Voyeur

by scriibble

As his seventh year begins and the First Wizarding World grows outside Hogwarts' castle walls, James Potter has one goal in mind: to finally win over Lily Evans. The only problem? Accidentally seeing her with someone else, of course—but it's not like that will stop him. [L/OC to L/J; Marauders seventh year/intro to the First Wizarding War] [Winner of JilyAwards 2020 Fav Smut/NSFW]

15. Chapter 15

A/N: 28 reviews for the last chapter?! How?! I'm blown away from where this started, with so few views and reviews, to now. Writing this and seeing everyone's reactions really is one of the biggest highlights of each week for me.

Writing this, I have started exclusively listening to Lauren Fairweather's album "The Prince's Tale." It's on Spotify and it's incredible. It's 10 songs through the points of view of Snape and Lily. My favorites are the songs that start with Lose You and end with Keep Her Safe, but I can't recommend the whole album highly enough. It's my favorite of the Harry Potter bands I've found, which I will continue to write about. Since you're reading fanfiction, I feel like you all are the only people who will understand my obsession with it.

Chapter Fifteen

"Evans spent the night in the Hospital Wing," Sirius told James the next morning when they met in the Great Hall for breakfast. "I went in early to see Hestia, and found them asleep together in Hess' bed like it was the most normal thing in the world. Pomphrey seemed to think so too—she just bustled around like it made perfect sense to her." He snorted. "Imagine what she'd do if she found us like that, mate. But with them, what, it's a regular Thursday? What is this? Should we be jealous that they're apparently like that with each other?"

"I'm surprised you're not into it," Remus remarked conversationally, if dryly.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not against it. Just a bit weird, that's all." Sirius busied himself with his breakfast. "Well, Evans woke up when I came in, took one look at me, and got up. But she moved over to McKinnon's bed and got in with her. So I guess she just gets around." He paused, as if he realized what he'd said, and shot James an apologetic look. "Sorry, Prongs," he said through a mouthful of eggs.

James shrugged. He hadn't slept well.

Sirius waited a moment, watching James cautiously, before he cleared his throat to continue. "That woke McKinnon up, and when she saw me she greeted me in her standard manner." He took a long moment to flip all three of them off. "So seems like she's back to her usual lovely self."

"You think they'll be back today?" Peter asked, and he sounded hopeful to see them in a way he wouldn't have before Christmas break. The tone resonated with James more than he liked.

"No, sounds like Pomphrey's keeping them another day. McKinnon said something about how I should go away because they're going to have only one more day free of me." Sirius nodded at James. "And you, mate. She definitely mentioned being free of you."

"She would," James agreed shortly.

"Hestia slept through it all somehow. I guess she's just used to McKinnon talking while she sleeps, although I don't know how. Got a voice like a banshee at the best of times, that one." Some of Sirius' good humor faded off his face, and James could feel his eyes as he dawdled with his food. "You alright, Prongs?"

"I'm fine," James said, although he didn't feel it, and knew he absolutely didn't look it. But the other three didn't press him, and he felt grateful for that, especially towards Remus, who gave the other two warning looks as if he thought they might consider pushing the issue further.

Lily didn't show up to any of their classes that day.

Marlene and Hestia didn't either, but James hardly expected them to. He thought Lily might just so she could escape the Hospital Wing, but, then again, she never really did anything he thought she would. When Sirius went back to visit Hestia after dinner that evening, James considered going with him, but he took the coward's way out in the end and remained in the common room. Peter went with Sirius, but Remus stayed behind, and although he regarded James with a greater sympathy than James felt comfortable with, he didn't ask any questions. He simply took out his Defense Against the Dark Arts book and read quietly.

"Evans wasn't there," Peter reported when they returned a couple hours later, anticipating the question before James could even ask. "Jones and McKinnon said she went to brew. And…" He looked at Sirius questioningly, clearly uncertain.

Sirius threw himself into a chair. "And they said she got in a big row with Snivellus earlier today."

Remus closed his book at that.

"What?" James demanded sharply, and he felt for the first time that day a flicker of an emotion besides misery, a stab of pure annoyance. "What happened?"

Sirius shrugged. "Dunno. They didn't really know either, or if they did, just didn't tell us—although McKinnon can't lie for shit, so I don't think she knew much. They just said Evans left the Hospital Wing this afternoon and came back roaring mad, mad enough that Pomphrey told her to either get it together or leave. Hestia pulled it out of her that she went looking for Snivellus and they got into it, but not much else." He shifted a bit, suddenly uncomfortable. "And then I guess she cried for a while, so much that Pomphrey offered her something to calm her down. Can't really imagine that. Doesn't seem like Evans is capable of crying much, if at all, really."

James could feel all three of his friends watching him, clearly waiting for answers, answers he didn't have.

"You going to go find her?" Remus finally asked, and James found it easier to meet his eyes than Sirius' or Peter's. He looked somehow understanding, although James knew he couldn't understand anything about the situation.

"No. I don't think I should."

Sirius grabbed Remus' heavy textbook from his hands with a groan. "I ought to chuck this at you, Prongs, really. Are you rowing with her again?" The way he held the book did seem, indeed, more than a little threatening.

"I don't know," James said honestly, although entirely gloomily. "I'll figure that out when I see her next, I guess."

"Should I throw it at her instead?" Sirius demanded. "Is this on her? I don't know why she's like this, gets your hopes up and then acts so fucking difficult—"

Remus reached over and smacked him upside the head even as he took his book back. "Stuff it," he instructed sternly. When Sirius opened his mouth to argue, Remus hit him again, sharper. "Padfoot. Seriously. Drop it and shut up." And much like Sirius listened to Hestia, he went silent at that, at something in the quiet power of Remus' voice that sounded more threatening than anything James could have mustered.

The girls returned to the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning, something that clearly didn't go unnoticed by the vast majority of students. Dumbledore had gone an unconventional route, James thought, and told the students the truth. Death Eaters, the followers of Lord Voldemort, had attacked Hogwarts that morning, he explained the evening of the attack. ("Well, he couldn't exactly lie," Remus pointed out later. "Too many student witnesses.") After the pandemonium that had followed—which the headmaster overcame by shooting of a series of loud, bright cracks with his wand—he had assured the students that Hogwarts remained if not the safest, at least one of the safest places in Britain. And he sounded genuinely remorseful, sincerely sorry, when he apologized at length for the lapse in the wards, which he had personally increased tenfold.

The second-year students who had witnessed the entire event suddenly became sought-after companions as keepers of great knowledge. The entire event only became more ridiculous, more exaggerated with each telling, with one Gryffindor girl swearing that Sprout had only ended the attack by hurling full-grown mandrakes through the air at the Death Eaters, whose screams had knocked them dead. But every account agreed that Lily, Hestia, and Marlene had borne the brunt of the assault, which of course only added to the mystery, and the desire to hear their accounts. James had found himself fending off countless questions the day before, as many people seemed to assume Lily had told him everything. Sirius admitted to dealing with much the same, although his method of dealing with it all by the end came through the end of his wand rather than his words.

After the third or fourth person had sought him out to ask after Lily's version of events, it had dawned on James that people associated her with him in the same way that they did Hestia with Sirius. It had hit him in a strange, powerful way, a swooping feeling in his stomach that reminded him somehow of Quidditch in a way he couldn't decipher. All the same, after the thought had dawned on him, he found he had much more patience with every pestering question thrown his way.

Hestia followed Marlene to the Ravenclaw table, although she gave Sirius a smile as she passed, one so sweet that some of the scowl faded from his face when he saw where she planned to go. But Lily paused by the end of the Gryffindor table, her hand resting briefly atop the gleaming wood surface, and she looked, if James didn't know better, a bit uncertain. But her face changed in the next moment, entirely resolute, and James' stomach backflipped when he saw that she made a beeline for him.

She took a seat at his side but didn't slide in beside him totally, her legs facing outward with the clearly intent to leave quickly. "I have three things to say to you, and then I have to go play nice over there," she said to him briskly, and she waved a hand towards the Ravenclaw table. She used the same hand to hold up three fingers, and looked at him impatiently, clearly awaiting a response.

James set down his fork immediately. "Okay," he agreed cautiously. Even after all the time he'd spent with her, her eyes still looked almost impossibly green so close up. He wondered if he'd ever get used to them, or if she'd always disarm him with just a single look.

"Morning, Evans," Sirius offered pointedly, but she seemed to not hear him, and didn't even look in his direction. James almost wished she would, because the intensity in her eyes made him distinctly uncomfortable.

"One, I'm not mad at you." Lily ticked the number off on a slender finger. "Two, I really don't feel like talking about all this yet, but I am thinking about it, like you asked. Three, I didn't go shag Morton."

Peter inhaled his toast.

Remus reached over automatically to pat his back, but his heart clearly wasn't in it, as he looked between Lily and James, unabashedly engrossed and clearly increasingly embarrassed. Sirius stopped eating mid-bite.

"I never said you would or did," James told her quickly. "I never said that."

"But you absolutely thought it," she shot back, but without real ire. "Didn't you?"

"It…did cross my mind," he admitted slowly, reluctantly, and he waited for the ire then, but she merely nodded shortly. "But I didn't think you actually would. I swear. It's just always my worry."

"Well, now you know. I didn't." Lily pulled out her wand abruptly and waved it in a swooping motion at Peter, who immediately stopped coughing, although his face grew no less red as he reached to gulp down some pumpkin juice. "I'm sorry, Pettigrew. I didn't expect you to react like that."

"He didn't know," James told her, and her eyes grew wide. Her hand went to cover her mouth, wand suddenly loose between her fingers.

"'Didn't know?'" Peter repeated, his voice hoarse. "What the—Evans, are you shagging Morton, or just planning to?" Although they sat quite separate from anyone else, he seemed to struggle to keep his voice down.

"Currently neither," she said, and he stared at her, dumbstruck.

