RECAP
Julie, Marlene and the boys all go to James' house for his birthday, but his parents get called into the Ministry for some kind of emergency. Meanwhile, Mulciber is being shady as always, trying to bewitch his own handwriting so that he can get in touch with Rosier and Wilkes, two recent Slytherin graduates.

XV. Unforeseen and Unforgotten

On the morning of the twenty-eighth of March something was very wrong in the world, and Lily felt it. It showed itself first when Lily woke up before Julie, something she could not remember happening, ever. She stared at the other girl, still asleep on the floor, pale and sweaty, and wondered how much of a hangover she was going to have to put up with.

Yawning hugely, she rolled out of bed and changed her pajama pants for a pair of jeans. She didn't change out of her old, worn t-shirt, because she didn't want to put a bra on. That was probably the worst thing about boarding school—having to get completely dressed before breakfast.

Petunia was up, drinking tea at the kitchen table, and she watched out of the corner of her eye as Lily fixed herself toast and eggs.

"Good morning," said Lily politely, seating herself at the other end of the table.

"An owl came for you," was Petunia's response, "I gave it money out of your bag."

"What? Oh." The paper had arrived; Lily took it and glanced at the front page. She got up to get the tea kettle, looked back at the paper, and froze.

SEVEN WIZENGAMOT MEMBERS DEAD IN ANTI-MUGGLEBORN CAMPAIGN: "LORD VOLDEMORT" CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR BREAK-IN.

Petunia's jaw was clenched. She took in her sister's reaction and then said in an even tone of voice, "So that's bad, then."

Lily covered her mouth with one hand. "I have to—I have to get Julie. Oh my God...oh my God..."

Julie wasn't surprised. That made it worse for Lily somehow, as she shook her awake, as Julie pulled her legs out of the wildly tangled sheets, as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "Slow down," she commanded. "What did you say? What...oh."

Oh. Julie considered the death toll, the Unforgivable Curses, the destroyed property, the slogans painted on Ministry walls in green paint that could not be washed away, mulled it all over, chewed it and swallowed it and came out with Oh . Then she got up, and found a brush, and started dragging it through her hair while Lily sat on her bed and pressed her shaking fingers to her mouth.

"Weren't you expecting something to happen?" she asked, but Lily couldn't speak. She just shook her head. Not this. Julie looked at her with sympathy, a little condescension, something like tenderness, and Lily didn't see any of it, lost in panicked thought. Could be me could be Dad could be Petunia Mary Remus . She looked up when Julie touched her shoulder. "Lil," she murmured, "any chance of a coffee? My head is..."

Lily stared at her in silence, incapacitated.

"Right," said Julie. "Guess I can find some myself."


There were two long, empty weeks to get through. Lily spent hours in bed revising. Julie revised at the kitchen table, and in the afternoons Petunia would sit across from her. The striking of typewriter keys and the scratching of a quill filled the silences. Lily wrote long letters to Marlene, but didn't send them. Marlene, her pureblood friend. She must have been afraid as well, but she wasn't the one being smeared in graffiti on Ministry walls. Lily was withdrawing at home as well, pulling back some of the sympathy she had extended to Julie. She didn't like being afraid, and she especially didn't like being the only one afraid, so she curled up like something wounded and hid.

Julie didn't even really notice. They spent the two weeks silently coexisting, and then Mr. Evans drove them to London, so they could spend four hours silently sitting in an old car. Once they got to the platform, Lily went off, without a word, to sit with Nigel.

Julie wandered down the train and left her trunk in a compartment with Mary and, of all people, Priya Shah. Slightly put off by the idea of sitting with a Slytherin—even one like Priya, who had never been involved in any serious incidents —and surprised that Mary wasn't as well, she moved on, and ended up sitting with some seventh-years, Will and Brandon among them. They were all very loud and forcibly carefree in a way that suited her present desire to empty her head of all thought. And then, around midday, someone arrived who suited that desire even better—Sirius Black.

He slid the door open and stuck his head in. "Oi, Jule, c'mere a second, will you?"

"Yeah, all right." She stretched lazily as she stood up.

"Keeps you on a tight leash, does he?" said Will.

Julie looked at him sideways. "You jealous?" she asked politely before following Sirius into the corridor.

He turned to face her. He had already changed into his robes, and Julie was still wearing jeans, torn in the knee, and a plain t-shirt. She lifted her hand, curled her fingers so that she could touch the backs of her fingernails to his cheek.

