Summary: Oneshot. When one thing comes out, who knows what will escape the mouth?
Disclaimer: I can't believe I even bother writing these. It's not mine!
Author's Note: This was in my head for a while before I finally wrote it down. I'm not too pleased about the way it turned out, but there you go. Beggars can't be choosers.
By the way, this originally had a different beginning, but I changed it after getting feedback from someone to better fit the flow of the story. It's still a little choppy where the stories ran into each other, but hopefully you don't notice.
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"James, can I talk to you?" The four boys sitting in the corner of the large, tightly packed common room immediately stopped laughing and craned their heads over towards the red headed girl that had spoken.
"Aw, come on, Lily," a stunningly handsome boy with dark, straight hair and tan skin moaned. "You've already monopolized his free time on Friday nights for patrolling,of all things, and now you want to come take him off with you on Saturday? Give the boy some free time."
"Shut up, Black," Lily said, her tone uncommonly nervous. "I've hardly monopolized him. And we'll only be a few minutes. I think." She twisted her hands together and refused to meet their eyes. A boy with sandy blonde hair furrowed his brow and stood up to put a hand on her arm.
"Are you okay, Lily?" he asked, sounding concerned.
Lily forced herself to look up and smile at him. "Yes, Remus, I'm fine, it's just that there's a, um, problem. By the lake. And I need James to clear things up. Help me clear things up, I mean." Avoiding their gaze, she added, "Sorry to interrupt and everything, but I really do need help."
The boy she was speaking to stood up and, giving her a quizzical look, took her by the arm and led her out of the portrait hole, calling, "I'll see you guys later," to his friends. As soon as they got out into the hallway, he turned to Lily and said, "So, what's up? I doubt there's really a problem down by the lake, since it's almost dark."
Lily stopped too, took a deep breath, and said, her voice slightly more confident, "Listen, James, we're friends now, right?"
"Yes," James said, a note of apprehension coming to his voice. After all, their "friendship" had only evolved that year when they were forced to work together as Head Boy and Girl. Both of them in Gryffindor, James had repeatedly asked Lily out in their earlier years which had evolved into Lily thinking of him as an arrogant jerk that wasn't worth talking to, let alone going out with. In their seventh and final year, however, James had abandoned his arrogant demeanor and refrained from asking her out even once in the hopes of making her like him. So far they had become rather good friends, but their relationship had yet to flourish into something more.
"So, um, we're friends then. Good. That's good," she said quickly, wringing her hands out in front of her.
James frowned. "Lily, what are you—?"
"And, um, friends are able to tell other friends about…things they've seen, right? And the other friend won't tell anyone?" she interrupted, her green eyes anxiously looking back and forth between his hazel ones.
"Lily, what's wrong?" he asked, cautiously taking her hand in his own. He couldn't help but notice that they fit together perfectly. "Come on, let's take a walk. You can tell me anything."
She nodded, a faint blush appearing on her cheeks as she stared at their intertwined hands. "James, the other day…Wednesday, I went to the hospital wing for a potion for my cough, and I saw…" She stopped talking and looked down at the ground, rubbing her forehead.
"What did you see?" James said, feeling a foreboding pit in his stomach lurch uncomfortably. Wednesday…what happened on Wednesday? he thought wildly.
Lily looked up at him carefully and clenched his hand a little tighter before she continued. "I…I saw…I saw Remus."
James dropped her hand as though it was suddenly as hot as burning coals. "You saw Remus?" he said, his voice dry and etched with shock.
She met his eyes for an instant and repeated herself. "I saw Remus…in the hospital wing…with blood soaking through the covers." Her voice softened until it was barely able to be heard even in the silent halls. "And then…and then I heard Madame Pomfrey say…" She studied his face and bit her lip. "I heard her say something about the moon, James."
James blanched in shock, his eyes widening. How could she find out? he panicked. He looked away, hoping that she wouldn't spot his confused expression before he could think of a suitable lie.
She knew him too well.
Stopping in the middle of the Great Hall, Lily planting her hands on her hips and looked at him squarely in the eye. "James, how come you never told me? How come Remus never told me? Why am I finding out about this now?"
James sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Dropping it down to his side, he looked at her helplessly. "What do you want me to say, Lils?" he asked. "None of us ever told anyone about Remus. It was his choice to tell whoever he wanted what he was…And he was always afraid the person would condemn him. You can't blame him, Lil. And I wouldn't have told a secret that wasn't mine."
