehead wrinkling.

"And she was right," I say quietly. "It did hurt. Even if I know it isn't true."

After a moment, he says in a painstakingly even tone, "We can talk about it. You can tell me, Lily. If you'll tell me, I want to hear."

"I will tell you." I say, because I will, just not now. "Just...later."

He swallows, then nods. His hand has stilled at the waistband of my sweatpants, and he observes me carefully for a long second, before heaving a heavy sigh, as if he's not sure this is the direction we should be going in given the topic of conversation. "Am I misinterpreting your look?"

I bring my body closer, hands falling to either side of his head at the wood behind. Strands of hair fall from around my shoulders to sweep the edges of his face. "What look do you think I have?"

"I'm not wearing glasses." He shudders a breath. "I could be projecting."

"You're not." I arch my neck forward for his mouth, an aching, plying kiss that burns me, shivers down my spine. I sit back, seated on his lap in a way I know is affecting, given the way his hips shift, the way his throat clenches. "When I came back, earlier, I wanted you. That's why I asked for a shower."

Now he stares in unconcealed desire. "Lily."

"Maybe it was irresponsible to want you in that state, but having you always makes me feel grounded." I touch a finger to his lips. His fingers pluck up my sides, cool on bare skin. "When you carried me—Merlin did I feel held." I tug my teeth along my lower lip. "Maybe it's vain, but your strength..." I push myself up on his bare arms, strong and tense beneath my fingers, my stare, "is very sexy. You're so capable."

I barely need to settle my hips wider now to feel the further effect of my words. I know I'm stroking a part of his masculinity I rarely appeal to, and I can tell he is torn between modesty and preening; either aside, he groans as I slide my hands up his arms and down his chest, pausing miserably slow over his nipples. His soft "oh," as I lean forward, place gentle kisses on each cheek, along the crown of his brow. His fingers traverse my ribcage carefully—I feel him slow ever so slowly across the shadow of the hex. I find his eyes as hands brush the underside of each breast; I push myself further into his touch, aching for his thumbs over my nipples, sweeping.

But he pauses, face gleaming up at me, vivid, somehow, despite the dark.

"I'm not sure I deserve you."

Something is faltering in his eyes, and I feel an immediate and frantic response in myself, a jolt of desperation to rid that damned Slytherin from his headspace. "Don't say that. Don't let her in." I take his face tightly between my hands and look at him with all the intensity I feel, body blooming like a lonely, untouched thing. "How could she know?" I demand, gently. "How could she know anything about this?" His skin is warm under my fingers but his eyes still flounder. "How could she know that when I'm with you I don't feel the heaviness of other things?" A finger shifts, dashes under his eye. He blinks and I feel the brush of eyelashes. "Or that when you kiss me it's like light, it's a stream of steady light?"

I reach under the jumper and cover his hands in mine; take both hands over my heart. "How could she know that I never feel more beautiful than when you look at me? That you make me like myself better? That I was uneasy in my skin till you touched me?" His grip on me tightens. His brow furrows. "No one could ever know those things about me. About us." I tug a finger down his lips. My voice is merely a whisper, now. "Only you."

James pushes his back up and off the headboard and his hands come up my back so swiftly I am helpless but to sway into the embrace. It's written all over his face—the frustrated garden moment, his that's the definition of falling in love, the pain and the desperation and the tug—and yes, I love him, too, but unevenly, imperfectly, without any confidence or faith in myself.

But I do have faith here, now, in his skin, warm and real under my hands, in taking his mouth again on mine, languidly, in wanting for his skin like a knife wants for blood.

He lifts me with the same strength as before, lays me back on the bed. I push my arms up and let him remove the jumper, let him pull the tie free from my hair, his hands running back up through its heaviness as he leans down and kisses me, his attention careful and close, touch skimming down me like I am something delicate and worth loving; something bright.

I pull myself up enough to hook my fingers along his pants and tug them down. He swallows as his length springs free, already half-eager. I wrap a hand around him; his chest concaves with quick breath. We hold each other's eyes; my fingers slow and searching. He hardens in my hand. I watch his throat bob. "Lily." He huffs when I sit up again, maneuver his sweatpants further down so he will take them all the way off. I do the same with my pants and underwear, thinking that he dressed me in them, wanting me to feel warm, safe, held. I stroke a hand over his cheek and smile.

Something cracks down his face. He bends for my lips, tasting them gently, makes for my neck and throat. He breathes in, deeply, between my breasts. A hand dips between my legs. My thighs squirm and settle. I keen softly. His fingers are lethargic, plying. My back arches with sighing. His breath is warm on my neck when he whispers, "Remember the first time?"

"That you fingered me?"

He laughs a little, kissing slowly along my shoulder. "No, that we shagged."

"Oh." I soften with the remembering. "Of course."

He slips a hand back through my hair. My scalp tingles. "You let me be on top for barely a minute," he's smiling, lips at my cheek, pressing a hand to my thighs, settling them wider. "When you came over me like that...I could barely believe I hadn't passed away."

"I lost my patience," I admit, kissing him in hopes of portraying a similar attitude. He laughs on my lips. "Because it felt so good," I add, brushing his mouth with two fingers. "I wasn't used to—well, sensation-wise, er, there's such a sizeable difference—"

James whips his eyes to mine, a warning in them. "You—don't you go telling me that right now, Evans," he groans. "I can't take any more of this ego-stroking. I'm trying to make love to you."

