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“I’m just saying—”
Lily sighs. By his count, it is her fifteenth sigh since they sat down here, on the frozen tundra of Hogsmeade high street. This is noteworthy because not a single one of those sighs has sounded the same. (“Lily is multi-faceted,” James had told Sirius only the night before; “Get a bloody hobby, Prongs,” had been his friend’s reply.)
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her bury her hands even further in her sleeves. “I know,” she says. “And do you know how I know?”
“Because I’ve been saying it non-stop for the past twenty-four minutes?”
At this, she chances a glance in his direction, failing to quell the hint of a smile that tugs at her lips. “Twenty-seven, actually.”
“Apologies.” James forces himself to look away, because that seems the safer option, and instead peers up and down the empty high street once more. Hogsmeade weekends usually see the village bustling and busy, but then, it is colder than a polar bear’s pocket today, and the steady but unrelenting dusting of snow has driven most students either indoors—the lucky bastards—or back to the castle.
He allows himself a moment to think wistfully, longingly, of the warmth and shelter of The Three Broomsticks; Merlin, even the shack would be more comforting than this. But he only gives himself that moment: as Dumbledore told him last year, it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. (Very wise advice, if a little bit dramatic considering James had only been grumbling about the lack of apple crumble at dinners that term.)
“I suppose my point,” he carries on, ignoring Lily’s renewed sigh, “is that making us sit out here ‘on duty’ is pointless. Any idiot who’d be daft enough to do something out here in the open is probably not someone we need to worry too much about.”
“I agree,” she says, a weariness in her tone that has been there since they sat down on this bench, already frozen solid just from the walk from the carriages, several hours ago. “And yet, we are Head Students, and we said we would do it, so—”
“It’s a dereliction of duty on their part,” James decides, warming (only metaphorically, unfortunately) to the idea. “We could report them to—who’s in charge of safeguarding pupils in schools? The Ministry?”
Lily shifts a little on the bench, ending up just a tiny bit closer to him than she was before; he knows he can’t overthink it. That way leads to ruin. “The muggle government has a whole department just for running education,” she replies. “But I can’t see the Ministry of Magic being that organised, can you?”
“No,” he admits. “But this cannot stand, Evans! It’s—it’s child abuse!”
“We’re both of age,” she points out.
“Do we ever stop being a child of our parents?” he asks. “My mother has very strong opinions on this subject.”
There’s a definite fondness in her answering smile. It’s been there for a while, really, at least since mid-way through sixth year. At some point, she started seeing him as a friend instead of a nuisance—or, perhaps more accurately, a friend as well as a nuisance—and, unless he’s been misreading things significantly, that affection has only grown. He’s not under any illusions that their friendship will transform into something more; for them to even be friends in the first place is nothing short of a miracle, and he doesn’t want to wreck it by pushing for something he’s not earned, something that she isn’t willing to give. Better to be a friend who is smiled at like this, like there’s love between them, even if the love doesn’t take the same shape as his. Better that than the alternative.
“I can’t wait to meet your mother,” she is saying, a sentence which lands with something like a blow to the chest and an all-encompassing warmth, all at once. “If half of what you and Sirius say is true—”
“Everything I say is true,” he tells her. “Honesty is my middle name.”
“I thought Fleamont was your middle name.”
“Exactly,” he agrees. “James Fleamont Honesty Potter.”
The laugh she gives him would set his heart fluttering, if he let it. Luckily, it’s far too cold for that sort of thing. Hard to feel lovey-dovey when you can’t feel your toes anymore. “Well, anyway,” she continues lightly, “if what you’ve told me of your mother is true, I get the impression that she wouldn’t be that bothered that you’ve been asked to be stationed outside in the cold on a Hogsmeade weekend, fulfilling your Head-ly duties and protecting your fellow students.”
“Probably not,” he admits. “She’d say it’s character building.”
“She’s right,” Lily nods. She’s staring intently ahead, as if something of great personal interest is displayed in the windows of Pocklington-Smythe’s Boot Repair and Locksmith Ltd. “Not that your character needs building, anyway.”
What, exactly, is he supposed to say to that? How should he react? He has to swallow down his instinct, which is always to reach out for her—for her hand, to brush a lock of that red hair from her face, to skim her back in an incredibly platonic way which he would do with Mary, too, or Pete, if either of them needed it. In fact, as they sit there in what could generously be called ‘bracing’ winds, there’s a curl of red that has escaped from her blue woolly hat, and it would be a kindness, surely, an act of service, to tuck it back behind her ear for her.
