A/N: So grateful for the crazy influx of reviews! (And to whoever recommended this on the Jily Tumblr! I did not expect that.) It honestly made my week. A shorter chapter this time, but the next one is longer, so I hope that'll make up for it.
Chapter Seven
The next day dawned cold and bright, the first after a string of gray, dreary days, and James couldn't help but think that the weather seemed to celebrate along with him that, after countless, humiliating attempts, he had finally secured a visit to Hogsmeade with Lily.
He knew, of course, that it wasn't a date, and even if he wanted to pretend it was, Sirius, Remus, and Hestia's presence made that kind of impossible. The three had waited behind as he and Lily had checked off the names of the students, besides them, who took advantage of the impromptu Hogsmeade visit, only six others in total. James had felt absolutely no sense of surprise when Filch had shown up, despite what McGonagall had said about his plans to enjoy his holiday, and watched them critically the whole time, although he kept any comments he might have had under his breath. Still, even though it wasn't a date, James appreciated that Lily chose to trail behind Sirius, Remus, and Hestia and walk the long, winding path to the village with him, and enjoyed how she laughed as she guessed at some of the things he and the other Maruaders had pulled on Filch over the years.
"Did you enchant the candles in the Great Hall, that time they went out daily for weeks?"
"Yes."
"What about the year that Dungbombs kept simultaneously appearing in every suit of armor on the floor of Filch's office?"
"Of course."
"And the year all those toilets exploded? What was that, fourth?"
"Yeah. We flushed a lot of Dr. Fillibuster's fireworks so he wouldn't catch them on us, but we…kind of forgot they were wet-start. In our defense, we panicked."
"But he never caught you for any of it!"
Or a million other things, James thought, aware that she might not find many of them—those pranks more personal or more dangerous—quite as funny. Still, he loved the sound of her laughter, and the happy knowledge that a time had never existed, before this year, where she would have found these kinds of stories even a fraction as funny.
Hogsmeade was, indeed, every bit as crowded as McGonagall had promised, and the noise of the crowd began to filter towards them even before they saw the mass of cheerful witches and wizards that perused down the main strip. James stood close enough to Lily that he could hear, even over the clamor, when she sucked in her breath in delight as they rounded the corner and saw the village for the first time.
James had been to Hogsmeade around Christmastime, certainly, as Hogwarts scheduled a visit every year before break, and the shops always looked festive. Yet those memories paled in comparison to the brilliant holiday cheer that seemed to permeate every inch of the village on Christmas Eve. An artificial lake sat to the west side of the strip, covering what James remembered from only days before as a wide, grassy plane, the water frozen over and dotted with ice skaters. Flashing light displays lit up every shop window, each one more ornate and intricate than the last, brilliantly lit even during the day. A large Christmas tree—bigger than any of Hagrid's, even—sat in the center of the village, all but dripping with enchanted baubles that belted Christmas carols. Snow fell from the sky all throughout the village, starting and stopping right on the dividing line between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, clearly an enchantment. Although it fell moderately thickly, the snow never seemed to accumulate on the ground past a light dusting, and it felt less cold than usual, too, James reflected, when he stretched his palm out to catch a few flakes. "This is complex," Lily said as she did the same. "To change the weather over such a large stretch of land—that takes power."
She and Hestia almost immediately vanished into the crowd, calling behind them something about shopping, and that they'd catch up with them after an hour, maybe. Sirius watched them disappear and shook his head. "This is chaos. You think anyone decorated the Shrieking Shack?"
Although they couldn't even picture the thought, he, Remus, and James worked their way through the masses, past dozens of cheery shops, until at last both buildings and crowds dwindled away to the desolate road that twisted uphill over a quarter of a mile towards the Shrieking Shack. It looked the same as it had two nights prior, bleak and grey against the blue sky, except some brave soul had conjured a short, lighted Christmas tree, no more than four feet tall, to sit just off the beginning of the drive, a single, small attempt holiday cheer.