"Currently? So you were?" He looked between Sirius, Remus, and James with rapid succession. "And you all knew?"

"Sorry, mate," Sirius apologized. "Christmas, you know? We found out a bit."

"'A bit?'" Peter sounded increasingly agitated, but he rounded on Lily. "I thought he bored you! But you still—and, what, now you wonder why he won't leave you alone? Come off it!"

Lily gave Sirius a dark look as he snorted into his coffee cup, but he just looked back with wide-eyed innocence. "I never said he bored me," she insisted. "I just…don't find him particularly stimulating. Conversationally! Fucking hell, Black, can you not?" she asked sharply, because he'd taken to laughing and stopped bothering to hide it.

"That one is on you, Evans. There's no way I'm not going to laugh at that."

She heaved a deep sigh and looked at Peter, and James caught the slight flush that came over her cheeks. "I am sorry, Pettigrew. Christ, what a way to start your day. I figured one of these idiots—sorry, one of these idiots or Remus—let something slip by now. You obviously tell each other everything. And people think women can't keep secrets. You're all worse than me and Hestia and Mar. And speaking of—" Her eyes went suddenly sharp. "You can't tell Marlene. She doesn't know—"

"'She doesn't know?'" Peter repeated. He seemed stuck on sort of repetitive loop, merely echoing words back, still too shocked to form his own thoughts.

"No, and she doesn't need to. Goddamn it, I wouldn't have said anything if I thought you didn't already know. You won't say anything, right?"

"He won't," James told her firmly before Peter could even answer, although he didn't look as if he could agree to anything just then.

"You're going to have to tell her eventually, you know," Remus said, the first words he had spoken in ages.

Lily regarded him for a moment, hand in her hair, and then nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Fairly soon, I expect." There seemed something in the look she and Remus shared that seemed significant, James thought, and he wondered suddenly if his friend knew more about the situation, more about everything, than he let on. "But not yet."

"Evans, when can we talk?" James asked, drawing her eyes back to him.

"Oh, I'll still talk to you," she assured him. "Like I said, I'm not mad, honestly, because there's nothing to be mad about. But not about…" She gestured between them, apparently reluctant to give name to whatever they were. "Give me some time, and then you can say your piece."

"I already tried to say most of it," he told her, and she smiled a little at that, the sight of which lifted his spirits considerably.

"You don't have some spiel or some impassioned speech?" she asked, and he heard it then, a little of the teasing tone that so often accompanied the way she spoke to him. It sounded normal, the sort of normalcy he'd begun to expect and love from her, and it reassured him immeasurably. "Shame. I've grown used to that."

"I can already think of several I could give," he said, and he couldn't help but grin. "And I'm sure I could come up with more, if you'd like."

"Excellent. I look forward to it. Eventually." She stood but lingered a moment, shifting her weight. "Sorry for derailing your breakfast," she said finally, and then left.

James continued to grin as he watched her leave. She slowed down only briefly when she passed the cluster of sixth-year Gryffindors several feet down the table who asked her, bluntly, what had happened Wednesday morning.

"Really? Before my breakfast?" she asked, smiling, her voice all easy charm as she flitted away, the kind of charm that made other people smile with her. "Come on, you really should know better!"

James found he admired her question-dodging when she employed it on other people and not him.

"One Christmas," Peter said ruefully. He pushed his plate away, his breakfast already long-since cold. "I missed one Christmas, and this happens. What the fuck?"

"It really was a wild one," Sirius said. "But this whole year has been batshit."

James had never agreed with him more.

xxx

Lily stayed true to her word. She didn't stop hanging out with the Marauders as James had first assumed that she would, and she still talked to him, although often in a significantly more detached, almost formal way than before.

She spent much of her time with Remus, discussing coursework or healing spells or, with increased frequency, Arithmancy, as she delved back into the complex mathematical sheets she had set aside in recent days. She showed him new equations, Remus told James when he asked, not the same ones that she had asked him to check before, which James knew by then had attempted to work out the curse on her leg. And she seemed a little more confident in figuring out this one, Remus added, a little more certain than last time, although she often went rather quiet after she discussed it with him, her words always careful and measured to avoid revealing too much. He told James the latter part reluctantly, as if he didn't know if he should, and James couldn't figure out why.

She spent a good deal of time with Peter too, perhaps more than before, although she'd always made an effort to talk to him and include him in things in a way natural way that James continuously appreciated. But in the days after Peter found out about her and Morton, she seemed determined to get him to treat her as normally as possible, which proved a challenge indeed. He seemed to not know what to make of her anymore, all previous notions of her irreparably shattered, and James understood the feeling well. Peter, too, clearly simply didn't know her, that same phrase she'd thrown at James more times than he could count, although less in recent months. Still, she kept at Peter, continued to discuss Transfiguration with him and ask for his help and his opinion on her work, and to offer him the same in Charms, which he absolutely needed.

He only seemed to truly warm to her, and maybe even more than before, when she began asking him about his Care of Magical Creatures class, which he had signed up for third year without the other Marauders and had stuck with throughout the years. She had a way, James thought as he watched her with Peter on more than one occasion, of finding out what people cared about the most, and acting so utterly interested, asking all the right questions, that they wanted to speak about it with her at length. At her prompting over several different evenings, Peter explained the different kinds of Puffskeins, and how brewers often kept them in their brewing labs to use their hair for a variety different potions. She asked him much the same about dragons, but pushed him to go into the history of dragon breeding in Britain, which, despite Peter's lack of any interest in History of Magic, he could explain to her by heart. She seemed most interested in his description of Kneazles, professing a real love for cats, and he happily explained different Kneazle breeds and the way that wizards often interbred them with cats.

"Have you thought about working with magical creatures after Hogwarts?" she asked him one evening. "I have no idea what jobs even exist out there besides the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry."

"No," Peter said simply, looking surprised, and as James listened, he wondered if his friend had given any thought at all to what he would do after June. "Hadn't thought of that, really. But I won't have the NEWTs for the Ministry, I'm sure."

"I'm sure you will in Care of Magical Creatures and Transfiguration," she insisted. "And you could in Charms, too. We could get you there."

"Maybe." He still sounded skeptical. "But I don't know how I'd ever get in there, anyway, even if I had the grades. The Ministry is all about who you know, and, well, I don't have Slughorn and his web of connections backing me like you do, or any of the other professors who would absolutely give you a recommendation if you asked." Somehow, Peter didn't sound bitter. Really, James thought, he never did when he pointed out those kinds of things. He seemed to perfectly accept his own shortcomings more easily than anyone else James knew.

Lily mulled it all over for a moment, twirling her wand between her fingers thoughtfully. "I could ask Slughorn if he knows anyone in the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. I'm sure he'd set something up for you, if I asked him in the right way and pushed hard enough. But only if you want."

Peter stared at her, silent for a long while. "I really believe you could," he said finally, and the laughter in his voice didn't cover his admiration. "You really could convince him. You're unstoppable, you know that? Just relentless." She shrugged in a way that clearly brushed off his praise, as if almost embarrassed by it. "Let me think on it, will you?" he asked, and, watching the exchange, watching her support for his friend, James found he liked Lily more and more, even as he tried to reign those feelings back in.

But although she spent time with the Marauders, Lily saved most of her energy for Marlene and Hestia in the days that followed the Death Eater attack, and she seemed more devoted to them than ever, her already obvious love for them renewed and redoubled. They spent more time conversing quietly during evenings in the common room, just the three of them, although they sat near the Marauders to do so, which slightly lessened the blow of their abrupt inward turn. Often they'd laugh and James would catch snatches of their conversation, would overhear a fragment of a recalled memory or bit of gossip or some humorous recollection of their days. But sometimes they sat seriously, sharing the same blanket, their expressions so somber as they whispered that he would feel relieved to not have to hear their conversations, whatever they were, because they seemed almost unspeakably hard.

Once or twice he caught a glimpse of Marlene crying during their talks. She never outwardly sobbed—he doubted she could, it just didn't seem in her nature—but she might brush a tear or two away from her eye with a hurried swipe of her fingers, and she always managed to catch them before they rolled down her cheeks. James never knew precisely what she'd gone through the day of the Death Eater attack, but it had softened her, and only later would he realize that it hadn't softened her, but actually broke her a bit. She no longer argued with any of them just for the sake of the argument, or even bantered quite as acerbically. On more than one occasion she even initiated a conversation with James quite politely. She almost seemed to enjoy herself when she struck up conversations with him without prompting, and she laughed at his jokes as she never had before. He wanted to ask Lily about how the sudden change had happened, but he didn't know if he could any longer. She seemed determined to keep him not quite at arm's length, but at least decidedly further away from her than before.

So he asked Sirius instead, who reported the information back from Hestia. "I guess Evans told McKinnon that the way they now feel about each other, the three of them, is how she felt about you after the Hogsmeade attack," he explained.

"What way is that?" James demanded, his pulse suddenly racing.

Sirius shrugged, looking a little perturbed. "Hess wouldn't say. She knows I'll tell you, I expect. But, mate, if you look at them, that kind of says it all, doesn't it?"

And as the days passed and Lily, Hestia, and Marlene continued to huddle together, almost as if for strength or for warmth, James felt he understood, and his hope renewed.

In their closeness together, Marlene pulled back from Rooney slightly, James couldn't help but notice, and that convinced him more than anything that something had changed in her, perhaps irreversibly. She still spent time with him, but markedly less so, and every time James saw Rooney, in classes or in the corridor or at mealtimes, he looked a little more confused, a little more concerned. Still, she would go off with him sometimes, and James waited for one of those evenings before he approached Lily again one-on-one.

He waited until Hestia had gotten up from beside her on the couch, abandoning his conversation with Sirius mid-sentence to take her place. Lily lifted her eyes briefly from her Charms textbook before she looked back down. "I'm reading," she pointed out.

