Dedicated to Alyss_Wolf for her astounding ability to re-read my stuff endlessly and your amazing support! Should have done it earlier but here's a good chapter for you!
Chapter Thirty Five
The feast was drawing to a close as Dumbledore stood up and quietened everyone down. He moved through the usual announcements quickly, well aware of the strange contradiction between the students being desperately tired and wanting to go to bed and their excitement at being back which fuelled the desire to stay up talking until the early hours of the morning. Childhood was a wondrous thing he mused as he faced their eager faces and smiled. “Now I have one last thing to say to all of you; I am sure that the Hogwarts rumour mill has been as efficient as ever and that this is news to very few of you but I am pleased to tell you that your Heads of School for this year will be James Potter and Lily Evans!” An enormous cheer billowed from the Gryffindor table, spreading its wings and filling the room as it spread to the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. Even a few of the nicer Slytherins could be seen applauding happily and everyone chuckled as Sirius forced James to his feet, practically carrying him as he lifted his arms above his head and waved his friend’s arms about in the air. Not one to suffer alone James motioned imperiously to Lily to stand up too and, after a vicious struggled between her and the other Gryffindor girls, she too was standing, her face nearly as red as her hair.
James was surprised at how easily he settled into the routine of being Head Boy; at first he had been mortified when Dumbledore had announced him and Lily as the Heads of School at the end of the feast but since then he had become used to his role; he found it less amusing, however, that Sirius felt the need to parade around in front of him and pretend to roll out a carpet, commanding people to salute as their ‘King’ walked past. It was even less amusing that this had caught on so much that the terrified first years, barely reaching past his knee, did it even when he had managed to escape from Sirius. He was greeted by a rash of salutes and cheers which were even worse than when he had only been the captain of the reigning Quidditch team; this also, irritatingly, included snide comments and sarcastic salutes from bitter Slytherins as well as the few people who felt that he shouldn’t have been awarded it because he wasn’t a Prefect. What he was not surprised at, however, was how well Lily fit the role; he had known that she would be amazing at it ever since he had first read her name in the letter and, had he known how amazed she herself was that she was not the worst Head Girl Hogwarts had ever had, he would have been dumbstruck.
The only thing which wasn’t going his way in the first term of his final year at Hogwarts was the patrols; unfortunately he had been distracted enough by Lily widening her eyes and begging him to help her that she had managed to get a strangled “Yes” out of him to pairing up with Azalea. His nights on duty were some of the worst things he had ever endured and he hated every minute of them. Remus, on the other hand, had somehow managed to get off extremely lightly – he had Mark Burrows every other week and Lily on the others. As James headed down one of the corridors, Azalea stamping moodily alongside him, he grumbled to himself. Why couldn’t he be given every other one with Lily? They were the Heads of School after all. Azalea marched through the darkened corridors, her wand out as she swept every corner for rule-breakers and James followed. She hadn’t even given him any trouble so he wasn’t sure why Lily was so worried and he didn’t see the need for him to ‘control’ her; then again he did accept that it could be she hadn’t yet misbehaved because he was her partner.
“Come on Potter,” she said coldly, her voice hissing through the darkness like a dagger between ribs, “wouldn’t want the Head Boy to be seen slacking, would we? You’re wasting my time here with this stupid patrol so we might as well get it over with as quickly as possible.” To be honest he preferred it when she didn’t talk and they just paced the hallways in silence. “Of course you’re not exactly the normal choice for Head Boy, I must say a lot of us were surprised that Dumbledore picked you… Well not so much that Dumbledore picked you because he’s an old fool who’s going nuts but that he was allowed to pick you by people who ought to have more sense.” James refused to rise to her bait and bit his tongue instead. If he didn’t say anything she’d probably shut up. After a few more minutes of slinging insults at a stony silence James was proved right and she fell into a mutinous quiet.
