Author's Note: I know that Lily/OC is a controversial pairing for most fans of Marauders fiction. If you're a hardcore Lily/James fan, like I am, I hope you'll still give this a shot—we'll get there, I promise. Please R&R!

Chapter One

Halfway to Hogwarts' front doors and the promise of a full moon night passed in the form of a stag, James Potter froze.

He knew, logically, that he shouldn't worry about getting caught. He had the invisibility cloak on, after all, and it had never failed him yet. So long as he kept his knees bent to conceal his ankles and didn't make too much sound, the cloak basically guaranteed that no prefect or professor would detect him. It was easily the best concealment avenue the Marauders had, and since James had it on him, Remus, Sirius, and Peter had been left to conjure Disillusionment Charms. But they had gone ahead earlier in the evening, before curfew and just as the sun set, to make sure Remus was safe in the Shrieking Shack before the full moon hit. They only had to rely on their chameleon-like forms to disguise them as they crossed the Hogwarts grounds, to keep any nosy students from noticing Peter's transformation, and the subsequent disappearance of the three of them—two students, one rat—under the Whomping Willow.

James had been left behind, grudgingly fulfilling the Head Boy duty of patrolling the castle's lower levels until one of Hufflepuff's prefects relieved him at a quarter to ten. The moon was long out by then, the second full moon of his seventh year, and he had cleared the stairs up to Gryffindor tower, to grab the invisibility cloak, in record time.

But now, one of Ravenclaw's prefects, Alexander Morton, stood in between him and the Grand Staircase.

James didn't freeze because he doubted that he could slip by Morton undetected, not for a moment. He watched the prefect pace down the hall towards him, and quickly assessed that Morton's heart was not in patrolling that night. His eyes were locked forward, his stride surprisingly hurried for a routine nighttime patrol, and he didn't bother to look about him for any truant students hiding in the fourth-floor corridor's dark shadows. Getting by him wouldn't even offer a challenge. Not in his state, which was what gave James pause.

Because Morton's state seemed…distracted.

Against his better judgment, James felt the slight gnaw of curiosity in the pit of his stomach. His desire to join his friends in Hogsmead—the only thought on his mind during his long, fruitless hours of patrol—lessened slightly.

It wasn't just Morton's movements that drew his interest. There was something about the look on his face that made James study him closer. He had known Morton for over six years. They had sat in many of the same core classes from sixth year up as they prepared to take their NEWTs, and they had played Quidditch against each other for two years, both Chasers. They were not friends, but might share a friendly word in passing. And across all the years, James had never seen Morton look quite as he did now. His expression reminded James of the look Peter often got on his face when the Marauders planned to break a major rule quite spectacularly—he had looked that way once a month since fifth year, when they had finally succeeded in transforming into their Animagi forms and began to leave the castle regularly on full moons. Something about Morton's face, pale in his wandlight, echoed that expression, especially in the way he moved his mouth incessantly, his lips never quite settling in one place.

The idea of Morton about to break a rule as serious as that of unregistered Animagi brought a grin to James' face. While he doubted that Morton had anything quite that intense planned, he'd never known him to get so much as a Ravenclaw house point deducted. What could he be up to? Interest growing, he allowed Morton to walk past him down the corridor, and then turned to silently shadow him, at least for a while.

The lads would understand if he was just a bit later, surely.

James only had to trace Morton's footsteps for a few more yards. Morton stopped abruptly in front of a classroom door, and now he turned, left and right, to look around him in the most conspicuous manner James had ever seen.

He was clearly very bad at this whole rule-breaking thing.

