A/N: Thanks to those who reviewed, favorited, and followed! Reviews are, of course, my ultimate favorite.

Chapter Two

In the handful of days that followed, James felt positively haunted.

His transformation into a stag that night had provided brief but total relief. Thoughts didn't disappear in his Animagus form, but they did become simpler, and the sheer complexity of the emotions that had roiled in his stomach—overwhelming guilt and shame, certainly, but also a returning sense of jealousy and a small but undeniable sense of satisfaction, the latter which only made him feel worse—simply couldn't translate to his stag brain. Sirius had once joked that, in dog form, he only experienced doggy thoughts and emotions—hunger, primarily, but also the desire to play and shag that he assumed all dogs constantly felt. "How is that different from your normal self?" Peter had asked dryly, with only a trace of humor, which hadn't abated Sirius' laughter in the least. But James understood what Sirius meant. As a stag, all he really cared about was running, as fast and as far and for as long as he could. And the small part of his mind that remained almost human always focused totally on keeping Remus-as-Moony in line. Some nights proved harder than others in that regard, and the October full moon was one of those nights.

"It's probably because I transfigured at home for three months," Remus reasoned just after dawn the next morning, as the four of them—exhausted and rather bruised and beaten, but overall cheerful—sat at a table in the kitchens. In the almost two dozen months that had passed since their first transformation together in fifth year, he had stopped apologizing for any minor wounds or injuries he inflicted on them, but he had learned several healing spells on his own, outside of class. He typically gave himself the worst of it on rough nights, and he carefully drew his wand along a long scratch that ran from his shoulder to elbow, knitting the skin back together until only a faint scar remained. "It's harder alone, and there's nowhere to really run there."

Peter grinned as a trio of house elves delivered several platters of food to their table. "Cheers!" he said eagerly, and they beamed back, clearly pleased, before retreating. "It didn't help that Prongs was hours late," he said, though without negativity, as he speared a sausage onto his fork. "I can't exactly help keep you in line, Moony. All you'd need to do is step on me."

"Or he could eat you," Sirius said mildly, as almost more of a suggestion. "But I doubt you'd taste very good."

"Agreed."

"Gerroff, Moony!" Sirius elbowed Remus away from examining the cut on his cheek, and then scrunched his face in silent apology when his friend flinched in suppressed pain. "I'll live until after breakfast. Eat something." He flapped a hand towards the food before rounding on James, looking and sounding far more accusatory than Peter had. "Where were you, Prongs? What, did you have to punish some out-of-bed first years for an entire two hours?"

James choked down the eggs in his mouth. He hadn't quite forgotten what he'd seen between Lily and Morton—in the light of the day, he wondered dully if he'd ever forget—but Sirius' question conjured the images back to the forefront of his mind. His food suddenly looked less appetizing. "Peeves was roving around the Entrance Hall, trying to knock over the house point hourglasses," he lied. "I thought about trying to slip out the door past him, but didn't want to chance it, even with the cloak. You'd know he'd raise hell if he saw me."

Peter and Remus seemed to take this explanation in stride, but Sirius continued to look at him strangely. "Weird he'd stay on something like that for two hours with no results. Usually when something is tough he moves onto something easier real quick."

James shrugged. "Couldn't tell you, mate." After a moment, Sirius seemed to accept this line of reasoning, and began eating.

James couldn't remember the last time he'd so much as attempted to lie to his friends, and it made him feel even worse.

xxx

After a meal and a couple hours of quick rest, James' general feeling of uncleanliness had dissipated slightly, but still clawed at his chest. He assumed that seeing Lily in class could only exacerbate things, and considered skivving off morning Transfiguration just to avoid her. He worried, on top of everything else, that his friends would manage to read all over his face whatever discomfort he expected to feel when he saw her, and he wasn't sure how he would it explain away.

But, as he found out upon arriving to class a few minutes before the bell, he mostly felt fine. In the morning light, chatting amiably to Hestia Jones and sitting in her normal desk towards the front of the room, Lily looked entirely like herself. He almost couldn't recognize the girl he had seen the previous night in the prim Head Girl before him, but when she laughed and pulled her hair over her shoulder, the two Lilys seemed to reconcile in his mind, and he grimaced.

Only Remus, ever observant, seemed to notice. "Sorry last night was such shit," he muttered, his voice low so Sirius and Peter wouldn't overhear.

