The transformation from Lily Evans the muggleborn low-ranking Quidditch coach into Calypso Selwyn the pureblood socialite is one she's got down to a science.

The glamour charms are relatively simple - changing her hair from a rich auburn to a platinum blonde, her green eyes to a steely grey. The rest is accomplished with makeup; whereas Lily normally wears none of it, the thick layers of it that she puts on for parties transform her face entirely. The contour, the false lashes, and the dark lipstick all serve to make her reflection wholly unfamiliar to even herself.

And while her normal day-to-day uniform consists almost exclusively of athletic attire, her alter ego wears dazzling dress robes that leave few of her curves to the imagination.

She picks a bloodred one tonight, that sits just off her shoulders and dips delicately in the center of her chest. The fitted fabric glimmers with every movement like flames on her skin, in perfect complement to the crimson red paint on her lips.

It's her warpaint and her battle armour; and instead of spells and curses, her weapons of choice include her saccharine words, her quick wit, and of course, her body.

She's quite certain that, when Dumbledore first tapped her as a potential informant for the Order, his intention wasn't that she become some sort of coveted prize amongst pureblood supremacists. He'd probably be appalled to discover the truth of how she manages to provide him with all the information she does. But he's never questioned her strategies, and they have thus far proven incredibly effective.

It's a multifaceted sort of thing, the way she's able to do all of it so covertly, without raising any suspicions. The first is that she's a woman - and amidst blood status superiority complexes is also a deep-seated sexism, and therefore none of the pureblood chauvinists think themselves capable of being outwitted by a simple girl.

And because of that, they also don't care much what she's up to when she's not at these dinner parties and galas. No one has once asked Calypso Selwyn what she does during the day; so long as they get to touch her and trade flirtatious remarks with her every so often, they don't expect her to speak much or have any sort of humanity otherwise.

She'd hate that in any other situation, but it's ultimately to her advantage in this one.

The second is that she's impossibly careful to never allow herself to be the only other person in the room. She's able to pull this off under the guise of chastity - she may put her body out for show, but no respectable man will want to marry her if there's talk that she's already been the bedfellow of another, so of course she can't possibly let herself spend too much time alone with any of them. The whole concept is complete bullshit, given just how much the pureblood men themselves sleep around, but it's an effective cover.

If she's never the only person in the room, she'll never be the sole suspect if and when they eventually realise there's a spy in their ranks. Bad things happen when she's the only person in the room - she learned that lesson the hard way.

And finally, there's the fact that she's invariably really fucking good at what she does. Dumbledore had seen it in her at Slug Club, the way that she's able to charm her way through these tedious dinner parties, collecting information and goading secrets out into the open.

If anything, her skill in that regard has only improved in the three years she's been keeping this act up. In all that time, she's only fucked up once. And still, she made it out alive and with her cover intact.

So all in all, a pretty solid record.

The letter that came to her two nights ago was an invitation - the Malfoys are putting on yet another one of their elaborate dinner parties, this time celebrating the engagement of the eldest Malfoy to Narcissa Black, and of course, anyone within the Sacred Twenty-Eight is on the guest list for those.

She hates Malfoy Manor. She can't really put a finger on it, because it's no different than the other pureblood mansions that are ostentatiously decorated with crystal chandeliers and marble fireplaces, complete with house elves flitting around underfoot doing all the manual labour of the household, but something about the place unsettles her.

She Apparates to just outside the manor gates. They open for her almost immediately - she's got the dinner party invitation tucked into her dress robes, and the magical gates can sense that she's on the list of permitted attendees. From there, it's a decent walk up the path to the house, which somehow looks even more ominous than usual in the late evening darkness.

There's a calming sort of silence surrounding Lily as she walks up to the front door, and she uses it to collect her thoughts, to let herself fully slip into this character as she's done so many times before.

The door swings open before she even has a chance to knock, revealing none other than the patriarch of the manor himself, Abraxas Malfoy. He's apparently taken it upon himself to greet guests in the foyer, no doubt using the opportunity to boast about the manor to every new arrival. She's been through this before - the Malfoys love their shiny things, and they love any chance to draw attention to those shiny things even more.

