Chapter Text
James Potter woke to green eyes watching him from the other side of the bed.
Lily Evans had tucked herself into the hollow of his spare pillow, one cheek pressed into the linen, her red hair a wild spill over the sheets and across her shoulder. The early morning light had found the pale slope of her face through the cracks in the curtains. It made her skin look almost translucent, except for the faint, raw flush around her nose and under her eyes. Those eyes—Merlin, those eyes—were fixed on him with such open, bruised intensity that for a moment James forgot to breathe.
Then she blinked, and the moment broke as a shy smile tugged at her mouth the very second she realised he was awake, as if she’d been caught doing something terribly private. Watching him sleep, he guessed, had embarrassed her.
He stretched luxuriously, his toes brushing hers beneath the covers. His shin slid along her calf, slow and new enough to make his stomach dip, but familiar enough that she did not feel the need to pull away. He watched the small change in her face when she felt it: the slight lowering of her eyelids, the fragile flutter of her smile. It was the way she always looked when he flirted with her and she was trying very hard not to let him know it worked.
His girlfriend was so impossibly hot it was frankly inconvenient.
Lily Evans—the most popular girl in sixth year, by the way—was lying in his bed with her hair mussed over the pillow, her cheeks still pink, and her mouth curved in that soft little smile that made James feel as though someone had removed all the bones from his body.
She was probably the most brilliant girl in sixth year, the prettiest too, not that he was biased in the slightest…but she had somehow decided to look his way for longer than five seconds this year…
And now here they were; so close and so easily bound together.
Sirius told James that it was weird how so strangely in step they were and that it seemed impossible to believe last year had been as awful as it had been for both of them. James had to agree because it was impossible to believe there had ever been a time when Lily had looked at him and seen only the worst parts of him, or when James had looked at her and wanted so badly for her to be friends with literally anyone else beside Sarah Beckett and Severus Snape.
(Fuck them both, if he were being honest).
But she was here now, his friend, his girlfriend, and friends with his friends. She’d chosen to stay with James last night, in his dorm, when she hadn’t wanted to go back to her dorm. She’d chosen to fall asleep at his side, always the most comfortable version of herself, when she had a hand on him.
James Potter was having a rather difficult time not feeling like the luckiest idiot in Britain.
Sure, she had cried for most of the night. Not loudly, otherwise Sirius might’ve bemoaned and kicked them out. Lily wasn’t the sort to dissolve into theatrical sobs, even when she had every right to. She had cried in a way that seemed to annoy her as much as it hurt her: quiet, frustrated tears while she wrote in that thick diary she carried around in her pocket..
James had only caught bits and pieces at first, partly because Lily’s voice had kept breaking, and partly because his entire attention had been devoted to holding her. He only heard Lipton’s name, a few slurred words, and then nothing else.
He’d been too busy feeling the shape of her under his palms to really pry. The stiffness in her shoulders, the trembling breath she kept trying to swallow before it escaped, and the way her fingers had twisted into the back of his robes as though she needed something to hold on to…that had taken precedence over everything else.
Professor Lipton’s opinion mattered to Lily, in some weird way he didn’t understand.
James knew that Lily respected plenty of professors. She feared, but respected McGonagall with some small part of her. She certainly liked Flitwick and Slughorn in the way one tolerated an overenthusiastic uncle at Christmas. Lipton had been different from the other professors for her, thanks to whatever secret thing they worked on together, Lily treated her like a confidant.
Back before they lost the map, James had seen Lily hanging out alongside Professor Lipton several times a week, and oftentimes past curfew.
Lipton had seen something in Lily, or offered her something, or perhaps merely listened at precisely the moment Lily needed listening to. James did not yet have the full shape of it, but he knew there had been a special project. Something Lily had been working on for months now with a secrecy that could rival his own hart.
James lifted a hand slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wanted to but she didn’t. Her gaze stayed on him, damp and searching, as his fingers brushed the hair back from her forehead. Her skin was warm from sleep and her crying. He tucked a loose strand behind her ear, then stroked his thumb gently beneath her eye, rubbing away the tiny crust of dried salt caught at the edge of her lashes.
