A/N: Welcome to my first one-shot!
This story takes place in the "Voyeur" universe, "Voyeur" being my long-fic (and by that, I mean my stupidly long long-fic). This one-shot stands alone regardless of its place in that story.
Fair warning: this one-shot features Lily and James with other people. In fact, they're not even together by the end. I know that that's a no-go for some Jily shippers, so if you don't want to see them with other people, this isn't the fic for you.
Request: if you're a Jily shipper and read a lot of fanfic (or what suggestions on more fanfics to read!), head over to the Tumblr jilyawards2020 to vote on your favorite fics. (No Tumblr account needed to vote!) They put a TON of effort into creating it all, so I'd love to see a big turnout.
Finally, you can follow me on Tumblr at scriibble-fics, if you're so inclined. I love prompts and questions!
Eighty Days
Lily Evans' life ended at 2:35 PM on January 12, 1976, just over two weeks shy of her seventeenth birthday.
That was how it fucking felt, anyway.
She didn't have a watch on her, but she later estimated the time back, performing the calculations as a strange sort of penance that she imposed on herself. She knew for certain that they were approximately two-thirds of the way through Transfiguration, working on the practical application of transforming water into a solid object—a pair of shoes, a desk, a lamp, whatever they wished.
If she'd had a better hand at Transfiguration, she would have transfigured the water into a comically oversized mallet and used it to knock out James Potter.
No, maybe she would have just knocked herself out. That was better, far better, than the alternative, which was her life ending.
And it was ending, absolutely unequivocally, without a doubt. Life was completely over, because she fancied James Potter.
It was probably dramatic to think—it felt dramatic to even experience it—but she swore the fucking ground shifted under her feet. If only it had opened and swallowed her whole. She would have preferred that to the sudden screaming in her head, screaming she planned to promptly do out loud the second she could get somewhere private and silence the room.
Five and a half years of the most serious dislike she felt for anyone outside of Slytherin house, transformed in an instant.
How was that for Transfiguration?
Perhaps worst of all, when she would try to recall exactly how it had happened, she couldn't, and it would drive her absolutely mad. She never forgot anything, and she prided herself on that. She could remember every rant, large and small, that Marlene McKinnon had ever made, and those happened several times a day. She could remember every bit of knowledge and insight Hestia Jones had ever shared with her about Herbology, her voice all quiet passion, and she didn't even care much for the subject. She could remember verbatim every horrible thing every Slytherin had said to her, every snide remark Petunia had ever shot her way, every comment from a professor that she could even possibly construe as critique. She didn't want to remember those things, but she couldn't help it. She obsessed over it all.
Why the fuck couldn't she remember what Potter said to absolutely destroy her life?
It must have simply broken her brain. She couldn't see any other explanation making sense. The second she looked at him with anything other than disdain, she must have blacked out.
He'd made her laugh before, of course. She hated even having to add the "of course" there, but it was necessary when it came to the Marauders. They made everyone laugh. Most people laughed willingly, often eagerly, excited to see what the four would do next. A prank on Filch? Or on the Slytherins, maybe? Some sort of destructive chaos in the castle? A giant party in Gryffindor Tower "just because it was Thursday"?
When she laughed at their antics, she laughed begrudgingly, and rarely at that. It wasn't like they weren't funny, but their humor revolved so much around the agony or embarrassment of other people that it usually frustrated her more than anything.
It didn't help that she often found herself on the receiving end of very similar attention from Potter. At sixteen, he still apparently hadn't figured out how to differentiate the way he treated a girl he fancied from the way he treated people he hated. The behavior wasn't identical, of course. He didn't hex her or curse her, although she did him. He also didn't prank her, at least not anything serious, nothing past the equivalent of 'pulling on a little girl's pigtails,' as her dad would have teased—and did tease, when she complained about Potter over the summers. He might transfigure her backpack or charm objects to follow her or literally mess with her hair (which he didn't pull, but she had lost it quite a bit when he'd charmed it blue and told her repeatedly how much it suited her), but nothing worse than that. He continually paid attention to her, ungodly amounts of attention, with the same sort of obnoxious, all-encompassing, obsessive nature that he used to harass people he didn't like.
And he asked her out.
All the time.
Loudly.
Well, at least he'd taught her how to put blokes in their place. She knew very well how to verbally destroy a lad who wouldn't take no for an answer on a night out, and she had Potter to thank for that.. She'd gotten rather good at telling him no in various angry, sometimes creative ways—so good, in fact, that she'd started to find it a little boring. He no longer even made her truly angry. She simply didn't care about him, and wished he'd leave her alone and let her forget that he existed.
So to laugh when he made some stupid crack at Sirius Black during Transfiguration after they (as always) finished their work early and mucked about? That wasn't a big deal. She'd laughed at his jokes before. Problem was, she usually remembered them, because she never forgot a fucking thing.
The bigger problem, of course, was that he and Black worked next to her and Hestia and Marlene, no doubt because Potter had placed them there so he could harass her. Potter saw her laugh, and he laughed with her, and suddenly, looking at him—
Her life was over.
When had he gotten fit?
It didn't make sense. She saw him laugh all the time. He and his stupid friends (correction: his stupid friends and Remus) never stopped laughing. Sometimes she thought she could recognize Potter's laughter better than that of Hestia or Marlene, and the three of them never left each other's sides. She knew it was dramatic, but she could swear she'd heard his laughter before in her stress nightmares.
Yet how often did she look at him when he laughed—really look at him when he laughed—when it wasn't at someone else's expense?
Apparently that changed things.
Apparently that gave him a jawline she hadn't noticed before.
Apparently his hair no longer looked stupid (undoubtedly helped by him not reaching to muss it up, the wanker), but tousled in the messy sort of way that made her think of snogging a bloke. No, it made her think of seriously snogging a bloke, the kind of snog where her hands were in his hair and his hands were impatient and everywhere and neither of them could even talk from desire and desperation and lack of breath, but that hardly mattered because it was all so good.
Apparently it didn't even have to do entirely with his face as he laughed. Apparently he also had great forearms, made evident by the careless roll of his shirtsleeves, and fuck, why was that her thing?
Probably because forearms led to the hands, and apparently those were nice too, and—
Her life ended and her world collapsed and it wasn't dramatic to think so and it wasn't cowardice to ask McGonagall if she could go to the loo and it wasn't ridiculous that she went specifically to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom so she could lock the door, silence the room, and fucking lose it.
But it was nice that Myrtle sobbed with her while she screamed. She thanked her afterwards, after she'd finished her what the fuck is wrong with me and Jesus Christ how the fuck am I this desperate and if he ever finds out I'm going to have to actually kill him rant had ended.
Myrtle smiled, her silvery face still thick with tears. "You're always welcome to come back," she said. And that?
That was just the icing on the fucking cake, because she was not about to join Myrtle's ranks in haunting a loo. She was not. Fuck Potter and his stupid forearms and his perfect jawline and his dumb jokes. She was going to ignore him so hard that he would physically stop existing. That was the amount of willpower she planned to put behind it.
So she did.
xxx
On that Day Zero, The Day Lily's Life Ended, Alexander Morton provided a beautiful distraction.
There was no reason for her to be so desperate that she had to fancy James fucking Potter and think about his annoyingly lovely hands. She was getting some, and it was starting to get really good, the kind of good where two people had truly figured out what they each liked and set to doing those things. Alex was smart and kind and maybe a little boring, but he was lovely to look at. Sometimes she felt bad for thinking that way about him, but she wouldn't have minded if he thought the same about her. They were casual, after all. Friends? Certainly. Potions tablemates? Absolutely, when she could convince Marlene to grow a pair and sit with him and Lucas Rooney, who Marlene had (for some reason) fancied for years. Lovers? She hated the term, but sure. He was always willing to meet up for a shag when she wanted, wasn't pushy if he asked and she wasn't into it, and she'd vetted him long enough that she trusted him with total secrecy. It was the perfect system.
Best of all, things with Alex were easy.
Lord, were they easy.
