Lily felt safe in the isolation of the Astronomy Tower again. Finally.
It was late November, and the frigid wind was not easily ignored. People only ventured out there at this time of year if they wanted to feel numb, but most preferred the more comfortable option of firewhiskey to such brutal cold. Among other things, probably—things Lily wasn't privy to.
She'd skipped breakfast to come out as early as possible. Everybody was surely in the Great Hall then. The loud, clamouring, crowded Hall. Lily was glad to be alone, but she also felt…lonely.
Well that's daft, she thought with a shiver. Isn't that the point?
It was the sort of question that should have an obvious answer. The wind was playing with her hair, toying with it, yanking on pieces and whipping them into her face—trying to hit a nerve.
James wouldn't be chasing after her today. Or tomorrow, likely. At no point in the foreseeable future, Lily reckoned, would James Potter spend any more time worrying about her, and she couldn't blame him for that. She couldn't blame anyone else for that.
It was a bright, sunless morning, a grey sky eclipsed by clouds. The world seemed so flat and featureless that Lily wasn't sure she was even breathing.
Maybe time wasn't even moving.
Maybe the world wasn't even spinning.
Maybe nothing was happening at all.
The wind yanked at her hair again like a child vying for attention. You aren't getting away from me so easily.
Wishful thinking.
Lily shivered.
Nobody spoke about Romeo and Juliet anymore.
It was unfair.
Or a gift.
Or just…confusing.
It was confusing, because what else were they meant to talk about? Benjy Fenwick's latest escapade with some hair-brained fourth year? Because her name was Margorie, and she was a Hufflepuff, and more fit than anybody he'd land his own age. Or should they talk about the first-year Remus found patrolling the halls last week, shaking and crying violently with sick on his face? Because his name was Geoffrey, and he was a Muggleborn, and nobody told him they could use magic like that.
Her teeth started to chatter, so she clamped her jaw shut.
Every moment of discussion on the play had felt like torture, like an attack, but now Lily longed to return to this fixation they'd developed. To let it be the only thing they paid any mind to. She'd hated it then, but now she hated reality more.
Lily remembered her dad telling her once that when people shiver, it's because their bodies are trying to warm up.
Did wizards know that? Or did they figure out warming charms first?
Either way, Lily forced her body to stay still.
No matter how real Romeo and Juliet felt, it would always be fiction. She knew that. Even though she'd worn Juliet's dress, lived as her for a night, kissed as her for a night, it wasn't real. She could keep it at an arm's length in her heart.
What Lily craved more than anything was distance. No matter how lonely it made her.
"Lily?"
Thank God, she thought before thinking, turning to see Mary before her and shivering violently as she did. She was just as ashen as the sky.
"I'd…I would ask, but. Right. I knew where to find you, so I suppose asking why you're…right, never mind."
She approached Lily, grabbing her hand and ignoring the icy feeling against her skin.
"You need to come to the common room. We're all…waiting, I guess, but…you'll see."
.
James really wanted to speak to her again.
He had, of course, plenty of times, scheduling the week's patrols or asking her to pass the peas, but of course that wasn't the same. He wanted to smile at her again. He wanted her to smile back. He wanted to look into her eyes and see the light behind them.
He missed her, which was undeniably stupid.
I see her every day. I sit with her at lunch. I have quite literally every single class with her.
That morning he'd run late, and though the Marauders were none of them early risers by nature, James knew by now they'd surely gone down to breakfast without him. He was still fixing his tie as he hurried from his room, down the hallway.
To enter the common room to all of his friends—all staring at him, some with ruddy, tearstained faces—it stopped James faster than an Immobulus. Maybe a Petrificus. He definitely wouldn't have been able to move if he'd tried.
His old instinct would've been to make a joke. Who's funeral is it?
The thought hid behind a shadow in his head. For a moment, this worried him more than the scene set up before him. James was bad at passing up jokes—especially obviously ill-timed ones. When had this instinct died off?
The fire was going in the background as always, but it looked weaker than usual.
Lily was there, he noticed. Lily was there, sitting right there on the couch, staring right at him with tearstained cheeks, her lips parted slightly. Lily was staring right at him and he saw an apology in her eyes, though he had no idea what she was apologizing for.
Sirius stood instantly but fell back into his chair, as if he didn't have the energy to keep up. His face was stony, and his silvery eyes watered. His jaw was tight. He didn't cry, or speak, couldn't seem to do more than stare.
James managed one move in his petrified body: a hard, hard swallow. It hurt.
