Thanks for all of the reviews! Is it no longer possible for authors to respond to individual reviews? I do want all of you to know that I read and appreciate each and every one!

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Wednesday, November 30, 1977

"And that's it now. Any questions?" Lily scanned the room, looking from one prefect to the next. There was Edgar Bones, straightening his robes. Malcolm Avery, closing his notebook and neatly tucking his quill into its sheath. And there, in the corner, Jennifer Higgs, casting longing looks towards Victor Branstone, who was busy holding hands with Ursula Gilmore.

Poor Jennifer, Lily mused, even as she said aloud, "Great! Meeting adjourned." Victor moved from girl to girl easily enough, but not once in all of their years here had Victor ever spared a glance for her.

As prefects began to file out of the room, Lily let her smile slip. It was exhausting, pretending to be cheerful.

Especially around James.

As the last prefect (Olivia Lansbury, the slowest moving girl in the entire sodding school) finally left the room, Lily turned to where James had been standing, an overly-rehearsed speech on the tip of her tongue.

But he was busy, shoving his things into his bag, and even as she opened her mouth to speak, he was brusquely shoving past her, mouth set in a thin line.

Oh no you don't, she thought grimly. Not this time. For weeks, she'd been trying to catch James alone, and she wasn't about to let another precious chance go to waste. Before she could second-guess herself, she was going after him, running into a desk and wincing but moving on, out the door and –

Gone. What? How had he vanished so quickly? This late in the evening, other students were supposed to be back in their Houses, so the corridors should be empty, of course, but how could James have vanished so quickly? A tapestry at the end of the corridor was fluttering slightly, but there didn't seem to be any other movement.

"You're not going to be able to find him." Lily spun on her heel, only to find Marlene, slouching against the door, a sardonic grin on her face.

Lily didn't ask what Marlene meant; it was obvious whom she was talking about. Instead, she asked, "Why are you still here?"

Marlene pushed herself off the wall and fell into step with Lily. "I was waiting for you. Obviously. Where are you headed? I'll walk you."

"The Owlery." Lily rummaged through her bag and pulled out a thick envelope, mostly just to reassure herself that she still had it.

Marlene eyed the envelope. "Is that your – "

"Auror application? Yeah." They rounded a corner, and Lily flashed her badge warningly at a couple of third year boys, who ducked their heads nervously and scurried away, hopefully back to their Houses. Who was supposed to be on patrol tonight, anyway?

"Isn't this due, like, tomorrow?" Marlene arched one long, thin eyebrow. "Cutting it a little close, aren't you?"

"You know me," she grinned. "Always a procrastinator."

As they started climbing the stairs to the Owlery, they lapsed into silence, and for a moment Lily listened to the sound of their footsteps. How many times had they climbed these steps? When she had first gotten to Hogwarts, she had gone up to the Owlery every other day, mailing letter after letter to her parents, begging them for news from home. As the years had gone past, she had come up here less and less, and when was the last time she'd written her parents, anyway? Maybe a month ago? Isabella had –

"Lily, I need to talk to you about something." Lily turned to look, any previous thoughts flying out of her head; Marlene's usually dancing eyes were calm, serious.

"What's wrong?" Marlene never looked liked this; usually, she was the sort of person who could brush off anything at all, and Lily had always envied that ability. Once, Marlene played half a Quidditch game with a broken arm, and Ravenclaw still won. "Is everything okay?"

"I…I…I've been recruited."

"What? By whom? And for what?" And why is this a big deal? Surely, all of them were too young for this, weren't they?

Marlene ducked her head as she pulled the door open, wrinkling her nose at the smell. (The Owlery was rarely cleaned.) When they were inside, surrounded by owls of all shapes and sizes, Marlene looked around furtively. What was going on? She'd never acted so strangely before. "The Department of Mysteries."

"The Department of what?" Had she heard right?

"Mysteries." Marlene's hand went to her hair, fluffing up the bottom of her pixie cut.

She only did that when she was nervous.

