by B.C Daily
The flies are taunting him.
"Tutela praesidium—tutela—tut—oh, for fuck's sake—" James tosses his wand in frustration, frowning darkly as the weathered mahogany clatters noisily against the broken courtyard cobblestone, and nothing—bloody well nothing—happens to the sodding flies. An irritating powerlessness brews in his stomach, too familiar a burning sensation. A meter off, the swarm of giddy, food-drunk fruit flies dip and dive around the remnants of James's lunch, mocking him with their carefree feast in the brisk February air.
In further insult, the wispy cage of glowing blue spellwork around the plate flickers rapidly.
The flies zoom right through it. Oblivious. Unaffected. It may as well be cloud.
Shit.
"Why don't you bloody hold?" James leans agitatedly over the crinkly, aged spellbook spread out on the ground before him. He flips back a page, squinting down at the miniscule text. At this point, he's read through the instructions so many times, the words seem burned on his poor, belaboured irises. He adjusts his specs, as if that might help.
Tutela praesidium. Round, lift, flick, left sweep, through.
He has done, stupid fucking book.
Sighing, he grabs his wand again.
"Tut—"
"Hey."
Burnished cerulean dies on the tip of his wand. James's mouth snaps closed as his heart goes thump in his chest…perfectly in time with Lily Evans, dropping elegantly down on the cobblestones beside him.
He keeps his eyes trained on the flies. "Hey."
"What are you doing out here?" She fidgets about on the ground, pretty pink lips pulling into a frown. Her red hair is sleek about her shoulders, tangled up in the thick scarf she has twined tightly around her neck. She rubs her arms briskly through her cloak. "It's bloody freezing."
James waves his wand. Instantly, the Warming Charm he'd cast earlier extends to cover her.
She gives a casual glance around.
"Convenient." She squirms until she's comfortably settled facing him, the denim of her jeans poking out from her draped cloak as she props her legs up, then lays her folded arms atop her knees. The toes of her left trainer prod his thigh. "I need you to do something."
"Oh?" James's ears feel overwarm. He'd like to blame the Warming Charm, but he's not that deliberately obtuse. Not in his own ruddy head, anyway. "You probably ought to know upfront that I'm terribly expensive and charge by the hour."
"Most men overcompensating for something are," she returns immediately, coy and clever. The prod at his thigh becomes a proper kick, and when James flickers his gaze over, she's rolling her eyes. His heart gives a kick of its own. Until she sticks him with a firm look. "You need to let Kiki Khan leave practice early tomorrow."
James blinks. "What?"
"Kiki Khan." She repeats the name slowly. "Your Seeker? You need to let her leave the pitch at six."
"I know who she is."
"Wonderful. So, yes?"
"No." James stares, nonplussed. "You want me to let my Seeker skive off practice a week before our match?"
"No." Another kick. "I want you to let your Seeker depart your—mind—second abruptly dropped-in practice of the week, a single hour early, because our Prefect meetings are Wednesdays at half-past, and poor Kiki is up in the common room working herself into a collapsible frenzy because she can't manage the idea of either asking you, her despot captain, to let her leave training early, or Vivna Moore, our despot Head Girl, to let her arrive to the meeting late."
James lifts his wand again, eyes cast down at the spellbook. He carefully retraces the described pattern. Round, lift, flick, left sweep, through.
"I'm not a despot." He overemphasizes his through. "I'm admirably passionate."
"Yes, of course."
Her mockingly placating platitude does not go unnoticed.
(Neither, see, is the little grin she accompanies it with—quirked up at the corner, pressed thin with amusement. At him. Naturally. Or…for him? Shared, maybe, with him? Thump thump thump.)
He mindlessly, diligently, traces the pattern again.
"Who's your dragon in this race, anyway?" He leans down, flips the spellbook page back. "And why is it my dictatorship that has to bend? Why aren't you toppling Moore's brutal regime?"
"Consider me a concerned citizen," is Lily's airy reply. She absently swipes at a bit of hair that's blown across her face. "And because Vivna Moore is terrifying. And you're not."
Is he…offended to be less terrifying than Vivna Moore?
James considers it. Can't quite decide.
"If I admit to being a despot," he asks, "can I keep my Seeker?"
"No."
