Eighteen Again

by scriibble

After Hogwarts, things fell apart for Lily Evans and James Potter. Three years later, when she shows up in his life to work for the Order, James finds himself pushed back towards her in a situation that's not only dangerous for his life, but also his heart. [First Wizarding War; Second Chances AU]

26. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

Week Eleven

"Remind me where your girlfriend is."

James glanced towards Sirius, who looked utterly unlike himself in deep blue dress robes that he hadn't pulled out of his wardrobe since the Slug Club Christmas party their seventh year. There was something entirely Regulus about the way he looked in them, like the rich fabric and careful cut elevated the natural Black aristocracy hidden by his usual jeans and worn leather jacket. "Remind me why you're here," he said instead of answering, and Sirius shrugged, grey eyes trained across the lavish ballroom to where his parents conversed with Abraxas and Josephine Malfoy.

"Glutton for punishment, I suppose." Shortly after they'd arrived at the charity gala that Madeline Avery had planned, Walburga had caught a single look of Sirius in the crowd and her face had gone stark white. She'd kept her back to him ever since, which truly showed dedication, because Sirius and James had moved around the room in large part to test her. Still, she'd stuck to it. "But also—you keep getting blown up every time you go to some sort of ballroom," Sirius added, and James knew the grin he flashed his way was more for his benefit than born of something he really felt. "Your track record isn't great when you go to these sorts of things—"

"Those were auctions. This is a gala."

Sirius snorted. "Please tell me the difference. I'm fascinated." He wasn't, obviously, and went on. "I can't let you have all the fun, can I? Besides, I kind of want to see how Fabian and Gideon act when they're in the wild, and I'd like to see your girlfriend out and about too, because I've been mad curious about that." He quirked an eyebrow as he labored over the word 'girlfriend,' like he spoke of a foreign concept neither of them fully understood. "Where is she again?"

He knew, but James told him anyway, because he knew Sirius wanted to hear him say it. "Probably with Thomas Avery's mum."

Well, at least Sirius found the entire thing humorous. Conditioned after years of friendship, James nearly chuckled along when Sirius began to laugh. "I can't wait to see that, and to keep watching you play politician. I'm already taking mental notes for Remus and Pete."

Sirius had nearly convinced them to go with him. Tickets weren't terribly expensive, Madeline had explained to Lily earlier that week, as most of the money they made would come from the bar. On top of that, all profits went to help the Diagon Alley businesses affected during a Death Eater attack, the one that James had just watched the Wizengamot discuss three years after the fact.

Lily had quickly quashed Sirius' encouragements. "We're giving them money back for the crimes they've committed, and they're only holding this event so they get to look like the good guys," she'd said flatly, a muscle grinding in her jaw. "That's fucked. Don't support it if you don't have to, and you don't have to." She'd stopped that line of discussion after Sirius had made it clear that he planned to go regardless, and James had eventually asked her why. "He wants to see Regulus," she'd told him quietly that night. "He hasn't said that, but—can't you tell?"

No. He couldn't. He hadn't even thought of that—not even after Sirius had asked him to keep an eye on Regulus—although it had made perfect sense the moment she'd said it. She'd sounded entirely certain, like she'd just known, that he hadn't doubted her for a moment. She hadn't said so either, but he would have bet the entirety of his Gringott's account that she'd picked up on it because her relationship with Petunia so mirrored Sirius' with Regulus.

In the end, aside from the throwaway question he'd just posed, James hadn't asked Sirius about it. He'd thought about it, and for longer than he'd admit, but in the end he hadn't said a word. Really, what was there to say that Sirius' desire didn't already explain? If he would willingly put himself into a room with his immediate and extended family—a large room, but a room just the same—that said everything about how he worried for Regulus.

James couldn't worry about Regulus. He tried. Genuinely. He tried because Sirius was his brother and that meant that he should therefore feel something towards Regulus too, but he couldn't. Not with the choices Regulus had made. Not with the way he'd spoken about Lily and Sirius straight to James' face. Beyond that, he didn't have any worry to spare for another Black, because all of his concern focused directly on Sirius. He didn't know what Sirius wanted to get out of seeing Regulus, but unless he'd pulled on dress robes he hated in hopes of getting into an explosive public row, he doubted that he'd achieve whatever he sought.

"Besides, who usually keeps Li—Diana company while you campaign?" They stood off to the side of the ballroom, blessedly alone for the first time in the hour since they'd arrived, but Sirius caught himself at her name anyway. "Although she seems more popular than you are around here—which I completely understand, if I'm honest."

James couldn't exactly take offense to objective truth, and he recognized objective truth despite Sirius' taunting tone. She was simply better-liked—at least by all the dickheads their age who they had to socialize with—something he'd already privately acknowledged and understood before that night. Yet he'd realized it all over again the moment Madeline Avery had whisked her away not even five minutes after they'd arrived. Lily had slipped back into that role of perfect politician's wife easily, and Madeline had looked relieved to see her, like they were genuinely friends despite their recent acquaintanceship and the age gap between them and all of the rest of the reasons a friendship between them was utterly ludicrous.

Then again, her relief made sense. Lily hadn't hesitated to help her with whatever she'd needed—some emergency about linens, from the sound of it—something Madeline had clearly, desperately needed. He'd seen her mum all over her in that, as her attention had immediately flipped to the perfect host even though she occupied the role of guest, and he'd only caught glimpses of her since.

"She stays busy," James said. "Obviously."

"Obviously. So, can I keep campaigning with you?" For the first time, Sirius looked really, truly amused. It shifted his expression into the face that James knew, that of his best friend and not the weird, aristocratic shadow of his brother. "I'm going to act so fucking charming that people will wonder why my family wants nothing to do with me. That's also why I'm here. For spite."

James' grin reflected Sirius' the second the wheels began to spin in his mind. "Okay, so here's who we need to introduce you to—"

He loved Lily, he really did, but mucking about with Sirius that night might have been the most fun he'd ever had at some stuffy society function. The past several months of torture—of learning people's names, occupations, alliances, beliefs, and on and on and fucking on—suddenly became fodder for a laugh at Walburga and Orion's expense instead of details committed to memory to keep up a nightmarish façade. He didn't even have to feel bad about enjoying himself, because it quickly became apparent that Sirius' petty spite actually served as a benefit rather than a detriment, something James hadn't anticipated. He'd imagined a neutral outcome at best, but he realized in the midst of a conversation with Damocles Rowle and Corban Yaxley that Sirius' presence made people quickly overlook the fact that his family had branded him a blood traitor, which cleared up his association with James almost entirely.

Sirius repaired his reputation by sheer force of will, fostered by his unique upbeat energy and charisma and all of the things that had made James bounce off of him the moment they'd met on the Hogwarts Express. It made people like him and want to believe anything he said, something James had noted about Lily as well. James knew he also had some measure of that quality, but when Sirius set his mind to it, it especially just worked, and nothing motivated him quite like sticking it to his family.

"Oh, I'm sure they're fucking terrible, and I really hope they are," Sirius said, his grin relaxed, when Corban asked after his parents with curiosity ripe on his face. Damocles choked on his drink, at odds with his usual suave ease, but the sight didn't surprise James. He'd never quite forgotten the way Damocles had laughed at his own voiced dislike of Walburga at the second auction, a recollection he'd muttered to Sirius before they'd gone over to talk to him and Corban. Naturally, Sirius' excitement at that had looked particularly vicious. Damocles came up laughing, and Corban looked like he did his best not to join him. "Too honest?" Sirius asked. "Come on, there have to be people in your family that you don't like. Mine just happen to be my parents. Well, Mum, really. Terrible woman, and the most controlling person I've ever met. You do know about our house-elves, right?"

By the time Sirius had finished describing the systematic decapitation of deceased family house-elves, and how they lined the staircase at his parents' house in London, even Corban had turned red from laughter, however unwillingly given.

"You should be the one doing this," James told Sirius privately after they'd excused themselves to fetch new drinks. "I've never seen either of them laugh like that. They're your new biggest fans. You're—"

Sirius' mouth opened with blatant, abject horror. "No way. I'd lose my fucking mind if I had to do this all the time. It's funny for a night, but I'd snap in…ten days, maybe? I might not even make it a week. It's a lot more fun to play your backup, because that's all jokes and no pressure. I don't have your patience to take it seriously. Besides, I might get people to laugh, but no one can get over the Arrows shit with you, can they? I'm so used to watching you act like an idiot that I sometimes forget that you're a celebrity."

'Celebrity' might have taken it a bit far, but given people's interest in still discussing his short Quidditch career a full two years out of the game, it seemed rather close. People no longer mobbed him, as they had during his actual time on the team, but he and Sirius very rarely found a single moment alone together. A steady rotation joined and then left their sides, filing almost one right after the other, like they'd formed a lineless queue by some tacit agreement.

At the same time, while each person wrung James' hand vigorously and greeted Sirius politely in contrast, all left perhaps more charmed with Sirius than they'd ever been by James. James saw it when Eunice Birch of the Ministry's Broom Regulatory Control sector went almost fuchsia when Sirius aimed a couple of jokes her way. He saw it again when Hennie Rosier and Josephine Malfoy greeted Sirius frostily, but went away sporting matching smiles. He saw it a third time when Cornelius Fudge stopped to yet again extend an invitation to James to join him for a drink and a chat—and, fuck, James knew he probably should, even though the very idea repulsed him—and ended up asking if Sirius might want to join them as well.

On, and on, and on it went, and only rather belatedly did James realize that Sirius had set out to do his best at charming the pants off of everyone not just to get back at his parents, but also to annoy him.

"Seriously, you should be doing this," he said through gritted teeth when Lucius Malfoy actually smiled as he left the pair of them, even though he'd called Sirius Narcissa's 'blood traitor cousin' and 'a real stain on the house of Black' only weeks before. "I couldn't get him to trust me for—well, I still think he doesn't trust me, honestly. But you? If you're not best man in his wedding in a few weeks' time, I'll eat my hat."

"Which hat?" Sirius asked immediately. "I need to know how hard I should work at this, because that might be worth hanging around dear old Lucius for the next few weeks." He laughed, his head thrown back with unabashed amusement. "Sorry, mate. I know you really wanted that spot as best man. Better luck next time, right? Can't imagine he and Cissy will stick, so you might have a shot for his next wedding."

Declan also took a shine to Sirius, immediately and without question. After checking in on James early in the night, he'd mainly left him alone. Perhaps he'd done so only because he'd seen James so effectively making the rounds, and remained unaware that he acted more to help Sirius get back at his parents and not truly with a mind on the campaign, although the two goals overlapped nicely. He only introduced himself to Sirius later that night, after he'd sidled up to their sides toting a man with a mop of straw-colored hair and a face full of freckles.

"This is Barty Crouch," Declan said, gesturing to the man, who fidgeted a little when James turned to look at him. "And you must be Walburga and Orion's boy. Sirius, isn't it? Do I have that right?"

Sirius grinned, and Declan smiled back without pause and seemingly genuinely, as most people smiled at Sirius. "You do, although I'm not theirs by choice and I try not to remember my parentage most days. Not exactly a great deal of fun, those two. But James talks about me often, does he? Unsurprised. And you're Declan Avery, of course. He talks about you too—terrible stuff, I promise."

Declan laughed, as if Sirius hadn't just told the biggest truth of his entire fucking life, although he'd convincingly spoken it like the most charming of lies. "I don't doubt you're telling the truth," he said with a wink. "Barty, this is James Potter and Sirius Black."

"How do you do?" Barty asked, the automatic words offered without even a little attempt at the heavy charm that Sirius—and, hell, Declan, and James too—put forth. He paled even further in comparison to James' other two companions, pale past the sour milk pallor of his cheeks, and he had a handshake quite unlike his father's. His hand in James' felt weak, almost limp, and left James with the impression that he'd just clasped hands with a freshly-deceased corpse. Try as he might, James couldn't find a stitch of hard-as-nails Barty Crouch Sr. in his son's appearance or expression or personality. If anything, Barty Crouch Jr. made Peter look assertive and authoritative. Peter.

"Nice to meet you," James said in return.

"Charmed," Sirius said. He didn't pause for a second before going on. "Your dad's up for Minister, isn't he? Any skeletons in your family's closet we should know about before we cast our votes? I'm not voting for him anyway—I'm writing my own name on the ballot—but I'm sure my parents have literal skeletons in their closets, so I thought I'd check."

