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Chapter Text

Act 1, Scene 1

September 2017

Hogwarts, a private school

"Drop your bag, Potter, and sit back down at once."

"But the lesson is over," said James.

McGonagall frowned dangerously at him over the top of her square spectacles, but James was standing several feet clear of the fir pointer she used for lessons and felt safe enough to engulf the last minutes of class with some time-consuming cheek.

Of course, she had never struck a student with the pointer before, but she had once told him that he was bound to send at least one of the staff round the twist before his school career came to an end, and for all he knew, she may have been hinting at something. It was prudent to avoid presenting himself as a target.

"Has the bell rung?" said McGonagall aridly. "I wasn't aware that I'd lost my hearing."

"No, but you'd finished the lesson and I wanted to get to the library as fast as I could."

He was met with silence, which felt like an invitation to regale the class with further impertinence, so he grinned and scratched idly behind his ear, a movement that smoothly transitioned into a hair-ruffle.

"It's important to study hard," he explained. "Otherwise I might have to sell my body on the streets, and wind up richer than I already am."

Though an amused murmur shuddered through the room, McGonagall's only sign of recognition was the lift of an eyebrow, of which James was immediately envious. He couldn't raise one brow at a time; despite his best efforts, one would insist upon joining the other. It was his greatest failure as a student and as a man, and McGonagall was a sly cat to remind him. As James recalled, he had once revealed this shortcoming to her during a careers advice meeting, though she'd feigned disinterest in what she'd labelled as "made-up weaknesses" and forced him to write an essay on self-awareness.

"Is that so?" she replied.

"You're such an inspiring teacher."

"How kind of you, Potter."

"You're welcome, Miss."

"And as you're so fond of my company, you may join me after school this evening for the first of a week's detentions," she continued, and drove the tip of her pointer into the ground like a screwdriver. "Unless you'd rather sit back down and avoid them."

James normally enjoyed an opportunity to go toe-to-toe with McGonagall, but he had a pressing engagement after school that he couldn't afford to miss. He dropped his school bag to the floor, where it landed with a thump, and sat down next to Sirius, who was picking at the dirt beneath his nails with the lid of a biro. An assortment of pens spilled from the open front pouch and rolled in all directions across the polished laminate floor in a bid for freedom.

His classmates, many of whom had been watching him expectantly, sank back into their earlier stupors.

McGonagall rapped the floor with her pointer. "I have something to discuss with you all, now that Potter's made his customary plea for attention. How is everyone enjoying Romeo and Juliet?"

Another murmur rose from the assembled students, so apathetic that it didn't quite reach the corners of the room.

"Thank you all for your unique perspectives," said McGonagall. "Since you're all so eager to discuss the play that accounts for 15% of your entire A-level, I take great pleasure in informing you that in lieu of the Christmas pantomime this year, the headmaster has instead elected to put on a performance of said play—again, that's Romeo and Juliet, for those of you who've slept through your first week of classes," she added, with a nasty look for Sirius. "Do you have any insight to offer on the play, Mr. Black?"

Sirius shrugged. "Not enough car chases."

"On behalf of Mr. Shakespeare, I apologise for the lack of car chases in 14th century Verona."

"Thanks," said Sirius. "He's forgiven."

McGonagall looked as if she would quite like to box his ears, but her nostril-flare subsided, and she carried on speaking to the rest of the class. "The headmaster is looking for students from Year 13 to audition, and as you're currently studying this text, I'd particularly like to see quite a few of you getting involved."

Louder murmurs filled the classroom. James glanced over his shoulder at his other mates. Remus was staring blankly ahead of him with no appearance of interest, but Peter had thrust his hand in the air and was watching McGonagall expectantly.

"Yes, Pettigrew?" said McGonagall.

"Will you need people to help out backstage?" said Peter, his voice high and reedy.

"We'll be requiring volunteers to work on lighting, costuming and so on. I'll post a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board. Booth?"

"When are the auditions?" said Beatrice Booth, who sat a couple of rows behind Peter and Remus, next to Lily Evans, who had caught one of James's pens beneath her foot and was rolling it back and forth. James watched her for a moment to see if she'd look up at him, but she didn't, so he turned back to face the front of the room.

"Auditions will take place on Monday after school, 4:30 p.m. sharp," McGonagall was saying. "There's no need to sign up, just pop along to the music room if you want to try out for a part. You'll be asked to read for a role of your choosing, so I'd advise anyone who's interested to read through the text and spend the weekend practising. Rehearsals will also take place at 4:30 p.m., starting the following Monday, and will repeat every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday until mid-December."

Sirius put up his hand but didn't wait for McGonagall to call on him. "Will there be car chases?"

"No."

"Will there be chariot chases?"

"No."

"Will there be any kind of chases?"

"Would you ever consider not being a tremendous pain in the backside, Mr. Black?"

"No."

"You've answered your own question," she said, and was spared from any further conversation with Sirius by the sound of the bell. "Lupin, stay in your seat. I’ve got something to discuss with you."

James stood up and darted past a confused-looking Remus and Peter, leaving his bag on the floor behind him. The rest of the class were shoving their things into their school bags and rising to their feet, but he managed to reach Lily Evans's desk before she stood up. On a whim, he got down on one knee before her.

Booth noticed him immediately and snorted, but Evans, who was packing her bag with meticulous precision, pretended not to see him.

"Oi, Evans," he said, in a loud voice.

The four or five people who hadn't already fled the room—not including Sirius and Peter, who were waiting for him, or Remus, who was waiting for McGonagall, or Booth, who was waiting for Evans—paused by the door to see what he was up to. This suited James just fine because he loved an audience, though the look in Lily's bright green eyes told him that he would live to regret his decision.

"What?" she said, through gritted teeth, but James had already invested too much in the endeavour to stop now.

"You have made me the happiest man in the upper sixth," he declared. "Will you do me the honour of giving me back my pen?"

A year ago, when Evans was the new girl at school, a stunt like this would have earned him an animated scolding, but she must have taken up yoga over the summer because she fixed him with a look of sublime, zen-like indifference and kicked the pen away. It rolled beneath Winifred Barnes's chair, where it came to a quivering halt, much like his heart, which persisted in pining for Evans despite her complete lack of interest in everything he had to offer.

His heart also pined for bacon, which was also beyond his control, but at least he could readily procure bacon for the low, low price of £2.50 at the local Tesco Express.

"That's a no, is it?" he said, and pouted. "I'm deeply wounded."

"Get out of my classroom, Potter!" cried McGonagall, as if she had only just noticed his presence. She couldn't fool him. James privately believed that the teachers were very interested in their students' romantic entanglements, and gossiped about them in the staff room. "My desk, Mr. Lupin. You can collect Potter's bag and pens for him when we're done."

In the meantime, Lily Evans had stood up, shouldered her own bag and swept regally out of the room, followed closely by Booth, who was laughing openly. James climbed to his feet and was met by Peter and Sirius, the latter clapping him hard on the back.

"Hard luck, mate," he said. "Buy her a ring next time."

Peter snorted with laughter, and it sounded like a great, wheezing expulsion of phlegm. "A cock ring, maybe."

"Detention, Pettigrew!" cried McGonagall.

And with that egregious lack of foresight, sense or comedic prowess on Peter's part, James Potter felt slightly better about the world.

Act 1, Scene 2

a corridor

Remus stayed in his impromptu meeting with McGonagall for ten minutes and emerged from the classroom looking sheepish.

"She's not happy with you, mate," he told Peter, and shut the door behind him with a resolute click. "She says you're to be at her office at 4 p.m. for detention."

"No," Peter whined. "It's Friday, I'm not hanging around here for another three hours just to sit through a bloody detention."

"Go in there and tell her that yourself, then," Remus suggested.

James knew that Peter would have sooner taken a bath with a plugged-in hairdryer than march into McGonagall's lair and announce that he was passing up detention in favour of an afternoon of FIFA 17, or feeling up his girlfriend, Helena, in the back row of the cinema. "Why do I get a detention and James doesn’t?"

"Because you told him to buy a cock ring for Evans in front of a teacher, you fucking weirdo," Sirius supplied.

"I didn't mean for Evans! I meant for James to use on himself!"

"Shut up," said James, sulkily.

Remus shrugged James's bag off his left shoulder and handed it to him. "I got your bag, and most of your pens, I think."

"Cheers," he said, and hitched it onto his own shoulder. "What did she want, anyway?"

"Just mentoring stuff," said Remus, looking at the ground. He was a great favourite with the teachers because he did things like study, speak respectfully and care about his future. As a result, he was always being roped into academic mentoring or leading tours of the school on parents' evenings. Remus talked about it sometimes, but the topic of extra responsibility bored James so much that he would feel the spools of his brain unwind, melt and leak through his ears like chocolate fondue, so he rarely listened.

Sirius, who was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, pushed off with one foot. "Let's get food in town. I've got less than an hour 'til French."

"I'll walk to town with you, but I can't actually stay for lunch," said Remus. "I've got a project to work on at home."

"Great, we can get McDonald's."

Remus pulled a face. "McDonald's is disgusting."

"Then it's a good thing you're not staying," said Sirius.

As one, they turned and moved down the corridor in the direction of the northernmost exit, which would lead them directly into town, and an enticing plethora of fast food eateries.

When James and his friends started sixth form, he had been determined for the four of them to take at least one course together, but by the time he made this grand announcement, the ever-conscientious Remus had already signed up for his subjects. As a result, James, Sirius and Peter speedily put their names down for English Literature, despite Remus's assertion that one shouldn't decide their subjects based on what their friends were doing. His argument fell on deaf ears, and not one of them ever regretted the decision. It was an easy class—at least, James thought so—and as they'd all had McGonagall for GCSE English, they knew they liked her enough to spend four-and-a-half hours per week in her company.

Otherwise, they all took completely different subjects, which was why Remus and Peter got to swan home early on Fridays while Sirius slogged it out in French and James hung around waiting for last-period Psychology. James was sure that the school had made this scheduling decision over the summer as part of some cruel vendetta against him—never mind that Remus would be starting every Monday with double Economics, followed immediately by double Statistics—but the joke was on the administration, because Lily Evans took Psychology and lived six streets away from James, which meant that he'd get to hang behind and pine for her when she walked home on Friday evenings, hence why he was so eager to avoid detention with McGonagall.

Technically, Remus had pointed out, this was stalking, but there wasn't much James could do about it—he had to take the same route home, and he didn't know how to be within walking distance of Lily Evans and not pine. He had thought to spend the summer getting over her, but then she'd shown up at the lido in a bright blue bikini and that was the end of that ambition.

"What do you think of this play?" said Remus, to the group in general. "Anyone going to audition?"

James snorted derisively. "And waste my free time prancing about with a skull, banging on about death and revenge? No thanks."

"That's Hamlet, though," said Peter.

"I'm auditioning," said Sirius.

This was a surprise. Sirius usually never expended effort on extracurricular activities, unless it involved putting bubble bath in the fountain or lobbing projectiles at Snape across the common room. James looked at his best mate with raised eyebrows. "Are you joking?"

Sirius shrugged. "McGonagall will probably let us off homework for a few months. Everyone who did the panto last year got an exemption from non-compulsory coursework."

"You'd have to actually read the play, you know," said Remus.

"I have read it," Sirius retorted. "'Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough,' or whatever. They should have set us Macbeth."

He pushed against the fire exit door—which was supposed to be kept closed, but they'd refused to adhere to this rule since the day they saw Slughorn using it as a shortcut to the staff car park—with his shoulder and strode out. It opened onto a brightly lit courtyard, where several students were assembled in various states of lethargy beside the fountain, desperate to soak up the last vestiges of the summer. Sirius loped ahead of their group, his shoulder-length black hair gleaming in the sunlight.

"Why didn't I know about this?" said James, and jogged a couple of steps to catch up with him.

"Why didn't you know that I'd read the play we're supposed to read this year?" said Sirius. "God, I couldn't say."

"I meant, why didn't I know that you were auditioning?"

"Because McGonagall announced it twenty seconds ago, and you didn't ask."

"I assumed you wouldn't want to do it."

"I'll only do it if I get Mercutio. Or Tybalt, maybe. McGonagall can shove it if she thinks I'm playing Romeo. I'd have to act like you," he added, inclining his head towards James.

Remus snorted, though Peter looked nonplussed, but that was enough for James to surmise that he was being insulted. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Remus began. "Romeo is kind of—"

"A soppy twat," Sirius finished, grinning. "He spends the whole play mooning over a woman, kind of like you do with Evans, but less annoying because Romeo dies at the end and gives everyone a break."

"I don't—" James couldn't argue that he didn't moon over Evans when he'd fake-proposed to her in class not fifteen minutes prior, and mourned her distaste for him for ten minutes afterwards. "—care for this topic of conversation."

"James can stick to one woman, at least," Remus pointed out.

"Do you think McGonagall will let me be sound manager?" said Peter.

"You did it last year and the year before," Sirius reminded him, as they neared a group of Year 11 girls at the school gate, most of whom glanced appreciatively at his tall, elegant frame. They broke into excitable whispers as soon as they passed, and Sirius rolled his eyes.

Sirius was much sought-after by his peers, male and female alike, being both exceedingly handsome and exceptionally uninterested in dating, which, apparently, was an irresistible combination. His complete disinterest in romantic attachments had once set rumours flying around the school that he and James were engaging in a closeted love affair, which neither of them minded, but Evans had put an end to that when she turned up on the first day of Year 12 and it became glaringly obvious that James's type ran to redheaded women with incredible…brains.

"Someone else might want the job this year, though," said Peter worriedly, gnawing on the edge of his thumbnail. "I should text Helena, she'll probably want to audition."

"I think you'd be a pretty good Mercutio, actually," said Remus to Sirius. "What part do you think you'll read on Monday?"

"There's a decent scene in Act 2 with Benvolio, or maybe his death scene. I dunno. I'll make up my mind over the weekend."

"Not the whole weekend," James reminded him. "We've got work to do on the website. Peter's coming over tomorrow."

"Did you finish your sketches for the About page last night?"

"You know I didn’t."

"And do you want to tell Pete and Remus why you didn’t finish them?"

"I was—" Sirius smiled evilly at him, and James scowled. "I had to walk Algernon."

"Past Evans's house," said Sirius. "Three times."

"That's where he likes to go!"

"He looks bloody stupid with that leash on, and you look even stupider holding it."

"You do look stupid," Peter agreed. "Cats don't need leashes."

They reached the end of the short road which ran between the school and town, and turned onto the high street, where James discreetly checked his reflection in the window of Gregg's—still gorgeous—and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"He was getting fat, and he needed the exercise," he stoutly insisted. "Anyway, I'll do the sketches tonight. I've only got two to finish."

"Can’t. We've got football tonight," Sirius reminded him.

"Did I mention that I hate living with you?"

"Love you too, mate," said Sirius, and slung an arm around his shoulders.

Act 1, Scene 3

a classroom

James didn't see Lily Evans again until right before last period, when he found her outside Binns's classroom, sitting on the floor next to Mary Macdonald. Mary had her phone out and was showing her a video—of one of her cats, no doubt. Macdonald loved her cats, though not one of them could match Algernon for intelligence, handsomeness or vengefulness.

James had never met any of Mary's cats, but he felt safe in assuming as much. No common moggy could hold a paw to Algernon, thoroughbred monarch of the feline world.

Lily and Mary had become fast friends on Evans's first day at Hogwarts, a little over a year ago, which James could recall as easily as if it were yesterday. There he had been, sat in Psychology next to Evan McNamee, deep in the throes of despair because he was bereft of his best friends for three out of four classes, when Evans breezed into the room like Venus emerging from her seashell in a black blazer and a pair of knee-high socks. Binns made her stand in front of the class, most of whom had sat their GCSEs at Hogwarts, and introduce herself; she'd offered a fiver to whomever could make a joke about gingers that she hadn't heard before, and James's susceptible little heart had been hers forever.

He didn't win the fiver—didn't even try, in fact, too stunned by the sudden appearance of a goddess in Binns's classroom to do anything other than stare at her in mute astonishment. Mary won by suggesting that you could save a ginger from drowning by taking your foot off their head, and Evans immediately handed over the cash, as promised.

"Are you gonna hand out money in all your other classes?" Eddie Bones had asked her, to which she'd laughed, a clear, sweet sound that James soon came to adore with a singular, wholehearted passion.

"That was all my lunch money," she'd replied, indicating the fiver, which Mary was waving triumphantly in the air, "so not bloody likely."

She'd won the entire class in less than five minutes.

"Hello," said James, approaching the two girls in the present day. He slung his bag on the ground with what he hoped was a sexy, Sirius-like nonchalance. Evans didn't look up from the phone, but Mary did, and greeted him with a curt nod.

"Alright, Potter?" she said. "Binns has locked us out."

He leaned, casual as you like, against the wall opposite. "Why?"

"Why do you think? He's still arranging his seating chart, nearly a week later," said Mary, and tucked a stray tendril of dark hair behind her ear. "A delicate operation that requires time, he says. Lily and I asked to be kept together."

Lily closed her eyes, dropped her head on Mary's shoulder and made a noise in the back of her throat that James would certainly imagine her purring in his ear when he had a moment to himself later, but not now. Now was the time to think of cold showers, his late grandmother's moustache and that slug he'd trodden on with his bare foot that one time, because the last thing he needed was to break out an erection when he was standing right in front of her and her eyes were about level with his nether regions.

And relax.

"She's a bit tired, is our Lily," Mary explained. "She's had a stressful day, you know. Some bloke proposed to her earlier. She had to turn him down."

"Ah," said James, his face burning. "Did she, now?"

Mary snorted. "What were you thinking, Potter?"

"The same thing I'm usually thinking—nothing," he explained. "I'm really sorry about that, incidentally."

Lily's eyes flicked open, prettily, which was how she did everything, and she observed him with an unreadable expression.

"Really, very sorry," he repeated blankly.

She blinked, evidently unimpressed by his contrition. "You've got sauce on your shirt."

He looked down. Sure enough, there was a large, undeniably bright ketchup stain on his pristine white shirt. As if he hadn't embarrassed himself in front of Evans enough today, life just had to throw the hallmark of a sloppy eater into the fray.

"Fucking chicken nugget share-box," he spat, and started scrubbing at it with his tie, which made Mary laugh, though Evans remained impassive.

That was how you knew you had no hope with the girl you loved, he sadly reflected, when she won't laugh with you or at you, because she simply doesn't care enough.

The way in which Evans affected James was severe and, until the day they'd met, utterly unprecedented. Raised by two devoted, doting parents who had lost all hope of having a child until he came along, he had grown up knowing that he was special, and had the titles to prove it—miracle baby, advanced toddler, gifted child, exceptional student, superb athlete, talented artist, and an apex predator on the popularity food chain, with the best mates a bloke could ask for to boot. It wasn't until Evans came along that he discovered a new and vexing facet to his personality: total fucking idiot.

Life had been a repeating loop of disasters since she walked into Psychology, first, because his worst enemy turned out to be her best friend from childhood, and second, because he immediately fell victim to a compulsion to seek out her attention, and did so in stupid, humiliating ways, which led to unwelcome feelings, such as self-doubt and incompetence. Everyone who knew about his feelings for Lily, including his own mother, thought it was utterly hilarious. He got no sympathy at all, which was appalling. Remus had even suggested that Evans had brought about a marked improvement in his attitude.

"Your neuroses have made you more bearable, to be honest," he'd told him once, after he and his mates had shared a bottle of premium Russian vodka, courtesy of Sirius. "I mean, I love you to death, but sometimes I want to put a paper bag on your head and leave you in a dark room."

The door to the classroom opened, and Binns popped his head out, peering at the assembled students behind his huge, milk-bottle spectacles. The summer hadn't been kind to Binns; his skin was papery-white, and he looked more like a Dickensian ghost than ever.

"Come in, one at a time," he instructed. "Look for the chair with your name on it. You'll be sitting there for the rest of the year."

Of course, the entire class surged towards the door as one, excepting Lily and Mary, who had stood up and were brushing themselves off. James headed straight for the top of the classroom, assuming Binns would place him there because most of his teachers insisted upon it. A quick scan of the desks yielded no results, however, so he worked backwards and found nothing until he reached the back row and located his name—in fine, bold print on a yellow post-it—placed primly on the chair that sat next to a very stoic, very unhappy-looking Lily Evans.

Thus, James died and went to heaven—though thankfully, not in a literal sense. That would have been traumatic for everyone in the classroom, even Lily, who couldn't stand him. Five hours a week spent sitting next to Evans was a delightful prospect, and James felt that he could have hugged Binns, if he wasn't certain that one hug would break him into a million pieces like a delicate china vase.

"Hi," he said, and tried to look as if he wasn't in raptures over the whole affair.

Lily didn't need to expend any effort to appear distressed. "Hi."

He sat down on the post-it, which he hoped she didn't notice, and plonked his bag on top of the desk.

"How was your summer?" he asked, while he dug around for supplies. His mum had packed his bag fresh on Monday, but already it was a chaotic jumble of books, pens, sweet wrappers, and balled-up pieces of paper. The only well-maintained item in his bag was his portfolio, which he kept carefully concealed inside a large, plastic wallet.

She shrugged.

"I saw—" he began, then hesitated. "I saw you at the lido" translated almost directly to "I saw you in a bikini and have been revisiting the memory on a nightly basis," which wasn't how he wanted to endear himself to her. "—the new Adam Sandler film, a couple of weeks ago."

At the head of the class, Binns was conducting his usual pre-class routine: searching for his misplaced notes. Lily turned her head and threw James a look of deep confusion.

She had gotten her ears pierced over the summer, he noted—little garnets that glinted merrily in her lobes—and was so pretty that it was almost easier not to look at her lest he be overcome by a fit of embarrassment, no doubt caused by the butterflies that had set up camp in his stomach.

"It was shit," he said emphatically. He didn't know where he was going with this line of conversation, not least because he avoided Adam Sandler films like the plague and wasn't sure if one had even come out over the summer. He slid his textbook onto the desk and stashed his bag beneath his feet. "If you were thinking of going—"

"I wasn't."

"Just thought I'd warn you, you know, in case you tripped and fell into a screening on your way to a thoughtful foreign language film. I wouldn't want you seeing it by accident."

Lily's brows knit together in consternation. "He's an actor, not the Ebola virus."

"Which is worse, though?"

"The Ebola virus," she immediately responded.

"Well, yeah," James admitted. "But if you consider them in terms of their respective fields..."

"What? The field of disease, versus the field of acting-slash-comedy?"

"Is Ebola really the worst disease?"

"It's right up there with smallpox and the Black Death, actually," Lily pointed out. "Whereas The Wedding Singer was a really good movie. So, no, I wouldn't say that Adam Sandler is the Ebola virus of Hollywood."

"Who is, then?"

Lily sighed heavily, the way James's mother used to do when he was six years old and thought an appropriate response to everything she said was, "Why?" followed by an impassioned appeal for Cadbury's chocolate fingers. "I don't know, Potter. Roman Polanski?"

"Well, then," said James. "I will Google Roman Polanski and get back to you on that."

"Right," began Binns, pointing with purpose at his notes, which he was holding so close to his nose that they mostly obscured his face. He took a deep, rattling breath. "To continue our previous study on infant-caregiver interactions during the formative months of—"

Lily leaned forward and started taking notes, her long, ginger hair trailing against the surface of the desk, and James knew her well enough from observation to know that he'd lost her—that anyone would have lost her, even Mary. Lily didn't talk during class, unless it was in direct response to a teacher.

Still, he'd gotten her to engage, and gleaned enough information to start a conversation with her before Monday's class. He just needed to look up that Polanski bloke, and possibly watch The Wedding Singer, if he had time.

Not bad for his first week back, he decided. Not bad at all.

Chapter Text

Act 2, Scene 1

James Potter's bedroom

The website, which was yet to be named in an official way and most often referred to as "the map," or alternatively, "this fucking website is ruining my life," had been James's idea. He and his mates had been working on it since February and intended to go live after Christmas, but that goal would have been beyond their reach were it not for Peter Pettigrew.

Peter was their coding wizard, possessing the power to convert ones and zeros into big, beautiful realities that proved invaluable to the project. The others had vital roles to play—James did the artwork, Sirius wrote the content, and Remus edited, researched, kept them focused and separated the bad ideas from the truly terrible—but Peter shouldered the bulk of the work, and was arguably their most invaluable asset.

That had done a lot for his confidence.

So had losing his virginity before the rest of his friends. Peter liked to point that out often, lest they forget that he was actively fornicating.

James wanted to ruminate on a sexually potent Peter about as much as he wanted to die of scurvy, because it was disgusting, and because he was jealous, not of Peter's relationship with Helena—also known as Yoko, previously known as James's Year 11 stalker—but of Peter's accomplishment. James had never even touched a boob in real life, let alone had sex, and the only girl he wanted was so far out of his league that he'd have to ascend to the stratosphere on the back of a unicorn just to wind up on her radar.

Saturday night saw Peter stop by James's house for further work on the site as planned, only James had devoted himself to mooning all day, and forgotten that Peter was coming. The optimism that Evans had instilled within his heart had ebbed away on Friday night because, after obsessively texting Remus for a few hours, he had been forced to accept that he had merely confused her into a conversation, and as Remus pointed out, that wasn't grounds to start planning the wedding.

After that, he must have gotten sick of James's complaints because he'd started to reply with things like Remus died thirty years ago and new phone who is this? which meant he was extremely vexed and wanted James to go away.

With Sirius at work and James sulking in his room, it fell to his mum to greet Peter at the front door and escort him upstairs.

"There he is," she announced, having thrown his door open. "My precious little angel, wasting his life and his weekend away, though not masturbating, thank god. I'm so afraid of catching him in the act."

From his bed, where he was propped up by a mound of pillows, James hit pause on his remote and looked at her.

"Do you know what my biggest fear is?" he told her, with a sweet smile. "Having a Chelsea fan for a mother."

"I've had to contend with having an Arsenal fan for a son and I survived."

"Only because you spend so much time torturing me."

"Better toughen up. We're having dinner when Sirius gets back, so come downstairs as soon as I call you or I'll wear my Frank Lampard jersey to your wedding."

"Then I won't get married."

"Fine. I'll wear it to your funeral when you die a lonely virgin."

"Double fine. Can Pete stay for dinner?"

"I've already invited him," she said, and trailed out of the room, letting the door swing shut behind her. James could hear her laughing as she headed down the stairs.

Peter scratched idly at his thin, blonde hair. "What's bakaliaros?"

"That means it's Mum's night to cook."

"I assumed it was something Greek."

"It's nothing fancy, just battered cod. Have you ever seen this film?"

"What is it?"

"The Wedding Singer," said James, and hit the play button. The protagonist resumed his ireful ballad about a woman who left him at the altar, to which James felt he could relate. Not that he'd ever been left at the altar in real life, but Lily had probably done it to him in a dream or something. "That's Adam Sandler."

"I know who Adam Sandler is."

"He plays a wedding singer who falls in love with Drew Barrymore even though she's already engaged to this other bloke who cheats on her a lot and only cares about material things, so Adam Sandler sings her a romantic song on a plane because nobody cared about airport security in the 80s, and they get married in the end."

"Great," said Peter, in a flat tone. "Now I don't need to see it."

"I watched it already this morning."

"Yeah, Remus warned me that you might have gone down the rabbit hole."

"Don't mention rabbits in front of You-Know-Who." James nodded towards his cat, who was dozing lightly beside him. "You'll get him all worked up."

Algernon yawned in response, and Peter crossed the room to perch on the end of James's bed.

"I know that Evans said she liked this film," he began. "But—"

"She said it was really good," James corrected him. "And she hates the Ebola virus."

"Everybody hates the Ebola virus. It killed thousands of people in West Africa."

James shrugged. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be learning from this film, except that she likes love."

"Everyone except Sirius likes love."

"Not true. Sirius enjoys love in an abstract way," said James, and pointed in the vague direction of his bookcase which, not being a big reader, he used mostly to store art supplies and his board game collection. "All of those rom-coms on the top shelf are his."

"I thought he was into horror films?"

"That's what he tells people. He's watched The Proposal about five times since he moved in."

"Sandra Bullock is delightful, I suppose."

James took a fruitless swig from his water bottle, which he had emptied over an hour ago and attempted to drink from three times since. "I thought that if I watched this film, I’d know what to say to Evans on Monday, but now I think I’ll sound like a creepy arsehole who watched the same film twice in one day to impress her."

"That is what you are."

"She doesn't have to know that," he murmured. "Jesus, Peter."

"Watching a movie she likes isn’t going to teach you anything useful."

"I know."

"And I don't know why you're so against having a normal conversation."

"I tried that. Doesn’t work."

"You haven't tried it. You try big public declarations, and as an authority on the subject—"

"You've had one girlfriend, calm down."

"As an authority on the subject, I say it's better to be honest when it comes to girls. Like, if you went up to her and said you've had a crush on her for a long time and that it makes you act like a tit sometimes, but that you're sorry and you want to be mates."

This sounded like terrible advice, so James sank backwards into his pillows and crossed his arms. His silent mutiny lasted for ten minutes, at which point he realised that Peter had gotten invested in the movie and didn’t care that he was being ignored.

"What's going on with Remus?" he said, transitioning clumsily into a new topic. Remus had been strangely uncommunicative since yesterday afternoon, even cancelling on the cinema trip they'd arranged for Sunday, claiming to have forgotten and made plans with his family. This was odd because Remus had arranged the trip in the first place, and he never forgot anything.

"Don't know," said Peter. "He's been acting weird."

"He didn’t turn up to football last night. I thought it might be his heart again, but he said he feels fine."

"He said that the doctor was happy after his last check-up, remember?”

"Yeah."

"But it wouldn’t be the first time he’s lied about it,” Peter reminded him, looking concerned.

"No." James frowned. "But he wouldn’t lie now, would he?"

"Boys!" cried Euphemia from downstairs. "Dinner!"

James scrambled up and tossed his empty bottle at Peter. "Come on, she throws your food out if you take more than two minutes to get downstairs."

They found Sirius in the kitchen, leaning against the dishwasher with a can of Coke in hand, dressed in the pink t-shirt he wore for work. James almost wished that he could make fun of it but laughing at gender stereotypes was stupid. Also, Sirius was really pulling it off.

"Hah!" cried Peter, less elegant in his approach. "It's Malibu Barbie!"

"Bore off," said Sirius.

James’s mother paused in the act of shaking grease from the chip pan and pointed toward the dining room. "One of you take those plates, the other can take the green beans and carrots," she instructed. "And leave Sirius alone, he’s been working hard all day while you two lazed around."

"I did stuff today," said James resentfully.

"What? Scratched your arse more than once? Go inside," his mother repeated, then flashed Sirius an indulgent smile. "You too, but give your new mummy a hug first."

Sirius sauntered over to the stove and smirked at James when Euphemia planted a kiss on his cheek. "I'm the favourite now."

"That's pity, not love," James breezily informed him, stack of plates in hand. He strode into the dining room, with Peter close behind, and together they started to set the table. His father was already seated at the head of the table, and had his nose buried in his iPad.

"Hi, Dad," said James.

"Hello, Peter! How have you been?" said Fleamont, and pushed his glasses up his nose to observe Peter better. "You're looking well."

"I'm doing well, thanks."

"I'm fine also, Dad, thanks for asking," said James. "Just your only child, but whatever."

"What level have you reached on Candy Crush? I got to 274 before Euphemia saw the iTunes bill. She's banned it now."

Peter and Fleamont launched into a discussion about overpriced mobile games, and James, having finished the exhausting task of setting a table, dropped into his usual chair with a wide yawn. Sirius came in, set down a wire rack of condiments and took the seat next to him, sliding a fresh can of Coke towards his elbow.

"You alright?" he said.

James nodded. "How was work?"

"Work was work. Boring. Bunches of stupid kids hanging around all day. They don't even buy anything."

"That's why you should quit."

"I'm not quitting."

"What was the point of you moving in if I can't even hang out with you on weekends?"

"The point was to monopolise your mother's love, kill you and assume your identity."

"Oh, don't do that," cooed Euphemia, who had come in carrying two large serving trays. "I suppose I'd miss him if he weren't around."

James pulled a face. "You suppose?"

"Try coming out of your bedroom every now and then, and maybe I'll love you more."

"I'm officially withholding my love until he mows the lawn like he promised," said Fleamont.

"Here, give me your glasses," said Sirius, and held his hand out, palm facing up. "I want to see if they suit me."

"It wouldn't work," said Peter. "How would you replicate his hair? You'd have to cut yours, and even then, it's far too neat."

"I'll stick my finger in a plug socket every morning."

"I don't think my hair's the defining physical difference between us, mate," James reminded him.

"I'll say I got vitiligo."

"Such a clever boy," said Euphemia fondly. "I don't see vegetables on your plate, James."

James sighed, and reached for the carrots. He couldn't understand why his mother insisted upon ruining fish and chips with these needless, healthy additions. "Why don't you tell Sirius to have more vegetables?"

"Sirius took a boxed salad to work with him today," said Euphemia. "You had three bowls of Sugar Puffs."

"Speaking of work," said Sirius, who was shaking the vinegar bottle over his chips in what appeared to be an attempt to waterboard his dinner. "Macdonald stopped by today and told me something interesting."

"Is it that you're a prick?"

"Language, James," his father reprimanded.

"It was about Evans, actually. She said something nice about you, but you bloody well can sing for it now."

James let his knife and fork drop to his plate with a clang, for this was Big News, and all present must remain silent to receive it. "What did she say?"

"My feelings are too hurt to remember."

He briefly considered stabbing Sirius with his fork to make him talk. The idea that Lily Evans could say something nice about him and that Sirius would happily sit on that news to torture him was...well, torturous. His best mate was a talented man. "You’re lying."

"How else would I know that you were talking some sort of crap about how Adam Sandler was the next Ebola? You neglected to share that piece of information when you replayed your conversation over and over and over last night until I wanted to die."

Euphemia's eyes lit up with an avaricious glee. She lived for gossip like this. "You talked to Lily Evans and you didn't tell me?"

"Is that why you've been watching The Wedding Singer all afternoon?" put in his father.

James picked up an ambitious handful of chips and stuffed them into his mouth to avoid answering for his crimes.

"He bombarded her," said Sirius, "with nonsense."

"And did he tell you about his big romantic gesture?" said Peter, snorting with mirth. "When he got down on one knee in the middle of class and asked her to give him a pen?"

James hastily swallowed what he could and sprayed what he couldn't. "It was my pen in the first place!"

"What was she doing with your pen?" said Euphemia. "Did you plant it on her? So that you'd have an excuse to talk?"

"May I be excused?" said James, deeply hurt by his mother's assumption that he would resort to subterfuge to get Evans to talk to him. He stood up and pushed his chair away from the table. "I have to go and throw myself out of a window."

"Oh, relax," said Sirius, and laid a placating hand on his arm. "She said that you were funny yesterday."

James's plan to hide in a crawlspace for the evening dissolved on the spot, which was just as well. The house didn't have a crawlspace. "For real?"

"For real."

"But did she mean funny 'ha-ha' or 'there's a weird smell coming from somewhere' funny?"

"The good kind of funny."

"Are you sure?"

"I didn't make Macdonald sign an affidavit because I didn't have my special legal papers to hand, but yeah, since she came in just to tell me about it, I'm pretty sure it was meant to be good news."

Like a sunbeam peeping from behind a cloud to drench the earth in warmth, James's earlier glee returned in full force. He sat back down, picked up his cutlery and smiled beatifically at everyone and everything in the room, even the green beans and carrots, though he passionately hated both. He would be willing to eat bowlfuls of carrots if it made Monday come sooner because Lily Evans thought he was funny and that meant a world of possibilities had opened before him, as vast and resplendent as a non-frightening Jurassic Park.

"She thinks I'm funny," he said to Sirius. "Do you know what that means?"

"That you're going to smile at me like that all night?"

"Yes."

"And make me repeat what Mary said a million times?"

"Yes."

"Permission to have an alcoholic beverage?" said Sirius, turning desperately to James's mother for help. "I can't handle him like this."

"Oh, sweetie," said Euphemia, and gave Sirius's hand a sympathetic pat. "What kind of mug do you take me for?"

Act 2, Scene 2

the back of Binns’s classroom

Psychology was James's first class on a Monday morning, but it wasn't Lily's. She and Mary had Law first period, which he knew because he had committed her schedule to memory on the first day of term. It had not been intentional. James couldn't help that Lily's timetable had crawled into his head and taken a steadfast hold. He couldn't tell his brain to stop being brilliant. It wasn't stalking. Remus was a liar.

As adept as his brain had proved in retaining information—some useful, most of it garbage—punctuality wasn't his strong suit, and he was known for it, but he tried a little harder where Evans was concerned. Thus, while he wasn't surprised to see Mary and Lily enter Binns's classroom with twenty minutes to kill before class started, they were taken aback to see him.

It wasn't stalking. His friends were trying to make him paranoid. He had every right to turn up early for class and wait for her to arrive.

"You're here early," said he and Mary simultaneously, and their faces split into identical grins.

"Monday class is only thirty minutes," Macdonald explained, and lifted her Costa cup into the air. "We got tea. What are you doing here at twenty to ten? Did Sirius wake you up? Was he doing naked lunges in your room?"

"Er." James pulled a face. "No?"

"What a shame," said Mary. She elbowed Lily in the side. "Go sit with your boyfriend."

Evans had been staring stonily at the wall with her cup pressed to her chest. She did that a lot with hot drinks, James had noticed, though very rarely with cold. She glared at Mary. "Really? That's what we're doing now? What age are you?"

"Seventeen. Same as you, but I act like it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, lighten up." Mary removed two fingers from her cup to push Evans in the direction of her desk, and by extension, James. "And go sit."

Lily did sit, but with a face like thunder, and Mary flounced over to her own desk to deposit her drink and her bag.

"Oh, dear," she said loudly, once done. "I've just remembered that I urgently need the bathroom for some reason!" She bounded to the classroom door. "I guess I'll need to leave you two alone!"

Mary's motives—much as James appreciated them—were so transparent that she might as well have knocked their heads together and screamed, "Now kiss!" though that hadn't worked out so well the last time she tried. Evans had been properly scary, that day.

She wasn't scary now, though, slumped against the desk with her head in her hands. He wondered if something bad had happened, or if the sight of his face had been all it took to ruin her morning. Probably the latter. He never wanted to upset her, but he seemed to have such a talent for it.

"Are you alright, Evans?"

She didn't respond.

"I feel like this is all my fault, what with the fake proposal and everything."

"Not your fault," she murmured.

James had dreamed up many hilarious and interesting statements with which to break the ice over the weekend, but he couldn't remember most of them, and the ones he could recall seemed trite in the cold light of day. What he did have, however, was a brown paper bag of breakfast items that he'd bought as a backup. Everyone liked breakfast.

He moved the bag to the middle of the desk and nudged it towards her with his elbow, until it brushed against her arm and she lifted her head to see what had touched her.

"Oh, hello there," he said, as if he'd only just seen her. "Would you like a hash brown to go with your tea?"

"What?"

"I bought a whole lot from McDonald's this morning. You can have as many as you like."

Lily looked at him suspiciously. Her hair was gathered in an intricate braid today, and the garnets in her ears had been swapped for emeralds. James didn't know if they were real or not, but they were pretty, and matched her eyes almost exactly.

"No," she said. "I don't—actually, yeah." She grabbed the bag. "I'm starving. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Can I take one of the little salt packets?"

"Sure."            

"Brilliant." She fished one out of the bag with her thumb and forefinger. "Back in a second."

Whereupon, Lily Evans rose to her feet, sprinted to the other side of the room, prised the lid from Macdonald's cup and tipped the entire sachet of salt into her tea—with a look of savage gratification on her face—then returned to the desk as if she'd merely taken a stroll.

"Thanks again," she said, and stuffed an entire hash brown into her mouth.

James could have proposed on the spot, and for real this time.

Who knew that Lily Evans had a vengeful streak? He had a vengeful streak, and people were always telling him that a mature adult wouldn't stoop to such behaviour, but Evans was very mature, especially when compared to James. She was the student council president. He had seen her checking her schedule in her iPhone calendar. She occasionally wore a wristwatch.

He stared at her while she devoured his food, blissfully ignorant to the fact that she was ruining and enhancing his life in equal measure, and with all the subtle delicacy of a hydrostatic bulldozer.

"That was brilliant," he told her. Not just brilliant. Spectacular. We should get married young and have children because it would be a disservice to the world if we didn't pass on our genes. I'm very rich so money is no object and have I mentioned that I love you?

She sucked some grease off the end of her finger and half-smiled at him. "Thanks."

"And not what I would have expected," he added. "From you, I mean."

"You don't know me all that well," she said, shrugging. "Besides, Mary had it coming."

"For calling me your boyfriend?"

"Among other things."

"Like what?"

"Like, I can't tell you because it's private?"

He shrugged. "Fair enough."

Lily took a sip of her own tea and heaved her school bag onto the desk to unpack her things, which James took for the clear sign it was—conversation over—though the silence that fell between them was companionable for once, not the frozen, insurmountable chasm he was used to. They even shared a secretive smile when Mary, upon her return from the bathroom break that never was, took a huge, gluttonous mouthful of tea, gagged, and spat it all over Terry Heaney, who had just taken his seat beside her.

This, he realised, made for the second semi-normal conversation they'd had since the beginning of term, which made for a huge improvement on last year's record of zero.

This was progress.

Progress was good.

Act 2, Scene 3

one of many corridors

Following the success of double Psychology—Evans had eaten two more hash browns and bade him goodbye after class with great civility—James decided to take advantage of the freedoms of sixth form by skipping the rest of the day and getting drunk on his mum's secret stash of peppermint schnapps to celebrate, but Sirius put the kibosh on that plan immediately. He had that stupid audition to attend and insisted that James come along to offer moral support.

