A/N: I think I got a review almost every day after I posted the last chapter, and some days my phone blew up with multiple notifications. I love those days. I'm especially grateful to those who take the time to review every chapter. I love seeing familiar usernames pop up! A couple of answers to questions I received:
I'm hoping to continue weekly updates as we move into fall. I started up my PhD program again this week, which will definitely hamper the time I can dedicate here, but I've built writing this into my schedule. If my update schedule changes, I will certainly note it at the top of a chapter.
Fort asked me what inspired me to start writing this story. I've always been a Marauders-era and Jily fan, and actually used to write fics back in my teens. This idea has rattled around in my head for ages, but my fic writing dropped off with the last decade of higher education. When COVID upset my normal summer fieldwork, I threw myself into this instead. It's blown up both in the amount that I've enjoyed writing it, and the response I've gotten. You all are wonderful.
Chapter Twelve
Marlene and Lily didn't speak for nearly two weeks.
Marlene avoided the common room mostly, probably off with Rooney, although James didn't care enough to find out. When she did show up she'd sit with the sixth-year girls, who seemed more than happy to have her, something James completely understood. If Sirius suddenly left their group, he knew the sixth-year boys would take him in just as fast. And Marlene made a point, it seemed, to perform as her most charming, witty self and keep the sixth-year girls in hysterics, as if to show, James thought, that she didn't need Lily or Hestia.
Because Hestia had tried for a few days to stay neutral between the two, bouncing back and forth, just as she had between the girls and the Marauders such a short time before. But she gave up suddenly, without an explanation, and stuck with Lily after that. Sirius confided in James that Marlene had proceeded to blow up on Hestia when she had pushed for reconciliation one too many times, and Hestia had decided to just throw in the towel.
"I think she feels rather left out," he heard her explain to Lily one night as they curled up beside each other on their usual couch by the Marauders in the common room. She nodded across to where Marlene sat with the sixth years, all but holding court. "I mean, she left for Christmas and everything was the same as always. And then she came back and…nothing was the same." Hestia gestured to Sirius as if to illustrate her point. After spending the first several days of the term back in a more reserved state, they'd become more affectionate again in the common room, much as they'd acted during break. James had yet to see them kiss publically, but Sirius apparently thought nothing about putting his arm around her or fiddling with her hair, and Hestia sometimes propped her legs across his lap as she read. None of this had gone unnoticed, of course, but Sirius and Hestia never defined what they were, even to James or Lily, at least from what she told him—or maybe even to each other, as far as he knew. This hadn't stopped interest in them from growing around the castle, especially among Hogwarts' girls, Lily assured James, because, as teased him again, every girl fancied Sirius.
"I got the same feeling, after I thought about our fight," Lily said, glancing up from the Charms essay she proofread for Hestia, even as Hestia proofread an equally-long Herbology essay for her. "Some of the things she said sounded that way. I think she hoped she could remedy it by dragging me kicking and screaming to the Ravenclaws. But, honestly, fuck that. If I'd wanted to be in Ravenclaw, I would have let the sorting hat put me there. But I didn't want to go. It just sounded then, and still sounds now, so…dull." She seemed to feel James' eyes on her suddenly, and caught his eye from where he sat by Sirius, clipping errant twigs from his Cleansweep Five near the fire. "Yes?" she asked expectantly.
"Nothing," he assured her, and as she turned back to Hestia to reference something in her essay, she continued to smile.
The full moon came and went, and Remus fared remarkably well, better than James could ever remember.
"Lily made me some kind of pain-killing potion to take beforehand," Remus explained the next morning, grinning despite the rising welt that spread across his cheek. "She tried to show me how to make it myself, but…no idea. I didn't follow. She warned that she didn't know what it would do to my transformation, but I felt fine. Better than fine, actually. I mean, I can still hurt myself, but it won't hurt at the time, with the goal that I'll be healed before it wears off. And I didn't feel the normal pain of the transformation at all."
"Would have been nice for her to make enough to go around," Sirius muttered. He rubbed a growing knot on his own head.
"I expect she would, if she knew how you all help me. She kind of said as much, although not in so many words. But I haven't told her, and she hasn't even asked, so…" Remus spread his hands apart, and he didn't vocalize anything in the gesture, but James interpreted it to mean, you're shit out of luck.
Lily did make enough Essence of Dittany to go around, though, which they found in four green potions bottles placed neatly upon Remus' bed, alongside a single, smaller red bottle, and a large bar of Honeydukes chocolate. James recognized her careful cursive on the scrap of parchment Remus picked up.
Remus,
Dittany in the green bottles, more pain potion in the red. Share the Dittany and chocolate, if you'd like, but the pain potion is for you, not them.
She left the letter unsigned, closed with just a single, scribbled heart.
"Bless her," Peter sighed happily as Remus threw him the chocolate bar. They'd just finished their monthly morning-after breakfast in the kitchens, but he didn't seem to care as he ripped off the wrapper. "Bit weird to think she's been in here, though. Better hide your shrine to her, Prongs, in case she ever comes back."
James snorted. There was no shrine, of course, but he found himself incredibly relieved that he hadn't left his bed too much of a mess. He'd actually pulled the covers back to make it, albeit roughly, and hadn't left out any socks or underwear, just a discarded robe near his nightstand. Overall, it felt like a win.
"It's entirely unfair that she can just waltz in here, but the second I put one foot on their stairs, I fall on my arse." Sirius uncorked a bottle of Dittany and regarded it for a moment. "Can I put this on my head?" he asked, already halfway through the motion as he spoke. He touched the spot a moment later, and then drummed his finger against it harder, testing. "Totally works," he said with a grin. "You're right, Wormtail. Bless her. I'll let her beat me at chess this evening as thanks."
Lily seemed to be waiting for them when they stumbled into Transfiguration later that morning after a few precious hours of sleep. She slipped away from the front row, where she and Hestia sat with a couple Hufflepuff girls, and joined them towards the back. She took in the sight of the four of them with one single, sweeping look, and settled on Remus. She sighed as she surveyed him, and James thought he heard all of the tension leave her body that she had refused to let show on her face.
"Glad you're okay," she said simply.
Remus reached out and took her hand for the briefest of squeezes. "Thank you. Best it's been, I think ever."
"You're a real gem, Evans," Sirius added cheerfully, and she dropped the tender smile she'd offered Remus as soon as she heard him.
"I'm glad you've finally realized that," she replied in her best prim, Head Girl voice before she turned back to Remus. "I'm sure we can make it better still, but we have a whole month to plan that out. I'm just relieved you're all in one piece. I was kind of a mess last night. Hestia finally got up with me because I couldn't sleep."
"What reason did you give her?" Sirius asked a bit sharply.
"I've got plenty of reasons not to sleep besides you idiots," she said, shrugging, but she smiled. "It wasn't hard to pull an excuse. Of course I didn't tell her, if that's what you're suggesting."
"He's not," James said firmly. "Right?"
"Wouldn't dream of it," Sirius agreed as McGonagall swept in.
"When Evans has taken her seat, we can get started," she called. Lily just smiled winningly in response as she made her way back towards the front row, even as Sirius couldn't seem to suppress a snigger. Professors didn't often call Lily out for anything close to wrongdoing.
James saw, as he watched her return to Hestia's side, that Marlene had turned towards McGonagall's pointed stare, and spotted Lily with him and his friends from where she sat with Morton and Rooney. He grinned at her as she rolled her eyes, more to mess with her than anything, and could hear her scoff all the way across the room as she turned back around.
xxx
The night before Potions rolled around that week, James offered Lily a spot with him and Sirius, certain she wouldn't want to sit at what had to be, he was sure, the most awkward table of all time. She declined immediately.
"Moving is defeat," she told him firmly. "If I move, she'll think I'm admitting I was wrong."
Sirius shook his head. "Evans, that's batshit crazy."
"Don't make comments about this when you don't understand, please," James heard Hestia warn Sirius under her breath, but she spoke sweetly and rubbed his arm while she reprimanded him. Almost like an owner would treat a dog, James thought with amusement. And, true to his Animagus form, Sirius acquiesced, although he did shrug a bit, clearly in disagreement.
