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.

15. Chapter 15

A/N: many many many thanks to Senem for being such a wonderful beta!

---

15

I want to share your mouthful

I want to do all the things your lungs do so well

—alt-J, "Every Other Freckle"

---

Lily

I'm pulled from a warm dream of green grass and spring rain by lips on my shoulder and fingers slipping the hem of my shirt. It must be early morning, still, not on seven; the melodic chime of my alert charm not yet rung. I stretch my toes out and meet two other feet, bare. The lips on my shoulder roam the crevice of neck. My limbs prickle, languorous in sleep.

James kisses the skin below my ear. I nudge my hips back lightly and find him hard; I push further, and he curls an arm around my abdomen, pulls me back. I moan instinctively, barely awake. Everything tingly and sensuous. The room is cast through in early morning shade. James hums pleasantly at the lazy roll of my hips, tongue licking long, broad swathes down the side of my neck. I roll my chin, tucking my head back onto the pillow; find the blurry form of him. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

The shadow of the room is hardly enough to hide stubble flecking his jaw, dark waves brushing his brow, the lilted pull of mouth as I reach back for his warm chest. His laugh, too, is warm. He smiles around my ear. "Good morning, birthday girl."

I drifted away thinking, I'll be eighteen tomorrow. The truth felt strange on the cusp of sleep, a ribbon of light in the blank abyss. I hardly believed it, even as I thought it. "I'm quite older than you now, you know."

He steals a kiss and I breathe into it like I've been days without oxygen; tongues ardent and drifting. "I find it a rather attractive trait in a woman." He sweeps a hand under my shirt, over the plane of my stomach. "Being older and wiser. More equipped for the world than I."

As though he isn't equipped to reduce me to just quivering; and I, myself, equipped for little else than grasping his chest, tugging at hair, desperate for any purchase in this slipstream. It's startlingly quick how I can't breathe, how my hips writhe of their own stubborn accord—and then his resistance from behind, both delicious and cruel, making me near delirious through thin layers.

"But certainly you seem—" I shift my neck as far around as it will go, urging his lips back to mine, hot, slanted. "—like an able-bodied young—" his fingers usurp the repartee unfairly and fold between my thighs and the air stutters clear from my lungs and I can only choke out my last clever word, "Lad."

James smiles into my cheek, gone pink in the wake of his breath, as his fingers part shorts and press underneath. "Able-bodied, hm?" he whispers. "Enough to please you, you think?"

"Yes," I rasp, pleadingly, desperate for his fingers to move, to rub, to stroke, to anything besides sit still and mock. I carve a hand to his bicep and grasp, tight. "Yes, please, yes."

His smile disappears into one pale shoulder, teeth scraping tenderly as his lips negotiate a slow, downward path. Riddled in urgency, I'm pulling at the loose, scalloped neck of my shirt so my fingers fill with the flushing swells—which proves offensive, apparently, to James, who makes a sound of jealous contempt and has me gasping when his arm snakes under my neck to hold the breast himself. My head finds soft landing on his arm. I grin at the extent of his childish claim, arch into his palm. His breath warms the shallow of my collarbone and he's sucking so hard in one spot he'll surely leave a mark, a small purple bruise; a reminder of teeth here, mouth here. I scramble blindly down the side of his body to squeeze his hip, accelerate his pressing, denote my ardent, growing need.

He whispers it to my skin, shallow and dense, "Lily," and it sounds like pain, so I turn my head, a wave of red hair falling heavy at my throat. I press my face into his hair and inhale; he smells bed-warm and musky, like leaves and woods and lingering shampoo. He repeats my name, and I urge his face toward mine, fingers dancing his jaw; find eyes so clearly gold without the barrier of glasses. He bears into my gaze. Torn open by similar want. His fingers pause in the valley between my breasts to stroke. "You're gorgeous. You're so gorgeous." He kisses me, once, slowly; then breaks away, eyes spilling over me like honey; his hips roll forward, indulgently, and my breath cuts open to whimpering. "I could look at you forever."

"Not forever," I gasp, hand on his cheek, stroking, pulling him back to my lips. "Got Charms in two hours."

He laughs and it makes my fingers tremble, latched helplessly at his jaw, searching for somewhere to stay. My tongue darts out and his laughter dissolves into a grating moan, eyes gone dark, thighs tensing behind me. "How do you want to come?" he breathes. "Fingers?" The hand among my legs demonstrates and I bolt to the touch, heat spiking through. "Lips? Tongue?" Said lips and tongue punish the pulse at my wrist, languid. He is pointedly ignoring the manic twist of my torso, how badly I want to turn and fall into his touch, feel his body bearing into mine like heavy water. His hand strokes the sensitive swathe of ribs, unhurried at my breasts, rounding nipples between the vee of two fingers. I expel an irritated breath; pry at his lips with my fingers, receive nothing but a wet tongue, a smirk, a swiftly tugged-at nipple. I writhe, helpless. "Maybe I'll lavish your lovely tits for a while," he ponders hoarsely. "See where that gets—"

"Prick." My throat nearly constricts with the effort to push out the word, because somewhere between his coaxing words two devious fingers have slipped inside of me and I clench to the touch, dizzy with intrusion, wrenched with hunger for something fuller; something thick. "I want your prick."

James hums a pained agreement into my wrist and slips the fingers out immediately, pulling my shorts down, and then off. I shift my shoulder down onto the bed, nestling into the crook of his arm; finally get a good long look at his sideways form. I reach down to palm his cock. Hips stutter to the touch. "Lils," he groans, struggling to cast off his pants in favor of my hand wrapping snugger; he's so hard, warm and leaking. My fingers slip the willing length, thumb rolling the tip, smearing the swollen head; his breath caught between my teeth as he pants. His throat is lighting up red. I kiss him with a slowness of his own making and curve my hips back to his, tugging him closer, whimpering as he loiters just before pressing inside.

He stills and looks at me, lost. I pry his lips apart with a finger. "Hi," I say, filled as I am. "Hi," he laughs, breath a narrow cylinder. The coarse hair crowning his pelvis pushed against my arse drives me wild, something so rough in such stillness. One of my knees in limbo, forced upward and hanging between our bodies; I pull it to my stomach, fingers spread under the thigh. I watch his brow complicated with the adjustment, watch his lips moisten from a swipe of his tongue. He pushes his hips forward slightly and I gasp with it, holding his eyes; gold gone dark. Even if it's obvious, I whisper what's stuck in my throat. "I love you."

His lashes flutter as his eyes shut for a second. He shifts my hand out from under my thigh to hold me up himself. "I love you."

The confessions still feel new, exhilarating—though it's been a few days since the Herbology incident, the sleepless night, the next day in the corridor; his eyes filled with such earnest determination, the words so heavy and real. That night he unraveled me thread by thread, pressing the words into my skin again and again, pulling out of me a pleasure so agonizingly sweet I was sure I would never feel anything so heavenly again; I was proved wrong not hours later, when I climbed on top of him as we woke and pulsed achingly slow, our bodies warm and desperate. I gasped the same words into his neck as I came, his hands keeping me firmly on earth, my name a steady spell on his tongue.

Being in love, it seems, is as potent an aphrodisiac as there is—this morning no different as his hips press in on me from behind, rolling, drawing out a steady whimper as I'm sloped, headlong, into something sublime. The outset is grueling slowness; languid and tender. I push two fingers into his mouth, feel his tongue roll over them gently. I pull them out and touch my swelling clit, rubbing slow circles. A thin sheen of sweat decorates the line of his nose; darkens the crown of his hair.

I like James urgent and quick; I like him bearing down on me roughly, chasing his own breath, groaning and biting his lips with his teeth; I like him sobbing into my neck, hips snapping frantically, hands thrust through my hair, threaded, tugging.

But here: Here, I adore him.

I adore him sickly sweet, languorous, easing my body through an indelible pulse of good pressure, the kind that builds in breathy sighs; the gentle swelling of a river-bound stream. I adore his lips slow on my neck, roving breasts and throat, breathing into my ear and asking me how it feels, asking me if it feels good.

"Oh, oh, Potter."

He's got his mouth on a breast and the sound of it—lips and their subtle suction, spit wetting the skin just to be dragged across a nipple—and the feeling of his tedious fucking, the way he slips out completely just to push back in, painstakingly slow—is sensory overload.

His smile vibrates against me. "That good, huh?"

At my bent thigh, my hand slots over his and our interlaced fingers manage to overwhelm me the most; this working together, the vulnerable nearness. "So, so good," I twist my neck to the side, chin tilting up for his mouth, rosy and wet. Our lips intersect, heated, insistent, and I can feel from the rumbling groan he empties into me that his patience of pace is wearing just as thin as mine. I reach around for his hip and squeeze. "Will you—"

He intuits. Hips rise and fall to match the rush of our breathing; harried, gusting. His arm slips further under my thigh to grasp my fingers round the other side. "Let me take care of you," he murmurs. "Let me take care of you, baby."

I let him take care of me. My eyes lull shut to the growing tide; fingers skimming into his hair, letting him kiss me slow. His fingers tender and pressing, hips bearing in, and I am humming, very close. I watch his eyebrows crease, cheeks sucked in, hear his breath shorten, then deepen, then stammer, transfixed. There's the sensation of falling without stopping. His last breaths—strangled cry, mouth lurched into my shoulder, gone slack—roll straight to my lungs, and the way he sobs, the way his fingers clamp down on my thigh, pulling my hips up as he comes, thighs clasped frantically through the freefall, the slowburn; my grip in his hair helpless, searching for gravity. Eyes fall shut as I pulsate, as I whine some unintelligible string of words, some fucking hell James holy hell oh my god oh my gods oh my gods.

And I am ruined, already, for the rest of the day, knowing we can't just lay here in the aftermath and kiss for hours, take a slow, sensual shower, dry off and fuck again before we've even left the bath, eyes meeting in the mirror above the sink.

I shudder through with the day we can't have, feel his lips on my shoulder, his hips slowing, easing. "So full," I murmur, treading fingers on his chin to bring him back to me. I adore, here, the hand smoothing up my torso to my cheek, the thumb that strokes. I am sighing; I am a cliché. Besotted and sated and full. "Of you," I press back into his hips and feel just how full. "Of you," I repeat, scouring the sweaty plane of his chest, palm spread over the thud of his heart.

I think in this moment that he is a door, pushed ajar, with long, warm swathes of light falling from behind, and I am curling my hand to the frame, pulling it open, letting the light fall onto me, over me, inside of me.

He whispers my name and kisses me deeply. He breathes, and nods, and pushes his thumb under my jaw, and there's a red stain painting his cheek that makes him look like a painting, ethereal, sweat-glistened, damp-curled. "It's almost too small in here, for all of it," he says, covering my hand with his hand, and laughing, and smiling. "Implosion eminent."

"Implosion," I repeat and kiss him again and again and again. Stuck between our bodies is a sensation that still, we haven't stopped falling.

---

James

Lounging on the bottom steps of the staircase, waiting for Lily, I tilt my head back and smile. I think of the way she reached for me as I left her bed, took my arm and kissed the veins raised blue on my skin; she put her lips to my wrist, then my palm. "Okay," she said. "Now you can go."

