Chapter 14: James

It's the next Friday. I'm watching my watch tick the time slowly closer to eight pm from the privacy of my bed, ignoring Carol studying at her desk across the room, and Potter and I have tutoring together again tonight. Alone time with him right now... unbearable.

Our rescheduled tutoring on Wednesday went just fine. Potter met me in the library after I finished tutoring Timothy, and we practiced more animal Transfiguration. He said nothing more about where he'd been the previous evening, though he seemed suspiciously tired, yawning through our wand work drills. However, despite the sleepiness, he cheerfully corrected all my poor attempts and by the end of our session, I actually managed to transform the rooster James had brought along into a cat, which, considering where I'd been a mere four weeks ago with that spell, was a right miracle. Potter shot confetti out of his wand in celebration, and I tried to further show off my blossoming Transfiguration skills by Vanishing the mess. It only partially worked, and so Potter had to take care of the rest before we left the library. "Next," he promised, "we'll focus on Vanishing Spells." I knocked into him with my shoulder, laughed, and agreed.

So I'm not dreading being around Potter anymore, not exactly. We've found a good rhythm and tutoring is going... well, much better than I had ever anticipated.

No, the reason being around James is unbearable is that ever since he mentioned me using his first name, I started to realize that despite what I said, I do not think of Potter in exclusively 'Potter' terms anymore. Frankly, it's alarming to me just how often I catch myself calling him 'James' in my inner monologue. And how often he's even appearing in my inner monologue. And I'm just not entirely sure what to do with that. Or what it even means.

All I know is that I am a bundle of confusion right now when it comes to James Potter. On one hand, he's this boy who patiently tutors me and makes me laugh despite my better judgement and worries he's not good enough to be Head Boy. He sticks up for his friends, which somehow includes me, and, while he's so stubborn and mischievous and sometimes misguided, he also somehow seems to be just... good.

But then, on the other hand... there's the boy he's always been before. Arrogant and proud, wreaking havoc just for a laugh. Truly tormenting Severus, often for absolutely no reason. I want to believe that James Potter doesn't exist anymore, but how do you just ignore six years of such behavior? Especially when he can still pull stunts like that stupid thundercloud last week. Even if it was in my defense...

Agh. Another look at my watch. 7:57. I really can't put this off any longer.

I slip off the bed, pull my shoes on, and grab my school bag. As I make to leave, Carol calls out. "Tell James I send my love, Lily."

"Give him your love yourself," I retort, then instantly regret it; I don't think I want her giving James – Potter, I correct myself – any kind of affection.

Carol smiles, showing all her teeth. "Maybe I will."

I don't give her the satisfaction of another idiotic retort. I leave.

Downstairs, in the common room, I find James – Potter – wrapped up in a game of Exploding Snap with Black and Pettigrew. Potter's cat, a small gray tabby named Marmalade, dozes at the end of the table. Remus must still be feeling under the weather, since he's nowhere to be seen. He's been missing from classes since Wednesday. I guess I spoke too soon on rounds with him. If you asked me to describe Remus Lupin, 'frequently ill' would be among the first things I'd list, along with 'mostly responsible', 'semi-reliable prefect', and 'really, he'd be an outstanding bloke if he wasn't mixed up with all that Marauder nonsense'.

I hover uncertainly at the edge of the group, not sure how to approach them all at once. I watch as Potter flips a pair of cards and successfully matches them. He looks up then and sees me while Black and Pettigrew continue the game.

"Oh, hey Lily!" A glance at his watch. "You wanna get going?"

"Whenever you're ready," I say, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

"I can go right now." He nods to Black and Pettigrew. "Later Padfoot, Wormy," he says, and throws his cards down on the table.

"No!" shouts Black, diving for the cards, but it's too late, and they explode. Marmalade startles awake, hurtling straight into Black's chest for comfort.

"Oops," James laughs.

"Just go," Black grumbles. He pries Marmalade off his torso. "And take your bloody cat with you." He holds her out to James with a look of distaste.

"And break her heart by separating her from you? I think not!" James scratches the cat behind the ears affectionately but does not take her. "No, you're going to stay here and keep Padfoot good company, aren't you, little Lady?"

The cat purrs contentedly, eyes nearly shut.

"Prongs," Black complains but, still chuckling, Potter joins me. "Ready?"

