September 17th, 1976: Lily Evans

It's only two and a half weeks into the school year, but Lily is starting to loathe Fridays. They start with the always-awkward double Potions with the Slytherins—there's only so much James can do to take her mind off of Severus's cold apathy—and though it's followed by a long break, History of Magic afterward isn't much better. It's hard enough to pay attention to Binns's lectures without James's conversational attempts and Amelia's resulting annoyance, both of which Lily got an earful of last class. Perhaps she'd ordinarily at least appreciate the start of the weekend after class, but this week, there's no such luck: with Slughorn's party planned for this Saturday evening, she can only dread another day of avoiding the Slytherins.

So her greeting to Professor Slughorn is less than cheerful as she and Alice escort Marlene to class—in yet another exercise in helping her avoid Black, Alice partners her straightaway, and Lily saves the seat beside hers for James. "You said something about talking to Maggie?" she asks, just to break the silence—though she's anxiously watching the door, resting her chin in her hand and leaning on the desk.

"Oh—yeah," says Marlene, stretching. "She, er, found me after I was with Black yesterday—oh, stop looking at me like that, I'm not going to try and talk to him after what happened!"

"Maybe, but he'll still try to talk to you," points out Alice. She still hasn't gotten over the fight in the common room and is easily set off by any mention of the two of them together.

Marlene shrugs, hunching over her desk. "Well, I'm not going to let him this time," she mutters, but she doesn't sound all that determined to Lily.

As the four Slytherins step through the doorway, Lily gives a small start, then glances down and starts chewing on her pinky nail. "What is it, Lily?" says Alice, but she catches on when Marlene nudges her side and discreetly inclines her head.

Only Damocles Belby acknowledges them with a curt nod and clipped smile; they smile, mumble, and (in Lily's case) break a nail in uncomfortable response. Severus tosses his books lazily next to Belby's and gives Lily only a cursory glance.

She tries to look away but can't help watching him out the corner of her eye.

"What did you say you'll be doing for your internship this weekend, Lily?" prompts Alice, if only to distract her. Lily turns to her, deer-in-the-headlights. "More lessons on France?"

"Probably," says Lily, nodding. As the new intern for Lord Brinn, the senior ambassador from Great Britain to France, Lily's been doing a deep dive into relations between the two countries. It's unclear how soon Lily will be able to go to her first diplomatic conference, but Brinn says he's expecting it to happen by the end of the year.

The Slytherins are stonily silent, but the volume of background chatter is rising—the boys must not be far from the classroom. "At least you still have an internship," says Marlene moodily, stabbing at her desktop with the edge of her (fast blunting) quill.

Alice purses her lips, then says sympathetically, "Don't worry about it, Marlene—at least you were considered for it, right? Half the sixth years didn't even get one, let alone the ones they wanted."

"At least half the sixth years didn't get turned down because of their character assessments," Marlene complains. "They've got to get better proctors in for that; you know they called me insecure?"

"Well—" But Alice never finishes the thought, as the boys choose this moment to burst into the classroom. Black makes as though to ask Marlene why she deviated from last week's seating chart, but Lupin steers him away, shooting an apologetic look over his shoulder.

James, on the other hand, plops his books down next to Lily's and takes his seat, grinning. "Beautiful morning, isn't it, Lily?"

"It's overcast, Potter; it'll probably rain," Lily remarks instead of agreeing, rummaging through her bag and sneaking a glance at Severus. He's absorbed in a conversation with Belby—or, rather, Belby's telling him something in earnest to which Severus doesn't seem to be paying attention. (Was Lily and Severus's friendship like that, a one-sided effort?)

"Rain is beautiful," James argues. She leaves it at that, her eyes still trained to Severus's table. Like always, James notices. "It's not worth it, Lily," he says, quieter now, resting a hand on her shoulder.

Lily straightens up, nodding, and feels grateful that the bell rings and Slughorn closes the door with a snap. "Cauldrons out!" he says merrily, winking at her on his walk to the blackboard. "And partner up!"

"Ready for this?" James asks with a telling hint of mischief in his voice. His hand drops to Lily's from her shoulder; she clasps it in a death grip, then quickly lets go, all the while not meeting his eyes.

