Dressing Gowns & Dinner Jackets, part two

or

There's No Place Like Home

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.'

Lily had to clear her throat. 'Yes.' She wrapped her dressing gown more tightly around her. 'I do —I did.'

James weighed the answer. He frowned. 'You don't want to anymore?'

'No —yes, I do!' she said quickly. How to start is the problem.

Charged silence filled the space. He was staring at her with an inscrutable look on his face that was making her extremely nervous.

'Are you wearing your dressing gown?'

If James was amused or bemused, Lily couldn't tell. Not the emotion crossed his face.

'This is my ball gown,' she said in a feeble attempt to break the ice. Merlin, it got colder when he walked in.

He sighed and looked down at the flagstones. Once, twice, he tapped the points of his shiny dress shoes together. It reminded Lily too much of the part in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy desperately wants to disappear from Oz.

Looking suddenly up at her with thinly veiled anger on his face, he asked, 'what is it, Evans?' In a sharper voice: 'what do you want to talk about?'

Shit.

'I just wanted to say that… I'd like to be friends.'

There was utter silence for a few moments. Lily rambled on, trying to fill the tense, anticipatory silence. 'I mean, recently we've been —we've been really friendly and it's been… really great, but I just don't know where we stand and I'd like to… I'd like to know,' she finished feebly. James looked back down at the ground. The light of the torches caught the spangles on his jacket, throwing dots of gold light across the pale stone wall. The effect was dazzling. A long exhale of breath and a few stamps of the feet later, he looked up. The torchlight reflected off his glasses, too. Lily couldn't see his eyes.

'We can't do this, Evans,' he said, wearily. He looked so tired.

'We haven't even tried yet,' Lily said in a very little voice.

Frustrated, he said, 'I don't know how to be friends with you.' His voice grew louder. 'You don't know how to be friends with me. Why do you even want to be friends?' The last question was blunt and forced and echoed through the corridor for a few seconds after. Before she could answer, he muttered, 'I can't take you seriously in that dressing gown.'

Lily was knocked off kilter by the abrupt change of tack. 'I'm not taking it off,' she said defensively, her response a little delayed. 'It's too cold.'

'Take it off,' James said, frowning. 'I'm not talking to a two-year old.'

'Are you trying to start an argument?' Lily asked, frowning, 'I'm not biting —'

'Don't!'

She had moved to take a step towards him. She paused, foot suspended in midair. 'What?' she asked, disoriented. Even James looked surprised at his own outburst.

'Just… just stay where you are.' He drew in a shaky breath. 'Why are you… This is really… Jesus, Evans.'

'It's Lily, not Jesus.' Oh, golden opportunity for a pun, was it?

Sure enough, he glared at her. 'I'm really not in the mood, Evans.' He threw his head back and huffed once, staring at the high ceiling. After a moment, he began to shrug out of his spangled gold jacket. Without looking at her, he threw her the garment, saying 'wear that. I'm not talking to you in that ridiculous outfit.' He stood there, face averted from hers, his shoulders broad in his white shirt, waiting for her to put it on. Without a word, Lily began to slide her arms into it. It was a tight fit over her fluffy dressing gown, but it was warm from where it had been touching his skin and smelt like him.

An errant laugh burst from his mouth when he looked up at her. 'I didn't mean over your dressing gown. You look even more ridiculous.' Then he shook his head firmly and sobered before her heart had time to lift with hope. 'This… isn't a good idea.' He scrubbed a hand across his face. 'I don't think I can be friends with you.'

'I heard that part,' Lily said stubbornly, crossing her arms. The extra layers made it difficult to bend her elbows. 'But you didn't say why.'

James looked at her like she was a total idiot. 'Does it really need saying, Evans? Are you serious?'

'No, I'm Lily.' Fabulous. The Great Mouth of Lily Evans strikes again. 'Sorry. Nervous,' she said quickly when he looked like he was about to explode. After a moment of deep breathing, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, James nodded sharply. He pivoted to face the wall. 'Jesus,' she heard him mutter.

After a good minute of very obvious self-collection, he turned slowly so that he was facing the wall, presenting her with his profile. 'You want reasons, Evans?' he asked, tilting his head back to stare at the torchlight, flickering in its bracket. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. 'Daisy's my girlfriend. That's… that's one of many reasons.'

Lily frowned. 'I'm not —I'm not propositioning you, if that's what you thought. Bloody hell, James —'

At his name his head shot up to look at her. Shock flitted across his face, quickly eclipsed by anger. 'I thought it was Potter to you, Evans,' he said, his voice so furious that Lily took a step back in surprise.

