A/N: Shout out to Nina for your reviews—and always so quickly and consistently. I'm always so appreciative when anyone takes the time to let me know what they think!
Chapter Five
"Do you see Sluggy? Is he guarding the door?"
For the first time in weeks, James held the Marauders Map between his hands, and the parchment felt like an old friend. He took Sirius' hand to move his lit wand closer, and their heads almost touched as they both leaned forward, surveying the layout of Slughorn's office. "Dunno. It's hard to tell. Can you see?"
Slughorn often packed his office to the brim during Slug Club meetings, which made reading the name labels on the Marauders Map difficult enough. But the number of attendees to his Christmas party every December escalated the problem, and the room became a wriggling, black mass of labels, clustered, overlapping, and illegible. Deciphering just one name seemed impossible, let alone picking Slughorn's name out of all the rest.
Sirius squinted, then sighed. "No. We'll just have to chance it, then." He watched as James wiped the map clean, and his expression darkened just slightly. "Remember, Prongs, I could have brought a date to this. You're welcome."
James grinned. "Thanks, pal. But you didn't bring a date last year either." Silently, they slipped out from behind the tapestry of Mungo Bonham on the fifth floor. The smells and sounds of Slughorn's party—rich food, loud conversation, and some sort of strange, caterwauling tune—hit them immediately. They had waited an extra hour past the party's start to make sure that things had gotten to full swing by the time they arrived, and it sounded like they had succeeded.
Sirius extinguished his wand, tucked it into the inner chest pocket of his navy blue dress robes, and then straightened his lapel as they started towards Slughorn's office. "Sounded tedious, then, having a date when you don't really like a bird. Still does. But I'm just saying that I could have found a date, not that I wanted to. I could have rustled something up if Evans had agreed to come with you."
"I didn't ask her."
The corners of Sirius' mouth pulled down in brief disbelief. "Huh. That's a first." He nudged James and gestured up ahead, to a trio of elderly warlocks ambling slowly towards the party. "Let's hang back and see if we hear Slughorn when they go in." When they'd left the common room, Sirius had suggested that they turn his goal of the night, avoiding Slughorn, into a challenge, and seemed to take it very seriously as soon as James approved.
James had felt a bit bad at first, but came around to the idea quickly when he remembered that he had escaped the last Slug Club dinner by agreeing with whatever Slughorn had said. He really had no idea what the Potions Master had in store for him.
"D'you think she's going with him, then?" Sirius asked abruptly, as they watched the warlocks step through the doorway into the dim, golden light of the office.
James didn't have to ask to know he meant Lily and Morton. "Doubt it. But I'm sure McKinnon and Rooney will go together, so they'll probably make a nice, happy quartet anyway." He tried his best to not sound too bitter.
"Really? McKinnon and Rooney? I didn't know." Sirius paused, thoughtful. "Huh. Real shame. He's kind of a git, isn't he?"
"I don't know, I'm sure he's fine." It would take up all his time, James had decided weeks ago, to dislike too many Ravenclaws just because they orbited around Morton. "Seems alright in class, anyway. But c'mon, I don't hear Slughorn. Let's go."
Against the odds, they managed to make it inside the party unseen. The room had been transformed, entirely unrecognizable from the same office where they had had dinner only a few weeks prior. Sheer, silvery hangings draped down across the ceiling, held in place by several gently rotating chandeliers that bathed the room is a flickering, golden light. The hangings floated down the walls and pooled along the floor, which was packed with all manner of people, as the Marauders Map had suggested. James spied Slughorn's corpulent form towards the middle of the room, not far from where a musician crooned a slow, mournful tune. His bandmate supplied the caterwauling noise James had first picked up in the hall, plucking at a many-stringed instrument. Almost immediately, a house-elf appeared near Sirius' knee, proffering steaming glasses of a thick, dark liquid.
Sirius picked up two and handed one to James, sniffing his carefully. "Some sort of cider, I think." He took a sip and then grinned. "But it's got Firewhiskey. Okay, let's pick a wall so we can plan out how to stay unnoticed. Not by the punch, that's—"
"Potter! Black!" Even over the music, Slughorn's voice rang out unmistakably. "How kind of you to make it!"
xxx
It took them a full twenty-eight minutes to disentangle themselves from Slughorn. James knew the time exactly, having checked his watch when Slughorn had pulled them authoritatively over to meet a cluster of Ministry wizards, and again when he'd finally waved them on with several admonishments to enjoy themselves.
"How did he know?" Sirius groused. "We weren't here for even two seconds before he spotted us. Is there some sort of potion for that? Something that sharpens his senses, but only to notice people who want to avoid him? Hey, there's Evans. We could ask her."
The party had picked up further by then, somehow even more crowded than before. Attendees spilled out of the room into the corridor, but there still wasn't enough room to move comfortably. James followed Sirius through the packed bodies (giving as much of a wide berth as possible to what looked suspiciously like a duo of vampires), and craned his neck to see if Morton stood with Lily. He wanted no surprises.
Morton wasn't there, thankfully. Lily and Marlene huddled together alone, settled into a space where the sheer, silvery walls met in a corner. Even though they appeared deep in conversation, they broke off when they saw James and Sirius approach. It became apparent, the closer they got, that the girls had chosen their position well, as it offered a fairly clear view into a great chunk of the room.
Sirius noticed as well. "Excellent, excellent," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Here, shove over, McKinnon. Let me watch the room with you."
As Sirius maneuvered them around to maximize the space, James found himself standing next to Lily, and wondered if Sirius had intended it all along.
"Wait, what are you drinking?" Sirius continued before anyone could get a word in edgewise, even as Marlene had opened her mouth, clearly to protest the way he had put an arm around her shoulders to physically move her. He took hold of her squat, crystal goblet by putting his hand over hers and pulling it towards his nose. "Smells…spicy."
"Could you not?" Marlene asked sharply, although her voice held no real aggression, and she pulled her hand back carefully. "Honestly, who raised you?"
"It's port," Lily said, and James could smell it too, dark and sweet, both from her glass and also somehow on her skin. "Supposedly from the Minister herself. Frank Longbottom brought it, said the Minister wanted to wish Slughorn a happy Christmas. And I've never seen him more thrilled. He insisted we toast with it right away."
"We were over there with him for almost half an hour and weren't offered a single thing," James told them, still a little sore that Slughorn had managed to best their attempts to avoid him.
"Oh, we saw. We took bets on how long it would take Black to give up and just walk away. We figured he'd be the first to crack. But we somehow both lost the bet. You lasted longer than we expected."
Sirius looked gratified at that, but quickly returned his attention to Marlene. "Let me try the port."
"What? Are you mad? It's mine."
"You look nice," James said to Lily, and he'd never meant it more. She wore dress robes in a bold, cool-toned red, and the color somehow made her hair look all the more brilliant, which she'd pinned atop her head to reveal the low cut of the back of her robes. Even though she stood half-facing him, he could see just enough of her exposed skin to remind him forcefully of the trail of freckles down her spine that he had admired the night he saw her with Morton.
They stood pressed so close together that James almost imagined that he could feel the heat of her skin where her bare arm pressed against the sleeve of his dress robes. When she smiled up at him, he watched as the faintest of dimples appeared in both cheeks, and he realized he'd never been close enough to her to notice them before. "Thanks," she replied. "The credit goes mostly to Marlene, though. She fixed my hair." He nodded in return, as if that meant anything to him.
She spoke in an entirely friendly manner. They'd come to an agreement in the past few weeks, it seemed, a mutual but unspoken ceasefire. Ever since their time spent in the kitchens after McGonagall's scolding, Lily had seemed quite willing to talk to James whenever he engaged her, and once he realized that, he naturally did so as often as possible. He shamelessly sought out any excuse to talk to her anytime he could, and had taken to asking her questions about courses, sharing his thoughts about prefect duties, and throwing general jokes or comments at her to try to make her laugh, which he succeeded at an increasing rate. Neither of them ever mentioned anything about Morton—his pseudo-relationship with Lily, what James had seen, how Lily had purposefully lauded their intimacy in front of James' face—and James found himself more relieved by that than anything. It felt good to simply talk to her about all sorts of little things. He found he could pass some joking taunt about her performance in Transfiguration, the subject that seemed to come the least naturally to her, and she would throw back, laughing, a jab at his struggles in Potions. He might catch her in the common room and tell her about a particularly troublesome student he'd encountered on patrol, and she'd ask him sit down with her to talk it through. And sometimes she even began these conversations herself, might ask him something passing about Quidditch in the corridor, and stop whatever she had set out to do to prattle aimlessly with him for a while. They had slowly become, to his intense surprise, not quite friends, but certainly very friendly.
