Dressing Gowns and Dinner Jackets, part one

or

A Study of the Effects of Jazz and Dim Lighting Upon Teenagers

The day of Albus Dumbledore's hundredth and seventh birthday dawned bright and chilly.

'I think Spring sprang overnight,' Mary said, hooking her arm through Lily's on their way down to breakfast. 'Sniff that fresh, Spring-y air, Lil. Sniff it, come on, sniff —ack —'

They missed breakfast. Lily didn't mind, though: she thought it was entirely worth watching Mary struggle to snort an entire Monarch butterfly through her nasal tract. There was nothing the redhead could do but stand out of the way as her friend stumbled around the corridor yelling, 'it's fluttering its bloody —ah, Jesus, now it's got its little legs —tickling —oh Merlin, oh Lordy —get it out!'

After a few minutes of entertainment, Lily had the brilliant idea of using a Summoning Charm. A quick, 'accio butterfly,' in between snorts of laughter, and the insect came zooming out of Mary's nose and flapped away, probably to find some sort of bug-counsellor to deal with its newfound issues. It was worth the amusement, but Lily and Mary headed off to first period Potions with empty stomachs.

In celebration of the Headmaster's birthday it was only a half-day, which gave students time to prepare for the ball later that evening. It was a lovely idea, Lily thought, but the prospect of finishing classes after lunch meant that absolutely no one paid any attention to anything the professors said before lunch.

Halfway through Potions, as Slughorn was droning on about the dangers versus benefits of using Erumpent horn shavings in potion-making and every other student was either asleep or discussing their robes for the ball, Lily received a note to the back of the head. Her heart beat a little quicker when, after a moment, she began to un-scrunch the little piece of parchment. There was one person in particular who was notorious in the art of note sending… but it was just from Mary.

Emergency pilfering of the emergency hamper before Muggle Studies. Circle yes or no.

At just that moment, Lily's stomach growled. She circled 'yes' and scrawled a short sentence beneath Mary's, grinning to herself. Quickly checking that Slughorn had his back to the class, still mumbling away about Erumpents and their horns, she swivelled to return the note.

But Lily had forgotten —how had she forgotten? —that Mary's desk buddy was none other than James Potter. The beautiful boy had his head in the crook of his elbow, and was drawing pictures of pie on his textbook. Whenever he yawned, Mary would vanish the pies and James, obviously half-asleep, would look with vague surprise at his quill, give it a shake and start all over again.

Making sure Slughorn still had his front toward the blackboard, Lily muttered 'depulso,' and watched with glee as the little wad of parchment shot straight into James's yawning mouth. His eyes popped open with sudden alertness and with a great, hacking cough that surprisingly failed to rouse the attention of every drowsy student in the class, the note was propelled with some force onto the desk in front of him.

Mary calmly fished the parchment out of the pool of spit and James looked up at Lily with a comical expression of shock on his face. His eyes moved from the note in Mary's hands, covered with Lily's embarrassingly recognisable handwriting, back to Lily. That was you? his raised eyebrows asked. Slowly, a grin spread across his face, and two thumbs were raised in a good job, Evans! type of way. Next to him Mary had gone pink and was shaking her head in amused embarrassment. James peered down at the note and frowned.

I could really eat a chocolate butterfly —sorry, frog —right now, Lily's note read. Mary was turning a lovely shade of magenta.

'Evans,' he whispered at Lily, looking across at Mary, who was clutching her nose. 'What's happened? Butterfly?' Lily shot him a quizzical look, trying to look like she didn't know what he was referring to. Annoyed, he flapped his arms in such an enthusiastic way that in trying to refrain from laughing, she snorted loudly. 'But-ter-fly,' he said, the words half-mouthed, half-whispered.

Lily was about to mime the butterfly-Mary's nose scenario back to him when she saw Daisy out of the corner of her eye. She was sitting a row behind James and had slowly raised her head off her arms, eyes flickering between James and Lily.