He pulled her closer and kissed her. They didn't really talk anymore; all their time alone was for this. The conversations they had had—before and during the night of her detention, when she had found him alone in the common room—had been nice, interesting, and maybe she should have missed them more. But really this was what had made them interesting: the promise of sex. The electric energy of something that was going to arrive compared to the kinetic energy of something that had arrived. It was what they were here for, and they both knew it.

He pulled away, his hand moving from her hair to her chin to his side. "We should..."

"Yeah."

She took him by the wrist and led him away from the compartment she had just left, not wanting to be seen through the window—although Will must have known what they were doing. It was funny, she thought. Somebody like Mary obviously liked her privacy, which led her to keep her head down and never do anything that would get people's attention. Julie wondered why she wasn't more like that. She was hardly ashamed of herself, she just wished people would mind their own business. Then she went out and did something like pull Sirius Black into the loo of the Hogwarts Express.

"Classy," he muttered into her neck, as she reached around him to latch the door.

She could have gone after anyone else. It really wouldn't have been difficult to find someone who wasn't in her year or her house, someone who wouldn't make her life more complicated, antagonize Lily, aggravate James. And yet—

More than kissing itself, it was feeling the heat of someone else's face against her own that was hard to get used to. She was reaching for the fastenings of his robes, he was pushing the small of her back into the sink, tangling his hands in her hair. And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him and she did not want to think at all.

God, it was good. It was so good.


If putting off a decision counts as making a decision, Niamh had made a decision. She had never managed to say no to her sister, but she was still capable of silence. It was, she thought, her greatest gift.

She was standing in a pool of light. She could feel the heat of the torch above her and the cold of the stone behind her. Across the corridor, she could see the outline of the forest through a window. It was almost nine o'clock, and it was deep twilight. By the end of the month, this would be light dusk.

By the end of the month, she would have made the decision. Somehow all the factors in that decision would have balanced out into yes or no. Will or won't. Past or future.

Just in time, another factor arrived.

"Hello, Niamh," said the factor, showing his teeth.

"Hello," she said. It was the easiest word to say, but it had the unfortunate effect of making Mulciber think he was welcome.

He doesn't care about welcomes anyway, she reminded herself. He leaned himself against the wall, blocking the window with his body. They were on the seventh floor, very near to Gryffindor Tower. She had paused here, finished with wandering for the night; he must have come looking for her, perhaps he had been following her. He has been following me all night.

He smiled again. He has steel teeth, she thought, so none of this is real.

He can still hurt me.

"I've been hearing a lot about you from your sister," he said. She watched the tip of his tongue move in his mouth and didn't answer.

"You know, she thinks very highly of you."

He waited, and then, in a voice just a touch less patient, "She trusts you."

"Yes," said Niamh quietly, because he seemed to want an answer, and sometimes when she gave people what they wanted they left her alone.

"She's hoping you can tell her something—can tell us something."

"I know." She wished Julie were there. Julie was so much better at hiding behind her own skin that it almost wasn't hiding at all, and Niamh could hide there herself.

"And I think she's told you how high the stakes are."

Niamh didn't answer this one, but only because her stomach was turning. But he didn't like that—he pushed off from his wall and leaned over to hers, putting a hand on her shoulder. She was pinned like a beetle in a display case.

"Niamh," he said,

Don't touch me don't touch me don't touch me

"—I think you know what the right decision is. For your sister. I think you've already made a decision. But if you haven't...if you're stalling, if you're faking, if you've been lying this whole time—"

And his fingers seized like a vise.

She bore the pain. She had done it before.

"I'm not afraid of you," she said, but her voice was as soft as a shiver.

Slowly, he released her, and slowly, he smiled. Those steel teeth, steel eyes. "There's more than one way to be afraid," he said.

She replied, "I think you should go now."

He stood with his arms crossed and looked at her, unconvinced.

"You should go now," she repeated. "I'm going to close my eyes, and when I open them, you'll be gone." And she closed them.

In blackness she heard him breathe and then softly laugh. "Are you having a premonition ?" His voice was light with disbelief.

She wasn't. She was just being hopeful.


"What the fuck are you two trying to accomplish?"