"Calypso, a pleasure," he says, as soon as she crosses the threshold into the manor, extending his hand out to her. When she places her hand in his, he brings it up to his lips, pressing a kiss to her wrist. "Will your uncle be joining us tonight?"

He lets go of her hand and she lets it fall back to her side. "Not tonight, I'm afraid," she says, trying to sound sympathetic. "Still recovering from his last bout of dragon pox."

That's a bold-faced lie. Her 'uncle' isn't at home ill - Azibar Selwyn isn't even in the country. Hell, he probably isn't even anywhere in Europe anymore. The man hates his pureblood roots more than anyone Lily's ever known - including Sirius Black - and had been desperate for some sort of escape from them that wouldn't result in anyone being out for his head. And so he'd approached Dumbledore of all people, begging the man to help him get out without a trace - and Dumbledore had agreed, but for a price.

That price had been Lily.

Before he disappeared, he'd toted Lily to a few key pureblood events, introducing her to everyone as his niece who'd moved to live with him after finishing her schooling in Norway. Once Lily - Calypso - had become a fixture in the pureblood social scene, thereby cementing her role as an informant for the Order, Azibar left the country, his absence completely unknown to anyone but Lily and Dumbledore himself.

He'd also left her with a rather impressive collection of vintage dress robes, citing that they'd stayed in the family for ages and he could care less about them. It's not like he'd had any daughters to pass them onto or anything of the sort.

She's made a number of alterations on the old-fashioned robes so that they better suit her own needs, but they were an incredibly useful starting point.

"That's unfortunate," Abraxas replies, although she doubts he actually misses Azibar's presence. The man has been gone for two years, after all, and no one has really thought twice of it. "Tell him I send my well wishes."

"Of course." She nods at Abraxas, before walking further into the manor, towards the sound of conversations and soft music.

She scans the room as soon as she steps into it, taking stock of who's here tonight. It's a lot of the usual suspects - the Averys, the Blacks, the Rosiers, the Yaxleys, and, of course, the Malfoys themselves. She finds the guests of honour easily - Narcissa is draped off Lucius' arm, clad in silver dress robes that nearly match her hair, while her fiancé is deep in conversation in Rabastan Lestrange.

Both of those two men are trouble, she knows that. She adds Rabastan to her mental list of people to linger around this evening - the sneer on his face as he talks to the Malfoy heir unsettles her, and she's long since learned that the conversations that appear the most unnerving to her are often the most informative.

"Champagne, Miss?" a house elf squeaks from below her, holding a tray of bubbling flutes above his head. She grabs a glass off the tray, and has to bite her tongue to hold back an automatic 'thank you.'

A Selwyn wouldn't talk to a house elf like that.

She takes a cautious sip of her drink before moving across the room. Most people here drink champagne (or wine, or whisky, or whatever really) like it's water, so she'd look quite out of place if she wasn't drinking anything at all, but letting herself get anything more than a little tipsy in this setting is asking for trouble. One little drunken slip could come at the cost of her life.

"Calypso, lovely to see you." Will Rosier appears at her side abruptly.

She resists the urge to groan. Rosier is, in all honesty, probably one of the tamest purebloods here - which would be a good thing normally, but is useless when the whole point of her presence here is overhearing dangerous plans.

But despite being utterly disinterested in some of the more violent tendencies of the other pureblood supremacists, he is fantastically interested in her.

"Will, a pleasure," she replies, faking a smile.

"I was wondering if you'd be making an appearance tonight."

She laughs, high and tinkling and nothing like her genuine laugh. "Since when have I ever missed an opportunity for a party?"

He smiles at her charitably. "Very true."

She's at these sorts of affairs nearly every time she's invited - the sole exception being the time that a match against Appleby had run late into the night and she'd been unable to get away in time. But otherwise, she's a relatively constant presence on the pureblood social scene.

"I was just on my way to congratulate the newly engaged couple," he continues. "Care to join me?"

He immediately offers her arm, not even considering the option that she'd say no.