"I can wait until you're at a good place for a break," he told her, and he meant it. But he also knew that she would give up reading sooner than later if he stayed there, and sure enough, she tossed her book into his lap with a loud sigh not three minutes later.

"What?" she asked warily. She gave him that look, the one he knew well, where she seemed to search his face for answers even before he could clue her in with words. "You're scheming, aren't you?"

For once, James hardly cared that she could read him so easily. "Yes. One hundred percent. I have a proposition for you."

"Oh, good lord." She looked like she didn't know if she should laugh or not, but her expression remained exasperated regardless, even if he thought he spotted humor in the corners of her mouth and the glint in her eyes. "Hold on, let me prepare myself for this." She scooted to sit up straighter, tucked her blanket more firmly around her legs, and pulled her wand out from where she'd pushed it to keep her hair atop her head, which fell down around her face. He felt like he pushed his luck when he reached out to tuck several loose pieces of her hair behind her ear, but she allowed it, even if she pursed her lips a little. "Okay. Go ahead. Lay it on me."

"I want you to come home with me for Easter," he told her without preamble, and he felt a certain sense of victory in the way her expression changed from unyielding to entirely surprised in an instant. He didn't know if he'd ever stunned her quite as much, or if he'd seen her look that stunned ever, period. Sitting nearest them, Sirius stilled for a moment, and James knew he listened. Although he had his back to them, James would have bet that he looked probably just as surprised at Lily.

"You've finally gone mad, haven't you?" she asked after several long moments of pause in which she clearly tried to compose herself, but she still looked astonished. She reached over and pushed his fringe back to feel his forehead, the first time she'd touched him since the prefect's bathroom. "Or sick, maybe? Because what the actual fuck are you thinking?"

At least she didn't sound mad, he thought, just bewildered. He could work with that.

"I'm neither." He took her hand from his forehead, and she let him hold it in his for a few seconds before she pulled away. "I think it's a perfectly sane and reasonable request. I have several reasons, if you'd like to hear them."

"Barking mad," she decided incredulously. "Absolutely barking, howling mad." She pushed both hands through her hair. "Alright. Let's hear them."

He grinned and resisted the urge to rub his hands together excitedly. He felt that he had her, for reasons he couldn't explain even to himself, just because she'd agreed to listen. But, he reminded himself, he'd read her wrong in situations many times, so he tried not to get too ahead of himself.

"Reason one." He held up a finger. "You definitely need a break."

She laughed out loud. "Okay, you have lost it. You really have. A break, Potter? A break, this close to the end of term, to our NEWTs? Yes, because we all have time for that."

"A break from here," he clarified, because he'd already anticipated that line of thinking, had mulled over any possible argument (he hoped, at least) that she could throw at him in return. "You've been here since September—"

"So have you."

"I know, and it's driving me fucking mad. Don't you want to get out of here for a while? Away from all of it—Hogsmeade, the Death Eaters, St. Mungo's, everything that's happened this year?"

"Oh, I thought you had more," she said after regarding him silently for nearly half a minute. "Do you expect me to answer?"

"Yes."

"I hadn't thought about it," she answered slowly, clearly selecting every word carefully. "I've always planned to stay here for Easter."

"But now that you're thinking about it? Don't you think you need a break?"

"I don't know. I'd have to think on it more before deciding how I feel about it all, really."

James focused on breathing normally, unwilling to sigh like he absolutely wanted, because he didn't want to give off any indication of impatience, or show that she'd already started to frustrate him in a way he didn't entirely mind. "Okay. Fine. But think of it this way—you might have more luck working at my house than you would here. Our entire year will sign on to stay for Easter, don't you think? And how many others, given the load of work we're always assigned? It's going to be a madhouse. My house is big enough that you could disappear and work by yourself, and no one will bother you. Not even me. I'll give you my word on that."

"What about the books I need? I need access to the library."

"Take what you know you need, and I bet we'll have the rest."

Lily smiled, amused. "You really think that? That you have everything I'd need for all my subjects? There's no way."

"You haven't seen our library," he countered. "I think I told you once that my granddad collected books." In fact, he knew that he had, could remember telling her about it over the many times they had patrolled together and spoke of everything and nothing all at once. He could recall almost perfectly the enraptured look on her face as she had listened, and how vocally she had approved when he had mentioned that he planned to keep up the hobby himself someday. "Dad's still at it. But you'll see. Ask Sirius, he knows."

"You say something, mate?" Sirius asked, twisting in his chair to face them, and he looked and sounded so purposefully casual that James knew for sure that he'd listened the entire time.

"What do you think about going home for Easter?" James asked, again without preamble, but Sirius reacted quite differently than Lily had. A grin immediately split his face.

"Love it. Your mum threatened to box our ears if we didn't, remember? Wouldn't mind avoiding that, if we can. Although—"

"Evans, my second reason we should go," James interrupted, because he knew where Sirius meant to take things just from the look on his face, "Is that we can take Sirius and Jones home with us."

Sirius looked immediately satisfied, and then, a moment later, more excited. He rubbed his hands together as James had felt like doing himself only moments before. "Okay then. Now we have to. Say you'll go, Evans," he coaxed with his most winning smile.

"That doesn't work with me," she told him, flapping a hand towards his face, but she did reluctantly return his smile. "You know, all your attempts at charm. Don't even try. That's wasted on me."

Sirius' smile faltered only briefly, but then he shrugged. "Doesn't always work on Hess either, but it does sometimes, especially when she wants to agree with me but feels like she shouldn't. You're feeling that way, aren't you? You know you want to go, Evans. It's fine. Just admit it."

Lily didn't respond, but she rolled her eyes at him expressively, and the look said enough, James thought. She smoothed her blanket over her lap again, pressing out any wrinkles with her palms. "Do you have other reasons?" she asked James, and he felt even more certain from her prompting that he had her.

"Two more," he said cheerfully. "My third reason we should go home is that it's my birthday on the twenty-eighth."

"And that's a reason why?"

"Because I'd want you with me," James told her with such simple honesty that he could see Sirius shift out of the corner of his eye. After a moment's hesitation, Sirius rose, left his seat, and went to join Hestia, Remus, and Peter at a nearby table, ostensibly to offer just a touch more privacy.

Lily looked away from him at that, and pulled her hair over her shoulder to run her hands through the ends. "And fourth?"

James scooted nearer to her, close enough that he could rest his arm across her legs as he had done countless times before, although not in recent days. He waited for her to shrink back from him, to pull away, or to tactfully remove his arm with a pointed look, but she didn't. "Fourth, I think if we got away from here for two weeks, away from all this—" he waved at the din of the common room, "—I think you'd see it."

"See what?" she asked, but she sounded like she didn't want to know.

"You'd see why we work, and what it would be like to be together."

He sat close enough to hear her swallow, and she dropped her fingers from her hair to tap lightly against his arm, the motion entirely mindless. "And if I already see that?" she asked, and she faced him square on, chin tilted up and jaw set, but he couldn't decipher what she felt so resolutely about, either why they would work together or why she wouldn't let it happen. He sincerely hoped for the prior.

"Oh." The question threw James briefly, undeniably off-kilter. He'd expected more pushback from her, not such an admission. "Well, if you already see it, I think…I think two weeks away would make you want it, want to be together enough that you would actually consider it."

"Who says I don't already want it?"

Impatience rose suddenly in his chest. "Are you acting coy on purpose, or is it just built into you at this point to drive me mad?" he snapped. He watched as she pressed her lips together, an obvious attempt to hide her sudden flash of amusement, pleased that she'd gotten to him. "Can you stop trying to wind me up and take me seriously for a second?"

"I can do both, you know. Take you seriously and wind you up." Still, she shook her head as if to clear her expression and thoughts, and she looked more thoughtful as she lifted her voice to call Hestia over.

Hestia answered immediately and crossed the few feet that separated them, Sirius following unbidden. He turned around the armchair he had vacated to face them and flopped back down. He tugged Hestia into his lap, where she sat with more grace than he had. "I would go, if you wanted," she told Lily without prompting, and behind her, Sirius tipped a wink at James.

"And what would we tell Mar?" Lily demanded. "Can you think of any explanation we could give her that wouldn't send her into a fit?"

"Just lie," Sirius said easily, and he lifted up a hand from Hestia's knee, all innocence, when she turned to look at him with raised eyebrows. "What? She can't act irrational if you just tell her you're both going home to your own houses."

"Why is your first instinct always to lie?" Hestia asked, her voice a little short, and Sirius reached up to stroke her hair as if to pacify her, his smile once again winning. Just as Lily had before, she seemed most unwilling to smile back, but she did as if against her better judgment. "We can tell her you're going to keep me company," she continued, addressing the comment back to Lily. "Which is true, in a way. Then if she decides to go home and she wants to meet up at some point, we won't have to lie about where we've been. And…she'd understand, I think, given how I spent last Easter, about why I'd want to be somewhere with sufficient distractions."

Something clouded the mood after she spoke, something James couldn't identify right away. Lily's face had gone decidedly gentle, and she pulled her hand away from the tapping she'd continued on his arm to reach for and grasp Hestia's hand. The arm Sirius had draped carelessly around Hestia's waist seemed to grip her tighter, and he looked at her with a certain amount of caution, like one might regard a fragile piece of china. And although Hestia typically appeared a bit guarded in James' eyes, usually still at least mildly closed off even at the best of times, that guardedness took on a new, intense meaning in the shadow that covered her face.

"Of course, Hessie. That makes sense. If you want to go, we'll go," Lily said in the next moment, still holding Hestia's hand in hers. A note in her voice jogged James' memory, and he remembered abruptly that Hestia's mother had died just before the previous Easter. He felt like such an arse for not remembering that he could hardly even acknowledge the flicker of joy he felt at Lily's acquiescence.

"I would like it, I think," Hestia said warily, as if she didn't really know, and James could hardly blame her for her uncertainty. "I think it could be a good distraction."

