Do Stags Have Teeth?
Lily was in the common room the next morning, sitting on the couch in a pair of grey joggers and a white t-shirt, her hair in a messy knot atop her head, when the Marauders came downstairs. James couldn't tear his eyes away the moment he spotted her. He'd never seen anyone look so beautiful so effortlessly before. His mouth was quite dry and he stared at her, even as Peter tripped into him from behind.
Lily looked up at the sound of their footsteps coming down. They were a motley collection, those Marauders - Remus had dark circles under his eyes and a peaky complexion and Sirius was hung over, squinting angrily at the sunlight. James stared at her, and Peter was rubbing his nose, glaring up at James. "Ow," Peter complained, "What'd you stop for?"
Sirius said, "Perhaps because he realized it's bloody too early in the morning for this getting up and walking around bullshit?"
"The house elves aren't going to bring food to you and you definitely need food and some good strong black coffee to sober up," Remus said.
"I don't want to be sober."
Peter looked nervously at Remus at these words - Sirius still didn't know that once he sobered up, he would be staying sober awhile, seeing as Remus had jumped all of the firewhiskey out.
"Morning," Lily said, "You lot seem a cheerful bunch."
"I'm a fucking ray of sunshine what are you talking about?" Sirius asked.
James waved the others on, "I'll catch you up."
Remus nodded and pushed Sirius toward the portrait hole, which Peter scurried on to open up for them, and Sirius complained as they went out the door into the corridor about wishing he didn't have mates that wake people up and drag them about the castle. "Simply unfair," he was muttering as he went.
James waited for the portrait hole to close behind them, then he turned to Lily, hands in his pockets. "Alright Evans?"
She shrugged, "I s'pose. What do you want, Potter?"
James sat in the chair next to the couch and hesitated a moment. "Evans... I - well, Remus, really, noticed that you've... you've got a sweater... with um... with patches on the sleeves and it's missing a button? A Gryffindor sweater?"
Lily stared at him.
"It's just that, um... Well, well it's mine. And - it means a good deal to me. And I was hoping that I might have it back. Please." He reached in his bookbag. "You can have one of my others if you want, I mean, if you need a sweater, I - I don't want to take it away if you need it, but I need that particular sweater back. You can have all these others if you want. Or I'll give you galleons for a new one if you rather, I just --"
"James," Lily interrupted him, "You can have your sweater back."
"Yeah?"
"Yes, of course. I mean, if it's yours then... then of course, I'm not going to steal your sweater. And bloody hell, you don't owe me another sweater..."
James flushed, "I just didn't want you to be without one is all."
"Well, thank you, but I have plenty." Lily stood up, a blanket she'd had draped over her shoulders fell from her onto the floor and James stared up at her, the white t-shirt hugging her curves, far more than her school uniforms did, and he couldn't help the glance across her figure that his eyes did... and he flushed when he realized she had caught him at looking. Lily grabbed at the blanket quickly and pulled it 'round herself again, covering up, her face hot in the cheeks. "I'll bring it down to breakfast."
"Alright," James nodded.
And she hurried away quickly, up to her dorm.
Lily folded James Potter's jumper up and lay it on her bed next to her textbooks as she got dressed, tugging her own jumper over her head. She ran her hand over the soft cloth of his jumper and lifted it up one last time to breathe in the smell of it.
The cologne was the same as her dad had worn.
Alice had thought she'd been telling Lily new information when she'd mentioned that the cologne was Old Spice brand. But it wasn't new at all. Lily had brought Mr. Evans a bottle of Old Spice for every holiday since she was old enough to pick out gifts. She could still remember the first one - it had come in a cream coloured bottle with a little blue boat painted above the red lettering. It had been on a display in the department store and while Tuney selected a pair of grey slippers with sensible no-slip soles, Lily had chosen that cream coloured bottle that smelled warm and strong. She could not remember her father ever smelling of anything else but that cologne.
She'd found the sweater under her bed in January, on her birthday, and she had sobbed when she'd smelled that cologne buried deep in the fabric weave of the sweater. She'd pressed it to her nose and cried in her dorm for hours that night, holding it, believing wholeheartedly that the sweater's mysterious appearance had been her father's way of saying happy birthday to her.
She'd kept it hidden for months, treasuring it as a precious gift from the gods... until the attack.
After Horace Slughorn had saved her and she'd returned to her dorm, a weepy mess, she'd pulled that jumper from a drawer and wrapped herself up in it and breathed it's scent and cried herself to sleep, comforted by the smell... And in the days that followed, she'd started wearing it to bed and just about the castle - when she wasn't in her school uniform, because it was far too big on her to be proper for classes.
