29 May 2003

The Stag’s Tale

 

The Tube was approaching his stop. At least he hoped that the unpleasant series of jolts and the noise like a suit of armor being dragged across a stone floor meant that they would soon be at Bethnal Green instead of in some metal-bending, bone-crunching crash. Apparating would have been a far more pleasant alternative--he already knew how, though he didn’t have a license--but the risk of the Ministry finding out was too great.

James looked around at his fellow passengers: older women clutching bulging shopping bags of various shapes and sizes; mothers with children of various shapes and sizes; old men who stoically read newspapers amidst the car’s rhythmic clacking, the whooshing of air, and now the groaning and shrieking of the brakes. Harsh lights gave an unnatural cast to the faces and the silence--no one talked or laughed or gave any sign of acknowledging anyone else--made James wonder if he hadn’t accidentally stumbled onto another species entirely. Gods, how did the non-magical masses stand being stuffed into claustrophobic cars that sped through these dark tunnels, tunnels that looked and felt like the vaults underneath Gringotts Bank? Only goblins could have designed the London Underground.

A chance remark from Peter, a bit of Hogwarts news, had started him on this journey. Girls confided in Peter for some reason and he was always the first to get new gossip over the summer holiday.

Dear James,

Or should I say, your Head Boyness? I can’t work out how you got the job, but it’s great! Snape is going to be so mad I bet his face will turn green even without hexing. Speaking of which, I ran into Elspeth Honeypecker in Diagon Alley yesterday and she told me she had it straight from Mandy Barnes that Lily Evans is Head Girl! How’s that for a nasty shock to a certain Slytherin gang?

How’s life in the mouldy manor? I hope your mother’s feeling better. Has it stopped raining long enough for a spot of Quidditch practise? Ha-ha. Father has relented and released me from clerking at the firm. Six weeks of copying out contracts is enough torture for me! I’m a free man, so come down to London if you can.

Peter

James had known that he’d have to pay Evans a visit, if he could arrange to come to Town, as soon as he’d read Peter’s letter. He just hoped that he’d survive the trip through the bowels of Muggle London.

He stood and prepared to exit, tucking the unfamiliar and uncomfortable Muggle shirt into the stiff new jeans that he’d put on just for the occasion. The train lurched to a final stop and the doors opened. James allowed the crush of people to push through the doors ahead of him. He peered through the grimy windows and tried to read the name of the station. “Bethnal Green”. That was the right one. He dawdled so long that he had to jump through the doors just as they were closing.

While people milled around him, James stood for a moment on the poorly lit platform and wrinkled his nose at the various odors, most of them unfamiliar and all of them unpleasant. And it was hot, too, as if several day’s worth of summer heat had been concentrated underground. How did they come up with this as a way of getting around? Trains he could understand, at least the sort that chugged comfortably through the countryside, like the one that had brought him down to Town. But the Tube, as they called it, was a poor imitation of a train, more like a form of torture than a form of transportation.

He followed the stream of people up a moving staircase that bucked and creaked in a most unmagical way, suggesting hidden machinery. Once on the street, he blinked in the bright sunlight and tried to get his bearings. He took out the other letter and reread it; the directions sounded simple enough. He set off on what he thought was the right course and tried to make sense of the shops along the way; they sold many things, some he recognized, but others left him baffled. Why did Muggles need to clean vacuum, for example? After seeing the mysterious machines in the window of the shop called “Vacuum Cleaners - New, Used and Repair,” he concluded that “vacuum” meant something entirely different to them. Perhaps a Muggle who wandered into Diagon Alley would be equally confused by “Ollivander’s Wands,” not to mention “Quality Quidditch Supplies.”

After a few false starts, he found the right street about a quarter-mile from the Underground station. There the houses were jammed up against one another on either side of the street in a long wall of dirty red brick. Didn’t anyone ever clean them? At home, for example, the house-elves diligently scrubbed the exterior brick on the manor house.

At first sight, all the houses seemed identical and he almost chucked the whole undertaking--he would walk to Diagon Alley, though, instead of attempting another ride on the Tube--but after staring at the street for a few moments, he could pick out individual houses in the way that one finally learns to tell one tree from another from another in a forest, even though they all look alike at first glance. Each of the houses had a dollop of a garden in front, some weedy and overgrown, some paved over, and some bursting with flowers. The front of each house had a door precisely in the same spot, but the color varied from house to house, from somber to garish, although quite a few sported only peeling paint and rusting hardware. Most, but not all, doors had numbers on them.

The house with the number that he was seeking had one of the neater front gardens. Tall spikes of foxglove poked over the wrought iron fence and he recognized several common magical plants growing in neatly arranged pots. He paused as he checked his watch and was surprised to hear bees buzzing lazily in the late July sun here in the midst of a landscape of lifeless brick. After a moment’s hesitation, he strode purposefully up to the front door because James Potter always did things with purpose, no matter how nervous he felt underneath.

He knocked and the door was answered by a middle-aged woman wearing plain, Muggle clothing.

“Mrs. Evans?”

The woman nodded, and she looked at him so quizzically that he reached up to straighten his hair and wondered if there was something wrong with the Muggle clothes he wore.

“I’m James Potter, a friend of Ev--of Lily’s from school. I wrote to her and…”

“She did mention something about a chap from school.” The woman frowned and hesitated for a moment, but then stepped into the house and called up a set of stairs just inside the door, “Lily! Your friend from school is here!”

No answer was forthcoming. The woman twisted a kitchen towel that she held in her hands and looked upstairs expectantly. While they waited, James surveyed the small front room. The furniture, although not as dark and ornate as the Elizabethan-era furnishings he’d grown up with, looked normal enough, but the glaringly unfamiliar Muggle appliances--something that looked like a fishbowl full of nothingness trapped in a wooden box, lamps of odd sizes and shapes with black wires snaking off to some hidden realm, and other things that he couldn’t identify--reminded him how far he was from his childhood home, and from the wizarding world.