Lily’s breath hitched and that reaction made the corner of his mouth lift before he could stop it, smugness slipping in like it had been waiting.
There had been a time, not so terribly long ago, when touching Lily Evans without an invitation would have earned him a jinx sharp enough to send him limping to the hospital wing. Possibly with boils the size of teacups, like she’d done to Mulciber in fourth year. He had seen her hex the eyebrows off William Kedlig once, so he could’ve gotten that treatment too.
Possibly both, if she had been feeling especially artistic.
“Morning, Whiskey,” he murmured sleepily.
“Morning.”
Merlin, her voice was rough from crying, scraped raw at the edges, and the sound of it did something dreadful to him.
He let his eyes travel over her face properly, taking inventory in the private, helpless way of someone very much caring deeply for another. Her swollen eyelids were prominent, as was the faint crease tucked between her brows. The stubborn set of her mouth was the same as the night before, and then the exhausted bags under her eyes.
The exhaustion she had tried to hide from everyone, even James.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she said.
Well, at least she wasn’t lying.
“I’m sorry, babe,” he whispered, the word coming out easily after heavy use last night while soothing her. “Do you want to stay in bed a while longer?”
For half a second, Lily looked tempted. Her lashes dipped, her cheek pressing harder into the pillow, and James could almost see the answer settling over her. Some part of her wanted to stay and hide away here with him, but then she shook her head.
“No,” she said, her voice strained. “I need to come down to the great hall and say goodbye to everyone. And I need to give Mary her Christmas gift for the train ride home. It is the holidays after all.”
“What’d you get Mary?” He asked, with his thumb tracing her soft lower lip.
A tiny sound escaped her. Not quite a laugh, but near enough that James felt his shoulders relax. Her laugh was always a good sign. Lily’s mouth curled, and there it was—that wicked little look she got when she was being absolutely vile, but pretending she was innocent.
James prodded her side and she admitted, “I bought her How to Shag a Wizard in Ten Days.”
James stared at her. “Pardon?
“It’s a romance book,” she said, eyes brightening. “Mary’s first romance book. She’s going to be properly scandalised and then spend all of January giving me hell for corrupting her.”
“I dunno.” He rolled his eyes, thinking of Mary Macdonald and all her dramatic sighs and stubborn, unfortunate devotion to people who did not feel quite the same. “Maybe she’ll learn a thing or two and actually go after a wizard who wants to date her.”
“Prat,” Lily kicked him lightly with her foot under the covers. “She doesn’t like you like that anymore.”
“She definitely does,” James disagreed, “she’s just gotten better at hiding her staring.”
“Are you really that arrogant to think she still fancies you?” Lily snorted, rolling her eyes. “I’m her best friend, and I’m your girlfriend, and it’s very clear to her that you and I are serious.”
“Are we?” he let his toes slide up her ankle, reveling in the red exploding on her cheeks.
“Are we what?”
“Serious?”
“No,” she said sweetly and with a bite in her tone, “Sirius is in the bed next door.”
“Brat,” he teased, because he was brave, and because she looked as though she needed another laugh more than she needed air.
“Toe-rag,” Lily said back to him, wrinkling her nose.
“Evans…”
Fuck, she always looked so cute when she scrunched up her face in mock anger.
“Potter?” She sang his last name, making his stomach flip.
Her hand lifted and slid into his hair, fingers threading affectionately through the black waves that never behaved for anyone, even less for him. James leaned into her touch, because he never took it for granted, and likely never would.
Her eyes shone again and James’s hand stilled against her cheek. He was about to make another joke, this time about her blush as they played footsie under the covers, but it escaped him the second she sat up on her elbow to tilt herself suggestively towards him.
“Whiskey,” he sighed her nicknamed affectionately, “don’t temp me.”
“Don’t fight me, Jim.”
He tried to roll away from her for that comment, but her hand caught his shoulder, twisting him back. James rolled his eyes next, making sure she saw the look on his face. It just made Lily cackle and lean closer.
