A/N: As always, thank you for the reviews!

Chapter Four

"Describe it to me."

Despite the crick in his neck, James didn't bother to lift his head from his knees. "Sirius," he said impatiently, too frustrated to bother with nicknames. "Stop. I'm not doing that."

Even though he'd tried to deter Sirius' questions, there wasn't a single lie James could imagine that would explain away what had passed between him and Lily in the corridor. At first, he could only think to extract himself from the situation by getting Sirius to drop the entire matter and return to the common room with him. But Sirius made it quickly apparent that this was one issue he didn't plan to drop, and James had folded under the pressure embarrassingly quickly, in his own opinion. The second he began to talk, the floodgates fully opened, and Sirius had no trouble pulling the entire story out of him as they sat in the cramped passageway—or at least the entire story of the initial night James had found himself trapped in the classroom with Lily and Morton. Reliving just that memory aloud for the first time had twisted his stomach enough. He didn't want to go further.

In some ways, he found retelling Sirius the saga almost worse than when he had recalled the same events to Lily. She had reacted angrily, justifiably so, but even though he still felt humiliated by the encounter, he discovered a newfound appreciation for how impassively she'd reacted when he'd first started recounting the tale. In contrast, Sirius served as an incredibly captive audience, a trait James had always appreciated in their seven years of friendship, but found suddenly intolerable. Then again, he'd never before had to tell a story quite like the one he recounted, his face on fire. Sirius had laughed, he had exclaimed, he had laughed more, and he had asked questions, countless questions, most of which James batted away with a sharp but simple, "Stop." He wasn't about to go into any specifics, no matter how much Sirius pestered him. He drew the line there. He already hated how close the images sat to the forefront of his brain; he didn't want to unearth them further at any time, but especially while sitting in such confined quarters with his best friend.

"You'd tell me details if it was any other girl," Sirius pointed out.

James opened his mouth to argue, but when he sat up and saw Sirius' face, he realized it hadn't been a "gotcha!" statement, not something Sirius had thrown out to prove a point or make him think. The last time he had lurked in a passageway for a significant amount of time, he'd had to constantly ward off those kinds of remarks from Lily, who had seemed to never say a word if she couldn't somehow use it add to an argument or to twist in some sort of knife. The need to defend himself had come almost by muscle memory, a leftover response from fending off her verbal blows. But Sirius had spoken mildly, without any guile. James relaxed, only just slightly.

"You know it's not any other girl."

He really didn't need to say more than that. Not to Sirius.

Sirius leaned his head back against the wall, his face thoughtful, although not without the same amusement that had dominated his expression from the moment James had miserably started to explain himself. "Absolutely batshit, if you think about it. What are the odds you would be in the right place at the right time to see Morton acting so shifty, and that what he was up to was getting up in Evans?"

James tried not to pull a face at the latter part of his remark. "I really didn't know she was there," he said, and there he did feel the need to defend himself, although Sirius hadn't sounded even slightly accusatory. "By the time I did, Morton had already locked the door." He paused for a moment, then added, "He just makes up spells, I guess. I don't know what he put on the door, but Evans said he made it up himself." He was an unregistered Animagus and had helped create a complex, interactive map of the entirety of Hogwarts, so Morton's ability shouldn't have bothered him. He knew he would probably surpass Morton in skill if he applied himself. Still, it rankled.

He didn't like when Sirius looked at least mildly impressed. "Pretty advanced. But," he continued loyally, after seeing James' face, "What a tosser. Not a good chaser, either. Never beaten us at Quidditch, have they?"

"Not since we joined the team, no."

"Right. And have you—wait." Sirius leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "Why would Evans tell you that?"

"What?"

"Why would she tell you that he made up the spell? Prongs, how did she know that you'd seen it?"

Fuck.

James opened and closed his mouth several times. How had he gotten so bad at covering for himself? He'd spent six years talking his way out of trouble, usually with quite a bit of success, and had somehow managed to lose the skill in less than six weeks. Only later, much further in the future, would he realize that he could still cover for himself and lie with perfect ease, just not when it came to Lily.

"She didn't see you that night?" Sirius persisted.

"No."

"So, what—you willingly later told her you saw her shag a random bloke?"

James didn't respond. He could feel the red of his face creeping towards his neck and ears, and the physical sensation somehow added to his embarrassment. Worse, he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt embarrassed in front of Sirius, period. He'd thought they had moved past the threshold for embarrassment years earlier, close enough by seventh year that there wasn't anything they didn't share, and anything that the other could pass judgment on.

Sirius let out a strangled sort of noise, a strange combination of a laugh and a groan and the attempt to talk all rolled into one. "Why?" he finally managed. "Did you really not think about how bad that would be? If you had told me, I would—"

"—have absolutely told me not to say a word to her about it, I know." James removed his glasses, more to avoid Sirius's gaze than out of any physical need. With his vision blurry, the world somehow felt less threatening. "I just…lost it a little."

