Jilytober 2021 prompt: "Being competitive."

tossing, turning / struggled through the night with someone new
and i could go on and on, on and on
lantern, burning / flickered in the night, only you
but you were still gone, gone, gone

Lily drew a final shuddering breath and pushed the stall door open, where a pigtailed ghost was waiting with her hands clasped like the maliciously gleeful girl she was. She had at least exercised a modicum of decency by waiting outside the stall door instead of floating through it while Lily had let out her angry cries, but now that she'd emerged, Myrtle's manners were over.

Between peeling giggles, Myrtle trilled, "Ooh, you look dreadful—"

"Thanks, Myrtle," Lily muttered dryly, heading for the sink.

"Who was it this time? Your sister? Or maybe that icky boy—"

Lily flinched. "No, not—" Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she gripped the sides of the sink in a bid to steady herself. "Not that boy."

Myrtle swooped from behind her, the chill of her presence lighting goosebumps up Lily's arms, and simpered, "Ooh, another boy…"

"Mmm."

"What'd this one do? Something awful, I can already tell—"

Her breath caught, knuckles turning white as she clenched the stone sink. The worst part of it was, James asking Adelaide to Hogsmeade was far less awful a thing than what Lily had done. Any claim she might have thought she had, any right to be angry based on their unspoken thing they'd been stoking, had been vanished with the five simple words that she couldn't get out of her head.

This is done. I'm done.

Clearly, he was making good on that declaration, if he'd already asked Adelaide Selwyn to Hogsmeade less than twelve hours after Lily had turned him down and inadvertently shattered her own heart in the process.

Myrtle was still blinking at her, but something about the ghost's giddy malevolence felt comforting in a way that Lily knew none of her girlfriends' reactions would. Mary might be understanding, and Marlene and Dorcas might be too, once Lily explained, and all of them would defend her, but underneath their support would always be a layer of pity, no matter how hard they tried to hide it.

Lily didn't want pity; didn't want to feel sad and pining and pathetic. She wanted to feel strong, and to do that, she needed to unburden herself to someone who wouldn't try to soothe her.

So she sucked in a deep breath through her nose and then told Myrtle, "He's, um—he's taking another girl on a date."

Myrtle gasped loudly, and her voice was ominously lower as she growled, "Boys are loathsome—"

Lily sighed, already knowing where this was going.

"—all of them. I was killed by a boy, you know, heard his voice right before I died—"

"Loathsome," Lily agreed for good measure; she'd learned long ago never to apologize to Myrtle for dying unless she fancied being drenched in toilet water.

"I could haunt him," Myrtle offered.

"No!" Lily protested quickly. "He'd figure out—"

"I could haunt her—"

Lily faltered—she couldn't deny that the idea of Myrtle popping out of Adelaide Selwyn's toilet was absurdly funny—but, again, it would surely get back to James and then, because he was too bloody smart for his own good and seemed to know a bizarre amount of information about the castle that no one else did, back to her dormitory and back to her.

"I appreciate the offer, Myrtle, but that would just get me in trouble—"

Myrtle threw her hands wildly, not noticing that one brushed through Lily's shoulder, making her shudder. "Well, you have to do something!" The ghost's face swooped under Lily's in a maneuver that would leave most people starting in fright, but Lily was used to Myrtle's tactics.

"Myrtle," Lily scolded.

The girl just stuck her tongue out and crossed her arms in a huff before spitting, "If someone's going to make you feel awful, you might as well make them feel awful right back."

"I'll think about it," Lily placated.

And as she charmed her puffy eyes, straightened her skirt, and slung her bag over her shoulder, she did. Not as vindictively as Myrtle would, but Lily justified it to herself under a different lens: it wasn't about making James feel awful, because if he'd called it off without even listening to her explain and then asked another girl out the next morning, he obviously didn't have feelings for her like Lily was realizing she had for him, and she wasn't about to sink to new pathetic levels of low just to make him feel lousy when that would only reflect poorly on her.

No, this was about making herself feel strong; untouchable. It was the same mindset she'd sat in for the past six years with respect to her blood, the same mindset that allowed her to snark back at Slytherins and laugh off their slurs like she didn't care. And now, she was going to use the same thing with James. She didn't care that he was taking Adelaide out; James was entitled to date whomever he pleased.

