...Winding Path...

By Zetta
Summary: James Potter's had a rough year, and when he decided he needs a break from being an Auror, Albus Dumbledore comes up with an interesting proposition....
Characters: James Potter, Lily Evans, Sirius Black, Sybil Trelawney, Taura Sinastra, Minerva McGonagall, Albus Dumbledore, and more!
Rating: PG-13
The problem of Voldemort is brought to attention, and Lily and James get a little bit closer... but not for long.

Eep! And I'm not trying to make Lily into Saint Lily- Thank you for pointing out that was what she was turning into.  Please, please feel free to tell me those sorts of things- I know how it's all going to play out, and I sometimes get distracted in making sure the things happen in the right order, and character believability suffers from inattention.  *sigh* I never was very good at that… Thanks again for pointing it out!

After this, the chapters will be getting slower- I don't have them pre-written anymore! (However, I have them all plotted out, and that is certainly a good thing! *crosses fingers*

Chapter Four

Life grew to be a regular, steady, mercifully boring rhythm.

Weekdays, he would wake up at six o'clock and dress. He would double check the lesson plan for the day, then go down to breakfast and eat with the staff and students. Each morning he had two or three classes, then lunch. Then he would have two or three more classes, and then he would dismiss the students and they would all go to dinner. He ate most regularly with Lily and Taura, but also occasionally with Sybil. He had been very careful around all three of them since Sirius had pointed out his "flirting".

On weekends, he would go into Hogsmeade and visit with Sirius, who had rented a small house towards the Shrieking Shack end of Hogsmeade. Apparently, most people were afraid to live anywhere near the Shrieking Shack because of the ghosts that haunted it.

Remus made it up one weekend, and the threesome went into town and got well sotted, though James a little less than the other two- he was, after all, a teacher, and it wasn't good for him to be seen drunk.

Sirius made nice with Lily and Sybil, and they and Taura occasionally accompanied James into town on the weekends.

All in all, it would have been quite nice, were it not for two major things:

The first were the dreams he continued to have. No matter what he tried, he could not escape them. Solid Sleep Potion proved to be ineffective after two nights of taking it. The nurse was rather unhappy about that, but she and Arabella Figg teamed up, against his wishes, to try and find a better potion for it.

James settled for sleeping in short periods, and hoping to wake up before he saw his little sister's accusing expression.

The other thing that kept it from being all nice and lovely was the continuation of the Voldemort attacks.

Every time James saw a paper, the headlines screamed of another attack. Calling him "You-Know-Who" had been an unfunny joke when it had started, but now it seemed that James was in the minority in thinking it was still a joke. No one would say his name. The Daily Prophet called him by several other names- never just Voldemort though.

Muggle-borns and "Muggle Lovers" were placed on the list to avoid, making things quite uncomfortable for a few students.

Unfortunately, it was not only restricted to the students.

*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*

Halloween morning, Lily woke up with a smile on her face, thinking of all the work she'd done the night before- she'd decorated her room in Muggle Halloween decor, with cardboard cut-outs of witches, pumpkins, ghosts, and skeletons, and was planning on teaching her classes how to carve a pumpkin the Muggle way...

She dressed and opened her bedroom door to enter her classroom... Only to be hit with a bucket of wretched smelling rotten foods dropping on her head and splattering all over the floor. Aghast and disgusted, she wiped her face clean and opened her eyes again...

Only to find that her classroom had been destroyed overnight.

The desks were flipped over, the chairs were in pieces. The decorations which she had so carefully put up were ripped and shredded. The filing cabinet was on its side, and papers were thrown all over the room, ripped up, colored on, painted over...

But worst of all, the miscreants had attacked her walls.

die mudblood said one wall.

kill the mudbloods, death to muggles!

mudbloods beware! the dark days come! was the frightening warning on another.

She wiped the food remains back further from her eyes, the stench so strong that her eyes watered.

Or maybe those were natural tears, coming from the shock of what a mess had been created.

Slowly, she started to step down the stairs, only to draw to a sudden, sickening halt as she nearly slipped and fell down the rest of the way... slipped on a red substance of some kind...

