DAY NINE

James doesn't sleep when he gets home. Instead, he spends a lot of time pacing around his apartment, trying to work through the mess going on in his own head. Even Godric realises that he's clearly going through something right now, because he doesn't even so much as meow at James when he empties the last of his food bowl.

Midnight strikes, and he's so tired, but even the mere thought of sleep seems completely unfathomable.

Sirius has texted him at least five times, but James hasn't bothered opening any of those up just yet - he knows he probably has no right to be upset considering he fully went along with it, but he can't help but be at least a little bit annoyed that his best friend orchestrated all of this with Marlene.

Truthfully, most of his anger has melted away at this point anyways. Anger was an instinctive reaction, a protective one, guarding the true feelings underneath it. It was never meant to last.

The truth of the matter is that James is just… sad.

Sad that the past eight days have been built on a lie. Sad that in a way, Lily was right - she's not who he expected that she'd be, because he never expected that she'd do something like this. Sad that he let himself get pulled into a scheme that ended up hurting her too.

And yet... against all logic or reason, he doesn't want this to be the end for them. He's not sure if that's even possible - if Lily ever even did have feelings for him at all, there's a good chance they were completely eradicated tonight - but he can't help but hold onto a dream where he shows up at her door in a few days' time with flowers and an apology, and she responds in kind (minus the flowers of course, because he'd probably kill those immediately), and they get their happy ending after all.

He knows it's probably destined to be nothing but a dream, but it's stuck in his mind nonetheless.

By 3 a.m., he's just about resigned himself to the fact that there's no way he's sleeping tonight and that he'll have to drag himself to the office tomorrow morning looking like a complete wreck - a great look when he's going to have to face the woman he's both hurt and been hurt by - when there's a request from the callbox. He accepts it without even thinking about it, without even checking to see who it is, which is probably a foolish decision on his part, because who the hell's trying to get into his apartment complex at this hour?

There's a faint knock on his door - James doesn't know why he jumps at it, because it's a completely natural thing to follow letting someone into your building, but it startles him nonetheless - and he walks over to the entryway to check the peephole.

On the other side of the door is an unmistakable flash of auburn hair - just about the last thing he was expecting to find standing outside his apartment. He immediately opens the door for her, without even pausing to think twice about it. Yes, he's angry and hurt and all sorts of other things, but at the end of the day, it's Lily, and he'll always open a door that she's on the other side of.

But as soon as he pulls the door open, he finds himself unexpectedly speechless. Lily, quite frankly, looks just as wrecked as he does, hair pulled into a haphazard bun and wearing a maroon sweatshirt that's so oversized it comes down to her mid-thigh.

He blinks a few times, attempting to confirm that no, he's not dreaming this. But she's still there, and no wildly out-of-place things have appeared in his line of sight either, so he accepts that this probably is in fact reality.

She breaks the silence first. "Hi."

"What are you doing here?" he blurts out, his brain skipping over any sort of formalities.

She looks surprised at his directness for a moment, then takes a deep breath and answers him. "I came to apologise. And I understand that it's probably too soon and I totally get it if you shut the door in my face, but I couldn't sleep and I knew it wasn't going to happen until I at least had the chance to try to say I'm sorry to your face."

If James were a different person, if he was the type who was capable of holding on to anger or resentment for more than an hour or so, he might've done exactly what she suggested, and closed the door on her right then and there. But he's not, and something about this apology feels fundamentally different from her last one over text, so what he does instead is open the door wider.

"Do you want to come in?"

She looks at him like she doesn't quite believe what he's saying. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't be offering if I wasn't," he answers. "It would probably be good for us to have a conversation that doesn't involve yelling at each other outside of a bar and doing passive-aggressive Taylor Swift karaoke, and I can't sleep either, so why not now?"

She nods, wrapping her arms around herself as she steps inside. "Yeah, now is good."

They end up in his living room, seated on opposite sides of the couch, Lily with her feet tucked under her and James with his gaze focused on his hands in his lap, the awkward silence engulfing them both for a while.

He should say something.

James opens his mouth to speak, to break the mounting tension with something, anything, but Lily ends up beating him to it.

"I shouldn't have made a bet on toying with your feelings," she says, her gaze focused on the couch cushions. "And beyond that point, I shouldn't have let things go as far as they did - I should've called things off the moment I started realising you didn't just like me on a surface-level, or the moment I started liking you as well, instead of pulling some ridiculous scheme so that I could have my cake and eat it too. None of that was fair to you."