Obviously, he was lying. Sirius had skin thick enough to repel bullets. He didn't need moral support to flaunt about onstage in a pair of pantaloons, he just resented the idea of any of his mates drinking without him.

James, though, prided himself on supporting his friends, so he agreed to hang around outside Croaker's classroom to wait for Sirius and, as it happened, Mary, who also took Classical Civilisation, and made a beeline for him as soon as she stepped into the corridor.

"What's up, smooth operator?" she said, and biffed him on the arm, grinning. "You dog, you!"

"What?" said James.

"Buying Lily breakfast was such a move."

"Such a sad, desperate move," said Sirius, who had come up behind her.

"Don't mind him, he's a prick with no heart. We were talking about it in class—"

"Shouldn't you have been paying attention?" said James, sounding quite unlike himself and more like Remus—which reminded him, he needed to go to Remus's house after the auditions were done and check up on him, because he was still being weird. He'd scooted off after English Lit that afternoon without so much as a backwards glance. Sirius thought it was probably nothing, but James and Peter were still concerned.

"Nah, mate," said Sirius. "Debate was a big deal in ancient Greece. It was field work."

"Sirius has taken the ridiculous position that you're a sad arsehole, while I've taken the position that you and Lily would make a cute couple," said Mary proudly, stroking her own chest. "You should stop choosing your mates from a pool of dickheads."

"Yeah," James agreed, with a glare for Sirius. "Maybe I'll find a best mate who doesn't force me to go to an audition with him when I could be at home relaxing."

"Are you not going to audition too?" said Mary.

James pulled a face. "And give up all my free time?"

"That's a shame," she sighed. "I'm not auditioning either, but I've got to support my girl Bea, and I can't pass up a chance to watch this idiot make a fool of himself." She slipped her arm through the crook of James's elbow. "You can walk me there, can't you?"

He didn't have much choice, as Mary steered him down the corridor with surprising strength for such a diminutive pixie of a girl, Sirius bringing up the rear and making all kinds of disapproving noises because he wasn't getting any attention.

"So," she said, with a sly tint to her voice. "How were your hash browns this morning?"

"How was your tea?"

"Oh, that." Mary tossed her head, with a brusque laugh. "We're at a delicate stage of our prank war—"

"You and Evans are in a prank war?"

"Correction—Lily and I are in a prank war that I'm winning. Didn't she tell you?"

"She said her reasons were private."

"Hah!" Mary barked. "She was just being mysterious."

Just once, he thought, it would be nice to learn something new about Evans that didn't plunge him deeper into the fatal quicksand of unrequited love. He wanted to ask Mary more about her, specifically if she'd said anything about class that morning, but Sirius—who would always try to change the subject when Evans was mentioned in conversation—butted in to ask if Mary was in charge of costumes for the play, which apparently she was, which led to a conversation about upcycling that James didn't understand, so he zoned out and started to plan an inspirational speech that he would recite later, should Remus happen to be sick again.

The music room on the ground floor was less of a room and more of an auditorium, with a stage, ample audience seating, a rarely used piano and a random assortment of hard-backed chairs that had been dragged in from other classrooms. Other students had already gathered inside by the time James, Mary and Sirius arrived, including Beatrice Booth, who had perched on the edge of some choir steps that had been pushed against the wall, doing what appeared to be a breathing exercise with her eyes closed. Evans was beside her, manning a copy of the play and a bottle of water.

That was another thing that she and James had in common—aside from the surprising prank war revelation—they were both such supportive friends. Lily was so kind. He loved her.

"That's me," said Mary, and gave James's arm a squeeze. "See you both later!"

As she tripped off towards her friends, James took a quick scan of the room and, to his immense surprise, found the very last person he expected to see.

"Remus?"

In the front row of the stalls, Remus sat with his head bent over the book that was clenched in his hands, reciting something under his breath. He looked up when James and Sirius approached him and turned a delicate shade of pink.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," James echoed. "What are you doing here?"

"He's auditioning," said Sirius. "As Romeo. Forgot to tell you."

James spun around. "You knew about this?!"

Sirius shrugged. "I never said it was me who needed moral support."

"McGonagall asked me to do it on Friday," said Remus quietly. "That's what the meeting was about. She said she wanted students who could understand what they were reading and not just recite their lines like empty-headed baboons."

"She also said that it'd be good for his self-esteem," said Sirius, with a crafty smile.

"Thanks, mate," said Remus. "I told you that in confidence, but whatever."

"Why didn't you tell me?" James demanded, feeling betrayed.

"Because I hadn't properly made up my mind until this morning, and because I wanted to spend the weekend practicing without being made fun of."

"I wouldn't have made fun of you!" Even as the words left his mouth, he knew they weren't entirely true. His theory that he and Evans were equally supportive friends shrank a little in the wash. "Why tell Sirius and not me?"

"I'm auditioning too, if you hadn't noticed," said Sirius. "Why would I make fun of Remus for doing the same thing?"

"So you knew all weekend and didn't tell me?"

"He asked me to keep schtum."

"Oh, suddenly you're an expert secret keeper, are you? But you told everyone that I walked Algernon past Lily's house?"

"That's because it was funny."

"Say it a little louder, James," said Remus. "I think there's a sheep farmer in Mongolia who didn't hear you."

With fear gripping at his throat, James whipped around to see if Lily had heard his shameful secret, but she was toying absently with the end of her braid while Mary chattered away, and did not appear to have noticed.

Remus and Sirius, though, were laughing at him.

"You're both pricks," he informed them, face burning.

"Thanks," said Remus, grinning. "Are you going to wish me luck?"

He scowled darkly at his mates, but it was hard to stay mad at Remus for too long because he was generally such a good bloke, and because James would have made fun of him, and didn't feel he had much of a moral high ground to preach upon.

"Yeah," he eventually conceded, though begrudgingly. "Yeah, alright. Break a leg, mate."

A hush fell over the room, and James looked up to see that McGonagall had swept through the double doors, followed closely by Ms. Vector, who taught Drama and Dance. He and Sirius hurriedly took their seats on either side of Remus.

"Good afternoon," said McGonagall.

"Afternoon," the students responded, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

"Ms. Vector and I will be directing this production, which will take place on the evening of the fifteenth of December. Following today's auditions, we'll meet back here on Wednesday after school to announce the cast list. If you don't show up on Wednesday and you don't have a good reason to be absent, your part, assuming you get one, will be given to somebody else."

She strode over to the piano and dropped her copy of the play on its glossy lid. Vector, meanwhile, had grabbed a stray chair and sat down, with an open notebook balanced on her knee.

"First thing's first, the obvious," McGonagall continued. "Can I get a show of hands from all those reading for the role of Juliet today?"

Ten, fifteen, more than twenty hands shot into the air. Grace Styles and Jennifer Costner both had theirs up, as did Helena, and the Stebbins twins—James couldn't tell which was Charlotte and which was Charlene—and Isabella Marks, who he'd dated for a couple of months last year, and Camelia Pinkstone, and Alice Parker and…

Lily.

Lily had put her hand up.

Lily Evans, of all people, was auditioning for Juliet.

James was genuinely shocked.

He never would have expected Evans to audition for a play, or for any extracurricular activity which might deplete her study time. She was an immensely focused student. She used free periods to do coursework in the common room, which made her quite unique, as far as students went, and she hadn't done the panto last year, and it was Booth who wanted to be an actress, but Booth hadn't put her hand up at all.

She was going to get the part.

Of course she would.

It was like McGonagall said to Remus, she needed people who understood what they were reading, and Evans would obviously meet that criteria. She always had interesting things to say about the texts they studied, and McGonagall loved her, and was bound to give her preferential treatment.

Not to mention, she was easily the fittest girl in the entire school, and though James didn't know much about Shakespeare, he was switched-on enough to assume that Juliet had to be pretty. There were a lot of pretty girls at Hogwarts, but only one of them was Evans. Only she was Venus in her shell. She had no competition. Unless she was the worst actress in the world, James would stake his house, his cat and his signed Thierry Henry jersey that the part was already hers.

"Keep them up," McGonagall barked, while Vector hastened to write down the names. "I must say, I am forever astonished that so many of the young ladies are willing to kiss any of these boys in their personal time, much less on stage, but I thank you all for your enthusiasm."

A laugh rippled through the girls, and Sirius. The other boys responded with stony, insulted silence.

"Done," said Vector.

"Lovely." McGonagall gestured for the girls to lower their hands. "Can I have the same from our potential Romeos?"

Eight hands went up, including those of Evan McNamee, Terry Heaney, and Remus—though his was a timid, embarrassed attempt, as though he was already regretting his decision to do it—but among the eight, James noticed one raised hand that shocked and confused him far, far more than Remus Lupin's.

His own.

Chapter Text

Act 3, Scene 1

the music room on the ground floor

He'd made a huge mistake.

James knew it as soon as he launched his hand skywards, like a rocket doomed to explode once it broke the sound barrier, this blazing beacon of his own desperation, but he didn't put it down.

He wanted to put it down. He was sure he wanted to. He didn't want to commit himself to any school production, especially one that didn't involve big musical numbers and uniquely choreographed dance routines. He had nothing prepared. Moreover, he hadn't even read the play yet. Finally, he had fulfilled his mother's darkest predictions and blundered his way into public humiliation, all because he couldn't keep it in his pants for a girl.

Were his hand a sentient being, he could not have been less in control.

Luckily, only two people in the room knew that he had come with no intention of auditioning, so to the rest of the room, and Evans most importantly, he wasn't immediately coming off like a lunatic stalker. Only Sirius and Remus would know, and they...

Then it hit him, as hard as the golf ball Peter had inadvertently sent flying in his direction during their last game of pitch and putt, the one that had smacked his chest like a mallet and left him with a badly bruised collarbone.

Remus.

He had forgotten about Remus.

Buggering shit.

It was painful to think that not five minutes ago, he had been comforting himself with the notion that he and Evans were equally considerate of their friends, when now it must have appeared to Remus as if his thunder was being stolen from right beneath his nose. This made him a scoundrel, as well as a fool, and guilt bled into the hideous cocktail that careened freely through his veins.

"Hands down!" came McGonagall's command, and James dropped his arm like it held a lead weight. He turned to Remus with great contrition and found that his friend was already watching him, his face divulging no emotion at all.

"I've betrayed you," he murmured.

Remus's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

"I didn't mean to," he continued, hoping that his morose expression would convey how deeply he wished he wasn't a shit. "My hand did it by itself."

Sirius, who was listening, let out a sudden laugh that sounded like a Labrador's bark, and clamped his mouth shut.

"Excuse me, Mr. Black?" called McGonagall. "Do you care to tell the rest of us what exactly has tickled you so?"

Sirius shook his head. His lips were still pressed tightly together. Remus's shoulders had started to twitch.

"Very well," said McGonagall tartly. "Now, obviously, we can't have eight Romeos and twenty-two Juliets, so some of you may be called back later to read for other—"

"His hand did it by itself," Sirius whispered.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Remus seconded.

"More like his cock."

"I've betrayed you!"

Sirius couldn't help it this time; he spluttered out another, louder laugh and sank back against his chair, muffling the sound with the back of his hand.

"Black!" McGonagall's voice cracked through the air like a firework this time. Several people jumped. "I'm giving you one more chance before I throw you out of this room!"

Then she glared at James as if he was responsible for his mate's misbehaviour, which he supposed he was, but it was still dead unfair of her to assume as much. He was being laughed at, not with, which technically counted as bullying. If anything, McGonagall's duty of care meant that she should have been showing him sympathy.

While Sirius forced out an apology and assured the teachers that he was taking the auditions seriously, James chanced a glance at Evans. Her head was resting on Booth's shoulder while she read silently from her copy of the play, paying as little attention to him as usual, but on the other side of her was Mary, who met his gaze and smiled in a smug, knowing way which reminded James that he'd told her that he wasn't auditioning.

That made three people who knew the truth. Mary must have known that Evans was going to read for Juliet and kept it from him on purpose, perhaps to orchestrate a scene just like this one. She was probably going to tell Lily why he'd put up his hand, and when she did, the girl he loved would know for sure that he had stabbed his friend in the back for a shot at kissing her.

This was it, then. He was going to go down in history as a backstabbing virgin and it served him right for trying to steal Remus's part after Sirius had specifically instructed him to provide only emotional support. Finally outdone by karmic justice, he leaned forward and buried his head in his hands, rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses.

"Don't worry, mate," said Remus quietly, once McGonagall had wrapped up her scolding and moved on, though amusement was evident in his voice still. Unlike Sirius, he could always be counted upon to control his laughter in a perilous-yet-comedic situation. "I'm not angry."

James groaned into his hands.

"I knew he'd do it," said Sirius.

"Same."

"As soon as she put her hand up."

"Silly old sod," said Remus, and patted his back in a comforting, dad-like kind of way that only served to make James feel guiltier.

"Stupid wanker, more like," put in Sirius.

"What are you going to do?" Remus pressed on. "Have you read the play yet?"

"No." James sat up and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Find a TARDIS, go back in time and be less of a prick," suggested Sirius.

"Leave him alone. He can borrow my copy if he needs it."

"Are you seriously suggesting that he go up there and audition with nowt prepared?"

"Why not? He's already the most melodramatic person we know," Remus reasoned, and though James was sure there was an insult in there somehow, now wasn't the time to bring it up. "He'll be a natural on stage."

"But I don't know a thing about plays," said James worriedly, "or Shakespeare, or anything. Evans is probably taking this dead seriously and I'm going to look like I'm taking the piss."

"It'll be fine," said Remus. "You at least know what the play is about, right?"

"I know that they fall in love."

"And?"

"Get married?"

"Yes, and?"

"Live happily ever after?"

Remus gave a dry husk of a laugh. "In the kids' version with the garden gnomes, maybe."

"Shut up," said Sirius. "Vector's coming."

James was forced to sit in an anxiety-ridden silence while Vector and McGonagall took details from those students who hadn't put their hands up for the two leading roles and kicked out those who had come with no intention of auditioning, save for a small handful of people, like Mary, who had already signed up to volunteer backstage. He wouldn't have minded being booted out of the room, but to achieve that he'd have to misbehave, and he didn't want to give Evans a reason to start ignoring him again.

It was truly a catch-22 situation, which worsened when McGonagall announced that she wanted to see the boys read for Romeo first.

With his time running out, Remus kindly gave James his copy of the play to read while Nick Crabtree took the stage, but he was too jittery to focus, his hands felt sweaty, and his eyes kept sliding over the words as if they were written in a foreign language. On a normal day, James could take in a hefty amount of information from the dullest of textbooks without expending much effort, but under such pressure he found himself reading the same sentences over and over without ever progressing. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and powered down everything but his sweat glands.

Crabtree was followed by Evan McNamee, then Terry Heaney, and James was struggling to get through Act 1 Scene 2—he had only just realised that Paris was a man—when McGonagall called, "Potter? We'll have you next."

A trickle of ice-cold fear slid down his spine, and he looked up, shifty-eyed, as if he had been caught nicking fruit shortcake biscuits from the staff room all over again.

Vector and McGonagall were watching him expectantly.

It was all too stupid for words.

Briefly, he considered standing up and running boldly from the auditorium. That would make a splash. They'd all think it was a huge prank, pretending to audition and then… not auditioning.

Not a terribly elegant prank, but not all humour needed to be highbrow.

"Come on up, love," said Vector, adjusting the long, purple headscarf she kept tied around her greying curls. "No need to be shy."

The idea that she, or anyone, could consider him shy was so peculiar that James almost laughed out loud, despite his nerves. Even McGonagall was side-eyeing her incredulously.

"Go on," said Remus, and nudged him with his elbow. "You'll be fine."

He'd done the crime, he supposed. It was only fair that he did the time. It would be a fitting punishment for screwing Remus over.

Resigned to his fate, he stood up, and walked to the head of the room. Only as he turned to face his captive audience did he realise that he'd left Remus's book on his chair.

"Right, sweetheart," said Vector kindly, "what have you prepared for us?"

A lie would have served him well, but all he could think of was the line, "Go, sirrah, trudge about," which wasn't even one of Romeo's, and utterly useless to him. Worse still, he could feel Lily's eyes on him, beautiful and green and probably full of loathing, but he couldn't bring himself to look in her direction, lest he see her disapproval and prove himself right. "Nothing, Miss."

The thin line of McGonagall's lips spelled mortal peril ahead. His senses must have abandoned him completely. Of all the times to be honest with a teacher, he had to choose this moment.

"Nothing?" she repeated. "You've prepared nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Is there any reason why you've come to an audition with nothing prepared?"

He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

McGonagall rose to her feet with the sprightliness of a teenager. "I know you think it's entertaining to interrupt what we're doing for the sake of a cheap laugh—"

"I'm not interrupting!"

"Potter—"

"No, I really want to be in the play!" he cried. "I just came to it late, which is pretty characteristic of me, if we're being honest here. Can you remember me ever turning up on time for class?"

Some of the assembled students laughed, and McGonagall raised an eyebrow at him.

"I really do want to audition," he insisted. "Honest."

McGonagall looked at Vector, who shrugged her plump shoulders, then turned her steely glare back to his face.

"Fine," she said. "Pick a scene and read it. If you must insist upon making a fool of yourself in front of all and sundry, I might as well get my money's worth."

"Alright," he agreed. "What scene would you recommend?"

"You're auditioning for a play, Potter, not picking your lunch from a restaurant menu." McGonagall's nostrils were flaring with familiar anger, but perhaps she had decided to conserve her energy for later, for her shoulders slumped and she let out an exasperated sigh. "Would it help if you read a scene with someone who has prepared?"

"That'd be good, yeah."

His teacher dropped heavily into her chair. She looked tired.

"So be it," she said, "but I'm not going to ask anyone in this room to give you a leg up, so it's up to you to find a volunteer."

He hadn't realised that people were talking until a hush fell over the room, but they must have been; some, perhaps, assuming that he was about to pull off a hilarious jape, while others, like Evans, may have been firmly confined to McGonagall's way of thinking. As his eyes moved over the crowd, his stomach twisted with embarrassment—which was rare, for him—and he wondered just how many people in the room had decided that he was the biggest prat alive.

He caught Sirius's gaze and tried to urge him to his feet telepathically, but Sirius only smirked and moved his book to hide his face, which meant his only chance was blown, because he couldn't bring himself to ask Remus after he had stepped on his toes so thoughtlessly and so thoroughly. It would have been beyond unreasonable of him. Even Snape might not have stooped to such a low, and he was more obsessed with Evans than anyone else James knew.

"Right," he said. "Well then, I guess I'll just—"

"I'll do it," said Lily Evans.

Act 3, Scene 2

September 2016 - One Year Earlier

the sixth form common room

He could talk to her.

He could do it.

He could.

He wasn't going to cock up, that was just his mates talking, and his mates were pricks. She was only a girl—a bloody gorgeous girl—but a girl nonetheless, and girls liked James. He wasn't nearly as sought after as Sirius, perhaps, but of the ones who weren't enamoured of his best mate, some of them plumped for him and found him quite satisfactory. He'd dated Isabella Marks from April to July and their breakup had been a doddle. They still went to the odd football match together. It was fine. He was fine.

Besides, she was sitting with Booth, with whom he used to hang around a lot during his skateboarding phase two years ago, which boded well for him, should he need someone to put a good word in for him. Booth was a decent sort, and had fancied Remus for years, so he could always make up some lie about having always believed they'd make a great couple if really pressed to explain his presence.

In any case, he had to place himself on Lily's radar, and fast. He wasn't the only one to have noticed her and shown an interest, and if left too long without meeting James, it seemed that she might be in real danger of dating someone who might convince her that Hogwarts didn't have any better blokes on offer.

So he left his mates, who had congregated by the pool table, waiting for McNamee and Crouch to finish up the longest and least thrilling game in history, to their own devices, and strode over to the sofa upon which the two girls were perched.

"Alright, Booth?" he said, and slung his bag on the ground.

"Hey," said Booth genially, though Lily was far less friendly in her silence, her eyes flicking once over his face before they returned to her phone, which sat in her hands. "What's up, loser?"

"Not much, mate. I see you've taken on the new girl. Looking for brownie points from McGonagall, are we?"

"New girl has a name, you know, and don't pretend that's not why you've come over," Booth reminded him, grinning. She nudged her new friend's arm. "This is Lily Evans. Lil, this is James—"

"I know who he is," she said coldly, still looking at her phone.

If he hadn't known any better, he would have believed that she disliked him, but that couldn't have been the case. He hadn't even spoken to her yet.

"Let me guess," he quickly supplied, a little thrown by the lack of welcome in her overall demeanour, but unwilling to change tack now, "you've heard that I single-handedly saved our football team from league relegation, right? I mean, I didn't ask to be called 'hero,' but if it's what the people want—"

"Don't care about football, and I especially couldn't care less about your involvement in it," was her short response. She locked her phone screen and looked up at him. "I don't associate with bullies."

He frowned down at her, quite unable to hide his confusion. Was she insinuating that he, James Potter, was a bully?

"What?" he said, and threw a questioning look at Beatrice, looked equally dumbfounded by her mate's distaste for him. Sure, he and some of the other lads had gotten called out a few times for roughhousing, but that was a mutual thing. He didn't go around pushing kids into the dirt and stealing their pocket money. Lily must have gotten him mixed up with someone else. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about."

"I genuinely haven't got a clue."

"Yes, you do."

"Seriously, new girl," he said evenly, "I really don't know, so maybe if you tell me who I'm supposed to have bullied, I can expl—"

"Severus Snape," she calmly interrupted.

That was the last name he would have expected to fall from her lips.

Severus Snape, who by all accounts was the slimiest little prick he had ever met, liked to pretend that he was a tragic, mistreated outcast, but he had ostracised himself by choice for as long as James had known him, being more interested in sneering at those of whom he was jealous, or biased against, or simply didn't like, than he was in making friends, or in being a halfway decent person. It was beyond weird that someone like Lily would even know his name. She was perfection; he was a greasy-haired git.

"What about Snape?" he said, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

"What do you mean, what about him?"

"I told you, I don't know what you're on about. I barely talk to that git."

Evans's mouth dropped open. Her cheeks were starting to redden. "Are you serious?"

"No," he said, and pointed to his mates. "He's over there."

"You beat him up!" she cried, her voice carrying through the room. Several heads turned in their direction. "He told me all about it! You and your mates, you ganged up on him and kicked the shit out of him!"

The lie was so blatant, and so ridiculous, that James didn't know if he should laugh or shout, for as she levelled her accusation towards him, he felt a frisson of anger that he did not want to unleash in her direction, so he chose the former. The sound carried, loud and more derisive than he had hoped. He was beginning to attract attention from others in the common room who were just starting to notice that there was an argument going on. "You believe that bullshit?"

"I believe the bruises I saw on his arms," she retorted, and stood up, her eyes narrowed with every sign of revulsion. She was quite a bit shorter than him but intimidating all the same; perhaps because of the way she held herself, or perhaps because no amount of self-righteous indignation could cancel out his awareness of how pretty she was. "Severus is my friend, and he—"

"He's a liar, that's what he is," James interrupted. "I didn't jump him and beat him up, it was a fight, which Snape was very happy to be part of, by the way, though he might not have mentioned that to you when he was crying on your shoulder!"

"Are you going to pretend you didn't start it?"

"I might have swung the first punch—"

"That's how you start a fight."

"—but he's the one who tried to have my friend expelled, for something he hadn't even done, by the way, just because Remus got prefect and he didn't!"

"That's not—" she began, and for a moment she seemed lost, her eyes boring into his as if she were looking for the truth inside them, but then she waved an impatient hand like she was swatting a fly. "That's irrelevant—"

"Irrelevant?" he yelped. "It has everything to do with everything!"

"No, it hasn't, because violence isn't the answer to a problem like that! Nothing makes it okay for you to go around beating people up!"

"I don't go around—I'm not—bloody hell!" He dragged a hand through his hair in frustration, and what remained of his self-control was warning him not to pound on his own chest like an ape. "I don't 'go around beating people up', it was one time, and you're so bloody wrapped up in defending your precious mate that you won't even consider that he might be the one in the wrong—"

"I'm not saying that he was innocent—"

"No, you're saying that the thing he did wasn't as bad as what I did, so he shouldn't be held accountable, even though he could have ruined my mate's life."

She made a noise of disgust in the back of her throat. "Now you're putting words in my mouth."

"Well then, explain why you're upset with me for punching him, but not with him for trying to get my mate expelled."

"Who says I'm not upset?"

"You do!" he accused. "He made up a lie about my friend having a drug addiction—"

"Sev wouldn't do—"

"—when actually he was in the hospital for congenital heart disease—"

"He wouldn't just—"

"But even though trying to get an innocent person expelled is worse than what I did, I get treated like a monster and he'll get, what, a mild telling off?"

"It's not as simple as all that! I barely know you and Sev is—"

"A sly, racist, ugly little arsehole?"

"He's my best friend!" she cried. "Don't act like you know him, he's been my best friend for six years—"

"Then you must be a shit best mate," he fired back, "if you've known him for six years and haven't noticed that he's a fucking prick!"

It was as if James had floated out of his own body, detached from himself, and was watching the scene unfurl below him. The defiant expression on Evans's face shattered in an instant, and she recoiled from him, as viscerally as if he had slapped her, and he knew that he had just made a terrible, catastrophic mistake, with or without Jennifer Costner's emphatic, "Oh my God!" to add fuel to the fire.

He could feel it, though, a wide, gaping divide between them, as keenly as if it were a physical thing, icy cold and insurmountable.

"You're an utter scumbag, Potter," she spat, and shoved by him, her shoulder slamming hard into his arm as she pushed past.

Without another word, Evans stormed out of the common room and James looked at Booth, who winced at the bewildered look upon his face.

"Sorry, mate," she said, pointing in the direction of a retreating Evans with the fingers of both hands. "I'll just need to—yeah."

She scooted off the sofa, shouldered her bag and dashed after Lily at a speed that made her brown ponytail swing like a pendulum, leaving James alone, the focus of fifty pairs of eyes, and most certainly the subject of all school gossip for at least the next two days, unless one of the students were to die unexpectedly, or Terry Heaney was caught doing inappropriate things with a shoe again, and that wasn't likely since McGonagall had denied him access to the communal locker room.

That, he glumly supposed, could not have gone any worse.

Act 3, Scene 3

September 2017 - The Present

the music room on the ground floor

People were whispering.

Not even a moment of silence had there been allowed; voices had begun to rustle through the room like a lazy tide immediately after Evans volunteered herself, and James knew exactly what they were likely to be saying. His unchecked, badly hidden crush on Lily had kept their names coupled together in school gossip for months, and he knew for a fact that it bothered her immensely, but now...

He was completely stunned.

A quick look at his mates told him that they were almost as surprised as he was. Remus's brows had flown towards his hairline, and Sirius had abandoned all pretence of subtlety and let his mouth drop open. Even Booth and Macdonald looked as if they hadn't been expecting her to do it. This, clearly, was beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected.

Was he dreaming? Was he minutes away from being woken up by Sirius sitting on his stomach? He had thought that he'd departed the mortal coil and arrived in heaven when Binns placed him next to Evans in Psychology, but he knew now that he had been overestimating his own feelings at the time, though the unrelenting pounding of his heart seemed to suggest that he was, in fact, still one among the living. That was good, he supposed. It would be a terrible shame if he were to die before he could collect his thoughts enough to fathom this miracle, let alone celebrate it.

McGonagall had leaned forward in her chair and was examining Evans as if to discern signs of a struggle, like she thought that James had telepathically strong-armed her into doing it, and still the whispers continued. Those gossip-hungry vultures he called classmates were going to think that something was going on between them, which meant that Evans was sacrificing quite a lot to help him out, but at that moment she didn't seem ruffled by the stream of questions she would inevitably bring down upon her own head.

"Are you sure, Evans?" said McGonagall, after, it seemed, she had satisfied herself that James wasn't employing the use of mind control. "With him?"

He should have been offended by that. He would have been, under normal circumstances, but Evans was commanding the entirety of his attention while his heart skittered about like a lost toddler and his caffeine-and-shock-addled brain struggled to comprehend what she had just done. Perhaps she was joking—but no, she appeared to be perfectly serious, having already climbed to her feet, looking at McGonagall with unblinking eyes, even while Booth and Macdonald giggled loudly and nudged one another behind her back.

"If Potter's fine with it," she said.

James didn't need to consider how he felt about her swooping in to rescue him from abasement like a superhero in a school uniform, and hastily nodded his agreement.

With great dignity, she swept over to join him in front of the stage.

"Do you want this to count as your audition, sweetheart?" said Vector kindly.

"Sure," Evans agreed. "Though, actually, Beatrice and I practiced Act 2 Scene 5 to perform together. Can we still do that for her Nurse audition?"

"That's fine by us," said Vector. "Minerva and I shall give you a minute or two to sort out what you're doing."

"And Potter?" McGonagall tacked on, regarding him sternly above her glasses. "You may want to thank the young lady for saving your backside, no?"

He wished McGonagall hadn't made that suggestion, for now it would seem as if he was thanking her only because he'd been told to, when in truth he was terribly grateful and had merely been searching for the words to properly express it. His master plan—the Make Evans Realise That You're Not A Prick plan—hinged almost entirely upon showing her that he wasn't a prick, but even his teachers were determined to set him back, which was very disheartening. McGonagall knew that James harboured an ambition to eventually make Evans his wife, and it hurt—deeply, like a knife to his heart—to know that she was actively working to scupper his dreams.

"Er, yeah, ta very much," he said, scratching the back of his head to stay his urge to fidget wildly.

"No problem," Lily absently replied. Not being a philistine like him, she had remembered to bring her copy of the play and was flipping through its pages with a slight frown. "Do you mind if I pick the scene?"

"No, go ahead."

"Cool. How much of this have you read?"

"Nothing," he said, and she looked up at him in alarm. "Yet."

"Nothing at all?"

"Hadn't gotten 'round to it."

"So, you decided to audition because…?"

"Because I'm charming and spontaneous, much like a leading man in a Shakespearean romance?"

"The play's a tragedy, actually," she said dryly, "and in whatever weird, secret spy language you and Black made up when you were children—"

"We've never actually—"

"—I'm sure that 'charming and spontaneous,' is actually code for 'obsessed with the limelight.'"

"That's basically the same," he murmured, which earned him the briefest of mildly amused glances.

"Alright then, you silly sod," she said, and flicked another couple of pages ahead. When she found the part she wanted, she handed the book to James with the pages facing up, holding it open with her thumb. "We'll do this scene."

He took the book from her, careful not to touch her hand in case she thought he was getting fresh. Despite his ignorance, he was pretty sure that there weren't any scenes in the play in which Juliet slapped Romeo hard across the face and revealed his perversions to half of Year 13. "Alright, so, er, what exactly..."

"What exactly is happening?"

"Yeah."

"Basically, Potter, you're a Montague," she said, and pointed to his chest, then turned her finger to indicate herself. "And I'm a Capulet."

"Right," he agreed. "Me, Montague. You, Capulet. Got it."

"Our families are sworn enemies."

"Like Arsenal and Spurs?"

She looked at him blankly. "Is that a football thing? I wouldn't have a clue—"

"It's fine," he said quickly. "Sorry."

"Right, well, our families are enemies, but you and I fall for each other after we meet at a party—"

His throat began to tighten.

"—and in this scene, you've come to my home to search for me, even though you'll be killed if anyone else finds you."

This was starting to sound a little too on-the-nose, and he wondered if she had, in fact, heard him talk about his walks past her house with Algernon. Perhaps she needn't have heard at all to know. It was equally possible that she'd looked out her window one evening and saw him skulking past her front gate for the fifth time in a row, leash in hand, with an angry cat trudging reluctantly behind him. James wasn't often subtle in his machinations.

"You're in the garden. I'm inside but I appear on the balcony right after your first line, and you see me, but I don't see you. We both get a monologue, and I don't notice you until this line…" She leaned in and pressed her finger to the page. "'I take thee at thy word,' which is when you interrupt me, but until then you're speaking as if to yourself, okay?"

"Okay."

"It's the most famous scene from the play, so there's bound to be some stuff you recognise, and make sure you don't turn your back on McGonagall. She'll need to be able to see your face."

He nodded down at the book, his eyes skating quickly over the lines he needed to recite. "So, this'll be simple, right? All we need to do is—"

"Fall in love for five minutes," she interjected, surprisingly softly. "I mean, only figuratively, but whatever works for you."

Yet another cardiac anomaly arrested his entire body, but James manfully tried to ignore it.

"Right," he agreed. "Brilliant. Thank you?"

Lily stepped back and smiled at him in a bemused kind of way. "You're welcome?"

She was being so sweet, and so helpful, but having only ever steeled himself for her scorn, James had no idea how to react to such kindness. Like an awkward idiot, he thrust her book towards her chest. "Do you want this back, for your lines? I can just—this one belongs to you, so—"

"Nah," she said, with a sly smile he didn't often see from her. "Don't need it."

God, she was so cool.

"Can I use the stage?" said Lily to Vector and McGonagall, who until that point had been conversing in whispers. "We're doing Act 2, Scene 2, so I think I need some height. Potter can stay down here."

"Feel free," said Vector, with an indulgent smile. Lily turned and skipped up a set of portable steel stairs that stood sideways against the stage, whereupon she took a deep breath, shook her head once as though to clear her face of any stray hairs, and nodded to James as she stepped backwards, retreating into the left wing.

"Whenever you're ready, Potter," said McGonagall, in a tone that boded only terrible things.

He looked down at the book in his hands, and realised, to his horror, that he didn't have a clue what his first line was supposed to mean.

He was going to make an utter tit of himself.

But he had to go for it or look like an arsehole in front of Evans and a room full of less important opinions, including Sirius's, which didn't seem as if it mattered now but inevitably would later when he entered his fourteenth hour of mockery.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound," he read.

It didn't make any more sense when spoken aloud.

He was doomed.

For a moment, he almost carried on reading, but remembered with a jolt what Lily had told him about Juliet's appearance on the balcony and turned on his heel to look up at her. Sure enough, she had re-appeared onstage and was lowering herself to perch on the edge of the apron, her braid trailing over one shoulder, a wistful expression lingering on her pale face.

She was so bloody gorgeous, and miles out of his league, but she was helping him out of the goodness of her heart and he still couldn't believe that this was happening.

Her kindness and empathy knew no bounds, it seemed, because this was more than he ever could have hoped from her and he didn't deserve it, so there was nothing to do but try his bloody hardest to give her something to work with. He owed it to her to be brilliant so that her audition could be brilliant, and so in that moment he resolved to do better than simply muddle his way through it and avoid getting a detention from McGonagall. Evans deserved the best he could offer.

Provided, of course, he could fathom a bloody word he was reading.

"But, soft!" he read aloud, this time with feeling, because it seemed pertinent that Romeo would act like a sap at this moment, turning so that he was standing sideways and the teachers could see him, mindful of another of her instructions. "What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

That, at the very least, he understood. Evans was as glorious as the sun herself, as any sane person would agree, so that was bog-standard common sense. She didn't look at him, preoccupied with staring towards the back of the room, far beyond the heads of anyone assembled, but that was fine. She wasn't supposed to see him. He remembered.

"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon," he continued. He understood that, too, and the beginnings of relief began to peer through the suffocating haze of self-doubt. "Who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious."

He could do this, he realised, with a rush of excitement.

He got this.

This, despite what he felt was unnecessarily complicated language, was nothing more than the ramblings of a lovesick prat, and what was James, if not the very same thing? People were always saying that his infatuation with Evans was pathetic, from Sirius to his mother to his cat, who couldn't speak but could communicate quite effectively with a disdainful glance. If all he had to do was stare goggle-eyed at Lily and wax lyrical about her unending perfection without fear of attracting her ire—if doing so would actually impress her—then there was nobody else in Hogwarts who could do it better. For the first time since the day she'd walked into that first Psychology class, he had been granted the freedom to be totally honest about his feelings, even if had to convey them through the words of a dead, boozy playwright.

He didn't even care that everyone was watching; it was "acting," after all, and he'd always loved an audience.

"Her vestal livery is sick and green," he read, and continued on from there, his eyes moving between her and the script, though he looked mostly at Lily, thankful that his lightning-quick memory had sprang back into action, abusing the moon for how it shrank in comparison to her beauty—or Juliet's beauty, but she was Juliet so it hardly mattered—then passionately lauding her brightness, "that birds would sing and think it were not night," and this was easy, and he knew what it meant and meant what he said because it was Lily Evans up there on stage, not Helena Hodge or one of the indistinguishable Stebbins twins, and that was terrifying enough to make his pulse race and his hands shake slightly, but it was also so simple.

He felt as if his voice were growing stronger with every word, and he couldn't spare a second for McGonagall and Vector, but he knew that they must surely be impressed by his performance, and he had no idea why he'd ever thought that this would be impossible.

He never would have guessed that he was a natural actor because his mother said he was crap at lying, but this wasn't like lying at all. It was the opposite, every bar of truth, but he could pretend that it was a lie, and that was what made it so brilliantly fun.

"See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!" he cried, properly enjoying himself now, when Lily did just that. "O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!"

"Ay me!" she happily sighed.

"She speaks," he gasped, then stopped, his face uplifted while his eyes dropped briefly to skim over his lines, because it seemed like a good moment to stop talking and appear to wait for her to say something else. He would have done the same, if he'd happened to wander by Lily's garden one night and caught her hanging out of her bedroom window, potentially poised to launch into a monologue about how deeply attractive she found him. "O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head as is a winged messenger of heaven, unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, and sails upon the bosom of the air."

It was incredible, how easy he found it to understand what he was reading when he could attribute the words to Evans, an angel herself, who today had chosen to cast her benevolent light upon him.

"O Romeo," said Lily, smiling dreamily. "Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet."

James hadn't read enough of the play's earlier scenes to know Romeo's deal with his father, but he probably would have kicked his own dad up the arse if it meant a chance with Lily, so he assumed Romeo that would do the same. He turned to face the room, but kept his eyes trained away from the many faces that were watching him, frowning at nothing. This was so easy. This was a piece of cake. Of course, he'd turn around here. How else would McGonagall see his full reaction to her musings?

"Shall I hear more," he said, dropping his voice. "Or shall I speak at this?"

"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy," she continued, the words sailing prettily over his head. "Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face—" She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was one he'd only ever imagined, lower, and punctured with a sigh of obvious longing. "—nor any other part belonging to a man."

He, and his affection-starved genitals, were very lucky that he was in a room full of other people, otherwise he might have been in serious danger of getting an erection. As it stood, it was a very near thing. He was a teenage boy. It didn't take much to set him off.

"O, be some other name!" came an impatient burst from the girl behind him. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for that name which is no part of thee, take all mysel—"

"I take thee at thy word!" he cried, and practically leapt in a circle to face her again. She jumped in perfectly believable fright, on her feet as swift as a deer, and backed away towards the left wing again. "Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; henceforth I never will be Romeo."

Lily came stomping back to the apron again and wrapped her arms protectively around her chest.

"What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night so stumblest on my counsel?" she demanded crossly.

"By a name, I know not how to tell thee who I am," he implored her. "My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word."

While he was speaking, she had let out a soft, contented noise and dropped her arms, her frown melting into a smile that was as begrudging as it was affectionate, as if she was trying terribly hard to be angry but simply couldn't help but be charmed, and though he knew she was just pretending, his weak, hungry heart was thumping a victorious beat.

He couldn't help it. She was smiling adoringly at him. They were maintaining eye contact.

"My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue's utterance," she said warmly. "Yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?"

"Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike."

Her happy expression began to fade, morphing instead into something more anxious. "How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here."

This was just like them, and it was too perfect. She was always so sensible, doing everything right while he clowned around and never thought of the consequences. The thought of it made him laugh, and why not? A lovesick prat would laugh.

"With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls," he told her, grinning widely. "For stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me."

"If they do see thee," she said, looking stricken. "They will murder thee."

"Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity."

"I would not for the world they saw thee here."

"I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight," he cheerfully insisted. "And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love."

"By whose direction found'st thou out this place?"

"By love," he replied, which elicited another stunning smile from her. "Who first did prompt me to inquire; he lent me counsel and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot," he added, and threw his arm out wide. "Yet, wert thou as far as that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise."

"Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek for that which thou hast heard me speak to-night," she said shyly, and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny what I have spoke: but farewell compliment! Dost thou love me?"

He nodded, and opened his mouth as if to talk, but she carried on talking at once. They were owning this thing.

"I know thou wilt say 'Ay,' and I will take thy word," she said. Her cheeks were flushed pink. "Yet if thou swear'st, thou mayst prove false; at lovers' perjuries, they say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully, or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown and be perverse an say thee nay, so thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world."

While she spoke, it occurred to James that Romeo would definitely climb up the trellis, or some creeping ivy, or even a rope ladder he'd fashioned from his own hair, just to be closer to Juliet, and that the steel steps were sitting right there, parallel to the stage, daring him to do it. He dashed up two steps at a time, laid his free hand flat on the stage and twisted towards her.

If Lily was surprised, she didn't miss a beat, but dropped to her knees beside him, so that they were practically nose-to-nose.

"In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond," she confessed, and covered his hand with hers, a movement so unrestrained in its haste that he could feel, instinctively, that it had only occurred to her in the moment. "And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light, but trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, but that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware, my true love's passion. Therefore pardon me, and not impute this yielding to light love, which the dark night hath so discovered."

She was holding his hand she was holding his hand she was holding his hand.

He felt as if his brain were about to overheat and blow a gasket, and for a terribly long moment, he was in real danger of forgetting himself, never mind his words, but the moment caught up to him and he revved back into gear. Screw it, he thought. His little glitch would be perceived as a dead good portrayal of an infatuated swain by McGonagall. They could do no wrong. Everything was bloody wonderful.

