Chapter 12: Come and Go

It was starting to get annoying.

Both the fact that James's looks at Derek were getting worse and finding a little time to talk to Lily was entirely impossible. Derek's mood was slowly getting blacker and blacker as the days wore on into October. Derek even snapped at Remus a week after the Quidditch tryouts. Lily helped his mood by being herself and continuing to be his studying partner. From time to time Sarah would join them, and her inherent bounciness while they were at Hogwarts helped Derek stave off the black mood for a few hours afterward, but every time he went into the sixth year boys' dorm, he was reminded of the things that were going wrong.

James wouldn't talk to Derek off the Quidditch pitch, though Derek was right in assuming that nothing had changed while they were on the pitch. Once the Quidditch practices had started up again, James would approach him with Quidditch things to talk about, but nothing else. It was frustrating, because Derek would call after him to try and get him to talk about Lily, so that Derek could explain himself, but James didn't listen to him unless he was talking Quidditch.

Sirius had noticed Derek's mood, and knew what was wrong. He included Derek in several plans he had for the younger years and joked around with him whenever James wasn't around. However, whenever James showed up, Sirius would clam up and only talk to James. Of course, given that Derek knew why he did this to him specifically, and that he did it to other people when James walked in too made Derek forgive him pretty easily.

Remus, now that the Marauders knew that he and Derek were friends, had no problem hanging out with Derek in plain view of the other Marauders. In fact, he made it a point to join the study sessions from time to time as well. In fact, the study sessions had grown quite large, and now Lily and Derek had to figure out another way to talk. Finally, Derek relayed his problem to Remus, who's eyes lit up when he was asked.

"I know the perfect place," Remus replied, putting his quill down and stretching. Derek was so shocked at this reaction. He had expected several reactions from him, but not this one. This one he had merely been hoping for.

"Well!" Derek asked impatiently, "where!"

"There's an interesting place in this castle," Remus said, beginning to tidy up his notes, "it provides whatever one needs at the moment. I'm not entirely sure what the true name of the room is, but James likes to call it the 'Needy Room.' I personally prefer the 'Come and Go Room,' but, again, we're not entirely sure what it's really called."

Derek was listening with rapt attention, and Lily had joined him in listening, once learning what the two boys were talking about. "Well?" Derek asked after a pause. "Where is the room?"

"It's off a seventh floor corridor opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Balmy and the dancing trolls. You have to walk by the blank wall three times thinking about what you need, and then the room will provide for you as best it can. And it happens to be pretty good at it." Remus stood up and stretched, then collected his belongings. "Don't do it tonight, but do it soon, so that you can stop being aggravated about something, and then you can work on getting James to realize his head's stuck up his-" he cut off abruptly, but Lily gasped anyway.

Remus shook his head. "He's being irrational, and laying into Derek for no reason." And with that, the young prefect turned around and headed up to his dorm. Lily looked at Derek for an explanation, but Derek shook his head. He didn't think it was his place to tell Lily that James actually did like her, as opposed to asking her out constantly in order to say he had gone out with every girl in their year. It would probably be more awkward than meeting Snape with mistletoe on the ceiling.

And with that mental picture haunting him, Derek went back to studying.

The rest of the evening was punctuated by James arriving in the Common Room with a dizzying grin on his face. Of course, when he looked over at the couches and saw Lily and Derek still there studying together, the smile faded. He didn't turn it into a scowl, and when he looked away, the grin returned. Derek grimaced when he saw the grin, because that meant one, and only one, thing.

A prank.

Whether James had already set the prank or it had just formed in his head was not yet determined, but from the similar grin that Sirius wore when he walked in the portrait-hole spoke to a completed prank rather than one that was just taking shape. Well, Derek mused, at least that means that the chances of it being on anyone in the Gryffindor Common Room is pretty slim. Thankfully, nothing else happened during the studying, and Derek, Lily, the girls and the marauders all, went to bed without incident.

Naturally, the incident that they were waiting for occurred the following morning, after all of the Gryffindors had woken up and everyone had filed into the Great Hall for the normal breakfast on Wednesdays. The strange thing was that none of Slytherin House arrived at breakfast. The marauders were all smiles about this, but then again, anything that happened to Slytherin was something that interested and often amused the marauders. Lily began to get worried as everyone started to get up to go to classes.

"Oh! I wonder what they've done now!" she seethed to the girls and Derek, "I mean, honestly, they shouldn't be affecting their studies directly! What if they miss class due to whatever they've done?"

"Calm down, Lilykins," James cut in, but he was cut off by Lily's shriek.

"DO NOT CALL ME THAT!"

James then did something strange. He backed down. "Right, Evans." He composed himself for a moment, then he plowed on. "Think about it, most of them are the ones that will end up joining with Vol-" when he saw most of the group flinch, he switched what he was going to say. "With You-Know-Who."

"You don't know that!" Lily whispered heatedly back at him, "Not all of them will join him just because of their House!"

James leaned in. "With recent events, don't you think that Sirius and him," here he indicated Derek with a nod of his head. "Are enough proof that people with the right kind of outlook don't end up in the other houses?"

Lily became deadly quiet. "Recent events?"

James tilted his head, his smile widening as the entire group of sixth year Gryffindors walked into the Transfiguration classroom. "Oh? Your boyfriend hasn't told you?"

Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say.