He knows he shouldn't, but he fixates on one point in her apology. "You actually liked me as well?"

She laughs hollowly, wrapping her arms around herself again. "I told you as much tonight, didn't I? I meant that. I like you - present tense - more than I ever expected I would, which is why it hurts so much that I've irreparably fucked this up with you."

He takes a long, deep breath before answering. "Is it really, though? Irreparable, that is?"

She looks over at him, her green eyes wide and glassy with unshed tears. "I - I don't know. I mean, I figured you'd want nothing to do with me after tonight. I'm still surprised you let me into your apartment, to be honest. I was expecting you to listen to my apology and immediately shut the door in my face."

"Evans, you weren't the only one who made some stupidly over-competitive bet," he replies. "I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I somehow thought you were so much worse than me for doing the exact same thing."

"But I was worse!" she pushes back. "I was doing things with the sole intention of trying to get you to drop me, and I hurt you in the process and caused you a lot of unnecessary confusion and doubt - all because I was let myself get wrapped up in my own fucking pride."

He starts to speak, but she starts again before he gets the chance to. "And I just… I immediately assumed the worst about you. Both before the bet even started, and tonight. And you didn't deserve that - you've proven over and over and over again that you're genuine and good and kind-hearted and sincere and… I let myself doubt that."

He sighs, his hand jumping to his hair automatically. "You know it was never a game with you, right? I mean, yeah, I agreed to some dumb bet with Sirius, but I… I've liked you for a longtime. I wasn't just going to drop you as soon as the ten days were up. I might've been planning to have a long chat about why you'd suddenly started acting so weird, but… everything else still stands."

She looks down at her hands again. "Yeah, I know that. I mean, I didn't for a while, because I was convinced you didn't actually feel that way about me, but then I actually started seeing you and getting to know you and I realised that wasn't true at all. And then I kind of let myself start believing that again tonight because I jumped to the immediate worst conclusions, but… yeah, I know it wasn't like that. That's why I was planning on coming clean to you about my side of things tonight."

Her eyes find his. "I put you through so much shit just to prove a point that I wasn't even right about. I don't even know why."

James chuckles. "I do."

She frowns, confused.

"Because you're extraordinarily competitive. Which, believe it or not, is actually one of the things I like about you."

"It is?"

"Yes," he nods, before changing the subject entirely, to something he'd been thinking about quite a lot in those few moments tonight where he'd forced himself to stop wallowing in his own misery. "Also seriously, I can't believe you thought laser tag as a date idea would make me like you less."

"I faked out and tackled you to the ground to win," she says, like that's somehow a rational explanation. Like she somehow thinks he wouldn't have found that absolutely fucking brilliant.

He tells her as much. "Which was a massive turn-on, honestly. I had half a mind to just start making out with you right there."

She laughs softly. "We would've scarred those 12-year-olds for life."

"Oh, for sure." A grin creeps its way onto his face at the memory of their first date. He finds that he wants to do that all over again; fight tonight or not, he still wants many, many more nights like that.

There's a long pause, not an awkward one but not an entirely comfortable one either. Lily looks like she's weighing things in her mind, and James isn't entirely sure what to make of that.

She breaks her silence eventually, her hands fidgeting in her lap as she talks. "So… what does this mean? I'll be entirely honest, I still wasn't expecting you to actually listen to my apology much less accept it, so… I hadn't really thought this part through yet."

He tries to think about it, but really, there's only one answer he can give.

"Why don't we give this a go for real this time? No bets, no competitions, no pretending to be anything we're not."

She looks up at him, a faint look of surprise on her features once again. "You want that?"

He nods. "Those first couple of days, before either of us really started taking those stupid bets seriously, those were absolutely fantastic. If that's what us being together for real is like, then yeah, I definitely want that."

Somehow, over the course of their conversation, they've moved from sitting on opposite ends of the couch to being practically on top of each other. Lily's ankle is linked around one of his, and his arm resting on the back of the couch is just inches above her shoulder.

"Do you want that?" he asks, the words tumbling out of his mouth so quickly that he has no time to be nervous about how she might answer.

Maybe, just maybe, the lack of nervousness is because he knows how she'll answer this time.

There's an immense softness in her green eyes as she leans into him even closer. "Yes."

"Well, now that that's settled," he trails off, because there's only one way he can finish that sentence, and it doesn't involve using his words.

He closes the last bit of space between them and kisses her.