"It's not losing to avoid sitting with garbage people," James told her. "You wouldn't sit with Snape now, would you?"
"Marlene isn't Snape," Lily insisted. "And she would see it as weakness, one hundred percent. She responds to strength."
"I think you're right, if that matters," Hestia said, and Lily held out a triumphant hand towards her.
"Thank you. Of course it matters. These two don't know her, and you do."
"And what, you think Morton and Rooney will just go about everything as business as usual?" James asked.
She didn't hesitate. "Absolutely. They're harmless. You'll see."
And she was right.
"Women, mate," Sirius muttered the next day as he prodded the fire under his cauldron. "How did she know?"
For once, he watched Lily's table every bit as close as James did, probably, James reasoned, taking mental notes for Hestia. But he seemed interested for his own sake, too, attracted to the sight of living drama, and James didn't blame him. Everything had come to pass exactly as Lily had predicted.
Lily and Marlene spent the entirety of the lesson clearly locked in a battle of wills. Neither addressed one another, not even when Marlene spilled Essence of Bulbadox all over Lily's station, which ran off the table and nearly doused the fire under her cauldron. They mopped it up, together but separately, never speaking.
Morton and Rooney looked like hostage referees calling the most contentious Quidditch match of their lives. Sirius snorted with laughter more than once when Rooney's face turned bright red as he tried to force conversation that ultimately he failed. He seemed determined to keep the peace, and spoke to both of them equally, as if it were simply any other Potions lesson. Every once in a while, when Lily would respond politely to one of Rooney's comments or questions, Marlene would make a noise, halfway between a huff and a sigh. But she glowered, really, fully, when Lily left her station to try to remedy Rooney's potion at his request, which had gone rather turquoise instead of green.
"McKinnon is going to absolutely destroy him later," James predicted, and Sirius laughed.
"She runs him, mate."
Morton acted very much the same towards Lily as he always had, maybe even a touch friendlier, to James' eye. He kept her engaged in conversation throughout most of the lesson, about what, James couldn't hear, but she did laugh once or twice. Lily had her back to him, so James couldn't see her, but Morton faced him, and James thought he looked, in those moments, stupidly pleased.
But James knew, of course, that he probably looked much the same when Lily laughed at his jokes.
"He's not done with her," Sirius said shortly, but James didn't need the comment, or any further clarification, to know that Morton did indeed still hold out a bit of hope for Lily.
Marlene, on the other hand, did seem entirely done with her. When the period ended, she left their table so abruptly that she didn't clean her station. Rooney stayed behind to throw away the skin of her Shivelfig and vanish the powdered remnants of Flitterby wings. He gave Lily a brief, apologetic look before he left.
"It'll improve," Lily told Sirius and James after they waited for her at the door.
Sirius shook his head in disbelief. "We must have just sat in very different lessons."
"You'll see," she maintained firmly. "I know her. Watch."
xxx
And then, just like that, one day they were friends again.
"I don't understand women," Peter said when they saw Lily, Hestia, and Marlene walk into the Great Hall together on Lily's birthday, talking as if nothing had ever happened.
"We know, Wormtail. That's pretty obvious." Despite his comment, Sirius stared at them too, clearly perplexed. All four of them did.
"I know none of us were there when they got in that fight, but did you hear about it after?" Peter asked. "'Cause from the sound of it, some of the first years thought a couple of actual banshees had gotten loose up in the girls' dorms."
"Given how it used to sound when they yelled at us, that's probably accurate," James told him as he gave a snorted laugh into his orange juice. He watched as the girls sat down away from them, several seats down the table on the other side of a cluster of second years, despite a clear opening beside the Marauders. Hestia did look up, however, and offer them a sunny smile. "Birthday ceasefire, you think?"
"Whose birthday?" Peter asked, but Sirius answered first.
"Evans'. That's right. Hestia mentioned something like that."
"Hestia?" Peter repeated, grinning. "Really, Padfoot? It's like that now?"
"Yeah. It got weird at a certain point, calling her Jones. You don't do that with someone you're snogging."
"Prongs, what do you call Lily again?" Remus asked, even though he very well knew.
James sighed. He didn't answer for a long time, the point seemingly made, but when his friends continued to watch him expectantly, he replied, grudgingly, "Evans," which sent all three of them into hysterics.
"Sorry, Prongs," Remus said, mopping his eyes, when he'd finally stopped laughing enough to speak. "It was your face."
"I don't know what Padfoot and Jones are—excuse me, what Padfoot and Hestia are—but whatever that is, I don't think you and Evans are it, Prongs." Peter seemed to physically dodge the look James gave him. "What? She doesn't hex you now, and she'll talk to you without yelling, but I still don't think you've cracked her. I'd still bet against you."
"I'll take that bet now," Remus offered quickly, but Sirius waved his hand dismissively, as he thoughtfully chewed a piece of toast.
"Wormtail, mate, you ever watch the map at night?" he asked.
"No. I sleep. Do you not?"
"Watch it next time Prongs goes on patrol. Evans will meet him, I'd bet you, and I'm sure they'll end up somewhere real cozy."
James stared at him. "Padfoot. Are you watching the map?"
Sirius shrugged nonchalantly. "I mean, not on purpose, no. I'd like to think I'm above stalking people, whatever else might be wrong with me. Not why we made the map, you know?" He returned James' look with one so pointed that both Remus and Peter looked confused, but then he grinned. "But, yeah, I totally saw it happen and I checked again a couple of times just to make sure. You still want to make that bet, Wormtail?"
Peter hesitated. "No. I can wait, see the map for myself. When's your next patrol, Prongs?"
"I'm taking the map," James answered immediately.
Sirius just laughed and rubbed his hands together. "Nah, mate, I'll keep it, I think. Anyway, should we get Evans a cake from the kitchens tonight? Maybe call her Lily when you had it to her, Prongs, make the whole thing a little less weird."
They did get her a cake, and they brought it to her in the common room, where Sirius insisted that they sing to her, and proceeded to do so the loudest while the rest of the common room stared. She had her face in her hands by the end of the song, laughing until she turned red.
"You're such a bloody showoff, Black," she said as she cut the cake. "And you're so bad at so many things, but truly, I think you're the worst at singing."
"Or humility. He's really bad at that too," Marlene added, seated by Lily's side as if she'd never left. "Which one of you actually remembered plates and forks?"
Sirius scoffed. "C'mon. We're not children, McKinnon." He paused. "But that was Remus, of course." He bent, then, to kiss Lily's cheek, and the action startled her so much she nearly dropped the plate in her hand. "Happy birthday, Evans. Glad you're alive."
Lily stared at him, perplexed. "Fucking hell, did you do something to this cake, and that's meant to throw me off?" She looked at the other three Marauders in turn. Peter had already started on his, and he just shrugged, clearly unbothered. "Potter, did—no, actually, Remus, did he? Your loyalty is questionable," she explained to James before he could even protest, and Sirius laughed at his face. "I've got a better shot with Remus."
"I think I'm offended," James told her, but she waved him off, unbothered.
Remus took a pointed bite of cake. "No, we were all with him the whole time. Besides, look at Jones." At the mention of her name, Hestia jumped a little, and her expression immediately switched from a dark glare Sirius' direction to a smile, although a rather embarrassed one. "You really think he'd chance pissing her off? Really?"
"I can be nice," Sirius said, and he set his fork down on his plate so he could reach out and touch the nape of Hestia's neck, an absent reassurance. "Evans, ask James for your gift."
She didn't tell him that time that he shouldn't have gotten her anything, as she had at Christmas. She did give him a look, however, somewhere between exasperation and pleasure, as she turned the rectangular package over in her hands. "There's no way you wrapped this. Hessie, did you?"
"I helped a little," Hestia admitted, and she slid closer to Lily, underneath Sirius arm, to watch.
James gifted her a poker set with a brand new deck of cards and betting chips in four colors. Lily laughed when she unwrapped it, and leaned across her chair to kiss his cheek, her hand resting briefly against his chest. "Thank you. I love it."