Her eyes fell on a shape at the bottom of the stairs, and she gasped and grabbed the railing to make her way down.

Horrified, she realized as she got closer that the shape at the bottom was an owl... A blood soaked owl that she had owned since her first year of attending Hogwarts.

Fighting the urge to vomit, she knelt down by the animal and carefully prodded it. When she drew back her hand, it was covered with blood.

Tears prickled her eyes, and she choked back a cry. Cupid... She'd loved that owl... Her mother had bought it for her...

"Oh my goodness..."

Lily looked up, startled to find Minerva McGonagall standing in the doorway, her face white and her expression even grimmer than normal. "Are you all right, Lily?" Minerva asked quietly.

"It's just out here," Lily murmured. "They didn't go in my room."

"I'll go get the Headmaster," James Potter said from behind Minerva. He looked sickened by the sight of the room.

Lily hadn't even seen him. She nodded distractedly and stood up to get a towel or a sheet or something to wrap Cupid in.

"What happened to you?" Minerva asked as she stepped in further, looking rather disgusted by the awful odor.

Lily glanced down at herself. "They rigged a bucket above the door. I guess I got hit."

Minerva nodded slightly and pulled out her wand. She waved at Lily, and within a moment, the filthy muck was gone from her.

Lily still felt filthy. She managed to nod a thanks to Minerva, then went to her desk and cautiously opened the drawer, well aware that it might have been another trap. Nothing went off, so she dug through the drawer until she found the bathing towel left from the "Summer With Muggles" session, and pulled it out.

Too tense to even tear a little, she knelt by the tiny owl again and carefully lifted him and set him on the towel, covering him, and trying hard not to notice how his blood was on each of the steps, as if they had tortured the poor thing to give it's blood up a little at a time, one step at a time...

"My, my," Albus Dumbledore murmured as he entered the classroom. He was clearly quite displeased. "You heard nothing at all?"

Lily shook her head a little, still very aware of the wretched smell of blood. "No... I didn't hear anything." And that was unusual, she realized. She was a very light sleeper.

James Potter looked around the room. "They probably did a silencing spell," he determined.

Dumbledore slowly crossed the room over to her and set his hand on her shoulder. "I'm very sorry about this," he said.

She gave him a wry, sad smile. "Unless you did it, Albus, I don't think you need to apologize."

He smiled back at her, also sadly. "Your owl was killed?"

She nodded, averting her eyes. "Yeah. He was my first."

"Hagrid would probably offer to take care of him for you," Dumbledore observed. "He has done such things many times, sadly."

She nodded. "I'm going to go down and see him, then I'll get this mess cleaned up."

"I'll clean it up," James offered, glancing around. "Unless we can catch the little-er, the people who did this."

Minerva McGonagall was white in the face, very angry. "I shall speak to Arabella," she said stiffly. Dumbledore gave her a look, and she sighed impatiently. "And Fulton and Ivy, of course."

Lily looked over at James. "I'll get it," she insisted quietly. "I want to take an inventory of what's been ruined, and make sure nothing is missing."

"I hope they did steal something," James said, nodding slightly. "At least then we could prove who it was."

Dumbledore nodded slightly. "Perhaps. But it is more likely that they did not. Therefore, I shall go find Hagrid and send him up to see you. Minerva, you and I shall go to speak to the other House Heads. James, if you would help Lily?"

They split up to see to their jobs, and Lily and James set off to clean the room.

*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*

No one on the staff would say it, but they all knew blame could be placed at the hands of a few sixth year Slytherins, who had created several problems for Muggle-born students already.

Arabella Figg was enraged by the occurrence, and rumors about what she'd said to her students flew wildly about- she would not confirm that she'd threatened to string the guilty parties up by their toes and force-feed them Flobberworms and Hippogriff guts. However, any time anyone asked her, she got a rather satisfied smirk on her face about it, so it was presumed to be true.

Nonetheless, it wasn't enough.

But the whole school learned that it would not be tolerated in late October.

