Chapter One
The world exploded.
Well, if not the world, at least the room.
One moment, James Potter stood near the auction stage in a brilliantly-lit ballroom, holding a glass of champagne he very much didn't want and speaking to a cluster of wizards he very much didn't care for. The next, he found himself thrown backwards, directly into a row of plush banquet chairs arranged in a long line. He felt his back collide with the gold metal lining of one of the chairs—hard—before he tumbled to the floor like a ragdoll.
From the polished wooden floor, he did his best to see through the smoke that had suddenly engulfed the room so he could ascertain exactly what the fuck had happened.
A second later, one of the three chandeliers that graced the domed ceiling fell and shattered spectacularly not twenty feet from him, which derailed his efforts entirely. The crash of metal and the breaking of glass and a sudden fire overcame the room—because fuck, fuck, the candles from the chandelier had caught another line of chairs, which had gone up in flames almost instantly. James rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up, wand already in his hand before he'd gotten to his feet. He stepped away from the nearby chairs he'd crashed into, which hadn't yet caught fire. He didn't plan on taking chances there.
Pandemonium ensued to such a degree that he didn't know where to go.
Screams filled the air with a thickness almost greater than the smoke. He could only just make out a blown-out hole in a nearby chunk of wall that stretched from ceiling the floor, large enough to drive two or three cars—Sirius' passion—through. The edges of the hole had gone up in flames as well, which had probably caused the initial smoke.
He could just make out a few forms in the area directly around him, all moving quickly as if running, although not in any one direction. Panic had clearly taken over the ballroom that only a minute before had glittered with the fancy dress robes of some of the wizarding world's best-connected witches and wizards. The constricting garments—and the heels for women, he had to assume—made for uncomfortable dueling wear, and based on the bursts of colored light that repeatedly flashed around the room, there was apparently quite a bit of that going on.
Not two minutes after the world had gone sideways, James got hit by the first spell.
It hit him from behind, landing right between the shoulder blades, and nearly knocked him back down. He caught himself just before faceplanting, and his adrenaline had taken over to the extent that he only felt a fraction of the burning sensation that would later overtake his back in full force. When he made as if to turn, a second spell clipped his elbow, and he felt the bone crack and then separate, a pain that reminded him suddenly and intensely of playing Quidditch, the only other time he'd ever broken a bone. The next spell hurt the worst of all, and almost sent him falling again. A searing pain hit the junction where his calf met his foot, just slightly above his heel. It didn't burn like his back or throb like his arm, but stung, bright and sharp and horribly, more intense than any pain he'd ever felt before. A rush of warmth followed, which he could only assume came from a torrent of blood running down into his shoe.
He nearly fell again, and probably would have if he hadn't acted. In the midst of his stumble, he Disapparated.
He landed on the lush green grass of his parents' front lawn—his front lawn by that time, yet even though it had been two years since he'd inherited the house, it still didn't feel that way.
He shot a spell towards the door, and mere seconds after he heard it reverberate across the yard, Sirius Black stuck his head outside, wand arm aloft, and caught sight of him. Even from a distance, James could see his face drain of color.
"Oi, James is hurt!" he could year Sirius shout back into the house as he stepped out the door. "Get Lily!"
What?
Even through the haze of pain that clouded James' brain, that broke through.
Lily who? Surely, not—
"Gone not even an hour, Prongs," Sirius chastised when he reached his side. He took in James' crumpled form with one sweeping glance, his face chalk-white against the gleaming black of his hair. "What the fuck, did—look, I'm going to have to levitate you, and I swear I won't run you into anything. On purpose."
Despite it all, James chuckled. It ached in his throat, which felt rough from the smoke. As Sirius lifted him magically, sheer relief broke over his body regardless of the pain.
He'd gotten out.
"No idea what happened," he told Sirius before he could even posit the question fully. "I was talking to this bloke from Albania one minute, and the next everything exploded. I didn't see anyone, but had to be Death Eaters. Who else?"
A brilliant length of dark red hair caught his eye the second Sirius—with supreme caution, and not knocking him even slightly against the doorframe—levitated him into the house.
Lily.
Lily Evans.
James hadn't seen her in three years, but she looked very nearly the same. Her hair looked different, longer than he remembered, with red waves flowing to midway down her back and fringe cut to frame her face, which swept like curtains that ended just above her eyes. Her eyes were exactly like James remembered, the same brilliant green he'd once stared into for hours. He assumed she had the same heart-shaped mouth as well, although she held the corner of her lower lip between her teeth as she looked him over just as Sirius had, although much more deliberately.
He had kissed that mouth more times than he could count.
He'd never stopped wanting to kiss her either, even after they had started fighting more than they'd gotten along, and even after they'd ended things.
"Put him on a chair in the kitchen," she told Sirius, and she sounded the same as James remembered, decisive and confident and in total control.
Sirius took James that way without question. James had just enough time to see her head towards the grand, sweeping staircase that rose at the end of the foyer and flick her wand sharply.
"She was here when I got here," Sirius explained before James could even ask. "Gideon and Fabian brought her two hours ago. She's staying here for a while. I guess she agreed to staying at headquarters before anyone told her where those headquarters were, but she's still staying. Merlin, how long has it been since you last thought about her?"
Truly, James still thought about her more often than he would admit.
They had lasted almost exactly eight months outside of Hogwarts. James counted six of those months as some of the best he'd ever had.
In the last two, everything had gone to hell.
If asked, he wouldn't have been able to explain exactly what had changed, just that something had. The issue had almost always come back their schedules, although he'd never understood why it had become such a problem so suddenly and intensely. For six months, they had almost easily navigated the vacillating nature of her Healer training alongside his intense practice and game schedule as chaser for the Appleby Arrows. He had missed her like crazy, and she had sworn she felt the same, but the time they spent together had more than made up for the time apart, at least through his perspective.
At least, it had more than made up for it until, without warning, it hadn't.
And once they'd started rowing…well, it had felt like the first six years at Hogwarts all over again, as if he'd never won her around seventh year. Truly, it had been worse. Back then, she had always gotten mad at him, never the other way around. With both of them angry at each other for the first time…
Well, chaos.
After they'd finally broken up—a long, drawn-out process that took weeks and only increased bitterness—he'd known that his friends had still talked to her. It would have been weird if they hadn't, really. When he'd won her over, she'd known they came along as a package, and she'd fit into their group seamlessly. But eventually, he knew Peter stopped talking to her, and Sirius too, even though they never explicitly told him so. They had just stopped mentioning her, and neither of them had acted as if they felt badly for it.
On the other hand, he knew Remus had kept in touch with her, although that hadn't surprised him.
He'd seen letters in her handwriting arrive to their flat, recognizable for her neat, curling penmanship even just from Remus' name on the outside. They had continued arriving even months later, after James had done his very best to move on, and while he hadn't resented Remus for keeping in contact with her, he had found it hard not to think about her at length every time a letter from her had arrived.
Thinking about her had at least momentarily derailed whatever romantic interest he had at the moment, no matter how hard he'd tried to avoid memories of her. That had become harder and harder as more time had passed, and he started forgetting the bad and only remembering the good of their relationship—of which there had been a lot.
Two years earlier, shortly before he'd quit the Appleby Arrows, he'd watched Remus receive one of those letters on a sunny Saturday morning in May.
"Do you still see her?" he'd asked, unable to help himself, and Remus had nodded as he'd opened her letter.
"Yeah." He had sounded as if seeing her was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it had been to him, although it hadn't felt that way to James.
"Is she still fit?" He hadn't been able to stop himself there either.
The corners of Remus' mouth had quirked up. "More so," he had answered. He'd gone off to his room after that, clearly at least a little entertained by James' question, and entertained even more by James' clear desire to press the issue. James had resisted the urge to follow him, but only just.
A year and a half before, after he and his friends had joined the Order of the Phoenix and James had offered up his parents' empty estate as headquarters, his thoughts of her had become much more regular.