"A little?"

"I felt bad, Padfoot!" He found he could use Sirius' nickname again, once he felt more frustration towards himself than his friend. "We've actually been getting on so far this year—"

"I'm sure that's over now."

"—and it felt just…scummy. She kept being nice to me, and every time she was, I felt worse. Not even because I'd been in the room, but because she had no idea I was. So she acting nice based on this—this false set of assumptions that I've not been a total prat this year."

Sirius fell silent for long enough that James felt he had no choice but to put his glasses back on. When he did, he found his friend still studying him with a significant amount of humor in his eyes, but with a certain amount of pity too, which somehow seemed worse.

"More than anything," Sirius said slowly, measuredly, "I'm honestly surprised you're still alive, after you told her."

At that, James couldn't help but crack a smile, however small. "I am too."

"What did she do?"

"Well, she hexed me."

Sirius nodded. "No shock there. With what?"

"I have no idea, but I've never seen anything like it before. Shattered my shield charm."

"And then what, she hit you with something worse?"

James hesitated. "Not exactly."

"What does that even mean?"

"Padfoot—"

Sirius looked increasingly interested. "No, don't even try that. You have to tell me now. What did she do?" His voice turned slow, thoughtful. "I've seen her eviscerate you verbally. I've seen her curse you like…like nothing else in this world, I don't even know to explain it. The skin-stretching hex you mentioned earlier was nothing compared to some of the other spells she's thrown at you. Whatever she did, it must have been crazy, because right now you look like…"

He didn't have to finish his sentence. James knew he must look every bit as cornered as he felt, and he had once again broken into a sweat from the heat that flooded out of his chest and into the rest of his body like fire.

"Do you still have your balls?" Sirius asked abruptly, and James almost wanted to laugh, not at the joke exactly, but more so at Sirius' consistent need to lighten any solemn moment.

"I do."

"So it honestly can't be that bad, mate. You had me worried that—"

"She made me admit just—all sorts of shit," James interrupted, trying hard not to fumble further over his words as what remained of his pride piqued. "She boxed me into this corner and made me tell her that I fancied her, and that watching her with Morton made me jealous, and that I jerked off watching them."

For a moment, Sirius simply stared at him. Then he began laughing.

"I'm sorry, Prongs, I'm sorry!" he said quickly as James, feeling more humiliated than angry, rose to leave. Sirius got up just enough to shove him back down, no easy feat in the cramped passageway, and then sat again himself, giving what looked like at least a valiant attempt to get himself together. "I'm sorry," he repeated, unable to suppress a final snigger. "It's just—that's really fucked up."

Some of James' irritation vanished immediately. He hadn't realized how much he needed someone to empathize with his plight. "You have no idea," he agreed with considerably more enthusiasm than he had shown their entire conversation.

"How did she get you to do it? Did she disarm you?"

"No." He felt foolish again, although nowhere near as much as he had moments before. The worst of it seemed to have passed, and he mainly felt relieved. He'd badly needed to get it all out, worse than he'd thought. "She literally just used her words. She…she coerced me into it. I don't know how else to put it. She just…convinced me I should tell her."

Sirius gave another snort of laughter, but at least had the decency to look apologetic. "I don't understand, mate."

"I don't either. She just did it."

"Okay, but beyond that…" Sirius paused, and he sounded, to James' ears, rather detached. Perhaps he had switched his tone consciously, James considered gratefully, to make up for his laughter, in the hopes that making the incident seem less personal would detract some of James' embarrassment. If that was his plan, it worked a little. "You and Evans talked about this, what, three weeks ago?"

"More or less."

"Haven't seen her yell at you since. And tonight at dinner she was…friendly." He somehow managed to make the final word sound dirty, dirtier than any of the various questions he'd asked about her shagging Morton.

"Part of her logic was that if she embarrassed me badly enough, she'd get over feeling embarrassed quicker. Like my embarrassment would trump hers." To James, it sounded much less convincing when he tried to explain it, compared to when she had laid it out for him. "It made sense. Well, sort of. At least enough that I did it. And it kind of worked, I guess, because she's been perfectly fine to me ever since."

"Not just fine, Prongs. She was nice tonight. On purpose. Thought she was flirting with you after dinner, but after that out there…" Sirius gestured wildly towards the passage's entrance to the corridor, at least as wildly as he could without hitting his hand against the stone wall. "That was entirely her fucking with you. She knew we would follow her."

James had already had such thoughts, of course. But to really believe it had seemed entirely too arrogant, as if he thought her world revolved around him. And seeing her with Morton had reminded him that he hardly mattered in her world. He said as much to Sirius.

