“I think we should do something for Halloween this year,” Sirius said one evening near the end of October.
Remus, from where he was sprawled by the common room fire with a book, as per usual, looked up suspiciously. “And by ‘something’ you mean…”
Sirius’s grin had an edge to it. “Right,” Remus said. “That’s what I thought.”
Peter was beginning to look excited at the prospects of a bout of rule breaking, but James, who was sitting a few feet away, paging idly through his Transfiguration notes, said without looking up, “No.”
Sirius, startled, turned his head, the light going out of his eyes. “Just like that?” he said, his voice hard.
James blinked at him. “What?” he asked, and Sirius snorted.
“I didn’t realize you were the one in charge here,” he said bitterly. “But I guess if the Head Boy says it’s against the rules, then I guess we’re out.”
“That’s not what I meant at all,” said James, bewildered. “Calm down, Sirius. I just meant not on Halloween. It’s our last year, everyone’s going to expect that. I think we should take Halloween off. Pull the rug out from under them all a week later.”
There was a short pause. “Oh,” Sirius said finally, looking a little embarrassed. “Right. Sorry. And, actually, that’s a good point.”
James’s returning smile was ever so uncomfortable, but when he spoke, it was in those jaunty, cocky tones that they all knew so well. “Of course it is. I’m brilliant. We knew that already.”
“Whatever,” Sirius rolled his eyes, glad to be moving past the moment. “What should we do?”
“I have no idea,” James said. “I hadn’t gotten that far. But can we please, please wait to plan something until after the dance? That’s taking all the energy I have right now.”
“Yes!” Remus agreed, looking up at Sirius with puppy-dog eyes. “Please! It’s overwhelming.”
Sirius snorted again. “Look at you two, with your responsibilities. Maybe Wormtail and I will just come up with something ourselves.”
“If you do anything to disrupt the planning of this dance,” James said darkly, “I will end you.”
Sirius held up his hands in mock-surrender, but winked at Peter when James dropped his gaze. If he was being honest with himself, Sirius thought, he was kind of looking forward to Halloween this year. For this first time since he had been at Hogwarts, the staff had announced that they would be forgoing the annual Halloween Feast, and in its place would be a masquerade ball. Sirius hadn’t told anyone this, and he wasn’t planning to, but he’d been working on his costume for the better part of the past two weeks.
The dance had been all most people had been able to talk about recently, and James and Remus, more than anyone else, kept bringing it up. Prefects were in charge of setting it up, and had to report to the Great Hall every day after classes in order to assist with the preparations. James and Lily, as Head Boy and Girl, were required to be there as well, in order to supervise the prefects”something that had earned Remus quite a bit of teasing from James.
The two of them were bent together, discussing something”probably some new sort of interior design scheme, Sirius thought with a smirk. Personally, he thought there should be some sort of maze, full of spooky corners perfect for pranking, but no one had asked his opinion, and he decided to keep it to himself, interested to see what they’d come up with. Instead, he turned his thoughts to the subject of dates.
James would probably want to go with Lily, Sirius reasoned. And for all our sakes, I hope she says yes, he thought with a quick shake of his head. Peter’s going to moon after Leda, and either he asks her and she turns him down, or he doesn’t ask her and just mopes around all night. Remus, well, he’s not going to ask anyone”well, maybe Moaning Myrtle, she’s not going to grope him while they’re dancing”and as for me…
Sirius sighed inwardly, his thoughts trailing off. When had it all gotten so complicated? Frankly, he didn’t want to take a date. And he didn’t want any of his mates to, either. Girls, he decided, complicated things. He liked them all right, especially Lily, now that she was hanging around, but he missed the old days, when it was just the four of them, and they had each other’s backs. If a dance like this had happened in, oh, the fourth year, he would have gone with James, Remus, and Peter, and they would have joked around, daring each other to ask the prettiest girls to dance, and spiking the punch with a Babbling Beverage just to see what would happen. But this, their last year…it wouldn’t happen like that. They were supposed to have matured, or some such nonsense. There were other things to think about.
