by ReaderMagnifique
sequel to <When It Rains It Pours Boys Down The Stairs >
"WAIT!"
Lily instinctively shoots her arm out through the rapidly closing doors of the lift. Two of the boys from flat ten are hurtling around the corner, each holding a wet floor sign. Behind them come two others at a more sedate pace; one laughing, the other wearing a long-suffering expression. The sign holders wear proud grins, as if something remarkable has been achieved.
"Once again, I must ask, where are you planning to keep these?" asks the sandy-haired boy, as the four of them shuffle into the lift with her.
"Thanks," says the first sign holder, nodding towards her with a smile. He's almost a head taller than her, with dark messy hair. Lily nods back and wills her redheaded genes to not turn her into a piccolo tomato.
He's not that good looking.
"They're souvenirs, Moony." Replies the second sign holder. He wore a leather jacket, and Lily vaguely remembered him from some flat party or another. "How can we spend a year in these hallowed halls, and not take away any souvenirs?"
"Just don't collect any for me, please." He sighs; his tone more resigned than anything.
The doors open on Lily's floor, and they all realise as a collective that she is at the back of the lift. Rather than making her perform some kind of wriggling gymnastics to squeeze past them, the boys all shuffle out for her. Lily supposes this is nice of them, and they are probably a bunch of decent blokes, despite their strange penchant for stealing bizarre and cumbersome mementoes.
They troop back into the lift behind her, and she walks away to her flat, the debate regarding where their new keepsakes will live fading behind her as the doors slide shut.
"Hold the door!" James cries, and Lily caught the metal doors just in time.
She knows his name is James now, and she's learnt that they are more than just the boys from flat ten; she knows his hair is always that messy, and he is the deepest shame (announced very dramatically) of his father who owns a company selling hair products; she knows this is bollocks, because she's been in the room when he's skyped his parents, and it's clear to anyone with eyes Euphemia and Fleamont love their son dearly; she knows he's studying business so he can go work in his dad's company, but that he's also very creative and has decided he wants to carve a place for himself somewhere in the advertising side of Sleekeazy, giving himself the best of both worlds.
Most importantly, she knows he makes her laugh whenever she sees him, and he's thoughtful and lovely, and she'd really rather like it if at some point – whenever works best in his schedule, really – they could snog and date and happily marry.
You know, the standard things you should know about a friend.
James pelts around the corner arms laden with – of all thing – wet floor signs. The snogging she was hoping would naturally occur during the lift ride to floor six may be off the table for now.
"Two things," she says, "one; the obvious, why would you subject me to remembering Hodor's tragic demise in such a flippant way? Two; why all the wet floor signs?"
"One," he says, leaning against the wall of the lift, and grinning at her, "I am so sorry for my choice of words, you're right, poor Hodor deserves better. Two, because picking up one wet floor sign as a souvenir is apparently a slippery slope to collecting as many as you can hide in your flat."
"You should be more careful," Lily replies soberly, the corner of her lip twitching traitorously, "collecting wet floor signs is a gateway drug to all sorts of stolen property."
"Is it?" he replies, laughing.
"Didn't your mother ever warn you? It starts with a few stolen wet floor signs, but sooner or later you're picking up traffic cones, and before you know it you've moved on the deadly roadworks signs. In some extreme cases, people have been known to take shopping trolleys home with them."
"To be fair, we already did that one in freshers' week. How else were we to get everyone's shopping back in one trip?"
"It's already too late for you then, I fear." She says, her mournful tone ruined by the fact that she's laughing with him now.
"We did return the trolley if that helps our case at all Judge Evans."
"Absolutely not. I sentence you to an evening of movies, with no chance of early release for good behaviour." She declares.
James protests dramatically at his unjust sentence, but the way he is smiling makes her think that doing hard time watching whatever Disney movie they eventually decide on (He'll be demanding Aladdin, she'll be standing by her old favourites Hercules and Mulan) is something he wanted just as much as she did.
She spots them jogging ahead of her, the bright yellow plastic a beacon of stupidity in the light March drizzle. She has no interest in running to catch them, so she allows them their head start. By the time she has made her way into Gryffindor House, the lift has whisked them away to the top, and come back down again, so she presses the button for floor ten and waits.
She knocks sternly on their flat door, and Sirius pops his head out from the kitchen. He smirks when he sees her through the window, and saunters down the hallway to press the door release.