After a quick glance around to ascertain that they were, indeed, alone, Sirius knocked the tree over and cast Bombarda to shatter several of the bulbs. "House is haunted, you know," he said conversationally as he ushered Remus and James away before they could get caught. "Wouldn't want the locals to forget, would you?"
They wiled the hour away in half a dozen little shops. Remus picked up a beaten-up copy of Everyday Healing Magic in Melvin's Mysticals, a dingy second-hand store. Sirius loaded his pockets down with Dr. Filibuster's Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks in Zonkos, although he also grabbed a Nose-Biting Teacup almost as an afterthought. ("Haven't tried it on Filch since second year, remember?" he asked with a grin. "Do you think he remembers?") James splurged on a pair of Cleansweap's new chaser's gloves that promised an improved, no-slip grip, which he had eyed in the most recent issue of Which Broomstick? And, after Sirius and Remus seemed properly engrossed in the trick sweets at Honeydukes, he excused himself to the loo, circled back to Spintwitches Sporting Needs, and bought the beater's set for Sirius as well.
They had just left the sweet shop, heading towards the Three Broomsticks, when Remus pointed out Lily's red hair weaving past them in the crowd. Sirius called out to her, and she appeared to have grown accustomed to the sound of her name in his voice, because the expression on her face as she turned towards them—exasperated, but not displeased—seemed to be her usual look when he spoke.
"Buy enough?" Sirius asked once she and Hestia managed to make their way over, each holding several bags on their arms.
"Sod off," Lily replied, although she sounded quite chipper. "Where are you off to?"
"Three Broomsticks," James answered, nodding unnecessarily towards the establishment, which sat only a few shops away. Of all the packed buildings at Hogsmeade, the pub looked the most crowded. Even as they watched, a trio of middle-aged wizards approached the doors, looked inside, and then backed away, shaking their heads, apparently unwilling to brave even a step through inside. "You?"
"Honeydukes," Hestia said, and the customary sweetness on her face didn't falter as Lily reached out and steadied her when a particularly large family squeezed through nearby and nearly pushed her over. "It's our last stop. We can join you for a drink after, if you'd like."
"Actually, why don't we split up differently? We're too big a party, and you two bought too much stuff, to fit in either place comfortably, at least until we have a table." Sirius reached, took Hestia's shopping bags, and thrust them at James. "Why don't you and Evans go get a table, and take the bags so Jones can maneuver better and doesn't get knocked down," he suggested briskly, his voice all business. "Remus and I will go with Jones to Honeydukes, and we'll meet you after."
"Sounds good. I haven't stocked up on Black Pepper Imps yet," Remus agreed immediately, even though James knew he had at least a dozen shoved in the pockets of his cloak.
Hestia had the decency to look at Lily for her okay, although it no longer seemed to matter as Sirius casually draped an arm around her shoulders to steer her away. "Pick me up coconut ice!" Lily called after her retreating back, and Sirius held a thumbs up over his head before they disappeared. "They're about as subtle as you," she told James as they started towards the Three Broomsticks.
"They are my friends, after all. But that was honestly pretty smooth, at least for them."
Lily left him the minute they got through the doors, offering some airy remark about finding a table, which left James to fight his way to the bar, attract the attention of the frantically busy barkeep, order two Butterbeers, and try to find her without sloshing the steaming beverages down his front. He saw her, eventually, tucked along the wall just behind the bar, a table away from the windows, with her shopping bags spread out around her to claim the six-top table for them.
"Nearly got in a shoving match with this bloke when I ordered," he said when he reached her, and he offered her a mug, which she took to hold in her cold hands gratefully.
"I saw. What was worse—that he nearly knocked you over, or that he wore a Haileybury Hammers jersey? You hate them, don't you?"
"Yes, because everyone likes them, even people who aren't from Ontario! Do you know how many times they've won the World Cup in the last twenty years? Everyone who supports them are all just fair-weather fans because they win!" Her laughter sounded like music to his ears.
