A/N: You all have left me feeling very spoiled with reviews, and it's an incredible feeling. I know I say this every update, but they really are what keep me going. A special thank you to those who take the time to review every chapter. (I went to type out the names of people I've seen review more than once, and realized just how many of you there are!) There really is no bigger compliment than a return reader, and you all make my day with each and every review.
Chapter Eleven
Fixing it was easier said than done, James knew.
Lily seemed to do her best to avoid him, although he realized, dully, on the third day of classes, that she might not even set out to avoid him. She might have just forgotten he existed, an undoubtedly worse possibility. She looked happy when he saw her, perfectly contented to have Marlene back to complete their trio. She, Marlene, and Hestia appeared inseparable once more, she seemed to never go anywhere without one of them, and she was always laughing every time he saw her.
Hestia peeled away occasionally to talk to the Marauders, and other times she and Sirius would disappear off together. "Working on Muggle Studies," Sirius would explain away with a wave of his hand when they would ask, which always made Peter snort. He'd signed up for Muggle Studies with Sirius back in third year, and still sat in it then, a silent supporter of Sirius' decision to take the class to stick it to his family.
"He's never cared so much about a class before," Peter said sarcastically when Sirius didn't join them for dinner one evening. James didn't mention that he'd actually seen Sirius and Hestia together in the library, books open and whispering, although what they talked about, he didn't know. Seeing Sirius there had been strange enough; he didn't know how to explain to his friends that he might actually leave to study, as he claimed.
He also didn't know what to say when Hestia looked him square in the face one evening as she played Sirius at chess, and asked, almost harshly, "When are you going to fix it?" Something about her face and voice, in that moment, reminded James very much of Sirius and his identical questions. He didn't have to ask what she meant.
"How do I?" he asked. "Tell me and I will."
"Figure it out yourself, but hurry the fuck up." James didn't miss the admiring glance Sirius cast her way as she sounded most unlike herself—really, more like him. "Because this is getting ridiculous. I'm sick of feeling like a bad friend every time I'm over here." As if picking up on her mood, her queen took one of Sirius' pawns rather more violently than usual, which sent up a fine spray of dust from the slaughtered piece. "And she—" Hestia paused, pressed her lips together, and tried again. "What you said—" She sighed and leaned back in her armchair, rubbing her forehead. "No, I'm not going to get involved," she decided finally, almost more to herself. "I'm not going to say anything."
And he knew, from the uncharacteristically fierce look she shot him, that she meant it.
Although they had nearly all their classes together, James really only watched Morton for the first time in Potions, since brewing left ample time to chat. With Remus' words still in mind—to let go of Morton, as much as he could, anyway—James led Sirius to their usual table towards the back of the room, away from where Lily sat. Sirius looked pleased about it, although he may have just been happy to get further away from Slughorn's watchful eye. James did his best to focus on his work, and his Mopsus Potion turned out especially successful, to Slughorn's obvious pleasure. It helped his concentration, James knew, that Morton had his back to him, so he couldn't see his stupid face. And it helped further that Lily seemed more interested in talking to Marlene than she did Morton or Rooney.
The three girls still sat with the Marauders at mealtimes, although not always. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, therefore, when they sat down beside them Saturday morning. Marlene had approached laughing, and continued to do so even after she took her seat.
"Potter," she said, all bright eyes and glowing cheeks. But as she looked at him, he still detected something behind her obvious mirth. Her eyes flickered with the same sort of change that always came over her when she addressed him, a different sort of look than she gave Sirius or Remus or Peter. He read in the expression that her dislike for him clearly continued unabated. "Listen to this. There's a rumor going around."
"Mar, could you not?" Lily sounded surprisingly sharp for the morning hour.
"Love a good rumor," Sirius said as he passed Hestia a cup of tea that James hadn't seen him pour. She favored him with a smile. "Tell us."
"A couple of the sixth-year girls stopped us in the common room on the way down—oh, stop it, Lily, it's hilarious," Marlene interrupted herself as Lily's face clearly showed that she'd like to chuck the toast in her hand across the table at her friend. "They asked us if it's true that you and Lily are dating, because apparently that's what everyone has been saying since we got back from break. And it sent me. What a romance, since you're apparently dating when you haven't spoken at all."
Lily rested her elbow on the table and her forehead in her hand. "The height of hilarity," she said dryly, and she discarded her toast onto her plate. She turned slightly to look at James, the most she'd acknowledged him in days, and he thought he could read all over her face the same thought he had. Who had started spreading it? Slughorn or Snape, after they'd seen them together on duty before New Years? Or McGonagall, even? She'd spied them patrolling the first floor the day before break ended, and Lily hadn't bothered to take her hand out of James', which had surprised him, as he'd entirely expected her to pull away. McGonagall hadn't said anything, of course, just waved them on with a swift, unremarkable comment about their good work, but her sharp eyes never missed a thing, he knew. Hell, the castle walls had eyes too, he realized—the portraits could have repeated the rumor all over the castle to each other. They hadn't exactly acted discreetly.
"Slughorn?" he guessed to her, even as Sirius and Peter joined in with Marlene's laughter, although Sirius at least had the good grace to look a bit apologetic.
He had assumed her thoughts correctly, as she nodded, apparently on his wavelength entirely. "I expect. He saw us patrolling together," she added quickly for Marlene's benefit, because she had stopped laughing.
"Patrolling and doing what?" she demanded. She no longer looked amused.
"Literally walking down a corridor," Lily told her firmly, and picked her toast back up. "But he asked me about it the next day, when I went to check on his progress with a potion."
Then it was Sirius' turn to look incredulous. "You and Slughorn discuss your love life? Evans, that's really fucking weird."
She threw her toast at him, although he caught it easily and simply took a bite. "No. We don't."
"You kind of do. He did hassle you about Greg," Marlene put in, and Lily threw a piece of toast at her, too, which landed in her lap in a shower of crumbs. "What? He did!"
"He didn't hassle me, Mar. He just asked what happened. And that's what he did with Potter—just asked if we were dating, and when I told him no, he kind of hemmed and hawed, like he didn't believe me, but he dropped it. You know how he is—he loves a gossip almost as much as Black." Lily shot Sirius a look as if she expected him to disagree, but he just nodded, clearly in agreement. "And it's not just me. He's just as invested in the Slytherins, or even worse. He told me the moment Mulciber and Talkalot started dating."
Peter pulled a face. "That's going to put me off my food, Evans. Mulciber is such a troll."
"Wait, when did that happen?" Sirius leaned forward, clearly interested.
"Beginning of December. You should talk to him more, Black. He trades in secrets; some of the things he knows are ridiculous." Lily pulled her hair to one shoulder and began to smile for the first time since sitting down. "I mean, it's not that scandalous, but he could tell you who your brother's dating, for one."
That took the focus off her, obviously as she'd intended.
Things felt a bit easier than they had since break had ended, James thought, as he watched Lily and Sirius volley barbs back and forth for a bit, their sharp words and wit evenly matched. She lingered after she finished breakfast, as she hadn't done in days, falling into conversation with Remus. Her expression remained easy, even, when James slipped out from his place and went to take the empty spot by her side.
"Can I talk to you when you're done?" he asked as she refilled her coffee cup.
He waited for her to say no, as she had the night everyone returned to Hogwarts after break, as she had when he'd tried to pull her after Transfiguration on Tuesday, as she had Thursday evening when he'd asked her after dinner.
