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James was having a rare moment of doing homework. McGonagall had approved of his list of personality traits he’d handed in after working with the other Marauders on it, and assigned him a new job of writing a paper about the first ever animagus. What this meant was that he had to go and learn about this mysterious bloke, a guy who could turn into a falcon, and he was in the library trying to find entries on him in the midst of the history books. He was sitting at a table near the back of the library, surrounded by tall towers of texts, when suddenly Lily Evans sat down opposite him and shoved two of the stacks apart to look at him.

She cleared her throat to get him to look up, and he did, putting his arms over the textbook to cover what he was reading about. “What?” he asked.

Lily leaned over the table so she was fairly close to him and James could actually focus on her eyes even over the top of the frames of his glasses. They seemed even greener the closer they were like that and he stared into them. “What’s going on with Sirius and Remus?” she asked. “You have no idea how much I want to tell Rey what’s going on! But I also want it to be a surprise. Potter, this whole waiting game is absolutely torturing me.”

James said, “Well it’s going to go on a bit longer, I’m sorry to say.”

Why?” Lily groaned, sitting back. “What could possibly be stopping him? If he likes Remus, and Remus likes Sirius, then why are they wasting time?”

James adjusted his glasses, which had slid down his nose from the angle he’d been holding his face into look at her. “It seems that Remus has obtained himself a boyfriend.”

Lily’s eyes went wide, “Excuse me?”

“Yeah. At least that’s what Sirius is on about lately. Sirius’s brother told him he’d seen Rey about the castle with some other boy,” James explained, “And I keep trying to tell Sirius that Regulus is just trying to cause trouble, but - really, you know Sirius can’t get something out of his head once it’s in there, so he’s been obsessed.”

Lily looked quite concerned, “Remus hasn’t mentioned anything to me about seeing anyone…”

“Hasn’t mentioned it to any of us,” James said, “Which is why I think Regulus is full of dung, but I can’t get that through Sirius’s porridge-brain. He’s so jealous over it.”

“Well jealous is good,” Lily said, “It means he’s really interested. It means he wants to be the boy Remus is with.” She rubbed her hands together.

“It means he’s not making a move,” James said.

“Do you know where Remus is?” Lily asked.

“Muggle Studies,” he answered. “He’s in with Sirius for the class, actually.”

“What’re you studying?” Lily asked, suddenly realizing she was witnessing a rather rare event.

“Transfiguration,” James replied. “Some extra work for McGonagall.”

“Impressive, I didn’t know you or Sirius ever came to the library unless you were up to no good.”

“I doubt Sirius has,” James laughed.

“Probably not.” Lily glanced at the piles of textbooks, then got up. “I’ll let you get to it, then. I don’t want to interrupt you actually being industrious.”

James watched her go and he chewed his lower lip. It was one of the first times ever that they’d held a conversation that hadn’t included her telling him to bugger off, he realized. It felt funny, having spoken like a real human person to Lily Evans. It made him rather excited and sort of breathless.

He turned back to his animagus studies with a renewed vigor… he just had to figure out how to turn into the stag again.




Sirius had his head laying over his arm on the desk. Professor Kotes was going on and on with a little slideshow, talking about muggles and vehicle transportation and the laws that governed how muggles drove their cars about. Sirius normally would’ve been quite interested in a talk about muggle cars and driving laws (especially when she had mentioned the laws for motorbikes, that really would’ve interested him normally), but he couldn’t get his eyes off the drawing that Remus was doing in the margins on the parchment before himself. It was some sort of machine that was in the textbook (if Sirius had been paying attention he would’ve known it was a combustion engine from the bonnet of a car), but Remus was shading it gently with the edge of his pencil so that it seemed to have an infinite amount of depth and detail and even a sort of black-and-white-photograph illusion of color... all with a single pencil.