"Prongs…" Remus started, his voice wavering, but he couldn't manage to get anything else out.
James was too busy looking back at Sirius, trying to ask what's wrong without words, to notice him approaching with Adam's copy of The Daily Prophet.
"You'll want to…" Remus started again. "I'm sorry."
Frowning, taking the paper from his hands, James lowered his spectacles to catch a glimpse of the headline.
HEAD AUROR EUPHEMIA POTTER DEAD AT 67
He barely read the words before they slipped from his vision, fell to the floor by his feet. His shoelace was untied. A moment ticked by. And another. He could feel their eyes on him, an apology on each tongue, and he could hear the headline ringing EUMPHEMIA POTTER DEAD like a joke nobody laughed at.
His spectacles slipped off his nose and clattered onto the floor. Everything blurred, the paper, the glasses, the he ground at his feet, all indistinct and somehow staticky, and James didn't realize that this wasn't just from losing his second set of eyes, so a few tears fell down his cheeks before he could blink them away.
He hadn't made it a step into the room before his day—fuck, before his life was ruined.
James scooped up the paper at his feet and turned his back on his audience.
EUPHEMIA POTTER DEAD, he thought as he found the tiny golden scar, by muscle memory because he certainly couldn't see, glasses or no glasses.
EUPHEMIA POTTER DEAD, he thought as he whispered the password, please, I will love, I shall love, amabo te, please, please, and opened the door.
EUPHEMIA POTTER DEAD, he thought as he closed it gently behind him, never slamming, his mum taught him never to slam—
and when he was alone the words screamed in his mind even louder, chasing him to his room, another door he was taught never to slam, especially now that he was going to Hogwarts, now that he'd have neighbours—
and he sank down against that door, feeling something so awful that tears would not soothe it away. He was shaking. Torn open and blown apart. Bleeding something out that he didn't know he had, didn't know he could lose, wasn't sure he could get back.
There was no telling how much time passed before the knock on the door, before the voice he'd probably hear on his deathbed, before "James? Are you…are you alright? I know you aren't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But…"
Lily trailed off, but she was still at his door. He could tell. For once—for the first time ever, maybe—she'd come to him. Chased after him.
But James was bleeding, he was torn-apart-blown-open, and her voice made him bleed heavier. He cast a silencing charm on the door so Lily wouldn't hear the sobs that didn't help anything.
EUPHEMIA POTTER DEAD.
.
Lily sat there far longer than she would've even considered admitting.
He'd left his glasses on the common room floor, and so of course she'd rushed in to return them. It wasn't as if anybody else could get it, so…so it was her responsibility.
She didn't know what to say—or, that wasn't right, but she just knew there wasn't anything she could say—but she couldn't leave him. She was bound. James was—he meant too much to her, whatever he was, he was too much—for her to leave him crying alone in his room with a headline like that.
Not that Lily knew for certain he was crying, or that he was on the other side of the door. She couldn't hear anything. There wasn't any good reason for her to stay—she could've easily left the spectacles by the door, nobody was buying that—but there was no way she could leave.
She sat in front of his door, twin to her own, for so long that she lost track of time; when Lily left the corridor, unable to ignore her panging stomach any longer, the first thing she happened upon was Sirius.
Lily was never certain of the difference between irony and coincidence, but the sight of him sitting outside of the door—just as she'd sat in front of the other a few metres down—was surely one of the two.
The common room wasn't empty, but it felt it. The fire looked the weakest she'd ever seen it.
James was the patriarch of Gryffindor. That much was undeniably true, though in any other circumstances all of them would've denied it. He was as good as Godric, in the flesh. It had only been—what, an hour? How long had Lily waited?—without him, but without the life he brought, everybody seemed at a loss. The entire house seemed to be in mourning.
Lily didn't realize they were all such avid readers of the paper.
"Oh, ace, it's you," he mumbled, taking Lily from the thought she felt a bit ashamed to have had. Sirius looked, for lack of a better word, wrecked. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin was paler than usual, nothing even close to a smile on his lips. It was the least Sirius she'd ever seen him.
"Yeah. It's me."
"I was waiting for one of you to come out." Sirius grunted a bit as he stood, stretching in a way that confirmed Lily's suspicion that he'd been there a long while. She knew he would've preferred James to her, by a million times, but that didn't wound her vanity—she felt exactly the same. "Seeing as I don't know the sodding password. Head's secrecy and all that."