He clearly thought James' expression stemmed from fatigue or pain or something that came back to his transformation the night before. James' guilt only increased. "Nah, Moony, it's not that," he assured him, trying to sound as light and carefree as possible as he patted him on the back. "It's just…" He couldn't even summon an excuse.

He hadn't meant to glance back at Lily, had actually intended to look anywhere but towards her, but he seemed, yet again, to lack any sort of control over himself. Remus nodded, as if he understood. "You quarreling with Lily?"

"No," James replied, relieved he could actually answer honestly. They hadn't yet passed the second month of the schoolyear, true, but he might have broken his record for the longest he'd gone without having some sort of altercation with her. The closest they had come to an argument had taken place on the Hogwarts Express, when he had shown up in the prefects' compartment with the Head Boy badge pinned to his robes. At first, she hadn't believed it actually belonged to him, and had insisted, with growing frustration, that he must have nicked it off the actual Head Boy. Only when he produced the letter giving him the assignment, signed by Dumbeldore and McGonagall, did she begin to believe him, although not before muttering something about enchanted parchment and forgeries. She'd fired several louder, sarcastic comments his way, questioning his suitability for the post, and had seemed surprised when he hadn't taken the bait to banter back. But he couldn't really defend himself against her acidic remarks—he had no idea how he'd come by the assignment either. Since then, she hadn't taken up the argument with him again, and had acted cordially in the weekly meetings they held with the other houses' prefects, an attitude he returned, trying his best not to annoy her.

"Huh." Remus gave a brief, huffing laugh. "Kinda surprised."

"Not as much as I am."

After Transfiguration, James got through the day without much incident, distracted enough by his classes and his friends to keep the previous night firmly from his mind. The problem only reared its ugly head again once he crawled gratefully into bed that night. Despite his overwhelming physical exhaustion, he found he couldn't sleep, because he saw her every time he closed his eyes.

He could picture, only too clearly, all of the intimate sights and sounds of her arousal—and not only couldhe picture her, but, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, that was all he could think about. He couldn't stop recalling the deep redness of her mouth, or the way her stomach tightened as she grew closer to climax, with her arms and legs soon following suit, until the tension finally broke as she came. He remembered the way her laugh sounded different when she teased, softer and lower in the depths of her throat than the bright peals of laughter she often gave around her friends. Mostly, he thought about how much she clearly enjoyed being in control—of herself, of Morton, of the situation—and how the sight of her desire had utterly changed the way that he desired her.

And, because he did desire her, then more than in any time past, his body took over what his mind protested, and he got himself off to the thought of her. Again.

As days slipped by, one melting into the next, James felt as if his life had shifted into the worst sort of patterns. He spent his days forcefully and decidedly not thinking about her, even in classes or the Great Hall or the common room, where he couldn't escape the sight of her. And when night came, when all distractions ceased, he became first a man obsessed, and then—after he gave in, jerked off, and came—a man in a deep shame spiral.

Wednesday night passed, and he knew Morton patrolled the hallways that night. He kept the lads up with him later than usual, desperate for the company, which they thankfully didn't question. Even after Remus and Peter dropped off, Sirius stayed awake with him long into the night, and they quietly discussed Quidditch across the space between their beds. By the time Sirius finally fell into a soft snore, James knew Morton had to have finished his shift, and his breathing came a bit easier.

xxx

Yet amongst all these uncomfortable new feelings, the strangest need of all built steadily across the days, until James could no longer avoid recognizing what he truly wanted.

He really wanted to talk to Lily about everything.

He wrote off the impulse at first as a passing flight of bizarre fancy. After all, he had spent the entirety of his time locked in the classroom with her and Morton trying desperately to keep quiet so they wouldn't discover him. And when he'd left the room, after giving his clothes a second round of cleaning spells, he had sworn to himself that he would never talk about what he'd seen, to anyone—because he felt terrible about it, sure, but also because he had no idea what she would do to him if she found out, only that it wouldn't be good. She would undoubtedly hex him into the next year, and he also entirely expected that she'd never talk to or even look at him again. And that was the last thing he wanted, especially when things had actually become, if not good, at least okay between them. He rather liked that he could speak to her in prefect meetings and she typically responded without rancor. Sometimes she even joked, or laughed at his jokes, the latter which felt even sweeter.

And besides, he told himself as the impulse grew louder hourly, what would he even say?

But it was an impulse, and he had always been notoriously impulsive.

xxx

"Do you think the Slytherin prefects are actually monitoring their own house? I feel like every time we meet, they show up with reports of all the points they've taken from other students, but never one of their own."