Instead, after chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment, she nodded. "Yeah, alright."
"That's not going to make you look any more single, Lil." Marlene lifted her hands from her own coffee cup in a pantomime of innocence. Looking at her, James recalled Lily's earlier words comparing Marlene to Sirius, and she looked, then, quite like him indeed, as Sirius often affected the same gesture after saying something he probably shouldn't have. "What? I'm just saying." That sounded entirely like him too.
"Doesn't concern me," Lily said, and there was something in her tone, something dark, that didn't match her placid words. It sounded like a warning, a holdover from a conversation they'd had before.
"It should."
"Marlene." Hestia sounded severe, so much so that Sirius jumped a bit at her side, briefly jolted from his conversation with Remus and Peter, before he realized she hadn't snapped at him.
"What?" Marlene repeated, undeterred. Like a dog with a bone, James thought, just like Sirius. "It should concern you, if only for me, because if you go off with Potter, I'm going to have to answer all sorts of stupid questions later."
Lily sat her coffee cup down so loudly that it clattered. "I'm not going to do this again." Only when she stood up did Marlene actually seem to realize that she meant it, as if she'd thought, all along, that they merely bantered. She started to apologize, or at least offer something that sounded close to an apology in the few words she managed to get out before Lily waved her off. "It's fine. I just—I don't want to do this today, okay? I just want to be happy that you're back, without—all of that." And she gestured broadly, not quite really at anything, just the Great Hall overall. "I'll catch up with you later, okay?" She smiled a little, as if to soften her exit, and turned to leave. She tugged at James' sleeve as she passed him, the hint clear that she meant him to follow her.
"What the fuck was that about?" he heard Marlene ask Hestia, clearly bewildered, as they walked off, and he knew, from the subtle shift of Lily's shoulders, that she heard it too.
"You okay?" he asked her when they exited the Great Hall's golden, oversized doors.
"Yes." She sounded definitive. She glanced over him quickly, spied the heavy winter cloak in his hands, and asked even as she pulled on her own, "Fancy a walk?"
He followed her outside and across the snowy, frozen grounds, towards the lake. "We meant to head to the greenhouses after breakfast," she explained, nodding in the opposite direction of their path, where the seven glass greenhouses glinted in the sun. "Were you off to Quidditch?"
James nodded. "We have practice in a bit. Sirius and I planned to get there early, set some things up for drills. But it can wait." Under his cloak, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I'm sorry for the other night." He had thought of a million other things to say, in the days that had passed since their row, but he couldn't remember any of them just then. Of course he couldn't.
Lily nodded, just once. "It's fine."
"No, I mean it. I'm sorry."
"And I mean it. It's fine." She smiled a little when he turned to look at her, so surprised he almost slipped off the path around the lake. "Really. Not a lie. Not a trap. I'm over it."
"You are?" He couldn't shake a sense of skepticism. Her forgiveness came far too easy, without enough of a challenge, and matched up with absolutely nothing about how he'd imagined the conversation would go. He would have felt less surprised, he thought, if she reached out and pushed him into the frozen lake.
"Yes." She sounded definitive again. "But there were a million other ways, you know. You could have asked me a million other times, not when we were in the common room with everyone. You could have asked me a million other questions, not the ones you asked. You didn't have to go about it the way you did."
"I get that. Sirius and Remus gave it to me after you and Jones left." She looked up at him, and he realized what he'd admitted from the way her eyes narrowed. "They know. About you and Morton." Despite the cold, he could feel his hands begin to sweat. "Sirius was with me, after Slughorn's dinner, and saw you in the corridor, and Remus…he just infers. He said he suspected, from fifth year." He resisted the urge to step around to her other side, away from the lake.
Her stride never faltered. She took a deep breath in and James waited, certain he was about to face the big blowup he'd somehow avoided all year. He clutched his wand in his pocket so tightly that his nails dug into his palm.
But she nodded. "That makes sense." She caught his stare, the gobsmacked expression in his slack jaw, and shrugged. She uncharacteristically seemed to take no pleasure in utterly confusing him. "I only saw you after Slughorn's dinner, but I didn't exactly look for Black, and it's not like you two ever separate."
James' brain seemed jammed.
"And—Remus?" he managed to get out.
She shrugged again. "I used to feel like he might know. He always kind of…gave me these looks, and he would say something here or there, some offhanded thing about the funny way that patrol schedule always seemed to shake out in a certain way. But he never asked."
"I didn't tell him what I saw, just that I knew." That seemed important somehow, important to impress on her. It seemed equally important to admit, no matter how much he didn't want to, "But I did tell Sirius."
"I expect you had to, after Slughorn's dinner. He's like Mar, you know? Can't drop anything, even for his own good."
He wanted to ask her, then, about what had passed between her and Marlene just before, but it mattered less than the pressing issue at hand. "I didn't tell him any…details. About what you did. With Morton." Heat crept up his spine. He couldn't tell, looking at her, if she believed him or not, but he hoped against hope that she did.
"Thank you. I still hope it was a really uncomfortable conversation for you," she said, but not entirely unkindly. She sounded, if anything, neutral.
"It was." James shook his head, trying to clear the memory of Sirius' laughter out of his head. "Evans." He waited for her to look at him and then wished he hadn't, struck by the familiar feeling he always got when he remembered how disarmingly green her eyes were, and how they made him want to reach out to touch her. "You're acting way too understanding about this."
She stopped suddenly. They had reached the tree, James realized with a sick, sharp pain, where he'd tormented Snape their fifth year, where she'd interrupted so furiously and swore that she'd never, ever date him. She had to know where they stood. She had to remember. And she had to have brought him here, he felt sure, to absolutely eviscerate him, finally.
But, instead, she sat.
He waited a moment, still wary, while she drew her knees to her chest and pulled her cloak tight around herself to lean back against the tree. "You can sit," she invited, although she didn't look at him. She kept her eyes out across the lake, across the deserted grounds towards the distant Quidditch pitch, although he doubted that it truly drew much of her interest.
So he did, carefully, though not quite close enough for their sides to touch. For a long while, neither of them spoke.
"I'm just really sick of it all," she said finally. She pulled her hands free from her cloak to push her hair back from her face, as if the light breeze in the air had tickled her cheeks. "Like, all of it. And I know I brought all of this on myself—"
"Not when I saw you in the classroom," he interrupted. "That was just some really fucked coincidence." He didn't why he spoke up when it could potentially draw the heat back to himself after he'd just dodged what felt like the world's largest curse. But when she glanced at him, he realized what he'd already subconsciously understood. She seemed almost sad rather than mad, and he wanted to avoid having her look like that, even if it meant that she focused her anger on him. Somehow her sadness felt worse.
"I brought the rest of it on, then, after that. Because I just so mad at you after you told me you were there. And I tried not to let it show, because I didn't know what to do, but then I could tell how bothered you were by it, still, even weeks after. So I started fucking with you, because I wanted you to be miserable, since I was too. And it became sort of fun, I guess, to wind you up, because I've never been able to piss you off before, whereas you've always gotten to me. I felt like I finally had some sort of leverage. But it's not fun anymore, and I get that it was never fun for you. I'm sorry."
