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After the boys have left and they’ve just charmed the dishes into doing themselves, James clears his throat.  “Lily,” he says, and his expression is determined. It sounds a bit like there’s a frog in his throat, despite his having just cleared it.  “Lily…I…I.  Look, I think it’s for the best if I go.  We can’t live like this anymore.  I’ll stay with Remus for a while, while I sort everything out.” 

Lily stares at him for a moment.  His eyes are so serious and a wild, rushing relief floods through her.  “Oh thank god,” she says. 

His lips twist into a crooked smile.  “Yeah.  Right?”

“Oh thank god,” Lily repeats and she reaches up and pulls his face towards him and kisses him hard, and for the first time in months, everything is perfect.

“We do not need two cauldrons,” Lily says, looking up at James from the cardboard box she is unloading.  He can’t see what’s inside it, just that there’s a lot of whatever it is. 

“What if you’re brewing something and I want to brew something?” James demands.

Lily snorts.  “When are you ever going to brew something?”

“It could happen,” James replies.

“You didn’t do NEWT Potions.  I think it’s very unlikely.  I don’t trust you brewing.  If you need something brewed, either buy it or ask me to do it, all right?  I’m a certified potioneer.”

James rolls his eyes.  He’s not that bad at potions.  He’d chosen not to take NEWT potions, thank you very much.  He could have done it if he’d wanted.  Besides, he was pretty sure that the entire staff of Hogwarts was pleased that he and Snivellus finally weren’t in a class together.  Ha.

“Fine,” he says, trying not to sound too childish, “We can get rid of mine.  Or donate it, or something.”

“Hang on,” Lily says, and with a flick of her wand his cauldron zooms towards her.  “Yours is in better shape than mine.  I lay claim to it.”

“Lay claim to—are you a medieval warlord?”

“I think they were just called lords, James.  And no.  I’m your flatmate.  I lay claim to things sometimes.  Like your not-used-in-several-years pewter standard size two cauldron.”  She flicks her wand again and her cauldron zooms into the bin that she’s already thrown some old clothes and books that she’s decided she doesn’t need into.  James sighs.

“Treat her well.”

“Is she a girl?” Lily asks.

“Yes,” James says.  Lily raises her eyebrows.  “Look, her name is Bethany and she’s a trusty lass, so you treat her well.”

“Bethany?” Lily snorts.

“Bethany,” James says.

“Do you name everything?”

“No,” James lies.

But Lily lets out a bark of laughter.  “You named your friends, I suppose, so I shouldn’t be surprised about the cauldron.”

“Bethany,” he corrects her.  “If you’re going to lay claim to Bethany, you shall at least call her by her name.”

“Forgive me, sweet Bethany,” Lily says in a tone of mock sincerity.  She sounds almost like McGonagall when you got her drunk.  “You shall be in safe hands.  Safer hands than—”

“Now hang on,” James interrupts.  “Just because you were better at potions didn’t mean I was bad.  I never mistreated Bethany.”

“I was referring to the fact that you manhandle everything you own,” Lily says brightly, and James frowns.  He can’t really deny that he’d…used his possessions well when they were at school.  But still, things at school and things now are different.  But he senses he’ll just sound like he’s whining if he tells that to Lily. 

Oh Merlin, what the hell.  “Look, it’s different now than it was at school, all right?”

“Oh yeah?” Lily demands.

“Yeah.”

“Prove it,” she snaps.

“I will,” he says.

“I look forward to it.”

She continues to not believe him, though.  Furthermore, she’s quite dictatorial in what their flat will actually have in it.

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Lily.”

“James.”

“Look it’s—”

“It’s falling apart and looks like there might be maggots living in the stuffing, and that leg looks like someone used it as a chew toy.  We’re not putting it in the living room.”

“But—”

“No.”

“It wasn’t a chew toy,” James mumbles, but he sighs and waves his wand and the couch vanishes.  “Can I at least have the table?” he points to a coffee table that is standing on its side by the door. 

Lily turns her head so that it is parallel to the floor, blinks twice and says, “Yes.  I think that’ll do nicely.”

“Why is that in better shape than the sofa?”

“Because I can cover up the drink rings with a tablecloth.”

“A tablecloth?”

“A tablecloth.”

“For a coffee table?”

“Yes.  Why not?”

“Because—because… Who puts a tablecloth on a coffee table?”

“I do,” Lily says, smiling up at him.  She flicks her wand, and the coffee table zooms towards them, and James rolls his eyes at her.

“You’re mental,” he mutters.

“You’ve only just noticed?” she says brightly, her tone too sweet.  No.  He’s not going to think about her having a sweet tone of voice.  Him having a schoolboy crush on her when he was fifteen will not in any way, shape, or form have any bearing on his living with Lily after school. He’s been plenty in love since then.  He’s only barely over Gabby.  Regression is not something he can afford right now. They are adults.   Mature adults.  Who know that you don’t get a crush on your flatmate.

“I noticed it years ago, Evans,” he sighs. 

“And yet you still wanted to live with me,” she winks, and he feels his Adam’s apple bobbing in a swallow.  Damn it. 

“Yes,” he says simply.  “For lack of a better partner.”  There.  That’ll make her good and angry with him and then she’ll knock him back to his senses.

But her face doesn’t go hot and angry, her eyes don’t flash emerald rage at him.  Instead, she pats his arm and says, “It’s for the best.  You and Sirius would probably never leave the flat and we’d come over to find you’d accidentally starved to death.  That or you’d kill one another.  Remus needs his space, and Pete’s living with Florence.”

She smiles at him, and he almost forgets that she’s a furnishing dictator.  She’s got a lovely smile.

James arrives at Remus’ house with his suitcase floating next to him.  It’s very heavy.  Lily had helped him charm it so he could put all of his things in it—at least, all the things he’d seem to need right away.  He knocks twice on the door, and hears footsteps before the door is thrown open.

Remus takes one look at him and his suitcase and says, voice full of surprise, “What—did Lily kick you out?”

“No,” James responds.  “I’m just going to stay with you for a bit.”  Remus’ eyebrows twitch upwards.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  You said you needed a housemate.  To help with rent.”

“No offense, James, but I’ve lived with you for seven years.  I don’t think I want you as a housemate.”

James rolled his eyes.  “Lily trained me.  I’m loads better now.  Besides.  I won’t be here much.”

“Oh?”

“Did you move out of your flat so you could date her then?” Sirius calls.  He’s not in view, and James cranes his neck to look into Moony’s living room.  Sirius is probably flopped on the couch there, right next to the door, as he's taken to doing of late.

“Might have done, yeah,” James responds.  The words put a smile on his face.  He can’t stop smiling.  Every time he thinks about it for just a second, his heart seems to patter a little faster, like he’s falling in love for the first time, or something. 

“Oh James, you didn’t,” Remus says at the same time that Peter lets out a whoop, and James hears Sirius say, “Well I didn’t see that one coming,” in a way that makes it sound like he definitely did see that one coming.

“Can I—?” James asks Remus.

“Oh.  Yeah,” Remus says, and steps aside, letting James into the house. 

James likes Remus’ house.  It’s bigger than his and…than Lily’s flat.  There’s a perpetual attempted cleanliness to it, the way a house looks when the person living in it is very clean, but constantly has people around who forget to put things away.  James brings his suitcase up to the second bedroom—the one that’s been unoccupied since Sirius moved out two years before because he needed more space to breed his dogs—and  drops his suitcase onto the ground by the bed.  He opens it, tugs his wand out of his back pocket and with a few careful flicks, the room is outfitted to be something like James’ room back at Lily’s flat, though he leaves some of the books in the suitcase.  He can’t have them lying around in the open like that.

“Look, I never said you could stay here?” Remus says.  He hadn’t heard Remus follow him upstairs.  Hell, he hadn’t heard Sirius and Peter follow him upstairs, but they’re all three of them watching him from the doorway.

“Oh come on, Moony,” says Peter.  “Don’t ruin this for us.”

“For us?” Remus demands.  “How on earth is this ruining anything for you two?”

“And yourself,” Sirius interjects.  “Definitely also you.  Don’t you want the dinner theater that is James and Lily finally getting together?”

“I’m not your bloody dinner theater,” James grumbles at the same time that Remus says, “I don’t want front row seats.”

“Sure you do,” Sirius says.  “Besides, where else does old Jamesey have to go?  I haven't got a second bedroom.”

“He could rent his own bloody house,” Remus complains,  “Or he could buy one.”  There’s a slight bitterness to that voice, and James ignores it, as he always has.

“You need help with the rent,” he insists.  “You’re always saying it, but you can’t get a roommate because of the Furry Little Problem.  Come on, Moons, I’ll be so easy you won’t realize I was here.  And I won’t be half as messy as this lot.”

“Hey!” says Sirius at the same time that Peter says, “You mean Sirius.  I’ve always been neat.”

“Yeah, whatever,” James says.  “Look, our flat was always neat.”

“I figured that was Lily,” Remus says slowly, looking at James curiously.

“She beat it out of me,” James says, shrugging.  Then he grins again.

“Oh god, he’s going to be unbearable,” Sirius moans.  “Worse than Pete.”

James doesn’t know whether he or Peter is more offended by that remark, but it’s Peter who speaks.  “Excuse me.  I was never half so bad as this one when he’s in love.  I keep my feet planted firmly on the ground.” 

“Oh.  Right,” Sirius says, clapping him on the shoulder.  “And I suppose you are making an honest woman out of yours.  Let’s see how fast this explodes in Prongs’ face, shall we?”

James shoots Sirius a withering expression.  “Thanks,” he says icily.

“Oh come off it, you can’t say you don’t expect it to turn bad.  It’s not like Lily’s ever done the whole steady relationship thing.  And it’s not like you do anything but that.”  James resists flinching.  Sirius doesn’t mention Gabby’s name, but he doesn’t have to.  That’s what he’s talking about, and they don’t know the half of it.  They never will.

Remus reaches over and pinches Sirius’ ear—hard.  “Now is not the time for that,” he intones.

“Thanks,” James mutters, feeling deflated.  He sits down on the bed and tries not to fall into the temptation to sulk.  Sirius is right, but then again, he hadn’t seen Lily after the wedding.  He hadn’t been in their bloody flat for the past few weeks, when she kept staring at his lips, or looking at his eyes with such a strange expression.  That was more than just…whatever Sirius thought it was.  But to protest would make him sound childish, so he refuses.  Instead, he remembers the look on Lily’s face, and her oh thank god, and suddenly, he doesn’t feel like sulking anymore.

Lily had never expected that—of all the friends she’d let know she needed a flatmate—it would be James Potter who would ultimately be the one moving in with her.  He’d lived on his own for several years now, playing quidditch for Appleby.  He hadn’t had a flatmate before, and he didn’t, or rather, shouldn’t need one now.

But he said he did.

He was also leaving the team.  He’d had some injuries in the last season that had put him off playing professionally for a while, though he didn’t say that to the press.  Mostly he said, vaguely, that it was time for something new.

“Did he say what?” demands Remus while James is getting dressed.  It is a Saturday afternoon, and James has a policy of only getting dressed on weekend if he absolutely has to, and Remus had said that he absolutely did need to be dressed while helping Remus “prepare” for something that he was very cagey about explaining to Lily.

“No,” she says, shrugging.

“Not a hint?”

“You won’t get it out of her, Remus.  I’m not telling a soul,” she hears James call from his bedroom.

Lily leans back, holding the doorframe and trying to peer into James’ room.  His door is ajar, but only barely.  He likes to keep his door closed, she’s noticed.  It’s not a problem.  Lily’s used to that.  Petunia kept her door closed while they were growing up, but it does make maintaining a conversation with him while he’s in there and they’re out in the living room a bit difficult.  “Oh?  Not even your roommate?”

“Especially not you—not while I know Remus is digging about.”

“I’m not digging.  I’m asking explicitly.  What’s your new job?”

“Can’t say.  Contractual obligation.”

“There is no job in the world that contractually obligates you to keep silent about your employment,” Remus says dryly.

“How do you know?  I could be a spy.”

“I think you suggesting you could be a spy indicates that you’re not a spy,” Lily says, half-laughing.  James throws open his door and strides out of it, a grin on his face. 

“You don’t know what’s in my contract,” he says to her.  “Don’t wait up.”

“Where are you going?” she calls after him. 

James is walking backwards now, looking at her, his smile only widening.  “I’m a man of mysteries, Lily.” 

“You really aren’t,” she says shaking her head.

James waves, as does Remus, and they both depart, leaving Lily on her own, wondering just how wrong it was to go into James’ room and actually do some digging.

James arrives at the castle at around noon on September first, feeling that spring in his step that comes every time he returns to the Hogwarts grounds after a summer away.  There’s a quiet excitement in him that he knows won’t stay quiet for too long.  This year will be better.  It will be easier.

“James,” calls Minerva as he passes her office on his way to his own.  “How was your summer?”

“Excellent,” he says, grinning at her.  Gone are the days where he feels as though something terribly, terribly wrong has happened because Minerva is calling him “James” and not “Potter!”  “Moved back in with Remus.”

She raises her eyebrows.  “Oh?” she does her best not to sound too curious, and James wants to tell her, he really does, but instead he just shrugs and says, “It’s for the best.”

“I see,” Minerva says.  “Well, I can’t say I’m too surprised.  Well rested and ready?”

James nods, then grins.  “I’m holding you to your word that second year teaching will be easier.”

She gives him a rare smile.  “I can’t imagine it won’t be for you.  You already seemed to be handling it well based on your evaluations at the end of last year,” she gave a pointed look to a file folder on her desk.  “Though the first month is always a readjustment.”

“As if it wasn’t when I was a student,” he says, rolling his eyes.  Minerva’s nostrils flare as she gives him a sardonic look. 

“Albus is holding a staff meeting at five o’clock to prepare for the students’ arrival and to give us a few notices before the start of term.”

“His office or the staff room?” James asks.  He likes meeting in the staff room better.  It makes him feel like he’s actually on staff and not head boy meeting with the headmaster again.  Or worse, not in fifth year and in loads of trouble again.

“The staff room,” Minerva says.  “And, please, try and get there early enough so that you don’t have to sit near—”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” James says quickly.  “It’ll be better this year.”  He’s not entirely sure it will be, but he can’t very well say that to Minerva.  Besides, as far as he’s concerned, he’s handling it as best he can.  And as professionally.  And Alice has already told him he’s not allowed to murder him, so…

Minerva gives him a long look, and he can tell that she doesn’t believe him.  She knows him too well, after years of teaching him and the others and knowing just how much he hates him.  “James Potter,” she says at last, “If you ever learned a lesson that quickly in your life…”

James grins, knowing the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  “I promise professor.  Cross my heart and hope to die.  That is in the past now.” 

Merlin, he’s the liar sometimes.  But he’s at least going to try.

Lily knocks on James’ door and hears him groan.  It’s early for him—he doesn’t have to be at work for another three hours since he has Wednesday mornings off for some reason she doesn’t quite understand, and Lily’s got an early shift and she doesn’t really care if she’s waking him up, she can’t live like this.  She refuses to live like this.

“You are never to leave the bathroom like that ever again,” she says, barging into his room. 

“Like what?” James moans.

“Like….like…” But Lily’s speechless.  His floor is littered with detritus, robes on the floor, books and papers thrown all over the place, magazines, plates and cups with crumbs and— “James.”

“What?”

“You can’t live like this.”

“Like what?” James repeats. 

“Like you exist in pure squalor.  This is vile.  You are not a ten-year-old child.  Pick up.”

“What?”

“It’s not hard.  You wave your wand, and things go away.  You’re a wizard, James.  You haven’t got the trace on you anymore.  For the love of—”

James shoves his glasses on then his eyes go wide.  She’s only in a towel, but that doesn’t matter.  She’s had long conversations with him when he’s been in just a towel before.  So what if this is the first time they’ve had one when she’s in a towel.  There was bound to be a first time.  He can get that ridiculous expression off his face. 

“Look, it’s none of your business what my room’s like,” James says at last, but he sounds a bit breathless.

“That I’ll concede,” Lily says.  “But for the love of all that is holy and good on god’s green earth, please keep the common spaces neat.  It’s ridiculous.”

She turns on her heel and marches back towards the bathroom.

She expects to have to fight.  She expects to have to needle and prod.  She expects that this will be the reason that they ultimately go their separate ways, because she should have learned at the age of fifteen that she and James were better off as casual friends and not as anything more.  But it’s not.  To her absolute surprise, James begins clearing up after himself.  The living room is neat, the kitchen is spotless, and even the bathroom gets a scrub down once a week.  She even notices, through moments of the open door, that everything isn’t strewn about on the floor of his room anymore. 

She’s surprised.  Oh yes, she’s surprised.  But also pleased.

“I hadn’t expected him to actually do it,” she tells Alice over coffee the next afternoon. 

“Do what?”

“Clean up after himself.”

“You got James Potter to clean up after himself?”

“Yes.”

“Has hell frozen over?”

“I know!”

Alice leans back in her seat, crossing her arms, a bemused expression on her face.  “You know, I never was able to get Frank to clean up after himself, and we’ve been dating for years.  Teach me your ways.”

Lily gives her a sheepish smile.  “I…I don’t know that I have ‘ways,’ per se.  I just…” she frowns.

Remus had once told her that she has a magical power unknown to the rest of the wizarding world, and that’s the magical power that makes James Potter grow up a bit.  “Or, you know, he deflated his head and did it himself,” she had replied. 

“I think the head deflating comes easier when you have someone who’ll puncture the balloon a bit,” Remus had replied.

Lily had cocked her head, then looked between Remus and James, who was napping on the couch.  “I punctured his head?” she’d asked.

“Probably.  No other explanation, really,” Remus had grinned.

“I don’t know if my tactics will work on Frank,” she says to Alice sadly.

“Oh?”

“ I punctured his head.”  Alice blinks at her, and Lily hastens to add, “Figuratively!  I mean.  He’s just…I nudge him towards being an adult is all.  And he does it.  Apparently.  But Frank is an adult.”

Alice sighs.  “He’s a mummy’s boy.”

“Get him away from his mum?”

“I’m trying.  She’s a monster.  Never lets him do anything.  Can I puncture her head?  Figuratively?”

Lily laughs.  “I don’t know if you’re allowed to do that to the mother-in-law.”

Alice glares at her and makes a shushing sound.  “What?”

“Don’t say that word.”

“What—mother-in-law?”

“Hush!”

“But—”

“Look, you’ll jinx it.  I don’t care how delightful this afternoon is and how perfectly we are being two old hens talking about our men, I will pour this coffee all over you if you jinx it.”

“James isn’t my man.”  She rolls her eyes at Alice.  She knows Alice is joking, that Alice more than anyone knows that Lily doesn’t do long-term dating things, and that acting like James is her boyfriend just because they live together is…a stretch of the imagination by all terms.  All the same, it’s annoying to have to bloody well correct her, especially since it’s not like she and James are ever getting married the way that Frank and Alice are.

“You got him to clean up the flat for you.  I don’t know what he is if he’s not your man.”

Lily glares at Alice, and Alice glares back.  Lily likes that Alice is willing to glare at her.  Most people don’t.  But regardless of that, Alice is being ridiculous.  James is not Lily’s man.  He is not.  He’s her flatmate.  That’s all.

Everyone knows you don’t date your flatmate.  There’s practically a law against it.

Lily is waiting for Alice when Frank sidles up to her at the Leaky Cauldron and throws an arm around her shoulder.

“You,” he says, “look happy.”

“Do I?”  Lily tries and fails to suppress a grin.

“You do.  I’m a trained professional.  I know when people look happy or they don’t.  And you, my dear Lily, look happy.”

“So what if I am?  Isn’t a girl allowed to be happy sometimes?”

“Oh, absolutely.”  Frank sits down at the bar.  “A Dragon’s Mark, if you please, Tom.”  He turns to Lily again.  “Now.  I have a guess.”

“Do you now?” Lily says, still smiling.

“I feel like this might involve a specky git.  Does it?”

“Might do.”

And a smile breaks across Frank’s face, and Lily can’t hold it in any longer.  “He moved out,” Lily says.  Frank frowns, confused.

“Wait—what?”

“He moved out,” she repeats.  “We couldn’t do anything while we were living together, Frank.  You know that.”

“So he bleeding moved out?” Frank asks, then he shakes his head.  “Bloody Gryffindors.  The whole bleeding lot of you.  Too damn…” but his voice trails away and Tom arrives with his beer and he takes a swig of it.    “So does that make him officially your boyfriend then?  Because I know you don’t use terms like that.”

That makes Lily pause.  “We haven’t actually discussed that,” she says, feeling her smile fade for a moment.  She isn’t sure she wants a boyfriend, even if it’s James and his ridiculous penchant for…well, everything.  She’d been too caught up in her elation that they’d both reached this point to actually take that into account.  She liked not being tied down (unless it’s that way), and feeling like she’s somebody’s...what if there was a part of her she couldn’t get back, like there had been with Sev?  And he hadn’t even been her boyfriend, but she’d felt bereft anyway.  But James…James dated, and he dated seriously.  He’d practically been engaged to Gabby, and Lily remembered his moon eyes over Melly Franklin at school.

“Your mind is going a mile a minute,” Frank says.  “Oy!  Over here!” he waves and Lily turns around and she sees Alice crossing the pub. She diverts towards a table that’s opening up, and Frank orders her another beer.  They’re quite the synchronized pair, Lily thinks as she crosses over to her, then groans because she knows that she and James are probably just as synchronized having lived together as long as they had.

“Hullo,” Alice says, kissing Lily’s cheek.  “You look like you’ve got something to spit out.”  Lily grins at her.  She loves this, loves not having to pretend to be polite.  She’s missed this with Alice.  Maybe now that she and James are…they can go to pubs with Frank and Alice and be all…together.

“James moved out,” Lily says.

“Oh dear,” Alice says, and she sees a flash of frustration on her face.  “I’m sorry.  Are you all right?”

“It’s a good thing.  Now they can shag.  Or date,” Frank says, and Alice’s face brightens.  “Which is good,” Frank continues, “because it means I don’t have to kill him.”

Lily kicks Frank under the table.  “You are not allowed to kill James,” she orders.  Lily takes a sip of her drink and ignores Alice’s gaze.  Alice knows what that or date means.  Far better than Frank does. 

“Or date?” she asks at last, because clearly Lily needs prompting in this, and Lily rolls her eyes. 

“We haven’t set terms yet.”

“But is he calling you his girlfriend?” Alice demands, and Lily shakes her head.

“I dunno.  Probably.  He only really does girlfriends, doesn’t he?” Why was there a part of her that felt happy about that?  She didn’t—hadn’t ever—but—

 “True,” Alice says, sitting back in her chair.  “Well, that’ll be a good thing, I think.  Certainly something to keep your mind off that project you aren’t allowed to talk about.”

Lily groans.  “I swear, I’m going to throttle Belby to within an inch of his life if he doesn’t…”

“Now now,” Alice says, “We don’t want to have to arrest you.”

“Yeah,” Frank says, “If you’re going to murder Belby, at least do it where we can’t know about it.”  The two of them grin at each other, and Lily glares at the pair of them.

“Is he still not listening to reason?” Alice asks, changing tone apologetically.

“Of course not,” Lily grumbles.

“Have you tried setting Slughorn on him?  If anyone will make him bend to reason, it’ll be Horace.  And if anyone will make Horace bend to reason, it’s you.”

“I tried that,” Lily says, “Ages ago.  Right as we were starting the project.  And Horace didn’t want anything to do with it.  Said it was Belby’s right as the chief potioneer…”

“Of course he did,” mutters Alice.  “Honestly, what a useless man sometimes.”

Lily sighs.  Alice had never gotten over not being invited into Horace’s Slug Club.  She reaches out and pats Alice’s arm.

“Well, you’re not alone in thinking that,” she says.  “You should hear James talk about him.”

“Does James talk about him?” Alice asks.

“Yeah.  Apparently there’s loads of Slug Club at his job,” Lily says, rolling her eyes.

“Still haven’t worked it out?” Frank asks.

“Shut up.”

“Get on with it, Lily.  You’re dating him.  Now’s the chance to figure it all out.”

“Keep your voice down, will you?” Lily groans, taking another sip of her drink.

He emerges from Lily’s room towards ten o’clock, looking thoroughly well fucked, and his eyes go wide when he sees James sitting there in the kitchen, reading the paper.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“I’m James.”

“Paul, good to meet you.”

“I was going to make eggs.  Want some?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Any preference as to how?”

“Fried?”

“The soft chasm of her lips—”

“Please, I really don’t need you to read this aloud.”

“Yes you do.”

“Sirius—”

Sirius is drunk again.  He’s drunk, and lying on the floor of his house, reading a book that he’d taken out of the muggle library.

“I’m reading,” Sirius says loudly, slurring his words.  “Isn’t that what you’re always telling me to do?”

“No, I’m pretty confident I tell you to go outside and enjoy the nice weather.”

Sirius puts the book down, looking confused.  “Who tells me to read?”

“I’d guess Moony.”

“It does seem like a Moonyish way to pass the time.”  He picks the book back up.  “Where was I.  Ahh yes.  The soft chasm of her—”

“Sirius, let’s go,” James whines. 

“Go where?  You want me to go to bed.  You think I’m too drunk.”

“I mostly would do anything to keep you from reading me more of this book.”

“Why’s that?  Oh.  Right.  You’ve got a bird again.  You always get ridiculously noble when you’ve got a bird.”

“Sirius, do you want me to go?” James asks, sighing.   Sirius looks at him with drunk and empty eyes.

“Back to your lady, then.  Go on.  I get it.  Not as—”

“That’s not what I meant,” James insists.

“Yeah it is.  I get it.  It’s fine.  That’s how it goes, isn’t it.”

“Sirius, you’re my best mate.  That’s not how it goes.”

“How it went with Gabby, isn’t it?”

“Is not.”

“Is too.  Until she left you.”

James glares at Sirius.  Sirius, turns back to the book.  “The moist chasm of her lips…” he begins and James sinks back into the chair, crossing his arm.  He knows Sirius too damn well at this point—knows that he’s trying to drive him away and he’ll be damned if Sirius gets his way on this.

Moony’s already Moony when James arrives, stumbling into the clearing behind the house and Sirius barks loudly and edges the werewolf towards the edge of the clearing as James stags.  The wolf stares at him for a few seconds, confusion on his face.  You were man, he seems to think.  And now you are pack. 

James walks towards him and lets him get a good sniff at him before Moony relaxes clearly deciding that the confusion wasn’t worth the energy spent.

Sirius gives him a look.  That was stupid.  You are late.

I know.

James bites back a yawn.  He’s dead on his feet and he has class at eight thirty tomorrow morning.  He’ll have to have the strongest coffee in the world all day.  If he’d had half a brain in his head when he’d set up his curriculum over the summer, he’d have had the days after full moons be test days so that he wouldn’t actually have to teach, he could sit there and just be awake.  But no.  No, he was teaching his fourth years about unforgivables tomorrow, and he’d been hoping to have that lead into a good discussion about power structures and the importance of critical thinking in the face of threats. 

Peter squeaks at him and he blinks.  Padfoot and Moony have already taken off into the night and he can see Padfoot’s silvery eyes looking back at him, wondering why he hasn’t followed yet.  He sinks to his knees so Pete can climb onto his back, landing a little harder than usual.  Fuck he’s already tired and they haven’t even gotten started.

“Evans, how’s progress coming?” Belby asks and Lily leans forward, glancing around the table.

“We’re still working on some developmental issues,” she says.  “According to Stigby, the potion didn’t quite last, though it had the desired effect for several hours.  He said that when it began to wear off, though, he found himself angrier and more confused than usual, and that the subsequent transformation back to the human condition was harsher and more painful than usual.”

“Ultimately, the pain is less a concern than the fading of time,” Belby says nonchalantly and Lily bites back a grimace.  He doesn’t think of them as people who suffer, does he? She thinks angrily.  She thinks of Remus, and of the pain graphs that she had practically memorized at this point, and shudders. 

“Ideally both,” Lily says, not bothering to keep the iciness from her voice. 

“Ideally, yes, but the goal is that they keep their mind.  I trust you’re…”

“Yes,” she says.  I’ll focus on the pain first, she thinks only partly spitefully.  In truth, she is feeling more and more tapped out, and she has no idea where this development has come from within the brew.  She’ll have to run back through everything all over again.  At least it isn't hard to numb the pain transmitters, unless…

“Dinon,” Belby says moving forward, “How are price margins coming?”

“Well,” Dinon says, “We’re still within budget, but I can’t imagine selling it for less than twelve galleons if we want to pull a profit.”

“Twelve galleons?” Lily snaps, horrified.

Everyone turns and blinks at her.

“Evans?” Belby asks.

“That’s more than a wand costs, sir,” she says quickly.  “And it’s a monthly drug.  That’s—”

“It’s a complicated potion,” Belby intones, sounding as though he is a long-suffering babysitter and she is a petulant six-year-old.  “And requires a great amount of attention and resources.  I’d think you’d know that.  We can’t let our bleeding hearts dominate everything.  If we did, we would have no means of actually helping.”

I do, you condescending bastard, she thinks angrily.  Instead, she says, “If anti-werewolf legislation continues as it does, there isn’t a werewolf in Britain who’ll be able to pay twelve galleons a month for this.”  She thinks of Remus again, and how shabby he looks these days.  And he has job security—to some extent.  Peter would always hire him, and would certainly never fire him for being…

“A problem for later,” Belby says calmly.  “For the time being, we proceed.  Dinon, if we aim for that as a price bracket, how might profits look?”

Lily stops paying attention.  She takes a deep breath and looks at the quill she is twirling in her fingers and tries very hard not to literally burst into flames.

Think about Tuney’s wedding, she tells herself.  You need to think of a good job to tell people about.  At first, she’d thought she’d just do some research on Peter’s computer about some pharmaceutical companies.  But right now, the very thought of that made bile rise in her throat.

Lily misses Alice.

James is all well and good, but he’s not around very much.

Alice hadn’t been either, not really.  She’d worked strange hours—came with the job—and when she’d not been working, she’d been with Frank.  But still, there’d been moments—quick passes in the morning, or a shared cup of tea.

She misses having someone who knows her everything, who understands her perfectly, who she doesn’t feel like she needs to explain herself to.  The third time she brings someone home, she sees the way that James keeps his face forcibly calm about it, like he’s doing his best not to show that he’s judging her a bit.  Like he knows what’s best for her, somehow, and it doesn’t involve bringing home Aurors for a good shag and someone to hold her, but not control her.

“Here he is,” Sirius calls when James steps into the clearing behind the house, wearing his rattiest t-shirt and jeans.  “Pulled yourself from your beloved’s arms, I see?”