"Ready," I confirm, and we set off together.

"Where do all your little names come from, anyways?" I ask once we've climbed out through the portrait hole. "Padfoot? Wormy?" I laugh. "And Remus is Moony, right?" When he nods, smiling slightly like he's amused by my whole discourse, I continue. "And you're Prongs. Hey, maybe if you don't want me to call you 'Potter' all the time, I can just call you 'Prongs' instead."

James laughs right out loud at this, causing a pair of ghosts floating along the corridor in quiet conversation to give us a curious look. "You have no idea how odd that sounds coming from you," he says, shaking his head.

"Well, I could," I say. "That's what your other mates, your Marauder pals call you, so maybe I should."

Potter just shakes his head some more, like he can't believe this whole conversation.

"But what's it mean?" I press. "Names like that, there has to be a story there."

"Wouldn't you like to know," Potter says cheekily. He hesitates, then adds, "Besides, I would have thought you'd figured it out by now."

"Figured it out?" I say, thrown. It's never occurred to me that this was something I could just... figure out. I was certain there was some sort of backstory, an inside joke or incident one would need to be privy to to understand. "What do you mean, figured it out?"

"Don't worry yourself about it, Lily. It's not that important. You're right, they're just silly names."

I want to press for more, it's clear that they are not, in fact, just some silly names, but Peeves the poltergeist comes zipping down the corridor just then, happily upending ink bottles over anyone in his way, and it suddenly becomes a lot more important to get out of the way than to continue the conversation. Two floors and a secret passage behind a tapestry later (I guess it pays to travel the castle with a Marauder), we're laughing and panting and the whole subject has completely left my mind.

/

"You're still jabbing too hard, Lily," Potter says. "It's much more subtle, like this." He waves his wand with a sweeping motion and finishes with a light prod, and the whole table vanishes. He does it nonverbally, too, of course. My Transfiguration textbook, the object I'd been trying to Vanish, drops with a whoomp to the floor.

We decided to practice in the prefect room tonight instead of the library. It's the last day of the month and we need to finalize the House points tally for September. Since all the House points records are kept in here, we decided to kill two birds with one stone and just do tutoring in here tonight as well.

"I know," I whine.

"And remember," Potter says, waving his wand to bring the table back, "Confidence. Believe you can do it!"

"I'm trying!" I say. "But it's so hard. Like... where does a Vanished object even go? Does it just not exist anymore? When we Vanish animals, does that... like... kill them?" I shudder. "How can I believe I can do this when I don't even understand what I'm doing?"

Potter just stares at me for a moment. "You are thinking entirely too hard about this," he finally says. "Although, if you really want answers about that, Emeric Switch has a fantastic discourse about it in The Hows and Whys of Transfiguration."

"No thanks," I say dryly, picking up my textbook from the floor to put it back on the table. "I'm not that desperate to know." I ready my wand again. "Alright, let's try this again."

We practice for another half hour. I do finally manage to Vanish the cover of my textbook, which James celebrates as a victory, but I just scowl at the remaining pages on the table. Maybe I'd be happier if one of my Vanishing attempts hadn't rebounded and somehow momentarily given me antlers until James could stop laughing and get rid of them for me.

"I need a break," I finally say, slumping back in my chair and closing my eyes.

"You're getting really close!" James says, flipping through the unbound Transfiguration pages. "Look, you Vanished all the words off the pages, too!"

"So close, and yet, so far," I say, sighing. "I need some air." I wave my wand without looking, and the window across the room slides open easily.

"Huh," James says. "I didn't know that window opened."

"It usually doesn't," I admit. "But I worked out a charm to get it to."

"How does it work?" he asks. "That could be pretty useful for the common room, I've never understood why only the one window can open up. Besides," he adds teasingly, "it can't be too clever of a spell – I'm sure if you can do it, so can I."

I sit up straight in my chair, tilting my head at him. He's grinning in a prove-me-wrong kind of way. "Please," I say. "You may be the Transfiguration expert around here, but when it comes to Charms, I bet I could teach you a thing or two."

"Oh really?" James says, still smirking.

"Yes," I say.

"And how do you know for sure?" he says.

"Because," I reply. "Your raincloud was sloppy." I point my wand out the window. "Descendit Pluvia!" A streak of silver mist glides in and balls itself neatly into a perfect little cloud. A slight flick of my wrist, and it stretches itself bigger and bigger until it coats the entire ceiling of the room.

