Chapter Three
As October faded into November, despite (or perhaps because of?) his conversation with Lily, James found himself constantly on the lookout for any interaction between her and Morton.
James watched them in Potions, where, in the days after he had spied Lily and Morton together, he realized that they always sat at the same table. They shared the space with Marlene McKinnon, one of her dorm mates, and also Lucas Rooney, the Ravenclaw Lily had mentioned offhandedly in conversation to Morton that night. (Why couldn't he forget anything about that night, even a detail as small as that?)
On the day after he and Lily spoke, James arrived to class early, followed closely by Sirius, the only other Marauder who had stuck with the subject after OWLs. He sat at the table next to Lily's, ignoring Sirius' inquiries as to why they had abruptly moved the closest to the front that they had ever sat in any class. James had already determinedly decided that he would not look up when she entered the room, a promise which gave way the second he heard her voice. She seemed to notice his change in seats immediately, and she caught his eye as she set her things down. Her eyebrow quirked (in what? Irritation? Amusement? Simple greeting?), and he hurriedly looked away, embarrassed at getting caught. He swore not to look at her again during the lesson. He would only listen to hear any potential conversation.
He failed at that promise immediately, too. He found himself almost growing used to failure these days, at least when it came to her.
Over the silvery mist of his Skele-Gro potion (which gave off the correctly colored fumes, somehow, even if his potion itself was a deep burgundy instead of a pale green), James watched as Lily demonstrated to her table how to properly dissect and cut their flobberworms—halved first, to harvest some of the mucus, and then finely diced, rather than quartered, as the textbook instructed. At one point, she placed her hand over Morton's hand—not Marlene's or Rooney's, James couldn't help but notice—to demonstrate the necessary angle to draw his silver knife along the flobberworm's skin to extract the most mucus, explaining her motions as she went along. Marlene and Rooney watched closely and mimicked her movements at their own stations. Morton smiled and thanked her politely, but that was it. Hardly the stuff of romance, James thought contemptuously as he watched their hands part, a fine thread of flobberworm mucus stretching between them.
"Mate," Sirius said easily from his side. "Your cauldron is on fire."
He never finished his Skele-Gro potion.
xxx
James watched them in prefect meetings, which, as Head Boy and Girl, he and Lily convened weekly in the Transfiguration classroom, as McGonagall had given them express permission to use the room for that purpose—and only that purpose, she had added with a dark look at James, clearly anticipating that if given an inch, he might take a mile. To his surprise, in the meeting that followed his conversation with Lily, James found that he no longer had the capacity to feel uncomfortable in during meetings, at least not in the way he had all year. The growing pains inflicted from his leap as a regular student to Head Boy no longer weighed on his mind, and he no longer felt out of his depth in the role. No, instead he spent only what was needed of his attention to punctuate Lily's instructions, remarks, and replies. Once or twice he thought he caught her looking at him after one of his comments, an expression on her face that almost seemed impressed. And more times than that, even, she complimented one of his ideas, a steady pattern that had begun in earlier meetings before their heated conversation, but one he had not expected to continue after. She stuck to her promise to continue to treat him cordially, and he doubted any of the prefects knew that something had passed between them. He hoped she remained just as oblivious to the fact that, despite his seemingly careful attention, he devoted most of his energy each meeting towards watching to see if she interacted with Morton any more frequently than she did the other prefects.
To his surprise, she did not. In fact, she seemed friendlier with Ravenclaw's female seventh-year prefect, Marguerite Bennett, than she did Morton, whom she treated with like a causal acquaintance. Each week she handed out the patrol schedule, which she had always made without consulting James. (He had always accepted this without question, and only realized after overhearing her conversation about patrol with Morton that he was probably meant to share this burden with her. But how could he go about offering his help at that point?) And each week she assigned herself to split patrol with a different prefect—usually Bennett, but sometimes one of the other Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff prefects, although never the Slytherins. (And, for that, James didn't blame her.)
Only twice in the weeks that followed did James spy Morton's name besides Lily's on the list of assignments for nighttime patrol. On those nights, no matter how hard he tried to fight it, James found himself shut behind the hangings of his four-poster bed with his wand lit and the Marauder's Map spread open as Sirius, Remus, and Peter snored around him. James watched, for far longer than he cared to admit, waiting for the moment the tiny dots labeled "Lily Evans" and "Alexander Morton" would converge together somewhere suspicious—not, say, in the Great Hall or a public corridor, but somewhere deserted and secluded, perhaps back in the classroom on the fourth floor where he had spied them initially.
But both nights, that moment never came. In the morning, sporting a clearer head and a guilty conscience, and with the Marauder's Map wiped clean and tucked back into his bedside drawer, he had to ask himself what he would have done if he had watched them meet up on the map. Would he have wiped the map clean so he didn't have to look? Would he have stayed there in the darkness, watching the labels of their name cover one another as the dots overlapped? Or would he have thrown on his invisibility cloak and hurried through the dark corridors to…to do what?
xxx
He found his answer one unseasonably chilly night in mid-November. As time went on, he found himself increasingly reaching for the Marauder's Map on nights that he couldn't sleep, regardless as to which prefects covered duty. He managed to ignore, but never quite silence, the nagging feeling of guilt that went along with it, but found a relatively easy way to justify his form of spying. If he didn't check the map, he reasoned, he would just lay awake and wonder. No, it was far better for him to just take a quick peak to give him some relief, he told himself. (He never did quite decide if he believed his own logic.)
After many checks without any alarm, the motion began to feel almost mechanical, a simple act of ritual before he went to sleep. Then came the night he finally saw what he had been looking for: Lily's name alongside Morton's, neither label fully legible as the script melded into one another, both dots shut inside the spare classroom on the fourth floor. His heart jumped into his mouth; he felt as if he'd just dropped twenty feet on a broomstick. He had slipped out of his bed and opened his trunk, fingers clutched around the invisibility cloak, before his mind caught up with his body. What was he doing? But he banished that thought, so easily in his adrenaline-filled state that it felt as if he had never stopped to question himself, and he stole out of the room soundlessly before his movement woke up Remus, who slept notoriously lightly.
He was midway down the seventh-floor corridor before he realized that he hadn't stopped to put on shoes or even shove his feet into slippers. By then the Fat Lady, unable to see his form under the invisibility cloak, had already cried out, "Who's there?!" and he knew he couldn't go back even if his feet would have allowed him to. They kept moving by instinct alone, even as his brain seemed to have stopped processing anything past the dull white noise that flooded his ears. By the time he'd reached the passageway he'd shown Lily weeks before, the icy floor had rendered his pinky toes numb, and the chill continued to encroach inwards along his feet. The next morning, still feeling, he would realize that he should have cast a warming charm on his feet the moment he'd slipped behind the wall and entered the same secret stairwell. But in the moment, the thought never occurred to him. He hardly even slowed to wordlessly conjure Lumos from the tip of his wand, and didn't bother pausing at the top of the spiral staircase to allow his eyes to adjust to the brilliant stream of light that materialized.