If James thought that he, accompanied through the lingering shadows by someone reputed to be the cruellest Prefect to come out of Slytherin for years, was having a bad night he should have tried putting himself in Lily’s place. She had barely stepped foot in the common room when she saw Cassie staring into the fire with tears streaming down her cheeks and it had taken only moments for her to wrap her arms around her friend. After a long time of just letting Cassie cry into her lap she asked her what had happened and, slowly and through her tears, Lily was told how this came to pass. Her stomach sank and she, detached from the situation and all too aware of how Snape’s mind could work, instantly saw what Cassie could not. However her half-hearted attempts at trying to get Cassie to see sense were useless and finally, when Sirius came in, she sat alone on the sofa as her friend erupted. The poor boy had no idea what was going on and Lily felt torn between sympathy for him and for her friend; in the end it was always going to be Cassie’s side that she took, no matter how much it damaged her relationship with Sirius or anyone else in the Marauders; she wasn’t a fool and she knew that this would divide them again. If there was ever a group of people she had met who were true Gryffindors it was the Marauders and their loyalty to their friends was both admirable and frustrating; they would instantly take Sirius’ side in all of this and whether they would manage to rebuild the tenuous friendships which they had forged was beyond Lily’s knowledge. The thing which shook Lily’s faith the most, however, was the knowledge that it was possible; it was the thing that so many less confident people spent their lives fearing, especially when they were at school and people who only wanted a bit of fun would play with their feelings; she had begun to like the Marauders and to see all of them as friends but there was no telling. Something in her gut told her that it was all a lie but something else in her head, a tiny little voice, was whispering that it could happen and that doubt was the worst part.
By the time Sirius and Cassie’s argument was over and he was entreating her to tell him what had happened, James had returned from his patrol with Azalea; too tired and rattled to explain precisely what had happened earlier that afternoon she gave them the basics and made her escape. Once she was ready to go to sleep she lay in her bed and pondered what had happened; there were so many possibilities that she just wasn’t sure who was telling the truth – if there was anyone in this that should feel betrayed it was Cassie but she too felt a little hurt; Cassie wasn’t the only person who had begun to trust Sirius and, if it was true and he was capable of doing that to her best friend, she wasn’t sure that he had changed from his former self as much as he claimed.
One morning, in a particularly complicated Transfiguration lesson, a note landed on Lily’s desk; she looked up from her notes in confusion and glanced around the classroom; sitting behind her was James and, as she shot a glare at him, he put his hands together as if he was praying and begged her wordlessly to open it. She found herself opening it against her better judgement; James had taken Sirius’ side in the spat and she had taken Cassie’s but they did, unfortunately, still have to work together and be civil to one another. Privately she hoped it would sort itself out soon or working with James and Remus was going to become even more hard work than she had expected; it was irrational, she knew, to dislike them for something their friend had done but she had promised Cassie that she wouldn’t talk to them and so, when she did have to discuss something with them, she tried not only to keep it purely professional but also to make sure that her friend couldn’t see them talking. It was, she reflected, a miracle that Cassie hadn’t quit the team in her fury or the melancholy which followed it.
The yellowed parchment had her name on it in a cramped scrawl and, very helpfully, underneath it was written ‘Head Business Only’. She tried, and failed, not to smile at this – it was funny but the fact that James knew she probably wouldn’t talk to him unless it was something to do with their duties also made her stomach sink a bit; up until last week she had thought that they might begin to get on much better and she even saw them finishing the year as good friends. Unfolding the piece of parchment she saw the same messy handwriting stretching across the page and, lifting her eyes up to where McGonagall was demonstrating some of the finer details of partial Transfiguration, she bewitched her quill to keep taking notes for her while she read what it said.
Dear Lily,
I’m so, so sorry about this but I checked the Prefects’ Schedule for the next couple of weeks and, I hate to do this to you, but I can’t make the Wednesday night. I know that it’s extremely unhelpful but I’ve rearranged it, don’t worry.
James
Lily frowned as she finished reading the note and added underneath James’ message: How? Who will you get to do it?