Julie didn't sound particularly displeased, but Lily jumped, wearing, she was sure, an expression of discomfort identical to the one which had just appeared on James' face. Julie was walking ahead of them, and when she spun around to look, they were on opposite sides of the corridor, as far as they could get from each other. James had caught up to the girls as they came out of the library to remind Julie about their first Quidditch practice, and somehow he and Lily had started arguing about homework, of all things—why either of them felt so strongly about Memory Charms Lily wasn't quite sure, but they had both started waving their hands about and aggressively correcting each other.

"What?" Lily asked.

"Accomplish?" said James at the same time, his voice even more skeptical.

"I thought you were babysitting me," said Julie, one side of her mouth twisting into a smirk. "Pretty rubbish at it, aren't you?"

"We're— I'm not—"

"No one's babysitting you," said James irritably. "You don't have to listen to us if it's so painful."

"Cheers." Julie turned again and set off. In the moment it took Lily to translate thought to actual movement of her feet, she had been left exactly where she didn't want to be—alone with James.

She started to walk again, brushing the wall with her fingertips as if it was the base in a game of tag. "If your wristwork weren't so sloppy, you wouldn't get the popping noise," she said crossly, not wanting to open up any other conversation.

"The noise is supposed to happen," James snapped.

Lily rolled her eyes extravagantly. "Sorry, I didn't realize you try to seem incompetent, but that explains so much —"

She broke off, realizing she could hear voices up ahead. They were just two corridors away from Gryffindor Tower, and it was time for everyone to be returning to bed. But she heard the tone before she could make out words, and something made her anxious.

It was Julie's voice, low and threatening. Lily felt sure that she had pulled out her wand.

"—liked it so much, you want another?"

James swore, and started to run—Lily followed him and passed him, jostling his shoulder, and they burst around in the corner in quick succession, breathing fast, anxious, and angry.

In a glance she took in the scene: Niamh Fairchild, curled on the floor with saucer eyes, Caius Mulciber backed against the opposite wall, tense and coiled to spring, and Julie in the middle, towering over him, her eyes glinting with fury.

Lily launched herself down the corridor, drawing her wand with her right hand and shoving Julie away with her left elbow. Levicorpus! sparked into her mind, the first and most obvious thing, and before Mulciber had even really seen her he was in the air, hanging by his ankle.

"Oh, come on ," Julie growled. James looked up and down the corridor and then stopped himself, folded his arms and leaned back against the wall next to Niamh, watching.

Lily hesitated, not sure where she needed to go first, but Niamh made a small noise and Lily turned and crouched by her.

"Are you all right?" she said softly.

"I am all right," Niamh echoed.

"Don't bother," said Mulciber, "you won't get any sense out of her."

He spoke very calmly, considering he was dangling upside down.

Lily stood. "What's going on?" she snapped. Mulciber didn't respond, and so she looked at Julie, who raised her eyebrows.

"I just got here. Sometimes I ask before hexing..."

Mulciber laughed derisively. His face was turning red.

Lily sighed. "Niamh, what's going on?"

Niamh, who was still curled against the wall, chewed on her lip for a moment. "I think he was just going," she offered finally.

Lily turned back and examined Mulciber again. She flicked her wand and thought Liberacorpus and he fell in a heap. He lay there for a moment without making a sound.

Wearily, she said, "Get out of here." And they all watched him clamber to his feet.

He flicked his gaze from face to face and ended at Niamh. "Think about it," he said calmly.

There was enough time for Niamh to react, if she was going to, and then Julie took a step forward.

"The next time you threaten a Gryffindor, I will find you, and I will make sure we're alone."

Mulciber smiled beatifically. "And I will report you, and you will be expelled. I understand how disciplinary records work, Fraser. "

"Do you? Will you? And have you been studying Memory Charms as well, or is the Slytherin class behind? I know not all of you are really...academically inclined..."

Half of her mouth was tugging itself into a grin.

"Julie ," Lily scolded.

Mulciber just raised his eyebrows as if he couldn't think of a clever response. He didn't seem cowed at all. He shrugged his shoulders once and left.

"Julie," she repeated weakly. The sound of Mulciber's footsteps died away.

"What," said Julie.

"Did I hear you say what I think I heard?"

"You tell me what you think and I'll tell you if you're right. Niamh," she said, abruptly shutting Lily out, "What does he want from you?"

"Influence," Niamh answered, blue eyes clear and unfocused, "Power, respect." She turned her head and snapped her gaze onto Julie. "Indirectly," she added.