"I think it shows the opposite. Try to follow my logic—actually, scratch that, you'll definitely follow this, because you followed whatever her crazy shit was about embarrassment so closely that you told her you got off to watching her shag Morton. What I'm about to say is a lot less ridiculous than whatever that nonsense was." James made a face, which Sirius blew past without comment; clearly he didn't consider it was too early to crack jokes at James' expense. "She was giving you weird vibes after dinner that got your interest up, and she made sure you saw her leave with Morton. And then there she was, what, a hundred feet away from Slughorn's office, putting Morton's hand up her skirt? She's obviously in charge of that git—there's no way he stopped them there. She knew you were going to follow them and set it up."

James had considered all the same things almost as soon as he saw them entwined in the hallway, but it felt then—and continued to feel—like his own wishful thinking, born out of desperation to make the best out of a shit situation.

His doubts must have shown all over his face, and Sirius interpreted them correctly. "Prongs, come off it. She was looking for you. You saw that. I don't think she even noticed I was there." He managed to sound only slightly put out.

"She knew there were other people around," James countered. "She could have just been keeping an eye out generally. Just because she saw me doesn't mean she was looking for me."

"Right, okay," Sirius agreed sarcastically, and for the first time he seemed to grow impatient. He dragged a hand through his hair, a frustrated gesture James recognized that they shared, and had shared long enough that he wasn't sure who had gotten it from the other. "I'm sure that's why she carried on after she saw you, and actually moved closer to where we were to keep going at him. Because she was 'keeping a lookout.' So you're saying that if she had seen Snivellus and his band of merry bellends instead of us, she wouldn't have screamed or gotten out of there, but would have still grabbed Morton's cock?"

James looked away. So she had definitely done that. Sirius saw it too. "I hate him," he said quietly.

"Who? Morton or Snivellus?" Sirius did his best to keep his tone light.

James was having none of it. "Morton."

"I know, Prongs." Sirius didn't sound the slightest bit amused, just rather quiet and almost defeated as well. "Fuck him."

They sat silently for a long while.

"What do I do?" James finally asked. He tried to remember the last time he had genuinely asked Sirius for advice. If he wanted encouragement, someone to egg him on into any idea—ideas good or bad, but typically bad—he went to Sirius. But he'd gone to Remus for advice, actual advice, for as long as he could remember.

Sirius shrugged. "Beats me."

"Padfoot."

"I don't know, talk to her," Sirius suggested almost flippantly. "Roll the dice. You already talked to her once and she didn't kill you. Might as well try it again."

"Do you remember telling me—in this same conversation, no less—that I was an idiot for talking to her in the first place?"

"Oh, sure," Sirius replied, not offended at all. "But that was different. Now it's like she wants to talk to you, because she set it up this time, and you can argue against that all you want, Prongs, but I will not back off it. She wanted you to react somehow. No idea how. She's weird, beyond anything I ever imagined."

Somehow, though, it sounded as though it made him like her better.

James rubbed the back of his still-tense neck. "Even if you're right, she'll flip it on me and I'll end up apologizing."

"About what?"

"I don't know," he said, but he did. He waited only a fraction of a second before admitting, "If I talk to her about it, she'll probably accuse me of being out of bed the other night when she was out with Morton again."

Sirius stared at him. "Why does that surprise me?" he asked, almost more to himself. "That shouldn't surprise me. Nothing about this should surprise me anymore. Were you out of bed, Prongs?"

"Yes. I didn't manage to close the passage on the fourth floor, you know, the one by the suit of armor. I must not have hit the switch correctly. She knew what it was, because I had taken her in there when we talked, and she saw that it was open after she and Morton took off separately." To Sirius' great credit, he didn't express any indignation that James had shown one of their main secret passageways to someone outside of the Marauders. James waited for him to comment so he could apologize, but Sirius simply waved for him to continue. "She didn't see me, because I had the cloak on, but she said my name out loud."

There were a million things Sirius could have said in response, and he stayed silent long enough that James reckoned that he had probably considered them all. He finally settled on, "I bet that was terrifying."

"You have no idea. Nearly shit myself."

James expected Sirius to at least smile at that, but he didn't. "Prongs?" he asked, almost unwillingly. "How did you know they were together the other night? The map?"

James knew he should have felt embarrassed as he had only minutes before, but found he had reached his capacity for humiliation, which relieved him more than anything. "Yeah." He felt tired.

"Do you look at it a lot?"

"Yeah."

"You're obsessed."

James leaned his head back miserably. "I know." He reached into the pocket of his robes, pulled out the map, and tossed the precious parchment to his friend. "Take it. Hide it. I'll probably look for it, and probably find it."

Sirius turned the map over in his hands. "Let's go up," he said abruptly, pulling himself to his feet and extending a hand to James. "If we stay much longer, I'll check myself to see if they're still in the other room together."

James stood without his help, even though refusing the offer made clambering to his feet a little more awkward with such little space. "Not funny yet."

"Sorry," Sirius said cheerfully, but the apology seemed genuine on his face. "Maybe eventually."