As was she. And if it took flirting up a storm or going on a date with another bloke to prove to him—to everyone—to herself—that she wasn't heartbroken but was Lily fucking Evans, strong and fierce and on top of her game without him, then that's was she was going to do.

Though their motives and methods might be different, Lily thought she agreed with Myrtle's sentiment: no boy would bring her down. Especially not a boy named James Potter.

After saying goodbye to a pouting Myrtle, Lily made her way up a floor toward her classroom; she had Arithmancy that afternoon, which James didn't take but Remus did.

"Hey," he said quietly, moving quickly to her side as she approached in the corridor. "Is everything, erm…alright?"

Lily forced her cheeks into the contortion of a bright smile. "Yeah, why wouldn't it be?"

Remus's eyes narrowed as he cupped her elbow, herding her to the side before muttering out of the corner of his mouth, "Gee, maybe because you stormed out of lunch?"

She shook her head. "I've been teetering on the edge of a migraine all day, it's why I missed this morning."

Which wasn't a total lie; she had been plagued by a headache since the night before, albeit entirely self-induced, but Remus didn't need to know that.

Remus's brow only knitted tighter together, disbelief etched in his face. "So, nothing to do with James being in a shit mood since last night and then asking Selwyn to Hogsmeade out of nowhere?"

Lily bristled; that was the kind of sass she would have expected from Sirius Black, but not from Remus Lupin.

"Nope." She hated how her voice came out a pitch higher; pinched. "He's at perfect liberty to date whoever he likes."

"Right," Remus sighed.

But he didn't push it further as they shuffled into the emptying classroom and took their seats, and Lily pushed from her mind those words Remus had spoken—James being in a shit mood since last night—out of nowhere—and the spark of an idea they threatened to set off in her brain. So what if James had asked Adelaide out to get back at Lily? He was the one who had ended whatever they'd had and just stalked away without even giving her a chance to bloody think.

She was strong. She wasn't heartbroken. She was Lily fucking Evans. And she would prove it.

At the end of class, as everyone was packing up their things, Lily surreptitiously pushed a page of her notes off her desk, letting the parchment flutter to the ground before she pretended to look for it.

"Oh, here." Her desk neighbor bent to the floor and picked it up. "Must have fallen off your desk."

Lily gave him a beaming a smile. "Thank you so much."

"No problem." He shrugged his bag over his shoulder and tucked a thick lock of his hair behind his ear. "Say, Lily, you going to Hogsmeade on Saturday?"

"Yeah," Lily told him airily, standing up and making a ladylike show of smoothing her skirt and adjusting her hair. "My girlfriends and I are planning on doing some shopping." She gave him a coy smile. "Maybe I'll see you in the Three Broomsticks after?"

He gave her an easy grin; he really was quite sexy, once one got past how much of a know-it-all he was. "Yeah, I'll save a pint for you."

Her stomach knotted, but she ignored it. "Cool. See you."

When she turned around and saw Remus Lupin watching her with a stony expression, the knot tightened, and when they started their usual walk back to Gryffindor Tower in silence, she started to wonder if she'd made a mistake.

Desperate for noise, for conversation, anything to break up this awkward tension, she asked, "Everything alright?"

Remus only shrugged and kept his gaze forward. "You tell me, Lily."

Well, shit. Her and Remus were friends, sure, but there were some things they had wordlessly agreed not to share, gossip about a certain bespectacled friend of his being one of them. She had to assume Remus didn't know, because they'd agreed to keep it secret and she'd only told Mary that day, but…did he know?

"I'm fine…" she started tentatively. "Busy, overworked, overwhelmed, harassed by Slytherins, constantly targeted by pureblood mania, but you know, all that aside, I'm fine."

Remus gave her a wry smile. "Always looking on the bright side, you are."

"Yeah, you know me, just trying to make my own sunshine, and all that"—Remus snorted—"in bloody rainy Scotland."

"Ever considered moving to the Virgin Islands?"

"Excessively."