"If that's what you want, that's what we'll do. And whatever you feel, we'll deal with it." Lily gave Hestia's hand one last squeeze and then brought her hands back to her lap. She rested her fingertips against James' arm, no longer tapping, but almost a faint caress. "Have you even run this by your parents, Potter? What are you going to tell them, that you're bringing home a couple of girls that neither of you are dating?"

"Not in those words, no, but they'll be pleased," James assured her confidently. He kept his eyes carefully away from Sirius and Hestia, trained solely on Lily's face. Sirius hadn't explained to him the exact status of his relationship with Hestia even after nearly three full months, and James had never asked, unwilling to perhaps touch a nerve. But it certainly sounded like Lily knew what went on between them, and knew with enough certainty to speak on the subject. "They love company, and you two will be a fair bit easier to host than when we have Remus and Pete over. That chaos. But I'll owl my parents tonight. Right now, if you want."

"Besides, Evans, they know who you are." James looked at Sirius at that, and his friend grinned back, either unbothered by the reveal of his relationship status with Hestia or affecting a good cover. "It's not like they haven't heard James talk about you for years. Oh, come on, you know your dad would have dropped that sooner rather than later to take the mickey out of you," he added when James gave him a pointed look torn somewhere between frustration and embarrassment. "Best get it out of the way early, don't you think? Don't worry, Evans. Fleamont thinks you're pretty great already, since I've told him every time you've gone after one of us. He fancies himself a dueler, so stories of your hexes have impressed him."

"Your dad's name is Fleamont?" Lily asked James incredulously, and he couldn't help but laugh. It sounded nice, in a way he hadn't anticipated, to hear her say his dad's name.

xxx

James never did hear how Marlene reacted when Lily and Hestia told her about their plans to spend Easter break at the Potter house. Sirius told him what he knew, what he got filtered through Hestia, and she only offered the scantiest of clues.

"She said McKinnon went through the five stages of grief—you know, from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance—all within about an hour. I guess by the end she seemed okay with it." Sirius frowned. "Hess wouldn't say much else though, just that McKinnon isn't likely to raise much of a fuss about it to us, but wouldn't say why."

And, as promised, Marlene didn't say a word to them about it.

The Marauders passed March's full moon the night before the Hogwarts Express set off for London. When they tumbled back to the common room after their usual post-transformation breakfast, Sirius immediately hushed from his recounting of nearly running into a centaur in the Forbidden Forest and pointed towards the couch nearest the fire. Lily lay curled up in the same spot where she usually read, wrapped in a soft purple robe with a blanket pulled up to her chin, fast asleep.

"Go on, Moony," James said quietly, nudging his friend. "Better wake her, tell her you're okay. She must have worried about you half the night."

"Not just me. Don't be thick." But Remus went to wake her anyway, crouching down next to her to give her shoulder a couple light shakes.

She woke quickly, and reached out to touch Remus' cheek immediately, where a sick yellow bruise had begun to form over breakfast. "You've lived to see another month, huh?" she murmured, her voice thick with sleep, and she smiled drowsily. "Glad I didn't kill you with potions a second time. There's Dittany on the chair, there, near the fire. How are you feeling?"

Remus picked up a bottle and tossed it to Peter. Lily's eyes followed the motion, and she sat up when she saw the other three. "I feel great," Remus told her, and he truly sounded it, bruises and all. "I definitely felt like I could think better with the Wit-Sharpening Potion, be a bit more myself."

"And you didn't feel anything strange, nothing adverse with also taking the pain potion alongside it?" Her voice became clearer as she wiped the sleep from her eyes.

"Not a thing. It went great."

"We're alright too," Sirius said, as he took the bottle of Dittany from Peter and dabbed a bit onto a bite onto his forearm. "Thanks for asking."

Lily shot up when she saw his actions, and she crossed the room to take Sirius' arm so suddenly that he tried to step back, although she held him firmly enough to keep him in place. She traced her fingers across the bite, over the perfect imprint of Remus-as-Moony's teeth that had just broken the skin, and James felt the intensity of the look she gave Sirius.

"Does this happen a lot?" she asked, and she threw the searing, inquisitive look over her shoulder to Remus. "Bites?"

"All the time," Sirius told her casually, and she turned back from him to snatch the bottle of Dittany from his hands and administer it to him herself. He looked quite pleased to let her.

"And nothing ever happens? You're all fine?"

"They are," Remus assured her, uncorking another bottle of Essence of Dittany. He looked only the slightest bit guilty as he said it, and James knew he still harbored some shame, even after two years, for the injuries he inflicted on the three of them. "We're careful, Lily."

"Evans," Sirius began, grinning, "I've got another bite on my arse, if you—"

She dropped his arm to smack him upside the head, but gentler than she might have normally, hardly more than a tap, and James thought there might be some benefit to their injuries if it protected them from her potential wrath. "Sod off." She looked back to Remus. "I'm sure you're careful, Remus. Less sure about the other three, but I trust you."

"Lumping me with them? Evans, I'm offended," Peter piped up near the portrait hole, and he grinned when she rolled her eyes at him, although she smiled just the same.

"I won't ask how you all manage it. Just…continue to be careful, please. I suppose I'll worry a bit less as time goes on, right?" Lily rubbed her forehead wearily, went to retrieve her pillow and blanket from the couch, and groaned when she spotted the clock above the fireplace. "Fucking hell, three hours until we have to get up for the train. I'm to bed. Remus, you should try some of the healing charms we've worked on, but use Dittany on any bites. It'll deal with the scarring better, since we haven't really covered that yet. And then go to sleep! I don't know how you all do this every month, honestly."

She kissed Remus' cheek as she passed him, and he touched her hair as she did so, the gesture absent but fond. He looked truly touched by her clear concern, a feeling James could understand. Aside from the other Marauders, he'd never told another soul about his lycanthropy. To have her respond so well—and not just well, but with such enthusiasm to try to make everything about his transformation as easy as possible, and to care enough to worry through the night—had to soothe any untold anxiety he may have had about telling her.

Lily didn't say anything to James as she padded on bare feet towards the dormitory stairs, but he caught the look she gave him, even as she looked like she hoped he didn't notice, evident from the slight flush he caught across her collarbone where her robe gaped. Her gaze looked at once swift and piercing, the way she often examined him so closely that it made him uncomfortable, but warmer, the corners of her eyes tilted down with blatant worry. He understood with a single glance at her expression, at the way she looked at him, that she hadn't laid awake anxious for just Remus.

He didn't have to think much more on it, didn't pause to consider his actions before he jogged across the common room after her and caught her before she could climb the stairs. She didn't have time to express the surprise he saw on her face before he kissed her as he had wanted to for weeks. And he found her entirely amenable to the idea in a way he wouldn't have thought possible the day before or even an hour or two prior, and quite willing to let him gather her in his arms. He even felt her rise onto the tips of her toes, tilting her head for a more comfortable angle at his mouth, before she hit him in the back with the pillow still clutched in her fist.

"I'm glad you're okay," she told him, pulling herself out of his grip, which took more effort than usual because he absolutely didn't want to let her go. She smiled at him, her eyes bright and shining, no longer bearing a single trace of sleep, and started up the stairs. "Goodnight, Potter. Or, hell, good morning. Whatever. Go to bed!"

Four hours later, she sat next to him in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express. She appeared to have rallied quite a bit better than he and his friends, all of whom, James included, could hardly stifle yawns. Yet despite his exhaustion, James couldn't help but admire the soft curve of her cheek, and the way she tossed her hair around when she laughed as she conversed with Hestia and Marlene with all of her customary cheer. It felt surreal to see her happily seated in the same compartment as him and his friends, when the last time they had ridden the train, back in September, she had all but bawled him out in disbelief of his Head Boy position. He could only marvel at the difference between the previous fall and the current moment, and wondered, not for the first time, how he'd managed it all.

"Bit obvious, aren't you, Potter?" Marlene asked dryly not an hour after they'd left, and James, aware he'd gotten caught staring, hurriedly turned to engage Sirius in conversation. He pretended not to notice when Lily shifted at his side and took the time to elbow him in the ribs. It seemed safer to ignore whatever taunting smile she'd throw at him, especially in front of Marlene.

More people had chosen to go home over Easter than James had expected, truthfully more people than he could recall ever leaving for the two-week break. (Although, as Remus pointed out later, that probably had everything to do with the recent attack on Hogwarts, and the demands of anxious parents.) The train platform had seemed nearly as crowded as it had during the start of the year, and Lily had given him a look that he very much interpreted to mean that she remembered his assumption that most everyone would stay behind for Easter. But she didn't call him out on the failure of his prediction, then or ever. She seemed quite happy to get away from the castle in a way that made James fully appreciate what before he had only suspected: she really did need a break.

Marlene opted to stay in their compartment for most of the ride, which surprised James more than a little. He wondered if she did so in order to extract vows of at least one visit with Lily and Hestia over break, which she received from them both without hesitation, but even after, she stayed to talk Defense Against the Dark Arts with Remus, toss Exploding Snap cards at Sirius and James, and play chess against Peter, as he had brought the board with them. Only after the first few hours passed did she stand to go join the Ravenclaw compartment, because she'd promised she would, she explained with a slight wrinkle of her nose. And even then, she took Lily by one hand and Hestia by the other to drag them both with her.

"Trouble in paradise, d'you think?" Sirius asked, grinning the moment they left.

"We can hope," James answered, and he left the obvious unspoken: if Marlene and Rooney broke up, it would solve a good part of his issues with Morton.

As the green countryside flew by outside their window, Peter proposed a gleeful bet: would Marlene and Rooney break up before or after graduation? He and Sirius both opined before, but James joined Remus' side in that it would happen after, and they argued the case back and forth for longer than James would have cared to admit.

