by clarewithnoi on archiveofourown.org
glossary:
"commis" means "junior chef"
"chef de cuisine" means "head chef"
"sous chef" means "deputy chef"
"chef de partie" means "station chef"
8:28am
“He’s just insufferable,” is the first thing out of Petunia’s mouth when Lily steps carefully into her car at half-past eight in the morning. It’s followed by a series of confluent grumbles and moans and complaints, some brimming with various Oxfordian synonyms to insufferable, some simple swears and ill-wishes, all along a classically high-toned stream of consciousness.
“Good morning to you, too, Petunia,” Lily mutters as she shuts the door.
“I mean honestly—he’s just awful!”
Petunia does not deign to clarify the he in question, but, really, there’s no need for this clarification. Lily knows at once that she’s talking about James Potter—the head chef and owner of Chez Maraudeur in south London.
It is, to be quite frank, the simplest deduction of all time.
Any conversations with Petunia for the past two days have been rent into two very specific categories: first, how impressive it is that she was chosen by Great British Foods—her dutiful employer, about whom she usually whinges, but that’s neither here nor there—to profile such a radically popular young chef, and shortly to follow, how insupportably immature the subject of said profile has proven himself to be. Ever since the interviews started (“Recorded interviews!” Petunia would screech. “He’s acting like an insolent child on camera! For ITV!”) three days ago, Lily’s been the unfortunate recipient of no fewer than fifteen phone calls at all hours of the night that consist purely of her sister’s hissing complaints.
“Maybe today will be better,” Lily says, a blatant and hopeless attempt at placation.
Petunia snorts. It’s something she’d never dare do with anyone but Lily, whom she deems beneath the social threshold for such breaches of etiquette. Much like a telemarketer or a taxi driver. “I highly doubt it. The man—and I use the term lightly—has been positively unendurable since I’ve arrived.”
I wonder what might have happened to establish such hostility, Lily thinks wryly. Maybe he didn’t bow low enough when you walked in the door.
A few minutes pass in terse silence. Outside the car, the landscape of London flashes by, flickers of old marble and brick and, for a while, corporate-tinted glass. Lily envisions herself getting out at a stoplight and running into any particular building, grounding herself in the presence of other people and their regular workdays, their abilities to chitchat back and forth comfortably, without fear of being shut out or talked over.
“This city is too crowded. Even in the morning it’s like a damned circus.” Petunia grouses with a sharp push of breath. She hits the break a little too hard; a warning for the driver behind her, creeping too close.
“I think it’s nice,” Lily murmurs. “It’s lively.”
Petunia accelerates but says nothing, as though she hadn’t spoken at all.
The reason she’s accompanying her sister on this particular day’s escapade is that Petunia’s assistant, a small, browbeaten man by the name of Murdoch, has mysteriously come into a severe case of pox (which kind he did not specify) and will be thus unable to continue his essential task of holding her various papers and files while she asks questions. The magazine refuses to provide her with a replacement—probably due to the fact that Murdoch is the fifth in a series of short-term assistants all suspiciously driven away from the position—and therefore, twenty-seven-year-old Lily was enlisted to take a day off work and provide free labor for the cause.
All in the name of being a good sister. Or, at least, so it has been explained to her over and over again by Petunia.
The car makes a sudden, jolting turn to the right, and before Lily can brace herself against the window—“ouch!”—they’ve turned onto a small street called Griffin Place. It’s quaint and cobblestoned, but dangerously single-laned, and Lily says a brief Hail Mary for those cars sitting parked to Petunia’s right.
“Blasted tiny streets—I swear to God—”
It appears at last: a small hanging sign that reads Chez Maraudeur, attached to a beautiful old building, only a few meters ahead. They’ve arrived.
She says another quick Hail Mary, this time for herself.
8:54am
Lily’s best friend Marlene once advised her that celebrities live in their own, luxurious plane of existence, and they should consequently be expected to act foolishly and immorally at every possible juncture. Marlene is herself of London’s most upper of upper-crust socialite breeds and therefore mixes with such people on a regular basis, which—by default to Lily’s own lower-class upbringing in a Manchester suburb—makes her the expert on the topic.
Meeting James Potter neither corroborates nor disabuses this notion.
When the two Evans women walk into Chez Maraudeur just shy of 9am (thanks be to hellacious south London parking), Petunia breezes in like she owns the place, purse hanging from her elbow, smile tight like she’s had to manually arrange her face to befit the expression. Her heels make a clack-clack noise against the wooden floor.
“Mister Potter?” She calls. “Mister—oh! There he is.”
Lily follows dutifully after her sister, but in the meantime, she takes in the layout of the restaurant. The tables are bare and devoid of any dressing or setting, and the chairs are stacked to one side, which leaves it looking more like an empty pub than a multi-Michelin-starred restaurant set to be reviewed by both Great British Foods and ITV.