“Fuck off,” James says.  He’d been grading, because he’s about to be bloody useless all weekend and he’s taking far too much time to get his third years back their papers.  He wishes he’d been with Lily, but she’s working late tonight.  Though he is glad that he has the time to actually be here with them and not be wildly exhausted.  That’s a nice improvement from last year.  He says none of this to Sirius though.

“And how is the lovely miss Evans?” Peter asks.  He’s sitting on a stump crosslegged, looking like he could be some mountain-top sage, if mountaintop sages wore unseasonably heavy jumpers. 

“Good,” James lies.  Well, he supposes it’s not a lie.  He’s quite sure it’s true.  She’s seemed quite happy the past few weeks—when he’s had the time to see her.  He’s missed seeing her every day. 

“Oy—this is a boys night,” Sirius says.  “No birds allowed.  Right Moons?”

Remus blinks at him, then looks at James and Peter, then shrugs.  “I suppose it would rather defy tradition.”

James snorts.  “Right—where are we exploring tonight?” he asks.

“We got too close to town last time,” Remus says edgily.  “I don’t want to be that close again.”

“We were fine at Hogsmeade,” Sirius says.  “Got much closer and never attacked anyone.”

“Yes, but Hogsmeade’s a town full of wizards, isn’t it?” Remus says icily.  “Bellingham very much isn’t.  So forgive me if I’d prefer to steer clear.”

“Right-o,” Sirius says, though he sounds mildly disappointed.  “You’ve gotten a good bit more boring in your old age, Moony.”

“We were also over the top as kids,” James says, thinking of his fifth years.  Surely they hadn’t been that young when they’d been fifteen.  They’d felt like they’d been on top of the world.

“Oh don’t go getting all boring too.  What’s Lily gone and done?  Domesticated you?”

“Fuck off,” James repeats and he stags.  The stars twinkle a little more clearly in his eyes—his vision is always better when he stags—and he towers above Sirius which is nice especially since they can’t talk.  He’s tempted to nudge him with his antlers, just to prove his point, but Sirius has already dogged and Peter’s ratted, and they’re waiting for the moon to rise before they run off.

“Nice and quiet with you lot like this,” Remus says, resting his hand on James’ back.  “The peace of mind I’ve always thought I deserved.”

Sirius makes a huffing sound that clearly says fuck off, and Remus chuckles.  They wait like that for a few minutes before Remus goes stiff and a moment later he’s twitching and convulsing and he’s the wolf again.  James stands close to him, standing a full head and shoulders above him, watching as the pain of the transformation recedes from Moony’s eyes and slowly, clearly, James sees that recognition flow into Moony’s eyes.

Pack.

Moony lets out a howl, and Sirius joins in.  James kneels down so that Peter can scuttle onto his back, and the four of them take off into the trees.

James is exhausted when he gets home, thinking the blackest of thoughts, wondering how he had thought this was a good idea, and why he’d left the team to begin with, and maybe it wasn’t too late to try and get his contract back for next year.  And he hasn’t even been teaching for two months.

It’s mid-October, and he feels like he’s been doing this for years—except longer, because every time he sees Snape in the hallways, he has to remind himself that he’s a grown up now and then he feels even older than he is, and certainly less mature than he should be.  Moving in with Lily feels like eons ago, rather than something that had happened at the end of July.  And it’s not even like he sees her that much, because she gets home while he’s grading. 

The flat is empty and he goes into the kitchen to cobble together some sort of dinner when he sees a note from Lily scribbled on the kitchen table.

Going to a lecture tonight at F&B on the Gargoyle Fiasco of 1272.  (You were probably asleep during that HoM lecture.  It was interesting.)  Come if you like.  Might get ice cream after.

He reads it twice and checked his pocket watch.  He knows well enough that Flourish and Blott’s’ lecture series begins at seven on the dot, and it is currently six forty.  He could very easily make it there, once he changed out of his robes.  He thinks about all the work he has to do, the classes he has to prepare for tomorrow, how soft his bed is…but he hasn’t done anything roommate-y with Lily lately.  He’s barely had time for the Padfoot, Moony, and Wormy.  Merlin, he’s not even had time to himself. 

The Gargoyle Fiasco of 1272.

That did sound interesting.  And Lily is right—he’d probably been asleep when it was covered.  History of Magic was made to be slept through.  It was odd—that the irresponsible thing to do was to go to a lecture…it is irresponsible, but now that the option’s presented itself, the very idea of working tonight makes him want to scream.

So he changes quickly and disapparates to Diagon Alley, finding the bookshop crammed full of witches and wizards, all jostling to get a better view of…he squints at the sign board.  It’s too far away, and he can’t read it.  He should probably get his glasses checked to see if his prescription’s gotten worse.

He spots Lily across the bookstore and waves at her.  She smiles and gestures towards him, and James, never one to care about precisely how annoying he’s being, elbows his way through the crowd until he squishes next to Lily and a bookshelf.

“Glad you came,” Lily said smiling up at him with lips that are a little chapped. “This is going to be good, I can tell.”

It’s not.  James is bored witless and dead on his feet.  He doesn’t know why he went to a History of Magic lecture. Anything that’s over four hundred years old is useless, and 1272 is more than twice that age.  He’d have thought that something like “Fiasco” would have lent itself to a better story, but he supposes it’s rather like the Defenestration of Prague—good on paper, but highly disappointing if you dissect it.

He tells Lily as much when they’re on their way down the Alley to find some ice cream. 

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, laughing.

“Ridiculous?  Were you even at the same lecture as me?  That was dryer than Binns.”

“I was there, and it was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever heard,” she insists, holding the door to Florean Fortescue’s new ice cream parlor open.

“Well, we all know your head’s not screwed on properly,” he shrugs.  “You’ve been spending too much of your time squinting at potion recipes and forgetting how exciting the real world is.  Here’s a hint, Lily.  It’s a lot more exciting than the Gargoyle Fiasco of 1272.”

“You know, I think you waste that brain of yours,” she says, her eyes narrowing.

“I do not,” he says.  He’s mildly offended.  He got very good marks in the classes he cares about, and he’s the youngest Animagus in the world.  Not that Lily knows that last one.  But if she did, she wouldn’t say he was wasting his brain.

“I don’t see you use it very much,” she says and he hopes she’s teasing.  It would be rather harsh if she weren’t, like the way they’d been before seventh year, with her constantly sniping at him.  She hadn’t really known him then, though.  Once she’d gotten to know him when they’d been seventh years…and once he’d grown a conscience…

“Yeah, well, I work, don’t I?  I don’t need to use my head in my spare time.”

Lily rolls her eyes and he sees the corners of her lips twitch.  “I don’t know you work, though.  I just assume you do.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“You have to guess, we agreed on this.”

“I didn’t agree.  You are being an idiot.”

“Am not.  I think it’s perfectly reasonable.  The blokes all are all right with it.”

“They expect a certain…”

“And you don’t?  Come on now, Lily.  You of all people should expect this very form of—”

“Moronity?”

“That a word?”

“How would you know?”

“I feel like I would have used it.  Or made it up.  Either way.  This very form of behavior from me.”

“Yes, but it’s one thing not to care what you get up to with your mates and another not to know what my own roommate does for his bloody job.”

James shrugs, grinning.  He’s quite sure she’ll be disappointed when she finds out.  He’s sure they all will, truth be told.  It’s not as exciting as Sirius has dreamed up.  Sirius had already decided that James was some sort of spy.  Remus thought that was ridiculous, but did think that the whole law enforcement thing wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.  Peter on the other hand, hadn’t guessed just yet.

“Ahh Evans, you’ll just have to live with that disappointment,” he says, grinning down at her.  She scowls at him, but can’t for too long.  It’s impossible to scowl when one is eating ice cream.

“Does she always sleep this late?”

“Later once she’s had a good night.  Doesn’t usually emerge until mid-afternoon on a weekend.”

“Merlin, should I wait around or…”

“Up to you.  She won’t begrudge you not waiting around for her.”

“I’m Jim by the way.”

“James.”

“Hello,” Lily says, pecking James on the cheek before pushing into the house.  James looks exhausted—pale and eyes with dark circles under them.  “You’re looking like the world chew you up and spat you out.”

“You should see the other guy,” James jokes, but it turns into a yawn halfway through.  “I’m going to be no fun today, Lil.  I meant it when I said—” but she cuts him off with a smile. 

“I know,” she says.  “I just figured you’d like some company.  I can cook and make coffee and the like.”  She looks around the house.  “Is Remus up?  I was thinking of making eggs.” 

Recognition flashes across James’ face, and the corners of his lips quirk up.  “He’s asleep upstairs.”

“Does he need bruise cream, or does he have bites or scratches that need—”

“Nah, we took care of that this morning before we tucked him in,” James says with the tone of someone who’s had a routine for years.  “But I think he’d like eggs.  And bacon goes over well, if you don’t burn it too much.”

Lily raises her eyebrows.  “Since when have I burned bacon?” she demands playfully.

“You don’t, but it’s harder than it—”

Lily snorts derisively.  “No it’s not.  Well, a good hearty meal it is.  Do you need anything?” she asks him over her shoulder as she heads towards the kitchen.

James shakes his head, and his expression is so soft it makes her heart skip a beat.

It’s a bad sort of day.  The kind where Lily thinks more seriously than usually about quitting her job, because she can’t stand Belby, can’t stand any of them, and if it weren’t for the fact that this potion would be really bloody good for the world, she’d be gone.  She’s too damn idealistic for her own good—that’s what Alice always told her on days like this.  She’d open a bottle of wine and they’d both sit there moaning about work—Lily more than Alice, since Alice’s superior officers were better than Lily’s supervisors—and Lily wouldn’t feel as though she was the only person in the world with trouble at work.

It’s a bad sort of day, and Alice isn’t going to be there at the end of it.  She’s at her and Frank’s flat, probably planning a wedding and doing that whole adulthood thing much better than Lily.  Only silence and darkness awaits Lily at the flat.

Except it’s not.

Because even before she taps the lock with her wand, she hears laughter.  Very familiar laughter—laughter she’d come to know too well at school.  On most days, she doesn’t mind it when James has his mates over.  James works hard, and barely ever seems to have time for them, so when they do make it over to their flat, it’s a nice break for him before he puts his nose back to the grindstone. 

Except Lily is tired, and wants to cry, and there they are, laughing like they’re seventeen again, and she could throttle the whole lot of them for just being. 

“Lily!” Peter calls excitedly as she walks through the door, and the others all make noises of welcome to her.

“Hi,” she says quietly, hitching a smile on her face.  “Good to see you all.”  She wishes desperately that it were dark and empty in the flat.

“Want a beer?” James asks, pointing to the counter, where she sees one remaining bottle.

Beer, not wine.

She shakes her head.  “Nah.  Long day.  Need to lie down.”

There are noises of disappointment, but she brushes past them and goes into her room, collapsing onto her bed and pressing her face into her pillow, missing Alice, and the way it was before, and friends who were hers and not James’.

Lily hears a knock on the door and rolls her eyes.  “It’s open,” she calls, and hears it open, then close again.  She doesn’t get up from the couch and so James comes in to find her sprawled over it, reading through some test reports.

“Long day?” he asks her, lifting her feet from the couch and sitting down before placing them on his lap.

Lily groans.  “Do you really want to hear yet another rant about my bleeding job?” she says.

“Yes,” he says, and he begins rubbing her feet.  Lily lets the papers fall flat on her stomach and looks at James’ hand on her feet, then looks up at his face.

“Do you really enjoy doing that?” she asks.

“What?”

“Rubbing my feet like that?”  She’s never had someone to rub her feet before.  She quite likes it.  But still, it’s jarring.

James looks down at her feet, then back at her.  “I don’t mind it.  You seem stressed,” he shrugs.  “Also, they’re on my lap.  What am I supposed to do with them if not play with them?”  She rolls her eyes. 

“Your job,” he prompts after a moment.

“Right,” she says.  She’d forgotten.  It’s not just James’ hands on her feet that’s distracting her, it’s the way that her muscles are seeming to relax all up and down her body.  She wonders if he knows that’s happening or if it’s on accident.  She wouldn’t be too surprised if the boys just somehow had some sort of foot rubbing circle as part of whatever shenanigans they got up to. 

“Lily.”

“Sorry.  It’s just distracting,” she says.

“Should I stop?”

“No.  I just needed to gather my thoughts for a moment.  To prove her point, she picks up her papers again and glances at the top of the folio.  Then groans.  “So, we have a test sequence this weekend, and I am fairly certain we’re getting closer to the end.”

“That’s good,” James says.

“Yes, but it also means that I’m working on a tighter timeline, aren’t I?  Like, if I want to aim for cheaper distribution, I need to have a proposal in sooner.  And the problem is, naturally, Belby doesn’t want it cheap, so he’s gone about to Dagworth about how we need a very generous donation to offset cost, so now I have to find a generous donation from somewhere, but where the bloody hell am I supposed to find that?”

“How generous?” James asks automatically, and Lily rolls her eyes.  “More than I feel comfortable asking from you lot.  Like way more.  It’s a hard potion to make.  I understand why they want it to be expensive, but honestly the people who need it can’t afford it, so what’s even the point if they can’t have access?”

“And you still can’t say what it is?” James asks.

“Only if you tell me what your job is.”

“Fat bloody chance.”

That makes Lily smile.  She sighs, and lets the papers fall to the floor and sits up, leaning closer to James.  She’s missed him.  It never stops being strange, coming home to an apartment of which she is the only resident.  Maybe she should get a cat. 

“You don’t have to knock, you know,” she says.

“Hm?”

“When you come over.  You don’t have to knock.  I know you have a key.  You used to live here.”

“Ah, Lily.  If I don’t knock, it’s not formally your place, is it?  Then I have some weird status as half-resident, which neither of us should allow.”

Lily snorts, and she presses her lips to his neck.  “You’re ridiculous.”

“Perhaps, but that’s why you like me.”

“No, I like you because of your profound moral fiber and decently quick wit.  I put up with your ridiculousness.”

“You win some, you lose some,” James says and he twists his head and brings her lips up to his.

It’s not like Lily’s never kissed anyone before.  Far from it.  But kissing James isn’t quite like kissing other people.  It’s both exciting and relaxing, her heart beating faster but her mind slowing down as a shiver crosses her skin.  She’d have expected the shiver to have stopped by now, but it hasn’t.  She doesn’t know what that means.

James draws her lower lip between his teeth as he pulls away slowly, letting it pop out when he’s far enough away.  “There’s nothing I can do to help, beyond this, is there?” he asks here quietly.

“Nah,” she says. “At least, not right now.  Right now, this is perfect.”  And she leans in to kiss him again.

 “How is he?”  Sirius is the first to show up, unshaven and smelling a bit of whiskey.  Lily wonders where he’d come from.

“I don’t know,” Lily says quietly, and Sirius brushes past her.  “He’s barely said a word.”

It’s been six hours since James had come back, pale and exhausted looking.  He’d only said two words before going into his room and shutting the door. 

“Dad’s dead.” 

Lily has tried bringing him food, had tried sitting with him, asking after his mother, even just being in the room with him.  But none of it has seemed to matter much to James, and so she’d sent messages to Sirius, Remus and Peter.

Sirius knocks firmly on the door.  “Prongs?” he asks before twisting the handle and going inside without invitation. 

Peter’s next.  He’s got a bottle of wine and a box of biscuits and he gives the latter to Lily—“for later”—before joining James and Sirius in James’ room.  Remus follows shortly thereafter, with a pie and some butterbeer, both of which he brings into James’ room.

They stay in there all night.  Sometimes, Lily peeks around the door—ajar for once—and sees them all piled on James’ bed.  None of them are saying anything.  Remus is reading, Sirius is dozing, Peter’s staring out the window and James—James’ face is blank, and Lily knows exactly what he’s thinking, remembers it too well from the summer before fifth year when her own father had died. 

She takes the day off work to go to the funeral.  It’s a rainy, blustery day and she’s never been to the West Country before.  She wears a nice dress, dark blue because the only black dresses she owns are the ones that she saves for first dates or for when she really wants to pull, and that would be the least appropriate thing imaginable to wear to James’ father’s funeral.  Although it might make James feel better, some very evil corner of her brain thinks.  She does her best to hush it though.   Just because James had a crush on her when they were at school does not mean he still does.  And just because she’s sitting there trying to be nice to him right now doesn’t mean she has a crush on him.  For god’s sake, the poor man’s father just died.

She finds Remus and Peter in the small cluster of people and gives them each a kiss on the cheek. 

“Have you spoken to him?” Lily asks.  He’d been silent practically since it happened.

Once, she might have given anything in the world to make James Potter silent for a span of days.  She’d definitely contemplated jinxing him when they’d been at school, though she had ruled it out, ultimately, as sinking to his level.  Now though…

“No,” Remus says.  “Sirius might have.  If anyone’s done it, it’s Sirius.”

Lily scans the crowd.  She sees Sirius in the distance.  He’s scruffy and unshaven and he looks like he might be drunk.  She feels her head shaking in disapproval.  But she supposes it shouldn’t matter.  Sirius does as he likes.  He certainly doesn’t give a damn whether Lily approves or disapproves.  He didn’t seem to give a damn if anyone approved or disapproved—except James.  And James…

He’s standing with his arm around his mother’s shoulder.  Mrs. Potter is a tiny woman, with a shock of whispy white hair that pops out from under a dark pointed hat.  She’s got thick bottlecap glasses, just like James, and while some old wizard drones on and on and on about Fleamont Potter’s contributions to the field, she just stares at the coffin that holds her husband, her hand clinging to James’ jumper.

She doesn’t think she’s ever seen James like this—someone’s rock, someone’s touchstone.  He doesn’t look prepared for that, she thinks. She wonders what they’re like when he’s not deeply mourning his father.  She realizes that she’s never met his parents before.  Does his mother rely on him?  He has to be her precious boy—he’s not like Sev, unloved and unwanted.  He’s the opposite, if anything. 

He looks so withdrawn, so defeated, but she doubts very much he can say that to his mother.  He has to be strong for her.  And is she strong for him?  She’s so old.

And James…He looked wholly numb.  It didn’t suit him at all.  James was suited to laughter and argument and joy and frustration.  He should never look numb. 

Lily had only met James’ father once, on the gloomy day that they had moved into their flat.  He had been old—much older than Lily had expected.  She knew that witches and wizards lived a very long time, but she had not expected James’ parents to be quite so old.  His father had had hair growing out of his ears and James’ warm smile and had helped her convince James that they really needed a new set of saucepans.

It was strange to stare at a plain wooden box and know that he was in there, and that he’d never smile James’ warm smile ever again.  It was the same sort of thing she’d thought when her own father had died during sixth year.  She shuddered.

“You should eat,” she told him when they were back at his parents’ house for the wake.  She pressed a bun of some sort into his hands and he raised it almost without thinking to his mouth, chewing slowly.  She patted his arm and he made a weird motion with his mouth, as though trying to smile.  Lily rolled her eyes. 

“What?” he asked.

“You don’t have to pretend to be all right to make me feel better, you know,” she says. 

“Yes I do,” he says, almost automatically, and his eyes drift across the room to find his mother.  Then he seems to realize both what he’s doing and what he’s just said, and he looks at her, a bit sheepishly.  “How’d you…?”

Lily reaches up and squeezes his shoulder.  “My dad died in sixth year, remember?” she says gently.  “The worst part is trying to convince people that you’re all right to make them feel better about not knowing how to comfort you.”

James’ eyebrows twitch slightly and a frown crosses his face.  “Did you pretend to be all right to me?”

“Obviously,” she says, rolling her eyes.  Then she hands him another bun.  “And you were none the wiser.  It was easier that way.  But I’m better at pretending than you are, so there we are—at least,” she pauses, considering the fact that James has always been a good liar, “about this.  Now, eat.  And if you need to have a cry but don’t want your mates knowing, I’ll distract them.”

James looks at her, bewildered.  “I don’t need to cry,” he says at last.

“You sure?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Posi—”

“Yes, Lily.”

“All right.  Eat.”

He rolls his eyes at her and she bites back a smile.  It’s the first time he’s rolled his eyes since his father died—at least at Lily. 

“I’m going to be weird for a while,” he says at last, and Lily nods. 

“That’s how it is,” she tells him.  “I’ll make sure you eat.”

James frowns.  “Yeah, what’s up with that?” he asks, bemused, and Lily snorts.  He shakes himself and looks past her to the room at large.  And, as if sensing that he seems to be a little more present than in the past few days, his mates descend upon him.

“Prongs,” Sirius says, as seriously as he can manage while his eyes are bleary with drink.  His words slur.  “Your dad was a great,” Sirius hiccups, “man. Better than my bloody dad, that’s for bloody sure.”

And the hints of relief in James’ face that she’d begun to see while they’d been talking disappear.  “He was,” James says, stiff again.

“I mean—taking me in?  I know that,” Sirius hiccups, “that was not an easy—” he hiccups again, and Remus pats him on the back.

“He’ll be missed,” Remus says.  “And I’m sure that his contributions will live on forever.”  Remus smiles at James.  James doesn’t smile.  Lily’s seized with the urge to take his hand, but she knows she can’t do that. 

“Right,” James says.  He seems to deflate in front of them.  “Yeah—his contributions…’Scuse me, I think I hear my mum,” and he brushes past them before Peter can even open his mouth to say something.

Peter looks at Remus, who shakes it off.  “He’s bound to be a bit off,” he says gently.

“He said he’d be weird for a little while,” Lily says, eager to defend James. 

“Yeah, his dad just died,” Sirius says, a little more loudly than would be proper. Lily pinches him and hisses, “Hush.”

“Hush what?”

“You’re talking loudly.  You’re drunk, Sirius.”

“Am not,” he says then hiccups again. 

 “Prongs?” James looks up from his desk and looks behind him.  The house is empty—Remus likes to write in the coffee shop in town and not in the house, which makes it easier for James to grade.  He can spread out and mutter to himself without being worried about disrupting Remus. 

“Over here,” says Sirius, and James looks down at the mirror that’s sitting on his desk.  He grins.

“Hello.  Been a while since you’ve used this.”  As he says it, he feels his heart sink.  When had that started being true?  Last year, sometime, he supposes.  He and Sirius had been inseparable while James had played, but teaching and playing weren’t the same—not at all. 

“Yeah, well,” Sirius’ voice slurs, and James glances at his watch.  It’s a Saturday, and it’s only three in the afternoon.  Lily’s coming over later tonight—she’s helping Florence sort out bouquets or something like that.  He can’t keep track.  “You’re always busy, aren’t you.  Want to come get a pint?”

“I can’t,” James says automatically.  “I’ve got work to finish.”

“Always bloody working,” Sirius mutters angrily.  “It’s not—oh.  It is.”

“Hm?” James asks, glancing at the pile of papers on his desk.  He’s about halfway through his seventh years’ N.E.W.T. practice papers. 

“I was going to say ‘it’s not homework,’ but then I had one of those revelations, you know?  That it is.”

“People do bring their work home sometimes, Sirius,” James teases as lightly as he can.  He can’t quite tell what mood Sirius is in.  It’s harder when he’s drunk.  “Even you do, when you bring your dogs home from the—”

“No, I meant—literally.  It’s homework.  You’re grading, aren’t you?”

James pauses.  Then he grins at Sirius.  “How’d you work it out?”

“Schedules,” Sirius says.  “You’ve always got chalk on your clothes.  We thought it was dust, but it wasn’t, was it?  And you have homework on weekends.  And you’re always tired.  And sometimes you go on longer monologues than usual.  What’re you doing.  Defense?”

“Yeah,” James says, and Sirius nods.

“Nice.”  Then a look crosses his face.  “The others still haven’t worked it out, have they?”

“No,” James grins.  “Not even Lily.”

“I always did know you best,” Sirius says, and the smile fades.  “Come drink with me?  Put down your bloody quill and have some fun.”

“Can’t,” James sighs.

“What about when you’re done.”

“Lily’s coming over,” he says.  It’s the wrong thing to say and he sees that instantly.

“Fine.  Well, if you’re going to go be all…responsible and adult, I’ll drink for both of us.”

“You drink a lot,” James says quietly.

“Always have,” shrugs Sirius.  “See y—”

“Hang on,” James cuts him off.  He glances at his watch.  He’ll be so behind.  So very behind.  And there’s a full moon that coming week and he’ll be even more behind.  But he doesn’t like that Sirius is already drunk.  And it has been a long time since they’d had a beer, just the two of them…and if he gives his fifth years a pop quiz…yeah, that’ll do.  “Meet you at the Blistering Dragon in fifteen minutes?”

Sirius grins.  “Always.” 

It’s work that gets him out of bed, and he’d never thought he’d be glad of it.  He likes his job.  It’s different than flying every day, and chasing the quaffle through the air and joking about with his teammates, but it forces him to put everything aside, if only for a few hours, and exist as though it hadn’t happened, as though his dad isn’t…

For all they always talk about how it’s Sirius and James that are at the heart of their little pack, (“the hart, get it?” Peter had said, grinning,) sometimes James thinks that he more than any of them knows what it is to be alone.  Pete hates being left out, Sirius should never be left to his own devices and Remus thinks that being alone is something he deserves, rather than a way of living.  But James was used to being alone.  It was normal for him.  When he’d been a kid and his parents had been busy, he’d been left to his own devices and it had been fine.  He was fine with being alone. 

He hadn’t expected it, but Remus hurts worse than the rest of them.  He’d have thought it would be Sirius, because Sirius, at least, has lived with him and his dad, knows his dad, calls him “Fleasy,” even though his dad hated being called Fleasy.  But it’s Remus that hurts, because Remus is so like him in so many ways, always with his nose in a book, quiet of wit and so very canny about everyone always.  There’s something in his voice that James hadn’t noticed until his dad had gone that he realizes even sounds like his father.  And James can’t be near him for it.  Because whenever Remus opens his mouth, it’s like it’s all happening all over again, like he’s learning his dad’s gone afresh and it’s a knife in his gut.

The others aren’t used to solitude, or don’t know how to embrace it.  James though…

He’s an only child, and his dad always had a nose in a book and his mum was always out doing this and that, and James was on his own.  He’d learned to play by himself long before he’d learned to play well with others.  Being alone doesn’t hurt him.  Being alone helps him forget that when he leaves his room, he’ll not have his dad to floo and find doing the crossword.

They’ve started just convening in their flat—the others.  Usually the boys end up at Remus’ and Sirius’ place, and when James has enough energy to go with them, he comes back in various states of sobriety but always with a big fat smile on his face.  But James hasn’t been inclined to move lately, so they come to him.  Remus sits and works on his articles in the living room, Sirius sprawls on the floor and Pete and Florence sit in the kitchen, listening to the wireless.  And Lily drifts in after work and just finds them there.

“Don’t any of you work?” she mutters, but she knows they do.  They just leave the office at five when they’re supposed to instead of getting obsessed with whatever’s still brewing, and taking notes and getting caught up in long debates about the merits of helibore. 

The nice bit about it is that Florence cooks.  “Chicken pie,” she says to Lily, when she casts a glance at the oven.  “And some baking potatoes.  Hope that’s all right.”

“Yeah, more than,” she says, almost surprised.  She likes Florence.   She also likes anyone who will cook her dinner.

Florence Greengrass and Peter met completely by accident two years previously.  It had been the sort of thing that surely only happens in books—both had been set up on a blind date by friends and they’d ended up at the same table thinking that the date was with the other.  It hadn’t been, but they’d liked each other well enough, and kept on dating.  They hadn’t known each other in school—she was a few years younger than the five of them were, and she’d been a Slytherin, and much to Sirius’ frustration, had played on the quidditch team with Regulus—but if anything that made Florence better for Pete than anyone else had been.  She was fiercely loyal to him, and tended to get in Sirius’ face when he crossed a line. 

Lily goes and deposits her purse in her room.  She kicks off her shoes, then goes and knocks on James’ bedroom door.

“James?”

He doesn’t reply, and she pushes inside to find him lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his face oddly blank.  She closes the door behind her and goes and sits at the foot of his bed.  “Florence is making a chicken pie for dinner.  Smells good.”

“Who is here?” he asks.

“Your boys, and Florence.”

“Oh.”  He doesn’t sound excited, or even pleased, and Lily sighs.  She pats him on the foot. 

“Shall I tell them to go?”

James shakes his head and sits up, sticking his hands under his glasses and rubbing his eyes.  “Nah.  I’ll come out and be a host.”

But James as a host is not the same as it used to be.  He doesn’t smile, or laugh, or mock, or preen, or anything.  He just sort of sits there, his face oddly blank and when Florence brings the pie out to the living room for them all to eat, his sullenness hangs like a cloud.

“So,” Lily says, looking around at each of them.  “How was everyone’s days?”  She cringes.  She sounds like her mother, in truth, and she’d always rolled her eyes whenever her mum had asked that question.  But if James isn’t going to make the conversation flow, Lily has to try.

“Not bad,” Peter says in a tone of forced cheeriness.  “I’ve been in talks all day with the owners of a tiny shop in Diagon Alley, and I think they’ll sell if I seem like a right, fine, upstanding gentleman.”

“Diagon Alley,” Remus says, a smile spreading on his face and James shifts in his seat, angling himself towards Peter and away from Remus.  “That’s great, Pete.”

“Is it in a good spot?” Sirius asks, his eyes darting between James and Remus before landing on Peter.

“It’s near the bank, towards the corner of Knockturn,” he says.  “So not ideal, but also could be worse, I’d say.”

“Hang on,” Sirius says, “It’s not that little place that used to be owned by the…” he fumbles, frowning, snapping his fingers until he continues, “Abernathys.”  Peter bobs his head.  “That’s a great spot, Peter,” Sirius says, smiling.

“Yes.  Excellent.”  James’ voice sounds hollow, but Peter beams at him and Lily smiles at him, encouragingly.  But he doesn’t say more. 

“Do you think they’ll sell?” Sirius asks.

“Looks possible.  Especially if—”

Florence cuts him off.  “Well, especially if they don’t learn I’m dating Pete,” she says and she takes his hand and squeezes it.  Sirius narrows his eyes.

“Did you get off with Demitrius Abernathy?” he demands.

“Sirius,” Remus intones.  James looks away from the group entirely, staring at the wall again.

“We dated briefly.  It ended badly.  So I’m keeping my head down for the moment in case they remember me,” Florence shrugs. 

“When will you hear from them?” Remus asks.

“Should be before Friday.  They’re discussing it and trying to set their affairs in order.”

“That’s soon,” Remus says.

“Yeah.  Getting exciting,” Peter beams.  “And, of course, if the paper lays you off, you’ve got a standing invitation to work at the shop.”