Even as Lily mused, James still marveled at the fact that she walked by his side congenially, and spoke to him, if not as a friend, at least like a colleague, as they made their way back to Gryffindor tower after the latest prefect meeting. And she actually paused, and waited for him to respond to her question, as if his opinion mattered and she took his word seriously.

"I'd wager they don't," he replied, waiting as the next set of stairs in the Grand Staircase floated towards them and slid into place, which they climbed to the fifth-floor landing. "But do you really expect them to? I don't. I never did. They—hey, wait," he said quickly as she began up the steps to the sixth floor. He nodded down the fifth-floor corridor, deserted save for a roving cluster of Hufflepuff girls headed their way. "There's a secret passage this way. I'll show you."

He didn't plan it. He offered the words entirely spontaneously, and as soon as he said them, he wanted nothing more than to reach out and take them back.

Lily hesitated, hand on the railing, and he thought, with undeniable relief (and disappointment—was that mingled in there too?), that at first she would decline. But then, she simply shrugged. "Yeah, alright." His heart fluttered wildly as she followed him down the corridor, winding left and then right, aware that at no other point in their Hogwarts careers would she have ever agreed to follow him anywhere. "How do you know about this?" she asked as they approached an ordinary-looking set of armor to the left of a tapestry of Alberta Toothill, a medieval witch famous for dueling that James only recognized from a Chocolate Frog card.

"Oh, you know." He hoped he sounded nonchalant. "I've spent a fair bit of time exploring."

"I do know. How many house points have I taken off you since fifth year?" she asked, and while the Head Girl in her sounded annoyed, her curiosity bested her when he gestured to the armor. "Is this how you get around the castle?"

That and a hundred other internal, and seven external, passageways, he thought. "Partly," he hedged, and then quickly moved on before she could ask for clarification. "Okay, watch." After a sharp look around to confirm that the hallway was, indeed, deserted, he squeezed the joint at the elbow of the suit of armor furthest from Alberta Toothill's tapestry. The bare stone beside the knight split, silently widening into a horizontal gap large enough for him to duck through. She followed without hesitation.

The passageway was entirely dark, but James knew the area well enough that he didn't need to see. He groped just above his head, and found an unlit sconce on the wall. He lit it with a wordless tap of his wand, and while they both blinked at the light from the conjured flame, he commanded again, "Watch." He pushed on the sconce, and after a bit of pressure, it sank just slightly into the wall and in mere seconds the opening closed.

"This is wild," Lily marveled as she lit her wand to better investigate the entirety of her surroundings.

There wasn't much to see. The landing they stood on held the two of them comfortably enough, but was small enough that James knew, from experience, that he and the other Marauders could not all fit. When together, at least two of them had to stand on the winding spiral stairs that branched off, one set leading up and the other leading down.

"This runs from the fourth floor up to the seventh," he explained, watching as she held her wand above her head and lifted herself up onto her toes to look as high as she could into the darkness above. He tried to ignore the way that her hair seemed to reflect the torchlight.

"So, what, you squeeze the armor to get in?"

"On the elbow, yeah. There's a little nob to push inwards. And then you close it with the wall sconce."

"Brilliant," she murmured, and she stepped closer to him so she could run her palm across the wall where the opening had disappeared. She seemed entirely unaware that her robes brushed his, and he added that fact to the growing list of things he tried not to notice. "So we can take this to up near common room?"

"Yes." He cleared his throat, happy for the distraction. "You enter and exit the same way on each floor. You can tell where the armor is on each level because they're always grouped in fives."

"Are they normally not?"

"No. Not that I've ever seen."

She looked up at him, unmistakably impressed. "That's…incredibly observant." It may have been the first genuine compliment she'd ever given him.

He looked away. "Yeah, well…uh, Filch knows about this one, I think, although I've never seen him here, fortunately. And the lads know, of course, but I don't know if anyone else does." He hadn't considered, until he spoke, that he had never shown another soul any of the secret passageways he knew about—had never even contemplated it—but had taken her without a second thought.

Impulsive.

"Mum's the word," she agreed, before he even had to ask. She started up the stone steps. "Show me where it comes out."

"Uh, wait." And there they were again, impulsive words that he wanted to take back, but before he could stop himself, he added to them quickly, in almost all one word, "I wanted to talk to you."

She stopped and leaned up against the wall, still a couple steps above him, almost at his height. "Yeah?"