Almost as if they'd overheard the quarrel for Marlene's drink, a house-elf appeared near Sirius' knee, carrying a heavily-laden tray of drinks. James stepped forward to take two glasses of wine, and put one in Sirius' hand. "Here."
"I'll switch you," Sirius offered to Marlene. With a pointed look, she polished off the port in her hand, probably at least a fourth of the glass.
"Do yours, so he won't keep at this," she told Lily, who, after a moment of thought, shrugged and complied. Marlene then switched out the empty glasses in their hands for fresh drinks from the tray. "Happy now, Black? We all have the same thing."
"Sure," Sirius said agreeably, waving an impatient hand. "It wasn't really about the port, you know. It was about how wrong it was that you got rewarded for talking to Slughorn, and all I got was an earful about how I haven't planned carefully enough for my future—as if he's suddenly surprised about that now. He's a little late, isn't he? But whatever. No dates tonight? Or is Rooney around here somewhere, McKinnon?"
"He and Alex saw Catriona McCormack and went off to try to meet her." Marlene looked faintly surprised. "How did you know I was here with Luke?" It took James a moment to recognize both Morton's and Rooney's first names, and he tried not to pull a face at the mention of the prior.
Sirius looked at her sharply, and then to Lily for confirmation. "Wait—McCormack, the Chaser who played for the Pride of Portree?" He and James exchanged an excited look. The Prides weren't either of their preferred teams, but they had won the British and Irish League Cup twice in the 1960s, both times under McCormack's leadership. Without so much as waiting for confirmation, Sirius lifted himself to his full height and began scanning the room.
"The same," Lily said. She rolled her eyes. "They looked exactly like you two do now."
"She's a big deal. Do you know which way—wait. Evans, are you drunk?" James saw something, something in the pink of her cheeks and the softness of her eyes which, though not unfocused, looked somehow less intense.
The question managed to pull Sirius' attention away from the prospect of meeting McCormack, at least momentarily. He dropped down, flat on his feet again, and cocked his head at her inquisitively. "You don't drink," he said, with at least a little accusation in his voice.
She held up her wine glass. "You've seen me drink. I had wine at Slughorn's dinner party last month. You're literally watching me drink right now."
"Yeah, but—I distinctly remember fifth year, you took points away from us for drinking at one of our Quidditch victory parties after we beat, was it, Hufflepuff, maybe?" He looked to James for confirmation.
"That wasn't because you were drinking. You lot started practicing dueling on the furniture!"
"You set a couch on fire," Marlene added, and she looked as if she struggled not to smile.
Sirius looked surprised. "I did?"
"Well, one of you two did," Lily said, and she gave them both a stormy look. "And it's nice that you blame me. Remus absolutely backed me up. He was furious."
"Oh yeah…" The memory came back to James in pieces. "It was Hufflepuff, Sirius. Tight game, and we didn't expect it, thought we had it locked down. I think we only beat them by fifty or sixty points." And he could recall, now, Remus' sheer, red-faced fury once he'd extinguished the blaze that had overcome the splintered remnants of one of the common room's couches. "I don't think Remus talked to us for a couple of days afterwards. That's a while," he added defensively at the looks he received from both Marlene and Lily, whose almost twin expressions made it clear that they thought they'd gotten off too easily.
Sirius smiled indulgently. "That's right. That was a great game. I got their seeker, Hutchinson, square in the chest with a bludger, remember? Made him miss as he went for the snitch. Knocked him off his broom, and he fell, what, thirty or forty feet? It saved the game."
"You're terrible," Marlene said flatly. "But no, Lily's not drunk. I'm not either, Potter, although you didn't ask. I know you've hardly noticed, but I'm here too." James forced himself to meet the mocking sparkle in her dark eyes. She looked away first. "You are red, though," she said, reaching out a hand to touch Lily's flushed cheek, and James found himself unexpectedly very jealous of the ease with which Marlene could touch her.
"Oi, your boyfriend's on his way over," Sirius said suddenly. James wondered if he spoke more for his benefit than Marlene's, as the moment he looked out to spot Rooney, he saw Morton as well. "Is he your boyfriend? James was pretty sure."
"Yes," Marlene said curtly, with none of her prior ease. She had gone a little pink herself, but looked distinctly pleased. "But it's pretty recent. I'm surprised you noticed, Potter."
"He's observant," Lily said, almost offhandedly. But James knew, from the way the corner of her mouth quirked, that she recalled, as he did, that she'd paid him an identical compliment when he'd revealed the armor secret passage to her.
"Did you meet Catriona McCormack?" Sirius asked the moment Rooney and Morton neared.
"Black, always good to see you," Morton joked, and although he grinned amiably, perfectly innocuous, James felt an immediate stab of irritation at the sound of his voice.
"Yeah, hi, good to see you, how have you been, all that. Did you meet her?"
"Briefly, yeah. For all of one minute. Slughorn grabbed us almost as soon as we found her, dragged us over to talk to some of his old students, including that Healer from St. Mungo's." Rooney seemed to direct the last part exclusively to Marlene; clearly they had conversed about the topic recently.
"And?" she prompted expectantly.
"He was…fine."
"Real dry," Morton supplied helpfully.
"Real dry," Rooney agreed. "Nice bloke, I'm sure, and we're meant to meet up at the next Hogsmeade visit to talk about the Healing entrance exam. He seems helpful enough. But… Catriona McCormack, you know?" And James did know, identified with the wistful frustration in Rooney's voice. He, too, would have rather talked to McCormack than any of Slughorn's connections.
"What was she like?" Sirius demanded. "Did you ask her about the League Cup, the one in '66, and the accusation of quaffle tampering the Prides made against the Arrows?"
Morton launched into a thorough overview of the short conversation. Sirius listened closely, closely enough that he didn't seem to notice that Rooney managed to slip in between him and Marlene; in fact, Sirius stepped aside absently to make room for him.
James dipped his head towards Lily's, close enough that he could smell her perfume, something soft and faintly sweet. "Are you here with him?" he asked quietly.
Lily tipped her head up, and the heat of the room seemed to swim to James' head. She stood close enough that he could count every eyelash, and see each of the fine lines in her lips that she'd painted a cool red to match her robes, which she pressed together to hide a smile. "It's absolutely not any of your business, but no."
He believed her, sort of. But there was something about Morton's face and his posture that had shaken the confidence James had felt an hour earlier, when he'd assured Sirius that there was no way Morton would escort Lily to the party. Even as he conversed with Sirius, Morton's body remained turned towards Lily, perhaps unconsciously, and his eyes continued to flash towards her. James caught his gaze, once, and he and Morton observed each other for half a moment, before they both looked away. "Does he know that?" he asked Lily.
She laughed, then, and James felt more than one person turn to look at them, although he kept his eyes trained on her face. "He should," she said simply.
He felt a brief flash of frustration. "Don't be coy."
"I'm not trying to be."
"Right."
"What? I'm not. I meant it. He should know."
Did she really not see it? Maybe not. After all, James had only just realized that he had missed it too. In all the weeks he'd spent watching Morton and Lily together, he'd never seen Morton look at her quite as he did now. Their interactions had spanned a wide range, anywhere between friendly and scholarly in public to the private, frenzied passion he'd now witnessed twice. In public, every moment he'd seen between them—in classes, in prefect meetings, even occasionally in the corridor—came off as utterly polite and almost detached. But now, suddenly, James could see that Morton looked at Lily in the hazy golden light with the same sort of hopeless longing that echoed his own feelings.
Morton looked as if he liked her, sincerely and genuinely, and past whatever they did in the dark, and James felt the already bad situation turn rapidly worse.
He swallowed the need to point these new findings out to Lily, along with most of his wine. He wanted to hear her refute them, or, better, say that even if James' suspicions were true, it didn't matter to her. Only the very real possibility that she might respond entirely differently, in a way he might not like, stopped him. "Well, if you're not here with him," he tried instead, "Do you want to take a walk with me? McKinnon's right, you are warm." Her cheeks had remained flushed, and the color spread rapidly to her exposed collarbone, but he wasn't entirely sure if the heat he felt radiated from her or himself or both.