"What?"

They stared at each other for a moment, Niamh intent and Julie confused. Neither seemed aware at all of Lily and James watching them. Then Niamh braced her hands against the wall and pushed herself to a standing position.

"Thank you," she said to Lily, "for hexing him. I don't mind that it didn't do anything."

Lily narrowed her eyes, too bewildered to reply.

Niamh looked around, her gaze darting from corner to corner. Without another word she turned and left. Julie called after her.

"Niamh! Niamh! Jesus Christ , what's that supposed to mean?" With a strangled sort of half-groan, half-sigh, Julie was gone as well.

James was still leaning against the wall. He had not moved since Lily had jinxed Mulciber, and she had no idea what he was thinking.

"You know she wouldn't actually," he said. Lily shot him a questioning look. "She's not actually going to Obliviate him," he clarified.

"How do you know?"

"She just—she just wouldn't . It's not her style."

Lily thought she knew what he meant. Julie was a physical being; she didn't usually hurt people without drawing blood. Still, she would rather have been reassured by Julie's moral compass than by her style.

Nothing, nothing frightened or disgusted Lily more than the thought of using magic on someone else's mind. Or someone else using it on her, picking and choosing her memories or planting opinions or forcing ideas into her head. She had been thinking about it over the whole Easter holiday, since the attack on the Ministry.

She thought aloud. "That was the first time I'd ever heard of someone actually using the Imperius curse."

James threw her a sharp glance. "There was a case a few years ago, but not so high profile." He paused, as if debating whether he should keep talking, and took a deep breath.

"I knew him," he said. "Anthony Bones, the man who—"

"Who was just Imperiused."

"Yeah, well. He used to come to my parents' holiday parties...he would always give me chocolates, but they were cherry cordials and I hate those."

He stopped and took another deep breath. Lily thought perhaps she should say something, although she didn't know if he wanted any kind of condolences and couldn't really imagine giving them. "Everyone hates those."

"Yeah, well. He was a pureblood, you know, but he was just about to propose some new Squib legislation."

And so he had been placed under the Imperius curse and forced to kill the six members of his committee. Someone, one of Voldemort's followers, had gotten into the Ministry of Magic just before midnight.

It seemed to Lily like a rather glaring possibility that one of Voldemort's followers actually worked for the Ministry of Magic, but the Daily Prophet had chosen to focus on how someone might have broken in.

"If there are spells that are Unforgivable," she said slowly, "then some magic is wrong in any situation."

"I guess."

"Well, then what about Memory Charms? Why don't they bother you more, why don't they bother Julie? Isn't it a terrible thing to take away someone's memories?"

James narrowed his eyes at her. "Obviously, you think the situation matters. Didn't you used to object to a Levicorpus ?"

Lily recoiled. "That's not the same at all."

"Well, of course you would say that. Is it different because Mulciber isn't your best friend, or is it different because you're Lily Evans and you can do whatever the hell you want?"

Best friend , coming out of his mouth, oozed with contempt.

"Half a minute ago, you were talking about cherry cordials. I'm not talking about Snape." She had to force the name out; she so didn't want to say it.

"I'm not talking about him either! I'm not the one who just almost started a duel and neither is Julie!"

"Well, good for you."

"Great."

She stood there for a moment, waiting for him to make a move, until finally, with an intense rush of irritation— I have to do everything myself? —she spun on her heel and stalked off—a little difficult, when she realized that he was surely headed in the same direction, but he waited politely while she gave the password to the Fat Lady. By the time she saw him climb through the portrait hole, she was on the girls' staircase, and she watched him look around, register Sirius and Julie sitting next to each other, and go over to Remus and Peter. He had a terrific scowl on his face and she stood there, fascinated by it, until a couple of third years almost ran her over and she turned and went up to bed.


Julie was restless. She dreamed about running and twitched in her sleep. During classes she had to force herself not to fidget. She copied every word the teacher said with her right hand and sat on her left. Quidditch practice was better, as they worked towards the Ravenclaw match—she could never fly fast or far enough to satisfy, but she could try. What she wanted was to hit somebody, but Lily and the thought of her mother kept reminding her that she was suspended. She could not, could not be expelled. She would get her grades and get out, and life beyond Hogwarts was a vast blank.