He didn't try to impress her or show off for her in any way except to get her off, and that was all she wanted. He didn't make a fool out of himself trying to make her laugh, and when she did laugh, he didn't look at her like she made the fucking world turn, like he'd woken up each and every morning with no goal in life except to make her laugh, like he'd remember that laugh forever and tell tales of it to his children and grandchildren—not like someone else she knew. He didn't try to hold her. He didn't try to talk about his feelings or ask after hers outside of a general, blanket how are you, and she could lie about that without even trying.
Potter wasn't easy.
But he could have been easy, she knew. She didn't doubt that she could have taken over his life and improved or destroyed it on a whim. It felt arrogant to even think (and she hated that about him too, his fucking arrogance, so she didn't want to ever emulate him on that), but he'd fancied her openly and intensely for long enough that she knew she could have crushed him if she wanted. It would have been easy to say yes to one of his Hogsmeade overtures, get his hopes up—maybe even over several months, depending on how long she could stomach his presence—and then crush him.
Marlene had suggested it.
More than once.
She just didn't have it in her. For all her talk, she doubted Marlene did either. Potter might treat others cruelly—hell, she'd taken points off of him not two days before The Day Her Life Ended because she'd caught him and Black at hexing a couple Slytherin fifth years.
"For laughs," Black had said when she'd asked why.
Potter had taken a different route.
"So, Evans—" he'd began, and she knew the tone of his voice and the look on his face well enough to just turn on her heel and leave.
But just because he was cruel didn't mean she had to be cruel back.
To her surprise, it turned out that ignoring him might have been the cruelest act of all.
After promising herself several times that she would not end up in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom again, she returned to Transfiguration and held Alex back after class with some nonsense excuse about prefect duties.
"When and where?" he had asked before she'd even said a word, and even if he didn't normally make her laugh, he certainly did then. He just made it all so easy.
She let Alex distract her that night, even though he didn't know what he distracted her from, or that he distracted her from anything at all, really. Would he have cared if he did? Doubtful, unless she explained that she'd lost her fucking head over finding James Potter fit, because even though they were nothing to each other, Alex certainly wouldn't like that. Quidditch had made him loathe Potter enough that she didn't doubt that even for all his innate niceness, he wouldn't have taken that news all too well.
Still, if he used her similarly, she wouldn't have minded. Besides, it wasn't like she thought about Potter while she was shagging him.
(At least, not then.)
When the next day dawned, Day One, she set to pretending that James Potter didn't exist.
Any chair with him in it? Empty.
Any word that he said? Never spoken.
Any prank that he pulled? Didn't happen.
Fucking hell, any air that he breathed? There was none, because he didn't exist, so far as she was concerned.
It took him two days of such treatment to clearly get frustrated, not that she noticed.
It took him another six to actually get kind of mad.
"Here's the thing, Evans," he said that evening at dinner, on Day Eight after her life had ended. He fell down into the open spot next to her, shirt untucked and sleeves rolled up and hair stupidly messy and she noticed none of it, of course, because he didn't exist and she intended to keep talking to Hestia and Marlene. "You know, sometimes you get mad at me and I understand why. It's not—"
"Sometimes?" Marlene repeated, astounded. "You're fucking joking me, right? What planet do you live on? You're an absolute nightmare to her constantly."
Just as Lily ignored Potter, he ignored Marlene, a rare turn of events. Usually he liked watching her kick off too, if only because she and Lily fed into each other's anger no matter how hard Lily tried to avoid giving him that satisfaction. He just knew how to get to her.
Although not anymore, because he didn't exist.
"It's not like that this time," he went on, undeterred. "I can't figure out why you won't even look at me, unless you've gone mysteriously deaf, although I'm not sure that that's it. Seems like you only can't hear me. Funny, that." He paused, waiting for a response, and didn't get one. "Still, I'd almost buy it, considering you didn't even look in my direction when I yelled your name across the Charms courtyard this morning."
Or the day before that in the Great Hall.
Or three days before that from across the grounds when he'd spied her on their way to Herbology. He'd jogged to catch up with her and started chattering on about the exact same thing he did just then, but she'd found it easier to escape him outside.
"And you'll normally at least turn around when I try to get your attention in class," he added. If he hadn't ratcheted that behavior up another several points as the days had gone by, she might have felt badly for how frankly bewildered he sounded. "So, let's talk terms here. What do I have to do to get you to start talking to me again?"
Fucking hell, there was a time she would have loved that.
She would have spent hours mulling over all the horrible things she could convince him to do, brainstorming with Marlene until they cried with laughter, all while Hestia looked on with alleged disapproval before somehow coming up with the worst idea of all.
It would have involved Sev, she knew immediately, even when she didn't put her mind to truly thinking about it. They would have come up with something truly horrible, and then something slightly less horrible, and something less horrible still, and if she went with any option, she would have selected the third just to see him squirm. (Still, although the idea appealed to her, she wasn't sure if she had that sort of cruelty in her, even if it was Potter.)
But really, all she wanted from him was to get less fit, or to get her a Time-Turner so she could go back and not think that about him. Then she wouldn't have to wonder if she'd think he was fit the next time she looked at him. Or the next. Or the next.
Christ, even just thinking about how he'd react to her saying something like that made her want to give herself a lobotomy right there in the middle of the Gryffindor table.
"I just have nothing new to say to you," she said instead, even though she knew that she shouldn't, because she didn't normally speak to thin air. She didn't even bother to look at him, but turned and slipped off of the bench, leaving the rest of her dinner behind. It was dead to her anyway. "I'll see you back upstairs," she told Marlene and Hestia, and then she left all three of them behind, looking varying degrees of confused.
xxx
On Day Fifteen, Potter sent in the big guns.
He sent in Remus Lupin.
"I'm impressed you held him off this long," Lily said after he'd looked at her with all manner of apology and said that Potter had asked him to see what he had done.
"Although don't put it like that," Potter had apparently added, but Remus had put it exactly like that, bless him, and even told her that Potter had added that caveat. It felt like his way of making the situation a bit better for her. Truly, she felt badly for him. He'd somehow walked a fine, neutral line between the two of them for years—or at least as neutral as he could manage when he continued to apologize to her when Potter really got on her nerves.
Poor neutral, Switzerland Remus.
Although Switzerland had gotten fucked during World War II. She knew that much from muggle history.
Remus pushed his Arithmancy book away and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Even if they hadn't sat in the library, she bet he wouldn't have spoken much louder than he did then. "It's not been easy." He offered her a rueful grin with the air of one proffering a very weak apology. "You know how he is when he sets his mind to something."
"Especially things he just one day decides and then sticks by with a vengeance for years? Yeah, I know that feeling."
Nothing else explained the way Potter fancied her. Nothing. He'd just decided it one day, and when he hadn't gotten his way because she had no desire to even talk to him, he'd set out to break her so he could get what he wanted. Spoiled git.
She really should have just gone to Hogsmeade with him fourth year and then sacked him off so he'd stop looking at her like she was some mythical, unattainable creature of fantasy and lore. But she'd understood nothing about lads at fourteen.
Then again, James Potter was unlike any lad she'd ever met.
Lads were easy.
He was impossible.
"It's not exactly like that," Remus said, but then took one look at her face and changed course. "But you don't want to hear what it's like. I understand that, and I understand why. He just…"
When Remus sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table, she realized how tired he looked. His hair had started to grey a little at the temples, only evident when he pushed it back from his face and rested his forehead in his hands. Nothing about him—from the way he looked or acted or spoke—smacked of a seventeen-year-old boy.
Her heart wrenched, as it always did around that time of the month. In three days, she knew he'd be a shadow of himself. In four days, when the full moon crested, he'd disappear. In five days, he'd be back and maybe limping a little or sporting a fresh new scar. In six days, he'd look and act like Remus again, and she would breathe a little better for knowing that he was alright.
Brave, loyal, selfless boy. She didn't envy him the task of grappling with her about Potter ever, let alone so close to a horrifically painful transformation that he wouldn't even tell her about.