They shared a laugh then, and Lily started to feel like she was getting the regular Remus back.

He exhaled a deep breath. "Look, Lily." Oh no, here it was. "I'm not going to ask what's going on, I'm just going to observe, as someone who is friends with the two of you, that seeing both of you be in off moods and ask other people out in the same day is fucking weird."

God, being called out by Remus Lupin felt worse than getting scolded by McGonagall.

"Any other observations?" It was a little snotty, she knew, but from Remus's sigh, she didn't think he'd expected anything different.

"Yeah," he said resignedly. "You two should shag and get whatever the hell tension is going on out of your system so the rest of us don't have to put up with the mood swings that come along with it."

Ice formed in her stomach, chilling and sharp. Did he know? Surely not; he wouldn't say something insensitive if he knew the truth. Would he? Remus had always had a dry sense of humor, but even still, Lily had found his reaction to her that day to be uncharacteristically stern, like he was…angry. They had never before had to test Remus's loyalties between the two of them, but now, Lily wondered if that's where they were headed.

"Lily?" Remus gripped her arm. "Are you alright? You went pale."

"Fine," she lied, shaking her head. "Still getting over that migraine, I think."

She could tell he didn't believe her, but he accepted her lie without question and changed the topic to commiserate over all the homework they'd just been assigned.

Somehow, that made her feel even worse.

By dinner, the entire school was talking about how she had a date-of-sorts with Garrytt Ollivander that weekend. Though she meticulously avoided looking in his direction, she'd heard James's laughter floating down the table from where he sat amongst his friends, and she could pinpoint the exact moment he found out by the obscene choking sound that preceded him gagging into his napkin as Sirius pounded on his back until whatever had been stuck in his throat dislodged and James took off for the double doors, running a hand furiously through his hair. She was supposed to feel strong, untouchable, but all Lily felt was hollow.

James got ready for Hogsmeade in steadfast silence, ignoring the mix of curious (Peter), pitying (Remus), and annoyed (Sirius) looks of his friends as they carried on a conversation they were still trying to goad him into joining. He couldn't talk about it, not yet. It was weird, something he wasn't used to experiencing, but he felt like if he even tried to speak about anything remotely related to her, the facade he'd built out of delicate glass would crack and shatter within a word.

The rest of the week had passed in a blur of intense focus on not thinking about Lily while simultaneously avoiding her at all costs, which necessarily involved thinking about Lily, and the result had been torturous. He wasn't one to ever cry, or even be sad, really, but he'd already cried about Lily twice that week. Once, after the fateful night they'd fallen apart, and then again when he'd heard she had agreed to go to Hogsmeade with someone else. Both times he'd shut himself in his bed, the charmed velvet hangings providing the only barrier he had to keep his mates from seeing him in that state, and neither time did he admit to anything, though he knew Sirius could tell where his head was at.

Mercifully, Sirius had kept his confidence, but that didn't mean his friend was pleased that James had ditched them for a date with a girl he didn't fancy.

"I mean, come on," Sirius whined again. "Selwyn? If you want to get some, you don't have to waste your Saturday in Hogsmeade with her for it. We could be spending the day buying out Zonko's and hanging out with Abe, and then you could still come back here and get sucked off in a closet if you asked her to."

James sighed. The truth was, he hadn't fully thought things through—or really thought at all—when he'd asked Adelaide to Hogsmeade. He'd acted out of anger and spite, wanting only to make Lily jealous. Sirius's plan (minus the blowjob—there was only one girl he really wanted that from, which was a stab to the heart to admit to himself) sounded much preferable, but it was too late now.

And besides, this was exactly what he needed this date for: to stop wallowing.

"She seems fun," James responded absently, trying to work a smidge of Sleekeazy's into his unruly hair. "We can go buy out Zonko's and hang with Abe anytime."

Sirius snorted. "Hardly. Between Quidditch and Head Boy shit, we've barely seen you since school started."

His hand froze in his hair as a boulder settled roughly in his stomach, and he glared at Sirius through the mirror. Sirius now knew—knew—that his "Head Boy" excuse had been a cover for stealing time with Lily, and he was really going to throw a blow like that?

