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"Was that song written about me? I think it was written about me."
She let the words out quickly as if they had been burning inside her mouth. Maybe they did burn on her throat, on her tongue, for they certainly burned him. James tugged at the collar of his t-shirt and looked at the emergency exit wondering how wrong it would be to just run away. But the fire was more like a lightning bolt, electricity that glued him to the spot and prevented him from making any sort of disgraceful escape.
“James?” Lily insisted after a moment.
“Bloody hell, Evans. How many other redheads do you know that saved his damn life?” Sirius’s voice betrayed his frustration, and though he mostly meant to put an end to the painful silence weighing on them he only added to the tension in the room. To be fair, the frustration had been brewing for quite some time and Sirius Black was not exactly the kind to sugarcoat his feelings.
“I hope you enjoyed the show,” James mumbled on his way out the emergency exit, regaining the ability to speak when Lily’s eyes released him as she turned to face Sirius. The fire spread through James’s skin, the scars on his body burned just as much as they did five years ago when they were gushing wounds. As soon as he made it outside the door, he frantically pulled his denim jacket off, checking his left arm for any traces of blood. Instead, the clean spiraling scars stared back from his skin and he traced them for the millionth time with his bass-string-scarred fingers.
James didn’t need to be in the room to know what his storming out would trigger. If Lily didn’t act quickly and ran away too he could hardly expect Moony or Wormtail to jump to her defense. Not when Sirius had been holding onto this anger for years. Not when both Remus and Peter had joined in distributing blame once or twice. Not when James wasn’t present to stop his ranting with an exhausted “Padfoot, please .”
What they told her he could only imagine, but Lily took a while to come out the back door, finding him in the dark alley. Immediately, James questioned why he stuck around long enough to be found. His first impulse after registering the look on her face was to comfort her, dismiss the rightful anger that she was most likely met with inside. He only looked at her for a moment before lowering his gaze to the pack of cigarettes he had pulled unconsciously from his jeans’ back pocket. Trained fingers fished out a cigarette and flicked his wand to light it with a tap once he put it between his lips. Without looking at her, he offered the open carton to Lily.
A million questions brewed in his chest as she chuckled. Why are you here? How are you? Why did you…
“What the hell,” she sighed as she took a cigarette out and James placed a singular corner puzzle piece in its place. That was a tone he recognized: Lily had allegedly quit smoking (again) and here he was, being a bad influence (once more).
“Do you want to go for a walk?” Lily asked, interrupting James’s silent string of questions, – was that her first drag in years? What did the cigarette taste like? Like him? In all those years, he had never switched his vice’s brand. “We can go back to the small talk I don’t… I don’t know why I asked…”
James shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmured with a shrug, taking another drag of his cigarette before finally letting his eyes fall on hers again. Under the crappy streetlight, her green eyes seemed to glow and so he stared for a long beat before nodding. “Let’s go. It’s their turn to pack things up anyway,” he lied.
Lily looked nervously at the closed door behind her. Whatever she heard, James was positive had been bad enough to want some distance between her and his band mates.
Both hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, James led the way out of the alley and onto streets he didn’t know at all.
“I thought Webster Hall was a No-Maj venue,” Lily began after they had walked in tense silence for about a block. James visibly winced, stealing a glance of the redhead through the corner of his eye. Lily didn’t blink, unaware of how strange the word sounded in her Cokeworth accent.
“Not on Tuesdays,” James grumbled, giving into anger for the first time since she appeared backstage. “There’s Muggle -Repelling charms and a glamour that makes it look closed. There are spells to keep in the sound.”
Under the streetlight, Lily blushed, catching on to the way she had slipped a little too casually into her new life. Her new life as far away from him as possible.
Forbidden Forest by The Marauders, written by Sirius Black and James Potter.
The forest hides many secrets,
Why wouldn’t it hide ours?
He had shown up with an insufferable grin on his face. No one ought to be that bloody pleased to be showing up late to detention. Detention in the Forbidden Forest of all places. Even though it was only her first year taking Care of Magical Creatures, Lily knew better than to be excited for the task at hand.