"No." James felt his stomach drop in one quick, spectacular motion. "But ask me again later." And there was potential in that, in the way that she said it, almost a command, and the way she looked up at him as she stifled another laugh, briefly biting the rim of her goblet.
"I'm going to," he promised, grinning.
"You should."
"Lily?" It was, of course, Morton.
She turned away from James, who realized suddenly that they had come to almost entirely face each other while they conversed, with her turned away from everyone else. Now as she twisted to look at Morton, he tried to ignore the clear view he had of the exposed skin of her back. Despite his best efforts, he still managed to count nine clear freckles across the base of her neck before it dawned on him that he'd never heard Morton call her by her first name before.
"You're nearly out," Morton said lightly, and there it was, again, the politeness from him that James had come to expect, as he held up his own empty glass. "D'you want to go try the punch? I was planning to head that way. Luke and I had some earlier and couldn't figure out what was in it. Right?"
Rooney's arm had disappeared behind Marlene, and from the way his shoulder moved, James assumed he had taken to stroking her back. "Yeah. Go give it a shot, potion's master, and tell us," he said to Lily with a smile. He spoke easily, but something about him, in his tone or his face or something else entirely, seemed off, although James couldn't put his finger on exactly what. His tone reminded James of how he and his friends would ad lib to back each other up when under pressure to expand on a shaky story or explanation. He and Sirius bounced the best off each other, he'd often thought, and Remus could spin a yarn remarkably well, even though he didn't like doing it. Peter still wavered a bit, but had grown at the skill out of time and necessity as they flouted rules through the years, and Rooney seemed at his level—not quite convincing, but not fully unconvincing in any discernable way.
"Alright. I'll be back, if it matters," Lily said to Marlene, with an amused glance at the way her friend's shoulder fitted neatly into Rooney's underarm, their sides pressed together.
"It matters," Marlene assured her cheerfully, and James recognized, then, what looked off about Rooney's face. While Marlene appeared open and carefree, something in Rooney's expression—perhaps the twist of his mouth or the look in his eyes—had gone almost imperceptibly confused, or perhaps suspicious. James wondered, for the first time, how much Morton's friends knew—or, for that matter, what Lily had told her own—about what went on between the two of them.
James watched as they left until he could no longer see them in the crowd, almost certain that Morton reached for Lily's hand before they melted away.
"We should go too, make a lap, mingle," Sirius suggested briskly. "We can try to find McCormack, see if we can ask her about the quaffle tampering."
James nodded. "Yeah." And he found himself adding to Sirius' suggestion, to the story about what they would do, just as he had seen Rooney do for Morton. "Evans said something about Frank Longbottom, didn't she? We should say hi. It's been, what, two years now since he graduated?"
"Yeah, two years. It'd be nice to see him." Sirius looked towards Marlene and Rooney and gave them a mock-deferential nod. "As Evans so rightly put it, I'm sure we'll be back, if it matters. I mean, this is pretty prime real estate—hate to give up such a good spot to stay out of the way." He reached out and pushed at one of the silvery drapes at Marlene's side, and his hand hit nothing but air. "Just don't disappear back there too quick, you hear?"
"Thanks, Black," Marlene said dryly, and he gave her a grin and a short wave before taking off towards the center of the room. James followed him.
"I give them…six minutes before they're back behind the curtains," Sirius said, and he frowned. "Didn't seem much point to stay and talk to them. I still think Rooney's a right git."
"He didn't do anything."
"Didn't have to, did he? He's just that kind of Ravenclaw. You know—thinks he knows a lot, lives in the library, would just as soon cut off his left nut than break a rule. And he's friends with Morton, and that bloke is just smarmy."
"You think?" James asked. The crowd seemed to thin a bit as they got closer towards the musician's stage, and it became apparent why. A fine, purple smoke had begun to permeate the room, and became thicker as they neared the source. Slughorn stood nearby, bent over in conversation with the trio of elderly warlocks they had seen enter the party, the later three all smoking long, elaborately-caved pipes. James took a step back, worried Slughorn might spot them and pull them over, but he appeared entirely engrossed in his discussion with the warlocks, his face a cheerful, whiskey-soaked red, and he didn't look their way.
"Yeah. Prongs, Morton is just…about her." Sirius seemed to not know how else to put it. "You should have seen him watch you talk to her."
"I did, a little."
"It's weird, mate. Weirder, she didn't even look like she wanted to kill you."
"I honestly don't think she did. I think we might be…almost friends."
James found himself happy to have Sirius with him, because he couldn't go running off to try to figure out where Lily and Morton had gone without explaining his actions. He knew Sirius expected him to suggest it, just as James knew it was a lost cause to even bring up. And somehow, that took some of the pressure off of his brain, just a bit, to know that he simply couldn't follow her, even if he wanted to. He still, of course, kept an eye pealed at all times for any flash of the red of her hair or robes, but Sirius' constant, cheerful chatter distracted him just enough that James found that he could enjoy himself.
Their immediate plan, to try to locate Catriona McCormack, failed, and they never did find her. But they ran into Albert Hamer, a friend of James' father who had helped him patent Sleekeazy's Hair Potion, which had quadrupled the Potter family fortune. The elderly wizard wrung James' hand with such beaming delight that he wondered if one—or both—of them would be sore the next day. They came upon Norman Tiller, the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain, seated cozily with his date, Rosemary Cindrey, another member of the Slug Club. Tiller asked about a particular play he'd noted from Gryffindor's most recent match against Slytherin, and then the three of them were off, with Tiller so engrossed in Sirius and James' tips for how to best the team that Cindrey looked rather put out. And they did find Frank Longbottom, eventually, who removed his arm from around Alice Prewett's shoulders just long enough to cheerfully grasp both Sirius and James' their hands, as personable and friendly as if he'd just seen them last week, not two years ago when he had graduated.
They were Aurors now, the both of them, Frank and Alice explained, and they spoke about the profession with enthusiasm. James had questions, of course, and they seemed best put to such two such friendly faces.
Alice wore a ring on her left ring finger, he noticed, and the small stone twinkled as she twisted it mindlessly while she talked. "As long as your grades are good enough, the department will accept you," she told James with reassuring warmth. He hadn't known her as well as Frank during their time at Hogwarts, but, from the way she spoke to him, he'd almost forgotten that they weren't the closest of friends. "There's tests after that, on character and aptitude, to see how you respond under pressure. That's where we watched a lot of people crack. But if you make it through, you'll start training—mainly in magical combat, but also in concealment and tracking, healing, investigatory methods, all sorts of different things—which comes with its own difficulties. Most people who make it through the grades, and through the tests, fail out there. I won't lie—it's tough, and they don't coddle, but they do try and help. Each trainee gets assigned to shadow an established Auror who aids in their training—Frank worked under Alastor Moody."
Frank humbly waved away her unmistakable pride, and a grin split his face. "They also check your criminal background, don't forget. I don't think your record here counts, though."
"It will if Filch has his way, I'm sure it will," James said, and Alice and Frank laughed.
"No, you should be fine. Our records weren't exactly clean." Alice gave Frank a look, so warm and personal that James felt, briefly, like he and Sirius intruded upon something between them. "We used to get caught sneaking out quite a bit, and we were fine."
Frank rubbed her shoulder. "That's a right bit different than what these two have been up to, Alice, or at least were up to. Still are, I expect?"
Sirius shrugged modestly. "Oh, here and there. We try not to let things get too boring around here, but James is Head Boy now, so he's gone rather dull."
"You and Lily, Head Boy and Girl, huh?" Frank asked James with a knowing look.
James dropped his gaze. He hadn't seen Frank since fifth year, and it felt embarrassing, just a bit, to get reminded that he'd already been so obvious about liking her, even then.
He tried his best to copy Sirius' nonchalant shrug. "Yeah. McGonagall's only gotten on us once for fighting, so we're getting on okay."
"I'm sure you started it. What did you do?"
"Blew up her binder and sent her notes flying everywhere," James admitted, which was at least the partial truth. Even as he shifted uncomfortably at the memory, he couldn't help but smile at Frank's infectious laughter.