"Not bad," James says appreciatively, but I'm not done. The cloud starts to pulse and flicker with purple, the rounded bottom sagging heavy...

"Lily," James says warningly.

...and it starts to rain. Directly on his head.

"Hey!" he says, but he's laughing and I've kept the rain light. He wipes at his eyes. "Too bad, though, that I am such an expert at Transfiguration." He brandishes his wand in the air and the raindrops turn to soft gray feathers that float gently to the stone floor.

"It's a good try," I say. "But..." I twirl my wand and the feathers start to rise again, born on an invisible, insistent wind. They spiral up and around James, swirling tighter and tighter around him, tickling at his fingers, arms, nose...

"Alright already!" James says. He's still laughing. "Fine, Lily, you win."

"Say it again," I tease, slowing the feather tornado, but not stopping it, letting some of the feathers whisper at his glasses and tickling the back of his neck. He swats at them.

"You win," he says. "Definitely far superior at Charms than I am."

"Thank you," I say smugly, and allow the feathers to drift back down to the floor. Then, with a quick glance at James, I sweep my wand across the room, focusing hard. "Evanesco!"

Every single feather in the room disappears.

"Oh my goodness, I did it!" I exclaim. I can hardly believe it finally worked. I jump up out of my chair and do a little victory dance, I can't help it, I'm so excited.

"Lily, that's brilliant!" James beams at me.

"I can't believe I did it, I've never been able to Vanish anything before. Thanks, James!"

We both freeze.

Oh. Merlin.

I did it. I said it. I called him James.

And just days after being so adamant that I could never...!

But then James – Potter – argh – just rolls his eyes, smiling slightly. "Wow. This has got you so worked up you can't even remember what you're supposed to call me."

I laugh, a little too high-pitched and short to be normal. "Silly me." I clear my throat and try again. "Thanks... Potter," I clarify.

He looks at me a long moment, and his expression is impossible to read. "Let's get going on those House points."

/

"You coming to the match tomorrow?" Potter asks a little while later. He bends over his parchment, quickly tallying up points.

"There's a match tomorrow?" I ask.

He swings his head up. "You're joking, right?" He studies my face, and I can't help smiling. He relaxes. "Yeah, you're joking."

"Of course I know there's a match tomorrow!" I roll my eyes. "I'd have to bloody well never leave my dormitory not to know... except, no, I'd still know, because that's all anyone talks about!"

"You... don't like Quidditch?" Potter cocks his head in surprise.

"Umm... not really?"

"But you were at tryouts!" Potter says.

"Those were... special circumstances." I wrinkle my nose, thinking back to how disastrous it had been to follow Sev to the pitch that morning.

Potter grimaces too. "Oh. Right. Well, I really think you ought to come. Going to be a great match. Ravenclaw will never know what hit them."

"We'll see." I bend back over my own parchment of House point tallies. I'm really glad Potter's here to help out with this. I'm not totally incompetent with maths, but Potter's much, much quicker than I am. Of course.

"C'mon, Lily! You owe me, I tutored you twice this week!"

"Excuse you, you tutored me twice because you bailed on me on Tuesday!"

"Only because you bailed the previous Tuesday!"

Our banter breaks off when James – ack, I mean Potter – yawns.

"Tired again tonight, I see," I say.

"Just busy," he says, stretching against the back of his chair.

"We should pack up," I say, looking around at the paperwork scattered all over the table. "We've got it more or less done. I can finalize it before I hand it over to Professor Dumbledore tomorrow so you can get some rest."

"Thanks," he says, muffling another yawn behind his hand.

"You know," I say, "maybe you ought to consider skipping the match tomorrow. You clearly need to rest up. You've been yawning since Wednesday." I Accio the mess of parchment and they zoom into a neat pile in my hands.

"Psh," he says. "Like I'd ever miss a match."

"Is it such a big deal?" I say as we leave the room. "I miss them all the time."

"Totally different," he assures me. "I mean, I am the captain." We walk a little further and when he speaks again, the teasing note has dropped away and he sounds very sincere. "Please come, Lily. I'd really like it if you were there."

I look at him, all sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired, expression totally hopeful and unguarded. "Yeah," I say. "Okay."