It was warmer inside the passageway, probably, he reckoned in the far-distant corner of his mind that still operated, because the body of the castle kept the hidden staircase widely protected from the night's harsh wind. The same distant corner wondered, so loudly it felt like a scream, who was on patrol that night. The patrol schedule, copied out in Lily's careful cursive script, seemed to swim before his eyes. She had assigned Morton to patrol the fop four levels of the castle, if his memory served, with Idony Wharton, a Slytherin prefect, covering the dungeons to the first three floors
For a moment, as James cast Nox and pushed inwards on the unlit wall sconce on the fourth floor of the passageway, it seemed strange to him that Lily would risk getting caught on a nighttime stroll when she wasn't on duty. The wall seem to try his patience by opening even slower than usual, but finally split wide enough to allow him to duck under the opening. He squeezed the joint at the elbow of the suit of armor as he took off down the corridor, not bothering to stop and see if the passage closed behind him, although he assumed it had. But, on second thought, the more he thought about it, the more her move hardly seemed like a risk. Few professors would question a prefect outside of their common room after hours, he realized, even if they weren't on that night's rotation. (Abruptly, it hit him—were professors even aware of the patrol schedule that he and Lily—truthfully, Lily—set, or were they just expected to wave on any student with a silver "P" pinned to their robes? Was anyone holding them accountable?) And even if a professor might doubt a prefect, none, surely, would question the Head Girl for patrolling the corridors after hours, especially when that Head Girl was as trustworthy, dependable, and honest as Lily Evans. Yes, it made sense that Lily could leave the seventh-floor common room, secure in the knowledge that Morton was meant to patrol the top floors, which made talking her way past any lurking professors her only obstacle. After that, it had to be as simple as meeting Morton when he could easily slip away from his patrol. He could always claim he had been patrolling a different area if professors caught rule-breakers somewhere within his requisite four floors.
The fact that he worked all of this out—whether he was right or wrong—left James feeling undeniably foolish, almost embarrassed by thoughts he hadn't shared aloud.
How had he gotten so obsessed?
He slowed down as he approached the classroom, his breath burning in his throat, and all but crept forward, hugging the wall for the last forty paces despite seeing no other movement in the halls—even the portraits were asleep in or missing from their frames. With slow, steady movements, he pulled the Marauder's map from inside his robe pocket and unfolded it, the parchment thankfully too worn to let out so much as crinkle. He had folded it up inside the deserted common room so that the map of the fourth floor faced outwards, and he scanned the area, squinting in the flickering torchlight that filtered through his invisibility cloak, to check if Lily and Morton were still just on the other side of the door.
They were.
He waited.
He didn't even know what he waited for. He couldn't hear anything, as pressing his ear to the door's crack and then keyhole quickly revealed. He didn't dare try the door, although that hardly mattered, because he knew Morton would have locked it. And he wasn't sure that he wanted to see what was going on inside the classroom anyway, although he also wasn't sure he didn't want to see it. His shoulders cramped as he stood motionless, knees bent to keep his entire height concealed within the cloak. Time passed slowly, he was sure, but he had no timepiece and no way of knowing besides the steadily increasing pain from his cold feet.
Did Morton know that he knew? Had Lily told him about their conversation in the hidden stairwell? She could whisper it to him as they got undressed, the words meant to somehow torment him, something she clearly liked to do. "Potter told me that he saw us shagging last month," he imagined her saying, imagined so clearly that he could almost hear her laugh in his ear. Because if she had told him, they would laugh at him, he was certain. He tried to guess how Morton would respond. "What a pervert. I'm sure he got off, because it's the closest he'll ever get to you." James became aware, abruptly, that he couldn't conjure Morton's voice to mind like he could Lily's. Outside of his unwitting spy session, had he ever really heard Morton talk outside of a classroom answer, a brief comment in a prefect meeting, or a hurried "good game" after a Quidditch match?
Sometime later (how much later James wasn't sure, but long enough for the cold to spread up his calves and into his knees), the lock on the door gave way with a click as loud as a hex in the corridor's silence. He had just enough time to take two additional steps back, giving the doorframe an even wider berth, before, in mere seconds, Morton had slipped out the door and closed it soundlessly behind him. He had that same look on his face that James recognized from the last time—a look of utter misbehavior, of sneakiness, of an attempt to pull one over on those around him. Even though James had seen the expression before, he thought the look still sat strangely on Morton's features—perhaps even weirder because never, in the weeks of observing him with Lily, had James seen him wear it during daytime hours. It seemed an expression entirely reserved for these late-night meetups.
James also couldn't recall ever seeing Morton's hair in quite this state of disarray, and the sight of it made his chest tighten forcefully. Just from watching the Marauders Map, James knew they had definitely not met up to exchange Charms notes. But the way Morton's fringe stuck upwards and the matching patterns of twisted locks above both of his ears somehow drove home that they'd shagged in a way that observing dots on a parchment could not. And somehow, he found he almost hated to see the aftermath rather than the deed itself. Observing Morton, James could only imagine the acts that he and Lily had committed, and had to wonder if the scenarios that raced through his mind were better or worse than what they had actually done.
Most of all, fighting down the heated flush of arousal in his stomach at the images of Lily he could only all too easily conjure to mind, James hated how much he wished he could have seen her again, no matter how guilty it made him feel.
But Morton didn't give James much time to dwell. Seemingly oblivious to the state of his hair or the look on his face, he gave a perfunctory sweeping glance up and down the corridor and then took off at a measured pace towards the Grand Staircase, presumably to continue his patrol as if he had never stopped.
The minutes slipped by, perhaps five but certainly no more than seven, before the door opened once more and Lily exited the classroom. Unlike Morton, she appeared entirely put together, from every piece of hair smoothed neatly behind both ears to the careful tuck of her shirt. Also unlike Morton, she immediately drew her want to cast Lumos. Even feeling as he did—like his chest matched the cold, unfeeling state of his feet—James couldn't help but smile just a little. The act, paired with her signature flawless posture, seemed to announce to the corridor—to the castle—that she was out and about from her bed after hours, and as Head Girl she had every right to be, no rule breaking here, thank you very much. It was a ballsy move, entirely Gryffindor.
She turned the opposite way from Morton, away from the Grand Staircase, and instead traced the same path that James had taken from the secret passage. Moving automatically, James followed her, although he grimly recognized that there was little else he could do in that moment. After all, what was he supposed to do since Lily and Morton had parted ways?
And beyond that, why, why had he even left his dormitory?
Lily's walked unhurried, assuredly unbothered as she strolled up the fourth-floor corridor. It wasn't the first time that James had watched her patrol the hallways, which was unsurprising given how often she had been on duty since becoming a prefect, and the amount of times he and the other Marauders had sneaked out of Gryffindor tower after hours. He and his friends often checked the Marauders Map before they left their dormitory to plan the route of their nighttime prowls around any prefects or professors, although of course even their best laid plans often went awry. He had never once minded when it meant that they came across Lily on duty—although he had, of course, resented the accompanying stifled sniggers of whoever had joined him under the cloak, as even Remus wasn't always immune to laughing at the expression on James' face when he saw her. She always scoured the area around her more efficiently than other prefects, sweeping her wand methodically left to right, which made her a more formidable adversary in the dark, twisting corridors. Even then, knowing the cloak protected him from her keen eyesight, James still melted back into the shadows of a particularly large tapestry when she came to a sudden halt, wand raised evenly to her shoulder and gaze planted firmly on the wall.
Even from profile, he could read the expression on her face as one of utter shock. Too interested to listen to his better judgment, he slipped soundlessly further up the corridor, to just across the hall from where she stood. His brain immediately exploded into a shower of expletives.