"Lady," he solemnly promised, with a barely perceptible glance towards the book. He turned his hand palm-up beneath hers and somehow their fingers laced together. "By yonder blessed moon I swear, that tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—"

"O, swear not by the moon," she interrupted. "The inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable."

"What shall I swear by?"

"Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry, and I'll believe thee."

"If my heart's dear love—"

"Well, do not swear, although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night," she said, and pulled her hand from his. "It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; too like the lightning, which doth cease to be, ere one can say 'It lightens.'" She sighed. "Sweet, good night! This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest, come to thy heart as that within my breast!"

"O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" he said impatiently, as she made to move away, recapturing her hand with a speed that had everything to do with wanting to touch her again and nothing to do with acting.

She arched an eyebrow at him. "What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?"

"That's enough!" cried McGonagall, and there was a loud smacking noise, and someone yelped in surprise. Both he and Lily jumped at the sound and turned in the direction of the cry to find that Beatrice Booth had been inching closer to the stage, clearly trying to film their audition, but had dropped her phone on the floor. "Very well done, both of you, but I don't need anybody kissing on my stage just yet."

Someone wolf-whistled, which drew a ripple of good-natured laughter from the students, and from Lily, who slid her hand from his grip with an embarrassed smile and seemed to be looking anywhere but at him. James's mates were grinning at him from their seats.

"Calm down, everyone, it was just an audition," said McGonagall dryly, though there was a hint of amusement tugging at her lips. "Come down, you two." She lifted her own copy of the book into the air. "How much of this have you learned, Evans?"

"That scene," said Lily, who had swung her legs over the side of the stage and was following James down the steps. Her face was red and glowing. "Act 2 Scene 5, and Act 3 Scene 2, so far."

"You learned all of that by heart over the weekend?"

She came to a halt next to him, back where they had originally stood, fifteen minutes and one life-changing audition ago. "Yes."

"Very good, very good," McGonagall repeated. "And Potter?"

"Yeah?"

She shot him something resembling a smile. "You can consider yourself redeemed. Go back to your seat."

He would have handed Lily back her book, but she had already twirled away and sprinted to her friends—and a small smattering of applause from some of the other assembled girls—without so much as a backwards glance at him, whatever spell they'd been under broken by a return to solid ground.

Something told him not to follow her, so he jogged over to his mates and sat down heavily on his chair, crushing the book he'd left there beneath his bottom while he clutched Lily's copy tight in his hands, with a big expulsion of air from his lungs and a feeling like he'd just been flying, unsupported and unbridled by earthly restraints, above the tops of clouds.

"That was brilliant, mate," said a grinning Sirius, who seemed to have changed his tune entirely.

"Really, really good," Remus seconded. "Both of you."

"Your delivery was great; absolutely smashed it."

"And you and Lily had great chemistry. Honestly, I'm not just saying that."

"I genuinely thought she was going to snog him at one point."

"Same."

McGonagall stood up and called for Curtis Higgins to come up to the front of the room, with the briefest of small smiles as her eyes flicked past James in the crowd, and beyond her was Lily Evans, sandwiched tightly between her friends, still red-faced, and perhaps a little embarrassed, but smiling in a secretive sort of way as she tugged on her braid and listened to whatever a giggling Beatrice was whispering into her ear.

As if she'd sensed him watching, she looked up and caught his gaze, but for the very first time since the day they'd met, he didn't feel quite so hopeless, and smiled at her instead of hastily looking away.

She smiled back; a soft, bashful thing.

This was brilliant.

They'd been brilliant. He and Evans. Smashed it right to bits.

That part was his. No contest.

Chapter Text

Act 4, Scene 1

the sixth form common room

He could talk to her.

He could do it.

He could.

Sirius was convinced that he'd back out and even his mother had cast aspersions by calling his courage into question, but James was determined to see the thing through and prove them both wrong.

Oh, how he would laugh when he told them of his victory. How he would relish the opportunity to crow over them both as they wailed and wept, and drink the salty tears of their failure.

They probably wouldn't weep.

Still.

He was definitely going to do it.

This wasn't like last year, when James was a naive young buck with too much unearned bravado. Nor was Evans the new girl at school, armed with nothing but the lies that Severus Snape had fed her over so many years. James had no idea what crime of Snape's had finally been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was common knowledge that he and Evans were no longer speaking. The fracture of their friendship was clearly bothering Snape, who seemed mopier and nastier than ever whenever James saw him, but she didn't appear to be any worse off for it.

Rightly so. She had far better friends now, friends like Booth and Macdonald, who had never been suspended for flinging racial slurs at Reshma Patel. Nor had they ever caused a nasty scene at the school's charity fashion show because Lily had agreed to model a dress.

She had looked so pretty in that fashion show dress. It had been deep purple and silkily floaty and made James think of a butterfly. To this day, he had no idea why Snape had been so incensed about it.

And James, despite his faults, was older and wiser this year. He knew this because he hadn't had a row with someone on the internet in at least six or seven months, which surely meant that he had ascended to a new level of enlightenment. Even his mum liked to argue with people on Twitter. James had surpassed her. Spiritually. Maybe he'd start meditating. The options were numerous.

First, though, he had to talk to Lily Evans.

She was kneeling on one of the grey common room sofas, her slender arms draped over the back, watching Booth and Winnie Barnes play ping-pong with a sleepy sort of indifference in her expression. Her hair was loose, falling past her shoulders in soft, fluffy waves of autumnal red, and she might as well have been floating on a sea of bubbling lava that could strip the skin from James's bones, for the way his stomach churned at the thought of walking up to her and starting a conversation.

After what she'd done for him yesterday, he should have been feeling more confident than ever. Instead, he was as nervous as he'd ever been. More nervous, in fact. With every scrap of good opinion he won from Lily, he found himself with more and more to lose, should he make one wrong move and screw it all up. Being thoroughly disliked by her had been excruciating on a daily basis, but there'd been safety in that, at least.

This semi-friendly acquaintance was all new and terrifying.

James could not let fear stand in his way, however. He needed to return her book before tomorrow's English Lit class, among other things, and by a lucky coincidence of schedules, all of his friends were otherwise occupied. This very moment provided him with the best possible opportunity to do what needed to be done without being taunted to within an inch of his life by Sirius afterwards.

Of course, if Sirius didn't see him do it, he likely wouldn't believe James when he told him about it later.

His mother would probably insist that he present her with hard evidence, but James could hardly whip out his phone and ask Lily if she'd be comfortable letting him film her because his mum wanted proof that he could.

But none of that mattered at that moment. Booth was absolutely trouncing Barnes at ping-pong and would likely finish her game soon. Evans had Law at 11 a.m. while James had Sport and PE, then neither of them would be free until lunch, but his friends would be with him by then. This was a now or never situation.

He crossed the common room with a few long strides, stopped beside the sofa and cleared his throat to announce his presence.

Evans turned her head and looked up at him.

"Morning," he said. The words came out at a slightly higher pitch than he'd intended. "Mind if I sit here? Great, thanks. You're too kind."

Then he plopped down on the sofa, landing a little too hard, and the corners of Lily's lips twitched upward in what he could only hope was slight amusement.

"Aren't you supposed to wait for me to tell you if I mind?" she asked him.

It was at moments like these that James considered falling asleep on a beach at high tide and letting the sea take him.

"Ah," he said, cringing. For want of something to do to seem calmer, he raised a hand to sift it through his hair. "Er...yeah. Suppose I should've. Sorry about that, I'm a prat. Do you mind? I can leave if you do."

She shook her head.

He reminded himself not to grin like a maniacally happy ponce. "So we don't have a problem?"

"Did you think we'd have a problem?"

"Most of our problems tend to begin with me talking, I've noticed."

"You say that like you think I hate you."

"Don't you?"

"I don't hate anybody, I don't think." she replied, twisting around to sit down properly, her body turned sideways to face his. She tucked her legs beneath her bottom and balanced her elbow on the back of the sofa. "God, is that really the impression I give off? You must think I'm a monster."

"Of course I don't!" he quickly replied, dropping his hand, and his insides shrivelled with shame at how his voice was misbehaving. He sounded as if he was about twelve, when in reality his voice had broken years ago. "I think you're cool," he finished, lowering it to a deeper tone, which Evans would hopefully find mature and soothing.

"And? Monsters are cool."

"Not all monsters," James countered. "Randall from Monsters Inc. wasn't cool, and all of the cool monsters in that movie were good people—well, good monsters—but my point is, you can't be cool and mean at the same time."

"I beg to differ. Roz was cool and mean."

"Roz was…" Shit. She had him there. "Whatever. You're not even a monster anyway. None of this is relevant."

One of Lily's eyebrows lifted for a moment, but then she let out a laugh—a sweet, girlish laugh that flowered out of nowhere, brief but no less pretty for all that.

A hot rubber band tightened around James's heart.

He'd never made her laugh before, or at least, not like that. Not once. Not him. He'd heard that laugh many times, listened to it bubble up and spill, and heartily adored the way it sounded, but he'd never been the reason.

"Alright, weirdo, you've argued me down," she ceded, smiling as she pushed a lock of that glorious red hair behind one ear. "What's up?"

"Came to give you back your book," said James, and swung his school bag up to rest upon his knees.

"Oh, right," she said. "I totally forgot you had it."

"Didn't you miss it last night?"

"Well, I'd just spent an entire weekend reading it and needed a break, so I was all about Gov and Politics last night."

"Sounds like a riot."

Lily smirked slightly as she held out her hand for the book. "I hope it behaved itself for you?"

He laughed at that, pathetic, dopey sound that it was. James shouldn't have been surprised by how much this little question charmed him. "Yeah," he said, handing it over, "it was good as gold."

"Did you manage to read any more of it after the audition?"

"Yeah, read it at home last night."

"What, all of it?"

"Yeah."

"In one night?"

James shrugged, to which Evans merely lifted her eyebrows in mild surprise. "It's a lot easier to understand when you're not frantically ripping through it right before an audition to play a character you know nothing about."

"You seemed to understand it pretty well yesterday."

"Most of that was because of you," he replied, not thinking, and her eyebrows travelled even higher up her forehead.

Shit.

He was such a fucking idiot. Now Evans was going to assume that James had been moved to comprehend Romeo's lovesick ramblings only when her luminous presence reminded him of his own lovesick feelings for her, which would have bothered him less if it weren't completely true.

"I mean, because you helped me out yesterday," he continued before she could speak, his pulse jittering wildly. "I didn't have a clue what I was doing until you stepped in and gave me some direction."

"Don't sell yourself short, you were really, really good," said Lily simply, and with a quick shake of her head. "Great, actually, especially considering you'd never read it before. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me."

"Nowhere near as good as you," came his immediate rejoinder. "You were brilliant, seriously. Better than all the others, and I'm not just saying that because—"

"You're just saying that because—"

"Because you were the best? Yeah. That's exactly why. And you're definitely going to get the part, too. McGonagall loves you; she was dead impressed that you'd learned all those scenes—"

"So did Camelia!"

"Yeah, and she kept looking at the floor. She didn't know how to project," said James flatly, as if he were Andrew Lloyd Webber at a casting call all of a sudden, searching for his next Christine Daaé. Phantom of the Opera was a banger of musical, even if Sirius refused to agree that the Phantom was a next level cretin who deserved to be put in the bin. "You're going to get the part, trust me. Otherwise, McGonagall's the biggest idiot I've ever met."

"Oh," said Lily darkly, as if he'd just made an immensely foreboding statement, though she looked flushed and happy all the same. "Well, I daren't even suggest that McGonagall is an idiot."

"Exactly. So you have to agree with me."

"I suppose I do," she said, smiling slightly.

"Also, while we're talking about it," James began, reaching into his bag for a second time, while his heart and pulse and sweat glands surpassed all previous records set and quickly became the Usain Bolt of nervous physical reactions, "I got you something. This thing. To say thank you."

This, more than anything, was the rough-terrained, terrifying mountain he had to scale.

This was what he really didn't want his mates to see.

"What?" said Lily curiously, just as he withdrew a notebook—a thick, hard-backed notebook with an engraved turquoise cover and stiff, high-quality lined paper—from his bag. Then she blinked. "For me?"

"For you," he agreed, thrusting it towards her. He felt his hand shake slightly when she reached out and took it. Stupid hand. "It's nothing, really, just a silly thank you gift."

"A thank you gift," she repeated, staring down it.

"Yeah, it's like a thing we do in my family. Or my mum does, anyway. Dad always forgets so she does it for him. Says it drives her nuts. Says I can't turn out like him or she'll chase me down the road with a broomstick."

Lily let out a whispery little laugh. "Seriously?"

"Well, that's what she says, but she doesn't even have a broomstick," James continued to babble. "She's got a Roomba named Diablo, but I don't think—"

"No," she cut in. "I meant 'seriously' as in, is this gift for real? You actually bought me this?"

"Dunno if you remember how you saved my arse yesterday, but you did, so I wanted you to know that I was grateful."

"So you got me a present?"

"Yup."

"A simple 'thank you' would have sufficed, you know."

"Yeah," he agreed, "but who wants to suffice when you can be dramatically over-the-top and weird about it?"

She let out another breathless little laugh. "Exactly how much caffeine have you had this morning, Potter?"

"I've had precisely one large caramel latte, but it had three extra shots of espresso," James admitted. "Don't tell my mother."

"Why?"

"I'm not allowed coffee at home. She says I'm too much to take without it in the first place."

"You're—right," said Lily, with one last flimsy giggle, and opened the front cover. "Wow."

She turned a page with great delicacy, and then another, and James could do nothing but watch her progress, waiting for his heart to get a grip and stop threatening to burst out of his chest like the alien from Alien, which he'd never actually watched because aliens gave him the heebie-jeebies, but had heard was pretty traumatic.

He had no idea what her eerily neutral expression was meant to be conveying.

He would disown his mother if he somehow made Evans uncomfortable because this was all Euphemia's idea in the first place. She had insisted, rather than suggested, that James compensate Lily for her time and effort with an item of monetary value almost as soon as Sirius sent her the video that he'd sneakily taken of the audition, laying down her command in a very long text message which featured as many inappropriate emojis as there were words. James had plumped for it in part because his mother's wrath was fearsome, but mostly because Lily did deserve a gift for lumping her own audition in with his sorry arse.

Besides, if he hadn't come home from school with a present for Lily, Euphemia would have sighed and rolled her eyes and gone and gotten one herself, and she wouldn't have bought the right thing. His mum was all about glitz and glamour—silk scarves and diamonds and expensive Chanel perfume—and that was great because it made her very happy, but Evans wasn't into that kind of thing.

At least, James didn't think that she was into that kind of thing.

Truth was, he barely knew her at all. She could have been. But he had made several observations over the past year, so he had some ideas as to what kind of gift Lily Evans would like to receive.

So, notebook it was.

The trouble was, now that he'd given it to her, it all seemed a bit grubby and pointed. Calculated. Like something one of those "nice guys" James had seen girls complain about on the internet would do. Lily deserved a present because she was clever and kind and so valiant to have swept to his rescue, but there were other conclusions that she could come to. The mere prospect of the sinister things that she might infer from that gift made his stomach churn with a potent blend of anxiety and shame as he watched her turn the pages.

He hadn't bought her the notebook to make her fancy him, but he really wouldn't have minded if it helped, and James didn't know if that made him an absolute wanker or not.

He also didn't know what he was supposed to do about it because he couldn't switch off his feelings—he liked her so much that there was no possible way to separate that longing from their every interaction—but his mother was right. It would be really shitty of him to let that act of kindness go without thanking her appropriately.

"I'm not trying to make you like me," he blurted out, because he was prattish to his core, apparently.

Lily stopped leafing through the notebook and looked up at him, frowning. "What?"

Now he'd probably given her the idea. Great. Would that he could have slammed his head repeatedly into a desk.

"That's not why I bought it," he clarified, gesturing towards her hands. His face was getting hotter and hotter with each passing second, as if he was a radiator that had recently been switched on, and he spoke very quickly as he continued. "I don't want you to think I bought it to make you like me as a—as a person, or—because I didn't, and I wouldn't, and it was all my mum's idea, anyway. She says it's really important to thank someone properly when they go out of their way to help you." He swallowed the lump that had surely formed a visible bulge in his neck. "She says."

"Oh," said Lily quietly.

She closed the notebook and flipped it over to examine its back cover, running the tips of her fingers along the dips and ridges of the engraving.

Then she turned it back over and looked up again, her bright green eyes latching solidly on to his.

"So your mum picked this out?" she said.

"Well—well, no, I did," said James. His palms were starting to sweat. "She told me I should get you a present, so I went to Paperchase after school. You've got so many notebooks in your bag so I thought—but obviously you don't need another notebook when you've already got loads, which I've only now realised."

"Noticed I was a notebook hoarder, did you?"

"Yeah, which was why I thought, you know." The lump he'd swallowed was clawing its way back up his windpipe like a reanimated corpse climbing from a fresh grave. "It was a stupid idea, honestly, if you don't want it—"

"I don't think you're trying to manipulate me," Lily interrupted, "and I absolutely do want it."

James could have whooped in relief and let off fireworks, but it would have given his pathetic adoration away somewhat.

It also would have set the common room on fire. Too much paper and flammable fabric about.

Instead, he settled on a brief, upward jerk of his head. "Yeah?"

"Of course. I told you, I'm a notebook hoarder, and this one is gorgeous." She smiled softly at him. "Thank you, honestly. I really appreciate it."

"You're absolutely welcome."

"No, really, this was incredibly thoughtful and I love it, and I'm only going to use it for fun things because you gave it to me," she said gravely, and folded both hands across the top of the front cover. "I mean that. Solemn promise. No schoolwork, no student council stuff and no strongly-worded letters to local MPs."

"You write letters to MPs?"

"When they're called for."

"And you're making a solemn promise to have fun?"

"Yes."

James's lips twitched with the desire to laugh, though he managed to bite it back. He was showing remarkable self-control. "Isn't that a contradiction?"

"Can't you just take it for the compliment it is?"

"I'll try, but I'm also trying to understand what kind of fun you can have with a notebook."

"Oh," she sighed mysteriously, "you'd be surprised."

"Working on a list of enemies?"

"Always, but I'd never write it down, leaves you too open to discovery," she quipped, reaching for her backpack. "I have a lot of notebooks because I write things. Like, fiction. Just for fun."

For reasons that James was certain he would not be able to comprehend even if he devoted significant time to trying to make sense of them, his heart began to pick up in speed, this time in excitement rather than fear. "Really?"

"Sort of."

"What kind of things?"

"Just short stories and poems and stuff." She had unzipped her bag and pushed both the notebook and her copy of the play inside it, now she was zipping it back up, her eyes trained resolutely in the direction of the task at hand. "Sometimes I'll make up a character and jot down facts about them, or a biography or something. Silly little things. Nothing major."

Immediately, James wanted to offer to read and fawn over every single thing she'd ever written, because all of it was bound to be brilliant and funny and as fascinating as she was, but he was forced to contend with a far less stalkery, "That sounds really cool."

"You wouldn't think that if you read some of it," she said wryly, and shifted her bottom to the edge of the sofa, which gave her the space to hoist her backpack onto her back. She normally used both shoulders to carry it, while James was a perpetual user of one and often switched between the left and the right. His posture would likely be shot by the time he was thirty, while Evans would remain as graceful as ever. "I've got to head off to class now, though, so..."

"Oh, yeah, of course." Lily climbed to her feet and James jumped up with her. "Thanks again for...everything yesterday. Really."

"No problem," she said sweetly. "Thank you for the notebook."

This had gone really well, so well, better than he ever could have dreamed. Lily liked her present. She thought that his audition had been good, even great. She'd even laughed a couple of times—with him, not at him—smiled at him, seemed perfectly at ease in his presence. As far as he could see, he hadn't mucked it all up, and the resulting euphoria flooded his brain with dizzying intensity. He wanted to jump and shout and spontaneously learn to play the saxophone so that he could give his frantic feelings a sufficiently jazzy outlet.

He wanted to marry Lily Evans and buy her a tropical island.

He wanted...to not have to say goodbye to her right now.

But he really, really, really needed to be mindful of her personal space, lest he push his luck and properly piss her off. He didn't want to be like one of those creepy dickheads who followed women around in pubs.

He'd say his goodbyes, then, and consider the day a success.

"Can I walk you to Law?" he asked instead, because he could never be trusted to look out for his own best interests.

Evans had slid her hands behind her head to pull her long hair out from beneath her backpack straps. Now she dropped her hands to her sides, eyeing him with some suspicion.

"Don't you have Sport and PE to get to?" she asked him.

"It's fine." His pulse was racing so hard that it was practically painful. "I'm very fast. I can run there in two minutes."

"Right," she said, drawing the word out a little. Her eyes were still narrowed. "How did you know I had Law next?"

"How did you know I had Sport and PE?"

He'd caught her, he realised, as her lips parted slightly, and a violently red flush stole over her face. He wasn't sure exactly what he'd caught or if he could allow himself to read too much into it—not that he'd have much choice in the matter when he recalled this conversation for the tenth time in a row later—but it gave him a happy little thrill to see her arrested by a flustered silence. She stuck him with them so often that it was nice to finally return a serve.

"Shut up," she said then, smiling a little, and gave his shoulder a light shove. "We're walking now."

She moved off and away, and James hurriedly heaved his bag onto his shoulder and jogged after her, grinning like an idiot from ear to ear.

"Was that a yes, then?" he said, once he'd caught up with her in the corridor.

"No," she said lightly. "But if I'm walking somewhere and you want to walk in the same direction, it's not like I can stop you."

"You could run away screaming."

"I've seen you play football; you'd catch me in five seconds."

"I'd still be pretty embarrassed."

"You embarrass yourself enough without my help."

"You can admit that you want me around, you know," he suggested, catching her eye when she tossed him a sideways glance. "I won't tell anyone."

That bit of cheek would have earned him a hateful glare a year ago, but on this blessed, magical day, she simply laughed instead. "You must think you're real cute to talk like that, Potter."

"It's not a matter of thinking," he reasoned, feeling very brave now. "I am cute."

"I'm not touching that subject with a ten-foot pole."

"Right, but how did you know I had Sport and PE?"

"Oh my god!" Lily cried, swinging her body away from him for a moment before she pivoted quickly back. For a fractured second, James felt a shrill stab of fear—trust him to push it too far so quickly—but the look on her face and the peppy inflection in her tone seemed more like bemused delight than genuine irritation. "Can you let anything go?"

"What?" A goofy grin was spreading across his face. He could feel it. "I'm just curious—"

"You're like a dog with a bone, more like."

"Have you memorised my schedule, Evans?"

Her cheeks were glowing like the Ursa Major. "No!"

"But you knew what my next class was."

"Yeah, because you're wearing your bloody gym gear!" she retorted, gesturing sideways to his clothes as they rounded a corner, passing the perpetually out-of-order drinking fountain that Evan McNamee had once been caught pissing in on a dare. "Kind of obvious, no?"

"Oh," he said, glancing down at his Arsenal jersey and shorts. "Right."

"Case closed."

He looked up at her again. "Why didn't you say that earlier?"

"Because," said Lily breezily, "I had to think of it first."

James stopped walking at once, but Lily did a graceful little skip at that same moment, propelling herself a step or two ahead of him. Her lovely hair flowed like silk down her back.

His grin grew so broad that he felt his cheek muscles would probably ache from it later, and he darted forward to keep up with her, his loosely hoisted bag slapping his back in line with his footsteps.

"So you do know my schedule," he said, drawing level with her.

"Don't make me pull your shorts down, Potter."

"That wouldn't do much to convince me that I was wrong."

She huffed out a loud, exasperated breath and stopped in her tracks. James followed suit at once, so she turned towards him, lifting her hands to rest them on her hips.

"I assumed you had Sport and PE but I didn't know why, and I only just realised that it must have been the clothes," she said, regarding him with a crooked eyebrow and slightly upturned lips. "Would you like to poke any holes in that explanation? Only I've got class in a couple of minutes," she tacked on, gesturing to the classroom at the end of the corridor, "so I'd rather get it out of the way now."

"No holes," he said pleasantly. The sunlight sure was pretty, here at the top of the world. "If it makes you happy to feel as if you've won, I'm cool with that. I already know the truth."

Lily's lustrous green eyes narrowed on his face and James stared boldly back, unwilling to surrender this slim slice of victory he had somehow managed to wrangle, buzzing with excitement from his head to the tips of his toes, and perfectly sure that he was even more in love with her than he had been when he brushed his teeth that morning.

For a moment, neither of them spoke or moved or did anything much at all.

Then Lily tossed her hair over her shoulder and gripped the straps of her backpack with both hands.

"You're too tall," she said flatly, spinning away on her heel. "Ridiculously tall," she called over her shoulder, stalking down the corridor like a queen traversing her throne room. "It's maddening. Who even needs it—"

Then she disappeared into the classroom, and James's wanting little heart grew at least ten sizes bigger.

Act 4, Scene 2

James Potter's kitchen

(correction: Euphemia Potter's kitchen, who are we kidding?) 

James filled his mother in on his successful encounter with Lily while he peeled potatoes for dinner.

Thanks to Euphemia, who often said that she would raise her son to be useful or die of shame in the attempt, James had cultivated quite a talent for cooking since she had first started to teach him. Tuesday and Thursday were his nights to make dinner, which he loved and had lots of fun with because it meant full control over the menu, and no revolting green beans. He had already fashioned four large burger patties from some good beef mince and diced onion, and was busy preparing chips while they chilled in the fridge.

Since Euphemia was watching from the breakfast bar, glass of sparkling water in hand, and was convinced that he'd succumb to scurvy if he went one day without a fruit or a vegetable, he'd also felt obliged to chop up some tomatoes and toss them in a salad. That was less fun.

Also offensive. His teeth and gums were in great shape.

"She said the notebook was 'incredibly thoughtful,'" he quoted, carefully curling his potato peeler around the misshapen lump he was holding. He always considered it a win if he could clear the whole potato in one go. "Incredibly. That's the exact word she used. She really liked it."

"Good," said Euphemia. "You can tell her from me that she's very welcome."

"Why would I tell her from you when I'm the one who bought it?"

"So it's my terrible idea when you don't know if it will work, but your brilliant idea when it does?"

"I'm just saying—"

"You're just saying that you'd rather not give your mum the credit," Euphemia sighed, and took a sip from her water. "That's enough potatoes, your father needs to cut down on starch."

James let the long, curling strip of peel drop to the chopping board. "Why?"

"Because I said so."

"I stopped drinking Red Bull because you said so and what good did it do me?"

Euphemia huffed her derision and slid from her stool, her heeled shoes clicking smartly against the tiled floor. "Are you dead yet?"

"No, but—"

"Then that's the good it did you," she finished, moving to stand beside him and survey his work. She tossed her silky black curls and gave a quick, approving nod to the freshly peeled potatoes and his mostly green bowl of salad. "Do you need any help?"

"Nah, I've got it sorted."

She looped her arm gently through the crook of his elbow. "You're a good boy."

Even when his mother was wearing heels—which Euphemia always did, all day, refusing to take them off until the time came for her to change into pyjamas and begin her nightly skincare routine—James was so tall that he had to bend his back to kiss her or give her a hug.

He did so now, stooping to press a quick kiss to her forehead.

"Thank you for the idea," he said as he straightened up. "Appreciate it."

"Anything to help my son pop his cherry."

"Mum!" he yelped, stomach squirming as he pulled away from her.

Euphemia let out a cackle and sashayed off, returning to her original spot at the breakfast bar. Why were the women in James's life all so graceful, and moreover, so determined to ruin him?

"I thought you had a better sense of humour than that?" she asked him.

"I do!" he hotly protested, "but not when my own mother's talking to me about…that stuff!"

"Oh, I see." Euphemia lifted a sleekly sculpted eyebrow. Why, also, were the women in James's life all so capable of raising single brows when he could not? "And I suppose you're only into Lily for her mind, are you?"

"I need to rinse these potatoes."

"I also suppose that you go through so much toilet paper because you lie awake every night, weeping over her impassioned opinions on iambic pentameter?"

His face was flaming as he pulled a colander from the cupboard overhead and slammed it down on the counter. "I am running away from home."

The injustice of his mother's familiar ribbing was unspeakable. James adored Lily Evans's mind. She was witty. She possessed genius. His love for her was pure and wholesome, and other such words that would have accompanied a salad particularly well.

That there was a filthy, shameful underbelly to this pure and wholesome love, that James could keenly remember the curve of Lily's bum and the shape of her calves and the exact way she'd looked in a bright blue bikini, soaking wet and laughing as she sat on her best friend's mostly-submerged shoulders, that she was the only person he thought about whenever he used up too much toilet paper...was utterly beyond his control. He didn't ask for those thoughts, his brain invited them in without permission. His body responded to them accordingly. That was just the way things were.

And James might have been a disgusting, horny little beast, but at least he had the decency to keep his perversions to himself, not laugh about them freely like his mum was so fond of doing.

"You wouldn't last a minute on the streets, sweetheart. You've grown up far too pampered," his mother pointed out.

"That's your failing as a parent, not mine as a son."

"Oh, I'm deeply sorry for loving you."

"Yet you're never sorry for all the wanking jokes?"

"Darling, there's nothing like the pain of seeing your sweet baby boy grow up and become a dirty-minded teenager—"

"Actually, having a Chelsea fan for a mo—"

"The jokes are how I get through it," Euphemia finished. She held her hand up to the kitchen spotlight and began to examine her nails. "It's a coping mechanism. I must get a manicure."

With the potatoes dumped into the colander, James moved to the sink and turned on the cold tap to rinse them, red faced and unwilling to delve any further into his masturbatory routines. Knowing Euphemia, she'd likely devised some diabolically clever way to monitor his habits. There'd been that one time that her Roomba had popped out from beneath his bed unexpectedly and scared him half to death while he was smack-bang in the middle. That had been a trauma for the ages.

Perhaps Diablo was in on it. Perhaps the whole house was a police state. Perhaps the kettle and the television and the Google home hub were spying on him, reporting on his actions to his gleeful mother.

Their Google home hub was definitely spying on them all, but that was a whole other, government conspiracy thing. Sirius glowered darkly at it whenever anyone else in the family asked it to turn on Spotify.

"So how are you going to progress?" said his mum, after he'd rinsed the potatoes and started chopping them. Her glass of sparkling water had been drained, which meant the time for her Tuesday night glass of pinot noir was drawing nigh.

He looked up from the counter. "What?"

"With Lily."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, you've got her attention," Euphemia recited, gesturing across the room with one hand that—as far as James could tell—had already been manicured to within an inch of its life. "You bought her that lovely journal—"

"Notebook."

"—you very gallantly walked her to class, and now we have proof of her little crush on you—"

"What?!" His body jerked so hard and so quickly that he very nearly sliced off his thumb. "No, we don't!"

He wished that they did. Wished it more than anything. More than he wanted Arsenal to electrify Britain with a repeat performance of their 2003/2004 unbeaten season, and that was as serious as any business could get.

He knew his mother believed that she was right, and bless her heart, she liked to try so hard to convince him, but something about hearing her say it—and she said it often, always with little evidence aside from her own motherly belief that James was the handsomest and most talented boy of his age—made him feel panicky and embarrassed, and compelled to shove even her most dramatically-voiced assurances away from him.

Maybe it was like earlier, when the prospect of talking to Lily had scared him more than it ever had done when she plainly couldn't stand him. Hoping that she fancied him was a far trickier business than being absolutely certain that she didn't, and his mum had always been good at talking him round to her way of thinking.

It would have been much more reassuring to hear such a thing from somebody like Remus, who had never expelled James from his private parts, and therefore had no parental bias clouding his judgement.

"You already know that I think she likes you," said Euphemia simply.

He had to resist the urge to stick his thumb in his mouth and soothe away a phantom pain, instead dropping his knife on the chopping board and lifting his nearly-maimed hand to tangle in his hair. "You're wrong, though."

"I'm never wrong."

"What about Trivial Pursuit?"

"Irrelevant. There was a misprint on the cards," said Euphemia icily, glaring at him despite her bald-faced lie. Behind her back, the kitchen door swung open. "She knew that you had PE class."

"I was talking to her in shorts."

"But why was she looking at your shorts, hmm?"

"Sirius," James whined plaintively, as his friend stalked into the room with a pore strip on his nose and his hair bundled up in a shower cap. Sirius used a leave-in treatment twice a week. James could disclose this information to others only if he fancied a one-way trip to an early grave. "Will you please tell Mum that Evans doesn't fancy me?"

"Evans doesn't fancy him," said Sirius at once. "What's for dinner?"

"Burgers and—"

"Excuse me," said Euphemia loudly. "I think I can claim to know more about the inner workings of a young woman's mind than two half-wit teenage boys, one of whom is frightened of his cat."

"I'm not frightened of Algernon," James retorted. "I respect his authority."

"You don't know Evans like we do," Sirius explained, stopping next to Euphemia. "If she fancied James, she'd probably just tell him. That's the kind of person she is."

"Yeah," James agreed, even as his head screamed listen to your mother! Believe her! Get your hopes up like a tremendous sack of stupid! "She's never had any trouble telling me what she doesn't like about me."

"Well, those are two very different things," Euphemia reasoned, then surveyed Sirius with a questioning lift of her brow. "Check?"

Sirius dropped his chin. "Yes, please."

Euphemia reached up and ripped the pore strip away from his nose, then turned it over to examine the sticky side closely.

"Clean as a whistle," she determined.

"Of course it is," Sirius sighed, as if he had somehow accomplished something important, then he slid into the stool beside her. "I'm beautiful."

"You're both beautiful," said Euphemia, folding the strip into a neat little square. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and waggled it at James like they were about to negotiate a contract. "And if you want my advice about what to do next—"

"I don't."

"You do."

"Well…yeah, but begrudgingly."

"Throw this away," she muttered to a sniggering Sirius, and handed him the folded-up strip. She snapped her gaze back to James as soon as Sirius took it from her hand. "If you trust me at all, darling son, you'll sit back, relax, and wait for her to make the next move."

"The next move?" said James, frowning. He hadn't been aware that any moves had been made before now. "What—"

"She helped you out with the audition, you bought her a gift to say thank you, and now it's her turn. Again." Euphemia leaned back in her stool, her cashmere sheathed arms folding snugly across her chest. "Give it a couple of days, my love."

"And then what?"

"Then she'll come to you."

James very nearly choked at the wording, and at a very potent twitch in a part of his body he dared not draw attention to. "She'll—pardon?"

"Like Algernon to a plate of freshly cooked bacon, darling," said his mother breezily, then fixed him with a smirk of deep amusement. "Do get your mind out of the gutter."

Act 4, Scene 3

the music room on the ground floor

On Wednesday morning, as James was brushing his teeth and stooping to see himself properly in his mother's bathroom mirror—much preferred to the regular bathroom mirror because it had flattering LED lights—he suddenly started to worry that perhaps he was too tall, and Evans really did have a problem with it.

This thought having occurred to him, he couldn't manage to get it to un-occur, and as a result he found himself fixating on the matter for the rest of the day. This was doubly frustrating because Wednesday's timetable consisted of English Lit, double Psychology and English Lit again after lunch. This meant that James spent four consecutive classes in the presence of the girl of his dreams, but he couldn't properly enjoy them for fearing that Lily might consider his long, gangling frame repulsively unattractive.

Plus, Sirius insisted upon dragging James to the locker room after English Lit because he'd left his History textbook there, so James turned up to Psychology too late to have a pre-class chat with Lily.

On top of that, McGonagall was announcing the parts that evening, and the results of that event would subsequently determine the course of James's entire life.

Not that he was being dramatic about it.

The play might have been the true problem, really. Thinking about it gave James funny palpitations. It was far easier to zone in on the height thing.

"Do you think I'm too tall?" he asked Remus, who had met him outside Binns's classroom when the lunch bell rang, as they were walking towards the canteen. "Like, problematically tall?"

"Can you get through a door without smacking your head off the frame?" Remus replied.

"Yeah, but—"

"Then you're not too tall."

That was easy for Remus to say. He was a nice, average, Lily-suitable height, and could have kissed her without potentially damaging the soft tissue in her neck. James was 6'2" and likely to spurt up another inch before his growth came to a halt, according to his mother.

Remus obviously had no interest in parenting him through this crisis, so James said no more about it. He considered asking the other lads at lunch, but Peter was very sensitive about his own short stature and would likely take it as some sort of jab. Then he'd spend the rest of the hour reminding them all that he was the only non-virgin of the four, and it simply wasn't worth it. James resolved to forget about it and let it go.

Until that afternoon, when Isabella Marks sat next to him in the common room to seek his opinions on Arsenal's upcoming match against Liverpool, and James found himself asking, "Did you ever think that I was too tall when we were going out?"

Clearly, he was doing a really fantastic job of letting it go.

"Um," said Isabella, her dark eyes darting to the side in confusion. "Why do you want to know?"

"Oh." Though his split with Isabella had been largely mutual and they worked much better as mates, he didn't like mentioning Evans around her. He had been insensitive enough to do it last year, four months after their breakup, and she had been weird and withdrawn for a couple of weeks afterwards. "Somebody suggested that I was disproportionately gigantic, is all."

"That...doesn't sound true."

"It is, they really did."

"They used the words 'disproportionately gigantic?'"

"Well, no," he admitted, "but it was implied."

Isabella let out a low, soft laugh, and gently shook her head from side to side. "I've never thought that you were too tall."

That was all very well and good, but Lily was slightly shorter than Isabella, so the height disparity might have been more of an issue for her. He compensated for this by asking Jennifer Costner the same question, followed by Sujith Hansraj, so that the results of his experiment would be relatively gender neutral. They were both very close to Lily in height, and so he felt that this was fair.

Both said no and pointed out that he was weird. Neither made him feel any better.

"I think I might be too tall," James finally concluded later.

"Yeah, and I'm too-good looking," Sirius retorted. "It's a real fucking challenge."

He, James and Remus were in the music room again, lined up in the exact same seats their arses had warmed on Monday, waiting for McGonagall to arrive and make her grand announcement. Most of the students who had auditioned had returned to hear the news, and looking around the room, James was a little relieved to see that he wasn't the only person suffering from visible nerves.

Remus, certainly, was quieter and paler than usual.

Sirius was always very pale, but that was just genetics. He wasn't nervous in the slightest. Moreover, he was utterly certain that nobody else at school possessed the raw and jagged charisma that he believed was needed for the role of Mercutio. He'd already told James's parents that he had the part sewn up.

If this were a football match, James would have been feeling equally cocksure and prepared, but the theatre was entirely new territory for him. He hadn't so much as played the part of a non-speaking tree in one of the school pantos, and that was quite a lot even without the Lily of it all thrown in.

And the Lily of it all was such a monumentally big deal.

If she got Juliet, and somebody else was cast as Romeo, and he had to sit and watch her kiss some other bloke on stage…

But he couldn't think about that. It wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen. Their audition had gone brilliantly, and their on-stage chemistry was plainly off-the-charts. Even Sirius thought so, and Sirius liked to scrimp on compliments. He never would have said such a thing if it hadn't been undeniably true.

Still, James couldn't help but tap a jittery, inconstant rhythm against the floor with one of his feet.

"What is this obsession with your height today?" Remus asked him, picking a piece of lint from the crest on his school blazer.

"It's not an obsession," James objected, despite having made a point to obsess about it all day. "It just occurred to me that I might be a bit too tall."

"And?"

"And I was wondering if that might be a problem."

"Even if it was, which it's not," said Remus, "how would you expect to rectify that? Saw both your feet off?"

"I wish he bloody would," Sirius cut in, digging his elbow into the side of James's arm. "Stop tapping your bloody foot, for Christ's sake. You've got nothing to be nervous about."

"Easy for you to say."

"You were solid on Monday. You know you were solid. You're going to get a good part."

"A good part," James pointedly repeated, giving Sirius a look. "That doesn't mean—"

"Good afternoon!" said McGonagall smartly.

All three boys snapped to attention at once. McGonagall was striding into the room with Vector at her side and her clipboard in hand, moving with all the poise and self-possession of a woman who knew that her entrance alone would be enough to silence the assembled, chattering students. McGonagall rarely had to tell a room to hush when she walked in. It was an impressive kind of power which James coveted, but also knew he could never possess.

"It's good to see that so many of you took this seriously enough to come back," she declared, having stopped in the centre of the room to assess its current occupants. Vector pulled up a chair to sit behind her, jangling her many colourful bangles as she did so. "There are schedules and objectives to discuss, but I know why you're all here—we'll get to the meat of things first."

An excitable little murmur ebbed and buzzed though the crowd at once, vanishing with a single disapproving look from McGonagall.

"Good luck," Remus murmured, nudging James gently in the side.

"You too," James whispered back, then turned his attentions to McGonagall, who was adjusting her spectacles on her nose as she consulted her trusty clipboard.

"First things first," she called out, her voice strong and clear. "The part of Juliet will be played by Lily Evans."

Some crazy, dizzying feeling of entirely unknown origins took a leap in the pit of James's stomach.

The rest of the room—he and his mates included—burst into a smattering of applause, while Mary squealed and Booth cheered loudly, the latter throwing her arms around Evans to pull her into an air-constricting squeeze. Lily herself was flushed pink and smiling, holding one shaky hand to her cheek in apparent shock, even though it was clear to James—and likely everyone else—that she had outclassed her competitors at the auditions.

As he watched her turn her head to say something to Mary, it struck him as unfathomable that Evans couldn't see her own magnificence for herself.

James could see it. He'd felt it when they'd read that balcony scene together, then watched her do an even better job when she and Beatrice ran through their comedic back-and-forth. He knew that she'd been the best of the lot, she was sharp and talented and delivered her lines so naturally, and McGonagall was a genius for casting her. He would never interrupt her class to be impertinent again.