It does, however, have its obvious merits. The room is lined with windows that let in a steady stream of natural light. On the far end, she sees that the building has somehow miraculously secured itself a small back garden, one with a tall tree that dapples spots of shade across the floor, and the smell of fresh herbs and spices wafts through the space like a gentle, perfumed indoor breeze. If she hadn’t just walked in the door from the street, she might reasonably guess that she’s standing in a boutique hotel in Devon or Hertfordshire.
They finally reach Chef Potter in a far corner, but he doesn’t look up at them from his seat at a small round table—instead, he simply holds a hand up to halt Petunia’s insistent calling. At her stunned silence, he brings it back down to to his forehead and drags it though the brunet jungle of his hair. The other hand clutches a telephone receiver to his ear, into which he’s speaking quickly.
She can’t see his features particularly well at this angle and from this distance, but she quite likes the black turtleneck he’s sporting—very James Bond. Plus, he has quite the strong jawline, and she has always been a sucker for a man in specs.
Call it the Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch effect.
Disregarding her leisurely scanning of the restaurant’s head chef, the entire atmosphere of this small corner is a bit tense for her liking. Petunia, a veritable woman scorned, is standing a short distance in front of the table and tapping her foot on the floor impatiently, possibly ignorant to the fact that she’s being soundly and completely ignored by the subject of her impatience.
“—just can’t do you for eight-thirty that evening,” he’s saying into the phone, “I’m sorry. No, no—not even if you’re desperate, madam. Unfortunately all the other diners that evening were either more desperate than you or quicker to realize their desperation.”
Petunia scoffs derisively behind her hand, and although she tries to hide it, Chef Potter most certainly hears, as his gaze flickers up to her before he brings it back to his three-ringed calendar, upon which he begins to doodle absently. The shift in his eyeline reveals enough of his face for Lily to determine one thing very quickly:
My sweet Lord, this man is fit.
This Fit Man sighs into the phone wearily and throws the pen back down to take his glasses off by the bridge. Apparently, he immediately deems this a poor decision, as he’s left squinting at his book until he places them back on his face, blinking a few times at the rapid adjustments to his vision. As he blinks, his eyes flicker up and down and side to side, eventually landing—in the way that eyes often do with people—on Lily.
If she thought he was fit five seconds ago, he’s basically Adonis now, with striking cheekbones and stunning hazel eyes. She’d say something complementary about his mouth, of course, except for the fact that it’s opening and closing like a koi fish as he stares blankly at her, which sets alight a strange fire in her stomach, and then, more starkly, alerts her to the fact that this man has no idea who she is or why she’s in his restaurant or additionally why she’s staring at him like he’s the newest exhibit at the V&A.
“Oh, er—hello, I—”
“Might I get your phone number, then?” Chef Potter cuts her off. He’s staring at her still, so intently that her face is most assuredly aflame, and she experiences a brief bout of hysteria at the fact that he’s just asked her for her phone number, oh my lord, what is happening, before he follows it up with: “in case any tables open up within your timeframe,” at which point all of the oxygen seems to leave her body in an airy whoosh.
He’s talking into the telephone.
Of course he’s talking into the telephone.
She very much regrets taking off work.
Lily is so caught up in the emotional peaks and valleys of the past twenty seconds that she fails to recognize the point at which Chef Potter hangs up the phone until he says a quick, excessively dull hello to her sister (“Mrs. Dursley,” as he calls her, which is…jarring), and then turns immediately toward Lily herself, presumably to ask who in the hell she is.
That is, until the phone rings again.
“Oh, for goodness sake!” Petunia shrills, and for the first time, she and Chef Potter seem to be of one mind, because he swears loudly before grabbing the receiver from the mount and shoving it onto his ear.
“’Ello?” He demands. It takes Lily an embarrassing amount of time to realize that he’s putting on a French accent, which only breeds more confusion. “Non, monsieur, I am zorry—ze chef eez away today, ‘e will not be back unteel ze zird or fourth. Can I geev ‘im a mezzage?”
At least now she has something to report back to Marlene when questioned about this celebrity chef: while he certainly seems to be in a different plane of existence from the one she’s currently occupying, Lily can’t be entirely sure that this is due to some sort of adherence to a glamorous lifestyle.
Even further, what he’s doing is so strange that it deflates a bit of her earlier petrification at his good looks; not to say that she no longer finds him attractive, but a certain level of oddity in a person certainly levels the playing field.
He hangs up again, this call decidedly more prompt, and looks up at the two women. “Ugh,” he groans, “sorry about that. For some reason, people have decided they want to talk to me, so I find it much more efficient to—well, to not be.”
“And the French?” Petunia asks skeptically.
“Well, I’m not going to go and make my voice all high in pitch, am I, Mrs. Dursley? That would be utterly ridiculous.”