Meeting her eyes reminded him, in real time, what a bad idea it al was. "Never mind. C'mon, the passage comes out near the entrance to the Astronomy tower, so you have to be careful about classes—"

"No, what?" she persisted, and he wondered, based on how she looked at him, if she pushed him because of something she saw on his face. She narrowed her eyes slightly. "You're not going to try to put it on me, are you?" but her tone sounded nowhere near as hostile as it would have in the past, more of a threatening joke than a mere threat. "Because I will hex you, Potter."

Any other time it might have made him laugh, or at least given him joy to see her tease him so easily, but he could only feel the overwhelming urge to flee. She didn't move, and he couldn't get by her. He had nowhere he could go but back out the passage, or down the secret stairs to escape out onto the fourth floor, but both options seemed equally cowardly. At least, that was what he told himself in the split second it took him to overcome the reasoning in the better part of his brain that demanded he stay silent.

He spilled his guts.

"I saw you last week. On Friday."

He had worked so hard to keep his tone anything but accusatory that instead the words came out flat, which clearly confused her. She stared at him for several seconds. "Yeah, I'm sure you did. We have classes together."

"No, I mean…that night. I saw you. With Morton."

Even though she stood still, somehow his words made her entire body visibly freeze further, as if every muscle contracted under her robes. That tension, along with the look on her face, reminded James in a wild flash of a dangerous cat about to pounce.

She said nothing.

He broke the silence first. "I didn't mean to!" He dropped any pretense of controlling his voice, which sounded panicky to his own ears, and launched into an overly-detailed, and completely unprompted, explanation. "I got done with patrol and left the common room to go meet up with the lads—they were already out, um, around elsewhere in the castle—and he was patrolling the fourth floor when I left this passage. I was gonna just go around him, but he looked so…" He struggled to find the word. "He looked so stupid, like—like he was breaking the rules or something, and it was so obvious that…I followed him."

She continued to stare at him impassively. "And?" she asked quietly.

He took a deep breath. "I followed him into the room."

A deafening silence followed. James only had a few seconds to feel it fester before a sudden prickling overcame the back of his neck. He had just enough time to thrust his hand into his pocket for his wand and conjure a shield charm before Lily threw something at him, a dark red, angry hex that he didn't recognize. The spell obliterated his shield, but not until after it had already protected him.

She turned away sharply and took three more steps up the stairs, just enough for James to think she planned to storm off, before she whirled around and came back down, joining him on the landing. Even though she once again stood shorter than him, he had never felt her loom so large, or felt smaller in comparison to her.

"What the fuck, Potter." It might have been better if she'd shouted, but she didn't need to. Her face was red, redder than he'd ever seen it, not in all the years he'd practically made a profession out of annoying and angering her.

"I didn't know!" he broke in quickly, and as he watched her swell indignantly, he added, "It's not an excuse, I know—and I'm not trying to make excuses, Evans, I swear—but I didn't know you were in there! And I didn't know…what…you were doing," he finished, rather lamely, and he felt heat creep up his chest and into his face.

"So you just followed someone without any reason and happened to end up in one of several dozen unused classrooms just when I happened to be there?" She spat out the words so harshly that he had a hard time picking out which ones she meant to emphasize and which ones she didn't.

"I get it—it sounds like hogwash, especially when you put it that way. But…that's honestly exactly what happened."

"Bullshit."

"Come off it. How could I even know you were in there?" He felt a twinge of dishonesty, because he could have easily known if he'd had the Marauders Map. But she didn't even know of the map's existence, so she couldn't call it out as a lie. And besides, he hadn't checked the map. His friends had had it on them.

"Maybe you saw me go in and followed me, not him," she countered.

Okay, that actually made a lot of sense.

"I didn't," was all he could say to defend himself. "Honestly—I will swear it to you until I'm blue in the face, Evans—I didn't know. I thought…I don't know, I thought Morton was up to something ridiculous and I got curious and followed him. Anyone who saw him would have known he was up to something. It showed all over his face. But I didn't know you were there. I swear."

She said nothing.

"And I couldn't leave," he continued, unable to stop himself. "He locked the door before I even knew you were there, and then I couldn't get out, because I didn't know the counter-spell and I knew you'd find me if I even tried to figure it out, and even if I did try, I've never seen that spell, so there's no way—"

"So you just stayed? And what, watched?"