While Declan laughed and James smiled, Barty stared at Sirius rather like he had never seen anyone quite like him—and that had Peter written all over it too, because Peter had looked at Sirius like that a lot in their early years at Hogwarts. "Nothing I can think of," Barty said after a long pause. He spoke as if he simply didn't know how else to respond.

"Just as well," Sirius said. "I suppose we have to have some decent, upright citizens of the law. It leaves room for the rest of us to have fun."

"I may have to write your name in for Minister too, Sirius," Declan said, still chuckling. He reached out and gave Sirius one of those annoyingly fatherly pats on the shoulder, and Sirius didn't cringe away, although James didn't doubt that he wished he could. "Brilliant strategy on life. James, I had mentioned that I thought you and Barty here might get on. He and Thomas are mates as well—"

Behind Declan's back, Barty pulled a little face, just the briefest contraction of the muscles around his mouth, before his expression once again went entirely smooth and almost blank. When he saw James watching him, the corner of his mouth twitched a little in an ungiven smile, which offered the tiniest promise of mischief.

Maybe there was more to Barty than met the eye.

"—although I don't know them to socialize too often," Declan went on. "Am I right with that, Barty? I'm sure there's much Thomas just doesn't tell me."

Really, that didn't surprise James. The longer he spent around the Averys, the clearer it became that Thomas and Declan didn't get along much at all. Really, Declan spoke to him, James, more often and with more warmth than he did his own son. Somehow, Lily had spotted that almost immediately, when it had taken him months to fully understand it.

Where was Lily?

"We've hung out a time or two," Barty said, and James had the impression that he spoke carefully. Really, he didn't doubt that they all had that impression, because Barty didn't exactly try to cover it up. "I don't get on with all his mates," he said finally, because Declan had secured him in a stare and refused to back down. "Some weren't kind to me at Hogwarts."

Such an admission shouldn't have made any of them happy, but Sirius grinned like Barty had just given him a great gift. "Oh, really? Which ones? Can I guess?"

James choked back a laugh into his whiskey glass. Could he bring Sirius with him always? Was that allowed? Based on the way that Declan grinned when he caught his eye, he very much doubted he would complain, at least.

"Actually, I'll let James here guess." Sirius clapped James on the back with one hand, and rattled his empty glass with the other. "I'm going to go fill up. Have to keep a nice buzz going to tolerate existing in the same room with Walburga, after all. James, mate, I'll catch up with you in a bit."

He didn't wait for a response. He strode off across the ballroom with supreme ease, casual grace in every step, and James could only stare after him.

The traitor. Sirius hadn't left his side all night—hell, they'd even gone to the loo at the same time earlier that night, like they were Lily and Dorcas or something, who sometimes still did that even at Potter manor. What in the—

"I can see why you like him," Declan said to James, which snapped him back to the present moment. "He seems like a real laugh."

"He is." Really, Sirius managed to make every instance a better one, at least when he stayed by James' side. Again, the traitor. With a certain amount of difficulty, he turned his attention back to the only one who seemed immune to Sirius' charm: bland Barty Crouch. "When did you graduate? I know we were in school at the same time, but I can't recall what year you were in."

It was a lie. He didn't remember Barty Crouch at all, really. If James hadn't known that they were roughly of the same age, he would have sworn he'd never laid eyes on him before in his life.

Barty answered, something James didn't hear. He tried to pay attention—truly—but his eyes looked past Barty's shoulder, following Sirius' form as he crossed the ballroom. The crowd had perhaps peaked, packing the room past the number of attendees James had seen all night. Sirius had to weave around several clusters of people as he walked, but he didn't head towards either of the two bars that Madeline Avery had set up on opposite ends of the room. Instead, he walked towards the large double-doors that led into the foyer, and—

And James' heart stopped in its chest—physically stopped, based on the way it felt, because it seized abruptly and painfully with such intensity that he suddenly lost the capacity to draw breaths.

Sirius had located Lily in the crowd, just visible in the masses in shimmering copper robes. He looped an arm casually around her shoulders, and extended his free hand to Antonin Dolohov, who wore his lime green Healers robes even then.

"You would have done well in Slytherin," Declan said, and James knew his voice should have brought him back to the present moment, but it didn't. His mind remained firmly across the room, standing alongside Sirius and Lily.

"The Sorting Hat did consider it," Barty said. "Ravenclaw felt like a good fit just the same."

Lily-as-Diana had a darker complexion than Lily, and darker than Sirius too, but she looked pale under her tan even though her vividly-red mouth smiled readily enough.

"I was always bound for Gryffindor," James said, hardly thinking the words through. Across the room, Antonin gestured with one hand as he spoke—his wand hand, from James' recollection of Lily's memory, the same hand that had flowed so fluidly as he'd cast Dark spell after Dark spell at her in the Malfoys' drawing room. Lily and Sirius laughed in response, their dark heads tipping back in tandem. "Mum and Dad were both Gryffindors as well, though, so it tracks. Were your parents in Ravenclaw?"

"Mum was," Barty said. "Dad was in Gryffindor."

"Imagine if you'd ended up in Hufflepuff," Declan said, chuckling. "I imagine they both would have disowned you."

Sirius pointed towards the foyer by hitching a thumb over his shoulder, and dropped his gaze down to Lily-as-Diana's upturned face.

"I take it your parents were in Slytherin, Declan?" James asked through numb lips. His heart hammered uncomfortably in his throat.

"Oh, of course. Every male in my line was, although we've intermarried with a house here or there. Madeline was in Hufflepuff, believe it or not. I try not to hold it against her."

Using his arm to steer her, Sirius turned Lily towards the door. She went along willingly—as she never would have under any other circumstance, James knew—and then laughed at whatever piece of banter Sirius threw back at Antonin as they departed.

Relief broke over James' body, hot and thick, so much so that he joined Declan's own laughter without even truly considering what Declan had said. Hell, Declan could have just confided that he'd killed several people—a fact that James knew was probably just that: a fact—and James still would have laughed. It didn't matter. Bless Sirius. Bless his stupid charm and his intuition and his ease and his—

Later, when given time to reflect—which would be much later, after the night's conclusion several hours in the future—James would swear up and down that the evening had taken at least a solid year off of his life. The emotional whiplash he went through in those moments couldn't be good for him, he knew, even just transitioning from bored with Declan, to horrified at the sight of Lily talking to Antonin, to relieved once Sirius swept her from the room.

Yet it was even worse for him, emotional whiplash again, when he saw a figure follow Sirius and Lily-from-Diana from the ballroom. He'd hardly even had five seconds to revel in the relief that had coursed through his veins before it stopped, turned off abruptly at the mere sight of Severus Snape ducking through the double-doors, his gait quick and hurried and hand reaching for the pocket of dress robe trousers.

"Will you excuse me?" James asked quickly. He sucked in a deep breath and forced a smile. "So sorry—don't mean to be rude—"

Some excuse followed, something that didn't even begin to explain why his palms had started to sweat and why he spoke even while retreating towards the door. Later, he wouldn't even recall what reasoning he gave for rushing away from Barty and Declan, but it clearly didn't suffice, because he caught the concerned furrowed of Declan's brow in the seconds before he turned to cross the room as swiftly as he could in such a packed crowd—at least, as quickly as he could without shoving people or running.

Really, with the way he felt, shoving and running would have made a lot of sense. The fact that he held back at all said a lot about how good he'd gotten at compartmentalization. After all, when had Sirius and Snape last come face-to-face? At least, when had they last come face-to-face outside of a battle with Snape in a Death Eater's mask and Sirius with his appearance altered? Hogwarts, almost certainly, and probably in the midst of some public row or duel. On top of their years of mutual animosity, Snape hated James, without a doubt, because James had gotten the one thing he'd always wanted: Lily. Yet he might have hated Sirius even more still, because Sirius had nearly gotten him killed their fifth year, and also gotten Remus sent to Azkaban at best or killed at worse, all because he—

"James!" came a voice just as he reached the door to the foyer.

It took every last piece of him to stop and turn around, an excuse already upon his lips.

Thomas Avery closed the last several paces between them. He'd moved with such speed that his carefully-coiffed hair fell slightly in his face, and he lifted a hand to push it back. "I take it you saw Severus—"

"Yeah." James slipped out the ballroom door with Thomas at his side. "Yeah, I didn't even know he was here—I hadn't seen any of you lot yet—"

"He's not normally at these things," Thomas said. He paused in the middle of the dimly-lit foyer, and his head snapped back and forth as he surveyed the room. "He said he wanted to chat with Diana, but then I saw Black had gone over there too, and you know those two—" He spoke as if James hadn't always stood at Sirius' side, arguing and dueling with Snape right alongside him, and like he hadn't taken up with Snape in every one of those same instances.

James didn't bother to remind him. "Yeah. Outside, you think?"

"Must be." Thomas pulled his wand from his pocket. "Just in case," he said, leading the way towards the door. "It's probably an overreaction—I can't imagine that they'd be stupid enough to really get into it at an event like this—"

James followed suit. "Really? Because I can."

The pleasant, sunny day had long-since faded into a damp night, and moisture hung thick in the air with the promise of rain. The second the front doors shut behind James, all sound of the ballroom's hundreds of voices fell silent in an instant, like a tap turned off. Suddenly, the night felt almost too quiet, quiet and heavy and foreboding. "You're right," Thomas said in undertone. He'd frozen on the building's steps, wand held aloft and dark eyes peering out into the night. "Severus swore last week that he had no problem with you dating Diana, just—you know, you as a person. I'm sure that goes double for how he feels about Black. Can you hear them? They must—"

A sharp crack! exploded in the distance to their right, so piercing and sudden that James nearly dropped his wand.

He took off in a rush—heart pounding, head pounding, soul pounding—as he ran down the pathway that he, Lily, and Sirius had walked up that night when they'd arrived. Tiny twinkling lights lined the cobblestones, offering James just enough visibility to see his feet, but not bright enough to give him any sort of clear picture of what lay beyond the weak pool of light.

"Stop it, both of you!" he heard Lily shout, her voice growing nearer every second. "You're not children anymore! You're adults and you're in public and this is—"

Another spell, more of a bang! than a crack! came off to James' right, along with a shot of brilliant blue. Thomas had somehow pulled ahead of him and gotten in the lead, and James reached out without thinking and grabbed the back of his dress robes, stopping him in his tracks. "This way," he said, pulling him along as he ducked off the path and onto the grass.

Thomas didn't take so much as a moment to adjust, nor did he falter. With a casual athleticism James had no idea he even possessed, Thomas fell into step beside him easily in the new direction, and lit his wand wordlessly as he went. James did the same.

For the first time in his life, James had a wild, sudden thought.

Thank Merlin for Thomas fucking Avery.

If it came down to it, Thomas could help diffuse the situation. He could get Snape to wind his neck in or could aid a hand in magical combat, because he didn't want to see Snape and Sirius duel any more than James did. Thomas, too, wanted to see peace reached, although for entirely different reasons, and thank Merlin for that. Thank Merlin for him.

"Expelliarmus!" The spell came in Lily's voice, accompanied by a dazzling flare of scarlet light. They'd gotten close enough that James could just make out flashes of the scene in the dark—scarlet reflecting off of Lily's robes in thousands of tiny lights; Snape's face, contorted in rage; Sirius' back held rigid; two wands flying through the air and into Lily's outstretched hand. "What, are you going to fight like muggles now?" she asked, her voice so acidic that James actually flinched a little.

When had he last heard her sound like that? Shit, had he heard her sound like that since she'd reappeared in his life? She'd gotten angry, sure—at him, at Gideon, at the Venomous Tentacula in his mum's greenhouse—but she'd never sounded furious, not like she did just then. She sounded like Evans, that girl at Hogwarts who he'd fancied enough that he still found her anger a little arousing, even while it filled the pit of his stomach with fear past the adrenaline that had already pooled there like a dull, lead weight.

"I can't believe you two," she went on. "Like we all don't have enough to worry about besides the two of you trying to kill each other because—what? Enlighten me. Is it because—"

She could have taken things in a thousand different directions, but James didn't wait to find out. After all, so many of those directions might have veered towards the personal, and included some piece of information, large or small, that could give her identity away to Thomas. "Alright, love?" he called, coming to a stop near them. Sirius turned reflexively at his voice, and James saw a brief flash of sheer hatred there, a heavy mask that distorted his features fully, before his expression dropped back into something much more himself just at the sight of him. "Sirius? You good?"