Petunia is rendered temporarily speechless, so in the absence of a retort, Chef Potter rounds back upon Lily, eyebrows raised.
“Murdoch!” He exclaims as he stands, extending his hand toward her. “You’re looking much better today than you have before, I must say.”
Lily rolls her eyes at the joke but sticks her hand out to shake all the same. He takes it in his own, warm grasp. “Lily Evans,” she introduces herself. “I’m Mrs. Dursley’s sister—but I suppose you can consider me the replacement Murdoch.”
“What happened to young Murdoch, then? He was a charming little bloke.”
Petunia jumps in, evidently vexed with the amount of time they’re spending on something other than her profile. “He fell ill. My sister isn’t a professional assistant, but she’ll do for now.”
A quip about how she’s been Petunia’s unwilling assistant her whole life nearly breaches Lily’s lips, but she bites down on her tongue until the pain overwhelms the urge. In lieu, she opts for another, smaller eye-roll, one such that to an untrained eye, she might simply be making a quick assessment of the establishment’s ceiling. It’s a lovely off-white with Victorian embellishments.
James lets go of her hand, and the belated realization that he’s had it in his possession this entire time prompts Lily to pin it to her side rigidly, much akin to a soldier dropping their arm from a salute.
At ease, she thinks.
“Bit of a shame,” he says with a very this-is-not-actually-shameful smile as he folds his arms across his chest. “I think poor Murdoch and I had some real commonalities.”
“Oh?” Petunia’s eyebrows raise slightly. “And what are those?”
“Well, Mrs. Dursley,” James replies as he turns a somewhat cutting gaze toward the woman in question, “I don’t think either of us have any lasting desire to be under your employ.”
“Hah!” Lily laughs before she can stop herself, and without even looking over, she can feel Petunia’s gaze heating the side of her face. She’ll be afforded a limited number of these perceived betrayals; it seems she’s already made her first strike.
Chef Potter, however, looks delighted.
Traitor.
“Ahem,” she coughs in a futile attempt to cover up the very obvious moment of merriment. “Shall we get started?”
“We shall,” Petunia grits.
And to the back of the house they go.
10:17am
He’s an entirely different person in the kitchen.
Chef Potter is in his element now, and watching him work feels almost like intruding upon an intimate moment between a honeymooning couple; every motion is personal, every movement laden with intention and care. She can, very nearly, understand Petunia’s earlier exasperation with the man—he’s much more brusque and humorless surrounded by the stainless steel appliances, all business and very little entertainment. There’s a good chance it’ll make for god-awful television.
“How is it possible to cook anything slowly on such a hot stove?” Petunia inquires as he tosses a handful of onions into a pan with sizzling butter.
“Who says frying onions should be done slowly?” is his reply.
At one point, he begins answering questions with such curt frankness (many answers one-worded) that Petunia declares the entire interview pointless, and in response, he slams his knife down and tells her that’s fine, she can go home, he’s getting paid to make food anyway, that’s what’s made him famous enough to have interviews—so if she wants to ask him questions, it’ll have to be after he’s finished julienning these herbs.
The entire scenario reminds Lily of a night at the lab when one of the researchers has a deadline coming up; either a report or a submission to a journal, and everyone is running about trying to find their samples, and the only talking they do is shouting instructions to one another.
Chef Potter explains after changing into his chef’s jacket and striped apron—with the sleeves rolled up gloriously, but that isn’t something she’s going to document in the bit of scrap paper Petunia’s bestowed upon her to take notes—that he’ll start off by showing them how he makes one of Chez Maraudeur’s most acclaimed dishes: their take on a steak and potato entrée.
Midway through his gathering of ingredients, three other men amble in through the back door; the first is sharp and regal-looking, modelesque and tattooed up the arms, and Lily knows immediately that Petunia will hate him. The second is bookish and wiry, with scars littering his face, and the kindest eyes she’s ever seen. The third is a shorter, stouter man, red-cheeked and more cautious-looking.
Chef Potter introduces them in succession. First is Sirius Black, his other chef de cuisine. Then Remus Lupin, the sous. Third is Peter Pettigrew, the head chef de partie. They’re James’s right-hand men.
Remus and Peter disperse after quick hello’s to go about their prepping business, while Sirius sticks around and introduces himself properly to the ITV crew and receives a daintily revolted handshake from Petunia. He’s to be Chef Potter’s assistant for much of the cooking done on camera.
He listens to Chef Potter’s instructions dutifully as he tugs on his jacket and apron, tying his hair back swiftly as a final touch.
“Excuse me,” Petunia interjects before they get started, and Lily nearly flinches. “I don’t want to be rude, Chef Potter, but, well…” she gestures to Sirius’s tattoos. “Might we use someone more suited for family television?”