Lily frowned, remembering a blisteringly cold day, and Quidditch, and a forgotten conversation. "Didn't you send in an application, months ago?" Her friend nodded, her eyes still grave and wary. "So, what's the problem? Shouldn't I be congratulating you? Weren't you expecting this?" Isn't this a good thing?

"They…want me as soon as possible." She started to bite her lip.

"That's great!" Lily was perplexed. "Seriously, Marlene. What's wrong?"

"No, you don't understand. As soon as possible means…if I decide to take the job, I'm going to go home for the holidays and…not come back. To Hogwarts, I mean." Marlene turned away, her fingers skimming the shelves. "How do you feel about this one?" Her hand rested on a large barn owl, who glared balefully and hooted once. "He's vicious, but surprisingly fast."

Lily's breath hitched; the change of topic was a bit much for her. "I'm sorry, what? Slow down for a second. They want you to drop out of school? Now?" Was that a thing wizards did? Lily's parents had raised her with the expectation that she would graduate uni, and when they'd found out that she was a wizard, they'd had to shift their worldview a little, but the expectation that she would graduate from something was still there.

"Crazy, isn't it?" Marlene passed the owl to Lily.

"What about your schooling?" She pulled the envelope out of her bag and began tying it to the owl. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too heavy for him - if her application didn't reach the Auror Department by tomorrow morning, she was screwed. "Can they even do that?"

"Oh, because Hogwarts matters so much?" Marlene picked up one of the tiny owls and began petting it. "There's a war on, Lily. This means…I think they're scared, and I think they need all the help they can get. And quickly, too."

Lily knotted the envelope securely, then patted the owl and went to the window. "What are you going to do?" She couldn't even imagine being in the other girl's shoes.

Marlene rubbed at her eyes, and Lily suddenly noticed how tired her friend looked, how world-weary. Where was the fun-loving girl Lily had meet as a second year? When had they all grown up? "I don't know. I have three days to decide."

"Are you…happy? Excited? It's what you want to do, right?" Checking that the coast was clear, she launched the owl into the air, and they watched as the owl flapped away into the night. Finally, that horrid application was finished.

It felt almost anticlimactic.

Marlene's lips twitched, and for a second, she looked like her old self. "I don't even know what they do. It's the Department of Mysteries!"

"Right." Lily patted her friend's arm as they left the Owlery and started down the stairs. "So…if you take it, what've you got to lose?"

"Well, we started here seven years ago, you know? It would be nice to finish things out." Marlene's voice was soft, thoughtful.

"But…what are you really missing out on?" Lily swept her arm wide. "It's only a few short months, and you've spent your entire life studying, anyway. Also, you won't have to do a final project! This is exciting!" After this statement, Marlene looked at her for a long, long while yet didn't say anything, her eyes large in her angular face. Finally, Lily asked, "What?" Why did people have a habit of looking at her as if she had egg on her face?

Marlene's hand went to her yellow-and-black tie, loosening the knot. "Only you would've thought of the final project as a great perk. I'm… glad I talked to you."

"Umm…thanks?" Lily was struggling to keep up; for a tiny girl, Marlene walked awfully fast.

"No, really. I wasn't actually supposed to talk to anyone about this, you know? It is the Department of Mysteries, after all. I was supposed to keep it a secret and figure things out, but I felt lost. And…you always seem to have all the answers."

She scoffed at that one. "Me? You think that I have the answers?" As they passed another corridor, Lily saw a fifth year couple getting a little too hot and heavy. But, hey, when else would they find the time, right? So she stopped and coughed, loud enough to get their attention (they looked peeved, but she wasn't taking away points, so they ought to be grateful), and then moved on. "Surely you're joking."

"Of course not! You always seem so confident; you always seem to have a plan." And Marlene looked so earnest, like she honestly thought those things.

Lily really didn't have anything to say to that. Except – "Are you kidding? Have you seen me lately? I wouldn't exactly call 'my plans' successful." It was true. She'd been ducking around corners, loitering in the Great Hall, carefully choosing her seat in class…

None of those had worked.