James stopped him as he turned to leave, grabbing his robes right before Sirius could lead them out into the corridor. "Padfoot, don't tell the lads. I mean, don't tell anyone, obviously, but…also not the lads."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Sirius replied, tone still brisk, but James knew, again, just from the look on his face, that he meant it.

xxx

It took James a single night's sleep to decide that he had no other plan of action than to follow Sirius' (absurdly logical, for once) suggestion to talk to Lily.

Actually following through with the plan took more time. To his deep shame, feeling as if he'd betrayed his house and all that it stood for, James found in the days that followed that he was simply too much of a coward to pull her for a chat. He came up with a hundred different justifications every day for why he couldn't approach her at any given moment.

For starters, he didn't want to talk to her anywhere too public—like before or after class or in the Great Hall, in case she went off on him—which he assumed was pretty much guaranteed.

He felt much the same about the Gryffindor common room in the evenings, only more so, really, because everyone who really mattered to him congregated there constantly. At least in the Great Hall, he reasoned, people spread out enough that it might go unnoticed to some if Lily started yelling at him. He didn't want to face that embarrassment in a more enclosed space, in front of the people whose opinions mattered.

Further, he reasoned that it was wrong to try to talk to her any evening before Quidditch practice—and that pretty much meant every day. He didn't want her reaction (if negative, as he could only assume it would be) to affect his game or his leadership as captain.

Really, between those three excuses, he managed to write off all day every day as the wrong time to talk to her.

The full moon came around again, passing with little incident only days after Slughorn's dinner party. Sirius hadn't mentioned their conversation to James again, but he had suggested—cheerfully, but all the same—that they share the cloak, the two of them, on the way out to the Whomping Willow, and he hadn't allowed James to dawdle in the castle. James knew he should have felt grateful for that, and for Sirius' agreement to hide the map as well, but he couldn't but feel a little resentful too. After all, Sirius had listened to him recount what had happened, but he didn't truly understand. James knew because he didn't truly understand any of it himself.

The day after the full moon, the four of them huddled together in the Herbology Greenhouse Six, exhausted but none the worse for the wear, aside from Remus sporting a slight limp.

"It'll pass," he told his friends, rubbing his hands together briskly. The weather had warmed slightly in recent days, perhaps one last hurrah before the cold really descended, but he always felt a bit weaker before and after the moon, and couldn't seem to fight off the slight chill in the air. "It's in my hip too, and I can't think of a spell that would fix it."

"Has to be from when you tripped over that tree root," Sirius insisted.

"You did go flying, Moony," Peter agreed.

"If Padfoot wasn't chasing me—"

Sirius waved an impatient hand. "But I was. Whatever, we chase you all the time. Well, Prongs and I do. Wormtail tries. And, Merlin, you somehow went under that root, Wormtail. It was impressive."

Peter grinned, pleased at the praise. "Thanks. But I only knew it was there because I saw Moony fall. It looked bad."

"I swear I felt my leg twist," Remus muttered somewhat testily, with none of his typical mildness.

James waited for Sirius to step in to offer some facetious comment to get them laughing, but immediately froze when he instead hissed, "Stuff it." They all fell silent at once, undoubtedly suspiciously, and then Sirius began to talk about Quidditch, managing to sound, impressively, as though he had been in the middle of a sentence, "—but there's no way they get the snitch first. Talkalot has nothing on Murk, not in terms of speed—oi, Evans! Good morning. Coming to the Quidditch match Saturday?"

James turned to find Lily behind him, a Gryffindor scarf draped across her shoulders and a thick sheaf of parchment held in her hand. He took a step away from her without thinking, and cursed himself for how weak that made him feel, if not look.

She didn't seem to notice. "Have I ever missed one?" she asked.

"Wouldn't know," Sirius answered. "I've never noticed. Don't really look at the stands."

"Then does it matter if I'm there?" She turned towards Remus. "Here." She held the stack of parchment out towards him, and James recognized her neat hand looped across the top page. "Arithmancy notes from yesterday."

Remus tucked them under his arm, a grateful smile across his pale face. "Thanks. Anything interesting happen?"

"Does it ever? Well, Vector did give us a new numerical chart—it's the bottom page. We can go over it, if you like. I can't pretend to fully understand it yet, but I haven't set it on fire, which is more than I can say for Ferguson. His somehow went up in the middle of class, and I still don't understand how, because I don't think he even had his wand out. You should have seen Vector's face."

Remus laughed, and James found he didn't like the sound. His annoyance didn't actually stem from anything about Remus' actions, he knew. The logical part of his brain could even acknowledge that it was good to see him show any kind of good humor, because James knew, no matter how Remus tried to brush it off, that his leg bothered him more than he let on. But illogically, James found it irritated him something fierce to watch Lily offer his friend help so easily, an unspoken statement of the nature of their friendship. He had known that they studied together for Arithmancy, and had ever since third year —after all, Remus had never tried to hide it. Still, he had never exactly liked it, all too aware as the years passed that this displeasure stemmed from simple jealousy.

But his jealousy no longer felt quite so simple. It seemed like everyone around him interacted with Lily more easily than he could ever manage. It aggravated him to no end.

