“So what’s home like for you, anyway?” Lily asked James one March afternoon in Potions. They were sharing a cauldron because James had begged her for her help (“Please, please, please, Evans, you don’t want me to fail, do you?”) and because Remus, who James usually turned to in times of academic crisis, was out sick.
“Home?” James asked, looking up from the salamander tail he was slicing. “I dunno, fine, I guess. Why?”
“That’s a lie,” Sirius said, sliding into the table beside them. “He loves home. He’s spoiled rotten.”
Lily looked curiously at James, who shrugged shamefacedly. “That’s…probably true,” he admitted. “My parents are kind of old. They didn’t think they were going to be able to have kids, and then I came along.”
“And he’s been getting pampered ever since,” Sirius added. James hit him in the head, protesting loudly, until Sirius finally sighed laboriously and amended, “Well, we’ve been doing our best to toughen him up. And it probably helps that, ever since I moved in with him last year, his mom’s totally found a new favorite child.”
“Why did you come over here, Padfoot?” James asked him pointedly.
“Well,” Sirius said sternly, “I just wanted to tell you that I don’t approve of this seating arrangement.”
James and Lily exchanged apprehensive glances. “Ours?” Lily asked.
“Yes, yours,” Sirius said petulantly. “It’s not fair that James gets all the Potions help.”
James rolled his eyes. “If anyone needs Potions help, it’s Wormtail,” he said, nodding in the direction of Peter, who was peering worriedly into a cauldron. “You know. Your partner. You left your grade in his hands again…you might want to give him some tips.”
Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Grades?” he said. “You’re thinking about grades? Evans, what on earth have you done with him?”
“Go,” James said sternly, and Sirius went.
“You know, sometimes I can’t tell if you’re best friends or if you hate each other,” Lily remarked as soon as he was out of earshot.
“We’re more like brothers,” James said. “So, you know. Both. Especially since he started practically living at my house during holidays. It definitely livens things up, though.”
“Is it that dull?” Lily asked.
“Oh, yeah,” James said. “It’s like living in a library.”
“I guess that explains why you get up to so much trouble here,” she laughed. “You should get a dog or something.
“No way,” he said vehemently.
She raised an eyebrow incredulously. “Not a dog person?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I like them fine. I just spend way too much time around them. I’m more of a cat person anyway. Don’t tell Sirius, he’d take it personally.”
“That you prefer cats to dogs?”
“Oh yeah.”
Lily shook her head. “I swear, I will never understand your relationship.”
“Probably not,” James said cheerfully. “I don’t think I do half the time. So why were you asking about home, anyway?”
Lily sighed. “I was thinking about summer,” she said. “And about how much I dread going home.”
“Oh, right, you go back to the Muggle world, don’t you?” James said, understanding dawning. “Are your parents not comfortable with the whole, you know, witch thing?”
“Oh, no,” Lily said, shaking her head. “My parents are great. It’s really my sister who hates it.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” James said, surprised.
Lily smiled wryly. “I think most of the time she pretends she doesn’t have one.”
There was a world of hurt in that sentence, and James looked at her more closely, concerned. “I’m sorry,” he said haltingly. “Are you””
She waved him away. “Oh, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m used to it. It’s just weirder now because, well, you know. Severus always used to be around. And now he’s, well…not.”
“Right,” James said, suddenly cool. “Severus.”
They both glanced towards the other side of the room, where Snape sat, sharing a cauldron with one of his Slytherin friends. James was more than a little startled to see that Snape was already staring at the two of them, his upper lip curling in disgust. He caught James’s eye and raised an eyebrow tauntingly.
Hissing under his breath, James reached for his wand, suddenly flooded by anger. But he stilled as Lily put a hand on his wrist. “Don’t,” she said fiercely, “even think about it.”
James bit his lip and looked down at her. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, she continued, “I know he was provoking you, and he’ll probably always be provoking you, but don’t give in. Please.” She did not take her gaze off of his, her green eyes burning intently, and after a moment he let his wrist go limp, his wand dropping to the table. He glanced up at Snape, whose gaze was now fixed on James’s arm, where Lily was still touching him. Snape scowled venomously and looked away.
“I can’t even think about it?” James wheedled, and she smiled softly, releasing him, the tension between them dissolving.
“Well,” she allowed, “only a little.”