As Morton surveyed the hallway, James moved closer, sidestepping around him to lean up against the wall right next to where the door would open. He tried to conjure the Marauders Map in his mind, to remember what lay inside this classroom, weighing if he wanted to follow Morton inside, just to satisfy his curiosity before he headed to the Shrieking Shack. This particular stretch of the fourth floor was nothing special, if he recalled correctly. The door across the hall from this classroom opened into a broom cupboard. Further up the corridor, next to a suit of armor, sat the secret passage that he had just taken, which ran the length between the seventh floor and the fourth and had exits on each level. Even further down, around a bend, was the Magical Theory classroom, a required first-year class. Nearby that, Professor Sinestra, the Astronomy instructor, had once had an office, but she'd since moved understandably closer to the Astronomy tower. And James had once hidden from Filch in a vacant classroom nearer to the Grand Staircase, a room filled with dusty desks, many broken, and a chalkboard featuring some of Peeves' best dirty limericks.

So what was Morton doing amongst all these unexciting rooms, all the while looking like he planned to pull off the world's biggest heist?

Morton's eyes remained trained down the corridor towards the Grand Staircase, even as he tapped his wand against the door's handle, which clicked as the lock gave way. He opened the door and hesitated, turning to look one last time down the other direction of the empty, motionless hall, which provided James with just enough time to dart inside before Morton cast Nox and followed him.

The room was dark, darker still than the dimly-lit corridors. Arched windows graced the wall opposite the door, offering little relief past a bit of watery starlight. James managed to shift sideways, away from Morton, shuffling carefully along the wall. If he made any noise, it was obscured by Morton's muttering under his breath as he cast a long, complex spell that traced a line of red light around the doorframe. When he finished, the light faded and the door locked again, leaving James with no small measure of surprise, and his curiosity further piqued. Morton hadn't cast a run-of-the-mill locking charm—this wasa spell James had never seen before, something that looked deep and secure and presumably wouldn't come undone by a simple Alohomora. Whatever Morton was up to, he clearly did not want to be disturbed.

As soon as the door locked, a flash of light flared towards the front of the classroom. It wasn't a brilliant blast by any means, but in the dark classroom it rendered James momentarily blind. He reached up to pinch his nose under the bridge of his glasses, holding his eyes shut to allow them to adjust, and then took in the measure of the room. It looked entirely like the spare classroom that had once served as his hiding place from Filch, down to an identical layout and contents. A series of desks, some missing legs or sporting shattered tops or with seats snapped in half, littered the room haphazardly. A chalkboard spanned the wall at the front of the room, although this one was empty, save for what looked like several decades of chalk dust. In front of the chalkboard sat a desk, larger than the others, meant for the instructor.

James' stomach did a backflip. He clapped his hand unconsciously over his mouth, an immediate reaction to control himself, to keep from uttering a single noise that would give his presence away.

Lily Evans sat on top of the desk, her legs crossed, holding a weakly-lit lantern that bathed the area around her in a thin, blue-tinged light. She was smiling.

"Are you late or am I early?" she asked Morton casually, the same way she might have if they had just met up at the Transfiguration door, and not in the dead of night.

Morton no longer looked nervous. Now he looked nothing like Peter, James thought, somewhere in the back recesses of his mind that amazingly still functioned. Peter had never looked quite this happy, maybe not even after he'd accomplished two years of hard work to transform for the first time. And Peter had none of Morton's casual attractiveness. James had never considered Morton's looks before, but became painfully aware that he was, indeed, a good-looking chap, just from the way that Lily looked at him.

Girls often looked at James like that. But Lily never had.

Morton checked his watch as he wove fluidly around the dilapidated desks. "Neither, actually." He halted when he reached the front of the desk, and simply stood there, as she simply sat. "We're actually both early. I think you knew I would be."

She laughed, low and soft. "Why?"

Now he reached for her, quite suddenly, closing hands around her hips to pull her roughly towards the edge of the desk. His movements had none of the unhurried, easy grace that he had just displayed a moment ago. Now he moved impatiently, clearly frustrated, almost mad. Lily slid along the polished wood easily, forced to unfold her legs as he pressed his body in between her thighs, the force of which lifted the hem of her skirt. He bent to kiss her, but she got there first, lifting herself briefly off the desk so she could pull him down towards her.