Remus’ smile is tight.  “I hope I won’t have to take you up on that,” he says quietly.

“Why would the paper lay Remus off?  Isn’t he their best staffer?” Lily asks, confused.  Of all of them, it’s been Remus who has the most trouble holding a job, and she can’t fathom why.  He’d been the best prefect on the team all of the three years she’d worked with him.  He was organized and thoughtful and dedicated and she couldn’t imagine him being anything less than the perfect employee.

“Has Burke been a right proper berk lately, or has he changed his ways?” Sirius asks, and it’s as if she hadn’t asked the question at all.  She glances at James, hoping to share an eyeroll with him, or perhaps a significant glance that indicated some sort of ‘I’ll tell you later’ that she and Alice had shared when they were still living together, but his eyes are now on his hands and he looked as though he isn’t paying attention at all.  Lily frowns.  She wishes she were sitting next to him, that she could buffer him from whatever it was in the conversation that was making him think of his father.

Remus smiles wryly.  “Well, I wish I could say that the homonym wasn’t appropriate, but…”

James gets to his feet and goes into the kitchen.  Lily hears him put his plate in the sink then a few moments later, his bedroom door clicks closed.  They all sit there in silence for a moment.

“He hasn’t been this bad off since Gabby,” Peter says darkly. 

“Pete, there’s a difference,” Remus says.

“Yeah but there’s no need for him to be a prat to you.”

“He’s not being a prat to me.”

“He is.  He doesn’t do that when it’s just me or Sirius or Lily.”  Lily looks at him sharply, then at Remus.  Remus doesn’t look like James’ dad as she’d seen him in photographs at the wake—not at all.  But maybe it wasn’t looks.  She’d hardly been able to pay attention in Transfiguration for a month when her dad had died because McGonagall had the same glasses as her father.

“It’s not personal.  He’s in a…” but Remus’ voice trails away and he shrugs.

“Was he bad after Gabby?” Lily asks, wanting to change the subject.  She hadn’t seen James right after he and Gabby had broken up.

“Moped for ages.  Detached.  Angry if you talked about it.  You know.  Everything that James isn’t unless he’s in a right state,” Sirius says.  “Refused to talk about it.  He’s such a stubborn…”

“Yeah, except now he’s being awful to Remus,” snaps Peter.  “And that’s unacceptable.  We’re not kids anymore.  That’s not how you treat your friends.”

“He’s hardly being awful,” Remus says.  “A bit rude because he’s hurting, but he’ll get over it.”

“He—” Peter begins, but it’s Lily who finds herself speaking.

“Look, it’s hard when a parent dies.  None of you lost one, yeah?” 

“Just wish I had,” Sirius says darkly.  “And Monty was closer to a father than my own dad, Lily.”

He reaches for the firewhisky and refills his glass, taking a swig.  Lily nods, and he lifts his glass at her, as if telling her to continue.

“He’ll get better with time but he needs to…do what he needs to do.”  She pats Peter on the arm.  “Not that you’re not right—he is being rude.  But…”

Peter sighs.  “Understandable,” he says. 

“Yes.  Exactly.  We’ll just be patient with him.  It takes time.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Peter asks.

“I’ll make sure it will,” Lily says, and she looks around at all of them.  She feels oddly forward, saying something like this to James’ best friends in the world.  What on earth can she do that they can’t.  But she doesn’t see affront on any of their faces.  If anything, she sees relief.

“Professor?”  James glances up from his desk and sees Bill Weasley standing there.  Bill’s lanky, and his hair’s a bit overgrown.  James sits up a little straighter, and closes the notebook in which he’d been outlining his lesson on defensive spell theory for his second years. 

“Come on in,” James says.  He’s not head of Gryffindor, and students don’t tend to show up in his office after classes are over unless it’s for help with homework before he heads home.  But Bill’s at the top of his class, and won’t need extra help. 

Bill perches on the edge of his seat, dropping his bag down onto the ground with a thunk that means he’s carrying his books and possibly his cauldron around with him. 

“Everything all right?” James asks.

“Do you have siblings?” asks Bill.  Then he flushes.  “Sorry.  I don’t…”

James shakes his head.  “Just a bunch of friends who are as good as brothers.  Everything all right with Charlie?”

“How’d you know?”  Bill asks quickly then rolls his eyes.  “I guess it’s obvious.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s homesick is all.  Misses dad a lot.  And mum.  And I keep trying to help him not be, but he keeps being homesick.  And Professor McGonagall…I don’t know.  I feel like…”

“She’d understand,” James says.

“Oh, yeah,” Bill says quickly.  “But…I dunno…”  He makes a face.  “I just thought…She lives here.  Maybe she doesn’t get homesick.  Or…”

James nods.  “She thinks of Hogwarts as home—that’s what you’re thinking?  So she might not know how to help Charlie?”

“It’s stupid.  Nevermind,” Bill says quickly.

“It’s not stupid,” James says.  “Though I think it’s misguided.  I missed my dad a lot when I got here.  My friend Sirius didn’t miss his dad, so he didn’t get my homesickness.”

“You were homesick, sir?”

James nods.  “For the first few months of first year, yeah.  I got over it.  And I tried to hide it, but I did.  Missed my dad loads.”

“How’d you get past it?”  Bill’s eyes are wide and eager and James smiles wryly.

“My dad wrote textbooks,” he says.  “I think I got past it when I realized that my dad never really left this place.”  He looks around the office.  “Still sort of true, really.  He died last year, and I still sort of feel him here.  It’s one of the things I like about teaching.”  He shakes himself.  “But that’s neither here nor there.  And as for Charlie…friends’ll help.  And a big brother who looks after him.”  He thought of Sirius and Regulus, but he knew that there wouldn’t be any of that between these two Weasleys.  “It’s good of you to want to help.  Really, it is.  But he’ll have to push past it on his own.  That’s how life goes sometimes.  You can help just by being there with him.”

Bill frowns.  “I sometimes think my not being homesick makes it worse.”

“Don’t worry about that.  He’ll see that it can be done and get there.  First year is harder for some than for others.  Charlie’ll get there.  If you’re ever worried he might do something bad, let me know, though.  I can always talk to him, if you’d like.”

He gives Bill a smile that he hopes conveys both support and authority.  Bill smiles back.  “Thanks, Professor.”

“Anytime.”

“Come on, up.”  Lily’s standing in his door.  It is a Saturday morning, and he has been awake since six o’clock when he usually wakes up, staring at the ceiling.  Usually, Lily waits until he’s at least gotten up and out of the bathroom before coming to talk to him, but it’s eight o’clock and she’s there with a look on her face that means no funny business—as if Lily being up before noon on a Saturday weren’t serious business enough.

“Morning, Lily,” he says.  He sits up and presses his palms into his eyes and colorful stars burst into his vision.  He shakes his head, rather like Sirius after he’s been a dog too long, then climbs out of bed.  Normally, he’s up before her on a Saturday.  Before his dad had died, he’d make breakfast for Lily’s dates while Lily—who could sleep until two in the afternoon quite contentedly if left to her own devices—remained in bed.  But Lily’s awake, and dressed, and showered by the look of it.

“Morning,” she says.  She sounds bright.  Too bright for a Saturday.  She must have had coffee.

“What’s—” he begins but she waves her hand.

“I’ll tell you later,” she says.  “Once you’re up and about.”

He feels himself frowning, but she’s gone and he sighs and climbs from the bed.  He showers, shaves, and takes a piss before getting dressed.  When he goes into the kitchen, he finds Lily standing over the stove with what looks like her second cup of coffee in her hand.

“Coffee?” she asks.

“Thanks,” he says and she waves her wand and one comes floating towards him.  He plucks it out of the air and takes a sip and almost spits it out again.  “Merlin, Lily.  Are you trying to power the entire Ministry on this?” 

She rolls her eyes.  “Nope.  Just myself, and you if you want.”

He sets the mug down, deciding whether or not he even needs another sip.  “What’s going on?” he repeats.

“We’re going for a walk,” she says simply.

“A walk?” he asks blankly.

“Yes.  A walk.  A nice normal thing to do on a Saturday.  There’s no need to look so perplexed.”

“I am perplexed.  It’s not even nine in the morning and you’re up and about and telling me that we’re going for a walk.  What’s not perplexing about that?”

Then he sees it, that look in her eyes that means she’s about to bring up his dad and he understands.  He understands perfectly.  Lily’s going to make him talk about his feelings, isn’t she?  The way Remus would, or his dad if…

“You get it?” she asks quietly.  He must have done a bad job keeping that stream of thoughts off his face.  Or Lily’s just gotten very good at reading him.

He jerks his head in a nod, grabs two muffins—Lily, it seems, baked muffins that morning—and they go out into the stairwell of the building.

“All right,” Lily says, and he can tell that she’s not in a tactful mood just from her tone, “What’s been going on?”

“Not much,” he says, and takes a bite of his first muffin.  Lily’s a very good cook, he’s noticed.  He thinks it’s the potioneer in her. 

“Oh come on.  We all know that’s not true.”

“My dad died, Lily.  And I loved him.  So it hurts.  That’s—”

“I got that,” she says gently, and he feels her hand on his arm.  He looks down at it.  It’s really there, resting gently just above his elbow.  “I really do.  So why can’t you look at Remus?”

So she’d noticed that.  They all had, probably.  But he had hoped she, at least, might not have.  James takes another bite of muffin, and Lily takes the second one away from him.

“Hey—that’s my—” he says with his mouth still full.

“I’ll give it to you when you’re ready.  I’ll not have diversionary eating tactics.”

“Lily, I’m not seventeen.  I don’t do diversionary eating tactics anymore,” he lies.  But Lily clearly doesn’t believe him and he sighs and swallows his muffin and says, not looking at her.  “He’s like my dad, all right?  More now than when we were in school.  But yeah—he’s a lot like my dad.  Bookish and glum and unendingly warm.  That’s my dad.”

He feels Lily’s hand leave his arm and wrap around his shoulder like some hot stripe over his back.  And oh god, he feels his eyes stinging and he looks up at the sky to try and keep Lily from noticing.  “What was your dad like?” she asks him.  “You never talk about him.  Not even before he died.”

James snorts.  “You can’t talk about dads, can you?”

Lily raises her eyebrows.  “What does that mean?”

“Have you never seen Sirius’ face when you talk about dads?  His dad was a horrible, evil…anyway.  And Remus’ has a lot of guilt about his father, and Pete’s dad took a while to come round to his son being a wizard, and your dad’s dead.  You can’t talk about dads.”

“My dad died years ago, James.  I’m fairly certain it’s a safe conversation topic.”  James looks at her, and he sees her eyes flicker between his.  “Did you really think you couldn’t talk about your father because it would upset the rest of us?”

“It sounds stupid when you put it that way.”

“It is stupid, no matter who you say it,” Lily says dryly and she squeezes her arm around him a little tighter.  They must look like quite the couple, James thinks unhelpfully, walking down the street with muffins on a Saturday morning, her arm around him.  But he can’t quite bring himself to remove the arm.  Who cares what people think.  It’s not like they are actually a couple.  Even if the simple fact of her arm around him sooths him more than…well…anything else has been able to lately. 

He takes another bite of muffin, and chews thoughtfully.

“I didn’t have any siblings,” he says at last.  “It was just me and my parents, and my dad was my hero growing up.”  He feels a lump rise in his throat.  “My parents got married late.  They met late.  My dad was a bit of a recluse—he wrote textbooks and could go days without talking to people, just wrapped up in his thoughts.  Ravenclaw,” he adds by way of explanation, and he sees Lily smile.  “But when I was a kid, he’d always have time for me, even if I was interrupting his work.  He taught me to fly, he taught me how to identify plants and animals—he was always patient with me.  I dunno.  Well, you know.  I was a bit of a handful, but my dad was always calm and peaceful and…” It’s hard to explain, and he knows he isn’t doing it right.  Maybe he should talk about his mum too?  “Yeah, anyway—he always got me.  Even when he didn’t get me, he got me.  And yeah.  I just…I miss him a lot.  And I can’t believe he’s gone.  It’s like…it feels like he could just be in his study working and have forgotten to owl or something, but it’s not that.”

He takes several deep breaths, trying to clear that lump in his throat which has only gotten bigger.  He stops walking, and Lily turns to face him, wrapping her arms around him more fully now.  “It’s not Remus’ fault,” he says quickly, suddenly feeling terrible.  He knows he was a bit of an idiot in school, and that Peter gave him hell about that after they’d left and gone out into the real world.  But he’d never want to hurt them—not any of them.  They were his mates, his Marauders.  Nothing could come between them.  Except, it seemed, himself.

“Of course it’s not Remus’ fault,” Lily says, and it’s the right thing to say, but at the wrong moment because that damned lump is back and now James feels like a terrible friend.  “It’s not anyone’s fault.  It’s just how things are.  Sometimes situations happen and it’s not anyone’s fault.”  Except when it is his fault, and there’s no getting around it.  He sighs.

“What was that sigh?” she asks him.

“Nothing,” he lies.

“James.”  She never believes him when he lies.  That’s always been the weird thing about her.  He can charm most anyone into believing him…

“You and my dad,” he says, then lets out a humorless chuckle.

“What does that mean?”

“You and my dad never believe me when I lie.”

“Does Remus?”

James considers that.  “I think he wants to believe my lies.  I think they all do.  Sirius might believe them sometimes, and Pete usually does.  But…I don’t know.”

She’s still hugging him.  He hasn’t missed that bit.  And he forces himself to pull away from her.  He starts walking again, and Lily follows him. 

“You still haven’t said what that sigh was,” she points out.

“You’re worse than Sirius when you get your teeth into something.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It’s part of what makes you a dictator.”

“I think I’d be quite the benevolent dictator.”

“So long as everyone’s furniture isn’t a bit run down.”

“There’s a difference between run down furniture and the state of your sofa when you brought it into my flat.  And you’re still dodging the point.”

“You really don’t let go.”

“Not when it’s important.”

“It’s my fault, all right?  No matter what you say about how it isn’t Remus’ fault, or my fault, it is my fault.  I’m hurting my friends.  And I hate doing that.”  He stuffs the last bit of muffin into his mouth so Lily won’t make him elaborate.  To his utmost surprise, she hands him the muffin she’d taken from him to begin with.

“So it is your fault,” she says at last.  “What are you going to do about it?”

He stares at her for a moment, more shocked than anything else.  Then her words wash over him.  Part of him’s angry—angry that she’s not trying to sooth him, to coo over him, to make him feel better like his mum or Gabby would have.  Part of him’s relieved.  Very relieved.  Because the second question means she doesn’t hate him for it.  Not only that—but she thinks he can make it better, that he can fix it.

“Well…” he says, still chewing.  “I could just…just have Remus over for tea or something.  Take him out to dinner, or cook him something?  Spend some time just him and me.”

“Will that work?” Lily asks.  “I mean, what if you get all upset again.”

“I’m not a big baby, Lily.”

“I think we both know that’s not true,” she teases, and he feels himself smiling.  It’s like he’s using muscles he’s forgotten he has.  And they won’t stop, they just keep pulling his lips up until he’s positively grinning at her. 

And she smiles back at him.  It’s not the smile that she and the rest of them have been giving him for weeks now.  It’s a real smile, a Lily smile, and it’s beautiful.

The weird part of dating Lily is that he’s not even sure they’re dating.

Well, obviously they are.  He moved out; they spend time together kissing and the like; there’s a softness to her eyes when she smiles at him. 

Except, well, he’s never heard Lily call him her boyfriend.

It’s a stupid thing to be hung up on, James knows that.  But it’s there, and it’s distracting sometimes.  When he joins Lily for drinks with Alice and Frank, and they run into some of Lily’s colleagues from work, he’s “Oh, this is James.”  No “My boyfriend James,” no “My former roommate, who I kiss a lot James,” not even “I’ve told you about James.  This is James.”  And it’s strange.

“Why not, though?” he mutters over breakfast.  It’s early, and he has to be at work soon, and Moony’s halfway through his first cup of coffee and he looks at James, perplexed.

“Why not what?”

“She never calls me her boyfriend.”

Remus snorts.  “Lily doesn’t do boyfriends, James.  This is new.  Give her time.”

“Yeah, but…well…”

“Give her time.  She’s not going to play with your heart.  Except, you know, for sport with the rest of us.”

James glares at Remus.

“Thanks for that.”

“You make it easy.

“I do not.”

“You really do.”

Later, when he’s over at Sirius’ house, helping Sirius with a new litter of puppies, he asks, “I should ask her about it, right?”

“No,” Sirius says.

“But—”

“You’re overthinking it, mate.  You really are.”  Sirius has that gruff tone he’s had lately and James wonders if he should have brought it up at all.

But he decides he has already brought it up, so he might as well keep going. “Am not.”

“You really are.   Did you already ask Moony about this?”

“No,” James lies.

“Because if I’m the second one you’re talking to, then you’re overthinking it.  And if you go to Pete, you’re being straight up ridiculous.”

James makes a face at the back of Sirius’ head and pats the dog he’s playing with before he makes his way home. 

“It’s just driving me mad is all,” he says to Pete a few days later, and Peter gives him a commiserating smile as he charms a few boxes of sweets into a neater row on the shelf.

“Well, obviously it is.  But you’re going to have to wait it out, James,” Pete says.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s a reason you’re complaining to me—and I presume I’m the last of us, so Sirius and Remus too—and not talking about it with Lily.  You’re scared.”

“I’m not scared,” James scoffs.  “There’s nothing scary about it.”

“Yeah there is,” Peter shrugs.  “You always play it close to your chest, don’t you.  And it’s a big thing to find out, wondering why Lily doesn’t call you her boyfriend.  She’s a lovely girl, but she’s even more closed off with information about herself than you are sometimes—at least in certain respects.” James thinks about Petunia and frowns.  “So either you suck it up and wait, or you stop being a chicken.”

“I’m not a chicken,” James whines.

“Big old chicken.  Should be in Ravenclaw with the rest of the bloody cowards.”

“Don’t you put me in the same house as Jim the Ravenclaw.” 

“You made that association, I didn’t,” Peter says, sounding smug.  James throws a lollipop at him.

He does his best to follow their advice and put it to bed.  Peter is right, of course.  Lily is even more private than he is about some things.  Honestly, she puts even Remus to shame with some of her secrets, he thinks bitterly.  For Remus, it had taken them less than three years to work out his Furry Little Problem.  Lily, though…he’d never known about her sister, and had certainly never known about Snape.

“You’ve got a look on your face,” she says.  They’re out to dinner at a muggle place near her office.  For all Lily claims that she’s barely in touch with muggle culture, she does have a way of finding good restaurants that force James into some well-to-do muggle clothes.  It has the added bonus, he supposes, of preparing him for Petunia’s upcoming wedding.  He really should start getting ready for that better.

“I’m not a coward,” he mutters to himself, and Lily laughs.

“I know that, James.  Who said you were?”

“Peter.  Remus implied it.”

“Great men, your mates.”  James gives her a look, but there’s a warmth to her face and he knows she’s teasing.  Of course she’d be teasing.  She’s not like Gabby.

“Yeah, well,” he mutters. 

“Well?  What are you being a coward about?”

“Why don’t you call me your boyfriend ever?” he asks, and winces.  Even to his own ears, he sounds like a whiny ten-year-old, and the look on Lily’s face—somewhere between slapped and stung—makes him want to swallow the words back up into his mouth and let them rattle about in his head a good while longer.  “Sorry.  Forget it.  It’s not a big deal.”

Silence hangs over the table for a few minutes, and James tries to push the nervousness out of his head.  This can’t be crossing a line.  It’s only fair—to ask this sort of thing.  Right?

“I suppose you are,” she says after a while, her voice sounding very distant, her eyes far away.  “Huh.”  It’s not quite a laugh, and James wants to know what it means.  But maybe he is a coward, because he doesn’t ask it. 

To his surprise, she keeps going, though.  “You know, I never really wanted a boyfriend.  But here you are.”

“You didn’t?”

She shakes her head.  “No, not really.  I mean, in theory, sure, but it’s hard losing a part of yourself to someone and never getting it back.  I never wanted that.”

She’s not making eye contact with him.  She’s looking, rather, at the necktie he’s wearing, a simple green and blue one she’d picked out for him.  Snape, he feels himself thinking, and anger rises in him.  She’s thinking about Snape.

It’s funny—it’s not jealousy he feels, not even over that part of her that she said she’d never get back.  But rather it’s sadness.  He reaches out a hand and finds hers.

“It’s not a complete loss if you get part of me in exchange, is it?” he asks quietly.  “Like, not a net loss.”

That makes her smile, and licks her lips as she looks at him again, her eyes soft, sincere.  “I suppose not.  I’d never thought about it that way before.”

“Well, not all of us are creative thinkers like me.”  Lily glares at him.

“You wouldn’t know creative thinking if it hit you over the head with a frying pan.  Creative thinking is my job, James.”  So’s mine, he wants to say but doesn’t.  Instead, he shrugs.

“Ahh, Evans.  Suit yourself.”

“I will,” she says, leaning back in her seat, and her gaze is burning into him and he can’t stop smiling.

“How’d you two meet?”

“Some mutual friends.  Lily spends a lot of time with Frank Longbottom and Alice Fortescue.”

“Oh yeah.  She lived with Alice before me.”

“How’d you two meet?”

“Same year at Hogwarts.”

“Nice.  Nice.”

He keeps pulling away from her right as things are getting hot.  She can tell that he’s turned on—can feel it through their clothes, and she’s quite looking forward to seeing it.  But he keeps pulling away, and resting his forehead against hers, and kissing her nose, and sighing, and wrapping his arms around her—cooling them down when she wants it to get hotter and faster.

“You’re not a virgin, are you?” she asks him one evening as they’re snuggled together, her heart rate settling down. 

“What?  No.” James snorts, and there’s a frustrating bemusement to his voice.  “Why?”

“I just thought I’d ask.  You always pull away, and I thought it might be because you…hadn’t before, you know?”

James runs fingers through her hair, and she closes her eyes, feeling warmth spread from her scalp down her neck.  “I don’t leap into bed very quickly,” he says.  “Never have, really.”

“Why not?” Lily asks, then provides an answer.  “You want it to matter?”  She flinches.  That sounds accusatory. 

“I figure it’ll matter as it matters,” he says slowly.  “It’s more…me.  I dunno.  I just always have.  It’s not that I don’t want to, but I do want it to feel right.”

“So this doesn’t feel right?” Lily teases, letting her hand drift down to the bulge protruding from his hip.

He gives her a look, and she laughs.  “No, that feels right.  You feel right.  We feel right.  It doesn’t feel right.  Not yet.  I…it’s a matter of security, I suppose.”

“Security?  Do you think I won’t last after we shag?”  She throws it out like a challenge.  He of all people knows what her sex history is, her relationship history as well.  But then again, she’s never really had a boyfriend like James.  And he wants sex to matter, she thinks, doesn’t he see that this matters more?

“No, that’s not it.  I can’t really…” he sighs and squeezes her tight.  “Look, just give me a bit of time.  We’ll get there, all right?”

“Yeah,” she says, and kisses him.  “I was just curious.”

“Yes, I’ve had sex,” he repeats.

“With more people than Gabby?”

“Yes,” he says.  “Veronica.”  Lily vaguely remembers the girl he’d dated in school, with straight blond hair she’d kept in plaits.

“That’s it?”  James nods and Lily shrugs.  “All right.”  She tries to keep her judgment out of her voice.  He’s only shagged two people.  She hopes he’s good.  I can train him if he’s not, I suppose, she thinks and her stomach jolts.  That’s what you do when you’re dating someone, right?  You make the sex good?

She buries her face into his shoulder and lets the smell of him wash over her.  This is all so much.  And Merlin she’s horny and a good hard fuck would get all the tension right out of her…

 James is writing up notes for Monday when Lily finally emerges from her bedroom.  Her hair is a nest, and there’s a hickey blooming on her neck, and she looks quite content. “Congratulations,” James says cheerily.

Lily blinks and smiles and makes her way to the coffee.  “Thanks,” she says.  “I liked that one.”

“Mark?  Yeah, he was nice.  I liked him better than Jim.  Jim was a ponce.”

“Jim’s got an ego,” she says.  “Also did not reciprocate on oral, which is a sure fire way to end up in my bad books.”

“That’s just poor form,” James says derisively, closing his notebook.  “What kind of idiot doesn’t reciprocate on oral?”

“Right?”

James shakes his head.  “Yeah—you’re better off shot of Jim.  Besides.  Jim’s just a stupid nickname for idiots who don’t know how to deal with the full glory of their given name.”  He waggles his eyebrows at Lily, and she elbows him.

“Yeah, right,” she says, and takes a sip of her coffee.  “Thanks for looking after them.”

“Does this make me a better roommate than Alice?”

Lily snorts.  “Alice is still a better roommate than you because she introduces me to all her auror friends.  If you’d wanted to gain points on the roommate front, you’d have stayed in quidditch and introduced me to all your hot teammates.” James feels his smile slip slightly.

“Are they all aurors?”

“Most of them,” she says happily.

“Is that your type?  Aurors?”

Lily rolls her eyes.  “I don’t have a type, but a girl knows better than to say no to someone who’s bold and daring and come on, James, I’m a Gryffindor too.  I like them chivalrous and courageous.”

“Sounds like Jim wasn’t that chivalrous.”

“He was a Ravenclaw.”

“Just goes to show.  If you want reciprocated oral, you should stick to Gryffindors.”

Lily coughs into her coffee, and James winks at her.

It’s Saturday night and he’s come over again, and it feels like ages since Lily last saw him.  It’s untrue, of course.  She saw him just last week.  But his summer hours ended this week and he’s back to working ridiculously hard again, and she remembers him saying that week nights were a no-go last year with his mates, so why should it be any different now that they’re dating?  There are dark circles under his eyes, though he’s got a good energy to him as he deals out cards for a game of flyby fancies.

She’s missed him.  She knows she’d have barely seen him this week anyway—he’d shut himself up in his room to finish up some work, or he’d simply fall asleep the second he got home, but at least if he were here, he’d be here, and not over at Remus’ place.  She could lie down with him on his bed and hold him while he got re-acclimated to working, and maybe…

It’s the longest time that Lily’s gone without sex.  Indeed, she can’t remember a time when she’s been with someone as long as she’s been with James and she hadn’t shagged him yet.  She’s been waiting for James to make that move, but he hasn’t yet.  And he keeps not.  She’d dropped signs all summer, and now it’s autumn and he’s barely free and they haven’t shagged yet.

She makes a huffing sound as she looks at the cards in her hand. 

“Bad hand?” James asks, his voice bemused.

“Are we ever going to shag?” she asks him and he coughs loudly.

“I’d been hoping to, yes,” James says.

“So—why haven’t we?” she asks him, putting the cards down.  If he was going to point out that she hadn’t ever called him her boyfriend, she could bloody well express her discomfort with the fact that James had a really attractive amount of stubble on his chin and he wasn’t scraping it against her thighs.

“Well,” James says slowly, “I was hoping to make sure it would be…” Lily raises her eyebrows at him, and his voice trails away.  His expression grows defensive.  “Look, I like it done properly.  With a few dates and some wooing before something romantic and a night together, all right?”

Lily gapes at him.  “And did you have a schedule for this?” she asks.  “Because it’s been two months now, James, and I can’t speak for you, but I really would like to shag.”

“Yeah,” James said.  “The start of the—the end of the summer just caused some unforeseen obstacles is all.”

“So…when were you thinking?”

“Lily,” James sounds exasperated, and Lily’s pleased to see—or rather, unpleased because god she wants to kiss her way along it—a flush rising from the collar of his shirt up his neck.  “Soon, all right?”

“How soon?” she tries not to snap.

“Soon, all right?”

“Like tonight?”

“Lily.”

“Is tonight too soon?” she asks him.

“Not technically,” he grumbles.  “Just off my schedule.”

Lily smirks at him.  “You’d better prepare to adjust your schedule,” she announces.

But James has a tendency to get stubborn when you tell him to do something against his will, even if yours has his best interests at heart.  “I will not.” 

“You won’t.”

“No.”

“All right,” Lily shrugs, and even as she does so, she feels herself grinning.

“What’s that grin?” James asks nervously.

“Oh.  Nothing,” she says, and she lays down her first set of cards. 

James piles his on top eagerly, and the game begins.

Lily wins the first trick, and the second.  James wins the third, and as he collects his cards, Lily strips her t-shirt over her head so she’s sitting there in her bra and jeans.

“What are you doing?” James demands sharply.

“You won the trick,” she says, her grin belying her innocent tone.

“This isn’t a game of strip flyby fancies, Lily.”

“Isn’t it?” she asks, blinking a few times.

“I haven’t been stripping when you won the tricks,” he snaps.

“Yes you have.”

James stares at her.  “It’s your turn,” she points out. 

Slowly, he lays his cards down on the floor between them, and Lily lays hers down.  James adds cards to the pile.  Lily does as well.  James does a third time.  Lily pushes the cards towards him and reaches behind her back to unhook her bra.

“Lily,” James says, his voice strangled and his eyes following the white cotton as it lands on the floor. 

“Yes?” she asks.  His gaze is focused on her knees now.  He’s very purposefully not looking at her breasts.

He doesn’t reply though, and Lily says again, “It’s your turn.”

It’s a fast turn, and she’s quite sure that James throws the trick.  “You didn’t even try,” Lily says as she collects the cards.

“I did,” James lies.

“James.  You’re no fun if you’re not going to play with me,” she says, teasing.  He’s still looking determinedly at her knees.  She sees him thinking hard and then watches as his eyes trace up from her knees to her face.  They’re conflicted, and Lily raises her eyebrows at him. 

James sighs, and unbuttons his shirt, and Lily suppresses a whoop of victory.  She watches gleefully as he pulls it off, then reaches for his hand again. 

Lily wins the next hand, and he toes off a shoe.  “That’s weak,” she points out to him.

He shrugs and lets Lily win another hand.  Then another, and off comes a sock.  Then they have to reshuffle the deck because Lily won the hand, and they’ll have a fresh hand to play with. 

Lily wins the first trick of the second hand and James is out of shoes and socks.  He looks at her over the tops of his glasses and she sits up a little straighter.  “That tactic was only going to buy you time,” she points out.

“Yeah,” James says.  He doesn’t sound annoyed now.  Or even resigned.  There’s something determined in his voice, and Lily likes it.  “I know.”  

Lily lays down her first cards, and James trumps her, taking the trick.

She gets to her knees and shimmies her trousers down her legs, kicking them off gracelessly.  James snorts.

“There’s no good way to get out of trousers,” she points out.

“Oh, I know.”  He’s grinning now, and his eyes are dark as they travel along her legs.