Severus still won't look her way.

James fills the class asking after Lily and the other girls, and he doesn't mention Severus again until after, while they're putting away their cauldrons. "You were staring at him again," he says, lowering his voice—Lily doesn't bother playing dumb.

"Why shouldn't I? He was my best mate—"

"Past tense," says James gently, scooping up his books and extending a hand. Lily takes it, training her eyes to his and not entirely suppressing a half-smile. "About time for you to go get a new one, don't you think?"

She watches him dubiously as he holds the door open for her and bows her out of the classroom. "C'mon, let's hear the contenders. I trust that I've made the list?"

"Fat chance, Potter," Lily teases, giving up and letting the grin fully slide onto her face. "Marlene, maybe, after everything."

"I thought she was thick with Macdonald," says James, furrowing his eyebrows.

Lily heaves the slipping strap of her bag back up to the crook of her neck. "She can have two best mates, can't she? Anyway, she and Mary had some kind of a row last night; they won't say what about…"

He shrugs and drops the matter. "Reckon we should catch up with the others, give Abbott some backup with the whole Sirius thing?"

Lily doesn't have to ask what he means. "You're sure you're not just lonely for the boys' company?" she says instead, smiling.

"Believe me, Lily," says James in earnest, stopping her right there in the corridor and taking her hands, "I'm not lonely."

It's hardly eleven o'clock, and the pink is already rising in Lily's cheeks. Fridays…

The other Gryffindors have already congregated in the common room—well, some of them. "Mary's been off promoting inter-house unity all morning," Black informs Lily and James before they have a chance to ask. "Not with the Hufflepuffs, though; she said something about finding Carol Davies."

"Em's been off with Maggie somewhere, and Marlene left to find them just now—they made up yesterday, she told me," adds Alice. "Besides, she doesn't really want Mary to find her if she comes back…"

"Or Sirius," finishes Pettigrew. Black fumes, reddening. "What? Elephant in the room got your tongue?"

James leans in and asks Lily what Pettigrew's on about, only in more vulgar terms. "Muggle idioms," she answers in an undertone, shaking her head—boys.

"If that's all," announces Alice, getting up, "I'd better get going—Herbology essay. I'll be in the library, if you need me for anything."

"Wait," Lily interjects as she gathers her books—Alice glances back at her, eyebrows raised inquisitively. "You're leaving me alone here with these four? Pranksters of legend and all that?"

"I'm sorry, Lily; if you'd rather lend me a hand in a class you dropped…" Lily shakes her head, and Alice shoots her one last sympathetic look before waving goodbye to the lot and departing.

Biting her lip, Lily takes Alice's armchair and leaves James to share the sofa with the others. It's a bit awkward, at least at first—other than at the full moon, she's barely spoken to any of them but James all year. Struck by sudden inspiration, she speaks up: "Oh, Lupin, I've been meaning to ask if you'd like to go to Slughorn's party with me—consider it my apology for the, er, wedding debacle."

Lupin smiles but shakes his head. "Thanks, Lily, but I can't—I'm already going with Sirius. Tradition, you know—James is taking Peter, too."

"Oh. Right," Lily says—though she doesn't recall this, since she never paid much attention to the other Gryffindors at the Slug Club before now. "I shouldn't have put it off until the last minute like this, but I don't know too many blokes…"

"Well, there's Alexander Zeller," says James, ticking off a finger. "Ravenclaw. Bit of a git, but that's only to be expected, he's mates with Pol Patil—"

Pettigrew joins in, eyes twinkling. "Belby and McLaggen are invited, so they've probably already found someone… Cresswell's taking Alice, Mary could get offended if you ask Cattermole… Benjy Fenwick, maybe?"

"No, he's going with Elisabeth Clearwater," she sighs. Why hadn't she done this earlier and spared herself the embarrassment?

"There's always Mary's pool of ex-boyfriends," suggests Black disparagingly. "Diggory, Gudgeon, Lockhart—"

"Oh, lord, anyone but Lockhart," Lily moans.