There's a sound from above—an exaggerated gasp—and her door swings open and she calls down, "Lilies!"

I tip my head back further and look up at her, upside down. "Like them?"

"My heart," she says, so quietly I can barely hear. She disappears, and I'm still smiling.

When I was young, infatuated without rational thought, I assumed that giving Lily a birthday gift extravagant and thoughtful enough would make her realize how wrong she'd been about me. I attempted the feat twice—second year, and then fourth—to no such avail; I received wide, embarrassed eyes, furiously red cheeks, harsh words, leveled at me tightly at a low volume. And the gifts—a bottle of French perfume (stolen from Mum) and a green cashmere scarf that matched her eyes perfectly (bought myself)—were shoved back into my miserable arms, unwanted.

Despite how misplaced my intentions had been—irresponsible and overzealous and oblivious—it still hurt to watch her reject the gifts, tokens I thought so full of my obvious adoration, were physical manifestations of how my chest choked every time she was near, how I lay awake at night and listened to everyone sleeping, mind stuck on a repeated clip of her tucking hair back behind an ear when it fell in her face. I couldn't fathom how wrong I was going at it; how incorrect the angle.

Today, she let me kiss her awake. The gift, still thoughtful—a little extravagant—is for her. Not the person I thought she was.

I'm still smiling when she comes down the stairs and pulls me upright, hair tied back halfway with a ribbon. "They're beautiful, I love them, thank you."

My hands steady against her back as she kisses me. "Just refresh my memory," I say, pulling back. "You do like being serenaded in the middle of class, yes?" She laughs, eyes bright and affectionate. "Yes, you're remembering right." I try to kiss her again, but she slips out of my arms, pulls at my hand. "I abhor subtlety. I demand the grandest gesture." I let myself be pulled through the portrait. "Oh, thank Merlin. You're going to just love the banner I've floated over the great hall."

---

Lily

Mary shoves a papered rectangle at me over breakfast, long and narrow and tied up in a thick, magenta ribbon. She raises her eyebrows excitedly. "Go on!"

It's a small pouch, beautiful mahogany leather, with a row of slim, sewn-in loops. "For quills, or pencils, or whatever other muggle nonsense you're keen on," Mary explains.

"Mare, it's gorgeous," I gush, running my fingers along the case. "Thank you, really, this is just what I've needed."

Mary accepts my quick embrace, her arm along my back. "Figured it was the only way to get you to shut up about the old one."

"Lils, oi," Marlene is leaning down over Dorcas across the table, a piece of toast between her teeth. "My present is back in the dorms." She tears off a corner of the toast. "It's inappropriate."

Dorcas rolls her eyes. "She won't quit going on about it." Mary adds, "And won't tell us what it is. Had it since summer, allegedly."

"I have had it since summer," Marlene digs an elbow into Dorcas' side as she sends a withering glare toward Mary. "And I just don't want to ruin the surprise."

"Okay, I'm truly frightened," I admit readily, stirring a spot of sugar into my coffee.

"Don't be. You'll be thanking me." She points her toast at James, next to me. "Potter will be, too. Suppose it's a bit more for him, thinking about it."

James glances up from buttering his own toast. "Pardon, now?"

"So definitely a sex toy?" Mary asks Dorcas, who nods adamantly in agreement.

"No," I shake my head, "couldn't be, last year—" and then I stop, because Dorcas' brow is creasing, and I realize the gift Marlene gave me last year has been—up until now—a close-lipped secret.

"I fucking knew it! " Mary exclaims, as though vindicated—which, in all honesty, she is, given the time and effort she's wasted trying to pry the truth out of me.

"Am I allowed to ask what's going on?" James' voice is quiet and inquisitive, and it's very endearing but I've no time for it because Mary is wheeling on Marlene, demanding, "How come I never get gifts like that from you, huh?"

"I—it's—" Marlene stutters, briefly, eyes caught on Mary's for only a moment before they dash down to her plateful of fried potatoes. "Didn't think you'd, er, be interested.

Dorcas offers me an expression of knowing so subtle I almost miss it.

"Sex toy?" James whispers, sounding desperately confused. "Am I supposed to know what that is?"

"I'm sure she'll show it to you, Cap," Dorcas laughs, "if you say please."

I look over at him, see how earnestly his eyes alight with curiosity, a curled-under slip of dark hair brushing his brow. I lean over to kiss his cheek. He looks back at me, a spot of pink blooming where my lips had been.

---

James leans over me during Transfiguration lecture under the guise of "being such complete bollocks at spelling incantations" and "needing to sort out the fiddly letters in Crinus Muto " when really he's just gently pressing his mouth to the side of my neck, right in the middle of class; then slumping back into his seat, quill flying across the page.

My lips part. His lips gone. I try to swallow the smile but I can't.

"Lecture, Potter." I keep the words quiet, but they're half-hearted. I wish he would keep kissing my neck; I wish we could skive off and neck in a broom closet; I wish we were somewhere far away, like at the cottage in Holland-on-Sea, where we could laze about and shut out the rest of the world.

James chews thoughtfully on the end of his quill, looking at me with glazed-over eyes.

"Stop," I murmur insistently, mortified at how quickly I'm affected by just a look from him in Transfiguration of all places.

He bites his lip and shakes his head. Scratches something down onto parchment. Taps a finger down to it.

Shall I pretend to be violently ill so we can find a local broom closet?

The side of my neck heats red. I breathe carefully

Shall I hex you so you're actually violently ill?

I look pointedly away as he reads, focusing on Professor McGonagall at the head of the classroom, exhorting on the intricacies of Conjuration.

I get it, you hate me. I'm just trying to make your birthday nice, and you hate me.

I roll my eyes when I read this, scratching down a hasty response.

You have made my birthday nice! Very nice!

Okay, I forgive you. Shall I raise my hand and tell Minnie it's the day you were born?

YOU'LL DO NO SUCH THING.

He grins, just a little, returning his gaze to the front of the classroom. My heart flutters, irresponsibly.

---

James

Afternoon study on Tuesdays is an irksome hour-and-a-half slotted between lunch and final classes. It tends, inevitably, toward exhaustion. Double Potions—grueling marathon of mental and physical effort—falls just before lunch, and Astronomy or Alchemy follow study, both being subjects one cannot reasonably hope to absorb whilst asleep. The hour and half between it all, meant to focus on coursework in the middle of the warm and cozy library, rarely—if ever—holds productive potential.

It helps remarkably, however, to sit with Lily, Remus, Mary, Dorcas, and Emmeline Vance, (a longtime friend of Mary's, Ravenclaw) some of the most unrelenting students I've encountered. Among them, I'm weekly made to chose between diligence, or looking a lazy fool.

Across the table, Lily is trying to bully Dorcas into telling her any little detail about her birthday party, putting on her sweetest smile and playing the role of the innocent, rather than someone trying valiantly to ruin her own fun. Similar tactics had hardly worked on me through the course of the morning—though, granted, her arsenal of tactics in my general direction involved quite a bit of lips and tongue, of hands apt to wander rudely below the belt while certain hips pushed slowly against certain other hips—which, I'll admit, quite almost worked a handful of times.

Operating word being almost.

Remus shoves his alignment diagram toward me in a huff of audible frustration. "I'm four moons off, or something, I sodding know it. Looks brilliantly wrong, see?"

I compare his diagram to my own, which is half as filled and appears—if possible—even more brilliantly wrong. "Er, hate to say it, but...I think we've both done rubbish jobs."

Remus' head falls into his bent palms, fingers intersecting handfuls of hair. The full moon's still a week away, but the tide is already tugging at him, scratching under his skin. He described it once as an itch at the very center of his body. I fix him with a sympathetic look as he emerges between his fingers and says, "I couldn't give two knuts about this, is that bad?"

"Not bad, no. I happen to agree. Alas, we've both got reputations to uphold." I grin, flattening my voice into a hush and directing it down the table. "Hey, Vance!"

Emmeline happens to be a verifiable lexicon of planetary jargon, lucky for both of us. She looks up, disconcerted, dark eyebrows fixed into a crease above her nose. "What is it?"

I shuffle both mine and Remus' diagrams toward her. "Little help?"

Emmeline eyes the diagrams, then eyes the two of us, then sighs, deeply. "You realize you've each somehow severely crossed up the—" she lets out a gentle laugh, shaking her head and tearing off a bit of parchment to dash a few quick lines. She pushes the parchment in our direction.

Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto (Jupiter)

Enceladus, Titan (Saturn)

"Oh, Christ," Remus takes back his diagram to examine. "You must think us amateurs."

"We're all amateurs, Lupin."

I squint down at my own diagram to discover where I switched the moons of each planet, and have—somehow—assigned Callisto to Neptune, a planet completely uninvolved in the assignment. "Vance, you're my hero. Eternal thanks."

Emmeline just rolls her eyes and reembarks on her work, muttering, "Can put a moon in front of a Gryffindor, just can't count on getting it back in the correct orbit."

I've been trying all term—to small avail—to figure out whether it's Mary or Marlene she fancies.

I set off amending the muddling of moons—which, once amended, makes the rest of the diagram a stupidly simple task. From across the table I hear Dorcas murmuring to Lily, "I know it's your birthday, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, but your freewheeling attitude toward this presentation makes me want to hurl myself in the Thames."

"It's not freewheeling," Lily asserts quietly. "I'm just not keen on giving us any anxieties we needn't feel."

Dorcas turns her eyes on her. "But I need those anxieties. You're doing that overconfidence thing that always makes me flail on the spot."

Lily shakes her head adamantly and insists, "I am not! And you won't flail, I promise. Name two other pairs with even half the—"

"Wotcher, Meadows!"

The greeting sounds as though it comes from halfway across the library. The volume of the voice, imbued with such lazy account for the quietness of the room, is immediately assaultive—and all six of our heads pop up at the interruption.

A strong gait and easy smile accompany Finn Doyle, who appears either unconcerned or unknowing of the sharp looks he's earned from peers up and down the center of the library.

My breath pauses halfway in my lungs when I see he's joined by two others: The first being Harriet Vaughn, who I hardly recognize off the pitch, her long black hair usually so concealed by Keeper headgear.

And the second—the second I'd recognize on or off the pitch, regrettably.

Owen Flannigan.

The situation is promptly surreal. Given what little I know of Dorcas' connection to Doyle, I'm unsure if public interaction is normal between them. Come to think of it, I've rarely seen them interact beyond silted necessities in class and during games, where they can hardly hope to avoid one another.

I spare Dorcas a glance and find her gone red. This reaction, combined with the dodgy smile Doyle continues to sport in her direction—even under the firm scrutiny of our entire table—makes me think this meeting is not sanctioned, and may, in fact, be some kind of retribution.

And not to mention Flannigan, his eyes fixed, smugly, stupidly, pointedly down the table: Right on Lily.

My blood is set to an immediate boil. On a rational level, I know losing my temper here would hardly boast a new sensitivity toward evading altercation. But I already feel an amalgam of everything I know about this bloke gathering dangerously in the forefront of my mind, obscuring rationality and the diplomacy of reaction it might allow.