Lily tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear and scowled up at the ceiling. "I suppose you're right. I mean, I don't know what I'd do if I was a werewolf."
James examined her face closely, noticing that her jaw was set tightly, a sign that she was trying to avoid her emotions, and took her arm gently in his grasp. "Here. Let's keep walking…by the lake or something." He led her out the doors, watching her worriedly as she didn't even comment on the fact that they were breaking school rules. After a while, though, he said, "So…now that you know anyway…do you have any questions?"
"How long have you known?" she asked after a moment.
"Er…We found out in our first year but we didn't tell him that we knew until second."
She winced. "Damn,"
"What?"
"The signs were all there, but it took me a visit to the hospital wing to find out! You didn't have to do that!"
He stopped walking and turned to face her with a wide grin. "I'm sorry, but I could have sworn that you just implied that you're jealous of me!"
She ducked her head. "Well…" she muttered. "That was part of the reason why I started hating you in first year." Her face reddened as she glanced up to see him staring at her, his mouth open. "It's not only my fault we've never had an easy relationship, though!" she said guiltily.
James shut his mouth but continued to stare at her, an odd smile forming on his lips as his eyes locked with hers. She felt her mouth go dry as he said, "We're on the way to changing that, though."
She smiled tentatively and nodded. Noticing a piece of grass that clung to his cheek, she instinctively raised her hand to brush it away, her fingers grazing his cheek and staying there a fraction too long. His breath caught in his throat, his eyes finding hers and trapping them in an intense stare. Not really knowing why, or how, she took another step closer to him so that their bodies were almost touching. His gaze drifted down to her lips, cherry red even in the fading twilight, and he had unconsciously begun to lean forward when a loud splash made them both jump apart like a pair of startled rabbits.
They whirled around to see a giant tentacle groping around a cluster of large gray boulders emerged in shallow water by the shore while a large black dog tried madly to escape. Lily's hand flew to her pocket and grabbed her wand. Pointing at one of the boulders that was half submerged in the water, she muttered, "Wingardium leviosa," and watched as the rock lifted and deposited itself on top of the giant squid's tentacle, giving the dog ample time to escape.
She turned around, satisfied, to see that James was no longer behind her but was by the base of the tree, holding the scruff of the dog's neck and scolding it in a low but obviously agitated tone. She drew closer, mildly curious as to why he was telling off a dog that wasn't his for almost being eaten by the giant squid, and a few of James' words drifted over to settle in her ears like bees.
"I can't believe you, Padfoot! You know that I really…listening to our conversation the whole time, weren't you? …out before I hex you!" He slapped the dog's head and watched it walk away, its tail between its legs, with his arms crossed and a ferocious scowl set upon his face.
"What was all that about?"
James spun around haphazardly, noticing—a little too late—that Lily was standing there and must have heard everything.
"Er—well—you see, that's Peter's dog, and, um, we—we try to keep it out of trouble, and—"
Lily tapped her foot, frowning. "That doesn't make any sense, James," she said. He stopped talking and looked at her with anxiety.
"What?" he said unintelligently.
Lily raised her eyebrows and lifted her hand to tap her chin reflexively. "Hm, where should I start? First of all, you talked to the dog like it actually understood everything. Secondly, I can hardly believe that you would hex an innocent creature for nearly being eaten. Oh, and by the way…" Her voice lowered and her eyes narrowed. "You called the dog Padfoot."
"I don't know what that has to do with anything," he said tensely.
Lily threw her hands up in the air. "I'm not stupid, James, and I know you better than you think I do. You and your friends always call each other nicknames when you forget that other people are around, and while I never understood it before, I just remembered that you call Remus Moony. What does that say about the rest of you? Why was that dog's name Padfoot, the same thing you always call Sirius? Tell me, James. Please. I swear…I swear that I won't tell anyone."
James put his head in his hands, moaning into his palms. Finally he looked up, sighed, and said, "Okay, but you have to promise that whatever you hear—whatever, mind you—doesn't leave the two of us. And you can't go until you hear me out, all of it. You promise?"
Lily had a hard time keeping from smiling when she answered. To think that she, Lily Evans, Head Girl and former Prefects, was being let in on one of the famous Marauder secrets! "I promise," she said solemnly.