Sirius’s eyes moved along Remus’s hand - he was drawing with his left, he noticed for the first time ever. (Had Remus always been left handed?) There was a bit of hair beginning to grow on Remus’s arm - not thick like wolf fur or anything, but a downy fine sort of hair that cuffed about his wrists and tapered off on the underside of his forearm. There were veins there, too, lines that ran all blue under Remus’s pale skin.

“Pssst,” Sirius whispered lowly.

Remus glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Hmm?”

“What’s your favorite colour?”

Remus’s eyebrows folded inward a bit and he looked at Sirius, “What?”

“Your favorite colour. What is it?”

“What’s this got to do with the lesson?”

“Just answer me, will you?”

Remus rolled his eyes, “I reckon it’s probably… probably grey.”

Sirius’s nose bunched up, “Grey? What the bloody hell kind of favorite colour is grey?”

Remus shrugged.

Professor Kotes was standing before their table, looking down at them pointedly and Remus flushed as she said, “Five points from Gryffindor,” and moved on, continuing talking about the muggle’s fascination with fictional accounts of vehicles that could fly, based on sightings of magically enhanced vehicles in the past, “This is why it’s highly illegal to fly a muggle vehicle…” she was saying.

“I’d like to fly a motorbike,” Sirius murmured. “Could you imagine the rush of it? They’re supposedly very dangerous.”

“Have you ever even seen a motorbike in person before?” Remus asked, glancing over at Sirius.

“Sure I have. I think…” Sirius shrugged. “They’re brilliant, though. I want one. The moment I turn sixteen, I’m getting me a motorbike and I’m gonna modify it to do splendid things. I’ll take you for a ride if you like, Rey.”

“On your imaginary, illegal motorbike?”

“It won’t be imaginary next year.”

Remus paused, “That’s right, your birthday’s coming up isn’t it?”

“Just a couple more weeks and I’ll be fifteen.”

“Blimey.” Remus chewed the end of his pencil, leaving little bite marks along the wood.

Sirius stared at the way Remus’s mouth formed around the pencil, and he felt the breath leave his lungs a bit and he had to remind himself to breathe, and he turned away quickly, unable to watch any longer without going mad.




James was finished with his paper at last and he put all the books away that he’d been using and was on his way out of the door of the library when his foot caught on the carpet and he tripped forward, running smack into the back of Severus Snape, who was standing outside the library with his nose in a thick book. The impact made Severus drop his book and it landed side by side with James’s on the carpet. Both of them scrambled for the texts.

Legendary Legilimens?” James asked, picking Severus’s book up.

Severus flushed and yanked the book away, his eyes travelling to James’s, which he also held. “Releasing the Animagus Within?”

James pulled his book away, too, and tucked it roughly under one arm.

They both stared at each other for a long moment. Silently, they both agreed not to mention it, and they each turned away in a hurry, red faced. James moved down the hallway, clutching his book, his cheeks hot. It wasn’t until a couple corridors later that he wondered exactly what a legilimens was that Severus Snape had willingly turned away from prying into the reason why James was carrying a book on animagi…

He passed the corridor that led to the Muggle Studies room in hopes of catching up to Remus or Sirius on their way back to the dormitory, but the class was still going on, so he kept on his way. He was a few steps passed the classroom when he spotted Lily Evans, sitting on the plinth of one of the suits of armor, reading a book she’d laid across her knees.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked her.

“Same as you, I’m guessing, looking for Rey and Sirius.”

“I just was curious if they were out yet…” James stood there before her, hugging his book to his chest now. “Why’re you looking for them?”

“I want to talk to Remus.”

“About who it is he’s seeing? Because if he is then I’d really like to know myself so I know what to tell bloody Sirius when he’s acting like a prat asking who I reckon Rey’s seeing. I’ve told him only a hundred times I don’t think it’s anybody but he won’t shut up on it.”

Lily said, “Well, I intend to find out what’s happening.”

“Good; do fill me in, Love.”

Lily nodded. She watched as James headed on down the corridor, and turned back to her book. It was several moments before she realized that she’d forgotten to tell him not to call her love.

Oh well, she thought. I’ll just tell him twice next time.