He ran a hand through his hair, which seemed to have lost its deliberate messiness in favor of the artless, genuine sort.
Lily swallowed. Talking to him unsettled her, even more now than usual. He didn't meet her eyes. "Right."
"Dinner's passed, and he's probably too…too preoccupied to realize he's starving," he continued. "He didn't even have breakfast."
Her stomach groaned, annoyingly well-timed. Sirius's eyes landed on hers, some recognition in them. "You're probably starving too. Were you with him at all?"
She glanced down at her feet. "I…not quite."
"Right." Sirius gave a grim version of his smirk. He didn't make her spell it out, which was definitely his version of mercy. "Then I 'spose it's time for a trip down to the kitchens."
They set off together. Neither spoke much initially; Lily was intimidated by his brooding energy, and too exhausted from the day—her day of sitting outside James's door, crying intermittently, worrying about the boy she hadn't thought to worry for before—to attempt to breach it. The sky was dark through the windows, just as colourless as the grey morning she'd forgotten all about.
"So you sat outside his door all day," he started after a few minutes, sighing.
Maybe it had been more disinterest than mercy.
"Guess so," Lily shrugged in response. She wondered if she looked like she'd been crying; she could tell that he'd been doing his fair share. Sirius considered her answer for a minute. She could see him come to a conclusion, but had no way of guessing what he'd decided.
"She was like my mum, too," he said after another stretch of silence. She knew she didn't need to respond. "I know I'm not—that whatever I'm feeling, it can't be half as bad as whatever James does, but…fucking hell. She took me in when I was disowned, you know that?"
Lily did know that, but it'd never stood out to her as very significant. James and Sirius had always been like brothers; Sirius had always hated his family. It was a natural escalation. She'd never considered how much that might've meant to him, being accepted into the family he'd always wanted. How kind Euphemia must be to take him in so easily.
She realized her error but refused to correct herself. How kind she must be.
"It's just…impossible to think about. It doesn't make sense that somebody as good as Euphemia is just…" He swallowed uncomfortably, cutting off a tremble just in time. "Gone. She's just gone. I can't believe that there's a world so fucking awful—much less our bloody world—where that can happen."
There might've been a tear streaking down his cheek, but Lily ignored it as they approached the fruit painting by the Hufflepuff basement. He reached out to tickle the pear. Somberly, somehow.
It wasn't until they left the kitchens with armfuls of food that he spoke again. "Bugger."
"What's wrong?" She asked. It felt like the stupidest question she could've asked, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Forgot the cloak," he muttered, mostly to himself. "Didn't even think about it."
"The cloak?"
"Invisibility cloak. James has one, we usually use it when we sneak down."
A thousand questions came to Lily at once, all inappropriate: An invisibility cloak? A real one? Where did you get it? Where did James get it? How have you gone around for seven years without being found out? God, have you listened in on my conversations?
She didn't even have to tell herself to bite her tongue on that one. "Well, you're wandering about with the Head Girl tonight, so I wouldn't worry so much."
Sirius gave a dry laugh. "Fair."
The walk back up took a bit longer, encumbered by plates and a few goblets, until Lily felt an unusually strong need to speak.
"You are allowed to grieve, Sirius," she said, shifting a plate of sausage before they could all tumble off.
Sirius looked at her like she was deranged. "What're you on about?"
Immediately, Lily regretted saying anything—regretted the assumption that she knew what he was feeling—but she figured there was no option, save to press on. "Even if she's not your mum. You're allowed to grieve without worrying that you don't deserve to be as upset as James."
"Who said I was worrying?"
Lily saw through it, but she wouldn't make him spell it out. "When Adam's mum died, I was a mess. When I ran off at breakfast?"
Sirius nodded.
She was surprised he remembered. Or noticed in the first place.
Then again, it didn't seem much escaped Sirius's notice.
"I went off to the toilets, and Adam was there. I felt like a complete idiot crying over it when it was his mum that died, yeah? But then…I thought about my dad. When he died. It was like…between me, my sister, and my mum, the house was a vacuum—bugger, that's a Muggle term, isn't it…it was…it was like all of the sadness between us sucked the house dry, I guess. There was no space for anything but grief. But at the same time, it wasn't a competition, yeah? My mum lost her husband. I lost my dad. Petunia lost hers, too."
Lily felt as though she may have lost her point. "But I never thought they were taking grief from me. When there's a loss like this, there's nothing but space for people to mourn. It's not something you have to earn, or an exclusive thing. Whatever you feel, there's a place for it."