It's just as magical as the first time, if not just a little more tender. He thinks of the other time she kissed him on his couch like this and of all the time they have in front of them to keep doing it, and everything else just seems to melt away.

Everything except Godric, apparently, because he picks that exact moment to jump up on the couch, sprawl out across both of them, and meow as loudly as possible.

Lily breaks the kiss first, laughing and looking down at the blob of orange fur spread across her lap fondly.

"Does this count as earning his blessing?" she asks, petting the now-loudly-purring cat.

"I think you earned his blessing before this," James replies. "I told you, he doesn't normally like new people, and he fell in love with you instantly. I think that's as close to a blessing as you're going to get."

Lily leans her head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her, just holding her there. It's some ungodly hour in the morning, he's just gotten off what feels like the most aggressive emotional roller coaster of his life, and somehow... he's happy with all of that.

It's been an awful past couple of days, but something about this moment makes him feel like things are probably going to be alright from here on out.

And Godric, mind-reading cat that he is, decides that since his owner is no longer in some sort of emotional crisis, it is now a totally fair time for him to jump off of their laps, walk over to his food bowl, and meow at the very top of his tiny lungs.

"I should probably feed the beast before he wakes up the entire apartment complex," James says, letting his arm fall from Lily's side.

"He's really a very polite cat for waiting until after our conversation to do that," she says, smiling at him as he goes into the kitchen to find the dry food.

"For all his faults, he's very good at picking up social cues," he agrees.

As he's doling out food for his very impatient cat, Lily brings up a totally different subject. "Marlene texted me like five times apologising for setting up this whole coordinated scheme to begin with."

"Oh god, Sirius did the same to me."

She pauses for a moment, looking very deep in thought. "You know, we could have some fun with this."

He can't see her face, but the mischievous tone in her voice is utterly unmistakable. And he loves the sound of it.

"Yeah?" he asks, setting the food bowl down in front of Godric before returning to the couch.

"Well, I mean, clearly, they did not think this plan through," she explains. "Which I think they sort of started to understand tonight, but… I mean, really, it could've been so much worse. We could've ended up as one of those couples that breaks up and can't stand to be in the same room together and make everyone feel so awkward when they're around us, and how horrible would that have been to deal with?"

"So what are you suggesting here?" He thinks he might know where she's going with this, and he fucking loves it, but he doesn't want to get ahead of himself without hearing it from her first.

The grin she gives him is practically devilish. "We make them deal with that."

"So you're suggesting that we pretend we actually hate each other now and make everyone else we work with feel super awkward to mess with Marlene and Padfoot?"

"It sounds a little ridiculous when you phrase it like that, but - "

"It sounds absolutely brilliant," he finishes. "Not to mention absolutely hilarious."

"We should probably warn Dumbledore though," she says. "Given his whole thing about not letting our personal lives affecting the quality of our work, he should know that this is all just a show."

Of course her very first concern is making sure they don't disappoint their boss.

But James has an even better idea. "Better yet, let's bring Dumbledore into the show."

For as serious as their captain is most of the time, he loves the opportunity to get in on an inside joke and cause a little chaos. This is absolutely right up his alley.

Lily recognises that too and her face lights up. "Oh my god, yes - that's perfect! I'll message him now - " she pauses, looks out the window at the pitch-black night, and rethinks that, "or maybe tomorrow morning instead."

"Probably good," he agrees. "I don't imagine waking him up at 4 a.m. would particularly endear him to our cause."

"Oh god," she says, moving to get up from the couch, "is it really that late? I should get home."

He catches her wrist before she can walk away. "Evans, you can't." She raises an eyebrow at him, and he revises his words. "I mean, you can, but you walked over here in the middle of the night and I'd really prefer if you didn't walk back in the middle of the night as well."

She relaxes into his touch. "I… yeah, okay, you make a good point."

"I do make those occasionally."

Godric meows again, and James decides to take that as a sign of agreement.

When his alarm goes off, the first thing he notices is that Lily isn't in his arms anymore like she was when they fell asleep. Any worry is very quickly dissolved, however, because he realises she's just sitting up in bed a few inches away from him, tapping away on her phone.

"Dumbledore's in," she says, as soon as she notices that he's awake.

It takes him a moment to process what she's even talking about, before he remembers the plan they'd discussed last night.

"You texted our captain at 7:30 in the morning? Isn't that a bit early?" he asks groggily, propping himself up on his elbows.

She scoffs. "Please. Dumbledore wakes up at 6:05 every morning - 7:30 is child's play."