My teeth clench just at the sight of him: Abhorrent blonde hair, hands tucked so nonchalantly into trouser pockets, blazer lapel popped out as if he fancies himself the debauched prince of Ravenclaw.

I, for one, believe he's closer to Lily than he should be legally allowed.

And before any one word is even uttered, I am irate.

The first word, as it goes, is uttered by Dorcas. She takes on a careful, silted tone, speaking almost under breath, perhaps in some effort to respect the laws of the library—or, quite possibly, to reign in her own boiling blood. "Little far from Ravenclaw tower, are we, Doyle?"

Doyle rolls his shoulders backward, unperturbed. "I resent any implication that I've never been to the library."

"Could've fooled me," Emmeline mutters. I look down the table to find her sporting a stunning glare in Doyle's direction.

He shoots her back an amused look. "Such odd company, Vance?"

"Fuck off."

"Yeah, fuck off, will you?" Dorcas seconds, icy stare daggering. They stare at each other a moment, something inscrutable passing between them.

And then, apropos of nothing, Flannigan says: "Hi, Lily."

It's the first I've looked over at her because I'm fearful of what I'll find—and what I find is a slated fury, sewn into the tense knit of her brow, the tense set of her jaw, her knuckles gone white gripping her quill. I wish, with sudden urgency, that I was sitting close enough to her to grasp the knuckles, to kiss the jaw, to unknit the brow. Wash her clean of unease.

But I am far, and unable, and her voice is carefully controlled when she responds. "Owen."

The idea that at some point she said that name without imbuing it in such disdain burns me hotter than it should. I ought to take fourteen deep breaths and leave the table, take myself far, far away.

But no matter how irrational the jealousy, how retroactive, how juvenile: It lodges itself in the cavity between my ribs and tears a toxic chasm.

Flannigan has the gall to flick his eyes to mine, next. "Potter."

I ought to have guessed my name would sound more like a curse coming from him.

The chasm burns.

I feel Lily's feet intersect mine frantically underneath the table, hooking around my ankle and squeezing. It's a warning: Don't you fucking dare engage him, James Potter.

Engage him I most certainly will.

"Flannigan," I respond ever so evenly. "Glad to see you're finally taking some initiative on that deplorable Divination grade."

"Give him some credit, James," Dorcas adds. "He's only just learned to read."

Owen flashes his eyes to her. Doyle pins an elbow into his friend's side as if to temper any forward movement. Next to them, Vaughn scoffs incredulously. "The hell's the matter with you lot?"

"Think you lot have well overstayed your astonishing lack of welcome," Dorcas snaps. "That's what's the matter, Harriet."

Doyle seems rapidly sinking in a quicksand of his own creation. "Dorcas, I—"

She looks at him, fiercely. "If you've something to say, Finn, go ahead and fucking say it."

Doyle falters. Something genuine flits across his coarse veneer, and his eyes soften on Dorcas. His mouth opens, then closes halfway, then opens again—then shuts, and stays shut.

This is evidently the match in the powder barrel for Dorcas. She's suddenly making a mad scramble of gathering her things and shoving them into her bag and scraping backward in her chair and stalking off through the stacks—an exit that Doyle follows hastily, eyebrows pinned anxiously to the middle of his forehead.

Flannigan takes the opportunity of turned events to raise his eyebrows at Vaughn. "Maybe she'll finally put out and we're finally out of our misery, eh?"

"Were you right dropped on the head as a child, you absolute cod?" Mary says in a tone so biting several heads toward her.

Owen turns an unkind eye on her, and my dislike of him deepens and twists into something so volcanic I've no course but eruption.

"I think you should leave."

Flannigan turns and is aglimmer, instantaneously, with the desperation to fight, to prove himself, to best me.

Lily digs the heel of her shoe into my ankle.

"Now," I add, politely.

Infuriatingly, the prick just turns back to Lily.

"Happy birthday, Lils."

The chasm rips open and screams.

Vaughn tugs crossly on Flannigan's elbow, and with one last punishing sweep around the table, he turns and follows her out in the direction they came.

"What a fucking wanker," Mary mutters, looking over at Emmeline. "How'd'you stand them?"

"I don't," Emmeline winces, reaching up to tuck stray hairs behind her ears. "Only one among them that's any tolerable is Harriet, and she's too weak to stand up to Owen. I'm sorry, Evans. He's such a shit."

Lily shoots a half-convincing smile in her direction. "Thanks, Em. It's fine. Used to it." Then she's looking at me, perhaps evaluating the overreaction she expects is simmering underneath my skin—which isn't far from the truth. I am simmering, still, in the moment that's just expired, the nerve endings in my feet and hands tingling as if raring for a hypothetical fight.

Remus is looking at me, too, from the side. I avoid both of their eyes. I stare down at my Astronomy work, the words all blending together into a web of misplaced ink. I inhale, deeply, and decide to take the Dorcas way out.

"Excuse me." I announce, waiting for no acknowledgment before rising from my chair and fuming all the way to Magical Maths—a section I can count on being seldom visited—where I release a torrent of agitated breath into the dusty air, rubbing frustrated hands all over my face.

"James?" A frantic voice rounds the corner to my dead-ended path and then Lily's there, peering down at me oddly. "You're...back here?"

I stuff my hands into my pockets.

"I—" she walks carefully toward my hunched, forward-leaning figure. "I thought you were—"

"Going after him?"

At some point in time, earlier this year, even, I would've. I would've followed Flannigan out of the library, pushed him around a little, drawn my wand, threatened to take him to task. And it might have made me feel better for a second, made me feel superior, good about myself. But it wouldn't have lasted. It would've left a bitter taste, knowing I could've done something differently, that I could've been a better person and let it go.

Things are different now. I've gained Lily's trust—not an easy feat—and I've no intention of losing it over something as pointless as Owen Flannigan.

"I'm not pleased to remain here, mind you." I pitch myself against the bookshelf behind me, knowing I sound proper whiny. "I'm chuffed to go after him."

She sets in on me with a stern look, pressing a knuckle to her mouth.

"Oh, come on," I burst. "How is it you're allowed to be jealous of Kerstin based on barely anything at all, but when that ass waltzes up and says happy birthday to you like the two of you've been on jolly good terms all year long, I'm not allowed to be upset?"

There's half a beat of silence and a look of conflict on her face—and then the sound of her sharp inhale and a look of firm decision, and she's stepped forward and bunched her fingers full of sweater and is kissing me, hard, in the middle of the stacks, my back pressed willingly to the shelf behind.

I'm released just as soon as I'm seized, breath panting out erroneously, temple cramped with the pull of surprise, cock all of a sudden rather highly interested. Lily's grip on me loosens. "I wasn't going to say you're not allowed to be upset," she says quietly. "I was going to say that if you're going to be upset, you might consider a...mutually beneficial reaction."

I stare, bewildered, not sure if I've latched on entirely to her line of suggestion. "What are you...what are you saying?"

A thigh pushes between mine. "I think you know."

My body knows, of course. I feel her heat and her intention and her eyes, darkening into the lush of a forest. "H-here?" I find myself stammering, poured over in a wave of unmitigated want.

She steps further into me, the bracket of her body bringing her mouth back, softly, to mine. A miniscule groan floats up the back of my throat. "Do you trust me?"

"I—" And she doesn't let me answer until she's swirled her tongue into the recesses of my mouth, and consequently green-lit the growing hard-on in my pants. "Merlin, yes."

Lily slinks off lethargically, holding me an arm's length away as her fingers slip my shirt. Her lips are swollen red with the snogging. "Good." She straightens out her sweater, smiles at me, and steps right out of Magical Maths.

I follow, thoughts of Owen Flannigan positively flung from my mind.

She leads me further into the fissured reserves of higher knowledge, back and back until we're further in the depths of antiquated books than I can admit to having gone on my own. We pass the dim alcove of the Restricted Section, guarded by a row of carved brass pillars, rigid and daunting as soldiers, and turn a darkened juncture into a hall that ends abruptly in a short, curved door.

I watch Lily take out her wand and place it to a brass keyhole, murmuring something I can't hear. The keyhole pulses blue; clicks unlocked. Lily grabs the metallic knob and swings the door open, revealing a narrow set of stairs. She turns over her shoulder to smile, offering me a hand. I take it and let her lead me up.

At the top of the stairs we emerge from a wood-paneled landing into a cramped, musty space. Two bookshelves flank either side of a room, joined on the far wall by a cushioned wooden bench beneath a wide-paned frosted window. The white of January snow lights everything brightly, even through opaque glass. It smells, distantly, of spoiled ink. Lily catches my eye and points toward a golden placard near one of the shelves:

Magical Pedigree

Lineage, Antiquity, & Genealogy

PtM—20th Cent.

My brow crinkles. "PtM?"

"Prior to Merlin."

I find myself unsurprised that sometime in her academic career, Lily was granted access to a charm-concealed inner sanctum of magical history. My lips quirk into a small smile. "Special permissions?"

"Special permissions."

Her hold on my fingers loosens, and she's looking at me intently. I feel my heart beating in my throat. Her wand, still drawn, dips down the stairway as she mutters two rapid incantations. I hear the door swing shut and feel a short, cold wind at the force of her privacy charms.

She drops her wand to the ground, unceremonious.

I swallow hard.

She walks toward me and I let myself be backed into the bookshelf, like before. Every space of skin on my body crackles with yearning. I reach for her warm waist and she dips into me, breathing hard, fingers pulling loosely at the slip of my tie. Her lean is intentional and presses into my crotch; she looks up. I can hardly hide the erection. It paints me a foolish schoolboy—which, unequivocally, I am.

I am also sweating down the back of my neck.

"I'm only going to say this once," Lily says, licking anxiously at her lips. "Because I know exactly how much it's going to inflate your ego."

My hands skim down the pleats of her skirt. I release an unsteady breath.

Something chaotic and intense lights the pale of her face. Her thighs intersect mine; my hands bunch up with fabric at her hips. My breath is coming from the very bottom of my lungs.

"Owen was...a real ponce about blowjobs."

"A real ponce," I echo.

"A real ponce," she repeats, encroaching closer still, belly pressed right to the bulge of my cock, twitching eagerly at her voice having dropped an octave, her lips grazing the line of my jaw, her fingers slipping my wrists and latching onto my belt loops, tugging. "But you—" she whispers, pressing a lingering kiss to the corner of my mouth. I shiver, goosebumps erupting over the exposed skin of my neck. "I enjoy sucking you off."

My breath becomes a thin moan, one that fattens and rushes out quickly when she melts herself against me. I grasp her skirt helplessly, needy for something to hold. "I like watching you when I kiss your hips," she says, fumbling at my fly. "When I dig my fingers into your thighs." She pauses when I inhale sharply, her lips curling into a satisfied smile, her fingers tooling lazily under my waist to shuffle my trousers very, very slowly down around my hips, flapping open in the front to reveal suffocating briefs. "And gods do I love your little gasp when I put you in my mouth."

Her fingers unfairly lethargic in the spot of hair just below my navel. She pricks a fingernail through the patch, thumb slipping under the waistband. Her eyes are bright, wanting. She knows her insurmountable control.