"It'll drag on forever and cause a huge mess," Remus said firmly, and he sounded uncharacteristically amused by it. James knew why without asking. If his prediction came true, the mess would end up entirely all over Rooney. Marlene would make sure of that.

Under the guise of patrolling the train, James located the Ravenclaw compartment after the girls had been gone for nearly an hour. He couldn't resist poking his head in, and the conversation—so quiet compared to the exuberance of his own compartment, he noticed immediately—died instantly.

"Alright, Potter?" Anthony Weber, Ravenclaw's Quidditch captain, asked uncertainly. He wore a quizzical smile. James had always rather liked him, Quidditch rivalry aside.

"Good, and you?" Still, even though he didn't mind Weber, James didn't wait for an answer, didn't bother to act like he truly cared that much at all. It would have just come off as disingenuous anyway, he figured. He tossed a large slab of shimmering pink coconut ice to Lily, who sat near the window next to Hestia and Marguerite Bennett, one of Ravenclaw's prefects. She caught it easily, and the wrapper crinkled under her fingers as she turned it over, her expression nettled, he thought, but overall quite pleased. He couldn't help but grin. "Picked it up from the trolley. Your favorite, right?"

"Yes. Of course you remembered. You're too much. Really. Too much." She laughed quietly under her breath, and sounded as if she meant it genuinely, that he was too much, but in a way she didn't entirely mind. James could see Morton examining her expression, his brow slightly furrowed. But, then again, they had all stopped talking to watch the interaction, and Hestia's face had gone pinker than usual, half hidden behind her dark hair, and James thought she tried very hard not to laugh. "Thank you, Potter."

"Nothing for me?" Marlene asked, and James caught amusement in her dark eyes, and even a hint of a smile, where he had expected to only find annoyance.

"Not a damn thing," he told her cheerfully, and she actually laughed at that, at the earnestness in his voice. From her side, Rooney turned to look at her oddly, and James felt, as he often did those days, a little bad for him. He truly seemed bewildered by her of late. "What if I got you the wrong thing? That would piss you off more than if I got you nothing."

"Probably," she agreed, and Rooney continued to regard her with pure confusion.

"Anyway, Evans, train's all quiet. I just checked. McKinnon, let Jones back soon before Sirius gets too miserable without her, okay?" Everything about the way Hestia looked at James, from the twist in her mouth to the way she rolled her eyes behind the curtain of her hair, told him that she'd go with him right then if she could. "Preferably sooner than later. You know how destructive he gets when he's bored. Happy Easter!"

He could feel Lily's eyes on him even as he shut the compartment door, and when he glanced back through the window, she gave him a brief, sarcastic wave.

"Must you?" she asked the second she came into their compartment later, Hestia trailing behind her, but she laughed. James fended off the light blow she aimed towards his arm, and grabbed her hand to pull her down next to him, back into the seat she had vacated before. She immediately shrugged his arm off from where he'd placed it around her shoulders. "Do you like chaos? Did you go in there just to stir things up? Were you that bored here?"

"It was dull here without you," he told her. She aimed another smack at his arm—much less threatening at such close range, although the prior one had offered no real force either—but she let him take her hand and hold it in his own for just a moment afterwards.

When they finally arrived in the grounds of James' parents' house several hours later, near dinnertime, Lily took a look around, and then a single moment to collect herself before she turned to look at him. "You do understand that this isn't a house, right?" she asked. "This is a manor. You grew up in a manor. This explains so much about you." But she ended her accusations quickly enough, as soon as Fleamont and Euphemia Potter joined them at the door, and James watched her transform into the politest of houseguests.

Euphemia took her time to greet both of the girls, and James saw something rather tender in the lines that framed his mum's eyes when she hugged Hestia. She greeted her differently than she did Lily, warmer in some indiscernible manner in her voice and expression, which surprised him. She hugged Sirius next, and James could hear her, hear the joking in the gentle brogue of the Scottish accent she'd nearly lost after more than forty years living outside London, as she asked if he'd managed to stay out of trouble lately, including any burning buildings. But real fear lurked under her attempts at humor, and James saw that close-up when she cupped his face in her hands and stared determinedly up at him.

"You scared me half to death over Christmas," she scolded as she smiled, and he bent to hug her, even though he didn't have far to reach. She'd always been a tall woman, and he'd only surpassed her in height two or three years earlier. It still felt strange to hover above her. "At least you're trying to comb your hair," she added, gentler. "You look well. Are you well?"

"Never better," James assured her, and he meant it. He caught Fleamont's wink over her shoulder as he wrung Lily's hand enthusiastically.

"Lily Evans, of course! So delighted you're here, Effie and I have heard so much about you from James. He never stops!" Fleamont beamed, and Sirius started laughing.

"One minute, mate," he said, clapping James on the black. "Not even one minute. I told you he'd tell her immediately that you never shut up about her. Nicely done, Flea."

But James found he didn't mind at all. The way Lily glanced at him over her shoulder—warm, personal, and almost a little shy—made his dad's teasing admission worth it.

"You grew up in a manor," she repeated again for emphasis when he and Sirius took her and Hestia on a quick tour before dinner. "My parents have a house in Surrey, Potter, and it's a fairly nice one. But this is ridiculous. What else did your dad develop? This couldn't have all come from Sleekeazy's."

"I don't know, Mar used to practically bathe in it, remember?" Hestia pointed out. She seemed less surprised by it all, undoubtedly because she'd grown up in the wizarding world and understood the Potter family's fortune as Lily apparently had not. She only grew truly impressed when Sirius pointed out Euphemia's greenhouses from the window of her third-floor bedroom.

"Remus usually stays in here," James told Lily when he showed her to the bedroom across the hall from Hestia's where Millie, the Potter family house elf, had deposited her trunk. "So it has a better desk than Sirius or I have in our rooms, or in Jones', where Pete usually stays. Just…dejinx it before you use it, will you? I can't promise we didn't do something to it over the summer."

Lily stopped just short of setting her hand atop the gleaming cherry wood surface, and pulled back quickly. "Well, now I'm officially afraid to touch anything, but I probably should have started out that way, shouldn't I?" James watched her go back on that word almost immediately as she ran her hand across the floral bedspread that covered the four-poster bed, and then fingered the curtains of the window nearest her as she peaked outside. "You literally have a Quidditch pitch." She no longer sounded even slightly surprised by such extravagance.

He didn't have to step up behind her, could imagine the miniature pitch in his mind's eye perfectly well, but he did anyway so he could brush at her hair just for the sake of touching her. "Yeah, Dad had to enchant it so our muggle neighbors couldn't see and ask questions. He played for Gryffindor too, but hurt his back his final year—the way he tells it, they didn't think he'd walk again. But he always loved it, so he started flying with me when I was pretty young. He had the pitch put in the summer after first year before I had the lads over for the first time. I think he wanted to make sure that we'd always choose to come over here instead of one of their houses. He loves a full house."

"It seems like it worked," she said, and he wanted to kiss her when she glanced back at him. Perhaps she knew that, because she slipped away from the window, away from him, in the next second. And he supposed that it did, that his dad's plan had worked, because the Marauders almost exclusively hung out at the Potter household. But even still, James had hardly imagined, in all the years that he'd liked her, that he would somehow manage to get Lily to visit there as well.

He took her to the library next, although he carefully pointed out his bedroom to her, just to the right of her own, and she appeared intrigued by that. (His hopes in her curiosity plummeted when she told him, laughing, "Pettigrew says you have a shrine to me somewhere in there, and I should try to find it." He didn't know if he should join in her laughter or immediately send a Howler to Peter.) But her laughter stopped the second they walked through the library doors, and James felt a certain sense of satisfaction when he heard her suck in her breath, her expression torn between disbelief and delight, but wholly endearing to him.

"How many books are in here?" she demanded. She turned immediately to marvel over the spines of books packed from floor-to-ceiling in one of the several dozen glossy wooden shelves that spanned the two-story room. James had long-since gotten used to the luxury of it all, used to the massive stone fireplace, the heavy wooden tables and plush leather chairs, and the gleaming spiral staircase that led down to a lower level on the second floor, where he'd done his best—and succeeded—to find hidden alcoves to read as a child, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of books. It felt refreshing to see it all again through her eyes, which had gone sharp and laser-focused as she tugged a particularly old, massive tome from the shelves and cracked it open.

"Ask Dad at dinner," he prompted, but he wasn't sure if she heard, because her eyes never left the text. In hindsight, he almost wondered if he'd see her at all over the following two weeks, or if she'd stay hidden, surrounded by stacks of books, as he had often found Remus in the early morning hours of summer days when he stayed over.

But Lily had heard him, because she took a spot by Fleamont at dinner and immediately peppered him with questions about his collection. How many books did he have? What was the oldest book in his collection? The most valuable? His favorite? Did he continue to add more, and if so, how did he select new books? Did he go with newer books, or did he hunt down old editions? What should she read while she stayed with them?

"Well, he's thrilled," Euphemia muttered to James over her wine goblet, and she smiled fondly at the way Fleamont promptly forgot about his Duck a l'Orange to give long-winded replies to all of Lily's questions. Once or twice, he nearly spilled his own wine with an exuberant hand gesture or two.

Euphemia had her own questions, which she flung at Sirius and James almost like hexes, James thought, as if she tried to trip them up, clearly suspicious of their responses, but good-naturedly so. She wanted to know about their grades, their NEWT preparation, their Quidditch games, and, especially, why neither of them wrote more often. Sirius took particular joy in answering—undoubtedly, James knew, although Sirius would never admit it, because his own mother never did, and never would, express such interest in him. Euphemia knew that too, had always known, and took extra time and extra effort to scold him gently, praise him highly, and express all the love and concern she showed James, as any mother should.