---
Spring came slowly to Hogwarts, bringing with it James’s seventeenth birthday. He’d been looking forward to it”not in the least because, as always, he still loved being the center of attention.
He didn’t entirely appreciate being roughly shaken awake, however, until he saw who was doing the shaking.
“Moony!” James yelped, hopping out of bed. “It’s full moon, aren’t you supposed to the Shrieking Shack for the week?”
Remus, who looked haggard and worn, gave him a weary smile. “Yeah,” he said, “but Dumbledore let me out for your birthday. Just for a little bit, don’t want to risk anything. But I didn’t want to miss it completely. Seventeen! It’s a big one.”
“I know,” James said, stepping forward to give his friend a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re here. I think it’s stupid that you have to stay in the shack all day when you don’t turn till the moon rises. We miss having you around.”
Remus looked at him sadly. “Well, it’s precautionary. I understand. But that’s not the point. I’m here for your birthday!”
“Wasgoinon?” Sirius said suddenly, waking up. He sat up sleepily, looked at them for a moment, and then raised both his hands in the air. “It’s Moony!” he cried. “It’s Prongs’s birthday! Are you two snuggling without me?”
James and Remus exchanged amused glances. “Morning, Padfoot,” James said.
Sirius blinked at them. “I want snuggles,” he said.
James, grinning, gave a long-suffering sigh and walked over to pat Sirius on the head. “I swear, you get more like a real dog every day,” Remus said.
“You’re one to talk, Wolfboy,” Sirius shot back.
“I can’t believe Wormtail managed to sleep through all of this,” James said thoughtfully. The three of them looked at each other for a moment, and then, as one, pelted towards the small shape of Peter, huddled under his blankets.
Peter squealed loudly as they landed on him. He attempted to stick his head under his pillow, but Sirius wrestled the pillow away and began happily whacking Peter with it. James and Remus, after the initial attack, retreated to the foot of the bed and leaned against the posts, laughing at their two friends.
“So do you do this kind of thing every morning?” said a voice from the doorway, and James looked up in surprise, his jaw dropping.
“Hey, Evans!” Sirius said merrily, waving Peter’s pillow at her. “You’re not supposed to be in here!”
Peter, for his part, yanked his bedcovers up to his chin so quickly that he knocked James off the bed and onto the floor.
“Hi, Lily,” Remus said, smiling at her.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sick?” she asked him as she crossed into their dorm, and offered a still-stunned James her hand. He took it and got to his feet, embarrassedly sitting back down on the edge of Peter’s bed.
“Oh, I am sick,” Remus assured her. “What are you doing in here?”
She scrutinized him. “Well, you do look kind of peaky,” she said. “And I’m here to wish James a happy birthday!”
James looked up, smiling shyly, as she stepped to stand in front of him. “Happy birthday,” she said, smiling mischievously, as if they were the only two in the room. And then she dumped a small, mewling bundle of fur into his lap.
“What is that?” Sirius asked in disgust.
“It’s a kitten,” James told him delightedly, picking it up. Tiny blue eyes blinked up at him from a puff of gray and black fur.
“Why did you get him a cat?” Sirius demanded of Lily.
She shrugged. “Well, Leda’s cat had kittens recently, and she didn’t know what to do with them, and I’ve been telling James that he needs to get a pet, so I thought it seemed like the perfect opportunity.”
James looked up to see that her eyes were on him. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and she winked”he knew that she, too, was remembering the question that they had had in Potions a few days earlier.
Lily looked back at Sirius, adding, “Plus it seemed like it’d make you mad, and you know I never get tired of that.”
Sirius made a face at her.
“Oh, lighten up,” she advised him. “You’re just mad because I’m making you look bad. I’ll see you all at lunch!”
All four of them watched her, slightly dumbstruck, as she walked from the room. “Oh, and happy birthday,” she called over her shoulder, and she was gone.
“She’s right,” Sirius said miserably, flopping backwards onto Peter’s bed. Peter, emerging from the bedcovers, patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. “I mean, look at him,” Sirius continued, gesturing towards James. “He’s a goner.”
“She got me a cat,” James said, still smiling dopily.
Sirius stared at him for a long moment, then reached over and smacked him on the head. “Snap out of it,” he said.
James frowned at him, and hugged the kitten to his chest.
“What are you going to name her?” Remus asked, chuckling.
“And if you say ‘Lily’ then I will hurt you,” Sirius warned. “Even if it is your birthday.”