The wall to the secret passageway had not closed behind him. It stood silently open, like a dark, gaping mouth.
Lily turned abruptly, although not to look further down the corridor, where she hadn't yet passed and where unknown rule-breakers most potentially lurked. Instead, she stared back down the path she had just taken, and behind the brilliant glare of her wand, James could see her lips pressed together in a fine, even line. He bent his knees to crouch even further and felt the cloak's hem pool around his ankles. He didn't care. He wanted to make himself as small and invisible as possible.
After several long moments in which James knew her eyes must have passed over and through him at least two or three times, she lowered her wand to hip-level. She turned to check the corridor the other way, but without nearly as much tension in her body as before. James took the opportunity to press his back flat against the wall across behind her, desperate for any sort of stability from the cold stone. She seemed to quickly write off whatever she looked for on that side of the corridor, and turned around again, her mouth now twisted with thought but expression otherwise mild, as if she had merely encountered a challenging wrist movement in an advanced charm that she couldn't quite get the hang of. Was she looking back at the classroom? James had to assume that she was, because what else was back there that she might be interested in?
Suddenly, she spoke. "Potter?"
Even though his name came out at just above a whisper, her voice—the first he'd heard since the Fat Lady's shrieks on the seventh floor—startled James so much that he almost fell over on his unsteady, frozen feet. Only after he'd righted himself, pushing his back even more firmly against the wall, did it occur to him not just that she'd spoken, but what she'd said. She had said his name, and that meant she must have—
But no. She couldn't have seen him. And in the brief seconds after his name left her lips, even as his mouth filled with the bitter taste of sheer, fear-based adrenaline, his brain recognized two important things. First, she didn't even look in his direction. And second, his name had come out as more of a question than an accusation, and without an ounce of the rage he expected would have filled her voice at the sight of him.
She stood silent for several long seconds, her brows now knitted together as she looked from the open passageway, down the hall towards the classroom, and then back again several times. Finally, she sighed, breathing almost unintelligibly, "Fucking hell." And then she slipped into the passageway, and the next moment, the wall slowly drew together until the stone left no visible sign that it had ever split apart.
For a while James kept absolutely still, his heart still pounding in his ears. Eventually, he drew himself up and ventured back up the corridor from whence he'd came, tracing Morton's footsteps towards the Grand Staircase. Even though his knees and back had joined the pained protest of his feet, he knew he couldn't return to the common room anytime soon for fear that he'd find her there, seated in a high-backed chair and waiting for him, ready to throw all manner of hexes his way once he'd crawled out of the portrait hole and confirmed her suspicions that he'd followed her.
No. He'd wait, even if it took hours for him to feel certain that she'd gone to sleep. Even as his warm bed beckoned (and as his adrenaline subsided, replaced with the familiar, leaden feeling of guilt), he crept downstairs to pass his time in the warmth of the kitchen instead.
xxx
Four nights later, James watched them as Lily and Morton sat two spaces apart at a dinner party held in Slughorn's office. Marlene McKinnon and Lucas Rooney sat between them on the long table, Marlene to Lily's right and Rooney to Morton's left, forming the short line of their little Potions table quartet. (Were Marlene and Rooney dating? James had never noticed before, but, from the way that Marlene looked at him, and vice versa, he would bet a good portion of his Gringots vault that either they were or would be soon.) From James' vantage point—seated not only across from the group, but also several seats further down the table—he couldn't make out what they spoke of, although he did note that Lily and Morton never exchanged a private word. But how could they, with Marlene and Rooney between them?
Sirius sat at James' side, easily talking Quidditch with Norman Tiller, the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain. James tried to jump into the conversation intermittently, just enough to draw cover over his (hopefully) unnoticeable surveillance. Fortunately, Sirius had perked up enough to carrying the burden of the conversation, so James didn't have to say much.
Although they attended only infrequently, Slughorn regularly invited them to his "Slug Club" gatherings. He invited him, James assumed, because of his position as captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and no small magical talent, although he felt certain that his new spot as Head Boy only added to Slughorn's interest in him. And he invited Sirius probably due in part to his own academic gifts, but mainly simply on the valor of the Black name. Slughorn had always seemed eager to add Sirius to his "collection" of students with the most famous (or, more like, infamous) pureblood names, which had always left James feeling rather fortunate that his own pureblood family had little standing in the wizarding world. Of the Blacks, Slughorn had already "collected" Regulus, which was the main reason Sirius rarely made an appearance at Slughorn's regular dinners and events—not that he ever admitted, even to his friends, that his brother had the power to keep him away from anything. No, he blamed the collective Slytherin group as a whole—who admittedly did make up the majority of the Slug Club—for his aversion to the gatherings. "Why would I willingly spend a night around that right bunch of gits?" he would ask whenever an invitation came, never mentioning Regulus by name. He rarely ever did.
That night, it had taken James his most charming cajoling to convince Sirius to attend the dinner with him.
"There will be food," he had promised winningly hours before the party.
Sirius had waved an impatient hand. "There's food in the kitchens."
"If we go, Slughorn will for sure invite us to his Christmas party. We'll look well stupid if we're not invited."
Peter had coughed pointedly, although Remus hadn't even bothered to look up from his book. Peter and Remus, far beyond Slughorn's radar, had never once received an invitation to any of his gatherings, large or small.
Sirius had laughed at that, patting Peter's back amiably. "You're right there, Prongs," he had joked. "We don't want to be stuck here with this sorry lot."
"And," James had pushed further, aware of his headway, even if Sirius had spoken in jest, "We need to have some professorial allies. Think about it. If all the professors are as suspicious of as us McGonagall, we'll never get anything done. It's important we keep on the good side of some of them. Slughorn's an easy mark. C'mon, Padfoot. It's for the good of all Marauders, not just us."
Sirius had still looked unconvinced, but no longer resolutely so. "I suppose." He had cocked his head, looking not unlike the curious dog he transformed into on full moons. "Why do you want to go so bad? You usually don't care."
James had weighed his options. He could have lied, creating some nonsense on the spot about Slughorn's connections to the Ministry and his owns desires to train as an Auror after graduation, all true, but not the truth. He'd figured Sirius would see through it right away.
"I want to talk to Evans," he had finally admitted. "She'll be there. And I don't want to go alone. So come with me." It was close enough to the truth that he knew Sirius would believe him, even if James truly intended to watch Lily rather than talk to her.
"Oh, sure then," Sirius had agreed easily, no questions asked. "Why didn't you say so? Yeah, we'll go. But seriously, Prongs, you don't see her enough at your little Head Boy meetings?"
"No." Also true.
"What's the point in being Head Boy then?"
Sometimes James asked himself the same question.
When they had first arrived to Slughorn's office, Sirius had taken a single look around the room and given James a withering look that promised that he very much owed Sirius a giant favor. James, too, had suddenly regretted his plan of action. They hadn't attended a Slug Club gathering since sixth year, and he had honestly forgotten how tedious they could be. Slughorn had transformed his office into a miniature version of the Great Hall, although featuring only one long table rather than four. Some sort of sweet, spicy herbs burned in the fireplace, the warmth of which left the room feeling uncomfortably close. The only other light came from candles floating overhead, and those set in golden candelabras along the table, which bathed the room in the kind of dim, romantic light not dissimilar to Madam Puttifoot's. It made for an intimate setting, but one full of people—including a large cluster of Slytherins—that James had no intention of getting cozy with.