Chef Potter just blinks at her. “You honestly think that this is going to be watched by children?” And directs Sirius to grab the necessary appliances while he starts peeling potatoes.
Sirius looks around for a moment before grabbing a Vitamix from underneath the center table. Once it’s plugged in, he turns to Chef Potter with an amused expression.
“I suppose we’ll start with the pomme purée, shall we?”
“Quite right.”
Petunia looks bewildered. “The what? Aren’t you making steak and mash?”
Before another scolding can occur (for whose sake she’s preventing it, though, is unclear), Lily interjects: “it’s from the french word for potato, Tuney. Pomme de terre.”
“Exactly.” Chef Potter snaps his fingers. “Good to know someone appreciates French whilst sitting in a French restaurant.”
Having taken German in school, Petunia huffs in displeasure, but she moves on with all the alacrity of someone who is quite used to brushing aside small conversational slights. Such is life in the company of one Vernon Dursley, Lily supposes.
It takes the two chefs only another ten minutes to prepare the entirety of the dish; the potatoes are not so much a mash but a custard, due in part to the magnitude of blending done to them and, Chef Potter revealed during their preparation, warm butter poured into the Vitamix throughout.
(The butter has to be warm, you see, so as not to change the temperature of the potatoes themselves; which would force them to coagulate and become lumpy and misshapen.)
Once the steak is seared and butter-basted and thus the dish is complete, the two head chefs offer samples to the crew, most of which—most being the operative word—agree excitedly.
“I’m vegetarian,” Petunia sniffs, eyeing the slab of meat as one would a particularly large puddle of sewage, “I won’t be having any, thank you.”
Chef Potter pauses his work for the briefest of moments to look at her with a furrowed brow. “You don’t eat meat? And you work at a culinary magazine?” At Petunia’s stiff nod, he snorts and lowers his gaze back to the steak he’s currently slicing. “Fantastic. I suppose they’re due to hire a syndicate of hermits to write for the travel section, then.”
“Excuse me—”
“Agoraphobes for the social commentaries?” supplies Sirius.
“Excuse me!”
“You, over there.” Chef Potter cuts Petunia off and points over her shoulder to Lily, who has to fight very hard not to blanch under his gaze. Any trace of their earlier interaction is completely missing from his features. “The sister. You come try it.”
The sister. How kind. I have a name, you know, you twat.
A sudden and altogether violent desire to mentally nickname him “Chef Twatter” is the only thing that cools her ire to the point of responding with an appropriate level of civility. Perhaps reading such a mental process from her expression (or, rather, her very unhidden glare), the chef softens slightly, bluster deflating.
“Miss Evans, was it?” He clarifies. “I assume you’ve got a more open palate.”
There we go.
“Well,” she says, “I eat meat, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He grins. “I like you more already.”
“Mister Potter!” Petunia gapes.
Ditto, Lily thinks as she makes her way over to the large metal table. “Not very discerning criteria,” she says instead.
“Ah, never fear,” he assures with waggling eyebrows, “I make up for it by being overwhelmingly picky later on—once I’ve sussed out the meat-eaters and the inferiors, as it were.”
He cuts a bite-sized morsel of meat from the large slices and—of all things—holds it up to her mouth with his fingers.
There is some tenacity about him that bleeds through this gesture, some flirtatiousness that may have nothing to do with her and everything to do with his ego. She can’t be entirely sure. His eyes on her are probing, testing; he knows he’s pushing boundaries. He just doesn’t care.
But there is an equal amount of tenacity about her, and if he doesn’t know that yet, he’s about to find out.
Brow raised, she takes the piece of meat between her teeth and pulls, careless of whether her teeth scrape his fingers, eyes never leaving his.
Ha-ha, she thinks.
His thumb brushes against her lower lip as he pulls his hand back. Surprise is plain across his face.
Victory, she thinks, will be written all over hers.
“Lily!” Petunia’s voice erupts, scandalized, from over her shoulder.
It’s strike two—and a big one.
Oops.
The steak, for those wondering, is sublime. The richness of flavor makes her eyes flutter shut. When she opens them again, Chef Potter is staring at her once more, hazel irises flashing brilliantly through his glasses.
11:24am
The chefs are buzzing about the kitchen, some carrying large containers of meat, others working diligently on finer tasks at their own stations. Various commis enter through the back door, and upon their entrance, Chef Potter barks an order at them, closely followed by an elaboration from Chef Black or Lupin or Pettigrew, which always warrants an immediate “Yes, chef!”
Chef Potter is in the midst of explaining his current work with a small batch of tomato purée, which is set to cover a fillet of salmon he’s just cut only minutes prior. Two cameras are set on him—Petunia stands in between them.