"He's fine," Lily snapped. "So is Severus. So am I. The pair of them are enough to almost make me swear off men, but that's the extent of it. If I give you your wands back, are you going to actually behave like adults, or should I give them to James and Thomas because you're children who can't control yourselves?"

At James' side, Thomas exhaled a laugh under his breath that sounded heavy from both exertion and nerves. "She doesn't seem like one to cross," he muttered. In the light of his wand, James could just make out a hint of a poorly-concealed smile on Thomas' face as he surveyed Lily-as-Diana with blatant admiration.

Without compartmentalization, James knew he would have happily started a secondary duel just then, his own casts aimed squarely at Thomas' stupid fucking face. Gratitude for his existence suddenly felt like a very distant memory.

"She's not," James said shortly, but Sirius broke in before he could get any further.

"I didn't do anything," he said sharply, the words directly at Lily. "He's the one who followed us out here." He threw a derisive hand towards Snape, as if he were the lowest of life forms he could imagine. "Why was that, Snivellus? What was your—"

"Did you run your mouth?" Lily asked, the answer implicit in the question. "Was that needed, Sirius?"

"Was it needed for him to follow you? Does that not strike you as particularly fucked? I don't know why you're defending him, when he's not—"

That, too, hedged a little too close to the personal for James' comfort. He could almost hear Sirius finishing that with something deep and cutting and personal, like, "—when he's not worth your time, just like he wasn't at Hogwarts," or, "—when he's not above killing people like you for a laugh," or, "—when he called you a mudblood in front of everyone back at school and broke your fucking heart." James thought of all those things—and more—but pushed them firmly into the back of his mind and locked them there. "Sirius," he said, and, obediently, Sirius stopped short. "Look, let's—love, you can give him his wand back. He's not going to do anything stupid. Snape, are you—"

"Oh, that's your call?" Snape asked. Darkness had fallen over the grounds, so thick that James could only just make out Snape's form several feet away, but he would have heard the sneer in his voice even if he hadn't seen it on his face. "What, all these years later and Black's still just your attack dog, Potter?"

It wasn't meant as a joke—it was meant as the most cutting of insults, really—but that didn't matter. For a solid beat, no one spoke. In the next second, Sirius threw his head back and laughed, like a dog howling at the moon.

Attack dog. If only Snape knew.

The sound pushed Snape past the point of reason. He lunged towards Sirius, all magic aside, his hands balled into fists in front of his face.

What came next happened almost too quickly for James to take it all in.

Going over it all with Lily later, both verbally and through Occlumency and Legillimency, he would finally understand that several things happened in quick succession.

One: Snape stepped towards Sirius, ready to strike. James saw it all in the moment, and Sirius dwarfed Snape so severely—in height, in weight, in strength—that his own hysterical laughter only just bubbled below the surface.

Two: Lily reacted on instinct and threw herself in between the two men. She turned towards Snape with her back to Sirius, and she stood in front of him with her hands outstretched on either side of her, like a human shield.

Three: Snape wound his fist back and threw a punch—and a pretty decent one from James' perspective—but he did so almost in the exact same moment that Lily moved. He hadn't accounted for her stepping in front of Sirius, which meant that—

Four: he hit her square in the mouth, with enough force that James watched her neck snap backwards. Her entire body snapped backwards, and she fell against Sirius, who caught her out of instinct alone. Even from behind, James read Sirius' entire being as utterly stunned.

Five: Snape went stark white in the dim yellow light of James and Thomas' wands, his color dropping as Lily cried out and Sirius swore and Thomas inhaled sharply and James—well, and James made some noise he couldn't even qualify. "Oh—fuck, I'm so sorry," Snape said quickly, the words all in a rush. "Fuck, I'm so—I'm so sorry, Lilsy, I didn't mean—I meant—"

Lilsy.

Six: everyone froze, Thomas so rigidly at James' side that James actually heard the tension snap into his body.

Lilsy.

Seven: Snape lunged again, reaching for Lily's hand, which had gone up to cover her face. He grabbed the duo of wands she'd confiscated and wrenched them from her grasp in a flash.

Lilsy.

Eight: "What—" Thomas began, the word spoken slowly. James lifted his wand, ready to do something—to cast some spell that he hadn't yet decided upon, but action undeniable in his body's movements even though his mind hadn't yet caught up. An incantation formed on his lips—

Lilsy.

Nine: "Stupefy." A red flash of light shot from the tip of Snape's wand, and it caught Thomas square in the chest. In the blink of an eye, Thomas crumpled to the ground in an unceremonious heap.

Ten: James' senses all rushed back to him at once—blood pounding hard in his ears, fear acrid in his mouth, palms slippery as he clutched his wand, and body aching with tension.

"I'm fine," Lily said, although James heard the pain in her voice. The ability to move came back to his limbs suddenly, and he left Thomas' prone form, closing the gap to her side. She'd done her best to push herself away from Sirius' chest, who had done his best to hold onto her, and the two grappled in the midst of a weak but constant battle. "Sirius, I'm fine—I've been through worse than Sev punching me—let me go—"

"Nicely done," Sirius said, refusing to let his arms drop. His eyes had locked onto Snape, and his face had once again become a mask of hate. "You fucking idiot—"

"Stop," Lily snapped.

She'd spoken at precisely the same moment Snape said, yet again, "I'm so sorry." He'd gone paler still, so much so that James worried for a moment that he might faint, a concern that increased when he wobbled a little on his feet. "I—Lilsy, honestly, I didn't—"

"Stop saying her name," Sirius snarled, and he let go of Lily abruptly, so quickly that she almost fell. It suddenly didn't matter that Snape held not just one, but twowands. Sirius advanced upon him menacingly, arms raised as if ready to throttle him, and—

Lily grabbed him quickly, fists gripping the jacket of his dress robes, as she so often held onto James to kiss him. She all but tossed herself back into Sirius' arms, and he hadto either stop walking or bulldoze over her.

He stopped walking, but not willingly. "James—take her, mate—" he began, and the opposite struggle began. Suddenly Lily refused to let Sirius go, and it looked so bizarre, and would have been comical under almost any other circumstance, that James very nearly released the hysterical laughter that sat dormant in his chest next to his rising sense of panic.

James opened his mouth, ready to call Sirius off—fuck, was Snape onto something with his attack dog comment?—when—

"Sirius, look at me," Lily said, and Sirius reacted automatically. He glanced down at her face, and what he saw there made him freeze.

Blood flowed from her lip in a slow but steady stream, one dark as ink in the moonlight. For a second, it reminded James entirely of the vampire he'd caught sight of on his first nighttime jaunt to Knockturn Alley, who had cleaned blood off his chin with a long, pointed tongue.

The rage on Sirius' face—and in the set of his shoulders, and in the tension in his hands, and in whole of his being, really—dropped off all at once. "Shit, Lil," he said quietly, so softly that James almost didn't hear him. He used a knuckle to tip her chin up to his gaze, like one might lift a lover's mouth to kiss, and the hysterical laughter in James' chest threatened to burst.

He sucked in a hot, harsh breath that rattled in his lungs. "Okay, we—fuck, we—love, have you ever modified someone's memory?"

Lily shook her head, or at least moved her head just the tiniest bit from side to side as Sirius passed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. "Sev has," she said, and—

And, somehow, James had almost forgotten that Snape was even there, despite the fact that he'd caused all of the chaos before them.

Snape stood frozen in the moonlight, wand held at the ready and eyes black with dislike as he stared at the almost motionless forms of Lily and Sirius nestled so intimately against one another. "I—what?" he asked, his voice strangely rough, as if he hadn't used it for the span of several years. A little of the revulsion left his face as understanding struck him. "Did I tell you that?"

"Yes." Lily dropped her hands from Sirius' jacket, but she left them hanging at chest level, as if concerned she might have to grab him again at any moment. "When we were brewing."

"Oh." Understanding registered across Snape's expression, which went cold when he surveyed Sirius warily. "Are you going to come at me, Black?" Much of his previous bravado had fled, apparently vanishing the second his fist had made contact with Lily's face.

"Don't tempt me," Sirius shot back, but his bravado had dropped too. He wiped his fingers, sticky with Lily's blood, onto the leg of his trousers. "So—what? We modify his memory? And then—"

"We?" Snape repeated, but he fell silent before anyone could offer the sort of rebuke that Lily may have turned to deliver to him. "Here," he said, thrusting a hand towards Sirius.

He offered Sirius his wand, which he'd grabbed along with his own from Lily's hand.

Hysterical laughter again frothed in James' throat, both at the gesture and at Sirius and Snape's expressions. Snape looked floored at his own offer, and Sirius looked even more surprised as he accepted it. Immediately, Sirius' immediately closed off into something deeply suspicious, like he thought the whole thing might be a trap.

They'd become unlikely allies, it seemed. At least for the moment.

"Right." James licked his lips, which had gone as dry as his mouth. "So—Snape, can you modify his memory and make him think—I don't know, that he got knocked out before it happened? We'll tell him you got your wand, Sirius ended up with his too, and he got caught in the crossfire—"

"Yes." Lily spoke on exhale, and it sounded so much like a noise she might have made in times of extreme pleasure that James felt his heart leap expectantly. She'd turned to look at him, her hair a dark halo around her face, but he didn't catch sight of anything beyond that before her head snapped towards Snape instead. "Can you do that, Sev?" she asked, and she sounded—

Fuck, she sounded almost scared, as scared and sad and small as bright, brilliant Lily Evans could sound, and James reached for her on instinct, stretching out a hand towards her—

And then he caught himself. Snape didn't know about their relationship—couldn't know about their relationship—

But he knew how James felt. He'd looked past Lily-as-Diana's face and had seen it written all over James' expression, which he had to guess looked every bit as lovesick and longing and concerned as he felt. In turn, Snape's mouth contracted sourly, but the muscles went slack when Lily repeated his name a second time. She gave another gentle, "Sev?" that had him swallowing so thickly that James saw his Adam's apple bob.

Fuck, James knew Snape wasn't shit to her—not romantic shit, at least—but he still wanted to hex him out of pure, intense jealousy at the way she said his name.

Snape took a deep breath. "Yeah." He shook his head a little, and then went to where Thomas still lay like a prone bag of muscles, meat, and skin. "Yeah, give me a second. Try not to talk. It takes concentration."

As Snape crouched by Thomas' side with his back turned, James gave into his body's screaming need and rested a hand along the soft curve of Lily's lower back. She turned to look at him, and he could feel the rapid pace of her breaths under his hand as her eyes locked onto his face. "I'm fine," she whispered, so quietly that he hardly heard her even as he watched her split lip form the words. "Just fine."

He had about a thousand things he wanted to say in response, but nothing seemed quite right. He couldn't speak just then anyway, but even if he could have, he wouldn't have known what piece of his thoughts he should express—his fury towards Snape or his love for her or his anxiety over what might come or—

Snape muttered a string of complex incantations under his breath, words spoken as he pressed the tip of his wand to Thomas' temple. In the quiet, dark night air, James hardly dared even breathe as Snape cast, because if it didn't work—

Fuck, if it didn't work, what would they do?

Sirius had the same thought. All the evidence James needed to see that came from the tight grip Sirius had on his wand. He looked as if he waited on a single word or sound or sign that he could take down Snape, or Thomas, or both, right then and there.

Time passed oddly, sped up and slowed down simultaneously, and then—

Snape pulled his wand back abruptly, and with it came a tiny, glistening thread no thicker than a stand of hair. He flourished his wand lightly, and the thread vanished into the night air.

"There." Snape's voice came out quiet but certain. "Done. I took the bit just before—well, you know—"

Before he'd outed Lily and could have ended her life entirely—all their lives entirely, James didn't doubt, because he knew none of them would have escaped unscathed.

Snape stood and brushed off the knees of his trousers, where grass and dew clung tightly. "I'm sorry," he said again, like a broken record spinning on the same spot. His usual mask of dislike or rage or contempt had vanished, cracked open to reveal real, true feeling as he took in the sight of Lily's marred face, and he winced, shoulders cringing inward. "Genuinely. I'm so sorry."

"It's alright," Lily said, although it wasn't, not even close. "You're—Sev, you're sure you managed it? He won't—"

"I'm sure."