For what felt like the millionth time in recent weeks, he wondered how on earth he had ended up where he was. That feeling of uncertainty had begun to feel more and more regular, more ordinary than the confidence he had had entering seventh year, which came upon him only fleetingly in recent days.
At least Slughorn had seemed delighted at their attendance, even if neither James nor Sirius could muster much enthusiasm in return. "Potter, my boy!" Slughorn had exclaimed, reaching to jovially shake James' hand as if he hadn't seen him in weeks, maybe months, even though they had just had Potions earlier that week. "And Black too, how good of you both to come! I can't remember the last time we've had the honor of your presence at one of these little gatherings—but no, no, don't worry about it in the least!" he had insisted as James had opened his mouth to offer some excuse that he still hadn't worked out in his brain. "I don't blame you a bit. You've got quite a lot on your plates, with Head Boy duties for you, Potter, and Quidditch for the both of you. No, I don't hold your absence against you in the least. But I will hold it against you if you beat Slytherin next weekend, make no mistake about that!" He had tiped them exaggerated wink. "Now, take a seat anywhere, anywhere you'd like. We'll all dine together here, no house divisions tonight!"
Sirius had snorted, but quickly took to coughing to cover it up. Despite the single table, house divisions had already made themselves remarkably clear, with Slytherin students clustered around Slughorn's chair at the head of the table. Students from the other three houses tended to sit amongst themselves as well, although Ravenclaw boasted only three attendees, Hufflepuff two, and Gryffindor the four of James, Sirius, Marlene, and Lily. Slytherin's numbers almost matched the other three houses combined. It made, James thought, for rather unpleasant dinner company.
Sirius had pulled a face upon first spying Regulus, who sat beside Severus Snape, which only doubled his displeasure. He'd determinedly gone for the opposite end of the table, as far from them and the Slytherins as possible. His mood had been sour for the first ten minutes or so as he ordered food into his empty gold plate. His knife cuts on his magically-delivered steak had seemed overly violent at first, but the mood had disappeared readily enough, as James assumed that it would. Sirius was naturally too high-spirited to ever stay angry for long.
Still, after an altogether fine meal, Sirius' irritation seemed to creep back in as Slughorn tried to engage the entire table in conversation, inquiring after specific seventh year students' graduation plans over a fine display of dessert options. It came off as more of a friendly interrogation than an actual conversation, although Slughorn clearly expected everyone at the table to listen or, if not fully pay attention, at least remain quiet enough so that he could engage students far away from his seat. James elbowed Sirius sharply as he sighed audibly when, at Slughorn's prompting, Lucas Rooney's launched into his detailed plans necessary to enter the Healing profession. James shared none of Sirius' irritation. Truly, he felt pleasantly surprised that Slughorn had waited until after their entrees to monopolize the conversation.
"Well, Healing is a difficult profession, my boy," Slughorn said, helping himself a second slice of apple pie after Rooney finished his long recital of preparations for the Healing school exam. "And so much of it revolves around Potions. You're a competent brewer, certainly, but I will warn you that you may find yourself facing potions in the entrance exam that are beyond your skill level—oh, current skill level, no doubt," he added quickly after a glance at the way Rooney's face reddened. "You can get there, it'll just take some time."
James watched as Marlene's arm extended discreetly towards Rooney under the table to presumably take his hand. Yes, he decided, they were definitely dating. Was that how Lily and Morton had initially met and become…whatever they were? Friends, as she said?
"One of my old students works at St. Mungo's in the muggle ward. He takes care of all those muggles who come in with magical injuries, fixes them up, sets their memories right, all that. I can put you in contact, if you like. I'm sure he'd have some insight into the profession." Before Rooney could even open his mouth to respond with thanks, Slughorn barreled on. "But if you want real, practical help, Rooney, I'd ask Severus here, or Lily. Best set of potion-makers this year—or that I've had in many years, truthfully."
It didn't escape James' notice that Slughorn referred to the two by their first names rather than surnames. He had always unashamedly favored them both.
"Why, Lily, you could tutor Rooney a bit, get him up to snuff on some of the more complex healing potions, couldn't you? Your Skele-Gro potion was first-rate, truly extraordinary for a first try." Slughorn didn't even suggest Snape, who seemed to glower more than ever behind the curtain of his hair, although James suspected it was more that his own Skele-Gro potion had gone unnoticed than the fact that Slughorn hadn't offered him up as help.
"If you'd like, Rooney, sure," Lily replied easily, as if totally unbothered by the singularized praise, although James couldn't help but notice the way her collarbone flushed even as her face stayed impassive.
"Yes, I expect you'd make a top-notch Healer, Lily," Slughorn went on thoughtfully. Lily had already set down her dessert spoon at the first mention of her name, as if she expected him to continue to single her out. "Although I'm sure you'd excel at any profession—I can't really think of one where your skills wouldn't translate well, although of course I hope you'll continue to brew. You've got a natural talent."
"Thank you, sir."
Even from the other side of the table, James heard more than one of the Slytherins make a derisive sound, a snort or a scoff or pointed cough. He saw the Slytherin Quidditch Captain, Lucinda Talkalot, whisper something to Regulus that definitely included the word "mudblood," the slur unmistakably readable on her lips, although James sat too far away to hear her.
If Slughorn noticed, he didn't comment. "Have you given any more thought, Lily, about what you'd like to do after this year?" he persisted. "You'll have the NEWTs for just about anything, I imagine."
"Some. I had planned on Curse-Breaking for a while. But I've been thinking more and more seriously about becoming an Auror, professor."
Slughorn's eyebrows shot up. "An Auror? Really now?"
Lily folded her hands demurely across her lap, although her expression was anything but as she looked squarely at each of the Slytherin students surrounding Slughorn, none of whom tried to hide their visible distaste for her. Her gaze lingered on Snape the longest, who, from James' vantage, didn't quite meet her eyes. "You must have noticed that the Prophet reports more mysterious happenings everyday—witches and wizards gone missing, some of whom turn up dead; increasing violence against muggles; rising reports of Unforgiveable Curses performed on magical and non-magical alike. And we can't forget about Diagon Alley, even if the Prophet stopped reporting on it right away. There's something going on over on the Continent too. There's reports of giant uprising and increased vampire activity in France, and of dark creatures generally attacking humans in larger numbers than the last few years. It seems…" She chewed on her words slowly, a change of pace from her previous brisk, firm tone that had brought color to her cheeks. "It seems like something is happening, that things are changing, and in a way that will soon require greater resources and more active participation against the Dark Arts. The Ministry will need more Aurors."
The table had fallen completely silent, without so much as the scraping of utensils against plates. At Sirius' side, Hufflepuff Norman Tiller stared motionless at Lily, his mouth slightly ajar, half-eaten creampuff forgotten in one hand. Anyone who read the Prophet noticed those things, of course. James and his friends had even spoken about them privately in their dormitory, with Sirius expressing particular anger at the rise in dark activity, certain that if his relatives weren't involved, they would join soon. But James had never heard anyone speak of the Prophet's reports publically before.
"As if you couldn't like her more…" Sirius whispered to James under his breath, although even he sounded grudgingly pleased. The words had been entirely Gryffindor. It was impossible not to respect her for them.