"Oh, but Potter will come around." Marlene elbowed her, snickering.

"Will he?" Lily kicked at a cobblestone morosely. "That's what I thought at first, but now I'm not so sure." It had been days now; had Potter simply given up on her?

If the roles were reversed, would she have given up on him?

"He will." Marlene nodded confidently, the light from the torchlight catching on her hair, making it sparkle. "Although…"

"What?" They'd reached the Gryffindor portrait hole; Marlene was simply going to have to walk back to Hufflepuff by herself.

Now Marlene's eyes were sparkling. "Potter loves a big splash. Maybe you ought to try your hand at one."

ooo

Monday, December 5, 1977

In the end, Marlene decided to go. Lily wasn't surprised, but she made sure to keep quiet about the matter, even as the rest of the school gossiped wildly. Marlene had eloped with someone; she'd been recruited by a Quidditch team, she'd run off to become a Muggle, she'd eloped with someone on a Quidditch team and they were going to hide as Muggles…if there was anything that Lily learned, it was that no one had really known Marlene.

Frankly, Lily wasn't even sure that she had known Marlene. They saw each other infrequently, but when they did, they never just made small talk. That had to count for something, right? And yet…she couldn't think of the last time that Marlene had spent any time around Fiona or Isabella or Emmeline. She couldn't even think of people whom Marlene regularly spent time with.

Maybe Marlene had been more of a mystery than anyone had realized.

Regardless, something about Marlene's final words had struck a chord within her, and for the next few days, she had worked feverishly, driving all of her friends crazy with her pacing and muttering and crumpled pieces of parchment all over their beds. She'd been late to her classes, she hadn't slept much –

And then the holidays had started and everyone had gone home and Lily had become increasingly more frantic because now she had no one to talk her through her neuroses and her family was chaos to be around –

And now she was here, shivering in the dark, standing in front of James Potter's house, snowflakes on her coat.

Yup. That was her.

"This is crazy," she whispered, hugging herself. "Am I totally crazy?"

The thing was, the plan was so crazy, it just might work.

And it was too late, anyway; she'd already knocked on the door, and now she just had to wait for someone to open it.

She knew they must be home; so that she didn't look too foolish, she'd owled Sirius yesterday, subtly asking about James' whereabouts. As a brill mate, he'd gladly given her detailed information (in an spell-encrypted letter that had taken her a couple of hours to figure out, of course), and she'd chosen this moment to make her stand.

His house looked nothing like she'd imagined it. She didn't exactly know what she'd imagined a wizarding home to look like, but there had definitely been turrets and some faint resemblance to Hogwarts involved. This…this just looked ordinary, like her own house, but a little larger. Weren't the Potters supposed to be incredibly wealthy or something? Was it all buried deep within Gringotts or something?

So here she was, waiting, with a million half-formed thoughts flying through her brain, scrabbling for her attention. What if this didn't work, what if it did, where were they going, what if he thought she was a fool, what if, what if, what if…So many possibilities, so many outcomes, and, right now, she hadn't an inkling about what was most likely. If she -

The door began to creak open. "Can I help you – Lily?" James' hair was tousled, his eyes squinting in confusion, and against the warm glow of his house she could just see him as a child, disobeying his parents and opening the front door. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi. Can you come out here for a second?" She shivered, her heartbeat beginning to speed up. From inside, Sirius' boisterous laugh rang out, and she wondered what she had interrupted.

"Why?" He didn't move, and the panic began to set in. What if he doesn't like it? What if he thinks it's ridiculous? What if he thinks I'm ridiculous?

Aloud, she said, "Just come outside."

He opened his mouth to object, but something about her face must've looked serious, because he closed it again and ducked out of sight. For a second, she thought that he was just going to shut the door and that would be that, and her brain started automatically spinning wild outcomes, calculating the probably that she was going to have to knock again and look desperate.