Sirius cast a glance over at James, who was now nose-deep in his book again, a stark reminder of how different things were now. James, doing homework. James, supervising prefects for a school-sponsored event. James, hanging about with Lily Evans as though he had been doing it all his life.
Sirius remembered the conversation he and James had had a few days back about James losing Lily, and felt, quite suddenly, that he understood. Maybe this, he thought, was what it felt like to lose James.
---
Biting his lip, Remus took a step back from the table, observing his work.
He was in the Great Hall, a mere two days before Halloween, helping with the finishing touches on the decorations for the dance. Much like Sirius, Remus didn’t really want to admit that he was actually excited for the Masquerade Ball…or that he had highly enjoyed the decorating process.
The fifth-year prefects had been stuck with all the grunt jobs”which mainly consisted of wresting various festive decorations away from Peeves the Poltergeist. Remus, as a lofty seventh-year, had been more or less free to choose his own tasks, and so he had, for the past several days, spent the majority of his time magically carving pumpkins, which would be levitated into the air on the actual night of Halloween. Most of these pumpkins had been the traditional Jack-O-Lantern face, but for the last four, he had indulged himself. He crossed his arms, smiling happily as he gazed at them; a werewolf, a giant, Grim-like dog, a rat, and a stag adorned the orange vegetables.
The stag, he supposed, wasn’t quite as creepy-looking or Halloweenesque as the other three pumpkins, but it would be tucked beside dozens of others, all floating eerily like the misplaced skulls of members of the Headless Hunt. No one would notice, he was sure, or mind.
Remus felt a tug about his ankles, and looked down in surprise to see a long piece of string twist around his legs. He sidestepped just in time, and looked up to see Peeves, staring cross-eyed at him.
“Loony loopy Lupin,” the poltergeist sang. “Loony loopy Lupin.” Peeves had come up with the song about halfway through Remus’s first year, and seemed to consider it a masterpiece of originality, belting it whenever their paths crossed. Over the years, however, Remus had developed what he considered to be a highly effective solution.
As Peeves turned a cartwheel over his head, still singing, Remus slid a piece of Droobles chewing gum from his pocket (he had taken to carrying the stuff for just this reason), chewed it quickly, and, as Peeves floated by him yet again, spit it at him with all the force he could muster. Peeves, somewhat used to this routine, ducked, just as Remus flicked his wand and muttered, “Waddiwassi!”. The gum rocketed down Peeves’s left nostril. Caterwauling, he zoomed away.
Not without some satisfaction, Remus turned back to his pumpkins, just as a voice behind him said, “You know, I’ve seen that trick a million times, and it never gets old.”
Remus looked up bashfully. “Hey, Prongs,” he said to a grinning James.
Lily appeared at James’s elbow, laughing. “Well, I can’t believe I saw it at all,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s the kind of thing I would expect Sirius to do, Remus, not you.”
Remus shrugged modestly. “Oh, well, Peeves seemed to find me more of an interesting subject than anyone else our year,” he said. “So I had to come up with a way to deal with it. Although, if I remember correctly, Sirius was very impressed with that spell…he seemed to think it meant that he and James had rubbed off on me…”
All three of them chuckled, although Remus stopped abruptly when he felt the telltale tickle at his ankles. He looked down; the string that Peeves had left behind was once more winding itself around his feet, but Peeves was nowhere to be seen. Suspiciously, Remus looked up. James had his wand out, and was flicking it lazily at the string, which tightened suddenly as Remus narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned, as James’s already devilish grin widened.
But before James could act, a black banner that had been thrown across the table swept across the floor, knocking him off his feet. From his back on the floor, he looked up in surprise. Lily, looking smug, waved her wand at him.
“Hey!” James protested loudly. “Cheater.”
“Oh, what,” Lily teased, “you can dish it out but you can’t take it?”
James made a face at her, and then stretched out his hand. “At least help me up,” he said.