She didn't even want to be a witch. She was good at magic, and she was already involved—once you've made enemies, you're involved. Lily had saved the career pamphlets given to everyone in fifth year—not because she really wanted them, but because she never threw anything out—and Julie found them one evening and spent a half hour looking through them while the other girls were at dinner. She hadn't realized before how many professions in the magical world involved working for the Ministry. The only thing that seemed at all interesting to her was working as a Curse-Breaker for Gringotts ( travel, adventure, and danger-related treasure bonuses) but there was that P on her Arithmancy O.W.L. The worst grade she had ever gotten, and it had to be one that actually mattered.

Niamh was quieter than usual, and she was usually quiet. Over the next few weeks she shadowed Julie, finding her in hallways between classes they didn't share, going to bed at the same time if Julie hadn't disappeared with Sirius. Julie allowed it, secretly liked it. Someone felt safe around her; maybe she could feel safe around herself. Or maybe it wasn't that—there was also the fact that for some reason Niamh, quiet, mousy-haired Niamh, attracted danger, and danger attracted Julie.

During one of their study sessions in which they made no small talk and so usually did not talk at all, Niamh asked Julie, "How many kinds of fear are there?"

This is the real reason Niamh was friends with Julie, not her Herbology grade. Lily or Marlene or Mary might have asked, at this point, if Niamh was feeling all right, or what she was talking about. But Julie thought it over, and after a silence that she did not try to fill by stalling or repeating the question, she answered. "Two. Certain and uncertain."

Niamh chewed on her lip for a moment and then nodded. "Certain and uncertain."

She didn't say anything else that might explain how she understood it, but Julie knew what she herself meant. She was not afraid very often. Usually she was angry. But there was a difference between being afraid because she knew exactly what was going to happen and being afraid because she didn't know what was happening at all. Uncertain was her attic, four knocks on the door, Margaret's face calm and resolved.

For her mother, she realized, that must have been certain. She could not possibly have led those four wizards into her backyard if she had not been trying to leave her own body as far away from her daughters as possible.

Julie was restless. She was angry, and she was sad, and it was growing harder and harder to shake the feeling of powerlessness. And maybe this was the reason she had slept with Sirius in the first place, because it was surely the reason why she was—maybe—getting tired of him.


"What?" Sirius hissed.

The common room was quiet, and Julie didn't respond. It was just the two of them, and James, sitting and working in the best chairs near the fire. The game with Ravenclaw was the next day, and the rest of the team had responsibly gone to bed early.

She poked him again.

"What? "

"Come outside with me."

James snapped his head up and looked from Julie to Sirius, his face carefully neutral.

"I wanna talk."

Sirius glanced towards the windows. It was the middle of April, properly spring, and an hour after dinner the sky was a full, rich shade of blue. They couldn't see them from his chair, but Julie knew that the trees in the Forbidden Forest would be casting long shadows across the front lawn. He did not seem to relish the idea of going outside, and in any case it was barely an hour before their curfew.

Not that Sirius was usually bothered about curfew.

"All right," he said, and pulled himself out of the puffy armchair. James stretched his legs and placed his feet on the vacated cushion, looking up at his friend.

"Shall I wait up?" he said sardonically.

"'Sall right," Sirius mumbled, and Julie rolled her eyes as she stood, angry again, or still angry.

"See you later, Jamie," she said cheekily, and he kicked the backs of her legs in a half-hearted way.

It was wearing on her, this half-friendship with James. She missed feeling truly comfortable with him, before he had started to treat her both carefully and somewhat resentfully, before January.

She and Sirius made their way to the third floor before either spoke.

"What's this about?" he asked.

She placed one hand on his nearer shoulder and wrapped the other around his neck, pushed him against the wall before she kissed him.

It was a long moment. He put his hands around her waist, pulling her closer, pressing the lengths of their bodies together until the buckle of his belt dug into her hip. She could hear a rushing noise in her ears, and when she stepped back she gasped for breath, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she stared at him.

"Come on," she said finally, and her voice was steady. She wanted a cigarette.

The hallways were empty, in spite of the hour they still had to wander the castle and grounds without getting in trouble, in spite of the beautiful, bright dusk. The school had changed, since the attacks on the Ministry, maybe even since Julie's own attack on Mulciber or the unknown attack on Niamh: students stayed with their Houses much more than they used to, studying in their common rooms instead of the library, walking to classes in clumps, and even speaking more quietly at meals in the Great Hall. Only Mrs. Norris crossed their path, giving them both a baleful glare.