“Come here often, Evans?”
On second thought, Lily decided she would rather face a werewolf than spend one more second with James Potter.
“How nice of you to join us, Mr. Potter,” Professor Sprout said with a disapproving clearing of her throat. However, she didn’t hold back a smile when James threw at her his most charming grin. Lily rolled her ears behind the professor’s back, but Potter saw, of course.
“Miss Evans has the list of ingredients we will be looking for today. Since you are only in your third year, I will be taking care of the more delicate plants. But I trust one day you will make great vampiric vegetation hunters.”
Lily resented the implication that she would find herself back in detention one day. She was only there because James couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut, not even in class.
“Only when you have collected all the items I’ve asked for will you be done with your task,” Professor Sprout concluded.
“We’ll take our sweet time, then,” James teased. Lily huffed and marched first into the forest, she would find all those damn mushrooms in under one hour if it killed her.
It was remarkable how quickly the light dimmed as she entered the forest. Very few and precious rays of sunlight managed to fall through the leaves. Lily began to reach for the wand in her robes, but she stopped as she heard James’s steps crunching leaves behind her. The last thing she needed was for him to think she was scared.
“Alright, alright. What’s on that list of yours?”
The hours stretched even though James proved to have a knack for finding mushrooms. Lily trailed behind him, trying her best to ignore his carefree chattering as he made his way through the forest. Knowing any questions would be misinterpreted, Lily silently wondered how many times he had been in the forest before. After all, James Potter knew his way around all sorts of places where he shouldn’t be in. Her thoughts for example.
“No, no. You want the small yellow ones,” James hummed, stopping her hand before she plucked one of the brown mushrooms from the ground.
“Says who?” Lily asked, pulling her hand away before he got any funny ideas. Sprout’s list said nothing of the sort.
“My father. They dry better, it’s easier to pulverize them,” James continued, his voice different this time. It was no longer playful or boastful. Carefully, he picked up the small yellowish staghorns and dropped them onto the jar in their basket.
Right. His father. The potioneer.
“Does he make you gather mushrooms too?” She asked and he laughed loudly. Loud enough for every scary monster in the forest to find them if they so wished.
“As you can probably imagine, it is the only way I can contribute. I am not exactly safe when it comes to potions.” His robe was scorched and his grades were abysmal in the subject, this came as no surprise to her.
A part of Lily had wanted to stop him before he made his way out of the Forbidden Forest that day. Demanded that he didn’t tell anyone about the fact that they had talked, laughed, and (for the most part) gotten along. She wanted to tell him not to get his hopes up, that it wouldn’t happen again. She wanted to demand he never ever brought this up to Severus.
But she didn’t. And he didn’t bring it up either.
Maybe that’s how it began, the not talking about things, the not asking questions before it was too late. Maybe the secrets they hid in the Forbidden Forest caused their eventual downfall. Lily was not quite sure what secrets James was singing about, but when the song ended without any mentions of staghorns she knew the song couldn’t have been about her. And why would it be?
Why would James Potter sing about her, in a country he didn’t know she was in, years after her betrayal? Most importantly, why did Lily want him to sing about her after the pain he had put her through?
I Solemnly Swear by The Marauders, written by Sirius Black and James Potter.
And if I could do it all again,
I’d start with the mischief,
I’d find our seats at the far end of the train,
That I solemnly swear
Walking down the streets of New York City with Lily did not get any easier as time went by. Almost absentmindedly, she pointed out landmarks as they wandered aimlessly. The history and architecture fun facts were impersonal, giving him no information whatsoever about her life in the city she described.
“Did you come straight here?” He asked, interrupting her tour guide script. He always had a bad tendency to cut in when others were speaking.
“No,” Lily said after a while. “I started in Boston.”
He let out a humorless chuckle. “We play in Boston tomorrow in case you want to give me useless facts about that city too.”
His poison-tipped tongue had always been too fast for his own good. But before Lily had the chance to put her matching quick wit to use James sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I am.”