He could say anything he wanted, she decided in an instant. He could get on a fucking soapbox and wax poetic about James Potter's good qualities for hours, and she would sit and listen. He deserved that, and she would give it to him.
Instead, he gave something to her.
"He's not real bright sometimes," he said finally, and she couldn't help it. She burst into laughter far too loud and wholly indecent for any part of the library. Only after the first couple seconds did she manage to clap her hand over her mouth, and then she devolved the rest of the way into silent laughter, burying her head in her arms. She caught a glimpse of Remus' face first, and saw the fond, almost exasperated way he smiled at her. "Lily, you act like that's new news."
She did her best to pull herself together, but it took conscious effort and more time than it should have. Still, fuck, she had needed to hear something exactly like that. How did he know? "It's new coming from you," she said, lifting her head. She felt flushed. "You're the preacher of patience and kindness and all things good."
The corners of his eyes crinkled as his smile widened. "Maybe, if this is a relativity thing and you're comparing me to my friends. Otherwise? I'd say that about you much more than me."
Brave, loyal, selfless boy, even with her.
She rested her hand on his arm, heart wrenching again. "Thank you. You're wrong, but thank you."
"Anytime." He paused for a second, watching her. "He does like you. I've shared a dorm with him for almost six full years. I would know. We all know. We can't escape it."
"Funny. I also can't escape it."
"I know." He rubbed his face, looking more tired still. "I'd also like to know what he did. I've never seen you like this with him before. I don't blame him for not understanding it, because I don't either. What happened? I won't tell him if you tell me. I swear."
For a second, she considered confiding in him.
But, really, how could she?
How could she make him make the choice between keeping his word to her and telling Potter something he would really, really, really love to know?
No, she couldn't put that on him and make him wrestle with that decision. He'd feel terrible either way, and she knew she would lose out in the end. She didn't even blame him for that. Potter came far before her, something she'd always known, yet Remus liked her enough that he would feel wretched for breaking her confidence just the same.
"It's nothing," she said briskly. She nudged his Arithmancy book back towards him. "He didn't do anything specifically. I'm just sick of him, that's all, and I'm sick of wasting my time even talking about him."
For a second, she thought Remus might push back and refuse to let her brush him off, but he didn't.
For Remus, loyalty and selflessness won out over bravery in the end. He'd done his due diligence and asked her, as Potter had demanded. She hadn't given him an answer. He could go back to Potter with that information and leave them to sort it out. That was certainly the easier option, both for him and for her.
Or maybe it was just the easiest way to remain Switzerland.
Whatever the reason, he didn't push her. He took the easier option and let them get back to Arithmancy, and she didn't blame him.
xxx
On Day Eighteen, Lily turned seventeen.
Well, at least she'd made it. Eighteen days before, life had felt pretty touch-and-go.
Sixteen-year-old Lily Evans? She might find James Potter attractive.
Seventeen-year-old Lily Evans? She would have absolutely nothing to do with him, no matter what.
(In one year's time—in less than one year's time—she would be very, very glad that she had kept that vow entirely to herself, because she didn't want to hear anyone laughing at her total annihilation of that promise. She would laugh at herself enough, and often less out of humor than out of anger at her stupid, weak mind.)
To her surprise, Alex wished her happy birthday in Potions. It surprised her less when he asked her afterwards, dropping his voice down low, when he could actually tell her happy birthday. That relaxed her a little as well.
With that relaxation came a certain amount of sadness she hadn't expected to feel. There was something rather pathetic about feeling that sort of relaxation because a lad—a good-looking, likable, entirely desirable lad—had showed he wasn't catching feelings for her. What the fuck was wrong with her?
She thought about asking Hestia, but she knew exactly what Hestia would say, and she knew it with enough certainty that she didn't need to hear her say it.
It would begin with "fuck" and end with "Greg Gimble," and that was really that.
Instead, after she, Hestia, and Marlene had gotten wine-drunk in their dorm that night, and she had laughed until she felt physically sick (unless that was the wine), she asked Hestia a different question.
When Marlene went off to shower well after three AM, she crawled into Hestia's bed. Hestia didn't hesitate. She rolled to face her, eyes no longer tired, but bright and curious.
"Can I ask you something without you laughing at me or judging me or taking the piss out of me or bringing it up ever again?" Lily asked. No, she all but whispered, even though she knew very well that Marlene couldn't hear her with the shower on, but that didn't matter. She was paranoid as all hell, even though she'd asked far harder questions in her life with much more ease.
"Of course." Hestia pushed Lily's hair back from her face, and the way she looked at her left Lily feeling even more exposed, even though absolutely nothing about Hestia's face changed. Just the fact that she looked at her at all had left her feeling ridiculously vulnerable. "Is this about Alex?"
"No." No, and fucking hell, she'd told Hestia about that almost casually in comparison to how she felt just then, and that was only after she'd decided against making her swear an Unbreakable Vow to never tell Marlene. And on that— "You can't tell Mar."
Hestia's face still didn't change; she still looked pretty and soft and sweet. "Okay," she agreed, but her voice came out slower. "You can't keep doing this, though. You know that, right? Keeping things from her—if I found out you were telling her things you kept from me—"
"I know, Hessie." Lord, did she know, and lord, did she feel bad about it far too often. "I know. I'm sorry. I know it's shit for you to keep things from her because I've asked you to. I don't have to say anything if—"
"No, go on."
Yeah, even as Lily had offered, she'd assumed Hestia would say as much. After all, she'd basically dragged the information about Alex out of her, and only after asking Lily about it multiple times. Some of that residual feeling of getting left out of that information in Lily's life had definitely colored Hestia's worries about Marlene's feelings. Wine-drunk or not, Lily could see that very clearly.
"You can't laugh," she said again. She waited for Hestia to nod. Even after that, it still took her two tries to get the question out, and it physically hurt to drag from her chest. "Do you think Potter is fit?"
The silence of their dorm, broken only by the quiet hiss of the shower behind the closed bathroom door, fucking judged Lily where she lay. She could feel it.
It also took Hestia two false starts to speak, two separate occasions of opening her mouth and then closing it, as if she didn't know quite how to respond. "Do you think Potter is fit?" she finally asked in return, which said absolutely fucking nothing and didn't even answer the question and if she weren't Hestia, Lily would have fucking yelled at her.
But she was Hestia, and she hadn't laughed, and she didn't look like she planned to laugh, so Lily took the question in as good of faith as she could muster.
"Yes. That's why I'm pretending he doesn't exist."
Hestia didn't laugh, but she did begin to smile, and that?
Well, fuck that.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, come here," Hestia said the second Lily threw her covers off to get out of her bed. She grabbed Lily's wrist with surprising strength—the same surprising, quiet strength of her personality, really—and dragged her back down. There was no one else on earth who Lily would let do that to her, not even Marlene, and she rather thought Hestia knew it. "I'm not laughing or judging or taking the piss out of you, I promise, Lil. Really. It's just very, very strange to see you come to the same conclusion every other girl at Hogwarts already reached years ago."
It was dramatic and childish and stupid, but it was her birthday, goddamnit, and she was drunk and tired and still just floored by her own awful traitor of a mind and her own stupid treacherous hormones, so Lily didn't feel bad at all for burying her face in Hestia's pillow and refusing to move.
Maybe ever.
She might just live there.
Hestia stroked her back in a way that reminded Lily entirely of something Hestia's mum had done to her the first time she'd stayed at their house. Twelve-years-old, she had ended up crying from a weird sort of homesickness she couldn't explain in words. It was the first time she'd ever stayed overnight with one of her Hogwarts friends, and her first time in a magical household. She'd ended up overwhelmed with everything new and confusing and concerning and incredible, just as she'd felt her first few weeks at Hogwarts. She'd at least waited until Marlene and Hestia had gone to sleep to cry, just as she had those first few weeks at Hogwarts, and Hestia's mum had found her all weepy and pathetic-looking and covered in snot and tears on the couch in their den. She sat with Lily for nearly an hour, comforting her, and then never spoke of it again, like she instinctively knew that was what Lily needed. She'd been devoted to Hestia's mum ever since.