"You like it, don't you?" she murmurs lowly. "Watching me get on my knees for you? Swallowing you all the way down?"

"Fuck, oh gods, yes, yes I do," I blabber defenselessly, reaching for her mouth, sliding my tongue along her lips, feeling her groan at the messiness, the eagerness with which my head slants for something deeper, faster, harder. "I love having you in my mouth, knowing I can make you come," she pants, kissing a furious line down my cheeks, my neck, nipping at the column of my throat. "I never imagined I'd enjoy it, really, but you...everything's good with you. I want you to feel incredible." She's frantically unbuttoning my shirt, pulling it open to flatten her palms over my nipples, press down on them and make me groan, make me gasp, "Bloody hell. "

She leaves my mouth with a devilish smile and is just as wickedly kneeling, thighs parted wide as her hands scrape down the length of my abdomen, tangling in the hair peeking up over my briefs. I suck in a big breath of air, hand pitched back for leverage at the bookshelf's edge, the other clutching her fingers as they fall down the front of my body.

I watch, tight-throated, as Lily nudges her face into the clear outline of my prick, tongue darting out to taste; she inhales, deeply, whining. My fingers tighten painfully on hers.

"Lily," I manage like a sob, back arching unconsciously, hips bucking into the warm stretch of her tongue as she mouths at me. I squeeze my eyes shut for just a moment, hearing the sound of her silted breath and feeling the hard book spines prodding my back. If I'm not careful, I'll come right in my briefs, hot and sticky and sudden.

"So eager, Potter," she purrs along the length of me, biting down with teeth so gently I could weep for it, fingers slipping up under the sides of the fabric to scrape teasingly on my thighs. She tongues the swollen head and blinks up. Kisses me hot and open-mouthed, sucking at the stain of my eagerness. Her neck arches as she retreats, slightly, looking at me through dense lashes.

"I know how badly you wanted to win that bet."

My lips part and any hope of clear thought evaporates. "Jesus fuck," I say stupidly.

"Yes," she laughs, and it flowers prettily, misplaced in such a musty place, unvisited and airless. Everything in this room feels illicit, like we're breaking a rule; my pulse runs thick with the thrill. "Yes, exactly."

"But—Lils, it's...it's your birthday," is somehow all I can get out, grappling blindly for her hand at my hip.

"I know." She looks up at me with an open face. "I want to take you right to the edge and then..." Takes a breath, releases it. "I want you to come inside of me." Her lips find my fingers where they clasp, tightly, with hers. "Up against the shelf."

I have to look away from her, prone on the ground, poised to suck me off, promising a bookshelf fucking in the very near future—I very nearly explode at the prospect alone. My throat works through with the painful effort not to come.

And I sound like I've no voice at all, just a body, just a body looking back at her searching eyes. "You're killing me. You're killing me, Evans."

The briefs are down around my ankles before I've even taken a breath; in fact, it seems all the air has gone out of me entirely, every nerve ending narrowed down to her lips as they push open over me, tongue spreading under my heavy leaking crown. For a moment she stays here, dipping no further into the broad heat of her mouth, licking around the tip, doling slow, sweet kisses around the entire circumference. A hand rises to grip me at the base, my thighs gone rigid with the firmness of her grip. Heat shoots up through my chest. Her hand falls from my hip. Slow, wet kisses along every oversensitive inch.

My body is screaming under skin. I close my eyes and breathe deeply.

Lily Evans is blowing me in the library.

I hear fabric rustling somewhere below; feel her tongue, pooled in spit, running over my cock. I feel a quick rush of air at the tip and I gasp, eyes snapping open just in time to see her smirk as she sucks me down, whole, the sound of it obscene, the suction of her mouth immediate—and the deplorable fact becoming clear that somehow, in the moments of my eyes closing, she'd gone and undone half the buttons on her shirt, tie abandoned, the swells of her tits barely held up by red lace that has me choking out a groan as I watch her work her mouth up and down my cock, hand prodding my thigh.

"Fucking hell," I breathe, head falling brusquely against the bookshelf. It rattles at the contact as though bemoaning my presence against it; a volume near my head wobbles violently, threatening to fall.

Lily thumbs around the base of my prick, pushing her knuckles over the soft skin of my balls. I swallow and I groan, loudly, hips hitching even with such gentle interaction, her breath turning into a whimper as she draws me out of her mouth despicably slow. A string of saliva hangs off the edge of her lip. I feel like someone is tipping a spill of hot water down my spine, so hard and tight in my own body. And she looks up at me a moment, holds my eyes as she takes in just the tip, tongue lolling around. Her hand yanks down the rest of me and I gulp with the speed, shoulder jutting and causing the irritated book to rattle more violently, clattering the entire shelf.

Her eyes like glimmering emeralds. "Careful, love. Some of these are first editions."

My throat constricts with a sort of groan-laugh. "You—of course you're thinking of the books at a time—" the sound becomes a full-fledged feral moan when she takes advantage of my distraction to swallow me down, tip to root so enthusiastically that I breach the back of her throat. "—like this, shit, Lily, shit." She hums as her mouth sets in on me with an earnest rhythm, tongue darting quick, dangerous, strokes, throat tilting open to allow my cock dizzying, astonishing purchase—and in all but an instant it's too much, I'm perilously close, stamina decimated, her whining a vibration that threatens to have me spilling at an embarrassing rate. "I'm—baby, I'm really close, I'm going to—"

Lily pulls off me, breath agitated through her open mouth. My cock comes away red and slick, curling, overeager against my abdomen. I gulp in air, offered hardly any relief in the commotion of Lily rubbing her lips into a smirk and climbing up off of the ground, palms pushing up the sweaty sheen of my chest, our mouths meeting indiscriminately in the middle, throats pulled through with gasping. I wrap her in my arms and spin us till she's thrust against the shelf, my hands running up the backs of her thighs for—

I pull off, brow tense. Her lips swollen, hair falling in loose tendrils at her cheeks. "Where—?"

She inclines her head to the ground and I snap my eyes over, find a slip of red fabric not far: The knickers missing from her hips, which push into my palms, warm and bare. "I—" I can't finish the thought, can't connect two dots, because my cock is hard and wet and nearly wrecked in the folds of her skirt and I will ejaculate in an instant, surely, if she was doing what I think she was doing while getting me off not seconds prior.

"What? You think you get all the fun?" She pouts a little, and it's devastating. I cup the back of her head and kiss her hard, tongue slipping into her mouth and she's nipping at my lips, fingers crawling up my neck for fistfuls of hair. "It's my birthday, remember?"

I smile and laugh along her jaw, pressing open-mouthed kisses to her cheeks, flattening my tongue where her pulse jumps under pale skin. "And the birthday girl wants me to..." I shift my hands down her thighs, aching with the little breath she lets out. "Come inside of her?"

"Yes." And impatient, her claiming of my tongue. I can't ignore the lacy underthings, the gossamer red strained so deliciously over her tits, shirt thrust halfway open. I let my lips lead the way, tracing the expanse of her chest as her fingers drag through my hair. I push past the lace, use my palms to hoist each swell between my teeth, between a laving tongue.

"Potter," she growls. "Potter."

I smile between breasts. "It's your fault, wearing such a smashing—"

She yanks my mouth back to hers, emptying me of my moaning, fingernails scratching at the base of my neck, fingers like a vise. I tip forward, pulling myself up to full height, her chin jerking upward with the movement. We kiss like we've only seconds left to do it, mouths a clatter of teeth and whining, each tongue convinced it will win, breaths torn out and ragged. Lily's hand reaches out for my cock and I clutch at her wrist, gasping. "Can't handle that."

She laughs a breathy laugh and touches me anyway, and I can't handle it, not one bit, so I retaliate, instantly; grasping her arse between palms and heaving her up so she's wedged between my body and the bookshelf and we're exactly eye to eye, her throat a small yelping, shocked eyes bright. Bright, bright green. Fingers curl onto my bared neck. "Oh, fuck me," she whispers, lips gone red with kissing.

I don't need to be asked twice.

The logistical rearrangement proves thorny with both my arms secured round her waist, and might even be awkward if it weren't for her laugh—warm, endearing—and her hand, helping, lifting up her skirt and guiding my prick—hot, weeping—to position. I tighten my arms to facilitate the final upward push and when I finally press into her—I have to press my brow into her neck, gasping.

Lily clutches my hair and breathes deeply against my face. "Don't hurt yourself, Head Boy."

"Evans," I'm groaning, tipped over some invisible edge. "I want to die, right here, right now."

"No, no," she laughs. "I need you for meetings."

I retreat from her neck, find her easy smirk. "That's all?"

"Check in with me later," she inhales. "I'll let you know."

Perhaps it's the idea of a challenge—teasing or not—that spurs me on, has me thrusting, hard, coaxing from her a breathless moan, an "oh, oh, gods." I kiss her neck, palms hot where they lift her arse. The angle of our bodies coming together unspeakably urgent; not since we visited the coast, so many months ago, have I had her like this, held up by just my arms and intensity of feeling.

Lily, unbridled, keening, throws her throat wide open, head fallen to the books behind. Her eyes wrench shut; legs clenched taut about my waist. The resulting tightness—perpetrated, in part, by slick inner muscles—seizes my breath and I stutter in rhythm, hips slowing to a full stop, pulled out of course. "No," she whines, "no, no, why are you stopping?"

"You...Lily, fuck," I grind through my teeth, staring in amazement at her up against the shelf, skin gone rosy, breasts heaving, tumultuous, lips parted and atremble. "When you squeeze like that, I just can't even—" She smiles, breath falling through parted lips, hips swiveling just barely at all. She squeezes, purposeful. A jolting; a clear directive.

There's one smooth, hard thrust and the soft noise she makes is enough to remind control, after all, is finite. I bear back in with graceless abandon, licking at the silent, rapturous oh of her lips, watching lashes flutter shut when I pitch into her chest, lathe wet strokes to each pink nipple. I shift slightly on my feet, widening my stance, hips tilting and aiming determinately upward. Lily makes a rough, arduous, split-open sound. "Holy fuck, you're—" A dreg of longing snagged in her throat. "You're so deep, oh my god, don't stop, please don't stop."

As if stopping is possible, my balls wound so tight between our bodies I'm inchoerent with need, each deep, willful thrust a new and jarring force. Our breathing speeds along the snap of my hips, ruthless, heated and I'm—"I'm really fucking close, Lils, I—" my words hoarse, half-broken, pinned to the ruddy bright of her cheek. She grips my chin and licks into my mouth with an unyielding tongue. "Come for me, baby," she moans. "Go on, come for me."

It's like a taut rubber band snaps down, hard and painful; for a long second the only sound is the rasping wetness where our bodies connect; and then everything goes white, split apart, snapped. I'm coming, instantly, forcefully, blind with it, shot to somewhere dark and glittering and voiceless as space. Lily makes a helpless, needy noise at the feeling of it, back arching off the shelf, legs clenching ruthlessly, fingers digging down into my back. I collapse into her shoulder, spent and dizzy but barreling onward, filling her up, the way made slick with come, her breasts jostling against my shirt. "Oh my—" she bites down into my neck, sobbing. Her hips buck upward, near helpless with such little traction. I tighten my arms around her and feel her begin spasming, gulping for air, mindless. "Fuck, oh fuck," her voice breathless, almost soundless, hands scrambling for something to grip, fisting my shirt, prodding to the beat of quick fucking. "Oh, fuck, it's—don't—s-stop, I'm—" and then she goes silent, and the next thing I hear is just my name become a gasp; and then keening, soft and high-pitched and blissful.