Lily looked at him, her eyes hurt and confused as if trying to make out what version of him she was dealing with. And for that, he couldn’t blame her. Lily Evans had witnessed his absolute worst on way too many occasions. Of his growth she had seen so little.
For his greatest mistake James had a physical reminder that spiraled on his skin, but for his growth he didn’t have much to show for but the ability to apologize before it got too big. Before he lost anyone else.
“Try again,” she conceded. And so he took the chance.
“How was Boston?”
And so Lily told him. She told him about the hospital, the sleepless nights, and what it was like to get to know a city and a country so different from her own. She told him Petunia never replied to any of her letters, she told him she adopted a cat three months after moving. James smiled, remembering the way cats always seemed to make their way to Lily when they walked down the streets of London, rubbing themselves against her legs in search of pets.
James thought back to the days he had been just like that, when he used to come out of the shadows to beg Lily for attention and care he did not deserve. When he showed up two or three hours late to a date he had forgotten about with a bouquet of flowers and a promise not to do it again, a promise he would promptly break. Maybe she was better off with a grumpy stray cat.
“Why did you come tonight?” James asked finally, his hand rubbing his left arm without realizing. He had spent many days trying to scrub away the scars.
“My friend Renn. Their partner is in the band that opened for you,” Lily says after a while and James translates the message: I didn’t come for you. “They were very excited for their partner, said that they had gotten this incredible gig opening for a massive band from the UK.”
Any other day, James would have puffed up his chest with pride. The Marauders had topped every chart back home, they were headlining the so-called British invasion this time around. He had done it for the music, of course. Music was his lifeline and making music with his best mates was what kept him sane. But he would be lying if he said not a single part of him had hoped that Lily would hear his music, that she would see a poster, that she would make her way to a concert as if called by a siren song.
Turns out the only thing calling her to him was a sad coincidence.
“And you didn’t think it was us.”
“I didn’t think the band was still together.” For the second time, James winced at what she said so casually. This time because it echoed similar words that had been exchanged in the worst moments of their past. Because it was a reminder that Lily had no reason to trust him at all.
Up to No Good by The Marauders, written by Sirius Black and James Potter.
Follow me into the dark
Don’t you worry, I know the path
Follow me, you and I, we could leave a mark
We will be together, face the aftermath
It is almost ironic how the four Marauders wear literal maps of their lives on their skin.
Peter’s fair skin is empty of scars. James was always quick to stand between him and any danger. His map shows freckles of days spent under the sun with his best mates and a tan line on his wrist that only shows when the bracelet he never takes off shifts. There is of course the tattooed lion on his shoulder blade he wishes was more visible. Still, sometimes it is all it takes to be reminded he is a Griffyndor, to stop his fingers from trembling when it’s time to hit the keys during a show.
Sirius’s and Remus’s are possibly the busiest maps, the ones most difficult to read to the untrained non-Marauder eye. Remus’s pale scars overlap again and again, showing traces of a war he was too young to be fighting. Teeth and claws have marked and bruised his skin. He used to loathe them, and some nights he still did. But memories came with them, memories of Sirius cleaning his wounds, of waking up in the Hospital Wing with Peter reading comic books at his bedside, of James laughing as he tended to Remus’s mangled hands after he went too hard on the drums.
And Sirius, he is the type to mask things as best as possible. His scars are hidden under tattoos. He permanently wrote the names of his friends where his parents had carved their hatred. He actively chose again and again what the map of his skin would look like. He had chosen antlers and full moons and footprints and coordinates and stars and music again and again until the result startled old ladies in the street and made strangers swoon at their concerts. But James reads the chipped black nail polish for sleepless nights and the calluses on his fingers for anger Sirius can only let out in song form. That he understands.
The dittany had done its part in saving his life, but the spiraling wound would forever be a reminder of his stupidity. James’s left profile tells a tale of a great mistake. The string scars on his fingers speak of pain he could only sing about, of bass riffs that resemble the beat of his heart. The flowers that are tattooed on his right side tell the tale of every person he has loved and disappointed.