Of course, she doesn't - she takes his arm and lets him lead the way to where Lucius and Narcissa are standing, still talking to Rabastan Lestrange and now joined by the other Lestrange brother, Rodolphus.

Her blood boils at the mere sight of Rodolphus - she knows he was involved in the torture of a Muggle couple and their magical daughter just a few weeks ago, she's heard him bragging about it at a party. But she has no evidence of it; there's nothing that she can give to Dumbledore that he can use, and so he continues to walk free.

It infuriates her, and makes her that much more set on making sure he does rot in Azkaban at some point. It's what he deserves.

She hadn't intended to make her way into this conversation while hanging on Will's arm, but she's here now, so she'll take it.

"Lucius, Narcissa, congratulations," Will says as he enters the conversation, nodding at them formally.

"Congratulations," Lily adds, smiling at the couple. "Narcissa, you're going to look positively stunning in white."

She nods, the faint smile on her face the perfect epitome of composure. "Thank you."

"We should be off to greet some new guests," Lucius says quickly, nearly tugging Narcissa along with him as he exits the newly-formed circle.

He'd made a move on her once, before he and Narcissa started courting, and still begrudges her slightly for rebuffing his advances.

She's happy to play the role of a pureblood supremacist to get information from their ranks, but dating one of them is a bridge too far.

She lets her arm fall from where it was still linked with Will's and turns her attention to the two Lestrange brothers.

"Rabastan, how good to see you," she says, leaning towards him just a little. "I heard you just got a promotion to Deputy Head in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, how brilliant. You must've been doing some really impressive work to make that happen."

Rabastan preens at her compliment, and Lily wants to laugh at how easy it is to get into his good graces.

Pureblood men are all narcissists; they love her because she indulges their self-obsessions. She plays them all like violins, and makes it look oh-so-easy.

And sure enough, by the end of the night, she's managed a dinner party invitation from the Lestranges and some important information about how Rodolphus plans to influence the upcoming Wizengamot trial of Amycus Carrow.

She'll put that new knowledge in a letter to Dumbledore, and he'll do whatever he needs to with it from there.

The next day brings ground training, and as Harrison is likely to do these days, he's put her in charge of running the thing so that he can focus on finalising their training schedule for the season.

As much as Lily loves air sessions, loves the feel of the wind in her hair as she shouts herself hoarse, she's got a strange soft spot for ground training sessions. Maybe because they give her flashbacks to her primary school years, where she'd done the beginner versions of this same type of training on her local football team.

She can still remember it vividly, those summer days with the sun beating down on them as they sprinted from one end of the field to the other. Lily would turn the same colour as her hair from the combination of exertion and sunburn, and she'd feel so wonderfully, gloriously alive. Giving up football was one of the things she'd been most upset about when going off to Hogwarts.

Of course, this is a significant step up from the grassy field at a community park. The conditioning room at the Puddlemere training facility is state-of-the-art, full of just about every type of weight and piece of training equipment a witch could dream up.

She's got the whole room set up for circuit training - the other assistants here are following her orders, and she's got every intention of working the team to the bone today. They've got tomorrow off to recover, after all, and this is what the pre-season is for - making them tougher than ever before.

The team slowly trickles in one by one, each person moving into a warmup of their own choice. James is the last to arrive, as usual, as he has been every single training session this week.

As soon as everyone's in the room, Lily tightens her ponytail and claps her hands together loudly, getting the whole team's attention in one fell swoop.

"Today's workout is circuit-style," she tells them. "The timer will run for a minute, then you'll have fifteen seconds to get to the next station before the buzzer will go off again. Once you've gone all the way around, you'll get a two-minute rest, before repeating everything three more times."

Her eyes fall on Gideon and Fabian, both of whom look vaguely horrified at this announcement. They've got a pretty good handle on how brutal Lily's training sessions can be when she wants them to be, and they've accurately predicted that she's got a rough one planned based on the structure alone.