Her hair fell in waves over one shoulder, catching the light that drifted from between cracks in the curtains. James shifted beneath the covers until the space between them shrank into almost nothing, his knee catching between her thighs. If anything, she folded towards him by a fraction, green eyes sharp and piercing.
“Kiss me, James,” she demanded.
Well, who was he to refuse?
James caught her chin gently between his fingers and drew her to him. She met him, familiar and eager, but still a little breathless. And fuck, her mouth was warm against his in a way that made his thoughts scatter and his heart drop in his chest. He kissed her carefully at first, because she had cried herself raw the night before and because despite all evidence to the contrary…
James did possess self-control on special occasions.
Then Lily made a small impatient sound and tugged at him, and his carefulness rather packed a bag and left.
James groaned against her mouth before he could stop it, helpless, one hand sliding into her hair while the other found her waist beneath the blanket. Lily smiled into the kiss like she knew exactly what she was doing to him, the vixen, and James was just deciding that Christmas might have come early when something thudded against the outside of his shut curtains.
“Stop snogging,” Sirius’s voice called miserably from beyond the hangings. “Some of us are trying to wake up without wanting to vomit into our slippers.”
Lily broke away with a breathless laugh against James’s mouth.
James sighed, long-suffering as he heard a snicker that sounded something like Peter. Lily glared at the closed curtains, her bottom lip jutting out, tempting James to take it between his teeth. Instead, something hit the curtains again, shaking them.
“We mean it, you two!” Peter was the one snickering, the prat.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly to Lily.
“Sorry?” Lily’s brow furrowed as she pulled back into him, though there was finally light in her eyes again, the bit that had been missing since the night before. “For what?”
Somewhere outside the curtains, the castle was waking: distant footsteps, a pipe groaning, someone in the corridor shouting about a missing sock, and a muffled yelp from Peter’s bed that suggested Sirius had already begun making himself everyone’s problem.
But inside the curtains, the world had narrowed to Lily’s face. It was warm as his fingers dug into the fabric bunched around her lovely thighs, tempted to trace the shape of her arse, because he loved her arse. He simply did not get to appreciate it often enough, especially not like this when she was wearing nothing but her flimsy cotton nightgown.
James brushed his thumb alongside the seam of the nightgown, watching happily as goosebumps rose on Lily’s arms. He traced up and and up, until his hand was cupping her round face.
“They’re prats, the boys are,” he said. “You’re allowed to kiss me whenever you like.”
“This is a no-kissing zone!” Sirius called again, closer to the curtains this time.
James’s head snapped towards the curtains. “I’m about to hex you out the window, Padfoot.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Sirius said at once. “Mia would kill you.”
James scoffed as Lily buried a giggle in the crook of his neck. The sound of it, bright and muffled, was lovely. What was even better? When she started to kiss the slope of his neck, because her breath was warm as it spread across his skin. Her nose was cold, but he didn’t mind as it nuzzled into his skin.
“You’re my favourite,” she mused, "did you know that?”
She would smother him, gladly, he thinks.
“Whiskey,” James warned again, reaching to adjust a growing problem between them.
“Hmmm,” she hummed noncommittally, her nose dragging up to his ear and tracing the curve of it.
James purposefully shifted so that he could press himself against her hip, showing her that he was dealing with a prevalent morning hard-on that she was not helping remove. If anything, he’d need to throw himself out the window and into the snow to get the blood rushing out of his lower extremities.
The quick brush of hips nearly gave him double vision. He hissed as he controlled the need to lurch into her harder and—shit. This was a bad idea, he should’ve never agreed she could stay all night with him.
Lily gasped from the feeling of James pressed, hard, into her. Her fingers began digging into his hair while her teeth lightly grazed James’s earlobe. She really felt him now, and she didn’t help at all. He felt her legs fall open so easily for him to slip between, putting him in a position that wasn’t legal when his mates were steps away on the other side of the curtain. James gulped and pushed Lily away, his brain swirling and stomach inside-out like he was about to do an eagle dive on a broken broomstick.
“James,” Lily giggled, and it did things to him. “There’s no need to try and hide it."
“Sorry!” He winced, why did he wince? “I can’t help it.”
