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Determined to Die


Despite all the searching the Marauders did that night, they could not find the invisibility cloak - or the Map - and they didn’t dare stay out after curfew without them, especially James who absolutely did not want a detention for the next day -- Saturday -- Hogsmeade Weekend Day -- Date With Lily Day.

“We’ll look when we get back from Hogsmeade tomorrow,” James suggested when they were headed back from the dorms from checking the Trophy Room Passageway and the tunnel behind Gunhilda the Humpbacked Witch, and a couple of the other shortcuts and passages that they’d found throughout the castle. “We’ll go out to the Shack and look there, too. Maybe we can do that before I meet up with Evans at the Three Broomsticks.”

Sirius nodded, looking peaky, “Yes, we need to find that Map. We can’t have lost the Map.”

“Sorry, but I think my invisibility cloak’s a bit more important to find than the Map…” James muttered.

Sirius looked offended. “It’s our Map!” he said.

“Yes, but we made it, we could make it again if we had to… the cloak is irreplaceable! Priceless family heirloom and all. My dad will kill me if he finds out I’ve lost it.”

Sirius still looked angry as they climbed through the portrait hole - Peter having given the Fat Lady the password. He ran immediately up to the dorm, leaving the other three behind in the common room. They watched him go, then James said, “Whatever,” and broke away, turning toward where Lily Evans sat on the floor by the fire, reading, and Remus sighed and turned to go upstairs after Sirius, followed by Peter.

James watched them go, standing behind the couch, watching the oblivious Lily read for a moment, a smirk playing on his face. Once they were alone, he drew his wand and he waved it at her book… and before her very eyes, the text rearranged itself, most of the letters spraying away to a cluster on the sides, except for a few that said, Tomorrow, Evans in the center.

She looked up and turned around to find him and he laughed and waved the wand to make the text go back to normal. “That’s quite impressive, how’d you do that?”

“Transfigured it,” he replied.

“You’re very good.”

“I know,” he answered. He came ‘round the couch and sat down on the floor beside her. “What are you reading?”

“It’s called Determined to Die, it’s a crime novel. This investigator, Apple MackKenzie, she’s a rookie on the force and she’s been given a case the chief thought was cut and dry, you know - a girl who was found dead in a treatment center after an attempted suicide so everyone’s assumed the girl just finally offed herself. Except no note. And the girl had always left notes on prior attempts so Apple thought it was a murder and now’s just found the girl’s ring in the shower drain and the girl only ever took her ring off in the shower and always put it right back on after drying off but she was found in a totally different room than the shower and Apple thinks maybe she was murdered in the shower and then taken to the other room and --” Lily stopped. She stared at James. He was smirking. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” he asked.

Lily flushed, “Boring you with the detailed summary of a story you don’t give a damn about when all you did was ask to be polite.”

“I asked because you were really into it and didn’t noticed when Sirius Black came banging through the door a moment ago,” he replied. “You obviously care a good deal about it, so I do, too… I wanted to know what had you so passionately involved.”

“Well. It’s good.”

James smiled. “You have the most beautiful eyes.” Lily bit her lips. He reached over and pushed a fallen bit of hair behind her ear as she flushed. “They’re… they’re just so green. Is there even a word for the colour they are?”

“At lot of people say emerald,” Lily said.

James shook his head, “No… no emeralds aren’t as bright as your eyes are.” His hand hovered near her jaw, holding her hair gently aside, his knuckles just brushing her cheek. “You know that green colour of a Sprite soda pop bottle?”

Lily’s eyebrows raised.

“Your eyes are like if the sun lived inside that bottle.”

Lily flushed even harder.

He smiled. “I think I have a new favorite pop.” And he leaned away, drawing his hand with him.

Lily’s heart raced. She’d thought he was going to kiss her and when he didn’t she felt a peculiar sense of being let down. She stared up at him.

“So… does Apple find out if the girl was a murder or a suicide?” James asked, nodding at her book.

“Oh. I - I don’t know, I haven’t read it before. She’s about to find out.” Lily looked down at the book.

James looked at Lily. “You could read it if you like.”

“And what are you going to do?” she laughed, “Sit there and stare at me while I read?”

“You could read it out loud.”

Lily looked up at him. He wasn’t smirking. He wasn’t even grinning stupidly. He wasn’t kidding. “I mean, you haven’t read the first thirty-something chapters, so for me to read you the last ones --”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said.

“No, I just don’t want you to be confused and --”

“You can explain it if I get confused,” he suggested. “You caught me up pretty well before, yeah?”

“I s’pose…”

“So who are the suspects?”

