Chapter Three: I Must've Spent Too Much Time Listening To James Ranting About Lily
By the James would talk to me again, I wasn't entirely interested in talking. My mother had sent me four Howlers in a week- a record for her- each one insisting I "NEVER DARE TOUCH HER PRECIOUS REGULUS!" The last of the four blew up with a puff of smoke that left scorch marks in my fringe for weeks, as if she didn't understand that you just don't blow up your son's hair. Consequently, I used her spell on a toilet in a fifth floor bathroom the next week and managed not only to leave the toilet seat-less and leaking great amounts of water, but to singe my brother's hair and a resultantly charm a deep-set odor to simmer from my brother for the following month as well (my mother sent no Howler for this, and I reckon my brother figured I was too volatile to suffer the reaction of him telling her). By the time James would talk to me again, I'd have rather hit him than be civil.
He said I was brooding. But really I wasn't. I happen to favor dark places- like the owlry in the west tower or the divination classroom (minus the subject). A man must have time, space, and a lack of light to think things through before he acts, I'd decided. The towers were silent, especially the astronomy tower. That was my favorite place to hide. And brood, if one must call it that.
I always related well to the stars; distant as they were so you could reach as far as you'd like but never catch one. I never thought too much on it, but if I was the way I'd have liked to be, or thought I was, I was like that. James didn't talk like that about things and about stars, so I didn't either, but it was the same way he thought of Lily- out of reach but too tempting not to try for it. Maybe he liked that sort of thing in people.
Pulling my feet up to rest on the stone frame that formed one of windows of the astronomy tower and pushing my back further into the other side of the frame, I stared far below me at the grounds. The night was streaked with the violets and pinks of the rising dusk, so tempting I felt I could fall into the twilight from my place on the window ledge, and I wouldn't completely mind. I probably wasn't thinking as much as I thought I was. I could see shapes moving against each other on the ground in a heated kiss near the forest; a girl pushing against a boy and the way he would push back again, their feet swinging in the lake; Vence, the newest Defense against the Dark Arts teacher strolled past Hagrid's cabin with burgundy robes billowing out above his ankles; Filch, the caretaker's apprentice who couldn't work a word of magic though I probably shouldn't have known, sourly kicked some dirt back into a green house.
A waved a curse at him with a half-concealed wand, but I didn't wait to watch the jelly legs take form. Instead I watch the couple by the lake, laughing and holding hands while she tossed her vibrant, red hair around. Molly Prewitt, I decided. I'd grown up with Molly (rather distantly, but she was at all the stuffy Christmas) and I knew hair like that anywhere. His glasses glinted off surface of the lake as he stretched his lanky arms out in front of him, keeping her fingers through his.
I had to believe I could have that. I had girls eyeing me constantly, and James had that too. Thinking of James, and I would rather have not to, the boy down by the water tossing about his long arms and legs became him, and slowly Molly became Lily.
Content with simply sitting there like they were the only two people in the entire world, she shoved him with a little laugh. Her cheeks were rosy and a little pained from smiling so big, but she kept on giggling anyway as he splashed a little water on her.
"Lily! You've really hurt me!"
She giggled again, the way she never did in any near, noticed vicinity of James, and she splashed him back, dragging the water up to him with her bare foot. He caught it easily, chaser as he was, and kissed the bone just above her baby toe, and then made a face like he could never bear anything so horrible, exaggerating the gesture just enough she'd know he couldn't ever think that.
He mumbled something, she didn't understand and then repeated it when she made her own sort of face at him to gesture lack of hearing. "Tastes like giant squid," he told her, mocking an attempt to choke and then hurl, though that may not have been what he said in the first place. Probably wasn't. And he kissed her anklebone, and then pulled her skirt up enough to kiss each of her knees and the inside of her thigh, then buried his head in her stomach. She held him carefully there, bringing her fingers though his hair, and she blushed as she brought his head up enough that she could kiss him.
He splashed her with water as she did, and I stopped watching Lily and James so I could see Molly smile at redheaded boy beside her as he then leaned over to kiss her. James would have something like that, he deserved it, and I had to do my best to give it to him. Even if he didn't want to talk to me.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
James looked at me Monday morning with big, bloodshot eyes, like he'd stated up all night studying. I looked at him closely through once-again-perfect black hair, and I knew that wasn't it.
"Where were you last night, mate?" He raised a heavy eyebrow and I shrugged at him, and threw my feet over the table, grinning at him.