“It’s true, Evans, he can’t help it,” Sirius called, clearly having heard the scuffle with his stupid good hearing, “He wanks himself to the thought of you nearly every morning.”
James frowned and told Lily gently, “Please, don’t listen to Sirius.”
“I never listen to Sirius,” was her saucy reply.
“Hey!”
Lily and James both laughed, but the laughter was cut short when James’s curtains were yanked back without any warning. James barely had time to shield Lily before Sirius launched himself onto the bed with them.
“Sirius!” James cried out, flinging his body over Lily as Sirius landed in a heap on top of them.
“What the fuck, Sirius?” Lily screeched from under James.
“Bloody dog,” James hissed, as Sirius made himself comfortable, right on top of them.
“Morning, idiots,” Sirius said cheerfully, already wrestling his way towards Lily. “Don’t mind me. Just here to restore decency to this once-respectable dormitory.”
“This dormitory has never been respectable,” James grunted, shoving at his shoulder.
“True, but it had rules.”
Lily was laughing beneath James now, bright and breathless and warmer than she had sounded in days. More like herself. More like the Lily who loved to tease and pester, like buying scandalous bodice rippers as Christmas gifts.
“What rules?” Lily scoffed, rolling her head back. “I never agreed to any rules.”
Sirius’s upper lip lifted like a dog. “Well, for starters, there’s no snogging in the dorm before ten in the morning, Evans.”
“Fine,” Lily said coolly, “but a contingency to the rule is that you can’t talk until ten in the morning, Black.”
James was pretty sure he heard Remus chuckle.
“Hell no.”
Sirius and Lily fought like brother and sister sometimes. Normally James thought it was hilarious, but currently he was annoyed with Sirius for interrupting a private conversation with his girlfriend.
“If I can’t use my mouth,” Lily said daintily, flipping her hair with her fingers, “then you can’t use yours.”
James coughed a laugh, offering her a grin that she returned with a wink.
Sirius, naturally, chose that exact time to seek payback.
“Let me at her,” he declared, managing somehow to pin one of James’s arms above his head while straddling him at the waist. His other hand reached past James towards Lily’s face with theatrical menace. “I’m going to pick bogies from her nose and make her eat them.”
“Disgusting!” Lily shrieked, half laughing, half gasping, batting at his hand. “Sirius, ew! Get your damn finger away from my nose!”
“Sirius, off!” James commanded, kneeing Sirius in the side. “Personal space, much?”
Sirius paused and shot him a deeply offended look. “Personal space? You were shagging your girlfriend five seconds ago in a full dorm.”
“We were kissing behind the curtains,” James corrected.
Lily added from underneath James’s broad shoulders, “Yeah, we were kissing like civilised people.”
“Civilised people don’t make the noises I heard before breakfast,” Sirius disagreed bluntly.
Lily wriggled free enough to prop herself up on one elbow, cheeks pink, eyes wicked. “Would you rather I snogged you instead, Sirius?”
Sirius recoiled as if she had suggested poisoning him. “I’d rather die than kiss you, Evans.”
“How rude,” Lily said, entirely unbothered.
“Sirius doesn’t want to kiss anyone,” James told her, “you’re not special, I promise.”
“You’re practically my sister-in-law.” Sirius told her, “it’d be revolting.”
“Sister-in-law?” Lily arched a brow at Sirius, “are you joking?”
“James already has a ring picked out.”
James shot Sirius the dirtiest look he could possibly imagine, “no I don’t.”
“We’re sixteen.” Lily said that so quickly, and James also caught that her eyes had dropped to her hand. “And we’re definitely not getting married any time soon.”
“Sure,” Sirius cackled, only to be surprised when Lily didn’t retort back.
Instead, Lily glanced at James with an odd look, and then he saw it happen.
He’s seen it happen often enough now that he’d taken to realise that precisely two seconds before she loses it, her pupils dilate. She was gone, trapped inside her head, right there on his bed. Still touchy from watching her convulse on the floor in history of magic, he reached out to pinch her, only for her eyes to snap back into focus.