Their feet were quiet on the flagstones of the Entrance Hall floor. Sirius held the heavy front door open, and Julie murmured some small nicety in response.

The lake was entirely in shadow by now, the water murky and dark. They walked halfway around it before either of them spoke.

They had gotten to the beech tree everyone liked to sit under, much less friendly looking at dusk, and Julie said, "I don't want to do this anymore."

"Don't want to do what?" Sirius asked, very calmly.

"This. You and me."

"You're the one who suggested a walk," he answered, deliberately misunderstanding. She stopped in her tracks, so that he had no choice but to stop walking as well.

"I'm breaking up with you."

He raised his eyebrows. "Were we together?"

She just stared at him.

After a long and prickly silence, he sighed. "Right, fine. Are you going to give me a reason, or are just going to move on to the next bloke?"

"Move on, I think," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"Fraser..."

"Black."

"Did James get to you?"

Julie laughed. "A bit, yeah. Doesn't he get to you?"

Sirius countered her question with one of his own. "So you believe all his rubbish?"

"That you've been shagging me to piss him off? I dunno, yeah, it's a bit too obvious. You've been having a row with him since last year, haven't you?"

He bristled. "That's none of your business."

"And that's why I'm chucking you."

"What ?"

"I don't know anything about you!" she said shrilly, hating herself for saying it.

And he reacted just as she thought he would: took a step backward so that he could look down his nose at her (which he did very well) and laughed.

"What the hell do you need to know about me?" he snapped. "I wouldn't have shagged you in the first place if I thought you wanted to understand me—" (he was lying) "—that wasn't what we were about. Is that the kind of girl you are?"

Is that the kind of girl you are? The kind who won't just settle for sex, who wants love , commitment, the kind of girl who insists on flowers for Valentine's Day and jewelry for her birthday, the kind of girl who either exists expressly to plague men or more likely doesn't exist at all?

That was the question he was asking, mainly to piss her off, and it worked; Julie was seized by a powerful desire to kick him in the shins.

"You twat," she said, "I don't care about understanding you—" (lying, also) "—I just..."

His face was so closed up and blank. It drove her to shouting.

"I thought we had something in common! I thought we were both orphans! "

That was it.

And she gasped for air, like a surfacing diver. That was what bothered her; Avanti Potter with her ruby earrings, pulling Sirius into her arms, looking at him to see if he had grown. He had a mother after all, and Julie felt as if she had been lied to. He had never really talked to her about his parents, nor she about hers, but she felt betrayed, all the same.

This was a revelation. She had not realized it this whole time, and now it seemed blindingly obvious, so that when Sirius said "What?" she felt another burst of annoyance.

"What are you talking about ?" he repeated. "You know neither of us is actually an orphan, right?"

She looked at him blankly.

"I don't understand why you're angry at me," he said.

"So neither of us understands shit," she replied. "It's all right, this is what you want, isn't it? Now you can go—go kiss and make up with James."

"Fine," he snapped.

They looked at each other, each with words on the tips of their tongues, and they both hesitated, and then finally Julie just turned around and left. It was no good, there was no point, and she could not make him understand an anger that she couldn't grasp herself.

In the Entrance Hall, she lit a cigarette. She walked numbly up the stairs, barely registering the small groups of students heading back to their dormitories. By the seventh floor, she had smoked the cigarette almost to its end.

"April showers," she said curtly, and the Fat Lady swung up to let her in.

James had, after all, waited up, although Julie had not been gone for very long. He looked surprised to see her by herself.

"Where's Sirius?" he asked as soon as she was close enough to hear him.

Julie shrugged. "He'll be in soon."

James looked at her oddly; then he reached up his hand so that she could pass him the stub of her cigarette. He took one long drag and passed it back. She looked at it, imagined the place his lips had touched it. There was almost nothing left of it, and she tossed it in the fire.

"See you in the morning." They had their game with Ravenclaw the next day.

Lily, Marlene and Mary were already in the dorm, sitting on their beds. Julie snapped the door shut, reached blindly for the nearest bureau, (Marlene's, by a happy accident) swept up a bottle of nail varnish and threw it at the wall behind her bed. It broke with a crack, and peach splattered down the stone walls.

"What the fuck ," Marlene said, jumping to her feet.

Lily looked up without moving. "You going to clean that up?"