I rub my lips together and turn to kiss his hair and reach down for his cock, guide it where I need it most. "Please. Make love to me. Slow. Very slow."

He emerges from my neck and stares down at me seriously. "Having me on?"

"No." I kiss him just as serious. "I want it really slow."

This he takes straight to heart. It begins—and remains—deathly slow. His thighs pressing gently to my thighs, body bent over me to receive lips and such tedious kiss, intersected by the breath he pulls. It isn't unusual that I should find his eyes during such an act, but most often other things get in the way—speed, frustration, position. Here, my arms crossed over his shoulders, his hips splendidly thorough, I am gifted a prolonged, unbroken stare. I watch, reverent, as his cheeks darken with red, as sweat curls his dark locks, his brow, crests at his upper lip; I feel the sweet gust of air from his broken breath, see his throat tense in with absorption, mouth curling in appreciation when my fingers bunch at muscled thighs, sweep up his arse and back, all hot, slicked in exertion. His pupils dilate on mine, slow-blinking, gold-rimmed, brimming adoration.

Perhaps this is the clearest and most painful indication of devotion we can manage, building so slowly to a peak oft handled with impatience; perhaps our bodies are weakened by grief and pulled from fear, happy just to be bodies; relieved just to be loved.

James takes my tongue, pliant and painstaking; my whimpering builds, carved out. We are inside of ourselves. He smiles down on me when the breath takes on a higher pitch, when my fingers tense on his neck and cheek, his "feel good?" and my breathless, "yes," my breathless "I love being able to watch you" and his brightening cheeks, my ensuing, pleading, "kiss me," which he obliges until my limbs are liquid, trembling beneath, until my hips ache with tension and his breathing falters, cut in two by groaning, and he gasps onto my lips, face wrenched in euphoria, brow pressed firmly to mine; the end, like the start, tender, lethargic, and ringing; a gentle sting. "Oh. Oh. Oh."

---

Later, after I wake a second time—brighter, well-rested—he asks again to hear. I settle myself between his legs, back to his chest, arms circling arms, and tell him about the fight. I tell him everything Marlowe said. The words feel weird and wrong in my mouth, but I maintain a steady tone, flinching only on the last; "bearing impure life" gloms in my mouth like a bite of rotten fruit.

James buries his face in my shoulder and I grip his forearms hard, feel the rage pulsing through, looking for an outlet. I feel tears sliding off his cheek onto my shoulder; I kiss his hair, hold his cheek, tell him I know the person she accuses him of being isn't him; I know him. I hold him like this for maybe an entire millennium. He is shaking behind me. He says "fuck" like it's the only word fit for such a voiceless pain. "Fuck." He drives thumbs under his eyelids and exhales into my hair. "What am I supposed to do with this anger?"

There is no easy answer. I have the anger, too, and I have nowhere to put it. But there is my need for him; always an unstitched wound. I drag his hand along my abdomen. "Channel it into something useful, something kinder." I take his hand down between my legs and arch into the touch. I roll my neck backward to find his mouth. He kisses me softly, without anger, without speed; I want to spread the crease in his brow out with my hands. I want him to understand. "Yes," I gasp as his fingers slipping inside, lovely and warm. He whines aggravatedly, plants a sprawl of fingers at my thigh. I nip at his cheeks and chin and lave my tongue over his lower lip, tugging with teeth. His eyes still watery, golden oceans; he seems an ocean away. "Baby," I breathe. "Stay with me." My hips cant compulsively. His fingers spread out and slide slower now, riding the juts of my movement.

"I hate that she hurt you." It's quiet and low and exhaled. My hips slow, though his fingers do not stop. He presses his thumb to the crest and I cry out, unable to stop myself, breath harsh and sped, his mouth latching, now, to the curve of my neck.

"I know. I know." The only thing I can say to explain that I know, that I understand, that I can't help it anymore in myself than I can in him—but by gods if this can't be something gentler, something stronger between us, rather than something she unravels. Let it thread us together.

I want to stitch myself to him now; and again, and always.

He drives his fingers down harshly, and I keen, back arching, bum thrust back into his hardness. He presses my name down into my shoulder. His fingers slip along my hips, leaving a trail of my wetness. I grasp his chin and drag him back to my mouth, tongue helpless and wanting and mean. I settle backward, his cock springing up between my legs, the broad pink tip already leaking. I grasp it and pull, his fingers filling up with my tits, clutching at hardened peaks. My hips now vehement in my pursuit, rolling forward to feel his slippery length, hungry for friction. "I need you," and I'm begging as if deprived, arm crooked painfully to scratch my fingernails along his neck, desperate for lips, teeth, tongue. "I need you, James." And this, evidently, is all it takes, he's lifting up my hips with both hands, my feet scrambling to aid on the bed, and when I'm positioned I sink down onto him, the filling unimaginably slow; I release my punctured breath; he moans obtusely, and long. His thighs tense under the flesh of my arse. "You feel like heaven, Lily, gods." I watch him watch where we meet, eyes glazed over, gone from this plane.