James had worried, in the more than adequate time he'd had to stew while he waited for drinks, that perhaps things would grow awkward between them once they were alone, the setting too date-like for the survival of any of the apparently friendly ease that had grown between them over the past few weeks. Those fears vanished entirely the moment he asked her about her own favorite Quidditch team, and she launched into a more passionate explanation about the Holyhead Harpies than he expected.
"Why?" she asked when he noted his surprise at her interest, smiling against the rim of her mug. "Did you just assume I cared too much about school to ever think about Quidditch? You should know by now that you don't know me."
But he felt like he was starting to, more and more, and that hadn't changed how much he liked her. If anything, he liked her more.
She asked him about his family, and seemed genuinely shocked when he explained that his dad had invented Sleekeazy's Hair Potion. She said it made much sense, however, when he explained that his parents had given up on having children before he was born. That would explain, she reckoned, for "part of his massive ego" and "why they'd be willing to adopt Black too." He could hardly argue either point, and she seemed surprised that he had no retort, but she hid it quickly.
She told him about her family, about her doctor father ("a sort of muggle Healer," she explained quickly when he clearly didn't understand) and her homemaker mother (he understood that well enough), and he had a thousand questions about how they'd reacted when she'd received her Hogwarts letter. After getting over their shock they had been as pleased as punch, from her description, although her sister had not. And her voice changed, getting not quite sad, but markedly different from the way she spoke about her parents.
"She's getting married next summer," she told him, twisting her mug, "And the night before I left for school this year, she said that she didn't want me there, because she didn't want to have to introduce me to her fiancé's family. Our parents wanted to insist, but…well, what's the point? What good would it do? So I decided to stay here for Christmas this year, just to avoid a big row. We have one every year, and I'm sick of our parents feeling like they have to pick sides."
He resisted the urge to lean across the table to take her hand. "Sirius has this thing he says about his family, and it seems like it applies to your sister. He'll say, 'Sometimes the trash has a way of taking itself out.'" She laughed, almost despite herself, and the melancholy lifted off her shoulders just a little.
After hearing about her family, he wanted more than ever to ask her about Snape, about what had passed between them as children that had made her defend him so staunchly and stand by him for so long, but he didn't.
Instead, he asked her about Hestia and her mother, and Lily's mouth set a firm, grim line, immediately angry. "Death Eaters," she explained tersely. "Last spring, right before Easter. They blew the house to bits and left the Dark Mark and everything."
"Why didn't I know?"
"What, like the Prophet was going to report on it?" she scoffed. "Well, they have an excuse this time, at least—they didn't get a chance. The Ministry hushed it all up. Her mum worked in the Department of Mysteries, apparently really deep in—Hestia didn't even know what she did there. Marlene's mum tried to take a vested interest in her death—she's an Auror, remember—and higher-ups basically told her to basically stop digging, because the Ministry didn't want any questions into the kind of work Hestia's mum did. I guess, in their minds, they knew You-Know-Who had ordered it, and the chances of catching the specific culprit were slim, so it wasn't worth compromising whatever work she had done for them over the years."
"That doesn't make it any better for Jones," he said furiously, and she smiled a bit, if sadly, at his tone.
"No. It really doesn't. But I don't think the Ministry cares about that. They'd rather keep it quiet, and Hestia has too. Only Marlene and I know, I think." And now him too, she left unsaid, and she didn't ask him to keep the information to himself, as though she already knew that he would. That, more than anything, impressed upon him that things really had changed between them. Only two months before, she had demanded proof of his absolute ability to keep quiet about seeing her with Morton by humiliating him into admissions that still, when he thought about it, made his stomach hurt. Now, she had confided in him something much more serious, much darker, and hadn't seemed to spare trusting him with the secret a second thought. Did she trust him, maybe, because he had proven himself with her secret about Morton?
For the first time in his life, James felt a real, genuine flash of appreciation for the boke, maybe the first one he'd ever had—and certainly the first one all year.