They were not there the last time she saw him. Lily tried not to stare, the denim jacket had stayed on during the show but it was now draped over his right arm, covering half the flowers she was so curious about. A bunch of daisies she is not surprised by, they had been his mother’s favorite flowers. Was that an aster next to the daffodil? A chrysanthemum covered the back of his right hand. And before he shifted the jacket she thought she had caught lilies and asphodels.
Most importantly, she wished the jacket would lay on his left arm. That the spiral of scars was not visible. James caught her staring and she looked down to her own hands, after seeing his scars again she half expected them to be covered in blood like they had been that night.
Aconite by The Marauders, poorly written by Remus Lupin and fixed by Sirius Black and James Potter.
And it’s the things that could save you the ones that kill you,
And it’s the things that you poison the ones that heal you.
“Fuck you,” Remus said from the bottom of his heart and the crowd erupted in laughter. Lily didn’t join in. She had seen the Marauders banter a million times. She was not impressed by the way James and Sirius completed each other’s sentences and playfully teased one another as they introduced song after song. She was not surprised by the way James praised his bandmates, by how effortless his choreography was on stage with his best mates. She wasn’t taken aback by the strength of Remus on the drums, the anger and joy he put into his music.
And yet she had been floored by all of it. For many reasons, she never thought she would see such a spectacle ever again.
The truth was that their downfall had been long coming. That the events that led to that night were scattered throughout their history.
Seventh year came around with a new and improved James Potter. The one that focused his energy on harmless pranks, the one that stood up to defend people like her but not with the purpose of impressing her. The head boy badge on his robes had brought a groan out of her when she first saw it, but she eventually got used to it. Lily got used to him bringing a cup of tea for her when they went on patrol, to the way he made her laugh at his own expense, she got used to not hating him. She got used to him loving her, she got used to the idea of maybe one day loving him back.
She got used to his big dreams, and his plans to start a band with the boys after school. She got used to listening to him talk about worldwide tours and so much fame they wouldn’t even know what to do with it. “I’m counting on you to keep me humble, Evans,” he had teased.
And she failed.
Maybe she had fooled herself into ignoring it until it became too big to go unacknowledged. Until some nights became every single night, every single day. Until James was drunk more than he was sober. Until he was reckless and angry and rude and back to being the insufferable toerag she had first met at Hogwarts.
Except they were not kids anymore.
When she had last seen the four Marauders together, she knew the band was approaching its foreshadowed end. She knew that they were one big fight from blowing up what had started as a lifelong friendship. James and Sirius were bent on drowning their grief in the firewhisky Peter either readily provided or hid away depending on whether or not Remus was present. Remus had turned his back on the issue until his friends turned their backs on him, too drunk to keep track of the moon phases. Heartbroken, Remus had also turned to less than advisable coping mechanisms.
Last she saw them, Sirius and Remus could hardly look at each other, united only by tragedy and urgency. But watching them on stage, Lily had caught on quickly to what every single delusional witch in the audience was apparently blind to.
“When did that happen? Sirius and Remus, I mean,” she asked.
James blinked, confused. “How did you…”
It was her turn to interrupt. She was also quite good at that. “I’m not blind, Potter.”
A genuine smile lifted his lips and Lily’s breath caught in her throat. It had been years, too many years, since she had last seen him smile like that.
“Well they are… or they were,” he chuckled.
“One day, Moony just plopped on the couch and said he wanted to pitch a song for the band. We teased him so much that he almost changed his mind. But then he let us read it… and it was the worst fucking song I’ve ever heard,” James laughed. “But I didn’t even get to tease him about it because Sirius really hated it. He said he found the poor quality personally offensive and stormed out, he was in an insufferable mood for weeks.”
“Sounds like Sirius,” Lily said, her humor faltering by the end of the short sentence. After what she did, she didn’t get to say things like that anymore. Not when she had looked into Sirius’s eyes and told him she was leaving.
It will kill him, he had warned her. And yet she walked away without saying goodbye.