It's a slippery slope.
“Well,” he says, because it’s been almost a minute since she spoke, and the longer he leaves it, the more likely he is to do something stupid, “thanks.” He swallows against the lump that seems to have suddenly formed in his throat. She’s still looking studiously away, now staring over at Banford’s Bakery, which is, unfortunately, closed today. Half of what had galvanised him to leave the warmth of his dorm this morning was the prospect of getting one of their sausage rolls, and he’d always said that there wasn’t anything that a slab of Banford’s Victoria sponge couldn’t cure. Perhaps the owners had decided opening up today, in horrible weather and to a flood of teenagers, was more trouble than it was worth. “What hides in a bakery at Christmas?”
That gets her attention: Lily tears her gaze away from the shuttered windows and looks back at him, eyebrows raised in mild bewilderment. “I’m sorry?”
“No need to apologise,” he says cheerfully. “What hides in a bakery at Christmas?”
“I—” Lily frowns, just slightly. “I don’t know…?”
He reaches out to pat her gloved hand—can’t resist it any longer. “Mince spies.”
A pause, and then a burst of laughter that echoes through the empty street around them. It’s a sound he would happily listen to every day of his life; he can’t help his huge grin just in reaction to the way her face has lit up. He remembers feeling this way the first time he ever made her laugh—it was like winning a Quidditch game, and the house cup, and becoming an Animagus all rolled into one. He’s been chasing that same feeling ever since.
“Oh, god,” she shakes her head, still smiling brightly. “James, that was awful.”
“Maybe you didn’t get it,” he offers with a smirk. “You see, mince spies sounds like mince pies, and—”
“I should’ve known you’d love terrible Christmas cracker jokes,” she cuts him off. “Just look at how pleased with yourself you are.”
“Plenty more where that came from,” he grins. “Remus got me a whole book of them last year for Christmas.”
“Isn’t it bad enough we have to sit out here with only pneumonia to keep us company?” she teases. “Do you have to torture me with awful jokes, too?”
“What’s green, covered in tinsel and goes ‘ribbet ribbet’?”
“No, don’t you dare—”
“A mistle-toad.” She thwacks him—quite gently, luckily—square in the chest. “Oh, sorry, did you have a joke you wanted to tell next?”
“You’re a menace,” she tells him, but she’s still smiling, and she sits back somehow even closer to him now. Maybe it’s for warmth. Maybe she hasn’t noticed just how little space exists between them now. Maybe she’s trying to make him lose his mind. Any one of those is a real possibility. “A menace to society, and you must be stopped.”
“I’m getting mixed messages here, Evans,” he replies, cheerfully enough. “You say I must be stopped, but you just laughed so loudly they could probably hear you down in the Hog’s Head.”
“I’ve got a loud laugh,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And I’m an easy laugh, too. Even if I don’t want to laugh, on principle, sometimes I still can’t stop it.” She shoots him what he supposes is meant to be an imperious look. “Don’t let it go to your head, Potter.”
There’s a great many things he’s trying not to let anywhere near the vicinity of his head. Easier said than done. “Too late,” he says. “It’s right there in the vault, now: 10th December 1977, made Lily Evans laugh so much she frightened away any lurking ne’er-do-wells.”
“Well, I suppose that’s something,” she sighs. “Doing my bit to protect the student body.”
“You’re an example to us all.” He checked his watch. “Not much longer to go, anyway.”
“Thank god,” she says, with another, different kind of sigh. Is he imagining that it sounds a bit wistful? “I’m going to have the longest bath known to wizardkind.”
Now there’s a mental image he probably shouldn’t linger on. “Even if it makes you go all pruny?”
Lily gives him a nudge with her elbow. “A small sacrifice to make, to defrost my poor shrivelled husk of a body.”
Another thing not to think about too closely. “What’re your plans for the Christmas break?” he asks. “You’re going home, right?”
She nods. “It’ll be the usual things. Plus the added fun of my sister’s new fiance being there, too.”
“You don’t get on…?”
She wrinkles her nose. “He brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘pain in the arse’. And brings out the worst in Petunia, unfortunately.”
James cringes in sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he says, and decides not to overthink adding, “If you ever need to escape… Sirius and I are around all hols, and my parents won’t mind a visitor…”
She looks up at him, that sweet smile once more on her lips, a twinkle in her green eyes that is more captivating than it should be. “That’s a kind offer,” she replies, but pauses, and the smile on her face fades just slightly. It’s enough to make his own smile fade, too. “But I—I probably need to be at home as much as possible, after what happened with my dad…”
Oh, Merlin. James frantically wracks his brain for this information—it is possible, unfortunately, that she has told him this already and he was too busy trying not to be in love with her to truly take in what she was saying—but comes up with nothing. He has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, not helped by the expression on her face, “Why, what’s happened…?”
