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James Potter lay upside down on his bed in the fifth year dormitory, hands behind his head, feet on his pillow. “I don’t think you understand, Pads. I don’t think you’d actually notice unless you really looked at it properly - but when you do, it’s just… extraordinary.”
Sirius, lounging on his own bed, didn’t look up from the Muggle motorcycle magazine he’d ‘liberated’ from Flich’s office during their last detention. “You don’t say.”
“I think he did, Padfoot,” observed Remus, wryly. “I think he said it not five minutes ago. And this morning. And yesterday. And… actually now I come to think about it, is there a day he hasn’t said it recently?”
Sirius sighed. “There has not, Moony. And it’s getting really old.”
James grinned. “Well perhaps if you’d all actually listen to me, I wouldn’t need to keep telling you.”
“I’ll listen to you, Prongs,” volunteered Peter, perched, cross-legged, on his bunk.
“Thank you, Wormy. At least one of you has a shred of loyalty!”
“I’ve got plenty of loyalty, I’ll have you know” complained Sirius. “What I don’t have is much more patience.”
James flipped himself over so that he was lying on his stomach, supporting himself on his elbows. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to bang on about Evans’s hair again, weren’t you?” predicted Sirius
“No,” insisted James, doing his best to sell the lie. “I was going to talk about something completely different.”
Sirius gave him a pitying look. “Prongs. Mate.”
“Yeah, okay, I was,” he admitted. “But it’s just so amazing! No one else in the whole school has hair quite the same colour.”
“There’s loads of gingers, Prongs,” Sirius told him, lazily turning the page of his magazine
“But Evans isn’t ginger - her hair is auburn,” James explained, reverentially, caressing the word in his mouth.
Sirius shrugged. “Still ginger, mate.”
But James was uninterested. “It isn’t just the colour though. It’s so thick and silky. Like water.”
“Water isn’t thick. Or silky,” observed Remus
James waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a metaphor.”
“Yeah. A really shit one,” snorted Sirius.
“I was referring to the way it flows down her back,” James told him, feeling a bit defensive. “You know, all swishy. I wonder what it feels like?”
Sirius summoned a quill and circled an advert in the For Sale section. “No one else cares, Prongs.”
James ignored his scathing tone. “I bet it feels amazing. Really silky.”
“Like water?” sniggered Peter.
James ignored that too. “I’d love to run my fingers through it.”
Sirius flicked him an irritated glance. “Kinda got that impression already, mate.”
“It probably smells really good too,” pondered James, with a faraway look in his eye
Remus looked mildly disturbed. “Alright, now you’re getting creepy.”
“I am not!” James was indignant. “I just can’t help noticing hair. It’s in my blood, isn’t it? I am my father’s son, after all.”
Sirius laughed. “I mean yes? That is generally how it works?”
James stuck two fingers up at Sirius. “Twat.”
“Dullard,” his best friend countered.
James thought for a moment, then gave him a broad grin. “You know what isn’t dull? Lily’s hair isn’t dull. In fact, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, it’s actually incredibly shiny.”
And that was what proved to be the last straw for Sirius’s patience. “You know what, Prongs. If you love Evan’s hair so much, I think you should have it.”
He flicked his wand in James’s direction, muttering an incantation under his breath. James’s head suddenly felt very warm. His scalp tingled uncomfortably for a few seconds, and then hair fell forward over his face - his long, thick, shiny, auburn hair.
Sirius, Remus and Peter all dissolved into fits of hysterical laughter as James pushed it frantically out of his eyes. “What the hell have you done, Pads!”
He dashed across the room to where a mirror hung on the wall. “Ooh! Well don’t you look a picture, sweetheart,” it trilled.
“Still in love with Evan’s hair, Prongs?” Sirius asked, through the laughter.
“Oh, you utter tosser!” raged James.
“Red really suits you, Prongs,” contributed Remus. “Brings out your eyes.”
James wheeled round and glared at Sirius. “I cannot believe that you did that!”
“Chill out, Prongs,” advised Sirius. “It’ll wear off eventually, so just enjoy it while it lasts. You know, run your fingers through it. Smell it. Whatever other weird shit you want to do with it.”
As Sirius talked, James became aware of a commotion in the distance. It seemed to be coming from the common room - shouting and more laughter. Then there were footsteps, echoing on the stone steps leading to the fifth year boys dormitory. The door was hurled open, so violently that it bounced against the stone wall with a loud bang, making them all jump.
In the doorway stood Lily Evans. At least, James thought it was Lily Evans. She had the same perfect willowy figure, the same hypnotic green eyes, and the same utterly furious expression that she usually wore around him. However, instead of her long, thick, shiny and (James could now confirm) great smelling auburn hair, she had a horribly familiar mop of messy jet black curls.
“James Potter!” she yelled. “What the hell have you done!”
Lily stared at James. James stared at Lily. Peter’s eyes darted frantically between the two of them. Remus took one look and then pointedly opened his Arithmancy text book. Sirius went extremely pale.