"Okay…" James muttered, still uncomfortable about the situation. "You'd better sit down. I don't know, by that tree or something." Lily frowned. Was it that important? she thought worriedly, tucking her skirt under her legs and sitting down on one of the huge roots.
"So…" James began. "Where do I start? I've never told this to anyone else, and the guys were there when it happened, so it didn't matter…Let me just start by saying that what we did was by no means legal, by no means safe, and even then something I would do a thousand times if it meant it kept helping as much as it did. Do you remember second year?"
Lily nodded, confused as to where this was going and not a little concerned. Illegal? Illegal as in Askaban illegal? Should she be hearing this?
"Do you remember that we were slightly…quieter, that year?" James pressed. "More studious, maybe, hours and hours in the library? Late nights?"
Lily furrowed her eyebrows. "I don't know, just as much as third and fourth year. You really came out in the fifth year, though," she reminisced.
"Exactly," James confirmed. "We stopped with those habits in fifth year because we'd found what we needed to…do our project."
"James, stop spinning around the topic and tell me already! It can't be that bad!" Lily snapped.
"It is, but…alright. It's hard to say…hard to describe the incredible amount of time and energy we put in. It was lucky I was so good at Transfiguration, or none of us would have got there. I don't want to come off as bragging, but we would have failed if I had made a mistake. We would have died."
A nagging thought tugged the back of Lily's mind. Were they…?
James took a deep breath and met her eyes deliberately. "What I'm trying to say, Lily, is that I'm…I'm an unregistered Animagus."
Lily stopped breathing. Her eyes as wide as saucers, she stared at James as if he was Jesus of Nazareth come to walk the earth again. Suddenly she let out a short scream and leapt up, causing James to jump and look around wildly. "What, what's there," he half-yelled, looking around frantically for the source of her scream.
"Oh my God, James, you have got to be the smartest person I know!" she shrieked excitably. He stared at her, wondering if she had eaten something odd at dinner to make her act like this. "I've never, never, heard of anyone that's accomplished that at the age of fifteen! I can't believe you! You could have died, Sirius could have died, I can't believe Peter didn't die! Oh my God, I am so sorry for ever calling you stupid, or, or lazy—"
"Lily!" James interrupted. She looked at him in surprise, slightly irritated that he had interrupted her monologue.
"What?" she huffed.
"I, I, you're not mad?" James said, stuttering a little in his bafflement.
She looked at him, stunned, as though she had completely forgotten about that. Drawing herself up into what he had once dubbed, "Bull-fighting mode", she appeared all but ready to launch into a twenty minute tirade. Before she could begin, he clamped a hand on her mouth and said, "Remember, you said I could finish." She nodded without protest and sat back down, still apparently eating up the fact that he was "so smart".
"Why'd you do it, then?" she said when he didn't start talking right away.
"For Remus," he said simply. "As humans, we couldn't be there for him on the full moon, and we always wished we could, ever since the first time we saw him in the hospital wing…" his voice gained a haunted aura. "But as animals…we could stay with him and he wouldn't feel the least inclination to bite us. We couldn't just transfigure ourselves, because then he would have still sensed that we had human blood in us. As animagi he couldn't ever tell, and we could be with him to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else. He was always more tame with us there."
"So," Lily said softly, "So last night was better? Honestly, James, the blood was soaking through the sheets. If that was better, what was he like before?"
James shook his head. "No, last night was much worse then usual." His voice tightened. "There was someone in the woods. I don't know who. But if we hadn't been there to hold Remus off…" He let the sentence hang. "Anyway, they're all right now. Just severely traumatized, apparently."
"Good," said Lily, though she was still obviously perturbed. There was a moment of silence before she broke it to say, "What do you turn into, then?"
James looked at her and grinned. "Why don't you guess?"
Lily smiled too and tapped her finger on the rock. "Let's see…Sirius is a dog, I know that…Peter's nickname is Wormtail, right?" James nodded, impressed that she had remembered. "He's a…a…rat. Or a mouse," she concluded. James raised his eyebrows.
"Very good. First try, too."
Lily snorted. "Well, it wasn't too hard. You guys weren't exactly subtle when you named yourselves. And he's always struck me as a quiet, sneaky sort of person. Animagi turn into animals that suit their personalities, right?"
"Yep," said James. "Now guess me."
Lily bit her lip and scrunched her forehead. "Prongs, right? Let me think…" She was silent for a few minutes before she sighed and said, "Okay, I need a hint."