She walks them through what to expect at each station - bench presses, squats, wall throws, footwork drills, weighted planks, and sprints, among other things. Every part about the workout is intentional, every part has a direct correlation to a skill the players need in the air. She takes pride in that, in the purposefulness of it all.

"Pick your starting station," she says at the end of her explanation, looking around the room. "First round begins in thirty seconds."

She waves her wand, and as expected, the magical timer starts its countdown. All the other assistants move to their assigned places as well, and at the first buzz, the whole thing kicks off like a well-oiled machine.

When she'd first started coaching, she'd held an incredibly foolish assumption that coaching was somehow a detached practice, that she'd just shout encouragement from the sidelines while the athletes did all the hard work.

It took approximately one day for her to realise that was not the case at all. It's not uncommon for her to find herself breathing just as hard as the athletes, what with bouncing between stations and adjusting weights between rounds and trying to shout out guidance the entire time.

And on a day like today, where for some reason the heat is on full-blast throughout the training facility, it doesn't take long until sweat is beading at her brow.

"Motherfucker," Ozzie swears loudly, as he walks by Lily to get to the footwork drill station. "Is there a reason the compound feels like the inside of a Chinese Fireball today?"

"If there is, I wasn't informed of it," she tells him, as soon as she finishes fixing the cones on the ground. Her baby hairs have taken to clinging to the side of her face, so she attempts to slick them back behind her ears as she moves to monitor a different station.

When she looks over at the other side of the room, James is peeling his sweat-soaked shirt off of his body, crumpling it into a ball, and throwing it across the room to where his water bottle is sitting. She follows it as it arcs through the air, and naturally, it hits its mark effortlessly.

Her eyes drift back over to James, and… fuck.

She's seen professional Quidditch player's bodies before. She's not a complete stranger to the fact that they're all in incredible shape - they have to be, that's part of the job. They've pretty much all got solid builds and well-defined muscles. Hell, there are six other players in the room right now, and all the blokes are shirtless at this point. This isn't new.

And somehow, here she is anyways, completely in awe by the way his abs are bloody glistening with sweat. The way his tanned skin reveals every little flex of the muscles underneath as he gets in position to start sprinting. He's so different from the somewhat-lanky boy of their Hogwarts years, and for some reason, it sends her heart into a rapid-fire rhythm that can't entirely be blamed on the workout.

Which is absolutely absurd, really. Because once again, this isn't anything she hasn't seen before.

The magical buzzer goes off, signaling the start of the next circuit, and Lily quickly redirects her focus to anything that isn't James before he - or anybody - can notice that she was staring at him.

It's a few rounds later, when Lily has taken to spotting the bench press, when James comes up to her station, wiping at the sweat on his brow before throwing the towel aside. He hasn't spoken to her much since the broom closet incident, only interacting with her when absolutely necessary for Quidditch purposes, and this seems to be a continuation of that trend. He doesn't try to make small talk while waiting for the buzzer, just gets into position on the bench, wrapping and unwrapping his fingers around the bar in a way that has Lily thinking of the other things he could probably do with those fingers.

Once again, the shrill noise of the buzzer is the thing that brings her back into sanity.

She gets into position to spot him - not that he really needs it, she observes, as soon as he lifts the barbell off the rack and pushes through the first rep with ease. She makes a mental note to up his weight on bench presses during the next round.

But of course, the lack of any real need for a spot means that her full attention really isn't needed, which leaves her mind free to wander. And naturally, that wandering very quickly settles itself on the very person she's meant to be spotting. His form is damn near perfect, which really shouldn't be a thing that makes him more attractive in her eyes but somehow does. This is the same boy who once struggled with throwing her over his shoulder while running from Filch, but now?

Well clearly, he could throw her around like a fucking ragdoll.

She burns that thought from her mind as soon as she possibly can, because honestly, she knows better than to let herself think things like that about him. She can admit he's fit - and unfairly so - but that's where the line stops. She shouldn't even entertain any sort of fantasy involving him.

It's been years since she's thought about him like that, with the small exception of that one dream the night before he started at Puddlemere, but that wasn't a conscious fantasy so it shouldn't count. She has no intention of picking up the habit again. She's clean now - she's not risking that.