She almost misses the fleeting glance that Black and James exchange before Black turns to her abruptly. "All right, Evans, you can have Remus," he says gravely. "I can make… other arrangements."

"What arrangements?" Lily says suspiciously, but Black's already hopping off the sofa and darting out of the common room, a none-too-innocent smirk plastered across his face. "Who are you taking, Black?"

"Put it out of your mind, Lily, it's a surprise," says James, grinning. "Just wait until tomorrow evening…"

She tries and fails to fully take his advice, but the conversation is distracting enough. "What ended up happening with the wedding, Evans?" says Pettigrew. "I mean, I know you don't like to bring it up, but—did your sister end up getting married?"

"Yeah, she eloped in Gretna Green a week after the funeral," Lily replies bitterly. "Didn't even tell me she had done—I found out from the would-be maid of honor when she wanted an ear to complain into."

"Bully for her, then," says Lupin half sarcastically.

Lily twists her lips and nods—they're approaching dangerous territory. "You're sure you can't tell me whom Black's taking to the party?"

They keep tight-lipped, all the way through History of Magic and the end of the evening. "Less than a day left, Lily," says James, ruffling her hair as he bids her goodnight. "Try and get some rest, yeah? Internships tomorrow morning."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Lily says distractedly—she's halfway through proofreading an Arithmancy essay and could do without any interruptions. "'Night, James."

She doesn't realize her mistake for another thirty seconds, when she realizes that James is hovering over her armchair, his breathing shallow. "What?" she asks anyway, just to downplay its significance.

"You called me—you never—" A satisfied grin slides over his face. "Slip of the tongue?"

"Something like that."

"So that's how you think of me." He's so sure of himself that it doesn't even sound like an assumption, let alone a question. "I was wondering how soon you'd come around."

Lily brushes her hair out of her eyes and takes a proper look at him. "Why the fanfare?"

James takes a seat across from her, propping his feet up on the coffee table between them. "Remember when you stayed over at my place for a few days last summer—"

"—After the concert, because we Flooed to the anteroom of your Muggle study and I wanted to browse," she finishes for him, smiling faintly.

"I was bothering you about how you were—different with me than with everyone else," he goes on reminiscently, "how you weren't yourself when Marlene tried to get you to open up with the others… you were completely disinterested. Remember that?"

It takes a second, but the memory comes back to her. "Why were you so happy about my reaction?" she says—Lily knows him well enough now to feel comfortable asking.

He closes his eyes, and his smile widens. "Same reason as for this," James says, now looking at her straight. "You're not just some petty teenage drama queen playing mind games—this is real."

"This?"

"Us."

She bites back the urge to scoff. "There isn't an 'us,'" she tells him, mostly believing it.

He stands, that smile still playing about his lips, and kisses the top of her head gently. "You say that now."

As Lily tells James off for inappropriate displays of unwanted affection, it occurs to her that this is the first time she's thought fondly of last summer. She lets him off the hook halfway through her tirade—just this once.

Up in the dormitory, she drains the last of her Dreamless Sleep Potion and hopes that it's enough to get her through the night.

xx

Wholly giving up the act, she greets James as "James" at breakfast on Saturday morning, which he returns with a nonchalant "Lily." The girls, even Emmeline, stare; Mary drops the box of Common Welsh Greens she's midway through passing to Lily. Snatching it back up and letting the milk drain from the bottom—it landed right in Lupin's bowl of cereal—Lily gives them significant "I'll-tell-you-later" looks and hope desperately that she won't actually have to tell them later, since she can't entirely explain it to herself.

Today's internship passes in a flurry of lessons and promises that she'll make a trip to the British Embassy by the end of the fall term. At half past seven, Lupin meets her in the common room, dressed in a shabby pair of dress robes and shifting from foot to foot. "Lily," he greets, albeit a little awkwardly. "You look lovely."

"Thanks, Lupin," she says, silently disagreeing: as she doesn't own her own dress robes, she's thrown on a spare pair of Alice's for the occasion, and it's easy to see why Alice didn't choose to wear these ones tonight.