"Where are they?"
"Where are what?" He asks sweetly.
"The innocent act, Sirius? Work on it if you want it to work." Lily replies, just as sweetly, before striding down the hall and into the kitchen. She finds Prat Number One waiting expectantly for her, his beaming smile most certainly not making her lips twitch in response. She is very tired of this silliness, and she does not find it funny.
She knows this because she has been reminding herself that she does not find it funny the whole way here.
"What have you done with them?" she asks, crossing her arms.
"Done with what?" Prat Number One, formerly known as James, is even worse at faking innocence than Sirius is. Or maybe she knows them too well.
"The floor signs."
"What floor signs?" asks Sirius, openly laughing now.
"They're in the ceiling." sighs Remus, staring down at the table with his head in his hands. Lily blinks.
"What do you mean, they're in the ceiling?"
"They pulled down a couple of the ceiling tiles and stacked them in the gap above them." Chortled Peter, leaning back on two chair legs. Lily steps back out into the hallway and looks up at the tiles. None of them look out of place.
"Honestly Evans, we put the tiles back again after, we're not amateurs," Sirius scoffed, "it's like you want us to get caught."
"Why are you even doing it?" she asks.
"Because we're whimsical like that."
"Sirius, you're not a wet floor sign fairy!"
"Please don't give them more ideas," Remus implored, "I swear they'll start wearing wings while they do it."
Sirius cackled mercilessly and went up the corridor to his room. Lily sighed and turned her attention back to Prat Number One, who is holding a frying pan expectantly.
"I'm cooking steak for Remus, want some?"
"If I say yes, is there going to be enough for you as well?"
"Absolutely! I've been expecting you, Mr Bond." She laughs and pulls out the chair next to Remus.
"You poor thing," she says to the resigned young man, who is secretly enjoying their antics. She can tell because so is she. "How are you coping?"
"Taking it one day at a time." Sighs Remus. She's not fooled for a minute.
"Of course, and that's why you're all signed up to rent a house with them next year."
"I can't see how that's relevant."
"No, not at all."
"It's probably blackmail."
"Definitely some bribery in there."
"How did you guess?"
"The steak, for one."
"That's just them fretting, they think I'm not eating enough."
"And are you?" Lily asks, one eyebrow raised.
"Yes." Says Remus, just as James whirls around dramatically.
"No!"
"I'm a fully grown adult–"
"You're too tired when you come back from classes and–"
"–and I am fully capable of looking after myself on a daily basis–"
"–you're definitely not eating enough. A banana and an orange–"
Lily lets them carry on bickering and chiding as she pulls out one of James' chopping boards and the packet of potatoes and gets to work making herself useful. For all his silliness, James is an adept multitasker. He continues to work around her while fussing over Remus, and while laughing at Sirius who returns with his laptop; simultaneously looking up motorbikes, and now large fairy wings on Etsy. Apparently the need to find ones that would span the entire width of the small corridor, while still fitting his need to look like a modish vagrant, is of paramount importance.
Occasionally James will reach for something in the cupboard above her, and she feels the warmth of him against her side. Occasionally he'll go around her for a utensil in the draw, and his hand will brush the small of her back.
In return, Lily occasionally swipes her shoulder against his as she works, and if she winks at him while she exchanges repartees with Sirius, well that's nobody's business but their own.
She wishes she could say that her affection for this prat and his band of buffoons was a mystery, but that would be lying.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me." Says Lily, staring at the catastrophe that has taken over her hallway.
There are at least seven wet floor signs scattered around.
Alice is in the doorway to the kitchen in her dressing gown, mug in hand and giggling. Mary is stood on a chair from the kitchen, only her body is visible because her head is inside the ceiling. Two of the ceiling tiles lean against the wall to the side. Dorcas is stood beside her, on the ground thankfully, looking up at the hole with a very determined look on her face. Marlene and Remus of all people are passing wet floor signs up to Mary to stow away.
This really wasn't at all necessary today.
She can see her bedroom door, elusive in the backdrop of this barmy tapestry, calling out to her. Every one of her tired limbs responds in kind.
The trick is getting past her nutty flatmates.
"Some people collect stamps, how is this any weirder?" asks Dorcas.
"That is not as reassuring as you think it is."
"We're going to beat the lads." Says Marlene, as she shoves another sign at Mary.