Things settle in slivers through the outer waves; regular sensation returning, the strain in my arms from holding her up, the burn of back and leg muscles with the feat, the fucking; pulse and breathing becoming self-aware, the kisses soft and sweet to accommodate air; her hands, spreading restlessly, up and down my skewed shirt, tender hips, sweaty chest. Lily, for her part, panting gently and beautiful, lips so swollen I can't stray long, and would stay with them forever if it wasn't for my arms beginning to quake with effort.

"Baby," she murmurs, laughing gently. "You can let me down, your arms are shaking."

I let her down, and the stretch as my arms unbend from her waist is tortuous, then relieving. She kisses my neck, my cheek, my brow. I'm staring at her wondrously, body ravaged. Some part of me is wedged somewhere surreal.

She kisses the corner of my mouth. "We just shagged in the library."

"We just shagged...against a bookshelf full of first editions."

And she laughs again, smoothing a hand back through my hair, no doubt a complete and utter disarray. "Some first editions, I said." Her eyes warm and bright. "At least there's nothing prior to Merlin."

I kiss her soundly, because there's no other course; and her hands latch onto my wrists and we neck without hurry, as though we don't have class to attend, as if we've not already been gone from our table for suspiciously long.

"Do you feel better now?" It's a whisper and a kiss, both at once.

I give the kiss back; make it something longer, softer. "Better?"

"You looked completely volatile, earlier," she breathes between my lips.

"Oh," I lean back. I'd almost completely forgotten about the series of events that led us to this moment. "Much better." I run a finger down her cheek. "You're a remarkable diversion."

She laughs, pink-cheeked, gilded in the afterglow. "If you must know," her hands fall down my forearms. "All told, the jealousy is sort of sexy."

"Oh?" I smile. "Sort of?"

"But also completely unreasonable." She tempers this with another kiss. "Obviously."

"Yes, obviously, understood," I say, dutifully, before adding, "But hear me out: Next time Flannigan shows his face, you come sit in my lap and we snog like, really wetly."

"Oh, fucking hell," she's shoving at me but she's laughing, and she's walking right away from me to retrieve her discarded underwear; and this, this is where my heart feels the warmest, her tender look back, her smile as she puts herself back together. She pours over me like clear water.

---

Lily

In all, it's just a passing. Just a glance.

Mary, Remus, and I are walking from the library to Alchemy, early evening. Silver-green ties betray them, slicked-back hairs, smarmy, tight-lipped smiles, supercilious statures. They walk in a tight cluster, turned inward, like the idea of having acknowledging outsiders repulses them, collectively. There's five of them: Malby and Avery heading up, clumped by Heather and Mulciber, and—cowering in the back, curved forcefully in on his own frame—Severus.

Their pride bears a physical mark, something oily and miserable.

My body clenches with slight nausea. I feel Mary and Remus tense on either side of me.

Mulciber is the first to sneer; Heather and Malby and Avery follow. Their steps don't slow, but their eyes—hard, compact stones—follow me as the groups cross the same space, then pass out of it.

I turn, briefly, as we pass. Severus is looking back at me. He snaps his head back forward. I exhale and feel both Remus and Mary grip my arms. "It's okay," I assure them. "I'm okay."

"Genuinely surprised they didn't start a fight," Remus confesses, letting go of my arm.

"Bit odd, yeah." Something pulses in the back of my head, a dull thud, uneasy.

"Daddies probably told them to lay low," Mary grits between her teeth. "Given all this 'confirmed surge' shit in the Prophet."

Ministry Confirms Visceral Surges in Dark Magic

DMLE to Compound Investigative Task Force

The article ran three days ago; I'd only been able to stomach about half. The accounts of dark energy innumerable, desperate, pervasive—and had been for the better part of five years. Absolutely infuriating to read in print, given official Ministry reporting had only admitted proof of malevolent forces for the past year.

We turn the corner to Alchemy and I pause near the threshold, nausea seeming to sway inside of my body. "All good?" Mary asks. "Yeah," I reply. "Just, er, think I need a second to breathe, is all."

"Okay," she says, hesitantly. Remus gives me a comforting smile as they turn into the classroom.

I lean against the exterior wall, parsing my eyes through the thinning crowds of students on their way to final lessons. I feel strange in my body, a visitor. Something hot pierces the flats of my feet. I think of Heather and Malby, glaring disdainfully as they handed over their Prefect badges not a day ago. How their mouths looked so ready to spit on me, show me the kind of usage they thought I deserved; the heaviness of their twin jeering, over my shoulder, right at James. The insinuated message: You've chosen the wrong side. You'll pay for that choice.

I think of Severus, looking back. I looked for any small remorse, small regret, any I'm sorry I nearly let you bleed out. I'm sorry I'm such a coward. I'm sorry I'm too weak to do anything but hate myself.

Whatever leftover grief, goading at the sympathetic shell of my heart, I dispel. I reject. His rejection—his treatment—of me still hurts, but I've found that with time, the memory of why it hurts unravels, steadily. Every good thing unmoored. Stretched thin and grey; cast off each time I see him cower.

I swallow and clear my throat; blink through the lingering pain. It bleeds away, its own flimsy thing.

Mary and Remus are fully settled into our shared bench when I join them. I give them both a confident smile of assurance and unpack my materials. As I'm opening my Alchemy textbook, a folded note falls out between pages.

L,

If you still like me next year on this day, I promise to take you anywhere we can be alone and unbothered. Maybe it's selfish—and maybe I'm too eager to make up for several specific birthdays when I was, assuredly, a nuisance—but I haven't stopped wishing we were just where we started, this morning.

Now I'm doomed to stare at the back of your head during Charms, acting very much as though I'm taking down notes, when I'm very much just writing this to you, thinking of you, wishing for you.

Also, in related news: I'm definitely going to need your notes from this period.

L,

J

"What's this secret smile, Evans?" Mary accuses.

I fold the note back up. "No secret smile."

She rolls her eyes, readjusting an inkwell. "Sure."

Professor Byrd shuffles into the class, tapping his wand noisily on the cherrywood lectern, calling us to attention. I turn my (secret) smile to a fresh page of parchment, write down the date.

---

I make it to the Prefect office fifteen ahead of the meeting that evening and figure it's time enough to get ahead on next week's scheduling—a pragmatic plan immediately quashed by James arriving early, too, not seconds later. He's sunny-eyed and cheerful, propping himself on my side of the desk, hands latched to the edge.

"I got your note."

He gives me an almost-smile. "Which one?"

"There's more than one?"

"Well, one's just a drawing."

I find myself grinning, next week's scheduling be damned, quill abandoned. "Drawing of what?"

"You'll just have to find out, won't you?" He digs around in his bag for something. "In the meantime." He places a small box wrapped neatly in blue paper in front of me.

I look at the box, then up at him. "What's this?"

He shrugs, as if innocent. I bite my lip and take it in my hands. Smooth a finger over the glossy texture. Up close, there are tiny pink and white flowers blooming over the surface. "I'm nervous," I confess, pushing a thumb under the seam of the paper to unwrap.

"You're nervous?" he laughs. I look up and he's watching me, anxiously. The paper unfurls in a barely ripped square. Inside is a flat black box.

Jewelry-sized.

Little can stop my heart rate speeding. I keep my eyes fixed steady as I pull it open and unearth, in a black velvet sea: Two silver spilling cosmos. Five glistening stars each.

It seems unreal that the earrings should be here, in my palm, and not buried back in the depths of the shop, gathering the dust of other old and precious things. I guess I've been holding my breath, because it all comes rushing out at once. And I'm a little afraid to look at him but I do. His hands are planted on his thighs. He might also be holding in breath.

"How did you…?"

There's a flush climbing up his neck. "You were lingering by one shelf, a long time."

I stare.

"And, erm, some guesswork was involved," he rubs a hand uneasily across his neck. "There was a crystal dish I thought maybe—" he swallows. "Anyway. Artine searched for your, uh, magical signature, and...these lit up."

I open my mouth, close it. Touch a finger to the exquisite pieces. There's a disconnect between them here, in front of me, and James, here, giving them to me.

I set the box gently down on the desk and stand up and take just a step to be near him. Maybe he thinks I dislike them; his face is apprehensive and still. I exhale and dip my head down to the crook of his neck and shoulder and breathe out. I feel his fingers, tentative, on my arms. "Lils?"

It's a little embarrassing, but I think I might be crying. I'm thinking of him ducking into the shop, letting Artine touch his palm and unweave his future bearings. Maybe she waxed on deers, on souls, on gilded spilling light. There's an image of the two of them in that narrow room, mismatched in stature but joined in purpose, searching for the place where I lingered, weeks ago.

I'm thinking of all the care that went into the task. "I love them," I whisper to his neck. And I kiss there and wipe at my leaking eyes. Fold an arm around his back. "It's really, really thoughtful."

His breath sounds relieved. "Oh, good, okay, I'm happy you—okay, I'm so glad."

"But they were..." I lean back and remember the shocking sum on the price tag. The discrepancy between our upbringing crystallizes; he's accustomed to disregarding expense, and I am not.

He infers from my silence, my hesitation. "I wonder..." he takes my hand and kisses the knuckles. "I hope you might let me spoil you, once in a while."

It's hard to avoid melting at the sincerity in his voice, all the wishing in his eyes; I slump a little and fall closer to his face. "Only once a year."

"Once a year?"

I let him kiss me, just a little indulgence, once a year. "And for Valentine's Day, you're getting me socks." I smile, though, when he kisses under my ear. "Bonus if you've had some involvement in their making."

James gives me a smile that spoils me further. I see shadows encroaching at the cracked office door, hear the sound of chattering as it nears. "We've got a meeting."

"Meeting," he repeats as I return to my seat behind the desk.

I take his wrist, briefly. "Also, I love you. Thank you."

Maybe every smile has been a spoil. I feel very, very rich.

---

"And it's just going to be small and no-nonsense, right?"

"Evans—"

"Because you know I would never forgive myself if something on my behalf was disrupting in any way to the general population."

" Evans —"

"I'm grateful, please don't misinterpret, really I am, I'm just properly worried about the whole 'authority figure' taking advantage angle—"

"Hey, hey." Dorcas grabs me by the shoulders, just round the corner to Gryffindor tower. "Trust, yes? I love you, you know I do, but you have to trust ."

I deflate, slightly, try to let go of some apprehension. "Okay. Trust."

"But also," Dorcas continues, smiling with some hidden energy. "Trust me when I say this was mostly their idea."

Something heavy thuds into the pit of my stomach. "Who—"

"Pepper imps." The Fat Lady swings obligingly open. Dorcas turns to me, expectant. "After you."

Oh bloody hell.