James must have seen Lily's expression falter, because he looked around to see what had distracted her. When he saw Daisy, he was suddenly still, his face averted from Lily's for a good ten seconds. Then he turned around again, face blank. He didn't look back at Lily.

A cold feeling twined about her insides. Mary, her mouth dropped open in a little 'o' of astonishment, was dividing her shocked stare between Lily and James, who was now drawing another pie on his textbook, forehead furrowed in intense concentration. Slowly, Lily turned around. She stared at Slughorn's bald patch for the remainder of the period, and when the bell rang, ran from the room.

And so Mary found out.

She caught up with Lily on the sixth floor staircase, threw herself onto the bottom step as it began to take off and landed at Lily's feet, panting. It took her a few moments to recover before she looked up, wide-eyed, at her friend.

'What just happened?'

Lily didn't know what to say, so she didn't.

'I don't understand what happened, Lil,' Mary said, heaving herself into a standing position using Lily's jumper. She settled herself and took a step back so that she could take in the redhead's face. Lily wondered what she looked like at the moment. She didn't even know how she felt.

'When he saw Daisy —your face —his face…' Mary trailed off. Her eyes flickered across Lily's face now. 'You looked so… so shocked… and upset. Is something… happening? Between you two?'

A moment passed. Lily couldn't help but smile a little bit at the look on Mary's face, even though her gut was twisting unnaturally. Mary's eyes widened further. 'You fancy him. You fancy James Potter.' She clapped her hands over her mouth and stared at Lily.

Lily didn't feel like she really needed to confirm the statement. Mary could see. Slowly, the witch's hands fell from her mouth. 'But… Daisy.'

Lily nodded. They stepped off the staircase together and stood at the mouth of the seventh floor corridor.

'But Daisy.'

Lunch was a light fare in saving for the big feast, but Lily and Mary ate ravenously. The emergency hamper was nearly cleared out from the time Lily had spent nearly thirty-six consecutive hours alone in dormitory and all they'd had to get them through Herbology and Muggle Studies respectively was a small block of suspiciously old Honeydukes' cherry chocolate and seven Every Flavour Beans. Lily won the tussle and got four beans to Mary's three, but hers ended up being porridge, leather, treacle and grass-flavoured anyway.

Mary made short work of letting Marlene, Dorcas and Emmeline know that she was in on the secret —'Welcome, Mary, to the Save Lily Evans From Herself Club,' Marlene said somberly —and regaled them with the happenings of Potions.

Aside from Emmeline who was quickly bringing Mary up to speed with recent Plan Be-His-Friend, everyone was silent after Mary described the look on James's face.

'This be-his-friend lark isn't going to work,' Marlene said bluntly.

Lily tried to swallow. A bite of egg salad sandwich seemed to be stuck in her throat.

Dorcas sighed. 'Not with Daisy on the scene. Your relationship, no matter how… well, it's always going to be charged, Lil. It's always going to be seen as threatening for someone in Daisy's position.'

Lily coughed and the bit of sandwich slid sickly down her throat. Everything seemed a bit grey around the edges. Her friends' chatter was too loud and too bright, despite the subject matter, and really… I think I'd like to sleep.

But then came what the others heralded as a breakthrough. 'Why don't you just be straight with him?' Mary asked. 'It sounds like there's a whole heap of unspoken stuff between you two. I think you should just let him know where you stand.'

There was a pause, which was then followed by a gradual build in enthusiasm for the idea. Marlene, Dorcas and Emmeline all began to hmmm and mmm with growing energy.

'You do have your uses, Mary, and not just for your extensive range of cosmetics. We should have recruited you to the team ages ago,' Marlene said, looking at the brunette in surprise.

Mary nodded smugly. 'Thank you very much.'

'Lily?'

Lily looked up from the remains of her sandwich. 'Yes?'

All four girls were watching her with frighteningly similar expressions of this-is-business.

Dorcas leant forward and, elbows planted firmly on the table, chin on fists. 'Do you submit to our superior scheming?' Feeling a little as if she were signing her own death-notice, but acknowledging that in her less-than-motivated state she'd probably only come up with another terrible plan for salvaging the situation, Lily nodded.