Really, he should've known.

"So the plan is on then?" he confirms.

She looks over at him, grinning. "The plan is on."

Acting has never particularly been James' strong suit, but he'll pick up a talent in just about anything in pursuit of a workplace ruse.

Which means that falling into character is remarkably easy for him; when he arrives at the precinct and Lily's first response is to pointedly look away from him, he responds by intentionally taking the long way to his desk so that he doesn't have to walk by hers. He doesn't look at her once as he sits down at his desk and turns his computer on. No 'good morning' like usual, nada.

"Sirius, can I borrow a pen?" Lily's voice rings clearly through the precinct.

"There's one right there on Prongs' desk," his friend answers.

"Well, I don't want that one," Lily replies petulantly, and James is glad no one can see his face from here because it's harder than he expected to fight off the laugh at that. She sounds so petty, and it's perfect.

"Okay, uh, here, you can have this one," Sirius eventually manages, and it takes a lot of self-control for James not to turn around and see the look on Sirius' face. Or anyone else's face, for that matter. He wants to know if they've gotten a reaction out of any of them yet, purely for his own satisfaction.

But he keeps his eyes steadfastly trained on his own computer, not wanting to threaten the ruse even a little bit this early in the game.

He's trying to think up their next move, the next little step they can take to build on the energy they've already created, but ultimately, he doesn't even have to do that. It's done for him.

Captain Dumbledore emerges from his office, and makes a beeline for Lily's desk.

"Evans, you emailed me about getting a new partner for the Crouch-Lestrange case?" he asks, and for the first time all morning, James looks over at Lily. From the brief look of surprise on her face - that lasts for only half a second, so he's pretty sure he's the only one who saw it - she didn't email Dumbledore; this is all the Captain's work.

"Yes sir, I did," she replies, catching on and playing along easily.

"I'm afraid I can't help you with that - no one else has any capacity for any additional cases, and I fail to see why Potter is no longer a suitable partner."

"I can name a lot of reasons why he's not a suitable partner," Lily grumbles. It's a stage-grumble though, which means it's loud enough for the entire room to hear.

The precinct is quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and there are even more awkward glances exchanged among their coworkers from behind Dumbledore's back.

James is also wholly uncontent to be a bystander at this point; this prank is entirely too much fun for him to sit on the sidelines any longer. "Would you like to list them all off to my face?" he asks dryly, and he's almost impressed with how convincing he sounds.

"I would like to, yes, but in the interest of professionalism, I will not," she says, turning to him for the first time all morning. Her eyes are positively sparkling, betraying all the humour in the situation that the rest of her face is masking.

"Perhaps we should, ah, continue this conversation in my office," Dumbledore says, his eyes flitting between the two of them.

"Yes, sir," Lily replies, getting up from her chair. James mimics the action, and they both follow the captain into his office. As soon as James shuts the door, Dumbledore speaks again.

"Tell me, what did everyone's faces look like?" It's delivered in his traditional monotone, but James is pretty sure this is his excited monotone.

"Remus looked like we were a car crash and he couldn't turn away," Lily reports, not bothering to conceal a grin since she's facing the desk.

"I'm pretty sure even Mary looked concerned, which is… really something," James adds.

"Good, good," Dumbledore says, nodding.

He folds his hands on the desk and leans forward. "The blinds are halfway open which means half the office is watching us right now, one of you needs to make a very visible show of frustration… now."

James rakes his hand through his hair, leaving it there as he turns to face Lily. "Is this good enough?"

"Could've perhaps played it up a little more," the captain replies candidly, "but it will certainly do the job. Now, I'm going to stand up and angrily point to the door, and you two will file out, looking shameful."

He is definitely having way too much fun with this.

Lily and James both file out of the office. He practically throws himself into his chair when he gets out to his desk - probably a little more dramatic than is strictly necessary, but fuck it, it feels like the right sort of thing to do.

The bullpen is… dead silent. Which is a complete rarity, because even 'quiet' moments at the precinct generally still amount to what the average person would consider a dull roar, so the fact that it's happened twice today is even rarer than someone making Mary smile. The tension in the air is palpable - which is something James never thought he'd be quite this thrilled about.

"Looks like you're stuck with me - what a misfortune that must be," James comments acidly, surprising even himself with the level of bitterness in his tone.

"Well, at least maybe try to avoid making any bets on us catching Lestrange," she replies, matching his coldness and then some. "Lord knows if you do we'll really be doomed to failure."