He'd begun overhearing Gideon and Fabian Prewett and Dorcas Meadowes talk about her from time to time, which had always put her in the forefront of his mind for at least a few days. He'd known his friends recognized it as well, because something in their faces had always shifted when they heard snatches of the same conversations. Peter in particular had always looked at James with deep concern at the mention of her name in their presence, which had left James more determined than ever to pretend he didn't know who she was, and to never insert himself into one of the conversations about her, even though he'd wanted to.
He'd still listened, of course.
Gideon, Fabian, and Dorcas had usually laughed when they talked about her, discussing some story amongst themselves about something she had recently done, some of which (annoyingly, so annoyingly) revolved around her dating life. He had heard fragments of their stories, unwilling to let them know he listened, and they had spoken of her with a warm fondness that had made his chest twinge strangely. It hadn't escaped his notice that they hadn't seemed to find it strange to talk about those things in front of him, almost as if they'd forgotten they had ever dated.
For reasons he hadn't quite comprehend, he really hadn't liked that.
He also really hadn't liked the thought of her with someone else, even during the times he was with someone else himself. Truly, seeing another woman might have made him dislike thinking of her with another bloke even more than when he had no romantic prospect of his own. When with someone, he could imagine more easily the things that Lily had to get up to with whoever she dated—talking, laughing, kissing, shagging.
He'd done his best not to think about all that, but he'd listened just the same.
Other times, Gideon, Fabian, and Dorcas had looked serious and had kept their voices quiet, rarities for all three of them, and James had heard just pieces of their conversation as he had walked past them or entered a room where they sat. They had always stopped talking instantly then, and he had seen them do the same to anyone who had happened upon those conversations.
Almost as if conjured by his thoughts, Gideon and Fabian Prewett entered the kitchen seconds after Sirius and James. Gideon took one look at James and blanched, his shoulders physically cringing inward. He went to draw a kitchen chair quickly into the middle of the room, and Sirius placed James there with far more care than James was used to from his best friend.
"What happened?" Gideon asked. He and Fabian wore identical expressions of serious concern on their nearly-identical, handsome faces, and even after knowing them well for near eighteen months—in the middle of a violent war, no less—James could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen them look so troubled.
"No idea," James said. The pain had left him nearly nauseous. "A wall got blown in. There was smoke and fire everywhere. I got thrown, and when I stood up, I got hit. All this happened to me in five seconds, maybe. If I hadn't Disapparated, I would have gone down and not been able to get back up."
Lily came in the kitchen after that, toting a large case in one hand. She set it on the floor next to him, and knelt directly in front of him. As she opened the top, James glanced down to see several different folding sections magically open up and spread out, rows filled with potions ingredients. With a wordless flick of her wand, a clear vial appeared from the dark depths of the case, which looked endless. With a second flick, a red bottle followed.
She uncorked the red one and handed it to him. "Drink this."
In all the times he'd thought about her, he'd wondered what on earth he'd say to her if he ever saw her again, and what she'd say to him.
He'd never imagined the scenario in front of him, or anything like it.
"What is it?" he asked as he took the vial, and she shot him an irritated look.
"Poison, James. I'm poisoning you." Her voice rang with heavy sarcasm as she uncorked the other vial. "That one will slow the blood loss. This one is for pain. Will you just take it?"
He did, and swallowed the next one too without complaint.
When she stood, he saw that just kneeling near his feet had left the hem of her knee-length linen sundress already stained bright crimson with blood.
"Your arm, your ankle, what else?" she asked.
"My back. I got hit with something that burns. Well, burned. It's not as bad now." His wounds felt instantly, remarkably better, all of them, even his loosely-dangling arm and the sharp pain that had never left his ankle. The prior pain had gone away almost entirely, and the other lessened, although still sharp and present.
"Poison will do that." She kept her voice the same sarcastic tone, which sounded somehow normal and pleasant in an otherwise abnormal, horrible situation. It was entirely how she had typically spoken to him at school for the first six years, and had kept up even when they had dated and she had taken the piss out of him. "Can I vanish your jacket and shirt? I'm going to have to if you want me to fix your arm, but I feel obligated to ask."
"Go ahead."
She had undressed him before, of course. Countless times.
Just never under those circumstances.
Sirius seemed to have thoughts relatively similar, because he flashed James a grin the second Lily had her back to him. The color hadn't returned to his face, but the grin reassured James like nothing else.
When Sirius worried, he worried. If Sirius could still find humor in the situation—well, that seemed much less concerning.
A second later, he sat shirtless. Lily disappeared behind him, and he felt her fingers on his back, gentle but purposeful.
Again, she'd touched his back before—clutching it in pleasure, typically—but never like that.
His head had started to swim.
"Someone should tell Dumbledore," he said, and Gideon left the room, presumably to send a patronus to do just that. "What he's after—well, seems like he's not the only one."
How much could he say in front of Lily?
What was she even doing there?
"Arm first because it's quick and you'll just make it worse if I don't fix it right away, then ankle, then back," she said decisively. She came back into sight as she stepped to his injured arm, and then she was on her knees again, kneeling so she could examine the break more closely. "Would you rather I tell you what's going on as I'm healing you, or would hearing what I'm about to do make it worse?"
He'd looked at her, of course, and saw only the top of her deep red hair. He could imagine the feel of it between his fingers without even trying. "I have no idea."
"Well, ask me if you want to know. Otherwise, I'll assume you prefer surprise. Look at Sirius for a second, will you?"
James followed her directions without thinking, and Sirius met his eyes for a moment before he saw Sirius look to Lily instead. In the next second, Sirius winced as a loud crack bounced off the walls and ceiling of the cavernous kitchen, followed by a strange grinding noise unlike anything James had ever heard. Neither hurt, necessarily, although something had pinched in his elbow at the second sound. He hadn't felt a thing with the first noise.
Just like that, his arm was healed.
"Move your fingers," Lily instructed. "Is there pain?" she asked as soon as he obediently wiggled his fingers, her own probing along his forearm the entire time. When she got to his hand, she took it in her own and examined each finger herself.
Again, she'd held his hand before innumerable times, but under very different circumstances.
"No, it's fine." He went to stretch his arm straight, but she stopped him.
"Don't move it too much yet. I know you're shit at it, but try to sit still."
Despite it all, he chuckled, and when she went to kneel again by his ankle, she glanced up at his face with the flash of a smile before he thought he could feel her fingers very lightly on the back of his calf.
It hit him suddenly that while Sirius, Gideon, and Fabian had all looked utterly stricken at the sight of him, pale and nervous and concerned, her expression and color had remained the same, almost as if they had happened upon each other in a shop in Diagon Alley. She looked somehow entirely unbothered.
Beyond that, he couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled at him. Had she smiled at him at all during those final, horrific weeks as their relationship had imploded?
Her composure and the mere sight of her smile floored him.
"I'm going to vanish your shoe and sock and then cut the leg of your trouser to your knee," she said after a pause.
"Sirius says you're living here now," he said as her wand traced a path up his leg, and the bottom of his trousers fell open with the practiced ease of an expert. She removed the excess fabric entirely and tossed it aside. His dress robes were black, so they didn't show blood, but the wet squelch as the fabric landed that told him it was soaked with blood.
"For six to eight weeks, yeah."
She'd stayed at his parents' house numerous times when they'd dated. How she felt about living there—especially with them gone—he couldn't tell.
"You'll feel this," she continued. "It won't be pleasant. I can't stop the pain entirely, because I need you to feel things so you can tell me if you suddenly don't. Tell me if you go numb. Otherwise, I'm sorry for it."
She glanced up at him again, and although he still felt nauseous, he had another thought.
He'd had her on her knees in front of him before. A lot. But never like that.
"She's got one hell of a sense of timing, doesn't she?" Fabian asked, and he'd clearly worked to get his customary cheer back onto his face. He dragged a second kitchen chair closer and sat on it backwards, arms folded across the top, to talk. James had the distinct feeling that he did so in order to distract him, and felt a rush of gratitude even as he felt a rush of pain from his ankle as Lily presumably touched him. "Can you imagine what Gid and Sirius and I would have done if you'd shown up like this? We'd have made everything ten times worse. You picked the right day to get nearly blown up, mate."
