The Square's at Square One

As she had for the previous two nights, Lily went straight to bed after dinner. She didn't think that she'd sleep, but she did —for sixteen hours. It was midday when she finally awoke.

For a very long time she lay in her bed, watching the dust motes hang suspended in the sun streaming through the open window next to Emmeline's bed. It was so quiet. Alone in the soft yellow light it was easy to slowly and carefully sort through her thoughts. They were terrifically tangled at this point, but, staring into that lovely shaft of gold, she combed them through. In her warm bed, yesterday's argument with Sirius looked completely unremarkable. She yawned comfortably.

After a while of this meticulous, plodding type of thinking, she managed to sort her thoughts into three different boxes. The confusion box —this fancying business is doing my head in! Expletive, expletive, expletive —the guilt box —I am a horrible person —and the fear box —Daisy and Sirius and possibly Remus and James either want to, or will soon want to kill me.

Happy with her work, she thought vaguely about going to classes, but discovered that she had not the slightest inclination to leave her bed: alone in the soft yellow light everything made sense for the first time in a while.

Four hours later, toeing off her shoes and loosening her tie, Emmeline took a running leap for her own bed with a war cry of 'hold me!' She landed face first on the covers with her arms and legs splayed like a large starfish. After a few minutes of lying like this, she turned her face to the side and regarded Lily with a frown.

'You missed the wonderfully spontaneous quiz that Vector sprung on us today. Should have seen the look of glee on the sadist's face. Kept saying that spontaneity was the spice of life. I really think that's as spicy as the poor bugger's life gets.' Her frown deepened. 'You promised to always have my back in that class, Evans. You were supposed to sit next to me and slip me the answers.'

'I did help,' Lily said comfortably. 'I could feel your tortured soul all the way over here. It came crawling up the tower stairs, covered in ancient runes written in Vector's blood and I sang to it. Did you feel strangely calm at any point? That was me.'

'No,' the blonde said shortly. 'You've got a shit singing voice.' Then she moaned loudly. 'I bet I failed that quiz. You're a bum. A great big bum with cellulite and curly hairs and bum-acne.'

'Bum-ne,' Lily snorted. The laughter ended on a falling note and she sighed happily. 'Ah.' She folded her arms beneath her head and swivelled to look at Emmeline, now reclined in a similar fashion on the bed next to hers. 'I've been in this bed for almost twenty four hours,' she informed the other witch.

Emmeline nodded, staring up at the ceiling. 'Fair effort.'

Lily yawned. 'I'm gonna go for a full thirty six.'

Frowning again, Emmeline looked over at her. 'Will you be able to walk in the morning? Can you feel your feet? You missed every meal!' she exclaimed, shooting up. 'You'll be as weak as a newly-sorted Slytherin when you try to stand again.'

'It's alright. I had the emergency hamper under my bed. I ate plenty of nutritious dairy products.' That meant chocolate and nothing else. 'As for being able to walk-' Lily tried to connect to her toes and failed '-the little buggers can't be bothered being found.' Concentrating hard, she finally located them and gave them a pathetic little wiggle.

'Do you want to talk about yesterday?'

Lily shook her head.

Emmeline sighed. 'Um —' her voice had taken on a guilty edge which caused Lily's head to swing around suspiciously '-you've heard that thing about the messenger and not shooting him, right?' At the slow nod from the adjacent bed she continued cautiously, 'well, skipping over the part where she threatened to make you eat your own liver —' Lily's eyes widened and her first, terrified thought was, I didn't think Daisy had it in her ' —Marlene —' she relaxed: threats from Marlene weren't thin on the ground ' —would like you to come down to dinner.'

'That's not a nice way to ask,' said the redhead ruefully after a pause. 'If Marlene's not careful she will hurt my feelings one day.'

'She also thinks you're a weak bint with a taste for melodrama.'

Wounded, the weak bint said in a very powerful voice, 'and she's a violent extremist with no moral compass or social skills! What a nasty piece of work!' Lily stared at the ceiling, fuming at Marlene's nerve.

Emmeline hummed thoughtfully. 'So, do you like the taste of liver?'

Lily's legs didn't give out when she stepped out of bed for the first time in a whole day, but they almost did when she sat down at the house table in the Great Hall and found that a certain two Gryffindors were staring at her from their seats.

It wasn't a collective, oh, you've caught us whispering cattily about you, type thing. It was clear that each boy thought he was alone in accosting Lily Evans with his eyes and each had separate reasons for doing so.

