Chapter Text
James doodles Lily Evans’s initials on the backs of all his O.W.L. papers at the end of fifth year.
It’s strategic, you see, just like the way he starts showing off and flirting every time she walks in the room or the way he makes sure that half their year is outside watching when he asks her out on the lake. Does he expect her to ever, ever reciprocate? Of course not. It’s well-established that James is an asshole and that Evans has no patience for assholes—at least, not for the ones she doesn’t have weird childhood friendships with.
James will never understand her friendship with Snape, and that’s fine, just like it’s fine that she rejects him that day on the lake. The thing is, James kind of hates her back—can’t really stand what a stuck-up prude she is. He’s got his own reasons for pursuing her, and like he said, those reasons are strategic.
As long as people think he fancies her, he’s safe. As long as people think he fancies an unattainable girl, they won’t be looking at the way he really fancies an unattainable boy.
xx
The Defense and Transfiguration exams were the last of the O.W.L.s, which naturally means that it’s time for the Marauders to get wasted on Firewhiskey. Correction: it’s time for James and Sirius to get wasted on Firewhiskey. Being a spoilsport, Remus has two shots and then proceeds to head down to the library for the rest of the night. Being a lightweight, Peter also has two shots and then proceeds to pass out, drunkenly snoring, on top of Remus’s bed.
“Do we move him?” Sirius asks casually—or, at least, as casually as one can ask that four shots in. Impressively, he’s only slurring his words a little (so far). “Remus is going to be pissed if Pete gets drool all over the pillowcase.”
“Yeah, and Pete’s going to be pissed if we drop him on the floor mid-Leviosa again,” James points out.
They look at each other for a second, and then James goes for his wand. Everybody thinks they’ve got an equal partnership, but they don’t realize James is the one who calls all the shots. Then again, everybody would think James calls all the shots, but nobody, not even Sirius, knows the kind of power Sirius really has over James.
The Firewhiskey’s really kicking in now, and it’s hard for James to hold his wand steady or get the spell out of his mouth. For a second, Peter rises about six centimeters into the air, a string of drool hilariously stretching from the corner of his mouth down to the pillow underneath him—and then, before James has barely moved him out of the center of the bed, he falls back down again. The mattress groans as Peter gives a particularly dramatic sleep-snort.
“Good one, Prongs,” snickers Sirius.
“Shut the hell up. You try.”
Sirius rolls his eyes. “Hold on. I have to find my wand.”
“How do you not know where you left your wand?”
“How does Wormy not know the five signs that you’re looking at a werewolf? How do you not know that Evans isn’t ever going to go for you? Sometimes, people just don’t know things they ought to, dumbass.”
“I’m not the dumbass. You’re the dumbass if you think I really want Evans to go out with me,” says James without thinking.
But the damage is done: Sirius is looking at him with furrowed eyebrows and a loose-hanging jaw that James is pretty sure aren’t just because of the Firewhiskey. “Mate, you’ve fancied Evans all year. You haven’t been able to shut up about how hot she is, and you start showing off every time she shows up. Why not want her to go out with you if you’re so interested in her?”
“Who says I’m really interested?”
“Who says you’re not?”
“Who says your face?”
And then Sirius falls all over himself snort-laughing about James’s drunken incoherence, and he drops it. In the morning, James will be glad he dropped it, but in the moment, he’s not glad at all. In the moment, he wants Sirius to push back on everything James says until James can muster up the courage to tell Sirius the truth.
xx
The real shocker comes the next morning, when Mary Macdonald informs them over breakfast that Evans—
—well, he’ll let Mary tell it.
“She basically broke up with him last night,” she divulges. It’s undeniable, straight-up gossip; she’s speaking in a carrying whisper with her mouth hidden behind one freckled hand and everything. “Like, friend-broke up, anyway, since they were never actually dating. I find it hard to believe they didn’t ever date, honestly, with the way he looks at her sometimes and how she spent all her time around him, but she swears they haven’t, and now, she’s swearing it’s over. She held it together just long enough to tell him they were through, and then she spent the rest of the night crying about it in our dormitory.”
James takes a second to marvel to himself that Mary could be such an asshole to Evans as to spread this information as wide and far as she can around the castle within hours of it happening. Then he gets over it. It’s not like Mary owes Evans loyalty, like Mary and Evans are friends—not like Evans has any friends outside of Snape—and now she doesn’t even have him, apparently.
It makes him feel kind of bad for her—for Evans, that is, not for Mary. Mary’s his friend and everything, but when it comes down to it, Evans is a better person, even if she is, like he said, a stuck-up prude. Anyway, Mary’s not the victim in this situation. Nobody called her a Mudblood yesterday in front of half of their year, especially not her best and only friend in the world. Mary’s got plenty more friends than Evans ever has had to begin with and has only ever pretended that Evans is one of them.
Anyway.
“Poor Evans. She really did have a hell of a day yesterday,” Peter is saying, but James doesn’t put a lot of stock in that when it’s not like Peter is defending Evans from having her business spread all around the castle or anything. Remus, at least, looks conflicted, while Sirius is just stabbing moodily at his eggs and avoiding eye contact with literally everyone at the table. It’s just as well: everybody knows he’s got a weird relationship with Evans, even weirder than the one she has with Snape. Had with Snape.