He took a deep breath, hanging his head and chewing his lip as he braced his hands against the counter, and then started when a presence appeared at his side.

"I'm sorry," Sirius whispered. "That was low. But look, Prongs, when I said to forget her, I didn't think you'd…do what you did. I thought we were going to…I don't know, get the old Prongs back."

"I know," James said heavily. "I do, I just…" He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I need to get over her, Pads."

Sirius squeezed his shoulder. "Alright. Go do that."

By the time he was halfway through his date, James realized it probably would have been easier to do just that if he'd picked a girl who looked less like Lily. They didn't even look that alike, but as James paid attention to his date and snuck glances at the Head Girl, he couldn't help but realize that Adelaide was like a different version of the girl he really had feelings for. Her hair was strawberry blonde where Lily's was deep red, her eyes a light sage green where Lily's were emerald, her personality peppy where Lily's was more cheeky. She was smart, she was popular, she knew Quidditch, she was gorgeous—there was no reason why he shouldn't fancy her.

And this was the thought he latched onto when he caught sight of Lily laughing with Garrytt Ollivander at the bar, tossing those long burgundy curls over her shoulder, puckering those rosy lips over the edge of her tankard of Butterbeer. And it was most definitely the thought he latched onto when Garrytt reached out a hand to brush away the foam that had lightly mustached Lily's upper lip.

His stomach turned, but it was the back of his eyes threatening to burn that forced him to look away and return his attention to his own date.

"My family has a box for Puddlemere matches," Adelaide was saying. "Maybe you could come sometime."

James grinned, a true smile peeking out from the idea of going to a professional Quidditch match. "You know I can't turn down Quidditch."

Adelaide smiled at him, then batted her eyelashes as she tilted her face and flicked her eyes down to his lips and back, like she—

Oh. Like she wanted him to kiss her.

Fuck, he hadn't thought that far. Well, okay, he had, in the sense that he'd wondered whether it would happen and whether he should let it, his brain bouncing between not feeling ready and thinking he should go full steam ahead to push her forcefully from his mind. Only, those wandering thoughts had been focused on an alcove around a corner from the Fat Lady; Adelaide inviting—hell, wanting—a kiss in the middle of the Three Broomsticks was a play he hadn't expected.

But Lily was just across the way, near the bar; Lily, who had turned right around and asked a bloke on a date after being exasperated over being asked by three blokes in one day, including James; Lily, who his heart ached for, but who had never made him feel more deeply, uncomfortably confused than she had in the past few days.

Forget her. The reason he was there with Adelaide in the first place.

Forget her. How could he, when she was radiant beyond belief?

Forget her. He had to. And if she was going to make him watch her flirt her arse off with Garrytt Ollivander, of all fucking people, then she could watch him snog his date.

Resolved, he leaned in just enough to signal his intention to Adelaide, and when she only smiled before tilting a smidge more, he closed the gap between them and pressed his lips to hers.

Everything in his body immediately screamed at him to stop, but he didn't. Even when Adelaide turned her head to deepen their kiss, even when her hand rested on his neck, fingers cold and unfamiliar, even when her tongue swiped at his bottom lip—even as his brain revolted, James hung on, reaching up to cup Adelaide's jaw as he Frenched her back, knowing full well his profile was in clear view of the bar.

Don't run. Don't hide. What would Myrtle do? Then, fuck, had it really come to that?

It had. Because not only was James across the way with his date that was not Lily, his hair looking deliciously tousled and that grin she'd once tasted dazzling on his face, and not only was Adelaide lapping up his attention like a thirsty Labrador, but now they were snogging—full on making out—in front of everyone like they were high on love potion fumes in Madam Puddifut's.

Lily's stomach turned, everything in her body screaming to flip a table, hex him to oblivion, and be sick, all at once. But she held on, focusing on her anger. That she could deal with. That made watching James Potter's tongue go in another girl's mouth more bearable. That made her forget—if even just for a second—what that jawline felt like and what his mouth on her neck did to her knickers.