James' brain seemed to scream. His hand remained over his mouth, somehow a very faint comfort, because then he at least knew the sound that pounded in his ears wasn't coming out of his mouth.

He had seen Lily kiss someone just once before, in their fifth year. She had been on a Hogsmeade date at the Three Broomsticks with Gregory Gimble, a Gryffindor lad two years above them. James and the other Marauders had just entered the pub in a blast of cold air, and he spied them as he unwound his scarf while absently looking for a table. He still remembered the moment he saw them together, mainly because he hadn't expected it—he hadn't known she even had a date that weekend, although of course she had turned down his offer—and the shock of it had left him unable to look away. It hadn't even been a snog, but two soft pecks Greg had delivered while passing her a steaming mug of Butterbeer. The familiarity of the act somehow seemed worse than a snog, imparting to him clearly that this had not been their first date or first kiss.

Remus—perhaps seeing that James freeze entirely, scarf still draped around one shoulder, and following his gaze—had been the only one to also see them. "Just remembered—forgot something in Zonko's—I'll be right back—here, Prongs, come with me," he had said to Sirius and Peter briskly, and had grabbed James by the shoulder of his cloak to pull him back out into the cold before anyone could protest.

They had indeed gone back to Zonko's, but, to James' relief, Remus hadn't tried to bring up what had driven them from the Three Broomsticks. He also hadn't stopped James from picking up several packets of Puking Powder before they left. And, despite his recent prefect status, Remus had pointedly looked the other way when Greg began vomiting profusely at dinner that night, and at several other meals throughout the next couple of weeks. Eventually, perhaps because he never saw them kiss again—and because he ran out of Puking Powder—James had come to accept that Lily and Greg were dating. He had just tried not to think about it. But his overall mood had lifted considerably when winter faded into spring and he saw her in the company of her friends on another Hogsmeade visit, not with Greg. It became clear pretty soon thereafter that they were no longer seeing each other. For weeks after, even Snape couldn't dull his spirits.

This kiss was infinitely worse. Morton had his hands buried deep in her thick hair, and although the broad expanse of his back blocked Lily's hands from view, James assumed by her movements that they played down the front of his shirt. She lifted a leg to wrap around his waist, and James could see the muscles contract in her bare thigh as she leaned back slightly and pulled Morton toward her playfully, laughing breathlessly when he had to disengage a hand from her hair to steady himself on the desk.

Worse yet, this wasn't a simple pub with a door James could easily use. He glanced at the door, but hardly even considered it as an option. Only moments ago, Morton's complex locking charm had simply furthered his interest, another piece in a curious puzzle; now he realized, foolishly late, that on top of locking anyone out, it also locked him in. How long would it take him to figure out how to lift the charm, when he didn't even know the incantation, let alone the counter-spell? And even if he could somehow figure out the counter-spell—assuming it didn't take him an endless number of failed, probably noisy attempts—how could he manage to perform it correctly, with minimal sound, and bolt from the room before Lily or Morton caught him? He only had to imagine the look on Lily's face if she were to come upon him, crouching by the door with his wand sticking out from the invisibility cloak, to understand how stupid he would have to be to try it. Ignoring them seemed like his best bet, but quickly proved equally fruitless. Even as he tried to focus on a particularly shattered desk in the far corner of the classroom, his eyes came immediately back to their embrace, even as he wanted to look, and be, anywhere else.

"Why?" Morton repeated after her, breaking away from her mouth as he steadied himself, his voice audibly thick. He stood up then and yanked impatiently at the sleeves of his robes, pulling the garment off entirely. The act sent James' stomach reeling. How far, he suddenly wondered, was this about to go?