“You okay, Whiskey?” James asked, taking care to notice the way she brushed her fingers through her hair, as if annoyed by whatever had just happened.
“Fine,” she dismissed his concerns.
He tilted his head, touching her gently on the cheek, “you sure?”
“Don’t be pushy,” she sang gently, grabbing at the hand on her face, looking nervous.
“You two are revolting,” Peter announced from his bed, moodily. “Do you ever stop touching?”
“We might as well put a permanent sticking charm on their mouths to save ‘em some time,” Sirius teased.
James rolled his eyes as Lily twisted quickly. He was impressed when she shoved Sirius by the shoulders, knocking him towards the foot of the four-poster. Sirius sprawled there in his striped pyjamas like a male model, grinning at Lily’s annoyance with his hair falling into his eyes.
“Did I hit a nerve, Evans?”
Lily glanced at Sirius, considered his mocking tone, and then turned back to James with deliberate purpose. Before James could ask what she was doing, she swung one leg over him and settled herself across his lap, looking far too pleased with herself.
James’s brows shot up as she made herself comfortable right where he didn’t need any friction.
Like, at all.
“Whatcha doin’ Whiskey,” he said, warning and delight shifting through his tone all at once.
And then Lily only smiled and bent to kiss him without another word. It was not long, not really, but it was pointed. Lily delivered the kiss with purpose, a flair of her tongue, and absolutely no respect for James’s roommates and their supposed delicate constitutions.
Sirius retched loudly from the end of the bed. “Disgusting!”
Without breaking the kiss, Lily lifted one hand behind her and flicked two fingers at him. James burst out laughing against her mouth, ruining the whole thing spectacularly.
Lily pulled back just enough to glare at James. “You were meant to keep snogging me until he got grossed out enough to leave.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, still laughing. “You should’ve seen the look on his face.”
“Why would I want to look at his face,” Lily teased, dipping her chin toward James with a wicked little smile, “when yours is so cute?”
Then, because apparently she had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, she wiggled her hips.
James’s hands flew to her waist at once. “Evans,” he said, voice strained in a way that made Sirius gag loudly and kick at them both, “you are going to get us both kicked out of the room.”
Lily only looked more pleased with herself. She was perched on top of him like she had every right in the world to be there, knees bracketing his hips, hair falling loose around her shoulders, cheeks pink from mischief. The morning light made her look soft and gold-edged and entirely too lovely for the situation, which was, in James’s opinion, grossly unfair.
Especially given that his mates were still in the room.
“Right,” James barked, tightening his grip on Lily’s waist to keep her still. “All of you. Get the fuck out.”
“Me too?” Lily asked innocently.
“Not you,” he demanded, squeezing her hips. “Definintly not you.”
Sirius, who had been sitting on the bed with one hand clamped over his eyes as if he were witnessing an unforgivable curse, lowered his fingers just enough to glare. “This is our dormitory, emphasis on ours. If anyone’s leaving, it’s you two.”
“I need to have a chat with my girlfriend.”
“You mean you need to swap tongues with your girlfriend.” Sirius deduced, “You can do that later, far away from the rest of us.”
“It’s our dorm, James,” Peter protested from his own bed, “we aren’t dressed, even!”
“Five minutes,” James begged. “Five bloody minutes, please!”
Sirius covered his mouth with the back of his hand and hissed to Lily, “he thinks he’d last five?”
Peter, still tangled in his blanket near the foot of his bed, gave a muffled snort. Lily snapped her mouth shut after a tiny laugh escaped and James glared at her purposefully. She just wiggled her hips again, her green eyes dangerously molten, as if flirting with him were second nature.
Perhaps, at this point, it was.
“Evans, fucking do something.” He bemoaned, “those prat’s won’t listen to me.”
Lily tilted her head, utterly unbothered. “Honestly, Captain Fleamont, the mouth on you this morning...”
“You started this,” James muttered, dutifully ignoring her ‘Captain Fleamont’ tease.
“I merely complimented your face.”
“You flirted with intent.”
Lily laughed again, and for a moment, James forgot she’d been crying all night. “James, I always flirt with you.”
“Yeah, but this is in my bed.”
