By midnight, it was clear that in spite of their masks and the fact that they had worked outside in the fresh air, everyone in seventh year Care of Magical Creatures had inhaled too much Hodag horn powder to sleep that night. Professor Grubbly-Plank was immune to it by now, and before she went to bed, she called on the Head Boy and Girl to gather all the affected students into the prefects' lounge and keep them there, where they wouldn't disturb anyone until they either fell asleep or breakfast began, whichever came first.

It was 1am and Lily was yawning hard by the time they knocked at the last house, the entrance to Slytherin which was disguised as a blank wall in the dungeons.

"You can go to bed, Evans," James said. "It's not like you were exposed to Hodag powder today."

"Trying to get rid of me?" she said through the last of the yawn.

"Get rid of you?" James raved. "Definitely not. I've hardly seen you since our nine hundred children came back from holidays."

Lily laughed. "I'll come to the lounge and sit awhile once we get Narcissa. But just so you can see me. Not so we can - you know. If we do that, they'll be on about inappropriate behaviour for student leaders again."

James frowned but accepted that seeing her without a public display of affection was better than her disappearing into her dormitory for the rest of his long, wakeful night.

The door to Slytherin was still unopened. "Maybe we should just leave her here. She's the only Slytherin in class so it's not like she'll be up causing a racket in there by herself," James said.

As he said it, the stone wall grated and shifted and Narcissa Black was standing in the doorway, dressed like an old-fashioned glamorous Muggle film star in a gauzy, billowing fur trimmed dressing gown.

"Oh, you've already gone to bed - " James began.

"I have not," Narcissa snapped. "It's the Hodags, isn't it? Is everyone else awake too?"

Lily tried to answer but ended up yawning again.

"Everyone from class, yes," James said for her. "They've sent us to the prefects' lounge to wait it out, but you seem comfortable here so - "

"So I will join the rest of you, of course," Narcissa finished. She sniffed as she looked Lily over from head to toe. "There's no need for the pair of you to wait for me. I'll be along after I get changed."

The door closed and James took Lily's hand, dragging her toward the stairwell out of the dungeon. At the bottom of the stairs she sighed heavily, as if the climb would be too much.

"You want me to carry you?" he said.

She shook her head. "No - inappropriate. Remember?"

"Who's going to say that here?" James asked, waving his arm along the empty corridor. "No one's awake at this hour but the seventh year Magical Creatures class, all of whom are technically adult wizards and witches, not giggling kids."

"Fine, James," she said. "But just up the stairs. I'll walk on my own when we get to the entrance hall."

She stepped onto the first stair, a better height from which to get onto James's back. With her arms around his neck she slumped against him and lifted her legs, one at a time, into his waiting hands. She was still dressed in her uniform, and neither of them was quite prepared for the jolt between them as his hands held her by the tender bare skin behind her knees. Lily gave a breathy gasp and James gave her a light toss, bracing her higher against himself. She let her breath out with the movement, settling in, humming against the nape of his neck.

James forced a cough. "Right. Up we go."

He took the stairs slowly, opting for keeping her comfortable over showing off by taking them at a run. "No, the only one spying on us tonight is Narcissa herself," he said. "She partnered up with Remus in class, which couldn't be avoided now that Snape's followed you to Divination class. But there's no need for her to be needling poor Remus about - his condition, not to mention her trying to goad Sirius into a family row."

Lily answered with another hum, her lips grazing his neck. "Is she a Death Eater?"

"Good as," James said. "Since the beginning of the year, she's been engaged to that nasty Malfoy, hasn't she?"

"I remember when he went here," she murmured. "Lucius Malfoy, he was good to Severus."

James shuddered, as if remembering something unpleasant. "Wasn't he just."