James had never been dumped before, of course. That would have required him to actually date a girl consecutively, more than just the scattered attempts at Hogsmeade dates he'd tried before admitting defeat, admitting that he didn't care if he had a date if it wasn't with Lily. But there was something about the ring of finality in her last two words that made him feel, quite suddenly, that her apology sounded exactly like a breakup, and it felt like he'd just gotten the rug pulled out from under his feet. He couldn't even savor, or truly acknowledge, that she had never said she was sorry to him before, never, for anything, whereas he'd spent most of the previous term offering her countless apologies. If anything, the sudden reversal seemed to bode even worse for the situation.
He pulled his hand from his pocket and touched her leg, still bundled tightly under her cloak. She didn't shake him off, but she didn't acknowledge him either. "I don't care about that."
She laugh under her breath, the sound humorless. "Potter, you've clearly cared plenty."
"Yeah, but—I'm not mad. I've liked it, most of the time, even when I definitely shouldn't. And I can't be too mad, can I, because would any of that have even happened between us if I hadn't seen you with Morton, and if you hadn't chosen to wind me up afterwards?"
His breakfast churned uncomfortably in his stomach as she thought about it, about the question that had plagued him for so long that he'd finally laid bare. He tried not to remember how much, or exactly what, he'd eaten. She turned to him, and she gave him that searching look that always made him wonder what she hunted for across his face. "I don't know," she admitted with great reluctance. Something in her tone suggested that her words somehow revealed as much as the question he'd asked, although he couldn't figure out how. "I think all this happened—we happened— in part because this knocked you down a peg, you dealing with me and him. Several pegs. You seemed a lot less confident that you had it in the bag."
"Had what in the bag?"
She didn't mince words. "Me."
"What?" She leaned back slightly, away from him, as if surprised by the ferocity in his voice. He touched her cheek, stroked the cold flush of her skin with his thumb as his fingers cupped behind her ear, and fought the urge to kiss her. "Evans, I never thought that."
She didn't pull away, although she didn't lean back towards him, either, as he'd hoped. "Maybe," she said evenly, and he couldn't tell if she believed him or not. "But you acted it."
He gave in and kissed her, then, and the tip of her nose felt cold against his cheek, even as her mouth seemed almost impossibly warm. She let him, let him until he moved to gather her closer to him with his arm, and then she stopped him, gently, with a hand on his chest.
"I never thought that," he repeated. Her eyes looked painfully bright. "But I believe you, that it came off that way. I've been a prat. I've done and said a lot of things I shouldn't have over the years. And I've been confident about a lot of things, and arrogant for sure, but you were never one of them."
She turned back towards the lake and didn't respond for a long time.
"You've been a great Head Boy," she offered finally. "I didn't think you would be, at first. I know I made that pretty clear on the train." She almost smiled there, but not quite. "But you've done better than I thought you ever could. You're engaged, you listen, you have ideas, you do what you know you're meant to and go even further—you've actually asked me to explain some of the duties to you that I just didn't because I didn't think you'd care. You surprised me."
She left unspoken, but he could surmise, from the wonder in her voice and the way he knew she prided herself as Head Girl, that she meant this as the highest form of compliment.
"I wanted to impress you." There seemed no reason to lie.
She did smile, then, just a little. "I know. You did."
He reached for her cheek again, unwilling—or maybe, by that point, unable—to stop himself. She brushed his hand away, but didn't throw him off entirely. Instead, she took his hand and brought it within the dark confines of her cloak, where she held it between her hands, warm in her lap.
"I don't want Morton to ask you out." He waited for her to push him away, but she didn't. "He's going to, isn't he? That's what McKinnon was on about at breakfast."
Her impassive expression didn't change. "Yeah. You were right, when you said so over break. Are you going to gloat?"
"I wouldn't gloat about this. I didn't want to be right."
Her fingertips traced the calluses along his palm, deep from years of Quidditch. From the look on her face, he doubted she made the movements consciously, but he couldn't read anything else in her expression.
"What are you going to say?" he asked when it became apparent that she didn't intend to respond.
"I'm going to tell him no," she answered immediately, with no trace of doubt, and he felt his body release tension he hadn't even realized he'd gathered. She must have felt it too, their shoulders close enough to touch, because she raised her eyebrows at him. "I meant it, what I said when we patrolled. I don't intend to date anyone. And he'll get over it, although I don't know if Marlene will. I don't know what he said to her about me, but she is so set on this. I think she just doesn't want to be the only non-Ravenclaw around them anymore. Which make sense, from what she's said about break. It sounds exhausting."
He hoped, fervently, that Marlene didn't hold the same sort of sway over her that Sirius did over him.
"Will you sit with us again in the common room, then?" he asked. "Because Sirius might actually be mad at me that you're not, because it's keeping Jones away. And I don't think he's ever been mad at me before."
That made her smile, truly. "She's mad too, although in her own way, which I expect is a lot easier to deal with than he is." Her voice became more conversational, confidential, the way she'd taken to speaking whenever they discussed Sirius and Hestia over break, and it warmed him to hear, despite the cold.
"To you, maybe. She's about bit my head off a couple times."
"Oh, she mentioned. I told her to go ahead, lose the restraint and let you have it, but she's a better person than me."
Her laughter made him laugh, made the last week drop off him like dead weight. He waffled a bit, uncertain if he should press the advantage when so much had improved. "So, are we okay?" He hated how tentative he sounded, but rushed on. "I just want things to go back to how they were towards the end of break. Between us. Those days were…" He didn't know how to characterize the time that had passed after the New Year. He didn't have the words. "I was really happy," he finally settled on, and the words sounded hollow, restrained, even to him.
"That would be enough?" she asked, watching carefully for his reaction. He didn't miss the warning in her voice, and he understood. She could have left the next part unsaid, although she seemed almost forcefully intent on making herself clear. "Because, like I said, I don't intend to date anyone."
James didn't know what to say, not at first. Of all the ways he had thought the conversation might go, he hadn't expected anything like that.
Was this the same conversation she'd had with Morton, back in fifth year? He wanted to ask, but knew that he couldn't, aware that anything of the sort would derail everything. But it seemed like they approached the precipice of some sort of agreement, something where his word would suddenly change, if not everything between them, at least a lot.
A sudden, dark question flitted through his frantic mind. Was she simply swapping out Morton for him, replacing a non-boyfriend model that no longer worked with one that she hoped would? But he felt her fingers on his hand again, and thought that, no, that couldn't be it. He tried to remember anytime he'd seen Lily take off with Morton for a talk, anytime he'd watched something other than professionalism pass between them publically, anytime she'd willingly sought out him and his friends like she did with the Marauders. He couldn't conjure a single image. Somehow, he doubted she'd ever held Morton's hand like she did his, or curled up next to him on a couch, or kissed him freely, just because, as she had with him in the Quidditch pitch. What was between him and Lily—whatever it was—wasn't the same. He was sure.
"It's not what I want," he told her honestly, "But you know that, I'm sure. But…if that's what I can get, to be around you, that can be enough, yeah."
She regarded him for several long, intense moments, and then squeezed his hand. "Okay," she said simply, and again, there seemed a certain finality in her voice, the sort he'd noticed before. But it no longer felt like a breakup. Instead, he felt a new sense of hope. "We can be like we were, then. I did like it."
His heart skipped a beat. "Will you still patrol with me?" His words came out more eager than he would have liked.
She smiled a bit, and spoke carefully, as if measuring each word. "Maybe. You can ask me."
He grinned. That was a start. "Will you sit near me, like you used to? On the couch in the common room?"
"I might."
"Will you go to the Quidditch pitch and fly with me again?"