Anger, is what Myrtle would harness. It was also what would make her circle of friends feel awkward and no doubt try to talk to her about it and tell her they were sorry, but she couldn't care about them feeling uncomfortable when anger was her only fuel, the one thing she could rely on to keep her knees from buckling and her stomach from emptying and the tears from falling.

So anger is what she channelled as she pulled her eyes from the slobbering show-offs and forced a smile back on her face, anger is what she imagined was in that shot glass of Firewhisky, anger is what fueled her immediate yes when Garrytt suggested they go up the road to Madam Puddifut's for a quieter atmosphere, even though everyone knew that the teashop was really a socially acceptable spot to sit and snog.

And it might have been anger that spurred her to accept Garrytt's kiss under the dim candlelight by the fogged window, but once his lips were moving over hers, it was pure fantasy that kept her going, blurred memories of inky black hair and hazel eyes and a different hot mouth all occupying her brain in a toxic make-believe until the sadness crept in and she resorted to feigning a headache (too much alcohol, not enough water, not enough sleep lately, yeah, she's been so busy) so that Garrytt would walk her back to the castle and she could try to get control of her threatening tears under the cover of darkness.

Pure luck had them catching up to Mary, Marlene, and Dorcas halfway to Gryffindor Tower, affording Lily the chance to genuinely tell Garrytt there was no need to walk her the rest of the way. He didn't even seem put-out about it, though he had always been known as more of a player than a romantic gentleman type.

She didn't miss the anxious looks the girls shared over her, and it took everything she had to hold it together, every last drop of her Lily fucking Evans strength to walk herself past the small crowd surrounding Sirius, Remus, and Peter in the common room and up the girls' staircases. But as soon as she crossed the threshold, she crumbled, sinking to her knees with her face in her hands.

"Oh, Lil." Mary dropped down next to her, wrapping a protective arm immediately around her shoulders, and Marlene and Dorcas followed suit, crouching in a semicircle.

"What's going on?" Marlene asked worriedly. "Is it Garrytt, what'd he do?"

"N-nothing," Lily forced out. "I just thought—after he did it—I should too, and—"

But a sob overtook her at even the fleeting thought of James being with someone else.

Dorcas asked confusedly, "Wait, Garrytt? I don't get it, what'd he do?"

Mary, bless her soul, was silent, but Lily knew she needed to come clean to the others.

"Not G-garrytt," she blubbered, dragging the back of her hand under her nose. "James."

Marlene and Dorcas blinked at her, and Lily flopped into a seated position, hugging her knees to her chest in the middle of the floor, and retold the same story she'd told Mary.

Moving on wasn't supposed to be easy, James rationalized. That's why it was called moving on—because there was something painful that required moving on from. Those who had already moved on didn't need to be moving on anymore, they were just…normal.

Which is where he wanted to be: back to normal.

Only, normal without Lily in his life wasn't something he was used to. Even though nothing more than platonic had happened between them before this year, they'd always been around each other. She'd always been there. The spitfire sort-of friend who would call him out on his shit and begrudgingly put up with his existence and occasionally genuinely laugh at his jokes. The first girl he'd ever had a proper crush on, the girl he'd tried to ask out fifth year before messing up miserably, the girl who had found it within herself to forgive him when he apologized and agree to an olive branch of civility, however shaky it might have been. The girl he'd always stood up for when Slytherins harassed her, even though he knew she didn't need him to, and sometimes didn't want him to. The girl who hadn't thought twice about sending him and Sirius to detention when she'd become a prefect but who also hadn't questioned him when he started showing up for Remus's rounds around full moons. Instead, she'd started making copies of all her notes and leaving them outside their dormitory door.

They had never discussed it, and, to James's knowledge, her and Remus had never discussed it either. It was just the type of person she was. No-nonsense, yet generously kind. It had brought a strange kind of comfort to his life, just having her there on the periphery to banter with. Other people might have called it arguing, but it never felt like that to James; it didn't get him proper angry, the way they bantered—it was more like a competition, a running game that never ended and in which the only rules were to snark better, faster, funnier.

He hadn't thought (a recurring theme, he knew) when he broke it off about how the ripple effects of that meant losing all of Lily, not just the part of her he knew in private. Because how was he ever supposed to go back to their pre-romantic normal when he felt like she'd lodged a dagger permanently in his heart and yet he was still in love with the girl?