He didn't respond, only too aware that she still held her wand in her hand, clutched so tightly that her fingers had gone white. When her wand hand moved, he hastily threw up another shield, but no attack came. She had only moved to pocket her wand. After several long moments of staring at each other through the shimmering haze, he lowered the shield.

"I'm going to assume that's a yes," she said coldly.

He could no longer look at her, and his ears burned as well.

Another silence descended, which left James feeling not unlike a trapped mouse in her claws.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked finally.

"I don't know." She opened her mouth furiously, clearly unsatisfied with his answer, but her cut her off with a surprisingly sharp wave of his hand. "I really don't!" he insisted, and he felt his own anger bubbling up, born out of the culmination of several days spent wallowing in crushing guilt, and from the frustration he felt at himself for following his boneheaded need to talk to her about any of it. His words flew out, blunt and honest. "I had no plan when I brought you in here, and I have no plan now—even as I'm talking right now—about how I'm going to get out of this. I'm impulsive, and I didn't think it through. I don't think a lot of things through, clearly. I followed a bloke into a dark classroom without thinking about the consequences or what I'd do if I needed to leave, just because he looked like he was up to something! I had no reason to do that. I just felt like it. And I just felt like I should talk to you about this."

He worried that his abrupt flash of anger might only escalate hers, but strangely, it seemed to have a contrary effect. If none of the fury visibly left her face, a flicker of curiosity at least joined the expression. "You don't make any sense," she told him matter-of-factly. "Why would you ever tell me you were there?"

"Because I feel weird being around you now!" he exploded, and he flinched, even as she didn't, at the sound of his own voice echoing through the tall, narrow passageway.

"You feel weird? You do? How do you think I feel? I'm the one—"

"I watched you shag another bloke, Evans!" And there it was, what he had danced around saying the entire time. He inhaled sharply, ready for her to fire something back, but when nothing came, he barreled on, not even sure what he planned to say. "And I felt like shit, for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I knew that I knew that I saw you, and you had no idea. And that felt incredibly fucked up, because—look, this year you've been talking to me almost like we're friends, and I can't handle you treating me that way if you didn't know I was there. I know I've been a right git to you for years, and I definitely deserved every time you ever yelled at me or hexed me or took house points away or whatever, but…this is the worst thing I've ever done, even though I didn't mean to do it. You just—you needed to know, because I feel guilty every time you even just ask my opinion about the ruddy Slytherin prefects. I can't handle you not knowing, especially when you're nice to me."

He hadn't known he felt that way, not really, until he'd said it.

She scoffed and, again, turned to leave, but didn't even take a step this time before she spun back around, her face rigidly set. "No," she said, almost to herself, before she turned flashing eyes on him. "I'm not going to leave, because I have no reason to be embarrassed. You should be embarrassed."

The sudden pivot stunned him more than any hex. "What?"

She exhaled slowly, as if willing herself to calm down, and some of the color did leave her face. "You should be embarrassed," she repeated, with exaggerated patience. "Okay, you didn't mean to be there. You didn't know I was there. I believe you."

He stared. "No you don't."

"Don't tell me how I feel!" she snapped, briefly breaking her more measured tone before she put it back on like an audible mask. "Whatever, let's say I do. Let's say I believe it. And let's say that I also believe that you had no choice but to stay there—and I'd actually believe that, because there was no way you were undoing that locking charm. Morton made it up himself."

"He can do that?" James asked, and then wished he hadn't, because it didn't matter, it was neither here nor there, and it sounded stupid.

She ignored him. "Let's also say that I believe that it makes you feel bad, because… I'm being nice to you now, by your reasoning? Which, for the record, I've only been nice to you because you haven't tried to antagonize me yet this year, although this whole stunt—" She cut herself off. "That doesn't matter. What matters is, let's just say that I believe you on all of that."

It felt entirely like a trap, as did the pointed look she gave him while she waited for him to respond. "Okay?"

She nodded, as if accepting that he followed her logic, despite his uncertain answer. "But even if I believed those things—and I'm not saying that I do, mind, this is all hypothetical—I have no reason to feel embarrassed, because I was doing something I thought was private, and I had no way of knowing it had turned into a show."

Her last words dripped with acid, but he couldn't disagree with that.

"But you…" And her eyes began to glitter like jewels, but like cursed, dangerous jewels. "Potter, even if you couldn't leave, no one said you had to watch."

"I tried not to!" he defended, but it rang hollowly. "But what else was I supposed to do?"