That jumper had gotten her through what was proving to be a very, very hard second term and she was quite ready for fifth year to be over.
She tucked the jumper into her bag, along with her textbooks, and she went downstairs.
In the Great Hall, the four Marauders were already at the table. Sirius had his head down against the tabletop, his eyes closed, while Peter ate hungrily, James picked at his bacon, and Remus sat, one hand covering his nostrils and forcing himself to eat some porridge with berries in it, looking quite peaky. Lily took a deep breath and walked up behind James Potter and tapped him upon the shoulder.
James looked up and dropped the strip of bacon he'd been eating ,wiping his hand on his knee to rid it of grease. "Evans," he said.
Lily reached in her bag, pulling the sweater out, only hesitating slightly as she held it out to him.
"Evans, thank you," he said sincerely, taking the jumper from her hands. He ran his palm over it appreciatively and folded it in half again and stuck it in his book bag at his feet. "Bloody hell you have no idea how much I appreciate it."
Lily nodded, "Yeah no worries." She started to turn away, though she wasn't sure where she was going to sit - Frank and Ali hadn't come down yet, nor had Carly or Annalee or McKenna or Meg or any of the first years...
As though he had read her mind, Remus said, "Why don't you sit with us, Lil?"
"Yeah," James agreed and he nudged aside a bit to make space on the bench beside him, the spot that had once been her usual spot, in another time, and he pushed Sirius down. Sirius groaned against the crook of his arm as James moved him.
Lily hesitated. "Alright," she said and she sat down slowly, stiffly, carefully keeping her hands in her lap, swinging her book bag to sit on the bench to separate her and James.
"Relax, we don't bite, Evans," James said, smiling.
Remus said, "Well. Usually anyway." And he winked.
James smirked, "And that's only once a month."
Lily laughed.
"Do stags even have teeth?" Peter asked.
"Yeah, a few," James replied, "In the bottom. None in the top."
"How do you eat without teeth?" Peter asked.
"It's like... the top of the mouth is hard and you sort of ... smash stuff against the top."
"Blimey. I'm glad rats have teeth," he muttered. "I'd starve if not."
Sirius murmured, "You have a fair amount of fat storage to keep your body running for a good deal of time, Pete, I doubt you'd starve."
Peter flushed.
Lily was blinking at her plate. Remus looked over at her, "You get used to it."
"What?" she asked, looking up.
"The animal talk," he said. "It's weird at first, because, like, normal people don't just have conversations like what sorts of teeth a stag has."
Lily laughed.
"We aren't normal, that's the key," James said. He looked at Lily and grinned.
"Well, didn't we all know that already?" Lily teased, and James's grin only widened.
Remus said, "You have no idea, Lil."
"The best people are the oddballs," James said. "Isn't that right, Pete? Siri?"
Sirius groaned and Peter nodded, crumbs falling from his lips.
Lily smiled... and her eyes moved across the hall and happened to catch Mulciber's eye as he walked through the door of the Great Hall. He sneered when their gazes locked and she turned red and turned away, quickly looking down, the smile melting off her face.
Remus turned around to see what had made her shut down like she had and he frowned and turned back to face her as James was grabbing a plate of bacon and filling his plate up. "Do you want some bacon, Evans?" he asked, and without awaiting a reply, he put some on her plate.
Remus looked at her with concern. "You okay?" he mouthed to her while James was distracted leaning to grab a plate of hash.
Lily nodded.
"Hash, Evans?" James asked and when she nodded, he thought she was answering him and he spooned some out onto her plate. "The eggs are just over there, if -- oi Rey, could just pass them over..." and he was spooning scrambled eggs onto her plate next...
Mulciber had moved 'round the hall to the Slytherin table and now sat next to Severus Snape.
She looked down to realize James had built a breakfast for her in just seconds of time, and gone back to his own breakfast without any bravado to it. She stared at the meal before her, and she glanced at him, his hair falling over his forehead and sticking up in places in messy spikes and twists. He had ketchup stuck to his cheek and clearly had no idea of it.
"You have just a spot..." Lily said to him.
"Huh?" he looked at her.
Lily took a napkin and reached up to wipe it away.
"Thanks," he said, turning back and shoveling another bite of hash into his mouth.
"Yeah," Lily nodded.
Sirius was watching from the crook of his arm with one eye open as James Potter and Lily Evans had quietly taken care of each other, without even realizing it was happening.