Morton came back to her as soon as the garment hit the floor, and Lily slid both legs around his waist this time, drawing his body to fit tightly into hers. She didn't bother to sit up from where she reclined, leaned back on her elbows, or to pull down hem of her skirt, which had pooled further around her waist. For a second, James forgot where he was, and even forgot the sudden nausea that had swept over his body, entirely transfixed by the exposed pale skin of her upper thigh and the way it curved gracefully into the smooth line of her backside.

Without thinking, he took several steps away from the wall, moving closer towards the center of the room, intent on finding an angle where he could better see her around Morton's back. He even forgot, in his pressing intent, to creep with slow, careful steps, but if he made any noise, it was apparently negligible enough that neither Lily nor Morton noticed in their current state. He could see, now, that Lily's hands had worked to undo the buttons down the front of Morton's shirt, which hung open. He could also see the look of sheer hunger on Morton's face as he looked down at her, and how her face flushed in return, but looked comparatively completely composed.

"Tell me what you said to me before Potions." Morton's words sounded like an angry demand, but there was something, something pleading about his tone and Lily's almost casual expression, that made it very clear that he was not the one in charge.

She seemed to know this too, and to find it at least passingly amusing, because she laughed again, only to stop rather short when Morton once again gripped her hips, his hands this time closing around bare skin. Despite this obvious distraction, her voice came out impressively even. "I told you," she said simply, "That I didn't have knickers on today."

"And?" Morton sounded strangled.

"And that I'd been thinking about you."

"Fuck," Morton swore, hushed and intense under his breath, and although Lily's legs didn't move from tightly around him, he stepped back just enough, creating the space necessary to push up the front of her skirt up, which left her entirely exposed from the waist down. "Jesus fuck," he muttered, almost reverent, intoning a muggle swear that James had only ever heard from Lily, something she'd thrown out angrily more than once during the heat of one of their arguments. But Morton no longer sounded angry, just equally as desperate.

Even as shame coursed hotly through his body, looking at the delicate patch of hair between Lily's legs, James felt his cock begin to harden.

Lily relaxed against the hand that Morton wedged between their bodies, letting out the softest of sighs, almost more of a hum, and closed her eyes. Despite the tension that roped across his body, Morton exhibited obvious restraint when he began to stroke her gently, almost worshipfully, rather than with the frantic force he palpably desired. "You seemed kind of distracted after that," she said as she opened her eyes, and here her voice shook for the first time, just the slightest of tremors that seemed to stem from the observation of his face, and the expression on it as he watched himself touch her. "Your Scintillation Solution was a right mess. Slughorn looked pretty disappointed."

"Distracted," Morton repeated darkly, watching as she lifted her hips to wordlessly cajole him to touch her with greater pressure, and looking gratified at the frustrated exhalation that wound its way out of her throat. "Of course I was fucking distracted. And I'm sure Slughorn would understand if you had told him that you—"

"Don't!" she exclaimed, sitting up abruptly and pushing him back with two hands against his chest, although not with any real force. "Don't bring him up when—"

"I won't," he agreed quickly, eagerly, moving to part her legs again, and failing as she gave him several sharp swats. "I won't! Although to be fair, you brought him up."

She rolled her eyes. "As banter. But to bring up me saying—"

"I get it. Completely understood. Problem solved." As she aimed one last smack, he caught her hand in the air with fast Quidditch reflexes, and pressed it against the straining crotch of his trousers. "But, fuck, just let me touch you, Lily, or touch me. Fuck."

The desperation in his tone didn't soften her mildly irritated expression, but somehow changed it, a decidedly different, but no less dangerous, gleam reaching her eyes. She drew both hands to his waist, mouth hot on his neck, and unbuckled his belt with sure, unhurried movements. "Did you touch yourself after Potions?" she asked, her voice barely audible over his choked breath when she snuck a hand over the waistband of his trousers.

His mouth found hers. "Of course I did," he managed, pulling at her robes, and her face blazed with pleasure. He made an impatient noise when she pulled away to slip her arms from her robes, but he quickly switched tactics, fumbling with the white buttons of her blouse with surprising skill, considering his rush. "You know I did. You wanted me to."