James doubted a lot of things about Snape— that he was a good person, that he held even basic morals or convictions, that he had a soul—but he'd never doubted him as a wizard. Innumerable duels with him had shown that he had skill and talent beyond most, and if he thought he'd modified Thomas' memory successfully, James didn't doubt that he had.

"Okay." Lily passed a hand over the thick, shining curls atop her head. "So—we wake him. Sev, you and I can take him inside, and then one of us should go get Declan."

"Why?" Sirius asked. He hadn't lowered his wand.

James answered for her. "If he finds out this happened without us telling him—I don't know." He didn't know, really. Would Declan care, even, that someone had allegedly gotten the jump on Thomas? "It might be best if—from the angle and everything—we say that you got him, Snape. You aimed for Sirius, shot past his shoulder—"

The open honesty on Snape's face collapsed entirely when he leveled James with a long, hard look. "Fine," he said finally, tone and expression once again guarded.

"You two need roughed up." Lily looked between Snape and Sirius quickly. "James, you do Sirius. I'll do Sev. Nothing serious, just—you have to look like you dueled when we bring Thomas back. Here—" She stepped towards Snape, and Sirius reached after her on what looked like instinct, like he couldn't bear the sight of her at Snape's side.

James knew that feeling all too well.

Snape, on the other hand, very nearly smiled when she busied her hands at his tie, plucking the knot open to jerk it roughly to the side. In two quick motions, she set the end ablaze, and then extinguished the fire after a few quick seconds of smoldering. She lifted her wand to his face next, and Snape gave a few random chuckles under his breath. "Go on, then," he said, and she didn't hesitate. She prodded his nose with the tip of her wand, and James heard the bone at the bridge of his nose crack. Blood began to pour forth immediately.

"That makes us even," she said lightly as he pinched the end of his nose, and he smiled at her.

"Not even close, but I appreciate it."

Sirius turned his back to them, eyes dancing as they so often did at the prospect of a good duel. "Go ahead, mate," he said, holding his arms open. It looked like he invited an embrace, not an assault. "What do you got?"

James would have much rather handled Snape—a fact he knew Lily knew, just based on the way she glanced over her shoulder with significant understanding. Injuring Sirius would physically hurt, just as much as if he hurt himself—worse, maybe. "Sorry," he muttered in preparation, and then he slashed Sirius cheek with a quick, efficient cutting charm. Sirius' cheekbone split, but he hardly so much as reacted, almost undoubtedly for James' benefit. James reached out and mussed his hair next, doing his best to disrupt the careless coif Sirius had combed earlier that evening. Unlike his own hair, Sirius' fell nearly back into place without prompting, perhaps the only well-behaved part of his entire self.

Sirius raised a hand to his cheek, which came away wet with blood. "Alright, then," he said brightly, determinedly. "You want to do the honors?" he asked lobbing the question towards Lily. "Should probably be you or Sniv—Snape."

Again, laughter threatened James just below the surface. What unlikely allies they had become, to the point that Snape had become his surname, not the nickname he and Sirius had coined on their very first day at Hogwarts.

Lily nodded, and knelt in the grass. Her hair dropped in front of her face as she bent, and a soft glow of light appeared from the tip of her wand as she pressed it to Thomas' temple. "Rennervate," James heard her murmur.

Thomas stirred, and for several solid seconds, James forgot how to breathe.

"Are you alright?" Lily asked, her tone soft and intimate and warm. James recognized her bedside manner immediately, present in her voice and in the hand she rested briefly against Thomas' cheek, but, fuck, that didn't mean he liked seeing it. At all.

"Yeah." Thomas struggled to sit up, and succeeded after a second. He shook his dark head once, twice, a third time, as if he attempted to clear away cobwebs that had appeared in his mind. "What happened?"

"Idiots," Lily said simply. She tucked a swath of hair behind her ear. "Idiots who never grew up, out here acting—"

"Fuck." Thomas stared at her, eyes blinking rapidly in secession, and then touched her face as she just had his. To James' surprise, Thomas' hand looked much more hesitant than hers. His fingertips just barely brushed her jaw, the touch almost reverent, like he thought that he pushed his luck even just by attempting to offer the briefest of caresses borne out of concern. Given Declan's attitude towards women and a few scattered comments Thomas had made here or there, he'd all but expected Thomas to behave like his father, but—

But he looked at Lily-as-Diana with great, deep concern, his mouth open and pulled down at the corners as his eyes scanned every inch of her face. He looked like he cared, but only for a second, before he caught sight of James over her shoulder and dropped his hand quickly, almost respectfully.

"Are you alright?" he asked her, and he reached into the inner pocket of his dress robes jacket and pulled forth a fine cotton handkerchief. "Here," he said, offering it to her.

James exhaled a breath he hadn't known he'd held.

Snape had done it. He'd succeeded. Thomas would have never offered such a chivalrous action towards Lily Evans, and he never would have looked at her as he looked at Diana then, with obvious distress at her condition.

Snape stepped forward and offered Thomas a hand. For a solid second, Thomas looked up at Snape as though surprised that he was even there—as if he'd forgotten that anyone occupied the dark night save for him and Lily—but then he accepted the hand, and he and Lily rose in tandem. Thomas' dark eyes swept across the rest of them, lingering on Snape's bloody nose and smoldering tie, then on the gash on Sirius' cheek, before they finally came to rest on James. He stared with an unasked question.

Snape explained first. "Sorry, Tommy," he said quietly, voice so low that James had to strain to hear him. "Black and I—well, we're done now. I hit you by accident."

"I'm fine." Thomas' voice cut, sharp as a knife. "No harm done there, but did you apologize to Diana? I can't believe you hit a woman, Severus—you're lucky James didn't kill you—"

"He apologized extensively," Lily said. She'd pressed Thomas' handkerchief to her lip, and pulled it back to look at the blood that had gathered. "I've gotten worse through brewing accidents, so it's really no harm done. I'd like to just move past it."

"You're fine with that?"

Thomas had directed the question beyond her, towards James, who forced himself to nod. "Yeah. I—you know, I have to listen to her. You've seen how she can be otherwise."

He'd done his best to sound engaging, to inject as much charm as humanly possible into the attempt at a joke, and he succeeded—and with greater success than he'd anticipated. Even Snape smiled a little, all while his nose continued to bleed.

Thomas smiled too, although that faded the second he looked towards Snape again. "You're lucky," he said shortly. "If you'd hit my girlfriend—"

Lily interrupted him. "But he didn't, and you don't speak for me, so that's that. Can we head inside? I don't want to get caught in the rain, and I'd like to check you over. You went down fairly heavy. I've seen these two after enough practice duels to know that you might have a concussion." She'd waved an airy hand towards Sirius and James at that, a hand that James saw just barely shook, something he would have missed entirely if he hadn't looked for it. Still, he didn't doubt that Thomas found that out soon enough, because she tucked her hand in the crook of his arm to usher him back towards the brilliantly-illuminated ballroom in the distance. Indeed, Thomas cast her a concerned look before he fell into step at her side, but he followed her readily enough. "I'll see you two back inside," she tossed to Sirius and James over one tanned shoulder, and then she and Thomas faded quickly into the night, Snape trailing silently behind them.

For a long moment, neither Sirius or James spoke.

Finally, James healed the cut on Sirius' cheek with one of the rudimentary healing charms Lily had taught him in recent days. The wound closed immediately, as if James had never opened the skin to begin with, and then James removed the dried blood with a second spell. "Padfoot—" he began, voice just above a whisper, and even that sounded loud in the dark, silent night.

Sirius interrupted him, voice rushing out like a dam had burst. "I'm so fucking sorry, Prongs," he said quickly, also whispering. "I didn't—fuck, I saw her talking to Dolohov and just wanted to get her out of there, but I guess Snivellus had the same idea. I brought her out here to give her a second, because she just looked addled, mate, and—I had no idea Snivellus was behind us, but of course he followed her. Of course he did. I should have known it—I don't know how I would have, because I didn't even know he was here, but he would do that, the creepy, obsessive—"

James interrupted what sounded like the beginnings of a long tirade. "What happened?"

Sirius drew a hand down his face like he tried to wipe some of the anguish from his expression. "I don't know. I don't think he came out here to row, but—she's right, I ran my mouth." He closed his eyes briefly, shoulders contracting inwards, and then shook his head. "You know—said something about how it seems like he's always after your women—"

James only just resisted the urge to sigh. "Padfoot."

"I know," Sirius said quickly. "I know. It was stupid. But—I fucking hate him, Prongs. I wasn't thinking about anything else. By the time I was, he'd said something back—brought up Reg, of course—and then I'd said something to that, and then—he cast first. That's not on me. That's on him." He waited for James to respond, and gave him the length of several heartbeats to do so, but James didn't speak. "How mad are you?" he asked finally, delicately, as if he expected an avalanche of anger to follow.

Maybe an avalanche of anger should have followed, but James didn't have it in him. "You can't do this shit," he said after a long moment. Exhaustion reigned in his tone. "You can't. You could get us killed, and—I won't let you put her in danger. I won't. She means—Padfoot, you know what she means to me."

He heard Sirius' throat click as he swallowed. "Yeah. I know."

"When you antagonize Snape, you're putting her in danger."

"I'm sorry."

"Tell her that."

"I will."

He would, James knew. He'd tell Lily that as soon as she'd listen to him, and she'd forgive him immediately and with probably less of a lecture than James had given. She was just that way.

"Are we alright?" Sirius asked. "Prongs, I didn't mean—"

"I know." James ran a hand over his hair, ruffling it as he went. It was an old habit, one he'd broken by the time he and Lily had gotten together—and purposefully broken, because she'd hated it—but it felt good to fall into once again. He took a deep breath. "Yeah, we're okay," he said, and Sirius let out his own deep breath, relief sagging his broad shoulders. "Just—think, Padfoot. Just think from here on out."

Sirius nodded eagerly. "I will, Prongs. I swear." He hesitated for a moment. "Should we go rescue her from that pair of gits?"

"Yeah."

On their way back to the ballroom, neither spoke. Sirius lit his wand alongside James, and James saw the looks his friend cast him as they walked, each glance heavy with anxiety that Sirius didn't bother hiding. "We need to learn how to modify memories," James said eventually, and Sirius resumed his eager nodding. Really, James knew that he would have agreed with just about anything he'd suggested just then.

"We'll ask Moony and Diana to look into it." Sirius said 'Diana' with great care, as if to drive home that he hadn't slipped up with her identity. "Couple of swots, those two. They'll have it figured out in no time. We can offer up Wormtail as the test subject. There has to be things he'd like to forget—hell, we can just erase one of the twelve thousand times McGonagall lectured us. Plenty of examples there to pull from."

James found himself smiling despite it all. "Sounds kind of fun when you put it that way," he admitted, and Sirius grinned in return, bright and pleased, as they approached the ballroom.

"I try. I—oh, mate." Sirius sounded torn somewhere half between amusement and disgust, and the emotions played out all over his face too, eyes dancing while his mouth twisted down. "Oh, mate, look at his fucking face."

James didn't need Sirius to point it out, because they couldn't get back inside without spotting Lily and Thomas in the foyer. Through the gleaming glass doors, he could see Lily with her wand aloft and her other hand on Thomas' chin. She checked his pupils with the light of her wand, a task James remembered well from his Quidditch days after particularly nasty blows from bludgers. The Arrows had retained a Healer on site, but when it had come to minor issues, he'd always very much preferred waiting to see her after practice so she could heal him personally. Her concern was just better, from her touch to her manner to her worry. She'd doted on him, and probably too much, because she had always made a mild injury kind of enjoyable.

Thomas wore an expression that James knew, just inherently knew, must have mirrored the way he'd looked at her during those moments of care—and still did, most like. Thomas looked like he tried very hard not to smile, as his lips periodically pressed together while he listened to whatever she said. He tipped his head slightly to the side after she said something James recognized as a miniature lecture just from the way she stood from behind, all cocked hip and impatient flutter of the hand at his jaw. Thomas did smile then, like she was the height of amusement.

Fuck, identifying with Thomas had felt old the moment it had started, but it kept getting older by the second.

"This is fucking hilarious," Sirius whispered, and he hung back a second before they reached the doors, laughter clearly bubbling below the surface of his voice. "He is proper into her. Do you know how pissed off he'd be if—"

He didn't verbalize the end, of course, because Snape had slipped up enough for one night, but the question hung implicit in the air. Do you know how pissed off he'd be if he knew she was actually a muggleborn and Lily Evans?