James had just finished up a lesson and had dismissed his class. He was about ready to run up to his quarters and get a book, when he heard voices arguing in the hall.

"Shut up, Fidget," another boy said back. "You're a stupid Slytherin, you shouldn't talk."

"You're nothing but a stupid mudblood, Wallace," the other boy sneered. "You shouldn't even be in this school."

"Oh yeah? Eat this! Rictusempra!"

A soft "oooh" was heard from the group that had apparently gathered, along with the furious giggles of the other boy.

"P-petrif-rif-icus t-tot-tot-alis!" the giggling Slytherin shot out, and a gasp came from the crowd.

With a scowl, James went to break it up before it got worse. It would be hard for them to listen to him- he was only a few years older than the boys, and they would likely still think of him as a student, but he needed to fix that idea anyway.

But Lily Evans got there first and was already stepping between them by the time he got to the door, and he didn't want to undermine her authority, so he stayed back. "Enough!" she snapped. "Finite Incantantum! Finite Incantantum!"

The crowd went "oooh" again, but the two fighters were too focused on each other to even glance her way.

"Furnunculus!" the Slytherin boy snarled.

"Desaugueo!" the Gryffindor exclaimed.

"I said enough!" Lily snapped again, and this time, did something about it. "Expelliarmus!" The wands flew into the furious witch's hands.

"Give me back my wand, mudblood," the Slytherin snarled, whirling about to face her.

There were several gasps, including one from the boy who'd said it.

Lily went white with fury. "Dumbledore's office," she commanded tersely. "Immediately!"

The Slytherin realized he'd slipped up and looked pale. "I-I didn't mean- I thought you were..."

Lily pointed her wand at him, her grip tight. "Immediately!"

The student stared at her, and shut his mouth. "The rest of you disperse," Lily ordered. "Except for you, Mr. Wallace, you still need further punishment."

"Yes, ma'am," the Gryffindor boy said, looking as though Christmas had come early- he had, after all, just witnessed an enemy making a huge mistake.

Lily glanced up and saw James then. He almost flinched from the scowl on her face. "Would you mind informing my class I'll be tardy?"

He nodded and watched as the other students saw him and started walking away with much more speed. "No problem, Professor," he said politely.

She studied him for a long moment and stepped forward to speak quietly. "And thank you for letting me handle this," she said, too soft for the other students to hear.

He nodded. "I figured it would be better..."

She nodded and stepped back, glaring at the Slytherin. "We'll be detouring to find Professor Figg," she said coldly.

The Slytherin looked like he would faint.

James fought a smile upon realizing that, and had to look away as he went down to Lily's classroom to await her students.

*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*

Lily rarely had a hard time controlling her temper, but when she got mad, she got MAD. The Slytherin boy had been smart enough to keep quiet for the long walk to find Professor Figg, and then to find Dumbledore. Arabella Figg was furious and it was obvious from her demeanor and glare that she couldn't wait to get the boy alone so she could tear into him.

Dumbledore was, fortunately, in his office, and he saw them right away. He was not pleased when Lily explained what had happened. He recalled that she had a class to attend to though, and suggested she go see it. "I shall be certain to keep you updated," he said with a sympathetic smile for her.

Lily had started to cool off by the time she got back to her classroom, but still paused outside the door for a few moments to collect herself.

She was somewhat surprised to hear her class giggling rather hard, and stepped further in the doorway to see what was going on.

James was up in front of the classroom, smiling a bit. "Muggle magicians don't do magic, no matter what their advertisements say," he explained. "A friend and I learned all about them a few years back, because they're pretty good at being sneaky. For example, a rabbit out of the hat sort of deal." He stood up and tapped his wand on a cup that was on her desk. With a poof, it turned into an adorable white rabbit. He glanced around the class and then snatched a hat off of a boy's head. The boy let out a good-natured cry of protest, but sat back to watch.

James cleared his throat and set the rabbit in the hat, which he'd transfigured into a Muggle Magician hat. "Now," he explained. "The Muggle only know one phrase that they think is magic. 'Abracadabra'. Repeat that, if you would."