She passed it back to him and received it back in moments.
It’s all sorted; I spoke to Mark Burrows (who I reckon can handle Azalea) and he was happy to do it; I’ll take his place with whoever it was supposed to be next Monday and it’s all good.
It took only a moment’s recollection for her to realise that that was her; as she worked that out she experienced the strange feeling of having her heart constrict in happiness while her stomach dropped in nervousness; all at once she felt sickness pervade her body and she could have sworn that she had broken out into feverous sweats. Why did James Potter of all people do this to her? Clenching her teeth together to stop them chattering she wrote out her reply.
That’s me…
Oh is it? Is that alright?
Yeah, fine don’t worry. Okay then, well I suppose the schedule will have changed, won’t it…
James genuinely hadn’t expected it to be Lily when he had asked Mark to take his place; he had first gone for people he thought could handle Azalea and Mark had warmed up to him after their frosty beginning; finding out that Mark’s partner for that patrol was Lily was just an added bonus. She hadn’t seemed too eager to do it with him but she hadn’t said no and now he was free to help Remus… It was a win-win situation for James and he settled back into his chair with a smile on his face after he had sent back one last note.
This note landed on his desk moments later courtesy of a Lily whose cheeks, flushed with what James reckoned – from past experience – was anger, had acquired a pink tint which highlighted the few freckles sprinkled across her nose. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to do it but now all he could do was go with it and he merely offered her his most charming smile in reply.
That’s wonderful. Love you.
He looked at the last thing he had written to her and shook his head. He should have known that Lily wouldn’t take it well. With a start, however, he saw something printed in her neat handwriting beneath it which made him grin and stifle his chuckle.
You’re an idiot James. Let me get back to work. McGonagall will kill us if she sees us passing notes; we’re supposed to set an example! xx
The message itself wasn’t particularly interesting apart from the feeling of them being friends which James picked up from it; it was the two kisses at the end which put the smile on his face for the rest of the day. Sirius, seeing him grinning at a scrap of parchment, grabbed it to read and James, who didn’t want to lunge for it for fear of McGonagall seeing, watched Sirius go from a pleased grin through to a leering wink at James and then to shaking his head. He dipped his quill in his inkpot and scribbled something on it before passing it back. James was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch his friend; he had circled the words ‘love you’ and the two kisses at the end of Lily’s final message and scribbled, Prongs mate, you’re pathetic.
James just shrugged in reply and pocketed the piece of parchment; neither Sirius nor Lily needed to know that those two tiny crosses had made his day. He was pathetic and he was annoyed at Sirius for pointing it out – why couldn’t he just be pathetic by himself without anyone else bothering him? Sirius was pathetic too when it came to Cassie – but, James amended quickly, he had better not bring that up. Perhaps, he allowed himself to hope, he was beginning to thaw Lily’s icy exterior.
As James worried about Remus growing thinner the days seemed to pass extremely quickly and, before he knew it, it was time for James’ patrol night. Sirius had, with Remus’ begrudging help, devised a plan to get Cassie back and somehow, though James knew not how and he was under the impression that Sirius didn’t understand how either, it had worked; this meant that the week after the full moon and before James’ patrol was filled with Sirius’ constant speeches on his happiness and his amazement – not to mention his fury at Snape and his brother – as well as Remus and Peter’s entreating glances and increasingly creative ways to get Sirius to shut up. The only person who was prepared to put up with this was Cassie and she, due to James beginning to schedule Quidditch training after lessons, was around less than they hoped. James, of course, suffered less than Remus, Peter and the other Gryffindor boys who had to handle Sirius while Cassie was away; normally they would have told him to snap out of it but after the turmoil of the past few weeks they had decided that a sickening Sirius was better than a moping one. Three days into this new form of torture Peter suggested that Sirius just go to watch Cassie practise with the team which was how he ended up accompanying James back to the tower on the afternoon of his patrol.
