the only way disney could get me interested in the obi wan spin off is if ewan plays him and it's just after the prequels and he just goes into hiding in a random cave and spends two hours whispering "anakin....you little bitch" to himself
for @padfootdidntdoit , whomst i would be lost without
word count: 4700
part i | AO3 | spotify playlist
November
When the kettle begins boiling in earnest, it drowns out the ticking of that awful clock that Sirius found in a train station, or at the bottom of the Thames, or in nineteen fifty-two. He installed it so far up the wall behind the fridge that Lily hasn’t a hope of reaching it unless she somehow manages to grow an extra three feet, and it drives her mad (especially considering he’s only eight inches taller than her). The point of this is that Lily spends as much time as possible per day boiling the kettle. Lately, her rate of tea consumption is just about levelling James’, which is – well, she sent him a crate of real tea last week so it must be just about time to post him another one.
The clock isn’t even on the right time, which is probably the worst part. Actually, no, the fact that Lily has started automatically adding an hour and six minutes on in her head is probably the worst part.
(She was at work last week when her co-worker Dorcas had asked the time and Lily had told her it was four fifty. Needless to say, their boss had not been pleased to discover Dorcas in the staff room packing up her things an hour before the end of her shift.)
Lily looks at the clock, and it reads two forty-five, which means that in nine minutes’ time, James will be seated in front of his laptop, ready to receive an incoming video call from her. She plugs her own computer into its charger, and waits for it to turn on (too slowly), and then she logs in to Skype.
“Heating’s broken,” she says, the second he picks up the call.
He grins back at her, pixelated and slow, and she tugs on the chain of her necklace. Anxiety tell. “Hello to you, too.”
“This is serious!”
“No,” he says, and he must push his laptop around, because she gets a sweeping look at most of his loft, “this is Sirius.” The man in question freezes with a cup of tea pressed to his lips, and flips her off.
(He might be flipping James off).
She says, “I’m hanging up,” and that’s that.
It takes him 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds to cave and call her back. “Heating still broken?” he asks.
“Yes. London is going to kill me.”
“London can try,” he laughs. “I’ll get someone to come round and have a look at it. Oi Siri,” he calls, looking over the top of the camera, “d’you think I can get your brother to go round ours for free?”
“No,” Sirius shouts back. “He’ll nick whatever booze is in the house.”
James rolls his eyes, and then he’s tapping away at his phone, and without looking up, “There’s a fur coat in the top of the guest bed cupboard, if you’re that cold.”
“I am,” she says, and goes and gets it.
“Regulus says fuck off, which I think means he’s coming over this evening,” he tells her when she plonks back into the desk chair. “I told him you’re going to freeze to death and he just sent back a knife emoji.”
“Aw,” she says, “he does care,” and they both laugh at that. “What have you been up to?”
“You know, this and that – being young and beautiful in a major world city. You know how it is.” He starts listing off on his fingers. “We finally went to that museum and took Gossip Girl pictures on Thursday, which Sirius pretends wasn’t his idea but definitely was. What else? He almost lost it in a Starbucks, again.”
“Still hasn’t found a good order, then?”
“I don’t get it! It’s not like we don’t have Starbucks at home!”
“What’s there to get? It’s an opportunity to be dramatic, Sirius is going to jump right on it.”
“It feels so nice to be known!” shouts Sirius, and Lily wishes desperately she was there with them right then.
“Shut up,” James sings. “Wait – fuck, oh my god, he’s just lit the sink on fire, I’ll call you back – Sirius!”
The screen goes black, and Lily taps her fingernails on the keyboard. He’s not going to call her back, they both know that. A millisecond, and the loneliness settles in.
Regulus shows up at 11pm which shouldn’t surprise Lily from what she knows about him, but does anyway. He actually has like, a tool belt, slung low, low on his hips, and a leather jacket, just in case she couldn’t figure out he was related to Sirius by his face.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” she says, “Batman.”
“Ha.”
“Do you know where the heater is?”
“Yep.”
“Alright then.” She steps aside for him to enter, and goes back to the kitchen. “Do you want a tea?” she calls.
“Yep,” he says again, and she puts on the kettle. She pours the water, checks in on Regulus, and then she puts The King and I back on.
“Hey, so that’s totally fucked,” Regulus says, “and I have no idea how to fix it but I can probably get a guy in mayb— areyouwatchingTheKingandI?”
“Seems that way.”
Regulus vaults the couch to land beside her, and puts his feet up on the coffee table. “Love this film.”
It takes eleven minutes and forty-one seconds for realisation to hit her. She points at the screen. “Yul Brynner.” Points at him. “Reg-yul-us.” The screen. “Yul.” Him. “Yul.”
“Hmm,” he says.
When they swap phone numbers so he can consult her about a real handyman, she saves his contact info as Yul with a knife emoji, and he gives her what must just about count as a smile, for Regulus Black.
He says, “I’ll text you,” and, with half a bottle of tequila that Lily was unaware was even in the flat tucked under his arm, he leaves.
December
“Lil,” Dorcas says, poking her head out from the back room, “phone’s for you.” Lily hadn’t heard it ring, but she carefully folds the ribbon she’d been measuring, and puts it in her apron pocket.
She takes the phone, and she says, “U-huh?” as she puts the receiver up to her ear.
