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A Second Thought


As the sun was setting, the boys were sitting about in the Shrieking Shack, talking and keeping Remus company. Sirius was doing most of the talking, though, and James sat picking at a sandwich. Sirius was on about Mia Black again. “I mean, something had to have happened to all the photos of her, yeah?” he said, “Somebody must have magicked them away. There’s no way that this girl just happened to miss getting her photo taken for seven years.” He had one of the year books opened on his lap. “And so far I haven’t found her in the candid photo either. I started over from their Year One with all the bloody house photos before me and tried identifying each person in every photo of the book. So far, I haven’t found a single one that doesn’t match one of the photos in the house photos.” He sighed. “I’m hoping they forgot to magic away one of the photos, but I haven’t found one yet.”

Remus said, “If only you put this much dedication into your homework.”

“I know,” Sirius laughed. “I’d be smart as you, then!”

“Smarter with this much energy spent,” Remus murmured. He closed his eyes a moment as a whiff of the roast they were eating caught his nose and turned his stomach a bit. Sirius caught it and closed up his box and pushed his dinner away, not wanting to make Remus sick. “Don’t, you need to eat,” Remus said.

“I’ve had enough,” Sirius lied.

James closed his box, too, and put his and Sirius’s both up on the desk across the room from Remus. Peter was still hungrily stuffing his mouth.

“You’re awfully quiet, James,” Remus said. “Are you alright?”

“Oh don’t mind James, he’s pissed at me right at the moment,” Sirius said with a knowing smirk.

“Pissed at you?” Remus looked from Sirius to James, “What for?”

James rolled his eyes. “I’m not pissed at you.”

“Sure you are, don’t be lying now!” Sirius snickered, and turned to Remus. “He’s just chapped because I went and told Evans we’d go to the Three Broomsticks with her for a butterbeer tomorrow.”

James said, “After I said I didn’t want to and he knew it.”

“You never said it,” Sirius said, “You just said you had to find out what I wanted to do. And I want to have butterbeer with Evans.”

“You want to instigate rubbish is what you want,” James replied, rolling his eyes.

Remus said, “What’s going on with you and her anyway, you’ve been sort of mean to her lately.”

James shrugged, “I reckon we’re having a row, her and I.”

“She probably has no idea about this imagined row,” Sirius plucked a feather from the pillow that was stuck to Remus’s head and flicked it away.

“Oh she knows about it,” James assured him. “You heard her asking me if I was cross. If she used her pretty little head and thought on it, she’d know why.”

“So you lied? You are cross?” Peter asked, confused, “Why didn’t you just tell her you were cross?” He reached into the bag he had brought along and produced a licorice wand for Sirius, which Sirius welcomed with an eager face. He also tossed Remus a chocolate fudge bar. Peter also offered one out to James, but he shook his head.

“He didn’t say it because he’s a git,” Sirius replied for James. “And you’re just as bad as her, playing this game, Potter you Rotter,” he added, wagging the sweet at James as he spoke.

James said, “I’m not. I’m just sick of being used and laughed at… I’m not out to be somebody’s replacement Odair. And I feel like maybe that’s what was going on. I think maybe she regretted breaking off with him - which Merlin knows why she did it - and she found me, an idiot desperate enough to let her go on snogging me in his place all while being kept a dirty little secret.”

“Alright now -- I’m the only person allowed to keep you their dirty little secret, Prongs. Evans can’t have you, too.” Sirius rubbed his chin, “I will say though that you do bare a rather disturbing resemblance to Odair… black hair, stupid eyes… take your specs off and you may be doubles.” It was a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but Sirius was good for exaggerations. He waved his hands lie they were a photo frame and squinted at James with a smirking grin playing about his face. “Oi, perhaps you’re twins separated from birth and he happened to find you and ---” Sirius stopped. “I shouldn’t be making jokes about him anymore.” He looked ashamed and concentrated on his licorice wand.