"I'm feeling distinctly more figurehead than tyrant right now."
"Perhaps I am just a very brilliant diplomat."
"I have thought you many things, Evans," James drolls laconically, lifting his wand, "but 'diplomatic' is not one of them. Tutela praesidium."
Round, lift, flick, left sweep—
Fuck. Fuck. Waning cerulean. He can already feel the spell sputtering as it leaves his wand.
"I'm plenty…" The words die in Lily's throat. She whips around. "Was that a Hextate Shield?"
James glares openly—tyrannically—at the glimmering, useless blue cage.
"Doesn't even have the dignity to lay claim to the label of an attempt at one, does it?" he bitterly bites off, wanting to hex something. The flies. The spellbook. Himself. He ducks his head down and is whipping through pages again. "Don't know why it won't bloody hold—"
Lily drops her legs.
"James. That's a combat-grade shielding charm. Hardly Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6." She reaches out, lifting one end of the spellbook's cover off the ground. "What is this? Where did you get it?"
"Around." The Restricted Section, actually, specifically. He gives into his impulse, swats at the old tome with his toes. "Ought to have left it. I'm missing something—"
"You can't twist your wrist. And you need to arch upward."
James's foot stops mid-second kick. "What?"
"You're turning your wrist in the lift." She mimes it, raising her own arm to demonstrate. "You need to keep it straight. And at the end—you don't dip to the left. You need to arc upward. Like—here—"
James doesn't know what he expects. Even as he watches her, stunned into silence, and sees her lift off the ground and shuffle his way, he doesn't know what he expects. So when she comes up behind him, covering her hand over his, and says, "Like this," warm and low against his ear, and begins to guide his hand through the revised pattern, all he can do is…sit there. Sit there, and let her move him like a mannequin. Putty in her hands. Pure jelly mush. He is her marionette, a puppet to be pulled any which way she desires. All strings, all over.
It's not the first time he's felt that way with Lily Evans, but it is the first time it's seemed so literal.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"See?" she asks, and the thing about Lily is she's so breezy. So unfathomably certain of herself. Such ease of person, of body. James is so bloody envious of that, so irrevocably compelled. He knows he's half bravado. More than half, maybe. Most sods are, aren't they? It works, but it feels like squeezing into an ill-fit shirt a majority of the time. But she…if she's playing at it all too, you'd never know. You really wouldn't. Does she even realise how special that is? How magnetic? She couldn't possibly. She'd wield it with more care if she did, surely.
Her body remains pushed up against his side. On some rare occasions, he's been this close to her before. He can't think of them at the moment, but they exist. Can't think much of anything, honestly.
"That's not what the book says," he manages to say. His voice is low and scratchy.
"Nope," she replies easily.
Her hand drifts off his. She remains beside him, crouched on her toes. His gaze flickers over momentarily, finds her watching him expectantly.
She has freckles across her nose, Lily Evans does.
He lifts his arm.
"Tutela praesidium."
Well.
Well.
In a matter of a few lingering cerulean seconds, the bloody flies are pounding with irritation against a glowing, intricately constructed spellwork shield, firm as steel, caging James's lunch plate.
One of them has dropped, dead, to the cobblestone, sliced through as the shield constructed.
James stares mostly at that fly, something caught in his throat.
"Jesus," Lily murmurs, eyeing the dead fly too.
James drops his hand slowly .
A peculiar feeling bubbles, strong and acidic, in his stomach. Equal parts satisfaction…and dread.
"You can't use that in Dueling Club," Lily says quietly, sitting back on the ground.
James shoots her a look. "It's not for Dueling Club."
"Then what?"
He considers not answering—she knows the answer, surely, doesn't she?—but instead he leans to his right, where he'd left his rucksack open in a heap upon the ground. The newspaper is tucked neatly near the top, just beneath a broken quill and his battered Quidditch playbook. He grabs the folded black and white pages, ink no longer fresh from the morning drop-off. He tosses the paper her way.
It lands on her lap, top-fold up, headline bold across the page.
Attack on Nighey Square: Five Dead, Dozen Injured
Her head remains downcast, silky strands of her fringe falling over her forehead and into her eyes. Almost mechanically, she unfolds the morning edition. Her shoulders are hunched, her body stiff.