He found himself further annoyed at the slight, irrepressible spike of fear he'd felt when he'd realized she had managed to appear behind him before he had noticed. Over the previous few days, he'd tried so studiously to avoid finding a time to speak to her that he'd begun to avoid her altogether, and it had startled him—no, past startled, scared him—to find her suddenly upon him with no warning. And it made him mad that he felt that way, when she could breeze up to him so easily, apparently unaffected by whatever there was between them.

But even as he turned t all over in his mind , he understood that what he feared the most—and therefore what added the most to his anger—was the possibility that he'd imagined that there was anything between them at all.

xxx

James held onto that anger, gripped it tightly and carried it with him into their next prefect meeting.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked Lily once the meeting had concluded. He'd hardly said two words the entire time, desperate to maintain his fierce determination.

"Yeah, okay." Even as his own heart began to beat faster, she seemed completely at ease. She looked to Marguerite Bennett, who waited for her by the door, the last of the lingering prefects. "Wait for me, will you?"

"Actually, we might be a bit." James didn't care how rude he sounded. Bennett looked puzzled, but then shrugged. As she left, James crossed towards the Transfiguration door to close it smartly behind her. He could have banished it closed, easily, but there was something much more satisfying about shutting it manually, harder than necessary. It also gave him something to do with his hands, which had already begun to sweat.

"Everything okay?" Lily asked before he could even turn around.

When he did turn, he saw that she looked sincerely nonplussed—unless, he reckoned, that too was an act. He had no idea how to read her whereas she understood and manipulated him so easily, and recognizing it dialed his frustration up another notch. Still, he didn't expect to sound so angry, and felt some satisfaction when she jumped slightly as he spat, "What's going on?"

She stared. "I'm sorry?"

"What the actual fuck are you doing?" She continued to look at him blankly, and his words became more punctuated, more staccato, as if to help clarify things. "I saw you. With Morton. After Slughorn's party."

"Oh. That." The growing fine line between her eyebrows relaxed, and she reached up to touch her face, visibly relieved. "You scared me!" she scolded with what sounded like almost a laugh. "I thought something was seriously wrong."

"Something is wrong!"

She rolled her eyes, and her tone turned rather lofty. "Don't be so dramatic."

He bent to grip the edges of the school desk closest to him. For a wild second, he thought he might throw it across the room, and the muscles in his arms contracted, readying. The desk made it barely an inch off the ground before he thought better of it, and he dropped it back down. "Then don't dismiss me. You inserted me into your shit with Morton on purpose. It's not dramatic that I'm mad about that!"

He waited for her to deny that she had set up the rendezvous, placed strategically so he would find her, but on that, she didn't push back.

He knew Sirius would have an absolute field day when he told him that little fact.

"You weren't mad when you inserted yourself into my 'shit with Morton.'" Her voice grew thinner when she repeated his words back to him, but she didn't even bother to look at him. She began to pack up her bag, carefully storing the minutes from their prefect meeting in a thick binder, and then began fussing over how to store her eagle feather quill. The actions felt almost more dismissive than her words.

"Yes, but I didn't mean to do that! And you did this on purpose!" When she still didn't look at him, James snapped. He pulled his wand from his robes, and in a flash her binder had exploded, spewing pieces of parchment like water from a fountain.

Her expression hardened, but she didn't reach for her wand or make a move to collect the sheaves that wafted slowly towards the floor. "What about what you did on purpose?" she shot back, and she threw her empty binder to the floor with a loud clatter, her anger swelling to meet his. "You didn't have to follow me after Slughorn's party. You chose to."

James knew that, logically. But he had felt in the moment—and even then, staring at her—that there was no other path for him to take, although he knew she wouldn't stand for an explanation like that. "Okay, so I chose to follow you." he relented, and his conversation with Sirius flashed into his mind. He had told Sirius that she would somehow flip this on him, but hadn't expected it to happen so quickly. "Does that surprise you?"

She didn't hesitate. "No."

"Well, I was very fucking surprised to see you. Not with Morton, mind—I assumed you'd be with him, wherever you went. But I was surprised when you saw me, and you kept going with him. Evans, I watched him feel you up, and you knew I was there when he did it!" He heard his voice escalate at the last sentence, and hated it. Somehow,even in her anger,she managed to come off as impassive, as if she didn't really care what they argued about, but simply took umbrage with his raised voice. He hated that he couldn't match that apparent lack of care, inwardly or outwardly.

"You're right," she agreed sharply, and even as the dangerous flush of irritation remained on her cheeks, the corners of her mouth curled when he had to reach down to physically steady himself from surprise. "Don't look so shocked. You knew I saw you."

"But—but why?" he sputtered, raising his voice, thrown completely off-balance.

"Why?" she repeated, her volume growing to match his, and her face straightened, any ounce of glee disappearing rapidly.