“This is the purée I made earlier,” he remarks to camera as he stirs the liquid and places it on the flat-top. “We’re going to add the other ingredients in a bit—” (butter, olive oil, black truffle, lemon juice; an exquisitely simple sauce) “—but for now I want to heat the purée by itself. I’m not going to boil it, of course, because then it’ll separate; just heat it up. And I’ll be poaching the salmon in goose fat.”
“Goose fat?” Petunia parrots back to him incredulously. “Won’t that make the salmon greasy?”
Although curious about this herself, Lily stays silent, trusting blindly in the man’s expertise. But she supposes it’s Petunia’s job to be the intermediary between reader and subject, so such questions are necessary. Maybe not in such a tone, though.
“No, not at all.” Chef Potter replies with eyes still on his saucepan. “Goose fat has a lovely subtle flavor, and I’ll only be poaching it for a short while—plus, of course, salmon is already quite an oily fish. You’re not going to make it greasy with two minutes in goose fat. You’ll just add the flavor as it cooks.”
Petunia shoots Lily a look—somewhere between did he honestly just say goose fat and why aren’t you writing this down, you troglodyte—so she sets about scribbling the various details of the recipe onto her scrap paper.
Goose fat = beneficial, she writes pointedly. Chef adamant.
And, just like that, it’s onto the next.
12:34pm
The seated portion of the interview takes place at one of the many Chez Maraudeur dining tables, in the front of the house. Since Lily’s arrival, the place has been positively transformed; the color palette is all soft creams and yellows, lace and sunlight like the gilded space between an angel’s wings. Tablecloths are atop every table, and on top of them, intricate dining sets with crystalline glasses and silverware tucked neatly into intricately folded cloth napkins.
For all intents and purposes, it should be gaudy; but for some reason, juxtaposed with the dark mahogany of the floor and the chairs, it seems more like home than any building she’s yet entered. How this is possible, she isn’t sure.
As if in answer to her yet unasked question, Chef Potter appears next to her, hands clasped behind him and staring in the same manner as she, an esteemed connoisseur in an art gallery of his own creation. He has to tilt his head down to her as he speaks, which he does so after a brief period of silence.
“Quaint, isn’t it?” He gestures to the room. “It’s modeled after the house I grew up in.”
“A country home?” Lily ventures.
Potter hums his affirmation. “Very much so. One could say...an attempt give the people of south London a reprieve.”
“A reprieve from what?”
“From London,” he replies easily, and turns fully toward her, eyes twinkling with mischief. A pleasant murmur up and down her spinal column alerts Lily to the fact that she quite likes this tête-à-tête. Whether that be from his wit or his very appealing face has yet to be determined. “London is a very feral place, Miss Evans, with feral people. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Oh, dear,” she tuts, “I hadn’t.”
“And here I thought you had the promise of sense about you.”
A laugh shocks out of her, so loud she has to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from drawing the ire of the ITV sound manager. Once assured in her safety, she looks up at the chef, who’s beaming down at her, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it wasn’t his own witticism that brought that smile but instead her laugh, which is a thought so blinding she has to blink a few times to reorient herself.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t have liked where I grew up, Chef Potter—”
“Please, call me James.”
“—it was not nearly as nice as London, and filled with lower-class people, myself included.”
Now it’s Chef Potter’s—James, apparently—turn to laugh, and his entire head tilts back with it, the movement loose and comfortable like the muscles for it are well-used and warm. “Darling,” he says, and goodness God, she is absolutely going to save that auditory memory. “Poor people aren’t the problem. It’s the rich ones—we’re absolute scum.”
To that, she has absolutely no argument. So she simply tells him not to call her Miss Evans; her friends call her Lily.
1:19pm
The second time James approaches Lily is after he and Petunia have a terrifically short on-camera exchange about his flagrant willingness to kick patrons out of his restaurant.
(“Someone told me you’ve kicked out eight people in two weeks, Mister Potter.” “Eight people in two weeks? You’re kidding.” “I’m not.” “My god, I’m below par.”)
Having apparently deemed her his only compatriot within the crew of interview staff, he makes his way to her immediately, and without any semblance of guile, begins complaining about Petunia’s interview tactics. She doesn’t find it within herself to object.
“…And you’re absolutely sure she works at a food publication.”
“Oh, no,” Lily feigns surprise. “Is that what she told you? I hate to break it to you, Chef Potter—”
“James.”
“—but we’re both from MI-5. Your restaurant is under investigation.”
James’s lips quirk upward, and he raises a hand to stroke thoughtfully at his chin. “Hm.” He looks to his left, then quickly to his right, and then back at her. “Tax evasion, I take it?”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Drat. You MI-5 chaps are top-notch. I damn near confessed there, didn’t I.”
“In strictly professional terms, I’d say you’ve cocked the whole thing up.”
What was once a quirk is now a full, excited grin, and if she weren’t so committed to her character’s subterfuge, Lily might mirror the expression.