“Finally,” says Petunia, and it sets Lily on edge in less than a heartbeat. “Do you even have your phone on? I’ve been trying to reach you for twenty-five minutes.”
“I don’t know how to put this politely, Petunia, but obviously I’m at work.”
“I know, I had to get the number off Mum. This has been hugely inconvenient for me, you know.”
“What do you want?” Lily asks, trying to suppress her exasperation, and judging by what her sister says next, failing.
“Because you’re being so rude I’m not even going to try to break this gently: you can’t come home for Christmas.”
The world slants and the floor is slipping out from underneath Lily as she manages to say, “What?”
“I booked a table for six at the Pennyworth months ago, because Vernon’s sister was going to be abroad, but she’s not now, and it would be rude to tell her she can’t come after all. I phoned the Pennyworth to see if we could get an extra chair but the place is fully booked out for Christmas dinner and they can’t make any exceptions.”
Lily thinks, as she braces herself against the filing cabinet next to the door, that they probably could make an exception, and Petunia just doesn’t want her strange sister to ruin her perfect Christmas dinner with her future in-laws, but she doesn’t say it.
“And besides, we need your bed because Vernon’s parents are staying at our flat, and they’re very old-fashioned, you see, so we can’t let them know we’re sleeping in the same bed before we get married, so Vernon’s taking the sofa at the flat and I’ll be sleeping in my bed at home. Marjorie will have to sleep in your bed, because it’s the only one left. So there won’t be any room for you.”
Lily doesn’t say that she could sleep in their mother’s bed, doesn’t say that she doesn’t want to go to the Pennyworth anyway, doesn’t say that the Potters would most likely take her in for dinner even without James there, and that the food would be a thousand times better, the company a million times better. She says, “What does Mum think of that?” instead of, “What have you told Mum?” and Petunia pauses in her rambling.
“Of course, she thinks that this is all your idea. You’re so busy with work in London, and you know how important it is for us to welcome all of the Dursleys into the family.”
Lily doesn’t say that that’s complete bullshit, doesn’t say that if Petunia hadn’t been slowly poisoning their mother’s mind since Lily moved away, she’d never have believed it.
There seems to be a lot that Lily isn’t saying, and maybe Petunia senses this, because she says, “Don’t forget to phone in the morning, though,” before she hangs up.
Lily listens to the dial tone, an aural marker of time stretching out from this terrible moment, an anchor to keep her from floating away. She barely realises she’s crying until a sob manages to slip free, and then she’s on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest and a pair of customers staring at her from the wrong side of the counter. Dorcas shuts the door to the back room, has to save face for the business.
It takes the better part of four minutes for Cas to prise the full story out of Lily, after she’s cleared the shop, and put on two teas. Lily’s still shaking, a little, when Cas starts rubbing her back, and she almost sloshes her tea everywhere. If Sirius were here, he might have offered her a cigarette. If Sirius were here, she might have accepted it.
“Your sister’s a right piece of work,” Cas grumbles.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Hey,” Dorcas says quietly, looking towards the sound of the bell over the door tinkling, “Take your break early, I’ll be okay alone here for a while.”
When she’s gone, and the door is shut behind her, Lily digs her mobile out of her bag. Her fingers move without needing to be told what to do, and James answers with a groggy, “Hello?”
“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh, no, I didn’t even think about the time difference, I didn’t even – oh, this is so silly. I’m sorry, this was dumb, go back to sleep, I’ll—”
“Evans,” he says, warm and firm. “Calm down, I’m not angry. I’ve been woken up at five in the morning before.” She hears a window open on the other end of the line, and the sound of trainers on metal, then he says, “What’s up?”
He says it so casually, like he wouldn’t mind if she was just calling to tell him she saw a cat he might have liked. Like he wouldn’t mind being woken up before the sun even if it wasn’t urgent. “Petunia just called,” she says quietly.
“Christ,” he says. “Are you alright?”
“I’m officially uninvited from Christmas.”
She can almost hear him grinding his teeth. “Right, I’m getting my laptop, and I’m going to book you flights out here to be with us—”
“No,” she says, though she doesn’t know where the firmness comes from. “No, I’m alright here.” She doesn’t have a passport. She doesn’t have the moral ability to take a handout like that. “I just…” needed to hear your voice. She doesn’t say that, and maybe she doesn’t need to. “What are you doing today?”
“Uhh,” he says. “Hmm, I don’t know. I think Siri’s got an interview for something, but I’ll probably just go in and have a four-hour bath to warm up.”
“Go in?” Lily asks. “James, you’re not outside?”
“Does the fire escape count as outside?”
“Isn’t it supposed to be snowing there?”
“It’s actually not that bad out. I think it’s going to rain, because rain is so weird here, like it gets warmer when it rains. So it’s…” He yawns. “I don’t know, I just know that the stairwell smells like vomit and it’s way too early for Siri to be woken up. Evans, it’s fine. I’d stand out in the Antarctic without a jumper if you needed me to.”
“Under what circumstances would I ever require that?” she asks.
“Oh,” he says breezily, “I wouldn’t know. I’d just be following orders.”
January
She breaches James’ en suite for the first time when she’s gone through all the towels in the linen closet, and the laundrette down the road is closed for repairs. She knows he’s got to have towels in there, and she knows he won’t mind, really, but it still feels like she’s finally taking it too far.
“This is so stupid,” she tells herself. “You sleep in his bed every other night.”