At Slughorn's side, Slytherin Walden Mulciber put a hand down on the table. He may not have done so with much force, but in the stunned silence, it went off like a Zonko's firework. Nearly everyone jumped. "You don't know what you—" he began, and the sheer acid in his voice had James suddenly, wildly wondering if Mulciber clutched his wand under the table, ready to pull it out in a moment's notice.
James didn't trust himself to hear what came next and not respond in kind. "You know, Evans," he interjected, loudly enough to cut Mulciber off completely, and the table turned to face him, "I hear what you're saying. It makes sense to me. But I don't think you're meant to be an Auror."
It was the first time he had spoken to her, aside from rather formal conversation during prefect meetings, since he had pulled her into the secret passageway weeks before. She pressed her lips together, reminding James forcefully of the expression on her face only four nights prior when she had surveyed the fourth-floor corridor with suspicion. But instead of suspicion, she held her lips tightly to hide a smile. "Oh?"
James felt, rather than heard, Sirius' surprise in the way that he shifted in his seat. He didn't look away from Lily, but felt Sirius' sharp, inquisitive look nonetheless. There had been a time that Lily would have never invited him to continue to speak. For years, she had cut off all of his attention with a sharp, "Sod off," or the occasionally stronger, "Go fuck yourself." Her single syllable truly was a break from the usual script, something unseen by anyone who didn't attend prefect meetings, where she seemed to openly value his opinion. Did anyone else notice? Marlene, maybe. Her dark eyes shifted from James' face to look at Lily curiously, although she may have simply wondered what her friend would say next.
"Yeah. Have you thought about becoming a Hit Wizard?" James asked, his voice still louder than necessary in case Mulciber felt like jumping back in. "I've seen you duel—no, I've felt you duel, and you're relentless. I'll never forget when you got me with that skin-stretching hex last year. It took me ages to figure out how to undo it—even Madam Pomphrey couldn't help. Did you make that up yourself?" James didn't add mention of the dark red hex she'd thrown his way in the secret passage weeks before, although it definitely came to mind. What had that been? Instead, not waiting for her to answer, he turned to Sirius. "And she got you with the Conjunctivitis Curse once, didn't she?"
"Fifth year," Sirius replied cheerfully. "In March. I remember, because we had a Quidditch match against Ravenclaw the next day and we didn't know how to get our hands on an Oculus potion. It was chaos. Whole team all panicked."
Lily returned his cheeky smile. "In my defense, I did brew it for you."
"After a bit, of course. Cheers, Evans."
Some of the tension in the room dissipated. Mulciber's mouth still worked furiously, but not to form words—he looked instead as if he chewed his tongue to keep quiet.
"I remember that," Morton said suddenly.
Even as the overall strain in the room continued to decline, some of the warmth in James' chest evaporated; although others had seemed to relax, his body now tightened. Four nights before, he couldn't remember the sound of Morton's voice. To hear him speak just then brought back all of the sheer loathing towards him that had piled up in James' mind. It also, he realized hotly, uncomfortably, brought him back to the night he'd first seen Morton and Lily together, because he hadn't heard Morton speak outside of a formal setting since. James was unwillingly struck with the memory of the way Lily's face flushed with pleasure when Morton had told her he couldn't stop thinking about her lack of knickers during the entirety of Potions. Morton's voice had been lower when he'd said it, spawning from somewhere deeper in the back of his throat, but the sound was nearly the same and James hated it. He had never loathed someone more, he decided in that moment. Not even Snape.
"We lost that game pretty spectacularly," Morton continued, and James found that he couldn't look at him without clenching a fistful of his robes with his wand hand. He felt like Mulciber, unable to control his own emotions without the desire to send a curse across the table. He forced his arm to relax. With the chairs clustered so tightly around the table, he knew Sirius must have felt both the tension and the release. "I took a bludger to the face near the end. Did you hit it, Black?"
"Oh, probably," Sirius said breezily. "Who's to say? I'll take the credit. How long did it take Pomphrey to fix your nose? Two minutes?"
"A bit longer," Morton replied dryly. "She had trouble locating my bones to mend them, said I had been lucky that they hadn't penetrated my brain, although she may have just been cross. You ought to have held onto that Oculus potion for a bit longer, Evans. We'd have had an advantage."
"As a Gryffindor, you know I very well couldn't," Lily said, smiling, and even though James had attended the dinner expressly to monitor any interaction between the two, he couldn't bring himself to look at the first of their comments addressed solely to each other.
By then Sirius had begun to laugh, and others around him soon joined in. Was it at the story, James wondered, or in relief that the tense moment had passed? Even Snape cracked a brief smile, although James reckoned, based on the look of abhorrence he shot at Sirius, that it was mainly at the thought of Sirius suffering at Lily's hands.
Slughorn chortled the loudest. "As a professor, I can hardly condone this kind of behavior, so I will pretend I haven't heard it." He offered Lily a great wink. "I will say, though, before I forget this episode entirely, that I'm quite sure that Potter and Black deserved it."
"Oh, undoubtedly," Sirius agreed, and James nodded. They usually did deserve her wrath. He couldn't remember what he had done or said to make her hit him with that skin-stretching hex, just the sheer horror at lifting up his still-pooling skin into his arms to make sure he didn't trip over it as he rushed to the Hospital Wing. He had, he defended internally, tried to fix the hex himself before he'd gone for help. And he hadn't told Madam Pomphrey who had hexed him, although she hadn't exactly asked even when she couldn't figure out the counter-curse. Like Slughorn, she had probably assumed he deserved it.
Sirius had apparently spoken up too many times to fly under Slughorn's radar. The Potions Master eyed him with a frank, curious expression. "Black, what are your plans after Hogwarts?" He didn't comment on any of Sirius' abilities, probably because he didn't know them well outside of Sirius' the typical "E" he earned in Potions, or at least earned when he cared enough to pay attention.
"Oh, you know." Sirius waved an expressive hand before picking up his spoon for another bite of bread pudding. "I might fix cars for the Ministry, write for Witch Weekly, play Quidditch for the Arrows—I've thought about it all, really. We'll see what happens. I don't like to plan too much. What's the point?"
James choked back a laugh at the look of disbelief on Slughorn's face and busied himself with his own dessert. He was glad he'd brought Sirius.
xxx
Sometime later, stuffed full of food and wine ("But not too much, not too much!" Slughorn had routinely cautioned as he refilled students' glasses, although his grin told a different tale), the party began to disband. Students trickled out in twos and threes, passing by an effusive Slughorn who had posted himself by the door, seemingly to allow him the time to extend ever-more advice over goodbyes.
Lily walked to James' side without a trace of awkwardness, as if they had always operated on casual speaking terms in social settings. "Are you on duty tonight?" she asked, still nursing her glass of elderberry wine.
"No," he answered with honest confusion. Why would she ask him that, when she herself had made the schedule?
"Hmm." She took a sip of her wine. "I was certain…no, you're right. Bennett's on tonight, and I think Morton relieves Wharton shortly."
Was she…taunting him? It felt pigheaded and arrogant to even consider. And yet…was it the candlelight that made her eyes glitter when she looked up at him, and the wine that caused the little half-smile on her lips?
Surely.
Marlene approached and touched Lily's shoulder. "I'm taking off," she said, and although she spoke in the singular, she nodded almost unconsciously behind her, to where Rooney and Morton stood still chatting by the table, evidently waiting for her. Rooney looked towards her at the sound of her voice, even though they stood a good thirty paces apart. Yes, definitely dating, James decided. Without a doubt.