'Alright then. Here's the plan.'

'Am I being stupid?' Lily asked quietly when it was only Marlene and her left at the table. The others had gone to begin getting ready for the ball and Marlene had stayed behind (or was coerced, depending on who told the story) to help Lily finish decorating the hall with the other prefects. 'Am I overreacting?'

Marlene had her tongue between her teeth as she levitated a garish purple and silver garland of Frida Davies's choosing into position underneath a window on the west wall. 'Why does it always fall to darling Marlene to do the reassuring? We all know I'm terrible at it.'

'Yes, but you won't feed me rubbish, feel-good answers,' Lily said, running her fingers over the top of her clipboard.

'And that's all of a sudden a good thing?' Marlene asked, a smile curling her mouth upwards. 'You know how much crap I've gotten over the —'

'Alright, yes, yes,' Lily said hastily, passing Marlene a silver bauble. 'I just need you to tell me whether or not this is all just dramatic nonsense and I should leave it alone.'

Marlene didn't blink. 'I think that you've never taken a risk in your life and that it's about time you fought for something that might possibly have always belonged to you.'

Naturally, the last few hours leading up to the ball were chaos. All the decorations on the West side of the Hall fell down fifteen minutes after Marlene put them up —'You should have told me to use a Temporary Sticking Charm, not a Quick-Stick Charm. I think that shows very poor employer/employee communication.' —and down in the kitchen, hysterical House Elves had to be reassured that everything would be to the taste of 'kind and beauteous Professor Dumbledore, sir'. Hagrid decided to help move the house tables out of the Great Hall to create the dance floor, and dropped a foot on the skinny tail of Mrs. Norris, who had to be taken to the Hospital Wing for an emergency amputation by an extremely distressed Argus Filch. Suffice to say, Lily had no desire to actually attend the ball by the time everything was ready, a scant ten minutes before the event was due to begin.

Behind the double doors of the Great Hall, students were thronging in their finery, eager to get the best seats and excited for the night to start. Lily sighed, one hand on a great doorknob. It had taken her and Stella Brightley the last hour to re-charm all the decorations into their correct places. Best go and get my gear on, then, she thought tiredly.

From behind her, a gloomy voice said, 'Party time.'

Normally neat Remus, shoulders now slouched and hands shoved deep in pockets, had his shirt untucked and a streak of purple glitter across his chin.

'I see you share my glee at the thought,' Lily said, gesturing that he had a little something on his face.

Scrubbing at his chin with one hand, Remus turned and surveyed the Hall. 'It looks great, though.'

Great was a gross understatement. While Frida Davies had had monopoly on the theme, 'Magic and Mayhem' had not entirely ruled out the possibility of tastefulness. The huge space was low-lit and ambient: not a quarter of the candles it usually took to light the Great Hall were grouped in small clusters above the hundred or so little tables that ringed the dance floor. Professor Flitwick had charmed into being a huge glossy circle of hardwood in the centre of the stone-carpeted Hall for the dance floor, and several metres above it, five hundred-some candles glowed from deep purple to palest mauve. The tables were covered by stiff white tablecloths and had a purple centerpiece; these, Lily admitted, were tacky, but what else would one expect with Arabella Scotts on table decorations? Theteachers' table was covered in a golden tablecloth and a purple-cushioned throne had replaced Dumbledore's usual high-backed chair.

Here and there, a few prefects were skittering about, tweaking table arrangements and charming back into place an errant candle. Anticipation was thick in the air and the steadily growing hum of excited conversation behind the double doors had the place humming with energy before the ball had even begun.

'It looks great,' Lily seconded. She turned to look dubiously at the doors. 'I just don't think I have the energy to battle through the party troops.'

Remus was already walking away, calling over his shoulder, 'Follow me, then.'

He led her through a tiny, stone-coloured door behind the teachers' table that Lily had no idea existed and down several little-used corridors only a few brightly clad and eager revellers were traversing this close to the commencement of the ball.