"Beat them?"
"Yeah, whoever has the most signs in their ceiling by the end wins."
"Wins what?" asks Lily. Marlene pauses, hands on her hips.
"I dunno," she says with a grin, "Just wins."
Lily glances over at Remus, who is donning a very rueful expression indeed, that is only marred by the smirk clearly wanting to escape. "You too?"
"Me too."
"Change of heart then?"
"On the contrary. The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
"You're helping this mad lot out for revenge then?"
"Of course."
"Did the wings push you over the edge then?" Remus' eyes narrow.
"Just a bit, yeah." Lily turns back to the rest of them.
"I assume I'm not going to talk you out of this?" A resounding chorus of 'no's' has her nodding. "Right. Well, I'm knackered, so if I could squeeze past here…"
Escape is in her sights; all Lily wants is to kick her shoes off, curl up under her duvet, watch The Good Place, and avoid thinking about last night. She's so close when a large amount of thumping erupts on the door to the flat behind her.
So close.
"Moony you traitor! You callous cur!" Wails Sirius. "You've left us broken and betrayed!"
"And apparently with a deep love for alliteration." Remus shoots back.
Lily sighs, feeling something very close to despair, and shuffles back past Dorcas to hit the door release button. Sirius was going to let this go for neither love nor money, and it was best to let him get it all out in the safety of the flat, rather than bring a noise complaint and security down on their heads.
"Were you dropped on your head as a baby?" she asks. Sirius grins.
"I was probably thrown headfirst down the stairs like a cannonball." He replies, before turning back to Remus with a scowl. He marches past, and Lily is suddenly face to face with James.
"Hi." He says, running a hand through his already messy hair.
"Hi." She replies quietly, avoiding his gaze. Lily was really hoping that last night wasn't going to cause any lasting damage, but apparently that was in vain.
This wouldn't have happened if she'd been in a party mood last night and gone out with her mates as they'd pleaded. This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't snuck up to flat ten when the coast was clear. This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't sat up until the small hours with James, getting more than a little tipsy on passionfruit liqueur and lemonade (they both agree that alcohol should be bright colours, taste nice, and include umbrellas at every given opportunity).
Nobody had any right to be that good a kisser when they were drunk. It wasn't fair.
Admittedly, drunk was a stretch. They had been too busy talking to drink that much, and it certainly wasn't strong to begin with. But they had been tipsy and giggly, and somehow that lead to some rather fantastic snogging.
And now things were very weird.
"Were you roped into coming too? Or did you come to help avert possible slaughter?" asks Lily. James smiles slightly.
"Oh, I definitely came to stop a murder. Can't have anyone committing flatricide." Despite the situation, Lily snorts.
"Flatricide?"
"Yeah, like homicide, matricide, fratricide; flatricide: the murder of one's flatmate." They both laugh, and some of the nervous energy surrounding them begins to drift away. Lily tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Can we talk?" she murmurs. She half hopes he doesn't hear her over Sirius' ongoing dramatics, but his face becomes serious once again, and he nods firmly. They shuffle down the hall; Lily is thankful that most of the attention is on Sirius and Remus, although she doesn't miss Alice's knowing glance.
And finally, they're alone.
Lily kicks off her shoes as James does the same. This is a familiar situation between them and now it feels different. Like she's going through the same routine with pins and needles in every limb. She tries to remember how to breathe.
"I'm sorry," she begins, "about last night."
"Are you?" he asks, more serious than she's ever known him to be.
"Yes?" she replies, "No? I don't know; both?" she takes a deep breath. "I'm not sorry it happened, unless it made you uncomfortable, in which case I'm more sorry than I've ever been about anything in my life because I definitely don't want to make you uncomfortable."
"I'm not," he says simply. "Uncomfortable, I mean. I'm actually really glad it happened." Lily lets out all the air in her lungs, and her knees feel just a little bit wobbly with relief.
"In that case, so am I." James smiles, big and bright and brilliant.
"I thought maybe I should get you flowers? But then, I don't know, what if you didn't mean it, or didn't want anyone to know? Flowers aren't exactly easy to hide under your coat – that's watches. Or sundials." He adds as an afterthought. Lily laughs quietly.
"I just wanted to make some kind of effort. Because last night was… brilliant," he breathes in awe. "Even if it's not how I'd imagined kissing you for the first time."