He smiles slightly. "It's Remus, remember? Or Rem, or—"

"Lupe, yes, like Marlene calls you," she finishes for him. The awkwardness is easing, to her relief, and they're both sporting grins. "Are we waiting for the other blokes, then?"

"No, actually—Peter and James are cutting it close to avoid mingling with the Slytherins as best as they can, and Sirius… wants to make an entrance," Lupin trails off. She raises her eyebrows but know that he won't explain. "Were you planning on going in with Alice?"

She considers it. "I suppose we should—I didn't mention it to her, but Dirk can't escort her out; he doesn't have access to our common room."

Accepting this, Lupin retires to an armchair, and Lily follows suit. She wonders if the wedding has been on his mind—it's been on Lily's. "How are prefect duties going?" she asks, if only to pass the time: she hasn't got a clue what else she could say.

"Oh, all right," he says vaguely. "Patrolling with Alice is going fine. We've had our first meeting already, too; just, you know, reporting any points we've added or deducted and detentions we've given, signing up for patrols, planning the first Hogsmeade trip… officially, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but we're debating between the weekends of the second and the sixteenth of October, so keep your schedule clear."

"Not like there's anything to schedule but Hogsmeade," she laughs. "I'd tell Mary the dates—she's planning on going with Cattermole the next time there's a visit—but word would get out if I did, no offense to her, and I don't want you to get in trouble…"

"Reginald Cattermole? From Hufflepuff?" Lupin asks. "Huh…"

Lily grins. "Bit of a shift from what's always been her type, but he could be good for her, I think. He's a nice bloke."

"You'd better not be talking about Dirk and me," comes a voice from the stairwell—Alice. She and Lupin turn in their seats to greet her; she's decked in a much prettier pair of robes and has curled her hair for the occasion. "Thanks for waiting, Lily—you didn't have to."

"Oh, I don't mind," Lily assures her, getting up, and it's true; she and Alice have their differences, but she makes for nice company outside the classroom.

They walk down to Slughorn's office together, detouring to meet Dirk on the way—he greets Alice with a half-hug and is quick to let go, to her visible disappointment. At the party, Slughorn is in his element: though no outside guests have been invited, he seems to have coerced most Slug Club members into attending, and the room is packed with students. "Good evening, Dirk, Alice, Lily—just the wizards I was hoping to see! Happy to have you here, Lupin," he adds, less enthusiastically, and Lily feels for Lupin a pang of something like indignation.

"He's with me, of course, Professor," she says, feeling suddenly bold, and steps closer to Lupin's side. "You've no idea how much convincing it took to get Black to give him up for me! He's quite the catch, Remus is, don't you think?"

Slughorn looks taken aback only for a moment, then breaks into a smile. "You're a cheeky one, aren't you?" he laughs. "Well, go on, then, I'll leave you to it… Abbott, Cresswell, would you care for some crystallized pineapple?"

Lily tugs Lupin through the doors before he's realized what's happened, but when he does ten paces later, he flashes her a grin. "Thanks for that, Lily. I owe you one."

"Don't mention it," she insists, waving over his shoulder—James and Pettigrew have just arrived.

"Hi, Remus, Evans," Pettigrew says; James sidles up behind her and wordlessly engulfs Lily in a hug.

She shrugs out of it, mock-disgusted, and returns Pettigrew's greeting before whirling around to face James. "Will you ever learn?" she sighs, but she's smiling.

"Forgive me for taking last night as encouragement," he says simply, ruffling up his hair. "Remus, do you mind if I steal your date away for a dance?"

"Go right ahead," says Lupin mildly.

Without giving her so much as a second to decide for herself, James whisks her off to the center of the office, where Slughorn's cleared away the furnishings and rugs for a makeshift dance floor. Behind them, she hears Lupin ask, "Care to do the same, Peter?"

It's a slower song, but James doesn't bother with formalities. He interlaces his fingers in Lily's—his palms are sweaty and calloused and oh so familiar—and takes his sweet time drawing their hands upward until her arms are draped around his neck, then wraps his own loosely around her waist and starts revolving with her on the spot. "I've missed this," he admits after a few minutes—the music has sped up, but they haven't.