Her face fairly glowed, and he thought she looked almost a bit bashful for a moment from the way she turned her head to press her mouth against her shoulder, hiding her smile. He wanted to pull her back in and kiss her for real, but he never touched her in public, really, with her kiss on his cheek the most affection she'd ever openly offered. He didn't want to try and potentially create a scene on her birthday of all days.
"Jones did help me figure it out, and how to get it," he told her. "Muggle Studies and all, dead useful. But it's made me glad McKinnon's back," he told her, and Marlene didn't bother to stifle her disbelieving scoff. "I am, McKinnon, truly. Now when we play poker and you lose, we'll actually be able to mathematically show how poorly you're doing. I've heard you're awful."
Marlene smiled at him over that, but more sourly than sweetly, he thought.
James managed to catch her by herself later, after she'd lost all her chips at poker twice over, and they'd all decided to pack it in for bed. He grabbed her, quite literally with a hand on her arm, before she could follow where Lily and Hestia had already disappeared up the stairs to their dorm.
Marlene wrenched away from him forcefully, her dark eyes flashing. "What?"
He didn't know what he meant to say, not really, only that he knew he needed to say it.
"It's okay that you don't like me," he told her, and she thought it the wrong thing to say, he judged, by her short, cold laugh.
"I don't need your permission to dislike you, Potter, but thank you for it anyway." She gripped the railing next to her, as if she wanted to leave but something held her physically in place. "You've been an arsehole for as long as I've known you, almost seven long years," she added brusquely. "I know what you're like, I know who you are, and you're not good enough for her."
There it was, James thought.
She reminded him, in that moment, almost frighteningly of Lily, all puffed up with indignant rage at what she perceived as an injustice in the world. And the thought of their similarity made him almost want to laugh, although he knew she would kick off if he so much as let out a single chuckle, so he tried his best to keep his face neutral.
"I know that," he said, and Marlene looked surprised, and then, immediately, skeptical, as if she tried to figure out his angle. "I honestly do. She's incredible. I've always thought that, even if I haven't shown it in the best ways. But it doesn't matter, really, because we're just friends. That's what she wants."
Nothing he said was really untrue, James reckoned, as he followed the party line in the way he assumed Lily would categorize their relationship. He didn't know how much Marlene knew, after all, and the last thing he wanted was to reveal too much and make things worse for her and Lily—which, he selfishly knew, would also make things worse for him and Lily.
It didn't matter, because Marlene didn't buy it. She shook her head so forcefully that her thick curls bounced around her face like hundreds of springs. "But that's not what you're after," she insisted, and he knew, then, that Lily hadn't told her about the two of them, just as she hadn't told her about her and Morton. At the start of the term, James would have sworn that they had no secrets from each other. The sheer amount to the contrary astounded him. "So don't pretend that you're fine with the way things are, because I know that's not your end goal. And in the meantime, you're fucking things up for her, because she's much better suited for him."
She didn't say Morton's name, but he realized, in the faction of a second that she watched him with intense interest, that she'd done so by design. She wanted to see if he knew who she meant, or if he would need clarification. Did she want to see if Lily had told him? Or did she think that he might have gotten the information from a Lily-Hestia-Sirius chain?
"I'm sure he's a good bloke," James said, and he tried to mean it as much as he could. Morton had never done anything to him, after all, besides getting to Lily before he got the chance. And, as James tried to remind himself, daily, his own actions and behavior had led to Lily's aversion to him, so he could really only blame himself. "But is that what she wants? You can't force something that isn't there just because you're sick of hanging out with the Ravenclaws by yourself."
Marlene turned sharply to flounce up the stairs, although she took the time to flip him off over her shoulder.
"McKinnon, just—thanks for putting it aside, not liking me," he called after her, and she slowed a little, but didn't stop. "At least enough to hang around. I am glad you're back, because she missed you."
She didn't respond, just disappeared from view, and, a moment later, he heard her dorm door shut with more force than necessary.
"What did you say to Mar?" Lily demanded the next day when she pulled him aside after breakfast.
James immediately assumed that he'd gone too far. "Was she pissed off?"
Lily shook her head a bit. Even though they stood just to the side of the doors of the Great Hall, in full view of everyone who continued to breakfast, she apparently felt comfortable enough to reach up and straighten the collar of his shirt. "You're such a mess," she muttered, but she smiled.
"Don't do that. It makes me want to kiss you." He could see, by the way that she laughed, that she already knew as much.
"But when don't you want to kiss me?" she asked, and he loved to watch the amusement dance across her face now, especially since it seemed so much less at his expense as it had before break. She still laughed undeniably at his expense, he knew, but at least he could actually do something about it, actually touch her and snog her, if only in private. "Later," she promised, and he thought again, for the second time in twenty-four hours, that she almost looked a bit bashful in the way she looked pointedly away from him for a moment. "I mean, she wasn't thrilled, and she's definitely still not the president of your fan club now, but she also wasn't before," she continued, and it took him a moment to remember that they spoke about Marlene, his mind still preoccupied with kiss her. "She wouldn't even tell me what you said, just that you'd cornered her and acted like 'an absolute wanker'—that's a direct quote—but…" She tipped her head left and then right, seeming to still debate Marlene's actions in her own mind. "I think she appreciated you pulling her, in a way. She responds to strength, after all. She needs confrontation to get over things."
"She's exhausting," he told her shortly, but Lily just shrugged, her smile fond.
"She's a lot, just like Black. But I have more fun with her than anyone else, which I suppose is also his appeal. What did you say to her?"
James hesitated. "A couple things. Mainly that I was glad that she'd decided to come around again, even though she obviously doesn't like me, because you had missed her." Her expression softened at that, no longer playful, just, if anything, perhaps a bit sad. "She mentioned Morton," he rushed on, hoping to push the look off her face, and sure enough, she rolled her eyes, immediately distracted. "Not by name, just said that I wasn't good enough for you, basically, and that you'd be better off with him."
"She'll give that up eventually," she said grimly, and James believed her, if only because she sounded so determined. "What did you say?"
"I told her I knew I wasn't good enough for you. But also that that didn't matter, because we were only friends, since it was what you wanted. She knows that's not what I want, of course, so I didn't even try to pretend."
Lily reached up to touch his collar again, although he knew she'd already fixed it perfectly, and she let her hand linger there, just briefly, soft against his neck. "Thanks," she said quietly. "For all of it." And it took everything James had in him not to kiss her then and there, as she looked up at him with eyes so bright and so green, and almost tender (unless that was wishful thinking, which seemed likely, he reminded himself sternly). She stepped back abruptly, once again all business. "But, anyway, now that I know, I'll see you in class."
As she walked away, he reached out to grab her hand without thinking. She didn't pull away instantly, as he expected, just turned to look at him with raised eyebrows, even as James saw a group of third- or fourth-year girls pass behind her and slow their walk, clearly interested.
"Can I see you tonight?" he asked, dropping his voice to not be overheard, and she laughed and extracted herself then.
"No, neither of us patrol. See you in class!"
"You make the schedule! Fix it!" he called after her as she left, and he could hear her laugh echoing through the Entrance Hall, even over the din of the other students.
xxx
But Lily did patrol with James, not always, but frequently. She rarely asked him to go with her in return, but she did once or twice, and he appreciated the gesture. They didn't always end up tangled together inside some secret passageway, but he found he didn't really mind when they only walked and talked. He'd meant what he said in the prefect's bathroom—she could have instructed him in anything and he would have found it fascinating. And he thought—although he didn't want to get his hopes up, didn't want to get ahead of himself—that she felt very much the same, based on the way she laughed at and encouraged his stories, even as she admonished him, without real anger, for some of the worse pranks he and his friends had played. He stayed away from mentioning anything they'd ever done to Snape, of course, whose entire existence remained mostly unspoken between them.
With every person they saw—students they busted after hours, professors also roaming the halls—James knew they just increased rumors that they were dating. When he said as much to Lily, surprised she hadn't mentioned it first, she seemed unconcerned. "I correct people when they ask," she said. "That's all I can do, really." As February marched on with a new resurgence of cold weather, James wanted to ask what the difference was, not dating when everyone thought they were, if her point in not dating him was to avoid anyone publically tied to her during such contentious times. But things were so good, so consistently good, that he always pushed the question off, set aside the potential row for another day.