Lily bit her lip, staring up at him. There was a tension between them… something she couldn’t name… something that made her very nervous and she didn’t know why. But it wasn’t a bad nervous, not nervous like Mulciber made her nervous but a different sort of nervous. “You really want to hear about all this rubbish?”

“Evans, you have no idea how pretty your face lit up before when you were talking about it. I want to hear about anything that makes your face light up like that some more. You’re so beautiful when you talk about things you’re passionate for,” James said. Lily laughed because she didn’t know what else to do and he reached for her chin and gently tilted her to face him. “Why’re you laughing?”

“You need your prescription checked,” she said.

“My prescription?”

“I’m not beautiful, James. You’re clearly seeing blurry.”

He looked genuinely confused.

“What?”

“Have you never seen a mirror before?”

“Of course I have.”

“Then how the bleeding hell can you think you aren’t beautiful?” his eyebrows folded in the middle.

Lily stammered, “I’ve never -- I’m -- I mean -- Petunia’s always been ---”

Petunia?” James said in disgust, “Merlin’s beard, you don’t look a bit like her.”

“We’re twins.”

“Eternal twins.”

Fraternal,” she corrected him.

“That,” he said, “She’s ugly!”

“Ugly?” Lily blinked at him and laughed, “She’s - she’s always been the pretty one and --”

James shook his head, “I dunno who the hell told you that but they’re the ones needin’ their prescriptions checked. Need new eyeballs, they do.” His eyes softened again and he smiled, his lip hanging up on his crooked tooth and they twitched slightly with amusement, “Evans, you’re the most beautiful thing on the entire planet. Nay, the universe. I could stare at you the way people stare at the gaze at the stars.”

Lily was breathless. Her mouth moved wordlessly, like a goldfish.

James nodded to the book. “So go on… read, Evans. I wanna watch you light up again.”

Because she didn’t have any other words, because they’d all been suctioned right out of her by his soliloquies, she turned to the book. “...Apple held the ring up for the chief to see and he squinted at it from behind his bifocals, as she told him about how she’d found it in the shower and her suspicions about Giovanni…” Lily paused. “Giovanni was the janitor in the facility. He quit right after Misty - that’s the girl - right after she died.”

“Alright,” James nodded. “Got it.”

He wasn’t really listening, even as Lily kept on reading, he was too busy watching her lips move and curve around the words, transfixed by her, gazing, just as he’d said, as though she were the stars in the night sky.

“....And so, Apple put the ring down on the gravestone and walked away, having proved the girl innocent of suicide, knowing that she would never forget the victim of her first case,” Lily wrapped up the book nearly an hour later. She sighed as she closed the book cover and looked up at James with wide eyes. “Well.”

James said, “So… so she was innocent after all that. Damn that Giovanni. That guy was a creep.”

“Yeah.”

“Glad he went to jail.” James nodded, “He belonged there.”

“Yeah,” Lily agreed.

Somewhere far off, a clock chimed, signifying midnight and James said, “Blimey. I had no idea it was so late. Did you?” Lily shook her head. “Well,” James said… and he peeled himself up from the floor… lifting his arm from ‘round her shoulder (Lily hadn’t even realized ‘til he took it away that it had been there - he must’ve done it at some point while she was reading, though she didn’t know when he had). “I s’pose it’s time for bed.” He stood up and turned back around, holding out his palm to help her up.

Lily took his hand and he pulled her to her feet.

“Here, I’ll walk you home,” he laughed and he took her hand and walked her across the room to the dormitory stairs -- all ten steps of the distance. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Long walk, really. Didn’t want you making it alone in the dark and all.”

She smirked, “You toerag.”

James laughed.

She stared up at him.

James smiled, “I’ll see you tomorrow. At the Three Broomsticks. Noon. Yeah?”

Lily nodded. “Tomorrow.”

“Exactly twelve hours away.” James shivered like a little kid going to bed on Christmas Eve.

“Good night, Potter,” Lily said thickly. She wanted him to kiss her.

“Night Evans,” he said back… and he wanted to kiss her…

But instead, he drew away, bowing slightly as he went, ever a gentleman, and backed across the room toward the boys dormitory steps. She laughed when he tripped on the edge of the carpet, caught himself against the back of the couch, laughed, and sad, “Bloody hell, when did that get there?”

“Always been there, Potter,” she answered.

“Yeah? You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

He smirked. “Guess I should look where I’m going.”

“Possibly a wise choice,” she nodded.

James backed the rest of the way to the boys stairs anyways and he stopped when he reached the bottom stair, holding onto the bannister. “Night Evans.”

“Night Potter,” she repeated.

He nodded, “Yeah… yeah.. Good night.” And he turned and ran up the steps.

Lily laughed and turned, on cloud nine as she went up to her own dormitory, hugging the book to her chest.