(Lily didn't know it then, but she'd recall that same memory less than two months later, when Hestia's mum would die unexpectedly and inexplicably at the hands of Voldemort's followers. She would stroke Hestia's back for days upon days afterwards, her very best attempt at the comfort her mum had always extended with such generosity to everyone she met, even though Lily knew herself to be a very poor substitute.)
"Yes, he's fit," Hestia said after a long pause. "You really never noticed?"
"No."
"I thought you probably had and just acted a really, really good game that you hadn't."
"Clearly not, since I can't act my way through this."
Hestia mulled that over. Lily didn't have to look at her to see the thoughtful look on her face. She could almost hear it. "No, you could act your way through it if you tried. I've seen you act your way through much worse. Why'd you decide to just ignore him instead?"
Lily didn't hesitate. "Because if he ever looks at me and so much as suspects that I fancy him, I will have to murder him. I still can't fucking stand him, Hessie. I don't want him to know that I think he has lovely forearms."
Hestia sounded like she smiled, and Lily was glad she had buried her face, because she didn't want to look and confirm it. She no longer had the energy to kick off. "You are about forearms."
"I know. I'm about ready to just chop his bloody arms off." Really, Lily had considered it, but there was still the matter of the jaw and hair and smile. That required decapitation, and she didn't have the stomach for it.
Hestia coughed, and if she did so to cover a laugh, Lily really couldn't blame her. Would she have blamed her if she'd laughed openly? Certainly. But her best attempt at hiding it? Well, that was as good as she could expect. It was undoubtedly far better than Marlene would have reacted. She would have immediately voted for decapitation.
"Do you plan to ignore him for the next year and a half?"
"Yes, or until I'm so used to it that I don't think about it anymore. Or until I stop fancying him, but I'm starting to lose hope on that. If I can fancy him when he's the most annoying, arrogant, insufferable person I've ever met—fucking hell, the odds on suddenly finding him unattractive aren't good." Lily turned her head towards Hestia. If Hestia had laughed, she'd wiped the amusement off her face by then and looked as kind and concerned as Lily had hoped. "I don't like him. I don't want to touch him. If he tried to touch me, I would chop his bloody arms off."
"Fair. But at this point, I think he might consider taking the risk if it meant you talking to him."
Again, anyone else but Hestia and Lily would have reacted much, much differently.
"He doesn't like me either." Lily didn't doubt that Hestia would have argued if anyone else had said it, because she looked like she wanted to disagree. It read all over her face, even if she merely lifted her eyebrows. "He doesn't. He absolutely fancies me, sure, but that's it, Hessie. He's has never shown one single example of liking me as anything other than someone to irritate because I'm the one girl he fancies who wouldn't give him a go if he asked. Don't fucking join up with Remus on this. I can't take that sort of betrayal from you."
She hadn't told Hestia about her conversation with Remus, but Hestia took it in stride, bless her, and didn't ask a single question. "If Potter tried, would you let him show you that he liked you?"
The question made Lily more uncomfortable than anything else yet had, but Hestia waited for an answer, and Lily knew she'd wait until one of them gave in and spoke or they both died. After all, she matched Lily in stubbornness.
"No," Lily said as the shower kicked off.
Bless her again, but Hestia didn't push it further. After a moment, she rested her arm across Lily's back and settled herself more comfortably.
She slept with Hestia all night and felt a little the better for it.
xxx
On Day Twenty-Eight, Gryffindor beat Slytherin at Quidditch, which left Potter feeling confident enough to face Lily head-on again.
Not only that, but he fucking ambushed her to do it. It shouldn't have surprised her, and it didn't, really, but it still startled her greatly. A life spent ignoring his every word and movement had started to feel…well, not normal, exactly, but she'd acclimated enough that it had become routine, even if he clearly hadn't acclimated at all. Having him suddenly in her face made her blood pressure spike.
She knew he'd been watching her the second he approached her in the common room during the afterparty, because he'd clearly waited until she'd briefly separated herself from everyone else. The second she stepped away from where she'd chatted with the fifth-year girls, and went to try to find her way back to Hestia and Marlene, he pounced.
His face was flushed with victory and drink and the heat of the room and also something that looked a little like hope, and that last aspect made her the most uncomfortable of all. Her stomach lurched, panic on top of dislike on top of longing on top of Firewhiskey, and the combination of those things left her suddenly very much wishing that Gryffindor had lost so everyone would have been sad and depressed and Potter would have shut himself away in his dorm. Fuck house pride. At least she wouldn't have to look at him then.
He didn't waste a second. Really, he'd grown smarter by that point and knew she would walk away without a word before long, so he knew he had to get to it quickly. "Evans, I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I'm sorry. When are you going to stop ignoring me? I'd rather you curse me a bunch and just get over whatever it is, because at least then you'd act like I'm actually around. You've seriously had me questioning my own existence for the past four weeks."
Yeah, because no one else paid attention to him. Sure. She believed that.
And how the fuck had he known it had been almost exactly four weeks? Well, four weeks and a day, technically. She knew because that was The Day Her Life Had Ended, but what a lucky guess on his part.
(She couldn't know, of course, that he also counted the days, something he never would admit to her.)
He'd startled her enough for him to take her silence as permission to go on. "Remus said you swore you're not even mad, but—"
Oh thank god. Something she could get mad about.
Later, she'd feel bad about her relief, but in that moment? When he looked at her so earnestly, like he hadn't spent every waking minute 'pulling her pigtails' for years? When he looked like he had no idea why on earth she wouldn't want to talk to him? She was fucking grateful for an out, for a way to specifically channel her anger past the generality that he'd always infuriated her, and continued to try to get her attention by calling her name over and over in public, and pulling little pranks even if he hadn't approached her head-on, and had sent Remus after her because he just couldn't respect her desire to avoid him. At least if she got mad she could leave and stop looking at him and thinking—
Yeah, fucking hell. And thinking he was fit.
"Don't send Remus after me ever again," she snapped, and she knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help herself. She wasn't supposed to snap at thin air, after all, and that was all he was, but she could only handle so much.
It hit her then that Hestia was right. She'd acted her way through much worse. What was her problem with him?
He made her feel out of control. He always had, because his constant attention had left her feeling like she could do nothing but react, react, react, even if he sometimes looked wounded at her reactions, as if she controlled him. The only control she had had was finding everything about him repulsive, which had made her want nothing more than to stay the hell away from him.
He'd taken that too.
His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "Did he—" he started, but he stopped himself. Still, the two words were enough.
"Did he tell me you told him to ask? No." At least she could still lie about something convincingly well. "But, fucking hell, Potter, I'm not stupid and you're not subtle. Do you think Remus would ever willingly try to get in between me and you? Do you not realize that he's spent over two years trying to stay friends with us both, ever since you announced to the world that you decided to fancy me and set to trying to drive me mad? Are you unaware of how uncomfortable walking that line between us must make him, even though he's never complained?"
From the look on his face, she saw that he was very unaware. He'd clearly never considered any of those things.
That only succeeded in making her madder. Of course he hadn't thought of that. How could he, when he never looked outside himself?
(Later, she would understand that if he looked outside himself for anyone, it was his friends. She would see his selflessness and dedication and love for them. Truly, if she thought about it, she would have admitted that she already knew he was a good friend—aside from siccing Remus on her—and that she'd known that for years. Yet in that moment? She couldn't see that part of him at all.)
He didn't ruffle his hair, that stupid tic she hated, but he did reach up and drag a hand through it, and she hated that too, because she knew she did the same when she was anxious or worked up or sometimes even just excited. To see him employ a similar motion while frustration read all over his stupid, lovely features made her flush with something more than Firewhiskey.
She never disliked him more than she did just then.
"He didn't complain," Potter said staunchly. Everything about the look in his eyes told her that he planned to defend his actions to the very end. "I asked him to talk to you, sure, but he didn't—"
"How many times did you ask him before he agreed?"