"How had you imagined it?" Lily asks, just as quietly.
"So many different ways. Admittedly, not during a heated argument about who we would eat first if we were stranded on a desert island, so I feel like my imagination was slacking there. Sometimes I'd imagine we'd been on a date first and we'd hold the lift open saying goodnight – really annoy everyone else in the building trying to use it."
"Of course, our first kiss serenaded by angry bleeps from people smashing the lift buttons."
"Don't forget the distant swearing."
"It adds to the ambience."
"Sometimes we'd never say goodnight. Sometimes it would be just out of the blue, in the library at stupid 'o'clock in the morning after you finished another paper. Sometimes it would be in my room or yours–"
"Like now?" she asks. James swallows.
"Yeah, like now."
Lily doesn't know who moves first, all she knows is one moment she's looking at him across her small bedroom, and the next she's in his arms, his hands cradling her face, her fingers running up into his hair to play with the soft strands. His hands move down to her waist and hold her tight. One kiss turns into two, that turns into three, then four, and at some point she loses count; all she knows is it should be impossible to feel so secure and yet so untethered all at once.
"Stay?" she breathes against his lips.
"Yes." He replies, and kisses her again.
Her bedroom door bursts open.
"LILY! Tell me you have a large suitcase, please?" Lily blinks.
"What?"
"A big suitcase. Hurry!" And just as quickly as she appeared, Marlene has gone again, the door swinging shut behind her.
It's at times like this that Lily wishes she possessed Petunia's skill of feigning complete deafness whenever it suited her.
She sighs, and stands up from her desk chair, then proceeds with caution into the hallway. She is faced with what seems to be a military operation. Dorcas is on a chair pulling wet floor signs out of the ceiling with the speed and precision of a sniper cocking her gun. Marlene is on her phone furiously typing away like an encryption specialist trying to crack the latest enemy code. Mary is pulling all the signs into her room to get them out of the hallway.
"What's happening?" Lily asks.
"Security is happening." Says Mary, poking her head out of her bedroom door. Marlene looks up from her phone.
"Security has finally found out about the floor signs. They know they're in the ceilings, and they're doing searches. Apparently it's been doing damage to the wires up there or something. Pete gave us the heads up that they're being searched already, and we need to hide the evidence. Alice has a massive suitcase that would fit them, but she's not in, her door is locked, and she's not picking up the phone."
"Probably with Frank." Says Lily.
"Now is not the time to be cute and cuddly," Dorcas states, stepping down from her chair and moving down the hall to the next stash of floor signs. "This is an all-hands-on-deck situation. We need a suitcase big enough for the floor signs."
"Why?"
"How else are we going to sneak them out the building? They're not exactly subtle." Lily pinches the bridge of her nose.
One way or another, she's finally involved in this.
"Okay," she says, "They're checking the ceilings. So we'll store them under Mary's bed, and your's Dorcas, while they do their searches. It'll be too suspicious to try and move them now, anyway. Just focus on one thing at a time."
They pull the mattresses up and stack the wet floor signs in the bed storage below. Dorcas has just put the chair back into the kitchen when the security guards knocked on the door. Filch grumbles and complains, but Hagrid is a gentle giant. Despite his best efforts, he's quite obviously finding the shenanigans of Lily's favourite people incredibly amusing.
Not five minutes after they had carefully pulled down every tile, verified that there was no lurking yellow plastic in sight, and left, the boys came down.
"Hello, love." Says Prat Number One, formerly known as James, and often referred to as her boyfriend. She allows him his kiss - it's such a chore - but then holds him at arm's length.
"How bad was it?"
"Filch is going to have a wonderful afternoon writing up reports about us. Really, he had a field day." Peter announces over James' shoulder.
"Honestly, not too bad, we have a meeting next week, basically a slap on the wrist. I think Filch wanted us strung up by our bollocks, but Hagrid was firmly against."
"I thank Hagrid for the survival of your bollocks," Lily replies sardonically.
The arrival of Alice and Frank begins a flurry of movement in flat-six; Alice grabs her suitcase down from the top of her wardrobe, they verify that Lily's suitcase was just big enough to fit another stash of wet floor signs, and James runs upstairs to offer his own suitcase to the mix. In the end, because despite all of the trouble of the day people still wanted to keep score, they had successfully stowed twenty-nine wet floor signs in the suitcases.