"I don't know if he was more startled to see us together or just embarrassed to see me," Lily whispered to him one night after Flitwick came across them patrolling outside his office. The diminutive professor had only offered a hurried greeting when he saw them, and rushed away with a speed James thought uncharacteristic since he normally took great pleasure in chatting with Lily, easily the best at Charms in their year. "He hasn't been the same, really, since I had to take my stocking off in front of him. I was right—it was weird. He almost turned purple."
She meant the anecdote humorously, James knew, but he couldn't quite get past the vague mention of her injury, even though she threw it out casually like a non-issue. "How's your leg?" he asked quietly, just as he'd asked several times since he'd seen her come out of the prefect's bathtub. He expected her to follow her past responses, a wave of her hand and a careless, "Madam Pomphrey is taking care of it," which told him absolutely nothing, as she clearly intended.
She surprised him, of course.
"That reminds me," she said, at her regular volume, and the contrast in her voice was enough to make him almost drop his lit wand held carelessly between his fingers. "I got this this morning." She reached into the inner pocket of her heavy winter cloak and pulled out a thin scroll of parchment sealed with purple wax. She handed it to him, and as James stopped to examine the letter, he identified the seal as a phoenix. Inside, he found a brief message written in a neat, slanted hand:
Ms. Evans,
Mr. Longbottom and Ms. Prewett wish to speak to you. Please come to my office tomorrow evening at 7:00. The password to my office is 'jelly slugs.'
Albus Dumbledore
P.S. Mr. Potter is welcome as well.
James read the message twice over before he looked up at her, puzzled. "Why me?"
"No idea. But he doesn't miss a trick, does he?" Lily took the letter back and returned it carefully to her pocket. "I can only assume that he now knows that we're friendly, although why that means you have to come with me, I'm not sure. I think Alice and Frank want to talk to me about my leg. That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Madam Pomphrey finally threw in the towel."
"What does that mean?" he asked sharply, and he reached out a hand to stop her in her tracks. The way she looked up at him, with such cool indifference, entirely echoed her tone.
She nodded impatiently up the Charms corridor and into the dimly-lit third floor. "Come on, we have four more floors—"
James took her by the hand and pulled her towards a nearby bench flanked between two sets of armor. She sat willingly enough, although she rolled her eyes peevishly. But she didn't extract her hand from his, and let him continue to hold it as he turned entirely towards her. "Tell me."
Lily sighed and crossed her legs—she kept her right leg, her bad leg, on top, James couldn't help but notice. "You're overreacting and you worry entirely too much."
"Maybe you don't worry enough," he shot back.
"Maybe I just don't tell you if I do," she snapped, and she gave him that determined look—jaw set, eyes narrowed—for a long moment, long enough that James wondered if she would simply refuse to tell him anything. But then she sighed, set her wand by her side, and pulled her hand from his so she could begin to plait her hair. "Madam Pomphrey just can't fix it," she said finally, and she looked away from him towards the wall opposite them, her eyes trained on a large tapestry of a pretty young witch surrounded by wood nymphs. "And Flitwick tried to help, but nothing. Madam Pomphrey finally said a couple of days ago that she planned to owl Alice and Frank and tell them that she couldn't do anything else—I guess they've been keeping up with my progress with her, past the letters Alice has sent me."
"I didn't know Alice wrote you."
She shrugged. "Didn't seem pertinent for you to know." As her plait developed underneath her nimble fingers, he could see that she wove her hair together to form something more intricate and complex than the style she often wore to keep it back from her face. "Alice said I'm not the only one who's still hurt from the Hogsmeade attack, but didn't clarify what that meant. I suppose she can't through letter, or maybe at all. It could be classified Ministry information."
James removed his glasses so he could rub a weary hand across his face. "Evans, I don't care if something isn't 'pertinent for me to know.' I still want to hear about it. And I wish that you would tell me—that you'd want to tell me." She had to hear the meaning in his voice, he knew, just as he heard it himself and the sincerity of it made him feel almost uncomfortable in comparison to how collected she sounded. He wanted to add, although he didn't, that he felt exhausted, playing games with her that got him just close enough to care for her—and care for her more with each passing day—but never close enough to actually know what went on, fully, inside her head and in her life. The only things he determinedly kept from her were his illegal Animagus status and, in all honesty, how much he liked her, although he suspected that she understood the latter and simply chose not to acknowledge it. In comparison, it seemed like she left him in the dark in more ways than he could count—and purposefully, too, never by accident.
Lily stayed silent for a long while, and when he put his glasses back on, he found that she'd finished her plait, although several wisps of hair already escaped around her face. She smiled a little when he reached out to push them out of her eyes and away from her forehead, and said, quite simply, "I know." She let his hand linger on her cheek, but then pulled it down gently to hold between both of her own in the same manner that she'd held his hand by the lake a month before. "Well, you know now. And you'll know more tomorrow, I expect, from Frank and Alice."
But he wanted herto want to tell him those things. And he thought about expressing that to her, even though he didn't have the words and didn't know what he would say. But she leaned in and kissed him, then, just long enough that he abandoned the idea entirely, happy to pull her into him and hold her for as long as she'd let him in such a public place.
When he thought about it, later, he'd wonder if she read something on his face that made her want to silence him completely in the best way she knew how.
But Lily let him accompany her to Dumbledore's office the next night, even though she'd pushed back a bit when she realized he had had to reschedule Quidditch practice.
"You have a match in less than two weeks!" she had protested, and she hadn't bothered to keep her voice down. Several in the common room had turned towards them, clearly anticipating some sort of disagreement, maybe even a row. But they had been disappointed, as Lily had taken one look at him and dropped that line of reasoning completely before he even had to argue back. James wondered what she saw that made her fold like that, because if he knew, he would have employed it as often as he could.
She seemed glad to have him, though, as they rode the spiral staircase behind the ugly gargoyle's entrance that led to the headmaster's office. "This is terrifying," she whispered, and she looked, to his eyes, much the same as she had before taking off on a broom, just utterly nervous and anticipatory of all the worst things. But unlike on the Quidditch pitch, this time she reached towards him, put her hand in his almost as if to draw strength from him. And the simple gesture, made what seemed so mindlessly on her end, sent his heart, already pounding a bit from his own nerves, into an even faster rhythm.
He pulled her in to hug her, just as he'd seen Marlene and Hestia do so mindlessly countless times, as Remus had with such ease after December's full moon. But he had none of their confidence that she would react at all favorably. He'd held her in his arms many times by this point, but always in some sort of moment of frenzied passion, never in any sort of manner meant to comfort her. He could feel her back tense for a moment underneath his arms, but then she relaxed, and even slipped an arm around his midsection to hug him back. He wished she would look up at him so he could see her face and try to decipher what she thought, even though he usually failed in that regard. The mere opportunity to try nagged at him even as he stroked between her shoulder blades gently, but she kept her face pressed against his chest and he couldnn't get a read on her. She pulled away immediately when they reached a polished oak door at the top of the staircase, and reached out to engage the brass knocker shaped like a griffin.
James only got a good look at her after the door swung open and they entered Dumbledore's office, but by that time she had already started to smile, because she saw Alice and Frank already waiting in two of the four squashy purple chairs set before the headmaster's desk. Both stood, and Alice and Lily met in the middle of the room for a long hug. Frank shook James' hand, smiling, if a bit tensely.
"You alright?" he asked, and even though he had lost none of his customary friendliness, James recognized new fine lines under his eyes that he hadn't noticed at Christmas.
"Good, and you?"
"I really can't complain." Yet somehow, even as Frank said it, James doubted that very much.
James looked around the large, circular room and took in the heavy oak bookcases packed with scrolls and papers and books; the vast number of portraits on the walls, all occupants currently slumbering or at least pretending to do so; and many wide, uncovered windows that would offer, he assumed, an impressive view of the grounds if the sun hadn't already set an hour earlier. Last, he spied Dumbledore at an ornately-carved desk that sat flanked by two staircases in the center of the room. The headmaster smiled at him benignly and raised a wizened hand to invite James, wordlessly, to have a seat. And once all four of them had done so, he nodded to Frank, as if in tacit permission to speak when the Auror looked to him.