The fire, already lit by the house elves despite the still warm weather, was crackling and bathing the common room in an almost stifling heat in case any of the Gryffindors should feel so much as a shiver crawl down their spines; Lily, as per usual, had her back to it and was letting it caress her shoulders as she worked. Tonight was her duty night and so, devoid of the hours after dark to finish up her pile of work, she had had to forgo the tempting offer of chocolate and Exploding Snap in favour of the much less violent pastime: essay writing. She sighed as she leafed through her textbook, hoping to find something else which she could add into her Herbology essay on the correct breeding of orchis italica, more commonly known as the Fairy Trap plant. It was an important ingredient in various potions as well as being cultivated by many witches and wizards both for its aesthetic purposes and its use in warding away fairies; despite its common usage, however, it was very hard for Lily to find enough information to fill the fifteen inches required of her by Professor Sprout and she was beginning to think she might have to make the effort of looking through the library after lessons tomorrow. As she flicked through the pages, her mind constantly half drawn to the many other things which she had to do in the coming days, the common room emptied until it was just Lily sitting there by herself.
“Merlin Evans why am I not surprised to find that you’re the only left?” James said as came to sit beside her.
“Because you seem to think that all I do with my time is work?” she replied as she finished the last sentence of her essay and sighed with relief.
James’ head inclined to one side as he studied her and he said, “You do seem to do a lot of it. Anyway I came to find you for our patrol.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just coming.” She stood up and stretched her arms out above her head, rolling her neck from side to side; she was completely oblivious to the way her jumper rode up slightly and exposed a strip of creamy skin above her jeans but James was not. “Well I want to be a Healer,” she said as he held the portrait hole open for her, “so I have to do well in my exams.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets as they strolled down the shadowy corridor, the only guiding light that which emanated from Lily’s wand as she held it up. “I didn’t know that,” he said.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me James,” Lily replied with a fleeting smile which he caught in his peripheral vision; he was half convinced he hadn’t seen it but the tone of her voice betrayed her.
“That’s true.” He felt that this reply was too meagre an offering but he couldn’t think of much else to say and they walked in silence for a bit before Lily said, “So what about you?”
“I want to be an Auror,” he replied and he sensed Lily’s surprise.
“Really?” she asked once she had collected herself, her question coming out more intrigued than shocked.
“Yeah well originally I wanted to be a Quidditch player but there’s not much call for fighting when you’re playing for the Chudley Cannons… Well not the sort of fighting that I want to do.” Lily chuckled beside him and he turned to her. “What?”
“It’s nothing just… This horrible thought occurred to me and I couldn’t help myself.”
“What?”
“Well I just thought… of course you want to fight.”
“It’s not like that,” he hastened to explain as they turned down one of the many corridors, “it’s just that I’d feel bad if I didn’t do anything, if I just stood and let all of this happen… especially after I’ve honed my skills so well here.” James meant his last joke to take some of the passion out of his words but he couldn’t help but continue in the same vein. “I just- well I’d never be able to forgive myself if I stood by and let it all go on under my nose without at least trying to stop it, you know?”
This time Lily didn’t laugh. Instead she stayed silent and James wasn’t sure what was worse until he saw that she was nodding. “I know,” she breathed into the darkness which pressed in on them from all sides. “I know exactly what you mean.” A silence almost as heavy as the sinuous shadows that surrounded them weighed over the pair of students as Lily searched for the right words. “I feel exactly the same way,” she started slowly, “and it’s why I want to become a Healer I suppose. Obviously it’s not the same thing but… well I can’t help thinking that all of my friends are going to go off and fight, just like you. And I want to fight, really I do, but I know that, in the long run, someone who can patch everyone up again afterwards might be more useful.” There was something strange about the gloom that they walked through, something about the way that she could just, out of the corner of her eye, see James looking at her in the faint pool of light that her wand cast, that made her think telling him this – telling him these thoughts which had barely acknowledged herself, thoughts and fears that she barely realised existed – was a good idea and, as the two of them kept on through the inky night which had permeated the corridors of their childhood, she felt less that she was speaking to James and more like she was spilling her soul to herself; James was just a friend who happened to overhear her conversation with the depths of the darkness. “You’re all so bloody noble,” she muttered. “It’ll be the death of everyone I love… their stupid, brave, wonderful nobleness; that and their ridiculously unswerving loyalty to their friends.”