She tried to include Hestia as well, but her responses to Euphemia's questions came much less animatedly than those from Sirius and James. Hestia had gone inward again Although her smile stayed as sweet as ever, her words came out softer, shorter, less assured, a complete reversal from the laughing joy James so often saw after Christmas. Her sweetness didn't falter, but it did change a little, grew visibly melancholy, as they tucked into pudding at the end of the meal and Euphemia tentatively brought up Hestia's mother.

"I was so sorry when I heard the news; I knew your mother well," she told Hestia softly, and James saw it again, the tenderness around his mum's eyes that he'd noticed when she'd first greeted Hestia. That tenderness vanished, briefly, and her mouth tightened when she added tersely, "I know the Ministry wanted it all hushed up, but of course I heard. I can't believe they thought word wouldn't get out, when so many people loved your mother." James couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his mum look so quietly furious, not even when he and Sirius had accidentally thrown a quaffle through the roof of one of her precious greenhouses the previous summer.

Although Lily never paused in her conversation with Fleamont (which had transformed, over the course of the meal, into something about potion-making), James saw her arm reach out under the table towards Hestia, who sat at her side. He knew she reached for Hestia, clearly aware of both conversations at once, and Hestia set down her pudding spoon briefly. Her hand disappeared under the table for a moment, no doubt to squeeze Lily's.

"Mum talked about you a lot," Hestia said, and although she picked her spoon back up, she didn't take another bite, just fiddled with the utensil between her fingers. She smiled, small and wistful, and,= to James' right, Sirius went rather still as he watched her. James knew he had as well. In all the months they'd passed as friends since Christmas, she'd never mentioned a friendship between their mums. "She complained about the charity board at St. Mungo's so often, about how you all never got anything accomplished at meetings, but said going out for drinks afterwards with you and Marybelle Picket made things at least a little better. She told me how the three of you would…well, kind of make fun of everyone else, and the ineptitude of it all. It always really cheered her up."

Euphemia's smile grew to match Hestia's, also wistful, also sad. She waited for a moment, and then reached out a lined, ringed hand to touch Hestia's shoulder, as if she didn't know if she should or not. "We had such fun together. I always told her I didn't know how she did it—worked such long hours, served on the board, and managed to be such a wonderful wife and mother. I'd ask her if she ever slept, and she'd always say that sleep was a waste of time." Her hand drifted to Hestia's hair, which had grown past her shoulders since Christmas, and tucked a swath behind her ear. "I'm sure you hear this a lot, but you look quite a bit like her. You have her smile."

Hestia ducked her head, and the fine silk of her dark hair fell in front of her face again. "I have heard that, but it never grows old."

Fleamont and Lily had fallen silent, and James caught Lily's eye for a moment and saw the anxiety there, the worry in the way she chewed the inside of her cheek and watched Hestia closely.

Euphemia reached for her goblet and cradled it between both hands. "And your father?" she asked. "How is he?"

"He'll never be the same," Hestia said after a long pause, and just from the way she said it, the conversation ended.

They retired to the den after dinner, and Lily and Hestia disappeared upstairs briefly with the promise that they'd return. Sirius passed those twenty or so minutes tensely, although he tried to engage Fleamont in conversation about Quidditch with an air of perfect ease. He only really relaxed once Hestia reappeared, carrying her knitting needles and a ball of blue yarn attached to a half-finished jumper. She let him pull her next to him on a loveseat, and James heard him exhale a significant amount of tension when Hestia shyly asked Euphemia about her greenhouses, her interest clearly piqued and mood, if not quite normal, at least okay.

"What's that?" James as Lily, because she carried her own bundle, hers a tall stack of neatly-arranged parchment, which she proffered to Fleamont. He watched his dad accept the papers with one hand, and use the other to summon her a chair to sit beside his favorite leather armchair.

"Lily told me over dinner about a potion she created," Fleamont explained absently as he bent his messy, gray head to rifle through the parchment with keen interest. He plucked the top one from the stack and handed it back to her, the motion sharp and assured. "Never show another potion-maker your recipe," he told her brusquely, all business. "That's how you get your hard-work stolen. Guard that."

"That's fair. Thank you." James crossed the room to sprawl on the floor near her, close enough that he could lean back against her chair. As he twisted to look at her, he recognized the careful loops of her handwriting across the worn parchment in her hands, and he watched her roll the piece up carefully. "I haven't shown it to anyone else, or even really talked about it much," she said. "I thought about mentioning it to Slughorn, but…do you know him at all, Mr. Potter?"

"Fleamont," he corrected automatically. As he recognized her question, filtered through the deep thoughts that flashed across his face as he read over her work, he paused to smile. "Yes, I know Horace. We were at Hogwarts together. I was a few years older. We didn't talk much then—different houses, and Gryffindor and Slytherin at that—but the potion-making world is a fairly small one. I got to know him well after I founded Potter's Potions—my old potions business, where I developed Sleekeazy's." He seemed to clarify the latter in case she didn't know, but Lily didn't look startled at any of this information, as if she already knew that he'd had his own potion-making company. James had to wonder if she'd quizzed Hestia relentlessly about his family when they had gone upstairs. "And I understand. If I were a student, I wouldn't quite trust him with any information about an original potion, no matter how much he favors you, as I'm sure he does you."

"Annoyingly so," James confirmed, and he reached a hand back to Lily. "You know I'm not a potion-maker. Can I see?"

She hesitated, then handed him the parchment. He scanned the ingredients and instructions while he listened to Lily walk his dad through the copious amount of field notes she had near the back of the stack, and, underneath that, photographs of the various iterations, both potions and trials.

"And your subject?" Fleamont asked, and James looked up at the sharpness in his tone. From the corner of his eye, he could see Sirius look over too, and knew why he had the same reaction. James could hardly recall a time when he'd heard his mild-mannered, lighthearted dad use that voice, not in all the years that he'd gotten in trouble at home and at school, sometimes minor offenses, but some incredibly serious. Fleamont typically laughed the whole thing off, usually even encouraged his antics, and Sirius' as well. He never got mad, but he sounded almost that.

"Myself, at first," Lily replied neutrally, and James watched as they stared at each other silently, something strange passing between them that he couldn't quite understand.

"How many versions before this?" Fleamont turned a piece of parchment towards her, and James craned his neck to see, but his dad snapped it back to himself quickly, as if he saw James' attention.

"That's number six, and I think that's how it will stay. There's nothing I can figure that would make it fade more. And it depends on the injury. I tried it on Hestia as well, and that's how I got versions seven and eight—you'll see those photos on the next page. Testing it on her helped me figure out some issues of universality, and I think it works more broadly now."

The words all sounded so coded, Lily's in particular, as if she selected each one carefully, or had perhaps rehearsed them before. James felt entirely left out from the conversation, an outsider looking in who couldn't fully understand the language. Hestia glanced up at the mention of her name, but she looked didn't look confused at all, not like James felt. She clearly knew more about the subject than he did, enough that she quite easily returned to her conversation about Euphemia's prized singing irises.

"So you'd like to take it to market then." Fleamont handed Lily back the stack of parchment and went to pour himself a glass of scotch from the marble-inlayed drink cart near the empty fireplace hearth. "That's a lot of work."

"But necessary work, isn't it?" When James reached back to take the papers from her without invitation, Lily kept her grip firm for a moment before she relented. She gave him a look he couldn't quite decipher when she handed them over, and then her hand drifted to rest on his shoulder. He wondered what that meant, the gentle touch of her fingers. "Given the state of the wizarding world right now?"

Everything clicked as James rifled through the papers. Skimming through dozens of pages of carefully recorded notes, he saw that she had marked each change in each version of her potion, from ingredients to brew time to heat to method of stirring, and its effects, both on the potion itself and on the application of the potion to the subject. He came at last to the back, to the promised photographs, and found nearly half a dozen pages with photos carefully affixed, each one a snapshot of the length of her cursed calf. He watched the transformation as the photos progressed, from the thick black lines she had described in the days after her return to St. Mungo's, which looked almost soldered into her skin, to the faint, white crisscrossing pattern he and had seen and touched himself, with dozens of other versions in between. In the process, among other side effects, she'd broken out in hives from knee to ankle twice, had managed to cover the area with dense, purple welts, and had even seared off a large chunk of skin near her ankle.

"What the fuck, Evans," James bit out, and he heard his mum stop chatting pleasantly to Hestia, heard her say his name with harsh reproach, but he ignored her. The hand on his shoulder gave several soothing strokes, and he understood that she'd reached for him to soften the blow, just as she clearly intended to do with the winning smile she offered when he glared up at her. "You didn't tell me any of this. When did you plan to?"

She seemed to really consider the question. "I wasn't exactly hiding it, because I did tell you a bit," she answered finally. "But look—" She leaned down over his shoulder, and her hand migrated to the nape of his neck, a gentle caress where his skin met the back of his shirt, and she flicked through the pages with her free hand to point at one of the final photographs. "Look, this is Hestia before, after treatment with just Dittany, and here she is after I applied the potion to her," she said eagerly, persuasively. And James could see the difference clear as day in the white line of a scar that had nearly split Hestia's neck after the Death Eaters' attack on Hogwarts, which had lessened in the next photograph, and then disappeared entirely in the one after.

He could smell Lily's hair, soft and sweet, in what had tumbled over her shoulder and against his face. Did she know, he wondered, the way it made his stomach twist, to have her so close, to feel her fingers on the back of his neck where she often twined her hands when they kissed? He absolutely thought she must.

But he refused to get distracted, at least enough to deter him totally. "Does Dumbledore know?" he asked. "That—"

"That I meant to talk to your dad about this? Yes, of course. He suggested it. I wouldn't—" Lily stopped suddenly and lifted her head. When James turned back to look at her, he saw that she'd gone pink. "I'm so sorry," she apologized, her voice lacking the heat that had started to creep in moments before. "This is incredibly rude."

"What, your little lover's quarrel?" Sirius asked. He grinned, but James caught the frank curiosity in his face under his amusement as well. "Hess and I are used to it by now."