“Oh, dear. She’s been up in her room all day,” the woman said, more to herself than to James. “I don’t know why she won’t--” She broke off at the sound of a girl’s voice from somewhere on the ground floor; the voice was unfamiliar to James, shriller than Evans’s voice and with less of a London accent.

“Mummy! I need help with my hair and you haven’t hemmed by green dre--”

The girl strode imperiously into the front room. She was wearing a dressing gown and her hair was wrapped in a towel. Did Evans have a sister? The thin girl with the pinched face looked nothing like her.

“Who’s this, then?” The girl gave James an interested smile, while plucking at her dressing gown to straighten it.

“A friend of Lily’s from school.” Mrs. Evans smiled distractedly. “James… Potts, is it?”

“Potter,” he corrected.

“You don’t look like one of those freaks,” the girl said acidly. Her smile evaporated, replaced by a contemptuous sneer.

“Petunia!”

“Well, they are, Mum. But that’s Lily’s problem.” She smiled again, this time a frigid smile of sugar-coated disgust, and then turned on her mother, dismissing James entirely. “I can’t go to the party in that green dress as it is. The length has gone out of fashion. I told you yesterday! You just have to hem it. And I need to get started on my hair. I’ve got to be ready by five, you know. This is a terribly important party -- loads of the right people will be there -- and I can’t look like a fright, now can I?”

“Well, dear, why don’t you fix the dress yourself, and then I’ll help with your hair?” her mother said evenly. She smiled briefly at James and seemed slightly embarrassed, although he couldn’t tell if this was due to his presence or to her daughter’s behavior.

“I don’t know where the stupid dress is, do I?” said Petunia. “I gave it to you yesterday and you said you’d fix it for me.”

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Evans said to James. “I’ll just be a minute and then we’ll see about Lily.”

The two disappeared, but James could still hear them from somewhere in the house, Petunia whining about her dress while her mother lectured her on improving her manners.

After some minutes of standing awkwardly in the doorway, James began to wonder if Evans had really been serious in suggesting he come. In spite of their six years at Hogwarts, he didn’t know her all that well. As Gryffindor prefects, they’d been thrown together more often during the past year. Before that, he’d known Evans as a smart witch with a quick wit that she often put to use defending herself against those who could be downright nasty to Muggle-borns. They had shared classes and traded lecture notes occasionally, but James had generally studied with his friends when he wasn’t practicing Quidditch or hanging out with his current girlfriend.

He had written to congratulate her on becoming Head Girl. “Next time I come down to London perhaps we can get together and start planning out the year,” he’d said. She had written back inviting him to visit if he was in Town--they’d agreed on this day at three o’clock in the afternoon--but maybe her invitation arose solely out of politeness; maybe she couldn’t be bothered with him. No, that was ridiculous. As Head Boy and Head Girl, they had decisions to make and events to organize. He hoped that she wasn’t charging ahead without him. Evans did have a reputation for taking matters into her own hands.

With a frown, James walked cautiously up the narrow staircase. At the head of the stairs was a closed door. The other doors were open, revealing two bedrooms and a bath that were empty as far as he could tell. Sunlight streamed through a tiny window in the bathroom and fell on the well-worn carpet in the corridor. Family photographs crowded the walls. He recognized red-haired Evans in several of them and confirmed that she looked nothing like her blonde sister. The voices downstairs could still be heard faintly, but all was silent upstairs. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether this journey to what seemed like a foreign country had been a good idea. But here he was, so he knocked on the only closed door in the corridor.

“Er, Lily? It’s James, James Potter.”

There was a rustling sound from inside the room and then silence. He waited, listening intently. The door opened and there stood Evans looking very much like a witch in a long full skirt and flowing top, a surprise in the midst of so much Muggleness. Her red hair, usually neatly pulled back, spilled haphazardly from an untidy knot on the top of her head.

“I’m sorry if I came at a bad time…” James trailed off, feeling like an idiot. She had “bad time” written all over her face, judging from the red-rimmed eyes and the hard set of her mouth. She met his eyes briefly and then looked down, folding and unfolding several pieces of paper that she held in her hands.

“I did say that you should come, didn’t I?“ She frowned and bit her lip. “But perhaps this isn’t the best…maybe you should…”

“Well, I can understand how you might be upset,” he said with a smile that he hoped would be disarming. “The sight of James Potter has been known to make Slytherins quake with fear. As Head Boy I am, of course, going to strike fear in the hearts of all students, Slytherin or not. I’ve been doing a correspondence course over the summer on striking fear in the hearts of men and, er, women. Do you think it’s working? You might want to give it a try. Do wonders for you. And you could practice on your sister.”

She looked up at him, green eyes shining, and smiled the nicest smile that James could ever remember. It was as if she’d never smiled before and it dazzled him in spite of the way she looked--or maybe because of it.

“Now there’s something I hadn’t thought of,” she said with a sniff and hastily wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.

The amusing patter that usually sprang forth effortlessly from James’s lips had temporarily dried up and he couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. A movement caught his eye as one of the pieces of paper she’d been holding escaped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. He reached down to retrieve it, determined to prove himself useful.

“You don’t have to--” she said with an urgency that James didn’t understand, not at first. She fixed her gaze on him, her cheeks reddening.

“Sorry. None of my business, is it?” James flushed slightly as he stood and hoped she wouldn’t notice. He thrust the paper toward her. “Look, I’ll just go now and we can meet at school at the start of term, or send owls if we--”

“Yes… No.” She sighed and pointed at the paper that he’d retrieved. “Look, you might as well see this now. Go on. Read it. You’re not the only one who’s heard that I’m to be Head Girl. I got three owls today and I’m sure there’ll be more.”

Puzzled as to whatever could have provoked such a reaction in the normally cool Lily Evans, James unfolded the paper, actually a scrap parchment that had been torn roughly on one edge. The letters were spiky and angry-looking, the words hurriedly written and smeared in places.

They shouldn’t let trash like you into Hogwarts. You are an abomination and should never have been picked for Head Girl. Step aside and let a real witch have the job.

“And the others… they’re like this?” said James in an even tone. He stared at the paper as he spoke, reluctant to meet her eyes.