“Play your cards,” she tells him, and he does so.  Lily plays hers, and he takes the trick again.  Grinning, Lily pulls off her underwear and sits in front of him completely naked.  James leans back against the couch.  If he had been avoiding looking at her before, he’s not now.  His eyes sweep over her, hooded, lazily. 

“I’ve got the rest of the tricks, I think,” James says.  “So what’s next.  You haven’t got anything left?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I hadn’t.  This was your game.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Didn’t think it through?” He’s smiling at her, a crooked smile, one corner quirking up higher than the other. 

“Might be making it up as I go along,” Lily says.

“Ahh Evans.  You should never do that.  Your plans go to shite if you do.”

“My plans?  When have my plans ever—”

“One’s plans, then,” James says.  “The generic you.”

Lily stretches her hands above her head, arching her back, closing her eyes and enjoying the way she knows his eyes are on her.  “Am I generic?” she asks him.

“Quite the opposite.”

“What am I?”

“Losing this hand.”

He plays his cards, and Lily does as well.  He plays another set.  Lily rallies.  He takes the trick, then smirks at her.  Lily likes that smirk.  That smirk means she is getting what she wants.  She’s quite sure that James won’t leave her hanging, just to prove his point.  That would be unchivalrous.

She flushes, remembering James’ comments on chivalry and sex. 

“Take your hair down,” James says, and Lily’s hands fly to her ponytail, tugging it loose. 

James plays a trick, and Lily takes it with the one trump card remaining her. James tugs his belt loose, and she sees a bulge in his pants as he shifts his weight around.

Lily starts her turn, and James takes the trick, then looks back at her.

“Well?” he says.

“Well what?”

“What now?”

“Well, the hand’s over.”

“True, but you still owe me at least one article of clothing.”

“And you owe me two from the beginning of the game,” Lily says calmly.  James cocks his head, then gets to his knees and shimmies out of his trousers and underpants in one go, his cock springing free, stiff and thick and Lily feels warm, just looking at it.

“All right, I’ve paid up.  You still owe me one.” 

Lily gets to her feet, and holds out a hand.  “I have some ideas,” she says in a low voice.  James looks up at her, his eyes steady.  His lips are dry, and Lily’s tempted to bend down and kiss him, to lick them moist again, but she doesn’t.  She just waits for him to take her hand.

When he does, she pulls him to his feet, and leads him to her bedroom, her heart hammering a victory song in her throat.

The minute the door clicks shut behind them, her lips are on his, her body is pressed against him and his tongue is in her mouth, his fingers winding through her hair and she stands there, losing herself in the beat of his heart against her chest, the heat of his skin against hers, the cool of his breath against her upper lip.

He tastes divine.  She’s known that before, of course.  But there’s something truly blissful about the taste of him right now, of his breath mingling with hers, of the little noises he makes as she runs her hands down his sides and pulls him across the room to her bed.

He lands on top of her and all the breath leaves her body as his weight presses her into the mattress.  He fumbles for a moment and his glasses are gone, and she hears the sound of them clattering on her bedstand and it’s that more than anything that confirms for her that this is really happening, finally happening.  That she and James are here, and now and real and she couldn’t be happier.  She presses up against him, feeling his cock pressing against the seam between her leg and her hip, and trails her fingers along his spine as he buries his face into her neck, sucking warm kisses there and she sighs.

“Lily,” he breathes into her neck as her fingers brush over his ass, and she cups it in her hands and he groans.  She loves the sound of him groaning.  Loves that she makes him groan.  She pushes up against him, pushes him onto his side and then slides down his body, pressing kisses in the hair on his chest, down the line of his stomach between the muscles of his abs until she’s just above his cock.  She looks up at him and he’s watching her and she waits.

“Something wrong?” he asks her.

“I just wanted to make sure it’s all right?” she says.

“Oh.  I couldn’t see you.  Very bad vision,” he says, flushing, and Lily feels remarkably stupid.  She reaches up and runs a hand over his side, tracing circles into his skin. 

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

She’s tempted to ask if he’s adjusted his schedule yet, but instead she takes his cock in her hand and pumps it a few times before dropping her lips down over it and sucking it into her mouth, feeling the smoothness of his skin against her tongue.  James lets out a strangled moan, and his hands fly to her hair, and Lily smiles for a moment before redoubling her efforts.

His cock is thick, and she flattens her tongue underneath it as she bobs her head.  His skin tastes so good—so heady and…and something else that’s oddly familiar, though she can’t place where she’s tasted it before. 

Up and down she pumps her head, her hand slipping over his shaft with her own saliva dripping over it, and she feels his dick twitch several times in her mouth.  She tastes precum on his tip and presses her tongue to it and feels James’ muscles tense against her arms.  She pauses to breathe, to twist her hair around a few times so it will stay away from her face before sinking back down and pressing kisses to the underside of his shaft, up, up, up until she’s at his tip again and opening her mouth wide to suck him in again.  She hears his head tossing on her pillow, hears the sound of him moaning, feels his fingers weaving through her hair and pulling her away from him, back up his body until her lips are against his again, and her tongue is twining around him. 

He’s breathing hard, and there’s sweat on his face as he pauses in kissing her, his hands on either side of her face, thumbs tracing along her cheek.

Trembling, one of his hands slides down her side, tracing inward along her hip to her cunt, and he runs two fingers along her slit.  Lily lets out a long, slow breath, and smiles at him, feeling her own heart beating a violent tattoo in her chest.  He’s rubbing her now, rubbing his fingers against her skin, wet with her own arousal and it feels so good and Lily’s eyelids flutter shut and her head droops against James’ shoulder. 

“This ok?” he asks her.

“Yeah.”  And he slips his fingers inside her.  Lily sighs and squeezes herself around his fingers.  She pumps her hips against him as he swipes his thumb across the top of her, trying to find her clit and Lily whimpers, “James,” when he finds it.

He nuzzles against her neck, and she twists her head and finds his lips with hers. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And his fingers are gone, and she feels something wider at her opening and she sinks onto his cock, stretching with a hiss as he groans her name. 

They stay very still for a moment.  James is still breathing hard, and he gulps once or twice before he begins to shift his hips against her, pushing into her even deeper than he already was, then pulling back.  His lips are on her neck, and Lily runs her hands through his hair, and she laughs because she remembers being furious with him running his hands through his hair like a great prat because it used to make him look like he’d just gotten off a broomstick.  Now it’ll look like he’s just had sex.  Much better, she thinks.

She can’t tell if he’s read her mind or not, but he pushes against her and twists her so that she’s lying flat on her back.  She cants her hips up as he pushes into her harder and faster, wrapping her legs around his waist, relishing how deep he went into her, the stretch of her skin around him.  She kisses his neck, his chest, his lips, his nose—every part of him that she can reach, and her fingers dig into his ass, pulling him closer to her as he thrusts and thrusts and she’s getting close now, she can feel that tingling tightness in her clit, the twist in her stomach, the tingling in her lips as she struggles to breath.

James comes first though, with a cry, with a groan, with his cock twitching and throwing heat into her as he collapses on top of her, and Lily holds him as tightly as she can as he throbs between her legs, kissing his neck as his heart thuds against his chest and hers.

“So, was that on schedule, or…”

“Shut up.”

Lily presses a kiss to his cheek, and he shifts his weight over her, pulling out of her before resting more soundly against her.  His heart is still beating hard, and Lily kisses the pulse in his neck, tasting his sweat and smiling.  Smiling, but part of her is still impatient.  She kisses him again.  He’ll get to it.  She knows he will. 

And, sure enough, she feels him stirring on top of her, lifting himself off her.  He kisses the tip of her nose, her cheek, her lips, before kissing his way, as Lily had done, down her chest.  He pauses where she had not, though, to suck at her breasts, and Lily arches her back into his lips, a smile playing at her lips, her fingers weaving through his hair.  He slides one hand between her legs and begins, lightly, circling her clit again.  Lily shifts, letting her legs fall open even more widely than they had been before and James brushes the flats of three fingers in a wide circle over her clit while his lips toy at her nipples. 

Then he keeps kissing down her stomach—not just kissing, she realizing.  He’s sucking hickies into her stomach and she shakes her head, rolling her eyes because they’re not teenagers anymore, but James clearly doesn’t care, and beyond the initial surprise, Lily can’t quite bring herself to, either because it does feel so good.  And when he settles between her legs, his breath is warm against her skin.  He runs his fingers along her cleft once, twice, before dropping his lips to her clit and sucking it. 

Lily’s heart swells, and she lets out a moan, and she feels James smile against her skin.  She feels his stubble rubbing against her thighs right as his tongue swirls around her clit and she gasps because it feels so perfect, so right.

It’s not long before he’s worked her into a frenzy, the roughness of his cheeks, the smoothness of his tongue, the heat that he’s kissing into her that spreads from her cunt up through her stomach to her arms and face and heart.  It’s not long before she’s crying out, gasping for air as the room is suddenly too cool and her skin is suddenly too hot, and it’s not long before she loses herself of her blood pumping through her and the soft lapping sounds of James’ tongue against her.

When she’s finished, she pulls him up her again, and nuzzles herself into his arms, a smile firmly in place on her face.  How long they lie like that together, Lily’s not sure.  At some point, James pulls her blankets up from the bottom of the bed where they’d been kicked and they fall asleep, warm, and content beside one another.

They’re out drinking—her and Alice and Frank and Hector, one of Frank’s partners, and Lily’s feeling particularly warm in her stomach.  It’s a good evening—the sort where the company has been able to distract her thoroughly from a week of particularly grueling and unrewarding hard work, and colleagues who’d not done their fair share. Hector’s been staring at her chest all night, and she’s quite sure they’ll end up back at hers tonight, and she’s quite looking forward to that. 

He’s a good looking one, Hector.  Has a square jaw and blue eyes and seems to be muscled like an ox.  And, he was a Gryffindor.  And, though part of her wants to hit James for having put the mental image of him reciprocating oral sex into her head, a different part of her wants to put his hypothesis to the test, and she very much hopes that Hector will pass it.

“I’m to the loo,” she tells Alice, who gets up as well and follows her towards the Leaky Cauldron’s two-stall bathroom.

“I like Hector,” she tells Alice.

“Thought you might,” Alice teases.  Alice is even more drunk than Lily is, and Lily’s quite sure that when they get back to their table, Alice will drag Frank to his feet and they’ll pop back home for a spot of sex.  “You should try keeping him.  We’re running low and you’ll have to move to a different department, Lil.”

Lily rolls her eyes, then realizes Alice can’t see it because Alice is not in the stall with her and she giggles to herself.  Alice hears her giggling and says, “It’s true and you know it.”

Lily frowns, not sure why Alice said that, then finds she can’t quite care.  She flushes and gets to her feet, feeling the rush of alcohol to her head and stumbles to the sink to wash her hands.

“You never know, Hec could be the one,” Alice says.

“You said that about all of them,” Lily points out.  “Maybe I’m not looking for the one.  Maybe I’m just looking for a damn good shag.”

“As you say,” Alice shrugs, and Lily, for all she’s tipsy, can tell Alice doesn’t believe her.  She elbows Alice and Alice lets out a shriek of surprise.  She must have gotten unused to Lily’s elbowing since she moved out, just as James has come to take them perfectly in stride.

She wonders where James is.  Out with his boys, probably trying to help Sirius pull by making comments about how the full moon is out and that’s a sign that lovers should meet or something ridiculous like that.  James never brings anyone back to the flat.  She’s noticed that over the past few months.  He doesn’t seem remotely interested in dating anyone.  She’s heard Remus and Peter and Sirius make comments about how Gabby messed him up, but she still doesn’t know how.  She’s drunk enough to want to know.  If she weren’t about to bring Hector home, she’d march back to their flat and ask James right now.  Except he’s out with his boys.

Lily checks her makeup, decides it’s not horrid for all she’s been out for several hours, then says, “I’m heading back to the table,” to Alice, and does so.  Frank’s not there—he probably went to the loo himself, but Hector’s at the table, chatting with someone Lily can’t see. 

“You can do better, mate.  She’s slept with half the auror office.”  Lily stops dead.  She knows that voice.  She’s heard it before, in a similar state of sobriety and Hector’s eyes flick up and see her, and she can see his eyes widen in surprise, as if he’s not expecting to see her there at all.

“Lily,” he blurts out, but Lily marches right up to the booth to see who’s said that.  She’s not wholly surprised to find that it’s Jim.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“Ah,” Jim says, and he looks uncomfortable.  “Good to see you, Lily.”

“Who’s slept with half the auror office?” she demands.  Her hands on the table, and she’s got the glare on her face that she reserves for Sirius when he’s being out of line.

“Oh come on, Lily.  You know it’s true.”

“And I don’t see how it’s any of your business,” she snaps.

“Hec’s my friend.  He has a right to know.  I look out for my mates.”

“And how precisely is this looking out for him?”

“Well, if you’re going to take him to bed and then never return his letters, I thought it’s worth warning him.”

“Jim,” she hears Hector say but she ignores him.

“Do you wish you’d been warned about me?” she demands.  “Did I wound your pride not fawning over you after you didn’t even get me off?”

It might have been the wrong thing to say, but she’s angry and drunk—a dangerous combination.  She feels a hand on her shoulder and knows that Alice is back from the loo.

Jim’s face is a mask of anger, and Lily knows what he’s about to say before he says it, so she cuts in, “You were perfectly pleased at how easy I was to get in bed when it was you.  You didn’t mind that I’d slept with half the auror office then—I guess because you benefitted from it, you right bastard.”

She turns on her heel, not daring to look at Hector as she does.  She marches to the fireplace, knowing better than to drunkenly apparate, and fiddles in her purse for a few knuts which she deposits in the jar and grabs a pinch of floo and makes her way home. 

The lights in the flat are out, and it’s completely silent.  James hasn’t come home yet, she’d guess.  She’s shaking, angry more than anything else.  Definitely not a Gryffindor, she thinks angrily, unchivalrous if nothing else. 

She showers, hoping it will calm her down, and climbs into bed.  She stares up at the ceiling, but she’s too agitated to fall asleep.

James doesn’t come home until early evening the next day, looking completely exhausted but in good spirits.  But he takes one look at Lily and she sees his expression change. 

“Is it that obvious?” she asks him.

“What happened?” he asks, sitting down on the couch next to her and throwing an arm over her shoulder.

“I was out last night with Frank and Alice,” she explains, “And one of their mates was there, and we were having a good time, and then bloody Jim the Ravenclaw comes over and while I’m in the loo tells Hector not to come back with me, and that I’ve slept with half the auror office and that I’m a bloody bitch for not responding to him when he didn’t even get me off.”  She’s shaking again, and feels like she’s about to cry again.  And she really didn’t want to spend more bloody tears on Jim. 

James’ arm tightens around her shoulder.  “Want me to go beat him up for you?  I’m really good at that.  And I won’t even get in detention for it.”

Lily lets out a strangled laugh.  “James, he’s an auror.  He’d probably eat you for breakfast.”

“Would not.  I’m crafty.  Besides, when it’s the honor of my house at stake, I must do something.”

“We’re not at school.  This isn’t a Gryffindor thing.”

“No, I meant literally.  You’re my roommate.  That means your honor is the honor of my house.”

She shakes her head, smiling in spite of herself.  “You’re being silly.”

“True,” he says, and his face goes serious.  “So I’ll ask you again—do you want me to beat him up?”

She remembers James at fifteen, harassing Slytherins for putting a toe out of line, for hoisting Sev into the air by his ankle.  It was what she’d liked least about him.  So she shakes her head.  “No.  Please don’t.  I can handle it myself, if I need to.”

James nods, then shakes his head, then wiggles it from side to side.  At last, he mutters, “Bloody Jim the bloody Ravenclaw.”

“He said he was just trying to warn his friend,” Lily says bitterly.  “Would you have warned your friends?  If someone—anyone—was someone you didn’t like or…I don’t know…someone who…”  had slept with half the auror office.  She couldn’t deny that she had, either.  Even Alice knew it, had hinted about it when they’d been in the bathroom. 

James frowns.  “I might,” he says at last.  “If it were Remus who has fuck all sense about this sort of thing and might end up hurt.  Sirius wouldn’t give a shit, because he’s not one for long-term commitment anyway, so I wouldn’t bother.  Pete…well, Pete’s with Florence, isn’t he, so it’s a non-issue.”

She feels upset all over again.  “Why does it matter?  Who I’ve been with or how many?”

“It doesn’t,” he says.  “I mean, it shouldn’t.  But I dunno…” James voice trails away and Lily knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“Anyone who cares about my having slept with half the auror office isn’t worth my time,” she says, her voice hard. 

“True,” James says.  “True, but—”

“There are no buts.”

“But what if he wasn’t looking for a quick pull.  What if he wanted a relationship?”

“And why does that get priority?  Why is that a justification for calling me a slut?”

“It’s not.  It’s just…” James sighs.  “The problem is it’s Jim, isn’t it?  If it weren’t Jim, I’d say I understood, but Jim’s just a…”

“Exactly. If it were him genuinely looking out for a friend who didn’t seem capable of making his own decisions, I’d give him a little more slack.  But Hector was into me, and clearly wasn’t being all noble and ‘no sex on the first date’ so it was just him being a swine.”

James nods.  “Yeah, I’m going to beat him up.”

Lily elbows him, then sighs and tilts her head to rest on his shoulder.  And, as she does so, some of the questions she’d had while in the loo come back into her head.

“You’re over Gabby, right?”

James stiffens and looks at her.  “Where’d that come from?” he asks her.

“You just never date, or bring anyone home when you’re out with your boys.  And I thought I’d just…”

“Gabby and I are done,” he says and there’s a profound finality in his tone.  “Very and completely done.”

Lily nods, feeling as though she’s crossed some sort of line that she didn’t know was there.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“Don’t be,” he says and he sighs.  “Look, Gabby and I just…we weren’t going to work in the end.  And it hurt.  And it’s over.  There’s not much more to say about it.”

“Have you just not wanted to date or…?”

“The new job has kind of taken over most of my energy.  Maybe next year when it’s not so new.  I don’t know.  But I’m not really looking at the moment.”

And, because she has to ask, has to know, though why she has to know she doesn’t want to think about right now, she asks one last question.  “Would you care?  If I had slept with half the auror office?”

“You’re my roommate Lily.  You can do what you like and it’s none of my business.” 

“If we weren’t roommates?”  She doesn’t want to look at him, but she can’t look away. 

“It’s none of my business,” James repeats, but she can see in his face that he would care.  He would care, even if he’d never tell her.  And it hurts far more than anything Jim had said last night, even if it shouldn’t, even if it’s purely theoretical because James is her roommate and you don’t do that sort of thing with your roommates.

Minerva calls a staff meeting on Thursday immediately after the last period of the day, and James arrives at it five minutes early, in order to fulfill his promise to himself, to Minerva, and to Dumbledore to ensure that he and Snape would never be seated next to one another during a staff meeting.  He sits next to Filius, who has poured himself a very large cup of tea, and is looking beleaguered.

“Any idea what’s going on?” James asks.

Filius sighs.  “A few guesses.  Most of them revolving around Montgomery.”

James flinches.

Augustus Montgomery was a fifth year, and where most fifth years seemed to be taking out their pre-O.W.L. stress by staying up late and working hard, he had started shoving heads down toilets and laughing about it.  And, worse, no matter how many points staff took away from Gryffindor, or how many detentions he received, he didn’t seem to care.  If anything, he took it as a point of pride.

This was going to be a painful meeting. 

James edges his chair slightly away from Filius, and sees Snape come into the room and, without acknowledging any of the other teachers there, sits down as far from James as he can manage, the oily curtain of his hair falling in his face.

“Thank you all for being here,” Professor Dumbledore says as he strides into the staff room, and James straightens in his chair.  He hadn’t expected Dumbledore to be there.  When Minerva called the meetings, usually it was some task that he’d given her to handle, and not one that he ended up coming down to the staff room for.  There was a huge difference between a staff room meeting and a Dumbledore’s office meeting.  James had learned that when he was, well, Montgomery’s age.  He didn’t know what this meant.  It made his skin prickle.

Dumbledore seats himself in the chair besides Minerva at the end of the table, and looks at them all over the top of his glasses.  “Earlier today, I suspended Augustus Montgomery.  Undeterred, it seems, by his punishments for his recent transgressions, he decided that it would be a good idea to put Andrea Ringwald’s head down a toilet on the fourth floor.  Andrea nearly drowned.”

James hears gasps, and his own eyes bug out of his heads.  “Had it not been for—of all people—Peeves who was nearby, she may well have died of asphyxiation,” Dumbledore continues.  “I have spent most of the afternoon with her and her mother, who we brought in from Aberdeen.  The question at hand is to determine what comes next.  I informed Mr. Montgomery that his suspension may well terminate his experience at Hogwarts.  I will be meeting tomorrow morning with the board of governors.  A situation such as this has not arisen in my time at Hogwarts—either as a teacher or a student—and as such, I would like to hear your views.”  Not even Sirius was suspended, but that’s because I got Snape out in time… James thinks, and even through the silence of the room, he knows exactly what’s coming next.

“He should be thrown out,” Snape spits.  “He almost killed a student.  He’s a danger to the rest of the students here.  What message does it send to his other victims that he be allowed to walk these halls unpunished?”

“I would hardly call him unpunished, Severus,” Pomona says, “Though I do wonder if suspension…how long a suspension is it, Albus?” 

“Two weeks,” Professor Dumbledore says.

“Will he have access to his readings in the interim?” Minerva asks.  Her voice is so serious.  He remembers the last time she’d sounded that way—back when Sirius had…Dumbledore hadn’t kicked out Sirius, though. 

“He will not,” Dumbledore informs the room.  “Additionally his wand has been left in my custody, to ensure that he will not be able to cast spells while at home.  He was able to bring his notes from previous classes, if he should wish to prepare for his O.W.L.s, but—”

“Professor,” Snape cut in, “I don’t see why this is even a discussion.  He is not responsible enough to treat his fellow students with dignity—how on earth should we allow him to set foot back in this castle?”

“Reasoning with him has not been effective,” Filius adds.  “This is the sixth student he’s done this to.”

“Has anyone actually asked him why he’s doing this?” James asks the room.

“Yes,” says Minerva.  “He is non-responsive.”

“So like when you asked Sirius why he was inflating heads in fifth year and he was non-responsive?” James asks.  Minerva blinks at him and the table looks uncomfortable.

“Black should have been thrown out of Hogwarts at about the same age as Montgomery.  He too was a danger to his fellow students,” Snape says.

“I personally am glad he wasn’t thrown out.  Not because he didn’t deserve punishment,” James adds hastily. “But because it allowed him to grow.  Having been thrown out of school would not have allowed him to become the man he—”

“What does he do now?  Doesn’t he breed dogs for muggles?  And drink?  What a fine contribution to society.  How laudable—what he was able to make of those two final years of education,” Snape jeers.  “He was a bully.  And it doesn’t surprise me that you’re sticking up for him.  You were just like him at that age.  You probably think that what Montgomery has been doing is a throwback to your glory days, Potter.”

“Hardly,” James says dryly.  “I did in fact keep maturing past the age of fifteen, Snape.  Regardless—I’m curious if we know why he’s really acting this way, or if—”

“That hardly matters.  He’s a mean person.  Sometimes boys are just mean, and there’s no need to glorify it or—”

“Yes,” James says quietly.  “Sometimes they are.”  Like you, he doesn’t need to add.  He looks at Snape, looks at him for the first time all meeting.  Snape is smirking, and his huge hooked nose is just so…punchable.  James takes a deep breath. 

“Do you think he could be reasoned with?” Filius asks James.  He knows what Filius is asking, that he’s asking him on behalf of the whole staff.  James was no better than Montgomery.  Does he speak for him?  For teenaged bullies throughout the school? 

“There’s a chance actually having nearly killed someone will put his actions in perspective,” James says, doing his best not to make his voice too sarcastic.  “I don’t know, not having spoken with him.  My concern is what made him start to begin with?  I know what made me do it, and Sirius.” Being too clever for their own good, thinking the rules weren’t for them, knowing they wouldn’t get into that much trouble anyway.  Montgomery’s marks weren’t nearly good enough for that, though.  “I doubt it’s the same for him, though.”

“I repeat,” Snape says loudly, “What message does it send to the rest of the school—to the parents—if he is allowed back in the castle?  We will be failing to protect the rest of the students.”

James looks at Dumbledore.  Dumbledore’s long fingers are steepled in front of him, and his blue eyes are not twinkling.  He takes a deep breath.

“I think we fail all our students if we don’t have an answer to why he’s doing this.  If it’s that he’s mean, and cruel, then we fail that by not having kicked him out sooner.  If it’s that he’s being an insecure teenager—”

“Not every insecure teenager shoves students’ heads down toilets,” Snape laughs harshly.

“No, sometimes it’s more insidious than that, and no less dangerous,” James retorts.  He hears a chair creek.  “I think we fail our students just as much by failing to understand why he does this.  And if there’s a way to punish him while also guiding him into being a better person, that’s the course of action to take.  If that’s not possible, that’s different.  But I’m not convinced we know what’s causing all this.”

“Saying that boys will be boys is no excuse,” Snape practically shouts.

“I agree,” James says calmly, still looking at Dumbledore.  “But clearly we’ve been failing to fix the problem up until now.  So I’m not convinced the problem is what we think it is.  I’m happy to be wrong, if I am wrong.  But I don’t know that I am.”

“You’re home late,” Remus says as James enters through the backdoor, dropping his bookbag on a chair in the kitchen and going straight for the refrigerator. 

“Stuff at work,” he says.

“Not anything bad, I hope,” Remus say, looking up from his book.  James glances at him, then pulls a half smile onto his face.

“No, not too bad,” he lies.  He sees Remus’ eyes flicker.  He knows that flicker.  Remus knows he’s lying. 

“That’s good,” Remus says, not pushing it.  James is tempted, for just a moment, to tell him that he’s been on the other end of the staff meetings that undoubtedly they’d all caused when they were idiots.  But he doesn’t.  Remus didn’t push.  And what good would it do?  Remus would feel guilty about not making them all stop sooner.  “There’s leftover stew if you’d like it.”

“You spoil me,” James jokes.  He glances at the window.  There’s no sign of Lily’s owl, so she must be working late too.  She’d push me, he thinks.  She doesn’t let me lie.  Not when it matters.

“How was your day?” he asks.

“Got some good writing done,” Remus shrugs.  “So not too bad, all in all.”

His eyes are a bit vacant.  He’s lying to me too. 

But James takes a bite of stew.  Maybe tomorrow, he’ll ask.  Maybe tomorrow, Remus will ask him too.

“Lily—I need you to poison me.”

Lily’s eyebrows fly up.  James is standing in her doorway, a look of desperation on his face. 

“What?”

“All those years of frustration you had at school—I know you wanted to poison me.  Or jinx me.  I don’t have a preference.  Come on.  Do it.  I can take it.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I can’t go to the Christmas party,” he says.  They’ve been invited through Sirius to his cousin’s Christmas party.  Lily had been quite looking forward to it.  She’s only ever met one of Sirius’ relations, his younger brother Regulus, and the concept of meeting the other Black who’d been—to quote Sirius—blasted off the Black Family Tree for marrying a muggle born was one that had excited her. 

“So?  Say you’re ill.  I don’t need to—”

“They’ll see right through that.  They know me.  They know my tactics.  It needs to be something they won’t expect.  Poison they won’t see coming.  So please.  For all the loyalty you bear me as your roommate, I beg you.  Poison me.”

Lily is still gaping at him.

“I don’t understand.”

“I can’t go.”

“Yes, you’ve said that, I still don’t…you’ll have to give me more to work with about why James.  I don’t go randomly poisoning my friends, even when they ask.”

“Yes, but—”

“Not even you.”

“I’m not asking for anything fatal.  Like, enough to incapacitate me for an evening and make it plausible that I’d—”

“Won’t they think it a little odd that you got poisoned?  You don’t do potions for work.  They’ll suspect me of foul play.”

“They won’t.  Why would you poison me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Fair point.  Thanks for not poisoning me so far.  But that has to end.  Poison me.”

“James—I need to know why I’m going to poison you.”

“I can’t, Lily.”

“You really can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“James Clarence Potter, if you don’t tell me why this is—”

“This is not middle name territory.”

“You’re begging me to poison you to get out of going to a Christmas party.  Either you’re the antichrist—which I’m not convinced isn’t a possibility—or you are going to—”

“All right.  All right.”  He sounds worn.  “I’ll give you one piece of information. And you can’t ask any questions.  I won’t answer them.  Then you poison me.  Got it?”

“Fine.  Spill it.”

“It’s got to do with my job.”

“James.  You can’t just leave it like that.”

“I can.  That’s one piece of information.  Now poison me, Lily.”

James isn’t back from work yet, and Lily finds herself lying on the sofa in Remus’ living room, staring up at the ceiling.  Remus is sitting at the table, writing.  His quill scratches softly against the parchment and Lily can’t remember the last time she’d heard such a consistent sound.  She’s used to quickly jotted notes, or of nothing at all because the scratching of a quill can and does get drowned out by the bubbling of cauldrons, the sounds of mashing ingredients or knifes cutting through thick roots.

She turns her head to watch him.  He’s thin, and pale, and there are dark circles under his eyes.  She thinks of Turner, who last time he tested the potion said that it made him feel exhausted during the week leading up to the full moon, which just made him angrier when he was the wolf, even if he was more in his mind than usual.  She wonders if Remus has been sleeping.  She wonders if he can sleep.  Barning had said that she didn’t sleep well while the moon waxed, though if that was because of the impending transformation or because she was just nervous, she never knew.

She wants to tell him.  Wants to tell him so badly—that she’s working on something that will make his life better. But he doesn’t know that she knows.  So she can’t.

Can she?

She pauses and thinks.  James had been adamant—it wasn’t his secret to tell.  But she knows.  She knows and wouldn’t it be a relief for him to know that she knows, that she can help, that she doesn’t care?

She takes a deep breath.  “At work, I’m working on making a wolfsbane potion.” 

“Oh?” Remus says.  He sounds thoroughly uninterested, but she can see the way his fingers tighten on the quill.

“Yeah.  To help treat werewolves.  To help them keep their human minds when they’re in the wolf’s body.”

“That’s an admirable task,” Remus says.  “I’d wondered why you were still working there given how much you hate your boss.  I understand now.”

“You understand.”

“Yes.”

Lily stares at him.  He sounds as though she’s not said anything more exciting than that she’s wearing pink socks, or that she’s going to try making sushi sometime soon.  Not like she’s working on something that’ll help him. 

“Remus,” she says, and her voice sounds like a whine.