She laughed, and he loved the sound. "Absolutely not, and you know it. Oh." She stood suddenly, but didn't drop his hand, simply pulled upon it until he followed suit. "Quidditch practice. Go. If we lose to Ravenclaw, I will definitely never patrol with you again. I'll be furious."
"Not as much as me," he promised, more seriously than she sounded, and he knew she understood. He hadn't lost to Morton yet, and he really didn't plan to start. Still, he hesitated. She hadn't dropped his hand. "Evans, what if I kiss you? Will you let me?"
"That depends entirely."
"On what?"
She bit her lip, looking solemn, but then smiled so suddenly that James swore that she'd only done so because she'd given in and let herself, controlling to the end. "What's the phase of the moon? What's the location of Saturn? What house is Mars in? What—"
She laughed against his mouth as he kissed her, and then pulled him, he could help but notice, along the far side of the large tree, so that no one from the far-distant castle might accidentally spot them, although they hadn't seen another soul in ages. He didn't mind, though, as she leaned back against the tree and tugged him into her, slipping herself quite easily into the folds of his cloak. She tempered the heat of his kiss with a slow softness of her tongue that only increased his need to push her as hard as he could against the tree, to hold her as tight as he dared without fearing he'd crush her.
He dragged his mouth away eventually, but not his body, although he leaned a steadying arm on the tree above her head. He looked at her, watched the rapid breaths that fell from her mouth, freezing in the air, mingling with his. "I'm sorry," he said, after she bit her lip almost in question as to why he'd pulled back. "For the thing with your neck, the other night. I didn't realize what I was doing until you got mad. Honestly."
She turned a bit pinker, he thought, or maybe he just imagined it, the tip of her nose and her cheeks already so flushed from cold. "Oh." She regarded him for a moment, and her eyes flashed, suddenly sly. "I thought you were doing it to wind me up, to get me back for kissing you before we went in the common room."
"I wouldn't play that game with you. I'd enjoy it, but you'd win every time." When she laughed, low and soft, the sound made his stomach twist something fierce. "But I wasn't doing that to you. I wouldn't when you're mad."
"I knew that, after I saw your face and I thought about it for a bit. You really did look stunned. But…you were doing it when I was reading, before we started to row, so I figured you knew what you were doing."
"I really didn't," he protested, but he found he didn't need to insist quite so hard. Their faces remained so close that her nose brushed his as she nodded, and he plucked a piece of bark out from the crown of her head, tangled in her hair, that the motion had shaken loose. "I didn't know I was doing it when you were reading. You didn't let on at all."
She looked gratified at that. "I didn't want you to know that it bothered me. But…" She hesitated, and then something in her seemed to shift, almost break, in the cool resolve of her face. She took his hand that lingered inside her cloak and brought it to her chest to rest between her breasts. He could feel her heart through her jumper, beating as fast and hard as his own. "I had to reread the entire chapter later, because I couldn't focus. I was sitting there, feeling like this the whole time."
"I didn't know." His voice sounded far away from his own ears, and he found himself clutching the tree above her head so hard that the bark cut into his hand, although he barely felt it. She dropped her hands and left his there, against her chest. He heard her breath catch, just a little, as he drifted towards her breast, but she didn't stop him, just watched his face.
"That's part of why I got so mad." She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, her skin cold against his but her mouth hot. "I'll tell you, if you want," she offered, and he felt her back lift off the tree, just slightly, to press against his hand when he began to stroke her breast. "What I felt then."
He'd never wanted anything more in his entire life. "Evans—" He broke off, not trusting himself to continue, knowing he should tell her no, because he needed to get to the Quidditch pitch, but his mouth had other ideas. "Tell me."
She pulled back, to look at him, and her face had certainly flushed darker, turned the most glorious pink, and she looked more dangerous he'd ever seen. "I could feel my heart like that between my legs," she said softly. She grabbed his shirt with both hands, balled the fabric in her fists, to hold him back, away from her, as he made a noise he didn't intend to utter and moved to kiss her. "But you knew that, Potter. You had to know that, after you kissed me there on my neck in the passageway. You could tell how much I liked it, and again when you touched me there on the stairs. You had to know how wet it got me. And I was still wet, just thinking about it, when we got back to the common room and you came and sat next to me, so when you started stroking me there—"
She dropped her hands from his chest, and let him silence her, at last, as he kissed her so fiercely it nearly hurt. He didn't care that she could feel how hard he was against her hip, and when she shifted against him there, with deliberate purpose, the world seemed to drop away all the further. She laughed, nearly inaudibly from her breathlessness, as he broke away from her mouth to swear and, then pushed against her with a new, desperate purpose. She reached and caught his hands, suddenly, as they went to the hem of her jumper. "Don't you dare, your hands are freezing!"
"Evans—" he heard himself repeat, and it came out as a plea, even though he didn't know what he would even ask of her. He couldn't think of anything else to say.
She shrugged him off as he went to her neck, to find that place below her ear to hear her make the delicious noise he still remembered from the passageway, desperate to make her feel again as she had just described. She then physically took his face between her hands and brought him to look at her. Her pupils looked the size of Knuts. "You have Quidditch. Stop doing this to me."
That broke through the cloud around his brain, even as it registered, somewhere, that she sounded nowhere near as steady as usual. "Doing this to you? Who do you think is in charge here?" He didn't recognize the sound of his own voice, and couldn't even really feel the words as they formed on his lips.
She laughed and she kissed him, just once, very soft, not at all like he wanted her to. "Me, of course. Clearly. But that doesn't mean I'm not just as bothered."
"Show me."
She continued to laugh, although something about the sound didn't nettle James, not like he thought, later, that it probably would have if he thought she were laughing at him. Something in the sound, or in her face, sounded rueful, as if she laughed at herself as much as him. "No. You have Quidditch."
"Fuck Quidditch. Evans—"
"Unhand me, please," she said, and she sounded so prim, so entirely proper Head Girl, even despite her mussed hair, swollen lips, and wild eyes, that he did, even though it almost physically hurt. "Thank you." She reached up, felt the back of her hair, and plucked out a piece of bark. "You'll be fine, don't look like that," she said, but he had no idea how he looked. The blood still pounded in his ears too much for him to think. She took a few steps away from him, and then turned to look back. "Go take care of it yourself. That's what I'm going to go do." With that parting shot, she darted away, even as he reached out to pull her back as she'd clearly anticipated, and she took the first thirty paces or so back to the castle at a jog. "Have a good practice!" she called cheerfully over her shoulder, and he shouted something back at her beyond words, just a strangled sound.
xxx
James felt better after several cold hours in the Quidditch pitch, and then considerably warmer, again, when he and Sirius returned to the common room afterwards to find the girls had already migrated to his friends' usual spot by the fire.
The look on Sirius' face alone made his already great victory feel all the sweeter. "You didn't tell me you fixed it!" he exclaimed, watching from near the portrait hole as two of Marlene and Peter's pawns tussled fiercely across the chess board. Hestia sat nearby, her face deadly serious as she whispered advice to Marlene, pointing around the board for emphasis. Lily sat nearby on the sofa next to Remus, both bent over a book in her lap, their heads nearly touching. Sirius shook James' shoulder, grinning. "Good man. C'mon."
"I've been informed that we sit here sometimes now," Marlene said as they approached. She nudged a rook forward, but they were Sirius' pieces, normally, so it took its sweet time before moving, and only then reluctantly, clearly not trusting her judgment. "Which means that I own the chess board now, just so we're clear."