"Put a silencing charm on your ears, and a blinding spell on your eyes," she shot back, as if she'd expected the question. "You can do those wordlessly, I'd imagine, and take them off the same."

"You would have seen the spells," he replied, feeling rather lame.

"Maybe. I suppose the cast would have disrupted the Disillusionment Charm."

It took him a moment to realize what she meant, but then it clicked. She had no way of knowing about the invisibility cloak, of course. He made himself nod.

"But the point stands that, even if you couldn't cast magic, you could have turned away. You didn't have to watch us, and you already admitted you did." She tilted her head in a pantomime of exaggerated curiosity. "Why?"

Somehow, the way she looked at him was worse than anger, and he almost wished she would lift her wand again. He could battle any spell she threw at him unless she caught him unaware, because dueling had always come easier to him than it had to her. But he read something in her expression that made him feel like he had no weapon against wherever she planned to go with this line of questioning. "Why what?"

"Why did you watch, Potter?" She enunciated each word so carefully that her voice came out as a hiss. "And—"

There was something about the look on her face that made James realize, with a sick, swooping feeling in his stomach, that he knew where she was going. She looked entirely as she had when she'd come into the upper hand against Morton—well, almost entirely. As she stood before him, he could see nothing playful in her expression except for maybe a sense of dark satisfaction in her eyes. She felt in control, and he had no way of wresting that away from her.

"—what did you do while you watched?"

James knew, in that moment, that he had never felt, and never would feel, as mortified as he did just then.

She waited.

"Evans," he got out pleadingly before he stopped, just short of stuffing his first into his mouth. He had no idea what he would have continued to say, and he also didn't want to know.

"Tell me what you did," she repeated. "Tell me what you felt."

What he had felt?

Panic, then jealousy, and then steady, hot desire. And then guilt. Remorse. Shame. The pattern had then repeated, and repeated, every day since.

"I know what you're doing," he accused, speaking even as the realization hit him. For a moment, she looked surprised, but hid the fact quickly. "You're trying to flip it. You're embarrassed so you're trying to embarrass me."

Whatever response he expected, he didn't expect her to laugh.

The laugh started out low at first, almost bitter, but she seemed to grow genuinely amused, if still angry, when she surveyed his face. He knew he must have looked stunned. "I mean, you're right," she agreed, and then laughed more, because her admission did nothing to lessen his shock. "I didn't expect you to notice I was doing it, or to call me on it if you did. It would have been smarter for you not to, probably, and just take it on the chin."

That actually made total sense, and he wished he had seen it that way.

"But, like you said…" She spread her hands apart, gesturing towards him, passing her judgment. "You're impulsive."

For a while, neither of them spoke.

"What good will it do? To embarrass me?" he finally asked, and from the look on her face, she knew she had him even before he did.

"It will make me feel better."

He sighed. Well, fuck.

"And it might help me get over it faster."

"You're never going to get over this," he said flatly. "You're going to hate me for the rest of our lives."

She shrugged, once again with that casual quality she seemed determined to pull back over herself. "Are you sure? And before you answer," she continued quickly, even as he opened his mouth, "I want you to consider if you thought, before last week, that you'd see me shag someone in a classroom." He flinched a bit to hear her put it so plainly, which she graciously ignored. "Because if you didn't expect it, how do you know what I'm capable of, or how I'll react to anything? You don't know me, Potter." She paused, pressing her lips together expectantly, and looked almost eager to debate him because she knew she would win. "Did you think I'd respond to this conversation like this?"

"I truly didn't think that far ahead." She gave another brief, quiet laugh, as if his honesty amused her, if a bit grimly. And he hated how almost logical her line of reasoning sounded, although he wasn't sure if he only followed her explanation because of his undeniably desperate need for her forgiveness. And if she couldn't offer forgiveness entirely, he wanted to at least receive relief for some of his guilt. With that in mind, he pushed, "So you could maybe not hate me after this?"

She seemed to seriously consider the question. "I'm not thrilled with you, and I doubt I'm ever going to be," she said, and something about her tone made him wonder if, despite his own dogged honesty, she spoke totally honestly for the first time in return. "But I also won't harm you physically, magically or otherwise. And I won't yell at you about it, and I'll be perfectly cordial in classes and in prefect meetings." It sounded like the basis for an agreement, and one not too shabby. "And I don't think I'll hate you, no. Is that important to you?"

He didn't to bother deny it. "Yes."