Remus saw where this was going and wondered if he should warn Lily; he held his tongue, however, trying not to smile as Lily, rolling her eyes playfully, reached out and grasped James’s hand.
But James, as Remus had known he would, yanked hard. Lily, unsuspecting, tumbled to the floor with a shriek that caused everyone in the vicinity to glance over. It’s fine, Remus mouthed, surreptitiously shaking his head at them as Lily fell, hard, against James, and the two of them lay giggling like children on the floor.
Remus gave them a moment before crossing his arms and looking down at them sternly. “And you’re supposed to be supervising us?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
James pushed himself to his feet. “Oh, sorry, Professor Lupin” he said, giving a little mock bow and winking. He turned and offered his hand to Lily, who was still on the ground. She eyed it cautiously, and then ignored it and stood, brushing off her robes.
“I think we can leave now anyway,” she said, looking affectionately at them both. “Come on.”
She turned and strolled from the Great Hall, James and Remus following a few steps behind her.
“You know,” James said thoughtfully after a moment, “I actually think that has a nice ring to it.”
“What does?” Remus asked absentmindedly.
“Professor Lupin.”
Remus raised an eyebrow. “Oh you do, do you?” he grinned. “And what would I teach?”
“Astronomy,” James suggested. “In particular, how the full moon makes people a little crazy.”
“Or cooking,” Remus laughed. “How not to overcook your meat.”
“Involuntary Transfiguration!”
“How do you teach something that’s involuntary?” Remus asked, amused.
“You’d find a way,” James told him gravely. “I have faith.”
Remus chuckled, following him into the common room. James was right about one thing, he thought. Professor Lupin…he did like the sound of that.
---
James woke late the next day”it was a Friday, and he had a free period on Friday mornings. He was alone in the dorm; Remus, he knew, had Advanced Potions with Lily now, and Peter had a standing appointment with Professor Flitwick, thanks to his enduring trouble with Charms.
He wandered down to the common room, yawning widely. It was mostly deserted, which didn’t surprise him; in fact, the only occupant of the room was Sirius, who stood squinting in front of the notice board.
“Hey, Prongs,” Sirius said, turning towards him, “did you know there was a Hogsmeade visit scheduled for tomorrow?”
“What?” James asked, running a hand through his hair and going to stand next to his friend. “No, I had no idea. I’ve been so busy lately…”
“There’s usually one around Halloween,” Sirius pointed out. “I just didn’t realize…I guess you’d go to the village in the morning, and come back for the Halloween Ball in the evening.”
“Busy day,” James said, yawning again.
Sirius looked sideways at him. “It’s a perfect date setup,” he said.
“Why, Padfoot,” James said, putting his hand on his chest. “I was beginning to think you’d never ask me out. After all these years…”
“Ha ha,” Sirius said dryly. “Shut up, you prat. You’re not my type.”
“No one is,” James said, rolling his eyes.
Sirius waved this away impatiently. “Stop dodging,” he said. “You know this is the perfect opportunity for you to wrangle Lily into an actual date.”
James bit his lip. “I guess,” he said slowly. “It’s kind of last minute though, I don’t know…”
As he trailed off, Sirius turned to face him, grasping him firmly by the shoulders. “Come on, James,” he said seriously, giving him a little shake. “You’ve been talking yourself out of this for months.”
“Not months,” James protested sullenly, shuffling his feet.
“Man up,” Sirius told him, punching him in the arm and taking a step back. “Go now!”
James rolled his eyes. “Right,” he said. “She’s in class right now. I’m just going to go bursting in there demanding things? That’ll go over well.”
Sirius checked his watch. “They’re in Potions, right? There’s only about ten minutes left in the period. We usually meet Moony for lunch about now…that’s plenty of time to get down there.”
James crossed his arms and looked at his best friend for a long moment. “Why is this so important to you?” he asked finally.