James struggled to keep from grinning. "Right. To be compatible with me—" Lily's heart quickened "—you'd have to be a doe."
Lily burst out laughing. "Are you a rabbit?" she gasped.
Instantly the smug look on his face turned to aghast. "What?" he yelled. "You think of me as a rabbit? Do I look like a rabbit?"
Lily shoved her hand in her mouth to keep from laughing. James Potter…a rabbit! Tears streamed silently down her cheeks as she shook with suppressed giggles. James gave up and sat back to watch her. Eventually she became self-conscious, and, worried that she looked funny, stopped laughing. James raised one inquisitive eyebrow and said, "You finished?"
Her lips twitched again. "Oh yes, my breath is quite depleted now. I don't think I'll ever be able to laugh again."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I need to redeem myself, though. What do you really think I am?"
Lily shook her head. "I don't know. Normally I'd be able to figure it out, but I'm having trouble thinking right now."
James wrinkled his nose. "A stag, of course!"
Her mouth dropped open. "Oh!" She studied him for a second and said, "It suits you. You're always the leader, and you always help people out, don't you?"
He smiled, touched that she thought so highly of him. "Thanks."
"Just what I think," she said quietly, stretching her legs out towards the lake. Her robes caught on the edge of the root, causing the cloth to be pulled halfway up her thigh. She adjusted it slightly, although she didn't really lower it, and stretched back to lean against the trunk. James' eyes followed her movements, flushing as he noticed how the robe stretched to outline her slender form. Her waist-long coppery hair shone in the moonlight, and her dark eyelashes brushed against her soft white cheeks before flickering open so she could gaze at the starry sky. "We should go back," she whispered disappointedly.
James looked away and swallowed. Lily looked perfect in the sound moonlight; a goddess from the sky. "Yeah, we probably should…" he muttered. "But I don't want to."
She sat up and stared at him, her green eyes searching his face in—was that hope? "Let me see," she whispered, crawling forward and then standing up so she was above him. "Let me see…before we go."
He stood up too and, his eyes never leaving hers, took a step back and began to transform. In a matter of seconds, a tall stag with a fawn-brown coat and an impressive rack of black antlers stood before her. The moon shone on the stag's coat to give it an almost pearly look, and Lily's breath caught in her throat as she gazed, enamored, at the beautiful animal.
"Prongs…" she whispered, taking a step forward. The stag looked at her with huge brown eyes, and she almost gasped at the depth of its gaze. It stepped closer and nuzzled her on the shoulder, and she let out a small laugh as she lowered her hand to stroke his head. She brought the other hand up to trace the stag's antlers, running over the smooth black rack with gentle strokes. The stag sighed deeply and shut his eyes contentedly. "Oh, James," she whispered.
The stag seemed to stand up, and suddenly James was standing in front of her, so close that she had to look up to see his face. His hazel eyes met her bright green ones with an intensity to rival the look they had exchanged before Sirius had interrupted them. She sucked in a quick intake of breath and realized that her hands were twined in his hair, the same spot where the stag's antlers had been. She dropped them to her sides and looked down, embarrassed, only to feel James' hand on her chin, begging her to look up.
She raised her head slowly to look at him again. For what seemed like hours, he held her gaze, his hand still on her face, and then he leaned down, ever so slowly, and touched his lips to hers.
Warmth flooded down her body, and she instinctively reached up to put her hands on his chest, feeling his breath go in and out at a rapid pace. He pulled her closer, as close as he could get without gluing himself to her, and tightened his grip on her, one of his hands tracing the back of her neck and running fingers through her hair to massage her scalp and the other traveling down her body in slow circles that left her breathless. He found the small of her back and rubbed it, his lips pressing hers with bruising force at the same time, then brought it around to her waist. Cautiously, he rubbed his tongue over her warm lips. She opened her mouth, moaning, as his tongue curled around her, caressing it softly.
Realizing that she couldn't breathe, she pulled away hesitatingly, only to meet his eyes and pull back in immediately. She kissed him desperately, her hands running through his hair in a frenzied movement, passion coursing through her mouth. James groaned against her and tugged away, gasping. He leaned into her, setting his forehead against hers, and nudged her nose with his own, earning a bashful smile from her. He kissed her neck softly, then with more fervor, before bringing his mouth back to hers for a passionate reunion.
A sudden yip brought them back to earth. James grabbed Lily's hand and pulled her closer to him, if that was even possible, and peered into the blackness where the sound had come from. Lily's heart hammered against her chest, this time from apprehension. What if they were caught? What if they got expelled? What if—?