"Okay," she said simply, unreadably, in return. "Go ahead then." When he didn't immediately respond, she waved a hand in exasperation. "I don't get it. If you want me to be less embarrassed—"

"Ask me again."

"Which part?" she asked practically. "Why you watched, or what you did?"

"I absolutely jerked off, Evans." He immediately wished he hadn't said her name at the end, because it somehow made his frank admission sound worse to his own ears. He felt faintly sick. "Is that what you want to hear?"

It wasn't lost on him, after he said it, that the latter sentence unconsciously echoed Morton's own words when she straddled his lap to torment him. But, James thought bitterly, Morton definitely had the better end of this bargain.

Morton, clever enough to create his own magic, and he, James, at least passingly smart, smart enough to become Head Boy.

How had Lily so clearly bested them both?

"Honestly? Yes." He looked at her, surprised by her guilelessness, but had to quickly look away. He couldn't meet her eyes. "But why did you watch?" she persisted. "You didn't have to."

His insides were on fire.

"Evans, show me a bloke our year—no, actually, any year—who wouldn't watch two people shag." Why did he keep saying her name?

"Okay, so you'd watch anyone, then," she said, as if she believed that completely. He groaned. It felt like he kept digging himself into a deeper hole, and that she aided him a bit too joyfully in the task. "So, let's say the girl you find least attractive in our year—I don't want to name names, you pick someone—"

"You know I fancy you."

His back had begun to sweat.

"And is that why you watched?" she asked.

"I—listen," he broke off sharply, feeling almost out of his head. "There was no way you were going to get naked and I wasn't going to look. There isn't a scenario I can think of where that would happen. If that makes me terrible—okay, I know that makes me terrible," he cut her off as she began to interrupt, and somehow, just the sight of her, standing there impassively, with her penetrating eyes and even crueler questions, added frustration to his feeling of utter humiliation. "I get what you're trying to prove, okay? I get that it makes me terrible, and I felt bad about it then and I've felt bad about it ever since."

"Have you really?"

"Yes."

"But not enough to look away."

"No."

A tight fist of anger gripped his chest—although at her or at himself, he couldn't say.

"Would you now?" she asked.

"What?"

"If you feel bad, you presumably wouldn't do it again. But if you saw me with Morton now, a second time, and you could leave, would you?"

"I…would try. But I don't know." And he knew after he said it that it was the truth. No matter how guilty he had felt over the past few days, with that feeling also came the almost frantic desire to see her come again.

He didn't offer up this information, and to his surprise, she didn't push it.

Instead, she seemed to switch tactics. "Were you jealous?"

He absolutely had not expected that.

He finally looked at her, and found that he could look, because she didn't appear to be reveling in his torture anymore. She just looked blatantly curious. "What?"

"Well, if you fancy me—"

"Oh, come off it," he said, and she almost seemed to smile at the return of his open frustration. "You don't have to make me admit that again. Or even at all. I've not exactly been subtle."

She did smile at that, although her face lost none of its dangerous quality. She reminded him again, unwillingly, of the way that she'd looked that night with Morton, of the sheer satisfaction that came over her when she'd felt totally in control. He tried desperately to disconnect the current look from any memory of that night, worried she'd somehow figure out what he thought about—or, as a familiar flash of arousal crossed his stomach, that his body would give him away. He pushed the sudden shot of desire as deep down as possible.

"True," she agreed, dragging him back to the moment at hand. "But if you were so jealous—"

"Of course I was."

"—then how did you—"

He interrupted her before she could say "jerk off," frightened of the very real possibility that it might add to his difficultly-suppressed craving to reach out and touch her. "After a while, I didn't even notice him," he said, and she gave a quiet, disbelieving tsk. "No, seriously. Almost immediately, all I could look at was you."

It sounded so gentle, tender in a way that he felt but had not intended to express. He almost wanted to say something crass to ruin it, like that the moment had come over him the second Morton had flipped up her skirt to reveal her lack of knickers. But it hadn't started there, not really. It had started in simply seeing the flex of her leg, and had continued not entirely because she'd taken off her clothes, but in no small part because of the faces and the sounds she had made throughout. And he hated knowing that he probably wouldn't have felt the same if he had watched any other girl.

And knowing that, and knowing she probably heard that quiet ache in his voice, left him feeling utterly exposed in a way that nothing else had before.

It made him angry. He prepared to snap back at whatever she asked him next, no matter what it was. But she didn't ask him another question. "I'm going to go to the common room," she said, and he saw that her face had changed somehow, but he couldn't read how. "I'll see—"

"Wait, that's it?"

