Fall In Love Again

Chapter Two: In Which Talking and the Lack Thereof Become Appreciated

Lily had a loud voice. I remember that much- it's something I can't ever forget. I don't mean she ever used it; it's just that we all knew it was there. Maybe we could tell by the way she talked to James, with her head tilted up a little but with her eyes still looking down at her shoes, and how she still called him a 'toe-rag' like that was the harshest word in the dictionary (and it probably was for her, with her prefect badge and perfect manners). Lily was nice, I mean the girl had everything from nice grades to nice looks, but she still had that redhead temper. And 'toe-rag' was the way she expressed it.

I think it was just after James had told her he loved her that she started dating Amos Diggory. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd always figured he was her first boyfriend. And she was definitely loud with him. You could hear her in broom closets and empty classrooms for two months before it all finally came undone. And with the way she was with James, the way anytime James passed her she laugh louder with a big, "Amos, not here" thrown in somewhere, there was no way it was going to last.

I don't think Amos knew about James and Lily, beyond that James made her feel something horrible. And if he did know about the things James did or said or thought about Lily Evans, he didn't care. They were friends, even, all through school. I hated that. I hated that so much, I punched him once for kissing Lily.

And that made everything worse.

It was a Saturday. I remember because of the Quiditch match- Hufflepuff versus Slytherin. We didn't want to be there, Remus, James, and I. Watching the Hufflepuff team losing by forty points to assholes like Goyle and Nott hurt like it was the Gryffindors losing. We weren't there for support, or pain, or cheering though. James just wanted to see Amos lose. I guess he figured that Quiditch and Lily were just as good, so that then losing Quiditch was losing Lily (I can tell you now that James only lost one match after his first date with her).

By the time Hufflepuff was sixty points down, James was a little flushed and he was brashly boasting about how he'd beat Diggory last week at some advanced levitation grade in charms, so maybe he should make it so Diggory 'just sort of' fell off his broom.

"Yeah, well," I said. "What a way to get a girl."

James blinked and pushed my elbow sourly. "Like Diggory didn't cheat."

I could hear Remus laughing nearby, but I didn't say anything. There wasn't much use; James was right or I was right, but he wasn't going to let himself be wrong. I saw him chewing thoughtlessly at the side of his lip, but I just looked back at the game.

"Sorry, mate. I know you've got that fantasy of shagging Lily's boyfriend." James said, sniggering. He had picked up a malicious streak since Lily started snogging in broom cupboards

Remus had stopped laughing, and it seemed like everyone around us had gone quiet, like James had been shouting at me. Maybe he was.

And I just glared. "You know," I told him, "you know how I feel about Diggory."

I didn't talk to James for hours, and I probably should have. We didn't normally fight, but when we did, we were more like bickering teenage girls. We never dueled. James hurt his enemies with spells. He didn't seem to realize that it was the words that made all things matter.

I wasn't much better.

I decided then that James didn't deserve Lily and I silently cursed him for his obsession. And, of course, I still just wanted my friend to stop thinking about her. I wanted him to stop thinking about Diggory.

I hated Amos Diggory. The world didn't need him. He was irresistible, and charming, and fucking gorgeous. And that's what Elisa Wood told me, just before Christmas. James still talked to him, still got tips from him in potions, and even talked Quiditch with him. Or at least he did until Lily asked Amos to Hogsmeade.

So as I fell into a small space between Lily and one of her friends, who immediately pushed her chest out a little and licked her lips, giving me these eyes, I glared at her.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing messing up everyone's lives?"

Lily looked at me as if I was a little speck of dirt on her shoe. I said Lily was nice before, right? Well, not to me. Her friend made this cute little noise that sounded suspiciously like 'prat' and then ignored me. I didn't really care. I just sneered at Lily.

"I didn't do anything to you, Black. Can't you sit somewhere, anywhere, where you're not bothering people."

"Can't help it, Evans, " I said. "You're just stuck with me." I wrapped an arm coolly around her. "I'm sure you need the warmth. Amos isn't going to be much use to you for a while, the way things are going."

"You're a jerk." She told me, but we both looked up at Diggory anyway, just to see he sported a rather large bruise on his left cheek and one of his arms didn't seem to be moving in line with the rest of his body. I couldn't remember him that way. "And so is James. Why do you have to hurt people to feel good about yourselves?"

I shrugged. I didn't really know what she was talking about, so I didn't say anything that might make me look stupid. So I repeated my question: "Why do you have to screw around with peoples' lives to be happy."

She let out something resembling a snort and something about how happiness is relative, and then told me to go away. Again, I didn't listen.

"AND TWENTY POINTS TO HUFFLEPUFF! " There was a deep groan and muted swearing. "OUCH. THAT HAS GOT TO HURT. THAT BETTER BE A PENALTY."

I wasn't listening to Alice Alstwick's commentary. They said she was part veela, and maybe she was, but her commentary favored whoever gave her the most galleons. I'm not saying I wouldn't spend three hours with her, if she let me do anything I wanted with her, but her commentary was dragon dung.

Lily shook her hair out of her face and crossed her arms over her chest. "Do you have any idea how many curses I could put on you?"

I laughed at her. "I don't know what He sees in you."

I didn't talk to her for the rest of the match. But when Hufflepuff lost and Slytherin won, and Lily still kissed Amos, I didn't know what to do.

So I punched him. He was standing right next to me, holding his broom he'd just slid off of with pride, almost as if he'd won. He still wore the marks of James's attack, and he had the nerve to stand next to me like I wasn't there, like he wasn't hurting my best mate just by being there next to Lily and next to me.

All wrongs on James's part were suddenly forgotten as Lily stared at me like she'd never seen me before. Every problem I'd ever had didn't seem to exist. She was looking at me as if she was pleading for her life, and I realized then that, to her, I was offering everything she didn't want herself to have. But I didn't understand why.

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James didn't talk to me for three weeks after the match. I don't know if he was mad at me; he just didn't talk. He'd sit with me in class and we'd work noiselessly together. He'd cast nonverbal spells on me sometimes and I'd shoat curse and charm after charm right back. But nothing he did to me was harmful. It was like everything was the same between us, just without words.

At night we'd sit in the common room, in a corner normally, blowing up spiders with dung bombs and throwing firecrackers at first years. James would talk to Remus, and Peter, too, when he wasn't feeling so high and mighty, but he still wouldn't talk to me.

Usually he'd spend his time staring over at Lily, who wasn't talking to him. She thought we were bad people. I don't think she understood then what it meant to have gone bad. Dark magic was everywhere when we were in school. It had always been around, always utilized by the worst of magic world, but by the time we were of age, dark magic was not only unavoidable, but also completely undecipherable.

But James and I were Gryffindors! And she was just prejudiced because James had levitated her skirt in first year so that for two classes, everyone saw her panties and she had no idea. That's what happens when you talk to eleven year old boys like their two just because you're a girl and 'therefore smarter.' They wreak havoc on your life.

It's too bad she was always such Prefect. She really did have a nice body.

Maybe it was because I was thinking like this that James wasn't talking to me.

A/N: I had a problem with the initial chapter of the story. I'm working with all of it now, but I'm not sure I have it right yet. My computer isn't working quite right at the moment. I replaced the first chapter with what it's supposed to be- I think I uploaded a first draft before. So this is the new chapter. I hope you like it.

Please read and review. The more reviews I get, the more I write.