“It wasn’t me!” yelped James.
“Then explain to me why I have your hair, and why you have mine,” she practically growled at him. “Now!”
James glanced at his best friend. The person he thought of as a brother. The one that he would do anything for, protect from any harm, to whom he felt more loyalty than any other. “It was Sirius,” he blurted, without a single hesitation. “He did it!”
Lily shot a look of such venom onto Sirius that he physically recoiled. “And why, in the name of Merlin, would you do that?”
Now it was James’s turn to throw a menacing look at his best mate, silently forbidding him from throwing James under the graphorn and recounting the conversation that had so irked him.
Fortunately for James, Sirius’s sense of loyalty held firm. “I… Uh… I thought it would be a laugh,” he stammered, shaken out of his usual insouciance by the scale of her fury.
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” demanded Lily. “Fix it! Now!”
“I don’t know how! I didn’t mean for you to get James’s hair, Evans! I only meant for him to get yours. So I…” he trailed off, spots of bright pink colouring his pale cheeks
“You what?” she asked, icily.
“I didn’t bother working out the counter spell,” he confessed.
“Oh dear god,” muttered Lily. “You're an utter imbecile, Black!” Shaking her head, she turned her ire back on James instead. “Well come on then, Potter. You’re the transfiguration genius. Un-transfigure us!”
And he tried. He really did - because no matter how gorgeous Lily’s hair was, he much preferred admiring it on her head rather than his own. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts. nothing he did made even the slightest bit of difference.
“In fairness,” commented Remus, acknowledging them all for the first time since Lily’s arrival, “human transfiguration is N.E.W.T. level stuff. I’m quite surprised that Padfoot managed it in the first place.”
“Piss off!” declared Sirius.
“Not helpful, either of you,” commented James, through gritted teeth.
“So what do we do now?” Lily asked him. “I want my hair back!”
“Only one thing we can do,” James sighed. “We go and see McGonagall.”
“Good luck,” offered Sirius - but Lily was having none of it.
“Oh, no - you’re not wriggling out of it that easily, Black!’ she announced, grabbing Sirius by the elbow and hauling him to his feet. “You’re going to come with us and explain to Professor McGonagall exactly what you did and exactly how you did it. She’s going to need to know if she’s going to fix it.”
Lily practically dragged Sirius down the stairs and out through the common room, to a chorus of laughter and catcalls. James, after carefully checking that Lily wasn’t looking, couldn’t resist playing to the audience, dramatically swishing Lily’s hair back and forth over his shoulders. It also gave him an excuse to sneakily run his fingers through it a few times, and verify that it was every bit as wonderfully silky as he’d imagined.
They located Professor McGonagall in her office. To her enormous credit, the deputy headmistress managed (well, mostly) to keep a straight face as she delivered a lecture on inappropriate magic use, the dangers of human transfiguration, and the utmost importance of being prepared with counter spells. She then docked five points from Gryffindor for Sirius’s misdemeanour, before setting about restoring James and Lily’s hair to the appropriate heads.
By the time the three of them left McGonagall’s classroom, Lily was much calmer. She was still extremely frosty with Sirius, but appeared to bear James no particular ill-will (for once). Emboldened, he caught her arm as Sirius ambled off down the corridor heading back towards the common room.
“Uh - Evans?”
“Yes?”
“I… uh… I just wanted to say sorry about all that.”
“Why? It wasn’t your fault, was it?”
“No.” No, it isn’t my fault that my best mate is a massive twat, even though he didn’t tell you that the reason he did it was because I wouldn’t stop banging on about how amazing your hair is, thus saving me from total humilation, James thought to himself . “But still.”
“Well, no harm done.” And then she smiled at him - an honest-to-Merlin, actual, genuine smile, and James thought he might have died and gone to heaven. “Don’t tell Sirius this, but I suppose it was quite funny. If you weren’t the one lumbered with your hair, of course.”
“Just imagine being lumbered with it permanently,” he replied, ruefully, pushing his hand roughly through the thatch on his head.
She raised her eyebrows. “You’d have preferred to keep mine?”
“Oh! No,” he clarified. “Having long hair was an interesting experience, but it looks better on you, I think. A lot better.”
“Thank you.” Now, James could have been imagining it, but did she blush at the compliment? Maybe just the tiniest bit? “Short hair felt really weird, to be honest. My neck was cold! And I was surprised at how soft it was.”
She stopped talking with the tiniest intake of breath, her eyes widening, and now James was sure she definitely was blushing; Clearly, she hadn’t meant to confess to that last part. Thrilled with the knowledge, James couldn’t resist fishing for more. “You touched it?”
“Force of habit, I suppose,” she replied, briskly. “Well. I have an essay that I need to be getting on with. Goodnight, Potter.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, just hurried away down the corridor. Smiling softly, James let himself slouch back against the wall and watched her go, her auburn hair swinging to and fro as she walked. He didn’t move again until she’d turned the corner and her footsteps faded into the distance.
“Night, Evans,” he whispered.