"She lovely, more so than I remembered," Alice said firmly, a hint of reproach in her eyes, and Frank righted his face immediately, although with some difficulty. "I've missed seeing her. Slughorn had us talk to her earlier, said she was interested in Auror training. I think she'd do well. He seems to think so too—the way he goes on about her, you'd think she hung the moon."
"A lot of blokes seem to think that," Sirius said, and affected an almost convincing air of innocence when James shot him a look.
Not much later, after Alice and Frank had gotten pulled off elsewhere, Sirius and James began to return to the prime real estate near Marlene and Rooney when Sirius spied Lily and Morton. "Punch," he said immediately after pointing them out. Although Lily and Morton didn't stand near the bowl at all, James understood immediately. The punch bowl gave the perfect excuse, and vantage point, to linger nearby. James scooped up two glasses, and when Sirius tasted his, he rolled his eyes. "There's clearly pumpkin juice in here. There, I solved the mystery. Couple of lying gits, and they're not even good at it."
James couldn't help but feel vindicated that Sirius had noticed something weird about Morton and Rooney's punch story as well.
"See, this feels less creepy than trying to catch them at foreplay in a corridor," Sirius continued conversationally. "I mean, I do get it, Prongs. Didn't mind seeing her like that after Slughorn's dinner. Wouldn't mind it again."
"Padfoot."
"Right. Are they fighting?"
It did, indeed, look like they'd caught Lily and Morton in the midst of a row, even as they clearly tried to disguise it. They stood near a wall some forty paces off, near several Ministry wizards, whose loud voices and bodies offered some cover. Morton's face had gone fairly red, and Lily looked just as flushed as before, only now with all of the sharpness in her eyes, and not a playful sharpness, either. It gave James a certain amount of pleasure to see her look like that towards someone besides himself, and an even greater sense of satisfaction that it was Morton who sat on the receiving end of her wrath.
"Watch, watch—he's going to try to touch her," Sirius said gleefully, his own voice now instinctively quieter than before as he the two struggle with their own volume.
Sure enough, Morton's hand had begun to move restlessly by his side. He lifted his arm, seemingly to reach for her cheek, but Lily smacked his hand away, and James recognized real intent behind the move, not at all good-humored as he'd seen in the past. She glanced quickly about them afterwards, as if she wondered if anyone had seen, and James had just enough time to worry that she'd spot them before she turned back to Morton, her face set.
Sirius began to laugh. "What do you think that was? A 'don't touch me in public' kind of hit? Or a 'don't touch me at all' one?"
It certainly looked like both.
"It's brilliant when it's not you," Sirius went on, sounding almost affectionate. "Don't get me wrong, it's still kind of funny when it is you—she's just so intense, look at her, she gets so wound up. But when it's not you, it's brilliant."
"I've never seen her yell at anyone else," James admitted. "Except the Slytherins, I guess."
"They don't count. Everyone should yell at them all the time."
"I feel like I should break this up," James admitted reluctantly, pointing as surreptitiously as possible at Lily's wand hand, which flexed briefly once, and then again. "D'you mind, Padfoot? She did say earlier that she might take a walk with me."
To his credit, Sirius looked genuinely delighted. "Did she, now? You didn't tell me that!" He gave James a friendly shove in their direction. "Go on, get your bird. I'll go find Frank, see if he feels like trying to break into Filch's office with me."
"He won't."
"Oh, I know, but it'll be fun to try to convince him, and to watch Alice squirm. She's too good for all of us, that one. Anyway, that's where I'll be, at least for a bit, if you strike out with Evans. But I'll probably head back to the common room soon." He returned James' grin, and truly meaningfully, as if he understood the gratitude behind it at his understanding.
Morton and Lily spoke in voices so low that James couldn't hear them until he was upon them, their words drowned out by the laughter of the Ministry wizards nearby. "Alright, Morton? Evans?" he asked, clapping Morton's shoulder in a (hopefully) congenial matter.
With his back to James' approach, Morton had jumped slightly at the words and touch, but managed his best attempt at a smile. "Yeah, 'course."
James waited to see if he might try to explain away the obvious tension, curious what lie he could even come up with, but Morton didn't bother to continue. "Well, I've lost the others," James explained after a beat, as if somehow the six of them had become one large, happy group that evening. "Sirius is off with Frank Longbottom—Alice won't be too happy about that, I expect—and I haven't seen McKinnon and Rooney for ages, but that tracks—Sirius figured they'd disappear somewhere to snog before too long."
Neither of them smiled.
"Anyway, Evans, do you want to go for that walk now?" James had considered, briefly, if he should try to use some sort of Head Boy and Girl excuse for pulling her away, but as soon as he saw her up close, he realized it didn't matter what reason he gave. She looked entirely ready to get out of there.
"Love to," she replied, and even though James knew that she didn't direct the frost in her voice at him, he still flinched, unused to her using that tone with anyone else. "And then I think I'll go to bed. 'Night, Morton."
"'Night, mate," James repeated, echoing her, and he clapped Morton on the back again. He didn't even bother to hide his merriment. And he didn't wait to hear if Morton replied, because he didn't really even have time to—by then, Lily had somehow wound her way halfway across the room. He followed her quickly, and caught the briefest flash of a grin from Sirius, who stood by the door with Alice and Frank, before he caught up to her in the hallway.
She had waited for him, but clearly only just, as she took off like a shot the second she saw him. "I've honestly seen a snitch move slower," James offered conversationally, doubling his steps to keep up.
"I'm sure."
"Where are we going?" he asked, because the way that she stalked—angrily, but with purpose—seemed to imply that she had at least some idea."
"Prefect's bathroom."
"Why?"
"I can't go back to the common room yet and see everyone. Not when I feel like this. And I never go to the prefect's bathroom, so he's not likely to find me."
"Do you think he would? Try to find you, I mean?"
She nearly walked past the statue of Boris the Bewildered. James reached out without thinking, taking her hand in his own to stop her, and found, immediately, that his heart seemed to flutter in his chest. She looked as confused as Boris beside her, but caught sight of the statue and understood quickly. "Oh." Her hand left his to rest upon Boris' head, although she didn't need to touch the statue to reveal the entrance. "Hogmanay," she said, and immediately slipped into the dimly-lit bathroom.
James hesitated, "Am I…?"
She looked back at him over her pale shoulder. "I expected you would," she said, even as he left the question unasked. "I'm not actually here to bathe, Potter." He ducked through after her, and watched as she pulled off her heels off one at a time. "I am putting my feet in, though. These are ridiculous."
He followed her across the bathroom towards the swimming pool-sized bathtub, the soles of his shoes echoing in the silence, ears fairly ringing after the noise of the party. "Do you think he would try to find you?" he tried again as, and then wondered, belatedly, if maybe shouldn't push the topic more.
She didn't answer as she flipped open the taps and sat down at the tile's edge. Pulling up the long skirt of her robes so it they billowed out above her knees, she dangled her bare feet and calves into the quickly-filling bathtub. She twisted one of the smaller taps nearby, and a powder blue, faintly sparkling bath foam, not dissimilar to fairy floss, gushed out. "Do you have a favorite bubble bath?" she asked, leaning to turn the tap next to that, which poured out glossy purple bubbles.
"No. I never come here either."
"Really? Does anyone?" She looked up at him, then, lifting a bare leg and flexing her foot, with toes painted, he couldn't help but notice, the same shade as her dress robes. "Are you going to sit with me?"
By the time he'd removed his shoes and socks and rolled his trousers to his knees, the water had risen far enough to cover her ankles. He hissed as he swung his own legs over the side, the temperature almost uncomfortably hot.
"I like it," she said, even though he hadn't complained. "And I don't know. If he'd follow me, that is. I don't know what he's like after a row, because we've never had one before. He's just…" She made a noise, the sort of scoffing sigh he'd heard directed his way all too often, and kicked at the water, splashing the wall on the far side of the room, just underneath the stained-glass window of a mermaid. "He's insufferable."
James couldn't help but wonder how often she'd had this same conversation with her friends about him.
"It was weird, seeing you get mad at someone else like that." The heat of the water had already begun to make him sweat, even as she still looked perfectly cool, at least physically. He pulled off his dress robe jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and magically turned the taps closed as the water neared the tub's edge. "Sirius had a right fit from laughing. He saw you first, for the record. I wasn't actually even looking for you this time, not really." He wanted to head that question off before she could ask.