It still smells like him in here, the exact combination of his shampoo and the bar soap his mum’s always gotten from the Indian grocery store down the hill from his house. The rest of the flat has mostly lost that smell. She blinks back tears she knows she doesn’t really have any right to shed.
She takes a towel and presses her face into it, and then she does what any reasonable person would do – she gets distracted by what he has laid out on the counter. Most notably a framed professional portrait of their old head of form.
She gave up several months ago on not talking to herself in this flat, so she breathes, “Why do you have this in your bathroom?” She feels like she’s meant to pray to it, or something, which, well. She can think of worse idols to worship than Minerva McGonagall.
There’s also a family of those tiny ceramic cats that Lily is pretty sure are worth a lot of money, and a folded up serviette with COSTA RICA written in sharpie and underlined eight or nine times. And a tube of toothpaste, which seems normal except—
Its expiry date is like, a questionable amount of time past, so after she googles how long is toothpaste good for and finds out that three years is too long, actually, she has a really supremely stupid thought. That’s how she finds herself with her foot braced up against the shower wall, with funny-smelling white goo lathered on her leg and a Kinks song playing through the entertainment system. She knows it’s toothpaste in theory, but in practice her brain just can’t connect the dots.
She holds one of her shitty disposable razors that she’s definitely been using for longer than she should have, and she gives it a go.
As she holds toilet paper to the parts of her leg that are bleeding, she considers that perhaps this does not rate in her Top Ten Best Ideas Ever.
The weekend before Lily’s birthday sees an eclectic mix of people to the Camden flat – first Regulus, two hours early to help her take down the shitty Christmas decorations she still has up, then Dorcas and Benji, who are put to work on the currently-empty drinks table to make ‘KEEP OUT’ signs for the bedrooms. Well, Cas writes KEEP OUT and Benji draws stick figure bouncers with barrel bodies and bouncer-names like Hugh and Geoff and Mars.
At half past eight, they’re playing Cards Against Humanity when the door – the locked door – swings open. Lily’s heart leaps and she half rises from her spot on the couch, because could they be? But it’s Remus and Peter, carrying a slab each, and Frank Longbottom in front with a set of keys in his hand.
“Compliments of the landlord,” Remus tells her, giving her a quick peck on the cheek before struggling over to the kitchen to free his hands. Peter does the same, and Frank, hands-free already, picks her up and spins her round a couple times in greeting.
“I didn’t know you were coming!” she grins, as Remus and Peter re-join them.
“And miss your birthday?”
Peter scoffs. “Not on Prongs’ watch.”
“I hope you didn’t tell too many people they could stay over,” Remus says, “because I’ve had a standing dibs of Sirius’ bed since he passed out on mine in sixth form and I had to sleep on the floor of my own bedroom.”
“Which time?” Pete asks.
“Exactly.”
Lily laughs, of course of course, and it catches Dorcas’ attention, so she waves her over. “This is Remus, Peter, and Frank, who I went to school with. Lads, this is Dorcas, she’s an angel.”
Later, she overhears Peter telling Dorcas something stupid like, “…loves of each others’ lives but they won’t admit it”, but she’s intercepted from going to refute that claim by Frank with fucking jägerbombs even though he knows she and Sirius got blind on them at their Leavers afterparty and she can’t stand the smell now.
“Frank, darling,” she says, trying not to breathe in, “have you met Alice? She probably won’t throw up on you if you put that thing too close to her.” She grabs Alice’s shoulder and uses her like a human shield, burying her face into shoulder length blonde hair. “Alice, this is Frank. His favourite song is Come On Eileen.”
“Fuck off, Evans,” he says cheerfully, and Alice laughs.
“Give me another explanation for why you play it at every single event, then,” says Lily.
“Because it fucking bangs,” Frank says, handing the cup of Red Bull and the shot of Jäger to Alice. Lily uses the distraction as an opportunity to slip away, and she finds herself on the settee next to Mary, getting her head massaged.
“I have a question,” Mary hiccoughs. “Well, I have a few. First,” and she digs her fingers into Lily’s scalp a bit too hard, “why have I not heard a single song recorded anytime in the last fifty years?”
“I dunno how to change the music,” Lily shrugs.
“Second, how the fuck do you afford to live here alone?” She asks it a little louder than Lily might have liked, and she shrinks away from the fingers in her hair.
“Hmm. That.”
“She’s fucking the landlord!” Frank calls from across the room. Entirely too loud. Lily cringes away from the sudden shift in focus around the room.
“I’m gonna get a drink,” she says, and crosses to the kitchen to what is, statistically, a Kinks song. Remus is there, mixing Cherry Coke and vodka, even though she knows he likes neither. “Does James know other bands exist?” she asks, and he laughs, and it’s almost enough to distract from the music changing.
Her body reacts to it before her mind recognises it, and she makes eye contact with him as the blood drains from his face. “I’m sorry!” she shouts, as they make a sprint for the control panel. “I don’t know how to change the songs on this thing.”
He looks up, frustrated, but he says, “It’s not your fault, the thing broke after he put this on and they never figured out how to fix it.”
“But it works fine,” Lily says, peering at the little screen.
“What happened was James prioritised and uploaded all his awful 60s music, and then while he was choosing the other stuff he wanted on, Sirius snuck in and put on Gasolina and something went wrong and the file copied 27 times and now they can’t put anything new on or take anything off.”