James resists the urge to drop a hand across her rigid spine.
"Yeah," she says. She fingers the crisp newspaper, her voice low. "Saw it this morning."
So had James. Just like he'd seen the edition a month ago, about the assassination of the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, a Muggle-born. Or the attack in Magical Brighton in the fall. The disappearances. The op-eds. The panic. The growing, unrelenting…inevitable.
All so fucking, terrifyingly, inevitable.
"Nighey Square is just outside of Diagon," he tells her, his words flat and tense even to his own ears. "There's this grumpy old codger with a broom shop there. Unfriendliest wizard you've ever met, but he somehow realigned my Comet 800's bristles to cut down on my sprints by 1.3 seconds. Sirius and I were there for two hours just before Christmas."
They hadn't named the dead or injured in the article. Couldn't, likely, yet. Too soon. Too late. But James hasn't been able to get Mr. Fiagro's gnarled and scowling face out of his head since the owl had dropped off the paper this morning. The image sits in his stomach like a stone, heavy and hard.
As he watches, Lily lifts her head slowly. Shakes it.
"You don't—"
"This isn't going away, Lily." He can't keep the sharpness from his voice. "And it's getting worse. Dangerously worse. Dumbledore may want to keep us cosseted and coddled here with Standard Book of Spells, but it's a waste of our fucking time. There's a fight coming." The back of his neck prickles. Realisation dawns. Idiot. "And you know it, too. Otherwise you wouldn't know how to correct my Hextate Shield."
Her head tilts, a rueful twist of her lips. "Well. Not much of a choice for me."
He's a cock. Of course he doesn't need to tell her that it's not going away, that there's a fight coming. Bloody living it, isn't she?
"Sorry."
"Hm."
"When?"
"Did I learn?"
"Yeah."
"Last year. After that shit Mulciber pulled with Mary."
"Right." Nothing had happened to Mulciber, after he…fucking hell, Mary Macdonald could've been seriously, seriously hurt. She'd walked around like a ghost until term had ended, a limp, wrung-out version of her previous vivacious self. She'd never been able to recall exactly what spell Mulciber had used. That it was dark magic seemed patently obvious…but without evidence, the Slytherin had claimed it all an innocent, misunderstood joke, skulked off with a slap on the wrist.
James lifts a hand to his hair, sweeping and pulling in agitation.
"Sorry," he says again.
"For?"
James considers it. "For taking an extra year to catch on. Longer, probably. For talking at you just now like you wouldn't already…so fucking righteously condescending, wasn't it?" He laughs without humour. He feels like a prime wanker. "For not finding a bloody better book," he scoffs, kicking the thing again. "What else?"
"More?" Lily asks softly.
James pulls a face. "Surely. I'll think of them later. Send you an annotated list."
Lily lets out a noise—a strangled, high-pitched sort of frustrated exclamation—and punches him not precisely gently in the arm.
"Idiot," she says.
"Ow." James rubs at his arm. "Fine. I'll think of them now."
"You're so—" She props her knees up again, drops her head atop her folded forearms this time. Then she pops it back up quickly. "This is why you drive me raving mad, do you know that?"
"Because I don't make timely lists?"
"Because you—" The noise is unleashed again. Slips of red hair are blowing in the wind. Her eyes are very bright, green and glowing. She sits up straighter. "Because," she repeats again, distinctly, "half of the time…you do these things…you say these things…apologies and Hextates and…and…and I want to…"
"Punch me again?" James offers sadly.
"Smother you," Lily replies. Then: "With my mouth. Lick you. Devour you. All over. For hours. Days. From your dumb, dirty trainers to your irritatingly pretty face."
…what, James thinks.
What.
What.
"But then the other fifty percent of the time," she continues, railing, getting into this now, "I want to take that same pretty face"—she mimes this, holding up a palm, as if she's cupping his imaginary pretty face, then swings it in a sweeping arc to the ground—"and smash it into a mud puddle. A giant, messy, really vile mud puddle. And just hold it there, until you somehow get it through your thick skull that you're too bloody clever and caring to waste half your energy on stupid laddish inanity." She drops her hand, lets out a puff of clear irritation. " 'You probably ought to know upfront that I'm terribly expensive and charge by the hour,'" she mimics in an overly gruff tone—is that meant to be him?—before pulling a face, like she's just sucked a lemon. "Why do you do that?"