Sirius didn't say anything for a very long time. "Maybe you're right, Evans."
"Maybe."
"D'you spend a lot of time giving yourself permission to feel things?"
She felt her face grow hot, though that could've just as easily been from the stairs. "Not really."
I just spend a lot of time trying not to feel them in the first place.
"Right."
They reached the portrait-hole, and they both said the password at the same time, edging into the room with their carefully balanced plates. The common room still felt empty, wide open and vulnerable, and Lily thought then that her words may have made more sense than she gave herself credit for. Sirius understood too. She thought he did, at least—maybe she was imagining the new softness in his eyes.
"Do you think he'll…?" She couldn't help but ask, but she didn't know how to finish.
Do you think he'll eat any of this?
Do you think he'll open his door?
Do you think he'll be okay?
Sirius made a face. "I'd tell if I knew."
Lily gave a small something like a smile. "G'night, Sirius."
"Sleep tight, Evans." His smile, in reply, was almost watery.
The fire was weak, but it still hadn't gone out. There was something to be said for that.
"Amabo te," she muttered, entering the hallway once again.
Lily made it across the hallway—the useless, illogical hallway—without dropping anything, but she was unsure what she was meant to do from there. Leave the plates by his door? Knock again and wait another eternity? Think about all the waiting he'd already done for her?
Maybe she just liked making things difficult for herself, because she set the plates down on the floor and knocked. "James?"
And then Lily waited.
She ate while she waited. The food was almost too much for her stomach, which had been empty all day, but she was glad to fill it anyways.
She was halfway through a plate of beans and toast when she heard a door open. Strangely, her instinct was to look to the end of the hallway—where the door appeared only occasionally, and with nobody outside who could even conjure it—instead of the one she'd been sat in front of for hours. Perhaps, after so long, she'd stopped thinking of it as a door.
How did James do this?
"Lily?" James's voice cracked on the two confused syllables, and she turned around slowly. Her back popped. Her bum might've fallen asleep, too, but she stopped paying attention to the complaints of her body when she saw the boy above her.
There were plenty of observations to be made—his eyes were red, his posture uncomfortably sloped, his hair was a bigger mess than she'd ever seen it, which would've been impressive in any other circumstance—but her heart beat her head to making any conclusions, feeling a strong pang of something tragic in her chest.
"I—I have food," she greeted with an unintentional eagerness. "And your glasses."
James blinked down at her; he ran a hand through his riotous hair and Lily's heart dropped like it was on a roller-coaster.
"You don't have to say anything—or I can shut up if you'd like, but Sirius and I went to get this for you and—and you really should eat."
James stepped out of his room and closed the door behind him. Lily's heart unclenched, only slightly. He sat down across from Lily, letting his head lean back until it hit the stone wall solidly, making a sound that probably hurt—or would've hurt if he'd had any space to feel new pain. In this configuration, Lily couldn't see his face, but the torchlight caught the tears that traveled down his neck.
She was still hungry, but she set her plate aside.
James wasn't eating either, but he was breathing, and hearing the fragile sounds move in and out from his chest made Lily think that she shouldn't ask for anything more.
So she sat and breathed with him.
And breathed.
And breathed.
Lily had heard a lot of people say that, after one tragedy or another, the war was finally "real".
She'd said it before, too, though if you'd asked her at any point in the past two years she would've said of course it's real, it's always been real. The actual conditions then were laughable. A trip to Honeydukes, looking back. Things weren't very real—they were just scary.
Now it occurred to her, as she sat across from the boy she'd assumed was untouchable—whose mother made headlines that morning for the worst reason imaginable—that perhaps it wasn't true that the war had, by this point, never been "real" to them.
It was just that none of them could understand how these things could hurt so unbearably every time.
Lily sniffed and handed James a plate. He wiped his face before he took it.
They ate their first meal of the day together, in silence.
.
Bizarrely, but just as easily, Lily fell into a routine.
It had been a week, and a week was far too long to go without food and water—or without knowing your assignments, even, Lily figured—and seeing as she was the only one who had access to his room at all, who was allowed down that hidden corridor, she had to be the one to bring such things to him.
Most of the time she'd just leave things in front of his door. Because he didn't want to talk to her, or because it just took him so long to get up to greet her that Lily couldn't wait long enough, James didn't open up very often.
When he did, he didn't speak much. Or at all. Lily would flounder under his gaze, try to quickly assess his emotional state by his appearance—and trying to keep from looking so plainly like she was analyzing him—before handing off his potatoes or his Muggle Studies review with a smile, turning to walk back down the corridor without waiting.