"Yes, why? You were so mad when I told you that I'd seen—well—you with Morton. Before." He didn't know how else to put it without going somewhere crass. "Why would you want me see to it again?"

"Why?" she repeated a second time, and he thought for a moment that she might be stalling for time, until she swept down to pick up her binder and chucked it towards his head with surprisingly good aim, her eyes blazing. He managed to duck just in time, and heard it hit the wall behind him with a dull thunk. "Why do you do anything that you do, Potter?" There was something about her scorn as she hissed his name that brought him firmly back to all their clashes in years past. He hadn't heard her sound quite so angry at him yet since the start of the term, not even in the secret passageway. "Why did you do anything you've done for the past six years? Why did you bully Snape daily? Why did you sneak out of the common room basically every night? Why did you never give me a moment's peace? Why did you transfigure my backpack into a sloth, which somehow destroyed all my notes right before our Charms exam? Because it was fun?"

Of all her questions, the last one, so specific, gave him the most pause. The sloth incident had happened around Christmas their fifth year, if he remembered correctly. Apparently she hadn't gotten over it.

The entire interrogation had sounded rhetorical, but when she didn't continue, he realized she waited for an answer. "Well—some of it was fun, yeah," he hedged defensively.

"So maybe this was fun for me! You don't get to own acting impulsively, or having a laugh at other people's expense! It's not—"

The classroom door flew open, and Professor McGonagall stormed in, fire in her eyes and her wand held aloft. "Potter! Evans!"

James took a step behind the desk in front of him, as if it could offer him some sort of protection.

McGonagall took in the sight of their red faces, the binder on the floor behind where James stood, and the volume of parchment that spread across the classroom like oversized confetti, and her chest swelled indignantly. "This is how you treat my classroom? This is how you treat the trust I've shown in letting you use it? This is the example you want to set as Head Boy and Girl? This?"

Lily seemed to shrink several sizes, her rage immediately dissipating in a way that James would have assumed impossible moments before. Had she ever been on the receiving end of McGonagall's wrath before? Sure, James knew, she had seen McGonagall tear him and his friends apart almost weekly, but he doubted that McGonagall, or any other professor, had ever so much as expressed disappointment in her. "I'm sorry, Professor," she said quietly, eyes on the floor.

"I expected better of you, Evans." Lily flinched. "As for you, Potter—"

"Professor, I started all of this," he said, cutting her off quickly. "I picked a fight, and I sent Evans' papers flying. It's my fault."

"Is that why I could hear you both yelling all the way down the corridor? Do you know how many students traverse this corridor, Potter? What do you suppose they think about their Head Boy and Girl now?"

"Probably nothing great," he said earnestly. "But, Professor, you can't expect that two people in joint leadership positions to always agree. Evans and I haven't quarreled at all this year." At least that publically. "It got out of hand, I'll admit, but ask the other prefects—we've worked together well. We just disagreed today. It won't happen again."

"I might believe you, Potter, if your track record with Evans didn't include so many similar dustups," McGonagall said coldly. She looked to Lily, her lips thin with ire, but after observing her for a moment just shook her head. "Clean it up," she ordered tersely, turning on one heal. "Apologize to each other. And act better, the both of you. I will rescind your right to use this room, and I will take points off if I ever see this kind of behavior again—yes, from my own house! Don't think I won't!" She stormed from the room, and the door flew magically shut behind her.

Lily immediately sank down to sit on McGonagall's desk, her face in her hands.

James swallowed. He twirled his wand, and sent the loose pieces of parchment flying through the air to form a neat stack at her side. "Evans?" he tried tentatively. She didn't move. "Evans, could you…not sit there?"

"Why?" she asked wanly.

He shifted, no longer angry, just restless and uncomfortable. Any attempts at delicacy vanished. "The last time I saw you sit on a desk, you had no knickers on."

She looked up at this, and the heat in her face seemed to flush a little darker. She let out a slight laugh under her breath that sounded almost against her own wishes, and the sound made James' chest twinge with pride. "You can't be thinking about that now."

"Is that a challenge or a bet?"

She didn't answer, but moved to slide down, and James turned away, happy to have the excuse to do something, anything. He picked up her binder and brought it over to where she stood, no longer sitting but still leaning on the desk, her arms crossed over her chest. "That was horrible," she said colorlessly.

James picked up her stack of parchment and busied himself with arranging them inside the binder. He assumed she had some system for organizing her notes, something he'd never figure out in a million years, but she didn't look to check or critique his attempt. "You get used to it," he assured her.

"I don't want to get used to it."

"Your choice, I guess. But when you're used to making professors mad, even McGonagall can't bother you. And she's the worst."

Lily sighed, and when she spoke, her voice sounded heavy. "I just feel really stupid. She was right—this is not the way we're supposed to act. And everyone in the corridor absolutely heard us yelling, and then heard her yell at us."