She waved a hand, and he couldn't tell if she meant to dismiss his explanation or the slight apology in his voice. "Sure."
"No, honestly. We'd just gotten done talking to Frank and Alice, and were trying to figure out where to go next where we could avoid Slughorn—"
"—as one does."
"—as one does, yes. I was faced the wrong way, but Sirius saw and pointed you out. And then…well, then we watched you fight." There was no denying that.
Her face went rather soft, then, entirely unexpectedly. "Frank and Alice are so lovely," she said, almost wistful.
"She said the same about you."
This made her smile, some of her visible anger receding, though just barely. "Did you see how he looks at her?"
"I saw how she looks at him. It made me feel like I shouldn't be there."
"I know. To watch them together, it's…it's the best," she said simply, as if she didn't know how else to explain it, and somehow, he thought he almost understood. "They were like that in front of Slughorn, too, just so wrapped up in each other," she added, and some of the tenderness left her face and voice, as if she'd caught herself. "He hardly knew what to do, but obviously felt uncomfortable and ended up just kept talking more."
"Hard to believe that's possible."
Lily shifted, turning her torso so she could lean her back against one of the marble pillars that surrounded the tub, and she now faced him almost head on. "Alice and Frank have fought him, I think. You-Know-Who."
James sat up straighter, staring at her. "What?" He'd never quite lost the mild feeling of unease that came when he was anywhere close to her, but now the sensation ramped up, tension on top of tension, enough to make his heart pound. "They told you that?"
"Kind of." She'd taken out her wand absently, and began to twirl it between nimble fingers. "I asked them if they thought that the Ministry had the manpower to counter what the Prophet had stopped reporting."
"You didn't."
She gave a small, satisfied smile. "I did. Well, Slughorn didn't like that. He got all flustered, and immediately engaged Marlene in conversation with a witch nearby. Mar told me later that the witch was actually a reporter for the Prophet, which Slughorn seemed to have forgotten because he was so desperate to get away from what I was saying. He went all pale, Mar said, like he expected her to ruin his party with the wrong questions, like I was, I guess, but she played nice. She's capable of that sometimes, surprisingly."
James laughed, despite himself.
"Anyway," she continued, and now she seemed to be getting into the flow of the story, talking almost as much to herself as she was to him, "You should have seen Alice's face when I asked that. She looks so sweet, you know—and she is, she hasn't changed there a bit—but her whole expression darkened, and I'm sure that's how she looks when she duels. Just…fierce. Frank kind of took ahold of her—he already had his arm around her shoulders, of course, but he used his other hand and took ahold of her arm, above the elbow, and just gripped her. There was just this…this energy between them, this heavy silence. I've never felt anything like it."
She took a breath. "He's more diplomatic than her, I think. He gave some classic line, you know, about how the Ministry always needs more talented witches and wizards, blah, blah, blah. But Alice—she reached up, and touched her neck. Her hair's short—you saw—and I could see that where she touched, she had this scar down the side of her neck, real red and raised, like it was fresh. It disappeared into that weird ruff she was wearing, so I think it must have gone on longer. I don't think the ruff went with her robes—the shades of green were just off between them, did you notice? I wonder if it just happened, if she just got injured and she didn't have time to buy different robes before tonight, although…if it did just happen, how crazy that they still came to the party."
James reached over and took her wand out of her hands, just as one of the bubble bath taps near her burst open, pouring a fine, lilac glaze. He placed her wand next to her, and then leaned to manually shut the tap. "I saw it starting to turn when you were twirling your wand," he explained. "But I wanted you to keep going."
She had jumped when he'd reached for her, and now her collarbone gave the faint, wonderful flush he'd come to look for to recognize when she felt flustered. "Sorry." Clearly moving her hands had become a compulsion. She began to take her hair down, removing one pin at a time, which she piled neatly next to her wand.
"Then what?" he prompted.
"It almost seemed like Alice wanted me to see it, the scar. When she saw that I'd noticed, she didn't try to hide it at all, but kept her hand there. And she said…I don't remember exactly, but something about how things would get worse before they got better, and becoming an Auror wasn't something to take lightly. So I told them what I said to you and Black and Mar after Slughorn's dinner last month, do you remember? I'm muggle-born, so there's no way for me to stay neutral in this, even if I wanted to. They seemed to take that well. But Frank said something like, 'Well, this profession would put a target on you further.' And Alice said, 'But blood stops meaning as much when you start to fight against him. He'll come after you just the same.' And she said his name then. You-Know-Who's. I hadn't heard it in so long that it shocked me."
The color had left her face again.
"And Frank said, real quick, just to her, 'But we'll be fine,'" Lily continued, although her tone started to change, to slow in pace, the story clearly almost over. "Slughorn pulled me away pretty quickly after that, but it seemed like Frank didn't want to dwell on it anymore anyway. I doubt I would have gotten more out of them. But there was…there was something so personal about the way Alice said it. 'He'll come after you just the same.' Like she knew."
James found, rather dully, that his conversation with Tiller—over how to avoid the Slytherin Quidditch team's propensity for blagging—suddenly felt so unimportant, and very far away.
"Alice said you'd do well," he offered after they sat for a few moments, the room silent save for the faint hiss of popping bubbles. It felt like a small comfort he could offer her, if a comfort at all. "When I talked to them. About being an Auror, I mean."
She smiled at him, and plucked the last pin out of her hair. James watched as it tumbled down around her face, and thought she'd never looked more beautiful.
"Is it still your plan?" she asked.
"What?"
"You wanted to be an Auror, didn't you?"
He looked at her oddly. How did she know? Had he told her?
She read his expression. "You said it once. Not this year, I don't think—it must have been ages ago."
"Why would you remember that?"
"I don't know. Probably because it was also my plan, at least once I realized I didn't want to pursue Curse-Breaking. Arithmancy is just so dull, even if it is dead useful, and that's all Curse-Breaking is, really."
He nodded slowly, undeniably flattered. She had listened to him, it seemed, even when she'd hated him. (Did she hate him still? Their interactions felt like companionship, and a relatively easy companionship at that, but the question still plagued him constantly.) And she'd committed something he'd said to memory, something that wasn't some horrible insult he'd hurled at Snape or some pigheaded way that he'd asked her out, even though both events made up the majority of their interactions before seventh year. "Yeah. It's always been my plan. I mean, I'd like to play Quidditch all my life, 'course. But I'd rather to do something that matters, I think."
"You don't fly well enough for professional Quidditch," she said, and he laughed, both at her taunt, and at the way she'd been unable to stand the tension in a reminded him fondly of Sirius.
"How would you know?" he asked. "Do you even go to games?"
"Of course. All of them. I was there when we played Slytherin last month. You did well." She sighed as soon as she said it, although she didn't seem truly put out. "Don't look like that."
"Like what?"
"Like that just went entirely to your head." She bent down, dipping her arms into the thick bubbles to rub at her calf. "I'm sorely tempted to get in."
Something about the way she said it sounded more like a warning than a wish. "Is that a hint?" he asked uncertainly. "Should I leave?"
She seemed to consider it, or at least to sit long enough in silence for him to grow even more uncertain, more uncomfortable. "No, you're fine," she said finally, and leaned back, groping for her wand, bubbles trailing from her bare arms. She shortened the length of her robes, so that the hem now sat where she currently had it lifted, and slid into the water.
He hadn't expected her to take her robes off. Not really. But he still felt kind of disappointed when she hadn't.
Her head disappeared under the thick bubbles, and when she resurfaced several moments later, she came up across the length of the tub. "You can get in, if you want," she said, almost expectantly.
He froze midway through scratching his cheek. "Evans."
"What?" And for once, she didn't look like she was toying with him. She genuinely seemed to not understand.
"Come off it. I'm not getting in a bathtub with you."
"Why—oh, Christ, the tub is big enough! You don't have to come anywhere near me!"
He reached up to rub his forehead, exasperated. Even when she got it, she didn't get it. "But I'd want to. And—well, I'm impulsive, remember?" She rolled her eyes, and he added, defensive despite himself, "I don't think you understand what it's like for me. Being around you."
She stared at him, considering. "Oh." There must have been something about him—something in his voice that he didn't hear, or something on his face that he couldn't control—that made her dive back under the water.