Once on the seventh floor —quiet now, as most Gryffindors were downstairs, crowding the Entrance Hall —Lily remembered something.

'Remus.' In the chaos of the last few hours she had forgotten her task. The heaviness she had felt at lunchtime hit her again like the Hogwarts Express. 'I've got to do something tonight. I've —I've got to speak to James.'

Remus shot her a sharp look. His open, tired expression hardened instantaneously. 'Alone, I presume.'

Lily nodded. Remus muttered the password and the Fat Lady swung inward. They both climbed into the common room. Clearly not wanting to look too eager to get to the ball, several older students were still hanging around the fire clad in dress-robes.

Lily and Remus, the latter now looking quite conflicted, stopped at the foot of the girls' staircase. A hand to his forehead, Remus began, haltingly, 'this isn't —no, you wouldn't. Sorry.'

'Did you just answer your own question and then apologise for it?' Lily asked, giving a tense little laugh. 'What were you going to ask?'

He took a great breath and looked at her with a weighty expression. 'I was wondering if this is going to be like in the films —yes, I've seen films —where you're all done up —' he gestured absently at her clothing ' —and there's low-lighting and atmosphere and you —you —'

'Use my womanly wiles to lure him away from the sainted Daisy Abbott?' Anxious though she was, the idea made Lily snort with laughter. 'Not likely. His virtue is no danger from me this evening.'

Remus watched her carefully for a few more moments. Finally her twitching fingers and rolled-in shoulders must have convinced him that Lily Evans, Seductress, would not be making an appearance tonight, and he sighed. 'I'll let him know.'

'No,' said Lily quickly, fingers leaping to the hem of her jumper with nerves. 'I don't think that–'

With both hands, Remus pushed Lily's arms down by her sides, smiling. 'Get ready and enjoy the ball. You'll have your talk with James.'

The ball was in full swing by the time Lily walked into the Entrance Hall. The space had come alive with buzzing students. A five-piece band was playing a light, jazzy piece that suited the mood of the conversation and teenagers who were hyperaware of each other had made the atmosphere electric. As of yet there was no dancing, but almost every table was occupied and students stood talking at various points in the Hall. Dumbledore was in his throne, dressed in pale gold robes, smiling jovially down the Hall. It was, simply put, magical. The light was soft and everyone looked different. Certainly, Lily knew, everyone felt different: something about a dress makes you feel special, she thought, swirling her own about her feet as she stood in the doorway. The softness of the material did something to soothe her gnawing anxiety. She felt… strangely confident.

The same change could be seen everywhere: pressed into the soft shadows next to the doorway a girl in a soft blue dress was laughing in the low, languid way that only jazz and dim lighting could prompt; the boy she was talking to had squared his shoulders and was standing taller than he usually did. '"Magic and Mayhem", though?' Lily heard the girl saying in a teasing way to the boy. 'It's magical, alright, but where's the mayhem?' Lily refrained from telling the girl to be patient; Frida's theme actually had quite the fantastic culmination, one that would answer the question well enough.

Her eyes suddenly alighted on Alice and Mary standing halfway down the west side of the hall, waving to get her attention. Weaving around a group of third year girls dressed in varying shades of ultramarine, she made her way towards her two friends. The table they had claimed was right on the edge of the dance floor, halfway between the double doors and the teachers' table. Alice was wearing a dress of soft champagne and Mary's dress was so dark that Lily couldn't tell what colour it was in the shadows. Alice had speared her up-do with her wand; Mary's was sticking out of a finicky little purse. Gasps of admiration were exchanged and each girl did a little on-the-spot dance of excitement. Emmeline joined the group moments later, and the whole process began again.

'Look over there,' Emmeline said quietly after everyone had cooed over each other's robes for long enough. She was pointing to a table across the dance floor, just to the right of the teachers' table. 'Dorky and Dominic Fletchey.'

Sure enough, standing next to the table was Dorcas and her burly Ravenclaw friend. Hands clasped in front of her chest, Lily squinted hard, trying to make out their facial expressions across the hazy purple dance floor. Dominic was speaking fast, his face earnest and his arms moving expressively. Dorcas was listening, a blank expression on her face; her arms wrapped around herself.