I step inside the common room, heart hammering like mad. It's dark, unusually so, consumed in shadows, no light from a fire. I feel Dorcas prod at my back, say, "Oh, weird, why's it all dark? Everyone must have gone to bed."

"I swear to Godric if there's—"

There's no chance of getting it out, all my worst fears immediately confirmed: An explosive and harrowing cry— SURPRISE! — shot up and exaggerated vastly by a sudden bursting of brilliant lights, silver and purple and blue, so bright I drop my bag straight to the ground, feel Dorcas' hands on my shoulders, her laughter bubbling at my ear, breath lodged in my throat at the sight: Sirius and James heading up the pulsing mass, room swollen in palpable hysteria, in friends and peers, Peter and Remus and Marlene and Mary and Emmeline, and even Marge Prewett and a tremendous smattering of sixth and seventh year Gryffindors.

"Jesus Christ," I manage, smiling embarrassedly, frozen in place as I look over everyone's bright and reddened faces, over the multicolored clusters of non-explodable luminous balloons, over all the furniture cleared out of the way and leaving behind a wide open space, over the table piled high in what I can only assume is alcoholic paraphernalia.

"You..." I direct this at first at James, then straight at Sirius. "Commandeered the common room?"

Sirius salutes and steps forward to pull me right into the fray. "Yes, yes, yes. Knew you wouldn't want to graduate this lump of stone without a genuine Marauder-made revelry."

I'm trying to come to terms with it all, everyone crowding me; the glittery lights pulsing down from somewhere above; how made-up all the girls look, heeled and lipsticked and bright-eyed; how James has changed into a pair of dark, foolishly tight jeans, a blustery green button-up that makes me want to run my hands up his chest; and, up close, I see that Sirius has smudged a hint of eyeliner around his eyes. The grey sparkles at me, irresistible, iridescent.

"Is she in shock?" Peter whispers to Remus, who elbows him in the side.

"This is..." I bite my lip. "This is really nice, everyone, but how did you—what about all the, all the other—"

Sirius cuts me off. "Very careful bribery of first through sixth years, believe you me. Safe and tucked in their respective dorms."

"You wouldn't believe the kind of Honeydukes contraband we've stockpiled," James adds, gently.

"Also, one special favor pledged per underclassman," Peter chimes in, looking pleased with himself. He's donned a smart tweed blazer for the occasion, folded up at the forearms.

I glance between the four of them, all wearing the same smile, a we're very good at our jobs, Evans smile.

"But—"

"Evans." It's Marlene, now, seizing me none-too-gently by my upper-arms, daggering me with a firm look. "For once in your fucking life, you're gonna let go of the need to question every godamn thing, okay? You're gonna trust that these actual lunatics have got everything under control, okay?"

The impulse to needle through every detail of this highly irresponsible venture drains from me almost instantly. It's impossible to look at their faces—eager, anticipating, so dear—and say no, I don't want this party, pack it all up.

"Okay." I nod, exhaling. "Okay, I suppose I can, er, relinquish the title Head Girl just for one night."

And then Sirius is sort of screaming, "Folks, it's fucking go time!"

"Unless an innocent student is in danger and needs my help, then I'll have to go deal with that!" I revise, though it's an amendment drowned out by a new conundrum of frenzied exclamations, of hooting hollers and hugs from all sides and my silly, burning cheeks, exerted through with thought of all the effort put into such a heartfelt surprise, connecting through the anarchy of arms and screeching and mirth to James' twinkling eyes, his little smile as he kisses my pinkened cheek and whispers, "just wait." A spot of commotion sounds from above and I glance just in time to watch the enormous piece of cloth unfurling from the ceiling, the crowd of necks bending back to stare up at the spangled red letters:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LILY!

Remus is grinning over at me, ruefully. "My handiwork, if you can believe it." His sandy hair is adorably disheveled, blue eyes bright and laughing.

Dorcas sidles up and jostles between James and I, clapping her hands together perfunctorily. "Alright, alright, time for a costume change!"

James mouths good luck and slips off as Marlene starts yanking at my hand, pulling me off toward the stairs. "Off we go, Evans."

"Wait, what? I didn't bring—"

"Doesn't matter you didn't bring something, love, we've obviously accounted for the costume change."

Dorcas is grinning. "Weren't about to make you wear your uniform to your eighteenth birthday party."

Marlene tugs at me harder, now. "Just let us dress you up, Evans, for Merlin's sake, you won't well die from looking fit for one night!"

Mary threads an elbow through mine. "You know they won't let you off till you're properly coiffed."

I exhale and laugh and spare a quick glance back as we begin up the stairs, find James and his sharp outfit, dark green collar pulled apart at the neck, jeans tight enough to encourage salvation. He shoots me a thumbs up as I disappear, cast off into Marlene's decidedly untrustworthy whims.

---

James

"Mine first! Mine first!"

I accept the cup from Sirius with a distinctly distrusting eye. As I raise it to my lips, he tips taps the bottom impatiently and the liquid spills down my throat so fast I nearly choke. I somehow manage to swallow, but come away coughing. "Fuck, oh, gods, Pads, what's in this?"

There's an argument somewhere about what muggle record to put on; someone is going on about how their uncle knowing so-and-so, who knew so-and-so, who knew David Bowie. Sirius squints down at his amalgam of ingredients. "About 85% Firewhiskey, I'd say, a dash of red gin, and a very small pinch of limequat fizz. Delicious, yeah? I may patent this."

"Don't hold your breath on patenting, mate." I'm still coughing from the brutal burn of it. "It's something, for sure, but delicious it is not ."

"You've no sense of what flavors go together, Black, you just pour in whatever you can reach," Remus offers me another cup. "Try mine."

His is immediately more pleasant, fruity and void of any noticeable burn. "Good. Good, Moony, what's in it?"

"Boysenberry rum and loads of pomegranate juice. Foolproof. Goes down easy, yeah?"

"Yeah, it really does." I hand back his cup and reach for Peter's. "Alright, Pete, a lot riding on this." I swallow down a sip and pull an immediate face. "Er, is this just...turnip wine?"

"No, no, no, it's turnip and beetroot wine, eh?" Peter smiles enthusiastically at what he no doubt believes is an acceptable combination of wines. "Near 35% proof, that."

"Sweet Gillyweed, alright," I laugh, and ruffle his hair and set down the cup without finishing and point to Remus. "You've got official bin drink. I mean, I could've guessed, but I wanted to be diplomatic."

"You're being so mean to me, right now," Sirius pouts, folding his arms in front of his body. He's wearing a black shirt pulled so tight over his chest it's a wonder it doesn't tear apart at the seams.

"No one's stopping you from drinking that blackout potion, dear," Remus mumbles, rummaging around the mess of bottles and cups to make room for the massive stone bowl we reserve for gatherings big enough for bin drink.

Sirius is all smiles at that, leaning his hip against the table, hair flopping down in front of his face as he eyes Remus suggestively. "Oh, okay, dear."

Remus looks sideways at him, blushing. Based on his own outfit—worn tee, tight black jeans, a peek of silver chain visible at the back of his neck—I'd say he knew he either dressed with Sirius' attention in mind, or was dressed, in part, by Sirius himself.

"Bloody hell." The words come from Peter, and sound like an emergency. I sigh, saying, "Yeah, I give it two drinks till they're—"

"No, no, Prongs, look ."

I turn to look where Peter's got his eyes glued and find Marlene and Dorcas and Mary coming down the stairs in a parade of shimmering dresses. Emerging from behind them as they part like a curtain of velour and taffeta, is Lily.

Unprepared, my heart drops straight through my ribs.

The dress is simple, really. Soft and black with short billowy sleeves, a low, tight, neckline, a skirt that tapers gently from the waist, flares midway down her brilliant, sheer-stockinged legs. Her curls are swooped up in a messy coil, exposing her neck, the pale, sloped lines, a slender gold chain.

I watch her approach, eyes alight in something Mary leans in to say. When she's close enough to notice me staring—looking, I'm sure, like a stupefied prat—I notice shiny platform shoes that bring her to my exact height, notice her eyes—lids glittering gold—blinking rapidly, lips—glossy and full—smiling shyly. There's a pinch of rosy red high on each cheek. She glistens and gleams.

My mouth gone completely dry.

"Hi." Her voice is breathy. It sends a schism of heat through my sternum.

I swallow unevenly, dazed, breath caught in my throat. "You are...so pretty."

"Um, holy fuck, Evans," Sirius has since turned from the drink set-up to gape at Lily, jaw gone slack. "What is happening?"

Lily laughs nervously, and I feel like I might faint she's so beautiful, so warm and glowy and flustered. Remus glances up from his work at the bin to offer her a widening grin. "Wow, Lily, you look great! Drink?"

"Would love a drink, thanks."

"Evans, the dress, and, and—" Sirius still appears flabbergasted, nearly speechless as his eyes rove over her; which, admittedly, I relate to. He turns, smacks me in the chest. "Are you seeing this?"

Lily rolls her eyes, but her blush intensifies. I look at Sirius belatedly, rather distracted, to crease my brow and say, "Don't you—don't you have some weird whiskey rum lime concoction to brew?"

He just scoffs and takes one of Lily's hands to kiss like a right gentleman of the court. "Save me a dance? Just us eighteen-year-olds?"

Her smile burns so bright. "Since you asked so nicely."

When she turns back to me I step closer, pushed in all sides by the increasing heat of the room, the sound of some finally agreed upon record pulsing, soft and buoyant and a little bit rock and roll. "Can finally see you eye to eye, Potter," she says, smoothing her hands up the front of my shirt.

"Can I kiss you?" I ask urgently. "Or will it ruin everything?"

"Marlene spelled me into all this," she murmurs, smiling. "Thought maybe someone might kiss me."

I do, and slowly, and the dress is soft, and we're getting heralded from all sides with oohs and ahhs but my mind is blank of anything but her heavenly scent, something faintly like apples, like flower petals.

---

An hour later, most everyone assuredly three or four drinks in—thoughts of Wednesday morning classes completely and willingly eliminated from the collective psyche thanks to Marauder-promised hangover potions—someone puts on a smooth, slow-moving ballad. Lily loops her arms around my neck and sways into me, eyes so vividly green. I settle my hands around her waist, let out a little laugh. "This is...wild."

"Wild?"

"Yeah, just...sort of...a fantasy of mine."

She raises her eyebrows. "How so?"

"I always thought...maybe after we won a Cup, or something, there'd some big to-do in here and everyone would be drinking and having a great time, and you'd come up to me and we'd get along really well, maybe have a drink together, and then you'd ask me to dance and..."

Lily runs her fingers up through my hair. "And?"

I shake my head and shrug. "And you would admit you fancied me."

She crinkles her nose. "Have to say, I was expecting something filthier."

"Well, I had plenty of those, too, don't you worry."

She bites her lips. Something flashes in her eyes. "I'm sorry you never got it."

"Got what?"

"The fantasy," she says. "I mean, who knows how it might have played out if we hadn't lived down the street from each other this summer. Maybe that scenario is more realistic than you thought."

My hands tighten around her waist. I stare, transfixed. "You've thought about that?"

"Of course." She quirks her head a little to the side. "Haven't you?"