"I knew she'd get it," muttered Remus in James's ear.

"She should have paused," said Sirius.

"What?" said James, still watching Lily and willing her to look at him so he could give her a thumbs up, his heart smacking wildly against his ribs.

"McGonagall should have left a dramatic pause before she announced who had the part."

Remus stopped clapping to let out a snort. "Sure."

"Laugh if you want," said Sirius darkly. "The woman has no sense of occasion." He folded his arms across his chest. "Evans was a good choice, though."

In Sirius Black speak, "good choice," was the equivalent of "Oscar worthy" for anyone else, so James could not have asked him to bestow a higher commendation upon her.

"That's quite enough, thank you," McGonagall called out, silencing the buzz of voices and giggles, though there was less snap in her voice than usual. As she glanced towards her new Juliet, James could have sworn that there was a certain fondness in her expression. How could there not be? Who didn't adore Lily? "Congratulations, Miss Evans. Ms. Vector and I are sure that you'll do a wonderful job."

"Very well done, sweetheart," Vector gushed, beaming at her.

"Moving swiftly on," McGonagall continued, "the part of Romeo..."

She lowered her chin and glanced in James's direction.

His rapidly pounding heart ground to a terrified, feverish halt.

Several slouching seconds seemed to tick by, unbearably slowly, moving at the speed of molasses.

"Oh, now she pauses," said Sirius.

"—will be played by Remus Lupin."

The room broke into polite applause again, and Sirius let out a bawdy, bellowing bark of a laugh, but James froze as if he had been petrified to stone, the same words bouncing madly in his head like an errant, violently energised pinball.

Remus Lupin.

Remus Lupin.

Remus. Lupin.

And Lily Evans.

Kissing.

He. Remus. Was going to kiss her. Lily.

James's stomach began to contract and hiss and scald him.

His appendix might have just burst.

Chapter Text

Act 5, Scene 1

November 2015 — Two Years Earlier

James Potter's bedroom

"Feeling better now?"

"Mmm."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Then scooch over," said Euphemia. "I'm hanging off the edge of the bed."

James opened his eyes and scooched accordingly, making room for his mother to wriggle onto the bed and stretch her legs across the mattress. The delicate white flowers stitched into the lilac satin of her robe were too blurry for him to make out in the dark without his glasses, but James could picture them clearly in his mind.

She had caught him in a right state, and he was embarrassed.

He wasn't a crying, clinging eight year old any longer, and fifteen should have been old enough to handle his own affairs without running to his parents for help. He hadn't called her into his room because he hadn't wanted her to know what was going on, but she'd shown up all the same, appearing by his side as if she'd sensed his fear from the next room over, set a glass of water on his nightstand and clasped his clammy hand between her palms.

"In through the nose, and out through the mouth," she had repeated under her breath, squeezing with every exhale, a calm and steady coxswain steering him gently through the rapids. "In through the nose, and out through the mouth. In through the nose, and out through the mouth."

Her hands had been cool and slightly damp from the condensation.

It was well past two in the morning.

It had helped.

"Keep taking deep breaths," she said, quietly commanding, so James flopped back against his headboard and took them, though his heartbeat no longer felt painful and the dizzying pressure in his head had slackened its grip on his brain. The familiar tick tick tick of the clock on the landing outside sounded normal again, not achingly loud. "And keep reminding yourself of the positives. Always the positives."

"Always the positives," he repeated, and sucked in a breath through his nostrils.

"The surgery was a success."

"I know."

"His doctors are happy."

"I know."

"He'll be home by this time tomorrow, and Hope would telephone us if anything was wrong."

"I know."

"We can make him something special for his next visit, hmm?" His mother gave his arm a gentle nudge. "Put our heads together, you and me? See if we can't steal Sirius away for the day while we're at it?"

James nodded shortly. "Peter too."

"I can't bear to think of Sirius stuck in that house with those people every night," said Euphemia, with a bitter tinge that always made itself known in her voice when she spoke of Sirius's parents. "What will Remus want for dinner, do you think?"

"Beef Wellington," James decided at once, "with gravy, and lots of vegetables."

Remus had been talking about Beef Wellington on the ward when James went to see him. Beef Wellington, of all possible topics. He'd been craving it badly, he said, now that they'd taken the tube out of his throat. Hospital food was fine, but nothing special. The arrival of meals meant a chance to break the monotony of a day spent lying in bed, hooked up to all kinds of machines, mysterious tubes sticking out of his loosely tied gown, pissing into a bag because he didn't have the strength to make his own way to the toilet, because Remus had almost died—died, might have been gone, lost, an entire life snuffed out as if it was nothing—if he hadn't had that surgery, but a bloody Beef Wellington was his primary concern.

In hindsight, it was clear that Remus had been dropping hints. He'd have fallen over himself on any regular day for a taste of Euphemia's cooking. She'd held two Michelin stars at the height of her career.

Who was James to deny him what he wanted? He would have cut out his own aortic valve and offered it up on a silver platter, if it could have made a difference. Cooking a dinner with all the trimmings felt like a meagre price to pay for his friend's life.

"A Wellington's not much of a challenge," Euphemia mused, "but if that's what he wants..."

"And some kind of crumble for dessert," James interjected. "Cherry and plum, maybe. Or apple. But we have to have custard. He loves custard. And no chocolate. He doesn't like chocolate."

"And Sirius loves it so," his mum sighed.

"Sirius can deal with it."

"Sirius would eat a shoe if we covered it in Velouté sauce and told him it was a rare delicacy. He'll be fine with what he's given." 

James laughed feebly. "Give it a French name, he'll love that."

"Imbécile pompeux," said Euphemia, a trifle absently. She squeezed his hand. "Do you think you'll be able to fall back asleep now?"

He nodded.

"Would you like me to stay with you until you do, just in case?"

James immediately pulled a face of disgust, which would have been more effective, perhaps, if he hadn't been holding her hand.

Or if he'd meant it.

He was fifteen years old, but he still needed his mummy to keep vigil by his bedside whenever he got scared.

Pathetic.

"No, I'm grown up now," he pointed out, with such forced contempt that he instantly knew he'd oversold it. "I'll be fine by myself."

Euphemia scoffed. "Fifteen is hardly grown up, child."

"Well, when is?"

"In general, or just where you're concerned?"

"For me. Specifically me."

"I'll reassess when you turn forty," she said, settling back against the headboard, and tugged his duvet across her lap.

Act 5, Scene 2

September 2017 - The Present

the music room on the ground floor 

(hereafter known as the depths of hell)

Friar Laurence.

That was what they had given him.

Stuck him with, more accurately. 

Only Edwin Edwards had auditioned specifically for Friar Laurence, and Edwin Edwards was a pretentious git who pretended he didn't have a phone because "modern technology sounds the death knell for the interpersonal," when everyone knew that Edwin's mum wouldn't buy him one because she believed he'd get radiation poisoning in his cochlea. His ex-girlfriend, Megan, had told everyone about it after their breakup, a piece of gossip that had since been embellished and exaggerated to such an extent that Edwin could hardly enter a room without being treated to a rousing chant of "Edwards's mum doesn't vaccinate her kids!" from Megan's new boyfriend and his mates, who seemed unusually aware of social issues.

The point was, Friar Laurence was a dud role for pretentious gits, but James was the one who had been saddled with it.

Aside from Edwards, nearly everybody else had gotten the parts they wanted. Everybody else! Sirius was Mercutio, Beatrice Booth was Nurse, Jennifer Costner cried tears of joy when she was announced as Lady Capulet and even Terry Heaney had been given the role of Paris, but James had been landed with Friar. Fucking. Laurence.

Friar Laurence!

To add insult to injury, McGonagall had called his name directly after naming Remus as Romeo, and she did it with a perfectly straight face, as if she were making a serious announcement. As if anyone could believe that he, James Potter, would be remotely suited to a part like staid, boring Friar Laurence. And people actually applauded! For Friar Laurence! Like it was a good thing!

McGonagall obviously assumed that James didn't know the play well enough to grasp that his own English Lit teacher was biting her thumb at him, but the joke was on her because he'd read the whole thing on Monday night. He knew the way things were. He knew exactly the insult she'd hurled in his face. What better way to stick it to James than to stick him with the role of the man who orchestrated Romeo and Juliet's marriage, likely whilst wearing an unflattering burlap robe and envying the groom his dashing doublet and sword?

And yes, technically the marriage happened off stage so James wouldn't actually need to pronounce them husband and wife and score a front row seat to their steamy snogging session, but still! 

Principle!

Also, he'd definitely still have to watch them snogging.

He knew McGonagall's game.

James had lived with his mother long enough—all of his life, in fact—to know retribution when it kicked him in the groin. He'd shown up at the audition unprepared, farted about like a posturing prat and wasted the valuable time of several important people, so McGonagall was punishing him to teach him the error of his ways.

"My appendix is bursting," he whispered to Sirius.

He cast an agonised glance at Lily, who had been called up to speak to McGonagall privately and was deep in conversation with her at that moment. One of her school-standard knee-high socks had fallen down and she was making surreptitious-yet-frequent attempts to nudge it higher up her calf with the heel of her shoe, fighting to keep her annoyance out of her face.

Remus hovered quietly nearby, having a similarly private chat with Vector. He'd practically raced over there after the stiff thirty minutes it had taken Vector and McGonagall to dole out parts and discuss their plans for rehearsals, during which time neither he nor James so much as glanced at one another. With the proceedings wrapped up for the afternoon, most of the crowd had begun to trickle out. James and Sirius were waiting for Remus, but James would have preferred it if he could get up and run home.

Remus, Romeo. Lily, Juliet.

They were going to have to kiss one another.

On stage.

In rehearsals.

Right in front of James.

In all the months he'd wasted losing his mind over Lily Evans, of all the cockamamie disasters he had imagined at the height of his own paranoia, of all the horrifying possibilities his brain had concocted—that she'd leave Hogwarts, marry Snape, join a nunnery and swear off romance—he'd never once expected that the day would come when he would be forced to watch the woman he loved suck face with one of his mates.

He felt blindsided. He felt debilitated. He felt...

He didn't know how he felt.

Nauseous, mostly.

His appendix was definitely bursting.

"Your appendix isn't bursting," said Sirius. He was scanning the schedule he'd been given and showed no outward signs of concern because he was an unfeeling bastard.

"It is," James murmured. "Call an ambulance."

"No."

"Posthaste."

Sirius snorted. "Your appendix is fine."

"How would you know? Are you a bloody stomach doctor?"

"It's called a gastroenterologist, and no, I'm not."

"Then how are you supposed to—ow!" Sirius poked him hard in his right side, and James's resulting yowl of pain attracted the attention of three or four of their surrounding peers. Not wanting Lily to notice, he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Why?"

Sirius leaned back in his seat and pulled a lock of his shiny black hair across his top lip like a moustache. "Proving a point."

"That you're a prick?"

"Or that you're a liar."

"I'm not a liar," James retorted, massaging the spot where he'd been poked with the back of his knuckles. "My emotional appendix is on the left."

Sirius laughed appreciatively at that, which kind of made James want to laugh too, but he couldn't, because love was a curse, existence was a prison, and he was Friar fucking Laurence.

"Remus isn't going to steal her away, calm down," said Sirius.

"But I'll still have to watch them kiss, and—"

"So?"

"So I love her—"

"You don't."

James expelled an exasperated breath. His mates always insisted upon that point, as if they knew his own feelings better than he did, or could understand a love as pure and true as his on any level. "Yes I do."

"You don't. You don't know her. Sandy Bullock would slap you to shit for talking like this," said Sirius flatly, and nodded towards the other side of the room. "Anyway, heads up, it's your girlfriend's entourage."

Sure enough, Booth and Macdonald were heading in their direction, arms linked, both girls wearing the same smug smile.

"Hey!" said Booth brightly, and marked her arrival by stamping her feet into the ground with evident self-importance.

"Hey," Sirius replied.

"Hey," said Macdonald.

"Hey," James gloomily responded.

"Well," said Sirius, "this was a varied conversation."

"Shut up, you dick," said Macdonald, and laughed. "We just came over to congratulate you both."

"And to congratulate me," Booth seconded. "Obviously. But you two did alright as well."

"Your Nurse audition was decent," said Sirius, who had laughed, audibly and appreciatively, at a couple of moments during Booth and Lily's comedic duet. "I, of course, will be carrying the play—"

"In that big fat head of yours, maybe."

"Don't hate me because you ain't me, Macca—"

It took James all of five seconds to zone out of their conversation, because all he could see was Lily, there in the background, and the incomparable gorgeousness of her every look and smile and gesture, and her continuing battle to keep her confounded sock in place, and the inevitable crushing horror of the entire situation. Her, Juliet. Remus, Romeo. James was staring at her and he shouldn't have been because he knew that everything he felt would seem so obvious in that moment, knew that he had little to no self-respect, knew that this should have been the kick he needed to move on from his love for her already. Yet here he was, staring anyway, like a bloody heartbroken fool, and if she happened to spare a single glance in his direction, she'd instantly know that...

She was looking directly at him.

Suddenly.

In fact, McGonagall had let her go, and she was walking over to them with her hands clasped tight around her bag straps.

Breathing felt optional at that moment, rather than a subconscious bodily response.

"Hiya," she greeted them all, drawing close to their little group.

"Hey," said Sirius, with all the effortless apathy that James would have kicked his dad up the arse for. He, on the other hand, found himself jumping to his feet with great haste, much like a 19th century gentleman greeting the lady who had deigned to join him for tea.

Except James wasn't sauve and smoldering like Colin Firth. James was a total flaming imbecile.

"Alright, Evans?" he said, and stuck his hands in his pockets. There may have been a terrible upwards nod to go with it, some failed attempt at cavalier disinterest.

He wasn't in control of himself.

"I'm alright," Lily replied, her eyes narrowed suspiciously on his face, though she was smiling, small mercies. "You?"

"Never better," he flagrantly lied.

"We were just talking about what our costumes might be like," said Booth, which was good, because James had not been paying attention and could not have furnished her with that information if he'd been paid to.

"Already?" said Lily.

"Well, yeah, hello, I'm in charge and I get shit done," said Macdonald. She pressed a finger to her own chest. "Got a budget and everything. Granted, it's basically nothing, but Vector said that we could fundraise as a kind of side-project."

"We were thinking of having a bake sale in the canteen," Booth explained. "Sirius suggested we auction him off to the highest bidder—"

"As if McGonagall would allow it," said Lily.

"And as if anyone would pay for that," Macdonald added.

"People would," said Sirius, "and you know it."

"They'd pay for tomatoes to throw at you, maybe."

"You've always been jealous, Macdonald, ever since we were kids—"

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that, but somehow I think a few millionaire squares would bring in more money than your pasty ass."

"Thought a lot about that pasty ass, haven't you?"

"I mean, if you want to be deluded—"

Sirius sniped back a retort, Mary threw another barb in his direction, and Lily sent James a smile that seemed to indicate a kinship of some sorts, an understanding, as if she was saying, hey, look at these two, can you believe that we put up with these clowns?

James rolled his eyes dryly in response, so Lily threw her smile down to her feet.

That made for the first moment of relief he'd been awarded since McGonagall announced the casting.

Naturally, Remus ruined it all by coming over.

"Hi guys," he said, appearing between Booth and Lily, his gaze trained quite firmly away from James.

"Remus!" Booth and Macdonald trilled in cheerful unison.

"Oh, hey!" Lily sang, and landed a feather-light punch to Remus's upper arm. "If it isn't my husband."

Remus laughed breathlessly, met James's eye for a fraction of a second and seemed to deflate on the spot. "If it isn't my wife."

It was funny, because James was not remotely in the vicinity of a body of water, but he was definitely, definitely drowning.

"Congratulations, Lupes," said Mary.

"I knew you'd get it," Booth seconded, smiling at a rather flushed Remus. "I told Lily you would, didn't I babe?"

"She did," said Lily warmly. 

"Well, that's—" Words appeared to fail Remus. His face was starting to turn pink. "Thank you."

"Your audition was totes the best," Booth continued. "You're so bloody talented."

"Oh, not really—"

"No, seriously, I know what I'm talking about, theatre is like, half my life, so when I say that you were the best—"

"I think everyone did really well—"

"Nobody did as well as you," Booth insisted. She obviously wasn't familiar with Remus's habit of growing extremely uncomfortable when forced to accept any kind of compliment. "Nobody."

"Well, thank you very much, but—"

"You were like, pro level good, yeah? I've seen a lot of plays in the last few years, but honestly—" 

"Oh, before I forget!" Lily interjected, with such forced sunniness as to make clear that she was rescuing Remus from Booth. She briefly touched her fingers to his elbow. "When you were talking to Vector, did she say that we should—"

Remus nodded eagerly. "She did."

"So I should probably—"

"Only if you want to."

"No, yeah, we should. McGonagall says it's important," said Lily, fishing in the pocket of her blazer for something. She withdrew her phone and unlocked the screen with a quick sweep of her fingers. "I don't know my number by heart, though, because I had to get a new one over the summer, but if you put yours in my phone I can text you later?"

"Oh, yeah." Remus wore the expression of a man sitting firmly on a cactus. "Yeah, sure."

"Why'd you get a new number?" said Sirius, as Lily handed over her phone.

Bizarrely, Lily spared a brief glance for James before she answered. "Doesn't matter."

"Aww, spoilsport, tell the class."

"It's none of your business."

"Someone stalking you, Evans?"

"Again, it's none of your business," said Lily sparingly. She looked at James again, this time more directly. "How do you live with this clown and not lose your mind on the daily?"

"Industrial strength earplugs," James replied, feeling as if he was watching this scene unfold from a great distance, because Lily and Remus were exchanging numbers all of a sudden and that was—what? What? What? "Congratulations, by the way."

"Congrats to you too!" She took her phone back from Remus without looking at him, smiling instead at James. "You got such a great part!"

Sirius snorted. "He doesn't think—"

"I think you all got such great parts," said Macdonald, and though she was smiling, there was an undertone of warning in her voice. "Except for Sirius, obviously."

"Yeah," Lily agreed, giggling, "Mercutio's kind of superfluous."

"And Juliet's kind of a twat."

"Ouch."

"You realise that historically, audience responses to the play have been known to fizzle out after Mercutio dies, right?"

"Then I'm sure you'll break that tradition." 

"Steady on, there's no reason to not be nice," said Mary—who was arguably the most unkind of all of them when the mood struck her—as Sirius opened his mouth to respond. "We should be celebrating, yeah?" 

"Yeah, the girls and I were going to go to OK Diner for milkshakes," said Booth. "Do you guys wanna come?"

"Suppose I could go for a milkshake," said Sirius, glaring at Lily.

Remus shrugged. "Why not?"

"Oh, I can't, though," James hurriedly put in. "Got a project to finish at home."

The words bounced around in his brain even as they slipped from his tongue, and James could hardly believe they were coming from his mouth. Here he was, turning down the opportunity to spend time outside of school with Lily Evans, a phenomenon he never would have anticipated.

But he couldn't. He couldn't. He wasn't capable of sitting in a booth with the rest of them, laughing and joking and necking a strawberry shake while the world fell apart around his ears and the people to his left and right were genuinely happy. James wasn't good at putting up fronts. His mother often said that his emotions were as subtle as an articulated lorry smashing headlong into a wall.

"Aww, that's a shame," said Macdonald, smirking.

"An art project?" said Lily.

"Yeah." 

"What are you working on?" she asked him, and looked as if she were genuinely interested in his answer because, unlike her friends, she was charitable and kind, and obviously a phenomenal actress. "Something for class?"

"Oh, nothing, just this thing for something we're doing—not for school or anything, it's like an online—but I was supposed to do it a while ago and I had to take the cat for a walk and there's a deadline and I'm really behind on sketches," he babbled, unsettled by the eye contact Lily was maintaining with him, and by the general turn his day had taken, "so I should go home and get that finished now, but you should all go."

"I'm not going if James isn't," said Sirius.

"Why, is he your wife?"

"Piss off, Macdonald."

"Well, Remus will come with us," said Booth, and let go of Macdonald completely to snake her arm through the crook of Remus's elbow instead. "Won't you?"

"Um." Remus looked down at their interlocked arms. His cheeks were still bright pink. "Yeah?"

"And you're sure you both can't come?" said Mary.

"I really can't," said James, his gaze flitting between Lily, who was still looking at him, and Macdonald's smirking face. He jerked his head towards Sirius. "He's just being a brat."

"When isn't he?"

"Piss off, Macdonald."

"It's fine, we'll all hang out another time," Lily put in, while the others began to move towards the door. She didn't follow them at once, but leaned sideways, yanked her wayward stocking up her leg and fixed James with an uneasy sort of smile. "Good luck with your project, yeah?"

"Yeah," he replied, his mind working frantically to come up with something charming. "Good luck with your sock."

Jesus H Christ, he wanted to die.

Act 5, Scene 3

James Potter's bedroom

The walk home from school was utterly miserable, with James's last, excruciating words to Lily ringing in his ears and Sirius loudly speculating on what they might have meant. His pet theory was that James had stolen Lily's sock and used it for a marathon wanking session, and with this hideous image he teased James until they reached home, and a sympathetic Euphemia met them at the door, eager to learn what parts they'd won that afternoon.

Naturally, upon learning that her only son was to play Friar Laurence, not Romeo, she laughed herself silly for close to a full minute.

"Nice to know that my own mother doesn't support me," James croaked, once she'd finished cackling.

"Oh, that did me a world of good," Euphemia sighed, brushing a tear from the corner of her eye with her thumb. She lowered her hand to her chest and took in a sniff. "What are you whining about now?"

"He thinks you don't support him," said Sirius, who was sitting on the kitchen counter with a glass of water clenched between his knees.

"How ridiculous," said his mum. "Of course I support you."

James did not possess the energy required to mimic Sirius and haul himself onto the counter, so he'd slumped against the oven door instead. He had enough in him to bristle, however, at the audacity of his mother's lie.

"Are you supposed to support your kids by laughing at them?" he countered.

"I think it's good to find the funny side of our misfortunes."

"So why are you laughing at mine and not your own?"

"Well, I don't have any misfortunes, darling," Euphemia explained, "and I find yours so much funnier."

Sirius snorted, but James straightened his posture, glaring at her with venom. "So this is all a joke to you?"

"Oh for goodness' sake, James," said Euphemia, "you didn't get the part you wanted in the school play, nobody died."

"So you do think it's a joke."

"It's not going to ruin you forever if—"

"You think it's a joke?" he cut over her. "You think it's funny that I'm going to have to watch Remus kissing the girl I love, and that they're probably going to end up—"

"Darling," Euphemia sighed, and pushed her shining black curls away from her face, "you don't love her, you're—"

"Yes I do!"

"You hardly know the girl—"

"I know how I feel about her!" he cried out. Sirius was laughing properly now, the water in his glass churning precariously between his shuddering knees.

His mother, however, was not doing much better. Her laughter had faded, but her voice held a vaguely pitying lilt as she said, "It's just a crush, sweetheart."

"No, it bloody well isn't."

"You hardly know the poor girl."

"I know her well enough!"

"James, everyone feels like this at your age, but it isn't the end of the wor—"

"I should have known you didn't really care about how I feel," he accused, even further enraged by the obvious amusement that lingered on his mother's—normally lovely—face, even as she tried her best to suppress it and, he suspected, pretend to take him seriously. "Just leave me the hell alone, all of you!"

"For goodness sake, James!"

But James ignored her and raced up the stairs, stomping his feet as hard as feet could stomp so that his mother—no, so that she and Sirius and the neighbours and the very house itself—would feel the mighty weight of his anger. He made straight for his room when he reached the landing, with a kick for the banister and a glare for Diablo, who was charging in the corner beside his parents' bedroom door and who Euphemia Potter obviously respected more than she'd ever respected her son.

"Oh, piss off!" he snapped at the Roomba, and slammed the door behind him.

Algernon was curled up in the middle of his bed, staring up at him in that unblinking, all-knowing way he always did when he believed that James was in the wrong, despite having none of the information, and being a cat.

"Not you as well," said James accusingly.

Algernon swished his ginger tail and did not seem impressed.

"It's not funny," James told the cat.

Algernon looked at him as if to say, did I indicate that it was, you sorry sack of manure?

"I hate everything," James declared, and threw himself boldly on the bed, intending to sleep his way through the next decade and wake up in 2027, when this whole, horrendous fiasco might have potentially been less painful.

But half an hour later, he sat up ramrod straight, this time with a newfound resolution.

A firm decision had been made inside his head.

He was going to quit the play.

It was the perfect response to all of this madness. So perfect, in fact, that James was honestly quite shocked to have failed to think of it sooner. If he quit the play, he wouldn't have to go to rehearsals, wouldn't have to know anything about what was going on, wouldn't need to see any devastating snogging sessions. Quitting was the only viable solution, the only way that he could salvage his own sanity and allow Remus to fully accept the role of Romeo unencumbered by any feelings of guilt or regret—and Remus would feel those things, that was the kind of person he was. James owed it to him to make this sacrifice. It was even heroic, in a way. After-school rehearsals meant more time with Lily. James was giving that up for Remus. That was worthy of some admiration, surely.

He could make up an excuse to avoid seeing the play when they staged it in December, too, like an illness of some kind. Finding an explanation to offer Lily would be...more difficult, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

She probably wouldn't care, either way.

With all of that settled, James then determined that the first thing he needed to do was tell Remus, to ensure that he found out about it before anybody else did and, more importantly, that Remus was given a clear explanation, one which allowed him no reason to place blame upon himself in the aftermath. This was James's decision alone. If he didn't want to endure the trauma of watching Lily and Remus snogging on stage, he could remove himself from the situation and relieve Remus's conscience in the process. James was the one who hadn't truly meant to audition. James was the one who muscled in on Remus's territory.

Their friendship was too important for James to let it fall to pieces over a girl, so he had to do what was best now, and make things easier for everyone.

However, when he pulled his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it to write a text, he found that Remus had already beaten him to the punch.

Are we alright?
I just wanted to check, I'm sorry.
I'd come over but we're still in the diner and I don't want to come by unannounced if you're not ready to see me.

Great. Now Remus thought James didn't want to see him. 

Already it had begun.

weird, he typed back, shooting for a casual approach, i was just about to text you and ask the same

If we're alright?

yeah
i don't want things to be weird now

I feel really shit about all of this.

you shouldn't

I'd have to be the worst person in the world to not feel shit about it.
But I have to be honest with you.

i'd have to be the worst person in the world to want you to feel shit about it
???

I'm not even sure if I should say this because I don't want to come off like a dick but I feel like I should.
You're too important for me to keep it from you (please don't show this to Sirius, he'll be a prick about it)

i won't
promise
tell me

I'm really glad I got the part.
Not because of Lily. Honestly.
But I did want it. I put in a lot of prep for the audition and I was convinced that you were going to get it and that didn't feel great, so I'm glad that they gave it to me.
I just don't want you to get the wrong idea about why I'm glad.
I also don't want you to feel like I'm lording it over you or anything, or that I want to compete with you, or, again, that this has anything to do with Lily Evans because if I could avoid that part, I would.
I honestly feel a bit sick.

Well.

That was...something.

Everything Remus said made perfect sense—and were James in a less emotional state, he would have agreed that it was perfectly reasonable and just—but reading it hurt him in a weird, stomach-clenching way all the same. Furthermore, he had no idea how to respond and sound like the reasonable, just, supportive friend he wanted to be, and the thought of further discussion on the matter was compelling him to throw his phone at the wall and bury himself under his duvet, hidden from the world and its many cruelties, so he focused in on what seemed like the most immediate, pressing conundrum. 

???? not sick for real though?

No, not sick sick. Sick thinking about it.

GOOD
jfc remus i can only handle so much

Done, James thought, and dropped the phone on the bed beside him, but another text pinged through mere seconds later.

Can you let me know what you're thinking about all of this?

Remus, it seemed, did not consider the matter resolved.

And James, for his part, was not strong or cruel enough to disappoint him.

honestly it's fine, i am fine

Are you?

i mean no but we have long established that i am an idiot
and yeah i feel sick about this too, can't lie, but that isn't going to change how you and i are
this is so stupid, we are not falling out over a girl
i'm being a prat just ignore me

You're not being a prat.

i am
and i never should have auditioned anyway
i only did it because she was doing it and i got my punishment
it's what i deserve

You don't deserve to be punished because you auditioned on a whim, don't be so bloody hard on yourself.
And look, you were brilliant, even unprepared, McGonagall gave you the most important part in the play besides the two leads.
Your not being prepared was probably the deciding factor, to be honest. I still think your audition was better than mine.

honestly i think i'll just quit

What? Why?

easier for everyone

I don't think I agree.
You enjoyed auditioning, right?
You wanted the part, in the end?

yeah but
you two are going to have to do stuff that i don't want to see
i don't want that stuff to affect our friendship
if i quit i don't have to see it
problem solved

That doesn't seem fair to you.

it wasn't fair to you that i auditioned in the first place.

James, you auditioned for a play, you didn't take my spot on a transplant list.
There hasn't been a single second where I felt remotely betrayed.
I don't think you should quit.

can we not talk about it now?
please

If you don't want to.

is she still there?

Who?

lily

Yeah, she's here.

is she happy?
about the part, i mean

She is.

why'd mcgonagall and vector want you to exchange numbers?

They think we should spend time together and work on our chemistry.
Not romantic chemistry.

what like, friend chemistry? 

they suggested that we get comfortable with each other so that we don't feel awkward later.

when you're kissing

Seriously, James, I feel so shit about all of this.

it's fine, not your fault
what kind of milkshake did she get?

She got a Coke float, actually.

aaaaah, that's my girl

You should have come with us.

i really shouldn't have
i'm not my usual dashing self right now
i'd just bring everybody down
also, mum and sirius are being pricks and algernon has no sympathy and i think i've got appendicitis and it'd be a real downer if my appendix burst while she was trying to enjoy her coke float and celebrate this momentous win in her life
am i a cad who bursts their appendix in front of their lady love? no i am not

I mean, you definitely don't have appendicitis, for one thing.

you're gonna feel so bad next week at my funeral

I'll risk it.
Macdonald's telling me off for texting.

tell her to bugger off and snog some haggis

I'm not telling her that.

coward

I'll tell her if I can come over after.

ps4 and mum's homemade tiramisu?

A+++++

Act 5, Scene 4

Minerva McGonagall's office

"No," said McGonagall.

James blinked. "Pardon?"

"It's a two letter word, Potter."

"But—"

"I trust you understood it."

"But—"

"Was that everything you needed?" McGonagall opened one of her drawers and drew out a manila folder, which she set down on her desk with a brisk snap. "I have a busy afternoon ahead."

Then she opened the folder and started shuffling through the documents inside it, as if he'd already gotten up and left.

James smelled a rat.

He could also smell ginger, because his teacher kept a stash of ginger biscuits in her office, but that was neither here nor there.

The point was, manila folders were superfluous in this modern age and McGonagall was good friends with his mother, so James knew certain facts about her that the everyday student would not find himself privy to. One such fact was that she watched The Gadget Show and was extremely technologically savvy. Her computer was right there, switched on and everything. She probably kept those papers in her desk to ward people off. 

This was an obvious ploy to get him him leave her office, and it was outrageous.

"You can't just say no," he reminded her, unwilling to budge from his hard-backed chair. That was tantamount to admitting defeat.

"I can and I will."

"No, you can't, it's a restriction of my freedoms."

"Roughly ten million children all over the globe remain entrenched in modern slavery to this day," McGonagall coolly replied, settling her narrowed, all-knowing gaze upon his face, "but please, tell me more about how your freedoms are being restricted."

James opened his mouth and promptly closed it again.

"Just as I thought," said his teacher. Her mouth was set in a firm line, but James could see in her eyes the satisfaction of having beaten him. "Now, if you're quite finished with this little charade, I'd quite like to—"

"Climbing on a soapbox and playing the first world problems card so you can win an argument is beneath you," he heard himself say, an act of bold defiance that sent a rush of adrenaline and fear coursing through his body. "Just so you know."

Perhaps the people would sing songs of his bravery, after he was gone.

McGonagall, however, studied him with curiosity, rather than rage. "Is that so?"

"All pain is relative."

"Yours appears to be entirely imagined."

"Think what you like, I retain the right to my own choice."

"Just as I retain the right to hold you to your commitments."

"I didn't make any commitments," James countered, "I did one audition."

"You also accepted the role when it was offered to you."

"What was I supposed to do, turn it down and storm out in front of all my mates?"

"That would have been childish, yes," she agreed, "but rather less underhanded than what you're doing now."

Now would have been the ideal moment for an ominous clap of thunder in the background, because James had not considered his decision as a devious act, but McGonagall made it sound as if he was sneaking away in the night with the crown jewels in a swag bag over his shoulder.

Not that he stood to gain anything from quitting, aside from the quiet relief of not having to watch Remus and Lily snogging each other in rehearsals.

And then again when the play was actually staged. 

But that was fine. James planned on developing a sudden gastric bug on the night in question. Even the thought of Lily kissing Remus made his stomach churn like a tombola drum, so it wouldn't have been difficult to manage.

"Have you taken a moment to consider why I gave you the role you were given?" said McGonagall, apparently seizing an opportunity to take advantage of his silence and impart some unwanted wisdom.

"Dunno," he mumbled, sliding down in the chair, "to punish me?"

"Do you really think I'd stake the entire play on one student's punishment?"

"I think you were angry that I auditioned with nothing prepared."

"Oh, I was," she agreed, "but then I was impressed, and you are not the centre of this world or the next, much as you might believe that you are."

"So why did you give me the part?"

"Because." McGonagall stood up, closed the folder over and laid both hands on top of it like she was the Undertaker, pinning an opponent for the three-count after executing a perfect tombstone piledriver. "Old ways won't open new doors."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, Potter, that you've had things far too easy for far too long, and it's high time you were exposed to the reality of the world."

James had slid down so far that the top of his head was level with the top of the chair back. He looked up at her, his deep scowl softening into a frown. "And you think I'll find that in a play?"

"There's reward to be found in challenge." McGonagall lifted her arm and gestured to her office door. "In any case, I won't allow you to make this decision now."

"But—"

"Not when you can't think rationally."

"So when will I be allowed to decide?"

"Take the weekend to mull it over," she suggested. "Have a read through the play, think about what I've said and what you might stand to gain from sticking with it. If, after that, you still want to walk on Monday, I'll allow it."

"Just like that?"

"No questions asked, and I can't say fairer than that."

It all seemed very suspicious—especially the part where McGonagall hadn't handed down a detention for his marching in and announcing his intention to quit in the first place—but James had never known his teacher to lie and he was really starting to need to use the toilet, so staying for much longer wasn't a viable option anyway.

Besides, wasn't guilting him into continuing on with the play even worse than a detention, in its own way?

"Fine," he sighed, and pushed back the chair so he could drag himself to his feet with pointed lethargy, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I'll come back and quit on Monday, then."

McGonagall merely hummed, uninterested, and waved him out the door without another word. She thought she'd worn him down, that much was clear, but she couldn't hold him there against his will.

James was quitting the play, that much was final, and there wasn't a soul alive who could talk him out of it now.

First thing Monday morning.

Act 5, Scene 5

Binns's classroom

To make matters worse, Lily didn't turn up for Psychology on Friday afternoon.

Sitting alone in the back of the classroom, miserable, while Binns cleared his throat with a ragged little cough and began his usual, monotonously mind-numbing recitation of his notes, James wondered if her absence wasn't the perfect way to bring his nosedive of a week to its proper end. He'd asked Mary on the way in if she knew where Lily had gotten to, but Mary hadn't seen her friend at all since lunch.

"She sent me a text, like, twenty minutes ago and said she couldn't meet me before class because she had stuff to sort out," she'd explained, shrugging. "No idea what she's doing."

James had mimicked her shrug and tried to look as if he wasn't gutted by this news.

He hadn't been hoping for much, just an opportunity to bask in her presence for the duration of one class before he had to skulk home and not see her for two whole days. He wouldn't have bothered her by trying to start a conversation. He wouldn't have stared at her like a salivating creep. He wouldn't even have suggested that they jazz up the play by having Juliet run away with Friar Laurence in the end, although that sounded like a brilliant plot twist to him. Being close to her would have been enough.

Perhaps she'd called her new "husband" and asked him to meet her for lunch. Evans and Remus could do that now because they had each other's numbers.

A woman needed her husband's contact details.

Perhaps Lily and Remus were sitting in one of the dessert lounges in town, eating an extra large salted caramel sundae with two spoons, laughing and joking and "working on their chemistry." Mousse Hysteria was James's favourite, both for their white chocolate berry crepes and their excellent use of puns, so they'd probably decided to go there. Yet another twist of the knife. His back might as well have had a gaping, oozing wound.

They'd fall in love over a heaped spoonful of ice cream and drizzled caramel sauce, and that would be the end of James.

Probably.

He was aware that he had gone fully down the batshit crazy rabbit hole, but it felt like speeding down a hill on a skateboard, impossible to stop now he'd started.

A romance seemed inevitable, and made far too much sense to go ignored. Remus was precisely the type of person that a clever, sensible girl like Lily Evans could easily fall in love with. He was tactful, level-headed, had a knack for making good decisions and gave serious consideration to a lot of things that James would have dismissed offhand. Almost all of his best qualities were mirrored in Lily herself, and besides, they had so much in common that pairing them together made sense from even the most irrational of perspectives.

McGonagall could see it, that was why she'd paired them together. Sirius could probably see it too, which was why he kept insisting that James needed to give up on his idealistic dreams. Perhaps everyone could see it, but James had been so wrapped up in his own infatuation that he'd been blinded to the truth before his eyes.

If James and Lily had ever actually dated, it would have been different, but it wasn't her fault that James was crazy about her; she didn't owe him any loyalty. If she fell for Remus, she was so forthright that she'd likely have no qualms about making her intentions known. And Remus was loyal enough to resist in deference to James, it was true, but he was also flesh and blood and she a goddess. Could he be blamed if he found himself succumbing to her charms? Could anyone truly be blamed? Would James be a wretched friend if he tried to stand in the way of true love?

Even if it meant that he would never, ever, ever, ever, ever forgive Remus the betrayal?

He'd try to forgive, sure, to put on a brave face, support them as a couple, toast them at their wedding...

Oh, who was he kidding? If Remus and Lily wound up together it would rip his life apart like a vacuum bag that Algernon had gotten hold of, the tattered remnants of his broken heart tossed carelessly to the four winds, forever searching for a home it could not find, doomed to—

The classroom door opened and Lily Evans stepped inside.

Sans Remus.

Well…

...right then.

"Sorry, sir," she said to Binns, who had stopped reading at the sound of the door and was peering at her over the top of his smudged spectacles.

"You're late," their teacher told her. The watery waver in his voice suggested that he didn't know how to handle such an abnormal turn of events and was hoping that Lily would provide him with a path. "Quite late."

"I know, I'm sorry." She was slightly pink in the face, and making no effort to hide the large Costa cup she was holding. "Got stuck in a really long queue."

So that was the "stuff" she'd told Mary that she had to "sort out" before class? Getting tea? Lily "award for perfect attendance in the academic year 2016-2017" Evans, who by James's recollection had never turned up to a class with less than three minutes to spare, was late for the sake of tea?

Tea?!

This was bullshit. Lily Evans didn't do tardiness. It wasn't in her nature. She was clearly hiding something, like a war baby she'd found abandoned on a church step, or buried treasure, or a secret affair with Remus. James was on to her lies. She couldn't fool him.

"Apology accepted, Lydia. Please sit down," Binns replied, and waved her towards Erica Rice's desk.

If her name was such an impossible obstacle to circumvent, it was no wonder that the old fossil couldn't remember the seating plan that he'd devised himself. James wanted to snap at Binns for daring to forget it, tell him her name is Lily and it's perfect, you decrepit old ghost, and his stewing cauldron of outrage bubbled ever closer to boiling point.

He looked down at his hands as Lily made her way towards him, realising to his chagrin that he hadn't so much as taken out a pen because he'd been too busy drowning in his sorrows. Red-faced, he dived into his bag and resurfaced with a notepad, which he dropped directly in front of him just at the moment she reached their desk.

"Hi," she mouthed at him, smiling.

In an instant, his bubbling cauldron of outrage melted all over the floor, a muddled puddle of pewter and rank desperation.

Why did she have to be so her all the time?

When would the torture stop?

And furthermore, if James had turned up to class late because he'd been getting a drink in town and didn't bother hiding it with a lie, he'd have been in a world of trouble. Binns would have slapped him with a detention and sent him to the headmaster's office in disgrace, but Lily Evans got to waltz in late with a cup of Costa's finest English breakfast in hand and get off scot-free, whenever she liked.

No, it simply would not do. Lily was going to fall in love with Remus and James was determined to wallow in his own self-pity until he eventually died alone and was eaten by his many feral cats, so he responded with an unenthusiastic wave and dropped his gaze to the desk. That would show her. She wasn't the only one who could turn up late and remember whole scenes from the play and be effortlessly cool about it.

That. Would show. Her.

Except, instead of becoming intrigued by his new, detached persona, Lily brazenly set her cup down directly on top of his notepad and shrugged her school bag off her shoulders.

What did she think he was, he wondered, aghast—even as the delicious aroma of coffee hit his nostrils—a servant? A pushover? A human coaster designed for her personal use? Had she not noticed his bad mood? Could she not comprehend that her and Remus's predestined romance had torn his heart asunder, and that even though she owed him no kind of fidelity, it wouldn't have killed her to be a little more tactful?

He waited patiently until she was in her seat and had finished unpacking her things, then he picked up the cup and placed it on top of her notebook.

Immediately, she picked it back up and placed it next to his arm, which made a little burst of panic sputter through a crack in his fractured heart, so he pushed it back towards her.