"Dumbledore asked her to brew for the Order," Sirius explained before James could ask. "Or that's her cover story, at least. I think she missed our constant charm, but she won't admit it." He, too, clearly tried to sound upbeat, although he struggled more than Fabian did.
James understood completely. Sirius probably felt his pain near as much as he did. They were brothers, after all.
"Gid and I suggested her," Fabian added. His grin looked undeniably proud. "Half because she's brilliant at potions, and half because we're still waiting for her to cave and give one of us a shot."
The easy way he said it had James suddenly wondering if he truly didn't know that he and Lily had once dated.
Fuck, maybe he didn't.
"Your gran says I'm too good for you both," Lily told him. There was a smile in her voice.
"Of course she does," Gideon said, coming back into the room. "She favors girls. You've seen what Molly gets away with. It's appalling." His dark eyes swept over Lily and then James. A little of the color had returned to his face. "Sent the patronus to Dumbledore. Now, I guess we wait and watch Lily's little medical show."
"Or not," she suggested. "You can leave me in peace so I can focus. I'd prefer it. James, I'm sorry."
James didn't have time to take her words in before he felt a sharp, almost blinding pain in his ankle. He heard a strange sound by his feet, something that almost sizzled, and he found himself clutching both fists so hard that he could feel his nails digging into his palms with enough force that it wouldn't have surprised him to see that he'd drawn blood.
"The bleeding should stop," she said, and the pain halted immediately. When she drew back, he saw blood all over her fingers, dripping towards her wrist, and her wand slick with it. She conjured a towel and wiped her hands on it, and then cleaned her wand as well. The fabric of the towel was black, he noticed, and he had to assume she'd chosen that color specifically not to show blood. "Unfortunately, this won't be a quick fix. There are steps. I have to pause between each one to make sure the prior one holds, so it's fairly lengthy. But it's an easier fix than if you'd lost your foot entirely, so there's that silver lining."
"As cheerful as ever, Lily," Sirius said with a snort. "I'm not sure why you're—Dorcas, hello. You're looking particularly angry this evening."
James couldn't see the doorway where Sirius looked, but he had to assume that petite, dark-haired Dorcas Meadowes stood there, and also that she looked furious. He'd seen the expression on her face countless times, both at Hogwarts and since they'd both joined the Order, so he could picture it well.
"Imagine my surprise at work today when Sturgis asked if I'd seen you, as he heard from McGonagall that you joined the Order," she said without preamble, and even though he couldn't see her, James knew she spoke to Lily. Her voice could have caused frostbite. "And I thought, no, there's no way, she would have—James, what the fuck happened?"
Gideon smothered a laugh. "Observant, aren't you? Of course you wouldn't notice, coming in here on a tirade—"
"Did you two know?" she demanded, not waiting for anyone to actually explain James' injuries. "I have to assume you did."
"Yeah, we suggested her again." Fabian looked particularly pleased by that. "Helped convince her, too, so I feel like we're definitely outshining you in the friend department."
Lily didn't look to Dorcas. Her eyes had gone to her potions case. She summoned a mortar and pestle, and then began to pull out ingredients. James recognized some of them from Potions at Hogwarts—the thin blades of fluxweed; the purple bulb of a squill; the long, white bones of what looked perhaps like a lionfish spine. Some things he couldn't place. The several vials she pulled out had no markings to distinguish among them, although they were all a different color—purple, blue, light pink, dark pink, yellow. But there were ingredients he didn't know too—a container of fine, brown powder; a dull green, mossy plant; several small, bright yellow mushrooms. Lily turned to the side, next to her case, and began lining them up in front of her methodically. The lionfish spine went into her mortar first, and she began to grind it with sure, practice movements.
"I made the decision last night, and just got here two hours ago, Dory," she said, eyes on her work. "I didn't have the time to write, but I knew I'd see you soon enough. Relax."
"Relax?" Dorcas repeated. "I've wanted you here with us for ages, and now you're finally in and you didn't think to tell me? Any of you?" James had to assume that she tossed the latter part at Gideon and Fabian. "What happened to Madam Rue?"
Gideon and Fabian once again went somber.
"Dead," Lily said shortly. She had reduced the lionfish spine to a fine white powder, but kept grinding. "Dragon Pox. It took her quick, thank god, and I had the potions to make it easier than most cases. She didn't suffer too terribly, and I was able to keep her at home. She wanted to go there, and I'm glad that she could."
James' stomach lurched. Images of his own parents swam before his eyes, their lined faces covered in the customary green-and-purple rash, skin tinged green underneath, with great, boiling blisters spread across every inch of their bodies that he could see.
Near two years had passed, but he still thought of them in their last moments so often that he sometimes forgot what they'd been like before those final hours.
A brief silence filled the room.
"Our gran's cousin," Fabian explained, presumably for Sirius and James' benefit. "A potion maker. Lily apprenticed for her. She and Gran lived next door to each other, which is why Gran favors Lily. They're basically best mates."
That answered the question as to why Fabian and Gideon knew Lily so well. When he'd overheard them talking about her with Dorcas over the past several months, James had just assumed that Dorcas brought her up—they were best friends at Hogwarts, after all. Four and five years older respectively, Fabian and Gideon had only overlapped two and three years with them at school. Before he'd joined the order, James couldn't recall ever speaking a single word to either of them, but they clearly knew Lily well.
"What happened to Healer training?" James asked.
She uncorked the yellow vial and tipped the contents into her mortar, which she then began to mix into a thick paste. "I completed two of three years," she said, and once satisfied with the paste, she set the mortar and pestle down and turned back towards his ankle.
"And then?"
Her face disappeared as she bent to examine his injury. "And then they mysteriously stopped allowing muggleborn students into courses. We all had to drop. It was the strangest thing."
Her voice very much implied that it was not the strangest thing. She sounded bitter.
The kitchen again went silent.
"It's holding fine," she added a moment later. She went to push her hair out of her face using her elbow, her hands presumably again covered in his blood. He didn't look to see. "I'm going to keep—"
She broke off with a laugh, a bright, pretty sound he'd always gotten intense pleasure from coaxing out of her. Without thinking, he had leaned forward to push the length of her hair out of her face for her, the action more muscle memory than conscious thought. Her hair felt smooth and silky and entirely familiar between his fingers, and he tried to ignore the little thrill that shot through the pit of his stomach, present even over the pain, just from touching her.
"Sorry," she said. She glanced up at him. "I'm not laughing at you or your pain. I just… normally when I'm on my knees and a bloke touches my hair—well, it's very different. You know that."
From the moment Sirius started laughing, James doubted that he would ever stop.
Heat crept up James' back and into his face, but he found himself laughing too, and he heard Gideon, Fabian, and Dorcas join as well.
Had she known that he'd had a very, very similar thought about her?
He didn't doubt it. She'd always read him easily.
Well, at least she'd laughed.
"I missed you," Sirius said to her, and he looked as if he truly meant it. He kept laughing, and James watched tears collect in his eyes from it all. "We were all thinking it, so thank you for finally saying it. Honestly, I was considering injuring myself a little so you could look up at me like that."
Fabian made a hand gesture that very much implied, same.
"Go fuck yourself," Lily said, the words easy and light and friendly. "James, I'm sorry."
The pain resumed. It felt just as sharp as the last time, seemingly reverberating up James' leg, into his knee, up his thigh, into his hip. He made an involuntary noise, something akin to a hiss, because he could swear that he felt her fingers probing inside his ankle, deep in tissue unmeant for exposure to air.
The laughter died off Sirius' face briefly, but when he saw James looking at him, he did his best to grin. "Still foul-mouthed, isn't she? Although I suppose she's said worse things to us both."
She absolutely had.
"It's part of her charm, don't you think?" Gideon asked. He sounded truly fond, and he winked at James. He, too, clearly sought to provide some sort of distraction or relief. "She's said things to us so harsh that they could peel paint off a wall."
James didn't miss the careful way he looked between him and Lily.