Sirius groaned and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Come on, Lily. Get out of here. James isn’t mature enough for this.”
“Oh, James isn’t mature enough?” Lily turned to give the other pure-blood a sharp look. “You’re the one gagging at the sight of a little kissing.”
“It was not a little kissing, Whiskey,” Sirius said with great feeling.
Remus’s voice croaked from somewhere in his bed: “You two should come with a warning label for Public Displays of Affection.”
Peter, who had finally freed himself from his bedding, padded across the room with his hair flattened on one side and sticking up on the other. He dropped onto the edge of James’s bed beside Sirius, wearing the expression of someone who was about to cause some trouble for the hell of it.
“Sirius prefers kissing with tongue,” Peter said brightly. “Isn’t that right, Padfoot?”
For one perfect second, silence.
Then Sirius moved fast and he shoved Peter off the bed. Peter hit the floor with a yelp and a thump, immediately beginning to laugh. Sirius sent the boy an ugly look, for making a Padfoot joke in front of Lily.
“Oi!” Lily cried, scrambling off James at once. “Peter!”
James caught at her instinctively, but she had already slipped away, taking all her warmth with her. The space she left behind felt offensively cold. He watched her kneel beside Peter, fussing at him even as Peter wheezed with laughter and Sirius looked on smugly.
James flopped against his pillow and stared up at the canopy.
He half wished they had slept anywhere else—literally anywhere else. The head student’s office wasn’t too far from here and had a decent looking sofa. A broom cupboard was his current favourite spot to be with her. Hell, he’d even sneak her out to Hogsmeade to steal a bedroom above the taverns. Somewhere far, far away from his best friends who haven’t had a sense of personal space since third year.
At least he would have time alone with Lily over the Christmas holidays and that thought warmed him again, though not quite enough.
She did not know it yet, but James and Sirius had agreed the night before, whispering in the loo like conspirators while she cried in James’s bed, that they were staying at Hogwarts with her.
James had gone in to brush his teeth and Sirius had followed him in, shut the door, turned on the taps, and said, “We’re not leaving her here by herself, are we?”
James had not even pretended to think about it. “No,” he said around his toothbrush.
And that had been that.
Lily had been torn up for weeks. Worse than torn up, really, though she was doing that stubborn Evans thing where she pretended she could hold herself together through sheer stubbornness and wit. When James asked if she was going home for Christmas last night (mid-tears by the way), she had said no too quickly.
Then she had claimed she needed to stay at school for remedial Charms.
Remedial Charms.
James had called dragonshite immediately, because something else was going on.
Lily was brilliant at Charms. Infuriatingly brilliant. James used to want to throw himself into the lake when she’d beat his scores in the class. Lily Evans did not need remedial Charms any more than Sirius Black needed lessons in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
It was dragonshite.
Complete and utter dragonshite.
But James had not called her on it.
A while back, Remus had told him that Lily needed space. James had nodded along as if that sounded perfectly reasonable and not like the worst advice anyone had ever handed him. Inside, it was killing him not to pester her for answers.
“Give her space, and not the space you gave me for two years,” Remus had added dryly from behind his book.
James remembered that he had felt beyond offended. “That was different.”
Remus lowered the book just enough to stare at him. “You followed me around the castle, interrogated me over my calming draught consumption, and once asked Madam Healer if I had a rare curse placed on my family line.”
“I was concerned.”
“You were unbearable.”
Still, Remus had a point. Lily’s secret was not so different from his, at least in the shape it made around her. The evasions when James asked her about it any time she got lost in her own head The missed classes and the odd headaches that she explained too quickly were the first clue in. The exhaustion she tried to hide with temper, was the second reed flag.
Except with Remus, there had been a pattern, and thus, something to track. Once James knew and Sirius what to look for, the answer had been impossible to ignore. The sickly appearance and the scars, and all the absences every month around the moon phases.
Werewolf was easy to deduce, Lily was harder.
Her fainting spells were wild and unpredictable.
Corridors.
Lessons.
Staircases.