“Lily.”

“Remus, I know you’re a werewolf,” she sighs, sitting up.

His face is completely smooth.  Completely and utterly.  But his eyes are a storm.

“Oh,” is all he says.  “Well.  Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For lying to you.”

“You didn’t have to tell me,” she says.

“I should have.  I’m not safe to be around.”

“Remus.”

“I’m not,” he says, and his voice sounds dead.  “Though I suppose the nice thing about being surrounded by a group of Gryffindors is they don’t much care about that.”

“Remus, I don’t care.  I never would have.”

“James told you, did he?”  The question is so casual, so light, that for a moment, Lily is caught off guard.  But then she looks at his eyes again and there’s rage. 

“No,” she says.  “James never would.  He said it wasn’t his secret to tell.”

“Yes, but James is a liar sometimes.  Sirius told, after all, even if it was only once.  And of course you’d—”

“I am working on a bleeding potion, Remus.  I worked it out because I saw the symptoms and pay a lot of bloody attention to the lunar calendar.  I’m a smart witch and worked it out for myself, thanks.”

There’s a pause and Remus’ face is still masklike.  Not the warm, soft, happy face of her friend.  Lily feels her lip tremble, though not for wanting to cry.  “Well, as I said, it’s admirable, Lily,” Remus says at last.  “You’re doing a great service for my kind.”

“For you,” she insists.  “You’ll—”

“Not for me. I would never be able to afford it.  I can barely pay rent.  How many galleons is this going to cost?  I can guarantee I don’t make enough to pay for a monthly treatment.  I never will.  Or is it a one time dose?”

“Remus,” she murmurs and gets to her feet to go over to him, but to her surprise, he stands as well. 

“I’m sorry, Lily,” he says and he turns away from her.  “Forgive me.”  And he just leaves.  He goes up the stairs into his bedroom and she hears the door click shut.  I made it worse, she thinks sadly to herself, staring at the parchment he’d been writing on.  This is supposed to make it better for him, but it’s worse.

What the fuck am I even doing?  She’s almost shaking she’s so angry, all of a sudden.  All the pain and frustration of work, and it’s not even going to pay off for the people that need it.

She goes back to the couch and buries her face in a cushion and hopes that James will be home soon.

 James comes home to find Lily sitting on the sofa, and he’s too tired to think properly, but the only thought that registers is that it’s awfully early for Lily to be sitting on the sofa—not even noon.  He reaches up to run his hands through his hair, a normal gesture that she won’t find suspicious, hoping desperately that he doesn’t have leaves in his hair from the night before.  Ordinarily he’d still be at Remus’, helping Pete and Sirius put him to bed, but he’s very behind on his prep for next week and had faked a headache so they wouldn’t think much of it, even if they never believed his headaches. 

“James,” Lily’s voice sounds sad—sad, not angry like when he’d come back after her fight with Jim the Ravenclaw.  Who he still needs to throttle. 

“Yeah?” he asks.  She’s gotten to her feet, and her green eyes are so very sad and he’s suddenly scared.

“James, your mum.  She’s died.”

“How’s he doing?” Florence asks her quietly.  They’re in the kitchen, making a tremendous casserole for the boys.

Lily wonders vaguely why she thinks of them as the boys.  They’re all fully grown now, and only ever boyish when you get them all together.  Remus worries constantly about being sacked, Peter’s started up his own business, Sirius, for all he still acts like he’s seventeen, has been self-employed for years, training muggle dogs for owners who don’t have any idea how to do it themselves.  And James, apart from spurts of juvenility, is an adult.  But together, they are the boys.  And the boys are here again, with James after he lost his second parent.

“He’s…” Lily peers over her shoulder. 

It’s different this time around—he doesn’t shut himself in his room this time, though he does wander around like a shell-shocked cat.  Even now, he’s lying on the sofa, his head on Sirius’ lap, reading a book about dog breeds that he’d snuck out of Sirius’ back pocket, just to give his head something to do.  He’s not been short with Remus this time, either, and he’s even managed a smile here and there.

“I think he’s managing better?” Lily whispers to Florence.  Unlike when the boys are usually over, the house is practically silent.  “I mean, he’s talking now a bit.”

He had.  The morning he’d come back from Remus’ place with bits of twig in his hair, Lily had made tea and he’d told her about his mum—a woman who was always in the center of things, who had friends out the ears and who had been married once before to a man who hadn’t wanted children.  James was her darling, her late-in-life boy who could do no wrong, because he was, like her, a Gryffindor and in her mind Gryffindors could do no wrong. 

She’d taken Sirius in without batting an eyelash, saying that was what one did when one’s friends—or one’s son’s friends—were in need.  She’d never been prouder than when he’d joined the Appleby Arrows, as she’d seen it as a sign of James’ natural leadership, and had often suggested that he might end up getting into politics because everyone likes a good sportsman, and it would help to have some popularity in the bureaucracy.

“She’s my mum,” James had said by way of ending.  But his voice had been less hollow than when he’d talked about his dad.  And in the days that followed, the preparations for the funeral, the constant stream of well-wishers who always managed to show up when both Lily and James had just gotten home from work, he’d seemed more present.

“That makes sense,” Florence whispers, “I suppose.  I mean, it feels like the knife’s twisting in the wound a bit.  His dad only died a few months ago.”

Lily hums in agreement as she stirs the rue on the stovetop.

“It feels cruel.  To take both away from him one right after the other.”

That’s what all the well-wishers had said too.  How strong James had to be, to bear the loss of both of his parents so soon.  He never seemed to hear those words.  They always made Lily want to call her own mother, even if it meant her mother talking on and on about things she didn’t understand because when was the last time she’d even begun paying attention to things in the muggle world?  But it was her mum, and she was sure that her mum was getting lonely.   Though she was sure that Petunia did her best to take care of her.  She really should call home.

“Lily?”

“Hm?”

Florence was looking at her.  “I said I’m glad he’s not alone.  I’m glad he’s living with you.”

Lily smiled at her.  “I’m glad he’s here as well,” she says.  She looks over her shoulder again.  James is scratching his chin, and, as if he can sense her watching him, he looks up from his book about dog breeds.  He smiles at her slightly, and she smiles back before turning back to the casserole.

“You’re a secret animagus who is undercover studying the breeding habits of monkeys,” Lily says over dinner.

James coughs, nearly choking on a carrot, and thumps his chest to calm his lungs.  “What?” he manages.

“Your job.  You’re a secret animagus who is studying the breeding habits of monkeys.  It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Of course I’m not,” James says, trying to laugh.  “And, honestly, monkey?  You think that if I were going to be an animagus, I’d turn into a monkey?”

“Well?” Lily asks.  “What do you think you’d turn into if you were an animagus.”

“I dunno.  I’ve never given it much thought,” James lies, and he takes another bite of salad.

“Your favorite class was Transfiguration.”  It wasn’t, but correcting her might lead her to a…Merlin.  She’d guess it right then.  But she’s too close to the… “James?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got that look on your face like when I catch you in the middle of a huge lie.”

“It’s not a huge lie.”

“Oh really.”

“No.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you have probably got trust issues or something.”

Lily guffaws.  “James, come on.  Out with it already.”

“I can’t, Lily.”

“You—”

“No, I mean really.  I can’t.  It’d get me arrested.”

“So you are a secret animagus?” Lily asks slowly.  James doesn’t say a word.  “Who doesn’t…oh you don’t!” she practically yells.

“Don’t what?”

“Run about with Remus on the full moon, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“James!” she’s practically shrieking now.  Oh this is bad.

“Look—it’s not that bad.  We’re bigger than he is.  It’s fine.”

“What are you, a horse?” Lily demands angrily.  “Or…Prongs.”  She hits herself in the forehead.  “You’re a stag aren’t you?”

“It’s my patronus,” James says, not untruly.

That gives Lily pause.  She cocks her head, looking at him, and he can see about six different emotions running over her face. 

“Lily?”

“I’m trying to decide what to say first.”

“Well, pick one.”

“My patronus is a doe.”

James stares at her.  She’s watching him closely, and he feels his lips do…something.  Not a smile, not a frown, not a neutral nothing.  They kind of wiggle.  She smiles, and all he can think is don’t be an idiot, which is promptly overrun by a different, more excited thought of, it’s a doe!  And I’m a stag!  She’s a doe! 

“The second one is are you kidding me? Do you know how dangerous that is?” she snaps and the moment is over, but James doesn’t care because he’s swelled up like there’s a balloon inside him and he knows she’s mad at him, but she’s not actually mad at him.

 Lily spots her briefly when she comes through the door, and grabs Remus by the scruff of his neck and drags him, yelping, towards the stairwell.

“Gabby’s here,” she hisses at him.

His eyes bug out of his head, and he stands on tiptoes to stare over Lily’s shoulder.  “You’re sure?” he breathes.  Lily nods.  She doesn’t bother looking again.  She wouldn’t be surprised if she couldn’t find her again.  It’s a wake, and everyone’s wearing black.  Lily would have missed her were it not for her telltale curls, and the flash of golden earrings. 

“What’s she doing here?” Lily hisses. 

“Their mums were friends,” Remus says.  “But I didn’t see her mum at the burial.  You don’t think…” he frowns.

“What’s the party?” Sirius says, drifting over, a scotch in hand, his eyes a bit glazed.  “Are we planning something?”

“Gabby’s here,” Remus says quickly.  He turns around again, and locks eyes with Peter and gestures him over, Florence trailing behind him. 

“Did you see?  Gabby’s here,” Peter said in a hushed voice.

“That’s what we were just talking about,” Lily says. 

“James hasn’t been…you know, seeing her again?”  And she finds four sets of eyes staring at her, because she, as James’ roommate, would know what he might be hiding from the rest of them.  Fat bloody chance, she thinks bitterly of James’ job, and how she still doesn’t know what that might be.

“Not that I know of,” Lily says.

“We need to run interception,” Sirius says.  “Keep her away from him at all times.”

“That seems unlikely.  She’ll probably want to give her condolences, and she deserves at least that much,” Remus points out.

“After breaking his heart like that she doesn’t deserve anything,” Sirius says a little too loudly and Lily elbows him while Peter shushes him.

“I thought he broke up with her,” Lily says.  She’s only been able to put pieces of it together, since James really doesn’t want to talk about it.

“He did,” Pete says.

“But you know that thing that people say about how sometimes it’s worse to break up with someone than it is to be broken up with because you know the damage you’re doing?” Remus says, sounding tired.

“No.”  Lily has never heard that before, but she considers it for a moment.  “But I can see that being true of James.”

They all nod. 

“Speaking of,” Sirius says, standing on his tiptoes.  “Where is Prongs?”

“With Frank and Alice,” Florence pipes up.

“So in safe hands, then,” Remus says.  He’s thinking hard. 

“How do we get her out?” Sirius demands.

“We can’t, Sirius.  That’s rude.” 

“And I thought you said interception,” Peter adds.

“I changed my mind.  I don’t want her near him at all, so it’s best if he doesn’t know she’s—”

“She’s talking to him now,” Florence says and all four of their heads snap around to look. 

And she is.  She’s leaning in to give him a hug, and James has a look on his face that Lily’s never seen before and she’s not entirely sure she likes.  Peter groans.

“Damn,” Sirius exclaims, while Remus’ face twitches into a scowl.

“He’ll know if we run interception now, and I can’t say if he’d want it or not,” Remus says.

“He’ll have to want it.  After the way he was when they broke up,” Sirius says.

“But if he doesn’t he’ll not thank us,” Peter says.  “He’ll get real tetchy, on top of everything else.”

Lily looks between them, then sighs.  “I’ll go.  I don’t know her as well.”  And before they can protest, she slips past Peter and Florence and crosses the room with purpose.

“Are you enjoying it?” She hears Gabby ask as she approaches.

“It’s good.  Rewarding.  Very different from quidditch.  Draining in a very different way.”

“I can only imagine.”

Are they talking about James’ job?  Lily almost pauses to eavesdrop, pushing back a flicker of frustration that Gabby Carmichael knows what James is doing even if Lily doesn’t.  But she keeps her mind on her mission.

“James,” she says and his eyes dart to her and she can see relief wash over his face.  “The caterers are nearly done setting up lunch and need your signature.” 

“Right,” he says quickly.  “I’ll be back,” he says to Gabby and Frank and Alice and he slips off.  Lily plucks up a glass of wine from a tray that’s floating by and takes a sip. 

“Lily,” she says, extending her hand to Gabby.  “We were in advanced potions together, I don’t know if you…”

“Right! Of course,” Gabby says, smiling.  She’s always been pretty, Gabby.  “How are you?”

“I’m well,” Lily says.  “Doing my best to help him.  It’s been an awful few months.”

Sympathy stretches over Gabby’s face.  “I’m sure,” she says.  “Losing his dad and then his mum…Are you two…?” her voice trails away, leaving the question unasked.

“Oh.  God no.”  But even as she says it, there’s a twinge of sadness about it.  There shouldn’t be.  There really has no reason to be.  The weird possessiveness she feels about James is purely platonic, but in this moment, where he’s been Gabby’s, she wishes that her relationship with James were… “Just my roommate.”

“Oh.  He’s moved out of his old place then?”

“When he started the new job.” 

“Makes sense,” Gabby says.  “It must pay much less well than quidditch.”  And in that moment, Lily knows precisely how she’ll keep Gabby occupied until the boys have figured out what to do about it all.

“I can only imagine.  He never talks about the pay change,” Lily says. 

“He wouldn’t.  He gets oddly noble about the strangest things,” Gabby says fondly, and Lily wishes she didn’t sound quite that fond—not after she’d broken James’ heart.

“Indeed.  Though I won’t say I’m not glad of that.  It’s the noble streak that keeps me from…”

“Throttling him?”

“Well…”

Gabby laughs.  “I seem to remember a few moments in school.  Didn’t you once threaten to drown him in frogspawn?”

“Did I?”  Lily flushes. 

“It was in the Great Hall.  Fifth year, I think.”

“Ah.  Yes, that sounds like fifth year.”

Lily raises her wine to her lips again, and looks around for Frank and Alice but, Alice being the most useless former roommate she’s ever had, they both have disappeared.

“It feels like so long ago,” Gabby says. 

“I know,” Lily says.  “I sometimes think back on it, and you never feel old until you realize how young you were then.”

Gabby nods knowingly.  “And everything that’s changed…Merlin, I just…well, I’m getting married.  I don’t know how to tell that to James.”

“Congratulations,” Lily says.  “Who’s the lucky man?”

“Sergei Sokolov,” Gabby says.  “I met him through work while I was on a trip to St. Petersburg.  He’s moving here once his paperwork clears.”

“I wish you luck.”  She suddenly feels much more warmly towards Gabby now that she knows that Gabby has a Sergei.  “Do you speak any Russian?”

“Not really.  I know a few words, but they aren’t useful at all.  Sergei’s English is very nice though.” 

Lily nods.

“I was thinking about putting him in touch with James, actually, in case there are positions open.  You don’t know if there are, do you?  I…I’m hesitant to just…well you know how James is.”

“I don’t know,” Lily says.  “And yes, I know how James is.  I could try and find out.”

“That would be excellent.  He’s got a strong background in most areas of magic.  I actually think he and James would work well together as colleagues but…well, I suppose I have a type.”

“What makes you think Sergei would…work well at…” Damn.  She hadn’t thought through that sentence properly.  She takes a sip of wine, hoping, praying that Gabby will…

But Gabby’s eyes narrow, and her eyes shoot from Lily to the direction that James had disappeared in.  “He’s doing something ridiculous where he hasn’t told anyone what he does, hasn’t he?”

Lily grimaces.  “How did you work it out?”

“You’ve been vague, and Alice seemed surprised to hear what he did.”

“Alice knows?”  That hadn’t occurred to her.  Alice would tell her, she was sure of that. 

“Yes.  Now she does. And I’m sure he’s swearing her to secrecy now.”  Of course he was.

“And I don’t suppose…” Lily asks, and Gabby pats her arm sympathetically.

“I should.  Just for all the hell he caused when he left me.  But…” She shook her head.  “I can’t.  It feels like I’m crossing some line, and the whole point was that I couldn’t cross that line.”  She sets her wine down on a passing tray and says.  “I’m off to find mum.  It was lovely speaking with you again, Lily.”

And she goes off, leaving Lily alone, frustrated, and also wondering what on earth Gabby had meant.

It’s his dad’s birthday, and James and Sirius go out for drinks.  Last year, he’d spent the evening with his mum, making sure that she was all right, not knowing how soon it would be before she was gone too.  This year, he drinks with Sirius.

It’s a quiet evening, and Sirius is in a melancholy drunk sort of mood rather than the energetic drunk mood he’d so often displayed in school. 

“He was a good man, old Fleamont.  A good dad.”  Sirius says as he raises his third glass of whiskey in the air.  “To Fleamont Potter.”

“Cheers,” James says and they clink glasses.  “To dad.”

“Better father than any in the world,” Sirius says.  His words are slurring and James looks at him.  He’s missed him too, he thinks.  Am I selfish not to have thought about that?  He hadn’t.  He’d not had time while working, and then with mum, and Lily…but it’s Sirius.  He knows when Sirius needs to be talked out of something.  This isn’t one of those times.  So they drink and James wishes his dad were there with them.

“You can’t tell her.  Either of you.  Can’t tell any of them.”

“It’s ridiculous.  Why would you hide it from them?  It’s not even that exciting.”

“It’s just gone all out of proportion, and they can’t know.  They have to work it out.”

“Even Lily?”

“Especially Lily.”

“What does that mean?”

“I just…she…I don’t know.  She just needs to find it out on her own.  I don’t…”

“How long have you been in love with her?”

“Alice.”

“No, I’m serious, James.  How long?”

“I’m not in love with Gabby.”

“Lily, James.” 

James pauses, and closes his eyes.  “Can we not talk about this now?”

“You’re the one who’s asking me to lie to my friend on your behalf, and you’re the one who brought it up here and now.  So you tell me, and don’t you bloody well say since forever, or since fifth year because I’ll throttle you with your own penis.”

“Alice.”

“Hush, Frank.  I’m serious.”

“Who’s serious?” Sirius asks, appearing out of nowhere.  James, Alice, and Frank whirl around to see him, standing there with more alcohol in his hand.  “Ahh.  Seem to have struck a moment, have I?”

“Can you shoo for a moment? I’ll explain later,” James lies. 

“We’re still running interference with Gabby.  I take it that’s welcome?”

“Yes.  Very.  Now shoo.”

“Right-o, Prongs.”  And Sirius is gone.  James turns back to Alice.

“How long?” Alice demands again.

“I honestly don’t know,” he says.  “Look, it’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?  She’s your bloody roommate, James.”  Alice’s voice has deteriorated to a shrill hiss.

“I’m handling it.”

“How?”

“There’s a lot going on and she’s not interested.  That’s how.  That’s enough for now, and if it gets to be too much, I’ll handle it better.  Look, you can’t tell her, all right?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’ve been told.  But you have to be nice to me.  It’s my mother’s funeral.”

Alice mutters under her breath and walks away.  James glances at Frank.  Of the two of them, Frank is the unknown entity.  Lily has stories out her ears about Alice, and sees her frequently, but he’s never spent extended time with Frank.  He just knows he’s an auror, and that it’s a bunch of his mates that Lily brings home from time to time.

“You won’t—”

“No.  I won’t.  But…” Frank steels himself.  “You seem like a nice guy, and I know your mother just died, but if you hurt her I know how to kill you and make it look like an accident.”

“That’s fair,” James says, shrugging, and he extends a hand, and Frank shakes it.  “I’ll help you hide my body if it comes to that.”

Frank bites back a smile.

It isn’t until much later, when Lily and the Marauders and Florence are helping him box up the extra food that he really lets himself think on it.

All the signs, he supposes, had been there, and he’d just attributed it to some idiotic boyhood crush that he’d put to bed the moment he’d asked out first Violet and then Gabby.  And if Violet, the six month torrid relationship hadn’t cleansed him of his crush on Lily Evans, Gabby certainly had.  Gabby, whom he’d loved so profoundly that there was a time he thought he’d cut out his own heart and chopped it into teeny tiny pieces because he’d had to end it. 

On top of that, falling in love wasn’t something he did gently, or subtly.  He’d been excruciatingly aware of it both of the other times it had happened, had delighted and agonized simultaneously as first Violet, and then Gabby had made him feel like the world was the sort of beautiful place that he’d never truly believed existed.  So Alice demanding to know when he’d fallen in love with Lily…He didn’t know.  He didn’t know because he hadn’t noticed.  He certainly hadn’t always been in love with her.  He wasn’t so stupid as to think fifth year infatuation was the same thing as love, as what he felt for her now.  It was like she’d slipped in there between his exhaustion for work and his agony over his father and she’d wrapped an arm around him and dragged him out to lectures and helped him through and…

To be fair, he had known he loved her.  James loved his friends.  He worked hard to make sure that everyone knew that being friends with him was an honor, for it meant that, by the end, he loved you.  So how long had he loved Lily?  Years now.

Maybe that was the problem.  Maybe he’d confused love with in love and that was why he hadn’t noticed until Alice had demanded to know when and his reaction hadn’t been “I’m not,” so much as “oh.”

She has this habit of touching him and when she does for just a moment he feels this recognition of something that’s not quite home and not quite joy but something similar to each.  She rests her hand on his shoulder when she comes back out of the kitchen.  “Anything else you want?  For the time being?”

They were coming back the next weekend to begin going through his parents things, to see what he’d want to keep, what he’d want to sell, what he’d store, and what he’d…what, leave for renters?  Was he going to rent his parents house? That would probably be a good idea.  It was big enough for a family, and in a nice neighborhood.  He certainly didn’t want to live in it right now.  Maybe later.  For now he was happily installed in his little flat.  With Lily.

“James?”

“Oh.  Sorry.  I think that’s it.”

She nods, and turns away and he feels his eyes drop along her spine to her hips to her legs, and when did she start being the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen?

They’re lying in bed together when she says it.  “You know I love you, right?”

James looks at her, then turns away to put his glasses back on, smiling as he does so.

“Yeah,” he says.  “I know.”

“Right,” Lily says, her throat dry.  “Good.”

“Yeah,” he agrees.  “Good.”

She kisses him, and everything is warm and right when he wraps his arms around her.

The elastic in her hair is too loose to wrap around her pony tail three times, but twice is not enough it keeps sliding loose, so Lily pulls it loose for the fourth time that morning and points her wand at it.  But as she tries to remember what a shrinking charm is, her mind is blank, and she just stands there with her wand pointing at her hair tie, blinking.

“What did it ever do to you?” James teases.  He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, and there’s sweat on his forehead.  It’s not like they’ve been doing heavy lifting, but the room is stuffy and it’s a humid sort of day.

“It’s weak,” she tells him.  “I’m trying to…” but she can’t form the words anymore.  “Make it wrap around my hair more.  Or less.  One or the other.”

James blinks at her.  “I think you’re asking too much of it.”

“Oh shut up,” she mutters, and the spell fills her mind and she shrinks the hair tie.  She sweeps her hair up into her hands and turns her back on him, towards the bookshelves that are laden with heavy leatherbound volumes that are undoubtedly older than she is.

“Your parents sure read a lot,” she says.

“Dad mostly,” James responds, coming to stand next to her.  She can smell his sweat.  James is one of those men blessed with nice smelling sweat.  Or at least—nice to her nose.  Not all of them are.  “Mum didn’t read much.  She liked to pretend she did.  And she could fake it better than anyone I knew.  Even Sirius.”

“Fake reading?”

“Fake that she’d read something.  You’d never know she hadn’t cracked it open.”  He sighs and runs a hand over a volume whose title is written in what appears to be Greek.  “Dad and I used to joke that we should get her and Sirius in a conversation where they’d neither of them read the book but couldn’t let that on to one another just to see what they’d do.”  His eyes are distant, and Lily reaches a hand up to pat his shoulder. 

James stiffens for a moment and she lets her hand fall away.  “Sorry,” he mutters, “I was just thinking…we should see what sort of damage Sirius and Remus and Pete have gotten up to.”

They’d divided forces.   As a former resident of the house, Sirius knew where things were, and he was going through the kitchen and dining room with the other two.  They find the three of them sitting at the long, polished dining room table, counting cutlery.

“No.  You can’t, Pete.”

“Thanks for deciding you have the right to give permission about my personal life, Sirius,” Peter says dryly. 

“You can’t!  We’re a band of four.  Not a band of…four plus one.”

“What about Lily?” Peter asks.

“What about me?” Lily sits down opposite.

“You’re a plus one.  Not a romantic one, but a plus one nonetheless.  I mean, you and James live together so you get dragged into things.”

“Not that I want to, but I see your point,” Lily says.  She smiles at James.

“What’s your problem with Florence?” James asks Sirius.  “Apart from, you know, her being a Slytherin, and friends with Regulus, and doesn’t take your shit, and—”

“Pete wants to marry her.  That’s my problem.”

The words ring through the room, and Lily glances between Sirius and Peter.  Peter looks completely calm.  No, not calm.  Happy.  There’s the same lightness to his eyes that Alice had had when Alice had gotten engaged.  That look of purpose and excitement and elation. 

“Congratulations, Peter.”  It’s James that says it first, and he’s grinning and clapping Peter on the shoulder.

“Yes.  Congratulations,” Lily says, smiling as well. 

“Thanks,” Pete says.  “I haven’t technically asked her yet, but I’m sure she’ll say yes.”

“She’d better,” Remus says, and there’s a mildness to his voice that can only be hiding steel. 

“If she doesn’t, I’m sure that we’ll figure out a way to make her upset about it,” Sirius says.

Peter’s brow furrows as he looks at Sirius.  “You just said I couldn’t, and are we fifteen?  If she says no, she’s exercising her right to do so and we won’t make her upset.  We didn’t—” but he looks at James and cuts himself off. 

“When are you asking her?” James asks, clearly not planning to acknowledge that Peter had just thought of Gabby.

“Next weekend.  Unless…” he does a quick calculation, then opens his mouth, then shuts it, his eyes darting between Remus and Lily. 

“Unless what?” Lily asks.

“What?”

“You were looking at me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Me and Remus.”

“Did I?”

“Remus’ Furry Little Problem won’t need a babysitter,” Remus says benignly.  “Earlier in the week I may want to rip his head off, but next weekend I should be fine.”

“Big deadline?” Sirius asks him, and Remus gives him a withering look.

“Am I ever going to meet this damned rabbit?” Lily asks.

“You don’t want to,” James says.  “Trust me.”

“The way you lot talk about him,” Lily grumbles.

They have lunch and in the afternoon, James and Peter go off and Lily and Remus and Sirius go through James’ mum’s closet and jewelry—James having already indicated that he cared not at all about going through his mother’s valuables, and that if they saw things that he should want to keep he gave them license to do so. 

Mrs. Potter had one of the widest collections of jewelry that Lily had ever seen in her life.

“I had no idea that the Potters were so loaded,” she breathes as she picks up a diamond necklace.

“Eh,” Sirius shrugs.  “You’d be amazed at how modest this all is.”

“Pure bloods,” Remus says, smiling at her.  “It takes a while to get used to.”

“You don’t want to get used to it,” Sirius says darkly.

“So I’ve noticed over the years,” Lily points out. 

Sirius’ black mood continues, and he seems to get grumpier and grumpier as he throws Mrs. Potter’s furs and cloaks onto the bed.  Lily glances at him, then at Remus.  She’s heard James talk about Sirius’ moods.  About how sometimes Sirius just goes into a dark place that James can’t follow him to, but she’s never seen it up close first hand.  But here it is, and she can see it clearly.  Sirius’s face is focused but his eyes are distant. 

“Spit it out,” Lily says.  She doesn’t for a second expect it to work though.  Sirius and James, for all they are close are not the same person in the slightest.  James wears his heart on his sleeve.  Sirius buries it deep inside him, so when he looks up at her, clearly peeved, she glares back.  She doesn’t know what his demons are, but she knows what it is to have demons herself.  “Spit it out or go walk it off.”

She doesn’t dare look at Remus, who is opening drawers in Mrs. Potter’s dresser.  She has the impression, even without looking at him, that he’s keeping his head down, but listening intently.

“It’s just never going to be as it was, is it?” he says.

“By definition,” Lily says and his glare intensifies.

“There’ll always be more than just us now.  And in a few years there’ll be little Petes running about.  And what’s next?  Who’s next?  Are we all just going to grow up?”

“You can’t be a boy forever. You’re not Peter Pan, Sirius.”

He doesn’t get the reference, but he doesn’t seem to care, either.  “I don’t want to be a boy,” he says and his voice bubbles with fury.  “I just thought that being older would be better.  Instead you just get left behind.”

“Who’s leaving you beh—”

But he whirls around.  “Walk it off,” he says.  “Yeah.  I’ll do that.”

And he’s gone.  Lily looks at Remus who closes the drawer to the dresser and turns around and leans against it, sighing.  “Was there a better way to do that?” she asks him.

“Probably not,” Remus sighs.  “I don’t know if there is a better way to do anything with him.  James is, well, magical on that front.  But James has a lot going on right now.”

Lily grimaces.  He does have a lot going on right now, but Lily doesn’t wonder if this mightn’t be worth it.  

“Look, I don’t see—” Sirius begins, but Peter cuts him off.

“Because it matters.  Dancing at a wedding is important, and I have muggles coming, Sirius.”

“So?  Just pretend the music’s from some—”

“We’re already having a non-magical ceremony, and are already asking the magical guests not to bring wands and to wear muggle clothes.  Do you really think that the guests won’t notice if something’s off if suddenly the Weird Sisters are playing?”  Florence asks.  She’s at the table, running through acceptances with Lily and sorting the cards into piles. 

“I’m still amazed that you convinced your family to have a muggle ceremony.”  James says.  He’s on the floor next to Peter, staring as Peter scrolls through a computer, picking songs from a list and playing them periodically.  His eyes are wide. 

Florence shrugs.  “It’s easier to tell wizards to act like muggles than to violate the statute of secrecy.”

“It’s for like…ten people, though,” Sirius says.  “Confound them afterwards or something.”

“That’s a crime, Sirius,” Lily points out.

“So?”

“Lily,” Peter calls, “Am I missing anything at all?  I’m just going through my dad’s iTunes and—”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Lily says.  “Haven’t listened to muggle music in years.”

Peter’s eyebrows raise slightly.  “Really?”

She nods.  “It was too much to keep up with.”

“Not even over school holidays.”

“I’d rather see friends when I was a kid,” she shrugs, her face neutral.  James watches her closely.  Snape, she means, he thinks.  He somehow can’t see Severus Snape encouraging Lily to keep connected with the muggle arts. 