He looked surprised, like he had only just remembered that they were once more than just casual housemates from Hogwarts.
James wasn't sure how to take that, exactly, but he couldn't see it as a positive, no matter how he tried to spin it in his head.
"You both deserved it." Dorcas had come around, and James watched her pretty face pale when she looked him over carefully. She rested against the edge of the kitchen table, the pose supremely casual, but her knuckles turned white as she gripped it. "What happened?"
Fabian spoke so James wouldn't have to. "Some sort of explosion. We sent word to Dumbledore. Had they started the auction?"
James shook his head, not trusting his voice, and also unable to wrench his teeth apart.
What the fuck would he have felt if Lily hadn't given him the pain potion?
No one spoke until Lily pulled her hands away, and James let out a giant breath he hadn't known he held.
"How are you doing?" Lily asked. James found her green eyes on him, wide and openly concerned.
His head swam a little more, because, fuck, she was beautiful.
"Hanging in there," he said, because he couldn't conjure a decent lie. "Tell me what you're doing."
"You're sure?" She sounded skeptical.
"Yes."
She went back to her mortar and added another vial of something, a thick, green liquid that plopped as it fell. "The ankle is relatively complex to restructure," she said, and he watched her begin to carefully mix the ingredients. "Blood vessels, muscle, joints, tendons, nerves, ligaments, bone—there's a lot that can go wrong when you're healing. I'm taking where you were cut and building from the inside out, fixing the damage there. There's layering to it, like fixing a cake." She paused. "Did I just ruin cake?"
He found himself smiling a little. "Kind of. At least for a while."
"When did Madam Rue die?" Dorcas asked abruptly. She still held onto the table staunchly.
The sudden change in topic didn't throw Lily for a second. "A little over two weeks ago." She summoned a silver knife and a cutting board from her case, and began to dice the fluxweed into pieces so fine they appeared almost translucent. The knife looked like it stuck to the tacky blood on her fingers, but she moved with the speed and precision the likes of which James had only seen in their old Potions Master, Horace Slughorn.
"So where have you been?"
"I helped their gran settle Rue's affairs." She nodded towards Fabian and Gideon. "I stayed at her house during that time. It took a bit."
"And then? What did you do?"
"She stayed with us a couple nights," Fabian said. He grinned triumphantly at Dorcas, as if he'd won something. He had, clearly, because she looked outraged. "Oddly enough, she found our constant company—how'd you put it, Lil?"
"Devastatingly erratic."
Sirius snorted. He didn't disagree.
"You should have come to mine." That was clearly the crux of the matter. The words came out clipped from Dorcas' mouth, her lips pursed immediately afterwards, as if she wanted to keep going but physically stopped herself.
"And deal with how put out Jack would have gotten?" Even from profile, James could see Lily's eyebrows raise. "Pass."
Jack was Dorcas' boyfriend of over a year. James had met him twice, and found him forgettable each time.
"Does he dislike you?" Sirius asked, clearly intrigued.
"No," Dorcas answered for her immediately, and she scowled when Lily gave a soft, disbelieving laugh. "He just thinks she's—"
"Difficult?" Lily suggested. She summoned a small scale from her case, and carefully measured out half of a gram of the diced fluxweed, which she added to her mixture. "Don't even bother coming at me for that, Dory. He's said as much to my face. So have his mates. I'm incredibly unbothered over it, but I wouldn't want to stay with you because I know it would make the whole vibe of your flat very, very weird."
Dorcas opened her mouth and then closed it. She clearly had no retort.
"Why didn't you stay with Dr. Rick?" she asked after a moment. She spoke the word 'doctor' with a lilt to her voice, obviously trying to lighten the moment.
Her tone also very much suggested a familiarity that made James deeply, distinctly, and unreasonably uncomfortable.
"We broke up." Lily opened the blue vial. She used the stopper attached to the cap to add two drops of dark, almost black liquid to her mortar. "Can we have this conversation later? Tempting as it is, I'd rather not injure James in my attempts to heal him, which means I need to focus, and this—"
Dorcas heaved a great sigh and pressed a hand to her forehead.
"Wait, when?" Gideon demanded. "You didn't tell us that, and you were with us for days, Lil. Well, good on Dr. Handsome Rick for making the rare six-month mark. When did—"
"Enough." Lily didn't look embarrassed, just annoyed. "I'm not getting into this." She turned back to James, and she ducked her head to examine his ankle again. "This is going to hurt the worst," Lily said, lifting her head for a moment. "It's all nerves, and that—well, it's unpleasant. Once we're past that, the worst is over." He thought he could feel her fingers very lightly on his calf, just above where his wound stung sharply. The smile she flashed him looked cheeky, clearly meant to lift his spirits. "You can touch my hair if it makes you feel better," she said, and he couldn't help it. He smiled in return.
The pain hit James instantly, with the force of a sledgehammer to the back of his head.
Somehow it ached even back there, as far away from his ankle as possible. His entire body ached, and stung, and throbbed. His hands went to clutch the sides of his chair, and he straightened his recently-healed arm to do so. His elbow protested just a little. It felt tight, as if he'd held onto a broom for several consecutive hours, but otherwise it didn't hurt at all, a welcome change. He tried to remind himself how much better his arm felt.
The pain was worth it. With pain came healing.
That sent him immediately back to thinking about his mum and dad, who had died in their bedroom just down the hall.
Losing them had hurt more than the wounds that dotted his body.
It hurt even then.
Lily's hair gleamed in the kitchen light. He wanted to touch it, of course, but he didn't. He held onto her offer too, right along with his desperate mantra of healing. She'd meant it teasingly, designed to distract him no matter how she felt about him, and it worked. It helped fill his mind with other things than the way his body screamed.
As she hurt him worse than any physical pain James had ever felt in his life, a thought flashed across his mind.
With her charm and her skill, she would have made an incredible Healer. He'd always thought so, but he'd never seen or experienced it firsthand.
Seconds passed, and then minutes, and the hours, and then weeks, and then months.
That was how it felt, at least.
He heard himself swear, and he lifted his good arm to press over his mouth to avoid saying anything else. The tension in his fingers and the pressure on his face grounded him.
Then, suddenly, the pain ended.
"You did well," she said, and she sounded warm, almost gentle. "The worst is over. You did great."
Yeah, she had great bedside manner. He felt an unwilling flicker of pride at her praise, despite it all.
He shook slightly, and tried to control the tremors as she prodded around the front of his calf and his foot, her touch light and probing.
"Is a doctor a muggle Healer?" Sirius asked. He'd gone pale again, and he looked determinedly at Lily's face. James didn't doubt he'd thrown out the question to distract himself.
Dorcas joined in immediately. "Yes. She's an idiot for throwing that away. Rick is stupidly good-looking, makes great money, and he dotes on her. How many times did he come to the bookstore and try to chat you up before you agreed to go out with him, Lil? He was so persistent. I can't believe you just—"
"I'm working." Lily said. She'd gone back to her mixture, and James watched her begin to dice up the bulb of a squill. "You're all very welcome to take Sirius and go discuss the intimacies of my love life elsewhere."
"Where's the fun in that?" Gideon dodged the Look she gave him, A Look, a proper noun. "Of the muggles she's gone out with, he was the best," he told Sirius, studiously avoiding Lily's face. "We only hated him a little, and that was mostly on principle."
"When did you dump him?" Fabian asked. There seemed no question that she had broken up with him, rather than the other way around.
Lily didn't answer, her silence pointed.
"You're working at a bookstore?" James asked, and when she looked at him, she appeared almost relieved at the change in topic.
"Yes. A muggle one. It's only a few times a week, but I like it. It's easy to build my brewing schedule around, and—"
"—and it's great for her ego, because blokes chat her up constantly," Gideon said. "I've seen it. It's wild, although I'm not surprised. I mean, I go there to see her too, so I get it. But you should see some of these muggle blokes when she starts talking books with them—it's hilarious. It's like they expect that a fit girl shouldn't know how to read, and they're stunned. Dr. Wonderful Rick was one of the worst about it all. He spent hours—"
Lily set her mortar and pestle down heavily. "Out."