She starts taking spotting a lot more seriously at that, even though it's not necessary and James continues to knock out reps like it's nothing, but at least it saves her from any more inexplicable and questionably not-appropriate-for-work thoughts. But the moment the buzzer goes off and James reracks the barbell, she knows she came to her senses too late. He saw the way she was looking at him.

"Something catch your eye, Evans?" he says quietly, a knowing smirk plastered all over his bloody face that she wants to smack off immediately.

She curses his smugness and her lapse of sanity in the same breath.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replies simply, turning her attention to adjusting weight on the bar so that he can't see her cheeks turning red.

"Suuuure." The word is long and drawn out, and likely accompanied by a cocky raise of an eyebrow that Lily can imagine but can't see. But before she can look up at him and confirm, he's moving to the next station, and Mari comes over to hers.

She throws her full attention towards Mari, because like hell is she giving James that same sort of self-satisfaction twice. He's incredibly fucking fit, but she's not going to fall at his fucking feet just because he's got a good body. She's not.

It's not intentional - or maybe yes, it is just a little intentional - but she always ends up switching the station she's working on before James gets to it, so she doesn't really see much of him for a while after that.

The break between the third and final rounds is the closest she gets to him, as she digs her water bottle out of her bag and uses a towel to wipe the sweat off of her face and he does the same just a few meters away.

And she can't tell for sure, but she feels like he's watching her. For someone who called her out on her own staring, he sure is being a real bloody hypocrite if her instinct is correct.

There's only one way to know for sure.

She thanks her lucky stars that she decided to wear one of the sports bras that makes her tits look incredible today, before pulling her shirt over her head, just as James takes a sip of water. And judging from the way he suddenly develops a coughing fit as she tosses the damp fabric on the floor, he was definitely watching.

Suddenly, the scoreboard is even.

It's so incredibly stupid, but somehow, she gets a powerful rush of satisfaction from it anyways. The fact that he's not the only one who's gotten fitter since Hogwarts, and that she's not the only one who's noticed. This shouldn't be a competition, but it is.

And she needs to win.

She needs to make sure he's fully aware of everything he missed out on. She needs that little, petty victory.

"Get in position for the final round!" she yells, turning her attention back to the thing she should be paying the most attention to right now. "Give it everything you've got - if you're not dragging yourself out of here after this, you're doing it wrong!"

And when the buzzer goes off and everything begins all over again, she's fully back in the moment, all non-Quidditch thoughts of James completely cleared from her mind.

Until, at least, the end of the workout, when all the players file out to shower and head home, and Lily and the remaining assistants grab their wands to get everything in the facility put back in its rightful place before they leave.

Lucas is the one who mentions the name first. "Potter made quick work, didn't he?"

"You're telling me," Lexie replies with a scoff.

Lily looks at both of them quizzically. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, just that yesterday's edition of Witch Weekly has some paparazzi shots of him from this weekend - he was out at one of the nightclubs in town apparently. And he had some girl on his arm the entire time, naturally," Lexie explains. "One of my friends was there, actually - said it looked like the two of them were about to shag right in the middle of the club at one point."

"I don't know what's more impressive - the fact that he's barely been here a full week and is already right back to pulling the same shit he did at Portree, or the fact that a reporter managed to find him here so quickly," Lucas adds.

Lily laughs hollowly, turning her attention to getting the weights properly racked. "God, that doesn't surprise me in the slightest."

Even as she keeps a relatively calm exterior, a brand-new flash of anger is burning through her veins. James had gotten so pissed off at her for daring to call him out on acting like some foolish party boy, as if she'd somehow gotten the story wrong, and then a few days later had gone out and done the exact same thing she'd called him out for.

He's such a fucking liar. He can say all the pretty - or not-so-pretty - words he wants to try and make her believe he's different, but it doesn't change the underlying truth. But she knew that, already, didn't she?

You can't ever trust a playboy.

Seventh Year, November 1977

She's really got no clue what circumstances led her to this exact point, what justification exists for the fact that she's squished into a tiny hidden alcove with the Head Boy, hiding from the caretaker.