“I know. She got called the worst slur in the world by her only friend in the world, and then James here—” Mary melodramatically reaches across the table to poke James in the shoulder, her neck-length black hair swinging in front of her face “—made an ass of himself in front of her, as usual.”
“I did not ‘make an ass out of’ myself, thanks. All I did was say out loud everything she and everybody else on that lake already knew.”
Sirius is looking at him funny, like he remembers everything James said last night about not really wanting Evans to be his girlfriend. Fortunately, he doesn’t say a word about it, allowing James to stuff his face with toast and dodge answering any more of Mary’s comments.
He really does feel bad for Evans, though, especially when she trudges into the Great Hall five minutes later looking like hell in pajamas with dark rings prominent under her eyes and her carrot-red hair pulled messily in a sloppy bun in the back of her head. James may be kind of a monster, but he’s not so far gone that he can’t feel pity, even for people he hates.
It’s a Saturday, and term is over for the fifth years anyhow, which means, normally, James would have no cause to interact with Evans all day. Normally, she’d spend the whole day hiding out with Snape in the library, while James would be off cavorting with Sirius, Peter, and Remus somewhere, getting day drunk or pulling off pranks or terrorizing passing first year Slytherins. Today, though, James checks the Map half an hour after he leaves the Great Hall, and he finds Evans’s dot alone on the grounds, far removed from any of the gaggles of witches and wizards enjoying the summer weather.
“What are you doing over there, mopey?” Sirius finally asks after James has spent the past three minutes straight staring down at the parchment. “I already told you: I finished mapping the seventh floor days ago.”
“I know. I’m not messing with the spell.”
“Then what are you brooding about? That’s supposed to be Moony’s deal,” adds Peter.
Remus throws a quill at Peter’s head. Apparently, he still hasn’t quite forgiven him for passing out drunk on Remus’s bed last night. (James represses a fond smile at the memory of the look on Remus’s face when he returned to the dormitory afterward.)
“I’m not brooding about anything,” says James. He abruptly hops up on his feet. “I’m going to go see what Evans is up to.”
“You’re joking,” drawls Sirius. “Evans? After everything she went through—everything you put her through—yesterday? You really think now is the best time to ask her out again?”
“I’m not going to ask her out. I’m just going to see what she’s doing.”
Remus breaks in, “I’m with Sirius on this one. Leave the poor girl alone, Prongs. She’s probably having a rough day to begin with, and she doesn’t exactly like you. No way do you make her day any better by bothering her.”
“See you boys around,” dismisses James, and he pockets the Map and sets off in search of his target.
He’s not sure what’s possessed him to do it, really, as he abandons the secret passageway behind the fourth floor mirror where the four of them have been hanging out and sets off for the castle exit. He doesn’t enjoy Evans’s company; the feeling is mutual; and he’s got nothing to gain from antagonizing her in a lonely corner of the Hogwarts grounds where nobody’s around to see or hear him. Still, James continues to make his way down to the first floor, out the double doors in the Entrance Hall, and down the lawn toward the Forbidden Forest, where Evans is apparently alone on its outskirts.
He finds her sitting underneath a tree on the very edge of the forest with a quill in her hand, doodling on parchment. Unlike James with his performative sketches of her initials, Evans seems to take her drawing seriously. The sketch she’s working on is certainly the best work of art he’s ever seen anybody produce in this castle, even if it is a depiction of Snape’s face.
Weirdly, this doesn’t disgust him like he’s expecting it to. Mostly, it just makes James feel sad for her.
“You’re really talented,” he says by way of greeting.
Startled, she flinches a little as she looks up and then narrows her eyes at him, flipping the parchment over to cover up its contents, even though James has obviously already seen them. “What do you want, Potter?” she sighs, but she doesn’t even sound angry, just tired—very tired.
More weirdly, he tells her the truth. It’s even more weird that the truth is what it is, but that’s neither here nor there. “I wanted to check on you. I was worried about you.”
Something behind her eyes cracks open and then closes again. “Right. Like you expect me to believe that. What’s the ulterior motive, huh?”
“There isn’t one.” He flops down on the ground across from her and draws his knees up to his chin. “I swear. There’s no one around to perform for, is there? I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“So the way you usually treat me is a performance?”
The weird honesty continues. “Yes.”
“You want to look like an ass when you talk to me?”
“Yes.”
“And what is the point of that, exactly?”
“What do you see in him?” asks James intently.
Evans frowns. “Why are you even asking? If you’re just going to attack me for everything positive I say about him—”
“I’m not. I swear I’m not. Just humor me. Why do you like him so much?”
Her jaw clicks. “Honestly, I don’t even know anymore. I could have given you two dozen reasons yesterday, but now, I feel like I’ve just been making excuses for him and inserting motives that were never even there onto him for the past seven years.”
“I feel that way sometimes,” James admits.
Evans raises her eyebrows. “Like what, exactly?”
“Like I make excuses for myself. Like I act like I’ve got motives that were never even there. I’d say I let people box me into the expectations they have for me, but they don’t. I do it all on my own.”
“Why?”
That’s the million-Galleon question, isn’t it? And it’s one that not even today does James have the gall to answer.