Sirius shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Things are just…weird this year. And I can’t help but think that some of it is because of all this stuff with you and Lily is just so up in the air. I want you to fix it so things can go back to normal.” He paused, cocking his head, then sighed. “And also it’s what you want. And so I want it for you.”
Oddly touched by this, James suddenly found himself at a loss for words. Sirius spared him by saying dryly, “Oh don’t thank me, it’ll get embarrassing. Just go. Before you talk yourself out of it.”
He was right; James knew he was right. Steeling himself, James breathed out, nodded at Sirius, and dashed from the common room.
---
Lily was somewhat surprised, as she filed out of the Potions classroom with Remus, to see James leaning in the doorway of the classroom opposite. She glanced at Remus, to see if he knew what was going on, but he had, quite suddenly, disappeared amidst the throng of students now disappearing down the hall. Shrugging, she crossed the hall to stand in front of James, who looked down at her, smiling crookedly.
“What are you doing down here?” she asked him. “Missing Potions this much?”
He laughed”a little nervously, she thought, and her curiosity grew.
“Come here,” he said, looking around to make sure everyone had gone, before pulling her into the now empty Potions classroom.
“James, what’s going on?” Lily asked him, utterly perplexed.
He took a deep breath and turned to face her. “So tomorrow’s the Halloween dance,” he said casually.
“I know,” Lily laughed. “We’ve been helping to set it up for over a week now.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, grinning. “Well, did you also know that there’s a Hogsmeade trip tomorrow?”
“There is?” Lily asked, wondering where this was going.
“Yeah,” James said, looking directly at her. “And I want to go. With you. On a date.”
Lily inhaled sharply, her breath catching in her throat. Maybe she should have been expecting this, maybe it had been naïve of her to think that this day would never come…but she didn’t know what to say.
“So what do you say?” James asked, with a shy little shrug. Then he straightened, as though grasping for his confidence, and winked at her. “Come on, Evans,” he said breezily. “It’s meant to be. We might as well stop fighting it.”
Yes, yes, yes, a part of her mind was begging her. Say yes. But the last thing he had said didn’t sit with her…meant to be? As though they had no choice in the matter? It was the same thing that had been bothering her for so long, everyone smugly assuming that they’d be together, as if she was wrong, or only fooling herself, when she had told them that they weren’t.
She felt her temper rise, quite suddenly and unexpectedly”how could he spring this on her, right now, with no warning? On some level, she knew that he wasn’t unjustified; she had promised him an answer at the beginning of the year, and almost two months had gone by without a word from her. He had been patient, she knew, and yet…Last June felt so incredibly far away…
Her silence stretched on, hardening between them in the cold dungeon. James’s smile didn’t falter, but something tightened in his gaze as he looked at her. “It’s not really a hard question, Lily,” he said woodenly. “It’s a one word answer. Yes or no.”
Of course it was a hard question, she thought, wishing she could run from the room, or rewind time so the past five minutes had never happened. They had been so comfortable together this year, and maybe she had been foolish to think that they could go on forever like that”being friends, maybe with a little casual flirting, but nothing deeper than that. She wasn’t sure, really, where this resistance was coming from, but she clung to it desperately, because saying yes meant that everything would change, and how could he not know that?
“Right,” James said slowly, looking away from her. “So…that’s a no, then?”
For the first time that day, Lily looked up, meeting his gaze directly. “James,” she said, almost whispered, “I’m sorry, but I just…I can’t.”
He laughed once, almost viciously, looking away from her. “Right,” he said again, “sure. Of course. Stupid me.”
“No, no, it isn’t you,” Lily heard herself say, almost pleadingly. “It’s just…it’s our last year, and we really should focus on that, and on…on important things. There’s a whole world out there, and so much is happening that we don’t know anything about, and it’s time to grow up, and…and I really think that, maybe, we should just be””
“Friends?” he cut her off, raising an eyebrow scornfully. “I don’t think so.”