She nudged it back to him.

Mystified, he shoved it towards her again.

Lily sighed, picked up the cup, set it back atop his notepad, glared at him and turned her gaze towards Binns in a firm, pointed sort of way which told him, quite clearly, that this dance was over, and he ought not dare to move that bloody cup again.

What?

What?

Was she serious?

Binns had already resumed his droning and James knew better than to whisper at Lily while she was trying to listen to the lecture, so he moved the cup to one side, ripped a sheet of paper out of his notepad and—after scrambling in his backpack for a pen—hastily scrawled his question at the top of the page.

is this for me????

He pushed it across the desk towards Lily, who caught it between her thumb and forefinger and placed it atop her notebook in one fluid motion that seemed well-practiced, never looking at him once.

She took her time composing a response, and it took all of James's self control to keep from peeking at it. If she was writing something nice, he was determined to fully enjoy the entire epistle at once, rather than spoil himself early. When she finished her last word with a flourish and pushed the paper back to him, he had to remind himself to take it with some doughty imitation of poise, rather than snatch it up greedily and press it to his chest.

Unsurprisingly, her handwriting was impeccably neat and pretty, a dainty swirl which kissed the page beneath his slapdash scribbles.

It's a large caramel latte with three shots of espresso and I can't stand coffee, so one would assume.

She'd bought him coffee.

She, Lily Evans—Lily "award for perfect attendance in the academic year 2016-2017" Evans—was late to class because she'd been buying him coffee.

The specific coffee order that he'd told her about on Tuesday when he'd given her that notebook and they'd flirted—sort of, almost, perhaps not but also perhaps maybe—as he was walking her to class. She'd remembered it exactly as he'd told her. Right to the letter. And bought it for him, just as if…

As if...

why??????????? he couldn't help but scribble in a hurry, an ugly mark beneath her beautiful penmanship, his heart exploding in a shower of colourful confetti, and shoved the note towards her. She rolled her eyes when she saw it but put her pen to paper anyway, then huffed out an irritated breath when she handed it back.

Isn't it obvious?

would I be asking why if it was obvious?

I'll tell you after class, you big dumb dork.

This was the most single romantic thing that had ever happened to James in his life.

Officially.

Telling Lily as much was not an option, however. He'd seen what she could do to the hot drinks of those who pissed her off. With his facial muscles working furiously to suppress a wide, sappy grin, he jotted down a quick needed this, thanks! and nudged the note to her side of the desk. She didn't respond again, but folded the paper into a neat rectangle and tucked it away in the back of her Psychology textbook, which was a shame, because James would have loved to keep it for himself.

On the other hand, it was a sunny Friday afternoon, Lily Evans had bought him coffee—delicious coffee, as a hearty mouthful confirmed—she was going to talk to him after class and she didn't seem to care that several of their classmates had noticed their exchange of notes and beverages. Mary was grinning over her shoulder like the Gruffalo while Reshma Patel and one of the Stebbins twins openly gaped and whispered, their heads bent towards one another as if the passing of gossip was a sacred act, but Lily ignored their looks and murmurs with the same serene indifference she'd displayed on the day she'd kicked his pen across the floor.

Hadn't he been upset about something earlier?

Eh.

Who even kept track of these things?

He returned Mary's grin with a smug smile of his own, and washed down his satisfaction with a well-timed victory sip.

Predictably, some malevolent force slowed time to a crawl for the rest of the class, and Lily did not so much as glance in his direction for the entire duration. When the bell finally rang, heralding the end of the longest Psychology class he'd ever experienced, James twisted around in his chair and fixed her with his most serious, most suspicious searching stare, a look of his mother's design that was guaranteed to wrangle answers out of even the most reticent suspect.

"Are you constipated?" said Lily, frowning.

Clearly, he couldn't pull it off with Euphemia's panache.

"No!" he yelped, embarrassed. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Mary was shoving her things into her bag at breakneck speed. He would have dropped fifty quid on betting that she'd race out of the room in an attempt to leave them alone together. "Why would you think that?"

"Because of your face."

"What's wrong with my face?"

"Well it's not your face, it's the expression on it."

"That was my best detective stare, I'll have you know."

Lily laughed and stood up, the metallic silver headband in her hair catching the light overhead. She gripped the strap of her school bag with both hands and heaved it onto the desk. It looked heavy. "Then for the sake of your future financial security, stick with the art instead. I already said I'd explain the coffee."

"It wasn't about the coffee," he retorted, springing to his own feet, "it was about the stolen diamonds."

"Well, I fenced the stolen diamonds to buy you that coffee, so you're shit out of luck."

"And the rest of the money you got for those jewels just, what, floated away?"

"Ah, but you're forgetting the private jet I chartered to Colombia so I could pick the beans myself." Lily countered. She shoved her notebook into the front of her bag and fixed him with a triumphant smile. "Those diamonds are gone, Potter, so I suggest you make your peace with it."

That she would nimbly play along with this ridiculous bit of make-believe was better, somehow, than the latte he'd just devoured in a rapturous haze.

James had never wanted to kiss a girl more than he wanted to kiss her, right in that moment.

"I'll make my peace," he happily conceded. "Thank you for the latte."

"You're welcome," she said. "It was the least I could do to thank you for my present."

For her present.

Oh.

Right.

That...didn't exactly sound like the romantic gesture he'd allowed himself to envision not minutes earlier. "That's why you got it?"

She picked up her pencil case and shrugged. "Of course."

"But you didn't have to do that."

"I know."

"I got you that notebook to thank you for helping me out."

"And I wanted to thank you for thanking me."

"Right, but the thing is," he pressed on, feeling jittery. "The thing is—" That besides the fact that he desperately wanted her to like him, getting a thank you gift in return had never been the aim. He didn't want to be that person. She wasn't supposed to feel obligated to reciprocate anything he did. "I didn't do that because I was looking for some kind of reward, or because I wanted—"

"I know!" she interrupted, her voice hitting a slightly higher pitch, but she didn't sound exasperated. On the contrary, she looked as if she was trying not to laugh. "I know you didn't. Kindness of your heart. Gratitude. All of that stuff. Which is exactly why I wanted to say thank you."

James's stomach did a funny little flip of excitement and joy and also terror; a sensation that fell somewhere between thoroughly unpleasant and giddily delightful, as if he might shortly need to run to the bathroom and expel from his mouth a glowing stream of rainbows and glitter where there should have been something foul.

"Oh—aaaah," he said, like an imbecile.

"You're very nice," Lily continued, her tone flat, as if she should not have needed to explain herself but had caught a glimpse of a question behind his stupid, dumbstruck face. "I think you're very nice. Try not to die of shock."

She zipped up her school bag, bent down slightly to heave it onto her shoulders, straightened up and fixed him with an expectant stare.

"Well?" she said, hands on her hips.

"Well what?"

"Are you walking home with me or not?"

A skyrocket of joy whizzed wildly through the dust-ridden corridors of James's romantic hopes, which had as recently as half-an-hour ago fallen into major disrepair.

He was feeling so much today. At this rate he'd need to take a nap before football.

"Yes," he immediately replied, an automatic response triggered by many months spent answering that question in his very wildest daydreams. He crammed his pen and his notepad into his bag, zipped it up and shouldered it, lest she change her mind and scarper. "Of course I am. Have to walk home that way anyway."

"I know, that's why I'm asking." 

"Only it's my turn to do something nice for you because you just got me this." He picked up his empty Costa cup and shook it in mid-air. "So you have to let me...I dunno, let me carry your bag or something."

Lily's eyebrows lifted. "Carry my bag?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we in an American high school movie all of a sudden?"

"Why not? We're both hot enough," James retorted with a shrug, which made her laugh and look away from him briefly, twisting her body in the direction of the window. "Come on, Evans. I know you stuff that thing with way more books than you need."

"That doesn't mean I can't carry it myself," said Lily, then hid a smile in the tucked corners of her lips.

A smile, within that context, with that face and those eyes. This was heaven.

"Never said you couldn't," he pointed out, "but I can buy my own coffee and it's not like that stopped you."

"I bought you that coffee to thank you."

"For thanking you in the first place."

"Yeah, but you shared your hash browns with me before the audition, which means you're the person to whom the original thank you was owed, so we'll be right back where we started if I let you carry my bag."

"And?"

"And, I'll have to thank you again."

"Fine. Then I'll do the same."

"And on and on it goes until we're eighty?" She had given up on trying to hide her smile; it was a tangible, beautiful thing now. "You know that one of us will have to give this up eventually, right?"

She said it like it was a bad thing, but nothing would have made James happier than ensuring Lily Evans's presence in his life until they reached old age. His mum always cooed when they were in the car and she spotted an elderly couple shuffling hand-in-hand down the road, and James reckoned he'd been made for eventual geriatric hand-holding.

"When we've only just started?" he countered, because blurting out but I love you, haaaaaaaaa and diving headfirst into the nearest available bush wasn't really an option. They were still indoors. "Weak."

Lily sighed and looked extremely put upon, but didn't put forward another argument.

Everyone but their teacher had left the room—as expected, Mary hadn't lingered to throw sly grins in their direction, but dashed out the door ahead of the rest—and Binns was poring over his notes with such rapt attentiveness that his nose was practically touching the page. He probably hadn't realised that Lily and James were still there.

"Fine," she resignedly agreed, and shucked her bag off her shoulders, "but only because it's heavy and I'm too lazy to carry it home."

She dropped it onto the desk in front of James with a thud and what seemed like deliberate force, so he set down his empty cup to pick it up.

"It's fine," he said, swinging it onto his back. "I can manage two at—Christ, this is heavy," he realised aloud, blinking as the full weight of her bag sank into his right shoulder. His own bag weighed but little in comparison. "Are you carrying bowling balls around at school or something?"

"Oh, no, that'll be all the tampons," said Lily airily.

"Tampons weigh like, nothing. You keeping ten thousand of them in your bag?" He braved a smirk in the face of her blinking surprise. "You thought you'd gotten me with that one, didn't you? But you didn't."

"No?" said Lily, though her face plainly said otherwise. "I'm just—how d'you know what a tampon weighs?"  

"From football practice."

"How could you even—"

"Nosebleeds," he said. "Our coach has us use them when we get busted in the face." With both bags adjusted on his shoulders and the empty cup in his hand, he moved off and Lily moved with him, looking up at him curiously. "Plus, my mum taught me all about that stuff a few years ago."

"About tampons?"

"No, about periods, because they only teach that stuff to girls at school and the system is broken, she says." He stopped to let her leave the room ahead of him, dropped his cup in the wastepaper basket and followed her out through the door. "Mum doesn't want me to disgrace myself when I start courting, whatever that means, so now I can label a diagram of the reproductive system."

Lily twirled around ahead of him and started walking backwards down the corridor, which at this time on a Friday was always as barren as an old Western ghost town. "Well, who wouldn't fall in love with an expert labeller?"

"As if I'll ever score a date by telling a girl that I know where her myometrium is."

"I don't even know what that is."

"It's the middle layer of the uterine wall," he supplied, and they both laughed, and James realised in that happy moment that all of this—talking to her, knowing precisely what to say—had started to become so much easier. "Real romantic, isn't it?"

"Better than a dick pic," Lily mused aloud. "You'll never believe who sent me one of those, by the way."

"Terry Heaney?"

"No, but—oh god, he would, wouldn't he?"

"Probably, yeah."

"He definitely seems like the type."

"Did anyone tell you about the stuff he got in trouble for before you started?"

"There was something with Camelia Pinkstone, right?"

"He offered to give her his Discman in exchange for a good sniff at her shoes."

Lily snorted, and tossed a quick glance over her shoulder. "Did he happen to make this offer in 1998?"

"I know, who still has a Discman?"

"I didn't think they still made those."

"They make them for people like Sirius, probably. The hipster market eats that crap up for breakfast." Binns's classroom was relatively near to the main entrance of the school, so they reached it quickly. Lily pushed through the double doors with a wave for the headmaster's secretary, still walking backwards, and James followed her through. "So come on, tell me, who sent you a dick pic?"

"Oh, that was Evan McNamee."

"Evan McNamee?"

"Yeah, and it was like, totally out of the blue, too. Just dropped it in my Facebook messages over the summer."

"What a prick," said James, screwing up his face to properly process this unpleasant news. "I mean, not that I'm surprised..."

"Oh, believe me, I'm not the only one who's seen his junk against their will."

"But still—"

"What a prick is right," Lily darkly agreed, then let out a woeful little sigh. "I swear, when McGonagall said I'd been cast the other day, I remembered he'd auditioned for Romeo and had a genuine moment of terror, even though I knew he wouldn't get it because he was so incredibly shit."

"What part did he get? I can't remember."

"Crabtree's understudy, I think? I don't know." She spun around abruptly and fell into step beside James. "I can barely even remember who Crabtree is playing. The less attention paid to McNamee and his lot, the better."

There was an unmistakable bounce in the way Lily moved on her feet, now that she had been unbound from the damning constraints of the bag that hung heavy from James's shoulder. It was a springy, feathery lightness she exuded, childlike and slightly careless, as if she might catch a gust of wind and be lifted clean away, while the late afternoon sun wrote sonnets in her hair and she spoke to him with all the unconcerned ease of a friend.

He was a soppy prat for thinking it.

The truth was, James would have been so, so happy just to be her friend. A real friend, not some sad fool she'd taken pity on or wanted an even score with. She was funny and easy to talk to, once he managed to overcome his lovestruck histrionics and get a handle on his human, less-dysfunctional self, and she seemed to find it easy to make conversation with him.

They had something that worked, whatever it was; here, in the common room on Tuesday, at their audition...

Not that the audition had mattered, in the end.

"You must be really glad that Remus got the part," he remarked, and did a convincing job of sounding as if a stone wasn't sinking to the pit of his stomach at the thought of it.

Lily hummed noncommittally.

"He'll be a proper gentleman," he continued.

"He will."

"You won't have to worry about him pawing at you or being a creep." What was he doing, trying to push Remus into her waiting arms? He didn't deserve oxygen. "Only decent choice for the part, really."

"Are you saying you would have pawed at me and acted like a creep?"

"Obviously not, but—"

"Because I thought you should have gotten it."

His heart thwacked in his chest like he was twelve, and Sirius was jumping out at him dressed as Ghostface again.

Then again, and again, and again.

But he reminded himself to be reasonable. Thinking that he should have gotten the part wasn't the same as wanting him to get it. Lily had helped him to audition because he'd been struggling, so it made sense that she had a vested interest in how that would have turned out for James.

She was likely just trying to make him feel better, because she was nice like that. This was something that he'd learned about her recently, that she was nice and helpful and kind.

And not remotely interested in kissing him.

"Did you?" he said, his pulse racing like a traitor anyway.

"I was really surprised when you didn't, to be honest."

"You know you really don't have to say that, yeah?"

"I never say anything I don't want to say," she replied, then she laughed abruptly. "God, that just made me sound so severe. Sergeant Major Evans. But it's true, I really thought you'd get it, your audition was great. And I mean, Remus's audition was great too, don't get me wrong, but not as good as yours."

"Oh," said James.

Oh, oh, oh, said his heart, dying.

"Please don't tell him I said that, yeah?" Lily looked up at him and winced in apology, as if James would ever consider not doing a thing she told him to do. As if there might be any need for forgiveness when she was being so unbelievably kind. "Because I really do think he was great."

"Of course I won't."

"Only I know McGonagall asked him to audition to boost his confidence, and I don't want to do anything to mess with that."

"He told you about that?"

"Yeah, we talked about it on Tuesday before class."

"Oh, right."

"He was convinced you'd get the part too."

"Yeah, he'd mentioned that."

"I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere about never making assumptions."

"Yeah," said James, feeling rather morosely as if he was sullying the moment because she had expected him to get the part, and he hadn't, which obviously meant that he had failed her. "Suppose there is."

Lily didn't immediately speak again and a silence stole over them both. While the north exit of the school led directly into town, the south exit brought them onto the residential streets, which were quieter at this time of day—directly after the younger kids got home from school, but before commuting adults began to arrive home from work—so they were left in relative peace. With neither of them talking, the only sounds to be heard were those of the wind, their footfalls, and the distant hum of cars.

He didn't know what to say to her about the play, having made the decision to drop out, not without sounding childish. Not without throwing Remus under the bus. Not without making it clear that his sole motivation to audition had been his mad infatuation, which would immediately crush their burgeoning bud of a friendship before it ever had a chance to put down roots.

Life was truly a rollercoaster today, rising high one minute and plummeting down the next.

"Do you think—" he began, meaning to steer the discussion back to Evan McNamee's misdemeanours and perhaps offer to have him assassinated, but Lily beat him to the punch by blurting out, "You're not really going to quit the play, are you?"

She posed the question suddenly, and with a concern which he may have mistaken for distress, if he were a touch more deluded.

Up the rollercoaster went again.

"Quit the play?" he repeated, at a loss for anything else to say. 

"Sorry for asking," said Lily, "it's just that Bea said you were quitting—"

"Booth?"

"Yeah, so—"

His face was starting to feel warm. "How did she know?"

"I dunno, she's a bottomless pit of gossip. I think it comes to her in dreams," said Lily lightly. Their pace had slowed with the change of topic. "So she was right? You're quitting?"

"I don't—"

"Is it because you didn't get the lead?"

Did everyone in his life believe him so arrogant that he'd quit the play just because he couldn't be the star of the show? "It's not that—"

"Because I totally understand, if it is," Lily ploughed on. "I mean, not that I would have quit because I'd hate for anyone to think I was petty even if I knew, deep down, that I was being petty, but I would have wanted to quit if I hadn't gotten Juliet, so I get it."

He stared down at her, unsure if she was being truthful or giving him an out. "What, really?"

"I have this, like…" She let out an exasperated sound and flicked her hair out of her face. "I have this whole thing where I constantly need to be better than everybody else, or—well, I didn't exactly word that right, but I feel like I need to be the best at everything all the time or else I've, I dunno, failed somehow, and it really pisses me off when I'm not."

"Oh," said James.

"It probably makes me a terrible person."

"No it doesn't."

"A lot of people wouldn't agree with you."

"A lot of people are stupid," he pointed out. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best at things and it's not your fault if other people aren't as good as you."

"So says Mr. I'm Unfairly Good At Everything."

"I'm not unfairly good at ev—"

"Oh, aren't you?" Lily sprang ahead of him like a deer, swung around and planted her feet right in front of him, effectively blocking his path. "Remind me again who the captain of our football team is?"

Between the heavily implied compliment and the fact that he'd almost barged right into her, James didn't feel especially capable of responding. "Um?"

"Do you or do you not always have the right answer when a teacher asks you a question, even if you've been so thoroughly disengaged in class that you might as well have been napping?"

"But—"

"You aced the audition despite having never read a word of the play," she continued, rising on her toes like a self-satisfied ballerina, as if the additional height she was gaining gave credence to her argument. "You've got half the school eating out of the palm of your hand, your artwork was picked for the school showcase last parents' evening, you—"

"It wasn't just mine!" he piped up, a feeble fart from his useless brain. "There were others, and it—"

"It was definitely mostly yours."

"Says who?"

"Says the student council president who picked it," she said flatly, clapping a hand to her own chest. "Face it, Potter, you've been unfairly blessed."

"You haven't even mentioned how good-looking I am," he said accusingly, because he would have done something stupider otherwise, like propose to her, or faint from the sheer overexertion of his nerves.

Her shoulders shuddered with the repression of a laugh. "Is that so?"

"And actually, while we're on the subject, are we ever gonna talk about how you've been unfairly blessed?!"

"Oh, I know that. I just wear it better than you," she quipped, then dropped back down to her heels. "And look, honestly? If I were casting this play just for the sake of the play itself, I'd have made you Romeo and Remus Friar Laurence because those are the parts that suit your personalities, but I don't think McGonagall's like that. I think this is good, honestly. I think she's trying to challenge you."

"Challenge me to what?"

"I dunno, to try at something that doesn't come naturally?" Lily suggested. "To pull Remus out of himself? To give you both something valuable out of the experience?"

"I guess that sounds like her," James mused, recalling his disastrous talk with McGonagall, "and she did tell me something like that when I talked to her on Thursday."

"So you think I'm right, then?"

"It makes more sense than what I'd been thinking."

"So...does that mean you won't quit, after all?" she added. "I know it's really not what you wanted, but I also really don't think that you should give up before you've even started."

She said it with such obvious sincerity—she was so hopeful and sweet and invested in this, for god only knew what reason—that James had to huff out a short, self-deprecating breath of laughter rather than allow his feelings to manifest as a full-blown declaration of love, there in the middle of the street. Of the little he knew about romance, he did know that confessions like that should not have been made in the middle of the street. "That's what I tend to do when I'm shite at something."

"Oh, please, name one thing you're shite at."

"Making a good first impression."

"Ah, well that's true." She hugged her arms to her chest, smiling slightly. "Yet here I am, buying you coffee."

"It's my charm. Gets 'em all eventually."

"Well, it got me," Lily admitted, "so don't quit the play, okay? Rehearsals will be boring as arse if you do."

"I won't quit," James promised. "Cross my heart."

Chapter Text

Act 6, Scene 1

McGonagall's classroom

"Do it now."

"But she's busy."

"So what? She's always busy."

"And I don't wanna bother her."

"She's expecting you to bother her, you said you'd give her your answer today."

"Yeah, I did, and she'll get the message later when I turn up at rehearsal."

"God, James, just go, and tell her before the next class comes in," Lily hissed, and gave James a light shove towards the head of the classroom, where McGonagall was seated at her desk, reading something on her iPad with a creased brow, evidently deep in thought. James stumbled forward a step and looked back at Lily in mute appeal, but she shooed him away and stalked off.

She was headed to Gov and Politics with Remus, no doubt. Evans had a pretty full schedule on Mondays, whereas 2 p.m. English Lit was James's last class of the day.

Today, though, he would get to see her again in a matter of hours.

He'd get to see her in rehearsals on Tuesdays and Thursdays, too, and those were usually his most Evans-starved days. It was crazy that just one week ago, James had resigned himself to only seeing her in class for three days out of the week, but from now until the Christmas holidays, he had her for a guaranteed five and she was talking to him regularly.

And to think, he'd almost quit the play.

In truth, James had no qualms about approaching McGonagall with his joyous news, but he had recently learned that being ordered about by Lily Evans released a hit of oxytocin directly into his bloodstream, and he was powerless to resist that kind of lucrative opportunity. With the knowledge that Lily had voluntarily placed a hand upon his person not fifteen seconds ago still twittering like a bird in his heart, he approached McGonagall's desk and did a little skip by way of greeting, clicking his heels together in mid-air. His backpack slapped against his back rather painfully, but he resolved to ignore it.

The internet had taught him to master that move.

"Hullo, Miss!" he called out, and flashed her the most winning smile in his arsenal.

McGonagall looked up from her iPad and fixed him with a stare that was scarily reminiscent of Algernon. "Can I help you?"

"Did you see what I just did?"

"That little stumble?"

"It wasn't a stumble, it was a bell kick," James corrected her. "It's a tap dance move? Haven't you heard of Fred Astaire?"

"No, Potter," McGonagall deadpanned. "I live in the dark, expansive nether with the rest of the teachers, manifesting only during school hours. What would I do if you weren't here, keeping me in the cultural loop?"

"You'd be bitterly unhappy, but I've not come here to share my thoughts on classic movie musicals today."

"I assume you've come here in all your glory to inform me of your decision?"

"I have," he said, puffing out his chest with great self-importance. "After much deliberation and a great deal of soul-searching, I have decided that I am not quitting the play after all."

Though James refrained from throwing jazz hands into the mix, he held himself with pride and projected his voice in a manner which felt appropriately bombastic, given the gravity of his announcement, but McGonagall broke his heart by failing to gasp and exclaim and weep in astonished delight.

"Good," she said instead, as if she'd just uncovered a spare set of staples in her desk.

He immediately sank into a slouch. "Is that it?"

"Is what it?"

"You could applaud, at least," he suggested. "This all seems very anticlimactic."

"I'll save the platitudes for opening night, thank you," she said, peering at the iPad, though James thought he might have spied a hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth. "So what was it, then?"

"What d'you mean?"

"What was it that changed your firmly made-up mind, in the end?"

"Oh." He lifted a hand to comb his fingers through his hair. "My unimpeachable conscience prevailed."

"Of course."

"And a concerned friend might have shown me the error of my ways."

"Ah," she said, and looked up at him. This time, her lips did stretch into a wry smile. "So it was Evans who brought you to your senses?"

If James claimed in that moment that he hadn't been building to the reveal that yes, he and Lily Evans were having conversations now, that she'd bought him coffee and also cared enough to talk him out of quitting the play on Friday afternoon, he'd have been lying, but his mouth dropped open in surprise anyway.

"How'd you know it was her!?" he demanded, abandoning all pretence of cool-guy charm.

"Call it intuition," said McGonagall. She laid the tablet down flat and set her arms on top of her desk, her fingers steepled together as if in prayer. "Know this, Potter, should the day ever come where your broken, battered remains are found lying at the bottom of a cliff, I shall know precisely who instructed you to jump."

"She wouldn't—" James blinked. "What are you implying?"

"Merely that you should leave, please, I have another class arriving," said McGonagall airily, waving him away as, indeed, a bunch of year 10s began to file into the room. "I will see you at rehearsals later."

James took an ungainly step back, followed by a few more, feeling called-out, embarrassed, and a little bit miffed to have been robbed of the touching scene he felt he rightfully deserved. He had shown great maturity and promise in arriving at this point, and that warranted—at least—a two minute, praise-laden speech from the deputy headmistress.

Still, he reflected, he'd done what Lily asked, made the commitment, proved to McGonagall that he could stick to his word even if he had been compelled to do so by pair of long-lashed, imploring green eyes and a wit so sharp that it could have put Meg from Disney's Hercules to shame.

His week was off to a pretty good start.

Act 6, Scene 2

the music room on the ground floor

Lily and Beatrice were already waiting in the music room when James and his mates turned up to rehearsals, and James got to experience the utterly novel sensation of walking right up to them and dropping into the vacant seat to Lily's left without taking a moment's leave to consider it.

He could do that now. They were...something approaching friendly.

Plus, he had news to share.

That would be his excuse.

"Told her I'm staying," he informed her in lieu of saying hello. "How many gold stars does that get me?"

She had been sitting with her head bent over her copy of the play, but looked up at him as his arse hit the chair and closed the book over her thumb.

"We're doing gold stars now?" she asked, eyeing him incredulously.

"We are, I've just decided."

"Well, shit, I'll have to run out to WHSmith and immediately replenish my collection."

"Get through a lot of gold stars, do you?"

"A fair few."

"What do you do with them?"

"That's between me and the stars, thank you very much," she said lightly, with a teasing lilt in her voice that was very nice to hear. "Was she pleased?"

"A bit too pleased, if you ask me."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah," he sighed, leaning back in his seat. He folded his hands behind his head and stretched out his legs, so as to appear casual and attractive. "Fighting back tears, praising me, all that kind of stuff."

"Sounds absolutely nothing like her, but okay."

"She hides it well, I'll admit."

"Fighting back tears. Who'd have ever thought?"

"I'm embarrassed for her if I'm honest."

"You are so full of shit that you'd make a Portaloo look clean," said Lily, smiling to herself as she returned to her book.

See? he attempted to convey to Remus and Sirius, who had settled on the other side of him, with a significant look in their direction. James had been so convinced that this would be hard, but as he was frequently finding himself reminded, he could do this. He could talk to her. Lily Evans wasn't frightening—or she was, in the sense that she held his fragile, exposed, greedy little heart in the palm of her hand like a tiny bird, and could crush it or throw it away at any moment—but she wasn't some icy, unapproachable immortal who might burn his soul out with her eyes if he dared utter a word in her presence.

Sirius rolled his eyes, but James didn't care.

The Romeo debacle didn't seem particularly taxing, in the face of everything else.

Lily leaned towards Beatrice and started talking to her under her breath, while Remus and Sirius—the latter quite pointedly—were mimicking her earlier actions and also reading through their copies of the play, but James was happy to sit and play with his phone until McGonagall swept into the room, followed closely by Vector, who was wearing so many dangly necklaces that anyone hoping to drown her in a lake wouldn't have needed to weigh her down with rocks.

"Hello, my precious blueberries!" Vector called out, waving her clipboard at them like a crossing guard, at which McGonagall—her poise slipping for the briefest moment—pulled a face of such comical, bug-eyed, utterly outraged disgust that James wished he could have captured it and slapped it on a t-shirt.

The assembled students let out a collective mumble in response, and James stole a sideways glance at Lily, who had pressed her lips together and seemed to be struggling to hold back laughter.

"How are you all doing today?" Vector continued, coming to a stop in front of the stage. "Excited?"

Another, slightly quieter refrain of mumblings filled the room.

"You can all put away your books," McGonagall barked, her command cutting through the low hum of voices like a blade through softened butter. "Ms. Vector has decided that for this first rehearsal, you would all be better served in getting to know one another and bonding as a group."

It was abundantly clear from her tone that McGonagall knew precisely where Vector could stick her future decisions.

"You've brought a list of activities for the occasion, I believe?" she added, turning to her colleague.

"I have indeed!" Vector raised her clipboard and let out a tinkling laugh.

"Jesus," murmured Lily under her breath.

"Can I have Romeo, Juliet and Friar Laurence up here please?" Vector continued, as chipper as a dawn chorus. She caught James's eye and smiled warmly, pointing at the floor to her right. "Front and centre, my loves."

His first, wildly stupid thought was that they were immediately about to rehearse Romeo and Juliet's wedding—which didn't happen on stage, but which McGonagall had clearly written into the play as a cruel practical joke—and subsequent snogging scene, but Lily had already jumped to her feet and tugged on his sleeve to bring him with her, so his body complied immediately.

"Come on, come on." Vector beckoned them towards her. "You three are going to be my team leaders today!"

Appointing James as leader of any kind of faction seemed like an unwise move to him, though not as unwise as protesting this decision in front of Lily and McGonagall, so he kept his mouth shut and allowed Vector to maneuver him into position, standing furthest to the left and facing the seated students in front of the stage.

"Team A, team B and team C," said Vector, gesturing to Remus, Lily and James respectively, before turning her attention to the rest of the cast. "I'm going to give each of you a letter and when I do, I'd like you to get up and stand with your team."

She then proceeded to take a machete to every single clique in the room, a move that would have struck James as impressively insightful if they hadn't all made it easy for her by cordoning themselves off into little groups before she and McGonagall walked in. He wound up in a team that included Booth and Evan McNamee, whom he still hadn't ruled out siccing a hitman on (his mother was bound to know someone) for sending Lily a picture of his dick on a social media platform designed for radicalising aunts with misspelled Minion memes.

Not that his choice of platform made a difference.

Sirius got put in Lily's team, the jammy bastard, and flashed his pearly whites with callous glee in response to the jealous glare that James couldn't help but send him, while poor Remus got stuck with Helena Hodge, and neither of them seemed happy about it.

Vector then made each team form their own trust circle on the floor to play two truths and a lie while she and McGonagall strolled around and supervised, the latter with precious little enthusiasm for the task.

"This seems a bit pointless, doesn't it?" said James in an undertone to Booth, who was sitting on the floor beside him, while the rest of the team tried to decide if Jennifer Costner really had been born in North Carolina, as she claimed.

"Being pointless is Vector's whole thing," she muttered back, then quickly glanced over her shoulder, tossing her long brown hair as she did so. "Just be glad that you're not stuck with her for half your classes." Booth took Dance and Drama, so she saw Vector quite a lot during the week.

"That bad?"

"It does exist!" Costner squeaked, while Edwin Edwards scoffed loudly. "You can Google it, Kill Devil Hills, go on—"

Booth ignored them both and leaned closer to James. "She plays favourites."

"And what? You're not one of them?"

"And don't you think I should be?"

"Dunno, I don't teach your classes."

"Well I should be," said Booth, with uncharacteristic bitterness. She was one of the most carefree people James knew, and certainly wasn't the type to hold a grudge. "But she decides who she likes on day one and she makes sure that everyone knows it, and she's fake as fuck."

"How d'you know she's fake?"

"Because nobody's that nice all the time."

James pretended to bristle. "I'm that nice all the time."

"That doesn't count—you weren't born like the rest of us, you were baked in the oven with sprinkles on top," said Beatrice, sending another glance in Vector's direction. "You can tell that McGonagall hates her, look."

James followed her gaze to McGonagall, who looked physically pained, watching Vector plop herself in the middle of Remus's circle and clasp Francesca Halliwell's hand between her own two paws, her glittery bangles tinkling like windchimes. McGonagall's lips were clamped together so tightly that they formed a straight line, and her nostrils were flaring, which was a sure sign that she was royally pissed off.

Nearby, Lily was listening to Grace Styles talk with rapt attentiveness, so there wasn't any chance of James catching her eye.

"Minnie looks angry," he decided aloud, turning back to the circle.

"Of course she's angry, we're supposed to be rehearsing instead of wasting time on this crap," Booth replied, then piped up loudly with, "the second one's the lie, by the way."

Several heads in the circle turned in her direction.

"How do you know?" said Edwards, who was taking the game too seriously, to the surprise of nobody.

"Because I've been to Jenn's house, I've seen her Cole Sprouse shrine for myself," Booth explained, gesturing to Costner. "Plus, her parents are American, with the accent and everything, so—"

"Yes, but that doesn't prove that she's from North Carolina specifically, there are forty-nine other states," Edwards interjected. He fixed Costner with a beady glare. "What are your political leanings, then? Liberal or conservative?"

Costner, who was a vocal leftie, pulled a face. "What?"

"Well, statistically—"

"Coming from a red state doesn't automatically make you a Tory, you know," James interjected.

"What's a red state?" said McNamee.

"Oh my god," Wendy Wilde groaned aloud.

"Beatrice is right, I was lying about Disney," said Costner, looking at Edwards like he had two heads, two mouths, and chronic halitosis in both of them. "I've only been to four of the resorts, not six."

"Let's just move on, yeah?" suggested Eddie Bones.

"I'll go next, I've already got mine ready," Booth offered. She adjusted herself where she sat by tucking her legs beneath her bottom. "Okay, number one, I hold grade 7 in piano, number two, I've won two regional medals in long distance running and number three, I've been training as a ballet dancer since I was four. You already know so you're not allowed to answer," she added, and thumped James's arm.

James did not, in fact, have a clue what Booth was talking about.

Aside from the ballet thing, obviously. She was constantly bringing that up.

Then again, she'd always talked a lot when they used to hang out together at the skatepark, but James had only listened to about a quarter of what she was saying. If she believed that he was party to certain details of her life, it was probably because she had shared them with him at some point.

He'd become a much better listener since he was fourteen.

At least, he hoped he had.

"We can prove the piano thing right or wrong right now," said Edwards, jerking his head to the piano that sat near the choir steps. "Go and play something."

"No," said Booth.

"Why not?"

"Because that would make it easier for you to guess which would totally defeat the purpose of the game?"

Edwards let out his affected, condescending little laugh. "But why would you refuse to play if you could play?"

"Er, for the reason I just explained?"

"What's she supposed to do, Edwin, bloody pirouette her way over there while she's at it?" said Wendy.

"And how's she supposed to explain to everyone else if she gets up and randomly starts playing piano?" added Bones.

"Well then, do you have a picture of your medals?" Edwards asked, changing tack.

"Of course I do, but I'm not showing you—"

"—like he doesn't even know how this game works—" Costner was muttering to Kelani Lim.

"This game is fucking stupid," McNamee complained.

"Oh my god," Wendy groaned again, her face in her hands.

The whole thing was an unmitigated disaster and Vector deserved to have her decision-making privileges revoked, but Edwin Edwards merely pressed along, undaunted and obnoxious, like a much less entertaining Frasier, which James, his father and Sirius liked to binge watch on Prime on Sunday evenings. "So how did you get your grade 7 in piano?"

Booth didn't even blink. "I had an exam in Enfield."

"Arranged by the school?"

"Nah, you can book them through the ABRSM online. I took mine in February."

"What's the ABR—"

"Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music," Booth interrupted, sounding supremely bored. "Next question?"

"I've got a question," said James to Edwards. "Do you like tossed salads and scrambled eggs?"

"Quite stylish," muttered Bones, grinning.

Bones might have been a legend among men for getting the reference, but everyone else in the circle was visibly confused by the question, particularly Edwards, whose narrow nose was all scrunched up like a discarded Quality Street wrapper.

"I...don't?" he answered, frowning. "What—"

"Oh my god!" cried Wendy, her head snapping up, pigtails flying. "Can we just stop with this? Please? Obviously number two is the lie—"

"Nope!" Beatrice chirped.

Wendy's forehead wrinkled. "What?"

"One was the lie, I can't play the piano."

"We're all supposed to get a chance to guess, you know!" Edwards protested.

"Wait, really?" James ignored him and addressed Booth. "I would have bet money that that one was true."

"Why?"

"Because you're into all that musical stuff?"

"I'm into singing, that doesn't mean I can play instruments."

"So how did you know all that stuff about exams and—"

"Because Lily has grade 7 in piano and I went with her to Enfield when she had her exam," said Booth serenely. She smiled at him—a wide, self-satisfied, mischievous kind of smile—as if she'd just handed him a very large treat, which she knew she had, even if James couldn't bloody well admit it to her face. "Why? Didn't you know?"

James craned his head to look at Lily, who was tugging her cuff sleeve around her wrist while she listened to whatever Sujith Hansraj was talking about. Her team appeared to have settled into a far more harmonious rhythm than team C, which was unsurprising, even with Sirius there to potentially ruffle feathers. She was probably doing her job and leading the conversation as James should have been. If a pompous prat like Edwin Edwards had tried to usurp her, she would have cut him down to size with a single, well-placed look.

Of course she was a piano prodigy. There was nothing she couldn't do.

It was ridiculous, the way James's heart began to race whenever someone threw him a table scrap of information about her life.

"I didn't know that," he told Booth, as if he didn't care. "Cool."

The manufactured "fun" continued into the hour, with Vector instructing the teams to play Werewolf, ask each other a series of bland personality questions, and pair up to hone their improv skills with a variety of random items that she'd brought in a cardboard box from home. James was forced to riff with Jenn Costner over a rubber mixing bowl for an awkward sixty seconds, all the while watching Lily and Sirius perform some back-and-forth with a silk scarf that James couldn't hear a word of, but which must have been hilarious, because the rest of their team was cracking up.

Finally, Vector announced that they were ending their afternoon of bonding with trust falls, which was even worse, because James then had to navigate the issue of catching a bunch of girls from behind without accidentally brushing their boobs, not to mention dealing with Edwards, who whined and bleated about being in pain whenever it was his turn to be the catcher.

"You fell too hard!" he accused, shoving James away from him and pressing his fist to his neck. "You could have crushed my collarbone, you idiot!"

As if James could control the speed at which he fell.

"I didn't mean—" he started, but Edwards hurried away to pair up with Booth and James was left with Evan McNamee, who cracked his chewing gum loudly and laughed at Edwards's retreating back.

"How did Edwards manage to get with someone like Megan Reece in the first place?" he scoffed derisively. "The state of him, like."

"Because being a pretentious prick doesn't make you a creep, I guess," James muttered in response. He gestured for McNamee to stand on the spot that Edwards had just vacated and held his arms aloft. "Let's just get this over with, yeah?"

McNamee shrugged, cracked his gum, spun around on his heel, crossed his hands over his chest, let himself fall backwards, towards James……

...and hit the floor with a hefty thump, his bellow of pain ringing hilariously in every corner of their small auditorium.

"Evan!" cried Wendy, and threw herself on her knees beside him.

"Oh no," James idly remarked, admiring his cuticles.

"Potter!" McGonagall shrieked, her voice a fatal whip-crack through the rabble. James looked up at her at once. "What exactly do you think you're playing at?!"

She was standing with Remus's group, next to Isabella Marks, and almost looked relieved to have something to yell about.

"It was an accident, Miss!" James called out, keeping his voice cheerful. The best way to appear innocent was to act like one had already been acquitted of guilt. "I tripped when I was trying to catch him."

"You fucking did not!" McNamee protested from the floor.

"Language, McNamee," McGonagall warned, but her sharp eyes had narrowed on James's face.

She knew he was full of shit.

"Sorry, Miss," he added, and clasped his hands together behind his back. "Won't happen again!"

"No, it won't," said McGonagall darkly. "That's as good a sign as any that we're done for the day—everybody, go and get your things, and we'll see you all back here tomorrow."

There was a sudden scramble of legs and voices as people broke from their teams to rejoin their mates and grab their school bags, but McNamee, who was red in the face—because he was in pain or because half the room was laughing at him, James couldn't tell—climbed to his feet and immediately blocked James's path.

"That wasn't an accident, Potter,'' he snarled, balling his big, stupid, rugby-playing ham hands into fists.

"Neither was you sending Evans a picture of your knob on Facebook," James retorted, pairing the accusation with a pleasant smile. "Was it now?"

McNamee's big, stupid, silver spoon-fed ham face contorted in disgust. "I didn't know she was with you at the time, alright?"

"She wasn't—"

"Fuck off, Potter," McNamee spat, and shoved past him to get to his mates like he was hoping to break James's collarbone with his shoulder, which he didn't, and James wouldn't have cared if he'd managed it, because Lily was watching them both and her face broke into the biggest, most core-shattering smile he'd ever seen the very second she caught his gaze.

"Thank you," she mouthed at him.

He grinned widely back, and would have given her a thumbs-up if McGonagall didn't have her eye on him.

It hardly mattered, though.

He'd take his victories wherever he could.