“Worse.” She laughed bitterly and turned away, long skirt swirling in her wake as she sat down on the end of a narrow bed that nearly filled the tiny room. A window next to the bed faced the street with its row of nearly identical houses whose windows stared back like a crowd of strangers at the scene of a tragic accident.

“You can’t let a few nasty letters stop you.” James leaned against the doorframe and stared at her profile.

“Just forget it. You wouldn’t understand,” she said in a low voice. For a moment there was only the soft swish of paper on paper as she turned the other letters over and over in her hands. When she looked up at him, the pain in her green eyes had flared into anger. “I thought you should know that there might be trouble, but it’s not your problem, all right?”

“Of course it is!” James shot back. “Anything that undermines our authority is my problem too. Let me see the others.”

“You’re a pureblood, aren’t you?” She jumped up suddenly and grabbed the letter from him, waving it at him as she went on, her voice edgy and brittle, “Do you know that I’m only the second Muggle-born ever to be appointed Head Boy or Head Girl? There wasn’t even a half-blood chosen until 1944! According to these vile notes, I’m going to be polluting Hogwarts and all of the wizarding world merely by existing.”

“And your ‘mere’ existence proves them wrong!” cried James. “No, more than that. You’re one of the best witches in our year and having you as Head Girl shows up all that ‘purity of blood’ stuff as utter rubbish. Don’t you see?”

She stared at him, mouth open. He realized that he’d been shouting, realized just how much taller he was and that he loomed over her, filling the doorway like some menacing madman.

“Sorry,” he said, ducking his head and looking down at his feet.

Without a word, she handed him the other letters, then sat once more on the bed. A painful knot formed in his stomach as he unfolded the first piece of paper.

Mudblood bitch. Hogwarts is better off without filth like you. Beware.

The last one was worse.

if you set foot in school ill rip you’re heart out and all you mudblood friends to

His insides twisted, as if he’d been punched in the gut, and he felt his limbs grow cold; anger coiled up inside him, poised to strike. Only he didn’t know whom or what to strike. Anger dissolved into frustrated confusion and his head began to throb. Neither of them spoke for some time. She poked at the floor with her foot, obsessively smoothing an already smooth rug.

“Oh, I know you’re right about… about showing them,” she sighed, “but sometimes I…”

“Hey, now,” James said softly and sat beside her. “You’ve got me, the Head Boy who strikes terror into the hearts of Hogwarts rule-breakers. I certainly won’t put up with any of this nonsense, and neither will the prefects or the teachers.”

“Thanks,” she said simply, her eyes still downcast. “I hope you’re right, I really do.”

“Well, maybe a certain Slytherin prefect will be a bit bent out of shape, but you leave him to me.” James blustered, trying his best to jolly her along and banish the darkness that seemed to have settled around her shoulders like an unseen mantle.

“I’m not so sure about that.” She looked up at him and he was pleased to see that a spark of amusement had returned to her green eyes. “After what happened last year at the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, I’m not sure that we can leave a certain Slytherin to you. The Head Boy can’t go around transfiguring his least favorite people into toads after all.”

“Sod it all! Er, I don’t suppose Head Boys are supposed to say that either.”

“Maybe you should have been taking a course in how to be a proper Head Boy,” she said with a chuckle.

“Proper Head Boy?” James snorted. “I’ll have you know that--“

“Oooh. You’re going to be in so much trouble.” Petunia had appeared in the doorway, still wearing her dressing gown and clutching an acid green something-or-other, probably the party dress. She gave Lily a nasty smirk and then yelled, “Mum! Lily’s got that boy in her room!”

“We were just talking shop, wizard-talk, you know,” James said with a smile that he knew to be fairly irresistible to members of the opposite sex, “talking about a spell for turning a person into a toad, don’t you know, and wondering about how to get just the right shade of green. Your dress, for example, would be a marvelous color for a toad. Do you mind if we test it on--”

“Mum!” Petunia shrieked, twitching, prepared to run away like a flightless bird on the verge of extinction.

James stood up and took a step toward her. She whirled around and fled into one of the other bedrooms; the door slammed behind her. Lily had one hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud and clutched her stomach with the other. James liked the way her eyes sparkled and he laughed, too, then grew more serious.

“You’re not going to get in trouble, are you?”

“No,” she said with a sigh, “but let’s not give her any more ammunition. We’d better go downstairs. I’m sorry for taking up your time with my silly problems. We didn’t even get round to talking about the new term. I don’t know if you can--that is, maybe you’ve got another engagement or something--but if you have time, and you want to stay, I could make you a cuppa.”

He stayed for tea and then for the rest of the afternoon, long after Petunia had flounced out in a huff to her “very important” party. He stayed for supper and helped Lily with the dishes afterward. And when he finally turned up on Peter’s doorstep, hours later than he’d said he would, his only excuse was that being Head Boy was a very time-consuming business.

For the rest of the summer, James was in almost daily contact with Evans, either by owl or in person. There really was a lot to arrange for the start of term and both wanted their tenures as Head Boy and Head Girl to go well. After the term started, things seemed to go smoothly until one evening, an evening after which nothing was ever the same between them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Potter?”

“Mmm?”

“The meeting’s over, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

James turned from the window and seemed surprised that the room was empty save for Evans and himself. At ten o’clock at night, there was nothing to see through the window, nothing but formless dark. Even in daylight there wasn’t much of a view of the Hogwarts grounds from the prefects’ office.

“I guess we should head back to Gryffindor,” she said. She rose from her seat but didn’t seem ready to leave. Instead, she stood behind the ‘desk’, a battered oak table that had served generations of Head Girls and Head Boys, and fiddled with a half-dozen quills, rearranging them several different ways, none of which seemed to suit her.