I swallow and take a second. I have thought about the hypothetical situation, but never for too long. It's always tinged in anxiety that we might not have arrived where we are now as soon as we did—or ever.

"James," she touches my chin gently, smooths a palm down my neck. "Even if I hadn't...seen you so much this summer, I still would have come around."

"You really think so?" It comes out sounding a bit sad, a bit desperate, because a part of me doesn't believe it, and mourns a version of reality where she never dates me, never holds me, never loves me.

"Yes. I'm certain of it." She folds one of her hands into hers and brings it against her chest. "I couldn't spend time around you, with you, and not—and not see you, who you've become. I—there's no world where I'm not drawn to you, eventually."

It sends a light through me. It shimmers even in the dim room, all the swaying bodies. The ballad has nearly run its course. "Alright, I won't waste any more time worrying about hypothetical James and Lily."

"I do hope they're having fantastic sex, though."

I laugh and she kisses me, just once, then draws back. "Tell me another of your fantasies." Lowers her voice. "Dirty this time."

"You really want to hear?"

"Yes, really, Potter, go on."

"Okay, well, there's one I used to visit with upsetting frequency."

"Used to?"

"You do realize I sleep with you in real life now, right?"

Her fingers through my hair firm up as she smirks. "I do, yes." And she leans in to kiss me again, soft and slow and long enough that Sirius is hissing, nearby, "no snogging on the dancefloor!"

We both laugh and I send a sanctimonious finger in the direction of his voice. Lily tugs at my shirt. "Tell me."

"Okay, alright." I inhale. "So, I would just basically walk into the dorm and find you in there waiting for me."

She rolls her eyes. "That can't possibly be all."

"Well, you'd be saying some stuff about how you couldn't keep lying about how much you fancied me, and how much you wanted to...you know...be with me."

"Be with you?"

"You know...shag me."

Her lips rub together, eyes sparkling. "That's all, really?"

I swallow and sigh. "Well, I suppose the thing is you'd be just wearing..." Another long sigh. "My Quidditch jersey."

I suppose I expect her to laugh, here, given the ludicrously unrealistic scenario. Instead, she just smiles. "That's what really got you off? Me in that silly maroon shirt?"

"Hardly think it's silly, Evans—"

"Thinking of me wearing your name is what really got you going, isn't it?"

I'm hardly ashamed of it, but the fact remains. If Lily went anywhere near my Quidditch jersey—hell, if she just held it in her hands—I would feel my pulse spasm. Just at the thought I breathe a little quicker. "I shouldn't have to explain myself, alright? It's my fantasy."

"Ah," she says. "So it is recurring?"

"I did...have a dream about it as recently as this summer." I breathe out slowly. "When I was trying really hard just to be your friend."

"Fat lot of good that did you, huh?"

I pull her in close, her laughter vibrating against my neck. I kiss her shoulder. "Did me a world of good, actually."

The ballad draws to a quiet end, and something much more raucous spins on. Someone—by the sound of it, Charley Mills, one of our Prefects—calls out for drunk Exploding Snap and a right hustle occurs, Peter at the frenzied head. I lean close to Lily's ear. "Want your other gift now?"

"Other ?"

I take her hand and smile. "Come on."

---

Lily

Under the dual spiral staircases of Gryffindor Tower is an alcove concealed from the untrained eye; and in that alcove, carved right into the back of the stairs, is a tiny nook, an escape. Ideal for the student who may need a private place away from dormmates, to rest, study, or—in the case of Marlene, when she literally stumbled into it, third year—to cry.

This is where James takes me, a muted lumos on the tip of his wand. Sounds of the party blare on behind us as we slip into the narrow space. He pauses at the edge of the bench, turns. I am warm with drink. The dim light barely illuminates his face at all, a sweaty slip of chest visible where I've pulled a few buttons undone, running my fingers under his shirt.

I see his lips quirk up at the edge. He's turning, reaching behind toward the bench. He passes something to me and it nearly falls right through my fingers.

Slippery silver fabric.

My breath shallows. I look up, dumbfounded.

His voice, soft and low. "Guess today's the day we both win the bet."

Something vital and hot slips the crevice of my body. A sound of expectation in the back of my throat. It's like an ache. "James," I say, because there's nothing else to say, nipples gone preemptively taut under the velvet dress. Thighs pressed together with swift and pulsing want. "James."

He expels the lumos and steps back, sits down on the bench. In the near distance—and I can't breathe for thinking all of our friends are mere feet away, celebrating my birthday—someone shouts about more drinks, less bickering!

James holds out his hands to me.

I climb onto his lap, slowly, hiking the dress up my hips around parting thighs. Our faces settle very close. I can feel his breath hit my lips. With both his arms, he ducks us underneath the cloak. It's a tight squeeze; the alcove is dim.

And though we're hidden from view, desire gives fear a steady handshake, and I am throttled by both. Between, treading a razor-thin line: Thrill.

James presses his lips to mine. His hands have settled at my lower back, thumbs slowing to circles. I curve fingers at his forearms. "Do you want me to do a silencing?" he murmurs into my mouth. "Or can you be very, very quiet for me, love?"

I gasp inadvertently. The idea of wanting to make sound but not being able to strikes me right between the legs. My hips smooth forward against the seat of his jeans. The scratch of denim on my bare skin thrums, an excruciating frustration.

"I can be quiet."

James lets his lips turn a very lazy grin. He kisses the edge of my chin, tongue tracing ever so slowly down the line of my throat, the side of my neck, the soft of my ear. I lean into his touch, his mouth, sighing when I feel fingers reach under the hem of my dress, tracing the edge of my mid-thigh stockings. I moan gently into his neck.

"Do you know how you look in this dress?" he whispers. "I've been half-hard all night." I moan again, straining to keep quiet. His thumbs are pressing into the mostly bare flesh of my arse. I rock forward into his hips, feel the hard line of his cock. "You look so good I can't stand it, Lils. I've no immunity to you." He bites the skin of my throat. "I want you to come on my fingers." His palms press into my bum, pull me closer. "Is that what you want?"

"Yes, yes," I chant quietly into his neck, fingers straining for purchase on his sweaty shirt.

"Shh ." He breathes so close to my ear that I shiver. "Remember, love, you've got to be quiet."

I swallow my groan, press my forehead into his and claim his mouth with a kiss. His fingers are rounding my thighs now, stroking softly; I whine, move my hips a little, yearning for friction.

"Something you need?"

His tone is calm. So opposite my skittery pulse. The atmosphere under the cloak is getting warmer, air becoming difficult to breathe. My thighs ache already; we're so tightly compacted, clothes between us a rude, unnecessary heat.

"Tell me what you need."

The words are gentle, commandeering; I find my arms tremble. It's so different from him asking, breathless, in the heat of a moment, what do you need? It's a directive. It comes from a place of authority.

I squirm just at the sound.

His fingers stroke down the insides of my thighs, passing over the gossamer slip of sheer stockings. It's unbearable. "I need—" I try, and have to clear my throat and breathe a shaky breath. "I need you to touch me."

His lips hide in the slope of my neck. "Where?"

Impatient, needy, I yank his hand between my legs. "Here—oh gods."

Fingers slipping past fabric. His lips pulled to a smile, brow creased. " Shit, you're so wet, baby."

I nearly peak on the spot, so tender and desperate his words. His fingers skim slowly at first, dipping through swollen folds, separating, joining again at the crux, pulling small and desperate sounds from me, pulsing in arcs over my clit. A hand encircles my lower back, unyielding, holding my hips in place. It's a maddening dance. I attach myself to the steady line of his shoulders, gripping dark hair. I pour stifled whines into his neck, the skin warm and smelling of a cologne he's never worn, warm and earthy. He's pulled to the pushed-up swells of my breasts like a magnet, lips lacing the edges, heavy kisses strung along exposed skin. My hips swivel into the feeling of unbelievable pressure, quickly rising. It's good, but not good enough.

"Please," I plant in his collar.

His fingers still. "Please what?"

I cry softly in protest, mouth clamped around the flesh of my own finger. I am panting. The bubble created by the cloak is extraordinarily hot. An inferno. "Please," I gasp. "Fuck me with...with your fingers."

No sooner than the words are out does he plunge two fingers inside. I bite down into his shoulder, torso rippling with my repressed sound. He is fast, now, letting my hips rise and fall, manic with heat, my muscles clenching and hungry for the feeling, fast and slippery; the sounds of the party feel more and more distant as I pass through what feels like a dark, glittering light. I don't leave his shoulder for fear I will scream. Under my hips, his prick is a firm line, twitching. He coaxes me closer and tightens his hand on my waist, strokes me erratically, fingers hooking inside. He whispers long strings of words hot into my ear, fuck, you're so close for me, Lils, that's it, come on, you're so close, fuck you feel good, you feel so good.

The tremor is swift and takes me almost by surprise; body firming up, back arching through the sudden ache; miraculous heat. I have to close my fingers to a fist and cry without voice, sob without breath. His throat vibrates next to my ear, his breath a hot, damp gasp between breasts. I inhale compulsively, chaotically, cunt grinding down into his palm in mindless pursuit of more more more , until there's no more, nothing left to take, and I'm an assortment of pleasure and skin, heat and bones. His fingers are loosening gently down my lower back; kisses pressed into the hollow of my throat.

I feel boneless. Wrapped in some hedonistic gauze. His fingers trail out of me slow and slip into his mouth; I watch him suck on the taste of me. I must be leaving a stain on his jeans. The thought jerks me from his shoulder; I crowd his mouth, see that he's smiling and flushed as my hands slip down his chest. "I can't believe you," I whisper, brushing my lips softly to his. "When you get—when you get like that I...want to die, it's so... Merlin it's so good." His smile widens into something so sweet and unassuming I have to vie for his tongue, moaning quietly as I can, thumbs pressing into his hip bones. "Was I loud?"

He shakes his head and reaches up to cradle the back of my neck. "You were perfect."

I let my hands wander toward the insistent bulge under my hips. He breathes in sharply. "Oh, don't—"

But I'm already touching; finding the material is soaked through. "Oh," I breathe, transfixed by the dark spot under my fingers. "Did you...?"

He huffs a breath, wetting his lips with his tongue, laughing a little self-consciously. "I...did."

I swallow, gasp, "Oh, baby," and pull him in for a hard and urgent kiss, frenzied, gone mad with the idea that he's just come his pants underneath me. "Oh my god, I'm sorry, I should've been—"

"—not your fault, I'm seventeen, still, you see." He grins and lets his hands fall to my knees, stroking the warm skin. "Randy and incorrigible. If a woman writhes on my lap I'm doomed."

"You often have women writhing on your lap?"

He cuts his head to the side. "Only you."

I touch a thumb to his lips. "I adore you." His eyes turn murky and even in the shadows, I can see him washed with affection. He kisses the thumb. "Do we have to go back?" I wonder. "Can't we just sneak upstairs and shag in your old bed?"

He laughs as he retrieves his wand from next to us, pointing it first at his own stain, and then gently at my thighs. "It's your birthday, you can do whatever you—"

"What is your deal, Macdonald?"