"It's the perfect vengeance," Sirius added, voice dropped even lower. "He might not know, but we know, and we know how much he would hate himself if he knew. Oh, that's fun. That's fun."

"Nothing about what just happened is fun." James' words came out clipped and flat.

"Wasn't our fault, though, was it? And it's fixed, yeah?"

It wasn't their fault, and it was fixed, and yet—

"This isn't a game, Sirius." He knew that Sirius knew that. Sure, Sirius could be reckless and rash and shoot off at the mouth, but he knew they weren't messing around. How many duels had Sirius stood next to him, perhaps laughing maniacally as he cast—as he always did with duels—but holding his ground, protecting James' back and sometimes even saving his life? There was no one he'd trust more with his life, save for Lily. But—

But that also meant trusting Sirius with Lily's life, and that? That came about a bit harder, even though it came just the same. Her safety mattered to James far, far more than his own.

Sirius had the decency to not look offended by the accusation. Really, he had the sense not to look offended, as if he heard the fear behind the brittle edge in James' voice. He probably did, and some of the ease in his manner collapsed. "I know, Prongs. But you're good. She's good. We're all good. We have to let it go for now so we can get through the rest of the night. Compartmentalization—isn't that what she's always preaching?"

Yes, it was, and how annoying that Sirius had picked up on that enough to parrot it at him too.

He clapped James on the shoulder, the motion all Fleamont Potter. "Come on. We have to face Avery's dad sometime, don't we?"

He had glanced past James' shoulder and spied Declan before James could. Snape had presumably fetched the elder Avery, and the two had taken up spots near Thomas' side. Declan didn't look concerned or angry as he listened to Lily talk. If anything, he looked curious—and maybe even a little amused or something close to it, which registered in the subtle shake of his shoulders as Lily dropped her hand from Thomas' face, extinguished the light from the end of her wand, and took a step back. James saw the desire in her posture to simply get away from Thomas, but doubted he would have noticed it if he didn't know her as well as he did. Before they'd dated, she'd held her shoulders very similarly any time he'd come near her at Hogwarts.

"—idiots," James heard her say after Sirius had closed the final steps and pulled open the door. She heard them behind her, and she cast a look at them as her dark hair swung between her shoulder blades. Her lower lip had stopped bleeding, but the cut Snape had inflicted remained swollen. "Just what stupid boys," she added in her very best prefect voice, and James could almost hear her about to launch into a lecture over some rule she'd caught him and his friends breaking their fifth or sixth year. He'd always rather liked that tone. "Speaking of—Declan, have you met Sirius?"

Declan grinned. "I have, but thank you for the introduction." A flicker of curiosity crossed his forehead, briefly wrinkling his brow—curiosity, not upset, not even a little. "Did you get the jump on Thomas?"

Snape spoke up quietly. "That was me, I think," he said, following their storyline completely and convincingly, even if he spoke more to the floor than to Declan. He'd healed his nose by then, and had fixed his tie as well, which had transformed his appearance back to normal. "I wasn't aiming for him, of course."

Sirius returned Declan's grin. "Hard to say, though. I deflected some spells and threw a few more, so it might have been me." Overall, he looked relatively unbothered by it all, like their world hadn't just almost ended mere minutes before, and like his heart didn't beat as fast as James knew it had to pound. His own pulse still hadn't returned to normal. "To be honest, I feel worse about Diana, even though that wasn't me either. I'm sorry you got hit, Avery, but—she's got a great face. I'd mess with your head over that any day, and James would be a lot less mad at me for it too."

He was goading Thomas—and also goading James a little, really. It was just him, him all over, to toss a comment about Lily-as-Diana in Thomas' direction when he'd just spied That Look on his face, proper noun, that James knew well.

Thomas smiled a little, but Sirius could do that to a person. He'd said it so winningly that James nearly smiled too. "I feel the same way about you."

It was rich, really, because how many times had James and his mates crossed wands with Thomas and his friends at Hogwarts—especially Snape, who still stood there, looking remarkably collected for someone who had almost ended Lily's life? How often had they tossed much worse hexes and curses the other's way, and beyond that, how many times had Lily or her friends gotten involved in scuffles with the Slytherins too? Arian Mulciber had tried to use the Imperius Curse on Mary Macdonald, for Merlin's sake. Lily had ended up defending herself from them countless times, more than James probably even knew. But Thomas looked towards Lily-as-Diana like he'd never lay a wand on a woman—and he wouldn't, James didn't doubt, if that woman were a pureblood.

"Are you alright?" Thomas asked her again, and she raised a hand to her mouth as if she'd forgotten what had even happened to her. Maybe she had. James wouldn't have blamed her for that a bit, not when he knew that her mind must have gone in a thousand different directions the second Snape had said her name.

"Just fine." She touched her lip, lifted her wand, and healed the cut without the need for a mirror. "Like I said, brewing can be dangerous, so it's nothing I'm not used to. I've had worse."

She'd had worse from them, tortured on the floor of the Malfoys' mansion. How the fuck could she say that with such apparent ease, as if that didn't cross her mind?

"Anyway, we thought you should know, Declan. I'm worried he's concussed, which means he's going home with you and Madeline tonight." She'd clearly decided that with no input from Thomas, who looked at her with raised eyebrows. Her own expression read of challenge as she met his gaze. "Someone will have to wake you up periodically to make sure you're fine. Have your house-elf do it. What, do you trust Evan with that? I wouldn't. Lucinda says he sleeps like the dead." She sounded all prefect, all Head Girl, all Healer, and James didn't doubt that the latter had somehow overcome her enough that she almost did worry about Thomas a little, despite who he was and all the things she knew he'd done. "You don't get to choose the patient," James could almost hear her say, because they'd drilled those sorts of things into her at St. Mungo's. Apparently she couldn't shake them entirely, war or not.

That was her all over. What had she said when he'd admitted that he sometimes thought of Declan as a person and not a complete monster? He had humanity. She had it too, but it wasn't exactly about to help them win a war.

"Nothing to your mother until we get home," Declan said to Thomas. He'd apparently accepted Lily's advice without question, and his tone had gone a little sharp. "Don't upset her here."

It was the closest James had ever heard to him caring about his wife—unless he cared more about a public scene. Really, that seemed more possible.

"We're good here?" Declan added, glancing around at the five of them. It wasn't a real question or a suggestion. It was a command.

"We're good." Unlike his father, Thomas looked directly to Snape as he spoke, like he'd immediately pegged him as the weak link in that decision. "And that's my call to make, since—aside from Diana—I'm the one who got it the worst."

In that moment—to his shock and horror and disgust—James liked Thomas more than he ever had before. He spoke to Snape exactly as James had in countless attempts at keeping Sirius in line. James recognized his tone of voice immediately as the sort of tone that said, simply, enough. Snape looked about as pleased about it as Sirius usually did, too.

"Good of you." Sirius offered his hand to Thomas, as he never would have at Hogwarts. It still looked like he didn't want to, but went through with it just the same. And that? That was better than nothing. Thomas looked about as surprised by the gesture as James felt, which came in the form of a heavy smack of disbelief across the back of his head, while he shook Sirius' hand.

Sirius knew they weren't playing a game. He took it seriously. He'd grown up at twenty-two like James wouldn't have believed him capable at eighteen.

Sirius ran his hand through his hair afterwards, and his eyes narrowed as he looked towards Snape. "For the record, though, Snape, you—"

Ah, there it was.

Snape was definitely an exception to any attempts at maturity on Sirius' part—but whatever. James would take what he could get. Baby steps.

"No," James said immediately, and Lily said, "Stop," at the same time.

Just as Snape had listened to Thomas, Sirius followed James' command—and, just like Snape, he looked none too happy about it. Still, he appeared a little pleased that he'd at least gotten to voice some facet of how he felt, and then held up his hands in mock surrender, as if he acquiesced something—and managed to make it look like he did James a favor by doing it.

"I'm going to need a moment," Lily said when Declan gestured back towards the ballroom, apparently satisfied enough with the turn of events for things to resume their normalcy. She offered James a reassuring smile in return to the look he shot her, which he knew had to ring with all of the concern that he felt. "Go ahead. I'll be in in a second."

The familiar urge to laugh bubbled in James' chest, and laugh rather hysterically, by the feel of it. Like he was about to leave her alone for a second after all of that.

Snape apparently had the same thought. "Can we talk?" he asked quietly, dark eyes on Lily's face and hands shoved in his pockets. Although he had no proof, James would have placed a large sum of money on the bet that he clutched his wand tightly in his right hand.

"Later," she said without hesitation, but perhaps with a little less of her customary warmth. Her fingers grasped her clutch tightly enough that her knuckles looked a little white.

A flicker of annoyance crossed Thomas' forehead, followed by something almost apologetic cast James' way. "We'll see you in there," he said firmly, and there was something very Declan about the way that he reached out and gripped Snape's shoulder as he made for the ballroom. He led Snape much in the same way Declan so often led James, marching him off as if he had the authority to control Snape's every move. Snape scowled, but he followed nonetheless.

"You good?" Sirius asked in undertone after Declan followed them. He stared intently at Lily, worry coloring his tone. "Did Avery—" He didn't finish, but he didn't have to. Did Avery act like he remembered anything? hung implicit in his tone.

Lily shook her head gently. "He has no idea," she said, voice all but a whisper. "I'm almost certain. He wouldn't have it in him to pretend if he actually remembered, so…it's fine. Everything is fine." She sounded like she tried to convince herself more than either of them. "Go back in," she said after a second, and there she looked at James. "I'll be—"

The urge to laugh remained. "Are you joking me? No."

"James—"

She'd started to sound frustrated, something Sirius picked up on immediately. "I'm going to let you two fight this out," he said, and he didn't wait for a response. He strolled away from them and disappeared into the ballroom with all of his customary casual grace, as if he'd slipped a mask back on after the tense, life-threatening events minutes earlier.

James reached for Lily immediately, and even just her cheek under his hand somehow felt tense, as if she held her jaw tightly. "Love—"

She took a step back—half a step, really, but enough to duck out from under his touch. "If you stay here—" she began, but halted her words abruptly. Still, James didn't need to hear them. She shot him a Look, proper noun, that spoke volumes, even though he only caught a glimpse. It was all bitten lower lip and wide, pleading eyes, and he didn't need to hear a single further thing or look at her for another moment. Heat swept through his stomach, hot and low and heavy. His pulse, which still raced, skyrocketed further.

If he stayed there with her, the adrenaline coursing in both of them would almost certainly flip into something much, much more pleasurable, just as it always seemed to in tense moments. She looked at him like she all but begged for him to grab her and distract her—to help her cope, as he'd teased her before—and, fuck, he'd never wanted anything so badly in his life.

It took him less than ten seconds to make up his mind.

"Where?" he asked, and he heard how his voice had shifted entirely. The single word came out clipped, almost crackling with the electricity between them, and he knew she felt it too, but—

"When we get home."

Home.

Would he ever tire of hearing her call it that?

He loved it even then, as frustration hit the back of his neck to tighten the muscles in a flash. He loved it and he loved her, but she was truly, truly stupid if she thought that she could look at him like that and then get him to let her be. Sure, he'd had the strength to tell her no before—even after meeting Voldemort for the first time—but nothing compared to the way his heart had almost physically stopped just minutes before as they'd stood outside in the warm, dark night. He would take countless evenings with Voldemort, innumerable Death Eater assaults and attacks like the one in Knockturn Alley, and endless events with the pureblood faction over even another second of the sort of hot, nauseous, horrible panic that had blossomed and then festered in his stomach the second he'd heard Snape say Lily's name.

He kissed her, hands on either side of her face to bring her mouth up to his, and he could feel the frantic pace of her heart as his fingers splayed down the length of her neck, pressing against her pulse point. Her body almost thrummed from it, vibrating just the slightest bit under his touch, and he felt the tension he'd noticed in her jaw throughout the entirety of her body. He wanted nothing more than to feel those muscles unwind and then slacken entirely when she came, and the desire to get her there overtook his mind and body so abruptly that he almost forgot how to breathe.