He gave her a tight smile, and then sat heavily on the old sofa that stretched along one wall like a dead dragon. No one knew for sure whether the green velvet monstrosity, with its dark lumpy upholstery and wooden claws for feet, was a cast-off from the staff room or a charitable contribution from someone’s parents, but legend had it that the sofa had been there at least since the turn of the century. The prefects’ office was a hodgepodge of old furniture and, since it functioned as a Lost Articles office, books, clothing, broomsticks and assorted miscellany as well. It was barely large enough to hold the entire group of prefects for the weekly meetings; most of the time it served as a place for the Head Boy and Head Girl to write out notices, meet with individual prefects or give warnings to students in danger of running afoul of the teachers or of the much-feared Hogwarts caretaker, Apollyon Pringle.

“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” mumbled James. The sofa creaked like a rusty door hinge as he shifted his weight. He cradled his head in his hands and stared at the floor, as if he’d forgotten her presence.

She finally finished with the quills and began straightening the neat stacks of parchment on the desk. She gave up and, with a curse softly muttered under her breath, she stepped around the table to face James, hands on her hips. In the light of the candles that illuminated the room, her red hair might have been a crown of flames. When she spoke, her words were fiery.

“Snape was at his nastiest tonight, wasn’t he? Honestly, I can’t figure out why they made him a prefect. Why does he bother, when all he can do is complain that most of the students are beneath his concern? It’s barely October and I’m sure I’m going to kill him before school’s out. He’s such a bastard sometimes.”

“Watch the language, Evans.” James looked up at her and chuckled softly. “I tend to agree with you, though. He had no right to say what he did to you. Shall I have a word with him?”

“I should fight my own battles, don’t you think?” She sighed and sat next to him on the sofa, the springs creaking softly. The fire that burned in her previous words had gone out, or maybe it smoldered beneath the puzzled look on her face, as she went on, “I just didn’t think it would be this hard, that I’d have to prove myself over and over--even to the prefects.”

“But you have proved yourself, you know, with the exception of our dear friend Severus. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but some of the other prefects did have some, er, reservations at the beginning of term.”

“Oh?’

“But not any longer,” said James quickly, trying to erase the pain in her eyes. “Yesterday, for example, I overhead Simmons taking points from a sixth year Ravenclaw in the library when he made a rather rude remark about you. And you know how much Simmons wants Ravenclaw to win the Cup; she’s not going to take points away from her own house lightly.”

“Did she? Well, I suppose that’s something.” She sighed and looked at her lap. “Perhaps I’ll do all right even without your correspondence course.”

“My what?” said James, and then he gave a weak laugh. “Oh, striking fear in the hearts of… Right. I’d forgotten about that one.”

He looked away, his eyes not able to fix on any one thing, and then he stared down at the floor. The room was silent, except for a faint hissing from the candles in the wall sconces and the occasional soft groan from the sofa’s springs.

“Is something else bothering you,” she said softly, breaking a silence that had stretched to several minutes, “other than prefects’ business, I mean? I don’t want to pry, but…”

“No,” James answered firmly. She hesitated for a moment, but then stood, assuming the conversation to be at an end. He reached up and caught her hand. She turned back to face him, puzzled, and he continued, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so…I guess I am in a bit of a state tonight and something is…. It’s my mother. She’s wants me to come and watch her die.” He laughed bitterly. “I shouldn’t sound so flip, I guess. But you have to know my mother.”

James shook his head dismissively. Lily sat down again and said, “Go on. Maybe we can’t do much about our mothers, but sometimes talking helps.”

He laughed again, but the bitterness was gone. “You’re right. As I said, you have to know my mother. She was--is a Seer with quite a reputation. Oh, she doesn’t do much these days, but people still ask if they can come up to the house and sometimes, if it pleases her or maybe if she Sees it coming to pass, she’ll allow them to come. They arrive with hushed voices and big eyes, and ask her about their fortunes or who’ll they’ll marry or… I swear that she seems to spend most of her time lost in some other world: maybe it’s the future; maybe it’s the past. I don’t know.”

He traced a finger across the back of her hand. With a slight start, Lily pulled her hand away.

“You’re an only child, right?” she said quickly to cover her embarrassment. “It must have been hard on you growing up with a mother like that.”

“I never gave it much thought, truth to tell, but then I don’t think any child ever thinks his family is all that odd--maybe it’s the rest of the world, you know. But, yeah, it could be a bit strange at times. I’d be on my own for days with only the house-elves for company because my mother would lock herself in the tower and…do whatever it is Seers do.”

“Ah, no wonder you’ve never taken Divination.”

“What? Oh, you’re right.” James laughed. “I never thought of it that way, but, yes, I guess I’ve had enough of crystal-gazing and tea leaves. There’s that and…I’d rather not find out that I was good at it.”

He laughed again--the bitterness back in his voice--and broke away from Lily’s concerned gaze. He looked down at the hands resting on his knees with fingers outstretched. Strong fingers, strong hands, that could grip a broomstick while flying upside down in a Quidditch match, or scale a wall when escape was called for because an adventure had turned out badly, or make a girl shiver in just the right way. What did it matter that those fingers didn’t deal out Tarot cards, or hover quivering over a Ouija board? It shouldn’t, but it did--and the realization never failed to anger him.

“Is your mother ill?”

“Ill? No, there’s nothing physically wrong with her.” James balled up his hands into fists and ground them into his knees. “I had a mediwizard come up to the house this summer--she’d never go to one on her own--and he said she was in fine health, maybe a little depressed. She refused to take the potions he left for her, of course. What more can I do? Now she wants me to come home and watch her die, that’s what she says, but there’s nothing wrong!”

“What is it then? She must have some reason.”

Lily laid her hand on one of his fists with a light, tentative stroke that nonetheless chased away the tension. He took a deep breath and looked at her face: a troubled face that seemed to mirror his own, frowning and filled with confusion.

“You don’t know much about my family, do you?” said James. “Eight years ago, when I was ten, my father disappeared. I don’t remember him going. Before that, as long as I can remember, he’d go off suddenly, returning after days or weeks, not talking about where he went. But that time, he didn’t… come back. The family, what’s left of them, won’t talk about it and my mother… she can be silent for weeks, months about him, then pitch a fit about why she can’t See him.”

“She blames herself?”