"Like heaven," he repeats, breathlessly.

I am already so close that I have to take this slow; hips rotating, spinning minutely, and it must be intensely torturous for him, flush inside of me, but he clips his fingers at my waist and groans, empty of complaint. I plaster myself against him and reach again for his neck, his lips, his breathy kisses, pausing in rapture when he brings fingers to the thatch of wiry curls and moves with my circling, the buzz insufferable and swift. "Oh, gods," I am keening, barreling forward till my hands can clutch his thighs, "I'm already—James, are you—tell me where you are, baby." Scrabbled into a rough horizontal, back flattened and knees along his legs and hips canting forward so I can slide up his length and thrust backward, deliciously slow. His breath huffs in short, agonized spurts. "If I'm to stare—if I'm to see your arse sliding back, fucking me, I—" I slither back, dipping back onto him, to emphasize the view. "Fuck, Evans, you know your thighs alone could finish me."

A triumphant smile steals my lips; there's the Evans. His teenage lust tapped. There's something covetous, now, in his fingers wrapping my thighs to roughly aid my movement. I want him to seize me, fuck me into the mattress, leave my thighs shaking with the imprint of his hands—and I am gone enough myself to know that if I ask for this, if catch him in the right moment, desperate himself for release, he might oblige. I slow off his cock and sit slightly up, hands propped on warm, hairy thighs, returning to his heaving chest. My hair obscures my face and he brushes it away and I pin his wondering, eyes with mine and whine, "Fuck me."

This does it. He digs a hand along my jaw, whimpering, legs scrambling jaggedly sideways till he's on his knees behind me, prick prodding the curve of my arse, one arm slid securely around my waist. I clasp my hand over the arm and buck back against his hips. "Please, love."

James sweeps my hair over one shoulder to suck at where my neck meets my spine; I shiver violently, roll my hips back, again, harder. I feel the imprint of his teeth on my skin and then he's pushed back in and my neck weakens as if my spine's been plucked from my body. "Oh, gods." His next thrust so quick and so perfect that I cry out for it, hips vibrating, his own sound a mix between laughter and groaning, "sweet Merlin, Lils, you—" I tug his head round the curve of my neck, laughing, too, now, at how foolishly good it feels, his fingers digging hard at my hip, his teeth and tongue hot between mine. "It's so good," he whines, "you're so good," and I take his tongue in my lips, gasping, "I know—don't—don't you stop—" but I'm choking through words, dumbstruck, paralyzed by the rapture of sudden speed, his burrowing hardened and quickened, its bright intrusion along my hips and between my legs as devastating as his moaning, guttural and undone, constantly coming undone; I gasp from his mouth, unable to be without his tortured gaze, brow furrowed, cheeks two planes of bright pink.

I feel cracked open by him; by his eyes; by his hold on me; by his broad fingers palming breasts; by every swift jut of hips becoming an unbearable confusion of pleasure and pain. My keening may as well be sobbing, a sound so violent and breathy it forces my throat open, and from the look on his face I can tell he is seconds from coming, eyes blackened beyond, breath like tortured wind, arm at my waist so tight I am powerless to movement of my own, his frantic fucking a blur of skin and hipbones slamming; bodies succumbed to the anarchy of sensation. A bright column of ecstasy swallows me as I yank his hair through my fingers and stare and stare and watch as the gold drains away completely.

"Don't you dare look away from me, Potter."

He bites at my mouth, helpless to disobey, and it's my lip between his teeth that propels me, unthinkingly and spasmodically over the edge into orgasm, thighs clenching erratically as his thrusting boils me down to just a single point of vicious light; blistering neon. Yellow floods my eyes and his own barreling descent—punctured with my fingers sliding at his arm, gripping hard, by his splintered calling of my name—ends suddenly, cock slating into me and spilling quickly, thickly, and long. My knees quake with the force, sliding in and out on bedsheets in an effort to devour all I can of such an exquisite feeling, so that I might tie myself to it, tie him to me—tie us to this space, here, the only place I've never felt fear.

James hums catatonically, cheek rushing against mine, lips trembling, hair sweaty and beautiful between my fingers. "Gods, Lils, your face when you come, gods." I whimper and neck him messily, senselessly, full still with him, inner-muscles clenching erratically for any dregs of joy—but he's displeased, somehow; a carnal moan sounds from his throat and before I've any say in the matter I'm flipped forward by his tense arms and tossed down onto the mattress, hot hands spreading back my thighs so his tongue may spread up and down my cunt like a maniacal thing, an unrelenting thing—and this sensation so intensely vulnerable, near-painful, nerves unendurably sensitive from orgasm, his come still inside of me, all of my skin heated as if burnt and still; here he is, concentration feral and unbidden by my neck thrashing helplessly to the side, fingers pulling at his hair. "Fucking hell, Potter," I manage, barely audible, as I watch him bob incessantly, "I already—" and now he flattens his body down further onto the bed and his eyes flick up to mine and I realize that he knows. He knows and now he wants to know if he has this power, to make me come twice in quick succession; if I am so weak under his tongue that I will soon heat to a boil, will cave in on myself like a dying star, throwing off molecules.