Once she had recovered herself, she frowned deeply. 'Why are you so edgy?' she asked, incredulous. 'What do you expect me to do?' She mimicked his voice: '"Don't come any closer; don't call me James."'

He ignored her questions and threw his hands in the air. 'I don't know what you've been doing recently —watching me, smiling, laughing at my jokes, flirting —'

'I have not been flirting with you!' Lily said hotly, voice shrill with disbelief. 'What, we have a conversation where I don't yell at you and it's suddenly flirting?'

'Yes!' He said, eyes blazing. At her incredulously raised eyebrows he paused, frowning. 'No. No, yes! I mean… I don't —you should know —' he punctuated the word by punching a fist into his open palm ' —that I —I operate differently around you! I process your actions so differently than anybody else.'

'That's not my fault,' she said primly, trying to look dignified in her dressing gown and dinner jacket. 'You're taking your anger at your own idiocy out on me.'

'But you know how I am around you! And I have a girlfriend!' Each word was enunciated and angry. 'You screwed me over! Close to two hundred times if Marlene's bloody tally is right!'

'It was under one hundred and fifty! And I just want to be friends!' Lily said, outraged now. Their voices were bouncing furiously off the stone walls. They were all quick-breathing and flashing eyes and red-faces and clenched fists. 'I'm not trying anything! Why can't I be your friend?'

'Because we'll never just be friends, Evans! I can't ever just be your friend!' The words seemed to explode from him. Silence crashed over them. His shoulders were tense. He had said something that he probably never wanted her to hear.

'This —' James gestured between the two of them ' —this doesn't translate into friendship. What we are is not friend material.'

What is he saying?

'We've got —you and I…' He trailed off and growled with frustration. A twitchy hand ripped through his hair. 'I really like Daisy,' he said suddenly, furiously, turning on Lily and pinning her with a freezing stare. 'But you and I, Evans, we've got something that you just refused to see for so long. It's —it's unexplainable,' he said, his voice suddenly very brittle. His hands clenched at the empty air. 'It's like we're that anomaly where the sun covers the moon or the moon covers the sun or whatever and it's awesome. It shouldn't be, and it shouldn't work, but it's awesome when you and I are together. And now all of a sudden you feel it and you're flipping everything upside down! Again! You don't get to do that to my life again!'

He was more angry and distressed than Lily had ever seen him. The dark shock of hair was standing on end from where he had gripped it with both hands. Restless energy radiated from him: he couldn't stop moving, like a spring winding tighter and tighter. Comparatively, Lily was frozen: she could only watch him, feeling as if she had suddenly become cold-blooded.

'You've felt it recently and I've always felt it and it's always going to be awesome, but you… you said no, Evans.' Now his voice was startlingly unstable. 'You said no when you had the chance. I was young, Evans, and stupid, but it ripped me up. And I've got Daisy. So I don't know if I could —' his voice went gruff ' —I don't know how to be your friend.'

The rejection was met with utter silence. Lily felt like her gut was falling away. She was shivering despite the extra layers.

Neither of them said anything for several minutes. Lily stood on her side of the corridor, wearing a bronze dress, a bright purple dressing gown and a spangled gold dinner jacket, eyes wide and lips pinched. James was half-turned away from her, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides.

How the hell did this escalate? What have I done?

What is he saying?

It was completely mad —and this really says a lot about Lily's mad brain —but it was at this moment, when it all seemed completely over, when James was turning away from her for the last time, that she began to hope. It was at this moment that Lily got something. She understood.

He felt it too.

It wasn't over. She hadn't completely squashed the spark. He was angry because he still cared. He can't be my friend because we've got something awesome. Like the moon covering the sun or the sun covering the moon or whatever. We've got to be more.

'Be my friend, Potter,' she said quietly. Something was beginning.

James had begun to walk away. At her words he turned again, irritation on his face. 'Didn't you hear any of that, Evans? No.'

'Alright, then,' she said calmly. 'I won't be your friend, but you'll be mine.'

He stopped walking. If Lily weren't sure he was furious with her, she'd have thought he was trying not to laugh. 'Evans… it doesn't work like that.'

'Yes, it does,' Lily said unflappably. 'You don't think we can be friends, Potter? Well, I consider you my friend, so we're halfway there.'

'We're not —' James stopped and shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. 'How the tables have turned, Evans,' he said, just a trace of bitterness in his voice.

As he walked off down the corridor, Lily muttered to herself, 'challenge accepted.' James must have still been listening, because she heard his soft answering laugh echo off the walls.

It's time to start a new tally, Potter.

Prepare to be chased.