Without thinking, James reached out to touch her, just to clasp a hand to her shoulder or pat her back, the same gesture he might have given Sirius or Remus or Peter in a similar situation, before he realized that she wasn't someone he could comfort like that. He pulled his hand back before his fingers so much as brushed the fabric of her robes, but she looked up anyway, catching him in the act. Somehow, the intense green of her eyes made him feel smaller in that moment than he'd felt the entire time McGonagall had berated them.

"C'mon, let's go somewhere." The words escaped his mouth before his brain truly thought them through, but as soon as he heard himself say them, he was committed. He stuffed her binder and forgotten quill into her backpack, and held it out to her.

She took it wordlessly. There was a look on her face not unlike the one he'd seen on the fifth-floor stairwell when he'd suggested they take the shortcut to the common room. He could almost visually see the way she turned his words over in her mind, debating his offer, and somehow he read in her expression that she would probably refuse.

Her answer didn't match her expression. "Where?" she asked simply, straightening up.

xxx

Unsure of where else to go, James took her to the one place that always made him feel better: the kitchens.

"You need chocolate," he told her confidently as she looked around, awe-struck, at the busy sights and sounds of the cavernous room, and at the legions of house-elves that ran it.

"This isn't Defense Against the Dark Arts and McGonagall isn't a dark creature," she said, but she'd nearly smiled, and she had accepted the hot chocolate and basket of pastries the house-elves brought to their table.

They sat in silence for a bit, a silence James couldn't decipher as companionable or awkward or somewhere in between. He watched Lily's hands as she absently tore apart a Danish, leaving just as many pieces uneaten on her plate as she put in her mouth.

"Do you just go around tickling portraits and prodding at armor?" she asked after she'd finished nearly half her mug. "Because I don't understand how else you find these places."

James shrugged, fully intending to brush the question off, but his mouth didn't comply. "We talk to a lot of the portraits, and Nearly-Headless Nick helped us massively. He's been around long enough that he knows more than anyone, but he's not exactly forthcoming—he's too long-winded to get much out of him right away. You really have to dig. I sometimes feel like I know more about him than I'd like. And most portraits just seem happy when anyone talks to them. If they know anything, they're usually willing to share."

"Are you ever anywhere without them?"

It took him a second to realize that he'd unconsciously spoken in the plural, 'we' and 'us,' without realizing it. "The lads?"

"Yeah."

"I try not to be." The answer was more honest than she probably knew.

She discarded her half-eaten Danish and wrapped her hands around her mug. "Thanks." She glanced at his face, understood his confusion, and clarified, "For trying to take the heat from McGonagall."

He couldn't remember a time she had ever thanked him. But then again, had he ever done anything worth her gratitude?

For some reason, her appreciation sat uncomfortably on his shoulders. "It was the truth. I did start everything, and I did send your notes flying. Which…sorry about that. I really don't have a good record with you and notes. At least there was no sloth this time."

He thought she might smile, but she just sighed. "I fully expected you to start a row with me after the night of Slughorn's party, though. Honestly, I expected it sooner."

"Oh." He knew he sounded as stupid as he felt. He didn't even bother with duplicity. "I was avoiding you."

"I know. You said it—you're not exactly subtle." She looked up from her mug, and he saw a bit of the old challenge flicker in her eyes. "You weren't subtle when you traipsing around the fourth floor the other night either."

He froze, and saw from the way that her face changed that the movement—or lack of movement—confirmed everything to her.

"Sorry." He didn't know what else to say, but couldn't help but feel that he apologized to her way too often. He fought the urge to ruffle his hair, aware that she hated his typical nervous habit. He propped his elbow onto the table and settled for digging his fingers into his fringe, so he could rest his forehead against his palm. The move obscured her from his vision.

"Do you ever actually sleep?"

"Lately? No." And he hated that that was the truth, and that she was the reason why.

He heard her shift, as if the bench underneath her had become suddenly uncomfortable, and then the scrape of porcelain against the top of the table as she pushed her mug away. "Potter, look at me."

He didn't move other than to flick his eyes towards her. Her eyes glittered strangely as she stared back.

"Were you in the room? When you were out the other night?"

James' elbow slipped off the table in surprise. "What?" He hadn't even considered that she might jump to such an (what suddenly very reasonable) assumption. "No. No, honestly. I got there and saw you both leave the room. But that was it." It was almost the truth. What was the purpose of telling her that he'd only seen them leave because he'd waited?

"Do you swear?"

"Solemnly."

A voice in the back of his head nagged incessantly. If he'd had the chance to be in the room, to see her again, would he have done it?

He hated how much the answer felt like yes.

She surveyed him longer, her eyes darting back and forth between each of his, as if she searched for something there. He forced himself not to look away, desperate to avoid any evidence of guilt. It felt much like battling a hippogriff. After a few tense moments she unexpectedly relented, and somehow her gaze became, if not soft, at least less sharp. "Okay," she agreed simply, just like that. She pulled her mug back into her hands. "Were you still there when I saw that you'd left the passageway open?"

