Jealously Wears A Green Mask | Jily

7: Prongs' Pursuit of the Lovely Miss Evans

"James?" Mary reached up to tap him on the temple.

He opened his mouth to tell her that he was fine, but, before he could the doors swung open, revealing Sirius Black holding Lily Evans in what was obviously a passionate embrace. James was not fine. It was a good thing, the small, still-functioning part of James's mind whispered, that he had not been holding Mary in a similar dip when the doors had flown open as surely he would have dropped her.

It too approximately three seconds for the rest of the room to notice Sirius and Lily in the doorway. The music screeched to a halt as the band froze where they stood. There was a lot of gasping and starts of sentences like "So that's what-" before elbows were thrown and knowing looks cast, and everyone turned at once to look at James Potter.

To his credit, James did not faint. He did not rush over to hex Sirius into oblivion, though that might have had had more to do with the fact that James couldn't really feel his legs rather than some showing of character. His eyes, ripping themselves from Lily and Sirius who were righting themselves, pink and giggling, looked for Marlene. Surely she would hex Sirius into oblivion. Surely she felt the same gut wrenching agony that was blooming inside James. He found her by the doors, face pressed against Remus's shoulder, her body shaking, clearly overcome by her agony. Remus had an arm looped awkwardly around her and wore a tired expression. It was the same expression Remus wore whenever one of the Marauders' pranks he'd tried to talk them out of backfired. It was the same expression he had worn when Sirius had explained to him why there would no longer be raspberry jam at breakfast. It was his tell, his sign, James knew from that look that Remus must have known that Lily was bringing Sirius.

"Bloody hell," James groaned, and because the room was still silent outside of the lovebirds' giggles, his voice echoed in the hall. Some of the girls nearest to him tittered, the blokes sent him sympathetic shrugs and Mary, to her credit, did not waver. She patted James's arm kindly, her face poised. James felt another stab of regret at asking her, not even because it meant he wasn't there with Lily, but because he was such a bloody terrible bloke for using her like this.

"I do believe more music would be appropriate to end this awkwardness." James whirled around to find Dumbledore, quite at his leisure, sitting at the high table, eyes twinkling. He didn't seem to be in costume, but, James supposed that when you were the headmaster you didn't have to do that sort of thing.

There was another scraping sound from the stage and then the music restarted abruptly. There were two more eight counts of terrible awkward silence from the dancers before the other students seemed to realize that James wasn't going to actually do anything.

"Dance." Marlene hissed, tugging him back into the rhythm of the music. He followed clumsily, unsure where to put his eyes. Watching Sirius spinning Lily into a perfect waltz was agony but not looking at her when she looked like that, in that dress, with that mask and her hair, seemed interminably worse.

Across the dance floor, Remus tightened his hold around Marlene's waist. She was coming off of the last round of laughter but until she managed to turn that beam into a frown, it was best that she kept her face pressed into his shoulder. As someone who didn't usually go around holding the objects of his mates' affections close, Remus felt decidedly uncomfortable.

"You have got to get yourself together." he muttered, not taking his eyes off James and Mary, "You're missing the show."

"It gets better than James's face?" Marlene's voice was muffled, "I don't think anything will ever top that."

"Now he can't decide whether to watch Lily and Sirius or not, poor Mary is like re-teaching him how to waltz." Remus smirked, then schooled his features remembering that he was supposed to be consoling Marlene.