But no, she supposed she shouldn't have doubted him, because he was back, wrapped in a thick black coat. As he closed the door, she backed away, giving him space on his front stoop. Then he turned to look at her, breath fogging in the cold. "What do you want, Lily?"

It was the first time he'd looked her in the eyes in almost a month…and she had to resist the urge to punch him in the face for being so grim, so distant. You're trying to get him to…to talk to you, she scolded herself.

"Can you just come with me?" She snapped her fingers, inspiration striking. "Think of it as…an adventure." Sirius would appreciate the touch.

"Really." James folded his arms, mouth set in a thin line. "Where are we going?"

She took a breath to steady her nerves, then smiled, trying to recall the way they used to be. "It's an adventure. You're not supposed to know where you're going." To keep up her flippancy, she spun and started walking away.

She hoped he would follow.

His insatiable curiosity got the better of him, which she had been counting on. "A'ight, Evans, wait up!" As he ran to catch up to her, she struggled to hide her tremulous smile.

Maybe her plan had a shot.

As they strode away from James's house, Lily felt the doubts begin to creep into her mind. What if this doesn't go well? What if I overthought everything?

"Lily? Are we going – "

"I need you to close your eyes," she said quickly, purposefully interrupting him, trying to ignore the way her heart was racing.

"What?" It was dark, and the falling snowflakes looked positively orange under the dim streetlamps. "Why?" His voice was terse, almost accusatory, and she resisted the urge to spit out a sarcastic retort.

"Will you just trust me?" She should've counted on James to be incredibly difficult.

He sighed, giving her one last wary look, but did as he was told, and she marveled at the fact that, after all this time, after not even speaking for a whole month, he still trusted her.

That had to mean something, didn't it?

Gingerly, she held his elbow, conscious of the places where his elbow touched her gloved hand. As she led him around the corner, she wished that she'd had the forethought to bring a blindfold; the temptation to peek would be, for him, excruciating. It was a good thing they didn't have to go far.

Also, at the last second, on a whim, she reached for his glasses and snatched them away, stowing them in her pocket. "Oy!" He yelped, hands flailing a little. "What are you doing?"

She reached for his elbow again. "Just trust me." As they reached their destination, she tried to slow her breathing, to keep her cool. "Okay, you can open your eyes now." Gently placing his glasses in his left hand, she stepped away. He would probably need some time to adjust.

Hurriedly, with the speed of a man in the desert reaching for water, he shoved his glasses onto his face, then blinked, looking around. "Oh, Lily," he breathed, eyes wide, and she saw him again as a small child. "What did you do?" But that was one of the things she'd always liked most about him, the way he could still look at the world with wonder.

She stared down at her boots, at the pattern of the snow against the dark brown leather. "Do you like it?" It had taken her all day to lug in all of the candles, and then to arrange them around the playground, and light them by hand…Of course, she could've used magic and it probably would've taken about ten minutes, but she'd seen a couple of Muggle children and she'd decided to play by the rules. Besides, the Muggleborn in her liked doing things by hand, as if everything meant more that way. (Okay, so, maybe, she'd cast a charm to keep the flames protected from the falling snow. But it was just a little charm!)

"What – why?" He still sounded a touch sardonic, and she struggled not to be hurt.

For weeks, she'd had a speech prepared, the well-rehearsed words running through her mind all the time, taking over her dreams. But in the moment, she found that all of those words were gone, and she struggled to make sense of her thoughts. "I…you were right, James. All those things you said."

"About – "

"Don't tell me you don't remember calling me daft," she said, still seriously contemplating her shoes. "I-I've been thinking a lot about how you feel, and about how I feel, and, you know I've been chasing you all over school just trying to talk to you about it all, and, well, I figured I'd just show you." As she raised her head to look at him, she thought sternly, It's all or nothing, Lily Evans. Go for it.