His ears burned. Still, when she kicked her legs to propel her body further beneath the suds, she shot a whole face and lapful of water at him with what felt like great purpose. It made him feel, strangely, somewhat better. At least she hadn't pitied him enough to stop teasing him. He already knew that he'd miss it if she ever did.
When she resurfaced, they didn't talk for a long while, and James found himself more comfortable in the silence than he would have imagined only two months—or even two weeks—earlier. He spent a bit of time cleaning the soap off his glasses (it took two Scourgify charms and a considerable amount of elbow grease), and then watched her swim laps, and if she noticed he watched, she didn't say anything. Eventually, Lily returned to his side of the tub and propped her arms up over the side, holding herself up enough to float gently.
"Evans?"
"Hmm?"
"Why were you guys fighting?"
She looked up at him, her cheeks pink from the warm water, hair darker and redder and slicked back across her head, mouth still the almost obscene cherry red he'd noticed hours before, lipstick held neatly, magically, in place. "Oh. That." She didn't need to ask him who he meant. "You don't want to hear about it. No, wait, you probably do," she corrected before he could even open his mouth. "But what if I don't want to talk about it?"
"Well…then you don't have to. Obviously."
She thought for a moment, and then shook her head before he could feel like an even bigger prat for pushing her. "It's fine. There's not much to tell. I don't even really know what happened?" The fact came out more inquisitive than assertive, as if she still questioned the fight, and, further still, questioned why she couldn't figure it out. "Morton pulled me, you saw, and I was kind of annoyed, because Marlene and Rooney don't know—"
"Wait, really?" Rooney he'd figured, maybe, but Marlene?
"No. At least, unless he's told Rooney lately, but I think I'd know pretty quick. You saw Rooney tonight—he's not a great liar. And besides, he'd tell Marlene, and she'd tell me. We don't have secrets."
"Except this, apparently."
"Well, fair." She paused, and for a second she looked like she doubted her own logic, but then roused herself quickly and the expression left. "But Marlene's fancied Rooney for ages, since fourth year, so I made Morton promise when we started that we wouldn't tell either of them, in case it made things weird."
"How—"
"—did Morton and I get started?" she finished for him, her tone suddenly sharper, and he wished he hadn't started the question even as he nodded. "Potter, under the list of things that aren't your business, that's definitely near the top. You know, I shouldn't even talk to you about any of this, but I figured, that, well, you were there tonight, and got me out of there before I really started yelling, so I kind of owed you an explanation about—"
He cut her off. "You're right. Don't tell me. But it's not like I haven't wondered, and sometimes it feels like you're still fucking with me—no, honestly, it feels like you're still fucking with me all the time. Sometimes you'll drop things, just little hints of things, and it seems like they're things you know that I want to know, but then you get mad when I ask."
When she didn't immediately snap back with something, some way to flip the problem on him, he wondered, for the first time since the party, if she'd had more to drink than he'd previously thought.
"That's kind of fair," she said, and now he felt sure that she wasn't entirely herself. "Kind of," she stressed. "Don't look so shocked." She tipped her head back under the water, and he watched while she smoothed her hair back again, her exposed throat seeming to fairly glow in the chandelier's dim candlelight. "Morton and I both became prefects fifth year," she explained, lifting her head back up. He tried not to notice the fresh beads of water that slid down her neck. "Is that enough to make sense?"
"No, but I can pretend."
"You could ask Frank and Alice. The same thing happened to them." Seeing that cleared up nothing further—that, if anything, it only confused James more—she sighed. "Frank was Head Boy then, and Alice was the seventh-year Gryffindor female prefect—Hortensia Layton from Ravenclaw beat her out for Head Girl, although I still don't know how. But Alice and Frank used to spend all kinds of time together, even before they started dating, because they were prefects together. We used to tease her about it. After he became Head Boy, Frank would always assign them to patrol together, Alice would offer to go with him when he'd reset the castle passwords each month—"
"Wait, are we supposed to be doing that?"
"Well, the seventh-year prefects are in charge of their own common rooms, so people like you can't get into, say, Slytherin's house, because who knows what chaos you'd cause there. But there's a certain number of passwords we're supposed to set, yes."
"How much work do you do without telling me?" he asked, fully aware that this was a problem that might not have bothered him the year before, and definitely not any of the years before that. He'd never given much thought to skivving off a group project, or taking advantage of anyone's labor. But it didn't bother him that he was taking advantage of Lily's labor, exactly, although the fact that it was her—and what she must think of him—did make it worse. No, much of his concern stemmed from the nagging feeling he'd been wrestling the entire term—that there was a lot more to this whole Head Boy business than anyone had told him. He knew he probably looked well stupid because he didn't do what was expected of him, which bothered him just slightly more than the overwhelming feeling that he just couldn't crack the job right. "Wait—will you tell me later? Tell me about Frank and Alice." Some of the bubbles, he realized, had started to recede—not much, but just enough for the tops of her shoulders to peak though. He didn't look forward to the idea of being able to see her in the water—although, at the same time, he looked forward to it very much.
"There's really not much else. Just…when you're around someone constantly, some things just…happen. That's what happened with Frank and Alice. I doubt they would have gotten together if they hadn't spent all that time together as prefects, and then more when he became Head Boy. And that's what happened with Morton and me. We got assigned patrol duty on the same night all the time, and he started offering to do a floor with me, or I'd show up to relieve him and he'd stay a while. And then eventually, after several months, it just…happened."
James felt, quite suddenly, like hitting something. He took off his perfectly clean glasses, just to occupy his hands, and polished them on his robes. "How'd he swing it?" He hoped his voice sounded as even as hers.
"Sorry?"
"How'd he swing it? Frank was scheduling, right? Because he scheduled Alice with him so they could shag."
"I don't know if they—"
"Evans. You saw them tonight. You know that they did." She didn't argue there. "But how did Morton manage all those cozy patrol sessions?" There it was—his bitterness peaked through at the end.
She had to have heard it in his tone, but made no comment. "I expect he got Layton to assign him the times he wanted us both to have. She and Frank set the schedule together. You know, she was the Head Girl, and she was in Morton's house and they were relatively friendly, so it makes sense that he talked her into it. But he's never told me. I've never asked."
When he put his glasses back on, he saw that she'd rested her cheek on her folded arms, her head tilted to look at up him. She looked tired, and he suddenly felt the pressing weight of the entire night hit his body. He had no idea what time it was. "Tell me about tonight, and then we should go. You can't fall asleep like that."
She didn't disagree. "It's stupid. What happened tonight."
"Lay it on me."
"Okay, just—oh, you're going to get such a big head." She sat up, ignoring his surprise, and no longer looked drowsy, just—by the set of her jaw—annoyed. "Everything was fine at first, and Morton and I were just talking, like we do when Marlene and Rooney are there—just stuff about courses, or about Christmas break, or whatever. Usually we're never alone together for Slughorn's little Slug Club nonsense, because it's just dinners or drinks or something in a large group. And last year, we—" She stopped abruptly, and leaned to the side to wring the water from her hair. "We just didn't stay long for last year's party."
James decided immediately, based on how casual she tried to sound, that he didn't want to know anything more about that, even though, at the same time, he absolutely did, a craving that made him feel a bit ill.
"And it was just bloody awkward tonight," she went on a little too quickly, and he was grateful she didn't linger so he could push past those thoughts. "I didn't understand why we were having this innocent chat by ourselves, instead of with Marlene and Rooney, so they wouldn't get suspicious, because they just got together at the beginning of November and I was so pleased about that and didn't want to ruin anything, and—Potter, don't you dare laugh."
He'd been trying so hard to follow her increasingly rambling sentences that the sound of his own name startled him. "What?"
"Say you won't laugh."
"Okay?"
She took a deep breath, and then closed her eyes. "We were talking perfectly normally, and then he just…lost his head a bit. About you."
For one delicious moment, time seemed to stand still.
And then, James couldn't help it, he laughed.
"I'm sorry, I really am, Evans, I swear!" he exclaimed immediately, but he couldn't help himself, he couldn't stop. He did his best to dodge the splash she sent his way, shoved harsh and fierce with both hands. While most of the water missed him, save for the left sleeve of his shirt, his jacket behind him got soaked. "I'm not laughing at you!"