For a second, one glorious second, she rendered him silent.
"Go find some other girl to bother," she said. She spied Marlene's thick, dark curls near the portrait hole and suddenly knew exactly what she planned to do. "Shouldn't you have done that by now anyway? It's not like you're devoted to me, Potter, so don't pretend that you are. I know you're not."
"Evans, it's not—"
She had no interest in anything he had to say. Anything. She went to leave, like she always left when around him for too long, but unlike usual, he didn't let her. He reached out to stop her, just a hand on her arm, one stupid, callused, beautiful hand that he used to lightly grip near her bicep, clearly intent on turning her back to him. She wore a thin cotton t-shirt that left her arms bare, and his skin on hers for the first time—
"Don't," she said, and the vitriol in her voice surprised even her. She threw his arm off so forcefully that he hit a fourth-year boy in the back of the head, but neither of them stopped to apologize. "Don't touch me."
Because what if she wanted him to keep touching her?
That would end her life.
"Evans—"
She wove her way through the crowd to Hestia and Marlene, leaving him behind her. Well, leaving him physically behind her. He was going to annoyingly haunt her thoughts. She had no doubt about that.
It took her two minutes to detach herself from Hestia and Marlene, her explanation short and clipped.
She hated James Potter.
She was going to go for a walk and pretend she was on patrol. The shiny 'P' on her chest meant that one would stop her. They never had before.
That meant they couldn't come with her, obviously.
She'd be back.
Neither of them liked it. Marlene looked especially put out, while Hestia wore an expression that Lily read as entirely too knowing. She'd guessed her destination without Lily needing to say a word.
Alex was on duty that night.
Thank god for small favors.
"Shouldn't you be celebrating?" he asked when she found him on the fifth floor. His patrolling skills were atrocious, because she was practically upon him before he saw her, but when he did, his face transformed from bored to enthused in the flick of a switch. "I've never known you to miss a post-game party."
"I didn't want to be there." She felt her shoulders unhinge when he grabbed her before she could even reach for him, because it was so easy. He made it all so easy. "I would much rather you take me into a classroom and get me off."
He followed that request completely.
It was stupid. She knew it was stupid even as she kissed him, even as she reached for the hem of his shirt, even as she pushed him down to sit so she could straddle his lap. She shouldn't need some bloke to make her feel better or forget something. She should handle it herself like a fucking adult and deal with her thoughts and feelings and emotions.
But it was just much easier to shag Alex.
"So what happened at the party?" he asked afterwards, after her mind had calmed considerably and her legs felt a little like jelly and she no longer had rage pounding through her veins. He handed her her shirt with the mildest look of curiosity.
She trusted him enough to not tell anyone about what they got up to, and he hadn't let her down, so she knew that she could tell him almost anything and he'd probably keep it quiet.
Still, again, she didn't think he'd take too kindly to her fancying Potter. That might be his line for secrecy and acceptance.
She settled for a fraction of the truth.
"Potter was acting like a real git," she said, and that was all she needed to say, really. Alex looked at her like he knew exactly what she meant without further explanation. Truly, she didn't doubt that she could say the same thing to a first-year Slytherin she'd never talked to before and they too would probably know that Potter had driven her away with his constant attention. Everyone knew how he fancied her, and everyone knew how she felt in return.
Alex mulled that over as he tugged on his trousers. "So you shagged me because you were mad at Potter?"
Jesus fucking Christ.
Wonderful.
Before her overactive, neurotic brain could figure out how to deftly get herself out of that one, Alex laughed.
Bless him.
"Sorry," he added quickly, shaking his head. He looked unbothered by the idea, and maybe even a little smug. The look sat oddly on his face. She wasn't sure if she'd ever seen it before. "I'm not laughing at you. I really just wish I could see his face if he found that out. That would really knock him down a peg."
(Lily didn't know it then—how could she?—but in the future, seeing her with Alex would knock Potter down several pegs.)
xxx
On Day Twenty-Nine, Lily heard that Potter had ended up snogging pretty seventh-year Patricia Thimble almost the second she left the common room the night before.
When the other seventh-year girls reported that information to Lily the next morning, she almost wept into her toast.
She almost wept into her toast out of relief.
Potter had set his sights on someone else.
He would leave her alone.
She wouldn't have to deal with his harassment, which meant she could look at him far, far less, and that would make ignoring his existence much, much easier.
"You're truly fine with it?" Leona Stafford, Patricia's best friend, asked with puzzlement all over her face. "I'll never understand what your deal is with him. He's fit. He's funny. He's obsessed with you. I told Pat that he's going to get bored of her and go back to pestering you sooner or later, because that's what he does—"
Yeah, he'd done that before. Lily couldn't forget the one-night Violet Griffith episode, or the Isobel Howard affair that had lingered over a couple of months, with him coming back to fancying Lily in between the times he shagged Isobel. The latter had been particularly brutal for her to witness, just due to the way Isobel had looked at her.
"It's different now," she told Leona, and she put so much power behind her words that she hoped she could will them into becoming truth. "He knows how uninterested in him I am. I thought I'd made it clear years ago, but now he really knows. I wish Pat the best of luck."
"He's taking her to Hogsmeade."
Lily felt Leona's eyes on her, sharp and keen. She knew she looked for any sign of a reaction, any tidbit that she could take right back to Patricia. It almost made her a little sad. She considered Leona and Patricia her friends—not good friends, but friends all the same. It hurt to know that she'd become some sort of adversary, and that was how Leona looked at her just then. She'd seen the look enough—and especially with girls over Potter—to know it when she saw it.
"I hope she has a lovely time," she said, and she didn't have to fake that a bit. She meant it with her whole soul.
xxx
On Day Forty-Seven, Lily realized that Potter had started a fucking game with her, one she sometimes thought he didn't even know that he played.
He spent more time with Patricia than any other girl he'd ever gone off or gone out with.
They sat together in the common room about once a week, which was a giant change from his inability to wrench himself away from his mates for even a second.
They flew together sometimes, because she played reserve chaser for Gryffindor, and he of course captained and starred on their team.
They ate dinner together a couple times a week, sitting together in the Great Hall with her cluster of friends seated next to his. Lily didn't always notice, but when she did, she didn't think the four seventh-year girls got on very well with Potter and his mates. They all acted friendly enough, but clearly sat as two separate groups. She had to wonder how much of that had to do with Leona's prediction that Potter would sack Patricia off sooner or later. Maybe they just didn't see the point in getting invested.
But Patricia was invested. Anyone with eyes could see that.
And Potter? Potter played a fucking game.
Lily didn't look at them often, but when she did, she found him looking back at her far too often.
He watched her, as if he wanted to see how she'd react to the fact that he'd followed her instructions and found another girl to 'bother.'
At first, it felt arrogant to even think that. Potter fancied her, sure, but she would have to have a massive fucking ego issue to think that that left him incapable of fancying anyone else. There was no reason why he wouldn't like Patricia far more than he fancied her. Patricia loved Quidditch. She was kind and laughed at his jokes even when they weren't funny. She sometimes looked at him like she wasn't sure how she'd gotten lucky enough to sit next to him or have his hand on her knee or kiss him.
Lily only saw them kiss a few times, and one of those times, she met Potter's eyes immediately afterwards. She knew then that it wasn't arrogance that had her convinced that he wanted to see her react. He truly watched her, as she'd suspected.
He was such a fucking dickhead.
"Are you alright?" Remus asked her on Day Forty-Seven, as they sat together at a table in the common room, Arithmancy books out but ignored. He'd joined her at her table where she usually sat with Hestia and Marlene, one as far removed from where the Marauders sat as possible. She'd chosen that corner years ago for that very reason.
If he didn't look at her with such clear, genuine concern, she would have laughed, because how the fuck could she explain her thoughts to anyone, let alone him?
"It's nothing," she said, pushing her hair out of her face. It felt thick and heavy on her back, like a weighted blanket, and she resisted the urge to plait it, worried Remus would pick up on her mood even further.