He's stunned into speechlessness by that; his inability to form a reply likely comes across to everyone else as offense, when in reality he's just generally shocked by her brilliance in coming up with that line to begin with.

"That's a bit rich, isn't it?" he eventually answers, sitting back down at his desk.

"Don't try me today, Potter."

"Wasn't planning on it, Evans."

He turns his attention to work, rather satisfied in the level of discomfort they've created in the room so far. Based on the look on Marlene's face when the two of them walked out of the Captain's office, everything is working exactly as intended.

They manage to keep up the act over the next few hours, each occasionally making a comment or gesture that clearly indicates how much they can't stand each other and generally plunging everyone into another round of awkwardness. It's by far the strangest energy they've ever had in the precinct, and it's brilliantly satisfying to know that they did this.

It's just after lunch when James' phone buzzes. Lily's name pops up on his screen again, and he glances over at her desk to discover that she's nowhere to be found.

meet me in the supply room in 5?

sure, what do you need

you ;)

James tries to set his phone down casually and look nonchalant, but he spends the next five minutes rather antsy, and then makes a beeline for the supply closet as soon as is acceptable.

He's not really sure what she's got up her sleeve, but her message has a pretty clear immediate interpretation that he would very much like to be the correct one. And the accompanying winking face all but cements it.

Lily's standing in the middle of the room waiting for him when he arrives, and she smiles at him when he shuts the door behind him.

He walks over to her. "Hi."

"Hi," she responds, before wrapping her arms around his neck. "We've been fake-fighting all day, I figured we needed to counteract that for a little bit."

"We do?"

"Mmhmm," she nods, gently running her fingers through the hair on the back of his head. "So kiss me, yeah?"

She doesn't need to ask him twice - he leans down and kisses her, and the little hum of satisfaction she makes as his lips meet hers only serves to egg him on further, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.

He's so lost in it that he doesn't even hear the supply room door open.

"James, are you in - "

The two of them spring apart just a second too late, and as such are caught in an incredibly compromising position by Peter. His eyes are wide, and he looks like he's forgotten how to breathe properly.

"Are you guys - did you just - "

He trails off, and James realises half a second too late that said trailing-off has occurred because Peter has fainted. And as he falls to the ground, he knocks over a stack of boxes, resulting in an exceptionally noisy clattering that no doubt the entire bullpen has heard.

"Fuck," James swears, partially because his friend has just passed out but mostly because their ruse has almost certainly come to an end. Everyone will come in soon enough, and Peter will almost definitely out the two of them, and the two of them being in the supply room alone is incriminating enough as it is.

He's just starting to think through how they're going to explain themselves when he hears a clatter behind him. He turns back to the source of the noise to see that Lily is… gone?

After a moment, he realises the noise came from the now-slightly-ajar air duct. He's got no idea when on earth she would've picked up that particular trick, but by god, it's fucking brilliant.

He has to resist the urge to grin at her genius, because the supply closet door opens and half the precinct is there now - and James should probably act at least a little more concerned by Peter's state.

He crouches down next to Peter, making a show of checking on him. Pete's rather prone to fainting spells, so truthfully James isn't all that concerned; this is really just par for the course anyways.

Peter comes to in a few moments - at which point basically the entire precinct has funneled into the supply closet with some version of 'what happened in here' - and as soon as he does, his eyes resemble saucers as he looks at James in shock.

"Oh my god," he stammers. "You. And Lily. You were - "

James furrows his brow, feigning confusion. "What are you talking about? Lily and I aren't anything."

"But I saw you!" Peter exclaims. "You were in here making out!"

"Pete, did you hit your head on the way down?" James asks, cocking his head to the side. "I didn't think you did, but maybe on one of the boxes?"

"I didn't hit my head - I saw you two!"

"How would that even be possible? Lily's not even in here." He looks around the room to make a show of it.

And right on schedule, a somewhat-breathless Lily appears at the doorway. James could almost kiss her for her perfect timing - although admittedly, kissing her was what got them into this situation to begin with, so maybe not.

"Is everything okay? I heard a loud noise and when I got out to the bullpen I noticed that everyone was gone."

"Everything is fine, Evans," James replies, almost dismissively. "Wormtail here just had a bit of a fainting spell that caused him to dream up a scenario that couldn't possibly have existed."

Peter, for his part, looks absolutely bewildered, turning his head from the space he'd seen Lily last to her new location, trying to figure out how the hell to reconcile the two conflicting pieces of evidence.