Normally Sirius would have thrown something back, something sharp to banter, but he didn't. "Sure, McKinnon, you got it," he agreed cheerfully, and he leaned against the side of Hestia's chair, surveying the board. "Pete's got you in about…eight moves anyway."
"Six," Peter corrected, and he seemed delighted at the look of alarm that flooded Marlene's face.
"What are we reading?" James asked, pulling an armchair near Lily's side of the couch. He couldn't quite look at her, curled up under her usual blanket, book in hands, without thinking about what she'd told him earlier, about the last time she'd sat near him on the couch. Something about the way she smiled at him told him she knew his thoughts without a word.
"Potions book," she explained, flashing him the cover, which, with only a faded cauldron embossed into the black leather, told him nothing more. "There's some stuff in here—healing potions and whatnot—I thought Remus might be interested in, since we're going over charms too."
"You think we could try something before next week?" Remus asked her, and the promise of the next full moon hung unspoken in his question in a way subtle enough to fly over Marlene and Hestia's heads if they listened.
"Yeah. We can whenever you want, really. Slughorn won't care if we use the dungeons, although he might give you a little shit for a sudden renewed interest in Potions." She flicked back and forth between two pages. "Which one are you thinking? We could make both, really, but I wouldn't try them at the same time. If there's any adverse effects, you'll want to know which one it came from…" And then they were off, heads back together, and James felt forgotten, but not in a way that bothered him. It felt good to see her dive so eagerly into the task of aiding Remus' lycanthropy, as she had promised over Christmas break. And it felt even better to see the look of appreciation on Remus' face as he spoke quietly to her, which echoed the expression that Peter had worn after Lily had arranged a place for him to sit on the Hogwarts Express.
Marlene lost in six moves, as Peter had promised. She looked half-tempted to knock over his remaining pieces, but she just smiled at him instead. "Really well done, Pettigrew." Peter looked even more pleased than he ever had beating Sirius. "Hey, Potter?" Marlene continued, and James looked over at her to find her surveying him inscrutably. "What did you do, to get Lily to forgive you for whatever it was you did? She wouldn't explain either thing in a way that made sense."
"I did explain," Lily said, even as neither she nor Remus looked up from her book. "He was a prat—"
"Yes, but what specifically did he do?"
"I mean, what does he ever do? It's the little shit, and it built up. Christ, Mar, how many days were he and I together over break? You wouldn't have lasted half as long without losing it on him."
"Probably true." Something about the way Marlene held her mouth as she agreed confirmed to James, again, what he'd always assumed: she didn't like him very much.
"I yelled at him today, cursed him, and he apologized." Lily waved an uncaring hand. "The usual. There's not much to tell."
"You looked fine at the pitch," Sirius said, and James turned quickly away from his swift, searching look.
"I wasn't." He watched the corner of Lily's mouth quirk. "I was pretty messed up."
"Where'd you take off the counter-curse?" she asked as she turned a page, still without looking at him. The question sounded completely innocent, completely ordinary, but he knew exactly what she meant.
"Locker room," he said tersely, and heat crept up the back of his neck as he thought of how quickly he'd come once he'd touched himself at the memories of her words, and the feel of her mouth, and her body against his. Still, he couldn't suppress a grin at the way she threw her head back and laughed with abandon.
Sirius began to laugh too, almost despite himself. "What the fuck did she get you with?" he demanded, interested, as he reached down to touch Hestia's hair with a sort of absent fondness.
"I don't even know," James admitted, and with such honesty that Lily laughed all over again.
"I'm sorry—" she began, reaching up to touch her face, as if to steady herself.
"You're not."
"No, I'm really not." She smiled at him, then, eyes bright and mischievous, before she addressed Marlene. "So yeah, we're fine. He's at least sorry, even if I'm not, so we can get on again. I'm glad, because being mad at someone honestly takes up so much time and energy. And now I can spend the time I devoted to disliking Potter to teaching Pettigrew poker, and watching you lose, Mar."
Marlene's protest got drowned under Sirius' exultant cry of, "Muggle Studies!" and he quickly had everyone moving, shuffling them around to form a circle.
"She doesn't like me," James muttered to Lily as he stood at Sirius' behest.
Lily didn't bother to deny it. "No, she doesn't," she agreed, and it pleased him, at least, that she didn't sound bothered by it in the slightest.
xxx
Morton held Lily back after their next prefect's meeting, which James entirely expected, although knowing it would happen didn't make it any easier to see. He lingered a bit near the Transfiguration door to give Lily the chance to ask him to wait for her, but she didn't. He purposefully didn't shut the door behind him as he left, but only got midway down the corridor, not even sure where he intended to go, before he heard it close.
Neither Marlene nor Lily showed up for dinner, and he couldn't help but notice that Morton and Rooney both sat absent at the Ravenclaw table too.
"I'm sure it's nothing," Hestia said under her breath as she reached across the table towards him to gather a basket of rolls that she set down and promptly ignored. He'd started so much at her acknowledgment of the situation that he almost knocked over his pumpkin juice, but when he looked to her for further comment, found that she'd immediately engaged Peter in a conversation about Herbology.
Hestia disappeared after dinner too, with such swiftness that she left even Sirius bewildered.
"She was literally right behind me," he said more than once after they'd returned to the common room.
"She frightens me a bit more every day," Peter said after Sirius' third such comment. "I can't ever tell what's going on in her head. Seems a bit more dangerous than Evans and McKinnon, you know? At least they'll tell you what they're thinking, even if it's terrible."
When Hestia finally reappeared, near an hour later, she looked distressed enough that she frightened all four of them. "I'm fine," she insisted before they could even ask. "Really. But, Potter, can you come with me? I passed a tapestry on the way up here that sounds like there's some students stuck behind it, I don't even know. I tried for ages to figure it out, but maybe you can find McGonagall?" She turned as she continued talking, and he had to follow her to listen as she continued. "I'm not sure where she keeps these hours, and I imagine you'd have better luck, as Head Boy—"
She kept up the chatter all the way out of the portrait hole and into the corridor, and then dropped the story completely, although her face didn't change much. She still looked distressed. "Lily's in the prefect's bathroom." He could smell it on her, then, as she drew him aside, the smell of the perfumed bath. "She wanted me to tell you, so you 'didn't go off your head thinking she was with Morton.' That's a direct quote."
James realized he'd never heard her use Morton's name before, and the weight of it, and all that it acknowledged, felt rather heavy. "Is she okay?" he asked, because everything in her expression suggested otherwise.
Hestia dragged a hand through her dark hair, and James recognized the same motion on her that he and Sirius so often made, one that Lily did too. "Yeah. She's fine. She and Mar got into a pretty heated row, I guess. It…didn't sound great." She looked like she wanted to say more, but thought better of it.
"Should I go see her?"
"Will you not go, if I say you shouldn't?" she asked, and even as he opened his mouth to answer, he realized she hadn't expected him to respond. "I figured you will no matter what I say. Just…be nice." Her tone changed so drastically, from soft to harsh, that James suddenly recalled Peter's fear of her. "I expect you would be, even if I didn't say anything, but sometimes you're so fucking thick. She can be thick too, but you—" She broke off, pressing her lips together, as if she didn't even have the words to express her disappointment in him properly. Because that was how she sounded: disappointed.