“I don’t know,” James said thoughtfully. “Maybe something like Jinx. You know, since…Moony, are you drooling?”
“No,” Remus said guiltily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, well, maybe, but it’s full moon! I have predatory instincts! I’m sorry!”
James and Sirius laughed, although Peter looked nervous.
“Come on,” Sirius said, checking his watch. “We’re going to be late for breakfast. That is, if you can tear yourself away from your new…pet, Prongs.”
“I’m going to have to get all kinds of stuff for her,” James said eagerly.
“What kind of man are you?” Sirius muttered under his breath, and began searching for his shirt. Then he stopped and looked back at James. “So,” he said, “Evans is really like, one of us now, isn’t she?”
James looked up at him, surprised. “Yeah,” he said, smiling slowly, “yeah, I guess she is.”
---
Lily went straight down to breakfast after leaving the boys’ dormitory, and she was scoping out a place to sit when she heard someone call her name. She turned, surprised, to see Marlene Mckinnon hurrying towards her.
“What’s up?” Lily said curiously, noting Marlene’s curious expression.
“Remember that conversation a group of us had at the start of term, about standing up to You-Know Who?” Marlene asked.
“Yeah, of course,” Lily said.
“Well,” said Marlene, “it’s high past time that we actually got to work on that. And I just talked to Professor Flitwick”you know, he used to be a dueling champion before he came back to teach, and he said he’s be glad to do a basic lesson on self-defense, which is a start! Are you in?”
Lily, who was trying and failing to imagine little Professor Flitwick as a dueling champion, nodded eagerly. “Of course I am!” she said enthusiastically. “When is it?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Marlene smiled at her. “I didn’t tell him exactly why we were interested”no need to broadcast it, I think”so he said something about making it school-wide. There will probably be a lot of people there, so make sure to tell your friends!”
“Of course I will,” Lily said, looking over her shoulder, “as soon as they get down here. It’s James’s birthday you know, so they might be taking their time…and Remus is sick again, so””
“Oh,” Marlene said. “I meant like, Mary and Leda, you know, in case they’ve changed their minds since January…I think Frank’s telling the boys your year, so you don’t need to worry about them.”
“Right,” Lily said absently, “Mary. I forgot.”
“I noticed you two haven’t been spending as much time together,” Marlene said carefully. When Lily didn’t respond, she added, “I also noticed you’ve been spending a lot of time with James Potter.”
Lily looked at her sharply. “I guess I have,” she said.
“Are you two going out?” Marlene asked casually.
“What? No!” Lily said, laughing. “Of course not. It’s not like that. Mary and I just grew apart a little, you know, so I started spending more time with James, but I’m certainly not dating him.”
Marlene’s smile was a little too knowing. “If you say so,” she shrugged. “Although a year ago, some people would’ve said that it would be impossible for you two to ever be friends, and here you are.”
“I know,” Lily told her ruefully. “I was one of them. But things change.”
Marlene raised an eyebrow, and Lily swatted her, chuckling. “Not that much though, you’re crazy. We’re just friends.”
“Sure,” Marlene said, shaking her head and grinning. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, Lily!”
Lily waved goodbye and went to sit down for breakfast. She was surprised a moment later as Mary slid in next to her.
“Hi!” Lily said enthusiastically. They had grown apart, as Lily had told both James and Marlene, but Lily did like being around the other girl every once in a while”conversely, now that they weren’t together that often, Lily found Mary’s quirks much more tolerable. And sometimes she liked a little girl talk.
“Hi,” Mary said back. “What did Marlene want?”
Lily told her about the dueling lesson, and they spent a few minutes happily trying to figure out how Professor Flitwick had managed to become a champion.
“Would you want to go?” Lily asked hesitantly, and as she expected, Mary shook her head.
“It’s not really my kind of thing,” she said unapologetically, and Lily nodded. “But,” Mary continued, “I have something much more important to talk to you about.”
“Oh, really?” Lily said, resisting the urge to laugh. “What’s that?”
“Well,” Mary said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “there’s kind of this rumor going around, and I just thought I’d find out from you if it was true. So are you really dating””
“James Potter?” Lily interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Marlene just asked me the same thing, and no, I don’t know why everyone thinks that.”
