// SONG: Stand By Me, Ben E. King \\
-//-
"Moony! Please tell me you've seen Andrea."
-
Remus' eyes went wide in horror. He grabbed James by the arm and roughly pulled him out of the library, the girls hurrying after them.
"What do you mean?! She was supposed to be with you!"
"I know that! But she gave me the fucking slip, alright? Merin's balls, I can't breathe." James was breathing heavily and he pulled on his hair hard enough to make Lucretia wince in pain for him.
"Oh, I'm gonna be sick. This can't be happening. I swear to Merlin if either of them tries to -"
"Hey!" Remus shot an alarmed look at the girls. James almost let Andrea's secret slip by accident in his crazed state. He was about to say; if either of them tried to finish the job Avery started, which could easily lead them to the truth of the situation.
"She might've just gone to her dorm. Have you checked there?" James shook his head, groaning as if he were in pain.
Marlene grabbed James' hands and made him release his hair before they all sped to the Gryffindor Tower. Climbing through the Portrait Hole they saw Sirius and Peter in deep conversation.
The two looked up at the loud entry and their smiles instantly slipped. "Where's Andrea?" Peter asked cautiously, standing from the couch.
Instead of answering him, James sped for the girl's spiral staircase, taking them two at a time. He burst through the door of her dorm room and found it empty.
Mary and Lily checked their dorm, but only found Corinna, who perked up with interest when she heard Andrea was missing. Throwing a curse word and a glare her way, Mary slammed the door shut and headed over to Andrea's dorm with everyone else.
James, hopeful, ran into the bathroom and checked, but found that empty too. As he came out to her room again everyone was already there.
Before he knew what he was doing, James punched the same post he had taken his anger out on last time. The post snapped where he hit, the canopy collapsing onto three posts instead of four.
Lucretia gasped and jumped back while everyone, including James, gaped at what he had just done in shock.
"Here's an idea, take your anger out on your own bed and leave my room alone," came a sarcastic chuckle from the doorway. James turned so quickly he could've snapped his neck. In two long strides, he had reached her and pulled Andrea into a tight hug.
Andrea tensed up completely at first, but finally relaxed and hugged him back. She patted his back awkwardly, not knowing what to do. They had hugged many times, but James wasn't even hugging her anymore. He was just holding her against him, relief washing over every nerve and muscle in his body.
Then came another feeling.
He pulled away and started pacing the room. Andrea knew he was angry. She knew he wanted to yell at her. But he was holding back, for obvious reasons. She crossed her arms and studied him. Everyone had their eyes either on her or the pacing Potter. "If you have something to say, just say it."
He stopped pacing and looked at her. "Where were you?" he tried in a gentle tone, but it came out very strained. "Forest," she shrugged, making it clear to the Marauders that she was most likely in Bambi's form while out there.
James clenched his jaw, making it tick on one side.
"Why?" "Felt like it." It was clear she was challenging him, waiting to see how far she could push before he snapped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his built shoulders rising and falling. "And who were you there with?" he said through clenched teeth. He already knew the answer. But he needed her to confirm before he lost his cool.
"No one. I went alone," she stated loud and clear, cocking an eyebrow at him. James turned his back on her, using all his willpower to calm down.
All the girls had fallen silent, not understanding what was making him this angry. While the boys looked on cautiously because they knew how much James wanted to explode right there and then.
Andrea pushed off the wall and approached him.
"What? You're not gonna yell?" she taunted him. He was quickly losing his patience, the demeanour he had managed to keep quickly slipping as she continued to push him. But she needed to push him. She needed her friends to treat her normally again.
"Come on, Prongs. I ran off, with no bodyguards, which I know you're responsible for by the way, and without telling anyone where I was going. I walked down there, all alone, even knowing the type of monsters there could be roaming these halls. And you have nothing to say?"
She was trying to get a reaction out of him. She needed a reaction. She needed him to snap at her like he would any other person. Like he would've done to her if it was any other time in their lives.
Because she was not weak.
James figured out what she was doing and spun around so quickly she flinched away. But James didn't catch it. Instead, he glared back at the defiant look in her eyes.