"Okay. I'll see you in the dormitory…soon, I expect." Lily's tone was knowing but easy, more relaxed than James had ever heard it. But when did he ever really hear her speak so casually before? He mainly heard her talk in classrooms or in prefect meetings, both which demanded a performative tone. And, well, the last time they had chatted at length, she had nearly hexed him severely, although he didn't want to think about that conversation. The humiliation still burned. "Just don't get caught by any prefects," she added. "It's after hours." She gave Marlene a look that seemed positively mischievous, although before October James would have doubted her capacity for any sort of mischief or rule-breaking. After everything that had happened in the past weeks, he felt more certain than ever, as she herself had pointed out, that he really didn't know what she was capable of.
He paid careful attention to the way that the expression changed her face—or didn't. Did she look much different, teasing Marlene, than she had looked at him just a moment before? And—although he didn't want to think about it, never did, but seemingly couldn't stop—did that expression differ greatly from the way she looked when she had had one leg up on him or on Morton?
Marlene just laughed. "If I'm stopped, I'll just tell them I room with the Head Girl. I'm sure they'll leave me be." She paused for a moment, her expression grew somber, and she lowered her voice. "But if I don't see you until the morning, Lily, seriously, well done." She did not specify on what. She didn't need to. But she considered Sirius and James carefully, clearly mulling something over in her mind. Her eyes never lost the look that James had come to expect from her over the years, one which imparted a general sense of dislike, but she apparently decided to trust them enough, if just for the moment. "My mum's an Auror," she explained. "Lily's right—there are things happening out there, past even what they report in the Prophet. It's scary."
"You-Know-Who, you mean," Sirius clarified matter-of-factly. He cast his own swift glance around the room. James knew he looked for Regulus, but it appeared that he and the other Slytherins had already left.
"Yes."
They didn't have to specify who they were talking about, because they did all know who. The Prophet had once called Voldemort by his name two years back or so, if James remembered the timeline correctly. At first reporters hadn't shied away from calling out the violent deeds that quickly became synonymous with his supporters, especially the attacks on muggleborn witches and wizards, and the even more brutal assaults on muggles. It had seemed, in the beginning, that Voldemort and his followers simply made up a fanatical fringe sect—a dangerous group, certainly, but one that the Ministry could nevertheless certainly bring to justice.
That had all changed two years prior in the spring of their fifth year with a searing attack on Diagon Alley, which Voldemort and his followers had never hit before. They had begun with an attack on the Gringot's goblins, apparently just for fun, and then ransacked the first level of the bank entirely. They nearly obliterated the Leaky Cauldron, and blew out the front façade of the building, injuring several muggles and terrifying dozens more. They tortured witches and wizards in the narrow cobblestone streets, out in the open for all to see. They burnt down shops, paying particular attention to those owned by muggleborn witches and wizards, whom they killed immediately—although the detail of the victims' lineage only became apparent later, after Ministry research, the status of a person's bloodline obviously unclear without further digging. The Death Eaters, as Voldemort's followers quickly became known, had clearly done their research and had chosen their targets purposefully.
Worse yet, at least for morale, the attack had occurred in broad daylight. Never before had they attacked magical people so wantonly, their previous attacks seemingly targeted at individuals who they quickly killed or coerced into joining their ranks in the secrecy of night. Even their attacks on muggles were isolated events, typically against a single family, and never took place in large villages, let alone in a city like London. The attack on Diagon Alley seemed a clear message, meant to alert the wizarding world to Voldemort's power and hatred of any bloodline less than pure.
But after that, nothing. The Ministry investigated. Those who dared brave the wreckage of Diagon Alley saw Aurors poking around for weeks. But they made no arrests, and the whispers began. Did Voldemort have insiders in the Ministry who had derailed the investigation, or made the incident go away? How could all of this happen in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and no one could identify a single soul involved?
Even more ominously, since then, Voldemort and his followers hadn't made another purposefully public attack. Still, the threat that they could never stopped lingering in anyone's mind, just as they had probably intended.
The Prophet quickly stopped any and all mention of Voldemort by name, and rarely printed any direct reference to his Death Eaters either. But anyone who cared to read between the newspaper's lines could easily spy their handiwork in the untold number of violent incidences that had occurred around Britain ever since, which the Prophet still covered without attributing their causes to any person or group. Most people, it seemed, hadn't blamed the Prophet for employing such a technique—after all, Death Eaters had targeted their headquarters in Diagon Alley with particular violence, torturing their staff and razing the entire building to the ground. More than anything, British witches and wizards seemed to take from the event a newfound, deeper fear of Voldemort—and a reluctance, like the Daily Prophet, to say his name.
"Your uncle was there that day, wasn't he?" Sirius asked Marlene after a few heavy moments of silence. "At Diagon Alley."
Marlene nodded shortly. "Yes." For a moment, James had no idea how Sirius would have remembered such a small detail, until Marlene, perhaps seeing his confusion, explained, "He was one of the editors at the Prophet then. They tortured him." She shook her head. "He doesn't work thereanymore."
"Can't blame him," James muttered, remembering. It had been a huge story, never covered in the Prophet, but talked about almost incessantly in the wizarding community—his own parents still discussed it at the dinner table when he'd returned home that summer. People worried that Ackerly McKinnon's departure from the Prophet might mean the installment of one of Voldemort's lackeys into the editorship of the paper. Calder Catts, McKinnon's previous co-editor, had taken over the position solely. Unlike McKinnon, who had shown himself as a vocal opponent of Voldemort from his work at the Prophet, Catts' loyalties remained a mystery.
That feeling of untrusting unease, of not knowing a person truly or who they supported, seemed to become more and more common as the days passed.
"It's a war, truly," Lily said, and her eyes blazed. "And someone will have to fight it."
"Spoken like a true Gryffindor," Sirius said, and he unknowingly echoing James' earlier thoughts.
She shrugged. "And a muggleborn. They're not likely to live and let live with me, are they?"
"Well truly, Evans—and I mean this seriously, no matter how it may come across or what my tone may suggest—anyone who comes on the other side of your Conjunctivitis Curse will immediately regret it." Lily laughed, her prior determined expression melting away, and gave several sharps smacks to Sirius' arm. He held up his hands to defend himself. "No, on my life! Did you know my eye hurt even after the Oculus potion healed it? I swear it did, for weeks. I might be permanently damaged."
"I'm sure you are, although not due solely to me."
"Lily, please don't hurt him too badly," Marlene said, and she, too, smiled as the mood immediately lifted. Sirius had a way of doing that, James thought. "Okay, I'm leaving. Behave yourself, Lily, or you'll have to take points away from yourself. Or the Head Boy can take them away, I suppose," she added as an afterthought.
"Truly doesn't matter to me what she does to him," James said.
"Spoken most unlike a Gryffindor," Marlene jested. She turned to leave, but stopped and turned back. "Oh, Lily. Alex said he had something to talk to you about, something about curfew or patrol."
"Nothing to do with how you keep breaking it?" Lily asked cheekily.
"Funny. No, actual prefect and Head Girl stuff, sounds like. So don't spend too much time damaging Black further. Alex said he'd wait." She hesitated for one moment more, her body already turned to leave, but her eyes still taking in the sight of the three of them. "Besides," she added bluntly, and her smiled faded to a look of confusion, perhaps tinged with dislike, "You have to admit that this is weird. Since when do we talk to them, Lily? Seriously." And then she laughed, somewhat humorlessly, and walked away, her thick curls bouncing with each step.