Bright eyes pinned to mine, fingers spreading me open, his tongue begins a hazardous darting in and out, frantic and glorious, and then this sucking—this sucking—at my swollen center, unyielding, diabolical; he's latched with abandon such that I am tilted, harder and closer with each breath—then he's pulling back, mouth a bloated smirk, fingers diving inside of me with a force so brutal it stings but stings well and I realize with sudden clarity how loud I am moaning, voice a thing separate from my body. And James has such gall as to fold down over my chest, now, to consult roughly with each nipple, tongue hot and wet and laving, and it's too much to stand, too much to bear along the building of a second end. I yank his neck upward, to my mouth, stuck open in its euphoria, my hips writhing and pulse screaming; he tugs at my earlobe with teeth, bites at my neck so hard it will bruise, by gods it better bruise, his fingers so quick that I really do spark like flint to a fucking rock; a man-made fire; a blistering, uncontained flame. And when I come, again, be has the audacity to pull his fingers quite slowly through the viscous mess, bending down over my abdomen to taste, tongue culling gently.

I am hyperventilating above. Spent and aching and used so deliciously. He is kissing back up my body too slow, lazy up my stomach, over flushing breasts, all the way around my throat; I tear at his arms, his hair. "Oh, you jerk, you absolute jerk, get up here."

He laughs into my stubborn kiss. I am all quaking thighs and wet cunt and affection so large it boils over. I push him up off of me just so I can climb over him and collapse, heavy, on his chest. I prop myself on his shoulders and receive a stare of absolute devotion. I brush all his hair back from his forehead. "The hellwas that?"

"What, you didn't like it?" His hands are edging my thighs, softly. My lungs battle for slower breath. I can't take my eyes off him and he's no good, he's ruined me. He jostles on elbows to get closer to my face and kisses my chin. "I had a lovely time, myself."

"Gods, you insufferable, beautiful—" he cuts me off with his lips and moans straight into my mouth, lethargic-tongued. "I'm not going to be able to walk," I complain and he just laughs, bashfully; it vibrates along my face. We kiss until I can't breathe for it, and I have to inhale, deeply, and find him staring, still, with unabated want, and I have to say, "Merlin, don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" but he's grinning, lips swollen and pink. His prick twitches between us, bobbing against his stomach, far too close to the mess between my legs.

I press a hand to his chest, as if to stop him from coming at me. "Like you could do it all over again."

"I could." His eyes sparkle and dart over me, hungry. "Just look at you, Lils. I could."

I groan and slide off of his body completely, shifting unsteadily to the edge of the bed in an effort to compose myself. After all—I force myself to think— it's half-six, and there's still school. My hair is an unwieldy mess, falling all over my face, so I twist at it impatiently, reach for a tie on my side table to secure it.

James scoots over toward me, head laid down near my thigh. I look down at him. Sigh. "Sometimes I think we'll implode."

Remnants of pleasure burst over me just with this gaze, just his eyes caught on mine. "Not explode?"

"No, implode, rather: To collapse in on ourselves." He sits up on his elbows and looks at me funny, like he can't quite follow my line of thinking. "Meaning sometimes...for me, at least, the sensations I feel when we're..." those pretty hazel eyes, damn their nefarious sparkle. "What I feel when I'm with you, it's...overwhelming. Might lead to permanent implosion."

James swallows and I reach out to trace the movement with a finger. He appears amazed. "If that's what you're calling implosion, well...that happens to me every day. You look at me and I implode. I'm powerless."

"Oh, god."

"I'm serious, Evans."

"I know—and still, oh god."

"Will you come sit on my face?"

"Urgh, you tosser, we have class, you can't just—" I squeal because he's already caught me round the shoulders and pulled me down to a kiss I am unable to leave, much to my own dismay and—alternatively—utter satisfaction.

He leaves me starry-eyed and smiling. "I mean, all things considered, implosion doesn't sound like the worst way to go."

"No," I agree, short on breath, watching as he sits up along a post at the end of my bed. I pointedly don't look past his waist. Focus, instead, on his sudden and unsuccessful effort to wrangle his completely tossed hair into a lesser-tossed state. "Are you okay?" I ask. "With everything...before?"

His eyes shift to me and he gives up on the hair. He is silent a second, thinking. "No. I don't think I'll ever—that's not something easily forgotten." I nod, because I feel the same way. "But I do feel better. Thanks to you. Thank you." He exhales. "Are you okay?"

"Okay as I can be." I smile, lean forward, and kiss his knee. Close my eyes against it. "Thank you for being such a comfort." I feel his hand brush over my hair, fingers splicing through. I sigh with appreciation. "It'll be an outlandish day. I wish I could skip it and just have things back to normal."

"We'll get through it."

We. I kiss the knee again, then emerge, and give his leg a little push. "Okay, I'm getting ready now. Please leave. You're naked and no good."

Stupid arsehole just grins. "Certainly hope the two things are mutually exclusive."

"Hope all you want, love, it's that I know for a factyou're just as randy for me getting dressed as you are me undressing."

"Yeah," he sighs, wistfully, staring at me dangerously. "Right you are, Evans."

"Out! Now!"

---

James

Even though Lily insisted on being okay enough to attend breakfast, and even though she had given me a hard look when I seemed trepidatious, myself, about letting her waltz right into what's sure to be a den of whispers and anxious looks and swift glaring from Slytherins—even still, my heart still pounds ferociously as we approach the great hall.