"You're laughing at my misfortune, which is enough, especially after you said you wouldn't!"
"I mean, I didn't know what I agreed to, but—it's just so funny, because do you know how jealous I've been of that bellend, and for months now? And I haven't done anything about it, but he sees us talking one time and, what, he just can't take it?"
She hoisted herself out of the tub suddenly, back to the ledge where she'd previously sat, and he stopped laughing immediately. He didn't stop because he worried she might leave—that idea came to him later, and he was surprised, in hindsight, that she hadn't. No, he fell silent at the sight of her, which he'd longed for and dreaded to see since the moment she'd gone into the water. He had just enough time to take in a few minute details—the sheen of her skin, the way a patch of light blue bubbles slid slowly down the length of her neck, how the sodden fabric of her robes clung to her and bunched a bit around her hips, revealing the muscle of her outer thigh that he'd so admired—before he reached for his wand and summoned a towel, which flew at her with alarming speed.
She caught it just before it hit her face, and set to drying her hair.
He summoned a second towel, this time to himself, and tossed it over her lap.
She smiled at him, all winning charm. "Thanks."
"You're cruel," he said, because she knew.
"Probably. Are you done?"
It took him a second to remember what they had even been talking about. When it dawned on him, he grinned again, despite the heated twist in his stomach that continued as he looked at her, and made sure to very pointedly not laugh. "Sure, yeah." He summoned his own towel, and then pulled his legs out of the water and turned to entirely face her as he dried off. "Tell me what he said." He leaned forward, already engrossed, any pretense of not caring—if it had ever existed—now fully out the window.
She rolled her eyes. "No. Grow up."
"Evans, I spent the last three Defense lessons trying to work out how I could get away with hexing him, and that's after not seeing you anywhere near him for weeks. I still just hate his stupid face, and I hate being anywhere near him, and now that we're finally back to dueling in Defense, it really seems a perfect opportunity to get him." He knew he should be embarrassed, but he found that he really no longer cared, because Morton was somehow jealous of him. The knowledge was too delicious for anything else to matter. "I know I can't pair up with him, because Sirius and I always team up together and that would look weird, if I suddenly suggested it. But I think if we're near each other but on opposite sides of the room, I could easily hit him and, with all the chaos around, he'd just figure it was Rooney with a few really good shots, you know? I just don't know how many times I could get away with it, so I'm trying to time it out and see what he's particularly bad at—and what Rooney's good at—to make it look convincing. I have spent a solid six hours in class trying to figure it all out. Let me have this."
He wasn't sure what he expected—maybe for her to laugh, or to argue, or to say that, if he had outlined his plans to embarrass himself enough to cancel out any humiliation she felt at his laughter, that tactic didn't work all the time. But she just sat there for a while, and watched him impassively, still toweling her hair. "Okay," she finally agreed.
"Tell me what he said."
"Well, it wasn't particularly interesting—will you just listen?" she asked irritably, some of the color coming back to her voice, as he'd started to interrupt. "I was going to say that it wasn't particularly interesting at first. Bit uninventive, really. He just repeated the usual stuff, the things I'm sure everyone has heard me say about you."
"I'm sure I know, but tell me anyway."
"Oh, just—you know, he said that you're arrogant and you're rude and you don't think about anyone but yourself, and that you can be needlessly cruel to anyone you think is below you, which is almost everyone. Those things." She paused. "He did add, though, that you're not that great of a Chaser, which, before you ask, no, I haven't said to anyone despite that I said it to you earlier, so he's not just repeating that from me."
He stared, indignant. "But—we always beat Ravenclaw!"
"I know that! And I told you, that's not something he got from me! Lord, Potter, it's like you're more concerned that he doesn't think you're a walk on for the Wasps next year than that he thinks that you're the bellend!"
"Well, the rest of what he said can be true, can't it? I've been like that sometimes, often a lot." Her face softened a bit, almost imperceptibly. "What?" he asked, confused.
"Nothing," she said quickly, quicker than he'd expected. She took a deep breath, and launched back in. "I told him—well, I told him that wasn't really fair."
James couldn't help it. He gave a delighted, whooping laugh, and then immediately brought his fist to his mouth. "Sorry. Continue. Just imagining his face."
"I told him that you hadn't anything to warrant any of that tonight—and hadn't in a while, actually. And I said that the Quidditch stuff was especially unwarranted for him to say at all, any day, because, well, we do always beat them."
"Cheers, truly."
She glanced at his grinning face, but then looked away, although the corners of her mouth twitched. "He definitely didn't like that," she said mildly. She pulled her legs out of the water and tucked them beside her, rearranging the towel across her lap as she did moved. "He said some other stuff, like that you're a shit Head Boy—"
Honestly, James thought, justified.
"—and that he had no idea how you got the position—"
Justified too.
"—and when I told him that obviously Dumbledore thought you were the right fit for the job, well, he didn't like that either. But then he just got so weirdly…personal?" Again, her incredulity colored her words so that it came out as more of a question than a statement. "He said it was obvious that you still fancied me, which he thought was…well, he used the word pathetic. But then he said—and he repeated this two or three more times, it's what he kept coming back to, so obviously mad—he said that he doesn't make me laugh like you do, and that's all I do in prefect meetings anymore."
James stared, and the happiness that beat in his chest now seemed to hum. "Oh really now?"
"So I told him—" Lily sat up straighter, color again flooding her cheeks, and she reminded James forcefully of the palpable anger he'd seen her vent towards Morton. He wondered, briefly sympathetic, how the poor bloke had made it out alive, unused to such treatment from her—he had grown used to her rage, after all, but he still didn't like it. "I told him that I didn't know he had ever tried to make me laugh, unless what he had just said was some sort of joke, and that, if so, he still wasn't funny."
"Evans?" he asked, and he waited until she turned to look at him before he continued. "That's honestly my favorite thing you've ever said."
She pulled the towel from her hair and threw it at him, but he caught it effortlessly. "Well, it was mean, and it still feels mean, but I meant it. He's never tried to make me laugh, so I don't understand this ridiculous…well, jealousy, it seemed like. I mean, sure, he and I banter, but it's like I would with Remus, you know?"
"Don't compare him to Remus." It came out terser than he'd intended.
She lifted an eyebrow, but acquiesced with a nod. "Well, I kind of went off like that for a while. I told him what I just said—he's never tried to make me laugh. That's not who we are when we're together. And I also told him kind of what you said earlier—that he could hardly get mad because I had at a single, brief conversation with you tonight. But he said again that, apparently, you and I do this all the time in prefect meetings, where you'll make jokes and I'll laugh, and I won't get mad that you derail things. Which I don't think is true. I mean, I do laugh, but we're always very much on track."
"You would know. You have the notes. I've seen them." He left unsaid, of course, that he'd last seen them after he'd scattered them around the floor of the Transfiguration classroom, but knew she understood when she laughed. Somehow, he decided, he liked when she laughed at his jokes even better now, now that he knew Morton hated it.
"Is this getting tedious?" she asked. "I can—"
"You know the answer is no. Again, let me have this."
She began to pull her fingers through her hair, and James watched her, remembering the way she'd gone through the same motions right before she'd left the classroom with Morton that first night. He wondered what the habit meant. "I'm almost done anyway, because it kind of devolved from there because I got so mad, mainly because he was criticizing the way I'm running things as Head Girl. When I told him that, he tried to backtrack and say that he hadn't meant that, just that he thought it was weird that you and I suddenly got on so well. He asked if there was anything 'dodgy' going on between us." She scoffed. "'Dodgy,' verbatim. I don't know where he got that from, because he doesn't really know that we—"
James watched her break off, gesturing between the two of them, clearly searching for however she meant to describe whatever it was they were doing in that moment, whatever it was that they had done in the kitchens, whatever it was that they now did whenever he could catch her during classes, in the corridors, in the common room at night. He waited a beat and then two, desperate to hear her finish, so he could know how she saw them, but also desperate to get her to stop talking, afraid the answer would disappoint him entirely. "We talk," he finally supplied helpfully, and she looked grateful.
"Right. We talk, but he doesn't know that. I never told him that you saw us together, and I don't even know how I'd go about explaining that. So he's basing all this off, what, our weekly prefect meetings, if you and I say anything to each other in classes, and you and I talking tonight? I told him there wasn't anything 'dodgy' happening, but that even if there was, it wasn't his business, because he and I are not dating, and that's when he apologized. You showed up right after. And now…I guess now you can laugh. Go ahead."