All she knows is that she was walking down the hallway, largely minding her own business, when James appeared out of nowhere sounding an awful lot like he'd just been sprinting through the castle, deposited something in her hand, and breathlessly told her to throw it.

And she really has no good explanation for why she actually followed through on those instructions, but she does. Throwing the small, round object had almost immediately results in an explosion of gold, brown, and green, and the distant sound of the Hogwarts caretaker cursing loudly.

"Alright, Evans, run!"

"What?"

He sighs impatiently. "Please don't make me try to throw you over my shoulder again - we both know how well that went last time, and we need to get out of here before the smoke clears."

She doesn't need to be told again, and takes off in a run down the hall. James quickly catches up to her, thanks to his long legs, and they've rounded another corridor when James suddenly grabs her hand and pulls her with him as he disappears behind a tapestry.

As it turns out, there's a pretty decent-sized alcove behind it. Well, it would be decent-sized for a single person, at least - it's a little cramped with the both of them in it.

"That's a strange favourite colour, Evans," James says quietly, pulling a piece of parchment out of his back pocket.

"What?"

"The smoke pellet you threw - it's a new Zonko's model that's designed to explode in the favourite colour of the person who set it off. Except yours set off three colours at once, which is weird."

She's never really given much thought to her favourite colour. If someone had asked her, she'd probably rattle off something random, like the baby blue of her childhood bedroom or the red of Gryffindor Tower's curtains. But certainly, she never would've said that whatever came out of that smoke pellet was her favourite colour. She's not sure where that came from at all.

He mutters something and taps his wand against the parchment, and suddenly the page bursts to life. She's completely taken aback by it, watching in wonder as the parchment unfolds itself, showing… a map of some sort.

"Is that a map of Hogwarts?" she asks, instantly curious.

"I'll explain later," he whispers. "But Filch will be coming down this hall in approximately five seconds, so not now."

She wants to ask how he knows that with such certainty, but she doesn't say anything just yet. Especially because, as predicted, it's just a few seconds later when she hears the caretaker walking down the hall.

"You can't hide from me forever," Filch snarls. "Foolish students out of bed, causing ruckus in the corridors, ought to chain you up for this."

Lily is, for some reason, almost immediately aware of how close she is to James in this particular alcove. She didn't notice it before when they were talking, but now, as they're holding their breath and hoping that the caretaker doesn't think to pull back an old tapestry, there's nothing to distract from the fact that she's pressed up against his side, his arm braced on the wall behind her, effectively tucking her up under his shoulder.

The air is suddenly very, very warm.

Can he hear how fast her heart is beating? They're in complete silence otherwise, and the pounding of it is all that she can hear in her own ears.

James, for his part, is still studying the parchment in his hands, and Lily's eyes fall on a pair of footprints labelled 'Argus Filch' moving down the corridor. And sure enough, in the place he'd just passed over, are two other pairs bearing the names 'James Potter' and 'Lily Evans.'

After another minute of that, he finally breathes out a loud sigh of relief. "He's gone - we're in the clear."

Despite his words, neither of them make any attempt to move from their current position.

"So, care to explain this thing?" Lily asks, gesturing to the map.

James grins. "Oh yeah, this is a fun little piece of magic that the boys and I put together a few years back. Shows you the entire castle and everyone in it."

She looks back at it in wonderment. "You made this?"

"Er, yeah," he replies, and - is that a hint of bashfulness in his tone? James Potter never sounds bashful about anything - he's normally the first to brag about every little thing, a cheeky smirk on his face the whole time. "Technically, Remus did a lot of the more advanced charms work - my only real addition was the charm that makes it insult anyone who guesses the password wrong."

And then it hits her. "So this is how you all are so good at never getting caught!" she says, looking up into his eyes. "You've got an enchanted map keeping guard for you."

"That, and this," he replies, holding up his other arm; for the first time since he appeared out of nowhere, she notices he's got some sort of cloak hanging off of it.

She finds herself in awe of his possessions for the second time. "Is that a - ?"