“At least we’ll die for the right reasons,” James added into the silence as Lily scoffed. “I’d rather no one died at all really.”
“Yeah, me too.” He looked down at her as he said this, his eyes tracing the features which the cold light illuminated and she, perhaps feeling his gaze, looked up to meet it with those wonderful emerald eyes which tormented him nearly every night. For a moment it seemed like the universe stretched into infinity and that there was only the two of them standing in that corridor, that they made up the entire world; neither of them was aware that they had stopped walking and James tore his eyes away before he did something which he knew he would never regret but which would have far reaching consequences. “So what else don’t I know about you?” he asked, a teasing tone which he hoped would keep their conversation neutral entering his voice.
“Well I’m not sure I know where to start,” she responded in the same light manner. “What do you know about me?”
“Let me think… Obviously I know that you want to be a Healer,” he started, “that you’re the youngest daughter in a family of four… I know that your favourite colour is that weird mixture of pink, purple and orange that you see as the sun sets sometimes but that you also like the colour of the sky at dawn. It’s an… an indescribable mix of blue and whitish pink that somehow ends up being a not-quite-grey. I know that your favourite smell is the smell of the rain and that once Cassie dared you to go swimming in the lake and you did. I know that you like to sit with your back to the fire because it reminds you of the sun on your back but that your favourite season is spring because even the typical British rain holds promise then. I know that you wear your hair down to school because you think it looks better but that whenever you need to concentrate you tie it up; you’re never satisfied so you’re always taking it up and then pulling it out again – but I also know that it looks amazing either way. I’m pretty sure that your current favourite book is some Muggle story called ‘The Great Gatsby’ but that you change your mind nearly every month and you even sometimes, and this is really weird, read poetry. There’s a lot more that I could list than that because you get to know someone pretty well when you live with them – plus your friends aren’t exactly the quietest people in the common room – but the most important thing I can think of that I know about you is that you make everyone around you want to be a better person because all you ever seem to see are their good qualities and you never seem to want anything in return. Course you’re stubborn and indecisive and you shy away from actually making yourself vulnerable, preferring to yell at people until you lose your voice instead, and you’re loyal to a fault just like the rest of us idiots in this godforsaken house but you’re generous and funny and kind.”
A strangled chuckle emerged from Lily’s throat and the only thing she managed to comment on, out of the whole list that James had given her was, “I’m pretty sure I spent five years convincing myself I was blind to your good qualities James.”
“I would’ve done the same if I’d met myself back then,” he replied. “Sirius and I were pretty horrible, frankly I’m surprised people liked us. Still I suppose everyone is ashamed of what they were when they were younger; the only thing you can do is to try your best with the knowledge that your past mistakes taught you.”
“What did your past mistakes teach you?” she asked curiously.
“That not everyone in life is impressed by power and that most of those people are the ones worth impressing; that the best people you meet are the ones who make others want to be better, to be kinder. Also that you should make the most of your chances to screw up but also the chances that you get to improve. And never to let Sirius serve himself first or all the house elves in the world won’t be able to guarantee you a dinner.”
Lily giggled again and said, “There I was thinking you were being serious.”
“Oh I am,” he gasped as he turned to face her, “haven’t you ever seen how much food he can put away? I went hungry for hours until an older boy showed me how to sneak into the kitchens!”
Through her laughter she asked, “Was that rather impressive speech supposed to woo me?”
“It was if you feel wooed,” he replied suavely.
“Oh yes, very… I particularly enjoyed the part where you called me stubborn and indecisive,” she grinned. “That’s very romantic.”