Sweet, empathetic, intuitive boy.
Remus watched her closely, and for a second, she felt like she often did under Hestia's gaze: totally exposed, completely vulnerable, utterly open. It made her head swim and her heart pound in her throat, because that? Having someone see her like that—even Hestia or Marlene, let alone anyone else—was one of her worst nightmares.
"It's funny how he drives you mad even when you're not talking to him," Remus said finally. He didn't bother mentioning names. He didn't have to. "You're driving him madder, if that makes you feel any better. I've never seen him this bothered by anything before."
"Is he trying to drive me mad?" Her skin crawled. God, how the hell had she resorted to asking Remus for information on Potter after she'd gone in on Potter for nearly the same thing?
Nearly the same thing. She didn't plan on sending Remus over to pick Potter's brain—he'd have little luck at it, anyway, since she wasn't sure Potter had a brain. Still, she would throw herself out of one of the tower's windows before she did anything of the sort. They'd call it the Self-Defenestration of Hogwarts and she would become a legend.
It sounded more than a little tempting just then.
Remus didn't hesitate to answer, bless him. "A little, I think, even if he doesn't always know that's why he's doing it." The way he rubbed the back of his neck looked more than a little guilty. "That's not telling you anything he has or hasn't said. That's just my opinion."
How long could he remain Switzerland?
"Of course. I wouldn't ever want you to tell me anything you didn't want to. Don't ever break his confidence for me. I don't think you would, but just so you know, it's not worth it."
He smiled gratefully. "I know." He paused, and something in the way he held his mouth or in the glint of his eye told her that his mind worked furiously, the same sort of look she'd seen countless times after studying with him for years. "I'll tell you more of my opinion, but only if you want."
How could she very much want to hear something, but also absolutely want to clap her hands over her ears at the same time?
With a sigh, she leaned back in her chair. "Go on, then, but only if it's not going to make me mad. If it is, I don't need to hear it. I have plenty of my own reasons to be mad at him. I don't need more."
Remus nodded. "That's understandable." He paused for a second, and then spoke matter-of-factly, his tone entirely neutral. "I think he's bothered that I'm over here with you. I think he's always bothered when I'm around you at all, because I get to sit here with you and banter and laugh, and he wishes he was over here with you instead."
For several long seconds, Lily stared at him.
Then she began to laugh.
How did Remus consistently do that to her? He constantly offered the mildest statements about Potter that caught her off-guard and left her absolutely dying each time. None of what he'd said was even that funny. It was just absurd.
"I think he's probably looking over here because he can hear you laughing," Remus added, and Lily glanced unwillingly past his shoulder to where Potter sat with Black and Peter Pettigrew, broomstick in his hand with a care kit open at his feet. As Remus had predicted, he'd stopped halfway through trimming the brush to look her way.
It really only made Lily laugh harder, and not even to spite Potter. It was all just ridiculous.
"Remus, I love you, but that's fucking crazy," she said, the tail-end of laughter still escaping from her lips. "What, he thinks I'm going to run off with you and he won't get his chance to shag me? Don't be absurd."
"That's not what he's after."
"Remus." She stared at him, and saw the sort of quiet resilience in his face that she often saw in Hestia. He planned to stick to what he'd said no matter how hard she tried to convince him otherwise. "Remus, he's a bloke. Of course that's what he's after."
"You really don't think there's a possibility that he actually likes you?"
Fucking hell, when he put it that way, and when he looked at her with almost a sort of sadness in his eyes—no, wait, was that pity?
There was nothing worse than pity.
She could lie easily without even trying, a skill she'd purposefully mastered. If she wanted, she didn't doubt that she could have convinced Remus of just about anything other than the truth, his intuitiveness be damned.
She had no idea why she told him the truth instead.
"No." How could a single word feel like such a soul-bearing admission?
Remus reacted in just the right way. He shrugged, all casualness that almost passed as genuine. Almost. "Alright, but you're wrong, which is kind of nice to see, since you're usually right about everything. I need to note the date and time so I can remember that you're truly stupid about something. I'll want to remember this the next time you best me in Charms."
He looked entirely pleased with himself at how hard that made her laugh.
"I'm stupid?" she repeated, mood remarkably lifted. "I'm not even mad. This is wonderful. Have you ever taken the piss out of me before?"
"Not often, because again, you're usually right about everything. That doesn't leave a lot of room for me to take the piss out of you."
It was absolutely a lie, but he looked like he believed it nonetheless.
"Remus." She took his hand from a top his Arithmancy book and held it in her own. "That cinches it. I'll run off with you. I was already tempted, but now that I know that you can keep me humble? That's it. Tell Potter all his worst fears are confirmed. We leave tonight."
He laughed, something she'd always loved to see. It made him look his age, not ravaged by the physical and emotional weight of his hidden lycanthropy. "You know, I might have considered it a couple minutes ago, but now that I know that you're actually not as bright as I thought—"
"Fuck off." She wasn't sure if she'd ever said the words quite so warmly, not even to Marlene and Hestia. Sweet, intuitive boy. He clearly knew how badly she needed to joke her way out of things, and it left her appreciating him as never before. No wonder he could occupy the uncomfortable spot of Switzerland. He clearly spent just as much time as she did obsessing over other people's thoughts, only he was better at implementing what they needed. She mucked it up constantly.
(That was how it felt, anyway, even if other people might have disagreed.)
"I'm glad I didn't write you off as a mate even though I very sincerely questioned your taste in friends," she told him, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She no longer felt the need to fidget with it, thanks to Remus' willingness to drop the pity from his gaze. Conversation was light again, and she relaxed significantly. "I still question your taste in friends, but years ago I was convinced that you must secretly be as bad as the rest of them. I kept waiting for you to slip up."
"I still could. There's still time."
She smiled. "The longest of cons. I'd be very impressed."
They worked on Arithmancy again after a while, Potter no longer even an option for conversation. Remus had blessedly chosen to move past it, and she wasn't about to bring Potter's stupid name up to anyone, because he still didn't exist. They packed it in fairly late into the evening, and even then, as magical numbers and properties and equations continued to occupy her thoughts, she still felt grateful for Remus' friendship. No one else on earth—no one—could walk the line between her and Potter like he could, somehow keeping them both happy and devoted to him even as they rowed with each other. Knowing him, she doubted he even realized what an incredible skill that was. No, while Potter was all ego, Remus was all humility, to a debilitating extent. He had no idea how lovely he was, something she'd always wanted to get him to see. She always did love an underdog.
Not that she noticed—because she fucking didn't—but Potter and Patricia were both absent from the common room that night for a period long enough for her to know exactly what they were doing. Again, she felt nothing but relief, and relief at her relief.
She didn't care that he undoubtedly shagged Patricia somewhere in the castle. Thank god that she didn't care.
He also potentially had gone off with Patricia because he'd seen her laughing with Remus, if Remus' hairbrained theory about how much he cared was correct. She doubted it, but she would have felt further relief if he turned out to be right. At least it meant that she wasn't alone in shagging someone else to forget her anger. That would make her a little less terrible.
Still, she doubted that that was Potter's reasoning at all.
(Potter never would tell her, but that was his reasoning entirely. And neither Potter or Remus or Black or Pettigrew would tell her that Potter later interrogated Remus in their dorm over exactly what he'd said that had made her laugh so hard. Further, he of course wanted to know what the fuck the hand-holding had been about, and when Remus would admit that it had come in large part because he and Lily had joked about running away together? Well, that would go over like a fucking lead balloon. But she never would have any knowledge of that conversation, and it was for the best, really. No matter how much she disliked Potter, she would have disliked herself even more if she thought that she'd made things more complicated for Remus. Then again, she might not have believed him if they had told her either event, because that would confirm that Potter actually kind of cared about her, and that simply wasn't true.)
xxx
On Day Fifty-Five, Lily's life truly ended.
Day Fifty-Five made Day Zero feel like fucking child's play.