"Invisibility Cloak, yeah," he finishes.

"You're really giving up all your secrets tonight, aren't you?"

"Not all of them." There's a flash of mischief in his eyes, bright and wild, and she wants to ask what else he's got up his sleeve, but he changes the subject before she gets a chance to. "So, what had you wandering the halls late at night?"

She shrugs. "Just wanted some fresh air and a break from work is all."

"Well, I suppose you got a little more of a break than you bargained for," he tells her, examining the space they're still crammed into. "And maybe a bit less fresh air."

Filch is long gone, so they've really got no reason to stay trapped in that small space anymore, and yet, neither of them has moved. And James is right - the air is pretty musty behind the tapestry.

"We're, er, free to go back now, right?" Lily asks, her eyes falling back to the parchment in his hands. "Since Filch is gone?"

James pulls his hand off the wall, running it through his hair. "Oh, yeah, I guess we are. Here - we can use the cloak to get back, since it's getting pretty close to curfew anyways."

He throws it over the both of them easily - the sensation is bizarre, because it feels like nothing more than having a blanket tossed over her head, but she knows objectively that she's entirely invisible to anyone else who may come across them now.

"Why didn't we - "

He finishes her sentence for her. "Use this to hide from Filch instead of running? Simple - there's just not as much of a thrill in that."

She bites back a laugh at the way that he's just... so very Gryffindor. Always needing the most exciting version of an escape plan is so perfectly on brand for him.

"Not to mention that you can kind of see our feet when there's more than one person under here - which doesn't work too well with Filch's cat, given that he's on eye-level with them."

He places his hand lightly between her shoulder blades and pulls the tapestry out of the way, as if to guide her out into the hallway. The sudden presence of his hand makes her shiver, and he's not even touching her anywhere that should set off that sort of reaction.

He notices the way she responds, his hand falling from her back as soon as they're both out from behind the tapestry. "Alright, Evans?"

"Yeah," she answers, covering up the real reason she shivered easily. "It's just a little drafty out here - I wasn't prepared for that."

"Well, let's get back to the common room where it's a little bit warmer then."

Being under the cloak necessitates that they walk closer together than they would otherwise - their shoulders brush constantly as they walk up the stairs, looking around for any evidence of teachers. Of course, being Head Boy and Girl, it wouldn't be too hard for them to have an excuse for being out past curfew, but Lily's not going to argue with their current position.

Just outside the common room, he tugs the cloak off the both of them, and the Fat Lady jumps.

"You always have a knack for appearing out of nowhere, boy," she admonishes, clutching her pearl necklace.

James smiles at her good-naturedly. "It's a talent of mine, I suppose. Haberdashery."

The portrait swings open at his utterance of the password, and they step into the common room - which yes, is a good bit warmer than the corridors were.

Once they're inside, she turns to him. "So, you never explained why I was throwing enchanted smoke pellets in the hallway."

"You never asked," he replies. "Thanks for that - by the way, would've taken up far too much of the very limited time we had to get out of there. But that was just a diversion… the real fun was on the other side of the castle."

"Let me guess - Sirius, Remus, and Peter."

The other three boys are lounging on the couches in front of the fire, having clearly returned from said expedition long before the two of them did.

"You'll see tomorrow morning," James answers cryptically, a sparkle in his eyes.

In the glowing golden light of the common room, his eyes are lit up behind his glasses, and there's colour in them that Lily's never really seen before. Gold, green, and brown, all perfectly intermixed into something deep and vibrant and lovely.

Suddenly, she knows exactly where her favourite colour comes from.

"I'm going to, ah, head up to bed," she says suddenly, feeling her cheeks warm at her abrupt revelation. "This was fun."

He tsks at her, the smirk on his face widening. "Our model Head Girl here, calling rulebreaking and sneaking around past curfew 'fun.' "

"The most fun I've ever had," she replies. "Goodnight, James."

"Night, Lily."

She walks up to her dormitory, mind reeling with the fact that she'd probably live this whole night over and over again if she could, and trying to figure out what the hell that says about her.