James and I freeze, wide-eyed. The voice belongs undoubtedly to Marlene, and she is undoubtedly with Mary, and they are undoubtedly just feet away from us, pulled into the same secluded shadows, unaware they are not alone.

Mary exhales. "You're kidding, right? I'm the one you're cross with?"

"She's being civil. You're the one with...whatever this is."

"Bollocks, McKinnon, it's like you're willfully missing the point."

There's a long silence. Then Marlene says, quietly, "You don't have to...protect me from her, you know. I can handle her."

"I've heard that before."

"Mare—"

"I've heard that for about a year now."

Another stretched out silence. James is giving me confused eyes. I bite my lip and shake my head, subtly. Later.

"The least you could do is quit pretending you don't know why I'm so worried. It's unfair to both of us."

"I'm...sorry."

"I don't want an apology. I want you to be honest with yourself."

There's a heavy sigh, and then footsteps, retreating. Another sigh—Marlene, I can tell—and then her footsteps, too, are gone.

I inhale and throw the cloak off of us. James is whispering, "What was that all about?"

I climb off of him carefully, smoothing my dress down over my hips and checking my hair with one hand. "Ingrid must be here."

He laughs a little as he stands, adjusting his shirt where I've pulled it apart. "I gathered as much."

"This isn't good."

"Mary...?"

I watch him set the cloak back down where he stowed it before. I bite my lip and try to form the words. "Wants what's best for Marlene."

He looks at me a little funny, but just says, "We better go, then."

Before we go, I step in for a head-spinning kiss. "To be clear, though, everything was extremely erotic before they showed up."

He laughs and fits my face between his palms and kisses me deeper, then deeper still.

---

James

The party unquestionably hit some sort of pinnacle in our absence. Drinks run almost dry—Remus' ecstatically-received bin drink long empty—and music a dull, thumping turmoil, a good mass of attendees tangled into an amoeba-like clump of writhing bodies; I spot Peter in the mix, surprisingly, red-faced and wide-eyed, appearing properly disoriented by Beverly Opland's tight grip on his arms.

Sirius appears unwillingly engaged in the flirtatious attentions of sixth year Mariana Vaz, a strand of long black hair curled and uncurled from her finger compulsively as she nearly boxes him against a wall, hip pushing against his hip, his hand pulling anxiously at the collar of his shirt; across the room, Remus half-observes the two of them, managing to look off-put while holding a bucket out in front of a green-faced Charley Mills where he crouches on an armchair.

"Oh, gods, alright." Lily is beelining, now, to where she finds the tense trio of Dorcas, Mary, and Marlene, seated on a sofa pushed against the edge of the room, just behind where Remus is helping Charley.

I head toward the drink table, send an Aguamenti into an empty cup and chucking some ice in. The cup I hand to Charley, who appears yet to be sick and looks somehow blue, now, in the face. "Chin up, champ," I smile and glance up at Remus. "Everything good?"

"Dandy, yeah." His voice is silted. I look back at Sirius and Mariana. She is rather bold, given Sirius' clearly unencouraging body language. Then again, he's still talking to her.

"I'm—"

"—don't think that's not an invitation, Macdonald, honest, if you're looking to tell me what I've done so wrong. Be my sodding guest, will you?"

I wonder, briefly, why this should be the day I'm witness to so many interactions of lovers scorned. Just behind us and Charley, intruding on the tight circle of Lily, Marlene, Mary, and Dorcas, is Ingrid. She's a drink in her hand and seems tipsy at least, tottering slightly on her heels, a flush creeping up the back of her neck. Her hair is blazing orange, tied up in a ponytail.

Mary's hands clutch at the sides of her dress. Lily and Dorcas flank her, protectively. Marlene's eyes are a wild frenzy between Mary and Ingrid, like she doesn't know who to comfort and who to tell off.

"I don't think it's the time or place for that." Mary sounds exceptionally calm, given how aggressively Ingrid is glaring.

"Yeah, Ing, why don't—"

Ingrid shrugs off Marlene's hand instantly. "Why don't I just stay though, yeah? I'd like to hear from sweet Mary, here, exactly what thorn I am in her side."

Mary remains silently, stoically so. Marlene wrings her hands together.

"Not gonna bite? Alright, fair enough." Ingrid wobbles closer, and Marlene inhales sharply as her ex almost topples face-first into the other three. Lily's eyes are flashing warnings at Dorcas, who just looks back, wide-eyed.

"Because I can actually illuminate it for everyone, make this easy." She takes a long swig of her drink and then daggers Mary with a pointed finger. "You just couldn't stand that she was mine. You couldn't fucking stand it."

"I—" Mary starts to say, but Ingrid cuts her off. "No, no, it's true. And you were so goddamn sure that on the other side of things she would come running to you, that you tore us apart, piece by piece, with all your little—"

"Ingrid, that's enough." Marlene says sharply, pulling at Ingrid's arm to little avail.

"No, Marlene, you fucking know I'm right. You know that we might still be together if it weren't for this slag —"

"Enough!"

Mary's voice is thunderous and clear, enough so that it gains the attention of a sprinkling of partygoers over the pound of the record.

"Enough," she says, quieter, eyes steady on Ingrid, who looks slightly taken aback. Mary stands up from the sofa. "I know you don't like me, and I'm sorry. And I'm sorry that you think I ruined things for you. I hope that someday you won't be grieving anymore, and you'll see yourself more clearly."

Ingrid opens her mouth to say something more, but then thinks better, shuts her mouth.

"I know you think you hurt me best when you talk about my feelings for Marlene," Mary goes on, even quieter. I watch Marlene turn to look at her, astonished. "But I assure you, nothing hurts worse than knowing I'm alone. So you can use your energy elsewhere. I got this hurt covered."

With that, Mary gives Ingrid a last, lingering look, then brushes past her, past all the heads turned toward the dispute, away from Marlene's unhinged jaw, Lily and Dorcas' worrying eyes.

Charley emits a low whistle through his teeth, then promptly sicks up in the bucket.

Marlene looks ready to be sick, herself. Dorcas says to Ingrid, "Thanks ever so, Laswell. Care to kindly fuck off?"

Ingrid has gone brilliantly pink in the face. She wastes no time striding away, thrust into the push and pull of dancing bodies. Marlene is staring up the girl's stairs, desperately, and she turns back to Lily, who is giving her a hard look. "What?"

"Don't 'what' me, McKinnon. You know what."

And then Marlene's shoulders are quaking, and Lily is huffing out a breath, saying, "Oh, for Merlin's sake, let's just go up there," and she and Dorcas take Marlene by the arms and all but haul her through the room and up the stairs.

"Maybe, er," Sirius is sidling up to Remus and me, perhaps having observed what just went down. "Time to call it a night?"

"Yeah," I nod, feeling very tired all of a sudden. "Yeah, definitely."

---

The room clears off slowly, and then feels empty, save the detritus of a party well-had; toppled cups and the birthday banner half-torn-down and, inexplicably, a single female shoe. Sirius holds it up and stares off in the direction of the girl's staircase.

"What a mess."

I sigh. "We can clean—"

"No, I mean that Mary-Ingrid-Marlene showdown."

Remus turns a sharp look. "Maybe have some sensitivity, Sirius."

"Sensitivity—oh, come on, that was mad! This whole time Mary's been—"

"Yeah, it's a right laugh, isn't it? Fuck unrequited love, right? What a stupid, pathetic, immature concept."

I watch Sirius' face falter and fall, the wash of Remus' agitation pulling his mouth into an affected frown. "Lupin, I didn't...hey, you know I didn't—"

"Whatever." Remus runs a hand brashly through his hair. "I'm gonna go check on Pete, he looked... you lot can clean this mess up."

"Remus—"

But it's too late. Remus is already gone, clambering up the boy's staircase.

Sirius exhales. "Well, fuck."

"I think...we're all a little drunk."

He looks over at me like this is as unhelpful as it sounded. "I was drunk. I wish I was still drunk." A hand comes to rub roughly at his jaw. "What a sodding mess, really, what the fuck?"

"It started out nice," I try, pathetically.

"Merlin's sake," Sirius intones. "Let's just clean up."

We pull out our wands and start cleaning. By the time we've evaporated most of the mess and levitated all the furniture back into a reasonable semblance of the way it looked before, Lily is descending the girl's stairs.

"How's—everyone?" I ask tentatively.

"Okay," she sighs, resting a hip along a sofa. "It's a little, er, tense, but I imagine things will be better when Mary and Marlene...talk things out."

"Sorry about your party, Evans," Sirius says, carding a hand back through his untamed hair. "Maybe we went a little hard on the libations."

Lily smiles and shakes her head, saying, "No, none of that was on you, Sirius. It was a fun party, it really, really was. Thank you. It was such a good birthday."

Sirius looks at her skeptically for a moment, then bows his head, conceding. "So long as you say so."

"I say so." She fixes him with a searching look, then reaches out to fold him into her arms. "Eyeliner is smashing, by the by."

Sirius looks at me over her shoulder. "In front of Potter?"

I roll my eyes.

"Tell Peter and Remus thank you from me, will you?"

"Course."

"And be nice, yeah?" I add as Lily tugs me toward the portrait hole.

Sirius sighs and waves us off. "Will try my best."

The halls are quiet and dim. We get several scandalized looks from portraits, given it's on half past midnight

"Everything okay, really?" I squeeze Lily's hand. "That was...intense."

"Yeah," she laughs a little. "It was. But..." she shrugs. "I can only do so much to push them over the ledge. I mean—maybe, they're already over it. Hard to tell with Marlene, sometimes. She's always in free fall."

I let the words settle, trying to understand all the pieces I've not been privy to, all these years. I find, of course, I empathize deeply with Mary's struggle. As, I imagine, does Remus. "That sounds familiar."

Lily looks over and half-smiles. "Marlene and Sirius really do have similar temperaments."

"Maybe Mary, Remus, and I should start a club, call ourselves 'The Unrequiteds.'

Her laugh is gentler this time. "Don't think you qualify anymore, actually."

"Yeah, you're right." Inside my chest, a fish out of water. "I've been requited."

"I certainly hope so." She slips some fingers up my forearm to my elbow. "It's been the best birthday."

"The best?"

"I mean it," she whispers, head falling against my shoulder.

"Lily." I tighten my fingers on hers.

"Gods, your birthday is going to be so pathetic in comparison."

And I laugh and press my lips to her hair. "No way," I assert, shaking my head. "You're the only present I need. Just you. And I get you every day."

"Oh my god," she laughs, face pressed closer.

"Every day is remarkable, really it is."

"I'm swooning down here," she assures my shoulder.

---

After she washes her makeup off and I shower off my sweat, her stockings unrolled and hair braided down her back, under the sheets, my hand wrapped at her waist, I kiss the back of her neck and she is mumbling, "I'm stupidly in love with you."

"Stupidly?"

"It's so stupid." She is swimming toward sleep. The water is warm; perfect. "I can't be without you. So...stupid."

I kiss the same spot, and smile. "Unreasonable."

"Do you love me, too?"

"Yes," I breathe, eyes quite shut, sleep quite near. Her breaths are slow and nearly even. "Foolishly so."

---

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