She did this to avoid the jarringly unpleasant experience of James closing the door in her face, with nary a blink, a smile, any recognition that she was standing before him. It was probably rude, but it didn't seem that James had room to care. He never called after her, anyways.
The walk away always left her feeling silly, because she rarely planned to actually exit to the common room.
Even if she wanted to, Lily wasn't quite sure she could stand the common room for very long, lately.
Lily used to be able to come and go through the Head's door without much commotion from pedestrians, but in the past week, she'd practically walked around with a target on her back. Lily Evans, Head Girl, was the link between James Potter, Head Boy, and the world at large. Heads snapped in her direction every time the door appeared; she could feel their eyes burning into her as she whispered the password, feel their ears straining to hear it, though nobody seemed keen to actually facilitate an invasion.
Usually she paid them no mind.
"Lily?" She heard Remus's voice behind her as she closed the door, softly, always softly, watching it disappear. The eyes flicked towards her. They flicked away.
"Hi, Remus."
It was a common sight: he was sitting alone on the couch. There was a long stretch of parchment in his lap, a textbook at his side, but he'd obviously not been doing much work. For a moment, upon meeting her eyes, Remus looked conflicted. "Er…how's he doing in there?"
Lily blinked. It was certainly not an uncommon question—it was, in fact, an incessant, inevitable question—but she hadn't yet settled with herself the best way to answer it. Should she tell him it was a good day because he'd made eye contact with her? That was the standard she'd taken to following. Would it be worse, she worried, to let him know that things were so poor that a moment of eye contact constituted a good day?
"He's alright."
Remus looked unconvinced as he shifted his neglected book, gesturing for her to sit. For some reason, though they'd always been friends, Lily was wary of the invitation. Was he only extending this little kindness to try and siphon more James information out of her?
"Doesn't seem up to everything, yet, then, does he?"
"Not quite." This felt like the strangest type of betrayal.
He nodded.
She looked away.
"Sirius is…" Remus started, his voice fainter than before, "he's not doing well with this. Euphemia being gone. James being gone. All the drama with his brother, you know, Regulus hanging around with…y'know. He isn't saying it, but it's just—" he looked down at his lap. "It's a lot."
Lily wondered how she'd been caught in the middle of this. After her months of proper evasion, all these sticky, complicated emotions, had caught up to her. All these hurting people. "I'm sorry, Remus."
He'd never been the type to speak before thinking, so the silence was long. "Can't be helped."
Is that true? Lily thought, but she was far too exhausted to say it.
Is there nothing we can do to fix things?
Can anything be done to help us?
As she stood up from the couch, she felt eyes all over her. Not only Remus's; all the eyes of Gryffindor, all over her, watching her. Not because she was Head Girl, or because she had toilet paper sticking out of her skirt, or because they fancied her, but because they hoped that where she went, one day James would follow.
Lily was a beacon of hope.
She wished she could be more selfless about the whole thing.
.
James was dizzy.
This could mean a variety of things—he'd learnt that by now. It could mean he was hungry; it could mean he'd slept too much; it could mean that he smelled so bad it was starting to make him ill.
He knew very well to fix these things:
Go to the door and see if there was a plate waiting for him.
Get out of bed so he'd stop falling back asleep.
Take a bloody shower.
His only indication of time was the sunlight streaming—or failing to stream—through his window, and James wasn't the orienteering type.
These became his time-telling guidelines:
Sun up meant daytime, sun down meant night.
If the sky was colorful and something between the two, it was probably either dusk or dawn.
To figure out which was which, wait about an hour.
If the sun was down, it had been dusk. If the sun was up, it had been dawn.
Showering was probably a good idea, at the very least. He did stink.
But that meant getting out of bed, which was a herculean task by itself, because:
What if he was dizzy because he was hungry? He couldn't go to the door first to get food, because then Lily would smell how putrid he was. She'd already seen him so low; she couldn't see him like that.
If he went ahead and showered anyways, he might pass out in the shower, bang his head on the tile, and
Lily would probably be the one to find him, but who knows how long it would take before she started to suspect something was wrong? How many times she'd have to knock, how many plates would pile up, how many days would go by before she finally opened the door herself—he hasn't locked it once—and saw him, probably stark-naked and dead, the water still running?
HEAD BOY JAMES POTTER DEAD AT 17; CAUSES NEED NO INVESTIGATION; DIED NAKED IN SHOWER.