They had finished climbing the stairs but James didn't mention it, and Lily was too sleepy to notice. It wasn't until they were at the door of the prefects' lounge that he turned his face toward hers, nudging her cheek with his nose. "Lily," he said. "Lily, love, if you don't want them to see me carrying you…"

As he stood jostling her gently, trying to wake her, Remus opened the door, clear-eyed and wakeful with Hodag powder. He laughed at the sight of Lily, the sleepy seer. "Let her go to bed, James."

"I told her to. She's the one who insisted on coming back here with me."

She was awake now. "Oh, we're here."

James set her feet on the ground, and Remus shook his head, holding the door as they came inside. He was about to close it when in the distance, at the end of the corridor, a ghostly pale, willowy figure appeared - Narcissa Black.

Hang it, why did James have to go down to Slytherin for her?

He didn't wait, but let the door close just as he could discern the features on her face.

Inside, the room was still a rowdy mess. It was due partly to the Hodag powder and partly to the fact that most of the students who stayed in Care of Magical Creatures until seventh year were from Gryffindor and Hufflepuff houses. There was spirited, noisy chatter, intermittent singing, at least two quaffles being thrown across the room at any time, and the lads playing a game of terribly unskilled wizards' chess where someone's pieces were getting smashed to bits every turn while the players groaned and cheered.

James shooed a game of catch off a sofa and led Lily to lie down on it. "Sit with me while I sleep," she said, snagging his hand as he turned to leave her in peace, heading to where the lads sat teaching Alice Fortescue to play chess.

"It's alright," Lily cajoled him, pulling him to sit on the edge of the sofa beside her. "Just sit. I'm too tired to have one of THOSE dreams. I promise I won't jump you this time."

"Lily, hush," he laughed at her, softly, brushing her hair behind her ear. "Someone's going to hear you confessing all our secrets - "

"Sit with me, James."

"I am. Make room."

"You don't need room," she said, sitting up slightly, pushing him against the back of the sofa and settling her head on his thigh like a pillow. "There."

James was frantically pulling his jumper over his head, folding it into a better, less provocative pillow for her face in his lap. "You are the bossiest, handsy-est sleeper I have ever known," he said, letting his own hand rest on her side as she quieted and went back to sleep.

Sirius looked up from where he and Remus were pulverizing Alice and Peter on the chessboard. "So you're stuck sitting over there, are you James?"

Remus looked up as well. "I'll fetch you a book, shall I? Good time to get caught up on some potions theory?"

"Thanks, lads. But there's lots to keep me busy here." And with that, James began to fashion little braids into Lily's hair.

"Pete, honestly," Sirius said, turning back to the game. "Poor Alice couldn't have a worse teacher. Look at that - Remus, do you want to do the honours or shall I?"

Remus slapped Sirius hard on the back. "You deserve it, mate. Let them have it."

Sirius moved a rook. "Checkmate."

"No," Peter and Alice said together. It may have been the loudest any of them had ever heard her speak.

"Oh, Peter, we've lost, and in spectacular form," she said, briefly dropping a hand on his arm. His face flushed red and he began to stammer.

Remus rushed in to save him. "Seems your formidable real life dueling skills don't quite transfer into chess play, eh Alice? At least, not yet."

"No, I'll have to get Frank to learn to play first if I want to be any good. I was never much of a duelist until I partnered with him either," she said.

"Really?" Sirius squinted, as if scanning his memory for some trace of what Alice was like before Frank. Strangely to him, but not strange for any small, mousy girl who's ever got a boyfriend, Sirius couldn't remember anything about Alice before Frank, and then Peter paid attention to her.

At the mention of Frank, Peter's rosy flush was cooling into a sick green. Remus opened his mouth to save him again, but Sirius had already rushed into the gap.

"So you and Frank," he said to Alice, "after graduation, are the pair of you going off to put that team dueling finesse to good use at Auror training, aren't you?"

"Well, yes, we've certainly applied to the program. Time will tell," she said, though it was all modesty. She and Frank were unbeatable at dueling, and even if they weren't, Frank's mother had influence everywhere.