"Would you ever talk about this with me?" he asked, and she seemed taken aback by the request.
"About what?"
"All of it. Evans and Morton. Evans and me. The whole thing."
"No," she said instantly, and it became his turn for disappointment. "No, because what am I going to do, tell you everything she says?" She scoffed, but her eyes had gone kind again, and she looked more like herself. "No, you have Sirius for those conversations, but I wouldn't listen to everything he says either. He's also kind of thick. And I don't think he'd even disagree with me saying so."
James realized he'd never heard her call Sirius by his first name before, only his surname, and it sounded strange from her lips. "Probably not. Honestly, you're the most emotionally intelligent out of all of us," he said, and he meant it.
She smiled. "Don't undersell Lupin. Or Pettigrew, really. I think there's more to him than people usually see."
James couldn't help but think that the same assessment applied entirely to her as well, although he doubted she would ever agree with that.
She shook her hair back from her face, straightened her shoulders, and let her face fall back into lines of worry, although less than she'd looked when she'd pulled him from the common room. "I'll tell them you couldn't figure out the tapestry and went to find McGonagall," she said, and she went back to the Fat Lady's painting without another word. As he watched her go, affecting such a perfect embodiment of concern, he felt, not for the first time, that he didn't really know her, or what she was capable of, at all.
It took him several minutes to get past Boris the Bewildered. He knew the statue wouldn't open with someone already inside the prefect's bathroom, and that he had to use the base password to reset the statue in order to get in. But it still took him an embarrassingly long time to recall what Lily had told him the base password was. He remembered, eventually ("Confundus," which made since for the confused wizard), and found Lily inside, looking much the same as she had the evening after Slughorn's party. She floated near the side of the tub, cheek resting on one arm draped atop the tiles, and she opened and closed the tap nearest her repeatedly, sending a thin stream of aquamarine bubbles, fine as glitter, into the water around her.
She started a bit when she heard his feet, and when she looked up at him, he thought it looked a bit like she had been crying. "I didn't ask Hestia to send you, even if she said I did," she said, and she sounded sharper than he expected. "Just so we're clear."
The comment rolled off his back, even as he knew it wouldn't have a week or two before. Somehow, he understood that she didn't mean anything personal by it—she just seemed determined to maintain that she didn't need anyone, including him. "I know," he told her. "She didn't tell me I should come. I just wanted to." He crossed the room to sit on a bench near the bathtub, the same bench he'd sunk down on after he hadn't kissed her the night of Slughorn's Christmas party. "You alright?"
"I'm absolutely fine," she said, but everything in her eyes implied the exact opposite.
"We missed you at dinner," he offered after she'd returned her cheek to her arm, and reached a soapy arm, again, to fiddle with the tap.
She made a noncommittal noise. "Was Marlene there?"
"No." She made no effort to respond. "Where'd Jones find you?" he asked.
"Dungeon. But she dragged me out, I don't know, half an hour ago, and we came here to go for a swim, like we did all the time over break. She hates brewing. Hurts her head, she says, although I think she just sees it as a waste of precious Herbology ingredients."
He stood up and moved closer to her, and he felt like some sort of jungle predator chasing down skittish prey, worried a wrong move might frighten her away. He sat by the edge of the tub, as he'd done after Slughorn's Christmas party, and as the smell and heat of the water hit him, he felt a tremendous sense of déjà vu. "So you fought with McKinnon, then?"
She lifted up her head and also her arm, propping her elbow on the tile and her chin atop her hand so she could look at him. Up close, from the pink that rimmed her eyes, he knew for sure that she'd had a good cry. "Yeah. We've never fought like that. I expected her to be a bit mad, of course, but not like she was. And, god, once we both started getting real mad, we just built off each other and everything went to hell."
"Will you tell me about it?" It seemed a safer question than asking her if she wanted to talk about it, because he had to assume, from the look on her face, that she'd answer with a staunch no.
She seemed to consider his request for a long moment, and then shrugged. As her shoulders lifted out of the water, James could see the faintest lines of pale blue across each of her shoulders, and he felt a familiar sense of disappointment, and also relief, to know she wasn't floating beside him naked, as he'd wondered. He felt, suddenly, that he could focus much more as she agreed, "Okay. She knew Morton meant to pull me before it even happened—"
"Will you start there? With what you talked about with him?" He waited for her to tell him that she didn't have to and that it wasn't his business, but she hesitated only a moment before starting over. He hoped she didn't read the surprise that almost physically coursed through his body at that moment, but knew that she probably did.
"We were in the Transfiguration room for ages, probably half an hour or forty-five minutes, and he actually took it really well, when he asked me out and I said no."
James felt suddenly very grateful that he hadn't waited for her. He couldn't imagine standing outside the door for that amount of time without going mad. "Then why did it take so long?"
"He just…" She pushed her fingers through the wet hair that clung to her scalp, and she hesitated again, but longer than before. "He had a lot to say," she finally settled on, and then waved a hand at him to stop him before he could push her. Bubbles flew from her fingertips and splattered his trousers, although he couldn't tell if she meant to do so or not. "Let me get there, okay? I don't want to talk about this, and I really don't want to talk about it with you. I need a minute."
He couldn't remember if she'd ever done that before, struggled in front of him and admitted it. Her clear discomfort triggered his, and he felt suddenly a bit more anxious than before. "Okay."
She took a breath. "He basically said that he didn't want to sneak around anymore, that he wanted to be more than we are—more than we were," she corrected quickly with a glance at his face. "I think he had a lot more that he wanted to say about that, but I just—I felt bad, so I tried to cut him off before he could spill his guts and make things worse. I told him that we weren't like that, and we'd been pretty clear about that nearly since the beginning. But he wouldn't leave off. He…he had all sorts of ways to point out to me that it had actually been obvious for a while that he felt differently than I'd assumed. And he went off on all these different things, all these different ways he'd tried to show that this wasn't just…a shag, to him." She'd seemed reluctant to put it in those words, as if she didn't want to remind him of the nature of their relationship. Oddly, even as she said it, James found that it lifted his spirits more than anything. She clearly didn't want to upset him, and that eased him just a little.
He reached out and took her hand, the one that had never ceased fiddling with the bathtub tap. Her skin felt warm and wet, almost slick from the bubble bath. She jumped a little at his touch, but didn't pull away. "What did he say? What did he want to point out?"
"You don't want to know," she said instantly, a bit reproachfully. "It won't do you any good."
"It probably won't do me any good," he agreed. "But I do want to know, if you'll tell me." He hoped his voice sounded as offhanded as he tried to make it, that his words didn't reveal how he actually felt, because the desire to know what Morton had said burned hot and sick in his chest. He wanted to understand as much as he could between them, just to solidify that whatever they had shared wasn't what he had started building with her.
"Just…different things he's said or done over the years, ways he tried to show me how he felt. Like, he went looking for me fifth year, after Snape called me a mudblood," she told him eventually, and he flinched at the slur even as she didn't, even as she sounded entirely matter-of-fact. "You remember that day."
He looked away from her, too afraid he'd see resentment in her face for his role in the whole debacle. "Yes."
"Well, Alex came and found me afterwards." He didn't like that she'd slipped into using his first name, and for the first time in their conversations that he could recall. "He made it seem like he just happened upon me, but he told me today that he'd actually gone a few places before he found me in the library stacks, way up in the Charms section. And he sat with me while I cried. We'd only been…meeting up outside patrol for maybe a month then, and had only started snogging, nothing more, but he still searched me out. But then we went home for summer break, so we never talked about it again."