"It is a fair question," Sirius said to Lily as they watched Marlene return to Rooney and squeeze his arm. Together, they left to say their goodbyes to Slughorn. "It's been so long since we've talked that I didn't know the pair of you could still string two words together, if I'm honest."
"Charming, Black, really." Lily's eyes flitted briefly to Morton, and then she turned back to James and Sirius. "Did you ever consider that I just never wanted to waste my words on the two of you?"
"No. But that would mean that your words aren't wasted now, if you're talking to us, right?"
"I guess. It almost seems worth the effort to talk to you lot now that I understand that Potter is capable of actually listening and responding somewhat intelligibly, although the jury is still out on you, Black."
James' tongue felt too thick for his mouth, and he couldn't shake the knowledge that Morton undoubtedly stared at them, waiting for Lily, even if he did do so politely and patiently. "Glad to hear my behavior in prefect meetings made such an impression on you," he said, trying to keep his voice as light and carefree as hers. He felt fairly certain he succeeded.
"Oh." She paused, finishing the rest of her wine. "Of course I meant your behavior in prefect meetings. What else could I mean? It's not like we chat elsewhere, Potter."
There. There! As she tipped her head to the side, surveying him, he saw on her face the exact same look she had given him when she wrested control over their conversation in the secret passage—eyes tilted up at the corners and mouth curled impishly even as she tried to keep her expression neutral.
She was taunting him.
And enjoying it.
The look vanished in a second, so quick James almost thought he had imagined it. "Anyway, I'm off." She reached out to hand her glass to James, who, still utterly confused her behavior, took it automatically. "Be a dear and put that back for me, will you, Potter?" Without another word, she whirled about in a flurry of dark robes and left to join up with Morton, who, seeing her approach, met her at the door to say goodnight and goodbye to Slughorn.
"What the fuck is going on?" Sirius asked immediately, intently, as he watched Morton and then Lily shake Slughorn's hand. Slughorn acknowledged Morton only briefly before turning his full attention to Lily, just as Sirius turned his full attention to James.
James tore his eyes away from Lily's smiling face. (Did she know he was watching her, dumbstruck? Why did he think that she probably did?) He looked at the glass in his hand, and finally to Sirius, who appeared every bit as shocked as he felt, only with considerably more mirth. "I'm very confused," was the only way James knew how to reply.
"Yeah, you and me both, Prongs. Merlin, what even—" Words seemed to fail Sirius, even as he spoke each sentence with the sort of excitement that James knew he should have felt. "Are you two—I mean, you're what, friends now? Is that what I just saw?"
"I…maybe."
"So, what, you've been hitting it off with her in meetings since September, and then coming back to the common room and acting like, 'Oh, being Head Boy is so dull,' and, 'Oh, I hate that I have to patrol at night, it takes all the fun away from sneaking out,' and, 'Oh, I—'"
"No?"
"You don't even sound sure about that yourself, mate."
James ran a hand over his face. The gesture somehow made him feel a little more solid, as though he could feel that he was, indeed, physically rooted to this spot. "I'm not." He turned the glass in his hand. "Why did she give me this?"
"She's fucking with you, Prongs. Could you not see that all over her face? After all the stunts we've pulled, you can't recognize in someone else when they're trying to mess with you?"
James walked slowly to the dining table and set Lily's glass down. The remnants of dessert still lingered on the golden plates. It felt strangely like long time had passed since he had finished his bread pudding. "Yeah." The realization of it hit him, again, firmly in the chest. She had been friendly, playful, even flirtatious, maybe, in the tone of her voice and the look she had given him and the words she had spoken. Truly, it wasn't what she had said, but how she'd said it.
But what had she said?
She'd acknowledged their tense conversation in the secret passage hideaway. He had assumed she would never speak to him about it again, and hadn't been sure how to feel about it. He'd felt some measure of relief, certainly, when he imagined that he'd never have to rehash such humiliation with her again. But, disgustingly, he almost rather wanted to, not just because it meant being around her, but also because it might provide another chance to see that look he just had, the look of triumph that came over her face when she knew she was winning. He'd come to associate that expression entirely with sex, and the thought of it never ceased to make his stomach flip.
She'd also said, what…that his behavior during their chat had…impressed her? Or at least made him more tolerable in her eyes? Had that comment simply been a jest, a passing remark to simply get under his skin, or had she possibly, somehow, meant it? He had spent the previous weeks entirely wrapped inside his own head, certain she hated him since she knew what he had seen that night in the fourth-floor classroom, what he had done there to himself (the thought still turned his insides hot), and for the fact that he'd dared talk to her about it. Had it instead made her appreciate him somehow? Was that even possible, or did he just want to hope that it was?
Yes, she had absolutely gotten under further his skin, whether it was her intention or not. And he felt that she'd absolutely intended it.
Sirius' gray eyes darted around James' face, watching, waiting. "There's so much you're not telling me that it's offensive. What is—"
"Come on, we have to go," James said urgently the second he saw that Lily and Morton had managed to escape Slughorn's grasp and exit the room. "C'mon," he repeated, and took off with a purposeful stride towards the door, sidestepping brusquely around Rosemary Cindrey, a sixth year Hufflepuff, who had to stop unexpectedly in her tracks to avoid running into him. He reached Slughorn without issue, and if the professor noticed his rush, he didn't show it.
"Potter, again, so glad you could make it," he said with a vigorous handshake. "So sorry I didn't get to hear much about your future plans, but we must talk soon. And you must come to my Christmas party in just over three weeks time. I'll owl you, of course—it will be a more formal party, not like this intimate gathering of friends! I'll have some colleagues from the Ministry here that you really must meet—"
James didn't hear the rest. He simply nodded at what he assumed were the appropriate times and agreed wholeheartedly with whatever Slughorn suggested—and hoped, later, outside his panicked state, that he hadn't agreed to anything ridiculous. With Slughorn, it was hard to know.
It seemed to take ages to politely extract himself, but finally Slughorn turned his attention to the Hufflepuffs also trying to take their leave, and he waved Sirius and James off cheerfully.
Once outside the Potion Master's office, James closed the door behind him firmly and stood perfectly still, listening, cursing his human hearing that paled in comparison to the hearing he had as a stag. He had the sudden wild urge to transform right then so he could maybe pick up their trail, even though he knew he couldn't, knew how crazy the very idea was. But he had to know, had to know, where Lily and Morton had gone. Back to the fourth floor? The urge to follow them felt primal, as deep and desperate as hunger or thirst.
"Prongs, what are you—"
"Shut up," James hissed. He took Sirius' arm and yanked him a few steps away from the door, in case the Hufflepuffs escaped Slughorn in record time. "Look, I have to do something. I'll see you back at—"
"You really think you're going by yourself to go do…whatever it is you're doing?" Sirius had lowered his voice to match James', and the whisper somehow made the ferocity in his voice sound more intense. "I don't know what you're doing, but Prongs, you look seriously—well—mental."
James felt it. Frustration bubbled up in his chest, tightening his shoulders. He shook his head, trying to relax. It didn't work. "Okay." He took a breath. "Look, I have to do something, and I can't explain to you what it is, or why I'm doing it. Not right now. If you're going to be a prat about it you can follow me, but don't say a word, keep in the shadows, and don't ask me what I'm doing."