Lily didn't bother to deny it. "I did," she agreed simply, and slipped off the desk to help him with her clothes.

xxx

James found himself rather outside his body.

His horror at his situation had somehow shifted imperceptibly to desire, so gradually that his increasingly-clouded brain couldn't quite follow the transformation. It had started (he would decide later, with no insignificant amount of shame) the second he'd seen the muscles flex under Lily's bare leg. And shortly thereafter, everything seemed to go suddenly sideways, as he watched the cool expression on her face never falter while she revealed that she hadn't been wearing knickers in Potions. His mind seemed to completely separate that fact from the fact that she'd done it, and said it, to rile up Morton. No, all James could think about was how he sat two tables behind her in Potions, how he'd looked at her more than once—out of habit, truly, though not a habit he minded—and if he had known she'd sat there, calmly shelling Runespoor eggs for her Scintillation Solution, without a shred on under her skirt, he would have lost it.

He was already hard, uncomfortably and then almost painfully so, by the time Lily's skirt came up. As Morton began to touch her, the almost inaudible sound of pleasure that came from the back of her throat, the thought of what she must feel like, and how it would feel to make her make that noise, combined to drive James over the edge. When she'd reached for Morton's belt, he'd gone for his own, fingers shaking and mind all but blank, but aware somewhere, instinctually, that he had to be as quiet as possible.

Any chance he had to second-guess his desire to watch flew out the window the moment he wrapped his hand around his cock.

He'd dreamt about her before, of course, especially frequently in those early years, at the beginning of fourth year, when he'd first started noticing her in a way beyond how much fun it was to get her angry. (Although, maybe the attraction had been there always, and had driven his actions even before he could realize why he so enjoyed seeing her face flush with rage.) She wasn't all he'd gotten off to over the years that had passed (although, to his intense shame, he had thought of her more than once during encounters with other girls). But she was his most consistent fantasy, one that bordered on compulsion. He had imagined having her in dozens of different ways, some utterly filthy and some sweet, almost romantic, and he wasn't sure which bothered him more.

But in all that time, he had never imagined her quite like she looked then.

And it wasn't just because she was with someone who wasn't him, although, logically, that should have been the starkest difference from his usual masturbatory material. No, absurdly—as he only recognized later on, following the return of his full competence—after his initial discomfort and violent jealousy, it became disturbingly effortless to simply filter Morton out of the equation and imagine himself there instead. He could watch Morton pull at the zipper of her skirt with such ferocity that it snapped, and immediately imagine himself in that place instead. It came only too easily.

James' entire field of vision seemed dominated by her, and everything else fell away. He could only focus on the abstract, like the utter pale flawlessness of her skin, which bore no tan to differentiate the color of her limbs from that of her breasts or backside, although he could only assume that the latter two parts had never seen the sun. She had freckles on her shoulders, though, and also scattered lightly down the long line of her back, and he fought a frantic urge to count them. He found himself transfixed at the sight of her breasts, and not simply because they were breasts or because they were hers, but because her nipples were darker than he'd ever imagined, almost rouged in the lantern-light. And he became momentarily overwhelmed with the feverish thought that, no matter how he had pictured her breasts before—and in that moment, he wasn't sure, because his brain honestly couldn't recall anything he'd ever imagined, anything ever, not just his fantasies about her—the way she looked was somehow better.

He watched, utterly amazed, at the different expressions that played over her face as she played different roles. Initially she was almost docile, her face dreamy, as she leaned once again onto the desk and allowed Morton's hand to resume work between her legs. At first, the uneven pace of her breathing and the occasional quiet noise—louder than a sigh, but less than a moan—were the only evidence of her pleasure she'd allow to show. Then, slowly, her impatience broke through once again. Her forehead wrinkled and she bit her lip as she brought Morton's free hand to her breast and lifted her hips higher, twisting in apparent dissatisfaction against the hand between her legs. James knew, from the frustrated moan that finally escaped her lips, that she needed something—more pressure, more speed, just something more—and a deep ache filled his stomach, not unlike hunger but also somehow entirely different, out of sheer longing to give it to her.