“Oh,” Pete says, then he glances at Sirius and James.  “Well, I guess my friends were all at school, so music and stuff was what I had.  It’s mostly after school that I lost track.”

Lily smiles at him.  “I feel like you can’t go old with oldies, though?  Or have it just be a bunch of jazz.  Wizards dancing is more like muggle formal dancing anyway—at least at weddings.”

Peter makes a face, considering.  “Or I could tell the DJ to give free reign.”

“Dangerous,” Lily says.  “But could also be amusing.  I’d love to watch this one’s face,” she toes Sirius.

“My face will probably be drunk, so I imagine that it will be entertaining, regardless of music,” Sirius says.  Lily laughs, and James grins at her before looking back at Sirius.  He hopes that she doesn’t see the way his grin fades as he looks at his best friend.  His eyes are blank again.  I’ll have to keep track of him at the wedding, James thinks. 

“You can’t ever get the upper hand on this one, can you?” she asks him, and he shakes himself and focuses on Sirius again, who is now trying not to look pleased with himself.

“You can, but it’s dangerous, and I only recommend it if you’re a trained professional.”

“Are you a trained professional?  Is that your job?”

“Job prep,” Sirius says, seriously.

Lily groans.  “You know?”

“Yeah.  I’ve known this prat since my first day.  Of course I know what he does to make money.  You’ll never have the upper hand, Lily.”

“Oy, can we pay attention to me, please?  It’s my bloody wedding we’re planning here,” Peter snaps and Lily turns away from Sirius.  James sees her share a glance with Florence for a moment before they both go back to sorting RSVPs.

“When did you know that you were going to ask her?” James asked.  They’re in the basement now, and they’ve got rags wrapped around their noses and mouths to protect from dust.  James wonders when the last time his parents cleaned down here was.  His mother had always bemoaned that her older sister got the House Elf.

“It’s been dawning on me for a while,” Peter says, his voice vaguely muffled by the rag.  “Just like…as the business gets off the ground she comes in every day after work to check in on me and it all feels very domestic.  Like, my mum and dad used to drive home from work together every day, so Florence looking in on her way home from St. Mungo’s…It’s not even on the way, and god only knows that her shift there has been bonkers lately.  But I’ve just sort of been ‘this is it,’ you know?”

James did know.  He knew all too well.  He’d had that feeling before, right after he and Gabby had moved in together, when he’d thought about buying her a ring and settling down with her for the rest of his life.  He’d come to this house, too, to talk to his parents about it. 

“That’s great, mate,” he says, elbowing Peter.

“Please don’t have picked up elbowing from Lily,” Peter groans and James grabs the offending elbow and stares at it. 

“Merlin, I did, didn’t I?”

“Un-pick it up,” Peter commands raising his hands and making a shooing gesture. “Go on.  Hie thee hence.  Your presence is unwanted.”

James grins and turns to a box, wand raised, causing it to float down to the ground between him and Peter.  “Well…I’m really happy for you mate.  She’s always been good for you, I think, and I’m glad one of us is transitioning into adulthood pretty well.”

“You’re not handling it too badly,” Peter points out.  I’m battling regression every day but thanks, Pete.  James smiles at him.

He hears a door slam upstairs and looks up at the ceiling.  “That’s either well wishers or someone got Sirius upset,” James sighs.  “Be back.”

“Go on.  I’ll be fine down here,” Peter says, and James climbs up the rickety staircase to the pantry then goes onto the back porch, where he finds Sirius as a dog, running around the backyard, growling at butterflies.

“Sirius,” James calls to him, and Sirius pauses, cocking his head.  Then he turns tail and runs into the woods.  “Oh for crying out—”

James runs after him and, after taking a quick look at the second floor to see if he can see any sign of Lily through the window, turns into the stag and runs after Sirius. 

The nice thing about the stag is that he’s got longer legs, and he can run faster than Sirius, even when he’s being a dog.  Even if he does have to look out for low hanging branches.  That had caused him trouble when he’d been younger and hadn’t remembered, but there’s nothing like feeling as though your scalp’s ripping off to make you learn that lesson fast.  He catches Sirius quickly and then keeps a pace with him until they’re a good way from the house.  They come to a little lake, one that the two of them had swum in naked when they were sixteen and Sirius had just run away from home. The dog goes into the water and paddles about for a few minutes, while the stag waits, watches him.  Then the dog comes out, and Sirius is there, dripping, but he takes out his wand and dries his clothes while James transforms again.

“Shall we walk back?” James asks.

Sirius grunts and they go back through the woods in silence, the sunshine beating down on their skins.  James waits.  You always wait with Sirius.  He’s not like Remus where you have to force him to spit it out.  He bites your head off if you try.  That’s probably what Lily had done.  He was sure it was Lily.  Remus couldn’t make Sirius get into a head of steam quite like this.

“I’m getting left behind,” Sirius says at last.

“Like bloody hell you are,” James says dryly.

“Pete’s getting married, Remus is focusing on his career, you’re hardly around because your mystery job drains the life out of you, and when it’s not you’re with Lily.  And where am I?  Training dogs and fucking about.”

James wants to clap Sirius on the shoulder—had he picked that up from Lily too?—but thinks better of it.  This isn’t a clapping someone on the shoulder kind of conversation.  So he jams his hands into his pockets.  “What is it that you want?” James asks quietly.  “Like—”

“I don’t bloody know,” Sirius grumbles.  “I’ve never known what I wanted to do—just what I don’t want to do.  I guess that’s the problem.  Get married?  Not for me.  Have kids?  Merlin, I’d be an awful parent.  Be a fine upstanding citizen?  I prefer dogs to people increasingly.  No wonder I’m getting left behind.”

“You’re not being left behind,” James says.

“No.  I am,” Sirius says.  “I am and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“There is,” James says fiercely.  “Look, Sirius, you’re my best mate.  Do you honestly think that I’d—”

“Nah.  You wouldn’t.  But that doesn’t mean you aren’t.  There’s a difference.” Sirius sighs.  “Maybe I need to go away for a little while.  Lie on a beach or something.”

“No,” James blurts out, and Sirius looks at him.  Sirius can’t go too.  Not after his dad and his mum.  He can’t.  But that’s not something he says to Sirius.  If it were Lily, he’d say it all and she’d wrap her arms around him, but Sirius… “I’d miss you, is all,” he says.  He tries to put the thoughts into the words. 

“I miss me,” Sirius whispers.  “I used to be happy.  Didn’t I?”

Sirius had always been angry.  But he hadn’t seemed this unhappy, overtly, in years.  “Yeah.  I think you did,” James says.

“I want to be happy again.”

“I want you happy, mate.”

They walk in silence the rest of the way to the house.  They’d never made this walk in silence before, and James knows that Sirius is thinking about that too.

“All right,” Remus says, and Lily sits up a little straighter.  She’s not used to hearing him speak loudly.  If anything, there’s a brassy quality to his voice that makes him sound so unlike the Remus she’s known for so long.  She feels James’ hand land, almost lazily, on the small of her back as he leans forward to watch Remus as well.

“I have a confession to make.  I didn’t write this speech alone.

“For those of you who have known Peter for a long time—first of all, I, on behalf of James Potter and Sirius Black over here—” he jerks his head in their general direction.  “would like to apologize.”  There’s a bit of appreciative laughter.  “Peter is a remarkably decent fellow, and I must say that we corrupted him rather badly at school.  Or rather…James and Sirius corrupted him, I tried not to be corrupted and failed dismally.  Peter didn’t even bother trying.” 

James lets out a “Ha,” of laughter and Lily looks at him fondly. 

“For those of you who don’t know what that means, allow me to give some brief examples.”  He looks down at the piece of paper in his hands and, for the first time, really reads.  “…Messing with the pipes in the girl’s prefect’s bathroom so the water came out pre-soaped,” Lily’s eyebrows fly up.  Not because of the story—she’d known that was them and had shrieked at them for hours—but because they are actually trying to make their stories muggle stories.  It had been frogspawn, not soapy water.  Infinitely worse.  “replacing all the balls the Slytherin team used for practice ones that were three times the weight, and—allegedly—” Remus gives the crowd a severe look, “spiking all the drinks on the staff table at the opening feast our seventh year.” 

Peter rests his forehead in his hands, while James and Sirius shake their heads, smugly making tsking noises.  Lily rolls her eyes.  She’d known that was them all along, and this is the closest she’s ever gotten to hearing a confession to it.

“Now, while we four were at school, there was a bit of a dynamic.  James and Sirius were the loud ones, I was the one holding them back, and Peter was the one who actually,” he throws James and Sirius a dirty look, “learned from his mistakes and was somehow able to refine whatever ideas came next.  He was a crucial part of our team, one who did not always get the recognition he deserved because some people don’t know how to let others in the spot light.  He is like an old jumper, one that’s often overlooked for flashier, less ratty options, but which nothing could ever replace.”

James and Sirius smirk loudly, and Peter grins over at them.

“Now, what do I mean when I say that?”

“Peter is the sort of person who is able to attain anything he sets his mind to.  Whether it’s setting up his candy shop—” someone in the crowd cheers, and Remus grins out.  “Right?  It’s amazing!  Best chocolate selection of them all.”  More applause.  “Or winning this amazing woman’s heart,” more applause, “Peter can and will solve any problem set before him, no matter how knotty it is.”

Peter collapses laughing, face as red as a ruby, and Sirius and James look at one another, grinning and very pleased with each other.  What on earth? Lily thinks before deciding she doesn’t want to know. 

James’ eyes are alight with joy as he looks at Remus.  He’s practically swelling with pride, and Lily wonders which part of the speech he’d contributed to.  She believes it that Remus had had his help, but it hasn’t been made obvious—not just yet.  His expression is so bright, so happy, so pleased with everything.  James and his boys, she thinks, and rests a hand on his knee.  His eyes flicker to hers and she smiles at him, and he smiles back and turns his attention to Remus.  They make him so happy.

“Peter’s a diligent worker—yes—but the thing he’s worked hardest at in his whole life is relationships.  I can’t even begin to express how much I have come to rely on him over the years, both in school and out.  He’s the first friend I go to when I’m in trouble, and he’s always got good advice for me, and for anyone else who comes along.

“That he’s the first of our number to get his life in order is no shock.  If anything, it’s a testament to his own capacity to ignore some influence,” Remus shoots Sirius and James another look and both of them make expressions to look like angels.  “In his heart of hearts, he’s a good person, and I am so wildly happy to be here with him today.

“Florence,” Remus turns to her, “I can safely say that if there is anyone in the world who understands what she’s got in Peter, it’s you.  The way he smiles when he talks about you is enough to make this sentimental old loon shed a tear of joy because I’ve never seen him look so happy.”  Peter raises one of Florence’s hands to his lips and kisses her knuckles and Remus is right.  He looks like Frank did at their wedding, all sorts of bliss—almost disbelieving in his good fortune.  I wonder if James will look so happy he’s married.  “And Pete, we honestly couldn’t be happier for you, and we promise, one day we’ll make all those hours in detention up to you.”

“Well said, Moony,” Sirius says as Remus sits down next to him again.  “Though I don’t quite know what you mean—some influences.”

“Yes,” James agrees.  “I’ll have you know that I was Head Boy.  I was a positive model of integrity and goodness at school.”

Remus rolls his eyes at the pair of them.

Peter and Florence dance their first dance together to a jazzy number that Lily feels like she remembers having heard in her youth.  They’re so lovely together, and look so in love.

Lily glances at James.  He’s watching her, and looks away quickly when she turns to him, lifting his whiskey to his lips and saying something to Sirius that she can’t quite hear.  He’s trying not to spook me, Lily thought again.  I’m not spooked, though. 

That was the scariest part.  Maybe Petunia’s wedding will spook me, she thinks darkly, and shudders slightly.  It’s approaching.  Maybe I can poison myself to get out of it?  But no.  No, she needs to go.  For her mum. 

She doesn’t want to be thinking about Tuney now.  She doesn’t know what she wants to think about, and when she feels that way, the best answer is, almost always, James.  He’s marvelous at distracting her.  Even if I’m spooked about not being spooked about marriage. 

“Shall we dance?” she asks him.

“Let a man finish his drink,” Sirius says.

“When can we expect you to pop the question?” she hears Remus ask, bemused.

“I already did.  Fourth year,” Sirius says.

James laughs.  “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Forgotten?” Sirius demands in mock aghast.  “James, I can’t believe…how…why…”

“I’ll dance with you, if you want to leave these two to their lovers’ spat,” Remus says, and Lily gets to her feet and takes his hand.

Remus is a very good dancer, and he looks tired.  “Are you getting enough sleep?” she asks.

He nods.  “Wedding prep,” he sighs.  And, you know…the other thing.”  Lily nods.  The full moon is in six days.  “He tried to space it out a little more, but Florence’s family…and, well, they shouldn’t have to take my furry little problem into account.”

“That’s what friends do,” she says and Remus smiles.

“I don’t deserve you all, in truth.”

“What an idiotic thing to say.”

He smiles, and they keep dancing.  At the end of the song, James appears as if out of nowhere.  “Mind if I cut in?” he asks, and Remus steps aside, and she’s in James’ arms again. 

“How’s Sirius handling your engagement?”

“He broke it off.  Couldn’t bear to give himself to someone who’d forget that we were promised,” James says dryly.

“That’s handy,” Lily says breathily, and James gives her a look.

“Yeah,” he whispers, seriously.  “Yeah, handy.”

“Is Sirius ok?” Lily asks, and James looks up from the pasta he’s cooking to see her standing in the door of the kitchen, looking tired.  It’s been a long week of work for her, and James sees it in her face, the dark circles under her eyes that make the green shine out of the darkness.  “James?”

He shakes himself.  Sirius, he thinks and then warmth floods through him.  He remembers knock-down drag-out fights between Sirius and Lily when they’d been kids, her shrieking at him that he was a horrible human being and a bully, and him telling her to relax and that it wasn’t a big deal and that there were far worse than him.  They aren’t fifteen anymore, but he’d never once thought that Lily Evans would ask him if Sirius was all right.  His heart twists and he notices all too much when Lily bites her lip, as though she’s overstepped some line.  “Never mind,” she begins to say but James opens his mouth.

“It’s complicated,” he says, and his mind is moving fast now.  He could lie, say that things were getting better.  He’s a good liar for the most part, but Lily catches his lies.  And she’d asked.  She’d really asked.  Merlin, I have it so bad, he thinks.  “He’s…he’s adjusting.  Slowly.  It’s hard, I think.  He’s got shite from home to work through from when he was a kid, and then on top of that we’re all busy and don’t have as much time anymore…” his voice trails away. 

“Was it so bad when you were playing quidditch?” Lily asks cautiously, and James shakes his head.

“Nah, I always had time for a drink after practice.  I think it’s the new job…” he frowns.  “Sirius has too much time and I don’t have enough.  And he’s bad at filling his life with new people.”

“He’s about as prickly as a porcupine,” Lily points out.

“I think because he’s lonely,” James says, that habit of leaping to Sirius’ defense kicking in, though it had been so long since he’d had to use it.  “Loneliness makes it harder for him to connect to people because he remembers too much.  He needs to be distracted from himself.”  And I don’t have time.  He thinks about the fifty essays he has to grade tomorrow, and how his sixth year needs this segment of courses replanned because they’re having some trouble nonverbalizing reflexological spells. 

“Hey,” Lily says and she crosses to him and her arms are around him and James breathes the scent of her, that lilac shampoo he’d first noticed when he’d been fifteen and randy and she hadn’t changed in all the years since.  “It’ll be ok.  You still care about him and you’ll help as you can.”

“Yeah, but I’m failing him,” James says, and something in his throat clicks.   He hopes Lily didn’t hear it.

“You’re not,” she says.  “You never could.  And he knows that.  That’ll help him through.”

James realizes his arms are limp at his side and he should shift them, should hug her back.  But she’s stepping away again, and the moment is gone.

“Ok, I need a job,” James says.

“You have one,” Remus points out, and James rolls his eyes.

“Yes, yes.  I know that.  I know that very well, thank you.  But I need a job so that when I’m at Lily’s sister’s wedding, they don’t think I’m a useless, unemployed fool.  I meant to think of one ages ago, but then I got distracted by…you know…my job.”

“Who cares?” Sirius asks, taking a bite of an apple core.

“I care,” James says, “because even if Lily doesn’t say it, she cares.”

She did.  That much was clear. She cared about it very, very much.  She’d already found herself a “new job” so that all the muggles would think she’d turned it around, and especially if James was going to this wedding as her boyfriend, he definitely needed to step it up as well.

“I am determined to be successful at this wedding,” James says.

“In what sense?” Peter asks.  He’s lying on the floor and has a lollipop in his mouth, and is looking thoroughly bemused by all this—perhaps because he’s remembering that James scarpered off to shag Lily at his wedding and he’s assuming that the same will happen at Petunia’s.  James hopes it will.  But that’s hardly relevant at the moment.

“I am determined to be a successful muggle, and determined also to be the star boyfriend.”

“Aww, but it’s her sister’s wedding.”

“You haven’t met her sister,” James says darkly.

“Fair enough,” Sirius says, clapping James on the shoulder.  “Make the old muggles wish it were you and Lily getting married, then?”  He sounds forcibly jovial, and James grins at him, encouragingly.

“Yes.  That’s the idea.”

Peter mumbles something that James couldn’t hear.  “What?”

“Nothing,” Peter says quickly, but the slight smirk on Remus’ face tells him that whatever it was, it hadn’t been nothing.  James elects to ignore it.

“So, we need to find you a job and help you be remarkably charming,” Sirius says.

“I’m already charming,” James points out.

“Yes, but if a muggle tries to drag you into conversation about The X-Factor, or what will you do?” Peter says.

“What’s that?  A potion ingredient?”

“Case and point.  I think we’ll need some flow charts,” Peter says, sitting up and waving his wand.  “Also…”

“I know you’re going to say your parents prepped you for fancy dinner parties, but believe me, they had nothing on Orion and Walburga, so I’m going to give you some pointers,” Sirius says, waving his wand and James sees flash cards zoom towards Sirius.

“I’d suggest tech,” Peter says, glancing at James.  “Say you work for Google.  And then say ‘I could tell you, but they’ll know and off me,’ whenever anyone asks you for more details.  Trust me, they’ll believe it and think you’re charming.”

“Google?” James asks.  “That’s not a real word, much less a place.”

“Prestigious job,” Peter says.  “Lots of money and long hours.  And no one will ask you for too many details.  American run.”

“That explains the name,” James mutters.

“Right.  So, computers,” Peter begins, and begins writing out a flow chart.

Lily comes home to find a letter on her doormat, written in a startlingly familiar hand.

Lily,

Mum’s died.  She had a heart attack last night.  The funeral is on Saturday.

Petunia

Lily stares at the words, wholly unable to understand what they mean.  Mum?  Dead?  Mum can’t be…Mum’s still got years on her.  Years.  She can’t be…

She puts the letter on the counter.  James isn’t home yet.  He has staff meetings after work on Wednesdays, and shouldn’t be home for another few hours.  So she puts her head in the fire and floos Alice.  Alice, she thinks as the world spins and compresses around her face, Alice will be able to make it stop hurting. 

“Alice?” she calls, but the kitchen fire is empty.  “Alice?” a little louder, but there’s not a sound.  There isn’t a sign of light streaming in under the door to the hallway.  There isn’t anything.  “God damn it,” she mutters and pulls her head out of the fire and wipes tears away from her face. 

She’s thoroughly drunk by the time that James gets home, and listening to a record by Judy Collins that her mum had listened to on repeat when she’d been a kid.  James takes everything into account—her tears, the music, the alcohol, before opening his mouth.  “Do I need to kill Jim the Ravenclaw?” he asks seriously.  That only makes her cry harder and she shakes her head, taking deep shuddering breaths and preparing to explain.

But she can’t.  She doesn’t know why, but she can’t get her mouth to move properly.  So she points to the counter where Petunia’s letter still sits.  James goes over and she sees him read it in less than a second before his head snaps back to look at her, pained sympathy on his face.  He crosses to the sofa in four strides and settles down next to her, wrapping her up in his arms, his hand on her hair and he’s so warm and solid and it just feels so good to be held right now that Lily can’t stand it and the tears come faster.

“I’m so sorry,” he says to her.  “I’m so sorry, Lily.”

She nods into his shoulder, and feels his arms tighten around her as she does so. 

“You should take off work for the rest of the week,” he tells her. 

“You didn’t,” she points out.

“Yeah, but I regret that.”

“You’re lying.”

She hears the wry smile in his voice.  “That obvious?”

“Yes.”

“You still should.  Your sister might want help planning things.”

Lily snorts.  “Tuney never wants my help with anything.”

“All the same, she might need it.  You might—”

“All right.  All right.”  But she doesn’t move.  She should go downstairs to the neighbors and lie and say their phone isn’t working and call Petunia, but she can’t bring herself to leave James’ arms right now, not when they’re the most solid thing in the world right now. 

“Do you want us all to come, or just me?” James asks.

“Come?  To what?”

“To the funeral.”

And she starts crying again, though for a different reason this time.  Of course James would assume that they’d all go to her mum’s funeral.  They’d all come to his parents’ funerals, after all.  Of course James would want to go. 

“It’s a muggle funeral,” she points out.

“So?  I’ve been in the muggle world before.”

Lily bites back a surprised when?  She can’t fathom James in the muggle world at all. 

“I…” she says.  She thinks about them all at the little parish graveyard, looking so thoroughly magical that Petunia would roll her eyes.  Petunia would roll her eyes regardless.  And purse her lips.  Definitely both. 

Petunia.

She’d have to explain Petunia to them.  It’d been easy to brush her off at school.  Petunia was her thoroughly muggle sister.  And leave it at that.  Leave out the shrieking arguments when Lily showed her parents how to brew a hiccup recovery potion, or doors slamming and fights with Sev. 

Alice she could share that with.  But Alice was probably busy, what with the wedding so close.  She was probably politicking her way through Frank’s crazy relatives. 

And besides, how could she say no to James when he assumed she wanted him there?  And did she really not want him there?

“Just you,” she says.  “I…I think the rest would cause trouble.  Well, mostly Sirius, but…”

“But you can’t have not Sirius but the other two.”

“Lily.”

She stiffens and doesn’t turn around.  She refuses to turn around.  She stares intently at the dragonskin gloves she’s been examining.  She needs new ones for work—hers are getting worn through because of the acidity of their most recent experiments. 

She will not look at him.  Will not.  Will not speak to him.  She hasn’t—not since she was fifteen.

“Lily,” he says and he’s standing next to her now.  She sees his profile—dark hair, hooked nose.  “Please, Lily, look at me.”

She edges away from him, examining a different pair of gloves.  They are too large for her, but it puts her body at an angle away from him. 

She hears him breathing behind her, then he mutters a curse under his breath.  “Of course you’ll not listen to me.  I’m sure he’s poisoned you against me years ago, didn’t he?”  As if you didn’t poison yourself first, she thinks darkly, thinking of his howled “Mudblood!” and how he hadn’t cared what Avery and Mulciber were getting up to. 

“Lily, he’s terrible, don’t you see?  Do you know what he’s doing now?  Bad enough that he was a bully in school, now he’s defending those who bully at Hogwarts—those who almost kill their peers.”

Lily’s mind goes blank for a moment.  Why would James care what kids at Hogwarts were getting up to, unless…

Chalk everywhere, locking himself up in his room like he’s doing homework, early morning departures and every now and then the inexplicably late night at the office, refusing to go to the Tonks’ Christmas party, being more free in the summer than in the winter…oh. 

Defending bullies at school…she shouldn’t be surprised by this.  She shouldn’t be, James had gotten up to so much when he’d been a kid, and now he’s teaching and…she takes a deep breath.  It’s Sev who’s telling her, though.  Sev, not James.  Why wouldn’t James tell her?  Because of this stupid game with his stupid new job.  He’d have told you if you had known.  I’m sure of it. 

She puts the dragonskin gloves down on the shelf and turns on her heel, walking away from him.

“Lily,” he calls.  “He’s horrible, and he hasn’t changed.”  She keeps walking.

Neither have you, Sev.  Neither have you.

It is raining lightly while they stood in the graveyard, listening to minister Pennyworth going on and on about Janice Evans.  James is listening closely, curiously, because in truth he doesn’t know much about Lily’s family at all.  He knew only that her father had died when she’d been at school, and that she had a sister.

A sister, who is a piece of work.  Petunia Evans looks nothing like her sister.  She has a long neck, and mousy hair and a face that looked surprisingly horselike.  James doesn’t find her attractive, but not because of her looks.  It is the look in her eyes when she looks at Lily, as if affronted by her sister’s existence, much less her presence.

“Janice will be missed,” the minister is saying.  “Not least because of her warmth or because of the biscuits she used to bring to bingo nights,” James makes a mental note to ask Lily later what on earth bingo was because it sounded interesting, “but because she was a source of endless warmth in our little community.  Our stage will be quieter without her guiding the parish’s children in their yearly musicale, and our hearts will be less lively without her laughter.” 

He casts a glance sideways at Lily.  She is staring at the box that contained her mother’s body, her green eyes glassy.  She isn’t crying.  She’d done all that when he’d come back from his meeting to find her drunk on their sofa and listening to a muggle record.  She doesn’t look even like she’s listening.  She looks like she’s far away, lost in memories.  James knows what that’s like.  It had happened when his parents had died as well.

But it’s strange to see it on Lily’s face.  Strange to see her standing there looking like she can’t hear or see anything around them. 

“And Martin’s just got a job working in London.  Are you still living in London, Lily?  You should look him up?”  Ellie Burton had cornered Lily within seconds of her stepping inside of her mother’s empty house.

“That’s great,” Lily says.  She won’t look him up.  She knows that already.  But she might send him a note.  She hasn’t seen Martin in years—not since she’d gone to Hogwarts instead of her local grammar school.  She wonders if his ears are more proportional to his head now.  “What’s he doing?”

“Public advocacy,” Ellie says.  “Well, not the legal part.  He’s running the office, though.  Doing administrative work.  And between you and me,” she lowers her voice, “I have no idea how the country runs.  The hoops he has to jump through…” she makes a tisking sound with her tongue.  “And what are you doing right now?”

“What?  Oh…” Lily scrambles, her eyes wide and she looks at James, but he knows fuck-all about muggle jobs.

“Between work?” Ellie asks, not unkindly, and Lily sighs.  She’d wanted to have a job that was very nice.  Positively dazzling to the minds of her mother’s friends.  She was the one who’d gone off to some fancy school for talented people.  They’d expect it of her. 

“Yeah,” she sighs.  “Didn’t like my old job.”  Don’t much like my current one as much as I want to, but she couldn’t say that.  “So taking a bit of a break before I dive into something new.”

“And you?” Ellie asks James, who looks like a deer in the headlights.  He’d been standing with her quietly, listening, looking rather like Professor Kettleburn when he was observing whatever magical creature he’d brought before the class.

“Oh.  I…” he looks at Lily and Lily raises her eyebrows at him.  “Between things as well, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” Ellie says, looking disappointed.  “Well…at least you have time for each other.”  She gives them a fond look, and Lily knows that look all too well.

“We’re not dating,” she blurts out.  “James is just a friend.”

“Flatmates,” James says.

“Flatmates?” Ellie looks confused.  “But…” then she waves her hands.  “I suppose it’s a generational thing.  I’ll sound like quite the old coot, but you didn’t go living with a male friend when you were my age.  But then I guess that’s just your age group.  I still can’t wrap my head around Louis Tomlinson and his baby.” 

Lily has no idea who Louis Tomlinson is.  Probably some movie star or something.

“My parents were quite perturbed,” James says, smiling at Ellie.  “But then again, they know the rest of my mates so I think they were glad I was living with someone who might be a good influence on me.”

That made Ellie chuckle.  “Well, I can understand that, I suppose.  Janice never mentioned it, so I assume it’s just me being a judgemental old bag.  But, then again, her head was very much wrapped up in Petunia’s wedding plans.  It’s so sad that she won’t be around for it.  She was so looking forward—”

Lily’s head snaps around to look across the room.  She’d been avoiding Petunia, in truth.  After giving her a kiss on the cheek, her sister had made it quite clear that not even their mother’s death could resurrect some of the sisterly affection they’d had as little girls and she’d sighed and turned away to James, neither upset or glad about it.  Just…it was just how it was with her and Tuney.  And apparently it was how it always would be.

Petunia is getting married, though.  To Vernon, she supposes.   And, looking at her sister more closely, she does see a ring on her sister’s left hand.  A modest one, nothing garish.  Petunia would hate something garish.  It…

It’s her mother’s engagement ring.  Petunia’s wearing her mother’s engagement ring. 

“Will you excuse me,” she says to Ellie, and without waiting for an answer she marches directly across the room.  She hears James behind her, making excuses and wonders if she’ll hurry after him. 

Petunia sees her coming, and Lily sees a moment of panic on her sister’s face, but she doesn’t care.  “Can I talk to you?” Lily says.  Petunia looks around.  There are people all around them, and Petunia has always cared how people think of her, and saying ‘no’ to your grieving sister on the day of your mother’s funeral is not exactly something that she can manage.  She forces a smile onto her face and the two of them go out into the backyard. 

The bench is wet, but Lily finds she doesn’t care and she sits down on it anyway.  She sees Petunia’s eyes widen.

“You’re getting married,” Lily says and Petunia flinches.

“Yes,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Were you going to tell me, or just hope I’d never talk to you again now that mum’s gone?”

“I…I didn’t think you would want to come,” she says. 

“Wouldn’t want to come?  You’re my sister, Tuney.”  Petunia glares at her. 

“You haven’t come home for Christmas in years, even though it broke mother’s heart.”  It’s Lily’s turn to flinch.  She’s not wrong.  Lily had gone to Alice’s and the Fortescue’s for the past few years.  “You don’t even bother to keep up with fashion.  I wouldn’t want you looking like a—a freak at the wedding.”  Lily looks down at her outfit.  It’s perfectly acceptable as far as she can tell.  She’s not like those old witches and wizards who don’t know how to wear muggle clothes at all.  She even wore these on weekends and the like, when she wasn’t at work.  Lots of them did these days.  Her clothes might be a little old, a little unfashionable by the times, but they’re not….

“Are we going to keep doing this?” she asks quietly.  “Forever and ever?  Driving each other mental.  We’re all we have left, Tuney.”

“We’re not,” Petunia says.  “I have Vernon and you have your little friends.  Don’t pretend that this,” she gestures between the two of them, “even compares.  You want to come to my wedding?  Fine.  Since mum’s gone there’s an extra spot.  You can even have a plus one, since mum was going to bring along a date, I think.  She was starting to move on, you know.  From dad.  Did you even know that?  You hardly ever called her.”