“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know.” James ran a hand through his hair and stared at the flickering candles on the opposite wall, hypnotized for a few moments. He shook his head and sighed. “Most times she’s perfectly lucid. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea; she can be kind and she cares about me. But sometimes, she gets in these moods.

“At the beginning of the summer, all she talked about were death omens. She saw them everywhere. Whose death? That was hard to tell. At times she was convinced that my father was dead; no trace of him has ever been found in the Black Forest, the last place he was seen alive. Other times she Saw dark and terrible ends for me, all in bloody obscure rhyming verse. She got better toward the end of the summer, better enough so that I could get away from the house for a bit. Since I’ve been back at school, she’s been vague in her letters, but I could tell she was… disturbed. Today’s owl informed me that it was her own death that she’d Seen, that she wouldn’t last the year. She seemed frantic to have me come.”

“Would it be a comfort for you to go to her now, or would it just upset her more? She obviously worries about you and when one is the,” Lily chose her words carefully, “object of someone’s worry, being nearby can sometimes make things worse.”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly as he weighed her words, trying to navigate the Byzantine paths of his mother’s emotional landscape.

“Look, if you want to go home on the weekend--if you think it would help--I’m sure Dumbledore would let you. And don’t worry about things here. I can handle whatever comes up.”

“Thanks.” James squeezed her hand gently and then released it. He forced a smile. “I don’t know if it would make things worse to go home. It might be better to ask my uncle to stay with her for a while. She’ll listen to him more than she will to me.”

He didn’t speak for some time; he stared into his lap instead and flattened his robes, pushing his hands back and forth over his knees until the fabric was taut and shiny. There wasn’t any way to avoid a certain amount of pain for all involved. He could almost hear his mother’s voice, an all-too-familiar mixture of reasoned concern and hysteria.

Lily shifted next to him. The creaking of the sofa jarred him out of a downward spiral of imagined actions and reactions, and reminded him of how close they were sitting to one another. Her presence suddenly clamored for his attention, like a jigsaw puzzle in which there are finally enough pieces to see the beginnings of a pattern, but not enough to make out the final design.

“Well, I’m not going to solve anything tonight,” he said and relaxed back into the lumpy sofa; his head bumped into the wood frame and his shoulder brushed up against hers.

“Thanks. You’ve been--You know, it’s been great working with you since term started and I--” he began stiffly, not able to look at her face. He’d sat next to her plenty of times since the start of term, often on this very sofa, but something had changed.

He felt her move away from him slightly and sit up, back straight and arms stiff at her sides.

“--that is, don’t misunderstand me, I mean that--” he said quickly, not really understanding what he did mean to say, but knowing that it was very important to say it nonetheless.

Her face, in profile, had become impassive and unreadable. She stood up, leaving a huge divot in the green velvet sofa, which had decades ago lost whatever springiness it had originally possessed.

“Wait! You didn’t let me finish!” James scrambled to his feet, confused as to why she was walking away from him, why she seemed suddenly closed and distant.

She stopped and regarded him with a hard set to her face: jaw tense and eyes narrowed. James had seen that look before when she dealt with name-calling Slytherins and habitual liars.

“You say, ’It’s been great working with you…’ and then there’ll be a ‘but’: ‘but we’ve been spending a little too much time together;’ ‘but you don’t fit in with my friends;’ ‘but you have to understand that my family won’t be pleased.’ Which is it going to be? I’ve heard this all before and you’ll forgive me if I don’t want to hear it again,” she said and turned for the door.

“No!” said James rather more forcefully than he intended. He caught up with her and managed to wedge himself between her and the door. “That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.”

She crossed her arms and nodded for him to continue, although she seemed ready to disbelieve anything he said.

“How this, then?” said James. He exhaled slowly and then took a deep breath before continuing. “It’s been great working with you and…”

What did he want to say? His mind was filled with possibilities, more pieces of the heretofore-unrecognized jigsaw puzzle.

…and I think about you--too much: how you look at me when you think I’m not watching, the way you smell, how your face melts into shadow by firelight, the curve of your neck, the hollow beneath your ear…and how it might taste.

Words fled and he gave up trying. He leaned over quickly and kissed her--on the cheek, fearing that this might be his only chance--and it was probably the most chaste kiss that a girl ever got from James Potter. He could charm any girl once he made up his mind, there was no question about it, but now he felt uncharacteristically afraid. He touched her cheek, hoping to make her stay, not knowing how to do it exactly, and whispered, “Yes, I did want to tell you something. I think that was it.”

She looked at him severely--it seemed to take hours for those green eyes to bore into him, laying bare secret places that he didn’t know he had--but answered in the space of a heartbeat.

“Tell me again,” she whispered back.

So he obliged her with another kiss that was far less chaste. She didn’t seem to mind.

After that evening, if the Head Boy and Head Girl spent more time together, most students didn’t notice at first. Of course, there was no hiding anything from Sirius, Remus and Peter. Even though Peter was sworn to secrecy on pain of many horrible hexes, word got out somehow that Potter and Evans were an item. As a result, there were more nasty owls, more impromptu duels, more snide comments in the corridors, and by the end of Christmas term, more points had been taken away from Slytherin house than in any year in memory. But the Head Boy and Head Girl were up to the task.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Five long strides, that’s how far it was from one end of the prefects’ office to the other, from the wall with the scarred wardrobe, containing a whole term’s worth of lost robes and confiscated toys, to the tiny window on the opposite wall. James fiddled with the little box in his pocket as he paced, looping his fingers through the bow and tugging at the ribbon.

“Sorry, sorry! I hope I’m not late!”

She burst in, calling out to him breathlessly, her cheeks flushed, her unbound hair disheveled in chaotic red streamers. Lily could light up a room for him, often dazzling him like a spring day when the sun arrives after what seems like years of gray winter clouds and feeble sunshine. This, as with so many other things about Lily, astonished James. His previous girlfriends had played more games with him, keeping him waiting just for the fun of it, for example, or, alternately, hounding him about why he couldn’t be on time. But Lily didn’t make a big deal out of such things, one way or the other, just like she didn’t fawn all over him when Gryffindor won a Quidditch game or didn’t give him any quarter when they argued, which had happened a time or two.