Clearly displeased, she changed tactics and switched to the aggressor. In mere second, she had Morton away from her and then directed him—led, quite literally, by the cock, her hand moving upon him with slow strokes—across the top of the desk and onto his back. And now her face took on that wonderfully mischievous expression that she'd worn moments before, when she'd reveled in the upper hand she had held over Morton in Potions. James decided that he loved the sight of that expression the most, and became frustrated himself when the long curtain of her hair momentarily obscured her face as she slid atop Morton and bent to kiss his neck.

"You're killing me," Morton ground out, the first words spoken in a long time, and the intent behind his voice seemed to honestly suggest that he meant it. It was clear why. Straddled across his lap, Lily slid herself along the length of his cock, setting a slow, repetitious pace without ever taking him inside her.

"Am I?" she asked, pulling her hair aside so that it fell away from her face and down one shoulder. Although she sounded controlled, especially compared to him, the way she stared down at his apparent torment revealed she may have been just as bothered.

"Yes." He bit the word out with considerable strain, taking hold of her hips in a desperate bid to thrust inside her.

She sat up to remove his hands, wove her fingers through his, and then leaned back down to the spot she'd left at his neck, pinning a hand on either side of his head. "You were killing me, and wouldn't give me what I wanted," she said simply.

He clearly could have broken free at any time, but he didn't so much as try, although the muscles in his arms contracted briefly as he squeezed her hands hard enough to turn her fingers red. When he caught himself, he released the pressure. "I'm sorry. Is that what you want to hear?" She lifted a shoulder in a shrug that he must have felt rather than seen. "But you—" He broke off, his voice failing. "Fuck—you're so wet."

For the first time, she seemed to lose a bit of her self-assured steel. Her cheeks grew darker, past arousal and into a blush, although, with her face now at his chest and her movements never faltering, Morton seemed oblivious to the change. "I was wet before," she pointed out reproachfully, looking up at him through her eyelashes briefly before she worked her way up the other side of his neck. If James hadn't been able to see the faltering expression written on her face, he may have missed the faint disgruntled ring in her voice. She sounded almost as if she were mad that her body's reactions had revealed that not only was she not as in charge of the situation as she would have liked, but that she felt every bit as aroused as he did.

"Fucking hell, I'm sorry. How do I—do you want me to beg? Because that's what I wanted from you—"

She cut him off wordlessly by giving him what he wanted, and took him slowly inside her, but not before she'd lifted to hover above him so she could watch his face while she did.

And later, when she came, she gave him what she wanted back and lost herself a bit, and, watching her, James found that that abandon was what he had wanted from her all along too. Her hips lost their even rhythm, and she reached, suddenly, to where his hands had again locked tightly on her hips, and gripped his wrists, as if to steady herself through him. The noise that followed wasn't louder than any other she'd made, but there was something in its ringing, raw intensity that made James come too.

xxx

If he had been outside his body before, James wasn't sure where he was after he came. Somewhere even further from himself than that.

As the throbbing in his cock subsided, and his brain seemed to make its way back, if not to his body, at least to orbiting the area around him, he heard Morton groan.

"No, stop it." James opened eyes he couldn't remember closing to see Morton pull Lily back as she'd tried to slip off of him. He used more strength than he had the entire time she had tormented him, as if he'd just remembered that he was stronger than her. Maybe he had. "I can't move, and I don't want to leave yet."

"Leave from inside me or from the room?" Lily asked, her mouth slightly muffled into his chest where he'd pulled her head.

Morton sighed, the deepest sigh James had ever heard—as if, on top of remembering that he was stronger than Lily, he had only now remembered how to breathe too—and draped his free arm across his eyes, grinning. "Yes."