"Yes."

"I knew it!" She sounded vaguely triumphant, almost not mad at all. "I knew it. I felt crazy, but I knew someone was there, and that it had to be you."

"I'm sorry," he offered awkwardly again. He wasn't sure what else to say.

"Well, you can't be mad, then," she said, her tone all brisk business. She plucked a muffin from the basket of pastries to dissect like the discarded Danish.

He figured he should have gotten used to her abrupt topic changes by then, but she somehow still succeeded in giving him emotional whiplash. "What now?"

"You can't be mad that you saw me with Morton after Slughorn's party if you're literally out there trying to find us other nights. Were you there other times?"

Something swooped across his stomach, low and sick. "There were other times?"

She quirked an eyebrow suspiciously. "Are you taking the piss?" He shook his head, and she seemed to accept that he wasn't joking. "I don't know, then, you tell me."

He stared. "Are you taking the piss?"

"Again, you tell me. You're apparently somehow always in the right place at the right time. You should know."

"It's starting to feel like the wrong place at the wrong time."

She laughed quietly under her breath, and despite the shrewdness of her tone, she did almost seem genuinely amused. "It probably should have immediately, Potter." The laugher died off her face. "But…I kind of had to, the other night. Set you up, that is, after Slughorn's party. I mean, there were probably other ways, but I knew you would follow me when you saw me leave with Morton. And I knew if you saw us, I would end up finding out some way or another if you had been lurking around the corridor the other night when I found the passage open. I figured you'd probably get angry, we'd row, and I'd pull it out of you."

He stared. Was he that predictable, that easy for her to manipulate?

She seemed to know exactly what he thought. "Again, you kind of lack subtlety. But…I also could have just asked you instead. I didn't trust you to tell me the truth, but …you haven't lied to me yet, I guess, even when you probably should have. So maybe I should have just asked."

It sounded almost like an apology.

"Was it fun?" he asked her suddenly, and it was her turn to look taken aback.

"What?"

"You said before that I wasn't the only one who got to be impulsive and have fun." He chose to studiously ignore all the other things she had said in addition, all the listing of his past actions that she'd so clearly loathed and obviously still held against him. He had a feeling he would give himself no choice but to dwell on them later, anyway.

"Oh, that." She tried to sound casual, but as he began to feel more confident deciphering at least some of her moods, he didn't miss the wicked sharpness that came to her eye. "Kind of," she said, although her tone implied 'very.'

He snorted, and as she swatted at him across the table, it made his heart twist with adrenaline. He had watched her pull the same move on Morton in the midst of their tryst, and on Sirius the night of Slughorn's party when he'd started bantering with her about the Conjunctivitis Curse. There was something so simply carefree in the gesture, a sorting of teasing that seemed like it passed only between friends.

And had she ever touched him before?

"You get this look on your face that just makes me want to laugh," she continued, and James had to remind himself forcefully that any fondness he heard in her voice stemmed entirely from tormenting him. But he still liked it, much as he didn't want to. "I don't know how to describe it. You looked it a few weeks ago when you told me you saw me with Morton—which still seems like a stupid move—"

He couldn't disagree with that assessment.

"—but I was too mad to find it funny. But the other night…" She laughed then, low and soft, and he recognized the sound immediately. She had gotten one over on him, she knew it, and she enjoyed it.

"You just like being in control," he observed, not without some terseness. He knew his ears had gone red.

"And you just like trying to figure out if I'm wearing knickers. We both have our flaws."

James winced as his stomach filled with heat, but from anything but displeasure. "Evans." He tried to mimic the warning manner she always pulled off so well, but his words came out panicky instead. "Don't say that."

"Why? Because you like it? Or because you want to know?" Everything about her tone implied that she already knew the answer was "yes" to both questions.

"You like it too." He'd thrown it out, not sure if he believed it entirely, until he watched the way she leaned back slightly—only an inch or two, but enough that he noticed—as if thrown off-kilter. Somehow, that told him everything he needed to know.

"Well, sure," she agreed, and he could suddenly read suddenly how she made the words sound exceptionally casual, overly so, as if to cover for herself. Had he ever picked up on it before? "But like you said…" She gestured to him, and then to herself. "You like impulse. I like control."

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. "I never said I liked impulse…" he finally muttered, and then quickly sat up straight as he watched her pick up her bag and rise. "Are you leaving?"

"Yeah. Hestia and I are meant to do our Transfiguration together." It wasn't lost on him that she always managed to leave him during every conversation, never the other way around. To his surprise, she hesitated as she stepped past him and touched his shoulder, so lightly with the tips of her fingers that he could barely feel it through his robes. "Thanks. Again. For everything with McGonagall…and all this." She lifted her hand away from him to gesture vaguely towards the ceiling of the wide, warm kitchen.

A fierce flame of pleasure burned suddenly in his chest. "Of course. Anytime."

She seemed to recognize that he meant it. After looking away from him quickly, she left without another word.