James' mouth felt rather dry. He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. He wanted to apologize for his part in Snape's words, and if she'd looked at him, he knew he would have. But she didn't. Her eyes remained unfocused, trained across the room, as if she looked at nothing.
"He remembers my birthday, too. It passed fifth year when I was dating Greg, and Alex and I were still just friends, but he acknowledged it then." His name again. It hit James almost as hard as her use of "mudblood," although not quite. "And he got me something last year, just—something little, something we'd laughed about in passing. I'd forgotten we'd talked about it entirely, but he remembered and got it for me. He said other things, too, a lot of them. He admitted that he'd gotten Layton to start scheduling us for patrol together fifth year. And that…we started getting scheduled for a lot of the same times way back in first term, in early November, after Greg and I had already been dating for a while. He said he did it anyway, had us patrol together in case Greg and I didn't work out, because he liked me already. And, of course, we didn't work out, and Alex was there to talk to me about it when it happened."
He couldn't help interrupting her, even as he wanted her to go on, while at the same time he wished she'd never started telling him any of it. "Evans, when's your birthday?" It felt very important.
She jumped a little at his voice. "End of the month. The thirtieth."
He nodded. "What happened then?"
She took her hand from his, but gently, and used both hands to briefly rub at her face. "There was more, a lot more. But I told him that I couldn't know what he felt from most of it, because he always played everything off casually—he just happened upon me, just seemed to remember my birthday, we were just randomly assigned patrol together, all supposed coincidences. And if he said anything serious, it was always…in the midst of us doing something where I just thought it was in the heat of the moment, and not anything he actually meant." She looked up at him apologetically, and then the words spilled from her lips. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apologize," he said, and he meant it. "Remus said—he basically said that I can't be upset with you over things that happened before you and I ever actually talked."
"But your face—"
He wiped his hand on his pants, still damp from hers, and then reached up to rub his own face, to scrub off any expression that lingered, because he knew, from her tone, that however he looked wasn't good. "I don't like it. But you don't have to apologize. And I did ask. Go on."
She did, after a long pause. "We went back and forth about that for a while. He thought the sum of all those things should have indicated something, and he's probably right in a way. I'm sure, on some level, I didn't want to know how he felt. We ended up both sitting in desks like we were in fucking Transfiguration class, trying to hash it all out. It's the longest I've talked to him one-on-one since fifth year, back when we just patrolled together and nothing else happened. We did talk back then, and a lot. But we stopped talking once things went further. It felt too much like talking to a mate, I think, and we were doing things you don't typically do with your mates."
"Do you feel like that now? With us?" The question formed in his brain even as it left his mouth, and once he heard it hang in the perfumed air, he wanted desperately to take it back.
She pressed her lips together, and looked, for a second, so severe that it scared him. But she shook her head, a wordless no. Then she pushed against the side of the sunken tub, to propel herself backwards, and slipped under the water.
It looked as close to running away as he could ever remember her doing, outside of her hasty exit when they had first kissed in the stairwell on Christmas Day. Even still, even after he'd watched her dash up her dormitory stairs, he'd felt sure she wasn't capable of retreat.
She stayed under for a long while, long enough that he began to consider, although not entirely seriously, that she might have set out to go unconscious to avoid talking to him further. Finally, she popped up on the opposite side of the tub, as far from him as possible. "He mentioned you," she told him, wiping bubbles from her cheeks.
"Oh, really?"
"Don't sound like that," she warned, but without any real fire behind her voice. She swam back towards him with a pretty decent side-stroke, keeping her head above water. "You had to know he would, after that stupid rumor."
"What did he say?" He tried, and failed, not to sound too pleased and eager as she relaxed her arms over the side of the tub again, and a bit closer to him than before, he noticed.
"He asked if it was true, of course. I told him it wasn't, that we're not dating, because I meant it when I told him that I didn't want to date anyone." She fixed him with a look—eyebrows raised, mouth firm—that imparted that she relayed the message as not just one that she intended for Morton to understand, but him as well. "He seemed kind of relieved at that, but he didn't like it when I told him that we had spent Christmas together, the five of us, and that you and I are friends now. He said that you obviously only stayed over break last minute because you knew I was."
"He's right. That was absolutely part of it."
"I know. And I told him I knew that, but that he couldn't get mad about it, since he'd apparently orchestrated an entire secret plot to get close to me fifth year when I was dating someone else. And he didn't like that, of course. But it was the only time I could even get a little mad at him. I just felt…so bad." She pulled her hair over one shoulder and began to fiddle with the ends. "It might have been easier if he'd just gotten mad, but he never did. He was so patient, even when I asked him why this came about now, after he'd started seeing that you and I were friendly. I asked him if this came from some sort of desire to win against you, because he doesn't like you and he never has. But he even took that well, and never batted an eye. He just explained all the reasons why that wasn't true, and why he actually liked me. And then I felt worse, because I had asked it hoping that he wouldget mad so I would have an excuse to leave."
"So how did you? Leave, that is."
She almost laughed. "McGonagall came in. She looked a bit surprised, but we were just sitting there, talking, so I don't think she thought much of it. I came up with something about trying to work out patrol issues around all of the extra training sessions Ravenclaw's planning before the game next month. And then I just…basically bolted as soon as I could." She almost laughed again, but more humorlessly than before. "Real brave. Real Gryffindor."
She hoisted herself from the tub, then, and James immediately summoned her a towel before her torso even came out of the water. He thrust it at her as soon as she stood, and did his best to look away. She wore a two-piece swimming suit in a light blue, the bottom slung low around her hips and the top tight enough to reveal the soft shape of her breasts. He hadn't seen her as exposed since he'd spied on her with Morton, and even though he'd seen all of her then, looking at her in the present moment felt worse, entirely more tempting. He knew by then what he hadn't before, knew what it felt like to kiss her, knew how the smooth skin of her sides and back slid underneath his hands, knew the feel of her breast in his hand and the way that her breath hitched when he stroked her there. But if she noticed his discomfort, or the heat that he felt spread up from his stomach into his chest and neck, she didn't comment. She wrapped the towel around herself immediately, and he knew then that she wasn't in the mood to torment him, although he desperately wished that she would.
She started as if towards the bench, but he reached out to stop her and almost tripped her in the process. "Sorry, just—hold on. Sit down." She looked like she might refuse him for a moment, but then his hand went to her leg, to the old injury from Christmas Eve. Even with her skin flushed a faint pink from the hot water, the red, angry scab still stood out starkly. "Sit down," he repeated, sharper, and she rolled her eyes but complied, and allowed him to take her leg into his lap, fairly soaking his trousers. He hardly noticed the water, just as he hardly noticed (but still couldn't help but notice just a little) that he had untethered access to the stretch of her leg from ankle to mid-thigh, and how soft and slippery her skin felt under his hands.
"It's nothing," she told him instantly, leaning back on one hand. "Madam Pomphrey's dealing with it."
"It doesn't look like nothing," he said, even sharper than before, and seemed to falter slightly at his tone. "Evans, it looks…" Up close, he could see that her wound had never healed, not really, not completely. It still looked like dozens of tiny clusters of deep cuts dotted her leg, most scabbed over, although even as he watched, a slow trickle of blood wept from two spots that had broken open.
