Chapter Text
Part 2: Tails
Tuesday, February 14th, 1978
Still, and quite persistently, Valentine's Day
Horace Slughorn's office, Hogwarts
Slug Club Party
"You're only going to make it worse for yourself if you stay out here," says Remus, from the floor, where he has literally given up and sunk to his bottom like a broken raft. "Just go inside."
"I can't go inside."
"Eventually, someone is going to walk out and see us."
"So I'll say you felt sick suddenly," James retorts, and pulls his watch, which was proudly bestowed upon him by his mother when he came of age, out of his pocket. Slughorn's party started thirty minutes ago. If Lily didn't already want to kill him and then dump him, this will convince her to do it. "No offence, Moon, but given your track record, nobody's going to think I'm lying."
"Not that I don't appreciate a bit of gallows humour—"
"You're welcome."
"—but you're literally standing your girlfriend up on Valentine's Day, all because you're intent on being dramatic."
It is possible that James has a taste for drama that has clouded his view of the situation, but Remus does not understand, nor do his other friends, who upped and abandoned him after he decided to fake an illness and skive off classes, all the better to avoid the repercussions of the stupid thing he said at breakfast. None of his mates, not even Peter, who once spent a week stalking Mary Macdonald - without her knowledge, because he was a pretty inept stalker - until Sirius thumped him in the balls and told him to stop being a creep, have ever been in love.
Loving Lily Evans, which is a full-time job, has taken James through an assault course of emotions over the years. First, there was misery, because she didn't reciprocate his feelings, even treating him with some well-deserved contempt on occasion. Then confusion, after an apology-turned-argument-turned-kiss that took him further than he'd ever been with a girl, then euphoria, over a year later, when he finally took his shot and came up swinging. Since then, since the moment Lily stood on her toes and kissed him in Scrivenshaft's, with a quill clutched in her fingers and a spot of ink on her nose, he's been terrified, certain that he would inevitably fuck it all up.
James has been waiting to fuck it all up with Lily Evans for one hundred and fifty-one days, pure and golden as they've been, because he knows their time is numbered. It's a miracle that he kept her fooled for this long.
He walks to the door of Slughorn's office, turns, and darts away again, grimacing slightly as pain smarts in the back of his thigh. He had tried to make Quidditch practice run late - an abysmal practice, during which he accidentally committed several fouls - but Macdonald, sensing his cowardice, smacked him with her bat, having promised Lily to leave his nose intact. As team captain, he really could have cautioned her for that, but as he'd spent the entire day avoiding her best friend, he didn't have a leg to stand on. Quite literally. Mary is an ace with a Beater's bat in her hand and she knows all the major pressure points, so he was laid out on the ground for at least three minutes. He should congratulate her later, for such an excellent hit.
After practice ended, he took a long shower and hid out in the dorm, but then Remus turned up and gently threatened him until he got dressed and accompanied him to Slughorn's office, outside which they have been waiting, one annoyed, the other anxious, for at least ten minutes.
"Could you go in?" he suggests, looking at Remus in the same way he looks at his cat when he wants him to go to the kitchens and fetch him a snack. It rarely works on Algernon, and when it does, he'll bring food to anyone but James, though Remus is a far kinder soul. "Just check on her, have a little chat, and see how murderous she's feeling? If I'm about to get dumped, I'd like to know in advance."
"She's not going to dump you for this."
"Can you get a second opinion on that? Hers, preferably?"
Remus raises his eyebrows at him. "Haven't I done enough for you today?"
"One more favour?"
"You're a bloody Gryffindor, James," his friend reminds him. "You risk your life at least once a month, but you're too scared to talk to your own girlfriend about your feelings?"
"On our next Hogsmeade trip," he says, ignoring this very accurate slight on his inner lion, and referring, not to the school-mandated trips, but to the trips that he, Remus, Sirius and Peter take at night, usually about a week after one of Remus's transformations. "I will buy you an entire bottle of Firewhiskey, all to yourself."
"Ogden's Old?"
"The oldest bottle they've got."
"Fine, then," Remus agrees, with the air of a man who has accepted his fate. He sticks a hand out. "Help me up, my leg's fallen asleep."
James does as he asks, hauling him to his feet, whereupon Remus dusts himself off and pokes his chest with a stern finger.
"I'm only doing this for the firewhiskey."
"Understood."
"And because Lily deserves better than this."
"Agreed, but thanks for rubbing salt in the wound."