"Abracadabra," the class repeated dutifully, a few of the Muggleborns grinning widely.

"A Muggle takes his wand- which is usually a piece of plastic- and taps the hat. Abracadabra!" James flipped that hat so everyone could see. "Voila, the rabbit is gone, and not a bit of magic to it."

The class applauded.

James frowned a bit. "I never did get how they got the rabbit back though. Probably something with a compartment in the top of the hat-" As he was speaking, the rabbit suddenly appeared on his shoulder, though he apparently didn't notice. "Once they get it in there, I've never been able to see how they pull it out." The rabbit crawled up and sniffed his head.

The third years were thrilled and applauded- he'd somehow done it without using his wand.

"I know it's in here somewhere," James murmured with a frown on his face, poking his wand in the hat. Then, abruptly, he grimaced and grabbed the rabbit off his shoulder, just in time for the class to realize the rabbit was leaving a mess on his shoulder. "Urhh...That's disgusting," James groaned, though the class found it hilarious.

Lily entered the classroom clapping as well. "Everyone give a thank-you to Professor Potter for providing you with a lovely entertainment of sorts. Unless I'm very much mistaken, he'll probably want to go...er, clean himself up, don't you agree?"

Giggles from the students. James gave her a sour look. "This is the thanks I get?"

She shrugged. "Apparently."

He sighed. "Well, I know when I'm not wanted."

She stopped him. "Before you go, can I have my cup back?"

He gave her a mocking smirk. "No." He tapped the rabbit, and suddenly there were two. "Have fun!" he said happily, and sauntered out the door.

"It's good to know some things never change," Lily sighed as the two rabbits began running around chasing each other. Her students giggled wildly. "Oh, this is lovely."

*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*

Apparently she'd grown attached to the rabbits, he decided a few hours later, watching from the doorway if her classroom. One rabbit was at her feet, and the other she was petting as she checked homework.

The fire flickered behind her, and it cast shadows on her face.

Not for the first time, a strange feeling went through him...She seemed to bring out strange feelings in him all the time. He frowned. It seemed that his teenage hormones were returning in full force. Perhaps it was something to do with being back at school...

She didn't look up when he stepped further in, and he had to clear his throat twice before she looked up, and when she did, she looked puzzled for a moment. Then recognition dawned. "Oh, hello James."

"Interesting stuff?" he asked, his hands buried deep in his pockets as he walked towards her.

She shrugged. "I wouldn't go that far."

He smiled faintly. "It's dinner time. Came by to see if you were heading down."

She made a face. "I'd love to, really. But I've got to get these checked, and I stupidly promised I'd have them done by tomorrow. Unfortunately, I forgot that one of my other classes had a project due, and..." She sighed. "It's a mess."

"You want help?" he offered. "I'll give you a hand, then we can ask the house elves to bring something up if we get hungry."

She blinked. "You don't have to do that," she started.

"Not a problem," he said, shrugging. "I did, after all, manage to lose your little cup thing."

She blinked and looked down at the rabbit in her lap. "I forgot about them," she admitted. "But they're kinda cute. I might just have to keep them."

James pulled a chair up to the desk. "If you don't, I'll just keep changing them back," he decided.

She gave him an amused look. "Thanks a lot."

"Anytime."

She rolled her eyes and dug through a drawer and handed him a quill. "I appreciate it," she said, referring to his assistance.

He shrugged. "You can owe me."

She rolled her eyes and went back to checking essays.

*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*..:..*

It was hours later, and the essays had been checked. They'd eaten and finished their drinks, and now they sat in the back of the classroom by the large window, in the two comfy chairs she'd placed back there when she'd first started working at the school.

"Arabella dropped by a bit before you got here," Lily said thoughtfully, her feet curled up beneath her. "She said the boy was going to be suspended for a week."

James made a small noise of approval. "I'm glad. Aside from the fact that he used that word, the fact that he said it to you, a professor at the school... He deserves it. My father once told me he'd sworn in front of the Headmaster..." He trailed off. He sighed. "Dad got suspended for a week and had another week of detention after it." He closed his eyes tight. His father had always roared with laughter after telling that story. He'd slap his knee then look at him and always say that he deserved every moment of that suspension. A rather silly thing to laugh over, but he always had... and he never would again.