“I can be romantic if you want Lily.” James’ voice suddenly became very serious and it deepened, sending a thrill through her as she thought of him bringing her flowers and taking her to Hogsmeade. She barely suppressed a shiver as she said, “No thanks, the thought of spending longer than thirty seconds in Madam Puddifoot’s makes me want to throw up.”
James’ loud chortles rippled through the darkness and he said, “I agree. That place really is Hell on earth. But you know you don’t have to go to Madam Puddifoot’s to be romantic. It’s not the place, it’s the person. I like to think I could make it quite a nice place though.”
“I’d like to see that,” she conceded with another chuckle.
“Maybe, if you came to Hogsmeade with me, you would,” he prompted.
“Is that an invitation?” Lily asked as she combed her scattered thoughts for how to react. Surely this was what she had been afraid of, that she would fall for James – even though she hadn’t fallen for him… well maybe a tiny bit but then everyone had – but after their past and the disastrous months of not talking last year she had thought that he had lost interest in her; when she had panicked over the summer it had always been how she would react – Lily had almost completely forgotten the ardour with which James Potter had once pursued her. She had, in the past year or so, been surprised by how easy it was to fall into friendship with someone she had once hated when they stopped acting like enemies and suddenly, as she was faced with the knowledge that he was still interested in her, she was forced to face up to how much she too liked him.
“It is if you’re considering it,” he sputtered, elated by this turn of events and not entirely sure that he wasn’t dreaming.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, “if you promise that we stay far, far away from that pink purgatory.”
“Puddifoot’s? You won’t even know that it exists,” James said with an unquenchable grin; he felt like he had just swallowed a bottle of Firewhiskey and the warmth of happiness was spreading through his body, filling him with uncontainable ecstasy. “Are you serious?” he asked, not sure that such a miracle could exist.
Lily smiled wider as she looked at him and nodded. “Yes,” she said as blissful laughter threatened to escape, “I can’t believe it but yes!” James gathered her into a hug, holding her close as he savoured this moment, being cocooned in the darkness as he rested his nose on the top of Lily’s head and sighed, feeling her warm arms wrapped around his torso as she buried her face in his chest. “I know we haven’t always been friends,” he mumbled into her hair, “but I swear that I will do everything I can to make you happy.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re not getting married,” he heard as a muffled reply.
“We may as well be,” James grinned, “you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.”
Neither of them knew how long they were there for as they stood, wrapped in each other’s arms, but eventually they remembered the time and raced through a couple of floors before deciding that there wasn’t much point in patrolling the rest of the castle since they had done all of the main corridors, and heading back. James’ hand was anchoring him to Lily and he had his other arm around her back as they ambled through the darkness, both as surprised at the other at the turn which the evening’s events had taken.
When they found themselves back in the common room, after having been let in by the very grumpy Fat Lady who barely opened her eyes as she swung the portrait hole open, the pair of them stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor.
“Goodnight Lily,” James finally said, disentangling himself from her and leaning down to peck her on the cheek before heading up to his dorm.
She blinked owlishly as she watched him go, still feeling the soft brush of his lips on her skin, his messy shirt hanging from his thin shoulders as he vanished up the stairs. Wordlessly Lily retreated to the sanctuary of her bed where she was able to run the night over and over in her mind, wondering when exactly she had decided that the person she wanted was James Potter.
In his bed the object of Lily’s thoughts was trying to calm the frantic beating of his heart down so that he could go to sleep; unfortunately the memory of how it felt to embrace Lily and the smoothness of her cheek as he had kissed it kept haunting him and, every so often, a thought would burst into his mind like a shot of adrenaline and wake him up again.
Lily had agreed to go to Hogsmeade with him.
Alright! Soooo… it begins! Sort of.
Anyway I will keep updating this but I've got a bit of a hectic week or so because I found out on Thursday that I got an interview from Oxford which means I have to prepare for that and that I will get to spend about two days the week after next being grilled on all things literary… So a good reason to be away I suppose.