She hadn’t been expecting this; startled, hurt, she blinked back at him. “But you said””
James shook his head. “Yeah, I know what I said last year,” he said, “all that stuff about how I could wait. Well, I lied. Or I was wrong, I don’t know. All I know is that I want you, I want all of you, and I can’t wait around for that any more, because it’s killing me. And you either want me back or you don’t. And I guess you don’t. Which means no, I can’t be friends with you now. I just can’t.”
And he turned, so quickly that she took a step back, and strode from the room. She stood there, blinking after him, trying to ignore the small voice in the back of her head that was telling her she was making the worst mistake of her life.
After a moment, she came to her senses. Shaking her head to clear it, she called, “James!” running from the room after him. But the corridor was empty; he was gone.
---
James heard Lily call his name and reacted without thinking; he threw himself sideways, ducking behind a tapestry into the secret passageway he knew it concealed. He crouched there, barely breathing, as he heard Lily’s footsteps down the hall; never had he wanted to see her less.
He waited long after he was sure she was gone before slipping out from the passage and looking down the corridor. The dungeons were deserted; not sure where to go, James wandered aimlessly into the now-empty Potions room, and sank into a chair, his head in his hands.
That hadn’t gone at all like he had expected it to”and part of him still didn’t believe it. He closed his eyes, wondering where he had gone wrong, when she had decided that they weren’t compatible, what he could have done to fix it…when suddenly someone, in the back corner of the room, started clapping.
James leapt to his feet and whirled around, his face darkening. There, standing half-in, half-out of the Potions supply cabinet, stood Severus Snape, applauding slowly, his face twisted with some sort of malicious joy.
“Well done, Potter,” he sneered, dropping his hands. “Really. Excellent attempt.”
For a moment, James studied him, almost dispassionately. He hadn’t seen much of Snape over the past couple of months; the other boy was thoroughly enmeshed in a net of Slytherins, and rarely went anywhere alone anymore.
He had gotten taller, James noticed casually, and more sure of himself; he wasn’t hunched, trying to make himself invisible. He was standing straight, staring blazingly at James, the fingers of one hand curled around his wand, the other pressed, inexplicably, to his forearm.
James didn’t know why Snape was choosing now to stand up to him; all he knew was that he had witnessed something private, something painful, and that he was here. James reached for his own wand almost habitually, whipping it out and flinging a jinx at Snape, who, to his surprise, deflected it without a word.
James raised an eyebrow. “Been practicing nonverbal spells, have you, Snivelly?” he taunted, but his words were cut off as Snape, still in complete silence, hit him with a curse that made him feel as though he had been hit in the chest by a car”he staggered backwards, the wind knocked out of him.
He’d had enough; there had been a time when tormenting Snape had made him feel better, but not now. As much as he was tempted just to lose himself in the dueling and the spells, he couldn’t”not without seeing Lily’s face, and Lily was the last thing he wanted to see right now.
“Expelliarmus!” he cried, and as the wand slipped from Snape’s hand, James shouted, “Petrificus Totalus!”
Snape’s arms and legs snapped to his sides, and he toppled to the floor. Panting, James looked down at him. “Wrong day, Snivellus,” he said softly, before turning and walking from the room.
James didn’t go to his afternoon classes; worked up by both the conversation with Lily and the confrontation with Snape, he didn’t think he could handle the presence of so many other people. He thought about heading out to the Quidditch pitch, but even the thought of flying didn’t make him feel any better. He didn’t want to go back to the common room either; he didn’t think he could face Sirius wanting to know what had happened.
He was sitting in an empty classroom on the sixth floor, not long after nightfall, when he became aware of someone standing quietly at the door of the classroom. He slid cautiously to his feet, squinting through the darkness, half-wondering if it was Snape again. But it wasn’t”he realized it was a girl a second later.
“James?” she asked hesitantly, stepping towards him. “What are you doing in here? Are you…are you okay?”
It was Leda; James registered this dimly, with equal amounts of disappointment and relief. “Yeah,” he said, “fine. Just…needed a break.”
