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Bickering


Remus Lupin looked restless already by Saturday morning, when James came back from the girls’ dorms. He took off his glasses, dropping them carelessly on the night stand, and threw himself onto the bed, hiding under his duvet, clearly hurting. “Prongs, I can tell you’re upset,” he said, “And I would come over and badger you ‘til you told me what the matter was if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m shackled to the bed over here.”

James had curled up on his side, hugging his knees, staring blankly at the side of Sirius’s empty bed. “I’m fine,” he lied.

“You don’t look fine,” Remus argued. Sirius snored loudly and his head shifted on Remus’s shoulder.

“Looks can be deceiving, Moony,” James murmured.

Remus wiggled his wrist, making the chains clink loudly and Sirius murmured, “Don’t you go trying to escape, Moonshine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Remus sighed.




James felt terrible, though, whether he would admit that to his mates or not. Really, there was nothing to admit to them. They didn’t believe him that Lily Evans had been snogging him to begin with so to say that he was hurt because she’d basically said that she didn’t still like him wouldn’t really be surprising to them at all. He could almost hear Sirius making some joke (“Like that’s a shocker!”). So he lay in his bed staring blurrily at the wall pretending he couldn’t hear Remus whispering to Sirius later, when he woke up and asked what was going on, that James had come back upset (“no, I don’t know where he was at all night”).

James didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. Sometimes Lily Evans was so, so, so nice to him - sometimes it seemed like she liked him back, like she wanted him around. She’d say things that made his stomach turn to butterflies and it would leap about like a gazelle inside of him, bouncing off his ribs… but then she’d suddenly go quiet and she’d push him away…

He loved her so much… and he still wasn’t sure if she liked him at all.

She hadn’t said she did when he told her that.

Perhaps she didn’t.

Perhaps she never would.

The thought made James sick.

He didn’t reckon he could ever love anyone that wasn’t Lily Evans. Other than Maryrose, he’d never even been distracted by another girl, despite how they threw themselves in his path.

It occurred to him suddenly that to Lily Evans he might just be one of those people throwing himself in her path. Like Annalee did to him. Like Carly did to Sirius.

James didn’t want to be Lily Evans’s Carly Shaw.

He wanted to be Lily Evans’s Remus Lupin.

He hugged his knees to his chest even tighter and wondered what would happen to him - to his heart - if he never was that.




The lie-in protest was lasting longer than anybody - excepting Sirius, that is - thought it would.

On his bed Monday morning - after having spent Sunday sneaking about the castle, avoiding anything that might mean he would see Lily Evans - James sat on the edge of his bed, his tie hanging undone around his neck, “C’mon you lot. Don’t make me go to Potions alone. It’s team day and if you lot don’t go I’m going to have to sit with Evans and ---”

Sirius interrupted, “Prongs. Last term you would’ve slit my throat for trying to keep you from getting paired off with Evans in Potions, first off. B, even if we did go, do you really think I’m going to pair off with you when I could sit with Moony? And fourth of all, we’re protesting. We’re busy.”

Peter burst into the dorm carrying a bag of food he’d knicked from the kitchens and dropped it onto his bed. “Alright, lot, I have a lot of bacon sandwiches and bottles of pumpkin juice.”

James grudgingly ate the bacon sandwich in silence then left, throwing his bookbag over his shoulder as he slammed the door shut behind him.

“What’s the matter with him?” Peter asked around a mouthful of bacon sandwich.

“Dunno,” said Sirius, “He think Evans is gonna snog him through Potions, I guess.” He snickered.

Remus sighed and jangled the shackles.




Slughorn was pacing the front of the room - the students working diligently on the Elixir to Induce Euphoria and James was about to cut up his shrivelfig. She’d been nervous coming down to the dungeons for several reasons - first off, the year before she’d been basically attacked in the dungeons by the gang of Slytherins - but, luckily, it seemed none of those boys were in attendance at all this year (still very peculiar, she thought, how they’d all disappeared - including Severus Snape - it just didn’t seem like a good omen). The halls were still haunted with the memory, though. The other reason she’d been nervous had been that it was team partnering day and she’d heard from Frank Longbottom that Sirius Black had Remus Lupin shackled to the sixth year dormitory bed (“quite literally,” Frank had emphasized) and that meant that, because of Peter’s dismal Potions grade, she’d be paired off with ---

“Hullo Potter,” she said, putting her stuff onto the table beside him.

James waved with one hand, staring down at his book.