"Where?" he repeated, and more insistently than before. "I'm going to get you there, love, and you know it. I'll put in the work and convince you if you want to play it that way, but if you don't want someone to walk out here and see me with my hand in your robes—"

For a moment, her forehead crinkled with what almost looked like pain, before the expression collapsed utterly. She looked like something had shifted and then broken inside her.

That something was her resolve, and it flew entirely out the window.

She took his hand without a word, her fingers woven through his, and pulled him from the foyer and down the hallway near the bathrooms with steps light and quick and entirely impatient. Stopping in front of a door just to the right of the ladies' room, she took her wand from her clutch and unlocked the knob with a swift sweeping motion. "Madeline brought me in here earlier to help her with décor," she explained, but he only half heard her. Blood pounded in his ears as she opened the door, and he all but pushed her through the doorframe, his cock already hardening just at the thought of what he planned to do to her in mere seconds.

The only light in the room came from streetlamps, which poured weakly through the windows, but he could still make out the confines of the small storage room. Several stacks of chairs lined one wall, and circular tables, much like those inside the ballroom, sat at scattered intervals. A pile of dozens of boxes sat in the middle of the room, and he could see the faint blue of one of the tablecloths from the ballroom spilling over the side of a cardboard flap.

Lily locked the door. He watched her do it, every muscle in his body coiled tightly with anticipation, and it didn't help that it took her longer than it normally would have. She looked intent on not just locking and silencing the door, but doing so intensely. She cast not just one locking spell, and not two, but three.

It was a good thing she thought to do it, because he hardly had the capacity to even consider such precautions. What would happen if Madeline Avery stopped by the room and walked in on James kneeled at Lily's feet, his mouth between her legs? Or if Snape decided to investigate where they'd gone, and came to find Lily straddled across James' lap, her dress robes hitched up around her hips so she could ride him? Or if some person they didn't even know waltzed into the room on accident and found Lily bent over one of the tables, her chest pressed against the gleaming tabletop as James thrust into her from behind? He didn't even have it in him to consider those consequences.

Fuck, he wanted all of that, all of it at once, and he couldn't get to her fast enough. He grabbed her wand from her the second she stopped casting, and then her clutch as well, just so he could toss them carelessly to the ground and have her hands available to him. In several short, quick movements, moves he didn't even think through, he had her pressed up against the door. He trapped her hands in his and pinned them above her head before he thrust his body into hers, pressing every inch of him as close to her as possible. The layers of clothing separating his skin from hers made him almost ache, but he made no move to pull at her robes or at his. Instead, he sought her mouth again, and she all but lifted herself onto her toes to return his kiss, her back arched and breasts soft against his chest. Kissing her came as naturally as ever, a smooth, practiced dance that they'd perfected hundreds—probably thousands—of times, but the sweep of her tongue against his, slow and sensual and entirely her, still left him groaning as appreciatively as he had the first time he'd really, truly snogged her years and years before.

"I love you." The words flew from his mouth without thought, and they sounded every bit as tense and tight and desperate as he felt. "Fuck, I love you, and—we're safe, Evans. You're safe. Everything is fine, and we're fine, and nothing—"

He just had to hear himself say it, to tell her that everything that had happened no longer mattered, that nothing could hurt her or him or them, because he had to believe it too. He had to. If Snape's slipup had gone any other way—if he'd decided not to rectify the situation by stunning Thomas, if he hadn't modified his memory successfully or decided not to tamper with it at all—

Fucked. They would have all been fucked, James and Sirius and especially Lily. Would they have even made it through the night? What would Thomas have done? Would he have run to Declan with the news of Lily's identity, and would Declan have accosted them immediately? Would they have taken them straight to Voldemort to get to the bottom of it all?

It was all so much, too much, to even think about. That fear still coursed through his veins, but, as he'd suspected, the adrenaline that came along with it transformed quickly into a ravenous need for her. He needed to lose himself in her, and to give her that in return—the latter especially. She deserved something to break the tension in her body and the upset in her eyes, and he wanted to give it to her so badly that it hurt.

"Baby—" she began, but she stopped abruptly when he shifted his hands. He spread the fingers of his left hand to close over both of her wrists, and then he dropped his right hand down to the tantalizingly high slit of her dress robes that had taunted him all night. He had his fingers between the warmth of her thighs within seconds, and immediately began to trace the center of her knickers with long, slow strokes.

Her expression crumbled yet again, falling into something needy with the same big eyes she'd given him in the entrance minutes before. That look alone would have gotten him hard, but he'd come into the room already halfway there, and touching her even over her knickers had sent any remaining blood rushing to his cock. The quiet, breathless noise she made as he allowed his fingers to linger over her clit made his cock twitch with anticipation, and he found himself rocking against her hip in tandem to the languid strokes he offered her, the friction embarrassingly delicious even just by itself.

Everything with her was embarrassingly delicious. He should have gotten used to it by then, but he still hadn't.

"Tell me what you want, love," he said, his voice like gravel, as she tipped her head back in pleasure. "I'll give you anything you want. I need to make you come—I need to. How—"

"Just like that." She made one of those quiet, incredible whimpers as he pushed her knickers aside so he could actually touch her, and he made some sound in response, a strangled sort of moan, when he found her already wet enough that he knew he could have entered her easily. "Jesus Christ, James—"

He passed the pad of his thumb over her clit lightly, the caress slow and repetitious and offering just enough pressure to make her twist promisingly, her hips lifting from the door to try to press more fully into his hand. She whimpered again, the sound soft and pretty and pleading, and the shift in her expression, from needy to positively begging, left him unable to even look at her anymore. He kissed her again, and then dotted kisses from her mouth to every bit of her he could think of—along the tense line of her jaw; up to her ear, where her sweet-smelling hair tickled his face pleasantly; down the long curve of her graceful neck; across her collarbone to the other side of her neck, where he slowed the progress of his lips almost to a crawl. The flush of her skin radiated heat, and he felt her fingers clench and then release as he nipped at a spot just below her ear.

"Tell me what you want," he repeated, and she shivered as he drew his attention to press barely-there, faint kisses up over her ear. "Talk, Evans. Tell me already, because I'm going to make you—"

"I want your mouth." She sounded almost frantic over it, all the words rushed together, and he let go of her wrists immediately to drop to his knees, the move instinctual. His body just went along with it on its own accord, determined to shake the tension from her muscles, and he had his glasses off and tossed carelessly aside and her dress robes hiked up before he even realized that he'd knelt before her. Her knickers came down next, the removal began by his teeth and finished by his hands, and he didn't pause to tease her as he might have normally. The idea didn't even cross his mind, really, because almost nothing crossed his mind just then except for the desire to taste her and feel her come against his tongue.

Still, despite his brain all but shutting down, a flicker of a thought crossed his mind as he glanced up after she buried her hands in his hair in a swift, perfectly-familiar motion.

He'd never actually shagged her as Diana before.

Sure, he'd snogged her. She'd gotten him off that way too, in one of the very first times they'd had to attend a stupid pureblood event. But he'd never touched her in any way past caresses over her clothes, not when she looked like someone else.

And yet she didn't look like someone else. She still somehow looked like her, like Lily Evans, the woman of his dreams who he loved so much that the disaster they'd just averted had certainly taken several years off of his life. Maybe she would have looked different if he'd had the benefit of a full set of lights, but he somehow thought not. In his mind, he'd managed to successfully meld together the physical differences between Lily and Diana into one person. It could have felt like cheating—maybe it should have felt like cheating—but it didn't matter that her skin was tanned rather than Lily's delicate white, or that her hair and eyes were dark instead of shades of vibrant flames and emeralds. It didn't matter that her mouth was fuller or her nose slightly altered or that her cheekbones had sharpened a little, all things he could pick out as different from saw Lily in her face as she looked down at him, her lower lip between her teeth and her brow furrowed in need, and he heard Lily too when she made a sound unique to her, a quiet, breathless gasp, as he ran his tongue over her with one slow, smooth motion.

"Oh." Her voice broke even on the single syllable, and the sound of it drove him forward, his fingers joining his mouth between her thighs. "Oh, fuck, baby—"

"Keep talking," he said against her—no, demanded against her, and his mouth and fingers aided that demand as he shifted her leg up over his shoulder to angle her better. In response, she gripped his hair, her fingers insistent in a wonderful way that only came from going down on her.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, just—do that again." She seemed to have already lost the ability to express herself in any other way than swearing, and each word came out sharper and more intensely than the last, as if she built steadily towards climax even then. Obediently, he flicked his tongue against her clit as he had moments before, hardly more than the lightest of brushes, and she rewarded him with a faint cry that rang with promise. "Oh, I love that. I—Christ, James, I love you."

It was somehow the most erotic thing she could have said to him in that moment, both in the words themselves but also in the way she said them, like he'd knocked the air out of her and had left her physically incapable of getting it back. Her breaths came in quick and shaky, more gasps than anything else, and she sounded just gone, already out of her head and incapable of thinking about a single thing other than him and the slow, careful movement of his tongue and the increased speed of his fingers. He groaned against her, hardly able to even think of anything past the gathering tension in her thighs or the way she'd already begun to contract promisingly around his fingers, and she shivered a little at the sensation. The gentle quake in her muscles ran the length of her body, and he moved his free hand to stroke the sensitive skin just above her hip, an area that always made her writhe with desire. She didn't disappoint him. Her hips lifted again, more insistently than when he'd first begun to touch her, and her movements seemed almost outside her control as she rolled her hips against his mouth like she often did when riding his hand or his cock.

It was all so much—too much, maybe—enough that the pounding of blood in his ears only accentuated the vague hum of static that had overtaken his brain. His cock ached. His body ached. His soul ached from wanting her, and he couldn't get enough of her—of the way she tasted; of the way she felt; of the way her body moved with such smooth, enticing rhythm; of the way she said his name as if she'd forgotten everything on earth except for him. Her fingers tugged insistently at his hair, raising goosebumps on his arms, the pressure applied in tandem to the repetitious movement of her hips. Those goosebumps came from a thrill unique to her, as it was all unique to her, every last bit that overwhelmed every last one of his senses. If he shagged a thousand other women, he didn't doubt for a moment that he could have picked her out of a lineup blindfolded, and without pause. She sounded like her, tasted like her, smelled like her, and felt like her. She even looked like her when he glanced up at her and saw the exposed hollow of her throat as she tipped her head back in pleasure. Everything about her was just Lily Evans, too remarkable by far, too incredible by far. There was nothing else—no one else—like her. He'd already known that—how could he not?—but the very real near-death experience they'd had moments before, paired with the hoarse sound of her cries and the unbelievable way she rode his mouth, solidified it for him all over again.

"I want you inside me when I come," she told him after several long, mind-blowing minutes filled with nothing more than her blissful, pleading cries. The words sounded strange, forced out from somewhere deep in her throat, and he circled her clit slowly with his tongue in response, once, twice, a third time. Her reaction was everything he wanted—panicked, almost, the inhalation of her breath so harsh that it nearly sounded like it hurt, and the muscles of her legs tensed further and then further still in anticipation. "Oh—oh, fuck. Baby—baby, please."

His mouth formed a swear that he couldn't express, far too invested in bringing her to the brink to halt his progress for even a second. Her request flew in one ear and then out the other, and he only truly thought about what she'd said when she gave his hair a pleasurable, more insistent tug, something meant to draw him back to reality and away from his single-minded determination to make her come so hard that she finally relaxed. "I love when you do that," he said, mouth just removed from her, and she gave a quiet, delicious whimper in return as she tugged his hair again with more purpose than before. He swore in response, mouth hot against her and his own breath coming in just as sharply as hers. "Fucking—shit, Lily." Without thinking, he shifted his left hand from her hip to encircle her waist, his palm open and flat against her arse so he could drag her even closer to him. "You're going to come like this, and then you'll come again when I'm inside you." She made a quiet noise of protest, apparently beyond words, and just the sound of it cracked his already overwrought brain even further. "I'm not asking you, Evans. I'm telling you—that's what's going to happen. Come."

His words had their desire effect. Just the sound of his voice at the very first word had left her fluttering around his fingers in a specific, telltale way that revealed just how close he'd gotten her to the edge. She always reacted that way when he spoke to her, unlike anything else he could do to her in bed, and it left her whimpering and almost whining, all quiet noises of deep desire held in the back of her throat. Those noises broke free as he returned his attention to her clit, the pace of his tongue unrelenting, and he brought the speed of his fingers up to match it, working both in tandem. She cried out with such deep feeling that he moaned, the sound muffled against her and almost inaudible under the intensity of her cries, and he could feel himself nudging her closer and closer to climax with each careful stroke of his fingers, the pressure of her muscles tight in a familiar way he could almost feel on his twitching, aching, desperate cock.