Up until that point, in seventeen years of life, Lily had done thousands of things to embarrass herself. Literally thousands, without exaggeration. Even the slightest misstep embarrassed her, although she'd grown fairly good at covering up every time she did something that made her cringe inside. Yet Day Fifty-Five easily came into the list of the top five events of her life that she would look back on and obsess over to punish herself in future days, weeks, months, and years. It was one of those events that came back to her in the vulnerable moments right before sleep, when her defenses were down and her stressed-out mind wanted to punish her for something or another, and her insides would burn with shame all over again.
She'd feel that way until the day she died. Literally.
Day Fifty-Five marked the first time of hundreds that she would fantasize about James Potter, and holy fucking hell, it was the worst for reasons far beyond her fervent dislike of him.
It was her own fault, really. She shouldn't have glanced into the Trophy Room.
But it was also his bloody fault, and Patricia's too, because they should have kept their fucking voices down or silenced the fucking room or, seriously, at least closed the fucking door.
Unbelievable. Fucking amateurs.
She was on her way to her own late night meetup with Alex, something unprompted by any outside event that she wanted to forget, and instead agreed upon just because they both felt like it. In the emotional chaos of that winter, it was a rare, welcome change of pace for her to simply want to shag for the enjoyment of it, and not to stop thinking about something or work out some sort of tension or however else she used Alex to cope. Even if she enjoyed those times—and she always did—going in with that type of energy made things different for her. For him? She doubted he noticed that she felt differently different times, although she didn't blame him for his obliviousness. She masked her feelings by design.
(She assumed a lot of things incorrectly but with total conviction, some things she would never even find out were incorrect. But that time? She was entirely on the money. Alex never caught those subtle changes in her mood, but it was just as well. She would have hated it if he had, because it would have made things much less easy.)
On the sixth-floor landing, she heard the quiet murmur of voices emanating from the Trophy Room, and she hesitated. She should have just kept walking, because she wasn't even on duty and it was none of her business who was fucking next to the Quidditch house cups from 1938 or whatever, because she knew that was what went on in there. The Trophy Room remained unlocked at all hours, which made it made it an incredibly convenient location for a snog or a shag, and she'd busted innumerable students at just that.
Again, fucking amateurs with no originality. It was like people assumed that only the Trophy Room and the Astronomy Tower were viable options for after-hours behavior.
She should have kept going, and she'd kick herself over and over for literal years because she hadn't, but she stopped. Curiosity overtook her sense of logic, and she moved soundlessly to the door cracked stupidly just ajar.
Again, what a sign of fucking amateurs.
With a jolt so strong that she swore she felt it from her toes to her scalp, she realized that those amateurs were Potter and Patricia.
She didn't even really see anything. She'd walked in on much more intimate and salacious moments before and had only ever had to keep back a laugh, not any other thought or emotion.
So what the fuck did she feel just then? She couldn't even tell. It was all tangled up in a giant ball in the pit of her stomach, the strands too tight for her to unweave, and she didn't want to unweave them anyway. All she knew then or later was that she felt something watching Patricia adjust her skirt in a way that she recognized very well, because she'd done it herself many times, that telltale gesture of careful tucking and smoothing that came after a hasty shag. She could just make out Patricia's expression, and she looked more than a little concerned, her pretty face etched with lines of worry.
And Potter?
He faced away from Lily, and that was bad enough. As Patricia spoke, her voice soft and gentle, he picked up his shirt and fixed the sleeves, turning them right side out. That meant, of course, that Lily had a clear view of his back, bare to where his torso met the sagging waistline of his trousers he clearly had only unbuckled and hadn't bothered to remove, and truly—
Truly, fuck that.
She might not recognize everything in the snarled turmoil in her stomach, but she'd messed about with enough blokes that she knew a back she wanted to sink her nails into when she saw it.
Suddenly, so suddenly, she disliked herself even more than she disliked him.
"—not really here when you're with me," Patricia was saying. Each word came out hesitantly, as if she worried she might rock a very fragile boat. "I don't know what's going on in your head, but it feels like it has nothing to do with me when we're talking or snogging or—"
Or shagging, Lily assumed she planned to say.
Potter probably assumed the same, because he broke in at just the right second. "I'm sorry, Pat." The muscles in his back flexed as he slid his shirt on, not that Lily noticed because he was just thin air, remember? "It's—you're right, it's nothing to do with you."
He'd missed the mark entirely. Patricia had clearly meant that she thought he didn't even think about her when they were together. He'd interpreted her words to mean that she thought she'd done something wrong, and if something was wrong, he wanted her to know that it wasn't her fault.
Really, that said everything about the state of things between them.
Beyond that, Lily realized that she'd possibly never heard him talk to another girl, at least outside of a classroom or Quidditch context. She'd certainly never heard him talk to another girl he showed interest in, because why would that have ever happened? Hearing his tone jolted her almost as much as thinking about his stupid, gorgeous back, because he sounded nothing like when he talked to her. No, when he talked to her, he sounded warm and friendly, all annoying charisma and charm and clear enjoyment. He didn't sound like that just then.
But he'd already shagged Patricia. He'd conquered that territory. He hadn't conquered Lily. His tone with her would undoubtedly change if she ever gave him the opportunity, not that she would, and he'd probably sound exactly as he did with Patricia just then: disinterested and almost formal despite the apology in his voice.
(Spoiler alert: he wouldn't.)
"Sure," Patricia agreed uncertainly as she and Lily both watched him tuck his shirt into his trousers. She managed to keep the hurt in her voice to a minimum. "So we're okay?"
"Why wouldn't we be?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's stupid, but I think—"
Lily didn't need to hear more. She didn't want to hear more.
Like the worst Gryffindor of all time, she fled the scene, all cowardice and humiliation and horror.
That would have made Day Fifty-Five bad enough.
But it got worse.
She wanted to lose herself in Alex, but she just couldn't. Her brain fired more rapidly than ever, scattered fragments of random thoughts as they kissed and undressed and touched, every thought a nonsensical bit of absolute fury at herself.
Worse still?
As she sat on the edge of a desk with Alex inside her and her nails in his shoulders, one of those flashes of thought converged around the memory of James Potter's stupid fucking back.
She thought on it for hardly more than a handful of seconds, but that was enough to end her life for the second time in fifty-five days.
Unsurprisingly, she couldn't come.
Alex took it in stride, understanding and unoffended, as he had reacted the other times it just didn't happen for her.
"I'd rather you not feel like you have to fake it," he said reasonably when she tugged her knickers back on and she told him she appreciated that he didn't make her feel poorly over it.
Kind, lovely Alex.
For possibly the hundredth time, she wished he could spark something in her besides lust and friendly fondness.
"Too in your head?" he guessed, and she had to smile, if ruefully. He might miss a lot of things about her, but he clearly understood some things very well. Then again, she didn't doubt that every Ravenclaw existed in a perpetual state of stressed-out obsessive neuroses that put even hers to shame, so he undoubtedly could empathize with that.
"Yeah."
"Shit week?"
"Pretty much."
He didn't push it further, because he always made things easy.
"I'll get you twice next time," he told her, and she had to appreciate him for the attempt to make her smile turn genuine. His own smile looked that way, lopsided and kind on his handsome face, exactly the way he smiled at her when she joked at their table in Potions—like one would smile at a mate. He didn't smile at her with intense levels of eagerness and hope like Potter once had before he'd stopped existing, and thank the lord for that.
Alex snogged her for a bit before he left, and she didn't mind it like she might have on a different night. Kissing her goodbye was one thing, but she very rarely wanted to hang around and snog him after they were done. Still, she had to assume that he did so because he felt at least a little bad for her own unsatisfying conclusion, even if he'd acted like it hadn't bothered him at all. She'd take snogging him over dealing with him going stroppy and self-critical and concerned like she knew some blokes could go, even if she'd never dealt with that herself.