“And here I thought Potter had just given up on modern music completely.”
“Oh,” says Remus, shutting the control flap, resigned, “I wouldn’t take that level of pretentiousness off the table.”
[01:21] lames otter to billy kevins: did u like the presents
billy kevins: i dont even drink somersbys
lames otter: I TOLD PETER NOT TO GET FUCKING SOMERSBYS
lames otter: wht abt the actual present
billy kevins: what actual present?
lames otter: i knew putting peter in charge was a bad idea
billy kevins: smh
Lily looks across the room to Peter, who’s just pulling out his phone and frowning at the screen. He looks up and searches for her, and gives her a sheepish smile. He holds up a finger like wait and goes into the kitchen, and she shares a look with Remus.
Peter emerges with a velvet box and Lily thinks for a hot minute that 1) James is proposing, 2) he’s proposing via Peter, 3) he’s proposing but then she realises that any jewellery might come in a velvet box.
billy kevins to lames otter: tell me you did not buy me jewellery
lames otter: open it u fool
She takes the box from Peter and opens it slowly, because this is sure to be something stupidly expensive, knowing James, but—
“Oh my god,” she laughs. It’s a plastic Spider-Man kids’ watch, like the one she and Tuney used to share back in primary school, before Tuney gave it to the boy she liked and he gave her a broken heart in return. She puts it on her wrist and thinks about how much she resents her sister, and about how that’s outweighing her James Potter resent for now.
billy kevins sent a photo to lames otter.
lames otter: :~)
lames otter: ok im going to dinner w siris art class friends
lames otter: speaking of, he says his gift shld b arriving in the post this week
lames otter: ok byeee call u wednesday xoxo
February
Never having to be the one who does the vacuuming, Lily discovers one afternoon when her white socks come away from the wooden floor covered in hair and dust, is a luxury of living at home. Oh my god, she thinks to herself, you’ve been here almost a year and you never thought to hoover.
So that’s what she does, after searching through every single cupboard in the flat. She finds this really ancient hoover that looks to be older than her—
(Why, she asks herself, indulging her petulance for just a moment, do these stupid boys have to do everything for the aesthetic? Why can’t they have clean, modern appliances that work?)
—and she sets to work.
Well, she blasts James’ awful 60s playlist and sets to work.
She tackles the guest bedroom carpet first, over the course of (shocker) a Kinks song and a half. A year, a year she’s lived in this flat and it’s still the guest bedroom, not her bedroom. Even James still calls it that, when she can get him on the phone, when he isn’t ducking her calls, when she isn’t ducking his.
(“Hey, quick question,” Sirius had said, last time he’d been in the room while James was on Skype with her, “why the fuck do the two of you still not know how to talk to each other?”
James had thrown a cushion at him, and accidentally pressed end call. She chooses to believe it was an accident.)
She does his room over a Beatles track that she doesn’t quite like, but which definitely reminds her of him. “Hey quick question,” she says, out loud to the empty room, “why the fuck am I so pathetic about James Potter?”
It’s because you don’t talk, the Sirius-tinged voice in her head snarks.
“That’s enough,” she tells him – not him.
She does a shit job of vacuuming his room out of spite.
Maybe it’s not just him in her head that’s riling her up. Maybe it’s him on the wall above the fridge, tick, tick, ticking. Maybe she leaves the hoover running even while she’s moving furniture to drown out that fucking clock. Maybe she climbs up onto the bench and tries to accidentally knock it down while reaching for the cobwebs on the ceiling.
“Hm,” she says to herself, from her new home on the floor with a sore tailbone and an even sorer wrist. She has to drag herself, one handed, to the table to retrieve her phone.
Regulus picks up on the eighth ring. Of the third call. “What?”
“I need you to take me to A&E.”
“What? Catch the tube. What did you do?”
“I fell off the bench and I think I broke my arm.”
“Evans. I don’t have a car.”
“So nick one,” she says. “Or were you making it up when you told me last month that you feel a spiritual connection with Baby from Baby Driver?”
“Fucking fine,” he says, except he hangs up halfway through so it’s more like fucking fi—.
“It’s not broken,” the nurse tells them, like six hours later.
(For all his complaining that she was being a real nuisance, Regulus had stuck around in the emergency room for an awfully long time.)
“Okay,” Lily says slowly. “Then why’s it hurt so much?”
Regulus stifles a snicker, but the nurse just gives her a look like grow up. “You’ve sprained it. We’ll get you fitted with a splint and you’ll be free to go home and rest.” She gives them another look, this time like don’t get up to anything too strenuous, which Regulus finds even funnier.
When he takes her home, she decides she can, in fact, keep living like this, and makes him put the hoover away.
“Don’t call me,” he says cheerfully on his way out, and then she’s alone.
She goes to bed, because what else is she going to do? She’s tired. She goes to James’ bed, and god, she misses him.
She stays in bed for a few days, except for when she makes herself toast and tea, and she calls in sick to work. She calls her mum, and then she calls Remus, because those seem like the two most sensible options. The most adult options, even though her mum’s still angry with her for not coming home for Christmas, even though Remus hasn’t texted her back in a week.
“James is going to want to know about this,” he tells her, then, “oh my god shut up, Pete, we’re not going to be late! I’m talking to Lily, can you be quiet?”
Muffled, she hears Peter say, “Tell her hello from me. Am I making this turn?”