Somehow, she packed a serious punch behind the single word, enough that Gideon's face immediately sobered.
"Lil—"
"Out. Do you think this is fun for me right now? I'm glad you're all having a laugh while I'm trying to fucking fix James so he can walk again." She had flushed, her color suddenly a soft, glowing pink. "Go have that laugh somewhere else. I normally don't give a fuck when you take the piss out of me, but not right now. Get out."
Fabian looked the most stricken, and immediately apologetic. "Lil—" he tried, just as Gideon had a moment before, but he stopped at the sharp way she pointed to the door.
"Out. I'm not joking."
All of them, even Sirius, listened.
"Sorry." She leaned forward, and her hair fell in front of her face. After a brief glance at the bloodstains on her hands, she sighed, and pulled her hands through her hair anyway so she could pile it on top of her head and secure it there. The color of her hair obscured any traces of blood, but a light smear smudged at her hairline, bright and red.
James tried his best not to stare at it. "I don't think you've ever apologized to me this many times."
"I've never had to."
Her tone hadn't resumed either the brisk business or the light sarcasm or warm gentleness he had come to expect. She still sounded a little brittle, as she had when she'd banished everyone else from the room. That quality of her voice reminded him wholly of teasing her at Hogwarts until she'd broken, stopped ignoring him, and kicked off. He'd stopped hearing that tone seventh year, although it had come back around full circle by the time they'd ended things.
"I'm sorry for bleeding on you," he said, and the corner of her mouth quirked.
"You're lucky I've gotten better at getting out bloodstains." She ducked her head back towards his ankle. "Pain again."
He steeled himself, but she'd spoken true. After the pain just prior, her work hardly hurt. It still hurt like a bitch, of course, but in comparison, it was like falling off a broom versus getting hit with a bludger. Both hurt, but falling always hurt much, much worse.
He still breathed harshly when she paused again and the severity of the pain vanished, replaced by the constant undercurrent he'd almost gotten used to. "Six to eight weeks?" he pressed, picking up an old thread of conversation.
She knew what he meant. "Yes. It depends on how long a couple different potions take. They're based on the lunar cycle, but it's experimental, so it's hard to know. I'll probably need to hit two full moons, but we'll see." Her fingers flashed deftly as she continued adding ingredients to the paste in her mortar. "Thank you for letting me stay, although you looked surprised to see me, so I'm assuming you had no idea."
"I didn't," he admitted. "But it's headquarters, so no one needs to ask my permission." He paused. "But I would have said yes if anyone had asked me, for the record."
His answer would have been more like a resounding hell yes, because he'd always lost it a bit when it came to her. The other Marauders had gotten after him for it constantlyat Hogwarts. They hadn't fully understood why he'd wanted her as intensely as he had, and truly, he hadn't either. He'd just found himself drawn to her like a flitterby to a flame, captivated by the length of her neck and the grace of her limbs and the brilliant sheen of her hair and the uniqueness of her eyes and the engaging sound of her laugh.
Pain and all, just looking at her made him feel eighteen again.
It sounded like he wasn't the only bloke who found her captivating. He never had been, but he'd had it fairly easy at Hogwarts, because few blokes seemed willing to ask her out and potentially—definitely—annoy him. Aside from a few short-lived boyfriends, he'd rarely seen anyone openly flirt with and admire her like Fabian and Gideon just had, their intentions joking or not. He really couldn't tell with them.
She stood, and he saw that her hem had gone redder. Blood had also smeared a little down one bare leg, but she acted as if she didn't notice. Truly, maybe she didn't.
He'd seen her covered in his fluids before, but never his blood.
That thought sent him nearly into laughter that felt almost hysterical in his chest. He only just held it down.
What a fucking day.
She went behind him to his back, mortar in hand. "It'll sting a little," she warned, and she gave him just enough time to absorb that information before he felt a thick, strangely cold product spread between his shoulder blades. As promised, the muscles in his arms and shoulders immediately tensed at a fresh, sharp burst of pain, but it only lasted a few seconds, maybe ten at most. Then the pain ebbed away, replaced by only a blessed coolness. "You're lucky I caught this now," she said, and he could feel each of her individual fingers as she continued her application. "This would have continued to spread without treatment. It's a really nasty hex. Rare, too. They weren't messing around."
"Thank you." He hadn't planned the words, but he meant them deeply. "For all of it, and for doing your best to distract me through it with jokes and banter, even though…you know."
Even though he'd doubted before that day that she'd ever speak to him again, truly.
"You're welcome."
He didn't know what to say.
"You're going to bruise back here," she added, reaching down to touch his mid-back. Sure enough, even though he could only just feel her fingertips, the pressure ached. "I can heal the bruise once it forms, if you'd like. And, well, we'll know about the state of your kidneys if you start pissing blood. Do let me know if you do."
He didn't know if she meant it seriously or joked, and he didn't really have it in him to ask.
She went back in front of him and sat down again. He watched her meticulously clear the floor around her that she'd used as her station. She cleaned her silver knife and cutting board with a flick of her wand, returned the remnants of ingredients with another, and vanished the few scraps that remained.
"What happens after six to eight weeks?"
She looked surprised at the question, and then immediately guarded. "That's hardly your business."
"I'm injured. Feel sorry for me and humor me."
He hadn't expected it to work, and it didn't, not entirely, but she did almost smile. "It's hard to say," she hedged. "I have a couple different options. I'm kind of at a crossroad right now, and I have a lot to figure out, so I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to, which I don't."
She still sounded just a little brittle, but less so.
He wondered if she ducked her head to examine his ankle in order to avoid the topic. Even if that wasn't her intention, it certainly worked that way. "I'm very nearly done," she said. The brittleness faded entirely, and she sounded pleased. "There's tissue and the issue of mending your skin, but that's nothing. And then I'll want you to stay off it, even though, like I said, I know firsthand that you're shit at sitting still. I'll need to check it in the morning, assuming you don't wreck everything tonight and make me start all over."
On one hand, he very much didn't want to go through all that pain again.
On the other hand, he very much didn't mind her attention. At all.
Fuck, how stupid was that sort of reaction?
"This shouldn't hurt as bad," she said, and he could feel her fingers more fully on the front of his ankle, as he really hadn't before, when he'd only barely felt her touch before. "I've been told it tickles, so try not to kick me."
She had often accused him of kicking her in his sleep. Did she remember? The way she spoke, he couldn't tell.
It did tickle a little, even as it hurt, but the pain continued to dissipate. He could hear the quiet murmur of her voice as she cast spells that hit him in different ways, some deep in his muscles and some tingling on his skin and some pinching his nerves.
He had feeling back, and, fuck, he hadn't even truly realized just how much he'd lost it.
"Don't move your ankle," she instructed sharply as she sat back up. She tipped her head to the left and then right, stretching her neck. "But try to wiggle your toes." He could feel them move, and the smile that split her face made her look eighteen again, as she'd looked when completing a particularly complex spell in Charms or acing a truly difficult potion. It made his chest ache with an unexpected fierceness that nearly knocked him over.
"Are you done?" he asked, forcing the words past the sudden lump in his throat.
"Very nearly." She summoned one last vial from her case, conjured a rag, and dabbed a bit onto it. She held the cloth to the back of his ankle. "Essence of Dittany. It'll help bind the skin together, because—well, you were missing a lot, which makes what I've healed more fragile. I'm not sure if you'd want to know this or not, but I have no idea how you Disapparated given the state you were in. Like I said, at least you didn't lose your foot entirely, but—it was close."
His stomach roiled in protest. He had purposefully refused to look down and see exactly what had happened, but the imagine she conjured to mind of his foot dangling loosely from his leg by the thinnest threads of the skin of his ankle—
Fuck.
She continued her cleanup. She wiped her fingers one last time on the towel she'd conjured, and vanished it along with the Dittany-soaked rag. She cleaned her mortar and pestle and packed them away into her case, which closed with a snap. He had to assume that she cleaned up the area around him to remove the blood, based on the way her eyes swept the floor and her wand twirled, and then he felt warmth on his leg, which told him she'd probably cleaned his leg as well.