"Don't test me, Russo," he got out through gritted teeth. "Or what?" she pressed again. James could see her shaking. Out of fear? Fear of him? He cautiously pulled back, not wanting to be a cause for her discomfort. But he also knew what she wanted him to do, so either go full in or pull back.
Either way, it wasn't going to end with everyone happy.
Sirius noticed the shaking too and glared at James' back. "Stand down, mate. Now's not the time," he warned. His words weren't aggressive, but his tone held the promise of 'or I'll make you' in it.
"This is what you want to do, huh? You want me to yell at you so that you shake with fear like you are right now? So, I can go on and hate myself for making you feel this way? And then you can resent me for it later on? This is not how it works, Bambi."
She narrowed her eyes at him and stepped closer. "I'm not weak." She had tried to sound tough, but her voice ended up breaking halfway through, making all the anger James had building up inside him disparate in thin air.
He rested his hands on her shoulders. "I know you're not. But Andrea, I am, OK? Whenever it's something that concerns you, I am utterly and hopelessly defenceless, and I can't handle knowing that you are out there on your own and something could be happening any second. Looking at the odds, they're coming for all of us one by one, picking us off. Lily, Peter, you last year, Marlene and now you again. I can't handle it."
Andrea sniffed lightly before gently shoving his hands off her shoulders. "Yeah, well learn to handle it," she said flatly. "Oh, it's just that easy?" he retorted sarcastically.
Andrea had turned to leave the conversation but spun back around, a new fire growing inside her. "Well, it's what I'm trying to do so why can't you, huh?! You weren't the one he assaulted! You weren't the one he tried to rape -" Gasps and intakes of breath echoed through the room at that and James flinched at the word aggressively. That was the first time she had called it what it was.
The girls looked around in utter shock while the boys looked down in shame, blaming themselves as much as they blamed the Slytherin boys.
"You weren't the one he called a whore that had been passed around too many times!" Andrea slapped a hand over her mouth, stopping herself from saying any more. She hadn't told him that before.
James was baulking in shock. She had never told him what had been said between them that day. Not the exact words anyhow. "Called a what?" he whispered, not wanting to acknowledge what she said.
Andrea shook her head, avoiding his eye. James looked up at the group still in her dorm. "Get. Out."
With his clear warning of pain and suffering to anyone who went against him on that, everyone quickly disappeared out of the dorm, Peter rather reluctantly.
Out in the hallway, Dorcas and Marlene turned to Sirius with matching glares.
"Why the hell did no one tell us?" Marlene barked. "And who is this guy and why is he still breathing?" Dorcas seethed, shaking with anger.
"Trust me, if it were up to me, I would've told you as soon as it happened. But it wasn't my story to tell. As for the breathing part, that's not for lack of trying. But McGonagall got him expelled pretty quickly.
"Expelled...?"
Lucretia gasped at that, only knowing of one who had been expelled recently. "Avery..."
As the others kept updating the girls on what's been going on, James slowly approached Andrea.
"Hey," he tried to coax her gently. Andrea rolled her eyes, feeling them turn misty. "Stop that. Stop treating me like some fragile little Bambi who's a second away from breaking down and trying," she said, brushing him off.
She folded her arms in on herself and James clenched his fists shut tight, as to not be tempted to reach out and touch her.
"You know we don't call you Bambi because we think you're soft and weak, right? It's important to me that you understand that," he said quietly. Andrea huffed at that. "Enlighten me then," she said in a delicate voice that didn't match the hard front she was trying to hold.
James stood right in front of her, yet not daring to reach out and touch her. A month ago, he would've taken any opportunity he got to pull her in for a gentle touch or a stolen kiss. Now, he had a second thought about everything. And he hated it.
"You even remember Bambi?" he tested her, a small smile playing on his lip. Andrea scoffed and met his eye, glaring back at him. "Of course I remember it, puffo. We watched that movie once a day for nearly three years," she chuckled.
"Exactly," James smiled, stepping slightly closer. He heard Andrea when she said she didn't want them to treat her like a fragile thing, but he needed to do it slowly, so she felt safe.