“No, the next one.” He sighs. “Sending him a Snapchat doesn’t count as telling him, either. Call him. And you didn’t hear it from me, but Black’s just about reached the end of his tether with America and I’m sure a few well-timed words from you would hold quite a bit of sway.”
“You want me to convince them to come home? Hang on, wasn’t it Black’s idea to move there in the first place?”
“There’s rarely reason or rhyme involved when it comes to Sirius Black. Listen, we’ve just pulled up at this dinner, I’ve got to go. Love you, call James.”
Anxiety heaves in her stomach, and she’s tired again, bone-tired. A nap, two naps later, and then, well.
Call him.
Sun is streaming through the window next to him, and he’s wearing a t-shirt which is like, annoying, because she hasn’t seen the sun in five or six days, and the flat is still bitingly cold.
“Sirius is being annoying,” his voice announces, three seconds before his mouth does.
“Well, you know,” she says, “I can treat you better.”
“Don’t you fuckin—”
“Better than he can.”
“Oh my god, you’re such a fucking meme. I like you why, exactly?”
She grins. “How’s LA?”
He grins back. “All so crazy, everybody seems so famous.”
“Oh, and I’m the meme?”
His grin relaxes. “What’ve you gone and done to your arm?”
She goes bright red. “Hm.”
“Do I have to call Remus to find out? Or do I need to come back to make sure you don’t accidentally fall out a window? Do I need to make sure you, like, mind the gap?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Ask me properly?” He whispers it, and her thundering heart almost drowns it out.
Don’t be silly now, she tells herself. This could be worth the risk. “Come home,” she says, quietly. “Please, come home.”
He stares at her, just stares. Maybe the screen has frozen, and then he lets out a heavy sigh.
@jilychallenge 07/2017 | @bantasticbeasts vs @petalstofish
Summer Tropes | “we have to crush the team of our unbeaten rivals in this waterfight (even if the other side has a rlly cute red head) oh god fOCUS”
Word count: 3000
AO3
would you believe me if i told you it’s still july on mars?
The first summer, it’s just him and Sirius, riding their bikes down to the corner store and using James’ pocket money to buy water balloons. When they get back to James’, they fill them up, and they have a go throwing them at each other. Sirius shrieks the first time he’s hit, and James’ aim accuracy plummets because he’s got water all over his glasses and he can’t bloody see anything, and Sirius will you stop darting around already.
It’s not nearly as fun as it looks in those American movies.
They trek inside, drenched and shivering, and James’ mum shoves them both in the downstairs shower to get the grass off. James doesn’t mind nearly as much as he lets on; a water fight in the English summer is a rather cold affair. Sirius gives his arm a soggy punch and says, “I’m gonna destroy you next time.”
But two days later, Sirius gets whisked away by his parents to France, and by the time he gets back, 17 whining postcards later, school has started and James has a runny nose anyway.
(It’s a disaster).
The second summer, Sirius has the forethought to invite Remus and Peter, and James has the forethought to wait for a day that’s actually hot. Sirius and Remus stay behind to fill up balloons while James and Peter speed down the hill to go get water guns.
Between them they can afford three little ones, or they can get one big one. “It makes more sense,” Peter reckons, “to get the three, ‘cause then we can have one between pairs and then a spare in case one breaks.”
“Yeah,” James says, “that does make sense.”
(They get the one big one).
James and Sirius argue for almost two hours over who should get to wield it before Remus snatches it from the table and climbs up the big tree in James’ backyard and sprays them when they try to follow.
(It’s a disaster).
The next summer, Peter brings along Lily Evans, who brings along Marlene McKinnon, who brings along someone who James thinks is named Fenwick. And of course, Snape, because he follows Evans around like a lost puppy at school, so why wouldn’t he follow her here? It makes James’ skin crawl to have Snape inside his house. Why’s his mum got to be so nice to everyone, whether they’re his friend or not?
How did he get to a stage in his life where Snape is in his kitchen, drinking his orange juice out of his designated cup at his favourite spot at the counter?
James spends the afternoon aiming for Snape with extreme prejudice.
(Evans spends the same afternoon aiming for James with the same prejudice).
(James abandons Snape and directs his fury towards Evans).
(It’s a disaster).
The next summer, there’s so many kids at the Potter house that they need teams, and Evans decides it should be boys against girls. Sirius, the traitor, pipes up to agree with her, but he doesn’t realise that this means that Snivellus will be on their team, and by the time James has smacked him on the ear in anger, Lily’s already herded Mary, Marlene, and three girls James doesn’t know (people he doesn’t know! at his house!) to a spot under the tree to discuss tactics.
James surveys his own team: Sirius, Remus, Peter, Benjy Fenwick, the weird boy from down the road who James doesn’t really like but doesn’t really dislike either (Diggle?). And Snape. God, it’d be perfect without Snape. He’d be happy to put up with Diggle, if it wasn’t for Snape.
At least Snape looks about as keen about it as he feels.
He’s been practicing his aim, and every balloon he throws lands on its mark.
“Friendly fire is one thing,” Evans is saying, and her hair is limp around her shoulders, plastered to her neck, “but you’re taking it too far! What’s Sev ever done to you?”
He just brings a balloon down on her head and runs away. She shouts something after him, and then she throws something after him. The balloon bursts on his calves and he almost trips over.