“People have been looking for you all over the place,” she said softly, coming to stand in front of him, her brow creased with concern. “Sirius thought Lily might know where you are, but no one can find her either.”
James wasn’t sure how to react to that piece of news either. “Oh,” he said eventually, looking past the top of her head to the darkening corridor outside.
Leda put a hand on his arm. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to say yes, sure, fine, but to his everlasting horror, he couldn’t get the words out. He looked down at Leda, almost apologetically, and he was so preoccupied by this that he wasn’t expecting it when she stretched onto her tiptoes and softly brushed her lips across his.
James was so surprised by this that, at first, he didn’t know how to react. For a moment, he just let her, but then he turned his head away, thinking, She’s not Lily.
“I’m sorry,” Leda said, looking embarrassed and backing away. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t think, I just…”
She turned, about to slip out of the room, when James heard himself call, “Wait.”
Because she wasn’t Lily, that was the whole point. Unlike Lily, Leda was standing here, right now, looking at him. Wanting him. He had almost forgotten what it had felt like to touch another person like that”to be the one who was wanted instead of the one who was doing the pining. And for a moment, all he wanted to do was lose himself in that feeling.
“It’s okay,” he said, walking forward to stand in front of her and smiling lightly. “I actually…really needed that tonight.”
Leda looked up at him, taking a step closer. She was pretty, he noticed, but in a way that was very different than Lily’s…maybe that was what he needed right now. So this time, as Leda put her arms around his neck so she could kiss him, he let her.
---
Lily, when she failed to find James after their disastrous encounter in the Potions room, was at a loss with what to do with herself. She thought about going back to the common room, in hopes that he’d show up, but even if he did, she didn’t know what she wanted to say”what she could say, to make the hole she felt was growing in her gut any smaller.
In the end, she did what she always did when she needed time alone; she went to the library. Dodging the tables crowded with students studying, she slipped in among the bookshelves, weaving her way back to the quietest corner of the library, and sinking down against the shelves.
It isn’t as though it’s that big a deal, she chided herself, breathing deeply. Sure, yes, all right, sometimes I thought that I was a bit attracted to him, but it never would have lasted. We’re just too…too different, it would have made it impossible for us to go back to being friends, if anything had happened. I made the right choice. This is just a blip. In a little bit he’ll realize that, and we’ll be friends again, and everything will be like it was.
It was as it should be, this way. A relationship”the two of them together, it would have been disastrous. It didn’t make sense for her to be this upset. She didn’t like him that way, not really.
After a while, Lily loosened the hands that were clenched around her knees. She leaned back against the bookshelves, convincing herself that she felt better. That she was right.
It took a little bit longer for her to talk herself into standing up, and rejoining people. She was stiff, and as she walked out into the halls, she was surprised to see that the windows were dark; she hadn’t realized she’d been in the library quite that long.
I must’ve missed dinner, she thought, but she wasn’t that hungry anyway. Slowly, she began the trek back up to Gryffindor Tower.
The corridors were mostly deserted, and growing dark as the evening deepened, the torches on the walls flickering eerily. So when she reached the sixth floor, the couple entangled just inside the doorway of an empty classroom was the first thing she noticed.
A little embarrassed, Lily picked up her pace, hoping to sneak past them before they realized she was there. But as she did so, something about the pair caught her eye; drawing back into a shadowy alcove, out of sight, Lily peered through the darkness at them.
She recognized Leda first; the other girl’s mane of black hair made her easily distinguishable, and Lily almost laughed”looked like Leda was taking full advantage of Mary’s lessons. But she didn’t recognize the boy”or maybe she did, but just didn’t want to admit it to herself”until he lifted his head, grinning slowly, to say something to Leda.
And finally, Lily couldn’t deny it anymore; stepping back into the alcove and closed her eyes, her back against the wall, she held her breath, concealed, as they slipped past her, Leda giggling as they disappeared down the corridor. Because it was James, it was James who had been standing there, kissing Leda, and that was what it took for Lily to realize just how much she did care, after all.