Remus sighs, opens the door – raucous laughter and cheerful music escape from within – and disappears inside, leaving James alone in the corridor, with nothing to do with his time but recap the series of mistakes that brought him here, like avoiding his beloved, then avoiding her some more, but mostly, declaring his love for her in the most unsuitable way, and in the worst possible place, and at the worst possible time, only to immediately recant his words.
The thing is, he does love her.
How could he not love Lily Evans, when she is so marvellous, and so achingly beautiful, treading through life with such kindness and compassion, yet with such strength? She's so smart, and brilliantly funny in that dry, laconic way of hers, and her eyes are so green, and she likes him, for some reason, and he's mystified by it all.
Sometimes, he thinks he loves her more than anyone else he knows, which feels intensely disloyal, especially to Sirius, and to his warm, wonderful parents, but he's been drowning in Lily Evans for years. He's entranced by her. Consumed, every waking minute of his short, yet eventful life. He thought he was hopeless before he won her over, particularly during that lost, turbulent year between their first kiss and their second, but now that he has her - by the skin of his teeth, it seems - it's far more terrifying, because losing her would be so much worse than never having her at all.
But he hadn't planned on telling her.
At least, he hadn't planned on telling her so soon, when she would be certain to rebuff him with an awkward, shifty-eyed 'thank you' and a pat on the arm. Obviously, he was going to have to tell her eventually, but he'd been thinking in the long-term. He'd had a dream once that he told her after he accidentally got her pregnant, and she decided to stick with him for the sake of the baby, and that seemed like some sort of plan. Probably not all that honourable, but it's fine now. There's not a chance of having sex with her, ever, not after what he's put her through today.
He can't believe she offered, just this morning, to give him everything, and he's gone and cocked it up.
He's still mulling on this when Remus pokes his head out the door, looking panicked, and urges him forward with one hand.
"Mate, you've got to get in here," he says quickly. "Snape's got her cornered."
"What?!"
"He's apologising to her, she's mentioned something about making things right—"
"That sneaky git!" James spits, and barrels past his friend, which results in quite a dramatic entrance, him bursting majestically into a room full of people - he is immensely handsome, after all - only to find fifty pairs of eyes on him.
Right in the middle of it all is Lily, standing in a little circle with Slughorn, Mary, Sirius, and some good-looking bloke James has never met, cold green eyes turned on him with all the rest, her beautiful lips pursed in an adorable, yet disapproving pout.
Snape is nowhere to be seen.
James has been had.
Remus Lupin has made a fool out of him.
What was he supposed to do, anyway? Punch Snape in the face? He's tried to apologise to Lily at least ten times since Christmas alone, and she's rebuffed him on every occasion, without fail. She holds James to a higher standard than Snivelly, and she wouldn't be pleased if he disrupted a social gathering just to start a fight with her former best friend, even if he is a filthy Death Eater wannabe. The most he could have done was flit to her side and glare menacingly.
She's wearing a red dress he's never seen before, and she's stunning, as per usual. Slughorn's good-looking mate is practically salivating at her feet, so at least there's one punchable face available, should Lily dump him and he needs to relieve his feelings.
"Found him!" says Remus, who has entered the room behind him, that sly, ultimately excellent bastard.
"Ah, Potter!" cries Slughorn genially, and waves him over. James finds himself being steered towards the group by Remus, and brought to a stop next to Lily, who blinks at him impassively. Merlin only knows of the wrath that seethes behind her spectacular bosom. "All cleared up, are you?"
"What?"
"I told Professor Slughorn about your funny rash," says Lily sweetly. "We've all been ever so worried."
"I haven't," says Sirius, smirking.
James doesn't yet have the strength, or the intel, to go toe-to-toe with Lily yet, so he rounds on Sirius instead. "What are you even doing here?"
He inclines his head towards Mary. "Macdonald needed a date, so I volunteered my services."
"I did not need a date!"
"You begged me to come—"
"You literally accosted me outside the girls' toilet—"
"How else was I meant to catch the drama?"
"What drama?" says Slughorn's mate, who really needs to back off and stop staring at Lily like he's in Azkaban, awaiting a kiss from a Dementor, and she's his last meal.
"There's no drama, Sirius is mentally subnormal," says Lily. "Anyway, getting back to the embarrassing rash—"
Sirius starts to laugh, and Mary elbows him, but she's fighting back a smile herself. If they start snogging, when he is so perilously close to being dumped by the love of his life, James will quite literally explode, and they'll be cleaning his entrails off their putrid, guilty bodies for weeks on end.
"It sounded quite painful when Lily described it," says Slughorn, and looks at James rather pityingly. "Did Pomfrey manage to help?"