"Is that why you've tried to be so affectionate lately?" Lily kids, lifting her head from his shoulder to look at him.

"I can't help that you'll only ever touch me when there's music," James shoots back, but he's smiling. "You'll come around someday, Lily, you just wait."

Faintly, she smiles back, flushed with embarrassment. "James?" An incoherent murmur in her ear tells her he's listening. "Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?" he mumbles—he sounds more concerned with the fact that he's pressing his cheek up against hers.

"After O.W.L.s last year, when you asked me to go out with you—did you mean it?"

He pulls back and looks at her intently, almost tripping as she keep turnings; he's close, too close, his ragged breath warming her nose. "Yes," says James slowly, "but I'm glad you said no."

Something in her deflates. "Why's that?" she prompts.

There's another pause as he closes his eyes and exhales, and his trademark scent of forest and ink and rumpled hair fills her up. "If you'd said yes then," he tells her, "we would never have ended up here."

She doesn't know what to make of this, so Lily buries her face in his neck and breathes him in. She reemerges briefly to say hello to Alice and Dirk (both looking a bit harried after Slughorn's ambush), then to Lupin and Pettigrew (who've lost five points each for Gryffindor on account of reckless dancing and social impropriety: "I thought you knew that we're openly gay, Professor; we have hot foursomes in the dorms sometimes"), but James doesn't try for conversation again, and Lily takes advantage of the thoughtful silence.

Too soon, she feels James detaching and pulling frantically at her arm. "What?" she asks, oblivious—glancing around, she sees no one unpleasant and nothing out of the ordinary.

"Sirius is coming—you'll want to keep a distance for this," he says elusively.

She goes along with it—knowing the boys, it's best to take their advice at times like this—and she lets James drag her away from the entrance to the office, bumping into a good few students along the way. "I'm sorry—excuse me—sorry—exc—oh, sorry, Sev, I didn't recog—"

Lily realizes her error too late: she's already given Severus an instinctive apology and friendly smile. Sensing something off, James halts in his rather hasty tracks and tenses up when he sees Severus, fist clenching around Lily's clasped hand. "Damn," she mutters anticlimactically, then adds knowingly, "James, don't."

"On a first-name basis now, are you?" sneers Severus. He's not with any other Slytherins this time—Lily assumes he's come alone—and he looks none too happy to see her.

"I thought you didn't care what I do anymore," she says, her voice almost lost in the din. He doesn't reply, just glares contemptuously and starts to brush past her, and something in her just loses it and—"DON'T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME THIS TIME!"

Severus, seemingly startled, freezes and faces her coolly; James reaches out to stop her, but she brushes him off, rounding on her former friend. "For eight years, you were my best mate—I told everything to you—I trusted you—I thought—"

He cuts across my stammering and says crisply, "You should have thought about that before you left without a trace for the whole summer."

"WELL, YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT BEFORE YOU CALLED ME A MUDBLOOD AND GAVE UP TRYING TO APOLOGIZE AFTER SIX HOURS—"

Splat.

In her fury, Lily hadn't noticed the gust of air above her before she feels a barrel's worth of pumpkin juice spill over her head. Seething and mortified, she wipes juice out of her eyes and glances around to find one Sirius Black, standing next to a cackling Peeves and looking thoroughly apologetic. "Evans, I—"

"Sirius, m'boy, twenty points and a detention for bringing a poltergeist as your date and inviting havoc to the party!" Slughorn looks torn between dismay and amusement as he steps forward, clearing away the gathered crowd. "And Lily, my dear girl, let's not make such a commotion in the middle of the festivities! I won't punish you for it this time, but—"

"I'll just be going then, Professor," mutters Severus, not even meeting Lily's eyes as he ducks away—

"LEVICORPUS!"

Severus dangles by his ankle in midair, and Slughorn looks at Lily with an almost bemused expression. "Detention," he says softly, ruefully, and she doesn't meet anyone's eyes as James gently pulls her out of the room.

There goes her clean record.

Muttering to himself, James guides her to the fifth floor and paces outside a door near a statue of Boris the Bewildered. "Dammit… what did Remus say the password was?"