Lily feels something in her throat constrict.  She doesn’t even know why she should want to go to Petunia’s wedding.  She doesn’t know at all.  But she does, damn it.  Even if it’s just to spite her for making her feel awful on today of all days.  “I think that’ll be nice,” Lily says.  “Mum and dad would have wanted it.  Thanks Tuney.”

Her sister glares at her again.  “You’re just as selfish as you ever were.  You were well suited to that horrible boy.  Where is he, anyway?”

Lily looks at her sister sharply.  “Sev and I haven’t spoken in years.  Had a falling out.”

“Well, good.  If anyone was going to look a freak here, it would be that Snape boy.  At least Potter,” she says the name with a venom that James doesn’t deserve and Lily gets to her feet angrily, “has the decency to be polite to normal people and not send sticks at them.”  Petunia whirls away and marches through the door back into the house, leaving Lily standing in the back yard with balled fists.

She takes a few deep breaths, and is tempted to just disapparate, just go.  Mum would understand.  Mum always had told her that if she got in a fight with Petunia, she should put her head to rights before going and dealing with other people.  Leave Petunia to explain to the people inside what had happened.

It was tempting. 

But she couldn’t leave James to that.  So she sighs and goes back inside, walking right into him as she comes in through the kitchen.

“Just coming to look for you,” he said quickly, breathlessly.  “Do you have any idea who David Cameron is?  They keep talking about him and something about a pig and I just sort of fake it but I haven’t got a bloody clue who…” his voice trails away and he looks flustered and Lily takes his hand. 

“Let’s go,” she whispers.  “I’m done here.”

James sags with relief and nods, and the two of them go to the front door where they find their coats on pegs by the door and slip out.

“You’re a teacher?”  James looks up from his desk.  He hadn’t heard her come into the house, up the stairs.  He hadn’t heard her even open the door, and there she was, behind him while he graded his first years’ tests.

He turns in his seat and smiles at her, ready to ask her how she’d found out, but he sees the look on her face and there’s rage there, and suddenly he’s unsure.

He nods, and she crosses her arms over her chest and bites her lip.  “What subject?” she asks.  Her voice is breathy, upset. 

“Defense,” he says carefully.  “How’d you work it out?”

“Snape told me.”

James’ brain explodes in questions.  Why had she been talking to Snape?  What had Snape told her?  Why would she be looking at him like that unless… “He’s still angry about Montgomery, isn’t he?”

“Is that his name?”  Lily asks calmly.  He doesn’t like that calm.  It’s the calm that hides the storm. 

James nods, and he gets up from his desk and sits down on the bed, patting it for her to come sit next to him.  She sits down in his desk chair.  Not a good sign.  But did he tell her about Sirius?  And Remus?  And me?

“Agustus Montgomery is his name,” James says.  “He’s a fifth year, in Gryffindor, and he hasn’t had an infraction since he was suspended.”

“He said that he’d—”

“Nearly drowned a girl named Andrea Ringwald.  He didn’t mean it, but I don’t suppose one does when one sticks a peer’s head down a toilet.”  Lily flinches.  “He probably wanted a laugh.  He was failing most of his classes, and worried about his O.W.L.s.  Hardly an excuse, but it begins to explain the motivation.  The motivation is key.”

“Is it?” she asks.

“Isn’t it?” he responds. “You of all people know the shit I pulled.  I was a horrid berk at that age.  So was Sirius.  So were Peter and Remus.  So you tell me, why’d we do it?”

Lily looks uncomfortable, but doesn’t say anything.

“Sirius felt powerless because his family hated him and he was realizing that, once he left school, he’d have to make his own way, completely.  Remus liked having friends, but I’m sure that being a werewolf in a world that told him he was evil for something beyond his control helped nothing.  Peter liked being cool.  What about me?”

James doesn’t break eye contact.  He doesn’t let himself.  Her eyes were so green, and he couldn’t read her expression at all. 

“No one told you you shouldn’t.”

“My teachers told me I shouldn’t,” he said.  “My parents told me I shouldn’t.  So why did I do it?”

Lily bit her lip, but didn’t look away.

“Because I was mean,” James said.  “I can talk about the justifications that I had—that I was helping my friends feel better, that I was exploring my own relationship with morality and magic, that I was trying to learn what it meant to be good, that I thought I was being noble and defending the innocent or some shite like that—but learning all that was something I learned through being mean.  Am I still mean?”

“No,” Lily says quickly.   “You weren’t even when you were seventeen.”

“I wasn’t perfect.  Still am not.  Very tempted to punch Snape for revealing confidential school information, but I’m not going to do that.”  He sighs.  “Kids are kids.  You’ve got to do your best to understand them, to help them, or you’re failing them.  That’s something my dad told me after Sirius moved in with us before sixth year, by the way.” 

“Yes, but how do you know where the line is?” she demands.

“You try,” he says, “Look, you’re the one who’s always frustrated about how that wolfsbane potion is going to be way too overpriced for any werewolf to actually use.  What’s that line?  You know what it is, which is why you’re mad.  And I know what this is.  If I thought that Montgomery were beyond help I’d have him kicked out too.  But Sirius wasn’t.  He’s still working on it, but he wasn’t.  I wasn’t.  People grow and change.   What’s the point of the world if you don’t forgive people?  Especially for things they did that aren’t reflective of them anymore?”

Lily chances a smile.  “So you’re going to forgive Snape, then?”

“Never,” James says automatically.  “But that’s because he’s toxic in my work space and accosted my girlfriend.”

“He didn’t accost me,” Lily says quickly—too quickly James raises his eyebrows. 

Lily shrugs, and he doesn’t push it.  Instead, he reaches out and takes her hand.  “I don’t get to take back what I did when I was a kid,” he said quietly.  “I never get to do that.  But I can try and help other kids not do it.  How do you teach someone not to do something if you don’t engage with them?”

Lily’s smile twitches a little bigger and she gets up and comes to sit on the bed next to him, her arms wrapping around him, and James takes a deep breath, feeling himself calm down as Lily kisses him.

 Lily orders some takeaway curry for them, and goes to take a long shower and James just stands in the kitchen, unsure if he should make tea, or coffee, or just break out some alcohol.

His mum had always warned him when he was a kid that listening at keyholes was more trouble than it was worth.  “You only ever find out what you don’t want to know, not what you do,” she’d told him.  She’d been wrong plenty of times, but she was right this time.

Lily had been friends.  With Severus Snape. 

He’d never known that.  Not once in how many years of knowing her.  They’d been kids together, known each other longer than him and Sirius, even. 

It is one thing to have seen her sister, to have gone with her into the muggle world and see where she’d come from, the constant sniping between her and her sister that she never once talked about.  He’d just wanted to hear if she was all right, she’d looked so furious when she’d learned that Petunia was engaged and she hadn’t been told.  But he hadn’t expected…

She’d been friends with Severus Snape. 

The irony of it isn’t lost on him.

Suddenly, horribly, he wonders if Snape know he and Lily are living together, if that isn’t part of everything?

 James looks after her.  He’s always does that for his friends.  It’s one of the things that made her not fully hate him in school.  That for all he was a bullying show off, he did at least take care of his friends, put aside the rest of his idiocy for them.  He’s home earlier now, and he cooks dinners most every day.  He’s a good cook, she realizes, almost surprised.  And a creative one.  He thinks of putting together meals that she wouldn’t have considered.  It reminds her almost of school, when the food that would appear on the long wooden tables wouldn’t normally be eaten together, but somehow were. 

“Don’t you have work?” she asks him after the third night.  She takes care of the plates and silverware, but is surprised that James cleaned as he cooked.  It’s not a hard thing to do, and she doesn’t fully know why she’s surprised.  James has been cleaning up after himself for nearly a year now.

“Summer hours,” James says, shrugging.  “I only have to go in a few hours each day, and that’s only if I want to.  I can work from home if I like.”

“Wish I had hours like that,” Lily says gloomily.  Part of her wishes she could just brew things at home and send her data into the office.  It would be better than having to deal with Belby all day. 

“Can’t you take them?” James asks, his brow furrowing. 

Lily heaves a sigh. “It’s a violation of contract, I think.  We aren’t supposed to leave anything in the open where it might be seen and certainly not supposed to do experimenting where it might harm others.”

James nods.  “Makes sense.  I always forget that sometimes potions explode.”

“Or melt everything around them.  Can you imagine explaining to the downstairs neighbors why suddenly there’s a giant hole in their ceiling?”

James gives her a wry smile.  “I suppose if I’ve had to explain to McGonagall why Carol Pevensie’s head’s twice its normal size, you’d manage.”

Lily rolls her eyes.  “I’d forgotten you’d done that.”

James’s smile turns a bit bitter.  “Try not to think on it, really.”

“Thought you were proud of all your shenanigans at school?” Lily says pointedly.  The number of times she’s heard him and Sirius waxing poetic about the golden days is too high for that wry, bitter smile to make sense.

“Some of them,” James says.  “Others…” he shakes his head.  “Well, others are…they’re…” he’s fumbling for words.

“You were a right bastard,” Lily suggests.

“Yeah.  That one.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, and Lily wonders what he’s thinking.  His expression hasn’t changed much.  If anything, it’s gotten darker.

James breaks the promise he’d made to both Dumbledore and McGonagall when he’d signed his contract at the Gryffindor Hufflepuff quidditch match on Saturday and sits down behind Severus Snape in the staff box.  He leans forward in his seat and says, calmly, “Ten years ago, I would have made your life hell for that.” 

Snape reacts quickly, twisting like a cat, hand reaching for his wand, but his eyes narrow when he sees that James is resting his hands on his knees.  “You had no business telling Lily any of that, neither on a professional level nor a personal level.  She made it clear to you years ago that you are not her friend, and that she does not believe you have her best interests at heart.  So, in short, it was low on three levels—professional misconduct, personal pettiness, and the refusal to leave someone well enough alone.”

His voice is quiet, and he’s quite sure no one can hear him over the roar of the crowd as the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff teams take the field. 

“What are you going to do about it, Potter?” Snape spits.  “Shove my head down a toilet like Montgomery.”

James chuckles, enjoying the way it makes Snape even more unnerved.  “No.  I’m not going to do anything.  Not worth it, you see.  I’m just going to let you know that you have to live with the fact that I have done on every count what I have said that I’m going to do—treated you with the respect one owes a colleague, let you live your life despite having a personal distaste for you, grow the fuck up because you’re not done when your sixteen.  You, however, are just as low as you were when you were that age.

“And you still owe me your life.”

He gets to his feet and makes his way down the row and sits down next to Minerva, who is watching him very carefully.  “Everything all right?” she asks him testily.

“More than,” James says.  “Shouldn’t cause any problems.”

“James.”

“I mean it.  It’s over.”

He somehow doubts that’s the case.  He doesn’t think that Snape would ever let it be over in truth.  But James is done fighting.  And that means that he’s won.

 James takes a deep breath before knocking, and waits on tenterhooks while he hears the shuffling of feet through the door, and the clicking of some locks.  When it opens, it reveals a very confused looking Alice Fortescue, who blinks twice at him, then stands aside with the question,

“What’s happened to Lily?”

James shakes his head.  “It’s nothing,” he says.  “I mean…it’s not nothing.  It’s definitely something.”  The house is bursting with fabric and flowers and James realizes his timing is complete shite.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“I can come back.  If you’re in high wedding mode, I don’t…it can sit.”

Alice gives him a stern look.  “Please distract me from wedding mode.  I am about ready to kill Frank’s mum, and I feel that wouldn’t start off the marriage in a good way.”

James snorts. 

“Tea?”

“Yes please,” he says and he follows her into the kitchen, where Alice unceremoniously lifts a binder and drops it on the floor by a chair and points to it. 

“What’s going on?” she asks again, going to the kettle and making it boil with a prod of her wand.  James takes a deep breath.  He doesn’t know Alice well.  Not at all.  He knows she’s Lily’s best friend, that she’d come into being with gusto in sixth year when she and Lily had shared a table during potions after never having had a class with a Hufflepuff before. 

“It’s really…” his voice trails away and he considers how best to approach this particular topic of conversation.  He wonders how he’d react if someone sat down and just asked him to explain all of Sirius’ relationship with his parents.  Somehow he didn’t think he’d do it.  “Right, so you know how…well… my job,” he begins.

Alice nods.

“Right, so I’ve got this colleague.  And we barely interact with one another at all.  Which is good.  I have a feeling the whole place would explode if we did interact frequently.  But when we do it’s just…well I’ve disliked him for a long time.  Since we were at school.  And he’s disliked me equally.  And…”

He pauses, and looks at Alice’s face carefully.  Unsurprisingly, it’s completely blank.  She’s an auror, he reminds himself.  And I’m just a bleeding teacher.  How on earth do I think I can outsmart her?  He can’t.  He knows he can’t.  But that doesn’t mean he has to spit it out.  Not when the whole point is he doesn’t want to hurt Lily.  Not at all.

“And I just learned some stuff about him recently that…that I can’t just put behind me.  But I’m not sure how to proceed, because I also don’t want my job to explode when we get back to the fall semester.”

Alice is nodding.  “You’re talking about…”

“Severus Snape,” he says through gritted teeth, and Alice’s eyes flash with some sort of recognition, and that’s all that James needs to corroborate what he’d thought he’d heard Petunia Evans say in her dead mother’s backyard. 

“What did you learn?” Alice says, and her voice is different now, and James sighs.

“I think you know what I learned,” he says quietly.  Alice closes her eyes and he curses a bit because he can’t watch her think when she’s got her eyes closed and her face neutral like that. 

“Did she tell you?” Alice asks at last, her voice strained.

“I overheard it.  At her mother’s wake.  She was talking with her sister.”

Alice grimaces.  “And Petunia just brought it up.”

James bobs his head, and Alice grimaces more.  “How did Lily take you finding out?”

“She doesn’t know,” James says at last.  “I was…”

“Eavesdropping?”

“Checking in with her about some muggle things.”

“Eavesdropping,” Alice repeats.

“Eavesdropping,” James sighs, exasperated. 

“You can’t tell her you know,” Alice says.  “Not right now, not while her mum’s just died.  She’ll freak out.”

“Yeah, I guessed that much.  Can you—”

“Don’t ask me to do that.”  Alice’s voice is dark and James does a quick double take.  She’s sitting there with a black look on her face.  “It’s not my place to say, and even if it were, I wouldn’t.  It’s Lily’s thing.”

“But it ended badly?” James asks her.

“How would you feel if Sirius became a living nightmare for you?”

James stops short, horrified.  Friends is one thing, but her being as close to Snape as he is to Sirius…that’s a whole different level.   He’d never want to hear mention of Sirius ever again.  It’s a thought that pains him, but he knows it’s true.  There’s little on this earth that’s as sacred to him as friendship, and if that friendship were destroyed somehow…

“Yeah,” James sighs.  “I get it.”

“I thought you might,” Alice says sadly.  “There’s a lot of shit there.  I think there’s some shit she doesn’t even think is correlated, but I think is, but god forbid I tell her that I think that.”  She leans back, and shakes her head, blonde hair falling in her eyes.  She reaches a hand up and wipes it back out of her face, tucking it behind her ears.  

James grimaces, and Alice looks at him sharply.  “Don’t fight him, all right?  It’s not worth you getting sacked, especially when you like your job.”

James did like his job.  But he liked Lily more.  And if Snape had hurt her…

“You didn’t beat up Jim Bishop,” Alice points out. 

“You know about Jim the Ravenclaw?” James asks blankly.

“Yes.  He’s a bleeding colleague and Lily was upset about it.”

“That I meant to beat him up, I mean.”

“Yes.  And you didn’t.”

“For lack of opportunity, mostly.  He’s not going to be at your wedding, is he?”

“No, he’s not,” Alice says darkly.

“Good.”

“Don’t fight Snape.  Just leave him be.  I swear if Lily finds out about it, it’ll open up a bunch of old wounds that I had to help her stitch back together during sixth year, and we’re all too old for that.”

James heaves another sigh and turns to look out the window.  Then he reaches for his tea, which he hasn’t touched until now.  It’s lukewarm now, but he finds he doesn’t care much. 

Alice is right, of course.  It’s not worth getting into it with Snivellus, especially not after some of the meetings he’s had with Dumbledore about how to be civil with him over the course of the past year.

But sweet Merlin does he want to.

“Now,” Ellie grabs James by the arm and she pulls him in. “I know when last I saw you, you were unemployed.  Is that still the—”

“No,” James says eagerly.  “I’m working for Google right now.”

“Google!” Ellie says, sounding delighted.  “And what are you doing with Google?”

“I could tell you, but they’d know and honestly, it’s not worth my life,” James jokes, and Ellie bursts out laughing, and James marvels that that actually works. He owes Pete a beer.

“Well, I’ve heard the hours are long…” she says, glancing between him and Lily.  “I do hope it’s not a strain.”

“I’m up early as is,” Lily says, taking James’ hand.  “We both work a lot, but we definitely still have time for each other.”  She smiles up at him. 

“Besides,” James jokes, “There are rooms on the compound for—”

“Anyway,” Lily says loudly, turning back to Ellie, “It’s been such a lovely wedding, hasn’t it?”

“She’s so lovely, your sister,” Ellie agrees, glancing over at Petunia.  She does look nice.  She’s wearing a pearl necklace that makes her neck look graceful, and the dress is a little garish, but, being Petunia, it could be a whole lot worse.  “So happy.”

“Indeed.  Her and Vernon.  What a perfect couple,” James says jovially.

“Well,” Ellie says, lowering her voice, and James and Lily both lean in.  “I hope that they won’t be the only one of Janice’s children to be married soon.”

Lily feels heat rising in her face and she looks up at James.  Ever since Peter’s marriage, all she can think of is that it hasn’t been odd for her—the concept of getting married, or rather, of marrying James.  She still can’t picture herself like a housewife, or even like her mother, but James and her, together, having sex and eating food and laughing at the antics of some small children with dark hair and green eyes…it isn’t scaring her.  And that’s scaring her.  It’s scaring her that it’s not scaring her.  She should talk about it with Alice. 

“If she’d ever consent to have me,” James sighs over dramatically.  “Alas, I don’t think that she ever will.  Nothing I do will ever be enough.”

“Oh Lily, you mustn’t be cruel to the poor boy,” Ellie says and Lily laughs.

“It’s the only way he ever learns, though,” she says, reaching up and running her hand along his cheek.  His lips quirk in a smile.

“The depressing thing about that is how true it is.  You’ve never met my friends, Ellie, but they’ll all attest to it.  I’m quite horrible, sometimes.”

“I’d never believe it.”

“Oh, but it’s true.”

He charms the pants off everyone the entire evening, and Lily’s aglow with it.  She laughs, she talks, she doesn’t even worry about James slipping up, because whatever he’d done to prepare for this ordeal, he’d prepared well.

“Well?” she hears a hiss in her ear and turns to see Petunia standing behind her.  Lily gets to her feet, and Mr. Gardener says loudly, “Oh look at the sisters, how lovely.  Let’s get a photo, shall we?” and he snaps one on his new phone.  Lily smiles at him, and she thinks Petunia does as well before Petunia drags her away by the elbow.

“I hope he’s not scaring my guests,” Petunia hisses under her breath.

“James is being a perfect gentleman,” Lily says dully.

“I heard the way you talked about him at school,” Petunia snaps, “Turning people’s hair blue, and the like.”

“Because god forbid anyone grows past the age of sixteen,” Lily says dryly, and Petunia glares at her, and Lily decides it’s time to get to the point.  “What do you want?”

“You’ve proven your point,” Petunia says, acidly. 

“My point?” Lily asks.

“You’re here.  I know you don’t want to be.”

“Tuney, it’s your wedding.”

Petunia rolls her eyes.  “You can leave.  I won’t mind.”  Lily bites back a gasp.  She knows that Petunia is Petunia, but to ask her sister to leave her own wedding…

“Do you want me to go?” Lily asks.

Petunia straightens her shoulder, her head jiggling slightly as she sizes Lily up.  And suddenly, Lily knows she doesn’t want to hear it.  She couldn’t bear to.  So she turns on her heel and marches back to James, who is finishing up his soup and she taps him on the shoulder.

“Not feeling well,” she says.

“Oh dear,” says Mrs. Gardener.  “Do you need some pills?  I’ve got quite a—”

“Not the sort of thing pills can fix, I’m afraid,” Lily says.  She knows James is watching her as he dabs his lips with his napkin and gets to his feet. 

“Lovely to see you again,” James says and his arm is around Lily’s waist and the two of them are crossing the room quickly. 

“What happened?” he asks her the moment they’re outside. 

“She wanted me to leave,” Lily says, and her voice is empty even to her own ears.  “She wanted me to go.  Wouldn’t even tell me to my face.  She hinted I was only here to prove a point.”

“Well,” James began hesitantly.

“I know,” Lily sighs.  She takes his hand and together they disapparate and they’re a block away from her flat.  “I know. But still—did she really have to do that?  Couldn’t she have just ignored me?  Was it so hard?”

James kisses her cheek while she fumbles for her keys and then they climb three flights of stairs to the flat.  Lily kicks off her shoes and unzips her dress and lets it pool on the ground around her.  James is watching her and she goes into the bedroom and finds a pair of sweatpants and a shirt that’s much too large and throws it on over her bra and underwear.  Then she goes to find ice cream. 

“She never learned how to live with me,” Lily says as she digs her spoon into the ice cream.  “Not ever.  Not starting from when I was eleven and she wasn’t picked to go to Hogwarts.  It’s not fair.  It’s how I am, and I’m her sister, shouldn’t she understand that and love me anyway?”

James moves slowly into the kitchen, sitting down next to her and grabbing a spoon himself.  “Sometimes…” his voice trails away, “Sometimes people can’t love how you are because it doesn’t fit their vision of how the world should be.”

“Yes, but that’s not love,” Lily snaps.  “That’s delusions.”

“Yes,” James agrees.  “But it hurts because you love.  Love hurts.  Uniformly.”

Lily looks at him out of the corner of her eyes.  He’s got his spoon in his mouth now, and he’s watching her from behind his glasses as well.  There’s something about his expression though—he’s not just saying it for her.  He’s saying it for him.

“What…” she begins, but isn’t sure how to ask the question, and James sighs and digs another bite of ice cream out of the pint they’re sharing.

“Gabby didn’t like how much time I spent with my mates,” he says.  “She didn’t get it.  Didn’t want to get it.  I wanted to marry her and settle down and she thought that wasn’t enough and wanted me to spend less time with them.  As if I’d leave them behind just like that.”

There’s so much bitterness in his voice that Lily’s somewhat stunned.  She’s not used to James sounding bitter like this, and yet here he is, sounding wildly bitter. 

“No wonder you never told them,” she says.  “They’re all curious about what broke you and Gabby up.  It was them.”

James doesn’t say a word, he just sucks more ice cream off his spoon.  Lily leans forward and kisses him, running a thumb along his cheekbone.  “You wouldn’t be you without the way you love them,” she murmurs into his lips.

“Yeah,” James says dully.  “They’re the ones who got me ready for tonight.  That bit about Google.”

“Brilliant,” Lily adds.

“Peter,” James says.  “It’d’ve been a nightmare without them.”

“I can only imagine,” Lily groans.  She leans forward and rests her forehead against James’ shoulder.  James hand comes up to rest weave through her hair and she sighs, breathing him in, and letting his warmth soothe away the dull ache that Petunia always leaves behind. 

Oh, she could definitely see herself married to him.  And it’s still terrifying to her.

“Ready?”

“Oh god.”

“You look lovely.”

Alice gives her an exasperated look.  “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“The mother-in-law?”

“Shut up,” Alice moans. 

Alice does look lovely.  Her dress is a confection of white lace with a neckline that’s so high it’s positively Victorian, but she makes it look stunningly fashionable anyway.  Her hair is pulled back neatly into some sort of bob and there are flowers pinned into it. 

Lily takes her hand and squeezes it, then passes Alice off to Florian who winks at Lily as she straightens her dress.  It’s slinky, and the sort of dark blue that makes her feel like both her red hair and her green eyes are somehow more colorful than they already are.  It’s also quite low cut, and James had told her that not a soul would confuse her for a matron of honor, which had made her grin and kiss him on the cheek. 

She waits for the music to start, then walks down the aisle, feeling the eyes of several hundred people on them.  She determinedly ignores the clump of aurors to the left.  She and Alice had already done a count, and there are over ten of them there that Lily’s had to bed.  Once that might not have bothered her.  Indeed, she’d gone to bars with Frank and Alice and there had sometimes been one former date there alongside the one she was focused on.  But ever since Jim’s…well, she doesn’t want to think about it.  Not today.  Not on Alice’s wedding day. 

She stands to Alice’s left and gets to watch as Alice and Frank say their vows to one another, as they promise to cherish and protect one another, to love and to hold, and it’s the first real time that Lily thinks she understands why people say that brides seem to glow.  Alice’s face is positively shining with happiness.  Her eyes are bright, her smile is wide and she can’t look away from Frank, not even for a second. 

I want something like that, she thinks, Someone to make me smile like that.

But no.  No, she doesn’t. She’s never wanted that, not really.  It’s just being at a wedding that does that to her.  She’s fine not being tied down.  She doesn’t want someone to hold some part of her she’ll never get back.  And that’s all right.  Alice wants Frank to hold some part of her.  And Lily doesn’t think she’s wrong to want that.  It’s just not what Lily wants.

She casts a glance out at the gathered crowd.  There they are, that throng of her exes.  She searches through the faces and finds James there, sitting at the end of a row, watching her.  She smiles at him, and he smiles back, and suddenly she feels both very alone and completely not alone all at once.  Alone, because she’s here with James, her roommate and her friend and not with some boyfriend or husband like many of Alice’s other friends, but not alone because who would she rather have with her than James?

It’s a thought that gives her pause.  She knows she’s gotten closer to James over the course of the past year.  God knows that was bound to happen while she and he lived together.  But the way she was thinking about him now…she’d once thought about Alice that way, and had never thought she’d think that way about someone else—someone so safe that she could even trust them near Petunia.  When did James Potter become someone who was that reliable figure in her life, when she’d hated him on principle for the way he’d treated Sev at school.

She had hated him, hadn’t she? Even when James was bullying Sev by the lake and Sev called her a mudblood, she’d hated James, hadn’t she?  She can’t remember.

She turns her attention back to Alice, whose face is still shining as she looks at Frank, and Lily puts thoughts of James Potter from her mind as best she can.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and, James is sitting in the kitchen of Lily’s flat.  Lily is sitting across the table, running through calculations for the millionth time and he’s rereading Defensive Magical Theory to see if any of it is usable for his fifth years and feeling his brain turning to dust. 

Lily stretches across from him, pressing her arms towards the ceiling and arching her back, and James looks at her, the way her breasts press together, the way her face scrunches as she closes her eyes.  He smiles, then looks down at his book again.

Jim the Ravenclaw isn’t here, but Hector is.  He looks over at her, and gives her a half smile, clearly trying to convey some level of warmth at her.

The rest of the group of aurors who are here are all jovial and warm.  Lily sees Marc and Tom, Ezekiel and Maurice, Aurelius and Jason all clumped together.

“I have to say hi to them, don’t I?” Lily mutters, glancing over at them.  They seem to be having a good time in one another’s company.  Wine is flowing, and she sometimes hears the boom of laughter that had first brought Maurice to her attention however long ago it was now. She’s seated with Frank and Alice and James and some of Frank’s cousins at the high table.

“Well, you don’t have to,” Alice says, and she squeezes Lily’s hand.

“Would not going prove Jim’s point?”

“Fuck Jim,” James says automatically.  He glances over at the table and Lily follows his gaze.  Hec catches her eye again and he gives her another smile.  “I don’t know that one,” James says.

“That’s Hector.  The one Jim…”

“Ah.”  James is frowning.  Then he shrugs and gets to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Lily asks wildly. 

“Well, you don’t have to say hi, but I made a bunch of them breakfast and thought I might.”  He gives her a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and he’s gone, and for all Lily trusts him, she also knows better than to leave him alone at this particular moment so she taps her napkin to her lips and gets up and follows him across the dining room, reaching him just as he gets to the table.

“Hello, gents,” James says, sounding the way he sounds when he’s being the charmer. 

“Hello,”

“Hey James,”

“Good to see you.” 

They’re all smiling up at him, and Lily can’t help but wonder precisely what went on before she woke up all those mornings when she found James in the kitchen.  They are greeting him almost like a brother in arms, even though they hardly know him and he hardly knows them. 

“How are the dark wizards.  You keeping us all safe?” he asks happily.

“Certainly trying,” grins Aurelius. 

“They put up a good fight,” rumbles Jason, his voice deep in his chest, and Lily viscerally remembers him groaning against her. 

“Well, you’re still in one piece,” she says to him, and his eyes flick to her.  He smiles, and Lily feels some level of relief wash over her even as she feels James stiffen slightly next to her.

“Not for lack of trying,” Hec says, patting Jason on the shoulder.

“Oh shut up, I had it handled,” Jason replies, peeved.

“Nah,” says Ezekiel.  “But you could have done if you hadn’t been so...”

They sink into a friendly bicker that reminds Lily all too much of lunch with James’ boys.  She finds herself grinning, and laughing along with them, and when Marc makes room for her on his chair and she sits down next to him, she realizes that James slipped away.

She looks up at the high table, but he’s not there.  She frowns, and glances around the room.

“Looking for someone?” Hec asks her.

“My roommate.  He was just here and he slipped off…” her voice trails away.

“Your roommate?” Hec asks.  “Not your…”

“No,” laughs Marc.  “He makes a very good set of pancakes.  This one sleeps late,” he pauses and looks at Lily, suddenly unsure if he should have said it.

“Never been much of a morning person,” Lily shrugs, “Quite the struggle when I had first period Care of Magical Creatures, I can tell you.” Marc relaxes.  

“Quite the host, James,” Jason adds.  “Always very hospitable.”

There’s a chorus of ascent and Lily feels a smile cross her lips.  James usually likes to be around when people compliment him.  He likes having his ego fed.  She’ll have to make a note of telling him that he was well received when she finds him again.

 She scans the crowd again.  No sign of James.

“Does he usually slip off like that?” asks Aurelius.

“Not much,” she says.  “Maybe he saw someone though and didn’t want to interrupt?  I might go look for him though.”  She says her goodbyes and makes her way through the room, still looking about.  When she reaches Alice’s table, she bends down and whispers, “You didn’t see where James went off to, did you?”

“You mean right behind you?” Frank asks and Lily whirls about and finds James has materialized right there, pulling his seat out to finish his dinner.

“Where’d you get off to?”

