Previously in the Darklyverse: Lily admitted to James that she's been sneaking out of the confines of the Fidelius Charm in Canada to see Snape. The Gryffindors found out about the Horcruxes via Slughorn's memory. Remus found out Sirius had suspected him as the Death Eater spy.

xx

February 27th, 1982: James Potter

"You were with Snape. You escaped from hiding to see Snape."

James is seeing red. A small, rational part of his brain is telling him to calm down—that Lily and Snape have history and it's not fair to expect her to forget all that, especially when Snape has knowledge that might be able to help him—but it's getting drowned out by the part of him that can't believe how reckless she's being. He's just—blindsided, that's all. The two of them haven't been friends in years—haven't even spoken properly since they were sixteen—and Lily knows how James feels about him. After all those years of swearing that she wants nothing to do with him ever again, for her to see him behind James's back—?

It's not like he doesn't have a good reason to hate Snape, either. Can he admit to himself that he used to be a bully, that he took his loathing of Snape way too far when they were kids? Reluctant as he is to admit it—yes. Even at the time, he knew it, even if he was avoiding taking responsibility for it. But Snape is a Dark wizard. He's a Death Eater. He would just as soon have James and Harry murdered in their tracks so that he could keep Lily all to himself…

"He had information," says Lily. When she'd first explained what she'd done, her voice had taken on a pleading tone, but that's gone now, and all that's left is thinly cloaked defensiveness and frustration. "If he's hunting Horcruxes—"

"That was the second time you saw him," James snaps, hardly believing what he's saying. "He had no such excuse the first time. It wasn't even his idea to arrange the meet—that was all you."

"James… he was my best friend. You can't just expect me to stop—"

"You ended it!" says James hysterically. "And with good reason! I thought you stopped wanting him anywhere near you when he called you a Mudblood. I thought it was over. I thought—"

"That you won? That you beat him? That's what you thought our relationship was about?"

"Of course not, but—"

"Because I don't owe it to you to put any relationships in my life on hold just because you don't like them!"

"Fine. But you realize that if you tell Snape where you live—if Sirius pulls him into the Fidelius Charm—you're also telling Snape where I live? Where Harry lives? This isn't just your safety at stake! He's a Death Eater! You know what he's capable of—what he's done—what he's been doing for years…"

Lily mops sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her robes. He can hear Harry starting to wail in the nursery, and he stashes his wand in his pocket (when did he take it out?) and turns to head there. James is expecting Lily to follow him, but she doesn't—instead collapsing onto the sofa and flinging her arms, once folded across her chest, to her sides.

In the nursery, James lifts Harry into his arms and begins to bounce him up and down on his hip. Harry's getting big to be held, but the motion seems to soothe him, and he clings to James's arm for dear life. "It's okay, baby. Mummy and Daddy are all done fighting. It's okay to play some more. Would you like Daddy to read you a story, huh? Would that help you calm down?"

He pulls Mr. Gumpy's Outing off the bookshelf, settles Harry back down in his crib, and starts to read. James grew up with stories like Babbity Rabbity when he was a kid, but Lily insisted on buying Muggle books for Harry, partly because she wants Harry to relate to what she's relates to and also because she wants him to grow up in a world where he sees Muggles and their things not only as good, but as normal. It's not like James could argue with that, and so books like Mr. Gumpy's Outing stayed.

Reading the book calms Harry down, but not, of course, enough to go back to sleep; instead, he demands, "Again!" and claps his hands delightedly when James finishes the book, and so he goes back and rereads the thing twice, three times, four. He doesn't know how long he stays in the nursery, but the light is starting to change outside by the time he hears the door crack open and interrupts himself mid-sentence to see Lily standing in the doorway.

"I thought Harry might like a bottle," she says timidly. The hand holding the bottle at her side is shaking.

"Look who it is!" James tells Harry in a carrying, confidential whisper. "It's Mum! Wave hi to Mum!"

"Mummy!" Harry shouts, clapping his hands together again.

All evening, Harry is like a buffer between James and Lily; they only meet each other's eyes when they're speaking for Harry's benefit. By the time Harry finally, finally crashes, it's been hours, and the thumping of James's angry heart has completely slowed.

"Do you want a sandwich? We missed dinner," he offers to Lily in a quiet, polite tone that feels like it doesn't belong to him.

"James…"

"You can't see him again," says James in the same voice, holding quite steady. "It's not safe to go outside Canada, and it's not safe to bring him into the Fidelius Charm, either. If he wants to share updates on the Horcrux situation, he can talk to Alice. You said he got a hold of you before through her, right?"

"Yeah," says Lily. She sounds defeated, weary. "He said it'll be some time before he finds out more. We won't hear from him again for a while."

"But when we do," James presses, still speaking very lightly, very formally, "you can't be the one. It can't be you, Lily. It isn't worth your life."

"I'm going to bed," she says simply. "See you later."