"We're here on Ministry business," he explained, "Although we did lobby to come personally rather than anyone else. I thought Alice and Esme McKinnon might come to blows over it."
Alice smiled demurely, the pure picture of kindness, and genuinely so, James thought. She looked hardly the type to so much as argue, let alone physically fight, magically or otherwise. "She cares about you a great deal," she told Lily, who sat at her side, in between her and James. "But so do we. And besides, this Frank and I have worked the hardest to crack what's happened with the injuries from Hogsmeade. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Madam Pomphrey wrote us. Can I see your leg, Lily?"
Lily complied, although cast a look at James that he read as almost warning before she twisted in her chair towards Alice, her back to him. She removed her shoe, stripped off her knee-high stocking, and vanished the bandage around her leg wordlessly.
As Alice picked up Lily's bare foot for a better look, James understood the warning in Lily's look immediately. The wound appeared no better than the last time he'd seen it—in fact, it looked entirely worse. The shredded flesh that wrapped around her calf and shin no longer looked as neatly healed over, and began to weep small streaks of blood the moment it came in contact with the open air. James watched as Alice silently dabbed at the blood with a handkerchief Frank had quietly conjured and handed her, and then used her fingers began to probe the skin just around the wound which had gone rather purple, almost black.
"Is there pain?" Dumbledore asked, the first words James had heard him speak, but the question proved unnecessary. Although she didn't make a sound, Lily shifted in her chair in a manner of obvious discomfort.
"Some," she hedged. She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment, as if mulling something over. "It's gotten worse as time has gone on, not better." She spoke haltingly, and James recognized the tone—she clearly felt like she confided something in these words that she would have rather kept to herself. "I've been using a pain-relieving charm on the bandages. And when that hasn't been enough, I've been taking a pain-relieving potion. Together they do the trick."
"That sounds like more than 'some,'" James couldn't help but note. She tossed her head in a way that clearly imparted that she'd heard him, but didn't respond.
"And your moods, Ms. Evans. How are your moods? Your thoughts?" Dumbledore's expression stayed as mild as ever, and his voice didn't change, but a new sort of intensity took over his blue eyes, James noticed, in the way he surveyed Lily over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "Any different than usual?"
"No," Lily answered, and she sounded truly perplexed. Alice gave her a short nod, and Lily silently bound and charmed her leg in two practiced motions. "Why?"
"We're taking you to St. Mungo's tonight," Frank said briskly, all business, and Lily froze mid-way through pulling her stocking back on.
"Alice—" she began, protesting, twisting towards her friend even as she remained bent, her stocking and shoe forgotten, but she didn't need to raise her concerns. Alice cast Frank a withering look, one fierce enough to make him reach up and rub the back of his neck sheepishly.
"You could have at least explained a bit more first, Frank, honestly," Alice admonished with real feeling. But she, too, hesitated, and looked to Dumbledore with the kind of questioning look that made James realize that, for all their established Auror careers, they were only two years out of Hogwarts, only two years out from under Dumbledore's guidance. She looked to him, clearly, for permission.
James met Dumbledore's eyes then, and immediately wished he hadn't. The headmaster squared him with a searching look identical to the one he'd given him in the Hospital Wing in the early hours of Christmas Day. James didn't know what Dumbledore looked for, and he certainly had nothing he wished to hide, but it didn't stop him from feeling uncomfortable at the way Dumbledore seemed to look into his very heart, his brain. When Lily sat back up, having resumed her dressing and slipped back into her shoe, he stared at her in the same manner.
"You can tell them, Alice. I trust them," he said finally. He sat back in his high-backed chair and rested his hands on his lap, his fingers folded together. When he spoke again, James saw that his gaze remained piercing, but less searching, less threatening. "I believe Mr. Potter and Ms. Evans capable of understanding the sensitivity of this information, and trust that they will repeat it to no one, not even their closest friends, if they'll give me their word."
James and Lily both agreed immediately, and James thought he saw the expression on Dumbledore's face change just slightly when he surveyed him in particular. It seemed almost an acknowledgement, James thought, of the fact that that he told his mates everything.
Alice proceeded without any further pause, although she did caution, "Some of this Frank and I haven't even spoken about at the Ministry." The words seemed to impart, again, how seriously she took their word and the significance of their trust in them. "I wrote you, Lily, that yours wasn't the only wound from the Hogsmeade attack that hadn't healed. That was true of a few different kinds of injuries. It was true, say, for someone hit with a curse dark from a Death Eater that was enough that magic simply couldn't heal them fully. But we expected that and knew it could happen. We've seen it before."
She reached up a hand to the side of her neck, and James noticed, for the first time, the dark red, angry scar that Lily had spoken about after Slughorn's Christmas party, visible less than an inch above the collar of her robes.
Frank may have noticed, too, because he picked up her explanation without any prompting. "But we started seeing people acting in ways that we didn't anticipate, and they were all people that suffered from broken glass from the windows of the shops they were in, just like you, Lily. People seemed okay if they only got hit minorly, but many of those who suffered major wounds started acting violently." He took on the turn of hesitation that Alice had dropped, as if unsure how to continue. "It's clearly some sort of incantation on the glass from the shop windows. There was a bloke from Kent sitting right by one of the window in the Three Broomsticks. He ended up embedded in shards all down his face. We took his statement at St. Mungo's that night, and they discharged him a couple of days later, patched up the best they could manage. Two days ago, he drowned his wife in their bathtub."
The blood drained from Lily's face so suddenly that James thought, for a moment, that she might faint. She looked as he felt, as if her stomach had suddenly tangled in nauseous knots that she couldn't undo. She raised a hand to her mouth, and although he knew he probably shouldn't, he reached over and took her free hand. She didn't try to pull away, but he also wondered if she even recognized that he'd folded her hand in his.
"And the others?" he asked once he found his voice. "Other people who got hurt similarly?"
He noticed that both Frank and Alice's eyes had bobbed down to look at Lily's hand clasped in his own, neither of them acknowledged the gesture otherwise. Their faces stayed the same, resolutely grim expressions that matched identically. "Much the same," Alice said carefully, as if she counted each word, scanning what she could see of Lily's face, still partially obscured by her hand, which hadn't dropped from her mouth. "Although not all of them," she added quickly, seemingly for Lily's benefit.
"But we expect them to," Frank said, and the statement hung heavy in the air, the meaning clear.
All five of them sat silently for a while. James knew, even without looking at them, that they, too, all stared at Lily, waiting for her to respond before they continued. "I've felt fine," she finally offered, though quite faintly, and James knew she felt her hand in his own, then, by the light squeeze she gave him, perhaps subconsciously. "It's hurt, but otherwise I haven't felt any different." She turned then, so abruptly that her hair flew around her face, and looked at James. "You've been with me. Tell them."
Her eyes looked almost glassy, he thought, shiny in the torchlight of Dumbledore's office. She'd never asked him for anything before in quite the same manner. If he thought her capable of begging or pleading, he would have classified her tone as exactly that. But such things seemed entirely contrary to everything he'd ever known about her.
"You have been fine," he said, and he spoke to her, not the others, as his heart pounded unnaturally hard, harder under her gaze. The nerves he'd felt on the staircase up to Dumbledore's office suddenly seemed like a joke in comparison. "All through break and last month and this one too."
"We've seen that," Alice said softly, and Lily's head snapped back towards her. Her eyes, a softer shade of green than Lily's, perhaps more hazel, also looked a bit glassy, James thought. It took him another faction of a second to recognize the look as the beginnings of tears. "In hindsight, I mean. We're only just now recognizing this for what it is, past what at first seemed like isolated violent incidences. We've come to understand—or at least suspect—that these things happen in clusters based on location, wherever the person was injured. The gentleman from Kent was the first from the Three Broomsticks. We would have come for you last night, Lily, but we had so much to organize. And Madam Pomphrey assured us that she'd make you stay overnight in the Hospital Wing."