"Wouldn't dream of it," he assured her, but he had to rub his face to try to keep his grin contained. "The timing on my part, though, showing up then—impeccable."
"I once said you somehow always manage to be in always in the right place at the right time."
"Yeah, but you didn't mean it. And this time it's actually true. I bet he's having a fit right now." As if the night could get sweeter.
"He might not be. We're not dating, so he shouldn't care that I left with you." He couldn't tell if she believed what she said, or if she just wanted to believe it.
But he doubted her assessment. "Well, we'll see." He watched her lift her arms above her head, stretching, as she stifled a yawn. "Bed?" he asked, even though he no longer felt tired. He would have a hard time resisting the urge to wake Sirius up to tell him all of this, even though he knew that he shouldn't, knew that he should keep the evening to himself.
"Mmm." Lily sat motionless as he rolled down his trousers and put on his shoes and socks, and only then did she stand up, and reluctantly. "I'm just going to go up in a robe," she said as she bent to pick up her wand and then her hair pins. James summoned a robe, warm from a heating spell probably cast by some house-elf. She only succeeded in picking up four or five of the pins before she clearly deemed the task not worth it, and vanished the pile entirely before she straightened up.
"Here." James didn't think about his actions, not really, not until he'd already unfurled the robe and stepped forward to drape it around her shoulders. And suddenly, as he looked down at her, she was all she could see, all he could sense. Placing the robe about her, one of his hands swept across the long, damp hair she'd pulled over one shoulder, even as his other hand brushed against the side of her neck. The chill in her hair versus the heat in her skin seemed to shock him, and it sent his heart hammering. Even though he'd long since grown used to the perfume of the bath, he felt sure he could now smell the bubbles still clinging to her skin, strong and heady, almost overwhelming. She looked up at him, and he thought she only looked surprised for a second, before he could swear that her eyes began to blaze.
He pulled himself back, but not until he'd already given each of her shoulders a quick, panicky pat that he regretted immediately. His face was on fire. "You go first," he told her after clearing his throat. "I'll wait a bit, so no one sees. And clean up."
She hung back only a second, hardly long enough for her to tie the robe around her waist and pick up her shoes, both of which she did without faltering on her way out the door. He didn't manage to see her face at all. "'Night," she called, and she left, her bare feet silent on the tile.
Once the statue closed, James sank to a nearby bench. He sat there for a bit after she left, unable to muster up even the energy for the most rudimentary of spells.
But he rose, eventually, and vanished the water from the floor. As he watched the bathtub drain, just as alarmingly fast as it had filled, the swirling water sent a fresh burst of the scent of bubble bath towards him, and it smelled like Lily.
He felt faintly sick.
When he exited out from behind Boris the Bewildered, the corridor felt as if it had been dark and silent for a while; apparently Slughorn's party had already broken up and the stragglers had long since left. His eyes didn't even have time to adjust before he heard Lily's voice. At that moment, to hear her voice seemed bad enough; his spirits only plummeted further when he heard Morton's join her.
"…I don't care how 'distinct my magic' is, it's entirely inappropriate and honestly a gross misuse of a spell," James heard her hiss from somewhere to beyond the bend in the corridor, towards the Grand Staircase. He could see, faintly, the outline of their shadows.
He hesitated. The tapestry of Mungo Bonham sat not ten yards away, in the opposite direction from where Lily and Morton presumably stood. The passage only went down to the fourth floor, but he could take it, he reasoned, and then he could head to the passage beside the armor and take that up to the seventh floor. He'd planned to take the armor passage, anyway, just to join it from this floor, but the entrance sat further down the corridor, past where Lily and Morton quarreled.
He had an escape route, one he could take immediately. He didn't need to listen.
But he did.
"You're right. I just meant it as in, I knew the spell picked up you and not anyone else, so I wasn't just tracking everyone around here." Morton's words came out rushed, less composed than James had ever heard him.
"Oh yes, I'd hate for you to violate anyone else's privacy," Lily shot back. "Just mine is fine. That'll do, Alex. Great job."
James realized he'd never heard her call him Alex before, only his surname. He didn't like it.
"You're right," Morton said again. "I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry. I figured you and Potter might have gone to your common room, but in case you hadn't…I just wanted to check, and I wasn't sure how else to find out. It's not an excuse, and I don't mean it as one."
"Really? Because it sounded like an excuse. It still sounds like one."
"Will you just—will you let me apologize?" For the first time, Morton sounded, if not mad, at least something other than pleading.
"Go ahead."
"I'm sorry for what I said earlier, all of it. I was a right prick, and you didn't do anything to deserve it."
"All of it?" she repeated. "All of it? You don't just get to question my capabilities as Head Girl—"
"Will you stop?" Morton whispered fiercely as her voice loudened, cutting Lily off so suddenly that James wondered, for a moment, if he'd cast a silencing charm on her, or gone the old-fashioned route of placing a hand over her mouth. "If Filch is around, he will hear you, and he's not going to believe that we're both patrolling when you're in a bathrobe!"
Silence followed, for several moments long enough that James wondered if they had left or—now he felt even sicker—were snogging.
Why hadn't he kissed her, when she'd looked up at him like that in the bathroom, like she so clearly wanted him to?
"Fine," he heard Lily say, finally, and he relaxed, just slightly, at how unmistakably mad she still sounded. Her tone of voice, he reasoned, killed any potential that they'd been snogging. "You have five seconds, and then I'm leaving."
"How did I question you as Head Girl?"
"You really don't get it? Fine. That's close enough to five seconds. Goodnight."
James thought he saw the shadows move, although they lengthened, as if Lily and Morton moved further away from him.
"I didn't say anything like that!"
"Really? You definitely made it pretty clear that, what, all I do in meetings is giggle at Potter's jokes? How else am I supposed to take that, other than to assume that you think that the real joke here is the way I act as Head Girl?"
"Oh." As he sighed, Morton somehow made the single exhale sound like the most relieved noise James had ever heard. And with that relief, came new confidence. "That wasn't what I meant."
"Sure it wasn't."
"Honestly. I—that wasn't intended at you. That was about Potter, and the way he acts in meetings."
"Like that makes it better?"
"I mean, doesn't it a little?"
"I don't know why you're going on about him. He hasn't done anything to you."
"Okay, maybe not tonight, but…I mean, how often have I heard you complain about him? How many times have I seen him act the exact way you've complained about? He and his friends—"
"I don't want to hear it. You're just going to repeat yourself. I'm going to bed." The shadows lengthened a bit more.
"How am I supposed to take this," Morton asked defensively, "As anything but you getting mad that I'm talking badly about Potter? I don't know why you'd defend him if there's really nothing going on between you two. Because tonight it looked like something was, and you need to tell me if you two are—well, if you're—"
"Will you get off of that? Fucking hell, I don't know how else to explain this to you. There's nothing 'dodgy' between me and Potter. I'm not mad because you suggested it—although, no, I am a little mad about that, because means you think I'm up to something with him while I'm carrying on with you. So really, Alex, what the fuck? Is that what you think of me?"
"Lily, that's not how I meant it."
"I don't care. What makes me the maddest, really, is that when you insult him, for any way he's acted in prefect meetings this year, you're also insulting me as Head Girl. You're implying that not only did I let him act that way, but that, what, everyone sees me as some giggling idiot? How else am I supposed to take that other than an insult towards me and everything I've worked for to become Head Girl?"
"I—"
"As for the rest of it, that doesn't matter to me. You can insult him all you want, and you can insult his friends too—except Remus, who you know, and you know he is lovely. Don't just lump him in there. But from my end, right now, I can't see a thing any of them have done to you to make them insult them, other than Potter and Black acting fairly polite tonight, all things considered. Just…" She took a deep breath. "Leave it tonight, will you? We can talk about this later. Even if you still think you're right, we can argue about it then. But I'm just done for now. I'm done."
"Done just for now?"
"Sure. Well—I don't know. We'll see. Goodnight." This time it sounded like she finally got away.
Although he couldn't see him, as James slid behind the tapestry of Mungo Bonham, he gave the wizard a little pat, feeling rather fond of him. His heart, now, seemed light again, lighter than in ages.