Mary gave a tinkling little laugh. “Oh, not James!” she said. “Like you’d ever date him, please, I know you. You spent way too much time disliking him to ever see him romantically. No, no, I meant Sirius Black.”
Lily stared at her for a beat. “You think I’m dating Sirius Black,” she said, dumbfounded.
“Well…yes!” Mary said, still smiling beatifically. “I mean, you’ve been spending lots of time around all those boys, and I heard you were holding hands with him at the Quidditch match.”
“I was not,” Lily said indignantly. “I was holding his elbow. Because James had just fallen twenty feet off his broomstick and we thought he might be dead.”
“Well, you did kiss him,” Mary pointed out.
“Not because I wanted to, that’s entirely unrelated!” Lily cried.
Mary shrugged. “So I guess you’re not. I don’t know though, I think you should! You guys would be cute together. And if you were dating Sirius and I was dating James, we could double! It would be so much fun!”
Lily spat her mouthful of juice onto the table. “You’re dating James?”
Mary laughed again. “Well, no, silly, not yet. I think I’m going to ask him out later today though. I mean, if that’s all right with you?”
For some reason, Lily was, at that moment, quite cheerfully contemplating socking Mary in the nose. Well that’s just ridiculous, she thought to herself. Of course it’s all right with me.
“Fine by me,” she said aloud. “He’s fair game.”
“Oh,” Mary said, sounding surprised. “Well, okay then. I’ve got to run now, though, I’ll see you later!”
She didn’t wait to hear Lily’s response, just leapt to her feet and half-ran from the Great Hall.
---
As this conversation was unfolding, James, Sirius and Peter had just entered the Great Hall and were heading towards the Gryffindor table. James was quite surprised to see Mary Macdonald see them as they entered, stand up, and make a beeline for them.
“She looks kind of annoyed…” he muttered to Sirius and Peter.
“Mayday,” Peter hissed back, but promptly shut up as Mary reached them. She nodded curtly, then grabbed Sirius by the arm and started dragging him from the hall.
“Hey!” Sirius yelped. “What’re you”I’m going to miss breakfast!”
“Shut up and come with me,” Mary commanded, then looked at James and Peter. “I’ll have him back to you in a few minutes. Happy birthday.” And then she left, taking a protesting Sirius with her.
James and Peter looked at each other, chuckling. James looked over at the Gryffindor table. “Hey, there’s Lily,” he said.
Peter gestured towards her grandly. “After you,” he said, and they headed over.
---
“We,” Mary said to Sirius, hauling him into an empty classroom, “have a problem.”
Sirius rubbed his arm gingerly. “And you have quite a grip,” he groused.
Mary rolled her eyes. “Oh, toughen up,” she said.
Sirius resented being told to toughen up by anyone, but especially by a girl who was half his size, and whose eyelashes, he noticed, looked entirely too long to be real. He was about to say this, but Mary was talking again.
“It’s Lily and James,” she said, and Sirius looked at her in surprise.
“What about them?” he asked.
“It’s hopeless,” Mary said dramatically, flinging herself down into a nearby desk. “They’re never going to get together on their own. Do you know what I just did?”
Sirius did not.
“I just asked Lily how she felt about me dating James,” Mary said, looking horrorstruck, “and she said it was fine!”
Sirius did not quite see the problem. “Wait,” he said, confused. “You want to date James?”
“Of course not,” Mary said, looking at him despairingly. “I just said that because I was trying to get her to admit that she likeds him. But Sirius, I don’t think she even knows that she likes him!”
“Well, maybe she doesn’t,” Sirius said reasonably, edging towards the door. “Anyway, it’s none of our business whether she does or doesn’t like him, and we should probably just stay out of it.”
“But that’s no fun,” Mary said petulantly. “Besides, you’ve seen them together recently. They’re practically dating as is.”
“Even more reason for us not to interfere,” Sirius said. “They’re doing just fine on their own.”
“No they aren’t!” Mary said, actually stamping her foot. “And I can’t just sit by and watch nothing happen.”
“Then start a betting pool,” Sirius advised her. “Have people predict when they’re going to finally get together. You’d probably make a good chunk of money. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go eat.”
Mary looked as though she was actually considering this as Sirius bolted from the classroom.
Trickster by Willow Rosenberg
Chapter Notes: So this chapter is sort of the first half of a two-parter that just got a little too long. Enjoy! Review! I'll put the second part in queue as soon as this goes through.--------