Sometimes she woke confused or dazed, as if she’d been someplace else. Sometimes he saw her crying, like last night. Otherwise, she seemed to go into a trance when he kissed her, like he was the problem. But if he was the problem…she certainly wouldn’t be kissing him so much.
At least he hoped so.
Once she had come back from an episode screaming James’s name, and blood was running from her nose in front of everyone in the classroom. That was the most recent event, and James couldn’t get the vision of her convulsing on the floor out of his damn head. It kept him up the night after, his mind reeling, wondering what on earth could be wrong with her.
If the episodes had been more consistent, he might have guessed, but Lily was not a werewolf. No, she wasn’t anything close to Remus in terms of condition. For the most part, she was a healthy sixteen year old witch, not skin and bones like his dorm mate.
She was always well dressed, wore her make up like the other girls, and looked very clean. He never found her with unexplained bruises, if anything, he was always with her when she got hurt. Her skin was perfect, minus a blemish or two, so no notes to be taken there. And her body? Perfectly assembled, in his opinion.
Robust hips, a well-defined arse, and tits that also happened to keep James up at night.
She was utterly perfect in his eyes, so there had to be something else, something he couldn’t see with his eyes. Perhaps, even, some type of curse. Something James had never seen or heard of before. Something that frightened her badly enough that Lily would rather lie to James than let him help her.
That was the bit that had lodged beneath James’s ribs for the last four months.
Watching her laugh one minute and vanish the next was scary. It was seeing her look perfectly normal while carrying around something that made her write secret thoughts into a diary no one could read.
She was lying to him, and worse, he was lying to her.
But, that lie, his lie, wasn’t his truth to give either.
The boys had made it very clear that Lily could never know they were unregistered animagus, until all four boys agreed that James could tell her.
James glanced at her now as she helped Peter up, scolding Sirius with the same brisk affection she used when she was taking the mick out of James. She looked normal and greatly amused. Very much alive, this morning, despite last night’s break-down.
There was no dark magic crawling over her skin, no obvious sign that anything was wrong at all…Which, in James’s opinion, was precisely what made it so ruddy suspicious.
What on earth could she be hiding?
“I’m getting you a cat for Christmas,” Sirius told Lily gently as she dropped down beside him, smiling. “You can kiss that instead of James every five seconds.”
Lily laughed, nudging her shoulder against his. “First of all, we won’t be together for Christmas.”
James very deliberately said nothing, and Sirius, to his credit, also said nothing. Though Sirius’s eyes flicked to James for half a second, a tiny knowing smirk flickering there. James just dipped his chin in a careful nod.
Lily carried on, oblivious. “And second of all, no cat on earth would allow me to kiss it. They’re notably devoid of affection, aren’t they?”
“Nah, they’re sweet little creatures,” Sirius said. “Karen DocLands cat and I are best mates.”
Peter, still rubbing his elbow from the floor, nodded solemnly. “Very dignified, that cat, he doesn’t chase me at all.”
“Why would her cat chase you,” Lily asked. “Are you a rat?”
“He is, actually,” Sirius replied.
All four of the boys erupted into laughter, even Remus, who was still under his covers in bed. James rolled onto his side, clutching it, in stitches. Lily just folded her arms over her chest and sent Sirius a look.
“I don’t get the joke,” she said as their laughter calmed down.
Sirius ruffled Lily’s fringe affectionately, “Yeah, and you don’t need to.”
Lily’s glare stayed fixated on Sirius, but it was more playful now. “Hm, well, if you won’t tell me I guess I’ll get back to snogging my boyfriend in front of you.”
Sirius grabbed Lily by the waist when she tried to crawl back up to where James was leaning his head against his pillows. James lifted his arms, hopeful, but Sirius was keeping her pinned at the edge of the bed. They were both laughing as Lily tried to wrestle her way out of Sirius’s grasp, nearing kicking Peter and James in the process.
“Let me go, Black!”
“Kissing is banned from this dormitory!”
“Jesus Christ!” She screeched when Sirius dog-piled her into the corner of the bed where James had thrown his spare pillows the night before, “James, help!”