Lily is peeved off by this. "I'm fine, James, will you wipe that look off your face? I'm not going to duel her before eight in the morning. I'm not going to duel her at all, period, actually, shouldn't've have said that...oh, really, you can lose this mask of utter—"

"Oi, Evans!"

We swerve—me in apprehension, her in surprise—to find Sirius half down the hall sideswiping a pair of second years to barrel toward us, Peter in close—though gentler—succession. Sirius beelines for Lily, reaching out straightaway to grasp at her upper arms, his face a swirl of unease and admiration. He stares at her a moment, then pulls her right into his arms. She lets out a sound of quiet surprise but then returns the embrace, grappling against his nearly head-taller-than-her height.

After a second he steps back and beholds her brazenly. "Look at you. Gryffindor through and through." He brushes a finger, briefly, over her injured cheek. The bruise has faded admirably since yesterday, now just a light swell of pinkish yellow; visible, but not garish. The cut remains in stark contrast to the bruise, a jagged little comma, brutishly—impressively—red. Near a shade darker than her hair. It lends her bright, beautiful features a quality of both vulnerability and daunting. As if to say: I bled here.

The combined effect when she grins up at Sirius is breathtaking—and I am staggered, for a moment, just to know her.

Sirius' own smile rings of blatant pride. "Reckon you might deck her back, given the chance?"

"Reckon I might start decking back the second we've graduated this place."

"Excellent. Excellent." Sirius beams wider, lets his hands fall from her shoulders. "Shall we?"

As predicted, Lily's entrance into the hall attracts innumerable attention and endlessly troubled looks from fellow housemates. Mary, Marlene, and Dorcas descend on her immediately and carefully, keeping their voices in hushed tones so their chattering won't be overheard.

I sit down next to Lily but let them sort their concerns and chiding, turning instead to receive a fatigued and knowing look from Remus. It lives plainly among his silvery scars, the weight of worry something he wears well, and wears often. "Everything okay?"

I nod. "Yeah." Peter reaches over Remus to snag a flaky almond roll. "Say," he mutters to me quietly, looking somewhere over my shoulder, "have a look at the chit."

I wait a moment, then turn and find where Peter's eyes are pinned. It's Marlowe Pritchard and her company of tittering, smooth-haired birds, sitting across the room at Slytherin table. Marlowe meets my gaze bluntly, a hard gleam in her eyes, her chin chuffed upward, one thin forearm lain down nonchalantly along her wand. One of her fingers twitches near the wooden hilt, perhaps subconsciously—but I take it as a threat, a why don't you come over here and try me, blood traitor?

A perverse and burning part of me is desperate to do just that; I want to make her suffer for what she did.

But if I'd learned anything from all the internal wrestling of the early morning, it's that nothing—absolutely nothing—is worth sacrificing Lily's trust.

So I turn from Marlowe and look back at Remus and Peter. I see something in their eyes, maybe a question; Are we doing something? Secretly? Untraceably? Is this within our rights as expert previewers of such secret, untraceable reprisals? I cut my head to the side just slightly, an almost invisible sign. They both nod in return, something understood; if not still touched in disappointment.

Even for them—arguably the two out of four least known for impetuous behavior—the instinct leans toward the teaching of a lesson. I can read this in either of them as easily as I feel it choking my own chest. The dip in Remus' brow, caught between his eyes, meaning his nerves are still in place, perhaps about Lily, or Slytherins, or some greater conflict, the larger system of which this is all a smaller symptom—a system just as unkind to his own othering conditions, if not more so. In Peter's eyes there's a great dulling to his normal, charitable brightness. I feel their same discouragement. Waiting, biding time—it will be excruciating. I sense it in Sirius too, much more physically. His leg catches up and down beside me, his hands engaged in a rather friendly tiff with a hard-boiled egg. It seems too mundane a task for such a heavy morning. I watch the cords of his neck tense and un-tense. He senses my eyes on him and offers a half-smile. "Almost the 20th."

I've nearly forgotten about the cagey parchment, the suggestion—or projection—of a clandestine meeting with the already highly speculative Order. I find in this moment that I've much less confidence in the prospect of it all being true. For all my faith, I find, now, it might be better to depend on the solid things, rather than the flimsy, than the wishing and hoping. Stars be damned. Even stars burn out, eventually.

"Sure. Gotta get through Potions preliminaries, somehow, first." Glorious in his timing, as usual, Slughorn had got the idea into his head that near end of January is a smashing time to begin, for all intents and purposes, giving us a mock-N.E.W.T every two weeks—the first of which is to take place this afternoon.

"Yeah, you wankers do," Sirius affirms. "I'm going to spend that lovely reprieve beating the shit out of my idiot brother."

"You'll do no such thing." Remus responds immediately in a clipped and definitive tone, slashing a bit of jam over toast.

"I mean, I might—"

"You won't."

The stare Remus locks him in is rather un-Remus-like. It's difficult and unbreakable and a far cry from friendly. It's a hard line drawn.

Peter raises his eyebrows at me. I return the look briefly, then busy myself with breakfast. When Sirius finally responds it's a clipped, muttered, "Fine."