"Do you really want me to ask you about it more?"

He had no idea what he wanted, and felt suddenly too exhausted to stay mad. He waved a hand and pulled his glasses off, and began rubbing the bridge of his nose, which somehow felt as tense as every other part of his body. He stayed that way a long time, long enough that he assumed she had silently left, and was surprised to find her still there when he put his glasses back on.

"Do you like this?" he asked after a still longer stretch of silence.

"Like what?"

He gestured to himself, aware that there was no hiding how tense and sweaty he looked. "Do you like knowing that I feel this way?" He didn't bother specifying what way that was, because he wasn't sure how to put it into words himself.

She seemed to honestly think about it. "A little, yeah. It does make me feel better knowing that you're now terribly embarrassed and miserable too. It feels a little more even. Not entirely even—I don't think that's possible—but a little." She paused. "And now I know that you won't tell anyone what you saw, because I will tell everyone about all of this."

Despite this duplicitous, underhanded, and almost Slytherin line of thought, James almost had to admire her guile. "I haven't told anyone, and I won't."

"Not even your mates?" She made it sound like a question, although it clearly doubled as a threat.

"No."

"Not even Black?"

"No." That seemed to satisfy her, at least a little. "And I won't tell anyone that you're dating Morton," he added.

For maybe the first time since they'd entered the passageway, she looked totally surprised, and gave no attempt to hide it. "What? Oh—we're not, though. Not dating, that is."

He stared. "You're not?"

She seemed to study his own surprise with more of her own, as if she hadn't considered that he might have jumped to this assumption, and getting caught off guard flustered her. "No. I mean—yeah, we've talked about it in the past, but, it's not—I'm not…" She paused, and then shook her head, as through she remembered who she spoke to. "It doesn't matter. I don't need to explain this." She didn't bother adding the unspoken to you to the end of the sentence. "But we're not dating. We're just…"

"Friends?" he interjected before he could stop himself. "Sure. In that case, sign me up. I'll be your friend."

As soon as he said it, it hit him that he probably shouldn't joke about those things yet, if ever. But she actually gave a slight laugh, and when she shot back, "I know you would," the fact that she had any jest in her voice at all lightened some of the weight from his chest just a fraction. Yet some of the mirth faded from her face as she added shrewdly, "But just because you know that he and I are…whatever, that also doesn't mean you can, I don't know, make him throw up everywhere for weeks."

Wait. "You knew about Gimble?" he asked uncertainly.

Satisfaction crossed her face. "I wasn't completely sure, but you just confirmed it. I always assumed it was you. I didn't know who else would do it, and, like you said, you're not exactly subtle."

He felt, for the first time in two years, kind of bad that he'd punished Greg for dating her, although he fully recognized that the feeling stemmed from getting caught rather than from genuine remorse. "Is that…why you broke up?"

"What? No, but—I don't have to explain that to you, either! Christ, Potter, just because you saw me naked doesn't mean you get to know everything about my love life—and don't look like that! You're lucky I can almost joke about it!"

He knew that, but he also didn't want to explain that he hadn't looked away from her out of embarrassment at her comment, but because she had absolutely confirmed that he liked hearing her talk about herself even remotely sexually far too much.

He felt very fortunate that he hadn't allowed her to say 'jerk off.'

The passageway suddenly felt inadequately small, but in a very different way than when he had considered his escape earlier to avoid the entire conversation. He didn't want her to know that he felt uncomfortable, because that might end with her needling him more, pressing to know why he felt that way, just to antagonize him further. But his mind wouldn't cooperate with his frantic need to cover his silence; he couldn't think of anything else to say. "Uh—"

"I'm leaving," she interrupted, and for that he felt tremendously grateful—but also somehow, in a sick way, disappointed. "I'll see you upstairs." She sounded so convincingly nonchalant that he might have thought she had gotten over their conversation completely, if not for the dark, warning look she shot him as she began to climb towards the seventh floor. "Don't follow me. Wait a bit. And—"

"We never had this conversation?"

She nearly smiled, a look he caught only fleetingly before she disappeared up the stairs. "Sure, Potter. I won't forget it, though," she called down after her, leaving him utterly uncertain how to interpret her statement, let alone how to formulate a response.

Somehow, he felt left with more questions than answers, and like he had solved absolutely nothing, only probably made them worse.