James said, “Yeah, well. Perhaps. But at any rate I’m here and he’s not and Evans is using me to make herself feel better for it, I reckon.”

“Is she really snogging you and refusing to admit to it, James?” Remus asked, “Completely seriously.”

“Ey? Siriusly?” Sirius asked, perking his ear and leaning super close to Remus.

“Not you, you dog.” Remus pushed his face away as Sirius laughed and looked at James with an imploring expression.

James nodded, “Yes. She is. She is for real. We kissed the day my house went and blew up, on the couch watching Doctor Who, and then after too a couple times... And the day Odair was sent to Azkaban, I spent the whole bloody day and night in her room making sure she was alright. Nothing happened, I mean she literally fell asleep and I just lay there waiting to make sure she didn’t need me. But then she woke up and I said I cared for her and she couldn’t even tell me she liked me. After all I’d done for her.”

Remus scowled.

“It’s fine, really,” James said, seeing Remus’s face. “I just am tired of being a second thought, that’s all.” He pulled his glasses from his nose, “And it’s just time I don’t let it happen anymore.”

Sirius lowered the licorice wand he’d been sucking on. “Yeah, our Prongs is a first thought, damn it Evans. You tell her, my deer.”

James stood up and walked a lap about the room.

Suddenly outside there was a very loud clap of thunder that struck so hard it shook the windows and dust fell from the ceiling and Peter squealed and POP turned into a rat right where he sat. James adjusted his glasses and peered out the window. “We ought to go downstairs,” he said, “The sky looks right nasty and the condition of this old shack I wouldn’t be knockered if the bloody roof caved in. Nearly moonrise anyway.”

They agreed and went downstairs, James scooping the fat little rat up from the bed and slipping him in his pocket.

Outside, the rain was falling in sheets and there was the clicking of a light hail and the dark was falling. Remus winced all the way down and Sirius and James braced him on the stairs so he wouldn’t fall. When they’d safely deposited him on the couch, Sirius and James transformed, too, and the rat climbed to his safe perch on Prongs’s antlers while Snuffles jumped up and nuzzled Remus’s cheek, trying to make him laugh and Remus hugged the shaggy dog’s neck and waited until the moonbeams came and changed him. His howls and cracking bones were lost beneath the sound of booming thunder and shaking eaves.




Lily Evans sat on the bench in her dormitory window, staring out, watching the lightning flash across the moon-filled sky, lighting up pitch black thunderheads that billowed and swirled about. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on her arms and worried about those four Maraurders out there in that creepy, drafty old Shack. Especially when the wind picked up and began to whistle against the stone and window panes of Gryffindor tower. She shivered as hail began clicking off the glass and went to get her jumper.

She shrugged the jumper on and peered at the photos on her wall, catching up the one of her and James and staring at it for a moment with a sigh. She brought it with her as she went back to the window and stared off toward Hogsmeade. She stared down at it in the moonlight, at James’s smiling, bright face and that bloody tooth and his perfect nose and thick hair. She could almost feel that hair between her fingers.

Next to James Potter’s good looks, she looked like such an ugly duckling. Really, anyone would, but Lily couldn’t believe that a boy as handsome and perfect as James Potter was would like somebody like her - plain, sort of boring, ginger-haired Lily Evans. He could have anybody he wanted - literally any girl in the school would gladly have dropped everything to go with James Potter - and yet he chose to chase after Lily Evans. It seemed like a joke, a game, something he did for the entertainment value more than the actual desire to have her. She couldn’t fathom that he was seriously into her as much as he acted like he was. Certainly if he ever got her, he’d instantly forget about her - it was all about the chase, if he was even serious enough for that. When he first started at it, she thought he was doing it purely for the laugh of it, thought he was just bullying her, trying to discreetly make fun of her for not being good enough...

She stared at the photo in her palm though as lightning flashed again outside.

She ran a fingertip along the shape of James Potter’s jawline.

Thunder shook the pane of glass beside her and she looked up again, across the trees, and she hoped that James was warm and dry and safe...