He does trip over. He hates having to sit out while his lip stops bleeding, but he supposes the fact that his mum is gonna let him go back out at all is a miracle.
Of course, his absence means he’s been exiled from his own team, and now he’s a freelancer. Which means he can go wild, but which also means that when he steps back onto the grass with only a handful of balloons, he’s a target for everyone.
Evans grimaces an apology, and he waves her off. Well, he throws a water balloon at her. It’s the first shot he misses, the balloon splitting harmlessly on the ground.
He ducks to miss one from Peter, and Remus gets him from behind. Typical. He throws his last balloon at Peter, and then he has to scramble to find more before they can bombard him in full.
(He doesn’t).
(It’s a disaster).
The next summer, James says, “Alright, Evans,” and hands her a stack of bright red sashes that his mum sewed for him last week. “You and me, team captains.”
She takes them with a scowl, and says, “Thank you,” like it pains her. It strikes him that she comes to his house an awful lot for someone who apparently can’t stand him.
“And because I’m feeling extra especially nice, you can pick first.”
Evans nods thoughtfully, then there’s this vicious look in her eyes and, “Black.”
James feels as though she’s been shot. Sirius looks at him in panic, but what can he do?
“Um,” says James. “Remus?”
Evans is fast, though. “Peter.”
Snape spits on the ground. On James’ ground. Where he sits sometimes.
“Sev,” Lily says, softly, but Snape storms off.
Good, thinks James. “Mary.”
Really, by the end of it, everyone’s sitting out except for him and Evans. It’s just them in the middle of his garden with a bucket of balloons each (his mum had taken away the guns after Sirius wouldn’t stop shooting water directly into Peter’s eye), yelling nonsense and hitting each other.
(It’s a disaster).
The next summer is the one after Sirius discovers Gasolina. He spends the day before the Battle Royale (and in hindsight, this is the first one that really, truly deserves the title Battle Royale) figuring out how to get Fleamont’s hi-fi system to play it and play it loud. He enlists Euphemia’s help in starting it playing right as the battle begins. It’s the call to arms they’ve been waiting for.
Peter takes first blood, a hot and immediate reaction to hearing the first notes of a song that, over the last eight months, has become the bane of his existence. Sirius splutters, and James wants to be on Peter’s side, he really does. But this is Gasolina, and it feels so stupidly right. Even Evans is biting back a smile. Or, he thinks she is. Maybe she’s biting back a scowl, but that seems unlikely. Evans is known for letting her scowls run freely.
Snape isn’t a bad shot, which pisses James off, because he won’t let Remus alone for even a second. He hates Evans for keeping on inviting him, and he lobs a balloon at her to let her know how pissed off he is. Maybe she gets it, or maybe she’s just in a water fight. Either way, she gets him right in the face.
“That’s it, run away!” spits Snape.
James spins, and there’s Remus, scrambling up the tree, and there’s Snape, throwing balloons and - stones from the flower bed?
He watches Remus fall out of the tree in slow motion.
They’ve climbed that tree a thousand times, they know that tree. Remus knows that tree. How can this happen, how can this be happening? He can’t look away.
The look on Snape’s face is victory, and it doesn’t slip when the crunch of Remus’ arm breaking rings out across the garden. That’s what really riles James. There’s not any remorse, he doesn’t look sorry.
James is on him before anyone can react to any of it.
There’s blood on the grass, but he doesn’t know where it came from. Is Snape bleeding? Is he bleeding? Yeah, it must be him. Snape’s got his grubby fingernails in James’ skin.
Someone grabs him around the waist. He elbows them in the chest. He needs another hit on Snape. Just one more, that’s all he needs.
Peter grabs his arm. Evans grabs the other.
“Get him!” Sirius shouts from far away. Too far away.
“That’s enough, Potter,” Evans spits at him.
“He broke Remus’ arm!” James shouts, and she flinches.
“I don’t need help,” Snape hisses, poisonous. “Not from a little slut like you.”
James gets his hit.
Euphemia drives him and Remus to A&E. She tries to make Snape come too, but he scarpers the minute her back is turned. Remus gets a cast, and James gets six stitches in his eyebrow, and they both promise to pretend the other didn’t cry.
James ends up with a scar, and when they go back to school, Evans touches it softly.
(Maybe it isn’t a disaster after all).
The next summer, James learns what it’s like to have Evans fight by his side, and he doesn’t ever want to go back to how it was before.
This is what happens:
They stand with their sashes, and go through the ceremony of pretending to choose teammates, because Evans will always have her girls, and James always have his boys. They glance at each other uneasily when they have to acknowledge Snape’s absence, and then Evans just barrells on like usual.
It starts like normal. Well, this whole event has been so ridiculous over the course of the last six years that starts like normal could mean practically anything. It starts with the teams in parallel lines, a bucket of balloons each. Then his mum shouts, “Ready?” from the balcony, and then she presses play on the hi-fi, and Sirius times his first hit to the first duro! and it devolves from there.
Evans is shaking like a leaf when she corners him under the balcony and he acknowledges somewhere in the back of his head that he must be cold, too.
“James!” calls Remus, but he doesn’t drop a balloon on Evans’ head like they planned. James shimmies past her until he can see up to where Remus is leaning over the railing, empty handed.
“What?” he shouts back.