It's only eight o'clock at night—hardly Lily's bedtime—but James doesn't call her on it. Out in the living room, alone, the hours drag on.

xx

Everybody always thinks that James and Lily have the perfect marriage—or at least, that's what they tell him. It's always been a point of pride for James: after all the time he spent wanting to be with her when they were in school, it pleases him not just to be with her but to have the reputation that they have. They don't fight often, but it's when they do that James gets frustrated with that reputation, because it makes him feel like nobody can hear him when he says he's struggling with his relationship with her.

But when he tells Sirius and Remus that Lily has been seeing Snape again, it's the one time that, in a fight between himself and Lily, people don't just tell James that he's overreacting, that it will blow over and he has no concept of what a real argument looks like.

Blokes' days have gotten very, very weird in recent months thanks to Peter's treachery coming into the light. It's not like the Marauders spent much time together as a foursome even in the months leading up to Peter's disappearance: with Sirius believing that Remus was the spy (unbeknownst to Remus), and their romantic breakup making things complicated, the group had been splintering for a long time. Now, with Peter gone and Sirius desperately trying to fix things with Remus, Sirius has been making efforts to bring the three remaining Marauders closer together, but being around Remus and Sirius together always just makes James feel like he's caught in the middle of somebody else's dramatic saga.

He can't be certain, but he thinks Sirius's motive is to fix things with James and Remus while he can, before one of them turns traitor again or gets killed like Marlene did all too recently. And James can understand that—but it's still, like he said, weird to be around them both together, what with the looks Sirius and Remus keep shooting each other that they seem to think the other (and James) doesn't notice.

"Enough already," he finally says to Sirius after Remus departs for the job he finally, finally got hired to do—working as a wandkeeper at Jonker's Wands in the province of Alberta. "I would need a meat cleaver to cut through the tension between you two. Just get back together already—or don't, and accept that it's over and move on—but enough with the pining. It's too much."

"Mind your own relationship problems, mate," says Sirius, rolling his eyes. "You're in no position to talk when Snivellus has wormed his way into the middle of your marriage."

"Lily and I are fine," says James thinly.

"Really? Because that's not what it sounded like when you were bitching about Lily seeing him twice before admitting it to you. Moony and I—"

"You love him. He loves you. I don't see what's so complicated."

"Yeah, try telling him that," Sirius mutters.

James knows he's being insensitive, but he doesn't really care—this whole Snape thing has set him on edge. "You're just wasting time," he says a little more calmly. "Look what happened to Marlene. Do you really want either of yourselves to end up dead before you work it out?"

"Low blow, bringing Marlene into it."

"Yeah, but you know it's true."

"Well, I can't make him change his mind about me, and maybe he shouldn't, after what I accused him of," says Sirius curtly. "If you're so bothered about it, then you try talking to him, because I'm getting nowhere every time I try."

"Nowhere?"

Sirius flushes. "Sure, there's tension there, but not necessarily in a good way, and that doesn't mean anything's ever going to happen. Just because it feels like it's close sometimes…"

"I don't get you two," says James flatly. "How can you say you're not moving forward when he's spending full moons at Hogwarts with you?"

"You're… not supposed to know about that."

"Come on. Did you really think Alice and Em were going to keep your little secret for you? Everybody knows, dude."

"I don't see why you care so much, anyway. It's not your life. It's not your relationship."

"I care because the way you two are around each other affects how you are around me, and this back-and-forth thing you're doing is getting old. Am I going to have to go back to only ever seeing you separately? Just—work it out, one way or another."

"Wanker," says Sirius under his breath.

Maybe it's none of his business—okay, it's definitely none of his business—but James doesn't see how Sirius and Remus are still playing the angst game when they're doing shit like breaking into McGonagall's office together to illicitly watch stolen memories about Horcruxes in Dumbledore's Pensieve. Don't they get tired of the tension? Wouldn't anyone?

When he gets home, the standoff between himself and Lily seems to be over, at least. She greets him perfectly cheerfully before going back to trying to feed Harry peas ("ew!"), and when he comes back into the living room hours later after putting Harry down for a nap in the nursery, she doesn't immediately get up and go to their bedroom, which James counts as progress. "I'm sorry about yesterday," he tells her, and she looks up.

He's not really sorry, of course. He still thinks it was stupid and reckless of her to leave Canada to see Snape, and he's still pissed not only that she apparently still cares for him on some level, but that she didn't feel comfortable enough to admit that to James much, much earlier. But marriage is about compromise, and Lily did tell him the truth, albeit with a delay. If he isn't okay with Lily making her own (stupid, reckless) choices, he can at least pretend to be.

"I'm sorry, too," she says softly.

"I… uh. I know I was a bully—back at Hogwarts, I mean."

Lily frowns. "I know. And I'm not okay with it. But… it's not like he wasn't giving it right back to you. He made you bleed—he admitted the other day that he liked to make you bleed—and you never did that to him."

"Maybe. But I tormented him. I'm not denying that."

"I remember it well," says Lily. "But the person I knew in sixth and seventh year grew up and mostly left him alone, and I know the person I'm with now would never do it over again like that if he could go back."

Is that true, or is she giving him too much benefit of the doubt in the wake of their fight? He can't be sure. He honestly can't be sure.