"I'm glad she did," Lily whispered. "I just thought she was acting overbearing." If she felt James looking at her funny, obviously puzzled, he couldn't tell. After they had patrolled, they'd returned to the common room together. She must have ducked out again after she'd said goodnight and gone up to her dormitory. He hadn't suspected a thing. "But I should have been in there all day too, yesterday and today, once you knew what could happen," she continued much more forcefully. "I could have—"
"But you didn't," Frank said quickly, firmly. "And it doesn't do any good to think that way. Besides, we weren't even sure yesterday if the Ministry would give us the okay to pull everyone with similar wounds to somewhere safe. We couldn't do anything then except warn Dumbledore."
Dumbledore nodded. "I had no doubt you would be fine, Ms. Evans," he told her kindly, but in that tone that James remembered from Christmas Day, one that utterly squashed any chance of an argument to the contrary. "I would not put my students in jeopardy if I thought elsewise. Madam Pomphrey's constant ministrations and tireless efforts to heal you, I believe, staved off what may have come sooner. We need tea, I think." He rose and went to attend to a nearby cabinet.
"Most people didn't have that kind of treatment," Alice said. She reached out to touch Lily's hair, to brush back what had fallen in her eyes with a soothing hand. "And it shows. The wounds we've seen, from the people who have…snapped, theirs have appeared much, much worse."
"What is it?" James asked, and at his voice he felt Lily squeeze his hand again, faintly. "What kind of magic could make this happen?" He realized, even as he spoke, that he addressed the question more to Dumbledore than Frank and Alice, although they had apparently worked on such answers for a month and a half.
Yet they deferred to him as well, and waited to see how he would answer. "We've spent some time discussing this," Dumbledore said as he levitated four steaming cups of tea to each of them, and another to his own spot at his desk. He returned to his chair, and James shifted uneasily as he gave him, again, one of those swift, piercing looks. "Alice and Frank and I have spoke on the subject at length, along with a number of similarly-minded friends," he continued. Something about the way he spoke these words imparted an unmistakable air of significance, although as to what, James didn't know. "So far we have no certain answers, although we do have some guesses." He brought his cup to his lips and waited, surveying them expectantly.
"You can't cast the Imperius Curse on inanimate objects," James said finally, once he realized that Dumbledore waited for a response. "Or the Confundus Charm. They only work on people."
"Unless they don't have to." Lily had taken her cup of tea automatically, but set it on Dumbledore's desk untouched. Color had returned to her face, just a little, and a bit of purpose to her voice. James recognized the way she spoke well, having witnessed such similar interest in Remus every time he came across something academically puzzling. "In Curse-Breaking—" She broke off suddenly, as if unsure. "I don't know much about it formally," she admitted. "I just—I had thought about it as a career for a bit, so I read what I could get my hands on." James realized with surprise that her uncertainty came from doubt, a sudden lapse in confidence in herself in a way he'd never seen before. She'd always worked hard enough that her self-assurance shined through in every class he'd ever taken with her.
"I'm going to assume that that means you've read more than the rest of us combined—save the headmaster, of course." Although Frank didn't smile, his expression lightened a little as he looked at Lily, as if amused by her. "I would assume, just from knowing you, that you've probably combed over everything the library has to offer."
"What wasn't in the Restricted Section," she admitted, and he did smile at that.
"Tell us your thoughts, Ms. Evans," Dumbledore prompted. To James, he sounded in that minute not like a headmaster, but rather a professor, keen on pulling something out of a particularly promising student.
"Curse-Breaking is basically just Arithmancy," Lily said slowly, and James felt a brief flash of déjà vu to the night of Slughorn's party, when she'd said something nearly identical to him, and noted how it bored her. "Alice, I know you didn't take it—Frank, did you?"
Frank shook his head. "Not required to become an Auror. Should it be?"
Lily shrugged. She took her hand from James' to reach up to pull her hair over her shoulder, and he thought, as he watched her fiddle with the ends, that the seemed habit seemed something born out of nerves, however collected her face and voice might appear. "Maybe. I stuck it out for the NEWT because I was already so far in by the time I'd realized I didn't really care for Curse-Breaking enough to do it for the rest of my life. But it's so useful. Every spell has a numerology to it, which means a counter-spell's numerology must directly counteract in order to work. The math behind the spell is there, even if we don't think about it while we're casting, and unless you're versed in Arithmancy, no one really does. But it's crucial to magical theory, to understanding what makes a spell work just beyond the simple incantation, and if you understand it, the spell comes faster."
She looked to Dumbledore, as if for confirmation, and he nodded encouragingly. "Or?" he prompted.
"Or…you can use Arithmancy to create spells. I've done it, just with a couple simple hexes, and I've seen—I've seen a friend do it too, with more complicated things." Lily's voice faltered a bit, as if she had wanted to say something different, or maybe something more, but she took a breath and continued. "But if you understand the numerology behind the Imperius Curse, you could use that equation to alter the spell, to make it work in ways that the creator didn't initially intend. That's how so many spells are made—they're variations of others."
"Like the snow on Christmas Eve? Over Hogsmeade?" James asked. "If you understand how that charm works, you could figure out how to alter it to make it resist Apparation and Disapparation with one of those ridiculous charts you use, right?"
Lily looked at him, and her expression—so bright, so curious, so determined—softened a little. The corners of her mouth lifted, just a little. "Yes." She sounded pleased he'd understood, so obviously so that he couldn't help but smile back. "It would work exactly like that." She turned back to Dumbledore. "Right?"
He nodded. "Yes. That's what I've considered most seriously." And despite the seriousness of the situation, and one that affected her so directly, Lily flushed with gratification. She'd always loved praise from professors, James knew, but he doubted a compliment of any of their instructors could have matched a comment like that from Dumbledore.
"We probably should have taken Arithmancy," Alice said to Frank.
He nodded. "Bit late though, isn't it? In the next life, I suppose." He looked between Lily and Dumbledore and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and eyes focused. "I thought Curse-Breakers worked mainly at places like Gringotts, or exploring old tombs or caves. Not on curses that affect people."
"A misconception, though an understanding one," Dumbledore said, and gestured for Lily to continue.
"From what I've read, Curse-Breakers most commonly work on locations because so many old or forgotten curses protect places like that," Lily explained. "It's easy, once you get the hang of it, to crack an old curse on a vault because they all trend in very much the same way—at least from what I've read. But magic on humans varies so differently from one spell to the next, and is so much more complex, that it takes more effort to work out exactly what makes up a spell in order to counter it. It's part of why magic on people develops so much more slowly than anything you might create on an inanimate object—the magic is simply harder to work out numerically."
"And, of course," Dumbledore added, "We're more likely, as a society, to remember counter-curses to spells that anyone could cast on us in a moment's notice. It's much more important to remember the counter-spell to the Confundus Charm than to know how to break something obscure that a wizard cast on his tomb in the Pharaonic Era. With most of the truly worst curses so widely known, Curse-Breakers aren't often needed to work on curses on people. We typically already know how to fix them."
James gave in and set his untouched cup of tea down next to Lily's. "So if you recognize a curse, even on a person, a Curse-Breaker can mathematically figure out the counter-curse?"
"Yes." Lily paused for several long moments, and some of the eagerness that had come over her face transformed. She still looked eager, but now no longer in a detached, academic sense. Instead she looked eagerly worried. "But if you don't recognize the spell—and I don't recognize this at all—it's harder to figure out what you're supposed to do. And then…there are some curses you can't lift. At least not entirely."
She and Dumbledore looked at each other, and, watching them, James didn't know how Lily met the intensity in his eyes. What the look meant, he didn't know.
Frank set down his own tea, half-finished, and went to the fireplace. "One moment," he said, pulling a handful of glittering Floo powder from an ornate vase on the mantle. He tossed it into the fire with a practice hand, called out, "Ministry of Magic," and disappeared into the green flames.
"To Moody, if I had to bet," Alice said into the silence that settled after the roar of the fire died down. "We talked about bringing a Curse-Breaker in, after you spoke about this at the meeting last night, Professor, but couldn't get the numbers to agree in the office. Moody felt his hands were tied from the higher-ups and the other Aurors alike. Frank got quite upset, and I'm sure, after hearing you discuss this more thoroughly, that he's gone to press the issue now."