"Quite the love story, these two," Marlene McKinnon said, squeezing herself into the extremely small space between Sirius and Remus.

"What, us?" Sirius said, waving over her head at Remus.

"No, you thick git," she said. "Alice and Frank. Tell them about those tea leaves, Alice. The ones the lady at that lovely tea shop in Islington read for you over Christmas. It was so romantic - "

Alice was on her feet. "Actually, I think I'll head back to the tower, to bed. I'm rather tired now. I think the Hodag powder is wearing off."

"I can't be," Marlene argued. "Look at everyone else. They're all - "

Her words were cut off by a mighty yawn from Peter. "No, I think Alice is right. She had the same Hodag as me and I'm knackered too. Must not have been a very strong creature we had."

Alice beamed at him, grateful for an excuse not to stay and discuss her last tea leaf reading, the one about Frank, and their souls, and their future.

As for Peter, his colour was returning to red again. And just as he was about to follow Alice out the door, he flung one parting rude gesture at Sirius before blowing him a kiss.

Marlene snorted behind her hand. "Poor Peter. I don't know how much plainer we can make it that Alice is taken. Locked up for life with dear old Frank Longbottom, her soulmate."

Sirius cringed. "They're not, are they? Is there some kind of epidemic?"

Remus jabbed at him behind Marlene's back.

Marlene shrugged. "It was in their tea leaves. But who knows, really. Tasseography isn't a hard magic."

Sirius dismissed the subject by faking a sad sigh. "Did you see Pete as he left? Looks like that was the only kiss I'll be getting tonight. Kissed off by Peter Pettigrew."

Marlene groaned as if exasperated, pushing herself back onto her feet. "Shut up, Black. And meet me behind that sofa in one minute."

Sirius passed his minute snickering to himself about his coming date behind the sofa and helping Remus restore the chess set to working order.

"Marlene's just as reckless as you are," Remus said as he stood the last black pawn on its square. "I worry about her."

"Her? Shouldn't you be worried about me?"

"Who says I'm not," Remus answered. "And I don't just mean your noncommittal snogging escapades. I mean - everything. If she's already part of - the you-know-what, then she's a walking target for the you-know-whos."

"Speaking of which," Sirius shuddered. "Here's my beloved coz. I'll be off then."

Remus looked up to see Narcissa taking a seat on the opposite end of the refreshed chess board. He lunged at the fleeing Sirius. "Rus - don't - " But Sirius was gone.

Narcissa gathered her shining hair in her hands and tossed it down her back. "Well, here's something I haven't touched since I was a child. Wizards' chess. I wonder if I still remember how to play."

"I'm sure you do," Remus said, rising onto his knees, as if to stand.

"Please, Lupin," she said, her long, thin fingers closed on his sleeve of his jumper. "Do me the honour of slaughtering me in a chess match. I'm certain it will be easy for you, and won't take too much of your time."

He glanced around the room for an excuse to leave the chess board. All of his mates were busy with girls. Quaffles were no longer flying around. No one but Lily Evans was asleep yet, but things were beginning to quiet down. He sank to sitting. What could Narcissa learn over a game of chess that might help the Death Eaters anyway? "Fine. You're white. You lead out."

Without the slightest pause, Narcissa lifted a knight. "I remember these ones. They move in that funny L-shape and can vault over the rest." She kept the piece in her hand, not yet choosing which of the two possible squares on which to land it. "They're the best pieces, part human, part beast."

Remus let out his breath. "I'll find you another opponent."

"You will not," she said in a cool, even voice, setting her knight down in front of her row of pawns. "You've nothing more to lose in speaking to me. I already know what you are. I've seen the register, the one your parents were forced to sign your name to after your - accident."