Act 6, Scene 3

James Potter's bedroom

Unsurprisingly, McGonagall took charge of Tuesday's rehearsal and proved herself far more effective than Vector. Right away, she put everyone into an assigned seat and started a complete readthrough of the play, which they couldn't finish in one afternoon because people kept struggling to understand what their lines meant. Despite several interruptions, McGonagall made her explanations and answered every question with admirable patience, prompting James to silently decide that she was an absolute legend.

He felt less fond of her when she took the main cast aside and instructed each of them to write a one-page essay on the personalities and motives of the character they were playing, to be finished and handed in within a week. McGonagall believed that it would help them to understand their roles better, though it seemed pointless to James, who had already decided that Friar Laurence was simply a less cool hybrid of Remus and his dad.

At Remus's suggestion, Wednesday evening saw James and his mates congregating in his bedroom to practice lines and finish their essays together. James and Remus had taken the bed, while Sirius had draped himself over the computer chair like a swan that was elegantly dying. They were reading through Act 3, Scene 3, which Sirius took umbrage with because his character had been killed two scenes earlier.

"I'm bored," he announced, interrupting them for the fifth time in ten minutes.

"I don't care," said James. "What simpleness is this! I come, I come!"

"Something Evans is never going to hear you say," Sirius retorted.

James didn't look up from his book. "What part of the play is that line from?"

"It's obviously not from the play."

"Then nobody fucking cares, shut up."

"You hear this, Pete?" scoffed Sirius. "That's pre-Evans confidence, that is. One measly little coffee and he thinks he's fucking Casanova."

James picked up Stanley, his stuffed monkey, flung it at Sirius and flipped to the next page in his book. "Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What's your will?"

"Let me come in," read Peter in an unnecessary falsetto. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with the play in his lap, filling in for the role of Nurse, having been lured to the house with promises of pizza and roped in to read lines. The grease stain from the 12 inch Hawaiian he'd devoured by himself was smeared across his t-shirt. "And you shall know my errand. I come from Lady Juliet."

"Welcome then," read James, bursting from the effort of not laughing at his friend's voice, and Peter mimed opening a door and poking his head through.

"Wow, Nurse, thou hast suddenly become markedly less attractive," said Remus, grinning slyly.

"Piss off, Remus," Peter grumbled. "O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar, where is my lady's lord, where's Romeo?"

"There on the ground," said James, pointing at an empty water bottle that he'd failed to throw into his wastepaper basket at the weekend, "with his own tears made drunk."

"O, he is even in my mistress' case," read Peter, also pointing at the water bottle. "Just in her case! O woeful sympathy! Piteous predicament! Even so lies she, blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering—"

"Like a whale," said Sirius under his breath.

"Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man. For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand. Why should you fall into so deep an O?"

Remus hastily cleared his throat. "Nurse!"

"Ah sir! ah sir!" Peter squeaked. To his credit, he was really getting into the performance. "Well, death's the end of all."

"Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her?" Remus recited. "Doth she not think me an old murderer, now I have stain'd the childhood of our joy—"

"What does 'childhood of our joy' mean?" Peter interrupted.

"Well, they've only just been married," James explained, "so they've not had a chance to be happy for very long."

"It means that Romeo and Juliet have only just boned and already he's killing her cousins," added Sirius.

"Because her cousin killed you first, right?"

"Yes, Peter, because her cousin killed me, Sirius Black, a character in the play."

"Don't be so pedantic," Remus scolded, but he sounded pretty disengaged from his surroundings, hunched on James's bed with his eyes shut tight, trying to quote his lines from memory. "With blood removed from li—no." His eyes flew open and quickly scanned his book. "With blood removed but little from her own. I can never get that line right."

"It's because you keep expecting to get it wrong, so you're thinking about it," said James.

"So how do I stop thinking about it?"

James shrugged. "Dunno, I'm not a psychologist."

"But you study Psychology."

"Not this specific problem, Pete."

"Just read from the book when you know it's coming up instead of trying to learn everything off by heart in the first week," suggested Sirius. "Eventually, you'll get used to it and you won't need the book to read it properly."

"And what if I never read it properly?" said Remus. "What if I mix up the words every time?"

"Then you mix up the words, big whoop."

"Yeah, big whoop," James chimed in, "it's not like there'll be a bunch of Shakespeare scholars sitting in the audience of a school play, trying to pick out mistakes. Nobody's gonna notice."

"Won't it be weird if that does end up happening?" said Peter, so Sirius whacked him over the head with a limp and unwilling Stanley. "Oi!"

"It won't," said James firmly, levelling a glare at Sirius. "And stop using my monkey to hit people."

"So you can do it, but I can't?"

"He's my monkey."

"Exactly what age are you, twelve?"

"Can we play FIFA now?" asked Peter.

"No," replied James and Sirius in unison, just as Remus said, "Actually, that reminds me."

James had been contemplating taking a dive off the bed to grab Stanley, but looked at Remus instead. "Reminds you of what?"

"That I can't go to football on Friday night," he said, rubbing the side of his nose and staring at James's plain red duvet as if it was the most fascinating feat of artistry in the world. "Because, er, I'm hanging out with Lily instead."

Peter let out a low, scandalised gasp like he was watching The Young and the Restless, or some other shit melodrama of that ilk, but James could not comment because a ghost had just appeared out of nowhere, karate-chopped his vocal chords and kicked him in the stomach.

"It's not a romantic hangout," Remus clarified.

"We didn't think it was," said Sirius.

"Yeah, 'course we don't," Peter seconded, as if he wasn't wishing for some popcorn to munch on while he watched all the drama unfold. "Why are you hanging out with her?"

"It's…y'know." Remus gestured over his shoulder. "McGonagall."

"She told them that they had to work on their chemistry," James provided.

He felt fine, actually. Totally fine. As fine as a man could be as he was being squeezed through the darkly putrid intestines of Monstro the whale.

Remus was not interested in Lily—not in that way—and James might not have known Lily's feelings, but he did know that she liked him enough to buy him coffee.

Nobody could take that caramel latte away from him.

He had to remember that, and stop acting like a wounded snot whenever Lily and Remus spent time together, which they were inevitably going to do.

"Yeah. No. Yeah," Remus continued. "We're going bowling at Pinball." Pinball was a retro arcade on the other side of town that took two buses and a five-minute walk to get to unless one had a car, which wouldn't be the case for James until Christmas. "Just for an hour or two. We only arranged it this afternoon."

"More physics than chemistry, then," Peter quipped. "Because bowling—"

"Yeah, Pete, we get it," said Sirius, unfurling from the chair. He tossed Stanley on the bed and nudged Peter with his toe. "Get up, I'll play FIFA with you."

Peter blinked up at him. "But—"

"These two need to have a cry and hug it out," Sirius explained, gesturing between James and Remus, "and I don't fancy being in the room when it happens. Come on."

Peter gripped the edge of James's dresser to haul himself to his feet and followed Sirius out of the room, begging him to relinquish his permanent dibs on Manchester United for just one evening. That left James and Remus alone on either end of the bed, the latter propped up by every pillow in the room because James routinely made a point of steering his friend to the most comfortable spot available whenever he came over, but he did so with guile and stealth, so Remus never noticed.

"Are you okay?" Remus asked, offering the question with a tentative sort of concern.

Evidently, James's feelings were much easier to discern than his ninja-like pillow machinations.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm totally fine."

"Because we're not—you know that we're just friends, right?" Remus hurriedly continued. His cheeks were starting to redden, as they always did when he was stressed or under pressure. "We're just spending time together as friends."

"Yeah, no, I do know that. It's fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Well—well no, okay?" James admitted, wishing that he could flush himself down the toilet. "I think it's a bit weird, but only because you'll have to kiss her and I don't like thinking about anyone kissing her and especially not a mate, and yeah, I'm definitely a bit jealous because I'd give my right kidney to spend time alone with her, but that's a me problem, I'd be jealous of anyone, it's got nothing to do with you or with our friendship."

A hint of a smile graced Remus's thin, freckled face. "Not the left kidney?"

"I'm fonder of the left one."

Remus let out a soft chuckle and shifted where he sat, catching his dislodged book before it could slide to the floor. "I think your kidney is safe for now, at least. Aren't you two like—you've got your own thing going on now, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose." James scratched the back of his ear. "I dunno, to be honest. She told me that she likes me, but in the way you'd like a mate, y'know? Not in the way that I like her."

"She said that? That she only likes you as a friend?"

"No, but—but she didn't exactly use the words 'I like you' either."

"So what did she say?"

"That she thinks I'm very nice," he recited, frowning to himself at the recollection, even though the memory of her words conjured up warm and mushy feelings, "that she thinks I'm unfairly good at everything, that she thinks I'm way too tall—"

"Is that why you were going on about that last week?"

"Um, yeah?"

"God," Remus exhaled, laughing with it. "You can really feel the hatred coursing through her veins, can't you?"

"Shut up," James muttered, shamefaced, and threw Stanley at him.

Remus caught him and chucked him back, grinning. "She told me that she thinks you're hilarious."

The angels above broke into song and James refrained from punching his fist straight into the air. "She did?"

"Yeah, she did—something about tampons in a backpack, but apparently I 'had to have been there' to get it."

"She's right, you would have had to be there," he said, beaming like a lovestruck buffoon, "and honestly, don't worry about me because I really don't have a problem with you hanging out with her, I'm just nuts."

"I'd understand it if you did have a problem—"

"I honestly don't."

"Are you sure? Really sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure, and I trust you, so don't let yourself get stressed over it."

"Well, good," Remus sighed, deflating into the pillows, "because I'm losing count of the things that are stressing me out right now."

Now that he thought of it, James realised that Remus wasn't looking all that great. There were dark, sleepless circles beneath his light brown eyes, and a definite slump to his shoulders—neither of which had been there earlier in the week.

A familiar little tremor of anxiety shuddered its unmerry way along his spine.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, and tapped his own chest with three fingers, where his heart was. "Not—"

"No," said Remus at once, and emphatically, waving the suggestion away. "No, nothing like that, I promise, just—has Vector talked to you about getting extra help with your lines?"

"No, why?"

"Because she called me over after rehearsals yesterday and said that I could come to her if I needed any additional coaching, which was nice of her, I suppose, but the way she said it was like—it was like she already thinks that I need additional coaching."

That made absolutely no sense to James, because Remus had easily been one of the best performers during the readthrough. He'd stumbled over a couple of sentences, but so had everybody else, so that was no big deal. McGonagall had even complimented his "crystal clear" enunciation, and she hadn't needed to explain a single line of dialogue to him.

"I'm sure she doesn't think that," he offered. "Maybe she can tell that you're nervous, and that's why she said it?"

"Maybe," Remus echoed. He shrugged and picked at the toe of his sock. "Or maybe she can tell that I'm all wrong for the part?"

"You're not all wrong for the part, McGonagall never would have cast you if she thought that you couldn't do it."

"McGonagall might just be biased."

"Well, she'd be really unprofessional if she was biased, and you know she'd kick your arse for even suggesting that she was unprofessional," James grandly retorted, chin jutting out, "ergo, you are wrong."

His unnecessary rigor worked, and a smile broke through Remus's gloom.

"Alright, then," he agreed, albeit somewhat listlessly. "I'll be wrong."

"For once."

"For once."

"D'you wanna go to Sirius's room and play FIFA? Might be good to take a break from this for a bit."

"Yeah, I do, I'm getting sick of saying 'thou.'" Remus pushed himself away from the mountain of pillows at his back and stood up, straightening the crumpled front of his t-shirt. "But do you think I could come over while Sirius is at work on Saturday? Just to go over our scenes?"

James followed suit and jumped to his feet. "You don't have to ask, just come over."

"Well, just in case you had plans—"

"Sirius ruined having plans when he got a job at weekends. It's fine," James assured him. "I was going to hang around here anyway, and I bet Mum will read all the other parts if we need it."

"Are you sure she wouldn't mind?"

"Oh, please," James drawled, and slung his arm around his friend's shoulders, steering him towards his bedroom door, "the woman already thinks she's Audrey Hepburn."

"I bet the hard part will be getting her to stop."

"You're telling me."

Act 6, Scene 4

the sixth form common room

The best thing about Thursdays was that James's only two classes were scheduled between the hours of 10 a.m. and noon, which meant that he was free as a bird for the rest of the day.

The downside of that was that his mates still had classes, and because he had to be back for rehearsals later, it meant that James couldn't hang out with them, nor could he go home to spend eight solid hours playing The Witcher 3 and romancing Triss just because she was ginger, as he normally would have done. The best he could do was wait around for Sirius to finish Classical Civ and see if he'd want to do something in town for an hour before he had to go back to class.

At least, James thought that waiting around was a downside until shortly after midday, when Lily Evans walked into the common room, feet dragging, and plopped down on the sofa beside him, slinging her backpack on the floor like it had personally offended her spine.

"I'm glad you're here," she told him. "I have Law first thing and nothing else on Thursdays, I'm not in the mood to study and it's boring as arse waiting around here by myself all morning."

She didn't look particularly happy, slumped on the sofa with her long legs stretched out in front of her, staring at her own two feet while she pointed her toes back and forth, like there was a weight James couldn't see that was pressing her down into the cushions.

"Where's Booth and Macdonald?" he asked her.

"Bea goes home to practice after Photography on Thursdays and Mary's out sick," said Lily to her shoes. "Ear infection."

"Ouch."

"I know, I feel really bad for her."

"Why don't you go home and come back for rehearsal, if you're bored?"

"Because," she breathed, looking up at him, "if I go home now I'll have to do the dishes because it was my mum's turn last night and she forgot, and I would do anything—even sit around here with nothing to do for six hours—to get out of doing the dishes."

"Even washing dishes has to be better than sitting around here all day."

"Er, no, because I can ask you to amuse me here and I can't do that at home, can I?"

James teetered for a moment between you could invite me to your house and you could ask me for my number before settling on the infinitely less daring, "Are you okay, Evans?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she sighed, smoothing down the front of her pleated school skirt, "I got my period last night so I'm all blergh."

"Oh, right. Bugger."

"And I'm in a mood because I got soaked walking in this morning," she tacked on. They'd been hit with an unexpected downpour right after breakfast.

"Oh yeah, so did I. Think my socks might still be wet, actually."

"You'd never be able to tell, your hair's still all...springy." She raised her hands to either side of her head and motioned outwards, fingers splayed. "What do you use to make it look like that, anyway?"

"Nothing, this is just what it looks like."

She let out a quick, disbelieving laugh. "No it isn't."

"Yes it is."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. There's pictures of me from when I was like, four or five, and my hair looks just like this," he said, pointing at his own head. "My dad's hair is the same, except he gels his down in the morning, but it winds up sticking out by the end of the day anyway."

"Bea and Mary and I have been trying to figure out what you're doing with your hair for ages and it turns out it's just genetics," she said, and laughed again, shorter and softer this time. "Huh."

"I mean, I wash it in the shower, if that counts?"

"Well, it's really nice, whatever you're doing," she informed him. "I wish my hair could look that good all the time, but it's so thick that it's a pain to do anything special with it."

As she spoke, she started threading her fingers through her own long locks, and her claim was so totally ludicrous that James almost laughed out loud. Lily's hair always looked fantastic. It was a glorious mane of silky, burnished copper that wouldn't have looked out of place in a shampoo advert, and as the son of a haircare mogul who had grown up around his fair share of shampoo adverts, he felt more qualified than most to make that call.

"Mum says that about hers, but I think it always looks perfect," he told her, hoping that she'd take the implied compliment as it was intended, then threw caution to the wind anyway, "and so does yours, so don't even."

"Don't even what?"

"Dig for compliments."

Her mouth dropped open, but very clearly in jest. "Me digging for compliments?"

"I can practically see the shovel in your hands."

"Cheeky git," she cheerfully accused.

"Compliment hunter."

"I'm in an emotionally fraught state on account of my vengeful womb, so I'm entitled to look for compliments."

"Yeah, and I just gave you one."

"You gave me half of one and you were mostly complimenting your mum," Lily retorted, but she was brightening up, smiling—smiling because he'd made her smile. He'd done that.

Between that, and the fact that she liked his hair, that she was glad to see him, that she thought he was hilarious, and that he was growing less and less nervous with every passing conversation, there wasn't a sun-drenched paradise on earth that could have made James feel any warmer.

"You've never met my mum," he countered. "She's very beautiful."

"I'm sure."

"I take after her."

She snorted, fighting another smile. "Now who's digging for compliments?"

"I think it's my turn to get one, actually."

"I just said that I liked your hair!"

"Then I said that I liked yours!"

"Half-said," Lily rebutted, "and that's not—"

"Lily?"

She and James both twisted in their seats at the sound of her name, and James found himself looking up at Severus Snape, who had sneaked up on them and was gripping the back of the sofa with both hands, his knuckles white, lips curled into a repulsed kind of sneer, staring down at Lily with beetle black eyes that practically bulged from their sockets.

And like a popped balloon, whatever modicum of cheer that James had managed to eke out from within her vanished in the blink of an eye.

"No, Sev," she told him. "I already told you no."

The difference in her voice was painfully audible, because she suddenly sounded exhausted and she had just been cheering up. 

"But I really need to talk to you today."

"I don't want to talk, I've already told you—"

"It will only take five minutes," he pressed on, his Adam's apple bobbing in his neck. "I just need five minutes, that's all—"

"Please tell me that he isn't doing this here," Lily whispered, looking desperately to James, as if he could have waved a wand and made Snape go away.

James wished that he could.

More than that, James wished that he could stand up and knock Snape's lights out, but last year had taught him all he needed to know about making those kinds of mistakes. If Lily was intent upon ignoring him, James could only follow her example.

"Really, Lily?" Snape whimpered. "You're going to talk about me as if I'm not even here?"

"I think maybe you should go home," James suggested.

"For god's sake, Lily, it's been weeks!" Snape's voice was starting to get louder, deep cracks forming beneath a paper thin veneer of strangled restraint. "I've waited weeks and you won't even look at me!"

"Yeah, I'm going," she decided aloud. "I'll just see you later at rehears—"

"What else am I supposed to do when you won't talk to me?!" Snape cried. "My calls aren't going through, you won't answer my texts, you won't answer my emails—"

Suddenly, the reason behind Lily changing her number over the summer became abundantly clear to James.

"I know that I upset you," he continued. His voice was inescapably shrill now, loud enough that it had reached every gossip-hungry student in the room. They had attracted a sizeable audience. "I know I've upset you and I've tried so hard—I've told you how sorry I am and now you've—what, this?" He pointed at James as if he was levelling him with a hex. "This is the level you've stooped to?"

Lily, who had scooped up her backpack from the floor and was struggling to loop her right arm through the strap, rose to her feet and yanked the strap onto her shoulder.

"I think you were right about the dishes, you know," she told James. "If I do them today, I can make Mum do them twice—"

"This is cruel, Lily!" With a spidery little twitch, Snape hurried around the sofa and flung himself in her path. "What, are you going to tell me that you're with him now? You think I'm going to believe that you changed your mind all of a sudden?"

"Get out of my way, Sev, please—"

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that this is real?"

"That isn't any of your business."

"None of my—" He let out a sneering, humourless laugh, repulsion etched across his face. "This is pathetic, you know that? Pathetic. I thought you were better than this."

That was more than enough for James, who also sprang to his feet, placing himself directly between Snape and Lily.

"She said she doesn't want to talk to you," he informed Snape, careful to keep his voice as calm as possible. "So maybe you should just leave, yeah?"

"This has nothing to do with you, Potter," Snape hissed.

"I think it does have something to do with me when she's standing here telling you that she doesn't want to talk to you and you just—"

"I bet he was an easy target, wasn't he?" Snape crowed, pairing the accusation with a nasty little laugh. "I shouldn't be surprised, should I? Stupid people are so easy to manipulate."

"I'm not standing here and listening to this," Lily muttered through gritted teeth, and made to walk off, but Snape took a step to the left and stuck out his arm to keep her from leaving, though his eyes hadn't moved from James's face.

"She hates you, Potter," he spat, his lip curling in cold satisfaction. "Did you know that?"

"Severus," said Lily warningly.

"And this...this thing, between you and her?" He gestured wildly between them with one finger. "It's not real. None of it is real. You do know that, don't you? Surely you can't be that thick?"

"Sev, I'm serious—"

"This is just a game, she's told me that she hates you," Snape continued, gleeful in his malice. "This is all for my benefit, she's doing this to hurt me and you're just the idiot"—he shoved hard at James's chest, and might have sent him stumbling if James hadn't been anticipating it, if he hadn't planted his feet—"who fell for her little game, aren't you?"

The urge to take a swing at his nasty little face was overwhelming, but James wasn't about to be goaded. Not in front of Lily. Letting Evan McNamee drop to the ground was one thing, but he knew how much it would upset her if he let things devolve into a fight.

"Don't push me, Snape," he warned him instead.

"I'll push you if I want," said Snape, and shoved him again. This time, his hand was balled into a fist, and his bony knuckles collided with James's collarbone. "It's not like you'll retaliate without your three little lackeys to back you up."

"We should go," said Lily urgently, her eyes on James.

"Well, two little lackeys, really," Snape continued.

"Please."

"We all know that Pettigrew's pathetic—"

"We should go now," Lily implored. "James, really—"

"And who knows how long your junkie mate Lupin has left, so maybe it's just the one—"

Like a machine springing to life and fuelled entirely by instinct, James heard the strangest noise coming from his own mouth, felt his body move, surging forwards, blood pounding in his ears, arms lifting, ready to tear Snape limb from limb like the pathetic little creature that he was, but then Lily was right in front of him and her hand was on his chest, covering the precise spot where Snape had pushed him.

"Don't," she said quietly, though she didn't seem disappointed, just concerned. "You'll only be giving him what he wants."

But Remus, James wanted to say. He went for Remus. He went for Remus and that can't be allowed to happen, it just CAN'T.

But he could feel the heat of her skin through the fabric of his shirt, enveloping his rapidly increasing pulse like a much needed balm, and a tinny little voice in the back of his head was repeating words like stupid and pointless and be the bigger person, which sucked, because being the bigger person wasn't nearly as satisfying as letting people have what they deserved.

Evolve or die. That was a quote from somewhere.

Maybe they'd sack him from the play, if he hit Snape. And Remus wasn't feeling so good about his performance. He was counting on James to help him with his scenes.

It wouldn't do Remus any good, if he hit Snape.

Lily smelled like coconut, this close up.

"We can go," he agreed, though he had to wrench the words from a part of his throat that fought them.

She let her hand slide from his chest, the ghost of a half-formed smile flitting briefly across her face, and turned around without another word for the cretin who'd been fool enough to drive away her friendship. James followed her, shunting Snape aside with his shoulder. The smaller boy staggered backwards and clutched his hands to his stomach as if he'd been punched, his long, matted hair flying in front of his eyes.

"What are you even doing with him?!" he snarled.

Lily ignored him and walked on.

"You'll talk to him but you won't talk to me?" he called after her in disgust. "You'll talk to Sophie Chisholm, but you won't talk to me?!"

And James didn't know who Sophie Chisholm was, had never heard her name, couldn't have guessed what she might have meant to Lily or what crime she had committed for Snape to so confidently qualify her as something worse than himself...but whoever she was and whatever she'd done, that was the effort that finally got the reaction he wanted, because Lily spun on her heel and marched her way back to Snape, stopping inches away from the end of his greasy, snivelling nose.

"Don't you ever," she warned, in a voice that was deathly low, a simmering venom, "mention Sophie to me again."

Snape seemed to flail where he stood, his impotent fury crumbling on the spot. "I don't—"

"Don't say her name to me, don't even think her name, not now, not ever, not ever. Do you understand?"

"Lily—"

"Do you understand? Yes or no?"

James had thought—more fool him—that he'd seen her angry before, that any of his stupid, childish antics had ever been enough to properly rouse her temper, but he'd been dead wrong, because she was truly angry now, and that anger was bigger than Snape's, ferociously big, burning up the air around them both and swallowing his petty little tantrum in a single, vicious bite. Snape's whole body had sagged beneath her gaze, his contorted features melting into a simpering, servile expression that even James would have considered beneath his dignity, much as he adored Lily too.

"I didn't mean—" Snape started, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. "Lily, I'm sorry."

"I don't care if you're sorry."

"Lily, please," he mournfully implored. "I just wanted—"

"I don't care what you wanted. Who I talk to is none of your business," she bulldozed over him, breaking through his feeble platitudes like she was kicking down a door. "What I do is none of your business. There's not a single scrap of any part of my life that has anything to do with you now because we're not friends, Severus, we're not friends and that was all your fault and that is never going to change, not ever, so for god's sake just leave me alone!"

The diatribe had started low and ended shrill, painfully shrill, and Lily slammed into Snape's shoulder as she pushed him aside to escape him, leaving behind a gaping, stunned-silent audience that was eerily reminiscent of the fight she'd had with James a year earlier.

Except this was worse. It was so much worse.

James shouldered his bag and hurried after her without a backwards glance for Snape, who was rooted to the spot like a wilting willow. He was the common room's problem now; they could laugh and point and pull him apart like wild dogs, for all James cared. Whatever beef he'd ever had with Snape seemed utterly pointless in the face of his desire to get to Lily and make sure that she was okay.

He found her in the corridor outside, paused at a corner with her hand braced against the wall, staring without seeing at a noticeboard covered with Childline posters and yellowing school announcements.

"Are you alright?" he asked when he drew close to her, unsure of what else he was meant to say in this situation.

She jumped at the sound of his voice, swiping furiously at her cheek with the back of her hand. "I'm fine."

It was clear that she was anything but fine. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"I don't really know what happened in there—"

"Nothing. It was nothing." She swiped at her face again. "Just Severus being Severus. I think I will do those dishes after all."

"If you want to, like, talk about it or anything—"

"No, it's fine. Really, I promise, I'm absolutely fine," she lied, red-faced and swaying on the spot with restless energy, like she was desperate to find an escape route, "I'm going to go home, I think. I'll see you at rehearsals."

"Yeah, um, alright," he agreed, and she scuttled away from him with an audible sniff, leaving him feeling like the most useless, incompetent arsehole in the entire world.

He should have comforted her, made her feel better.

He should have had something better to offer her than stupid, empty words that served no purpose.

But then she stopped walking and swung around to face him, snapping her heels together with a Dorothy-worthy click.

"Have you eaten yet?" she asked.

"Um," said James, blinking rapidly. "What?"

"I'm hungry. Really hungry," she explained, in a voice that wasn't her own, but entrenched in something bitter, firing brisk words in his direction like they were jagged little stones, but her eyes were distinctly watery, and James recognised a hurt in her that had nowhere else to go but further in. "What about you? Are you hungry?"

He had polished off two BLT sandwiches and a chunky KitKat about five minutes before she'd walked into the common room and found him on the couch, but instinct told him to keep that to himself.

"I could...eat, I guess. Yeah," he said.

"Good. Great. We're going for lunch, then. We're going right now," she finished, and pivoted back around again, setting off down the corridor at high speed. "It's my turn to pay, come on."

Act 6, Scene 5

a diner

The OK Diner was a roadside establishment primarily intended for busy commuters, but it could be reached on foot by avoiding town and cutting through the woods that ran past the length of the football pitch at the back of the school. Multitudes of students had trodden a makeshift path through the forest floor over the years, relentless in their pursuit of greasy hot dogs and sundaes the size of boulders, marking trees and rocks with crude graffiti and littering their walk with spat-out wads of chewing gum along the way. Starting at the furthest goal post on the pitch, the path cut through the least dense part of the woods and ended in the diner's car park. James could probably trace the route with his eyes closed. He had walked that path at least a hundred times.

He just never would have believed that he could find himself walking it with Lily.

For the most part, their only conversation was the squelching of damp forest debris beneath their moving feet. Lily's sour mood remained for the entire duration of their journey, and the easy back and forth that she and James had discovered on their walk home from school on Friday did not resurface.

The funny thing was, though his Lily-specific anxieties often felt like a ball of tangled electrical cords—some of which were dangerously frayed and exposed, still plugged into the wall and liable to shock him at any moment—James couldn't find it in himself to fret about it.

On the contrary, he felt very calm.

He wasn't the problem, for once.

Snape was.

And Sophie. Whoever Sophie was.

James wasn't going to make the mistake of asking until she volunteered that information.

None of that made it any less terrible to see her so upset, but James at least had the comfort of knowing that he hadn't been the one to hurt her, that she wanted him around, that he stood a slim chance of making her feel better. If he could have had his own way, Lily Evans would be happy for every waking moment of every day, but as it wasn't possible for any person to be happy all the time, the least he could do was refrain from contributing to her melancholy.

The fidgeting started once they'd placed their orders.

They were waiting for their drinks to arrive—a strawberry shake for him and a Coke float for her—and in their oddly comfortable silence, Lily was staring out of the window at the cars that whizzed by outside while James was pretending not to notice Reshma Patel and whichever indistinguishable Stebbins twin she was friends with in the booth across from theirs, even though the giggling girls were blatantly whispering about them both.

He didn't like that they were whispering. There had always been gossip about him and Lily flying around the school and that had been entirely his fault for being an ostentatious boor; the last thing James needed now that he and Lily were spending time together was for one of them to start a rumour that they were legitimately dating, and for Lily to become so distressed when she heard it that she called off...whatever this was.

He didn't even know why they cared.

It was much easier, and much more pleasant, to keep his focus on her.

More specifically, he was focused on what she was doing, because she had started to fiddle with the button on the cuff of her blazer sleeve, twisting it back and forth like she was tuning an old fashioned radio, only to drop her hands to the table and drum her fingers on the surface before starting the whole process up again, mere seconds later. It was rhythmically restless, as if it kept occurring to her that she might accidentally tear the button off, but she couldn't quite fight against the compulsion.

The ring she wore held a little turquoise oval at the centre.

James wondered if, behind those long, loose waves of dark red hair, he would spy two turquoise studs she'd put in her ears that morning. Over the last two weeks, he'd noticed that she wore different coloured studs in her ears every day, and James imagined that she approached the process with the same deliberation and care that she applied to the stationary she arranged upon her desk. Often she wore a ring or bracelet in the same colour. Sometimes she even painted her nails to match. He had no idea if she'd ever hoped that anyone would notice—and she probably didn't—but he wished that he could tell her that he had, and that it regularly blew his mind to know that she had so many brilliant cogs whirring away in her head, that she treated him kindly when he hadn't deserved it, that she got out of bed in the morning and pondered over what colour studs to put into her ears, that she existed, that she was there, and that she'd deigned to let him speak to her at all.

"Your ring is pretty," he told her instead, which seemed safest.

"Is it? Mum gave it to me," she said absently, glancing in the direction of the serving hatch that looked in on the diner's kitchen. "I used to not wear jewellery at all but like, you get fed this stupid idea that if you're even remotely feminine or enjoy girly things that you shouldn't be taken seriously, and at some point I got pissed off and thought, screw it, I'll like what I like, you know?"

"Um..." She was finally meeting his gaze, and had gone from total silence to a sudden information dump. James struggled in vain to think of an appropriate response. "Yeah?"

"Sorry," she offered sheepishly.

"Sorry for what?"

"For serving you up my life story when you made one innocent comment about my ring?"

"You know that I've shoved tampons up my nose, remember?" James reminded her. "You don't need to apologise for oversharing. Plus," he added, as the thought struck him suddenly, "you're right about that stuff and you should say it."

"I know, but you can't go around assuming everyone agrees."

"Who doesn't agree?"

"Severus," she said glumly.

"Oh."

"He used to say that when I dressed nice, other boys were looking at me. That they were having thoughts," she added, her eyes fixed on the table's chrome surface. Her hand darted from her cuff sleeve to her napkin, which she picked up and didn't seem to know what to do with. "That I was degrading myself, because they wouldn't know—wouldn't understand how clever I was or how substantial I was, whatever that means. He was always coming up with that kind of bullshit. He always hated it when I tried to look pretty."

"That is bullshit," James agreed. "My mum wears skyscraper heels all the time and she never leaves the house without makeup and she's the smartest person I know aside from you. And believe me," he tacked on, "everybody who knows her knows that too."

She let out a feeble breath of a laugh, lashes lifting to peep at him through her hair. "Aside from me?"

"Well, you and McGonagall."

"I'm up there with McGonagall and your mother?"

"Actually, it goes you, then Mum, then McGonagall," he explained, indicating their respective levels of intelligence with a chopping motion in mid-air. "Or you, McGonagall, Mum. Either way, you've never grounded me or given me detention, so I'm totally biased in your favour."

"Would you say the same thing if they were both here?" she asked him slyly.

"Yeah, if I could hide behind you after."

Lily laughed again, dropping the napkin to push her hair back, and sure as James was living, there were two little turquoise gems glittering in her earlobes.

The warmth that swelled in his chest at knowing that he'd known of their existence was some kind of magic.

He might even have been stupid enough to comment on it, but they were interrupted by their waitress, who stopped by their booth to deliver their drinks and assure them that their food would be ready shortly.

Their food. His and Lily's.

He was sitting in a booth with Lily Evans, having lunch.

Two weeks ago, he'd fake-proposed to her in class in a bid to retrieve his pen and she'd kicked it across the floor like he and it were both diseased. Now, they were sitting in a diner together on a Thursday afternoon, preparing to tuck into a lunch that he'd insisted upon paying for because, despite her protestations, she couldn't deny that she had put him in McGonagall's good graces by changing his mind about the play. It was James's turn to do her a kindness.

He and Lily Evans had made a game out of being kind.

And in the spirit of kindness, a hearty attempt at cheering her up would be the least James could do.

"I love milkshakes," he told her once the waitress had gone. Normally he'd have made a small whirlpool in the centre of his drink with the straw, but the diner had switched to those useless, flimsy paper straws for the sake of the environment, so he was forced to resort to viciously stabbing it instead. "My mother says the first milkshake I ever had was when I was three and she and Dad had stopped in a McDonald's drive-thru—apparently I finished mine in under a minute, immediately started bawling and wouldn't stop until Mum gave me the rest of hers."

"Right," said Lily, looking down at her own drink with her brows raised. "So what you're saying is that you were spoiled from a very early age?"

"No, I'm saying that I was adorable from a very early age, and what makes you think I was crying just to get another milkshake?" He arranged his face into a disapproving frown that even Binns wouldn't have been convinced by, and Binns barely knew what day it was most of the time. He probably shuffled into the school on Sundays and taught Early Childhood Development to an empty classroom. "I could've had a brain freeze, you don't know."

"And another milkshake would have fixed that how?"

"White wine gets rid of red wine stains, doesn't it?"

Lily's lips twitched. "And?"

"And, my milkshake was chocolate, but Mum's was banana."

Her snort was immediate and pronounced. "What kind of logic is that, Potter?"

"Uh, the logic of a three year old, Judge Judgey?"

"What's your excuse now that you're seventeen?"

"Excuse me, would most seventeen year olds know useful wine facts, like how to get out stains and what makers to avoid, and how you should never wear cologne to a tasting?"

"No, because most seventeen year olds are necking room temperature Kopparbergs in their bedrooms while their parents aren't watching," she batted back easily. "Where did you get all this stuff about wine?"

"From my mother."

"Is she really into wine or something?"

"Nah, she abandoned me in a vineyard when I was a baby and I was raised by sommeliers," he said, with a perfectly straight face, and Lily threw her napkin at him. "Oi!"

"Stop it, you," she warned, attempting to frown through her smile.

"Stop what?"

"Making me bloody laugh."

"What's wrong with laughing?"

"Nothing, except I'm not here to laugh, am I? I'm here to—" She filled her lungs with a great big intake of air like she had something important to say, but the words she needed seemed to escape her in the moment. She gestured towards him with both hands instead, letting the rest of her sentence out on a breath. "You know."

"I know what?"

"I wanted—" She let her hands fall to the table. "How do I even start this?"

"Start what?"

"Potter."

He'd made a serious misstep somewhere, because she was looking at him like he was meant to understand what she was getting at, but James didn't have a bloody clue. The jitters that lived in the little nooks and crannies of his insides had begun their creeping little dance in the pit of his stomach. "Evans?"

"I wanted to—urgh. No," she said, apparently to herself. Her voice had dropped to a whisper that made her sound like a harried mother who was trying not to spoil Santa for her kids. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again and cleared her throat. "I wanted to apologise."

The look on her face was such a strained one, her words tight, like it had cost her quite a lot to say what she had just said.

And like an utter waste of space, James was still as clueless as before.

"Um," he said, sincerely despising himself. "Why?"

"Because I really owe you an apology?"

"For what?"

Her strain gave way to a frustrated sigh. "Don't you remember that fight we had in the common room last year?"

And just like that, the doom bells tolled.

More specifically, the song playing on the diner's speaker system switched to "Stop! In the Name of Love" by The Supremes, which was one of his mum's favourite songs, and James sincerely wished that Lily would stop in the name of love because there was no part of him that wanted to see her apologise for an argument that hadn't been her fault.

Well...maybe a tiny part of him wanted to see that.

A small, insignificant, barely relevant part of himself.

Half at most.

"Oh, that," he said, like it wasn't something he beat himself up over frequently, and dropped his ailing paper straw into his drink. "What about it?"

Lily, though, drew herself up in her seat, her jaw set and determined.

"Right," she said, firmly. "Well, the thing is—I mean, obviously the thing is that the whole thing was my fault in the first place and you—"

"No it wasn't!" James yelped.

His face was flaming all of a sudden, and he wasn't looking at Patel and Stebbins, but he could tell from the sudden quiet on their side of the diner that both of them were staring from their booth.

Lily didn't even spare the girls a glance. "Yes it was."

"No, it wasn't," he repeated, but at a more human pitch. "It was nothing, nothing at all, you so don't need to apologise for that."

"But I do, though."

"No, 'course you don't, you were just being a loyal friend, why should you have believed a word I was saying when—"

"But that's the thing," Lily interrupted, one hand gripping the edge of the table. "A big part of me did believe you, because I know Severus, and deep down I knew what he was like. This little voice in the back of my head was telling me that you were right and I just ignored it and let him believe that I hated you because I didn't want to hurt him. Because it was easier," she finished bitterly, disgust etched into every detail of her beautiful face. "And I feel shit about it, I have felt shit about it, and then Sev today just—well, you heard."

"Yeah," James admitted. "I heard."

"And it's not just that," she continued, "because there came a point after our fight when I should've told you that you were right about him and instead I just carried on pretending that I hated you and it was so fucking awkward because you'd try to talk to me and I wanted to talk to you and just I couldn't bring myself to do it, and I—" She stopped to quickly catch her breath. "And that wasn't even about you, just my stupid pride, because I don't just have to be better than everyone at everything, I have to be right about everything, too, and I hate that I just gave into that."

"I, er…" His insides were writhing. "I don't really know what to say to that, to be honest."

He hadn't been expecting this from her, which seemed stupid now, given their encounter with Snape, but James couldn't see anything bad or immoral in her loyalty to her former friend, could never have blamed her for it, and couldn't even begin to fathom the fact that he had agonised at length over earning the hatred of a girl who—from her own lips—hadn't ever hated him at all.

Moreover, James now knew that really didn't want this from her, because he would have done the exact same thing in defence of one of his mates. The exact same thing. Even if he had the exact same niggling doubts in his mind.

"It's fine," she sighed. "The truth is, I've been trying to figure out how to apologise to you for all of it for a really long time."

"Oh."

"I was going to, eventually, because I had to, right? Especially now that we—I couldn't have carried on doing what we've been doing without giving you that, because you deserve that, but Sev just kind of...forced my hand a bit."

"Right."

"So that's that," she finished.

"I guess I'm...glad you never hated me?" he offered.

She let out a feeble, airless laugh in response.

"You had every right to," he tacked on, attempting to cut through her gloom with some self-deprecation of his own.

"I really didn't."

"No, really, you did," he pressed on. "That argument we had—you were just sticking up for your friend who you'd known for years."

"Right," she said, in a tone that meant she clearly didn't agree with him, her eyes fixed on the sugar dispenser.

"I was nothing to you at the time."

"That doesn't mean that I shouldn't have at least heard you out."

"I wouldn't have heard you out, if it was Sirius we were talking about."

"Yeah, but Sirius is basically your brother. You've known him your whole life."

"Yeah, I have, and he's done some really shitty things," he pointed out. "So have I. Snape might have been lying about how that fight got started, and yeah, he's always been a shit, but I was a shit right back to him for ages. That was just how we were. I grew out of it eventually, but we were like—sometimes he'd go for me and sometimes I'd go for him, and I can't sit here now and pretend that I had the moral high ground because he—because he's the kind of person he is, or because he believes the things he believes, or whatever."

"Somebody else's bad behaviour is never vindication for yours," said Lily softly.

"Did you just make that up on the spot?"

She smiled rather abashedly at him. "It's something my mum always says."

"Well, your mum is dead right," said James firmly. The more listless she became, the more charged up he felt, like he was raring to gallop into battle on her behalf. What a prick Snape was, making her feel like this. It wasn't fair that she was sitting there punishing herself for the crime of being loyal when it was Snape who had lied to and deceived her. "And you definitely can't be blamed for taking your friend's side when you didn't know any—"

"But the thing is, I did know better," Lily interrupted, leaning over the table. "Deep down, I always knew better. There were so many signs with Sev, so many times when I knew things weren't right, when he'd act jealous or make his nasty little comments about people I didn't know, or whatever, but I—honestly, I don't know why but I didn't fully see it for myself until we went to the same school and by then he—it was complicated."

She seemed very aware of the public setting because her voice was very quiet, but it was urgent too, almost imploring, as if she wanted James to assign her a share of the blame.

"Sounds like it," he said instead.

"I don't want to—" She sucked in a breath, held it for a moment and let it go with an exasperated huff. "I'm not going to violate his privacy here, but he's had a shitty childhood, a really shitty childhood, and he used to say that I was the only good thing he had in his life. How do you cut someone out and not feel terrible about that if that's how they feel about you?"