Moving on wasn't supposed to be easy. It was hard, fucking hard, but James could handle hard. He was a Gryffindor. He was an Animagus. He ran around with a werewolf every month. He'd played Quidditch through the most brutal of conditions. He'd broken more bones in his body than he could count, through a mixture of all of the above.

He could do hard things.

Like hook up with Adelaide Selwyn.

After he'd kissed her in the Three Broomsticks, his stomach churning with unsettled Butterbeer, and noticed Lily was gone, he'd had a strange moment of clarity and thought for sure he wouldn't kiss her again; Sirius was right, he should just be screwing around with his mates, not messing about another girl's feelings because his own were so messed up. But as they started walking back to the castle, Adelaide's arm looped around his, her pace dawdling like they were on a romantic stroll under the High Street's lanterns, he'd seen: Lily, making out with Garrytt through the window of Madam Puddifut's, with her hand holding back the hair that normally fell handsomely into his stupidly handsome fucking face.

Anger, not sadness.

Fine. If this was how it was going to be, both of them just parading around other people after they imploded, then fine.

Adrenaline sizzled under the surface of his skin, propelled him past her friends on the staircase without so much as a wave, steered him toward that alcove around the corner from the Fat Lady, and hammered in his chest when Adelaide followed him inside eagerly and pushed him against the wall.

Her hands in his hair, on his jaw. Wrong. His hands slipping around an unfamiliar waist, up the back of a tight shirt. Wrong. A mouth sliding with his, just slightly out of sync. Wrong. Friction at his front, pressure he couldn't control building where her jeans rubbed against his. Wrong. Threading hands into her hair, soft but not the same. Wrong. Letting her undo his button and zipper. Wrong. Feeling himself harden the rest of the way at the attention of her hand. Wrong.

But no—he needed to stop thinking that. It wasn't wrong, it was just different. Someone new. Someone he could like if he let himself, if he got over everything that was holding him back.

He could do hard things.

So he did, if only to prove to himself that he could.

Dorcas frowned. "Why not just talk to James?"

Lily's cheeks grew hot. "Because he'd already asked Adelaide!"

"So you…turned around and asked Garrytt?"

"He asked me, actually," she corrected petulantly.

Dorcas arched a brow. "And you said yes, and then you put on a show flirting and snogging?"

"Well, but—that's not fair," Lily spluttered, indignant, "he had his tongue down her throat first!"

Dorcas sighed and rubbed her temples, but when Lily sought solace from Marlene or Mary, it was to find them sharing a furtive look.

"What?" Lily shrieked.

The look Dorcas gave her was almost too pitying to bear. "You really don't see it, do you?"

Lily shrugged, at a complete loss for what Dorcas was getting at.

"God," Dorcas exclaimed, "it's like you're…fucking competing to make the other one more jealous, more miserable, when in reality all you're doing is self-destructing!"

The truth in that clawed at her, ripping its way through her insides, as the shame she'd tried to push away pooled anew in her stomach.

Marlene reached for her hand and spoke soothingly, like she was trying to counteract Dorcas's straightforwardness. "Could you talk to him, Lily? At least tell him what you told us, about how you felt that night? About Garrytt being a mistake? I mean, you have to work with him for heads stuff, you could talk after—"

Her stomach sank at the reminder that with a new week came a new schedule for meetings and patrols; she hadn't yet had to speak to him since that fateful night, and now she was so humiliated and upset she didn't know how she ever could again.

"—I'm sure he'd listen to you, it's James, he's fancied you for ages—"

"Stop." She ran exasperated hands through her hair. "What—ages?"

Mary cleared her throat awkwardly. "Er—literal years, love."

Had she known? No, not really, though she had sometimes suspected. But he hadn't asked her out after he'd tried fifth year, and he'd never acted like he still fancied her, he'd just been…James. Hot-headed, annoyingly smart, unfailingly loyal, dependable, earnest James.

"Fuck," Lily sighed.

Her girlfriends' responding silence would have broken her heart, but she'd already done that on her own.