They chat amiably about the restaurant for a while: how James’s mother needed to personally approve the tablecloths herself, with hell to pay for those who disobeyed; how Sirius finds it a sporting contest to see how much béchamel he can spill on them without getting fired. He talks about meeting the three other chefs; how Remus and Peter had gone to culinary school, but James and Sirius had both trained as commis at Le Gavroche, both bypassing formal training in order to study under the greatest chefs in the fine dining world. She learns that they all crossed paths at some high-brow event or another almost seven years ago, and then from there, they were inseparable.
“It’s just occurred to me.” James says after a pause. “We’re spending all day discussing the tedious in’s and out’s of my profession, and I’ve basically told you my life story just now—and sorry about that, it’s just been a whole five minutes since I’ve been asked something—but we’ve yet to talk about you.”
This conversational turn takes her by surprise. There’s no reason he should be asking anything about her life; he’s the one being interviewed for a prolific food magazine. They’re currently standing in his two-Michelin-star restaurant. She’s just there to take shitty notes and get barked at by her rapidly -frazzling sister.
But his expression is incredibly earnest, not a trace of arrogance or deceit within it. He genuinely wants to know about her.
“Er…” Lily stares up at him for a moment, unanchored. “I’m a research scientist.”
Rather unexpectedly, his eyes light up at this information. “Really? That’s incredible—what do you research?”
This level of interest throws her yet again. “Oh—I, well, my lab researches neuromuscular degenerative disorders.” He still looks interested, so she keeps going, and as she speaks, her confidence boosts. She should talk about this with confidence. Her work is important, and impressive; even if there are no Michelin stars to be awarded for it. “We’re trying to develop a way to lessen the immune effects on people with them, because—well, not a lot of people know this, but a lot of what kills people with degenerative diseases is outside infection.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Making the world a better place, are you?”
A smile pulls at her mouth, and she masks it by sweeping her hair from her shoulder. His gaze follows the movement before snapping back to her face. There is no tally being kept of their back-and-forth, no loser or victor, and there is no reason to think that she’ll catch him out or off-guard. This is his domain—she is but a visitor.
Even still, there is a challenge in his eyes, somewhere between pupil and edge of iris; he wants to push, to see if she’ll pull.
Honesty, she feels, is often the most radical course. So she takes it.
“Isn’t that what all work should do?” Lily asks. “Shouldn’t we all try to make the world a better place—even if it’s just with a hot meal?”
The way he looks at her, she thinks she might just be a victor after all.
2:10pm
“Is there anything that reinvigorates you to come back every week and do the same thing over again?”
“Every Saturday, Sirius and I count up all the money we’ve made for the week. And then we promise to do it all again on Monday.”
“I’m not going to print that, Mister Potter.”
“And that is your prerogative.”
2:27pm
The final stretch of questions happen over glasses of wine, which is a mercy to all parties involved. Petunia sips as she asks; James smokes a cigarette in between answers. Lily sits at the table next to them, out of frame of the camera, but nearby enough to listen.
“What is the reason for the name of this place?” Petunia asks.
“Oh, you mean Chez Maraudeur?”
By this point, Petunia looks ready to tear her carefully-coiffed blonde hair clean out of her skull. “Yes, Mister Potter.”
“Do you know what Maraudeur translates to?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“It means Marauder. Do you know what it means to maraud?”
“I do not.”
James takes a slow drag from his cigarette. “No, I should say you don’t.”
“Mister Potter.”
“Fine, fine. It means to roam and pillage; to cause chaos.” He pauses and then begins again at length. “Overall, it means to be downright mischievous.”
“And you think mischief has a place in the catering business?”
From her seat at the next table, Lily sees James lean forward onto his elbows, cigarette pinched between his index and pointer finger, a smirk growing on his face that teems with promise and suggestion. She’s struck suddenly, irrationally, with the thought that if he’s searching for treasure to pillage, he need not look any further than his own smile.
“Darling,” he says to Petunia, and it is somehow a completely different word than it was before, one with a different etymology, swarming with condescension between the two syllables and cloying in their wake. “I believe there’s a place for mischief everywhere.”
She’ll vehemently deny it to Petunia later when asked, but at this very moment, James glances over at the table where Lily sits, all smirk and cigarette and tousled hair, and winks.
3:09pm
The interviews and the b-roll footage wrap up in time for James to get back to the kitchen to finish his prep for the dinner service. He’s behind, of course, due to the sidetracking brought on by the crew—but this was to be expected, and he’s mentioned already that Remus and Sirius should have the kitchen working seamlessly in his absence.
“Get our things while I go get the car,” Petunia hisses the second she’s finished. “It’ll be the first useful thing you’ve done all day—I mean really, Lily. You couldn’t have tried to be there for me a bit more?”
That stings.