"I wanted to kiss you, you know," he told her abruptly, emboldened by her trust. "In the prefect's bathroom, after Slughorn's party."
She nearly choked on the last of her Butterbeer. "Where did that come from?" she asked, and he didn't even mind that she had gone into a fit of laughter, because it brushed the lingering melancholy and anger from her face.
He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. But I wanted to and didn't. I started kicking myself the second you left, and I haven't stopped."
"I know you wanted to. I could tell." She sounded fond, as if recalling a cherished memory. "It read all over your face—remember, you're not subtle. I mean, you always kind of look at me in this…this way, and it was even more—"
"In what way?"
She shifted and reached up to brush back an errant wave of hair, as if the need for clarification made her uncomfortable. "There's a way," she said simply, deflecting, and then pushed on before he could press her further. "Anyway, I was pretty sure all evening that you were going to try at some point, and I was absolutely certain you were going to in that moment." She didn't need to clarify what moment she meant. They both knew, he could tell just from looking at her her face, knew that she meant when he had slung the bathrobe around her shoulders. "Why didn't you?"
She sounded, he thought, about as casual as if she were inquiring about the weather.
"I had reasons."
"Go ahead."
"Are you enjoying this?" he asked, even though he knew the answer by the way that she leaned in on her elbows, her chin cupped in her hand, and her eyes glittered in that teasing, dangerous way he'd come to expect—and love—and fear—all at once. When she didn't answer, clearly waiting, he sighed and held up three fingers, in a move entirely the same as the one he'd pulled on his friends only a few nights before. He lowered one. "If I kissed you, and you let me, I didn't want it to be because you were mad at Morton."
She leaned back, pulling a face. "Potter, I'm not like that."
"You're the one who keeps telling me that I don't know you, so how was I to know?"
She chewed on that for a second, and although she clearly still didn't like it, conceded, "Fine. Fair. But I'm telling you now, so you do know this about me—I'm not like that. Second?"
He ticked off another finger. "You had been drinking, so if I kissed you and you let me, I wasn't sure you wouldn't hate me in the morning."
"That's fairer, I think. But I wasn't sloshed. You kept treating me like I was."
"I know that. But you also weren't you, and I didn't want to feel like…like I was kissing someone else." Looking at her had suddenly become rather hard. He lowered his third finger and reached for his Honeydukes bag, not for any specific thing, but more for the distraction of something to do with his eyes and his hands. "Third, I wasn't sure that you'd let me."
She stayed silent long enough that he finally had to look up from his rummaging, and found her watching him quite impassively, picking absently at her nails. "I felt so humiliated when I left," she said finally, although she sounded more detached than embarrassed, and he could only stare.
"You did? Why?"
"Because I wanted you to kiss me, and I knew you knew that, and you still didn't."
"Oh." And James sounded like Remus, then, at least to his own ears, as if he could only express the weight of the world that had come upon his shoulders in a single syllable.
The gears in his brain seemed to have suddenly clogged, clogged on something so large and immovable that he wondered if his mind would ever work right thereafter. He felt like his lungs might never remember to breathe again, like his tongue had forgotten how to shape words, like his eyes could no longer focus.
"Don't you dare get smug about this," she said sharply, jolting him back to reality, and he only realized then that he'd started grinning.
"I'm sorry." He tried to wipe the look off his face, but his grin bounced back unbidden. "But I really wasn't sure, so it's all just hitting me now. You wanted me to?"
"Yes."
"So, I should have kissed you." He tried not to make it sound like a question, even though he still felt no confidence in the words as a statement.
She shrugged. "Probably."
"And…if I tried again?"
She smiled at that, and he felt certain he knew why—because suddenly the ball seemed firmly back in her court, the power once again hers. "I mean, it would entirely depend," she said, and he found it bothered him hardly at all, in that moment, that she played these games with coy words and sly looks, because he could almost see himself getting closer to where he wanted to be with her.
"On what?"