She held something large and shiny behind her back and she struggled to keep it out of his sight as she closed the door with one foot. She had a sort of artless grace and James couldn’t help but be affected. He laughed and lunged for her.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” She chuckled and danced away, holding the gold package up over her head.

“Haven’t I been good?” said James as he chased her around the desk. “Good enough for a Christmas present?”

“You are very good.” She stepped in front of him and gave him a push so that he landed on the sofa. Still chuckling, she sat down beside him. “As to whether you’ve been good enough to deserve this, only time will tell. Here, then.”

James took the shiny gold package with the scarlet ribbon that she offered to him. Although bulky, it was light. He made a big show of shaking it before pulling off the ribbon and tearing through the paper. Gold Gryffindor lions on a scarlet background spilled out of the paper and onto his lap.

“This is great, just brilliant,” said James as he held out a knit wool scarf. And it was. The lions seemed regal and proud, no less so than the ones on the house banner in the Great Hall; the scarf felt soft and inviting beneath his fingers.

“I knit it myself--well, I used a knitting spell, you know, to speed things up--and the thing’s been enchanted to repel water because I just hate it when my scarf gets wet,” Lily said, her eyes shining and fixed on James.

“I shan’t take it off,” he replied as he wound the scarf around his neck once, letting one end trail down his chest. “Not for the entire holiday.”

She smiled and looked a little confused, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not he was making fun of her gift. James let her know how he felt in the best way he could: he pulled her close and kissed her. It was some time before either of them spoke.

“I’ve got a little something…” James murmured, his head happily buried in a cascade of red hair. He gave her a kiss on the neck and then sat back, enough so that he could find the little box in his pocket and pull it out.

“Here. This is just a little something--been in the family for ages and I thought it might--thought that you…” He found himself tripping over the words as he thrust the box into her hands. “Not much really...”

She bent her head over the box as she tugged at the ribbon, while James cursed himself for tying such a complicated knot. Finally she opened it and gasped as she pulled the gold chain from the box and held it up, letting the pendant dangle in the space between them. The emeralds in the pendant, small but perfectly matched in size and color, were set in a circle. It had been his grandmother’s and he’d arranged to have it sent from the family vault.

“Oh, James, it’s…” She looked up at him, frowning even as she tried to smile. “Do you really mean for me to have this? It’s lovely, I mean, but, well, if it’s your family’s...”

“No, no, it’s mine to give,” he answered impatiently. Then he checked himself. After taking a deep breath, he smiled and took the chain from her fingers. He undid the clasp and fastened the chain around her neck. She smiled back hesitantly and fingered the emerald circle.

“And I want you to have it. The stones are the same color as your eyes, you know, that’s what made me think of you and… You like it, don’t you?” He waited, feeling nervous.

She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. When she finally did look at him again, she said quietly, “It is beautiful, James. Thank you.”

“I’m going to miss you,” he whispered. There was a rough edge to his voice, a hoarseness that gave away more of his desire than he’d intended.

She didn’t reply. Instead she kissed him lightly on the cheek, and then stood. “It’s getting late. Don’t you think we should…?”

They didn’t speak on the way back to Gryffindor tower and the few students they encountered, didn’t acknowledge them either, but scurried off to their common rooms, as if they could remain invisible to the school if only they didn’t speak to the Head Boy and Head Girl.

James went through the portrait hole into the common room first, turned and gave Lily his hand. She hesitated, and then took it. He didn’t let go as they walked across the dimly lit common room toward the entrance to the girls’ dormitory. At this hour the candles had been extinguished and only the fire cast light across the deserted landscape of tables and chairs.

She halted in front of the arch that led to the stairs and she looked down at her hand, the one James was holding, biting her lip. With her other hand she fingered the circle of emeralds hanging from the chain around her neck.

James searched her face, trying to decipher the hieroglyphics written into her frown. With his other hand he pushed a stray lock of hair away from her face, his fingers hovering indecisively near her cheek for a moment.

“Thanks again…it’s...” She looked down at the pendant. With a shake of her head she dropped her hand, but then seemed uncertain as to what to do with it.

“It matches your eyes. Yeah, that’s the least original line on the planet, but in this case it’s true. It’s been in the family for ages, you know, just gathering dust, and I thought you’d like it, and it’s Christmas and all that,“ said James as he tried to read her face. He gave a tug to the hand-knit wool scarf around his neck, a red and gold parade of Gryffindor lions. “…and the scarf is great. I’ll need it when I go home. It gets cold there, so, yeah, thanks and Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas,” she echoed softly. She glanced away for a moment, as if she was about to say more. When she looked up at him again, whatever riddle had been written on her face was gone, retreated to the shadows to wait for another time and place. “Speaking of Christmas, we’ve got to see everyone onto the train in the morning, so I’d better be heading off to… sleep.” Lip-gnawing was back. “Good night.”

James released her hand reluctantly. “See you…in the morning,” he said softly to her departing back. He stood for a moment watching the light of the fire glint on her red hair as she ran up the stairs. Then she was gone.

With a sigh, he turned toward the great fireplace, its mantle decorated with garlands of holly, and ambled toward one of the high-backed chairs near the hearth. He was so mesmerized by the fire as he sat that he failed to notice that the chair next to his was occupied.

“You don’t look like a happy man, Prongs. Here I thought you were in love.”

“What? Oh, ‘lo, Sirius.” James got over his initial surprise at seeing his best friend and went back to staring into the fire. The light flickered on his glasses, multiplying the fire kaleidoscopically.

“Women,” Sirius snorted with a scowl in James’s direction. He held a pinecone in his hands, restlessly turning it over and over between his fingers. It glinted in the firelight and James recognized it as one of the batch that some of the girls had decorated with fake snow. When the girls weren’t around, the boys would levitate them, turning the common room into a battlefield of flying pinecone missiles.