"Sirius," James said, his tone dark with anger. He took out his wand and muttered an incantation. A sharp yelp pierced the silence, and a spotlight suddenly illuminated a huge black dog. In a second, it was not a dog that stood there, but rather Sirius Black, looking highly peeved but excited at the same time.
"Lily! Prongs! Fancy seeing you here!" Sirius cried jovially, striding over to where they stood. Lily stared at him blankly while James glared at him murderously.
"What the hell are you doing here, Padfoot," James groaned, already knowing the answer.
"What am I doing here?" Sirius repeated, pretending to think while a large grin lit up his handsome face. "Well, after I saw that you two were getting along so well before," –James glared at him— "I decided that I'd stay and see how things would pick up! And might I add, Lily, that if you ever feel the need to, ehem, switch partners, I'm always right here!" He beamed and winked at her. James thought that his eyes might pop out.
"Padfoot. Go. Away. Now. Before I hex you," he said through gritted teeth.
Sirius smiled at him and shook his head. "My, my, Prongs, awfully touchy today, aren't you? But I'll leave you two alone. I just thought you might want this since you're technically breaking a rule right now." He handed James his invisibility cloak and waved goodbye pleasantly. "Have a nice night, Prongs!" he called suggestively over his shoulder, then, after a loud guffaw, he transferred back into a dog and ran back to the castle.
"Listen, Lily, I'm so sorry—" James began, but stopped when he realized that Lily was just laughing over the whole scenario.
"Is he always like this?" she asked.
"Um, yeah, pretty much," said James, relieved that she wasn't offended. "I'm not going to hear the end of this for weeks, now. Of course, neither are you!"
Lily smiled. "Oh well. It was worth it."
He caught her eye and grabbed her hand. "Listen, Lily," he began. "You know that I've always liked you, right? I just wanted to tell you that that hasn't changed, even if I may have seemed a little distant this year. I was just trying to…fit your standards, I guess. I need you to know…everything I've done this year, all the changes I made…they were because of you."
Lily's breath caught. "Really?" she asked in a small voice.
"Really," he whispered. "And I want to know now, Lily, if you…well, if you'd like to go out with me sometime. Be my girlfriend."
Lily smiled happily and kissed him on the cheek. "James, I would love to be your girlfriend."
He grinned, a wide, carefree grin that he normally reserved for the best of pranks on the Slytherins. He leaned forward and kissed her; not as long as the first kiss, but enough to leave her breathless and grinning like an idiot. "You don't know how long I've waited for you to say that," he breathed into her ear.
"You don't know how long I've waited for you to ask," she retorted.
He frowned. "What?" She smiled and rolled her eyes at his boyish lack of awareness.
"Well, I started liking you at the beginning of this year, but you wouldn't ask me out again, so I thought you didn't like me anymore," she said quietly. He looked at her with regret.
"I'm sorry, Lil, I would've asked you, but I was afraid that everything I'd done to change would be ruined. I didn't know," he said softly.
She smiled at him. "Well, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm sure we can talk about it later, not that we need to of course, but for now we should be getting back to the castle. What's that thing Sirius gave to you?"
James looked down at the hand that was clutching the invisibility cloak. "I don't know. Why don't you try it on?" he suggested, a mischievous grin adorning his features. She looked at him suspiciously before taking it out from his fingers and putting it on.
"How's this supposed to help us get in the castle?" Lily's voice asked from a patch of air next to James.
"Oh, I don't know," he said playfully, going along with it. "Look at yourself and maybe you'll see."
There was a swish of cloth and a sharp gasp. "James!" Lily shrieked. "You have an invisibility cloak?"
He smirked. "Obviously."
"Oh, I would slap you for that pert tone but that wouldn't be exactly fair, seeing as I'm invisible." Lily said, a smile evident in her voice. She stepped out of midair and grinned at him, dimples pressing the corners of her mouth. They began the long walk back up to the castle, the invisibility cloak in Lily's hands. "So, Mr. Potter, what else do you have to tell me about?"
James grinned. It was going to be a long night.
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It's done! Anyway, I had a lot of fun with that one; especially with the Animagus part where Lily thought James was a rabbit. You'll have to tell me what you think, though. If you don't I'll never get better and I'll be putting out bad writing all over the place for poor people to read.