"Er, yeah," James lies. "I'm right as rain."
If this is his punishment, he needs to take it like a man. And a Gryffindor. He is both a man and a Gryffindor. He is not afraid of his girlfriend. Not much, anyway. He's afraid of being dumped, which is why he's spent most of the day in hiding. She can't break up with someone she can't find.
"Potter here is Lily's paramour," Slughorn tells his friend, chest puffed out, walrus moustache twitching.
A small victory at last, James thinks, as the friend says, "Ah," and looks disappointed. Take that, you good-looking prick.
"It keeps one young, you know," says Slughorn. "To see love blossom in my very classroom."
"Actually," says Lily. "It blossomed in an empty classroom, nearly two years ago, or would have, only James got a bit excited and—"
"Hah!" he nervously barks.
"What was that?" says Sirius. "He got excited?"
Sirius's eyes are gleaming with the promise of a thousand opportunities, and James will fake any rash Lily wants, but he will not, under any circumstances, regale his two best mates, Mary Macdonald, Professor Slughorn and a potential romantic rival with the story of the time he came in his pants.
"Oh, it was nothing," Lily sighs. She grabs hold of James's hand, a strategic move that delights and scares him in almost equal measure, and something brushes against his wrist and he looks down.
She's wearing the bracelet.
That must mean she's not - or is no longer - planning to murder and then dump him.
Perhaps she's not even angry. Perhaps in her sweet, sympathetic heart she took pity on him, and is merely indulging in some light teasing.
That means he's saved.
He can salvage this. He can salvage them.
"Thanks," he says, ruffling his hair with his free hand in the way he knows she likes, and then, in total, moronic, ridiculous opposition to the realisation he just had, "I love you."
That, he instantly reflects, is probably not the best way to salvage things. Lily is looking at him as if an extra head just spouted out of his neck.
"Right," says Remus, and places his hand on the crook of Sirius's arm. "I need a drink and also to get away from here."
"But—"
"Now," says Remus sternly, and moves off, taking Sirius with him, who in turn grabs Mary by the hand, and they float away like a strange paper chain.
"I think I need a drink too," says Lily. "Come on, James."
"The drinks table is that way," says Slughorn's friend, as Lily begins to pull James in the opposite direction to where Remus headed.
"Obviously I know that, Sherlock Holmes," she snaps. "Haven't you ever escaped an awkward situation before?"
She lets go of his hand altogether and stalks off, and James can only shrug an apology before he follows her, ducking beneath stupid, heart-shaped balloons and floating pink streamers, into a quieter, curtained area which offers them, perhaps, as much privacy as they'll be able to find at a crowded party.
She's sitting on a large, overturned crate that somebody shoved out of sight, arms tightly crossed, watching him expectantly.
"I, er—" he begins, unsure of where he should begin. "That guy's name was Sherlock Holmes?"
Lily's brow furrows, and her lips part slightly. "What?"
"Slughorn's mate—"
"Of course not, his name was Desmond. Is that really what's important here?"
"He was interested in you, you know."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot, I'm such a flake that I'll happily get off with any bloke who's interested," she snidely retorts. "Warn me the next time you feel like standing me up, and I'll take your cloak, so I can render myself invisible to all other men."
Lily, like Remus, has always had a gift for inducing shame with only a few words, but this is the first time in a long time that she's used that gift on him. "That isn't fair."
"No, you not trusting me isn't fair."
"I do trust you!" he yelps. "I'd trust you with my life!"
"Fine, I'm sorry. What about that shit this morning?" she interrupts. One of her feet is knocking against the crate as if she's trying to crack it open. "Telling me you love me, except then you say you don't, then you do again, and you've ignored me all day?"
His impulse is to hug her - it always is, when she's upset - but she might not want him to touch her and he doesn't want to try without asking. She might punch him in the throat. She might cry. He has never, to his knowledge, made Lily cry, and if this is how it happens he will never forgive himself.
"I'm really sorry," he begins, weighing his words carefully. "I was awful this morning, and I thought you might need some space."
"From what?"
"From me, and my perpetual stupidity."
"Don't give me that nonsense, you're brilliantly clever."
"At Transfiguration and stuff, yeah, but when it comes to you I'm hopeless, like a first year trying to fly a broomstick."
"You've been flying since you were three-years-old."
"Okay, I'm a Quidditch genius and that was the worst example I could have thought of," he admits. "It's just, I knew as soon as I said it that you'd think it was too soon and then—"
"I offered you sex earlier, James, what part of me do you think would have thought you were being premature?"