I try to swallow down a smile. I want to say something like, Merlin, would've asked the two of you to take up years ago if I'd known Remus could get you to stand down an irrational idea with that tone.

But I don't.

Instead, I tune my ear into the conversation next door. Marlene is saying something in a soft voice that's making Dorcas laugh, though I can tell she is tempering it for Lily's sake. Mary is next to Lily, holding her hand and looking at her closely, perhaps trying to see if she's really alright, or if she's putting on a brave face, or if it's some complicated combination of the two, something she'll need to pull her aside and figure out privately, later. I've an inkling it's the latter.

Mary catches my eye and mouths thank you. I swallow unevenly and nod in affirmation.

"—common knowledge that she's shagged half of them herself, and no, indeed, I'm not saying that's a bad thing for any girl to do, just this particular girl, who is being immensely hypercritical slinging around really foul words about a grown woman expressing her sexuality in an entirely healthy sort of way—"

It seems, now, the conversation is mostly a bit of a spar between Dorcas and Marlene, Lily quite honed in on the omelet in front of her. I notice, suddenly, the absence of Ingrid. I glance down the table in each direction and find her sitting with her younger sister Lita, a third year. Ingrid looks peeved. I watch as she looks over in our direction, then quickly away, like she doesn't want to be caught staring. Marlene, for her part, doesn't look that way at all.

On the way to Charms, Lily walks ahead with Mary, huddled in a whispered chat. Dorcas falls in next to me and I take the opportunity to apologize for my lack of composure the previous day. She waves it away. "Appreciate the gesture, Potter, but it's good as unnecessary. She seems wildly calm today, given what happened. I mean, you should've seen her post-rowing with Snape, even just last year. Fucking travesty. She would be in a rotten mood for days. Sometimes a whole week. Usually took something stupid to break her out of it, I mean—" she laughs, suddenly. "Usually it was just another row, with Owen. Fuckssake. Don't often take a second to realize just how outrageously the tables have turned. I mean, what, two years ago, you were a pointed aggressor of her stress, I mean, a frequent aggravation. And now, well," she shrugs. We're at the threshold of the Charms room, pausing to watch as our classmates filter inside. "You seem to smooth it over brilliantly. Really. In record time, too. So either you're an exceptional lay, or she's rather painfully in love with you."

I nearly break my neck looking over to Dorcas, a flicker of amusement licking her clear blue eyes. She's pulled her hair back from her forehead with a maroon headband, and it makes her seem more approachable than usual. "Okay," she cedes, parsing something new from my look. "Maybe it's both. I dunno. Regardless." She shrugs again and smiles. "Keep it up, cap."

I watch, oddly paralyzed, as Dorcas steps into the room and makes her way to sit down next to Lily, who smiles in greeting and says something that makes them both laugh. Dorcas responds and then Lily's brow creases, slightly, and she turns to look back at me, finding whatever floored look Dorcas has left on my face.

---

Lily

I feel a bit lightheaded as I descend the spiraled stone staircase down from the Headmaster's office. It's a combination of reliving the memory of Marlowe Pritchard cursing me out in the middle of the hallway, having to do so in a silver swirl as a third-party observer, and having to do so while standing next to Professor Dumbledore—who is, perhaps, the most eccentric, peculiar adult I've yet encountered in a castle crowded with nothing but eccentric, peculiar adults.

He had offered, very kindly, to go into the basin of ghostly fog on his own. "I realize this particular memory may be rather unpleasant for you to relive, Miss Evans. It's perfectly alright if you wish to refrain." After a moment of thought, I declined his offer. I didn't exactly want to relive it, but I also wanted to take ownership of my own rash actions, and, in turn, show strength in the face of such unpleasant adversity.

Watching the fight had been brutal, as I'd known it would be. For his part, Dumbledore had clutched his hands in front of shimmery, brass-colored robes and watched with a keen eye and calm demeanor as Marlowe spurred her vile language. I winced hearing my own immature retaliation, and almost had to look away—but I resisted and as the brief duel ensued, I found myself surprised, for a moment, at my own restraint. It would have been unbelievably easy to lash my own hexes at Marlowe. To be sure, this would've shut her up more effectively. But watching from the blurry shadow of hindsight, I saw myself standing ground in a way I hadn't felt in the moment: Eyes fiery and unwavering, knuckles gone bloodless with their fierce grip on my wand, face barely flinching at all when Marlowe's fist came down, violent. Seeing that as an outsider, looking in, was like standing still while someone reached clear down my throat and yanked all the oxygen from my lungs. As the professor and I emerged from the stone shallows, my throat had gone dry with the watching.

Professor Dumbledore had then assured me firmly that Marlowe would be dealt a swift and appropriate punishment for her transgression. He'd looked at me quite a long time after that; appraising me for what, I couldn't tell. It was slightly uncomfortable being pinned under the unwavering weight of his stare, icy blue eyes crinkling around the edges with thoughtfulness and such strange precision; I was convinced, in that moment, that he could see right through me. "I assume you'll concentrate quite hard on keeping a level head during all future interactions with Miss Pritchard?"

"Yes, Professor."

"Suffice it to say I am impressed with you. I hope also, Miss Evans, that you are impressed with yourself."

"Professor?"