James could not wait to see Lily’s face when she realised he and Sirius were not getting into one of the carriages bound for Hogsmeade. He imagined the surprise first: the little crease between her brows, the suspicion, the quick glance from him to Sirius and back again. She would accuse them of plotting and she would be right, obviously.
But after her initial suspicion, he knew there would be joy.
Small at first, because Lily never liked giving James the satisfaction too quickly. She would try to hide it behind a roll of her eyes or some terribly sensible comment about how they were being ridiculous.
But it would be there, her utter incandescent joy.
James usually went home for Christmas and he had never spent the holiday at Hogwarts before. His parents made an event of it every year: roaring fires, too much food, his mum pretending not to cry when she was drunk, and his dad sneaking him wine while claiming it was “for medicinal purposes.” There would be music, and crackers, and his father telling the same four stories as if they had not all heard them every Christmas since James was old enough to understand words.
He would miss them, of course he would, his parents were his whole life back home…he already felt a pang at the thought of his mother reading the owl she’d get and trying to pretend she understood.
At least he and Sirius agreed to go back for her birthday on New Years Eve, that would pacify her.
But the thought of staying here at Hogwarts with fresh snow on the grounds, Sirius at his side, and Lily close enough to snog whenever he liked—made something in his chest feel bright and foolish.
Besides, Lily was staying and James had gotten rather good at re-arranging his life around Lily Evans before he noticed he was even doing it. Sirius had said so himself, noting that James has done a ton of things in the last four months he would’ve never considered, had Lily not entered his life.
Sirius had finally let her go, escaping back to his own bed and pulling the curtains, likely to change. Lily crossed back to James, crawling slowly up his body, being careful of tender spots.
He smiled as she bent down to kiss his forehead, pulling him out of his thoughts. It was a light kiss, quick, and almost as absentminded as he felt.
“I need to run to my loo for a quick change,” she said, straightening and tugging her dressing gown back over her loose cotton nightdress, “and to grab Mary’s present. I’ll say goodbye to you downstairs, okay?”
James nodded, propping himself up on one elbow. “Okay.”
Her green eyes shuttered, “I’m really going to miss you.”
Her forehead pressed to his and James promised, “you won’t miss me too much.”
“Who will I snog?”
“You can start with no one,” James said, “and just dream of me instead.”
Sirius gagged behind his curtains.
Remus flung his blankets over his head and glared at them both, snapping, “both of you get out, before I hex you!”
“Sorry, Remus!” Lily giggled, standing upright.
Her face was flushed as she tied the belt of her robes at her waist, looking self-important, but she paused at the dormitory door to look back at James. For half a second, there was something in her expression. Something soft, as if she wanted to say more, or as if she had nearly just decided to stay…then it was gone.
“Bye,” James called after her.
“I’ll see you downstairs,” she said seriously, before adding playfully, “for another snog to annoy your mates.”
"No snogging before ten!" Sirius reminded her with a sing-song voice.
"Fuck off, Sirius."
The door shut behind Lily with a soft click, her short laugh disappearing seconds later. James contemplated going after her, pressing her against the wall, and snogging the daylights out of her. She'd probably appreciate it, considering how off track their morning had gotten thanks to his roommates.
Sirius snorted immediately after she left and James closed his eyes, already braced for the shite his mates would give him...
Like they always did whenever Lily left the room they were in together.
“Oh, bye, darling,” Sirius crooned in a dreadful imitation of James’s voice from inside his four poster. “I shall wither in the two seconds we’re apart. I'll perish without your lips upon mine! You're my Christmas present this year, my one true love!”
Peter collapsed into laughter, using his pillow to block the sounds, only to end up sounding like a dying pig.
James sat up slowly, “Hey, Sirius?”
Sirius poked his head out of his curtains, grinning, and entirely too pleased with himself. “Yes, darling?”
James reached for his wand on the bedside table.
Sirius’s grin widened. “Violence before ten in the morning is also against the rules.”
Five seconds later, Sirius was hanging upside down from his ankle over his bed, screeching at James to let him down. James only let him go because Remus was threatening to hex them both if he didn’t get at least another hour's sleep before the carriages arrived.