Sirius opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. His desire to make a joke to lighten the mood read all over his face, but he had clearly thought the better of it. "Okay."
"Okay," James agreed emphatically, warningly. He spoke quickly then, quietly, the plan forming in his head even as if left his lips. "We're going to go down this corridor, turn left, and take the tapestry passage—you know, the one behind Mungo Bonham healing those wizards—down to the fourth floor. And then…then when we get to the fourth floor, I might have to check the map, and we might have to put on the cloak, but I'm not sure yet. I'll know when—"
"Wait, you have them on you? The map and the cloak?"
Sirius' incredulous tone forced James to realize how absolutely crazy he sounded, and the utter madness of his entire idea. He felt like a man possessed. It hadn't even struck him as odd when he'd carefully tucked the Marauder's map and the invisibility cloak into the large inner pocket of his robes before heading to dinner, even though he didn't carry either on him regularly. Somehow, knowing he was about to see Lily and Morton together had seemed to necessitate bringing them along.
He had no time to process these thoughts. "Yes," he said shortly. "Look, are you coming?"
His expression still unabashedly baffled, and in no small part concerned, Sirius gestured expansively down the corridor. "Lead on."
xxx
As it turned out, James hadn't needed his cobbled-together plan at all.
He had just reached his hand behind the tapestry of Mungo Bonham, intent on slipping inside the materializing passageway, when he heard the faintest of voices. He reached out to still Sirius behind him, and felt his friend intake a breath, clearly about to break his word and ask a question. James hit his chest, harder than he'd intended to, and crept along the wall slowly.
Just beyond them, the corridor bent gently right. The opening to the Grand Staircase shined brightly several empty classrooms away, though still distant enough that, to James, it just looked like a small patch of brighter light. Yet the brilliance of that light, however far-off, made him realize that the corridor was much darker he had initially noticed. He had grown so used to traipsing around the castle at night that the movement almost felt like second nature, something he didn't need vision for, but to actually decipher figures in the dark took several moments. Yet his eyes adjusted and found them eventually, as he had known intuitively, somehow, that he would.
Lily and Morton stood inside an arched alcove, behind the wooden bench that sat in its recess. Shadows played across their forms, partially obscuring them from James' sight, but he could tell that their bodies were touching, and could see the soft smile on Lily's pale, upturned face as she leaned back against the wall, listening to whatever Morton said, his voice too low for James to hear. Although the dark and partial seclusion made them seem somewhat far away, James realized quickly just how close they were when Lily responded to Morton, her voice more audible than his for its higher pitch. He also couldn't make out all her words, but could identify a few.
"I thought we…honestly, just think…"
Behind James, Sirius tensed. James had almost forgotten he was there. Sirius gave a sharp intake of breath, and then let it out with an almost silent, "Oh." So he saw too, and he understood. Or at least he understood some of it. James wondered, for a moment, if Sirius might pull him away then, more out of a desire to spare him from the sight of Lily with another man than out of respect for her privacy. But he didn't move, and James didn't blame him. He understood Sirius' frozen entrancement all too well, better than he wanted to.
They watched as Lily easily took hold of the collar of Morton's shirt and leaned up to kiss him. She pushed her other hand into his hair, twisting at the side of his head that left the patterns James had noticed four nights before. Morton's body seemed to stretch over hers as he pressed her up against the stone wall, his knee between her legs, pinning her in place. Lily's thighs tightened around his leg, and she ground her hips in a way that made Morton break away from her mouth with a low sound. She gave a breathless laugh, and pulled him back to her, pressing her mouth against his ear, whispering, as he kissed her neck. Even in the dim light, James could see her face as clear as day, her skin somehow lit up from arousal, mouth smiling and eyes closed.
And then she opened her eyes.
Even as Morton worked his way down her neck towards her exposed collarbone, and even as she guided his hand to disappear past the hemline of her skirt that lifted higher and higher towards her hips, she scanned the corridor with the clear, determined gaze that made her such a formidable patroller. Before James could so much as push Sirius back to make a quick break for the secret passage, her eyes passed over their spot. She seemed to look past them at first, as if she hadn't spotted them. But before relief could set in, her eyes bounced back, and James found her staring at them—no, not at him and Sirius, but him, her eyes locked with his completely. Every muscle in his body clenched painfully.
She laughed.
Whatever James had expected, it was not that.
Morton ceased his movements under her skirt, and pulled away from her, reaching for her hand to bring her with him away from the alcove, a few steps closer to where James and Sirius hid. "We should go—" James heard him say rather shakily. He jerked his head down the corridor, towards the empty classrooms on the way to the Grand Staircase, and even that single gesture looked impatient. "Is one of those—?"
"That one," she said, nodding towards the second door on the left. "Flitwick used to bring Charms there for practical instruction, but he moved to the third floor in fourth year—closer to his office."
"How do you know these things?" Morton asked her, marveling, although it was hard to tell if it was at her knowledge or at the curve of her hip, which he stroked almost absently after slipping a hand back up her skirt. Although he had initially pulled away, he seemed have a hard time letting go of her long enough to get somewhere more private.
"Oh, practice," Lily replied offhandedly. "I'm out here all the time." She traced a hand down his torso, and although with Morton's back to him James couldn't see where it landed, based on Morton's reaction, he could only assume she now cradled his cock.
"Christ, Lily…" Morton swore, again with that muggle curse. Had he learned it from her? "Just tell me when you're out here. I'll be there."
While he sounded ragged with desire, her voice was cool, collected, reminding James that she constantly seemed the one in control—and not just with Morton, but also with him. "I'm here now," she said simply.
Morton grabbed her then, closing the gap between their bodies and mouths with desperate force. "C'mon," he said when they finally broke apart, his hand still cupping her face, thumb tracing her lips as if he couldn't stand to stop touching her.
A moment came, again, one of those fleeting, hard-hitting moments of the evening that James increasingly believed came part and parcel when dealing with Lily. But the moment that happened as he crouched behind the wall, watching her, hit him the most
She looked past Morton's face, again towards the tapestry where James lurked with Sirius a step behind him, tucked further into the shadows. If James had somehow convinced himself that she hadn't seen him before, he knew then that she had for certain. The look she gave him nearly knocked him backwards. It was that smirk, that mischievous smile that had previously baffled him, but suddenly left him with an unexpected tightness in his balls.
She absolutely knew he was there. She knew he could see everything.
She was messing with him.
And it was starting to seem, he thought with a dry mouth, that, even as much as he hated it, he alsoliked it, and that she might too.
She didn't say anything else to Morton, simply broke from his grasp to close the steps to the chosen classroom that she unlocked with a wordless wave of her wand. Morton followed her inside; then the lock clicked again and the corridor fell silent.
The entire episode had lasted no more than three or four minutes, and it seemed to James as though he and Sirius stood frozen for almost the same amount of time. Finally, Sirius pulled him backwards by the collar of his robes into the relative safety behind the tapestry. Once inside, darkness enveloped them briefly, before light seemed to explode from the tip of Sirius' wand as he conjured a lighted sphere that floated into the middle of the long, narrow passageway. He turned to James immediately, his eyes wide and wild.
"What," he asked, emphatically stressing every word, "Seriously, what, Prongs, was that?"