"Like I said, I don't want you moving it." With another flick, thick bandages appeared, wrapping from his toes to a third of the way up his calf. "Not for the rest of the day, at least. Figure out where you want to sit and stay there. No stairs, and don't even walk that much on flat surfaces. Make Sirius help you go wherever you want to go. It might humble him a bit, which would be good for him." One final flick sent bandages around his torso too, wrapping entirely around where she'd applied the salve. "I'll check that in the morning too, but the burn should be gone by then. Oh." She opened her case again, and summoned out another clear vial, which she held out to him. "For pain. You might not need it, but I expect your ankle will start aching by morning. Your arm might be sore for a little while, so don't overtax it either. Questions?"
For starters, how the hell was he ever supposed to repay her?
Second, did she still hate him, as she'd looked like she had when they'd parted for the final time?
He didn't hate her. He never had, not really. Once he'd gotten past anger, he'd quickly taken to missing her more than anything.
"No." He paused. "Thank you. Again. Really." The words fell entirely short.
She nodded and stood. "It's nothing." She really did make it sound that way. After she crossed the kitchen floor, he heard the door swing open and her lift her voice. "Sirius! Come act as James' servant. He has tasks for you."
When Sirius reappeared, he joined Lily at James' side. The tentative expression on his face sat strangely, distorting his features. "You're alright?" he asked, and the two simple words rang with raw, gut-wrenching concern. He laughed with relief when James assured him he was, a loud exhalation of breath whooshing from his lungs. "Lily, I don't care that you're all covered in blood. I could kiss you." He really did look at her like he meant it, his mouth slightly open and his eyes awed. "How did you do that?"
"Magic."
"Everything good in here?" James recognized Fabian's voice before he saw him. When Fabian came into view, James saw that his color had returned to normal, and when their eyes met, he looked utterly relieved. "Glad you're okay, mate," he said with simple honesty. He slung an arm around Lily's shoulders. "Have my children," he said to her, and she didn't look surprised by the words. Her mouth twisted with suppressed amusement when she looked up at him. "You've seen me and Gid. We need some intelligence back in our family line. Take pity. Help us out. Have my children."
James could only stare.
Sirius let out a bark of laughter. "Little strong there, innit?"
"He's been worse." Lily nudged Fabian's arm off of her and reached up to take her hair down. James watched with poorly-concealed interest as it tumbled down her back. "I'm going to shower and finish unpacking. There are things—"
"Go to dinner with me and Gid," Fabian prompted. "Dorcas has to go meet Jack, so she's out, and you know he's shit company by himself. Don't subject me to that. I promise we'll only minimally harass you about Dr. Nice Guy Rick. I do need to know when you dumped him, though, because I'm very aware that I only have a two- to six-week window to try to get at you before you agree to go out with some other bloke. I need to know how much time has passed so I know how much time I have left. It's simple clockwork, Lil."
She ignored the latter part of his words. "Go ahead and take the piss out of me. I don't mind. Just not when I'm literally up to my wrists in blood. That's my line. I think it's reasonable." She bent and picked up her potions case. "I'll do dinner. I'm going to shower. James, remember—find a place to sit or lay and sit or lay there. Don't ruin all my hard work. I'll be much less kind if I have to do this all over again." Without another word, she left.
Sirius helped James to the den where Gideon and Dorcas sat. He chuckled all the while. "You kind of look like you're considering moving in for the next six to eight weeks," he said when he deposited James in an armchair. He flicked his wand, and several seconds later, a t-shirt came flying into the room, summoned from James' old bedroom. It was a blue Appleby Arrows shirt from before he'd played for them, back when they'd just been his favorite team. It felt strange to pull on, but his arm ached only minimally when he did so. "The lads and I wouldn't miss you at all. Can't wait to see their faces when I tell them she popped back up. Remus'll be thrilled."
Dorcas took one look at them and left the room. James had no doubt that she'd gone off in search of Lily.
"We already told her we're considering moving in," Gideon said, nodding towards Fabian as the other half of that 'we.' "She said she'd find somewhere else to stay if we did. Apparently we make her drink too much, which was part of what made staying with us so erratic. I can't imagine what she means."
He spoke with all manner of innocence that James didn't buy for a second. He knew firsthand exactly what she meant.
"Do you know what she's brewing for the Order?" he asked, and Fabian turned a hand over in a gesture that clearly imparted, no idea. "You suggested her to Dumbledore?"
"Yeah. We met with him over that recon we were doing in Dorset, and he mentioned that he needed a potioneer for something." Fabian ran a hand over his thick, dark hair. "We didn't think she'd go for it, since she and Rue stayed pretty busy with Rue's mail-order potion business, but then Rue got sick not long after…" He looked, again, more serious than James was used to seeing. "We were lucky Gran didn't catch Dragon Pox too. I have no idea how she didn't, because she and Rue were always together. She's fucking devastated."
Gideon looked almost identically grim. "I don't know what we would have done if Lily wasn't there. She knew how to take care of Rue, and then she took care of all the rest after. She's still working through estate stuff with Gran." He shook his head a little, and did his best to grin at James. "You dated her, didn't you? Do I have that right? Do you have any tips to help Fabian and I out? I think Gran might disown us if one of us doesn't bring her into the family."
Fabian saved James from having to come up with some sort of coherent answer to Gideon's questions, or to really think about what it meant that Gideon had to ask if he and Lily had dated, instead of just knowing. Gideon had phrased the question entirely offhandedly, as if James were simply another prior suitor in Lily's life, something casual and fleeting that hadn't mattered.
That didn't describe their relationship at all.
"I wish I had a camera to get your face when she made that crack about being on her knees," Fabian said, grinning. "That was truly something."
Sirius snorted. "I mean, we were all thinking it. I was just surprised she said it."
"She said she'd do dinner," Fabian added to Gideon, who looked supremely pleased.
"Excellent. I want to know what happened to the doctor, even though it was bound to happen sooner or later. She's not cut out for the muggle thing, even if she—"
A silver, opaque patronus appeared so suddenly that James jumped. "I'll be by tonight," the phoenix said with Albus Dumbledore's voice, and then it dissolved into a mist.
Save for James' very confusing feelings about seeing Lily, the room had lacked the sort of tension that had begun and lingered since he had appeared in a crumpled heap on the lawn. Suddenly, that tension reappeared, and ratcheted up significantly.
"Be nice if he'd say when," Sirius said, shaking his head. "Loves to create a mystery, doesn't he?" He sat down in a nearby armchair and leaned forward, his gray eyes intense. "James, what happened? Go through it slowly."
James did his best.
He'd been in battle before, and more than once. Skirmishes with Death Eaters happened all over Britain, and with increasing frequency. A couple months before, he'd only just made it out of a burning home in a muggle village, where he and several other Order members had gone to halt an attack in progress. The smoke then put that the fire and smoke in that evening's ballroom to shame, as he'd almost passed out from it while running through the house. When he thought on it, he could still almost conjure the reeking scent of burning polyester as the muggles' couch went up in flames.
Weeks before that, he and a few other Order members had gone to stake out a warehouse storing hundreds of wizarding artifacts preparing for sale.
Death Eaters had had the same idea.
Masks and all, James had wondered if he recognized some of them from his own year at Hogwarts. He had almost thought he could spot Severus Snape's hunched posture, or Arwell Nott's gait, or Thomas Avery's showy, impractical arm movements as he cast that weakened his ability as a dueler. Remus had been with him then, and James had laughed aloud when Remus had shot a particularly well-timed spell that caught the possible Avery right in the chest and threw him backwards. Remus had rolled and ducked behind a brick partition right afterwards, but James had caught his grin, bright and almost vicious. They always altered their appearances before conducting any sort of Order business, so he hadn't looked like Remus in the least, but the grin had somehow been all Moony, more werewolf than man due to his savage pleasure. James had to assume that they all looked that way when they battled. Even Peter, usually so mild-mannered, went severe in combat. Sirius, on the other hand, typically laughed like a madman, which was perhaps the most terrifying reaction of all.