To a degree, she supposes, her sister has a point; while she’s taken all the notes necessary and handed over all the papers required of her, she was a bit caught up to be the silent, dutiful younger sister that she’s usually able to play in these situations.
“I’m sorry, Tuney,” she pleads. “Really.”
“Just—whatever. Just get the bags and the papers, will you?”
By the time she’s packed up hers and Petunia’s things, James already sequestered in the kitchen, clearly too busy for something like a goodbye. Lily tries very hard to stamp down the disappointment that swells in her sternum. But Petunia’s pulling the car around; there is no choice but to go with her.
She’s halfway to the door when the short chef de patrie, Peter, comes skidding to a halt in front of her. “Miss Evans! Miss Evans!”
Lily halts, openly confused. “Er…Peter, was it?”
“Yes!” He looks pleased that she’s remembered his name, and then, as though remembering something himself, begins to speak in a rapid, hushed voice. “James told me to tell you he’d really like for you to come back.”
Well, that perks her up. “Oh—well, thank you! I suppose I can call tomorrow and—”
“No!” Peter exclaims. “No, he means tonight. He’d like for you to come back tonight. Does half-eight work for you?”
Outside, a familiar car horn jolts Lily and Peter both.
“Half-eight? What, you mean a date?”
To his credit, Peter only gives himself a moment to squirm at such personal talk about the head chef, apparently just as aware as she of the crushing time pressure.
“Yes, exactly like that. In fact, he was pretty adamant about that part.”
Something inside of her soars just a bit—a date with him, tonight. He’d asked her out for tonight.
The answer comes to her, unbidden, before she’s even had time to properly think it through. It spills over her lips like it’s been sitting there, lying in wait for such a question to be asked. “Tell him yes for me, Peter—will you?”
By the time she gets in the car with a scowling Petunia, she has to try especially hard to hide her smile.
8:02pm
Lily throws herself into the taxi with no regard for finesse, her mind too scattered between touching up her blush and making sure the end of her dress doesn’t get caught in the door. She should have left at least ten minutes ago, she knows, with London traffic being what it is.
“Thirteen Griffin Place,” she directs hurriedly.
The driver nods and pulls the cab into the line of cars. “Ah, Chez Maraudeur, right? The wife has always wanted to go there—they’re chock full! Been on the reservation list for months, have you?”
“Oh.” Lily blinks, a bit staggered by the question, and its implications, and the notion that it absolutely does not apply to her. “Oh, actually—I’ve, er, I’ve got a friend that got me in.”
“Blimey! Lucky girl, you are!”
You don’t know the half of it.
If Petunia chooses to call her again tonight, well, it’s too bad. She’ll say she was out with a friend.
8:35pm
When she arrives (only five minutes late, by a miracle), James is standing outside the restaurant with a small bouquet of flowers and his original turtleneck on, which sends fluttering through her extremities like she’s just touched a livewire.
He beams at her, and she blushes, and it’s such an innocuous thing, to be flushed in the face of an attractive man; innocuous but invigorating, vitalizing. It is a simple gift—much like how James described his dishes earlier in the day.
When you add more things, you take away, he’d said—talking about ingredients. You need to appreciate the little things first to build properly.
He’s quite right, she thinks now. It’s the little things.
“Hello,” he says brightly at her approach, “you look lovely.” He extends an arm. “Care to join me?”
She takes the arm gratefully. “Well, I’ve heard fabulous things about this place.”
His laugh is even more dazzling than she remembered.
9:48pm
A lull in the conversation brings a more serious tone from James, who has yet been jovial and untroubled, and an avid listener to her stories about work; more than once, she’s trailed off, realizing how many minutes had passed from when she started talking, but he’s prompted her every time, posing relevant questions and expressing all signs that point to genuine, bona fide interest. It’s a low bar, of course, but one that surprisingly few people are able to meet.
Now, he clears his throat before speaking; he straightens his shoulders even though his posture was already rimrod straight.
“You know,” he begins slowly, “it’s a horrible shame that you and Mrs. Dursley are sisters.”
Something in Lily’s stomach drops and catches itself all at once. She realizes, dimly, that she’s been waiting for this; the inevitable if only, the it’s not you, it’s something else. She wonders if there’s something she could have done differently, maybe shushed Petunia more, or distanced herself physically, but she tries to dispel the thought. It’s useless now, anyway—and Petunia is still (no matter all signs that point to the contrary) family.
But it is a shame, she thinks, that every step her sister takes forward seems to shove Lily back. That includes—apparently—driving away a very lovely man.
Eyes downcast and hoping for steadiness in her voice, she asks: “And why is that?”
“Because now I’m going to have to apologize to her for being a prick.”
This snaps her gaze back up to him. “You—what?”