'Poor Dorky. Why does she do it to herself?' Alice muttered. All four girls were watching the exchange intently. It looked dismal. 'Did you just come from there?' Lily asked Emmeline.

'No,' Emmeline said, her downturned mouth morphing suddenly into a coy smile. 'I've been over there with Adam Prescott.' The Hufflepuff was sitting with his friends two tables away. Her smile grew wider as Adam noticed her watching him and waved his fingers.

'Adam Prescott,' Lily repeated blankly. 'What, do you fancy him?'

'Emmeline Peterson!' Alice crowed, eyebrows moving athletically. Emmeline grinned back. The soft pink of her dress made her blonde hair look particularly gold and brought out the blue in her eyes, which were shining with excitement. 'He said that my dress reminded me of his sister's pygmy puff. I have decided to take it as a compliment.'

Lily surveyed the boy. He has a nice enough face, she thought, but I'm pretty sure he's entirely stupid. As they watched, he huffed into a dessertspoon and tried to stick it to his nose.

'What about Vance?' Mary asked, frowning, as Emmeline and Alice held hands and squealed in each other's faces. 'I thought you held the ole torch for him.'

Emmeline face fell into a frown. She turned away from the table of laughing boys. She waved the comment away. 'No, Mary. Vance is… fine. But Adam, well…' Emmeline trailed off, shrugging her shoulders with a grin.

Lily looked over again at the group of boys. Emmeline had liked Friedrich Vance on and off for years but he'd never noticed her, which was a pity because he was one of the nicest boys Lily knew. Good on Emmeline for seeing the impossibility of the lark and moving on. Wish I knew how to do that…

'Whew, hasn't little Pettigrew scrubbed up!'

Lily thought it was sad how fast her head whipped around to where Mary was pointing. Where Peter was, there too would be her treasure. That's not how the saying goes, she thought vaguely. She didn't really get more than a cursory glance at Peter in the end, though. Instead, she spent the time staring across the dance floor at James Potter.

To be entirely honest, there were very few people who weren't staring at him tonight. Him or his three mates. A year ago a stunt like this would've had me spitting, she thought absently. Now… it was actually quite impressive. And attractive.

All four Marauders were wearing luridly spangled robes. Peter's were purple; Remus was wearing silver; Sirius, deep blue, and James Potter… gold. How Lily had missed them before, she had no idea: the light of the candles above caught on each and every sequin attached to the wizards. Even when she turned her head away a little bit she could still see their bright forms picked out in purple, silver, blue and gold in her periphery. The gold was the brightest.

Oh dear, was all Lily could think.

'I hope you're not thinking that your outfits match,' came a voice by her side. Marlene had come up behind her and was smiling widely. 'Your dress is brown and his robes are gold. If anything, you make up the Hufflepuff crest, which is not particularly impressive.'

'It's bronze, not brown, thank you very much,' Lily said sharply, trying not to look like she was staring. Marlene let her pretend for all of ten seconds, then pulled her bodily over to the table, saying, 'You're not ruining this night for yourself quite yet, Evans. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Focus on something else.' There was a basket of bread in the middle of the table. 'Have some bread.' Naturally, Lily's attention was spectacularly diverted when a hunk of the stuff was shoved into her mouth.

All in all, the ball was a huge success. The feast was spectacular: a person had only to tap twice to the right-hand side of their plate, speak clearly what they would like to eat and it would appear. For the most part, that is: when Mary asked for coq au vin, she got a saveloy and three kidney beans. It was quickly deduced that one had to ask for the closest English equivalent of foreign dishes, otherwise one's plate would fill with the default sausage and beans.

Marlene made sure Lily was entirely distracted: there was no end to good company on the sixth year girls' table. Benjy Fenwick was drawn in to amuse her with his hand-drawn informative guide to troll hunting. Adella Creevey was making the rounds in a lurid yellow gown, giving out pamphlets and an impassioned soliloquy about the plight of gnomes and other household creatures. Lily was also lucky enough to hear from Dermot Weasley and Patrick Bates exactly how the world was going to end before 1985.