With one final little push, she came.

Her hold on his hair intensified and then released, and the rest of her body followed suit simultaneously. Every bit of her contracted for the span of several beats and then broke, and with that breaking she very nearly collapsed. "James," she said, and the sharpness in her voice broke with her body. It seemed as though her body gave up fully, as the one leg holding her up began to shake uncontrollably. He hadn't planned the arm around her waist to anchor her, but that happy coincidence allowed him to tighten his grip and stabilize her. The second she felt that he had her, she let go completely. He held her there as she gave up and gave in and went completely limp, her body suddenly nothing more than a broken pile of limbs and loose muscles that spasmed against his tongue and around his fingers.

Nothing on earth—nothing on earth—made his chest roar with pride quite like making her come, and especially with that sort of intensity.

"Oh my god," she breathed as she rode out the rest of her climax, the roll of her hips slower than before, and he altered the pace of his caresses to match. "Oh my god, Potter, that—I needed that so badly. I still—I need you, I need your cock, I need you inside me, please, please—"

It wasn't fair, the way she could run him with hardly more than a single sentence or two. He'd already wanted inside her, and with such deep desire that he felt like he might almost drown in it, but between 'your cock' and 'inside me' and just flat-out needing, he couldn't remember a time he'd felt quite as frenzied to fuck her, even though he didn't doubt that he'd felt similarly probably within the previous day or two. She just did that to him, and he loved it and he hated it and he needed her in return, so intensely and immediately that his body acted again on its own, as it so often did around her.

Really, calling him 'Potter' hadn't exactly helped matters, although it absolutely had at the same time.

"Tell me where," he demanded as he stood, voice coming roughly from somewhere deep in his chest. She whimpered a little at the loss of his mouth, and it flipped his stomach in anticipation. "Where—"

She didn't let him finish. "Table," she said, and that was all he needed. Her legs continued to shake a little, but she barely had time to shift her weight before he cleared the few feet towards one of the circular tables and all but dragged her with him. "Take off my robes," she said before he could lift her onto the table like he so desperately wanted. "Otherwise they'll wrinkle, and I don't—"

The concern was so her, so wonderfully logical and thoughtful and Lily Evans, that despite the actual pain he felt from wanting her, he couldn't help it. He laughed.

"You're so cute." He sought the back of her robes with impatient fingers, hunting down the zipper he'd secured for her earlier that night—and thank Merlin for that, that he'd already known how to get her out of them because he'd helped her into them, because every second he spent outside of her only hurt more and more. "I'm seriously going to—fuck, Lily. Fuck."

She hadn't even done anything, really, just cupped him through the front of his trousers, but it was enough to make his head swim. It was nowhere near what he ideally wanted, but the warmth and pressure of her hand was still better than nothing—still better than it had any right to be, really—and he pushed into her palm on instinct. That action alone was enough to set her into motion, and she began to work at his belt with one hand as she stroked him with the other. Somehow, she had his belt undone before he'd even located the zipper of her robes, but he found the fastening eventually, and he unzipped her and pulled her straps down her shoulders. The whole length of the silky fabric of her robes would have pooled around her ankles if the straps hadn't caught upon her forearms.

"Let me," she said when he went to pull her hands away from his waist so he could further the progress of her robes, and he heard the long-suffering sigh he gave in return, one he didn't intend on making. "I don't trust you not to just leave them on the floor and step on them and wrinkle them worse than if you left them on—"

It was a decent point, really.

He picked up her progress on his trousers. While his fingers still refused to cooperate fully, the task of undoing his own clothing came easier than hers, probably because he found himself far, far less distracting than he did her. Even still, it took him longer to undo his trousers than it probably should have, but it didn't surprise him at all. She undressed in front of him, after all, and that would always entirely distract him, no matter what other tasks he had at hand. Not only that, but the second she slipped her robes down and off, she stood entirely bare to him, bare except for her shoes—the pair he loved—and her jewelry and the long length of her hair that tumbled across her shoulders. He probably should have gotten used to the sight long before, because he knew they'd spent countless days together naked by that point, but it still knocked him senseless. His hands stilled at his trousers, momentarily caught off-guard even though he'd fully expected to see her in absolutely nothing before him.

Worst of all? Worst of all, it didn't even look like she knew that she had that effect on him. She missed the way his body froze entirely, too caught up in removing her robes carefully so she could drape them across the back of a nearby chair to avoid any pesky wrinkles. She perched her bum on the edge of the table to do so—it looked like the full strength of her legs still hadn't returned to normal, he couldn't help but note with pride even as his brain jammed. When she looked back to him, her eyebrows hit her hairline, those eyebrows shaped just like hers above eyes shaped just like hers, no matter the change in the color of both.

"What?" she asked, but he just shook his head, voice lost somewhere in his throat and very aware that, even though he might find it, he wouldn't manage to find the correct words to tell her just how unbelievable she looked. She caught a bit of it in his expression, at least, evident in the brief duck of her head, but she overcame the burgeoning shyness quickly enough. Her hands went to the collar of his jacket, and then she had her mouth on his, fingers gripping to draw him close enough between her legs that he brushed the smooth, hot skin of her thighs as he hurried resumed unfastening his trousers with even less skill than before. "You're wearing too many clothes," she said, pushing his jacket off his shoulders, and after he unbuttoned his trousers and got the zipper down, he had no choice but to drop his arms and let the jacket fall to the ground. She tilted her head, opening her mouth under his so that her tongue could sweep his lower lip.

He reached instinctively for her hair, moan lost in her mouth, as about fifty different responses blossomed and then wilted in his brain, ranging from sensible to utterly absurd. Each reply got lost in snogging her, just as all thought got lost in snogging her. He could have happily died that way, one hand in her hair while the other worked to pull his trousers and pants down just enough to free his cock, because even just snogging her was somehow so good that nothing else mattered on earth—somehow, not even getting inside her, although he wanted that more than anything else he could imagine. Things were just like that with her, still too good, still too perfect, and he'd already begun to suspect that that would never change.

"I don't care if my robes get wrinkled and I look like shit," he finally managed. It remained the one line of logic that continued to run through his brain after she'd opened the buttons on his shirt in record time and ran her hands down his chest in open, admiring strokes. Only as her hands neared his waist did he recognize the danger in her path of caresses, and he snatched both of her hands quickly in his own. "Fuck off with that." He heard the impatience in his voice. "I'm going to make you come again, love, which means I can't deal with your hands right now. You're too good at—"

Her impatience mirrored his exactly. "So just—"

He might have laughed if he'd felt drawn even just a little bit less tightly, but his nerves were all but shot from wanting her. She sounded almost angry—beautifully, wonderfully angry—and she looked it a little too, eyes visibly flashing even in the dark room. He might have laughed again a second later, when he closed his hands around her hips and dragged her even closer to the edge of the table, because she didn't see it coming and she gave a soft squeal of surprise as the short, jerking motion rocked her back onto her elbows. Yet he was wound too tightly to laugh, and he couldn't laugh just then, because it didn't matter that he'd taken her similarly dozens of times, with her stretched out across the top of some flat surface while he'd stood or knelt at the side—of a bed, of a desk, of a table, of a couch, hell, of the stairs at his parents' house earlier that week when they hadn't quite made it up to her (their) room. The sight of her that way still knocked the breath from him every time, still lit his veins on fire, still made his heart pound so hard that he felt for a moment like he might pass out just from sheer want of her.

And none of those feelings—none of them—compared at all to how it felt to lift her hips and slide slowly inside her while she dissolved into whimpers the moment the tip of his cock brushed her entrance.

"Fuck, Evans." The words came out choked, but he heard something past heat reverberate in his tone—affection, undoubtedly, and tenderness, too. It wasn't just heat in his voice, but warmth, which surprised him not at all, even though he hadn't planned it—or planned to say anything, really, although he never did when in the throes of the moment with her. "You feel—fuck, how do you still feel this good? You're fucking perfect."

She'd tipped her head back, mouth gently open to make the tiny cries that stroked his ego with each passing second, and the delicate arch of her throat only increased as her back lifted almost of its own accord when he began to rock against her. Each movement was hardly a movement at all, just a slow roll of his hips against hers with more careful control than he would have thought himself capable of when lust and desire had all but overtaken him, but he managed somehow. She rewarded him with a breathless plea of his name, and when he bent to kiss her, she curled an arm around his neck, fingers once again drawn to his hair. Her legs followed, first one and then the other, and then she had them clutched so tightly around his waist that he couldn't have moved faster or harder if he'd wanted. At the same time, he very much didn't want to, because she sounded and felt so incredibly pleased with each slow, sensual rock that he knew he would have kept up the motion even if he'd had another choice.

"You're going to come again," he said, the words ragged, when he could finally wrench his mouth from hers. She clenched around him almost immediately, at the very suggestion of his voice, and he had to drop his face into her neck as a heavy wave of pleasure crashed over him. "Just—holy shit, Evans, you're going tocome for me." He slid a hand underneath her backside to tilt her higher, the move driven on by instinct rather than thought, and his instinct proved correct, as it always did with her. Her nails scraped at the back of his neck, sharp and pleasant, and the swivel of her own hips picked up speed, egged on by the shift in angle that clearly brought things even more together for her. "You're going to come for me here, and you're going to come for me again when we get home, because you're going to ride my face until you can't move anymore, and then I'm going to fucking pound you into our bed—"

"Fuck, baby." She sounded almost pained. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—there." He'd just pulled back to look at her, but he hit on something inside her, a certain spot that made her almost melt against him but tense at the same time. Her muscles squeezed around him so hard that he had to drop his head again, that time to her chest, just to steady himself. The feel of her, the sound of her, the look of her, stretched out on her back with pure pleasure dominating every feature of her face and her breasts thrust into the air—it was all enough that he could hardly stand it. "There—just—just like that. Oh, god, James. You're—fuck, you're killing me."

She'd stolen his mantra right out of his mouth, and despite the growing pressure around his cock and the incredible way she worked her hips against his, the rhythm slow and sinfully familiar, he still exhaled a chuckle against her breast as he skimmed his lips across her nipple. She arched into his mouth, once again offering a tiny whimper, and he complied with her wordless plea and took her nipple between his lips. "You're so hot when you beg," he said, and her nails scraped lightly against his scalp again. He shivered, and when she felt it, she repeated the movement, her fingers tight and insistent. "Tell me what you want, Evans. Will you come like this? Do you need—fuck, what—tell me what you need."

The last sentence came out more choked than the others, as she dropped her legs from around his waist and lifted them instead, the hint—no, the instruction, really—evident even without words. Dragging his mouth from her breast, he stood back up and slipped her ankles up onto his shoulders. Cupping his hands under her arse, he tilted her hips upwards, and the second he pulled out of her and thrust back in, deeper than before, deeper than what even felt possible—

Well, the world melted away.

He couldn't describe it any other way. In that moment, nothing on earth mattered—nothing, and he couldn't even think about anything other than the hot responsiveness of her body and the sharp cry she gave and the sight of his cock plunging between her thighs over and over and over again, each thrust harder and more demanding and more incredible than the last. He lost track of everything else—where he was, what he was doing there, the near-catastrophe they'd somehow just avoided, the seriousness of the mission they had outside the storage room's doors—and suddenly nothing else mattered except the desperate way she said his name over and over and over again and how she contracted around him several times before really tightening as he got the angle exactly right.

"Merlin, you love it like this, don't you?" he asked as she stretched her arms up above her head to clutch the rim of the table. It didn't matter that he lacked his glasses. He could see the tension in her arms that radiated down to the white knuckles of her hands, tension that ran the length of her body, building back up from when she'd come before. "Tell me—love, fuck, please tell me you're close."

Her thighs shook with a mass of tremors from muscles that had never regained their full strength after she'd come against his mouth, but she looked beyond caring that her body had given away her neediness. "I'm so close," she breathed, voice breaking gently in a way that made him swear faintly under his breath. "I'm so close. I want—baby, I want you like this again when we get home. I want to get in bed with you and never leave. Promise me we'll stay in bed all day tomorrow. Promise me."