"But, but, but - "

"You sure you're all good, Pete?" James asks, turning his attention back to his friend again. "We can call for medical help if you need."

His friend shakes his head. "No, I'm fine," he says, and lets James help him up to his feet. "But god, that sure was real fucking weird. It felt so real, you know?"

"Part of me really does wish it was real, buddy," James replies, putting on his best dejected tone. It's probably a bit much that he's not only tricked Peter - and everyone else in the room, too - into believing he's completely imagined a very real thing that he actually saw, and now he's playing it off like he's still a little heartbroken, but this charade is too much fun to temper it in any way.

From the doorway, Lily scoffs, and James glares at her.

And just like that, they've succeeded in making everything incredibly awkward again. Mission accomplished.

Once everyone has dissipated, James returns to his desk, because even though he would've liked to resume the thing he was doing before Peter had come in, he doesn't have faith that they'd be so lucky as to come up with a perfect cover-up twice.

Lily's sitting at her desk looking at case files when he gets back to his own desk; he's pretty sure they're relevant to the Lestrange case, so he texts her to ask about them. He's been doing that a lot today - texting her or emailing her about the case so that they can still maintain their usual level of productivity despite the office ruse.

She'd never want to sacrifice actual work for the sake of a prank, and when the work is this important, he gets that.

reading anything interesting?

not really

mostly just thinking about crouch

fantasising about his weird tongue thing?

OH MY GOD

NO

that's just

i don't have words

:P

you have ruined that emoji for me

:P

ANYWAYS

i was thinking about one of the things he said

that lestrange doesn't give up on a hit

so like… that means she's almost definitely going to try to go after the longbottoms again

well yeah, that's why they're in protection now

but lestrange doesn't know that, in all likelihood

so what are the chances that she's just waiting to strike again once they reappear

idk, pretty high i'd guess?

well, i have an idea

i'll tell you in person in a little bit

it's a bit much to get into over text i think

but also this is a damn good idea and i don't want to tell you when i know you're going to have to fake-hate it

ah, yeah

also on that note

just out of curiosity

how long are we keeping this up for?

oh, just until the end of the day maybe?

i don't know how many more close calls we'll be able to avoid

and getting caught really ruins the fun of the reveal

too true

any ideas of how to actually end it?

hmm, i think i've got something

just play along, yeah?

i can do that

He reacts to her last message with a heart, then gets back to work. Or, more accurately, fucking around to avoid doing the paperwork he knows he's still got to fill out before the day is over.

He's really rather curious about whatever it is that Lily's managed to cook up in her mind, but he doesn't dare ask her just yet. No, he can get that information from her later tonight. Right now, he's just trying to make it to the end of the day maintaining their frosty silence with one another. Because once they hit the end of the day, they're going to give everyone in the precinct whiplash, and it's going to be the best way to close this day out.

Once 5:00 rolls around, before anyone has actually made it out the door, James gets up and walks over to Lily's desk.

"Ready to go?" he asks.

She turns around, studies him for a second, and instantly seems to know where he's going with this. "Perfect timing, babe," she replies, smiling at him. "I just finished up."

He extends his hand to her, and she takes it. The whole room is dead silent yet again, and neither of them acknowledge it at all.

At least, not until they get into the elevator and the doors close behind them, at which point they both start laughing hysterically and can't seem to stop.

"Did you see Kingsley's face?" Lily asks in between giggles.

"Did you see Sirius's?" James retorts, unable to stop picturing the simultaneously confused and horrified expression on his best friend's face.

His phone dings once, twice, three times, which means someone - or maybe more than one person, in all likelihood - has undoubtedly texted him to ask him what the fuck they just witnessed.

"We really do make a damn good team, Potter," Lily tells him, as soon as she's regained some of her composure. They're in the downstairs lobby now, hands still intertwined as they weave through people to get out of the building.

"I feel like we should celebrate a job well done, you know," he says. "Go get ice cream maybe? Or, uh, a drink?"

She laughs again at that. "I love that your first thought was ice cream, and then alcohol."

"I feel like I've got my priorities straight."

"Hmm, I might be inclined to agree with you," she says. "Alternatively, we could have both at once and go to that place that sells alcoholic popsicles?"

"They sell what?" How is he only just now hearing about this?

She grins. "Oh yes, we're definitely going there," she replies. "They are an experience."

"Well then," he squeezes her hand, "lead the way."