Remus ran both of his hands through his hair. "Look, you can tell them my answer is the same as James's and Lily's and Sirius's. It's no. I won't join them. And I'm sure there's no shortage of volunteers for them among my kind. I can't imagine why they'd trouble themselves to seek me out as - "

"Lupin, look at me," she said. She sat up straight, pushing her fitted black sleeves to her elbows, first the right and then, the left. The flesh of the inner sides of her arms was white, unblemished by anything. Skin like that gets called ivory, alabaster, but it made Remus think of neither of these. It didn't look hard, brittle. Even from where he sat, he could tell it was soft, warm. Inside his mouth, the end of his tongue edged against the tip of one of his canine teeth. In revealing her arms, she was showing him she hadn't taken the Death Eaters' mark. It was an attempt at showing that she might be neutral. It was not intended as seduction.

It was not…

Even if it was, he'd decided years ago he'd never touch anyone sensually. No one but Sirius and only when he was safely transfigured into Padfoot and Remus was in his human form. It would be an exchange of warmth, scratches and petting, sleep. Yes, everyone assumed he was comforting poor homeless Sirius when they sat together like that. Maybe it was mutually beneficial, but it was the only physical love Remus could trust himself to take from anyone else. A love his inner monster would never lash out at in savage hunger or simply out of unguarded carelessness.

"I have no idea what they would want from you. It has nothing to do with me," Narcissa said, drawing his gaze back to her face. "But I need to ask something of you myself."

Without a word, Remus moved a black pawn, opening the path before his left bishop.

Narcissa's second knight hopped into play. "My Veela ancestry - my mother says it's diluted to nothing, and it's sick of me to keep mentioning it, like I'm trying to bring it on just by wishing it. But it's not a wish. It's real magic. I feel Veela in me. Strongly, to the point where I wonder if I'm going mad."

"Maybe you are," Remus said, his tone flat as he inched the pawn forward, into the path of Narcissa's knight.

"Maybe I am," she agreed, taking the pawn without pausing. "I need to know for certain. Is there any trace of a Veela left in me. And if there is," she paused to take a huge breath, watching her knight striking the pawn to rubble. "If it is there, I need to reconsider my betrothal to Lucius."

Remus scoffed. Moving another pawn out to threaten Narcissa's knight. The chess game was another bloodbath, both of them rushing through it killing and being killed.

"There are several possibilities," she went on. "One, I'm not a Veela and so Lucius is right not to sense it in me, and I should set my feelings aside and stay with him. Two, I am a Veela but it's lost on Lucius, wasted, and I should leave him."

"Or three," Remus said, "you should get over yourself and trust that bloody Malfoy accepts you for whatever you are and set up housekeeping like a good Black family girl."

She laughed as his bishop moved nose to nose with her second knight. "Whatever the options are, my being a Veela needs to be ruled out or in. And that is where I come to you."

She hadn't moved her knight. He ought to take it with his bishop but it felt like a trap. He hesitated, saying nothing, finding it difficult to think through the consequences of the carnage on the board.

"I've never had a wizard, no matter what his blood status, show any response when I - when I call forth my inner Veela. Stars, I sound ridiculous," she said, sitting back from the chess board and hiding her face in her hands. "But you're not exactly a typical wizard, are you Lupin. You're partly a magical creature, one that looks human most of the time, like a Veela, only - "

"A cursed creature," Lupin said. "And yes, this is ridiculous. Utterly."

"Remus," she said, scooting around the board to sit next to him, her hand on his sleeve again. "I want to know if your creature status allows you to sense the same thing in me - "

"It doesn't," he said, speaking much louder than her, straining as if to get away.

"I don't mean now, or here," she said, glancing around the room. "There's magic to - to what I do. It's something only done in private - "

"Absolutely not - "

"I don't mean it - like that," she said. "I won't compromise you. Just let me show you."

"Go show a mermaid, or a centaur, or any number of other partially human magical creatures around here then - "

"I'm not looking to be drowned or carried off," she said.

"But savaged by a werewolf is fine with you?" he said, his face close to hers as he hissed his whispered answer.

She lifted her chin, bringing them even closer. "Perhaps it is."