"I don't…know." James doesn't even feel like his mouth is connected to his brain any longer. He doesn't know how he even sputters the words out.
Sometimes he has thought…
Well. Sometimes—though a majority of the time he's certain he's dreaming up the whole thing—he's thought she might…they are two people, circling each other, always. For the wrong reasons. For the right ones. Compelled, nonetheless. Or, he's been compelled. She doesn't reject the compulsion, never has done, but he couldn't ever be entirely certain that any of this…feeling…(there is so much feeling)…has been reciprocated. Because she is breezy, and blithe, and sure. And he's never been, around her. For years, he had always said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing. Occasionally, he'd stumble on the right one, but it'd always seemed like a supremely fancy trick. It had gotten a bit easier over the years, maybe, but…
But.
What.
"Well, it's remarkably irritating," she says, and like she can't help herself—like she can't help herself—she lifts her hand and brushes her fingers quickly, unnervingly, over his head, through his hair. Her nails scratch lightly at his nape. Then she shoves halfheartedly at him. Sits back again.
James just keels languidly over with the gentle push, like a bobbing buoy swaying in strong currents.
He feels a bit like he's drowning, actually.
Underwater, out of breath, searching for surface.
She wants to lick him?
"So that's…" He clears his throat. Are his fingers numb? They feel a bit numb. "Fifty percent, you said? Half the…the devouring, half the mud suffocation?"
She's picking at her cuticles now. Doesn't even look up. "Approximately."
"Ah." Thump. Thump. Thump. Another throat clearing. "Well. Well. For the record…we tip that over to, say…sixty-forty. In favour of the licking. And I'm in."
A snort. "No."
"Seventy-five."
"Ninety."
"Ninety?" James sits up. "This is meant to be a negotiation, Evans!"
"Is it? Recall"—she stops picking at her fingernails, finally looks up at him with an arched eyebrow—"you have thought me many things, but 'diplomatic' is not one of them."
He groans loudly, and she laughs—laughs, properly, warmly, and not even at him, really. With him, this time. At least fifty percent, with him.
They're not tremendous numbers, frankly, but he can work with them.
He will work at them.
She lifts herself off the cobblestones with an admirable ease, not remotely as jelly-legged and bowled over as James himself feels. If he tried to stand now, surely he would collapse straight back down, loose as a flobberworm. Humiliating, that.
But…
He thinks—thinks—maybe her cheeks are a bit red as she comes to stand over him. Rosy, at the very least. It could be the wind, of course, the brisk February air…but James doesn't think so.
Thumping, jumping, his giddy-winged heart just does not think so.
"If I let Kiki Khan leave training early," he posits, "have I knocked my percentage up? Sixty? Sixty-five?"
She cocks her head down at him.
"Please," she scoffs. "Fifty-two."
"Fifty-two?"
"Your motives are sullied," she declares primly, sticking her hands in the deep pockets of her billowing cloak. "They're lust-soaked motives."
James frowns, muttering, "Pretty high and mighty up there denouncing lust-soaked motives when you're the one who brought up licking."
"I'm incredibly contrary." Oh, yes. Definitely blushing now. Definitely, definitely. She prods her toe at the spellbook in front of him. "This, though?" One hand slips out of her cloak. She playfully walks two fingers across the top of his hair. "Sixty-one," she says. "Easily."
James grabs her hand. He doesn't quite, quite, tangle their fingers together…but they sort of…they twine.
Tentatively, they twine.
"Is that including or excluding the Kiki plus two?"
She pulls her fingers away, laughing.
"You'll tell Kiki?" she asks as she turns.
"Including or excluding?" James prods again.
"Pushy," Lily murmurs in chastisement. "Minus point five."
"Minus—" James sits up. "Since when is this a decimal system?"
"I have a better book than that," Lily says, nodding at the old spellbook still on the ground, ignoring his mathematical outrage. "Find me later. I'll lend it to you."
"I'll tell Kiki," he grumbles, not above a grumpy pout.
She smiles at him. He will not be delighted by it, by her, this undiplomatic manipulator of numbers.
But he watches her as she ambles back to the castle.
Watches, wonders, and plots percentages.