She pressed the palm of her hand flat against his chest, and propped her chin upon it to look at him. "Was I too horrible in Potions earlier?" The question sounded neither remorseful or like a challenge, just merely curious.

"No," Morton replied contentedly, with clear, simple honesty. "Never wear knickers. And tell me about it every day."

"I did feel rather bad," she admitted reluctantly, though she laughed lightly as she watched him. "It was the look on your face. I've never seen you so shocked. How many times did Luke ask if were okay?" she asked, naming the other seventh-year Ravenclaw who shared their potions table, if James recalled correctly.

"A dozen? I think he thought I was having a fit."

"You kind of were."

"You have no idea." Reluctance played over Morton's features as Lily sat up, and he gave a short, soft hiss that sounded like loss as she climbed off of him, disengaging their bodies entirely. He watched as she picked up the ravaged pieces of her skirt, and rolled to swing his legs over the side of the desk, his movements rather sluggish. "Can I fix it for you?" he asked almost formally, like one would offer a simple healing charm to a distant friend. "I did break it."

By then, Lily already had her wand out, and repaired the zipper easily. "I got it," she said, stepping into the skirt, which she fitted around her waist and then zipped. "But you're on duty. We should go."

Morton snorted contemptuously, but began pulling on his slacks nonetheless. "Like anyone will notice. I'm only worried about the Head Girl docking points, if I'm honest."

"You joke, but I absolutely could. Although then I might have to explain why, and that could get messy."

Messy.

As they dressed, James wiped his sticky hand down the side of his trousers. More than anything, he wanted to cast Scourgify on his entire self—on his hands, his trousers, his underwear, his robes, and, increasingly, his brain, which began to fill with the familiar feeling of the horrid, hot shame that he had felt initially, before his arousal had managed to clear his mind entirely.

What had he just seen? And what had he just done?

"When do I patrol next week?" Morton asked as he retrieved and passed her her robes.

"Haven't even thought about it. Wednesday? And maybe Saturday too? Are you off Quidditch?"

"As long as it's late enough, I can do it." He paused. "You could join me."

Finished dressing, Lily took the time to run her fingers through her hair, hunting for any possible snarls, and to double-check the buttons on her shirt. She shrugged. "Maybe."

"Will you tell me in Potions?"

"Or Charms, maybe. I haven't seen you make an arse out of yourself in front of Flitwick yet."

Their banter now seemed so casual and friendly that James could almost believe Lily was talking to someone like Remus—or hell, even to him—although her tone always carried more acid when they verbally volleyed. The conversation hardly seemed like the pillow talk of lovers, which seemed to add to the unreality of the situation. James hurriedly zipped up his trousers, trying to ignore the general feeling of uncleanliness that permeated both his body and mind.

Lily and Morton parted ways at the door. Morton paused to pull her in for a kiss, and she obliged, slipping back into his arms to run a hand through his hair. Then, as if totally unbothered, she stepped away to trace the doorframe with her wand. The counter-spell seemed somehow longer than the original incantation, unless it was James' deep desire for escape that caused the seconds to tick by slower now than they had before. When the lock released, she nudged Morton towards the door. "You first. I'll get the light and follow after a bit."

He kissed her one last time before he stole out the door. True to her word, Lily extinguished the lantern with a wave of her wand, and then she waited, in the dark, for enough time to pass so she could discreetly leave. James could hardly make her out in the near pitch black of the room, other than her motionless outline that accompanied the faint sound of her breath. Hearing it, he became scared to breathe himself.

When she finally left without a sound, he took in and let out a breath so heavy that it left him lightheaded. Even though he had just wanted nothing more than to escape, now he lingered behind, undoing his trousers again so he could cast the cleaning spells he desperately needed. But even after his clothes nearly sparkled, he couldn't shake the overall feeling of filth.

More than an hour would pass before he finally mustered up the strength of mind to leave the room and join his mates on the grounds.