She had snatched up the napkin again, and was tearing strips out of one corner without any apparent sign that she was aware of what she was doing.

James had never seen her like this before.

He had seen her in a bad mood, sure, seen her angry a handful of times and seen her truly furious just an hour earlier, but never in his memory had she been so despondent, so self-doubting, never had he considered for more than a passing moment that she might not be as firmly convinced of her own perfection as he was. James had always just assumed that she was unflappable, untouchable, Venus in her shell, that nothing could possibly faze this flawless creature, which at that moment seemed like an utterly preposterous notion, and what an idiot he had been, because Lily Evans was—despite her beauty and her brilliance, despite his obsequious adoration, despite the way she made him feel—just a girl, just a person, with a heart and a pulse and mistakes in her copybook and wounds that were red and raw and vulnerable, just like everybody else in the world.

She shouldn't have had to peel away the bandage for James to finally see that.

And worse, she shouldn't have had to go through any of this in the first place.

"I, er, dunno," he admitted. "That's not something I've ever had to deal with."

"So...well, yeah, it went on and on and on," Lily continued, "and he kept on making his comments and getting upset when other boys looked at me and then he hated Beatrice and Mary just because they were there, and he kept lying, and I mean, these really huge, ridiculous lies about other people—especially about boys, that just—I don't know how he expected me to believe them all, but whenever I tried to call him out on it he'd act like he didn't know what I meant, like I was crazy or something. He'd say that I was the one falling for other people's lies and that he couldn't believe I'd turn my back on our friendship like that."

"I'm pretty sure that's like...gaslighting, right?"

"It's abuse," came her flat response. "I knew it was abuse. I knew it and I just let him keep going because I thought that without me he'd have nobody, even though that was obviously intentional on his part, and that pisses me off more than anything because I'm not—I don't let other people bully me, ever, but I put up with him and his bullshit for almost seven years."

The mess she'd made of the napkin had formed a small pile, and Lily tossed what remained on top of it before she sank back against the worn leather seat with a sigh.

"Anyway, I'm supposed to be apologising, not dumping all my shit on you," she murmured, staring sideways out of the window. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to say sorry to me."

"I feel like I do."

"Well, since you seem to think I'm the victim here, I say you don't," James assured her, as confidently as he could. "And as for Snape, I can't pretend to know a lot about this kind of thing, but I do know that if you're being abused—and I mean, like, abused in any way, even if they never touched you—that's never on you. Even if you know you're being abused and stick with them anyway, it's not your fault, it's theirs."

She let out another sigh. "I know that, but—"

"Do you?"

Lily's head whipped away from the window and she locked eyes with him at once.

The look on her face was just...dismal.

Not just dismal, wounded. Really, properly wounded, and James couldn't tell if it was a product of the situation they were discussing, or if he himself had just said something hurtful.

He hadn't meant to sound accusatory. It certainly came out firmer than he intended, but he hadn't intended to be mean.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I know you know that, I just—it just sort of sounds like you maybe don't feel it? And I wish you would feel it because you said it yourself, everything he did was intentional." James was talking fast now, unsure of where exactly he was going but determined to fix whatever pain he might have just inflicted. "And yeah, it's easy for someone like me to look at it from the outside and see what he's really like, but I don't know anything about his childhood and you did. I don't care about him and you did. Or still do, even. And if you do, I get it," he hastened to add. "I legitimately can't think of anything worse than cutting off someone I'm close to, it's not as easy as people make out."

It took her a couple of seconds to take that in—seconds in which she looked like she was in great danger of crying—then her chin bobbed up and down in a stiff nod.

"It really isn't," she agreed.

"I haven't hurt your feelings, have I?"

Lily shook her head.

"You can tell me if I did and call me a prat, I won't mind—"

"You didn't, you really didn't. This is all me, I just—I just hate that I was so stupid," she finally confessed, deflating against the table. She swiped at the corner of her eye with her thumb. "I hate being wrong about anything—it's humiliating, makes my insides want to shrivel up—but especially about this."

"You're not stupid, you were being a good friend. He took advantage of that." James shrugged. "Shit happens."

"That's your official diagnosis, is it?"

"Sometimes it's the best way to look at things."

"Suppose sometimes it is."

"And more importantly," he continued, "you are not stupid and this isn't your fault, and if I hear you say that about yourself again I'll have to...to put my foot down."

Lily's eyebrows lifted, her lips curving into a hint of a smile. "Put your foot down?"

"You heard me," he said loftily.

"What will you do?"

The fact that he'd made her smile made him want to beam at the world in general, but James forced himself to look stern. "I'll slowly shake my head in disappointment."

A snort of mirth escaped her.

"Excuse me!" James scolded her, delighted. "You've never seen one of my disappointed head-shakes. They are devastating, alright?"

She'd clamped her lips together to stem her snickering. Her face was turning a lovely, rosy pink. "Alright."

"You will be devastated."

"I believe you."

"And I'm sorry if I sounded like a dick at any point. I'm not very good at this whole...reassuring people stuff, or talking to people about their problems," he explained. "My mum is, if you catch her in the right mood, but I'm useless—try to help and always end up putting my foot in it somehow."

"Hang on a second," said Lily, frowning, "I thought we agreed that you were unfairly good at everything?"

"You decided that, I never agreed."

"And I haven't been proved wrong yet," she concluded, with a softly triumphant smile.

"In that case, remind me to never let you watch me assemble flat-pack furniture because you'll change your mind immediately."

"All you do is follow instructions."

"And if those instructions weren't written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, I'm sure I'd do a lot better."

She was giggling when the waitress returned to the table—with a mountain of chips for James, and a hot club sandwich for Lily that was roughly the size of her head and held together by an American flag toothpick—which was a stellar victory in his book. Making her laugh might have been the best feeling in the world, and if he could keep on doing it until she found her way out of her melancholy and felt a bit better about herself, then all the better.

"Why do they always give such gigantic portions?" Lily wondered aloud as the waitress walked off.

"Dunno," said James, dousing the side of his plate with a generous glob of ketchup, "but I'm a growing boy, so I'm not complaining."

"That's true, I guess," she said quietly, though she made no move to touch her own food. "James?"

He paused in the act of picking up his fork. "Yeah?"

"You really mean the things you say, don't you?"

A drum solo suddenly started pounding in his ears. "Um..."

"No, you do. I know you do," Lily insisted. Her eyes were narrowed on his, though she didn't seem annoyed, merely curious, like she was searching his expression for something. "Just...in general, that's what you do. No bullshit, no stupid game-playing, like what you said about me and your mother and McGonagall earlier, that wasn't—you really do think I'm that clever, don't you?"

If James could have blamed the overhead lights for the warmth that bloomed across his face, he would have.

The quickening pace of his heart, though...no lights could be held accountable for that.

"What, you?" He let out a comical scoff to deflect from his own embarrassment. "Nah mate, you memorised whole chunks of that play in one weekend and aced an audition that you volunteered for on the spot without looking at the script once. Not clever at all, are you?"

"Nope," she said, smiling faintly. "Not at all."

James laughed and poked at his chips with his fork. "But I do bullshit quite a lot, to be fair."

"Maybe," Lily allowed, "but there's a difference between bullshit for the sake of being funny and bullshit to get what you want out of people."

"What is the difference?"

"The difference is, the first kind doesn't hurt anyone," she said warmly. "And just so you know, I don't do the second kind either, so please don't think that any of this is some shitty scheme to get back at Sev, yeah? Because I would never do that. This has nothing to do with him, I just—" Her shoulders lifted in a stiff kind of shrug, and she let out a breath when they dropped. "I think you're a really cool person."

"I think you're a really cool person," James seconded at once.

"Then we can be mates without letting Sev and his bullshit interfere, right?"

You'll never guess what's just happened, Lily, my heart has actually just stopped and I'm DYING, was the immediate response that flew through James's brain, because it had, and he was, but he substituted it with an easier, less alarming, "You want to be mates now?"

"Um, yeah?"

"Like, for real? Our friends know about it and everything? Officially?"

"Does this require a formal discussion?" she asked him, eyebrows raised in question. "A swearing-in ceremony? Blood-pact?"

"Okay, now you're just being dramatic."

"You think I'm dramatic?"

"I'd happily settle for a written contract."

"Unfortunately, I don't have a solicitor on retainer on account of being seventeen and a normal human being," Lily glibly countered. She pulled the toothpick out of her sandwich and pointed it at James, fixing him with a firm and calculated stare. "But I will offer you this—do you want to be my friend?"

"Yes," said James at once. "D'you wanna be mine?"

"Yes."

"So that's all sorted?"

"Yes it is, you barely-comprehensible weirdo," she sighed. "Do you want some of this sandwich?"

"Is this part of the formal agreement?"

She exhaled a laugh through her nose. "It's just a really big sandwich, James."

"Yeah, alright then," he happily agreed, pushing his plate to the middle of the table. She followed his lead and did the same with hers. "D'you want some of my chips?"

"Definitely, toss some over."

"There, help yourself. Don't take that big one, though—he's my favourite."

"You—he's your favourite?"

"Yeah, I named him Jim."

Her big, bright, beautiful peal of laughter rang all the way through the diner like a bell.

Chapter Text

Act 7, Scene 1

outside

The last week of September started poorly, thanks to Sirius, who had double History with Croaker first thing on Mondays and took James's 10 a.m. start as a personal insult. He must have woken up that particular morning in a vengeful mood, because he barged into the room blasting Amorphis from his phone, threw himself upon James's bed and flicked a lathered-up toothbrush at his face.

"Argh!" James cried, trapped beneath the duvet and his would-be brother's bony glutes, Sensodyne Pronamel in his eye. "Gerroff!"

"Walk in early with me," Sirius commanded.

"No!"

"I dare you."

"No!"

"Won't get up if you don't."

"Fuck off!" James struggled to displace him by throwing his body sideways, blinking away wet toothpaste while his knees fought furiously to lift, but Sirius let his body get floppy and sank, increasing the pressure on his legs. The prick had already yanked the bedroom curtains open, and cruel sunlight was attacking James's face like the 20,000 watt bulb of an enemy interrogator. "I was trying to slee—get off me!"

"Walk in with me."

"I was having a bloody lie-in!"

"No you weren't, you're wide awake."

"Fuck off and leave me alone!"

"Fine," Sirius sniffed as though much injured, thereupon he rose from the bed. "I'll just go downstairs and eat all the bacon your mum left out."

"Don't you even think about tak—fuck!"

In his haste to untangle himself from his duvet and beat Sirius down to the kitchen, James fell out of his bed face-first.

Another twenty minutes saw him showered, dressed and dragging his feet to school, resentful of the early-autumn sunshine that mocked him with its cheer and accompanied by a supremely smug Sirius, who had been lying about the bacon. It was a punishment that James had done nothing to deserve, and extra painful on account of his delicate emotional state, which made him a poor man's target for teasing. Remus had gone bowling with Lily on Friday night, reporting that they'd "had an alright time," when he stopped over to run lines the next day, and while James trusted Remus enough to feel almost totally fine with this arrangement, he hadn't been able to pluck up the courage to ask Lily whether she'd enjoyed herself, and if so, precisely how much.

He had her number now, so he could have posed the question whenever he wanted, but the prospect of asking her if she fancied Remus, even asking in a roundabout way, made an astringent foulness roil and bubble in the pit of his stomach. If a potent cocktail of infatuation and nerves impaired his reason and skewed his perception of the chemistry that they undeniably shared, then putting Lily's number in his phone appeared to have gotten him stinking drunk.

For now, all he had to go on was an Instagram snap of his sheepish-looking mate holding a lurid green bowling ball (caption: Friend date with fake hubs) which did absolutely nothing to indicate if Lily was into Remus or if she wasn't.

Besides, she hadn't sent him any enquiring messages either. She obviously wasn't waiting by her phone for him to get in touch.

When would James make it onto her Instagram? That was what he wanted to know.

Fraught, confused, and ultimately annoyed with himself, he'd found himself with no recourse but to spend his weekend venting to Sirius about his fears and feelings Lily-ward, even visiting him at HMV to beseech him for an opinion while he worked. His obsessive behaviour might have been the motivating force behind the unpleasant wake-up call in the first place, but that wasn't James's fault. He was madly in love. People who were madly in love deserved to have allowances made for their lapses in sanity and Sirius ought to have known that on account of all the Sandra Bullock movies that he hoarded, which in turn ought to have compelled him to treat James with a little understanding.

"You should have left me in bed," he scolded his friend, kicking at the ground beneath his feet and wishing there was an empty can or bottle lying about that he could have vented his feelings upon before inevitably feeling bad, picking it up and depositing it in the nearest recycling receptacle. Sadly, the path was spotless. "Stupid clean roads initiative."

Sirius gunned the back of his throat like a derisive motorbike. "You sound like a bloody broken record."

"What am I supposed to do between 9 and 10?"

"Dunno mate, I'll be in class."

"So you woke me up just to fuck with me. Great."

"Read the blurbs I wrote for the forest and the lake if you can't handle being bored for an hour."

"You've not even sent them to me yet."

"Check your email, I sent them this morning," his opponent was swift to counter. "Tell me if anything's missing and I'll fix it after class."

James considered refusing, but he'd submitted too many late sketches for the website to assume the moral high ground, especially when Sirius was churning out his content with a dedication and finesse that was ever-so-slightly shaming.

"Yeah, fine," he agreed, though he took care to let his reluctance sour his tone. "Sent them to Remus and Peter yet?"

"I'll let them have them after edits."

"Then I'll text you before Psychology," James concluded, a trifle absently. They had turned onto Fountain End, Lily's road, and as always, he couldn't help but let his gaze land upon the small semi-detached house that she lived in, as if she were liable to pop out from behind the cabbage palm beneath her front window at any moment. "But they'll be fine. They always are."

"I know tha—oi!" Sirius barked, catching his attention. A conker lay next to one of the horse chestnut trees that lined the street and he hopped sideways, kicking it towards James. "But we've all got to agree."

James caught it on the side of his foot and kicked it back. "I'll work on more sketches after school."

"We've got rehearsals."

"After rehearsals, or—wait, no." Arsenal were playing West Brom that evening, and James had to watch or they surely wouldn't win. "Tomorrow, then."

"Cool." They were volleying the conker back-and-forth with good rhythm now. "Nando's for lunch?"

"Nah, I'm sick of Nando's."

"Well I'm not going to fucking Zizzi's."

"Why not?!"

"Because Pete will want to bring that cow along with us," Sirius spat, and with tremendous force—or with rage, perhaps, at the thought of Helena Hodge—he smashed the conker all the way down the street and straightened up, squinting at something over James's shoulder. "She fucking loves it there. Alright, Evans?"

"Alright, Black?"

James spun around at once.

Sure enough, there was Lily Evans in all her glory.

She was perched on her front step with her school blazer tied around her waist, silky strands of long, fiery hair catching the sunlight to show off their lustre, and wearing a pair of black tights in place of her infernal, slippery socks.

"Hey!" she called out to him, beaming. "Fancy seeing you at this time of the morning!"

Jesus.

It was like a shaft of bright blue sky breaking through a storm cloud, like seeing Venus in her shell for the very first time again, knowing that her smile was partly for his benefit, that he'd inspired a nugget of happiness in her morning just by being in the right place at the right time. James had honestly believed that he couldn't have fallen for her any further, but here he was, tumbling down another flight of stairs, wishing he could leap the distance between them and spin her around in his arms, declare his feelings at the top of his lungs, or kiss her, anything to dispel the longing that exploded in his chest with such enormous, vociferous warmth that it propelled him a couple of steps towards her garden before he even knew what he was doing.

"I'll have you know that I'm deeply committed to my education," he said, sounding much more relaxed than he felt, and shoved his hands deep in his pockets for added nonchalance.

"Sure you are," she intoned. "You look like you're in a good mood?"

"Am I?" He grinned at her. "Mondays, innit?"

"Oh yeah, Monday, famously everyone's favourite day of the week."

"It's got to be someone's favourite."

"Well, it's not mine." She pulled her front door shut behind her and swiftly crossed the path that cut through her square-shaped lawn. "What's got you so happy?"

"I dunno, nothing?" He couldn't quite temper his giddiness. "Your hair looks pretty today."

Lily stopped at her garden gate and touched her fingertips to her hair, which she'd worn loose and wavy, a soft smile tugging at her lips.

"Thanks," she said sweetly. "So does yours."

"What about my hair?" piped up Sirius.

"Your hair is nice too," Lily offered, lifting the latch off her gate. "I mean, you actually bother brushing it and keeping it clean and some men with long hair don't do that, so that's a point in your favour."

"Philip Kingsley." Sirius flicked his own shiny mane out of his face. "Body Building Shampoo."

"See, mine's too thick already so I can't use anything volumising or I'd have a frizzy mess on my hands."

Sirius squinted at the crown of her head. "And that's your natural colour, is it?"

"Nah," she cheerfully countered, "it's all an elaborate ruse, actually. I paint on all my freckles first thing every morning. Takes two hours, massive waste of my time, and it serves no purpose, either." She smiled at James again. It did funny things to his stomach. "How was your weekend?"

"Emotionally stable," he lied. "Tried a Hawaiian pizza for the first time."

"And?"

"And, you were right." Lily had recommended it on Friday. "It was really nice."

"I told you it would be!"

"Yeah but, like, pineapple?"

"Nobody complains about tomato sauce on pizza and tomatoes are almost as swee—"

"Don't get him started on the fucking pizza, Jesus Christ," Sirius interjected, with a breathy and thoroughly oversold exasperation, probably because Lily had had the gall to show her face in her own front garden. "It's bread and sauce and cheese, you've not invented the fucking wheel."

"I mean, it's wheel-shaped," Lily reasoned.

"Yeah," James agreed, "can't argue with that logic."

"We need to get to school," Sirius muttered, and stalked away. To a casual onlooker, it wouldn't have seemed like much cause for worry, but to James, who knew his friend's many shades and shadows, it signalled a trickle of anxiety that bled its way into what had been his rapidly improving mood, muddying the waters in an instant.

If she annoyed him enough, Sirius wouldn't give a second thought to being a prick.

Lily, though, didn't appear to have noticed that her arrival had marked a sharp downturn in his disposition, for she shrugged and pulled her gate open to follow.

"Wait a second!" cried a voice behind her.

A woman, roughly the height of an Amazon and dressed in a fluffy white bathrobe, had come flying out of Lily's house and was hurrying to the gate. She was missing a slipper, had wound a fuchsia headscarf through a mass of tight, frizzy curls that bounced with her every step, and winced as she trod on a couple of pebbles in her haste.

"Where's your other slipper?" Lily asked her, eyeing her one bare foot with concern.

Sirius, meanwhile, suspended his escape attempt to watch the new arrival with great interest.

"Oh, god, I've no idea," the woman breathed, balancing on her slippered foot. "I'm sorry to bother you when you're on your way out, but d'you think you could stop into Boots and get me another one of these on your way home?" She pulled an empty make-up compact from her pocket and pressed it into Lily's hand, followed by two crisp £20 notes. "I'm running a training sesh in Saint Neots until late so I'm not gonna get a chance, and your mum'll be bogged under all day."

"Sure, but I won't need forty quid for one thing of powder," said Lily, frowning down at the banknotes.

"The rest is to get yourself a treat with," said the woman covertly. Her hands were clasped around Lily's like a vise. "James too. And his friend." She sent a twinkly smile in James's direction. "How are you doing this morning, kiddo?"

"Er," said James, startled at being addressed by name, and that she used the word "kiddo" like an American dad who liked to work the grill and crack harmless jokes at the cookout. He had never met this woman before in his life.

"He's fine, Hen. I'll get your powder for you after school," said Lily. She slid her hand from the woman's grasp, and there was a familiar austerity in her tone as she shut the gate between them. "I left your thermos by the kettle, by the way, make sure you grab it."

"Will do, sweetie," said Hen, whoever she was.

Lily, meanwhile, tucked the money and compact into the breast pocket of her blouse, grabbed hold of James's sleeve and towed him away from her garden at a brisk pace. Moving people along by their sleeves seemed to be a habit of hers, but James had zero inclination to protest when she was doing it to him.

Sirius loped along on James's other side, frowning at nothing in particular.

"Who was that?" he asked Lily, glancing over his shoulder at the garden that they were now moving away from.

"That was just Hen," said Lily. "Gretchen, I mean, but everyone calls her Hen. She's my mum's girlfriend."

"How does your mum's girlfriend know James?"

"She was sitting by the window and saw him talking to me last week, so she asked," she said simply, then added, "she doesn't live with us or anything, but she stays over most nights."

"She's alright-looking," said Sirius. "Good for your mum."

"Suppose," Lily agreed. "She's really good to Mum and I like her a lot, although it's been nine months and she's obviously still trying to buy my approval, so I don't know how good I've really been at letting her know it."

"I'm sure she does know it," said James, inclining his head towards Lily's just a little.

"I dunno. I hope she does."

"She probably treats you because she likes you too, and because she knows you deserve it."

She let his shirt sleeve slip from her fingers, but the smile she sent his way felt like something private, and was so coyly exquisite that it instantly abated the tragedy of such an event.

"That would be nice, if that's true," she said, "I guess if—"

"Speaking of," said Sirius loudly, "where's this treat we were promised?"

Bloody gluttonous git, James thought. If Sirius didn't wind up insulting Lily to within an inch of her life before they'd made it halfway to school, he'd make sure he did it after he bled her dry. That was exactly the level of troll that he aspired to.

"Dunno," Lily replied, leaning forward to look at Sirius properly. "What do you fancy?"

"Greggs sausage baguette."

"Then I'll get you a sausage baguette."

"You don't have to get him a sausage baguette!" James cried, neck whipping around. He fixed his best mate with a hard, admonishing stare, one that demanded he watch his step, although Sirius merely snorted at his expression. "He's already had his body weight in toast for breakfast, the greedy prick."

"It's fine, he can have a baguette."

"Yeah James, I can have a baguette," said Sirius nastily, and flashed a hint of his patented squinting smirk before focusing on Lily again. "So what's the deal with your dad?"

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean, do you know who he is or did your mum pick you up at a bank in a plastic cup?"

James's mouth dropped open. "Sirius!"

Sirius adopted an innocent expression. "What?"

"My dad's around," said an unruffled Lily. "He and Mum are getting divorced."

"Because she's a lesbian?"

"Because he's not a good person," she corrected, "and my mother is very proudly bisexual, by the way, let's just clear that up right now."

"And you don't have a problem with that?"

"Why would I care that she's bi? A person's sexuality is as arbitrary as the colour of their hair, I don't give a shit who she's seeing as long as they're good to her, which Hen is."

"But your dad wasn't?"

"Leave her alone, Sirius," James warned. The conversation was moving too quickly for him to process what he was learning, such the fact that Lily's dad was not a good person and it was completely unacceptable of Sirius to fire point-blank questions about the man like they were discussing meteorological mundanities, particularly when the topic of his own parents often sent him on a gloomy spiral of death metal and ancient Russian novels about various famines and wars.

"I'm not bothering her. Her dad's a prick and so is mine," Sirius retorted. "We're finding common ground here, yeah? Thought you wanted us to bond?"

"I didn't want—" He turned desperately to Lily, cheeks burning like a birthday candle. "He doesn't mean that exactly, I told him to be nice to you, is all, because he can be such a bloody troll."

"Thanks, mate, you're like a brother to me, too."

Lily, though, simply smiled at him again, a sublime picture of serenity.

"He's not bothering me at all," she assured him. "Really."

"See?" said Sirius. "I'm not bothering her. What did your dad do that was so bad?"

She let out a snort. "Hard pass on that one, mate."

"Did he know she was bi before they split up?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Would have pissed him off. Why is your dad a prick?"

"Because he's a racist, elitist, emotionally abusive scumbag," Sirius expeditiously supplied, "and my mother's the same."

"Is that why you live with James?"

"That's why I've supplanted him, yeah. His parents prefer me."

Scandalised, James rounded on Sirius. "They do not!"

"The cat's his only ally now."

"My mother thinks—"

"Oh, yeah, your cat!" Lily squealed, her hand flying to James's sleeve again, tugging for attention. He quickly turned his head and she skipped in a little half-circle to face him, gazing up at him with her starry green eyes all aglow. "The one you take for walks?"

James's heart slammed against his ribs like someone had kicked his aorta with a steel-toed boot.

"Oh," he said, face flushing, mortified. "So you've...seen that, have you?"

"Not personally, but you mentioned it in the music room a while back. Do you have pictures?"

"Oh yeah, mate," snickered Sirius, "tell her about the photoshoots."

"Not to be dramatic or anything, but could you send me every single picture of your cat that you have?" she asked, practically walking sideways to keep her gaze locked onto his. That was another habit of hers, over-committing to keeping eye contact while she walked and talked with people. It was a wonder that she never tripped over. "Because the thing is, I'm obsessed with cats but my sister's allergic so my mum won't get one even though she doesn't even live with us anymore and never visits because she doesn't approve of either of us, which is standard, really, because she doesn't approve of anything, so why would the universe even let her have cats? Makes perfect sense to me."

"Yeah, I…" Completely overwhelmed, James looked to Sirius for help, but the bastard rolled his eyes and pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I mean, I'm in a lot of them, so—"

"I'll take those too, I don't care," she interrupted. "It's not like you're a chore to look at."

Not a chore to— "What d'you mean by that?"

Lily shrugged. "I dunno. Do you guys have anything going on in early November, by the way?"

"But, no wait—"

"It's my birthday on the 3rd," said Sirius, with an edge of possessiveness in his voice. "Why?"

"Because it's Bea's birthday on the 9th and we had the idea for us to go to Splashdown that weekend, on the 11th—it's a Saturday—so we were wondering if you'd both want to come with?"

Splashdown was a massive indoor water park near Watford that James and his mates visited regularly, though not since Peter had been thrown out for pretending to drown in the wave pool as a prank, and never when Lily and her bright blue bikini were there. He had barely been able to function when he'd seen her wearing it at the lido, so the odds that he could successfully socialise with her while she was wearing something similar were slim to none.

An unnaturally merciful—or simply curious—Sirius spared him the embarrassment of a panicked splutter by continuing the conversation. "Just me and James?"

"Well, no, Remus already said he'd come and paid for his ticket, and we were thinking of inviting Peter and Helena because I know the four of you come as a package..." She winced. "Although I can't guarantee that Mary will be nice to Helena, so it's at her own risk if she comes along."

"I don't care, I'm not nice to her either," said Sirius. "Who else will be there?"

"Just us three girls, and you lot, if you're coming."

"And this isn't just an excuse for Booth to prance around in front of Remus with her tits out?"

"Even if it was," Lily breezily replied, "absolutely nobody's got a similar plan in mind for your benefit, so you don't need to worry about that."

"Macdonald would jump me if I offered."

"Once, maybe, to see what it was like. She likes somebody else."

"Who, Eddie Bones?" Sirius scoffed. "He's a clown."

"What do you care? You're not interested in her."

"So what? She's still a mate. I have standards for my mates."

The emphasis was as unmistakable as its accompanying intent was ruthlessly shitty, so much so that James decided it was worth it to let his decorum slide for a moment, and thumped the side of his arm.

"Ow!" Sirius yelped, clutching at his shoulder. "What was that for?!"

"You know what," James hissed, shooting what daggers he could shoot with his eyes, even though he knew that his censure meant nothing to Sirius, who would carry on doing as he pleased. To Lily he added, "Ignore him, he's being a shit."

"Was he?" she asked, her voice light.

Sirius snorted.

"Listen, though," she carried on, all business, "Splashdown is £20 each if you do want to come and Bea wants to book tickets early, so let me know when you've decided, yeah?"

"Of course we're going," said James before Sirius could get a word in, sending him another glare. "I'll send her the money whenever she needs it."

"I'm the one booking it so I'll text you my PayPal at some point. Send it to me with those cat pics you promised."

"When did I promise?"

"We're going to say that you promised because that suits me."

Sirius muttered something under his breath that James did not care to hear repeated louder, so he silently resolved to ignore it. They were approaching the triangular fork in the road that split the school and the town, and Lily led the group, heading right where she normally would have turned left, bound for Greggs because she had consented to buy a delicious breakfast treat for someone who disliked her and made no secret of it. She was far too good.

"Alright then," James agreed, and took a few longer strides to catch up with her, "although since you mentioned Beatrice, I had been meaning to ask, how is she dealing with everything that's been going on?"

He could approach the Remus topic in this way, right? With the brotherly air of a concerned friend? James liked Beatrice, he cared about what happened to her. His motives couldn't be grubby and deceptive if they were at least partially grounded in truth.

He deliberately did not look at Sirius.

The space between Lily's brows crinkled in a slight frown. "How is she dealing with what?"

"With the—with the play," he said. His hands instinctively found his pockets again. Was that what he did when he wanted to look like he was totally unaffected by a deeply affecting topic? If so, had Lily noticed? Would she notice? James noticed all of her little mannerisms, but then again, James fancied her and she didn't fancy him back. "Because you and Remus have to—well, you know."

"Have to—oh!" Lily's eyes widened for a moment, then she let out a laugh. "Right, yeah. God."

"Right."

"She doesn't really care, to be honest."

"But—but you have to kiss him."

"And?"

"And—" His brain was unravelling in spools. Could a man not even count on Booth—Booth, who had been obsessed with Remus since they were both twelve and his voice broke before all the other boys in their class—to stand in solidarity with his emotional predicament? "I dunno, it just seems like something that would bother a person who, y'know, fancied the bloke playing Romeo?"

"Yeah, but it's not real, is it? It's just acting. It's not like I'm personally going to run away with the guy. I mean, he's great and all, but I don't fancy him. That'd feel like fancying my brother."

Atop the godly peak of Mount Olympus—the Disney version, where all of the gods were chill and fun, not vengeful and jealous and deeply problematic in all the worst ways—paradise opened its luminescent golden gates. A choir burst into the Ode to Joy. Birds trilled, stars twinkled, a hundred thousand fireworks whizzed their way skywards, Arsenal won the Premiership a whopping twenty times in the space of a single second, and James found himself propelling with breakneck speed through the most rapturous succession of emotions that he had ever experienced in his life.

"Ah," he said, underwhelmingly.

"Anyway," Lily continued, "Bea's not bothered. And she's pretty sure that he fancies her back."

In the back of James's overstuffed brain, this registered vaguely as a piece of brand new information. "He does?"

"That's what she says, anyway. Why?" Lily's eyes narrowed on his face. "Has he said anything to you about her?"

James and Sirius swapped identical expressions of bewilderment.

"I mean, I know he...likes girls, if that helps?" James offered.

"If he does fancy Booth, he wouldn't say anything about it," Sirius seconded. "He's not the kind of person who shares that shit. Not even with us."

"I get that, though. I'm the same," said Lily wisely. "Although you sort of can't be that way when you're friends with Bea, she gets it out of you, but I don't tell other people, not even the person I fancy, like this one guy I had a massive crush on for ages, I could have talked to him loads of times but instead I just ignored him. Wouldn't even look at him when he walked past me in the corridor." She shrugged her shoulders, holding her hands aloft like the harangued babysitter to a gang of pesky troublemakers on the cover of an early 90s children's movie on VHS tape. Sirius owned a collection of shite films like that, unlike the collection of rom-coms, which were great. "How's that meant to get me any?"

"Perhaps you should change tactics," said Sirius.

James had nothing coherent to say to that, except that he wished he could punch the bloke she fancied square in the jaw, although he was at least able to recognise the childishness of his own envy.

"I wish I could tell if Remus fancied her," Lily continued, both hands moving to clasp the same backpack strap, frowning down at the ground, "then I could pull off some cunning plan to set them up, but I can't get a good read on him, he's so…"

"Hard to read?" Sirius suggested.

"Hilarious," she said dryly. "Anyway, I'm hoping that this trip to Splashdown will clear things up for them, or at least give us an idea about how he's feeling."

"Right little matchmaker, you are."

"And?" Once again, Lily didn't falter at the nastiness in Sirius's tone. "So I think they'd make a cute couple, what's wrong with that?"

"I could—suppose I could try to find out for you?" James offered. "If he likes her, I mean. I could ask him one day, or something?"

"You'd really do that?" said Lily delightedly.

"You'd really do that?" repeated Sirius, in a decidedly different tone.

"Yeah, I would," said James, coupling his words with a shrug. "Nothing wrong with asking, is there? If he says no, he says no. If he says yes, at least we already know that Beatrice fancies him back, then they'll both be happy."

"Yes! That exactly!" Lily nudged him with her shoulder, beaming. "You're the absolute best, you know that?"

James couldn't believe how quickly the morning had turned from crap to blissful.

Lily didn't fancy Remus!

Not only did Lily not fancy Remus, she actively wanted James's help in setting Remus up with somebody else!

Furthermore, she thought he was the best. The best. Thought it emphatically! He'd heard it in her voice!

He was having an incredible day.

*

Act 7, Scene 2

the music room on the ground floor

Tuesdays were normally James's least favourite day of the week.

This was, in part, because the weekend still felt like a mirage in the desert—glimmering, teasing, beckoning to the collective student body, taunting them all from a distance, impossible to reach or truly believe in—but it was mostly because he didn't have a single classes with Lily, or with any of his mates.

Of course, Lily was a mate now, so that was really all one and the same.

Happily, his outlook on Tuesdays had changed with breathtaking rapidity since he'd committed himself to Romeo and Juliet. Tuesday afternoons now meant rehearsals in the music room, which meant reciting a lot of lines and enduring mild boredom when he didn't have a scene or a chance to show off, but it also meant spending time with Lily, and with his mates.

Of which, of course, she was one.

As he was frequently reminding himself.

To his delight, Lily seemed quite committed to reminding him of their newfound friendship herself.

"So I'm sitting in Gov and Politics just now, right?" she announced that afternoon, appearing out of nowhere in the music room and dumping herself into the vacant chair beside James. Her backpack was deposited heavily into his lap, promptly unzipped, and she started rooting around inside it. "And all of a sudden I feel like I need to sneeze, so I think to myself, okay, I can sneeze quietly, it's fine, and I try to, you know..." She paused in her rummaging, brought her hand to her nose and made a spiralling gesture. "And then it just...explodes." Her hand went flying outwards, then dove back into her backpack. "And I mean, it's quiet but it still explodes, right? A snot explosion, and it's all over my bloody face, I don't have a tissue with me because I wasn't expecting the entire River Thames to come rushing out of my nostrils, so I'm sitting there in a panic while I try to hide my face and find something I can use to mop myself up, then bloody Ms. Paine asks me to explain Ten Minute Rule Bills. Of all the times to—oh, there it is," she finished, emerging from her search with a tube of Chapstick and a gratified smile. "Thanks for holding that for me. How was Art and Design?"

It was all James could do not to gawk at her.

God, she was spectacular. He had never been so in love.

"It was—yeah, it was fine," he said, heart dancing a merry little jig at her appearance. Being close to her made him so happy. "What happened after you sneezed?"

"Oh, Ms. Paine gave me a tissue and let me out to the loo to wash my face, it was super anticlimactic," she concluded, a disappointed-sounding utterance. She hoisted her bag onto the floor, sank into her chair and uncapped her Chapstick. "Still ghastly, though."

James let out a brief laugh through his own, mercifully clean nose. "Who even says ghastly anymore?"

"I do."

"Why? You're not ninety years old."

"Because I like proper words that mean things, and speaking of ghastly—" She closed her fingers around her little tube of lip balm and held out her arm for him to inspect. Lily wore her watch face on the inside of her wrist, and it was pointed towards him. "What exactly do you call this?"

"An...outdated timepiece in this era of smartphones?" James guessed.

"You could call it that, sure," Lily mused aloud, looking thoughtful. She returned her hand to her lap. "You could also call it thirty-two hours since I asked you to send me pictures of your cat, and yet—"

This time, he laughed with relish. "Oh my god, Evans."

"And yet!"

"Are you genuinely serious?!"

"You said you would and then you bloody didn't!"

"So you counted the hours?"

"When I want to make a point…" She fixed him with a hard stare. "I make. The point."

"There are pictures of him on my Instagram, you know," he reminded her. It wasn't worthwhile to mention that he failed to send her those pictures because his one attempt to determine how many should include his own face ended with heart palpitations, as well as an obscenely comforting amount of Ben and Jerry's Karamel Sutra.

"I'm not talking about the ones on your Instagram, I'm talking about the ones you haven't posted," came her plucky return serve. "Where are those pics? Where's my special treatment?"

"Your special treatment? What about mine?"

"You haven't asked me for anything!"

"Was I supposed to? It's your turn to do something nice for me, I paid for lunch on Thursday—"

"Because you insisted!"

"Because it was my turn," he finished tartly, "and if you can ask for pictures of Algernon without a thought for the value of my emotional labour, I should be able to be on your Instagram too, that's the only way to be fair."

It was unchecked, unfounded arse-twaddle, and James regretted it immediately.

"What do you mean," Lily asked, her eyebrows pulling together, "on my Instagram too?"

"I mean..." What did he mean? Why had he let that come out of his mouth? Why was he alive? "I mean, like—you've got Remus on there now, and I'm just as much your friend as he is. Almost as much," he hastily amended. "Because you—almost."

Her lips twitched like she was about to smile, but she didn't.

"Right," she said. "Makes sense, I guess?"

James was lucky that he was dramatic enough in his day-to-day life to make that bizarre request seem somewhat legitimate.

"Maybe it does. I dunno," he lied, shrugging. "What was I supposed to ask for? You'd just put me on the spot, I didn't have time to think of anything proper."

"I never asked you to think of anything at all."

"You implied that if I did ask—"

"Oh, for god's sake!" she snapped, but there wasn't an ounce of bite in it, only sincere joviality. "Get in a selfie with me, then, just let me put this on first."

She slid her stick of shimmery, bubblegum pink Chapstick across her lower lip, then her top lip, snapped the cap back on, bent forwards and tucked it into the front pocket of her backpack, blithely unaware of the fact that watching her go through this process in its entirety made James feel indecent and jittery and boiling hot all over, facilitating an urgent need to clutch his phone strategically in his lap.

Damn it all to hell. Why were iPhones so bloody small?

It was all over for him if she glanced down there—not that she'd ever do that on purpose, but eyes often travelled in directions unintended. What was he supposed to do to hide this from her, cross his legs? Drag his jacket over his thighs? She'd figure him out in an instant.

Good lord, he deserved to be punched in the face.

His mother was entirely right, her sweet baby boy had grown up into a dirty-minded teenager, perverse and shameful and vile, having thoughts about Lily as she was innocently attempting to ward off irritable skin, when she was obviously, comfortably under the assumption that he could be trusted to think nothing of the sort, when she had finally decided that he was worthy enough to be confided in, even considered a friend, when she—he could see the band of her bra through the back of her blouse.

Hecouldseethebandofherbrathroughthebackofherblouse.

He quickly looked away from her when she straightened back up.

"C'mere, then," she said, but scooted closer to him in her seat before he had a chance to move. Her phone was sitting in her palm, although he didn't know where she'd pulled it from. "Can you take it? Your arms are longer than mine."

His fear was dialled up another couple of notches. Take her phone? Move his hand? "Erm—"

"I'll do it." Beatrice Booth was there all of a sudden, a merciful angel, standing directly in front of them with a single arm outstretched. "Give it here."

Lily unlocked her phone and tossed it into Booth's hand, Booth bade them both to look presentable and James—who at this point was feeling rather familiar with these knee-jerk journeys through fear that Lily often inspired in his heart—tried his damned hardest to look as little like an unglued pervert as he possibly could while she snapped a couple of pictures, which was difficult to accomplish when she was sitting so close that he could smell the coconut in Lily's shampoo, and when his own phone was still semi-covering a semi-established boner.

He truly deserved to be punched.

"Awww!" Beatrice cooed when she was done, surveying her handiwork. "You both look really cute!"

She handed the phone back to Lily, who brought it to her chest and examined it closely.

"Oh, we do!" she agreed, holding the phone out for James to inspect. "See?"

James did see, and sure enough, he looked miraculously sane, calm and handsome beside her in the picture, prompting a silent, internalised "thank you" to the angle of the camera for hiding his lap, to his father for his reliably splendid hair, and to his mother, for the excellent bone structure and complexion she'd passed down to him in the womb, along with a large number of other, equally fortunate genes.

Lily, being the most beautiful girl on the entire planet, naturally left him in the dust, but he didn't mind that at all.

"I should really model," he remarked.

"Model what?" Lily stifled a sputtering laugh. "Clown shoes?"

Beatrice let out a snort, but James goggled at Lily, the threat of his devious genitals momentarily cowed by this shocking insult.

"Clown shoes?" he repeated, firing the words at her like an accusation. "Clown shoes?"

"Suppose somebody has to model them," said Bea.

James ignored her, focused on the pink-faced object of his affections, who remained the object of his affections even as he was the object of her ridicule. "Why did your mind immediately jump to clown shoes?!"

"I don't know, it just did," she insisted, holding her hands up in surrender, though the overall picture of contrition was ruined by her giggling. "I'm obviously not saying that you're actually a clown—"

"Just that I have gigantic clown feet!"

"You have perfectly regular-sized feet, and so do all clowns," she pointed out. "Nobody's buying those shoes because their feet are the size of skis."

"I dunno." Beatrice dipped her head to one side, examining the stupid, shiny leather brogues that James's mum made him and Sirius wear to school, even though Remus and Peter had been getting away with black trainers since the start of the year. "They look sort of like Sasquatch feet to me."

His face contorted in revulsion. "Sasquatch feet?!"

"She's joking!" Lily cried, looking positively giddy. Beatrice laughed to herself and took her seat beside her. "Your feet are fine, it's a nice—look, it's a nice picture!" She showed him the photo again. "I'm going to post it right now."