"We had thirty-two!" Sirius crows, delighting in his victory. "Drinks on you lot till the end of term!"
"We never agreed to that!" answers Marlene indignantly.
"Your alternative is Sirius' smug attitude for all eternity."
"Urgh," says Dorcas, "I think I'd prefer to cough up for drinks."
"Sirius will be smug regardless. He's smug when he doesn't have anything to be smug about." Answers James, dragging suitcase number one to the lift.
"The word 'smug' has been said so many times, it doesn't sound like a word anymore."
"What's your plan?" Lily asks James. "We still have to cart these past the security desk, they're going to know." James nods solemnly.
"We're going to have to be subtle about this," he says addressing their motley crew, as Peter presses the button. "Follow my lead; we're going full Tipperary. Peter, you're the golden goose."
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about." Interjects Lily.
"You'll see, we're old hands at this sort of thing," says Sirius with a knowing smirk, "They won't suspect a thing."
While Sirius, James, and Dorcas descend in the lift with the suitcases, the rest of them dart down the stairs. Short of hanging from the ceiling, there wasn't a cat in hell's chance of them all fitting in the lift together. They race across the courtyard through the drizzle and the fading light, Alice giggling and taking photos behind them.
"See Sirius, that is an appropriate souvenir!" Says Remus, pointing back at the camera flash.
"That is a predictable, ordinary souvenir, and it lacks my signature flair." Replies Sirius, his serious expression and determined stride matched only by James. They reach the door of the front building, mere feet away from the security desk.
"Ready?" asks James, looking at them all with such a grave expression, that Lily is stunned into silence.
"Always." Replies Sirius, clapping a firm hand on James' shoulder in a move full of daring camaraderie, plucked directly from every war film in existence. James takes a deep breath and opens the door.
"Bye Peter!" He yells at the top of his lungs, startling a girl walking past with her earphones in, "Have a great weekend! Say hi to your mum for me!"
"Don't you worry, we can help with your luggage!" adds Sirius in an even louder register, and Lily hadn't thought it was possible.
"It's a perfectly reasonable amount for two nights, wouldn't you agree?" Adds Peter, not quite reaching the heights of volume that had come before, but still bellowing. Lily stands, mouth agape, as Alice does nothing to hide her laughter, and Marlene sinks slowly to the floor beside her, tears streaming down her face.
This is subtlety?
Filch is growling at his desk, and Lily is pretty sure he just snapped a pencil, while Hagrid is leaning back in his seat, not even bothering to withhold his enjoyment at the procession before him.
"Absolutely! Couldn't agree more old bean!" Declares James, still at a volume that could probably be heard in Outer Mongolia.
"Send us a postcard when you get there!" Yells Remus, leaning back against the windows next to Mary and smirking.
"We'll miss you dearly!" Adds Dorcas, proving the mettle of her lungs.
"I'm counting the very seconds till your return!" Declares Sirius, as he punches the door release button, and yanks the heavy front door open with a flourish. Alice darts forward to hold it, and the Prat Parade exits the stage.
"Oh look! There's mummy Pettigrew!" James hollers, and rounds the corner at a quick march until out of sight.
"Well, I think that went well." Says Prat Number One upon his arrival in Lily's kitchen, Dorcas, Sirius, and Peter trailing in behind him. Lily had been treated to a running commentary, via text, of the incredible adventure to stow the wet floor signs in three of the closest campus buildings; with the addition of a video of the four of them running, dodging and diving around, whilst humming the Mission Impossible theme, and the Bond theme, somehow at the same time.
"I think my sister is more subtle than you were half an hour ago." She replies as he slides into the seat next to her.
"Didn't they see Peter come back in after he'd apparently taken home half a house for the weekend?" Askes Mary suspiciously.
"Probably, but they were too blown away by the truth of our performance." Sirius insists.
"Is that what we're calling it now?" replies Remus, with a sardonic twist to his lips.
"Olivier could never."
"You're a complete prat." Murmurs Lily to James, her stern tone belied by her silly grin; a matching set with his.
"I know." He replies, just as quietly, inching closer to her.
"And you are the least subtle prat on the planet."
"I know."
"I was just making sure you were aware."
"Oh, I am. Prat Number One reporting for duty."
"Admit it, you're just happy to outrank Sirius for once."
"Well, it had to happen sometime." He says, and then his lips are on hers.