After he left, she laid back on the desk in the dark for a long time, unwilling to return to Gryffindor Tower. She doubted she'd see Potter, but getting anywhere even close to him—closer than she currently was, two floors away—left her feeling ill.
xxx
On Day Fifty-Six, Lily began her shame spiral.
xxx
On Day Sixty-One, Potter and Patricia officially ended, to Lily's complete lack of surprise.
"She told him it's fine, but it's absolutely not," Leona confided quietly to Lily the next morning at breakfast. "She just wanted to save face, but she really liked him."
Yeah, as anyone with eyes had clearly seen.
Well, it appeared that she and Leona were friends again, because Leona no longer looked at her with suspicion—but also, truly, fuck Leona. If Marlene or Hestia had ever told anyone Lily's innermost feelings like that, especially when she was raw from heartache?
Fuck whatever a lad could do to her. That was the worst betrayal she could imagine.
"I don't want to say 'I told you so' to her, but I did tell her so," Leona went on. "He'll be back at you within a week. It's a compulsion for him at this point. You're a compulsion for him at this point."
If Marlene or Hestia ever said 'I told you so' to or even about Lily after heartache?
Yeah, fuck Leona.
Still, Lily went out of her way to sit with the seventh-year girls in the common room that same week, although after a few days. She wanted to see if she and Patricia were still friendly.
They were. Patricia treated her as she always had, save for the thirty-two days when she'd avoided Lily's eye and presence.
She could at least take solace in something returning to normal.
xxx
On Day Eighty, things shifted forever.
If Day Zero had started the end of Lily's life, and Day Fifty-Five made her feel so fucking terrible that some days she didn't want to even look in the mirror, Day Eighty fixed things. It wasn't a perfect fix, but things came together like a sloppily-cast mending charm—improperly together, but together nonetheless.
In the middle of History of Magic, as Lily did her best to take notes on the war between giants and goblins in the mid-fourteenth century that Binns somehow made sound horrifically dull, she found a purring cat rubbing against her ankles.
Then she saw a second cat jump on a desk nearby.
A third cat chased a fourth cat across the room.
Eventually, cats all but carpeted the classroom's floor, meowing and wrestling and begging for attention, cats of all shapes and sizes and colors, including shades of violet and green and a truly hideous neon yellow and all manner of other colors of the rainbow.
It was the Marauders, of course.
They'd transfigured them from various nonsense drawn from their bags, each spell cast with apparent ease, even though they'd hardly covered inanimate-object-to-animal transfiguration in anything but theory. Nothing about that surprised her, from their propensity for chaos to the way all four of them managed to live and breathe Transfiguation even while she struggled and worked her hardest to maintain an 'O.'
In terms of pranks, it was hands-down her favorite of any they'd ever done.
It wasn't even a prank, really, just an excuse for the complete disruption of class. Yet Binns' confusion turned the whole thing into a prank, because he clearly just didn't know what to make of it all or what to do. More than one cat passed through the silvery mist of his ghostly body, which left them immediately screeching from the shock of cold. Cats began to fight on top of desks, scratch desperately at the classroom's windows, clamber all over students—
And Lily?
She couldn't stop laughing.
In the ensuing pandemonium, she ended up with a cat on her lap and one on the desk in front of her and one even stretched across her shoulders, which left her completely coated in cat hair, but she hardly cared. She wished she had twelve more hands so she could pet twelve more cats, and a dozen more sets of eyes as well, because she wanted to watch every single second of an absolute dream for her, as people around her also reacted favorably or panicked or sneezed. One Hufflepuff girl even got up on her desk, watching the whole scene with the sort of abject horror Lily would have felt if she'd found the room suddenly full of rats. Lily felt a stab of sympathy for her, but just briefly before the cat on her desk headbutted her in the face affectionately and she began laughing again.
She would happily die under a pile of cats.
She could hear Potter and his friends laughing too, and she glanced their way before she could think better of it, the first time she'd looked anywhere near his direction without conscious thought in literal months.
He was watching her, of course.
He looked so proud of himself, the same way he'd looked after he'd led his team to win against Slytherin, just flushed from victory and something akin to hope, which fucking floored her. There was no way making her laugh even compared to a Quidditch win in his mind. The very notion was absurd.
Yet he still looked at her in That Way, proper noun, like she made the fucking world turn, like he'd woken up each and every morning with no goal in life except to make her laugh, like he'd remember that laugh forever and tell tales of it to his children and grandchildren, just as he always had.
She still didn't like it. She still didn't like him. But when the cat on her desk headbutted her again, clearly every bit as desperate for her attention as Potter, she felt some of her shame lessen for reasons she couldn't understand.
Then again, she didn't care if she understood. As long as she could feel less terrible, it hardly mattered why it had happened.
Nudging the cat on her lap onto the floor, she stood up, intent on petting every cat she could before Binns somehow managed to regain control over the classroom.
xxx
That same day, Day Eighty, Potter took the time at dinner to tell Lily that her hair looked fetching that day and that he liked it even more than usual.
"Why would that interest me?" she asked. The look of absolute shock on his face, followed by what had to be an exaggerated amount of pleasure and joy and relief almost made her want to laugh.
(She would later slowly, slowly come to understand that he hadn't feigned a bit of his pleasure, joy, or relief.)
"Are you talking to me again?" he asked, his grin wide and delighted and complementing his stupidly beautiful jaw.
(If he'd had a little more pride, he might have covered at least some of his excitement and tried to play it cool. She would later slowly, slowly come to understand that when it came to her, pride took a complete backseat to desire.)
At his side, Remus flashed her a smile that looked nearly as relieved as Potter's, which left her smiling in return. She could at least get joy out of knowing that she'd undoubtedly made his Switzerland status easier.
"I'm smiling at Remus, not you, so don't look like that," she said sharply, because of course Potter had assumed that she sent the look his way. "Why would I smile at you? Have I ever smiled at you? Jesus Christ, Potter, the ego on you."
Her words had the opposite of their intended effect. He chuckled, and she wondered if she imagined the affection in his hazel eyes. Fucking hell, she certainly hoped she imagined the affection there, because imagined or not, it left her wanting to plait her hair, not that she'd give him the satisfaction of ruffling her even in the least.
"I've missed our little chats," he said, and he looked like he meant it. "But—that's it? You're confirming my existence again after, what, eighty days of ignoring me? No bawling me out? No hexes? No curses? Not even a jinx? I'm a little disappointed in you."
For a second, she stared.
Eighty was a nice, round number, which made it easy to guess. That explained it.
Surely.
"I guess it's a good thing then that your disappointment somehow means less than nothing to me," she said. "I didn't know there was something less than nothing, but I discovered it because of how little I care about what you think of me."
(She would later slowly, slowly come to understand that she absolutely flirted with him when she bantered with him like that, no matter how cutting her words sounded. She would continue to flirt with him the same way until the day they both died.)
"Evans, from the bottom of my heart, thank you," Black said. He truly did look grateful. "From the bottom of all of our hearts, thank you. You know how miserable he is to live with when you're not constantly shooting him down? I swear, he needs it to live at this point. Seems mad masochistic to me—and Remus and Pete and I have had some chats about our concern over that streak in him, all behind his back, of course—but now that you're—"
"Sirius."
Black offered an annoyingly charming grin in return to Potter's single use of his name, but fell obediently silent.
(If Lily had looked at Potter just a little closer, she might have seen the blush that crept up the back of his neck. She didn't, of course, because she wasn't eager to look at him any longer than she had to.)
"You're welcome," she told Black dryly, who winked at her almost conspiratorially in return. It made her feel slightly dirty, because she never wanted to conspire with him about anything, but she let it go. "Keep him in line, then, will you? Make him stop doing his best to drive me fucking mad so I don't regret accepting that he's still a person."
Of course, Potter immediately set to doing his best to drive her fucking mad, and continued those attempts for the rest of term.
Yet just under one year from Day Eighty, he would tell her he loved her for the first time, even though he wouldn't remember—or truly even know—that he said it at the time. She wouldn't acknowledge it either, but to her complete lack of surprise, by then she would find herself entirely amenable to the idea.