Julie stared at the wall, and then stared at Lily, whose eyes narrowed into slits.

"Are you. Going. To clean. That up."

In the painful silence that followed, Mary slid her books onto the floor, got up and left the room.


The sky was fully dark by the time Sirius walked back, but he saw with a funny pang in his stomach that James was still up, his face lit by the low-burning fire. He looked up at Sirius and smiled.

He was angry at Julie, but he wasn't that angry. She had told him to make up with James, and that was what he would do.

"Go to bed, you have a match tomorrow."

James looked at him, searching his face. Julie was always doing that too, trying to figure him out. Tonight, even James was getting nothing from him.

"Everything all right?" James asked, getting to his feet.

"Fine, yeah," said Sirius, and he cuffed James lightly around the back of the head. "Come to bed."

But in the middle of the night Sirius snapped awake from an old nightmare, heart pounding in his ears. His mouth was dry and foul-tasting. The dream was less sound or sight than just colors, all those dark greens and musty, moth-eaten reds, the colors of the house where he grew up.

He kicked the blankets away and went over to the window, poured himself a glass of water and drank it, looking out over the grounds. Somebody—probably Remus—was snoring softly behind him.

He crossed the room and left, closing the door quietly.

The common room was dark and silent and not entirely empty. Sirius flopped onto a couch, staring at the ceiling. When his sight adjusted all the way, he flailed into a half-sitting position and swore. Niamh Fairchild was cross-legged on the couch across from him, staring at him.

"Shh," she said.

Obligingly, he whispered, "Fuck, fuck, what the fuck, Fairchild?"

She blinked, once. Her eyes were luminous in the half-moonlight trickling in from the windows.

"You were in my dream," she said.

"What?"

"I know," she said, "I wasn't expecting it either. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious...It's always like that...

"And you didn't look like yourself."

He pushed himself from his elbows to his hands. He still had no idea what was happening. Niamh Fairchild was not someone he spoke to other than across the dinner table, to ask her to pass the pudding, and even then very rarely.

"And there was someone else—red hair—"

He scowled. "Which one?"

"I don't know, a little boy..."

"What?" Neither of the options he had thought of were little boys, and he was more lost than ever. It was time to gracefully extricate himself from this conversation. "The fuck are you on, Fairchild? I'm going to bed."

He stumbled to his feet.

"You have a brother," she said.

He stopped, turned. The moon silvered one edge of her face.

"Would you die for him?"

And because it was so dark, and in the dark he could tell the truth, he said, "Yes."

"Would you kill for him?"

There was a pause, and then he said, "No."

Niamh sighed in the dark. "It's good to know that sort of thing," she said softly, and she got up and walked past him up the girls' staircase.

Alone, Sirius put his face in his hands for a moment. You're not my brother, he heard Regulus say, and, Why can't you just stay, why did you have to say that, why are you always starting fights, why are you always fucking up?

Christ. He had started this day planning to actually study Charms for once, and here he was, standing in the common room at one in the fucking morning, tearing up thinking about his shit of a little brother.

Improbably, there was a cigarette in the pocket of his pajama pants. Julie must have given it to him at some point. He had never said no to her when she offered him one, but he hated them. He had tried smoking in fifth year and found it boring and slightly disgusting. He hadn't stuck it out long enough to get over the constant coughing, let alone achieve Julie's unpleasant but undeniable glamour.

He rolled it around in his fingers for a moment. He could drop it in the fireplace, but making dramatic gestures in an empty room didn't really appeal to him. Finally he just put it back in his pocket and left.


It was one of those clear, cold spring mornings, perfect conditions, and James felt pleased with himself and the world as he opened the great front door of the castle. He had gone to find Julie, as the rest of the team was assembled at the breakfast table, and it took so much less time than anyone would expect (magical maps did come in handy) that he could sit with her for a few moments. She was sitting on the front steps of the castle, smoking, and because nobody had seen her since last night, he assumed it was not her first cigarette.

"Why did you start?" he asked, settling himself on the same step.

"Dunno."

"No, come on. To bother your mum?"

Julie shifted her weight. She had never tried to bother her mum in her life. "Not really. It was Amy who was bothered. Margaret never said anything about it." She tapped ashes onto the step. "I think she knew the whole time, though. But she never said anything about it, except for the night before...the night before," she finished, pretending that was a sensible way to finish a sentence.