"Albus, Alice, please," he corrected, and she smiled, if a bit guiltily. It was clearly a conversation they'd had before. "But on the subject of the meeting—"
Panic flared in Alice's face, so suddenly that James felt his own pulse ratchet up yet another notch. "Oh, I didn't think—"
Dumbledore lifted a hand to stop her. "Think nothing of it. You know I already intended to ask them."
He set down his teacup, and looked between James and Lily again, each slowly in turn, as if sizing them up. Meeting his eyes felt rather like battling a hippogriff, James thought. He knew he'd once had the same thought about Lily's gaze, but meeting Dumbledore's eyes felt more dangerous, somehow, given the somberness in the headmaster's expression. James tried very hard not to blink.
"I mentioned earlier a group of friends," Dumbledore said carefully, like he'd selected each word long ago, weeks before their conversation. "Alice and Frank are a part of that group. They told me that you've both expressed interest in becoming Aurors."
The conversation seemed to switch so abruptly, from the group to their future plans, that it left James' head spinning. He couldn't seem to follow the headmaster's logic. "That's true," he said cautiously, as Lily nodded.
"And I've gathered—from the things I heard you express after the Hogsmeade attack and from the things others have reported to me—that neither of you are in favor of Voldemort's actions."
Lily actually laughed, although somewhat humorlessly. "Professor, I already hated everything he's done and everything he stands for. And now I'm literally cursed because of them. No, not a huge fan."
"He would still take you as one of his followers." Somehow, even in a voice as calm as one discussing the weather, Dumbledore's words cut like a knife.
"My blood—"
"—matters less than you would think, if it comes to Voldemort acquiring something he wants. And you're talented and driven enough that I expect he'd overlook your lineage." Dumbledore sounded so certain that the skepticism twisting Lily's mouth faded just a little. "I just wouldn't rule it out, Ms. Evans, the possibility that they will approach you. And you, Mr. Potter." James felt himself hit with that piercing stare. "They will certainly extend overtures to you, and to Mr. Black as well. Purebloods, both of you, and as talented as Ms. Evans, I know, if you would both apply yourselves."
James struggled to find the words, to know exactly what to say to express just how abhorrent he found the idea of his blood somehow allying him with Voldemort and his followers. "I could never," he said finally, and each word came out emphatically, almost as its own statement. "And neither could Sirius. We could never hate people like that, especially for something as arbitrary and—and unchosen as blood status. That's not who we are."
"No," Dumbledore said quietly. "I thought not." Did James imagine it, James wondered, that Dumbledore's gaze flickered to Lily briefly as he said it, before he looked back at him? "We're forming something of a resistance, this group of friends and I. Is that something either of you would be interested in joining?"
"Yes," James didn't need a moment of time to think before he answered immediately. He heard Lily respond identically, almost at the same time. Dumbledore smiled, and to James' right, on Lily's other side, Alice beamed.
"Excellent," Dumbledore said, his voice now brisk with business, no longer so measured and careful. "I fear Voldemort has already begun looking inside Hogwarts for new recruits. You will graduate during an important time, one unlike any other I've seen in recent years. It is important that you decide where you stand now, because you may not have that luxury once you leave these walls. All too often, Voldemort and his followers decide for you." He paused. "You both understand, of course, that the existence of our resistance, the Order of the Phoenix, depends upon complete secrecy by those involved. As I said earlier, this is something you cannot tell your friends, no matter how badly you may want to. The consequences could be dire for all of us involved if you do. Even death."
Only then, really, did James understand the seriousness of what he had just agreed to. He recalled, against his will, the image of Louisa Mullins falling dead in the Three Broomsticks, her body collapsing like a heavy sack. But in the moment—and later still, years later, after he'd seen and done and experienced more horrible things than anything he could have imagined at seventeen—he didn't regret his decision in the least.
James voiced his agreement, and Lily did likewise before she followed with a question of her own. "But perhaps later, Professor, you'll see someday what we do in our friends," she persisted, and it warmed James' heart, even as the serious of the situation seemed to weigh on it, to hear her call them their friends, jointly. "At your discretion—not ours, of course—they could perhaps joins us, if you thought it right."
Dumbledore nodded his white head graciously. "Yes, I expect so. And I will let you know if and when that happens."
The fireplace roared to life again, and Frank tumbled out, landing on his feet with only a bit of soot on his robes. His face looked rather red. "Sorry," he said shortly, dusting at his shoulders. "But it's taken care of. Moody's summoning a Ministry Curse-Breaker. He said he'd take the heat if it doesn't work and Crouch throws a fit that we didn't consult him."
"Howdid you do it?" Alice asked, but not in amazement. Instead, she sounded suspicious.
Frank crossed the room, sat at her side again, and picked up his abandoned tea. "I did yell a bit," he conceded reluctantly with a sideways glance at her. "But just a bit!"
"Frank!" Alice sounded truly scandalized. "You shouldn't have—Moody is our boss!"
"And a reasonable man overall," Dumbledore said smoothly. He tipped Frank a wink, unwilling—or perhaps unable—to keep from smiling. "He may not have seemed convinced last night, but if we're right, he'll be glad he followed your advice and went around bureaucratic orders."
Alice took a deep breath. The fire hadn't died out in her eyes, and she still looked truly shocked, perhaps more than James felt. He couldn't remember hearing Frank raise his voice in anger ever in the five years they were at Hogwarts together, even though they'd played Quidditch together for two years and everyone else lost their tempers once in a while. But not Frank. Never Frank. "James and Lily have agreed to join the Order," Alice said, and she sounded well pleased, despite whatever she battled internally.
Frank grinned and looked, again, entirely like himself. "Excellent, truly excellent. I don't know how much you'll be able to do from in here, but you'll both be vital after June, I'm sure. Although we'll see. Things could pan out differently."
Lily didn't return his grin. "We have to go now, don't we?" she asked bluntly. "To St. Mungo's, right? For how long? Fucking hell, you probably don't know, do you?" Her face went suddenly pink and she shot a look at Dumbledore. "Sorry, Professor."
"Whatever for?" he asked mildly. "I haven't the faintest idea."
"We don't know," Alice confirmed apologetically. She set her empty teacup down with a note of finality, and James felt, again, a new resurgance burst of nerves. "But we'll try to get you before the Curse-Breaker as soon as we can. Moody will agree." She seemed sure of that.
Lily rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Of course it's NEWT year. My classes—"
"Will be here when you get back," Dumbledore said matter-of-factly. "I expect you're fairly ahead of the curve as is. And your friends will be here too. You'll tell them, Mr. Potter? Not everything, but…that Ms. Evans has gone to St. Mungo's and will be back soon. You don't know what for, but I insisted she go. And you will tell only them, and ask them not to tell anyone else. To the rest of the school, should anyone ask, we'll simply say she had to leave Hogwarts for a bit, but not why. That should be enough. And we'll see if the rest gets around." He lifted a hand and ticked off the names of their friends on their fingers. "Ms. Jones. Ms. McKinnon. Mr. Black. Mr. Lupin. Mr. Pettigrew. Those are your closest friends, yes?"
Lily managed to stop feeling miserable long enough to look impressed. James remembered what she had said to him the night before—Dumbledore really didn't miss a trick. "Yes. Marlene and Hestia are my closest friends." She looked to James, then, and when he met her eyes, he fancied that he could see her debating something. "And you can tell your friends as well," she added, and she said it like it meant something past the handful of simple words.
And for once, he understood what she meant perfectly. She trusted his friends, too, if not as much as her own, at least enough to want to give them a chance.
"Thanks," he said quietly, and he hoped she knew how much he meant it. She smiled a little, though somewhat sadly, as if she did.
Dumbledore stood and the rest of them followed suit. He conjured a winter cloak from thin air, and walked around the desk to hand it to Lily. "Better you leave now without returning to your common room," he said. "I assume that St. Mungo's will have everything that you need, but if you find yourself lacking something, please owl me. I can have Ms. Jones or Ms. McKinnon retrieve it for you from your dorm." He reached out and put a hand on Lily's shoulder reassuringly, almost affectionately. "You'll be fine," he said, and he sounded so confident that James almost believed that he knew so for certain.