"Really, so many things. What's the phase of the moon? What's the location of Saturn? What's—"
"You're literally just asking Divination questions."
"Really? I never took it, but—"
The room exploded.
James hit the polished wooden floor hard, and the entire weight of his body landed squarely on his left forearm. He felt something give, and pain shot up through his arm and into every inch of his body, accompanied by a bright light he could see even though closed eyes. In the moment, he associated the light with his pain, certain he had gotten hurt badly enough that he saw spots, but he would later come to understand, though the recollections of others, that the light actually came from several spells ricocheting around the pub at once.
When he opened his eyes, he found the air around him so thick with smoke that he could hardly see a foot in front of his face, and even that vision needed to filter through the cracked lenses of his glasses, which hardly helped his plight. He rolled to his side to reach into his pocket for his wand, and heard an uncontrollable scream rip from his throat, a noise he didn't recognize as his own, as his left arm dangled uselessly with such a pain that he felt, again, rather faint. He only realized once his own cry died out that he hadn't just heard his own voice in the air; no, his scream had joined a choir of others, many of those still ongoing, some piercing shrieks, others deep sobs, and more still the shouting of words he couldn't understand, of spells and names and orders.
He felt a cool hand on his cheek, and Lily's face swam before him, disfigured by a deep gash on her forehead that poured blood down her face, obscuring her pretty features. "It's okay, I'm okay, you're okay," she whispered fervently, soothingly, her breath warm against his face.
He realized, rather dimly, that the bar behind her, which had collapsed in on itself like a bonfire, had erupted in flames.
She moved her body closer to his, crawling stealthily upon her elbows to keep her stomach flush to the floor. "Oh, your arm—I can't fix it, not quickly, not with the bone through the skin—"
The words registered in the deep recess of his mind, and his stomach roiled in nauseated protest. "You're bleeding," he told her hoarsely, and she brushed at the wound on her head carelessly. Her hand came away thick with blood.
"I'm fine." Screams intensified, just outside their line of sight, although James thought he could see the beginnings of shadows through the thick smoke. "Listen," she hissed urgently. "Don't make a sound. Do you hear me? And stay still." She tapped her wand against the top of his head, and James felt the cold, familiar spread of a Disillusionment Charm slide down his body. She cast it on herself next, and he watched as she disappeared, chameleon-like, into the floorboards.
Hit with a cold blue spell, a table not five yards away burst apart, splintering into a thousand pieces, and James saw the culprit emerge from an envelope of shadowy smoke that continued to steadily dissipate. "Louisa Mullins!" He spoke with the voice of man, but nothing else about him revealed any clue to his identity. He dressed all in black, with the hood pulled up on his thick cloak, and he sported gloves on his hands. A full white mask entirely covered his face, with slits only for his eyes and mouth.
James knew immediately, without question, that the man was a Death Eater.
"Louisa Mullins!" he shouted again. As he approached a clustered heap of customers scattered around a broken booth, James saw that the entire front and roof of the Three Broomsticks had been blown away into a pile of burning rubble and shattered glass. "Where is she?" he demanded of a witch who cradled a broken wrist.
"I don't know!" she sobbed, and as James watched, the Death Eater cast something at her, a spell so dark it looked almost black, that split her injured arm open from shoulder to wrist. As blood poured from the mangled wound, she began to immediately, uncontrollably scream.
James realized, almost detached, that had never heard a noise like it before.
He felt Lily's hand, still invisible, come to grip the shoulder of his good arm, so tight that it almost hurt more than it comforted.
A tall woman, perhaps in her late-forties with bobbed gray hair, stood up from behind a toppled table. She wore a Three Broomsticks apron, and James recognized her as one of the owners of the pub, and the mother of Rosmerta Mullins, who had graduated a handful of years above them. "Please stop," she begged, and held up her arms, her wand clutched between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, completely useless as she turned her palms towards the Death Eater in surrender. "Please, just do—"
She didn't get to finish. The Death Eater gave a sharp flick of his wand in the same manner one might shoo off a fly. James didn't hear the incantation over the screams of the other pub-dwellers, but he recognized the blinding, emerald green light as the Killing Curse even before Louisa Mullins dropped, dead before she hit the floor.