She’d told herself that he was alright. That he wasn’t sore about Saturday morning still. She told herself he was just concentrating on the book.

But it became apparently quickly when he was really quiet for the whole of class that he was in fact still upset.

Because the O.W.L.s had eliminated a good deal of students from the N.E.W.T. classes, the sixth year Potions classes had become a mix of all four houses - mostly Ravenclaws, but there were the four Gryffindors and two Hufflepuffs in addition.

Well - today there were only two Gryffindors thanks to the lie-in protest being staged upstairs.

Despite her new friendship with James, he was still sort of annoying in close proximity in a way that she couldn’t quite explain. There was something about the stupid little way his nose whistled when he took a deep breath, or the way he bit his tongue that made her get quite distracted from her work and that was annoying. And also he would run his hands through his hair constantly as he worked and clear his throat and there was the thing where he rubbed his nose with his quill tip and made this like clicking sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth when he thought real hard...

At one point, he paused to undo the tiny buttons on the wrists of his oxford and diligently rolled up his sleeves. Lily looked over as he carefully cuffed each roll of the sleeves, making perfectly neat folds, rather than the messy knots she had shoved up over her elbows.

“You’re spending longer on folding your bloody cuffs than you’ll spend cutting the fig,” Lily said. She wasn’t sure why it annoyed her, the way James Potter flicked his wrist and twisted his arm in over-exaggerated gestures as he worked at making the perfectly folded sleeve. It just did. She tried to ignore it, but when he ignored what she’d said altogether and took his time even more on the left sleeve - the one closest to her- his wrist flicking out so grandly that his arm nearly hit her in the face, she turned to him, “Must you?”

“Don’t want to ruin my uniform, Evans,” he answered.

She sighed and moved a few steps away, giving him more space to flap about like a great over-neat bird.

Harry Warbeck glanced over from where he was sitting next to Marlene Mckinnon and raised his eyebrow, then turned back to Marlene and whispered, “Maybe next class we move to a different table further from them, ‘ey?”

Marlene’s lips twitched.

Once James got his bloody sleeves rolled up, Lily had hoped his annoyingness would be over, but instead it only got worse because he was cutting up his figs and leaning over the table and Lily tried not to watch the way his hair would slid over his forehead and in a clump, eventually annoy him hanging there, and he’d toss his neck so the fair would flip back off his forehead. He’d do it repeatedly if he had to, because apparently pushing it up with his hand was just too much work or something.

She didn’t know why this annoyed her, either.

“Seriously. Must you?” she repeated.

“Must I what?” he asked, completely oblivious to what he was doing to drive her crazy. He looked over at her, his glasses slipping over his nose. He used his wrist bone to push them back up, his fingers covered with fig juice.

She sighed. “Forget it.”

James stared at her for a few moments as she continued on with her work. He rolled his eyes, “Bloody hell, it’s a good thing we’re brewing euphoria,” he muttered, “You could use it.”

“Excuse me?” she looked over at him.

“I said you could use to be a bit happier.”

She stared at him.

He turned away, muttering something under his breath.

“What?” she demanded.

James looked back at her. “I said you’d think you were a werewolf because you seem to be having a time of the month,” he repeated louder. She stared at him. “Sorry,” he muttered, and he turned away again.

“If you ask me, you could use some of this elixir yourself,” Lily snapped.

They continued on bickering as they worked and at the end of the class, everyone dispersed quickly. James overheard a Ravenclaw girl whispering to a Hufflepuff boy, “I can’t believe we have to listen to those two all term!”

Lily went up the stairs ahead of him, her face red.

James walked sullenly behind her.

Halfway up, she stopped and turned around, waiting for him to catch up. He stopped two steps below her, staring up at her.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded, “Why were you being like that?”

“Why was I being like that?” James asked, “Everything I did you made a big show of saying how annoying I was for it.”

“You were trying to annoy me.”

“By rolling up my sleeves?”

“Almost hitting me in the face.”

“I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Right.”

“Well if it bothered you then maybe you shouldn’t have had your face so bloody close to my arm,” he said.

Lily said, “Sorry. Next time, I’ll make sure there’s, like, five meters between us!”

James stepped around her and started up the steps again. “Probably best - maybe you won’t be able to be annoyed by me when I’m five meters away.” His voice shook slightly, and he hurried to pass her.

“Potter,” she said and she went after him. “Is this about Saturday?”

“No,” he said, voice sharp.

But whatever he said, he had a feeling that it really was.