"Oy! Did you need wet your sheets and need a change?"
He shot me a scalding look, but the effect slowly softened. He grinned back at me in truce.
I looked over at Peter a meter down the bench from James, taking in the way his lips pulled inward as he inhaled in his sleep. His head was collapsed on his chubby little arms, and his lips puckered out in an exhale. He snored softly over fat little fingers.
"Astronomy tower," I said lackadaisically because where else would I be?
I saw Lily walk into the hall with hair colored a booger-green color. Her smile suggested that it was the most normal day in the world, and she held steadfast to three spell books that wouldn't fit into the heavy-laden, suede bag that kept banging against her knees. A laugh escaped me, sounding more like a bark to my own ears, though James seemed to get the general idea of it. He looked over at her, his eyes lighting up with mischief and glee, but a little glazed over too.
"Oy, Evans!" he called across the hall from our place at the Gryffindor table. There were too many pointed hats between the doors and us, but Lily heard us clearly, and saw us just as well. The middle book of the three dropped to the floor, and as it echoed through the hall I realized that no one spoke. But James laughed. "Who blew their nose on your hair?"
Lily didn't understand him, but she knew something was wrong. She must've known from the time she dropped her book onward. She kept walking though, on and on until she was behind my bench, ignoring me easily and looking at James like she could step on him and that would be all right.
"What did you do, Potter?" she sounded tired, despite how cheerful she had seemed before. I think I preferred her smile; it didn't cut so deeply at my nerves.
James shrugged and smiled up at her lazily, though his demeanor seemed suddenly jolly. "A little this, a little that. Just a few spells, you know."
Lily leaned in closer to him, over my shoulder, and I could see Dumbledore carefully not noticing them, chewing on a piece of sausage and trying to engage McGonagall in conversation, though the only one who listened was Professor Vence. Lily's wand was tightly clutched in her hand, but I could only see the tip of it poking out of her robes near my temple. It was dangerously close to my already traumatized hair.
"I said: what-did-you-do?" She pronounced the words hard enunciation, her voice deathly quiet.
But James smiled and shook his head. "You're a fiery one, aren't you?"
Lily let out a shriek, and I turned to look at her and look at James, and look at her again, trying to tell her, show her how she was hurting him. Do you like fucking over everybody you possibly can, Lily Evans? Her brilliantly glittering eyes were too big too look in, and I think she was crying because she took in a raggedy breath, and the she stalked down the table and sat next to a girl named Adria Bell.
"It's too bad, mate." I told him, just like I always did when Lily was mentioned. He shrugged and I raised an eyebrow, and we both grinned just as we usually did. Girls would never break our friendship as long as Lily Evans never got to close.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
James tossed a snitch he nicked ages over my way, and I tossed it at Wormtail's head. James grabbed it as Peter smacked the place the little, golden ball had landed, and then threw at me again, smiling faintly. Peter had long since given up on catching passes and no longer clapped whenever we caught it instead, but I could still hear him in my head whenever James made a particularly difficult throw of it and still managed to toss it or catch it wherever he wanted.
James slumped against a tree with a stub of a trunk and fat, tangled branches that crawled over the ground and then up into the air. I couldn't see him from my place over the slump of a hill. My vision twisted upside-down and was blocked a little by the soft, verdant grass around me. Far on the other side of the lack, the side closest to the castle, I could see two pairs of knees, with a skirt wrapped around each, bending over the grass and into the dark water.
Remus lay with his head adjacent to mine, loosely holding a book down the hill but above our heads. He looked at me, blinking like it was too bright for him, and I understood what he meant: you couldn't think out here in light like this.
Catching the snitch, I dropped onto the hand lying on Remus's chest, and I looked back up at the sky, making out whatever shapes I could see. I wasn't any sort of romantic, but I would swear to this day I saw James and Lily, kissing, in the clouds.
A/N: Thank you soooo much to people who've reviewed. Especially to OTHCharmedHPFreak- you've reviewed all my HP stuff and put it on your favorites list, and that's just kinda amazing Also, thank you to SeekingSnitch for putting this story on your favorites list.
Not knocking that, really, please review if you read this. I flourish on comments and advice, and knowing the exact thing you like and don't like. Even if you just write to say 'it sucks' or 'cool,' that's enough.
This chapter was WAY too inspired by Radiohead's 'OK Computer,' particularly the song 'Climbing Up the Walls.'