James looked at his friend’s profile. Outlined in the firelight, Sirius’s face was all hard angles and planes of dark and light.

“Let me guess: you had another fight with Maggie.”

“Not a fight exactly. You can’t really fight when--” Sirius lobbed the pinecone into the fire and gave a satisfied grunt when it exploded. He grabbed another pinecone from a basket on the floor. “That girl is either on or off, hot or cold, and tonight was bloody arctic.”

“Freeze your balls off, did she?”

“Fuck,” was Sirius’s terse reply as he hurled the pinecone into the fire; sparks flew when it collided with the logs.

“Apparently not,” said James with considerable amusement. He took a pinecone from the basket. This one had pink snow as decoration and squeaked “Merry Christmas!” when he picked it up. Definitely a candidate for fiery death.

“I don’t expect you have to worry about such things,” Sirius drawled. He scooped up another pinecone--this one squeaked “Greetings of the season!”--and tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other. “Not with the amount of time you’ve been spending with Evans since the start of term.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” said James vaguely, tossing the pink pinecone into the fire. It managed to emit “Mer--” before popping and crackling in the flames.

“What? Oh, don’t tell me that she won’t--Oh, this is too much,” Sirius chortled, seeing James’s obvious discomfort. “What happened to the old Potter charm? I thought you said she really liked you.”

“I think she does…I’m pretty sure she does, but she’s not… ready, or something,” said James lamely.

“There are other girls, you know. Lots of other girls want to go out with you, so don’t get hung up on this one.” Sirius threw the pinecone hard, straight at James’s face. “Fifty points if you can put it between the two big logs.”

James, with his Chaser’s reflexes, caught it easily, almost lazily. He was silent for a while. The fire roared and the pinecone squeaked out its holiday greeting as he rolled it between his palms.

How could he have been such an idiot, giving her a present like that? To him, the necklace was truly just another pretty thing gathering dust in the family vault, something that would make her happy, a trifle of a Christmas gift. But the look on her face when she’d opened his gift earlier in the evening had told him that all these assumptions were wrong. Right now he wanted to turn back time and erase the hurt and the fear that he’d seen in her eyes.

“I know,” James answered at last, staring into the fire, “there are other girls, but they’re not….”

“Merlin’s balls! Have you gone all soft on us?”

“I don’t know, Sirius,” sighed James and flung the pinecone in the direction of the fire. He missed and it bounced out onto the floor. “I don’t seem to understand myself any more. I certainly don’t understand her.”

“Full points to me!” Sirius said, after he’d scooped up the pinecone and hurled it back into the fire. “Hey, I’ve got it now. If she won’t sleep with you, ask her to marry you. That worked for my cousin.”

“What? Are you crazy?” James, roused from his torpor, sat up straight and looked sharply at Sirius.

“Yeah, it worked for my cousin, but I think it only worked once for him, though,” said Sirius with a casual shrug. “Last time I saw him, he was married and his wife was expecting.”

“Bloody hell, you’re a fountain of great advice tonight, you know that? ” James slumped once more into the chair and resumed staring into the fire. After a few moments, he went on, almost to himself, “We won’t be students forever, though, will we?”

“I was only joking!” cried Sirius and aimed a pinecone right at the top of James’s head. It bounced off, leaving a dusting of glittery powder.

James ignored the assault. “I mean, only two more terms at school and then what? Don’t you wonder about that? About getting out and finding a job and… and all that.”

“You’re scaring me, mate,” Sirius concluded with a scowl and a dark shake of his head.

“Yeah, well, sorry. I scare myself sometimes.”

Another pinecone was procured from basket. This one didn’t make noise. James began picking it apart, showering his lap with little bits of brown dusted with faux green snow.

“I wish I could talk you into coming down to visit over the holidays.” Sirius decided to steer the conversation away from such uncomfortable subjects. “I’m going to go nuts with just me and my dad. No one to hang out with since....since Mum went off to France with Andie. I never thought I’d miss an annoying little sister so much.”

“My mother seems to want me home this Christmas. You know how she’s been,” answered James as he continued to reduce the pinecone to shreds.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. But try, okay? Just for a day or two?” Sirius said. He stood up, stretching. “Let’s get a couple of hours of sleep before chaos descends. I haven’t even packed yet, have you?”

“Mmm?” James was lost in thought and didn’t stir from his chair. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

But he stayed for a long time, staring into the fire.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Have another crumpet, Mr. Potter? I don’t expect you’ve had much to eat today.”

“What?” James roused himself from staring into the fire. “Thank you, Headmaster. No, I don’t think I--The house-elves have been in quite a state at home, forgetting about meals and things. My uncle’s got the job of calming them down.” He took a heavily buttered crumpet from the plate that Dumbledore held out to him and bit into it. The smell tickled his nose. He closed his eyes while he chewed, overcome by the simple experience of warm butter wrapping around his tongue and sliding down his throat while his stomach screamed for more. Yes, it had been some time since he’d eaten.

“We are still several hours before dinner and I don’t want you to faint from hunger on your first day back.” The Headmaster’s eyes glowed with amusement. “Though I suspect that you know enough to sneak down to the kitchens here, if need be.”

James laughed at the joke, more out of obligation than humor. He’d felt obliged to find Dumbledore when he’d arrived back at school, chilled to the bone by a cold broom ride through the failing light of a winter day. Warming charms hadn’t been able to banish the cold completely. Now he sat before the fire in the Headmaster’s office, taking tea. He still felt cold, in spite of the fire and several cups of tea.

“Miss Evans has handled things admirably in your absence,” Dumbledore said as he refilled James’s teacup. “Students will bring the oddest things back to school after the holidays. Mr. Pringle’s in quite a state about a large amount of green goo that’s stuck to the ceiling in the second floor boys’ lavatory. And in the three days since the start of term, a great many House Points have been lost all around, and perhaps you will not be surprised that Gryffindor have lost the most.”

“Wonder what Sirius got for Christmas, then?” James muttered. Sirius had, of course, come up briefly for the funeral, but Christmas presents hadn’t been a subject of conversation.