“Bathroom,” James says.  “Also, that—” he jerks his head back towards the table of aurors, “wasn’t going to cause you a problem, and they are more your friends than mine, so…”

Lily frowns at him.  James loves talking.  He loves being around people.  He’d had, she was sure, a great time talking to all the muggles at her mother’s wake.  James cuts into his steak, though, and looks at her too innocently.  She narrows her eyes, but sits down next to him and continues eating.

“So what?” she prompts.

He shrugs, noncommittally.  “That Hector—I think he’d still pull for you if you liked.”

There’s something in his tone that makes Lily pause, and he takes a bite of his steak and goes to cut another. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I think he would.  If you liked.”

“Oh.”

Whatever it is that is bothering James, he remains close-lipped about it, and manages to shake it off during dinner.  He chats animatedly with one of Frank’s cousins, and tells a story about the time that he found Alice’s Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder in the spice cabinet.  “I thought that I’d accidentally ended the world while making chicken,” James teases, and Alice rolls her eyes.

“It’s a good place for it, especially if you’re expecting a dark wizard attack,” she says over the laughter of the table.

“Expecting attacks all the time, are you love?” Frank asks, running his hand along her arm, and leaning in for a kiss.

“I am not, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t prepared,” she says.

Frank rolls his eyes slightly.  “Spending too much time with Moody, I’d bet.”  He taps his lips to Alice’s, and there is a smattering of applause from nearby tables.  Alice’s face turns red as a beet. 

When Frank and Alice take to the floor for their first dance, Lily feels warmth spreading through her at the sight of them in one another’s arms.  “There’s something so right about them,” she whispers to James as the music washes over them.

“Yeah,” James agrees.  “They fit.”

Lily smiles at him and he smiles back.  She’s tempted to rest her head on his shoulder, but she doesn’t.  Maybe if they weren’t at a wedding she might, if they were back at their flat, or if…if she wasn’t sure.  It was odd, that she felt strange about wanting to rest her head on his shoulder.  Ordinarily, she wouldn’t care about that, she’d just do it.  She’d always been the sort to just go and rest her had on people’s shoulders, or pat them on the shoulder, or whatever. She wasn’t like Remus with his constant need to keep his hands to himself.  But it was strange that she’d worry about that all of a sudden with James.

It was probably just the wedding making her silly.  After all this time of feeling sad that Alice was pulling away from her, it was probably just some culmination of that.  Nothing to worry about, and it would go away soon.

Except when she looked back at James, she found him watching her and there was something about his eyes that made her breath catch in her throat.  She didn’t usually notice James’ eyes, buried behind his glasses as they were.  But they seemed to glow gold right through them in the candlelight, and she’d never noticed just how beautiful they were.

“Want to dance?” she asks him, more to put her mind off his eyes.  Already, there are some other couples sweeping their way out onto the floor. 

“Sure,” he says. 

And it was a stupid thing, she realizes, because the second his hand is on her waist she feels all sorts of warm—the sorts of warm she usually feels a few drinks in and when she’s getting ready to head home.  And that’s not the sort of warm she should feel about James.  Not at all.  Not when he’s her flatmate, not when he’s her friend.  She’s always had the rule that you don’t shag your friends and you certainly don’t shag your roommate, but here she is, noticing the size of his hands on her hip and at the small of her back, feeling the warmth of his body, not quite pressed against her but not far enough away from her not to be aware of it.  And the worst bit—and this is the part she hadn’t counted on, not after she usually spends her time dancing with guys grinding with them, her back to his front—is that his face is right next to hers, right in front of hers, and she can’t look away from those eyes that have somehow come to shine through his glasses.

She’s never noticed how red his lips are.  And she shouldn’t be noticing that now.  It’s so bad to notice that now, because she’ll never unnoticed it.

“You look like you’re in pain,” James comments.

“I’m fine,” she insists, but even to her own ears, she doesn’t sound fine.  She sounds breathless.

“All right,” he says.  He doesn’t sound fine either.  He sounds breathless too.  And suddenly, horribly, Lily notices where his eyes are looking when they’re not looking into her eyes.  They’re darting to her lips, then away from her face, then back to her eyes, then back to her lips.

“Shut up,” she mutters at him.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re saying enough.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Shut up.”

He’s grinning now, and he’s always had a nice smile.  It’s part of what was so frustrating at school—his smile.  He’d smile and it was like he shouldn’t be in trouble for the shit he pulled, and he’s smiling now, like he shouldn’t in trouble for…for being.

She practically jumps out of his arms when the song ends, and she joins in vigorously to the clapping of the band. 

“I need a drink,” she says to him firmly. 

“I’ll get you some,” James says.  “Wine?  Something stronger?”

“Wine’ll do,” she says, and he’s gone and she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes and tries to forget what his hands feel like on her.

“Lily?” She starts and looks around and sees Hector standing at her elbow.

“Hey, Hec,” she says.

“Want to dance?”

He’s got very broad shoulders, and Lily chooses to focus on those because it doesn’t remind her of James.

“Sure,” she smiles, and steps into his arms as the music starts up again.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees James come back with wine.  He looks around for her, then sees her dancing with Hec.  He raises a glass at her, and gives her a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  He places her wine on a table then makes his way back through the gathered people to the table with Frank and Alice.

James gets home late on Friday night, after having had a long meeting with Dumbledore about course development for the next year, and finds Peter sitting in the kitchen with Remus, a half-drunk beer on the table and an empty plate of eggs and sausage.

“How’s married life?” James asks him, clapping him on the shoulder, and Pete grins at him.

“Remarkably similar to unmarried life.  But with more cooking utensils.”  He gives James a smile that does not quite meet his watery eyes.

“What’s up?” James asks, passing Pete to the fridge and grabbing himself a beer.  He’d eaten with Dumbledore.   He taps the top of the bottle with his wand and it uncaps, and he raises the bottle to his lips.

“Have you…heard from Sirius lately?” Peter asks him. 

James frowns, thinking.  There had been a full moon since Peter’s wedding, but Peter hadn’t been there.  Sirius had been.  He’d already been a dog when James had shown up and had been his usual self as far as James had been able to tell.  “Not since the last time we ran,” he says, glancing at Remus.  “Moons?”

Remus shook his head.  “We were supposed to get coffee last week,” he said, “but I had to cancel because it was a particularly bad transition back.”  He’d been vomiting for two days afterwards, and hadn’t been able to keep any food down.  James had had half a mind to bring him to Madam Pomfrey, except he knew that would only have ended badly. 

“I haven’t had time,” James says, and he feels his stomach drop.  He’d had a note from Sirius over the weekend, but it had come in while James was reviewing practice N.E.W.T.s and so he hadn’t gotten around to replying…  “Damn.”

He puts the bottle down on the counter.  “Damn, damn, damn.”

Peter nods.  “Shall we, then?”

“Let me go first, will you?  If he’s bad…”

“James, he’s not sixteen anymore.  We can all help,” Remus says calmly.

“I know,” James replies.  “But I was supposed to reply and I didn’t and…damn.”

He hates feeling like a bad friend.  Hates it.  He hurries into the front hall again, and grabs his travelling cloak and hurries out into the night, hoping that things aren’t as bad as he expects that they’ll be, but daring not to believe that that will actually happen. 

Lily wakes up on Saturday to find James asleep on the couch, covered in branches and brambles, and with several yellowing bruises on his face and arms.

She sighs and tucks her bathrobe closer around her and slips back into her bedroom to find her potion kit.  Hector is still asleep on the bed, the blankets tossed down to his ankles so that she can really appreciate his full form for a moment before she goes back outside quietly.  Of all the guys she’s shagged, Hec’s the only one who sleeps later than she does.  James had once said that that made them perfect for one another.  She’d felt odd when he’d done that.

It was all strange.  She’d hoped that Hector would wash away the experience of dancing with James and noticing his eyes.  But he hadn’t.  Hec is great, but sometimes she notices the curve of James’ bum now, and she really wishes she didn’t.  And she actually bloody notices herself turning towards him when they’re sitting in the living room reading, or listening for him in the morning when she wakes up.

It’s wrong on so many levels, of course.  He’s still her roommate, and her friend, and she’s shagging Hec and really should give him her full attention.  But every time she takes Hec to bed, she wonders…but no.  She shouldn’t wonder.  She should leave it be.  But she can’t.

She settles on the ground next to James and begins to dab a bruise reducer onto his arm, watching as the yellow turns purple and blue and then fades to the tan of James’ arm.  He doesn’t stir, so she moves onto his face.  It’s positively battered.  There are some scrapes there she hadn’t noticed at first glance.  But, miraculously, his glasses are fine. 

She snorts to herself.  James would manage to keep his glasses undamaged while his person turns black and blue.

He starts and opens his eyes, wincing since one of them is black.  “What am I?  I mean.  Where am I?  Lily?”

“You’re home,” she says to him.  “Stay still.  I’m patching you up.”

“Oh.  Good.”

“What did you lot bloody do last night, and please say that the other guy looks worse than you.”

James gives her a wry smile.  “He does.  Trust me,” he says.  He winces again.  “If you don’t mind…I think…my back.”

“James.”

“Yeah, I know.  I hadn’t noticed that until I started breathing, to tell the truth.”  Lily glares at him. 

“I hope whoever’s honor you were defending appreciates what you’ve done for them.”

“Don’t worry, they do.”

He strips off his shirt, and Lily pretends very well not to notice the dusting of dark hair on his chest as he rolls onto his stomach. 

“Are those bite marks?”

“Yeah.  Ran into a dog.  It’s fine.  They aren’t infected, are they?”  Lily leans close.  They look clean. 

“That’s a bloody vicious dog.  You should have set Remus’ Furry Little Problem on him.”

“We were tempted,” James yawns.  “He calmed down nice and quick, though.”

Lily bites her lip.  Of all the times to ask, now would be it.  He’s never come home this beaten up before.  “James…what is it that you lot get up to?  When you come home all banged up like this?”

James makes a muffled grunting noise into the couch cushions, then twists his head to look at her out of the corner of his eyes. 

“I can’t say,” he says firmly, seriously.

“But—”

“Look, I really can’t.”

“James, if this is you lot being idiots, it’s not worth it.”

“It’s not us being idiots.  And it is worth it.”  His voice is stubborn, and she’d say his face were too if it weren’t too bruised to tell.  She’d say it was a stupid thing to get stubborn over, but the words die in her throat as she thinks about it. 

James and his mates—they’re a remarkably tight little band.  And yes, they have their traditions, but their traditions—to be defended at all costs—aren’t the sort to make James sound like that.  This, whatever it is, is different.  It sounds a bit like when James mentions Sirius’ parents or his brother.  Except Sirius doesn’t have a secretive bone in his body. 

“Remus,” she whispers, and James starts under her fingers and he sits up on his forearms surprisingly quickly.  He looks at her and there’s a defensiveness to his eyes that confirms her suspicion.  She sees his eyes—god they’re so expressive—flicker and she sees him quickly turn on his…what, his liar’s face?  This isn’t him lying.  She’s sure of that.

“I can’t say anything,” he says firmly.  “I can’t confirm or deny.”

“James—”

“Look, Lily.  I can’t.  He’s my friend, and I can’t.  The one time that this got out we were almost kicked out of school.”

“Almost kicked out of school?” she says blankly.  James and his friends had pulled a ton of ridiculous nonsense, but she’d never once gotten wind of them almost being kicked out of school.  Not once.

“Yes,” James says seriously.  “So I can’t, Lily.  I really can’t.”

She looks at him, and feels her brain grinding into thought.  It’s too early—at least for her schedule—to be thinking this hard without coffee, but she does it anyway as she absentmindedly dabs James’ eyes with some cream and watches the swelling fade.

Something to do with Remus.  That they do once a month, even if James is stressed from his job, even if it’s Peter’s mum’s birthday.  And always stories about his furry little problem afterwards…Moony.

“Oh,” Lily says, and James stiffens again.  “It’s always after I’m finishing trials,” she says.  Then, “Remus is a werewolf, isn’t he?”

James sags against the couch.  “Is it that obvious?” he asks after a moment, and Lily reaches a hand up and runs it through his hair.

“Not unless you’re me, I guess.  Honestly, I’m surprised that it took me this long.  That’s what I’m working on at work.  The Wolfsbane potion.”

“Wolfsbane potion?” James says sharply.

“Yeah.  To help werewolves keep their minds while they’re transformed,” she says.  “You can’t tell anyone.  Honestly I could get sacked for breach of contract.”

James stares at her, his eyes filled with wonder.  “Keep their minds while they’re transformed,” he breathes, his voice full of excitement.  “Will it be hard to make?” 

Lily feels her face fall, and watches the expression become mirrored on James’.  “Yeah,” she says.  “It’s really knotty.  We’re probably going to sell it, because we don’t want people accidentally poisoning themselves while they’re—”

“It’ll be expensive?”

“Probably.”

She knows exactly why James is frowning.  She knows it too well.  She grimaces.

“It’s something, though,” James says, sounding like he’s talking more to himself than to her.  “It’s definitely something.  And I’m sure we can buy it for him, even if he…but Sirius’ll…”

And then the thought occurs to her.  “James?”

“Yeah?”

“You haven’t been running around with a fully grown werewolf every full moon, have you?  Because that’s bloody dangerous, and I know you’re an idiot, but I didn’t know you were that much of an idiot.”

James gives her a wry smile.  “That’s something else I can’t confirm or deny.  But for different reasons.  More to do with…do you have a certain blonde auror in bed with you?”  He tries to sound nonchalant, but she sees the way his eyes seem to go blank as he asks the question.

“James Potter, are you breaking the law?”

“Honestly, Evans, do you want the answer to that question?”  He sounds so smug she could hit him, except she’d just removed a bunch of bruises from him.  Well…that isn’t prohibitive.  She can remove any others she might inflict too.

“And you almost got kicked out of school because Dumbledore found out?” she asks.

“That whole thing about confirming and denying…” James says and his voice is no longer playful.  She can tell this whole subject must be so complicated, full of the boys at their tightest but also at their most serious, which, she supposes, are the same thing.  It all fits, suddenly, their weird little band.  They all came together around Remus, and that attitude of defending one another, their little pack…

“You know, even when I hated you at school, this right here is why I liked you.  Because you would do something so ridiculously over the top to help your friend.” 

James’ eyes are bright.  So bright, and Lily’s throat is very dry.  She swallows.  Then swallows again.  And James’ bright eyes flick down to her lips and she sees him swallowing too, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat and…

“Morning.”

They both turn around so quickly that Lily hears a crack in James’ neck.  Hec’s standing there in his boxers and a t-shirt.  “I’ll make breakfast, shall I?” he asks.

“Yes,” Lily says, getting to her feet.  “I’ll help.”  She looks down at James.  He’s watching her over the tops of his glasses, and Lily wonders what would have happened if Hec had been asleep for even two more minutes.

James finds Sirius alone on the floor of his house, surrounded by bottles of firewhisky. 

“Oh,” Sirius slurs.  “Hello there.  Good of you to look in.  Glad to know you’ve got the time.”

James closes the door behind him and comes and sits down next to Sirius.  He stinks. 

“When did you last take a shower?” James asks him.

“Monday,” Sirius hiccups.  “Why?”

“Smells like it,” James shrugs.  He picks up one of the bottles and looks at it.  “Have you been drunk since Monday as well?”

“By and large,” Sirius says.  “Helps, you know?”

“I don’t think it does?”

“Oh yeah?” Sirius says mulishly, shoving James’ shoulder weakly.  “What would you know about it?  You’re never around, are you?”

“No,” James says quietly.  “I’m not.”  He looks at Sirius.  “Sirius, you can’t just sit here, waiting for us to be around.  We’ve all got lives.”

“And I haven’t.” Sirius says hardly.  “I’ve got—hic—dogs.”

“Where are the dogs?” James asks.

“In the yard.  I think.  Unless they ran off.  Like everyone else.  I bloody drive everyone away, don’t I?”

“You don’t.”

“No.  I don’t,” Sirius says.  “They don’t come near me in the first place.  No one cares.”

“I do,” James says softly.

“Yeah but you haven’t got time.  And I’m clearly not handling it properly,” he barks a laugh.  “When we left school, I was going to take over the world, wasn’t I?  And what do I do now?  Breed dogs and drink.  What a bloody failure I am.”

“What do you want to do, Sirius?” James asks quietly.

“I don’t know,” Sirius moans.  “I keep asking myself that.  Be your friend, but you haven’t got time.  Take care of Moony, but you’re there.  Help Pete, but he’s got it under control.  I’m bloody useless.  Just like my mum—”

“You are not what your mum said.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts.  None.  You’re not.  You just aren’t.”

“How would you know, you’re never around?”

James glares at him and he glares back.  “You should find a job where there are people.”

“I like dogs.”

“Breed them in your free time.”

“They require a good amount of care.”

“So do you.  Go work at Pete’s for a while.  Remus hasn’t taken that job that Pete keeps talking about, I bet Pete’d give it to you.”

“Yeah, like Pete wants me working for him.  I’m a dick, remember?”

“Yeah, but I care about you all the same,” Peter says, and both of them start and look up.  Remus and Peter are standing in the doorway.  How long they’ve been there, James isn’t sure.  Remus begins picking up bottles, and opening a window to let some air in the room.  “Come work at mine, all right?” Peter says.  “The pay’s not much, but it’s something and there won’t be a dull moment.  You can figure the rest out from there.”

Sirius stares at Peter.  “Work?  For you?”

“If you can deign to sink so low,” Peter says dryly. 

“Peter,” Remus hisses, but Sirius lurches to his feet and claps Peter on the shoulder. 

“All right,” he says.  “But I’m not wearing a bleeding uniform.”

“We don’t have one.”

“And you know that I’m probably not the best employee, right?”

“Having gone to school with you for years, I’m pretty confident in saying you’re the worst possible employee I could hire.  I consider it temporary,” he adds, and glances at James, who begins speaking immediately.

“You’re going to figure out what comes next and it’s going to be for you to find out, all right?  Glory years are gone and all that, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of life has to be terrible.”

Sirius looks at him, then at Peter and at Remus.  “Thanks,” he mumbles.

“Yeah.  Of course,” James says.  “Now go take a shower.  You reek.”

James drops by Peter’s shop after work and finds Peter closing up.  “Dinner?” he asks.  He knows it’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.  Anything that’ll let him take a little more time to get home.

“I was going over to Remus’,” Peter says, not bothering to add an invitation.  It’s understood.  James is glad of that.  The pair of them disapparate and find Remus in his house, cooking a huge vat of stew.  James’ presence certainly doesn’t seem to trouble him.  If anything, he points his towards the fireplace and says, “Someone floo Sirius, will you?” and moments later, Sirius has joined them in the kitchen.

“This is nice,” Sirius says happily as Remus ladles him stew.  “Nice surprise.  I take it Lily is still with what’s-his-name, then?”

“Hec,” James says through gritted teeth.

“Right.  Hec.”

She is.  It’s almost unbearable.  Not that he ever sees them, but he just knows that Hec’s there, and that when Hec’s not there, she’s thinking about Hec. 

“Sore subject?” Sirius prods.

“Leave him be, Sirius,” Remus intones.

“How long’s she been seeing him?” Remus asks, ignoring him.

“They’ve been shagging for a month,” James says, tone clipped.

“That’s not too long,” Pete says.

“Long for Lily,” James snaps.  “I’m happy for her.”

“You’re just sad for you,” Remus points out.   He doesn’t sound like he means it unkindly, but he’s certainly not making James feel any better.

“She doesn’t do long relationships,” James says.

“So?  Then what’s the problem?” Sirius asks.  “He’ll be gone soon enough.”

“Again—long for her,” James says.

“So he’s good in the sack,” Sirius shrugs.  “I still don’t see the problem.”

“Look, can we talk about literally anything else?” James asks, and a moment later, Peter’s cutting in and telling about Florence’s mum and wedding plans, and James focuses as much as he can on Pete so he doesn’t think about the fact that it’s a school night and he’s not yet home because there’s a strong chance that tonight, Lily will have Hec over and he’ll fall asleep thinking about how they’re in the next room, shagging like rabbits.

Lily slams her bag down on the counter in Remus’ house and Remus looks up from his newspaper, surprised.

“What’s happening?” he asks her slowly, and James glances over from the papers he’s correcting, his eyes on Lily.

“I’ve quit,” she says at last.  “I’ve quit.  I’ve quit.  No more Belby.  No more idiots I can’t stand.  No more of it.  No more.”

“Congratulations,” says Remus.  “Tea?”

“Remus,” Lily says, taking his hand, “There’s no NDA, which seems like a huge oversight on their part, but it’s not my fault they’re morons. I’m not contractually bound anymore, and even if I was, fuck that I can make the potion for you.  I helped develop it.  I can help you take care of your…” she glances at James, “Furry Little Problem.”

Remus’ jaw drops, and James leans forward in his chair, his eyes bright.  “I can’t let you do that,” Remus says.

“Why not?” Lily demands, hands on her hips.  “You need it.  I can make it.  What’s the problem?”

“Lily—what goes into it?  It must be so expensive.”

“So pay me,” Lily shrugs.  “Cover the cost of ingredients.”

“And the time for brewing?  What even goes into this potion?  I haven’t even the beginnings of enough money to pay for that.”

“How much could you afford to pay?” Lily asks him.

“I—Lily.”

“Go on.  How much?”

“Ten sickles.  At most.”

“Pay me eight.”

“Lily—I know I’m ripping you off.  You’re unemployed, you can’t just—”

“No,” Lily says, and the idea hits her even as the words pour out of her mouth.  “No, this is my new job.  I’ll make potions for people.  You need them, but you need a certified potioneer to make them.  I’m certified.  I can do it.  I’ll sell my services.  And I won’t have to answer to Belby about to whom.  Or why.  And you can have a friend’s discount, and help me spread the word.”

Remus is stunned, leaning back in his chair.  “Lily,” he breathes. 

“Eight sickles.  And I’m making your bleeding potion so that this lot doesn’t have to galavant around illegally every month.”

“This is going to get you into a lot of trouble,” Remus says.  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“But you can ask James to turn into a stag every month?”

“He wouldn’t say no.”

“Nor will I.”

Remus stares at her, then he rolls his eyes.  “Bloody Gryffindors,” he mutters.

“You’re a Gryffindor too,” Lily points out.

“Exactly,” Remus sighs.  “Will you at least let me think on it?”

“Only if you come back with a yes.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I know.”

“I now understand so much more of why and how all this,” he gestures at her and James, “works.”

James gives him a wry smile as he leaves the room, before getting up out of his chair.  He crosses the room quickly and wraps Lily so tightly in his arms that for a moment she can’t breathe.  His lips find hers, and she closes her eyes and sinks into the kiss, feeling triumphant.

“You’re wonderful, you know,” he whispers to her.

“Yes,” she says.

“Truly everything that’s good and great in this world.”

“Why thank you.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

He snorts, and kisses her again, and she wraps her arms around his neck.

They trip their way up to his room, and fall onto his bed, lips still attached.  The patterns are familiar at this point.  How many nights have they spent like this, Lily peeling off her t-shirt, James unbuckling his belt, clothing flying until it’s just the two of them—skin against skin?  Lily laughs when her hair ends up in her mouth and she spends a moment pulling it off her tongue while James kisses her neck, and she takes James’ glasses off for him, because he likes to leave them on as long as he can so he can actually see her, but they always just in the way. 

She feels as though she is conquering the world when she straddles him and takes him in her, his hands holding onto her hips as she rocks back and forth.  Her heart is pounding in her chest, and everything feels right, things are all the way they should be and James…

He can’t see her right now.  His eyes are closed—they are so often closed once he takes off his glasses.  His lips are quirked up, and his cheeks are flushed, and Lily bends down to kiss him.  She draws his lower lip between hers, and nips at it, and one of his thumbs extends down from her hips, adjusting his grip on them so that he can hold her and caress her clit all at once. 

She loves him.  She really does.  She loves feeling this way—feeling like she’s doing good, like she’s loved, like she’s in control of her own life.  She likes that he’s here with her, and when her heart erupts and the orgasm floods over her, she knows that that this—this is how she wants to be every day for the rest of her life.

Hec’s shrugging into his shirt when Lily finally sits up, stretching and letting the sheet fall down from her chest.  “Sure I can’t convince you to stay for another round?” she asks, smirking at him.

“Nah,” he says.  “I’ve got to run.  Work.”

“Of course,” Lily says, shrugging.  She leans forward to kiss him, and he gives her a quick peck.  She frowns.  They do not quick peck.  Not when he’s leaving in the morning, anyway.  “What’s wrong?” she asks him.

He gives her a dry look.  “Look,” he says, “This has been great, but I don’t think I’m what you want right now.”

Lily blinks at him, confused.  “’Course you are.  What d’you—”

But Hec just shakes his head.  “I’m not, though.  Like you think you want me, but you don’t.  I can tell.  Besides…I like you a lot, Lily, but a month and a half is longer than I’m looking for right now, and I think you’d once have said the same…except you don’t want me.”

She raises her eyebrows.  “Who do I want, then?”

Hec rolls his eyes.  “Don’t be thick,” he says.  “You are cleverer than that.”  She flushes and looks at the door.  It’s still spelled, she’s sure, so James can’t hear the conversation.  He’s probably at work already, Lily thinks, glancing at the clock.  She was up early.   She liked seeing Hec off before work. 

When had that started being the case?  She never saw anyone off before work.

“Oh,” she says slowly.

“Yeah,” he says.  “If you get past it and want a shag again, let me know,” Hec says.

He gives her another peck, this time on the cheek, and sees himself out and Lily lies back on her bed, letting everything wash over her.

“And there’s this one that Mrs. McDonald brings in—she’s this matron who lives near Devon—and I swear I’ve never met a randier dog, and you know how many dogs have come up to me in spring because they want to…you know,” Sirius says, and everyone’s in stitches. Peter’s not even bothering trying to make noise anymore—his face is practically purple with laughter.  Remus keeps making noises about how he can’t breathe, and James is still wiping up wine that had spurted from his nose at the last bit of the story.

“Anyway,” Sirius continues, “Mrs. McDonald—she comes back after I’ve had her dog for a week and she wants to know if I think it’s possible that that was enough time, or if I’ll need more.  And I just turn to her and say, ‘Ma’am, I think if your dog stays even five more minutes, my bitches will be worn down and useless.’”  And they all collapse in laughter again. 

Lily’s hovering in the doorway, just watching them, and there’s this huge grin on her face.  She can’t stop smiling.  Not because of Sirius’ ridiculous stories, though they are funny.  Because of the fact of them all just sitting there enjoying one another’s company in her dining room on a Wednesday night.

“And then, she inflates, sort of like what happened to Dev Ramamurthy when that charm backfired in sixth year, you know?  She inflates and just turns to me, and says, ‘You shouldn’t use such offensive language in front of ladies.’”  And the table erupts again.  Peter falls out of his chair, James lays his head flat on the table, shaking and Remus buries his face in his hands. 

“In front of...” Peter wheezes.

“Yep,” Sirius says happily, pouring himself another glass of wine.

“I hope you apologized, Pads,” James says.  “That’s awfully offensive.  Lily,” he turns, tipping his head back and looking at her upside down. “I’m so sorry you had to hear such words coming from such a person.  I do hope you’ll forgive us.”

“Oh fuck off, you wanker,” and her own laughter is drowned in more from the table. 

“You shouldn’t use such offensive language in front of gentlemen,” Sirius manages to say it almost without laughing. 

“What?  You lot?”

“I see your point,” Remus says

She smiles at him.  She tries to smile at him more these days.  Not that she didn’t smile at him much before, but…well…she wants to be as supportive as possible.  He doesn’t know that she knows, after all.  She is following James’ advice and not letting it on just yet.  The time will need to be right. 

They dive into the next bit of conversation, and Lily pulls up a chair, a little bit further away from the table than the other four.  Peter’s now telling stories about some of his clients, about what goes into sweets development, about Florence’s parents being furious that she’s marrying a candyman as opposed to a banker or the Minister of Magic. 

She doesn’t even realize she’s got a look on her face at all until James turns to her and whispers, “What’s that look for?”

“Hm?”

“Your face.”

“Oh.  Just the sight of you and your boys,” she says, shrugging. James gives her such a look, a look like he could just kiss her right then and there, that she almost can’t bear it at all and if she could think of an excuse to escape to her room and memorize the way his face looks in that moment, she’d do it. 

Much later, after the boys have left and they’ve just charmed the dishes into doing themselves, James clears his throat.  “Lily,” he says, and his expression is determined, and it sounds a bit like there’s a frog in his throat, despite his having just cleared it.  “Lily…I…I.  Look, I think it’s for the best if I go.  We can’t live like this anymore. I’ll stay with Remus for a while, while I sort everything out.” 

Lily stares at him for a moment.  His eyes are so serious and a wild, rushing relief floods through her.  “Oh thank god,” she says. 

His lips twist into a crooked smile.  “Yeah.  Right?”

“Oh thank god,” Lily repeats and she reaches up and pulls his face towards him and kisses him hard, and for the first time in months, everything is perfect.

“You know,” Lily whispers to him one night, running her fingers through his hair as he rests his head on her stomach.  “I think you should move back in.”  She says it carefully, purposefully, and holds her breath, waiting for James to speak.

James is holding his breath and he twists his face, his nose rubbing against her stomach until she sees him watching her.  Then he sits up, grabs his glasses from the bedstand, puts them back on and lies back down where he was before.

“You mean that?” he asks her, almost breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Lily says.  “It’s really bloody inconvenient that you’re not here all the time and…” she pauses, and smiles at him.  “And I dunno—I think it’s a good idea.  I’ve…” she should just spit it out.  She really should.

“You’ve,” he prompts her, his voice trailing away the way her voice did, and she smiles at him.

“I dunno.  It’s not to say now, or immediately, or anything, but I dunno…”

“Immediately what?” James asks, his voice now sounding confused—edgy. 

“I just,” Lily wriggles slightly.  She hadn’t meant to say any of this, but she can’t not—not really.  So she takes a deep breath, and goes.  “I just feel like this is it.  This is us.  Us is it.  I don’t know.  So, what’s the point of pretending it’s not?”

James frowns.  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Probably.”

“You know, for someone who’s really good at most emotional heaviness, it’s remarkably hilarious that you can’t say ‘I think you’re the love of my life and I could marry you at some point down the line.’” He grins up at her.

“You got it, didn’t you?” Lily teases, and James grins at her.  He sits up again and leans in to kiss her, stopping just before her lips.

“Yeah, I did,” he says.  “But you should work on saying it.  I like hearing it.” 

“Oh shut up,” she whispers and closes the distance between their lips.