Remus just points, out towards the driveway and the winding road that connects the hill to the town. If James had a Spidey Sense, it’d be tingling right about now. He sprints to the tree, and climbs as far as he can, until he can see what the matter is. He’s surprised to find Evans pushing her way up beside him.
“Is that-”
James grimaces. “Mulciber’s car.”
It’s a desperately ugly monstrosity of a Beamer-cross-Buick-cross-Behemoth, and it spent the better part of last term impounded, though that period of bliss seems to be over. They watch is crawl up the road as Mulciber struggles to find the right gears for the climb, and James is still frozen.
“Come on!” Evans shouts at him from the ground. “Christ, you’re useless. Black! Start filling up balloons. Mary, make sure all the guns are topped up. Peter, you get Potter out of the tree.”
They’re not ready when the car pulls up in front of the house. Why don’t they have a gate?
“Ready!” shouts Evans. James picks up a balloon. Pink. He tosses it up and catches it, feels the weight of the water. Sirius catches his eye and blows him a kiss, and that makes him feel a little better. “Fire!”
At least James’ muscle memory makes it look like he knows what he’s doing. God, this is so embarrassing. It’s just Slytherins, ugly, pathetic Slytherins, so why is he so fucking afraid?
Avery gets hit with 3 separate balloons at once, and then he raises a gun. Like, a gun.
What. The. Fuck.
James kind of wants to do a heroic jump in front of Evans to save her from a bullet, but he also kind of doesn’t want to die.
(In the end, he doesn’t get a choice).
James has never been in as much fucking pain as he is in this exact moment. Avery has just shot him in the fucking kneecap and what if he can never play cricket again oh god his dad is going to kill him.
He chances a look down to make sure he’s absolutely, definitely going to die and oh god oh god oh god his trousers are stained red, red, red.
“Get up!” Evans hisses, and tugs at his arm. Sirius has his other.
“I can’t,” James sighs, “I’ve been shot.”
“With a paintball gun, you tosser,” Sirius says.
James sits up, takes in the splotch of red on Evans’ collar, the red matting the left side of Sirius’ hair. Paint. “Well, it still fucking hurts, Sirius.”
“Come on, we’re all getting up on the balcony so we have the high ground.”
James pulls himself up and says, “You were my brother An-” and then his knee buckles and he’s back on the ground. “Hey, I’m not fucking around right now, I think my knee’s dislocated, or, like, shattered into a million tiny pieces or whatever.”
“You owe me,” Sirius grunts, as he lifts James up, a little less than gently, and carries him into the house.
“What about-” James starts as Lily closes the glass door behind them.
“Flea’s trying to get rid of them,” Sirius says.
“I heard him say he was gonna phone the police,” Lily supplies from her position pressed up against the glass.
“Yeah, he loves that one,” James says, running a hand through his hair and gritting his teeth as he shifts to find a position on this bar stool that isn’t completely agonising. “‘James, eat your karela or I’ll call the police!’, ‘James, do your homework or I’ll call the police!’, ‘James, go to bed or I’ll call the police!’ I think he just wants to call the police.”
“I hate hiding in here,” Sirius says, pacing.
At least one of you has to be in motion at all times, Evans told James once. As soon as you stop, Sirius starts. It’s kind of spooky to watch. Sirius crosses to the glass door, tugs on the ends of his hair, returns to James. Spins a ring around on his finger. Goes back to the glass door.
Evans gives him a look like see?
She says, “Go find Euphemia, then. James needs to go to A&E.”
James.
His whole body turns towards her without his permission, like she’s some kind of beacon and he needs to be looking at her right now. Of course he manages to smack his arm against his knee in the process.
If he had a higher threshold for pain, maybe he wouldn’t have passed out just then.
He comes to with a brace around his knee, and Evans holding his hand. He pretends to be unconscious for a little while longer, but his mum catches him at it, and Evans takes her hand back.
(It’s the worst disaster yet).
The next summer, unease settles across them as they stand in their lines. Evans stands opposite James, grave until she gets this smirk on her face like she’s Gal Gadot and he’s just told her he reckons he can take her down. Maybe that smirk is how he already knows he’s completely and totally fucked, but he has to try anyway.
She tackles him as soon as the music starts, sends him sprawling on the grass, and pumps the water gun right into his face.
“Foul!” he calls, except he only gets out fou before he accidentally inhales a mouthful of water and has to hack it back up. Sirius hits Evans from behind with a balloon, a perfect distraction for James to scramble to his feet and wrestle the gun from her hands.
She legs it, and she’s so much faster than he’s ever given her credit for, but he’s an athlete, even with one fucked knee, so she only makes it most of the way across the yard before he catches up.
The collision is messy, but he slams into her and they both go flying. It’s a scramble to their feet, and whoever makes it vertical first is going to be the victor. Then he has her pinned up against the wall by the sitting room window, water dripping steadily from her braid, and she gives him that Gal Gadot look again.
(He holds on tight).
“Alright, Evans?” he whispers, and she angles her face up to him. He licks his lips, and she watches him do it. She brings a hand up to touch his cheek, and then–
She smacks the other hand down on his face, hard, and the balloon she’d been cradling bursts open. “Peachy,” she grins, and then she’s kissing him, and he’s kissing her, and it’s uncomfortably wet.
Remus finds them like that, and it takes him, Peter and Mary sixteen balloons to get them to break apart. When they do, he’s bright red, and Sirius gives him that you’re never going to hear the end of this look that he loves so very much.