Several people continued to scream long past the others, and James located one such person, the same man in the Haileybury Hammers jersey who had jostled him at the bar, now sprawled several feet away on his back. It took James' brain several long, painful moments to comprehend that the man now missed a leg, and that thick, heavy blood, almost black, poured from the stump. Splinched, he realized a second later, and badly, as if something had interrupted his Disapparation.
"They've all splinched," he heard Lily breathe, and he realized that the Haileybury Hammers man wasn't the only one screaming from a sudden lack of body parts. Although he knew no one could hear her over the pandemonium of the room, the roar of the increasing fire at the bar, and a howling from outside that he hadn't yet placed, he wanted to clap a hand over her mouth to silence her, and might have, if he had had the range of motion and the ability to see her.
A bespectacled, middle-aged man, also in a Three Broomsticks apron, crawled to clutch Louisa Mullins's body, to hold her the best he could with one shoulder severely dislocated, swinging uselessly out of its socket. Although the Death Eater's mask obscured his face, James thought he could hear the sneer in his voice as he shouted something at the man, although James could only make out the words "blood traitor" over the continued screams. The Death Eater jabbed his wand sharply, and although no light came out, the man began to convulse uncontrollably on the ground. His screams, somehow, were worse than all the others' put together, even worse than the woman who still sobbed over the remnants of her ruined arm. His screams made the pain sound deeper, more primal, than anything James hoped to experience, and although he had never seen it performed, had only read the theory in books, he knew he watched the Cruciatus Curse in action.
"I could hit him," Lily whispered suddenly against his ear, and he felt her body shift closer to his, as if she aimed her wand across him towards the scene. "I could stun him."
"Don't!" He wasn't sure at first why he said it, his brain so clouded with pain and horror and increasing nausea that it took a moment for his thoughts to catch up with his feelings. His words came out rushed, then, desperate. "Don't you fucking dare, Evans—there are more of them, there have to be—if you stun him and they come in, they'll tear this place apart, they'll—"
"But if everyone else—"
Almost as if on cue, an additional pair of Death Eaters entered the wreckage of the pub, one almost jogging, and the other fairly sauntering behind. "Cleared?" the jogger asked, shouting to be heard over the bespectacled man's screams, and James realized, with a jolt, that the tall, slender figure underneath the black cloak was a woman.
The first Death Eater didn't bother to break his Cruciatus Curse, which he now seemed to perform rather lazily, moving his wand as an experienced conductor might conduct an andante piece of music. He nodded.
And then, for lack of a better term, the three Death Eaters began to play.
James didn't know how else to describe it in the moment, and would later struggle for the right word in recollections to friends and authorities alike. But something about the Death Eaters' dispositions as they turned their attentions upon the other inhabitants of the pub reminded James forcefully of the way that a child might take his parent's wand and use it to destroy one ant at a time that marched out of an anthill. The Death Eaters' actions lacked any regard for the feelings of those around them, victims or spectators, as though they considered the inhabitants of the Three Broomsticks lower life forms—which, James realized later, bitterly, they almost certainly did.
He wasn't sure how long he lay motionless on the floor, trying not to watch, yet unable to look away. Time seemed to have lost all meaning. He would later recall the events that transpired—certainly, he wouldn't be able to get them off his mind in the coming days and weeks and months, or truly ever—but not how long they lasted. Time seemed to pass in moments, not minutes, each one more horrible than the last.