But James survived it. Survived her. And here he was, looking dreamily ahead of him as he thought of his best mates.
“It was a love song. ‘Moony’s song’, that’s what we dubbed it, although now it’s called ‘Aconite.’ After a lot of polishing. It took Padfoot about two weeks to ‘fess up. But eventually he exploded and asked Remus who the hell he was writing about. I guess it wasn’t as obvious to him as it was to everyone else. They’ve been together ever since… that was three years ago. Sirius sings that blasted song all the time. The original one.”
Lily couldn’t help it, a smile appeared to match his. The bittersweet love song James mentioned made more sense now, in context. In conversation with Sirius’s over-the-top guitar solo in ‘Constellations’ it painted a picture that years ago Lily would have never thought possible.
Then again all four of them were more than capable of keeping appearances, which Lily knew all too well. Capable of keeping things from her about the true nature of things, about the depth of the problems and the rifts between them. Two beautiful love songs did not make up for the arguments she had witnessed, for the times she had been out late, wandering the streets trying to find what pub they had been kicked out of.
“Doesn’t that go against all the rules? Dating your bandmate?”
James simply shrugs. “We are Marauders first, bandmates second.”
Patronus by The Marauders, written by Sirius Black and James Potter.
The things you least expect could have been easily predicted,
You bet it all knowing you have everything to lose,
You learn to expect the kind of pain you can’t refuse,
And in the end the light won't be defeated
There was so much predictability in the unexpected events that led to their downfall. First, there were his parents. They were both old and tired, but that did not stop Euphemia from volunteering every day at St. Mungo’s where she eventually caught dragon pox. Even though she got it first, Fleamont was the first one to pass away.
To this day, Lily didn’t know if his parents had in any way prepared James for their death. In any case, no preparation would have ever been enough. There had never been a person so absolutely crazy about their parents as James Potter.
He had not been home in time to say goodbye. Caught in between gigs and alcohol-filled nights to forget the pain of his parents’ illness, James had missed their last moments. Lily had suggested that since he had not found the answer to coping with ill parents at the bottom of a bottle he would not find an answer to dead parents. He had stormed out.
Sirius, devastated himself for the loss of the only parents he had ever known, had only enabled James’s worst antics.
In turbulent times, it seemed like a good idea to Lily to devise a plan to take him away.
“I was offered a job,” she started. She could have sugar-coated it, led more elegantly. But James was reaching into the cabinet for a drink, she didn’t have much time if she wanted to catch him in a rare moment of relative sobriety. “In the States.”
James had looked at her with so much pain Lily had wondered if she could carry on with her plan.
“You are leaving,” he accused her. The ‘me’ was implied.
“I want you to come with me,” she rectified.
All of the pain in his eyes turned to contempt in an instant. “I can’t leave, Lily. You know that. I’ve got the boys and the band and the house.”
Ah yes, the Potter Manor. The house he had put off cleaning up for months now. In hindsight, she could have approached the subject differently. But she had frozen her ass too many times waiting for him to show up to clean the house with her.
“You can hire someone to clean the house. You’ll sort the belongings later,” she said with a shrug. James dismissed her with a roll of his eyes. “And the band? James, it’s time you all let go of this stupid dream. You could get a real job in the States. Be an Auror like you wanted.”
In the many nights she had laid awake thinking about their last fight, Lily wondered if this is how James remembered his drunken nights: as flashes and feelings. The only thing she remembered clearly before she apparated out of his flat was the intense emotions they projected onto each other. The anger and disappointment that came with James not showing any interest in the job she had been offered, no congratulations, no curiosity. The exhaustion of constantly having to protect him from his worst instincts. The jealousy of how fiercely he clung to the Marauders and their crumbling future, not even entertaining the possibility of a different life with her.
She also wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t chosen to apparate. If she had stormed out instead. If she had stayed with him.
Did she put the idea in his mind?
There is a reason behind the apparition classes in school. They stress the importance of focus for a reason.
Hours later, after Merlin knew how many drinks, James had not been focused. And now his entire left side showed the splinching scars to prove it.