Weeks and months before that, James had encountered numerous other battles—in the streets of Diagon Alley more than once, just outside Hogsmeade another time, in a deserted stretch of muggle London another, and on and on. He remembered only fragments of each time, which came in deep, graphic memories. Remus' grin felt imprinted on his brain. The spells that the possible Snape had thrown at him, one after another after another after another, also felt carved into his mind. The frequency of the casting had had him convinced that, altered appearance or not, Snape could recognize something in him as well. He could see exactly the imagine of the artwork on the wall of the muggle home he'd escaped, a large, abstract canvas, which had gone up in flames with surprising speed. Yet much of the rest of it remained a blur, a wild, rushing tornado of chaos that tasted like bitter adrenaline and coppery blood, filled with a cacophony of loud explosions and crackling flames, and burned almost blindingly with flashes of brilliant spells.
That evening felt exactly the same. What he did remember— the laughter on the Albanian wizard's face moments before it all went down, the ear-splitting crash of the chandelier falling to the floor, the searing pain in his ankle—he remembered well.
The rest blurred together into one tense, horrific mess.
Still, he tried to walk through it the best he could. Explaining things to Sirius, Gideon, and Fabian, he found that he recalled more than he thought.
He didn't think the explosion that punched a hole through the wall had been the only one. He thought it might have accounted for the initial chaos, but he remembered a secondary explosion rocking the floor as he had Disapparated.
Although all manner of spells had burst around him, evident by the multitude of colors he witnessed clearly through the smoke, he never saw the telltale green flash of the Killing Curse. Clearly, then, the attack had meant to frighten the auction's participants, not kill them.
Whoever had attacked him from behind also clearly hadn't meant to kill him. If they had, they could have easily.
Sirius had once again gone pale at that.
"Do you think the cup was there?" Gideon asked, and James could only shoot him an exasperated look. "Sorry. You couldn't know. Just—months of trying to find that damn thing, and Dumbledore's right, they very clearly want it too—"
"Wish he'd tell us why everyone wants that nonsense," Sirius muttered. He rubbed his face vigorously with his hands. "Sodding old Hufflepuff relic that no one should even care about—I don't get it."
"Like that though, isn't he?" James felt suddenly very, very tired. His adrenaline, which had spiked at the auction and hadn't abated thanks to both Lily's presence and her healing, had dropped all at once. "When he wants us to know, we'll know."
It probably should have bothered him more that, without a reason why, Dumbledore had sent him on a wild goose chase for months in hopes of tracking down a lead to the whereabouts to the cup of Helga Hufflepuff. It sat in the hands of a private collector, apparently, and the collector had plans to move it to market sooner or later. As head of the Potter family, James had had an easy enough time garnering invitations to the ridiculous social events necessary to gain access to that information, but he'd loathed the work, which was only part of his mission there.
Months playing that game, never daring explain exactly what he looked for for fear of tipping off Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and finally, when things had started to look promising—
Fuck it all.
Despite the fact that Dumbledore had very nearly gotten him blown to bits, James didn't hold even a bit of grudge against the headmaster for sending him into chaos with no clear reason. Dumbledore had never lead him wrong before. He trusted he never would.
When Lily and Dorcas reappeared, they both looked a little more at ease than before. Clearly, they had set to rights whatever strangeness had passed between them in the kitchen.
"Kind of preferred you with the blood, to be honest," Sirius told Lily with a grin.
"I'd be happy to make you bleed, if that's what you're asking after." She smiled in return. "I need to stop at the apothecary," she said, looking to Gideon and Fabian. "Do you want me to meet you somewhere?" When neither of them answered right away, she understood immediately. "Are you needed here?"
"Dumbledore sent word he'd be by sometime," Gideon explained. He sounded truly remorseful. "I think we—"
"No worries." Lily went to the fireplace, and James watched her begin to alter her appearance. "But I have to stop by your gran's to sign some paperwork. I'll make sure to tell her you both blew me off. I expect she'll get past that and forgive you both eventually."
"This is why you're her favorite. You sabotage the competition."
Lily flashed Gideon a smile through the mirror. "Now you're getting it." When she turned around, James wouldn't have recognized her if she passed him on the street. She'd charmed her hair a glossy brown nearly as dark as Dorcas', and turned her eyes brown as well. Aside from the color of her eyes, she'd also altered her mouth into a fuller pout, very slightly changed the shape of her nose, and sharpened the cheekbones in her heart-shaped face. Her skin no longer glowed as radiant and pale, but glowed for its sudden warm tan, which contrasted wonderfully with the soft blue of her dress. "It has nothing to do with her seeing me far more than she sees you both. Not a thing."
Neither Gideon or Fabian looked surprised at her transformation. A glance at Dorcas confirmed that she didn't either. Sirius, on the other hand, stared at her with the sort of confusion that James knew had to read all over his own face.
"You were fit enough even without the blood," Sirius said, and she looked at him quizzically in return. "Why the change?"
"Oh." She rummaged through her handbag, but came up empty from whatever she searched for. James had the sneaking suspicion it was a stalling technique, and that she looked for nothing. "I never really was popular with the Slytherin crowd, and you know where most of them ended up, so that's always been an issue. But I also…said some things I shouldn't have and angered some people when I left St. Mungo's. I meant it all, but it wasn't smart to say. If I'm going anywhere in the wizarding world, but especially in Knockturn Alley, I can't look anything like myself if I don't want to risk an ambush. Kind of hard to miss with my hair, you know? It's easier this way. Anyway." She waved a hand as careless as her words and made for the door. "Stay off your feet, James!" she called after her, and she was gone, Dorcas trailing after her.
"Rue made her alter her appearance to make trips to the apothecary," Fabian said after they heard the front door close. "Rue insisted she go to the one in Knockturn Alley. Always said it was better-stocked." He sounded a little sad, but fond just the same. "I'm glad she agreed to it. It's better than the alternative: fight a constant fight or leave. Mary Macdonald just straight up moved to a few months ago because she couldn't handle it."
James remembered shy, blonde Mary Macdonald, of course, although he hadn't known her as well as he knew Lily or Dorcas. Of the Gryffindor girls in their year, she had shrunk a little into the background, and was the only other muggleborn student aside from Lily in their house and year. Although they'd been very close, she and Lily had operated on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how they treated their blood status. Mary had acted only too happy to have no one so much as notice her for any reason, but Lily had never shied away from attracting attention academically and socially, almost as if she dared someone to say something about her parentage.
James hadn't even known she'd left, but he could imagine Mary running from conflict at the first opportunity.
Really, he didn't blame her that much.
"Rest, mate." Sirius looked again uncharacteristically concerned and serious. "We'll wake you when Dumbledore gets here."
James knew he wouldn't fall asleep. He couldn't, not after everything that had happened in the previous few hours, and when he sat in trousers that still smelled faintly of smoke, the scent of which came off his hair as well. Beyond that, he sat in his dad's armchair, and while he'd sat there many times before over the past twenty-two years, he'd never slept there. No, only Fleamont Potter had ever slept there, usually reclined on a weekend afternoon or in the late evening after nodding off during a Quidditch match.
Further still, he hadn't slept in his parents' house since they died. He had wholly planned to never sleep there again, because time spent there even during waking hours felt strange enough. He couldn't imagine how it would feel to wake up there again. Would he forget their deaths in the first few moments of the morning? Would he open his eyes, stretch, and stare at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom with the absent wonder of what they were up to? And would it all hit him at once and come crashing down—that they'd fallen ill without him there, that they'd gotten worse before he came home, that they'd fallen into unconsciousness before he could speak to them, that they'd died within hours of each other without ever opening their eyes again?
He didn't want to find out.
Yet against his certainty—and against his better judgment—he nodded off with alarming ease.
xxx
When James awoke, the first thing he noticed was Lily Evans sitting on the settee nearby, her brilliant hair contrasting wonderfully against the dark green velvet.