(It’s a disaster).
(But James reckons he doesn’t mind so much).
The last summer, the summer between sixth form and university, they stand around and pretend they’ll be back next year. Maybe they will. Sirius holds a portable speaker above his head, and Gasolina pumps into the air, and then they go to war.
ellie, my dear, my darling, my dearest, i am so glad to have met you, and to have you in my life. you deserve the world x
Sunday, 30th January, 1977
She wakes up in the common room. She wakes up warm from the fire, burning low. She wakes up to James Potter shaking her gently.
She wakes up seventeen. Well,
“Hey,” James says, and she sits up slowly.
“Hey,” she says. The common room is deserted, the night pressing darkly in through the window. She shrinks away from it. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” he says happily, and shoves a box wrapped in brown paper into her hands. “Why don’t you ask your new best friend?”
She half-laughs. “What?”
“Open it.”
She gives him a look, and then she sets about opening the box, and – oh Merlin – she’s one of those people who won’t rip the wrappings off, no matter how long it takes. Of course she is. “James…” she says, and it sends a shiver down his spine the way she says James, not Potter.
She holds up the watch, and he can’t stop looking at the way the band spills over her fingers like molten silver. This is when he knows he got it right, perfectly right. They’re made of the same stuff, that watch and Lily, all delicate and deceptively sturdy.
“I wasn’t sure if you’re meant to get a witch a watch for her seventeenth,” he says, “so I wrote to mum to ask.”
She’s still studying the timepiece when she asks, “What’d she say?”
“She said it’s the 70s and that it doesn’t matter. Which is, privately, what I was thinking, but I still had to get the money off her.”
She looks at him, a blazing, beautiful thing, and she decides that she doesn’t ever want to not be his friend. He looks at her, all hard edges and soft middles, and he decides that he will never not love her. “It’s so lovely,” she says, “but it’s too much, James. It’s too much money.”
He laughs, and he hopes it doesn’t come off as dismissive. “There are so many dumb, stupid traditions that exist in the wizarding world, and I thought it might be nice if you could be a part of this one. If you like, I’ll never get you anything ever again for the rest of our lives, but this is yours.” He reaches out, his Gryffindor daring guiding his hands, and he takes the watch from her fingers. She lets him clip it on her left wrist, then she lets him undo it and put it on the right way round.
When he’s done, she takes his hand, and gives it a squeeze, and says, “Thank you.”
He mumbles something that might be, “Don’t worry about it,” and then he retracts his hand, his Gryffindor daring spent. “What time is it?” he asks.
She looks down at the tiny face, and her face lights in a grin. “It’s three fourteen.”
He grins too. “In that case, happy birthday.”
Sunday, 27th March, 1977
“Jinx!” she says, over the music that Remus has somehow managed to rig into blasting all through Gryffindor Tower. She thinks she remembers the song from last summer, possibly a Paul McCartney number. Maybe. If she closes her eyes she can hear it coming out of the clunky radio in Petunia’s car.
James spins around, and grins at her, and the soft clink of their watches tapping together as they knock wrists is lost in the din. “Hey,” he says, and Sirius has clearly found whoever put Wings on and relieved them of DJ duty, because the music shifts very suddenly to Anarchy in the UK.
“Happy birthday,” she says, and he wants very much to kiss her, but he doesn’t, because that would be a horrendously stupid thing for him to do. Falling in love with her was a horrendously stupid thing for him to do.
“What’d you get me?” he says instead, and immediately realises he sounds like a total prat.
She doesn’t seem to mind, though, because she hands him a card that she’s made from an old scrap of parchment, and it makes his heart flutter. The inside of it is packed to bursting with her words, the handwriting cramped and pushed into every corner. “Read it later,” she says, and he nods. “There’s also this.”
She holds out a black rectangle, and it takes him a second to figure out what it is. It’s an upside-down polaroid, but he knows what it’s of before he even takes it. When he flips it over – yep – it’s the picture of them Mary took at Sirius’ birthday. He knows she keeps it above her bedside table, even though he’s never managed to make it up to the girls’ dorm.
She takes a sip of her drink, and he wants to ask what she’s drinking, but she obviously wants to know what he thinks of her gift.
“Evans…” he says, and then, because that feels wrong, “Lily, I… Are you sure?”
“Sure as shooting,” she says. “Besides, I still get to see it, I just have to come to your room.” She holds up her cup. “To many more.”
He looks at her, and he’s never seen anyone so extraordinary. Maybe he hasn’t.
Maybe he’ll have a few more drinks tonight, and maybe he’ll have a few more, and maybe he’ll end up crying over how much she means to him in the loo with Remus rubbing his back. Maybe he’ll pass out thinking about her, and maybe he’ll wake up too late for breakfast. Maybe he’ll remember about her card when he’s halfway through tying his tie, and maybe he’ll fish it out of last night’s trouser pockets, and maybe he’ll miss the first half of charms because he’s reading it. Maybe he’ll give her a sheepish smile as he sneaks in while Flitwick has his back turned. Maybe he’ll carry Love, Lily, written larger than everything else, in his heart and in his soul until the day he dies.
Or maybe he’ll just enjoy this moment, a moment between friends, with her arm around his waist, with her trying to flag down Mary McDonald and Mary McDonald’s camera on the other side of the room.