James gave it a sweeping glance and stuck his nose in the air, milking his feigned offence. "With a highly complimentary caption?"

"I can offer you a single heart emoji."

"What colour heart?"

"You can choose the colour."

He pretended to give the matter some thought, narrowing his eyes on her gaze and pulling his pursed lips to one side, as one might do when one was pondering the great mysteries of the universe.

"Orange," he eventually concluded.

Lily sent him a look of flat disbelief. "Orange?"

"I said what I said."

Her incredulous expression did not change, so James stared calmly back at her and fought the urge to break out a grin when it became apparent that she was valiantly battling a smile.

"For fuck's sake, get a room," demanded Sirius in disgust, striding by them both to take the seat on James's other side and followed closely by Remus, who already had his head buried in his copy of the play.

"Shut up," James admonished, shamefaced.

"Hey," said Beatrice.

"Hey," Lily echoed, greeting them both with a wave.

Remus lifted his head, waved back at the girls and promptly resumed reading—sadly without any longing, lingering gazes for Beatrice—but Sirius merely grunted as he sat down.

"What's wrong with you?" James asked him. Sirius had been in an alright mood earlier.

"There's just no point in me being here, is there?" Sirius leaned backwards in his seat and kicked at his backpack to vent his frustration. It skidded a good few feet across the floor. "We're just finishing the fucking readthrough, my character's already dead, I could be at home right now if I didn't have to sit here and listen to Hodge butcher her lines for the next hour and a fucking half. What's the point?"

"So ask McGonagall if you can leave," James suggested.

"What, and risk getting raked over?"

"She's not gonna rake you over."

"Of course she is, she'll take any excuse."

Lily, meanwhile, had gotten up to retrieve Sirius's backpack and stopped in front of his chair, holding it out to him. "Here you go."

"Thanks," he murmured, taking it from her with a sullen, suspicious glare.

With a wry and worryingly knowing smile for Sirius's downturned head, Lily retook her seat just as Vector and McGonagall entered the room, the latter launching into a speech before the former could open her mouth.

"Alright, quiet down," she demanded of the room, her shiny shoes clacking with impressive authority on the floor, sending everyone straight to their school bags to retrieve their books, "we have ninety minutes of time to work with and I intend to utilise every one of them, so we're diving right back in. Let's get this readthrough finished this time around, yes?"

"Yes, Miss," the cast echoed.

"Very good. Open your books all," McGonagall continued. She took her chair in her usual spot and Vector sat down beside her. "Act 4, Scene 4 is a short scene, so I expect to get this done quickly, if I can have Booth, Crabtree, and Costner." James heard a frantic rustle of pages to Lily's right. "Richards and Stoepker can be the servants—"

"Which servant, Miss?" Jacob Stoepker interrupted. "Number one or number two?"

"Number two," Booth murmured under her breath, snickering.

"You child!" Lily gleefully whispered back.

"You're one, Richards is two," McGonagall instructed Stoepker, with a careless wave of her hand. "From the top, please, Miss Costner, and as clear as you can."

Jennifer Costner did a little shimmy in her seat, cleared her throat and held her book aloft.

"Hold," she recited, squinting at the page, "take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse."

"They call for dates and quinces in the pastry," Beatrice replied.

"Enter Capulet," said McGonagall quietly.

"Come, stir, stir, stir!" cried Nick Crabtree, whose enunciation and commitment to the part was fantastic, to his credit, "the second cock hath crow'd—"

James's phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it, pretending to follow the dialogue in his own book so that McGonagall would think he cared about scenes that didn't involve him.

"—the curfew-bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock. Look to the baked meats, good Angelica, spare not for the cost."

"Go, you cot-quean, go," Beatrice read aloud. "Get you to bed; faith, You'll be sick to-morrow, for this night's watching."

"No, not a whit: what! I have watch'd ere now. All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick."

"Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time—"

Lily nudged his bicep with her elbow.

He looked up at her.

"—but I will watch you from such watching now."

She held up her own phone, waggled it about, and used it to gesture to his chest.

"Exit Lady Capulet and Nurse," said McGonagall, in that same, sotto voice.

James glanced over at their teacher, but she was keeping an eye on Crabtree, who basically had the rest of the scene to himself.

Slowly, so as not to attract her or Vector's attention, he slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and braced himself to read and cherish the very first text that Lily Evans had ever sent him.

Are you busy on Sunday afternoon? is what he read.

Just like with the somewhat visible bra, James immediately went hot and shivery all over, while the words IT'S HAPPENING, IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING flashed across the huge, neon, Las Vegas residency billboard in his imagination.

no, why? he replied, playing it as cool as he could.

So McGonagall said that Mary could hold her costume fundraising thing in the canteen on Monday and the three of us are taking Remus to Bea's house to bake some things. Her parents are letting us use their kitchen. Do you want to come?
Her parents own Mimi's Bakery, btw

It was simultaneously the most exciting and the most disappointing invitation that had ever been extended to him, and James silently cursed his own brain for taking leave of its senses and getting his hopes up for a romantic evening with what he now realised was stunning immediacy, considering he and Lily had been friends for all of five minutes.

And that she didn't fancy him.

That kind of thing tended to get in the way of a budding courtship.

yeah i know, her mum's a legend
taking him there?
like
a kidnapping?
are you planning to kidnap remus?
have i become party to a crime against my will?

Taking him there because he doesn't know where Bea lives and she has a car to cart all of the supplies, so it seemed like the logical solution???
Also, you can't be party to a crime until the crime actually happens.
At best, you'd be party to a plot.

you know, you keep saying you need to be right all the time
but where's the evidence?

Oh my godddddddddddd James Potter who even ARE you??

oh my godddddddddddd lily evans i'm an excellently attentive FRIEND

"Very good, that was nice and painless," McGonagall's curt voice cut through the air, "so we'll be speeding right on to Act 4, Scene 5, sticking with Costner, Booth and Crabtree as before. I'll also need Heaney, Hodge, Potter—"

At the sound of his name, James dropped his phone into his lap like it had burned him and flipped to the next page in his book, assuming an innocent expression that was probably ten times more incriminating than it was deceptive. A sideways glance at Lily confirmed that she was making no effort to hide her rapid-fire typing, because apparently she was bulletproof in this bloody school. If she'd phoned up a friend to start a loud conversation about the futility of English Literature as a subject, McGonagall probably would have asked the other students to keep it down so she could chatter away unimpeded.

"—and three musicians." McGonagall was still going. "Pinkstone, you might as well read for one, Walawalkar and Burns, read for two and three respectively—"

"Sorry, Miss?" Booth's hand was thrust into the air. "But can I ask you a question about my monologue before I start?"

McGonagall adjusted her spectacles and peered at Beatrice. "The question being?"

"So when Nurse says, 'you take your pennyworths now' at the beginning—"

Bless Beatrice Booth, and bless the time she'd bought him, thought James, just as two replies from Lily flashed up on his unlocked phone display in quick succession.

Well FRIEND, do you want to come with us to Bea's house per my recent question that you as of yet haven't answered, thereby casting doubt upon your claims of excellent attentiveness?
Sirius too, obviously. Bea's cool with making two trips if you guys have no other way to get there.

McGonagall began to regale the room with an explanation of the dialogue Booth had questioned, so James picked up his phone again and typed a response one-handed, making sure to keep it hidden behind his book.

depends

Depends on what?

can i sit in the front seat?

Absolutely not. I sit in the front seat.

then i'll sit on your lap i don't mind

God yeah, please do, because all my life I've dreamed of having my thighs uncomfortably squashed in the front seat of a Toyota Yaris, how did you guess?

at least it isn't a citroen

What's wrong with a Citroen?

french

French?

god lily if you want me to sit on your lap that badly i'll do it

Super gracious of you, thanks. I'm taking that to mean that I can tell Bea you're both coming?

you can tell her i'm coming, but i'll have to check with sirius to see what he's up to

Cool, can you let me know before Friday?

yeah no problem

Thank you, now be a good boy and pay attention, the Friar's turning up any minute.

He tucked his phone back into his pocket with a cheesy grin stretched wide across his face, and didn't even falter at the noise of abject revulsion that came from his scowling best mate.

"You're a prick," Sirius mumbled under his breath.

"Thank you," James replied, and felt totally at peace with the world.

*

Act 7, Scene 3

James Potter's dining room

Lily wound up forgoing the heart she'd promised, but captioned their photo "Orange you glad you decided to do this play?" and by the time James sat down for dinner that evening it had forty-six likes, as well as the comment "ur both so hot I die" from Beatrice. This obviously meant that Beatrice was a sister to James now, and as such, he was fully prepared to give her one of his kidneys, should she ever need a kidney, and if he could be guaranteed a really cool scar following the procedure.

It was a really nice picture.

They looked so good together. Natural. Attractive. Like they could be a couple, if she so chose. You couldn't even tell that he'd been trying to hide a boner.

James couldn't stop staring at it and smiling, and he assumed that he was being subtle with his frequent, adoring glances, but his mother noticed that something was up as soon as she walked into the dining room, fresh from a haircut at Celeste's and sporting the manicure she'd been talking about needing for several weeks.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked, holding her hands in front of her chest like she was settling down at a piano, no doubt intending for everyone to admire her new French tips. "You look like you're under anaesthetic."

Ordinarily, James would have protested at this outrageous impugnment of his character and face, but he was simply too happy to care.

"Look!" he bade his mother, thrusting his phone in her direction.

She took it from him and squinted at the screen.

"That's Lily Evans," she said, and only sounded a little bit surprised.

"Yes," James dreamily agreed.

"She posed for a picture with you?"

"Yes."

"What does this caption mean?"

"Oh, that?" He let out an airy laugh. "That's a private joke. Between me and her." He felt so smug that he very nearly hated himself. Nearly. "You wouldn't understand unless you'd been there."

Euphemia studied the phone with primly pursed lips.

"It's a lovely picture," she concluded. "You look very handsome."

"Thank you, I agree."

"How do I leave a comment?"

"What?" he squawked, springing from his chair like a deer starting at a gunshot. His bubble of self-satisfaction popped with such violent immediacy that if he had been floating above the table—which, on some level, his soul had been—he would have hit the floor with a bang and shattered his coccyx. "You can't leave a comment!"

"Why not?"

"Because you'll be leaving that comment as me!"

"Well, I'll tell her that I'm your mother, silly!"

"That's even worse!" he cried, lunging for the phone.

"So dramatic," Euphemia drawled, though she allowed his phone to slide from her grasp and land safely in his hands, just as Sirius skulked into the room with his head buried in a dog-eared copy of The Idiot. "If you just did what I told you all the time, you and Lily would be going out already."

"They wouldn't," Sirius immediately supplied.

Euphemia fixed him with one of her no nonsense frowns. "Books away from the table while we're eating, thank you."

Wednesday night was Fleamont's night to cook, which inevitably resulted in some sort of casserole or pasta bake in a Pyrex dish, and tonight was no different. Within seconds of Sirius leaving his book on the sideboard and dropping into his usual chair next to James, the Potter patriarch swept into the room with a jolly, "Cod casserole, everyone! All thanks to healthyseasonalrecipes.com!" He cradled the dish between the novelty lobster claw oven mitts that he was constantly showing off to guests.

"James has been making progress with his paramour at last," Euphemia greeted him, because apparently My Son James and his Sad Sad Love Life was a serialised daytime drama that she had recently been enjoying.

As he always did, Fleamont rounded the table, shook off a claw and bent over his wife's chair to serve her first. "Is this the Evans girl?"

"It is." She practically preened as her dutiful husband ladled out her dinner. "He's been taking his mother's advice."

"Not a minute too soon, clever wife."

"She's not my p—Mum's exaggerating," said James, red-faced and not even wanting to attempt that word, lest he be heard speaking French. "She's my friend."

Sirius snorted.

"She is," James asserted, not looking at him.

"Sure she is," Sirius agreed, "and hell is just a sauna."

He was clearly in one of his moods and determined to find fault with Lily for no reason besides his distaste for James having other friends, so James ignored him and continued to address his parents, reaching to take the outstretched casserole dish from his father's hands. "There's a bake sale happening at school on Monday to raise money for the play—for the costume budget—and Lily's asked if we wanted to go to Beatrice Booth's house on Sunday to help them with baking."

"How lovely!" Euphemia enthused.

"Who is 'we' in this situation?" Sirius asked, though his tone was more accusatory than it was questioning.

"Me and you." James slopped a large helping of casserole onto his plate and set the dish in front of Sirius. "And Remus, but he's already said he'll go."

Sirius's face screwed up in disgust. "I'm not wasting my Sunday off baking."

"That's fine if you don't want to, but I'm still going."

"Of course you are," his best mate drawled, serving up his own dinner with pointed slaps of cheesy cod against his plate. "She's got you wrapped around her little finger already."

"No, she doesn't."

"She bloody does."

"Well, I think it was very nice of the girls to invite you both," Euphemia cut in, effectively preventing Sirius from extrapolating upon a point that he chose to emphasise by chucking the serving spoon into the casserole dish with a clatter. "And I think we should buy some baking supplies for you to bring over."

"Can I take your car?" James asked. His mum narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Beatrice will have to go out of her way to pick me up otherwise."

"Where does Beatrice live?"

"Newlands Road."

"And you can't walk there?"

"Not if I'm bringing supplies."

"You can take the car so long as you're careful with it," his mum agreed.

"And you're sure you don't want to go too?" Fleamont asked Sirius. "It sounds like a fun afternoon."

Sirius snorted again, his fork hovering in front of his face. "And watch James humiliate himself?"

"Why would he humiliate himself?"

"I mean…" said Sirius, and looked between Fleamont and Euphemia expectantly, but whatever understanding he must have thought they shared, they didn't show a sign of it. "You both know that Evans isn't really his friend, right?"

James's stomach sank.

Actually, it dropped, a swift and sickening swoop to the floor, like he'd woken up on the Tower of Terror and wasn't sure how he'd got there.

"Yes she is," he quietly, stubbornly insisted.

"Nah mate," Sirius countered through a knowing wisp of a laugh, waggling his fork, "she used to be tight with Snape until they fell out last year, now she's using James to piss him off."

And maybe it was because that particular comment echoed uncannily of Snape himself, or maybe it was because it was Sirius who'd said it, but as James dropped his own cutlery onto his plate and opened his mouth to say something, he found that his usual, theatrical overreaction was dead on his tongue before he could think to summon it, because his feelings had actually been hurt.

"Go to your room," said Euphemia flatly.

It took James a second to realise that it was Sirius she was talking to.

Sirius seemed to need the same second to figure it out himself, because after a moment of stunned silence, he laughed. "What?"

"It wasn't a request," Euphemia clarified. "Take your dinner upstairs with you."

"I was just—"

"I don't want to know what you were just," she interrupted firmly. "I play along with this ribbing of one another that you both do because I know how boys your age are, but I will not tolerate nastiness from either of my children, so you will leave the table and stay in your room until you are ready to apologise to James."

Like he was expecting someone to jump out and reveal that he was on a prank show of some sort, Sirius looked blankly around the dining room.

"Go on, son," Fleamont encouraged.

It was as if the air had grown thick or the room had taken a sideways lurch into an obscure place that wasn't familiar to James at all, because Sirius never got told off in this way. He had been wrapped in cotton wool from the moment he'd first moved into their house in a flurry of never-to-be-mentioned-again tears and parental cruelty, very rarely scolded and certainly never grounded, and James was just as stunned as he was to learn that the special treatment he received did have a ceiling.

"Er, right, I'll go up," Sirius quietly agreed, and rose from the table without a smidgen of fuss, which only made the experience all the stranger. Sirius cowed? Sirius meekly submitting to an authority figure? Sirius not being Sirius? "Can I bring my book?"

"You may not," said Euphemia, "and don't turn your Playstation on either. I want you to eat your dinner and spend some time reflecting upon your behaviour."

"Surely will," Sirius muttered.

He stacked his knife and fork on the side of his plate, picked it up and left the room like a sleepwalker. The silence that remained in his wake hung heavy until the thudding of his footsteps subsided at the top of the stairs.

"Well!" Euphemia chirped, inappropriately breezy, as if nothing had gone amiss. "This is a lovely casserole, darling. Well done you!"

Fleamont cheerfully began to describe the recipe he'd used, but James sat in silence and stared down at his plate.

His appetite had fled the scene.

Was he supposed to be happy about this?

He probably should have been happy. Sirius was basically his brother, and weren't siblings supposed to enjoy watching their other siblings come to justice? He had been out of line with that comment and deserved to be told off, but there was no residual triumph for James, just a horrible, gnawing feeling that he was going against the natural order of things in not jumping to his defence.

That was what they did, he and Sirius, when one of them was in real trouble.

He, the victim, was allowed to be pissed about this, but his parents…

"You know he didn't mean what he said, right?" he blurted out, interrupting his father's monologue about how lovingly he'd caramelised the onions.

Both parents looked at him, his mother as if examining him for defects.

"I know he didn't mean it," she said, after a pause, "but don't you think that's worse than if he had?"

James pulled a face. "No?"

"Of course it's worse. If he believed that what he said were true he would have expressed it to you with concern, not used it to make a joke at your expense."

"People should say what they mean, son," his father seconded.

"Yeeeeeeeeeeah," James agreed, squirming on the inside, eager to exonerate Sirius in his parents' eyes even as he remembered what Lily had said in the diner about the kind of bullshit that hurt people and the kind that didn't. Even as he was mad at Sirius still. "But—"

"No buts, he needs to sit with what he did and learn his lesson from it," his mum smoothly cut across him, "and don't you for one minute start to believe that that sweet girl would do such a horrible thing, understood?"

"I know she—how do you know she's sweet? You've never met her."

"I've met her before."

"When?"

"A few months ago, remember? She let me cut ahead of her in Sainsbury's."

"And from that you've got her entire personality figured out?"

"Well it wasn't just that," said his mum, blinking innocently. "I also noticed that her fingernails were very neat and clean."

And that was it, as far as his mum and dad were concerned. They resumed their dinner and their caramelised onion conversation with an ease that they could only have accomplished through years of disciplining their first child in a similar fashion. This kind of thing was no skin off their nose, even if Sirius was languishing in disgrace at that very moment and James was the one suffering for it.

He did, however, rediscover enough of an appetite to finish the casserole.

Mum hadn't been lying, it really was good.

Once dinner was done, his parents decided to snuggle up in front of the telly, so Euphemia sent James to load the dishwasher and prepare four different kinds of overnight oats for everyone's breakfast. After much deliberation and pitting of cherries and awkward placements of forks, he decided that he'd take the opportunity to shoot Lily a casual and not-at-all-pining-for-her text as a reward for finishing his chores. Also for event planning reasons, and because he figured he deserved at least a moment of joy before he went upstairs to face his disgruntled brother.

just me coming on sunday, sirius busy, taking mum's car. can pick you up and bring you if you want, he wrote.

He started fretting over the possibility of a reply as soon as he hit send, but barely had a second to do so before she, blessed goddess that she was, soothed his worries for him.

Depends.

on what?

On WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN CAT PICS?

He had to hide his laugh behind a hacking cough to prevent his mother from overhearing and doing that thing she did where she used her powers to guess exactly who he was reacting to and started to push for details, and typed his reply so hastily that it was a wonder he didn't send it off with a dozen typos enclosed.

so you're denying me the pleasure of your company until i give you what you want?

Her response was almost equally instantaneous: I'll try whatever I'll try until I start to get results.

dictator

Cat miser.

sending you a collection of his finest portraits right now actually

I'd thank you but it's what I deserve.

He laughed, sighed, realised that he was still hungry, imagined what it would feel like if she open-mouth kissed him and swirled her tongue around his, got a boner, shuffled uncomfortably to the larder in search of chocolate-covered pretzels, couldn't find chocolate-covered pretzels, ruminated angrily upon the fact that chocolate-covered pretzels were the only snack he could possibly want to eat in that specific moment, sent Lily twenty-seven photos of his cat and hoped to god that when he finally reached adulthood in March, his brain would start restricting him to just one single emotion at a time.

Then, once the unauthorised party in his pants had calmed down, he went upstairs and nudged his way through Sirius's half-open bedroom door, bracing himself for a sour mood but prepared to do battle if necessary, for Lily's sake if not for his own.

Apparently he needn't have worried. His brother was sitting cross-legged on the carpet with his hair tied up in a flyaway bundle, his plate scraped clean beside him, and playing FIFA 17 on the PS4 and television that Fleamont and Euphemia had given him as two of many welcome gifts when he'd moved in. To the ignorant eye, it would have looked as if nothing remotely untoward had happened.

"Hey," he murmured in greeting, catching James in the corner of his eye.

It would have been nice to smack him.

Sirius deserved a smack.

Scratch that, he deserved to be smacked and subdued in a sharpshooter submission hold on his bedroom floor while he screamed in agony and Mum pretended not to hear (she wouldn't pretend not to hear but James's revenge fantasies were entirely his own to have fun with). He deserved to be pelted round the head with his own pillow until he went down and learned to stay down. At the very least, he deserved to have all of the discs taken out of his precious Sandra Bullock collection and swapped into the wrong boxes, and not just because it was stupid to own DVDs in 2017. He'd been an arsehole to the person who loved him the most with no provocation and James was entitled to a scrap of retribution.

"You know you'll always be my best mate, right?" was what he half-shouted at him instead.

Sirius scoffed. "Don't be soft."

That was his thing, of course, all part and parcel of his ten-inch thick veneer of cold rolled steel and "I don't care" that he couldn't let slip for a second, not for anyone, not even for James, except for when he got drunk and came up with madly affectionate ideas like cutting their palms open and swearing their brotherhood in blood.

He really deserved a smack.

"She isn't using me to piss Snape off," James pointed out.

"I know she isn't."

"I know you know she isn't, which is what I told Mum when you left, so why did you say it?"

Sirius paused the football match that he was midway through and let the controller slip from his fingers.

"I dunno why," he admitted, giving James his full attention now. "Bad joke?"

His face was all frankness, but it wouldn't have been the first time Sirius had denied the obvious truth to himself. It wasn't a bad joke, it was something that he secretly wished was real, but James doubted that he had the words to give voice to a feeling that likely deeply shamed him. Sirius wasn't Remus; this wasn't going to end with them having a heart-to-heart about their problem and coming out emotionally refreshed on the other side. Sirius couldn't do that. Sirius didn't know how. He had grown up in a home that was harsh and cruel and taught him it was wrong to share his feelings, and as he'd clumsily tried to raise himself he had been forced to learn to do it in the only way he knew how, with sarcasm and a shit-eating grin. James might have been seventeen and roughly 80% idiot, but he knew that as well as he knew his own face.

He would have to find a way to work around it. Push through it. Refuse to take it on the chin or let it slide. He had Lily's honour to think of now.

Maybe this was how it felt to imbibe wisdom.

"You need to stop saying shit like that," he chided, albeit without much bite and with his hands shoved into his pockets, leaning against the door frame. "To me and to her. Especially her. Don't be a dick to her."

"So I'll just forget that she was mates with Snape, yeah?" suggested Sirius, his eyes narrowed to slits.

"If it helps."

"And that she bit your head off in front of half the school?"

"You weren't even there when that happened."

"No, but I heard about it enough."

"So what? She apologised for that last week."

"Not to me."

"She doesn't owe it to you!" James cried, hands springing free to gesture outwards, incredulous and amused in equal measure. "She barely owed it to me and even if she had, that's nobody else's business!"

"So what happens if she is using you to get to Snape, then?" Sirius challenged, hunched forward and balancing his forearms on his knees. "Just out of curiosity."

"If she is I'll bitch and cry and moan about it for the rest of my life and you'll pretend you knew all along when really you'll be pissed that she fooled you too," he retorted, "but we'll put up with each other because we're brothers, so that's kind of part of the deal."

Sirius sighed and turned back to his telly.

"Say you're sorry!" James demanded.

"I am sorry!" he cried, twisting around again like an impatient yoga instructor. James raised his eyebrows and Sirius lowered the tone of his voice, although his face remained characteristically defiant. "I'm sorry, alright? I shouldn't have been a prick."

Defiant he might have been, but Sirius would never apologise if he didn't mean it. That went against his many, many principles.

There was genuine remorse beneath that stony disposition.

Somewhere behind it.

"Alright, I believe you," he ceded, "but you'll have to apologise to Mum too because she is not happy with you right now."

"I know, I'll do it later."

Considering the fact that James had walked in expecting a drawn battle, the evening had taken a rather optimistic turn.

This, he supposed, was the best he could have hoped for.

He crossed the room to join Sirius by the telly.

"You're not pissed off with her, are you?" he asked, stopping beside him.

"With Evans or your mum?"

"Mum."

Sirius looked up at him and shrugged. "Never been sent to my room before."

"Never?"

"My parents usually just… shouted. Or threw shit. When they noticed."

"Yeah, well," James sighed heavily, and sank to the floor beside him, stretching his legs out long, "welcome to being parented."

Sirius didn't say anything for a moment, but crossed one leg beneath the other and prodded at the toe of his trainer with his thumb.

"She said I was one of her kids," he presently, quietly remarked.

James shot a sideways glance at him. "You are one of her kids."

"Bugger," he deadpanned, battling to chew back a smile, "that better not mean that I'm gonna turn all soppy and start mooning over Evans."

"Nope."

"There's a relief."

"You won't inherit my superior FIFA skills either."

"That's an interesting way to frame your total incompetence."

James swiped the controller from the floor and shoved him aside with his elbow. "Shut up and I'll show you how it's done."

*

Act 7, Scene 4

the middle of town

"Should we just split a bag of chips?" he suggested on Friday afternoon.

Lily was composing a text message, but she eyeballed him for just long enough to communicate her obvious suspicion.

"You know that I can afford to pay for two bags, yeah?" she said mildly, her gaze dropping to her phone. "I am fairly self-sufficient for my age, even if I've not got that shampoo empire new money."

"No it's not—" He snorted at the quip. "I just meant that the portions here are huge."

"Oh."

"But isn't it my turn to pay anyway?"

She scoffed without looking at him. "It bloody is not!"

"I think it is."

"You already got away with that last Thursday—"

"But—"

"—and that was only because I was emotionally vulnerable, and dealing with, y'know..." She vaguely waved her hand in the direction of her pelvis. "Regularly scheduled maintenance."

"But it is my turn!" James protested, unwilling to be distracted from his point, or from his guilt, which manifested in fine form whenever anyone offered to pay for an item that he could have afford ten times over with naught but his weekly allowance, by her sparkling sense of humour. "You paid for that Greggs on Monday morning!"

"I bought Sirius a Greggs on Monday morning," Lily's downturned head reminded him. "You, in fact, didn't have a thing."

"But—"

"I'm not arguing this with you, Potter. Acts of kindness are non-transferrable and that's that."

"Caveats like this are the sort of thing we should be discussing before they're settled upon, y'know."

"Yeah, yeah," she intoned, then sighed, sliding her backside along the chrome and glass counter display as yet another customer departed with their greasy paper bag, moving James and Lily that bit further up the queue. Her nose was still buried in her phone. "Buying breakfast for your mate doesn't count."

James fixed a flat stare at the crown of her head. The parting of her hair was slightly crooked. "I happen to think it counts."

"Then you can tell me that I'm pretty before your next turn, and we'll be even. Crisis averted."

The way she could deliver effortless rebuttals to any argument he threw in her direction, even as she texted her neighbour to confirm that she could make it there to babysit by eight, was mightily impressive.

"Do you want to split the chips, then?" he suggested anew. He was already flush with elation from having successfully invited her to grab some food with him after Psychology, and wondering if he wasn't soaring a little too close to the sun. Complimenting her hair was one thing, but telling her how pretty she was—and god, she was—seemed ultimately dangerous.

"One sec, I'm just—right. Done. Sorry about that," she said, as if she'd been any less engaging when she was texting, returning her phone to the inside pocket of her blazer. She looked up at him and sank a little deeper against the counter, inadvertently expanding the disparity between their heights. "Olivia's mum makes me reconfirm her dietary restrictions with her every time I babysit; it's like she thinks I'm somehow going to forget and shove pine nuts down her throat. Just how huge are the portions here, exactly?"

"I've never weighed one or anything, but a large bag of chips could definitely feed my entire family."

"Do you like salt and vinegar on yours?"

"Yeah."

"Then sure, we can split a bag," she agreed.

They shared their spoils out of James's lap outside the chippy, sitting on the roughcast cement wall where the local builders normally tucked into their lunches, their backpacks stacked behind their feet—his comfortably touched the ground while her toes skimmed it—and armed with a two-pronged plastic spork apiece.

"This is...too many chips," Lily admitted, once they were halfway through the bag.

"Told you."

"It's like you get through one layer and there's another, bigger layer right underneath."

"Like that story from the Bible," James sagely agreed. "With the fish."

She prodded at the still generous pile with her spork. "They're not even depleting!"

"Yeah, they won't do it gradually. One second you'll have eighty chips and the next you'll be left with one or two."

"They're really nice, though, I might have to bring some home for Mum so she'll remember to eat later."

"Your mum doesn't remember to eat?"

"It's not so much that she doesn't remember, and more that she's too busy to properly eat?" Lily popped the spork into her mouth and sucked off the residue. "She's a landscape gardener and she has to work a lot, so she picks up something during her lunch breaks and snacks on whatever when she gets home."

"So what do you eat?"

Lily shrugged.

"Like, for dinner," he clarified.

"I dunno," she said. "Mum keeps a lot of salad boxes and microwave meals in the fridge so I'll have one of those most nights, and Hen's basically bankrolling my lunches these days, so I guess I get fed."

"What about breakfast?"

She considered this question for a moment. "Does tea in Costa count? I'm always in a rush in the mornings."

A razor-sharp image of his mum, horrified and clutching at her pearls—which she literally did sometimes—popped unbidden into James's head. Euphemia, who was perpetually convinced that her children were in danger of wasting away at the slightest provocation, would have fainted if he and Sirius didn't eat proper, hearty meals in the house every morning and evening. As it was, James felt a bit stricken by this information himself, which was a pretty strange way to discover that he was turning into his mother.

"Does anyone in the house cook?" he asked her. "Like, you or Hen, or your mum on her days off?"

"Mum used to, but that was when we had my dad's income, so she had more time at home. She's never liked it though, and my few attempts have been literal disasters."

"And you don't mind eating salads for dinner?"

"I mean, it gets boring, but I'd rather eat salads than be struggling for money, and Mum's doing everything she can to make sure that never happens."

James felt a different, guiltier kind of stricken, as he always did when he was forcibly reminded that he was looking at a situation through the eyes of a person with advantages that most people didn't have. It was all very well for him to sit and fret about Lily's diet when her mum (who unlike his, was not a retired professional chef with cash to burn at farmers' markets every weekend) was running herself ragged trying to provide her with a home and a future.

"I'll cook you something one day," he compromised on telling her instead.

"Will you?" she replied, glancing sideways at him, eyebrows lifting.

He shrugged. "I'm a really good cook."

"Of course you are, you're good at everything."

"Except for first impressions."

"Except for those," she agreed, nodding away all rosy-cheeked and cheerful. "Fiftieth impressions, though..."

"Oh, definitely, that's the sweet spot. Fiftieth time's the charm."

Lily giggled and dove back into the bag with her spork, and god, it was lovely just to sit there with her on the wall and talk, munching on vinegar-drowned chips and watching the new mothers scuttle by with their babies in their prams. It was lovely and it was easy, and that was the best part, knowing in his gut that he and she were a natural, instinctual fit, that they were truly supposed to be friends, because how often in life did that happen between two people? How utterly incredible was it that it was happening with her?

"You know what actually made me like you, though?" she said through a sort of gulp as her chip went down.

"My many insightful thoughts on Adam Sandler?"

"Those obviously," she agreed, "but really it was your art."

He pulled his own spork from his mouth in surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. Do you mind if we start heading home? I want to get my homework done before I have to go babysit Olivia."

"Yeah, sure."

"Help me down?"

She had hopped up on that wall without his help and easily could have gotten down without him, but James wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He wrapped up the chips and set them on the wall to shuffle obligingly to his feet, and was rewarded for said obedience by the tentative pressure of her hand on his shoulder, the warmth of the other in his own and the briefest brush of his fingers against her hip as he helped her to alight her stony throne. It was a heavenly moment, one made all the sweeter by the fact that the prospect of touching Lily Evans in any way still felt fantastical and forbidden...though judging by the way she liked to lead him around by his sleeve, she clearly didn't share his apprehension.

He was also trying to recover from the surprise she'd just sprung on him, but wasn't so stunned that he didn't lean down and scoop up her unforgiving boulder of a backpack before she could trouble herself with the task. He had been planning that move since the moment she'd suggested the wall as a dining spot.

"So you were a fan of my art before you were a fan of me?" he asked her, slinging it over his free shoulder.

She was poised to take it from him, but dropped her outstretched hand, eyes wide. "A fan of yours?"

"What else would you call it?"

"Not a word that hints at me keeping a shrine to you in my bedroom, anyway."

"That sounds more like a stalker than a fan. I never said you were a stalker."

"Well, good, because I'm not a stalker," she confirmed, then laughed to herself. "Although I did snap a photo of one of your paintings when we were setting up the student showcase and kept it as my phone background for a while."

"No you didn't!"

"I did! For a bit. Then I changed it to me and Beatrice." She plucked her phone from within her blazer and flashed it at him. Her and Beatrice's smiling faces were just visible under a plethora of apps. "See?"

"Which painting was it?"

"Lawlor bridge?"

He'd painted that one for his father, who spent a childhood playing on Lawlor bridge and racing twigs down the river. "Ah."

"Might change my background to Algernon, actually, now that you've sent all those pics."

"And you're saying you don't have a shrine?"

She pocketed her phone with a jaunty toss of her head and started moving, snatching up the wrapped-up bag of chips before she did. "You are not your cat, mate."

"What about the picture you took?"

"You aren't your art either."

"Actually," he offered, loping easily alongside her, "art is a reflection of the inner self, therefore I am my art."

"Hmmph."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I don't have a response that can beat that so I'm going to pretend you didn't say it," was her grand, and shameless, admission.

James grinned widely. "I'm just trying to find out what you liked about my art, given that it's mine, and all. And that it apparently made you like me."

"It didn't apparently make me like you, it made me like you."

"As a person?"

"As a candidate for multi-function garden tool of the month, actually," she easily quipped, "but I guess as a person too."

"Is there such a thing as the multi-function garden tool of the month?"

"According to one of the five million different gardening magazines and newsletters my mum gets, yes?"

"What was it this month?"

"Is this really what you want to talk about?" Brow quirked, she looked sideways at him. "Because we can definitely talk about that instead of you."

"Noooooooooo!" he whined. For good measure, he tugged at her blazer sleeve like an impatient child, which judging by her expression seemed to charm her more than it annoyed her. If it even did annoy her. "I wanna know what about my art made you like me tell me nowwwwwwww."

She swatted at him, beaming all over her pretty face. "It's hard to explain!"

"Hard how?"

"Just because I'm not like...arty, y'know?" She gestured ahead with the chip bag. "I'm no good at it for a start, and don't know the right language to use or what your intentions are when you're working on something, or how I'm supposed to react to a piece of art in any way that goes beyond I like how that looks or I don't like how that looks, so it's difficult to put into words."

"You don't have to have a reaction that goes beyond I like how that looks in the first place," he pointed out.

"I suppose, but like…" She let out a little sigh, then sucked in a breath very quickly. "Have you ever seen Mary Poppins?"

"Er, yeah?"

"Okay, so you know how in that film they all jump into the chalk drawing?"

He blinked on purpose at this surprising segue. "Yeah?"

"So it's kind of like that, like—so this is stupid of me, but you remember how you did that painting of the museum, right?"

"Right?"

"And then you painted the pavilion, and that shitty, rusty old playground in Sparrow Park, and those are all places I know because I've lived in this general area for most of my life, but they also weren't those places?" Lily explained, practically sideways-stepping to face him as they walked but not looking at him at all, looking absolutely everywhere except at his face. "And I don't know if that was because of the colours you used or some sort of technique that I'm not art savvy enough to know about, but you made these mundane places so incredibly, like...soft and happy and beautiful, and I remember I was looking at them and feeling like I'd rather be there than here, even though there was here, like if I could somehow step into one of those paintings I'd be in a better place than the one I'm stuck in. That doesn't make any sense," she tacked on, talking very quickly, as if she had to pull herself up at once or lose face, embarrassed by her own flight of fancy. She even tugged her braid across her neck, possibly to hide the splotchy red colour that was creeping up her throat. "It makes no sense at all. It's stupid. But it's how I felt, like you had—like you'd painted a kinder world."

He stared at her.

She half spun on her feet and walked a little quicker, her eyes fixed firmly on the horizon.

He walked alongside her but didn't know how. James was sure he had melted back there. Human freeze pop. Pooling away on the pavement. Right in front of Argos. Historians would mark the spot where he had died.

But he couldn't say any of that. Then she'd know.

"That's a bit more than I like how that looks," he muttered, exchanging trash for treasure like the bloody stupid idiot that he was.

"It's embarrassing, I know, this is why I didn't know if I should say it, it's probably pretentious and completely not what you intended," Lily confessed to the sky. Her face was so red she looked practically sunburned. "But you are kind, so I turned out to be right in some way."

In no way, shape or form was she pretentious or off the mark.

Lily Evans really did like his art.

She didn't just like it, she cared. She cared so bloody wholeheartedly that she'd cast aside her own comfort to let him know how deeply her love for this thing he could do had put down roots in her bones. Her honesty was unearthed in soil and vulnerable in a way that James simply wasn't brave enough to reciprocate, not because she was a goddess like he had once assumed—she was just a person, a person with flaws and failings and an uneven parting in her hair, that much he had recently surmised for himself in the unromantic setting of a diner on a back road where the jukebox didn't work and the bread came lathered in grease—but because there was something good and decent and true at her core that myths and movies and literature didn't deem worthy of enough attention, and goddesses of lore were notoriously cruel.

Didn't she deserve the truth from him too?

What if…

What if he asked her out?

What if he said it? What if he just. Said it. What if he told her he liked her a lot and thought she was special and beautiful and that he wanted to kiss her and hold her hand? What if he said, "will you go out with me?" What if he uttered those six words right now? He could force six words out of his mouth. His dad always said that a person could get used to anything except dying, which meant that James could handle whatever came next. He could deal with the rejection. She might turn him down in disgust and express her belief that he'd merely pretended to be her friend to get into her pants, effectively bringing these golden past few weeks to an abrupt halt, but he could plunge back into the depths of her indifference and learn to swim again.

Right?

No. No, no, no. He couldn't learn to swim now that he'd happily floated on the surface with the sunshine warming his face. He'd bloody drown. He'd cry like a child. This was all too much to handle, munching on chips one minute and walking headlong into stunning emotional revelations the next. Eating in her presence was fast becoming a very dangerous thing.

"That might be the best thing anyone's said about my work ever," he admitted, because he could admit this much, at least.

She looked at him again, her delighted smile a far better reward than he deserved. "Really?"

"Really and truly," he promised, crossing his heart with his fingertip for emphasis. "And it was what I was getting at, sort of—sometimes my mother says that I want to live in a cartoon where nothing bad ever sticks and you can peel yourself off the road and move on if a piano falls on your head, and I suppose you're both right, but you were much nicer about it than she was."

"Oh." Still pink-cheeked, she seemed to mull that over for a second. "Her assessment is definitely funnier, though."

"Oh yeah, can't argue with that," he agreed, then added, heart pounding like the drums of war, "I also do other things."

"You mean other artwork?"

"Stuff aside from the paintings you've seen, yeah. I just entered those for the showcase because Mr Bird said I should, but I do, like, maps of places I've made up, and I'm pretty good at portraits."

Her eyes were alight with interest. "You are?"

He shrugged, ashamed of how greedily he wanted her to love his art even more than she already did. "I really like drawing faces."

"And do you keep those other pieces on you?"

"Like in my portfolio?"

"Yeah."

"Not all of them, but some. My big portfolio's at home but I keep the smaller one in here my bac—"

"Can I see it?"

"Er," he said, surprised by the immediacy of her request even as he reminded himself that she'd just treated him to a three course meal of art-related praise. The words "can I read your writing" popped unbidden into his head, but James shooed them away. That wasn't how their game of thoughtful acts worked; Lily could have whatever she bloody well wanted from him, so long as it wasn't the unfiltered truth of his helpless puppy love. "Yeah, whenever you like."

"So I can see it right now?"

She stopped walking—actually stopped walking—and James got a couple of steps ahead of her before he stopped too, his head swivelling from side to side to ascertain that they were still on the high street, where people tended not to stop walking and ask for a peek at their mate's portfolios.

"What?" he asked. "Now now?"

"I'll give it back if it starts to rain."

"But what about your pre-babysitting homework?"

She held out her hand expectantly. "I'll do it tomorrow instead."

He gaped at her and she stared right back, serving her unwavering eye contact with a side of unearthly terror. There was nothing more to be done but precisely what she wanted; James let his backpack slip to the crook of his elbow and unzipped it, withdrawing his pristine black portfolio from amongst a heap of junk and balled scrap paper. With a slyly victorious smile she took it from his grasp, let out a contented little sigh, plonked herself down on the pavement's edge and set her chips down with all the confidence of someone who wasn't doing any of those things in full view of the employees of the local Holland & Barrett, who were watching them both through the front window with confused expressions on their faces.

"I've been wanting to get my hands on this for ages," she murmured happily to herself as she unzipped the blasted thing—woman of his dreams, sitting on the roadside and dirtying her skirt and not giving one iota of a shit, all because she really loved his art—and immediately exclaimed in sheer delight. "Oh! Look at this!"

I am in love with you, James thought, more convinced than ever before.

"You are really weird," he told her.

In this manner, like a coward, he floated ever on.