He didn't mean to show up his mum, but blimey, what a headline that'd be.
James clenched his jaw at the feeling of tears crawling up behind his eyes.
He decided to just stay in bed.
The sky was in-between when he heard another knock on his door—dusk or dawn, end or beginning?—and James felt the perfectly unpleasant feeling of a day totally wasted. Of doing nothing for so long your brain rots. He was meant to be scheduling patrols with Lily, doing his bloody coursework, starting practice for the Quidditch season—which, because of some institutional shite McGonagall explained to him at the beginning of the year, had been postponed and condensed, all being fitted into spring term.
He hadn't thought about it now, but he figured now it was because of the war.
Everything was because of the war.
His jaw popped from clenching. Before he cycled through another series of lists, all of the reasons he should let himself rot, he shoved the bedcovers off of himself.
It felt like it took him ages to stand, but the sky was still in-between by the time he was on his feet. Little miracles.
Then he stood there, uncomfortably, looking lost in his own, well-used pyjamas in his own room. Thinking hard about where to go, like he didn't know the layout.
He had gotten up, he remembered faintly, to go shower, but he was right; he felt a bit funny just standing upright. When was the last time he'd left bed?
So his options became this:
Get back in bed.
Check for food at the door.
Die in the shower.
James decided without thinking, because maybe thinking wasn't doing anything, and if he took much longer the sun would set. Or will it rise?
He opened his bedroom door to the sight of Lily bent down to set the plate on the floor, wand poised above it. She cast warming charms on the food before she left it, he realized.
Somehow, she'd missed the opening of the door—maybe she'd forgotten it could open without her—and only glanced up when she noticed his feet in front of her. His toes were sort of hairy.
When she glanced up, the look of surprise in her eyes surprised James in turn.
Fuck, do I smell?
There was a lot in her eyes aside from surprise, though, as they looked him up and down, lingered on his hair and the dark stubble on his jaw.
"Hi," he said while she examined him, uncomfortable with the rustiness of his own voice. James hadn't spoken in days, not even to himself—which used to be something of a habit.
James was surprised by the sound of his own voice, but Lily's reaction certainly topped his. Her eyes blew open and she stared up at him in wonder, like he was a stray cat that'd just recited a poem, and everything weren't already so strange, James might've laughed at her reaction.
"…hi, James." Her voice wasn't very smooth either.
This was monumental, apparently, this level of interaction, because the pair stood there in silence for a long while, simply recovering from it.
"Lily?"
"Yeah?"
"What—" his voice cracked again. "What time is it?"
Lily frowned. Maybe she didn't want to have to talk to him.
Maybe he should've just waited for her to leave and taken the plate then.
He probably smelled.
"It's about six, I think. In the evening," she added.
He nodded. "And, er, what day is it?"
This question, which James thought would be the more egregious, left Lily unfazed. "Tuesday."
"Has it only been two days?" He asked. That couldn't have been right, could it?
She shook her head quickly, anxiously, looking down at her feet. "Ah…it's the next week from then."
He appreciated the way she delivered this news. No apologies, or dancing around the matter, or pitying expressions. That was one of the things on one of the lists that kept him in his room: the condolences he'd have to receive when he went outside. He'd hated—hated—that moment the last time he stepped out into the common room, seeing everybody mourning and having to be told they were mourning for him, and he couldn't stand to face another.
True, her avoiding his eyes stung a bit, but that wasn't specific to this scenario; she'd done that plenty before now, and it always felt that way.
He'd taken too long to respond. Lily was searching his face now.
"Right."
Lily bit her lip. "Yeah."
"Well, er…" He ran a hand through his hair. "G'night, then, Lily."
Her expression was a mix of a million undecipherable things, and James was lacking in the presence of mind to decipher it; he'd already be caught on the handful of words they'd exchanged for the rest of the night without worrying about the furrow of her brow and the light in her eyes.
"Good night, James."
She left before he could close the door.
James ate the food she'd left him. It tasted kind of nice.
Then he took a shower.
.
"She's coming towards us, yeah?"
"Of course she is. Why else would she be coming out?"
The weather wasn't nearly as bitter today, but it was still November. The Great Lake wasn't crawling with students desperate to get out of their dorms; it wouldn't be again until April, at the earliest.
That wasn't enough to discourage Sirius and Marlene, though.
And apparently, not enough to discourage Lily, either.
"Well, she hasn't said hello. Maybe she's coming out to brood?"