Remus sat back, clucking his tongue in frustration. "You have no idea, you foolish girl. If you must have a werewolf for your test, find another one. I'm sure your husband knows plenty of us."

"But you're right here - "

"And I said, no." It was his final word. He stood up and walked to the sofa Sirius was lying behind and leaned over it. "Oi, I'm going up to bed."

Sirius sat up. "Right, I'll come with. Marlene's fallen to sleep anyway. Hey, what do you reckon? Could a good kiss be an antidote for Hodag powder?"

Behind himself, Remus could hear Narcissa Black restoring the broken chess pieces. "I guess we'll never know."

Lily woke up with her face still in James's jumper, on his lap. She raised her arms over her head, stretching and taking in a deep breath full of his smell from the knitted fibres. There was a buzzing rattle above her head as he snored, his head fallen back against the top of the sofa, his mouth wide open. She sat up, grinning at him as he continued to sleep, rubbing at her cheek where the pattern of the jumper had imprinted onto her face. Her hair felt strange. One side of it was full of tiny plaits. James must have done it himself while she slept. What a mess they both were. She loved it.

His glasses were missing. She trusted he knew where they were and didn't worry about it. He looked younger without them, innocent, almost helpless with his jaw slack and mouth open. That child of theirs they kept hearing about, if they ever brought him to life, would he look like this too? He'd have to take something from her. Maybe he'd be a ginger, or go up the middle between them and be blond. With a light touch, Lily swept her fingertips over the smooth, taut skin on James's forehead, just below his hairline.

No, their son's hair would be dark, like his father's.

She sat back, startled. It had happened again. The little dark-haired boy, his forehead - it hadn't been a daydream. It felt more like prophecy.

She was going to have a son by James Potter. In the prefects' lounge, with classmates recovering from Hodag powder exposure sleeping heavily all around, Lily knelt on a sofa, looking into James's face, her heart drumming inside her, scared but happy, racing with love for him and for the "and" in all her prophecies, their boy. She dropped the lightest kiss on his jaw.

Standing up, she drew her wand and used it to gently ease James from sitting to lying on the sofa. He stayed asleep but closed his mouth, swallowing noisily, passing a hand over his face. When he was still, Lily spread his jumper over his torso like a blanket and lay down beside him, on her side so they'd both fit.

James must not have been quite as asleep as she assumed. As soon as she lay down, his arm was around her waist and his closed mouth was pressed against her forehead. He murmured and hummed before he fell quiet again.

She leaned back to see him, taking his face in both her hands, pressing another gentle kiss to his cheek. "I love you." She mouthed it more than said it, but he heard somehow and opened his eyes, not squinting, as if he saw her perfectly.

"Marry me, Lily."

She kissed him, her lips soft on his, full of feeling but without an answer.

James was speaking again as she pulled away. "I can't go home, not without you. Home is you. The rest of my life is you. And even after that. Please, Lily..."

If it had been later in history, not the 1970s when proposals were simple and private, spoken as moved upon by the heart, Lily might have been dissatisfied with this question whispered in a crowded room with no preparation, no ring, both of them disheveled with sleep. As it was, it was perfect.

She kissed him again, longer this time, still soft, but deep enough to sense the ache in James as he waited for a reply. She smoothed his hair as he drew away, a tremor in his breathing, her fingers on his scalp, his question still on his face.

"How could I do anything but marry you?" she said.

James let out a breath like a laugh, his hands on her face, bending to kiss her when Professor Grubbly-Plank threw open the door.

"Alright, you lot," she bawled into the prefects' lounge. "You're excused from morning classes, but you've got to sleep the rest of it off in your own dormitories. You can't stay here. Potter? Where's Potter, and Evans?"

"Here, Professor." James said, already on his feet and grinning at something Grubbly-Plank couldn't figure out.

"You alright, Potter?"

"Yes, Professor. Excellent."

"Right," she said. "Make sure they clear out. I'm off."