"That's different," he argues, though he's not sure if he can stand by his own point. "Sex isn't love."
"It is for me," she says, and stands up, her arms dropping to rest at her sides. "So?"
"So?"
"Do you love me or not?"
He gaze drops to the ground. "Yes."
"Why was that so hard to admit?"
"Because," he says, and his hand jumps to his hair, this time out of habit. "I'm obviously going to lose you at some point, aren't I?"
Her hands fly to her hips. "No, I don't think that's obvious, actually, so you're going to have to explain yourself."
"It's just—" He wishes he had a crate of his own to sit on. Or hide under. "I had a really long time to get used to the idea that you'd never want me."
"I did want you."
"Yeah, I know you fancied me, and, okay, we're together now and it's brilliant, but sometimes it doesn't feel real, or, like you're too good for me—"
"I'm not."
"Well, I think you are, alright? And that's fine at school, and I'll try my best to deserve you if it kills me, but eventually, when we get out of here and you meet a much better bloke—"
Lily laughs, an incredulous, loud, forced laugh with no trace of amusement. "Are you for real?"
"Yeah, I am for real."
"Because, no, I already - no, you know what? I've got this," she says, and pushes her hair behind her ears. "I'm going to tell you something and you're not going to like it, but I think I need to."
Dread. He feels dread. "Okay?"
"And after that, you're going to kiss me and tell me you love me to my face, not to your shoes, or in front of a bunch of people, understood?"
"Lily—"
She silences him with a hand. "My turn."
"Sorry."
"Do you remember in fourth year, when I had that gigantic, embarrassing crush on Benjy Fenwick, and everyone knew about it?"
"What, Benjy-fucking-perfect-pants?" Fenwick had taken more than a couple of hexes as a fourteen-year-old James struggled to vent his feelings about that. "I'd blocked it out, but thanks for the reminder."
"You know, considering the fact that I've never given Benjy-fucking-perfect-pants a blowjob, but you get them on the regular, you might want to ease up on the jealousy?"
His mouth opens, then closes it again. "That was rude. M'sorry."
"Look, I didn't want to tell you this, but he actually asked me out a few months ago," she says, toeing the floor with her shoe. "And I said yes."
His mum would call it having his grave stepped on, but the shudder that starts in his spine and spreads, sickeningly, to every nerve ending in his body, has nothing to do with his final resting place and everything to do with Lily. "Ah."
"It was right after we came back to school," she continues. "We had that Hogsmeade visit scheduled, and Benjy asked me - very gentlemanly, mind - to go with him. To Puddifoot's. He had it all planned, and I was over my crush at that point but I thought that I owed it to my younger self to say yes, so I did, and I actually started to look forward to it. He's nice, you know? Smart. And doesn't he play Quidditch?"
"He's the Ravenclaw captain," says James hollowly. His mouth has gone all dry.
"Yeah, exactly. Good on paper, right? Even my mates were excited. I think we'd all fancied Benjy at some point or other—"
"I'm sorry, but what's the point of all this?" he interrupts.
"The point should be obvious, James."
"It's really not, Lily."
"Oh yeah?" she says, and crosses her arms again. "Who did I spend the first Hogsmeade trip of the year with?"
He has some argument, he thinks, some mean-spirited quip about how he's sorry he isn't Fenwick, but he knows he's better than that, and it dies before it can properly formulate in his mind. "Me."
"Yes, you. Why was that?"
"Because I asked you."
"And when did you ask me?"
He blinks a little at the recollection. "The night bef—"
"The night before!" she interrupts, and spreads her hands out wide, as if she's about to reveal the next part of her trick. "There I am, sitting in the common room, minding my own bloody business, looking forward to a date that I'd scheduled weeks back, and you - you cheeky shit, Potter - you saunter over like you own the bloody world and ask me when you should pick me up for our date, as if I'd already agreed to it, like I couldn't even say no, like you and I were an accepted fact, or something. And what I should have done, what I was supposed to do, was tell you no, thank you, because I've already got a date with Benjy-fucking-perfect-pants, and I didn't. I told you to pick me up at eleven!"
He remembers that night as if it were yesterday. Him, imbibed with the courage only firewhiskey would provide, propelled by an otherworldly power to take one more shot or he'd regret never trying, and Lily, and her instant, happy acceptance, and the way her hair shone in the light from the fireplace, and how he'd gone to bed wondering if he wasn't already asleep, and dreamed it all into reality.
He'd almost believed it, too, until the next day, when he came upon her in the entrance hall, pink-cheeked and waiting for him, of all people. She'd slipped her hand into his, and smiled, and changed everything.