He watched as one of the Death Eaters turned upon a woman and her child. They conjured ropes to bind the mother, and then levitated her child—a girl, no more than four or five, by James' eye—flipping her upside down in the air, and began to spin her like a top, faster and faster. Every time the mother would scream, a second Death Eater would cast a spell at her, something dark and wicked that made blood blossom underneath the mother's robes. Cutting spells, James realized, as a long, thin slash appeared upon her cheek. Eventually, the mother fell silent, even as sobs still wracked her body, and the little girl's screams—shriller than all the rest—cut off abruptly as well, as her head sagged loosely from side to side.
The Death Eaters chose people, seemingly by random, to blast with the same Bombarda Sirius had cast on the Christmas tree baubles outside the Shrieking Shack what felt like a lifetime ago. (And as James realized this, his thoughts previously somehow disconnected from his emotions, suddenly all of the feeling—worry, horror, fear—rushed back to him, as he wondered—where were his friends? Where had Sirius, Remus, and Hestia ended up? Were they okay?) With each cast, a victim would fly spectacularly through the air, and land painfully yards away with shattered bones and broken skin. Most stayed conscious, somehow, but when one elderly man hit the wood floor particularly hard, his head fairly bounced on impact, and he didn't move again. Blood began to pool steadily beneath him, streaming from his ears.
They cast all manner of dark spells that James had never even heard of. They cast a curse that stretched the victim's limbs, pulling them out tighter and tighter, as if on a medieval rack, before they finally gave way, ripping out of joint. They cast a curse that twisted limbs at unnatural angles, back or forward farther than they should go, or rotated, turned like a screw. They cast a curse that set skin alight with an unnatural, blue flame, which seemed to grow, inexplicably, the more a person thrashed.
And the whole while, they laughed.
At some point, James realized, dully, he had begun to cry.
And then, suddenly, it was over.
As if by some unspoken signal, all three Death Eaters Disapparated with a trio of loud cracks. In the next moment, more of the same cracks rang out, and Ministry wizards poured into the wreckage of the building from the street, their wands raised.
James turned in time to see Lily rematerialize beside him, and then felt the hot sensation of the Disillusionment Charm lifting from himself as well. "Are you okay?" he asked immediately, even though he could very well see that she wasn't. Her head wound still wept blood, although at a slower rate, it seemed, and tear tracks mingled with some of the blood staining her cheeks. He couldn't remember ever seeing her cry before.
"I'm fine," she told him swiftly, just as she had after the initial explosion. She hovered over him, and reached a tentative hand to touch just above his left ear, which immediately sent stars flashing before his eyes. "Sorry," she said hastily, and then her hands moved quickly, so fast that James, in his current state, could hardly keep up with her.
She ran her wand across his head, to pass over the wound she had just detected, and he felt some of the pain lessen just slightly, although not disappear completely. She cast Ferula on his injured arm, which became immediately bound in bandages, and the sheer, hot pain seemed to better slightly. "It won't fix it," she said, "But it'll hold." She moved quickly to his nose, and cast Episkey, which left his face feeling very hot, and then very cold. He hadn't even noticed his nose had broken.
"Stay here, and don't you dare fall asleep. Stay awake." She struggled to her feet. With the sudden perfect view of her ankles, he realized that blood had soaked through the right calf of her jeans, and completely drenched her shoe. "Don't you fucking dare," she snapped at him, echoing his previous command to her, as he tried to sit up. "Don't make me put you in the Full-Body Bind. I will." And then she rushed off, favoring her left leg and hardly held back by her limp.
James watched as she cleared the space to the man in the Haileybury Hammers jersey. He had stopped screaming at some point, and moving as well. She set about to stopping the blood flow on his mangled leg, although she did have to twist her body around, at one point, in order to vomit.
And then he heard her start yelling, and he began to try to sit up again before he realized what she shouted. "Frank! Frank!"
The last thing James remembered was Frank Longbottom's face suspended over his, although he looked entirely unlike the Frank that James knew. This man shared Frank's features, but his face was set, rather grey, and his mouth firm, with none of the grinning laughter that James so staunchly associated with his friend. He looked far older than twenty. "Close your eyes, James," he instructed, and he had Frank's voice. And then he cast something that made James' world go black.