"Yesterday, you made the correct and difficult decision. Even provoked, you issued no harm. I suspect many in your position would not have been so kind in the face of such deliberately unkind treatment." His eyes had softened then, the corners crinkling with age-lines. "I would particularly urge you not to think of your defensive reaction as weakness. Having found my own self in situations of such brittle animosity, I can assure you that sometimes relying most heavily on protecting one's self is more valuable than offending one's enemy. You'd do quite well to keep that spirit of moxie in all future confrontation—and I must say I am quite proud to find it from a Head of House. Well done."

"Thank you, professor."

I had turned to leave then, a nervous, blustering speed to my pulse, and just as I'd crossed the room to descend the stairs the Headmaster had called out after me, "I trust you'll bring along those with a similar fortitude, when the time comes, Miss Evans?

I had turned and found something sparkling in the recesses of his eyes, a blue so deep and paralyzing that I was nearly winded in their fathoms. The look of knowing was so clear and poignant that I knew with certainty, as I had predicted before, that my body was transparent, and he could see straight to the heart of me. I tried to quit my arms from trembling as I nodded, vehemently, and said, "Of course, professor."

This is the strange and shaky body with which I descend the spiraling stairs, half expecting to find James out waiting next to the large and ugly gargoyle guarding the Headmaster's tower. It's not James I find—rather, Sirius. He's posted against a wall in a casual lean, wand almost absentmindedly igniting with tiny showers of multicolored sparks.

I find the sight of Sirius doing something so harmless and childlike does remarkable things to my fraught nerves. A smile seizes my mouth before I've any chance at all to resist. "My, James, you've really changed your hair since I saw you not two hours ago."

Sirius' eyes alight on me and he breaks into a crooked grin, hand flying up protectively to his sloppily knotted strands. "Potter sodding wishes his hair looked like this."

"He wouldn't carry it like you," I laugh as we take off down the hall. "Suits you well."

"Careful, Head Girl, the second he finds out you're hitting on me when he's not around I'm actual toast."

"Stuff and nonsense. I can take him." I say, and we exchange a look of mutual amusement. "So you're my Marauder-issued protection detail for the afternoon?"

"Not at all." Sirius stuffs his hands in his pockets and raises his eyebrows at me. "I rather think I'd hide behind you, actually, if we were attacked just now."

This draws from me a laugh so bright that I'm taken by surprise. "Okay, I hear you loud and clear, Black. In the line of fire, you're letting me get hit first."

He shakes his head and shrugs, smiling. "Just trust your instincts better than my own, is all." His expression changes now to something like apprehension, and it looks like he's leaning forward a bit on his toes. "So how'd it go up there with Al? Everything...okay?"

I exhale. "Yeah. No better evidence than a memory, I suppose. Marlowe will—I mean, she'll be in detention till the end of the year probably."

Sirius is quiet at this. I imagine he may be biting his tongue with James' same concerns, thinking Marlowe deserves expulsion. I'm grateful he doesn't bring it up. I'm not sure I could go through that argument again, especially with someone holding equally volatile—if not more justified—opinions on Slytherin house.

"I'm sorry about what happened, Evans," he says, finally, voice quiet and unwavering. "You're worth more than the whole miserable lot of them."

When I look over, I find his eyes flooded with sincerity—and something else, beyond that, a striking and unpretentious empathy. It purges all air from the hall. I see here a wallowing, unspoken depth; he has painful tucked-away memories of his own, having been subjected to treatment equally as horrifying as Marlowe's—except it comes from his own family, and for opposite reasons. I swallow against the rush of this realization. "Thank you."

I sense something else nagging at him. He pulls at his sweater collar, like he needs more room to breathe.

"You're not one of them, you know." He looks over at me. "You choose a different path. I'm hard pressed to think that was easy for you, or that it won't be difficult, still, but...you're consciously doing the right thing. That's brilliant, given your circumstances. And I hope you realize how much you are worth, Sirius."

In his pulsating throat, a catch—a reflex to brush this off, or refute my point, reject sympathy or care, to write himself off as a black sheep, a wild card, a childish, unthinking rebel. This impulse is borne deep from him. Something he clings to, in humiliation, or in grief, perhaps, over a family he is actively rejected by—over a family from whom he still craves love, support, and acceptance, deep in the very center of himself. I see it fluttering over his edges, a wordless struggle. I reach out for his arm and give it a quick squeeze. I hope this is enough.

It's something, at least. "Crickey, woman," he laughs to dispel his own discomfort, voice a notch rougher than before. He reaches a hand up to scratch at his neck. "Quit gazing into my soul."

"Can't help it. I'm O-level in soul-gazing." I smile warmly, then humor him by changing the subject. "Are you going to the tower, just now?"

"Er, yeah," Sirius says as he shakes the fog of self-consciousness from his eyes. "Head knob—sorry, boy, if you must—was disciplining a truly aggrieved set of third years when I left." His face really lights up, now. "I might add that it was for using dung bombs in a spectacularly inventive way that would've had our third-year minds bloody spinning on end, so I fail to see the—" he looks over at me, sees my rolling eyes and hard-set jaw, and laughs. "Alright, fine. Not my jurisdiction, I get it."