Remus was merely curious. Sirius would no doubt have told him all about yesterday and Lily felt herself draw back a little, but the sandy-haired boy's face was clear and guileless, besides evident curiousity. Come to think of it, when they had spoken after Ancient Runes a few days ago Remus had seemed quite open-minded about the whole thing. At the time she had been panicking because he had found her out, but looking back, had he been supporting her? No. No —not quite. But he hadn't seemed overly averse to the whole thing. The look he was giving her now meant he wanted to know what her side of the story was, she could tell that much. He was interested to know if anything had progressed. Shakily, she gave him a smile and quick nod that said later.

Sirius was looking decidedly less open-minded. The expression on his face was also considerably less hostile than yesterday, though, which she supposed was an improvement. He had his elbows on the table and a loaded forkful of sausage and potato hovering in the air before his slightly narrowed eyes.

Standing up as tall as she could, Lily narrowed her own eyes at him in a full-on glare. So powerful was the glare that when poor Edmund Boot, sitting next to Sirius, chose at that moment to swing around and reach for the pumpkin juice, he looked up at Lily, screamed, and dropped the jug in Sirius's lap. That was an unplanned success in itself and a laugh broke her furious expression when Sirius shrieked loudly and bolted out of his seat.

But Lily's laughter died very quickly.

Because the dark-haired boy who had been sitting with his back to her had swivelled on the bench to find what had scared poor Edmund. And he was staring at her with an intensity which actually made her knees buckle. She literally wobbled on the spot, standing between the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor tables.

The look on James Potter's face was the most terrifying of all three stares, because there was something new in his expression.

It wasn't resentment, or apathy or indifference. It wasn't the look, there's Evans again look which had preceded Sirius's glare. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time in a long while. His eyes were wide and curious and assessing and… alive. The gold flecks in the hazel were as bright as the yellow flames on the candles that hovered above his seat. And as he stared at her, and she stared back, Lily felt herself wake up. Every nerve ending in her fingertips, in her toes, all over her skin woke up as if they had been asleep up until this moment.

And it was the most terrifying thing she had ever felt. More terrifying than admitting that she had feelings for James Potter was standing in the middle of the Great Hall, her eyes connected immovably to his, feeling as if she would explode from simply feeling.

How is this possible? Lily thought with wonder as she stood there impeding traffic. Something incredible was happening, and even as she felt her face burn with colour and the faintest pink tinged the skin over James's collarbone, they continued to stare at each other. It wasn't… hope… in his eyes, was it? No, she tamped down the irrational surge of the same emotion which exploded in her own stomach. The look was too cautious for that; too fragile. But it was new; fresh; alive.

The look lasted maybe ten seconds, maybe less, but it was possibly the most significant moment of Lily Evan's admittedly unexciting life so far. Because although James Potter suddenly broke the gaze a second later and both hurriedly and jerkily swung back around in his seat, she had seen what she had needed to see. All of a sudden she was fired by a conviction and a determination that she had never had for anything else.

He had been beaten down. She had trodden on him one hundred and thirty seven times —undoubtedly more —but still, incredibly, there had been a spark in his expression that Lily suddenly knew she had to fan back to life.

She stood there between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, staring at the back of James Potter's head, face flaming red.

It looks like it's your turn to be chased, Potter.

At the prefect meeting that night Phillip McMillan and Frida Davies were assigning corridors for house teams to decorate. In the Wizarding world, the birthdays of mark were seven, seventeen, seventy and one hundred and seven and in two weeks it would be Dumbledore's one hundredth and seventh birthday. The teachers were planning a ball —though it would be less ball and more rave if the sixth and seventh years had anything to do with it —and had assigned all decorating responsibilities to the prefects and heads.

Normally Lily would be the first to volunteer for something like this but today she sat, fingers writhing in her lap, mind whirring, meticulously planning Stage One.

Quickly, it must be known that Lily Evans had no intention of becoming a home-wrecker. James was dating Daisy and she respected that… mostly. She had no intentions of luring him away from Daisy. Well, yes, she did, but not in any maliciously underhand way.

And so, she thought, staring absently at the portrait of Egbert the Egregious above McMillan's left shoulder, stage one should be simple; uncalculated.

Stage One: be his friend.

She told that to Remus after the meeting. He had been listening to the heads talking, though only because he had noticed that she hadn't been listening, and to that end he approached her to grouch as they shuffled out of the meeting.

'Something's really eating you,' he said, falling into step beside her down the corridor. 'The last time I had to listen in a prefect meeting was… my first one, actually.'