She sighs, pursing her lips together for a moment, as if to stave off a wave of emotion. “It’s awful, really. He was really poorly. He—he ended up in hospital after eating some Christmas decorations.”
He can’t quite process what he’s hearing. “He…?”
She looks up at him again, but this time, there’s something else in her eyes—and he only realises it’s mischief when it’s too late. “Yes. He’s got tinselitis.”
His stunned silence is broken by what he can only describe as a cackle from his bench-mate—pure glee, and a look of utmost delight and satisfaction on her admittedly very pretty face. “Evans,” he says, scandalised and not-so-secretly thrilled. “Lily Evans, you—”
“Gotcha,” she wheezes through a laugh, brushing her hair from her face. She looks so pleased with herself; it couldn’t be more charming if she tried.
“You leveraged a pretend parental illness,” he points out, laughing now too, “just to get one over on me!”
Lily slumps at his side once more, still grinning. “Your face was a picture,” she tells him. “You were so concerned.”
James can only shake his head. “This is a whole new side to you,” he says. (He doesn’t say, a whole new side for him to fall in love with.) “Can I trust anything you say to me ever again?”
“Probably not,” she agrees easily. Somehow, for reasons passing understanding, and in a manner more befitting a dream than his usual reality, she leans in to rest her head on his shoulder. “Sorry for destroying your belief system.”
Internally, he’s panicking. No, not panicking—that would imply he doesn’t want to be this close to her, which is patently untrue. No, internally, he’s trying his level best to stay calm against all the odds, against everything in his crowded head and heart that wants to blare ‘WE HAVE PHYSICAL CONTACT’ over and over like a klaxon.
Externally, he’s as cool as the proverbial cucumber, and not just because the ambient temperature seems to have dropped at least one more degree in the past twenty minutes. “It’s okay,” he replies, thinking about the point of warmth where her cheek currently meets his shoulder. Maybe later he could have it cast in bronze, as a memorial. Sirius would probably be up for working out how to do that. He loves a challenge. “I’ve got another belief system back at the castle.”
“Oh, good,” she says. She still hasn’t moved. He wouldn’t mind if she never did. “Always important to have a back-up.”
There had been times, this year especially, that it had felt like there wasn’t much hope left. Things had taken a darker turn, something last-year-James wouldn’t have thought possible; the very reason they had even been asked to spend the last Hogsmeade visit of the term sitting outside, ‘on watch, just in case’, was indication enough of the way the sands had shifted beneath their feet lately. He can’t remember any of the previous Heads needing to do something like this, but then, maybe they had and he just didn’t notice.
All of this can be true—life can be bleak, and frightening, and take turns you never thought it could—but sitting there, even in the arctic air, with her head on his shoulder…
It’s light, in darkness. It’s warmth and comfort and peace, against all odds.
“I think I will come and visit,” she murmurs; he’s not sure how much time has passed. She lifts her head to meet his gaze, and James concentrates on not looking gutted by the loss. “It’ll be good to have something to look forward to.”
He gives her a smile, something soft and small, maybe barely visible as daylight fades fast around them. But he knows that she can feel it nonetheless: he can see it reflected on her own lips, too. “Good.”
“Good,” she echoes. A pause, heavy with something intangible. Then, with a fresh new sigh (this one, almost contented, happy, even), she stands up. “Right, Potter, we’ve done our time,” she gives an indicative wiggle of her wrist, where presumably her watch hides under the layers of jumper and coat. “Back to the castle?”
“To the castle,” he agrees, standing too. His limbs feel stiff with the cold, but falling into step beside her is enough to make him quickly forget the feeling. “Oh, by the way… I’ve—well, I’ve been meaning to say…”
Lily shoots him an apprehensive look as they walk. It’s endearing, but then, everything she does is endearing. “...say what?”
James sighs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Well… did you hear about the man who stole an Advent calendar?”
Her eyes widen. “No—”
“He got twenty-five days!”
She gives him a shove, although she’s laughing, and her arm somehow ends up looped through his. “A menace,” she says. “Honestly—”
“She can dish it but she can’t take it, eh?” he teases in return. “You’ve set yourself up for this now, Evans.”
“Oh, god,” she grins. “What have I done…”
And although she protests, they swap jokes all the way back to the castle.