"This is the playground we had our first Heads meeting at, and you told me that you loved this playground a lot. And I figured…well, the candles…the point is, I lit a candle for every time that you'd asked me out, and as you can see, it's rather a lot." She looked around, at the candles placed on swings, and on slides, on the perimeter and on the seesaw.

(Lily had never been good at arranging things.)

"I just thought," she continued, steeling herself for this final push, "that maybe, well, I should ask you out, just this once. So, James, will you go out with me?" There – the words were out of her mouth, and she couldn't take them away. For the first time, what was happening between them seemed permanent; real.

He took a step towards her, but this time, she didn't automatically back away, didn't automatically try to maintain a certain amount of space between them. For many long seconds, he didn't say anything, and she wondered if he was going to refuse, if he'd changed his mind, if he'd found someone else –

What he said wasn't a yes, or a no, but, something else entirely, his voice dry. "All this time, you kept count?"

Automatically, she swatted him, feeling some of the tension of the moment evaporate. (She'd never done well in romantic situations. Look at what had happened at Madame Puddifoot's!) "Of course not! I just…estimated. Or extrapolated. Whatever! I was hoping to overwhelm you with the sheer numbers."

He took another step forward, mouth twisting into a slight smirk. Suddenly she was aware of how close they were standing, and how much snow was falling onto his hair. "You just lied to me, Evans. In your attempt to be honest."

"What? It wasn't a lie. I just…massaged the truth."

"Oh really," he said, sounding darkly amused. "Is that what you're calling it?"

"You know you've asked me out loads of times! How was a girl supposed to keep track? I didn't know it was going to be relevant!" Her voice was getting high and squeaky, and she found herself feeling rather flustered, her cheeks warm despite the ever-increasing amount of snowfall.

He sighed, sounding old and weary, despite the way that his eyes were twinkling behind smudged lenses. "Oh, Lily, Lily, Lily Evans."

"What?" she snapped, feeling a little angry at his completely blasé manner. "Hey, I worked hard on this, and do you even know how many candles I dragged out here and how hard it is for me to be this disgustingly romantic – Mpf!" she yelped in protest when James reached out and placed a finger on her lips, closing the distance between them. "What are you doing?"

And then she was totally conscious of all the places where they were touching, and the way that he slid his hand from her lips to her cheek, cupping it gently. Her breath caught as he ducked his head closer, and then, his lips almost brushing hers, James said softly, "You really are quite daft, Lily Evans." But then his lips were on hers, and everything felt just right, as if all of the squabbling and the laughter and their complicated friendship had just been a prelude to this every moment, as if they'd both been waiting for just this, and part of her couldn't believe how stupid they'd been this whole time, fighting when they could've had this, but then again, hadn't they always been this way, and weren't they pretty stubborn, and – wait a minute.

She pulled away, frowning, and when he sighed a little, she almost lost her resolve, but she went ahead and slapped him anyway.

"Ow! Evans! What the bloody hell was that for?"

"You called me daft! Again!" As much as she liked James – as much as she was willing to admit now about how much she liked James – she had never been one for romance, and the seriousness of it all was making her queasy, and making her babble. (Also, he was an excellent kisser, and that wasn't helping her collect her thoughts at all.) "You – you have to stop doing that!"

He laughed, and it was the first time she'd heard his laugh in what felt like forever.

She rather liked the sound of it.

Reaching out for her and pulling her forward so that they stood hip-to-hip, he said, smirking, "What are you going to do about that?"

His voice almost melted her resolve, but she stood her ground, laughing as she ducked out of his arms and sprinted across the playground. "Person who blows out the most candles gets to call the other one daft for the next month!" she called behind her, feeling a burst of euphoria and excitement, of the possibility of something new happening to them, right here, right now. "Better get going, Potter!"

This was it, she knew, as she raced to the swings to swipe at a few candles with her wand (he didn't exactly know that she'd cast a charm to strengthen the miniature flames, so she definitely had an advantage).

This was the moment she and James did something real, together, for the first time in their lives.

ooo

There's another chapter; no need to fret! It's pretty short; I should have it up in a week or so.