When she didn't flinch or panic from his closeness, he took it as a good sign. "Bambi loses his mum, stranded all alone in the forest where many challenges lie ahead for him. But he just keeps on moving, never letting anything stop him. You showed up here two years ago, all on your own, and there hasn't gone a single day that you haven't impressed me with your strength or your sheer will to make the world bend for you the way you need it to."
Andrea bit her lip, looking at her shoes. "So I only started impressing you after I started at Hogwarts, huh?" she teased, poking his stomach gently.
James ever so slowly reached for her hand, interlocking his fingers with hers in such a gentle touch she barely noticed.
"You've impressed me since the day we met, and every day you impress me more, showing me just how strong, courageous and brave you are. You're amazing," he whispered.
Andrea knew he was watching her face, but she still couldn't look up. She had one last worry she needed to air out.
"He kissed me," she blurted out, surprising James.
His fingers, which had been moving over her hand in a comforting stopped as he studied her with a questioning look.
"OK?" She had already told him this, explaining how Avery's lip was bleeding that day because he had bitten it when he had kissed her, so why was she saying it again now. Did she need to talk about it properly?
Andrea finally looked up, glancing back and forth between James' eyes. "No, I mean, he kissed me." Andrea took a deep breath as James' confusion deepened.
"Before that day, you were the only one I'd ever kissed. And he ruined that," she said, braving it out clearly at the start but ending her sentence on a mumble.
James' eyes went wide in surprise. He knew he wasn't the first guy Andrea had liked. He wasn't even the first one she had dated, but the only one she'd ever kissed?
"Wh-What about Kingsley?" he questioned, going to the first one he could think of. Andrea shook her head with pursed lips. "We tried but I just kept pulling away. Guess my subconscious didn't want me to kiss him there and then."
"That's terrible," James cooed at her. "Then why are you smiling?" James quickly pulled his lips down again, not noticing the smile that had appeared. "Sorry," he shrugged. Thinking it over, James studied Andrea again.
"And Marshall? No kiss there?" Andre couldn't help but laugh as he mentioned the tragic, one-sided romance she had with Marshall Fawley last autumn. "There was absolutely nothing going on with me and Marshall. And no, we never kissed."
James didn't even try to hide his smile at that. Andrea raised a questioning brow at him. "What about you, womanizer? Who have you kissed." James turned smug at that. "No one other than you, since I was three until the day I die," he winked.
Andrea felt her ears grow how at that, a hand quickly going to her beaded necklace as she started to feel flustered. "That's what I wanted too. But Avery stole it from me..." she muttered.
A new round of anger hit James then, hating the guy for taking anything from her without her permission.
Andrea caught James' eye with a determined look. "The last guy I kissed was Charles Avery, and I don't want that to be a reality anymore."
James gave her a hesitant look. "Are you sure?" he asked, understanding what she wanted. "You shouldn't push yourself into something before you're ready." Andrea nodded, her jaw tight and determined.
As James took too long to make his mind up, Andrea took control, grabbing onto his tie and pulling him closer to herself. Eyes wide in surprise, James wasn't ready when Andrea quickly smashed her lips to his, pulling him even closer for the passionate kiss.
James let her keep control of the kiss, thinking that was what she needed most, and instead did what he was instructed to do. Let Andrea move his hands, let her guide him closer as she cupped his cheek and ran her fingers through his hair, let her do exactly what she needed to make this as comfortable as possible, yet also memorable enough to erase the feeling of Avery touching her.
"Hey, since we didn't hear any more screaming, we thought we'd make sure Andre didn't kill you and – WHAT THE HELL?!"
The two pulled apart and spun around at the interruption, seeing all their friends, apart from two, gaping at them in complete shock. Andrea groaned and turned back to James, dropping her forehead against his chest, grumbling so only he could hear.
"Busted..."
-//-
A/N
Slowly but surely, everything is going to work out <3
I think I'm gonna have a bit of a time jump after this. Not too far but a month maybe, because even though Andrea's process is important and it shouldn't be taken lightly, I have no idea how to write that.
So We'll see what happens from here, it's as big a mystery to me as to you guys :P
– ACE
♥