"I know how it looks," she said, and her tone turned sharp in return. "If I could get my wand—" He cut off her pointed remark by summoning it for her, and it flew over from where she'd left it on the bench by her robes, shoes, and long gray stockings.
He watched as she ran the tip of her wand down the length of her leg, and the bleeding stopped. The wound didn't heal, not exactly, but it looked a bit firmer, somehow, not quite as fresh. With another flick, she instantly bandaged her leg, almost wrapping his fingers in alongside the gauze. He knew, from her face, that she meant it as a silent reproach. "Did it ever heal?" he asked as she pulled back from him, tucking her leg securely by her side.
"No."
"You should have told me."
"Why?"
He pulled off his glasses with a sigh, unable to hide the frustration that he knew only grew out of worry. "Because I give a shit about you, okay?"
She didn't answer, but he didn't expect her to. When he put his glasses back on, he found that she'd magically dried her hair, and she'd tied it up atop her head, although several pieces had already escaped around her face. He resisted the urge to reach out push them all behind her ears. "Tell me about McKinnon," he requested. The topic seemed safer than pressing her about her injury.
"I don't want to." And as she said it, he could tell just from the four simple words that she absolutely would not change her mind as she went on. "As much as I didn't want to talk about Morton, I want to talk about Marlene even less. So it'll be brief. Don't push me on this."
James didn't argue, although she clearly expected him to. "That's fine." It felt good just to hear her refer to Morton by his surname again, which felt entirely less personal than when she called him 'Alex.'
Lily stood, and if her leg hurt her, she didn't show it, either on her face or by favoring her non-injured side. In two quick spells, she dried herself completely and then transfigured her clothes back to the skirt, button-down, and grey cardigan of her uniform. James found it entirely easier to look at her afterwards.
"She obviously knew he was going to ask me out, because she was waiting for me in the common room when I got back from talking to him. I think she expected me to be happy, although I don't know why." She sat on the bench to pull her stockings over her feet and up over her legs to rest below her knees, and James hurriedly looked away again, the movement undeniably erotic in a way she didn't seem to realize. The mermaid on the stained-glass window above the bathtub winked at him and flashed her fin. "I've made it very clear since she got back that I absolutely did not want him to ask me out. I guess she figured I'd change my mind in the moment with him. I suppose I see why. A lot of girls would."
He could hear her place her shoes on the ground and figured it was safe to look back at her. He found her watching him, and he could feel his ears heat up, because she had to know why he'd looked away. But she didn't display her characteristic amusement at his obvious attraction to her. She looked tired, as she had the day by the lake. He nodded at her to go on.
"She was confused at first, but she's always gotten this look when she's about to really get mad, and as soon as I saw her start to look that way, I pulled her up to our dorm. And I'm glad I did, because she started saying all sorts of stuff—nothing really bad at first, just questions and little comments, bits of passive-aggressive things. But then I got frustrated, which made her frustrated, so then I got angry, which made her angry, and on and on." She waved an expressive hand. "I think we both said some things we didn't mean—at least, I hope she didn't mean them, because I didn't mean what I said—and eventually I just left. We've just…"
She gave a sigh that sounded so sad that James got up and crossed the room to sit by her, more out of instinct than anything. He wanted to touch her, to reach out and stroke her back or her leg or put an arm around her shoulders, but he didn't.
"We've been friends for so long that she knows everything to say to me to really make it hurt like no one else can," she said after a long pause. "I suppose I know those things about her too, but I didn't say them, not all of them, not the really bad ones. Maybe she held back too, I don't know, but it really didn't feel like it. We've never rowed like that. Or at all, honestly. And I know everyone in the common room could hear us yelling by the end, based on the looks I got when I came down the stairs. They didn't hear the words, I don't think—our dorm is up pretty high—but everyone definitely heard us screaming. We weren't quiet."
"I assume she went off with Rooney and Morton afterwards. They weren't at dinner either." He touched her at that, lightly between the shoulder blades. She didn't react except to nod.
"Yeah, I expect so. And she'll probably stay with them until curfew or later, but I'm still not going back to the dorm until I know she's asleep."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know." She paused, thoughtful, and then ticked a list off on her fingers. "I could go to the library. I could make up an excuse to visit Slughorn or Flitwick—I have to see Flitwick tomorrow anyway with Madam Pomphrey because she wants his opinion on my leg, although lord knows how he'll react when he has to watch me take off my stockings. That's going to be weird. I could go back to the dungeons and brew more. I showed Remus a couple different potions last week, but there's more I'd like to try before the full moon. I could—"
"Go to the kitchens with me, because you missed dinner."
She turned towards him and gave him the look he hated to see, like she wanted to tell him no, even though she usually agreed in the end. But for once she didn't agree, and instead changed topics entirely. "I feel like I should tell you, in case you find out some other way, although I don't know how you could." She took on a brisk attitude, her back suddenly straightened and her chin tipped up, entirely the opposite of the exhaustion that had seemed burrowed deep in her bones a moment before.
He stared. "Okay."
"I'd like to say it's not your business," she continued swiftly, and he realized that she rushed her words not out of some renewed sense of energy, but because she wanted to get past them quickly. "But I think you'd say it is. So. Morton kissed me today. I stopped him. I would have, even if not for you, because kissing him would have been entirely contrary to the message I wanted to send."
He watched her wait for him to speak, her body rigid with tension. "'Even if not for me,'" he repeated back to her, and he saw, in the way she looked at him, a similar expression to the one she'd worn before taking off on a broom over break—a bit pale, eyes wider than usual, mouth working incessantly without words. "But sort of because of me?"
She closed her eyes as she exhaled slowly. She looked, for a moment, like it pained her to reluctantly admit, "Yes. I did think about you."
He tried very hard to control himself, but he couldn't stop the grin from spreading across his face. She seemed less annoyed at it than she usually did, he thought, because she said nothing, just scrunched her nose a bit when she'd opened her eyes and looked at him. He touched her face, reached over to push her loose hairs behind her ears and went to kiss her, but hesitated, uncertain, because she still seemed so very unlike herself.
She caught his meaning and closed the gap between them. She kissed him just once, very gently, and he resisted the urge to hold her there when she pulled back. That she'd caught his meaning and kissed him, he decided, was enough on its own.
He stood and pulled her to her feet. "Kitchens, c'mon. And then I'll go to you with the dungeons, if you'll have me. You can show me what you're working on for Remus."
Lily smiled at that, just a little. "You hate Potions."
"I don't hate it; I just think it's dull. But I wouldn't think that if you taught me. I don't think there's anything you could teach me that I wouldn't find utterly fascinating."
She tipped her head, mulling that over. "What about women's health, and the horrors of a period?" she asked, and she laughed at his face.
"That's a hard pass," he told her firmly, and he felt happy, happier than before. It felt good to see her laugh. "Potions it is."
He went for the exit, planning to slip out behind Boris the Bewildered and wait for her somewhere in the corridor until she could leave without anyone potentially catching that they'd exited together. But, to his surprise, she followed him out right behind him, eagerly suggesting other topics she could educate him about. ("The real-life effects of the Disemboweling Charm. The actualities of the Skin-Reversing Curse—and there are pictures for both. What it's like, truly, to spend a whole day with Snape." He protested most at the latter, of course, as she knew he would.) And even though no one saw them exit the prefect's bathroom together, with the fourth-floor corridor completely deserted, the fact that she'd risked it said a lot.