James was at a loss for words, suffering a loss of imagination, mothered as he was. But he subverted her pretense by thumping her on the back. Julie was silent as well, thinking, perhaps about everything else her mother had never said. He was sorry for bringing it up.

"So you're friends with Evans now," James said, immediately cursing himself for saying anything. Evans had asked him enough times that, sometimes, even he wondered why he couldn't keep his fat, stupid mouth shut.

Julie let out a short, unfriendly laugh.

"What's that mean, then?"

"Lily isn't feeling too warmly towards me at the moment."

"Oh?"

"She screamed at me for half an hour last night."

"Christ, Scottie. What did you do?"

She cut her eyes at him. "How do you know it was my fault?"

"Scottie," he said, leaning back on the step above and squinting at her. The morning sun was very bright, and he put a hand over his eyes. "What did you do?"

She just rolled her eyes and sat thinking for a minute. Then, "Unrelated," she said brightly, "I broke up with Sirius."

"What!"

James tried to sit up, banged his elbow, and slid down a step, all while managing to keep an accusing glare fixed on Julie. She glanced at him coolly.

"I thought you'd be happy."

"And why'd you think that?" he snapped, rubbing his elbow ruefully.

"I didn't think you wanted us to go out in the first place."

"I didn't want you to break up with him, either," said James. "I didn't want you to go out because I didn't want you to dump him!"

"How do you know it was my fault?" she asked, echoing her earlier question. This time, she was pleased; her lips curled into a thin, lopsided smile.

"Julia ," he said, rubbing his temple, thinking fervently please, God, can my life not get more complicated?

"Unrelated," she said again, after a long pause, "I borrowed your scales that day you skived off Potions."

"Fraser, do not tell me what you're about to tell me."

"How much did those cost, anyway? Get pewter next time, you rich bastard."


"GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOOOORRRR!"

The pounding beat of the dance music, the gleeful yells of her housemates, and the sleepless rage of the night before were building up to a vicious ache at Lily's temples; she wandered vaguely through the post-match party, wondering if she should go to the library or just give up on the whole day and go straight to bed.

She shouldn't have even watched the match. Marlene always wanted her to come. She was happy enough to support her friend, but this time, watching Julie and James pound the Ravenclaw team into the dust somehow outweighed the fun of the game.

She liked Quidditch, had always liked Quidditch, fondly remembered playing four-a-side with the other Gryffindors in second year (boys against girls, Mary abstained) and she hated Julie and James for making it impossible to watch, and she knew that she didn't really hate either of them, and she hated herself for that. Just a little bit.

"Evans!" said a loud voice. An accompanying arm dropped onto her shoulder. Lily pushed the arm off without looking.

"Black, I'm tired, I'm pissed off, don't make it worse."

"Ah, come on, Evans," said Sirius, "You need a drink."

Lily crossed her arms, turning to look at him. "What I need," she said calmly, "is an aspirin. And an end to this idiotic party."

Sirius had a bottle in his own hand, ostensibly butterbeer, but with a sharp whiff of alcohol clinging to it, and he offered it to Lily.

She stared at his hand. "Why are you talking to me, Black?"

He shrugged. "You're pissed off. I'm pissed off. It's a fucking victory party. It's just the two of us."

Lily sighed deeply and took the bottle. Over Sirius' shoulder, she could see James, Marlene and Brandon Douglas standing on a table, reenacting dramatic highlights of the match. Someone was screeching with laughter. Julie hadn't bothered to spike her butterbeer; she was standing with Will Preston, drinking straight from a bottle of muggle alcohol.

Lily watched her take a deep swig and couldn't find it in herself to mirror the action. She handed Sirius' bottle back. "'Sallright, thanks."

He rolled his eyes at her. "Evans, why are you such a priss?"

She was so, so sick of all the bullshit. She was sick of everyone she knew, she was just sick of everything. "Okay, Black, thanks very much, thanks for the great time, I'm just going to go the fuck to bed—Fuck. No, don't look—never mind."

Because Sirius had already turned around and seen what she was seeing. Julie and Will wrapped around each other, kissing, her hand loosely holding the bottle behind his back. He didn't look for long, just turned back to Lily with his eyebrows slightly raised.

This is the stupidest, most pointless, stupid , thought Lily. I hate boarding school and I hate girls' dormitories and I hate this party. She had not just lost patience, she had lost any memory of patience. More than anything she wished she could just be left in peace.