"POTTER!" Lily shrieked at the top of her lungs, her wand suddenly trained on James's chest. Everyone else took a step back away from the power that Lily was exuding in her anger. "JUST BECAUSE WE STUDY TOGETHER DOESN'T MEAN WE ARE DATING!" Turning around and addressing Derek, she quieted and softened her face. "No offense, Derek."

"None taken," Derek said, and somehow managed to keep his tone straight. Well, here was direct proof that mu-… muggle-borns could have just as much power than those who were pureblooded. The rest of the group remained stunned at the front of the classroom while Lily calmly walked to her usual seat and sat down. It took McGonagall bustling in and telling them in her normal short tone to sit that everyone else did. And even then, no one sat in the empty seat next to Lily.

That evening before curfew, Lily and Derek "snuck out" of the Gryffindor Common Room (though all they were really doing was making sure that no one would follow them) and headed toward the Come and Go Room that Remus had mentioned. They reached the corridor fairly quickly considering that they didn't frequent the place, and Derek checked one end of the corridor and Lily checked the other end. Finding the place empty as expected, the two of them walked up and down the corridor together thinking of the private place that they could not be interrupted.

When they turned around to pace the corridor the third time, there was a door in the wall that had not been there before. Lily and Derek shared a grinning look, then they both walked quickly to the door and went through. Once inside, they found a small room with a table and two comfortable chairs that were opposite each other. There was a fireplace that was alongside the table and when Derek closed the door behind them, he found there were several locks on it, and he could even see the magic that was in them to keep them from being simply unlocked.

Lily sat down in one of the chairs while Derek sat down in the other chair. The fire roared to life the instant that Derek felt that it was a bit cold in the room, and this caused him to smile at it. Lily had apparently had a similar thought, because she seemed pleasantly surprised at the fire. Finally, after a few more moments of comfortable silence between the pair, the long awaited conversation began.

"So, Derek," Lily probed gently, "What did you want to talk about?"

"My parents."

There were a few beats of silence.

"What about them?" Somehow, Lily's voice was quieter.

"They have joined with the Dark Lord, and want me to as well," Derek said bluntly.

Lily gasped. "But… they're killing innocents! Don't they know that now they're adding themselves to the most wanted list that the Ministry is putting out…"

Derek leaned over the table. "Do you think the Ministry actually knows the people that are underneath the masks? I can't tell anyone in the Ministry or on the staff of Hogwarts what my parents are without endangering my own life. I imagine that Sirius is in a similar predicament. So now I have until the beginning of my seventh year to join them…"

Lily sat quietly at the other end of the table, afraid of what Derek hadn't said. But not hearing it was worse. "Or…?"

"Or die."

Lily sat back into her chair hard.

"I've already seen what Sirius's solution to his own problem was, but I can't do the same thing because not all of the 'renegade purebloods' can hide out in the same house. It would get a little easy to find us. So I have to find another solution…"

Lily perked up a bit, but her voice was still weak. "I knew it… I knew that you wouldn't join them…"

"Not by choice, I promise you that," Derek said, and he swallowed the lump in his throat that he always got when he confronted the fact that he didn't know how long he had to live anymore. "This summer has been revealing to me, Lily. I've found out many things about the world around me and about myself. I met my brother; you know, the Squib in the family… and I talked to him." He wasn't sure whether Lily understood the risk or the change that had meant inside himself, but her nod was encouraging, and he continued.

"I helped Sirius run away from his home… that's why the Marauders are friendly with me now, instead of pranking me from time to time."

"What about Potter?" Lily asked, her eyes going hard.

"Potter…" Derek desperately searched for an explanation and hoped that his desperation was not showing on his face. "Potter is a special case. Surely you already knew that."

"But he's Black's best friend. Everyone knows that. So I know that he also had something to do with him running away, especially because of the fact that Black now lives in Potter's home."

Derek sighed. He didn't think he could get out of this one evasively. He didn't think that Lily would want to know when she finally did find out… but there was no way to determine that before telling her, or even dissuading her once she was told that she wouldn't want to know. "James is having problems with me because of the time I spend with you." There. He had said it. Now all he had to do was ride out the explosion. He winced in anticipation.

But Lily's reaction was slightly off of what Derek had expected from her.

She had frowned, and seemed like she was trying to reconcile this in her mind. "You mean… all of that isn't just a show? He actually likes me… legitimately?"

Derek nodded. "But I never told you that. I'm not even supposed to know. I imagine that Sirius would kill me if he knew that I had told you. He told me so that I would be able to confront James about the problem and convince him that we are just friends."

There was a little more silence that seemed a little less comfortable with the revealed facts hanging between them.

"So there's the summary. Though I can't imagine which is worse," Derek finally said, trying to summon up a smirk. "The fact that my life is in danger on a basically daily basis, or that the prat James Potter isn't faking his infatuation with you."

Lily kicked him under the table, and it was impossible to keep the smirk any more. "That's not funny, Derek," she said softly. "Not funny at all. It's just… a shock is all. It will take some thinking about to get used to. Do you think I should let him off easier instead of being so cutting about denying him?"

Derek shook his head. "If you think he's still a prat, stay stern with him. Maybe he'll catch the hint with time. Especially if you drop hints to Remus about it."

Lily smiled. "Yes, Remus. The main connection that keeps our year together."

"And sane."

"Yes. That too. But speaking of him," Lily leaned closer conspiratorially, and though Derek didn't like the new grin that lit up her face in a sort of evil way, he still leaned in to hear what she had to say. "Have you found out whether he likes anyone?"

The sound of Derek's face hitting the table followed by Lily's laughter could be heard throughout the seventh floor.