Again, for the thousandth time, he could have laughed. Promise her? Like he hadn't spent literal weeks trying to talk her into staying in bed with him for full days, only to have her reject the offer time and again because her need to stay busy bordered on compulsion? He didn't need to promise her, because he'd never wanted anything more in his fucking life.

But he couldn't laugh, not when she felt like she did and looked like she did and sounded like she did, and especially not when she shifted her legs suddenly, moving her left leg over to his other shoulder to cross at the ankles with her right leg, because that changed everything. "Jesus fuck, Evans," he swore, and whatever remaining bits and pieces of his brain remained immediately exploded into smithereens. "I fucking love that. You—fuck, how can that make you feel even better? It's not—"

It wasn't fair, really, how just a delicate cross of her ankles could somehow tighten her further, creating such pressure on his cock that he nearly came with a single further thrust. He clamped his eyes shut on instinct, fingers digging into her arse hard enough that he didn't doubt that she'd bruise, and he lifted a knee up onto the table for leverage, desperate to thrust into her harder, deeper, just more—

"I'll stay in bed with you forever, love." He couldn't see her, determined not to look at her—especially when she sounded like she did, her voice a symphony of pleading cries—but he could feel the effect his words had as she squeezed his poor, aching cock even harder. "Shit—holy shit—you—Evans, you deserve whatever you want after tonight. I'll give you anything you want."

He hadn't planned to say it, or to reference the very real danger of the night at all. She wanted escape—she needed escape—and he knew that that was what she sought in his cock, just like he sought the same inside her. Yet the words flew from his mouth unplanned, like they always seemed to around her, and it shifted something in the air. He could feel it without even looking at her, and despite his resolve not to chance a glance at her face for fear it might tip him over the edge into his burgeoning release, he opened his eyes.

Her forehead had wrinkled, expression an open map of raw desire and pleasure and need, and she had her own eyes closed and lower lip between her teeth. Yet her eyes flew open in the next second, almost as if she felt him looking at her, and something changed in her eyes. A certain vulnerability read in her gaze—vulnerability past the physical vulnerability of sex—and the pressure of her teeth increased for a second. "I was so scared," she said, and it sounded like an admittance, a breathless reveal of something deep and shameful.

His heart broke.

"Evans." Her name came out as a verbal caress, gentle and tender and loving, and he felt all that towards her despite the frantic pace of his thrusts that he didn't pause for a second. He couldn't pause for a second, so close on the cusp of climax that Voldemort himself could have burst into the room and he wouldn't have so much as blinked. He groaned softly as she clenched—hard—at the sound of her name. "Evans, you're safe. I'd—love, I would have killed Avery before I'd let anything happen to you."

Again, he hadn't planned to say it. He hadn't even really thought it, not past perhaps a flash of the idea in the first waves of panic that had hit him after Snape's slipup, but as he laid the words out for her, open and honest and ugly, he recognized the truth in them.

He would have killed Thomas. Without question. If it came down to it, he wouldn't have hesitated for a second. Sure, he would have tried everything else first, but in the end—

In the end, he would have figured out how to cast the Killing Curse and dealt with the fallout if it meant protecting Lily. He would kill for her.

She saw the reality of it in his face. He could pinpoint the exact moment that she realized that he meant it, because something broke in her expression, some shift that he couldn't quite place. "James—" she said, her voice gentle, and she reached for him with an outstretched arm.

His movements all came instinctually. He parted her legs again and leaned down to her, pressing every inch of himself to every inch of her he could find, and her mouth opened under his immediately, her tongue soft and stroking as he grinded against her in a way that made her gasp. "Come." The word hurt to pull from his chest, as every muscle in his body stretched to the limit while he held back his own end. "I know you're there. I know you're there. Just—fuck, just let go, love. I've got you. I've got you—"

She was nearly there, so nearly there that the pleasure of the intensity of it all almost hurt. She fluttered around him again and again, muscles contracting and releasing as she built towards climax, each pull dragging him closer and closer to the edge along with her. Her hands went to cup his cheeks, her touch somehow gentle in comparison to the tight, desperate grip he maintained on her arse, and he had the familiar, distinct feeling that she looked into his soul as she teetered on the brink. And then—

Then he nudged her just right, just enough to finish what had built from the moment he'd first thrust inside her, and she toppled over the ledge into oblivion.

Her body broke, her expression broke, her voice broke, all of it shattering into a thousand little pieces around and over and almost through him. "James," she said, and a winded sob followed as she spasmed around him, her cries wild and brazen. "James, James—baby, Jesus Christ, yes, yes, yes—"

It all followed that, all of the hungry, thirsty, desperate things she said, and he knew he responded with the half-formed thoughts in his mind. "You feel so fucking good," he heard himself tell her, voice as raspy as his breathing and words pushed out between teeth gritted with thick, impossible pleasure. "I love watching you come. It's so fucking hot. Shit, I—holy shit, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you—"

Declarations of love in the moments before he came? That had 'eighteen again' written all over it, didn't it?

He didn't care. He did love her, so much that it had somehow consumed his entire life in the way he'd once feared, scared that he'd lose himself in her as he had years before. Yet that fear no longer mattered. It no longer even registered in the back of his brain, and not just because nothing registered in his mind in those seconds right before he came. A single glance at her face, at the way she stared into his soul as she watched him chase his own pleasure, told him everything he needed to know about how she felt in return.

She was his, absolutely, unequivocally his. He owned her, just like she owned him.

Nothing else mattered except that.

"Come inside me," she urged, fingers clutching his hair. "Come inside me, so when we have to go back out there, you can look at me and know that I'm yours, baby. You can think about your cum inside my knickers and on my thighs while we play nice with the Death Eaters, and when we get home, I'm going to—"

He really wanted to know what she planned to do when they got home. Really. But the rest of it was all so much—the promise in her voice, the visual her words painted, the way she felt underneath and around and against him—that he came, and the hoarse, guttural cry he gave drowned out her words.

He was gone.

The world exploded around him, and he shoved his face into her neck as his body shattered, his hips snapping with desperate force as release hit every bone and muscle and joint and bit of his body all at once. She clutched him to her, one hand tangled in his hair and the other splayed across his back, and it felt like she held him down into the moment when his entire self threatened to fly away. She anchored him, kept him grounded, kept him safe, and hot, heady love filled his chest as he came, a rush so strong that it left him more than a little dizzy. His head spun as stars formed behind eyelids he hadn't planned to close.

"Evans, Evans, Evans—" he heard himself say over and over, begging even as release rocked his body. It wasn't enough—it was never enough—to express how it all hit him in that moment of climax, but he couldn't think of a single thing except for her, of the warmth of her body inside and out; and the soft slickness of her skin against his; and the gentle pressure of her hands; and the sweet, familiar scent of her neck. She was Evans then, not Lily, and he only realized later that he probably called her that because of what her surname represented. She was Evans, with no familial connection to the wizarding world, a muggleborn—and a muggleborn that the pureblood crowd hated, hated far beyond their usual hatred for those of her birth. Her name presented her as ostensibly lower than those around them, including himself, but fuck it all if absolutely none of that mattered to him. Fuck, he loved her even more for it, for her muggle upbringing that had left her with so much to prove in the wizarding world, that had egged her on to be the best student she could be, then the best Healer she could be, then the best brewer she could be. It made her so uniquely her, determined and driven and intent on being The Best, proper noun, and she was The Best to him in every single way.

She pressed soft, tender kisses along the side of his face as he slowly returned to his body. Her thighs had trembled before, but his body shook then, the tremors subtle but uncontrollable, and he knew she felt it, although she didn't say a word. With much effort, he slowly released his grip on her arse, and his hand ran up the smooth curves of her body. A faint sheen of sweat aided the gliding caress.

"Did you come as hard as it seemed like you did?" she asked quietly, her mouth just removed from his ear, and the smile in her voice made him smile into the warm confines of her neck.

"Harder."

"Mmm." Her hum came out soft, contented, and the fingers in the back of his hair began to stroke his scalp so soothingly that it could have easily lulled him to sleep. "I really, really needed that. Thank you."

His smile widened at her subtle intake of breath as he traced the delicate skin on the side of her breast. "You used to tell me it was weird when I thanked you after sex."

"It's cute when I do it."

"I can't argue there. Everything you do is cute." He lifted himself onto his elbows to look at her, and it hit him all of a sudden as it hadn't before he'd come: she looked like Diana, not like Lily. And yet—

And yet it hardly bothered him at all. She was still her, no matter how different she looked. On top of that—

"I know what memory I'm going to think about the next time I need to conjure something to mind," he told her. "I already think about you anyway, but now—oh, I'm going to have no problem pushing this to the front of my mind in case of Legilimency."

She laughed, tipping her head back much as she did in the throes of passion, and then lifted her head so she could kiss him, just once and very gently. "I'm happy I could help. That was definitely my plan all along—helping you with Occlumency, not getting off. Which, I know you didn't ask, and it's only going to give you a big head, but—Jesus Christ, Potter. Good luck topping that later."

Fuck, he loved her.

He told her that, the words spoken so gently and with such raw meaning that the amusement slipped off her face into something more tender that matched the tone of his voice. For the span of several heartbeats, he could only just look at her, somehow beyond further words. He had no idea how to even begin to explain exactly what she did to him and how she made him feel and how he'd go to the ends of the earth for her without a second thought.

She understood anyway. It read in the smile she offered him, something so sweet that it tugged at his chest in a deep, unexpected way, and then she nuzzled his cheek, her nose gentle and a little bit cold against his flushed scruff. "I love you too. More, if we're keeping track of that sort of thing." He planned to argue back, but she went on before he could so much as form his first counterpoint. "Will you get me my clutch? I assume your wand is closer, since I have no idea where you threw mine."

He followed her instructions, even though it meant gaining enough control over his muscles to stand and pull out of her. He located his wand in the inner pocket of the jacket of his dress robes, and he summoned both her wand and her clutch with two wordless casts.

She sat up to take them from him, and removed a white handkerchief from her clutch, one spotted with the telltale shade of red-brown blood. "Avery's," she said with a certain sense of satisfaction, and sure enough, TDA sat embroidered in the corner in golden thread that glimmered even in the dark room. As he watched, she slid the handkerchief between her thighs, wiping up where he'd spilled out of her. "There's something really delightful about imagining what he'd say if I knew I used this to clean up your cum," she said, her tone matter-of-fact even as she bit back a smile that reached the mischievous glint in her eyes.

Yes, he loved her.

He laughed the entire time they dressed, and he kept at least one hand on her for the entirety as well, unwilling to stop touching her for even a second. He insisted on helping her into her knickers and then her robes, adjusted her hair for her when she began to fuss with it, and stroked the length of her neck as he healed the faint red marks that his scruff had left on her skin. He couldn't get close enough to her, or touch her enough, or find his fill of kissing her. Every bit of him just wanted every bit of her, so much so that she swatted at him a little when he refused to let her go long enough that she could unlock the door.

"I'm yours the second we get home," she told him, pointedly removing his hand from her arse. "Until then, I hardly think it'll help your political career if you insist on groping me in public. As the best of politician's wives, I can't let you do that."

Wives.

The door glowed briefly white as she released the final spell she'd put on it, and he contented himself with reaching for her hair, which slid through his fingers like dark ink. "I'm going to marry you." Saying it the second time had somehow drained all of the anxiety out of the declaration. She'd heard him say it once and hadn't bolted, which drove him on. "I'm going to marry the shit out of you."

She laughed, the sound pretty and bright and uniquely her, and that same pretty expression read all over her face—her face, as he once again saw Diana as her, no questions asked. "You know what?" she asked, her hand on the doorknob. Laughter dominated her features, but there was something honest about the way she briefly bit the corner of her lip. It looked as if she went to make an admission of her own, and it made her more than a little nervous. "I think you're right."

xxx

A/N: Happy Friday! Hope you all enjoy this stupidly long update. I fully swore when I finished Voyeur that I would have no chapters over 10k…and here we are, 21k into this chapter and the next will pick up where this left off. Truly, my apologies/you're welcome for that, depending on how you view it.

Drop me a line here or on tumblr (scriibble-fics) and let me know what you thought of this chapter! It was one of my absolute favs of the whole fic, so I'm really excited to hear what you all think! Many, many thanks for the sweet reviews for the last chapter, as always. I'm still endlessly giddy each time a notification pops up in my inbox. Super grateful for all of you.