I'm hardly as bothered by it as I seem. A passing group of upperclassman break into a tittering squall as they catch sight of my face and the fading injury. "I'll come with," I decide. "I've some mates that are melodramatically want for quality time."

"They're peeved at you, truly?"

"Well," I consider the question. "Sort of. Not really. Some of it's truly out of my hands, what with courses and Head's work, but I know Marlene is fuming about time spent...otherwise, regardless of other, more justifiable time-consuming activities."

"Will be immediately telling James you don't consider him a 'justifiable time-consuming activity.'"

Sirius yelps in protest as my elbow comes into rough contact with his side. "Alright, alright, fine, I won't. But honest—McKinnon's one to talk, really, half the time she's got her tongue down Laswell's throat." I choke a bit on my own laugh, here; Sirius notices and immediately cajoles me with a smile and shake of his head. "Sorry. Also not my jurisdiction."

"Merlin, but I don't mind it, unfortunately. You're spot-on with that one." I respond, returning his crinkly smile. We turn the corner on Gryffindor tower and shuffle through the portrait hole along a cluster already on their way in. The common room's half-packed, most of the cozy nooks of couches and chairs saturated with chattering groups killing time till dinner or final classes. I spot Dorcas, Marlene, and Mary in one such gathering, and I wave and approach, Sirius in tow. Marlene appears put off by something, hardly looking up as we approach. Dorcas offers me a sympathetic smile. "Okay, Lils?"

"Yeah, doing well." She seems satisfied with this response for the moment, though I know she'll save in-depth questions for later when we're not in a so public a place. "Any thoughts on Potions? I'm itching to revise after this morning."

"Ugh, of course you are," Mary rolls her eyes. "Never mind we were right clobbered by one mock, now we've got to go right on and revise for the next."

"Fair point, honest, but I'm actually game to review," Dorcas admits. "Can we do it in the library? Awful loud in here."

Marlene scoffs and tears up from her chair, suddenly, barging from the room in irritation and disappearing up the stairs to the girl's dorms.

"What's her deal?" Sirius asks, eyes following Marlene.

"Tiff with the missus, we think," Mary says vaguely. There's something odd at the corners of her expression. I catch her eyes and she looks away, shaking away the expression as soon as I see it. Later. "Anyway, I suppose I'm in for Potions, too."

"Well then, ladies, I've a reputation as a loaf to maintain, myself," Sirius swivels his head between us, saving an ostentatious wink just for me. "I'll leave you to it."

I wave him off as he leaves us to it. Dorcas follows his retreat with an almost wistful expression. "Real shame he's not dating so much, this year. Wouldn't mind a go at that lithe figure."

"Oh, Dor, please, haven't you already got a Quidditch player?" Mary laughs as she shoves her bag up onto her shoulder.

Dorcas runs a restless hand through her cropped hair. "I mean, Quidditch stamina is Quidditch stamina, no? Evans, back me up."

"I've no formal comment on the matter," I say as they stand up so we can head—though here's my own Quidditch player, in fact, bounding down the dormitory stairs, apprehension stitched across his features.

Dorcas grumbles, "No formal comment but you've sure got that formal stare, don't you, Merlinssake."

"Hey!" James tries to keep the tone light, I can tell. "Dorcas, Mary." He nods at my friends, then fixes his eyes on mine, an anxious shimmering.

"Any formal comment on your stamina?" Dorcas assaults immediately, her face a cross of exasperation. "Phenomenal, right? Fuck."

Mary tugs at Dorcas' arm, laughing. "We'll meet you, Lils? I'm divining from Potter's windswept eyes that he's going to pass on if he doesn't hold your hand in private." She's off then, Dorcas in tow, crinkling her nose back at us amusedly.

I turn to these windswept eyes and smile foolishly, offering a hand for holding. "I do not want you to pass on. Not before I've beaten all your N.E.W.T scores."

We duck out of the common room and he rushes me down the hall and into what I soon find to be a secret passage that's hiding—perhaps obviously, to a Marauder's hungry eye—behind a 16th century tapestry illustrating a ring of blue faeries mourning the death of a unicorn. Inside, it's strangely warm for such a dark, narrow aisle, perhaps thanks to the ancient sconced flames studding the upper walls. In the middle of the passage, James gathers up my face in his hands. "Alright?"

I nod, pull him in for a quick kiss amid such medieval ambiance. "You didn't need to send Sirius, you know. I would've been okay."

He looks surprised. "I didn't send him, actually," he reaches to tuck a wayward hair behind my ear. "I mentioned I was hands-full with inappropriate use of dung bombs in the dormitories, and he just went to meet you, on his own."

This warms me to Sirius immensely—even beyond our earlier interaction. "He's alright, that one, isn't he? Think I'll leave you for him."

James laughs and the warm sound transforms the dimly lit passage into someplace cozy. "Suppose you'll have to get past Moony, then, and I've got scars from that bloke that might warn you off such a pursuit."

I pull at his collar for another kiss, something searching and slow, something that coaxes a bit of a groan from him. "Wait," he says, tearing his mouth away. "You're distracting me, I want—tell me about your meeting. And then tell me why Dorcas asked about my stamina."

I have a burgeoning laugh of my own now, pulling him close for one last kiss before I'm inclined to do either.