Vulnera Sanentur by The Marauders, written by James Potter
Once is not enough, it could never be
It could never heal what runs so deep
Twice, she knew that time around
Her siren song could only do so much
Say it again, save me again
The thing about Vulnera Sanentur is that it is one of the few incantations that you have to repeat more than once in order to get the result you want. The chanting, the repetition, the musicality of it turn it into a sort of lullaby.
Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur.
James had only heard of it before. His mother had taught him the healing spell in hopes that he would never need to use it. But as Lily’s voice coaxed his body into not giving up, James clung to the melody, allowing it to heal more than Lily would ever know. Music, the only language James was sure he understood, stayed with him as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
Slowly, the lullaby of Lily’s voice disappeared. It was replaced by the rough sheets of a hospital bed, the pressure of her hand on his, the revolving door of his room as people came in to check in on him.
But when he opened his eyes, Lily was not there. Remus, Sirius, and Peter watched as James got used to the scars that now lined up his left arm, sprawled on his torso, and made their way down his thigh. Permanent reminders of his stupidity, permanent reminders of the way Lily saved his life once more.
Silence became heavier, and eventually, James got tired of staring at the door waiting for her to come back and sing again.
Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur.
“Where is she?” He croaked, and panic flooded every crevice of his body at the thought of losing his voice, his music, perhaps forever. That fear was quickly eclipsed when he saw the look on Sirius’s face.
Although the look on his face would have been enough, the resentment in his voice made it clear to James. No need for clarifications. No need to ask if she would be coming back.
“Prongs, she’s gone.”
It’s their greatest hit. The song that put them on the map, or so Lily’s friend had said.
It was well into their walk when James realized they had traced a weird loop that brought them back to the concert venue. It occurred to him that he should have asked if he could walk her home, for old times' sake. That maybe, just maybe, she would have said she lived on the other side of the city, and he would have said he didn’t mind. That he would walk her anywhere.
Maybe that would have given them enough time to say the things they should have said all those years ago.
With a new goodbye looming. James knew the least he could do was answer her question.
“The song, it’s… well, it’s obviously about you,” he said. Lily opened her mouth to interject but James stopped her by raising his right hand, the lilies on his forearm showing fully. “Please just… let me get this out.”
Lily nodded, pursing her lips together as James gathered his thoughts.
“What Padfoot said, it’s only partially true. You saved my life when I showed up bleeding at your feet... when you acted on your feet and got me the medicine I needed. You brought me to the hospital and if you hadn’t I would have died but that is not what the song is about.” Lily looked at him puzzled, watching attentively as he ran his fingers through his floppy hair.
“I think some people get… chips? Or tokens. I’ve got one of these for every year I’ve been sober,” he said after what felt like forever. She couldn’t help but notice the way his fingers trembled as he stuck out his arm, showing him the bundle of four lillies that were permanently drawn on his skin. Scared shitless, James went on, knowing there was a distinct possibility he would never get another chance. “You saved my life even when you were not even there anymore. We put the band on hold while Sirius and I got the help we actually needed. We talked… really talked, the four of us. We made it work. I cleaned the house and moved back in, I planted daisies in the garden.”
“You have no reason to believe me, not after what I put you through. And I am sorry, I am so sorry for everything.”
Lily allowed the new information to settle in her head. She took a deep breath to quiet the desperate beating of a heart aching to be broken again.
“James, that’s not the song I was asking about.”
Timeturner by The Marauders, written by James Potter
Tell me how many spins will be enough,
Would it be sufficient to twirl around again on the kitchen floor?
I think I could get it right, if we gave it another go
“Can I see you tomorrow?”
“Don’t you have another show to get to?”
“We leave at noon, I can see you before that”
“Since when do you eat breakfast, Potter?”
“I can always make time for coffee.”
She can’t help but smile, thinking already of the way his hair will stick out in all directions as he stumbles in late to the coffee shop. James returns the smile, planning to be there half an hour early. At least.
They can always give it another go.