"She would've turned around when she noticed us. Lily never wants company when she's brooding."
"Fair enough."
Lily was definitely walking towards the pair, but her gaze was fixed on her feet as she approached. Sirius didn't like how waifish she looked; he was too busy with all the other shit in his life to worry about to add her to the list.
He had a feeling there were plenty enough people worrying about Lily Evans already, anyways.
"Everything alright, Lily?" Marlene called out, not waiting for her friend to take the last few steps to meet them. Case in point. Lily smiled wanly and wrapped her arms around herself.
It wasn't that cold out.
"I'm fine, thanks," she answered. Her eyes were set on Sirius. "I just—I thought I really ought to speak to you."
He frowned, took a drag before responding. "What about?"
"James." The tone of her voice was frustrating in a way he couldn't pin down. She was—it was too earnest, too kind, too gentle—too much like she was doing him a favor, like she was the damned authority on the subject. He swallowed her gaze away, turned his attention to his cigarette, breathed in too deeply and held the smoke too long. He let the black feeling linger.
Marlene was frowning now. At him, he realized. "What about him?"
Is he alright? Is he eating, is he sleeping, is he breathing? Is he alright?
"He's doing okay. Figured you should know."
Sirius flicked away his ash. Is he eating, is he sleeping, is he breathing?
"Y'know. Eats the food I bring, right. Talks more than he used to. Don't think he's showered in a bit—definitely hasn't shaved—but…he's alive. He's alright." Then Lily stood in her own silence, peering up at him, her face expectant and apologetic at the same time.
Sirius didn't want to hate her, he didn't think, but he didn't want to feel bad for her either. Maybe he just didn't want to be around this girl—this unexpectedly mysterious girl, this girl who always seemed to be in one melancholy or another, this girl who'd got hold of James and didn't even want him half the time. This girl who had all of him.
"Appreciate it, Evans," he said with a shiver he couldn't will away.
"I wish you could be there." She muttered, her gaze sweeping out across the lake, the way Sirius did sometimes. Hers seemed less rehearsed. "James…I mean, he's on his own most of the time. It's just me—"
Like he didn't know that.
"—and I think…I really think he needs his mates. He needs something normal. I'm alright, or—I guess I'm just doing my best, I'm trying, but I…I'm not really enough for him right now, don't think."
Some girly, jealous part of Sirius spent too much time fixated on the "right now". It was kind of a threat—even though it obviously wasn't, even though he had nothing even close to a rational reason to feel threatened by Lily Evans—but part of him preened at her assessment, anyways. James did need them.
At the beginning of the term, the Marauders tried everything they could to get into the corridor, excited by the possibilities a hidden room, protected as thoroughly as a common room, would offer them. Nothing in their bag of tricks-nor the tricks they'd added in the process—got past it.
Sirius knew the password; he knew exactly where the mark sat on that blasted wall. Every time he heard her whisper the password, blocking the view of her fingers with her body, and watched the door shrink away behind her, he had to fight not to go mad with the pretense of it all.
"Don't tell Evans we tried this, yeah? Figure I shouldn't give her any extra reasons to blow her lid."
"I wish I could be there, too."
That was the most he could concede, and maybe it wasn't really a concession at all, but he'd gone the entire time without blowing smoke in her face, either, and Sirius was all about the little victories lately.
"Right, well…see you lot in Herbology, I guess." Lily smiled a pretty smile again, turning back to the castle with the air of something else on her mind.
"If the prat shows up," Marlene called after her. "See you, Lily!" Then she turned on him.
"What's got such a stick up your arse?"
Sirius immediately felt defensive. "Fuck off."
"No, really, since when do you have a problem with Lily?" She sounded as bitchy as she usually did, none of the honey—or lack of venom, rather—that she'd had a moment ago.
For obvious reasons.
"Fuck off, I do not," He objected, but he knew it was clearly ingenuine.
Marlene huffed, rolling her eyes, looking more annoyed than offended. "If you're just being catty because she's shut up with James and you can't get in, I suggest you get your chin up and stop acting like a bloody child about it."
"Merlin, Price, sure aren't sparing any feelings today—"
"It's not her fault, you prat."
"Is this…" Sirius waved his cigarette hand around in the fashion of somebody searching for a word. He hated himself for it, kind of. "This onslaught meant to make me feel better?" He landed on, taking one last drag.
Marlene rolled her eyes and started off towards the castle. Didn't even wait for him to stomp out the butt.