“Well,” James elaborates as if nothing he’s saying is shocking, as if this is normal. And maybe it is, for people whose siblings aren’t Petunia, who haven’t had such a fear of rejection instilled into them that they see it coming even in the shadow of joy. “I’m rather desperate to see you again, you see, and I don’t think I can do so with your sister plotting my gruesome death on the weekends. So I’ll have to be apologizing quite soon, I should think.”
She can do absolutely nothing but laugh—loudly, in fact, louder than she had earlier, louder than she has in a long time. It lasts for a good few seconds before it splinters open into smaller, lighter laughs, and then, slowly, to giggling.
When she was little, her mum told her once: the right man isn’t one who will try to fix you, but the one who will be so good, it’ll make you realize things were broken.
He grins wide at her laugh, like the sound of it makes him happy. She hadn’t realized how important such a grin would be.
“You know what?” She sighs, long and languid and pleased. “I think you can wait on that. She owes me a few apologies herself.”
11:30pm
The sky is a navy swirl through the windows, and all the light to be found is golden and warm, antique streetlights outside and the glow of scant candles on the tables. There is something incandescent and paradoxically hazy about this night, the way it drifts on around her, yet at the same time, how vastly in control of it she feels.
“You’re very good at dodging questions,” Lily says on a sip of wine. It’s floral and fragrant and, as expected, pairs unreasonably well with the food. She might have indulged in a bit too much of it already—not enough to be drunk, but enough that she’s smooth-tongued and confident. There are only a few people left in the restaurant, most of them dishwashers hard at work in the back. “I hardly think Tuney got any straight answers from you.”
As always, James is ready with a retort—those, of course, he’s more than willing to supply. “Well,” he murmurs, “that’s because it was her.” He scrutinizes her for a moment before leaning back, grin still scrupulously in tact. “If you have any questions for me, go on. I promise to answer directly and honestly.”
Taking cue from his gesture, Lily leans back herself, and her shoulder blades push against the wood of the Chez Maraudeur chair as she stretches her arms out above her, letting out a deep sigh at the pull of muscle and tendon.
In what is—of course—but an unintended externality of the stretch, James’s gaze is unabashedly dark as he looks at her, from the tips of her fingers down the line her body. His eyes roam every part of her visible to him at the table.
(Call it the wine. She likes it.)
Finished with her stretch, Lily drops her arms back down to her sides, and the movement seems to reacquaint James with reality, forcing his eyes to blink and his breath to stutter out from his throat. He brings a hand up to ruffle his hair, which sends it down the path from messy to differently messy.
“Any question, hm?” She ponders it for a moment, searching his face for inspiration but finding none (for the question, that is—for other things, well…). At length, she finally thinks of something, and she takes another sip of her wine before opening her mouth to speak.
“You said earlier that you’re—what was it, now…oh, yes! That you’re ‘overwhelmingly picky’ with people.” She pauses to let the memory sink in. Once it seems to do so, she continues, leaning forward slightly and terribly unable to keep the smile off of her face. “What is it, exactly, that you’re looking for, James Potter?”
“Easy.” He responds without a moment of hesitation, tone a heady mix of intense and cerebral and full-hearted, all wrapped up in a two-syllable word. It takes her by surprise. “I’m looking for someone with adventure in them. I can’t lead a boring life.”
“Is that all?”
He hums contemplatively. “No,” he elaborates, “no, I think they need to have passion as well—for what they do, or their hobby, or something. They’ve got to be passionate in some way.”
Lily raises her wine glass, arm outstretched in front of her, and squints one eye to peer at him through it. His image is distorted; his smile wonky, eyes lopsided. He shouldn’t manage to be beautiful through such a lens—but, lo and behold, he is. She thinks he might be exceptional in everything.
“And you?” She opens her eye once again to look at him fully, red wine swirling in her grip. “Are you passionate?”
James raises his own glass to meet hers with a clink. Their eyes are locked together, unblinking, the challenger and the challenged sitting above the gauntlet thrown.
He responds after a few breaths of silence. She fights not to break his stare, to trace the movements of his mouth with her eyes as he works his jaw in preparation.
“Incorrigibly so,” he says, gaze scorching. “In all things.”
They take a drink.
Glass half-finished, Lily sets it down and leans forward onto her elbows. She watches in a little bit of rapture as James follows the movement, and suddenly he’s leaned forward as well, expensive wine discarded, elbows tucked underneath his torso.
Her voice is mysteriously breathy when she next speaks. Maybe it’s the wine, or the ambience, or the company. Chez Maraudeur seems to have some sort of physical effect on her. There’s barely a few centimeters between their faces now.
“Care to prove it?” She asks.
Hazel flickers in the dim firelight between them. It’s spice and honey at once.
“Darling,” he murmurs, and a thrill shoots through her spine. Darling, darling, darling. “I’ve been waiting to do that all day.”
Their lips meet, and if she’s tasted anything before him, she can’t be arsed to remember it.