"And I really think James should apologize, Lily, not you," Euphemia said firmly, and she gave James a look that could have melted steel. "Because I'm not sure what that language was, James Henry."

"Sorry, Evans," James repeated dutifully. It went unsaid that just because he had to say it didn't mean he had to mean it, and his voice sounded so hollow that, for a second, Euphemia looked like she might push him further and insist that that wasn't good enough, but Lily spoke up.

"That's alright," she said, and she took her hand off his neck to reach down and retrieve her papers from him. He missed her touch immediately, and resented her—and himself—for it. "I'm sure I've said worse to you."

"Probably within the week," Sirius agreed, sniggering, but he managed to calm himself, and even look shamefaced, when James caught his eye.

"Probably," Lily agreed, and although James couldn't see her face, and didn't want to turn around to look at her, he knew she had to look every bit as chipper and cheerful as she sounded. "Mrs. Potter—"

"Effie, please."

"Effie, then. I know that you grow, but do you brew? Hestia can't stand it, which I've never understood—"

James' mood hadn't improved fully when he made the first move for bed a couple hours later. Everyone else had seemed only too happy to let Lily smooth over the moment that had passed between her and James without further explanation. Fleamont had even suggested, seemingly without pause, that he show Lily his brewing lab the next day. He asked her to walk him through the broad strokes of her scar-removal potion, as if he'd forgotten the potential row it had raised between her and James.

"Nothing specific, mind you," he repeated more than once, smiling. "That's for you to know, and no one to find out. But I'd love to see the broad strokes."

"He's never gotten over his disappointment in me and James for thinking Potions is dull as dirt," Sirius explained to Hestia in a stage whisper, and Fleamont laughed.

"Couldn't have said it better myself," he agreed, and he continued to chuckle about it, off and on, until they went to bed.

James bid his friends goodnight the moment he reached the third-floor landing and went to his room with the determination to stay mad. Although, he reckoned as he threw open his trunk and began tossing clothes out, mostly to give himself something to do, he didn't know if he was quite mad, or more worried and frustrated. It seemed like Lily always kept important information from him that she would drop casually in conversation later, and then acted surprised when it upset him. He kept waiting for the day that she would tell him things the moment they happened, not several days or weeks later, and, more so, the day she would want to tell him those things. But it seemed increasingly like that day might never come.

He heard Sirius' voice in the hall briefly, and the unmistakable sound of Lily's laughter, before he heard doors close. And then, silence.

James had just enough time to fully unpack his trunk—or at least take everything out and put absolutely nothing away—before he heard an explosion from Lily's room.

The sound sent his heart into his mouth, and his mind flew immediately back in time, back to Christmas Eve to the Three Broomsticks. He suddenly felt like he was back there again, trapped inside the wreckage with his arm dangling uselessly as smoke, thick and heavy, surrounded him. He grabbed his wand, dashed into the hall in a second, and threw her door open before he even had time to think.

What he found was nothing like what he expected.

Lily stood in front of her dresser, which smoked slightly, her fingers in her mouth and her face irate. But James hardly noticed any of that, or anything at all, past that she'd already changed out of her jeans and blouse and into a dark green Holyhead Harpies jersey and nothing else, the hem note quite long enough to cover the curve of her backside. And as she rounded on him, eyes flashing furiously, he caught a glimpse of dark red knickers lined in lace.

"What the fuck, Potter!" she exclaimed angrily, yanking her hand from her mouth, her fingertips quite red. It dawned on James, somewhere in the back of his head, that she repeated the same words he'd hurled at her a couple hours earlier. "The desk might be jinxed, be careful, you said! But nothing about the dresser! Nothing! What is wrong with you four? Do you know what I do to Hestia and Marlene that's like this?"

"What?" James jumped at Sirius' voice, having not heard him approach. He, too, held his wand in his hand, which he lowered as he rapidly examined the scene, from James to the smoking dresser to Lily, where his eyes rested. It became apparent to James quite quickly that he tried his hardest not to laugh. "Tell us."

"Nothing! I don't do anything like this, because I'm not a fucking child! What else? What else is jinxed?"

"Honestly, probably everything," Sirius answered easily. "I already checked everything in Hess' room earlier, because I knew we'd probably done something to mess with Pete last summer. So this is on James, just so you know, for not doing that in here. And Evans?"

"What?" If Lily had held something, James would have bet that she'd have thrown it at them then.

"Nice legs."

In her anger, it took her a moment to understand what he meant. Already flushed with anger, she couldn't exactly go redder, but something about her expression changed, something where the rage dropped just a little and she looked almost embarrassed. But then she seemed to get angry all over again, with purpose, and she stalked across the room towards her bed, to the pile of her discarded clothes from the day. In two swift motions, she bent to grab her wand and then summoned her bathrobe from her open trunk, the same soft purple one they'd seen her wear in the common room near dawn that morning. It felt like ages ago. The moment she pulled it on, she began lobbing pillows at them from her bed, her aim, just as James remembered, quite accurate.

"You're both such—just—ugh!" Words seemed to fail her, nothing quite terrible enough to describe them, as James ducked a small, decorative lace pillow that she'd aimed for his head. "It scared me senseless, you pricks! And, fucking hell, it's a Quidditch jersey, Potter, not lingerie, so don't look like that!"

"You understand it's basically the same thing to us, right?" Sirius asked conversationally, even as James had no idea quite how he looked, or what she saw on his face. She hurled her last pillow at Sirius, which he caught. "Speaking of, whose jersey? Which Harpy is your favorite? Are you a fan of seekers or keepers or—"

"Is everything…okay?" Hestia's voice, quiet and perhaps almost amused, came from behind them. She held a towel in one hand, which she'd clearly just pulled from her damp hair, and one of Lily's pillows in the other. The sight of her—and the sight of her own sleepwear, a matching set of soft pink silk in a tank top and pants—distracted Sirius immediately and entirely from his mission to wind Lily up.

"Oh, they just took several years off my life, Hessie, it's fine," Lily said acidly. She sat on the edge of her bed, but only for a fraction of a second, before she jumped back up, clearly recalling her suspicion of all the furniture in the room.

"I'll check everything else for you, if you want," James offered, and she scoffed.

"No. Leave. You too, Black. Hessie, will you come in?"

Hestia examined her momentarily, and then shook her head. "No. No, I don't think I will. You can come to my room in a bit." Surprised at her refusal, and the conviction in her tone, James looked to her just in time to see her move to kiss Sirius goodnight. He didn't think he'd ever seen her initiate a kiss before, although she had allowed Sirius to do so in front of other people a few times since after the Ravenclaw Quidditch match. It still felt strange to see. "Goodnight," she told the three of them—or, two, rather, since she clearly expected to see Lily again—and slipped into her room and shut the door.

Sirius looked like he wanted to follow her, and quite badly, based on the way he stared at her door as if he willed it to reopen. But, perhaps feeling James' eyes on him, he shrugged, gave his own goodnight, and returned to his room.

James watched Lily, who studiously avoided his eye and flicked her wand, perhaps harder than necessary, to summon her pillows back to her bed, where they arranged themselves neatly atop the quilt. "I'll help you check the rest," he offered again as she turned to run her wand across her mattress, probing for jinxes.

"If you like," she replied curtly, not bothering to turn around. And so he stepped into her room, even though it felt rather like entering a lion's den, and shut the door behind him.

He took the jinx off the dresser, and, although he didn't tell her, removed a similar jinx he detected on the bedside table on the right side of the bed. "If it makes you feel any better," he said into the silence as they worked, "After I got him with one too many jinxes, Remus came into my room last summer around three in the morning and literally set my bed on fire. The flames didn't actually burn anything—don't ask me what kind of charm that was—but it gave me a right shock to wake up to that."

"I'm sure you absolutely deserved it." After pressing a hand into her mattress, clearly testing, she sat down. She no longer quite so fearsome, just more tired than anything. James had almost forgotten, due to her outward energy all evening, that she had passed the full moon the night before with very little sleep as well. "What did you think, when you heard it from your room?"

"What, the jinx?" he asked, and she nodded. James stood from where he crouched by the desk, having just double-checked all the drawers, and found that he didn't know what to do with himself after he'd finished his task. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I thought about the Three Broomsticks," he said, and admitting just that simple fact took more effort than he would have expected.

She continued to nod. "So did I," she said, and despite the lack of inflection in her voice—or maybe because of it—he felt terrible all over again.

"I'm sorry. I really am." Deciding to chance it, he closed the distance between them and sat down next to her. She didn't react negatively, or really at all, other than to just look at him.

"I know. You meant it as a joke to Remus, not me. I get it. I got mad because it scared me than anything. I really hate feeling scared, especially these days. It happens too often."

That, of course, made him feel even worse.

"But you also made me mad because—" Her voice changed somehow, although it became no friendlier and held none of the warmth or teasing he'd grown to expect from her, which had even remained present in the way she had spoken to him, admittedly minimally, after the prefect's bathroom. "Please don't try to argue with me in front of your parents again. I'd rather they not hate me by the end of break."

It took James a second to remember what she even spoke of. He'd all but forgotten his anger the instant he'd heard the jinx go off from his room. "My dad would already trade me and Sirius for you," he joked, deflecting, and he thought she almost smiled. She didn't respond, just watched him, presumably waiting for his agreement. "Right. I won't. But you didn't tell me you talked to Dumbledore. Or the extent of your potion attempts. Of course I got mad. I want you to tell me these things—and the stuff with Dumbledore, don't you think I need to know that?"

"I only talked to him about all this after you and I stopped…talking." The way she said it told him everything, and she didn't need to add, although she did, "After the prefect's bathroom." He watched her shift her weight slightly. "So I didn't feel like trying to start some big conversation with you. I've tried to give you space, and be as respectful as I can."

He stared, taken aback. "Respectful of what?"