"You aren't the only one in this castle who's miserable lately, Sirius. Sorry if you hadn't noticed."
Lily was an orange dot in the distance, but it still looked to Sirius as if Marlene was following her.
.
"Am I being a prat?"
The late nights the seventh years spent in the common room weren't very late at all anymore. Adam and Marlene didn't show some nights—snogging in the boy's dorm while it was empty, he theorized—and Mary didn't stay out on the couches until she passed out from exhaustion anymore, though the smudges under her eyes were still severe enough to look like bruises some days. James was, well, locked away, and perhaps Lily was sitting dutifully outside of his door, like she probably did every night, waiting for signs of life.
A year ago, none of them could've imagined a universe where she doted on him. None of them.
Sirius really needed to stop bothering himself thinking about Lily.
"Generally speaking, yes." Remus replied.
So, reasonable hour aside, they were already alone for the night. Something about it—the sounds of chatter from the dormitories around them, or the sight of the sky not yet graying with the suggestion of morning—made them uncomfortable, less at home. They sat side by side, hands entwined, not doing much.
"Moony." Sirius said seriously, turning to look into his boyfriend's tired blue eyes.
He sighed. "Sort of. Lately."
"I haven't spoken to either of them in more than a week."
The fire muttered quietly in front of them.
"The last time I saw Regulus he was hanging around those fucking snakes again."
It popped.
"I could fix everything if I could just bloody talk to them."
"Could you?" Remus finally responded.
"I could—I could help James through it. I knew his mum better than anyone—save him, of course, you know—but I know what he's lost. And Regulus, I could talk him out of this shit he's got into—"
"That's been your strategy for five years, Sirius," he interrupted softly, like he didn't want to say it—because he didn't.
Sirius clenched his jaw. "I just want them to be okay."
"Me, too, Padfoot. It's what we all want," he said with another sigh, heavier than the last, though somehow weaker, too. "We just…We don't have control over these things."
It made Sirius feel cagey, not having any control. He wasn't used to being so trapped. When his parents yelled at him too much as a child, he'd grab a broom and fly off—for days, even, one time when he was ten. When Hogwarts tried to box him in, intimidate him with its shifting paths, its secret hallways, he'd made a map to lay it out bare. When his house began to feel so stifling he couldn't breathe, when he didn't want to be in his vicious, poisonous family anymore, he'd simply run away. Got himself blasted off the family tree.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice.
Remus rubbed his thumb over their linked fingers absently. "Wait."
"I hate that," Sirius said, setting his head on the other boy's shoulder not because he was drowsy, but rather with a vain hope that it might lessen the pressure of all the thoughts weighing down his mind.
Remus could feel the jaw clenched and twitching against his sweater; he could feel the wet heat of tears, too, so he didn't look down. "I know."
They both heard a door open behind them. Sirius's head jerked up at the same time that Remus pulled his hand towards his own lap, separating their hands; their attention snapped to the sound.
James stood by the wall where a door had obviously been, looking rather blank.
"Prongs?" Sirius asked excitedly. Vulnerably, even, but he didn't have the mind to care. Then he remembered that he'd been crying and scrubbed a hand over his face, cartoonishly, like he was trying to change emotions altogether. Remus found his unused hand, laced their fingers right back up.
James nodded slightly and moved towards the couch.
The moment was blown open, unusually real; Sirius was impressed by how well-defined James looked in his eyesight, like he'd expected the sight of James to be blurry after so long.
Sirius waited for James to fall down onto the sofa heavily—that was typical of James—but instead, the James sat slowly, quietly. He barely dented the cushion.
James. Prongs. He was here, even if it wasn't very obvious yet.
"Long time no see," he grinned. James responded with a malnourished smile. Before Sirius could say anything else, which he certainly planned on doing he felt Remus squeeze his hand.
Not now, his blue eyes read. He was no longer the most tired person in the room.
The night was young, but Sirius and Remus sat there with James—who did little more than blink, breathe, stare at the fire—until he retired, the sky hinting at gray.
Oh god I'm in college now, and I'm constantly overloaded. If I explained all of the stuff I have to do it would read like a resume. I haven't written for fun in forever. Since before summer. And I've had this chapter almost entirely written this entire time, but I was never happy with it, so it's sat in my documents, unloved, until the past two days where I edited it with what may be an entirely different writing style from the rest of the story and posted it. Right now. Nobody really reads this story, but I like it, so I'm going to finish it eventually. Swear to god.