"Peppermint sticks," she says hoarsely—she overheard Alice telling it to Dirk last week—and the door swings open to admit them. James gazes at her for a second, wearing an expression akin to admiration, then takes her juice-sticky hand and leads her inside. She hardly notices the grandeur of the bathroom as he turns on a few taps and helps her out of my robes—she's seen him in various states of undress before.

Clad in her undergarments, Lily eases herself into the pool-sized tub and clings to its edge—she doesn't much feel like treading water. James bunches up his robes and dangles his legs over the edge, addressing her directly for the first time since the party: "I figured you deserved the privacy of the prefects' bathroom, and the relaxation."

"Thanks," she says. She rubs at her arms with the soapy water—the juice is starting to rinse off.

"If you need to, you know…" He looks awkward for the first time all night, really and truly awkward, fidgeting and blushing and messing up his hair, half in the water and half out.

She shakes her head, and he eases, if only slightly. "No, I'm not going to cry about it this time," she says, more to herself than to James, and then looks at him properly. "But there is this one thing…"

Her dreams are plagued by nightmares without the potion, but James rolls out of Black's bed every time he hears her and soothes Lily into a gentler few minutes of sleep. It's like summer, almost, except that James needn't always be there beside her—for the most part, she gets through it on her own, and the other boys know enough about it not to ask questions.

Detention, mercifully, is the next night—she's grateful to get it out of the way before classes resume. Looking regretful all the while, Slughorn assigns lines and leaves in a hurry; they work on the task silently until Black says, "I wouldn't have brought him if I'd known that that would happen, Evans. It was supposed to be a laugh…"

"It's okay, Black, you didn't know," Lily says automatically, scrawling out for the twenty-sixth time, I will not curse my classmates, especially in public vicinities.

Beat. "I wish you wouldn't call me that," he says eventually, resting his quill on the desk.

"Hhm?"

"Black. My family—well, you've met my brother." Lily nods, starting to sense where this is going. "They're all like that, mostly. My cousin Bellatrix… Bellatrix Lestrange? She's been a Death Eater for the past year and a half, and I think—I think Regulus is headed down that road, too."

He says it so callously, so tonelessly, that Lily stops writing and pulls her chair up closer to his. James's voice crosses her mind: What, you haven't caught on that their little on-again-off-again fling is resurfacing? … January of our fourth year. It was inconspicuous enough, at first—happened right around the time his cousin—er… "I heard you ran away last summer," she confesses, sliding over her parchment and resuming her lines. "Was that because…?"

"A lot of things, but mostly Regulus," Black confirms. She peers over his shoulder: I will not invite Peeves to Slug Club events. "He admitted he'd been talking with Bellatrix and her husband, Rodolphus, about joining up. Prejudice is one thing; joining the war is another… I've been living with James ever since."

Lily doesn't know what else to say, so she dives right in with him. "You were sort of right last July… about the Dark Magic." Black looks alarmed, so she continues, talking faster now, "Not that I've ever gotten into it, but Severus—Snape—I always knew he was interested. I thought I could stop him—change him—but…" She gives a little sigh and glances back at her parchment. "People are who they are, I suppose."

He smiles, just a little. "You're not who I thought you were," he says.

"I have to admit, I've been really… what are you and I doing? After how we left things last year, I'd been expecting us to have more intense—stuff—happen over the summer, but even on the nights we both stayed at Helene's Manor, we barely spoke."

Black coughs. "I, uh, just didn't want to encroach on James's territory. I know he doesn't own you—I know it's not like that—but… honestly, I think the other blokes had thought for a long time that I might fancy you, and I wanted to give James some space to get to know you without him having to feel like I was his competition."

"They think you fancy me?"

"Well, they thought it, anyway. I don't think any of them thinks it anymore. I don't, for the record—fancy you, I mean."

"Good," Lily snorts. "I don't fancy you, either. But…" She summons her courage. "I was wrong, all those times I told you we could never be friends. I don't know how it happened, but—I think we could be."

Something in Black's face softens. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Detention, suddenly, doesn't seem like such a curse anymore.