So she wasn't just a pain-induced dream. She really sat there.
The second thing he noticed was that Albus Dumbledore sat nearby her on a squashy purple chair that he'd conjured for himself, even though had had access to several other seating options. He held his wizened hands steepled, and he was deep in quiet conversation with Gideon.
The third thing he noticed was Sirius, because Sirius had seen him wake up almost the second his eyes opened.
"Was starting to think she actually had poisoned you," Sirius joked. Truth be told, he did look relieved to see James awake and more or less alert. "You've been out hours."
"How are you feeling?" Dumbledore asked, and he sounded genuinely concerned.
"In one piece." James reached up and rubbed his eyes. They felt dry and gritty. "That comes down to Lily. She set me straight."
"So I heard." Dumbledore waited for James to resettle his glasses before he went on. "Tell me what happened tonight."
"Before that—" Although he hadn't seen her in nearly three years, when Lily spoke, she wore an expression unlike any James could remember. She looked and sounded uncertain, the polar opposite of the confident, self-assured way she'd always carried herself. He'd never once seen that confidence so much as falter. "I'm going to leave before you get too far into it all, but I had this thought tonight—"
"Even if you choose not to stay with us long-term, you're welcome to listen." Dumbledore had fixed her with his piercing blue stare. "I have no issue with that."
"What?" Fabian asked sharply, and James watched him shoot his brother a startled glance. "What does that mean, 'not staying with us long-term'?"
Lily ignored him. "I appreciate that. Truly. Just the same, what happened today and why it happened aren't things I need to know, so I'll step out. But…" she hesitated. "Gideon said you're looking for something. Some wizarding relic. I don't need to know what, but I wondered…have you considered Knockturn Alley? You can buy information there on just about anything, as long as you can pay the right price and you have the right connections and you know where to look."
A tense silence filled the room. Lily and Dumbledore stared at each other, clearly waiting for the other to speak.
"Go on, please," Dumbledore prompted finally, his voice polite, but James didn't miss the keen nature of his gaze.
"It's possibly nothing. Probably nothing. But—have you been to Moribund's?" When Dumbledore gave a short nod, she went on. "The man who runs it—a Moribund, I don't know his first name—works with all manner of magical products and oddities and antiquities. If you're not sure exactly where to locate whatever you're looking for—well, I just wouldn't rule out trying to get someone into Knockturn Alley to see what they could shake loose. Moribund could maybe help in that, if you played it right. He'd sell his own teeth right out of his mouth for the right price if he trusts you won't run to the Ministry. So would Borgin at Borgin and Burke's. I might go there first, actually. Now that I know him pretty well, he's always open for a chat."
"Why were you in Moribund's and Borgin and Burke's?" Gideon asked. "I thought you only went to Knockturn for the apothecary."
She stood and shrugged. "Rue sent me other places too. I mostly bought illegal potions books and equipment. I got to know Borgin and Moribund well enough that they remember me in my altered appearance, and they seem to like me well enough. I've chatted with them a decent amount, so we're friendly." She didn't look ashamed over it at all, even though the Head Girl James had known at eighteen would have disemboweled herself before admitting to any sort of rule-breaking in front of a professor. That went double for the headmaster, and for the severity of her confession. She'd broken law, apparently, not school rules, but offered the information with an ease that left him staring. "I'm to bed. Professor, I have what I need to start brewing tomorrow. I'll update you with my progress."
Dumbledore inclined his head in thanks, and Lily went to leave the room. "Lily?" he called after her, and she paused in the doorway, fingers drumming on the doorframe. "Would you be willing to approach Moribund and Borgin about this?"
She opened her mouth, then closed it and stood, unmoving.
"I could," she said, the words entirely hesitant. "What would you have me do?"
If James had a better hand muggle idioms, he would have thought that Lily had just signed a giant blank check she probably wouldn't want Dumbledore to cash. But he didn't know many muggle idioms, so he didn't know what to think of the situation at all.
In return, Dumbledore just smiled, and inclined his head again. "We'll talk about it in another day or two, after you're settled. Thank you. I'm grateful you're here." He waited for her to leave before he looked to James. "Tell me about tonight," he prompted, and James forced himself through it all again, the entire debacle of the evening's events.
His head had started to hurt.
When he finished, Dumbledore didn't speak for a long time. Because he sat silently, the rest of them did too. Finally, Dumbledore leaned forward in his chair, his face unusually sharp. He looked suddenly less like a kind, elderly grandfather and more like the man who had defeated Grindelwald, like a powerful, accomplished wizard no one would want as their enemy.
"I have it on good authority that Voldemort is after relics that belonged to Hogwarts' founders, not just Helga Hufflepuff's cup," he said. James' heart began to pound, adrenaline creeping back up. The way Dumbledore spoke, it sounded as if he divulged a great secret, one of those key pieces of information he held back until it was absolutely necessary for someone to know. "He's begun to search for a diadem that once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw. Just like with the cup, I'm still not sure to what end, although I have my suspicions and will share them when I know for certain. I found this out just this evening, so I have not even the slightest clue where the diadem might be, except to know that it's not in his hands. Yet. We need to make sure it doesn't fall there. I expect the attack tonight was meant to give the Death Eaters the chance to search for both the cup and diadem before they sold, if they were in fact there. As of an hour ago, I know that they had neither in their possession. I'm hoping it's stayed that way."
"Howdo you know all this?" James asked.
Just because he didn't resent Dumbledore for keeping them in the dark about a lot didn't mean he wouldn't press him for information when and where he could.
"We have eyes in their camp, at least to a certain extent," Dumbledore said, and despite the pain in his head, James leaned forward expectantly. Around him, he saw Gideon, Fabian, and Sirius do the same. He wondered if they too held their breath. "I can't say more than that," Dumbledore went on, and James exhaled all of his hope. Dumbledore heard and interpreted the sound correctly. "I understand how frustrating that must be. I've asked for your trust and cooperation to the point that you all have put your lives on the line for this cause. I only hope you'll continue to extend that trust, with the assurance that I will share anything I know for certain as soon as I know it, and only hold back what I absolutely must."
James didn't hesitate. After all, if they couldn't trust Dumbledore, who could they trust?
"What's my next step?" he asked, because he didn't need to say more than that.
"Heal," Dumbledore said after a grateful smile. "And let me think on the rest. For certain, I will send Lily to Knockturn Alley. I'd like you to go with her. It might also be wise for her to go with you once the dust settles and another auction gets underway. If she knows her way around Knockturn Alley and its inhabitants, having her at your side can only help you in these matters."
James watched him stand and vanish his chair. "I think you'll need to tell her that we're going to do this together. She'll take it better than it coming from me."
If he didn't know better, James could have sworn Dumbledore nearly smiled.
"Of course," he agreed immediately. "I'll write her so she knows first thing tomorrow morning. I'll talk about it with you both in the next couple of days. I'm sure we can come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation for your public partnership as well."
Yes, he certainly almost smiled at that.
"Heal," Dumbledore repeated. He patted James' shoulder as he went to leave. "Thank you, James. I'm glad you're alright."
The eight words shouldn't have hit James quite as they did, but he found himself suddenly, intensely touched.
For a moment after Dumbledore left, the four of them didn't speak.
Finally, Sirius looked to James with a certain twist of a grin. "How do you plan to explain to your girlfriend about why you're galivanting in public with Lily?"
Oh.
Oh, shit.
That.
xxx
A/N: Welcome to my latest insane waste of time! As anyone who follows me on Tumblr knows ( scriibble-fics), I'm pretty excited about this one. It started as a "break" from writing Voyeur, my other Jily longfic, and then kind of…exploded.
To anyone concerned about how the writing of this impacts the status of Voyeur's sequel…it really doesn't. I have a truly embarrassing amount of this completed, so it won't hold me up from writing other things for very long, and having two works in progress has been pretty great. I highly recommend it to anyone who's writing and also has no chill. I'm able to bounce back and forth between works, along with other pieces here and there, and it's been great for writer's block.
As always, I love reviews of any kind! Happy holidays!