"Of the fact that this doesn't work for you." She motioned between the two of them, and when her hand neared him, James caught it in his own, much as he had done earlier that day on the train. She withdrew from him immediately, albeit gently. "It's not enough for you, and I understand that. I know that that means I have a lot to figure out, but I'm not going to be—I don't know—emotionally intimate with you in the meantime, or whatever. Or physically intimate, although I know I haven't been the best at keeping to that—and don't you fucking dare try to kiss me right now!"

James hadn't even moved, and he stared at her, startled beyond words that she could somehow read his mind. "I didn't!"

"But you were absolutely going to. You get this look—"

"You let me kiss you this morning!"

She sighed. "Potter, I came out of a dead sleep after I was up all night worrying about Remus, and worried the rest of you would somehow end up werewolf food because none of you will tell me how it is that you're all miraculously fine after you all apparently get bitten every month. And that's fine. It's maddening, but I'll never ask you to tell me, any of you. But because I don't understand how it works, I was so relieved to see you all in one piece that I would have let Pettigrew kiss me."

He snorted. "You don't mean that."

"Well, of course I don't. But that doesn't mean I should have let you kiss me, even if I wanted you to. That's all I'm trying to say. It was entirely contrary to the message I wanted to send."

A low swoop of nausea hit James, followed by a hot flash of anger. "You say the same thing about kissing Morton, you know that, right?" he asked harshly, so harshly he surprised himself, and certainly surprised her, because she recoiled visibly. "About how kissing him would send him contrary messages. You've said it more than once."

"Oh." Her voice had gone suddenly rather small. He could hear her throat click when she swallowed. "No. I didn't know that. But…it's not the same."

"How? Tell me."

"No," she said immediately, decisively, with a firm set to her jaw. "No. I don't want—"

"What?" he asked, because she'd stopped herself.

"I don't want to have this conversation right now," she said resolutely, but he knew that wasn't what she'd meant to say, even though she sounded infuriatingly convincing. She stood up. "I'm going to go to Hestia's room. We can argue later when—don't you fucking dare!" she repeated again, because the sight of her about to leave had vanished away any and all anger he had towards her. He'd grabbed her by the fabric of her robe and pulled her back towards him so he could secure an arm around her waist.

"Don't go." He waited for her to actually make a move, to try to pull away, to express her disapproval in any way other than her dark, warning glare, before he asked, "Look, do you want to talk to me or kiss me?"

"I'm not talking about this!" she insisted, which basically told him everything he figured he needed to know. When he pushed a hand into her hair to bring her to him to kiss her, he found her mouth on his, hot with desire, before he could even make the move.

He pulled her closer, flush against him where he sat, and her hands went around his neck, back to where she'd touched him in an attempt to soothe him earlier, which confirmed to him that she had known exactly what he'd thought as she'd done so. His pulse seemed to pound double-time as he tugged at the knot in her robe, impatient and quite suddenly frustrated. She pulled away, both from his mouth and her hands from his neck.

"Absolutely not," she said, but the effect of her words was ruined by the breathless quality of her voice. "You said—"

"Fuck what I said," he told her, and he could not have meant it more. Seeing her in the comfort of his home, watching her laugh with his parents, and holding her on a bed he knew well had altered everything he'd previously thought. That she'd agreed to come home with him at all left him far more confident in things between them than anything he felt previously, enough that any doubts flew out the window from the closeness of her. He got her robe open and could see, again, the green of her Harpies jersey against her bare skin. He reached into her robe, wrapped both arms around her rather rougher than before, and dragged her closer still. The feeling of frustration had never dissipated, and he knew, instinctually, that it wouldn't until he got inside her. Unable to do that, he cupped her arse and lifted her up to straddle his lap. He caught the look on her face for a second, quite torn as if she thought better of the whole situation, before she bent to catch his mouth again, her hands back in his hair, buried on either side of his head, holding him to her.

"We're not doing this," she said a second later, and he realized why she cradled his head as she did—because she could not only pull him to her, but also hold him away.

"Why?" he demanded. He heard the desperation in his voice, but he didn't care, because he also heard the way her breath caught, very faintly, when he ran his hands over the outsides of each of her legs, and u, to grasp her hips. He'd dropped his eyes to watch his progress, to watch himself touch her, and the sight of her there—the tensed muscles of her legs; the red of her knickers, slung low around her hips; the way the skin of his hands contrasted with that of her stomach, hers a more delicate shade of white—made his cock rub almost painful against his jeans. She felt it too, he could tell, by the way she twisted her hips against his for a few delicious seconds before she stilled, her breathing a bit more ragged than before. "Fuck what I said," he repeated. "I want you. I've never wanted anything so bad in my life. Fucking hell, I know you feel that."

She nearly laughed, although he didn't know at what—his use of her favorite swear for the first time, or how clearly tortured he sounded, even to his own ears. "Don't be dramatic," she said, though not dismissively, but almost tenderly, the note in her voice only solidified by the way she caressed his cheek briefly with her thumb. "Just because this jersey is weirdly like catnip to you—"

"It's not weird at all, but whatever, fine, if it bothers you so much we can just take it off."

She did laugh then, and swung her head around as she had done so often on the train that morning, as she did so often generally. Watching her, James had a feeling he'd never be able to break the instant association he made between the motion and his throbbing erection. "No. No, I'm not shagging you. Christ, can you imagine if I acted like this towards you when you told me no, if I had kept persisting?"

He managed to feel bad about that, even as his hands migrated upwards under her jersey, over the smooth planes of her sides and up her back, and his stomach clenched, almost painful with pleasure, when he confirmed, as he suspected, that she wasn't wearing a bra. "I would have cracked immediately," he told her honestly, even as his head ached with the knowledge that it would take three simple moves—robe off, shirt over her head, knickers down—to get her fully naked. "But you're not really trying to make me stop, are you?"

"No," she confirmed. "No, not yet. You'll know when I'm stopping you, and you'll let me go then. I just want you to know—"

She let him kiss her, let him use the hands on her back to pull her down, and she made a noise, soft and low against his mouth, when he moved to stroke her breast, her nipple hard even before he touched her. For a moment, from the way she rocked against him, from the second noise she made, more determined than before, and from the way she looked at him when she pulled back abruptly, with a sort of raw intensity he couldn't recall ever seeing on her face before, not in all the times he'd snogged her, not even in the prefect's bathroom when he'd had his fingers inside her, he thought he had her.

"I just want you to know," she repeated, and his stomach flipped at the sound of her voice, throatier than he had ever heard it, clearly affected with no attempt to hide it, "That I'm not turning you down because you turned me down, although I don't mind how miserable you look right now." She grabbed his hands, both of them, one from her breast and the other that had gone to stroke the smooth curve of her backside, and wove her fingers through his. He understood why, a second later, when her eyes flashed, hot and dangerous, and she watched him very closely, clearly savoring every word. "That was worse for me, in the prefect's bathroom, than this is for you, because you had me so close to coming—honestly, another five or ten seconds would have done it, although I expect you could tell that. I should have just let you get me off, but I went for your belt because I wanted you inside me when I came, I wanted you to feel me—"

James wrenched a hand away from where she held it and grabbed the back of her neck to pull her back to his mouth. And he knew, again, in the part of his brain that still formed thoughts, thoughts outside of the desperate, all-encompassing need to touch her, that he only managed to do so because she let him, that she'd allowed him to do it despite her front at pinning his hands away from her. A moment later he felt her open her legs, wider from where they clenched around him, and he knew she led him there. He pushed his hand between her legs, ran his fingers over the outside of her knickers, and found the fabric soaked through.

And then, after she pressed herself against his hand eagerly, she pulled away from him, slipping off his lap so quickly that he had no time to even react before she took several steps back, outside the range of his arms.

"Now I'm done," she said firmly, and she yanked her robe closed and tied the belt savagely. Just as she had promised, he knew, however dumbstruck, that she meant it.

"Evans—" he began, even though he didn't know what he even meant to say. "Just—Lily—"

He actually managed to startle her as her name fell from his lips, something he hadn't even planned. She laughed as she pushed her hair away from her face and hooked it, smoothly, behind each ear. "No way, James," she said archly, and he hated that he loved the way his name sounded coming from her, even if she only said it to make a point. "This is when you're going to try calling me Lily? This moment? Really? Whatever. Listen. I'm not trying to be cruel—"

"Bullshit."

"Okay, I'm not trying to be only cruel. This is really all your fault, because I told you not to kiss me. I did. But thank you for letting me get this out of the way early. You can do whatever you want to me—"

"Promise? Then get back here."

She started to laugh again, even though he could tell she clearly didn't want to. She struggled to regain control over her face after a few seconds, and pushed her hair back again. "No. I meant, I assume you're going to try this basically as often as you can during break—which, I kind of thought you might, even though I meant what I said." The mirth faded rapidly from her face. "I want to be considerate to the way that you feel, and what you said, in the prefect's bathroom about why you didn't want to have sex. Honestly. I want to respect that. So, my point is, you can try this as much as you want, you can do whatever you want, but this is how it will end, because—what did you say to me once? 'Because I give a shit about you, okay?' I'm not going to shag you unless I'm sure."

"Sure of what?" he asked, but she didn't answer, and he would turn the question over in his mind for days.

She bent down and rummaged in her trunk for a moment or two, long enough for him to appreciate, not for the first time, that her robe probably should have been longer. "Here," she said, straightening, and threw something at him, something black and lacy, which hit him in the chest.

Knickers, he recognized after hold them for less than a second, and he'd seen larger scraps of parchment before. "Why would you bring these here with you?" he asked slowly, his mouth rather dry, another question that would plague him for days.

She shrugged in return, a light lift of a single shoulder, her expression all innocence. "I don't know. You figure it out. But, you know, in case you need an aid, since you're going to be taking care of yourself for the foreseeable future. Goodnight!" She swept out the door, and he could hear her laughing long after she'd disappeared into Hestia's bedroom.