James hadn’t had much of a Christmas. Once he’d arrived home, his mother seemed to need him by her side constantly, or so she insisted when she was lucid. As Christmas Day approached, her periods of lucidity grew shorter and she seemed to slip away into the world of the half-living; most often, she spoke in unintelligible, prophetic couplets. James stayed with her even when she no longer recognized him; he hated to see her in such a state--tormented by demons that only she could see and hear--and guiltily wished that he could have slipped away to Sirius’s house.

On Boxing Day, his mother passed away. Her final words still rang in his head, as they had all through the long, cold flight to Hogwarts. They made no sense, like much of what she’d said in her last days. He heard her voice choking them out, her dull eyes fixed on another world, as she feebly grasped his hand.

Dark gathers Dark, both great and least;
The Dark Lord conquers man and beast.
Defeat unlooked for as the hour grows late;
Green eyes seal the Dark Lord’s fate.
An orphan cries for parents lost;
Darkness banished, through great the cost.

“Perhaps a nap would be in order?”

James looked up, befuddled, to see Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes fixed on him. Had he nodded off? He took a sip of tea to hide his confusion. Stone cold. Perhaps he had lost track of time. Suddenly the Headmaster’s cozy fire seemed too hot, the office too stifling.

“Thank you. If you’ll excuse me, I should put my things away and…” James stood and picked up his bag and his traveling cloak, still damp from the snowstorm that had assaulted him as he’d flown toward the castle.

He left, intending to go to his room, though he didn’t take a very direct path. To be fair, the route from Dumbledore’s office to Gryffindor tower wasn’t one that he’d taken all that often in his nearly seven years at school and corridors had been known to shift in Hogwarts castle.

“James?”

A familiar voice yanked him out of the fog that had enveloped his head.

“You weren’t really heading for the North Tower, were you?”

“Was I--Remus? What are you doing here?” James blinked and pushed his glasses hard against his nose. Maybe a little pain would snap him out of whatever-it-was. His friend stood framed in an arch at the junction of two corridors, a concerned and quizzical expression on his face.

“Following you. Well, I was on my way to the library when I caught sight of you.” He held up a collection of parchment scrolls as evidence.

James laughed, intending to make a joke, but his mind was surprisingly blank.

“Are you all right?” Remus said as he walked toward James, slowly, carefully. He had that look in his eyes, the one that everyone seemed to adopt lately, the one invariably accompanied by “Are you all right?” and followed soon after by “I’m so sorry...”

“Sure,” James started to say, unconsciously taking a step backward. The thought of going back to Gryffindor repelled him. He could picture a sea of faces in the common room, all giving him that look. He bumped up against cold and unyielding stone and dropped his bag as he slid down the wall until he came to rest on the equally cold, hard floor, knees drawn up to his chest and clutching his cloak.

“Bet it’s been rough,” said Remus gently. He squatted next to James and waited.

James was grateful for the silence, grateful for the words not spoken. After a minute he sighed and heaved his bag across the corridor. It thudded against the opposite wall in an unsatisfying way.

After another minute, Remus broke the silence. “There’s nothing I can say--nothing anyone can say, really--but if it’s any comfort at all, after a while it stops hurting so much. One day you wake up and it’s a scar instead of an open wound.”

Startled, James tried to fathom the depths of his friend’s words. It had been almost a year since Remus’s father had been killed by Death Eaters and he had said very little about it to anyone, even to his closest friends.

“Do you miss him?”

Remus was silent for a long time, his pale face clouded with memories, the dark circles under his eyes framing the faraway look there.

Oh, gods, James thought, the moon was full last week and I forgot all about it.

“Not so much at school, but when I go home, it’s… difficult.” Remus shrugged. “It’s harder on my mum, I think, because she stills runs the shop and there’s so much of him… still there. We don’t talk about it much, though.”

James reached over and gripped his friend’s forearm. “Look, Remus, I’m--”

“Thanks,” Remus replied quickly as if he knew what James meant to say and didn’t want to hear the words. He pulled James to his feet, saying, “I expect you’ll want to catch up on prefects’ business.”

“Why would I…” James shook his head, confused, as he resignedly retrieved his bag. It seemed to have gotten heavier since he’d arrived back at Hogwarts.

“I heard Evans say she had a meeting with a student in the prefects’ office this afternoon,” said Remus as he took James’s bag. “Go on, then. I’ll take your bag back to Gryffindor.”

A burden lifted from James like a great black bird taking flight. He pounded Remus on the back and then set off for the prefects’ office, taking the shortest route.

But there wasn’t any student in the prefects’ office when James hesitantly opened the door. Lily sat at the desk writing, her back to him so that all he could see was a familiar knot of red hair, pulled tight against her neck as she bent over a piece of parchment.

“Yes?” she called out at the sound of the door opening. Her voice was curt and had that tone that said “this had better be important business” but it made his heart pound nonetheless.

James found himself robbed of speech and a little dizzy, as if the solid stones of the castle had suddenly shifted beneath his feet in the prelude to some geologic catastrophe. He fumbled behind his back and pulled the door closed, unable to take his eyes from the back of her head as she laid down her quill. She pushed the chair away from the desk, turned and then stood. It all seemed to take place at less-than-normal speed like a Quidditch play seen through Omnioculars.

“What is--” she said with a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes, hard at first, shimmered as she took him in.

What a sight I must be, James thought, realizing that he’d been wearing the same robes for days and that his cloak was wet and muddy, although he couldn’t actually remember how it had gotten so dirty. He let the cloak drop to the floor and took a step toward her--a small step since he felt unsure of his footing, still worried that the floor beneath him might prove treacherous.

Green eyes shining with tears: a pool that beckoned, familiar by now like a favorite swimming hole from childhood in which every crevice and rock is well known so that diving in holds no terror, but the promise of cool, wet escape.

She put her arms around him. Still she said nothing. She didn’t have to.

James closed his eyes and stroked her hair with one hand, the other wrapped around her waist. At that moment, he didn’t want her to let go. Ever.

-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-

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