The 'mayhem' component of the theme was justified before dessert: that's when the fireworks started. And they were spectacular. For a solid ten minutes, the darkened Great Hall was lit up like the sun in every colour imaginable. The fireworks wove among the students and teachers, cool to the touch, painting the air with glitter. It was truly magical mayhem.

The dancing began afterwards. Lily had her back to the dance floor all night —to avoid looking at a Certain Sequined Someone, as Marlene called him —and had managed to come up with many a stellar excuse not to dance: 'Thank you for the offer, Kevin, but my pancreas has been swelling of late, so I'll have to pass', 'You're quite the mover, Daniel, but I've had one saveloy too many tonight: I had better sit here and digest' and simply 'never ever, Hickory.'

But Mary and Alice were a touch more persuasive —and threatening —than these unlucky suitors, and towards the end of the night, Lily found herself in the middle of a group of sixth and seventh year witches, belting out the chorus of the new Hinkypunks hit, 'Bewitch Me', on the purple dance floor. The song went down so well, in fact, that Marlene went right up to the band and 'sweet-talked' them into playing it twice more without pause.

After the third time, Lily was exhausted and beginning to hate the song. The final chords gave way to a slow, crooning saxophone solo and she sighed. A slow song. Fantastic. She mouthed, 'I'll sit this one out,' to Alice, and was about to creep back to her seat when she heard a voice behind her.

'You want to dance?'

Lily's heart almost thudded to a stop. She turned slowly… and her heart resumed beating. Remus.

'Do you know how?' she asked dubiously. Shaking his head and grinning, her silver-clad friend took her by the waist and pulled her hand into his. 'Nope. Dim lighting covers all sins, though. Just follow what everyone else is doing.'

'Great costume,' Lily said, plucking at a spangle with a laugh as they began a slow, fumbling turn around the dance floor. 'Did you hand sew the sequins?'

'I have hidden talents, young witch,' Remus said. 'Sewing is not one of them.' He paused and looked down at her and rolled his eyes dramatically, a tiny smile on his face. 'Sorting out your mad relationship issues seems to be, though.'

'Sorry,' she said, partly for the "mad relationship issues" and partly for stepping very heavily on his toe. 'What's… what's the go, then?'

The final task of the prefects was an extra lengthy patrol. It logically followed that students would be up into the wee hours of the morning after the ball ended, and while the heads of house accepted that they would be hard-pressed to quash the inevitable after-parties, traversing the corridors after hours, it was sternly dictated, would not be tolerated. The Gryffindor prefects had been assigned a fourth floor corridor, but Remus wouldn't be joining Lily on patrol tonight.

She had very purposefully kept her eye off James all throughout the ball, knowing that if she were to think too much about him she'd psych herself out. But waiting for James in a deathly silent corridor was giving her plenty of time to do just that.

It was cold in the drafty upper levels of the castle, so she had run up to get her bright purple dressing gown to wear over her dress before coming to wait here. She was regretting it now. Now I look stupid. This whole thing is so incredibly stupid, she thought, fingers writhing in front of her. The corridor was completely silent. I should get to bed. Oh Lordy. How did I let them talk me into this? But her feet seemed frozen in place on the stone floor.

Five minutes passed.

Ten minutes.

Lily sighed. He's not coming.

Just as she was trying to decide whether or not she felt this was a good thing, the sound of footsteps rang through the corridor.

They got louder and louder until, shining in gold, with a loosened cravat and hands shoved deep into his dress trousers, James Potter turned the corner. He stopped a good distance away from her.

Despite his dress robes, he didn't look like he had just come from a ball. He looks like he's going to war. Lily felt her shoulders curl in. On his face was the most incredibly guarded expression she had ever seen. His eyes were dark behind his glasses and his mouth was a tense line.

'Remus said you wanted to talk.'