"So," Lily continues. "That left me with two dates for the same day, and every single rule of etiquette, or even basic manners, would have told me to cancel on you because Benjy asked first, and I didn’t. I went to Ravenclaw tower first thing the next morning and waited outside for an hour until someone came out who was willing to fetch him, and do you want to know what I told him?"
"What?"
"I told him that I couldn't go out with him, ever, because I'd made a date with you first."
"But you hadn't."
"But I had."
"I don't understand—"
"Ages ago, James," she says, and takes a breath, and sighs. "When you kissed me the first time."
"After the OWLs?"
She nods.
"But you - really?"
"Things were complicated, I know, and I was still pretty mad at you and I wasn't – I didn't love you, or anything – and honestly, I've realised since that I didn't even know you that well at the time, but it doesn't matter, because after that kiss, I was yours."
It's amazing, really, that after one hundred and fifty-one days, she can still make his heart race like it's the very first day and he's sitting across from her in the pub, watching her tug at the end of her braid and lick butterbeer foam from her lips, willing himself to make good on this chance because she's it. The one. The only one. He should be too young to know that, but he knows.
"But I came in my pants," he says, despite the hundred other things that might have been better, or more romantic.
Lily laughs, though, kind of helplessly, but it's a laugh still. "That was actually quite flattering, you know."
"You did have your hand in my trousers."
"You had yours in my bra."
"You told me to put it there."
She laughs again, and comes to him, finally, and he wraps his arms around her at once.
"So, after all that?" she says, very quietly, now that they're close again, and her hands are on his chest. "We had one amazing kiss at a bad time, then we were friends for an entire year and never mentioned it, and I thought you'd gotten past it and I – it was fine, making a date with Benjy when I thought you weren't interested, but when I knew you still were?" She shrugs. "It was you or it was nothing."
He feels every fraction of his shattered nerves melt and meld together like wax. "I never knew that."
"I should have told you."
"I shouldn't have been so convinced that I was dooming us both."
"It's okay, you're an utterly ridiculous person," she says, with the tiniest of smiles. "But, you know, maybe get rid of this idea that I'm going to leave you for a better guy, yeah? Because you're the better guy, and I really love you."
"Really?"
"So much it hurts. Cross my heart."
His own heart feels like a sunburst. "I love you, too."
She sighs contentedly, and tips her head back, hair tumbling down her back, tickling his arms. "Finally! I feel like I've been waiting forever!"
"It's barely been a day!"
"A very long day!" she cries. "I'm too attached now, you've ruined me. Potions is utterly boring without you."
"Then I'll never skive off class for as long as I live," he swears, grinning like an idiot in love. "Can I kiss you, please?"
"Yes," she says, but jerks her head away when he tries to swoop in. "Wait a second - no."
"Why not?"
"I'm still mad that you stood me up."
"Oh."
"Yes, oh."
Since he can't have her lips, he drops a kiss on her forehead, and relishes the happy noise he elicits. "Then what can I do to make it better?"
"Oh, I've got a very specific idea." She holds up her wrist, whereupon her bracelet glitters prettily, for him to inspect. "See this?"
"Yes, I do, Whoever got you that bracelet has exquisite taste."
"He does, as it happens." She moves her hand to wind around the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair. "But I don't want to have to get a charm to commemorate our first proper argument as a couple."
"Only happy firsts allowed on that thing, Evans."
"I agree, so I think we need to replace it with something better."
"Does something better involve me taking you upstairs immediately?"
"And booting Peter out of the dorm?"
"I'll drag him out if I have to."
"And taking off all your clothes?"
He laughs, though his heart is racing, and she's pressing up against him in that way she knows he likes, and he'll have to scoop her up and take her away, right now, or they'll have another mess on their hands. "Just my clothes? That hardly seems fair."
"You can tear mine off when you're done, if it helps."
He lifts her off her feet, his princess in a cherry red dress, and loves the way her eyes light up, the way she squeals in delight, and the feel of her arms around his neck, and thinks that he might marry her one day, this brilliant, clever woman, and carry her into the sunset, just like this. She's spectacular, his girlfriend. Absolutely breathtaking, but he's always known that. It's why he loves her.
"You sure you want me to tear your pretty new dress?" he asks, before he marches her through the crowd, ignoring all the inquiring looks, before they fall onto his bed and he gives her everything, and gets everything, and she adds another charm to her bracelet.
"Lucky for me, I love one very talented wizard," she reminds him, and pulls his head down for a kiss. "I'm sure he can repair it."