They took their leave silently, with Alice remarking quietly as they took the revolving stairs down, "We'll go out through Hogsmeade and Apparate." She looked towards James, considering. "You can walk us out, if you'd like," she offered, and he smiled gratefully.
Frank held him back a bit as they took off through the corridor. The girls walked in front of them slowly, as if Alice shared Lily's reluctance to leave, and she had an arm around Lily's shoulders as she spoke to her with words so soft that James couldn't hear. Frank nodded up towards them, his voice equally low, and asked, "So are you two…?" He didn't finish, but he didn't have to, as he just raised his eyebrows significantly. "Why not?" he demanded quietly after James shook his head. "Why haven't you made your move yet?"
James weighed his response in his head as they traversed the mercifully-empty second floor. Ahead of them, he heard Alice give a slight laugh, as if the somber mood had somehow broken between her and Lily. "It's complicated," he said finally, and Frank made an impatient, disbelieving noise. "No, it honestly is. I can't explain it to you, but it's not that easy."
Now Frank shook his head, and it seemed like he did so both in disagreement and in disappointment. "Never knew you to be afraid of anything," he said, and even though James knew, from the hint of the sly grin Frank flashed him, that he said it to wind him up, it still worked.
"You don't know her," he insisted, but discontinued talking when he saw that Alice and Lily had stopped at the Grand Staircase to allow them to catch up the few steps they lagged behind.
"Did James tell you what he got Lily for her birthday?" Alice asked, smiling, and James looked to Lily, surprised that she'd mentioned it so quickly to Alice, if at all.
Lily smiled too, although her color hadn't yet returned to normal. She slung the cloak from Dumbledore around her shoulders as they descended the stairs. "I was just saying, all things considered, that this whole thing kind of put a damper on just turning eighteen. Not one of my better birthdays, considering all this now." She sounded determined to keep her voice even and light-hearted, and she succeeded. James wondered who she performed for, them or herself.
"A poker set," James explained to Frank's expectant look. "It's a muggle—"
Frank's chuckle cut his explanation short. "We know what it is," he said, and he reached forward to pat Lily's shoulder. "Didn't know you still played. I figured you wouldn't have the numbers after we all graduated."
"We still play sometimes too," Alice said.
With these words, James understood that he and his friends weren't the first group that Lily had lounged with, wiling the hours away by offering instructions on muggle games. It hurt a bit in a way that he knew it should not, since she'd already explained that she played with her muggle friends. Yet the thought of her doing so at Hogwarts, as she had with him and his friends, prickled a bit more. He tried to summon the memory of their fifth year, playing with Frank and Alice around a table or on the floor, and thought he could almost picture it, but not entirely, couldn't quite place anyone else with them.
Frank seemed to read his mind. "We all get together for a game once in a while still. Me and Alice, Rupert, Genevieve, and Hector." He ticked the names off on his fingers, listing off Gryffindors who had graduated the same year as he and Alice, and then cast James a look full of sly mischief. "Usually at Greg's house, Greg Gimble. He's at the Ministry now too, in the Department of Magical Transportation."
Alice paused long enough on the first-floor landing to shoot a dark look over her shoulder at the mention of Lily's ex-boyfriend, one James noticed only in the periphery of his vision as he sent Frank one of the same. Frank held up his hands in silent innocence to them both.
Lily seemed not to notice. "He mentioned that. I ran into him in the Leaky Cauldron last summer."
"That's what he said," Frank replied conversationally, as if he didn't hear Alice's sigh. "He told me pretty much right after he saw you. And he asked after you, of course, when we came back from Slughorn's Christmas party He seemed dead disappointed he didn't get an invite, even though Slughorn helped get him his post in the Apparation department. It didn't help that Alice kept going on about how lovely you looked."
"Because she did," Alice said tersely. "And I thought we weren't going to talk about this, Frank?" She looked at him disapprovingly for the second time that night, which made two more times than James could ever remember her looking in the rest of the years he had known them. And even as it flashed in James' head, wildly and without real intention, that he'd really like to push Frank down the last flight of stairs, his annoyance lessened slightly at the warmth he felt for her.
"I wouldn't have," Frank maintained, "If you hadn't mentioned poker, dear. It got me thinking, that's all. Lily, did he ever—never mind."
James didn't know what silenced him. Perhaps he fell quiet on his own accord, his own decision to leave the question hanging in Lily's mind and pique her interest. Or maybe the new look Alice gave him over her shoulder cut the words short, the look fiercer than the last, so much so that James, not even the intended recipient, flinched a little. He saw her mouth something at him, something that looked very much like don't meddle, but he didn't know for sure. Frank, however, seemed to get the message.
Lily didn't pick up and persist after Frank's question. She may have, James supposed, if Alice hadn't immediately launched into an explanation of how to best Apparate into St. Mungo's as they reached the Entrance Hall.
"What the fuck, Frank!" he whispered, this time the one to hold his friend back. Frank tried, again, to affect a sort of innocence that didn't sit right with his grin. He looked a bit like Sirius in that moment, James thought, just entirely devious and joyful at the potential chaos he had caused. The comparison still didn't warm James to him in the least.
"It's like Quidditch, you know?" Frank whispered back earnestly. "Sometimes you need to realize that there's another chaser out there after the quaffle before you get up the balls to make your move."
"This isn't Quidditch!"
"Same process! Do you think I was the only bloke after Alice? No. Did I get there first? Yes. And did I get there sooner because I knew if I didn't, someone else would? Absolutely."
"This is different, and she's not like Alice," James hissed, but he had to stop there, because Lily and Alice had reached the front doors of the castle and stood waiting for them.
James tried to wipe away his frustration at Frank when Lily looked up at him, certain she could read it all over his face. If she did, she didn't comment or even smile, as he would have expected normally when he expressed the same kind of displeasure. He found, looking at her, that his anger did melt away, replaced by the same heart-pounding, bitter-tasting fear he'd experienced in Dumbledore's office when Frank had first said that they would take her away. It felt far worse.
"You're going to be fine," he told her, repeating Dumbledore's last words, and he realized that he needed to hear it just as much as he wanted her to believe it. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, that Alice had pointedly pulled Frank a few steps away and turned their backs towards them, which made him feel, again, quite warmly towards her.
Lily didn't argue with him, although his words probably sounded hollow to her. "Can I trust you to get my homework? And get Remus to get it in Arithmancy?" she asked, and he nearly laughed, despite himself.
"Of course. But you're the only person I know who would think of that right now."
She gave a sort of half smile that didn't meet her eyes. "And you'll tell them I love them?" she asked, and she didn't have to clarify that she meant Marlene and Hestia, her friends—and his friends too, James understood for sure.
"Of course."
"And you'll beat Ravenclaw for me, if I'm not back by then?"
As he stared at her, he felt an increased flicker of unease. "The match isn't for almost three weeks. You'll be back."
She shrugged and shook her head, and with those movements, she suddenly looked tired. "Just in case."
"Evans—" he began, but he stopped himself short. He wanted to kiss her, because he had never seen her look so sad and so small, so unlike the vibrancy he'd admired in their first six years at Hogwarts, and had come to admire even more the more he knew her.
She seemed to pick up on his desire, because she shook her head at him, just a little, in a silent no, and reached to hug him instead, for the second time that night and the second time in their lives. He had just enough time to settle his arms around her, and to breathe in the sweet scent of her hair that had begun to remind him of snogging her in dark passageways dotted around the castle, before she pulled back. "I'll see you when I'm back," she said, and from the decisiveness in her voice, he knew she had finished talking to him even before she walked back to Alice.
Alice hugged James goodbye, the first time he could remember her doing so, and gave Frank another look, this one far less severe, as he lingered behind to shake James' hand. Frank waited until the girls had slipped out the castle's heavy doors before he asked, in parting, "If not when she's literally cursed, mate, then when?" He didn't wait for an answer. And long after they'd departed, James remained in the Entrance Hall, thinking that he had a point.