"You still dream about it, don't you?" Lily asked quietly.

James studied the night sky with a small frown on his face. "I do," he answered finally.

"Me too," she admitted, sipping her tea, which she'd brewed just a short while ago. "Mum died about a week after we graduated. Dad passed away just a short while after her."

"I didn't know," he murmured.

She shrugged a little. "My mum had a tumor, and we knew it was coming. Dad... well, I don't think he even wanted to live without her. I know it sounds silly, almost ridiculous, but they were... I don't know, part of each other or something. That's about the only thing my sister and I have ever agreed on."

"I remember you telling me a little about your sister," James said quietly. "Another flower name, wasn't it?"

"Petunia. Petunia Dursley, now. She got married over the summer." Lily sighed. "Amazingly, she invited me to the wedding. Of course, she told me if I said a word about what I was, she'd kill me, but at least she invited me. And I got to sit up front because everyone knew I was her family." She shook her head a bit. "You were actually in your brother's wedding, weren't you? I think I remember you taking off for a weekend to do that."

James nodded, closing his eyes. "That was... Merlin, David got married two years ago. It doesn't seem that long ago. He and his wife had their first child nine months exactly after that. Michael. He was..." James paused for a moment. "Michael was something else. He adored me and looked just like me and my father. We always teased David that Julie, his wife, and I had had a little tryst on their wedding day. He'd get so mad..." He opened his eyes again, drawing himself back to reality. It didn't much matter, did it?

Lily's hand came down to rest on his, and he looked over at her, a little startled. She gave him a small smile. "It's okay to think about them," she said quietly. "It helps...if you remember the good."

"It hurts," he admitted, unable to stop himself. For whatever reason, she was was easy to talk to. Even about things that he wouldn't tell Sirius about.

She squeezed his hand a little. "It always will, a little."

Silence fell between them and she started to draw her hand away. He didn't let her, and didn't explain why.

He didn't know why.

He didn't have the opportunity to think about it, because she drew her hand away again, and didn't let him stop her.

When she looked over at him, her eyes were dark and somewhat unreadable. "It would be a very bad idea for anything to happen right now," she said quietly.

He was startled and shifted so he could see her better. "Between us, you mean?" he asked.

She nodded after a moment's hesitation. "Aside from the fact that we're both teacher in a school that thrives off of rumors, I don't think it would be the best move on your part. You're still grieving... It wouldn't work if you threw yourself in a relationship so you could just forget your pain. And I'm sorry if I'm being blunt, it's just..."

He shook his head a little. "No, I suppose you're right." He looked away from her, out at the night sky, which had suddenly lost its brilliance, and seemed clouded over... "You're being smart. I'm not ready for it."

They sat in silence for a long time after that, and both felt as though the night was a lot gloomier.

Thanks to all my dear, dear reviewers:

Mogliecat- Glad you like it! Happy holidays to you, too!
Twisted Rose- Happy to hear you're enjoying it!
Got Harry- lol, don't worry, I need to be pushed! 
Scarlett*Eyes- More L/J will come eventually, don't worry.
mooncancer- Glad you like!
Iris cream- I'm trying to keep this a not-fluffy and light story, so I probably won't let Sirius show off all of his humor- sorry!
Jemi Fal- Wow, the first since Monday? I'm honored that you bothered to read mine!
Quick Quack 88- I hadn't realized she was turning into a savior! Thank you for pointing that out! Please, please, please let me know if that's still happening- I'm really trying not to let it!  I know she's still rather like that in this chapter, but I will do my best to get rid of such feelings in the future.
Manatees 'R' Us- You feel sorry for Sybil? Good!  If all goes well, you'll feel even worse for her soon. :o)  And yes, as far as I know, likeable is a word, and you spelled it correctly. :o)

Next Chapter: Everyone goes to Hogsmeade again, Tension enters Lily and Sybil's friendship, and James struggles with life and love and loss.