Feigning surprise, Lily shot him a sideways look. 'Quiet, studious Remus Lupin shirking his prefect responsibilities?'

'No longer, unfortunately,' he mourned. 'Can I just say how shocked I was to find it even more boring than the first time I listened?'

'Well,' Lily said, heaving her bag strap over her shoulder, 'I am super grateful you listened, Remus, because I —' she shot him an excited smile ' —have figured out what I'm going to do.'

Remus frowned. 'With the decorating? But you weren't —'

'No!' Lily stopped, blushing. A quick head check ensured that only Frida and Phillip remained, talking seriously by the door, and so she continued with a fervent whisper of 'about James.'

Eyes widening impossibly, Remus shot a look at Frida and Phillip —who were standing suspiciously close together even though Lily knew that Frida and Arj Patil were going out —and then ushered Lily onward. 'Yes,' he dragged out the word as they jumped onto a staircase which began to swing in the direction of Gryffindor tower.

'I'm starting off slowly,' she said, hugging her bag to her chest and steadying herself on the banister as the staircase swung upwards. 'I'm going to be his friend.'

'What?' Remus's eyes widened even further. 'I'm sorry,' he said, backtracking quickly at Lily's frown. 'It's not that I don't think it's possible, I just never… really... thought it was possible. Really.'

Waving a dismissive hand, she said impatiently, 'Yes, I know, but the day has come and I will succeed.'

'Right. Gillyweed.' The dozing Fat Lady swung open with a squawk at being awakened. Lily stepped through and suddenly stopped short, causing Remus to collide with her back.

'Well,' came the whisper from behind after a pause. 'It looks like stage one begins now.'

A familiar head of black hair in a chair not two metres away had turned toward them when the portrait opened. James Potter was staring directly at her. He had his transfiguration textbook open in his lap and his tie around his forehead. His eyes were wide, trained upon Lily, and his lips were parted in surprise. A hand hovered above the book, clearly suspended in the act of turning the page.

How many times had he seen her walk through the portrait hole? She was a busy witch, so it would be a high count. Why was he surprised to see her? she wondered absently, somewhere in the back of her brain. She fancied him, so it was only natural that the sight of him caused her to grow roots.

But, honestly, most of her brain was focused on something else entirely. Something a whole lot shallower.

There he was, only a few steps away; hair dishevelled, limbs loose and relaxed, his whole person languid and easy after a long day. Merlin, had she never looked at his lips before? They looked so —Stop right there! Bloody hell, she was genuinely losing her mind… but the way he was reclining in that chair (big enough for two, she noted) absolutely begged cuddling… and he was staring at her, eyes wide and golden from this distance, as if he had never seen her before —

Remus nudged her in the back. Hard. 'Stage one?' came the whispered question. Then he slipped around her, whacked James on the back, hard, and continued past them, settling down next to Arabella Scotts and Bertie Thomas by the fireplace.

And so Lily was left alone by the portrait hole, mind racing, as James Potter sat watching her with his tie drooping down his left cheek.

Oh God, oh Merlin —think of something to say. Something to say, you daft bint! Think —think —small talk. Oh Merlin, bloody hell, shit, go, anything —

'That's… festive. Your tie.'

The two words could not have been posed with any more awkward an inflection. Nor could the following gesture to the tie in mention have been any lamer.

'Festive?' he repeated after a pause. 'How's that?' The faintest hint of an upwards curve was now at his lips.

Oh, darn. What did I even mean by that? Her voice was shaky. 'Um. I —I dunno. I just —' Shit. Shit, shit ' —well, it's nearly… Easter.' Die now, Evans. 'Don't they do that thing– you know that tie thing they do in —in Peru?'

'Peru?' He was definitely smiling now. 'I'm not sure. It's closer to my birthday than Easter, anyway, so it could be in celebration of that, I suppose.' His voice was smooth and amused now, where a moment a go he had been as surprised and nervous as she was.

He thinks he's got the upper hand, Lily realised with anger. I've acted all daft and now he thinks he's in control. A familiar churning had begun in her gut. Her palms felt sweaty and if she was a cartoon character a black thundercloud would have been brewing above her head. Oh, no. Not again. James was leaning back in his chair, smiling up at her. 'Peru,' he chortled quietly. 'Oh, Evans, how I've missed you.'

The innocent little grin that accompanied the last proclamation broke the proverbial camel's back. 'I don't —you're such —you —ugh.'

And with that stellar and cutting rebuttal, Lily stormed past a shocked James, up the staircase and barricaded herself within her four poster until time ended.