When It Rains

It took all of about two seconds for the boy opposite her to get that ghost of a smirk on his lips and run his hand through his hair, and all of two and a half seconds for Lily to already be annoyed with him. She could feel her hands clenching into fists at her sides, and was thankful she kept her nails short, or she was sure they would be digging into her palms at this point. Why did he always have to do that? Obviously she knew the answer; he thought it was cool to look like he’d just stepped off his broomstick. A lot of girls would agree, she knew. She had seen first-hand the small crowd of girls that hung about after Quidditch matches hoping to get to speak to James or another member of the team before the standard Common Room party which Lily always made a quick escape from. She was normally trying to study, and having James whip her book from beneath her nose and tell her she needed to lighten up a bit and go dance with him was not helpful. The Library was the one room that was still her refuge; she sometimes doubted whether Sirius and James even knew where it was, since she’d never once seen them inside.

Her eyes followed his gesture to the seat questioningly. Even she knew that was his seat, and she had avoiding sitting in it for over a year now, ever since he had suggested she simply sit on his lap if she found it so agreeable a place to rest. Her face had turned almost as red as her hair in anger, and she had almost slapped him. Instead, she had settled for telling him the very thought of physical contact with him made her feel ill, and left the room, but not before sending a hex at the seat cushion exploding the feather stuffing into his face. It had been rightly deserved, in her opinion, and she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. In fact, she came very close when he leaned posing against the window, and felt the familiar twitch in the fingers of her wand hand as she grew more agitated.
“I’d rather spend the rest of my evening outside in the rain staring at the less attractive end of a hippogriff than sat here looking at you.” She retorted, a sarcastic, Slytherin-like smile stretching her lips that she had picked up from years of spending time with someone who had perfected the expression.

She didn’t know whether to take his comment on her current appearance as an insult or not. She was soaked to the bone, after all, and could feel a shiver setting in. However, this was James Potter, and the two of them had barely said anything resembling a kind word to one another in six years. How Dumbledore thought they would ever get along as Head Boy and Girl was something Lily did not know. She was even beginning to question his sanity. It was obvious that one of them would end up in the Hospital Wing after one of their rows, and it wasn’t going to be the female half of the pair.

“Oh, well, thank you for that marvellous revelation, Sherlock,” she bit at him, rolling her eyes, “but this is what tends to happen when one actually attends their classes when it is raining, not that you’d know anything about that of course. Besides, I’d rather look like I’ve taken a swim in the Lake than like I’ve been dragged through every hedge in the castle ground backwards.”

Making a point of it, she walked towards the fireplace and sat on the floor, leaning back against the couch. She unbuckled her shoes, setting them to dry out next to the fire and scrunched her toes a couple of times to warm them up. The feeling of wet socks was extremely unpleasant, but at least in front of the fire as she was they would dry out pretty quickly, hopefully along with the rest of her. Glacing at the small table in front of the chair James had been occupying, she realised what he had decided to skip class for and cast an accusing glance his way.

“So, Quidditch plays are more important than passing your final year of school, Potter? Maybe that third year Slytherin whose drink you and your lot spiked with Itching Solution could tutor you, since at this rate you’ll probably still be here by the time he’s graduating.”

She knew this was ridiculous, of course. James was annoyingly naturally bright, and seemed to pass every class without any effort at all (and some of them without apparently attending). Lily had to work very hard to maintain her excellent grades, and took it personally that the person she was supposed to work with as a role model for the rest of Hogwarts thought it appropriate to miss class for this.

“Of course, I forgot,” she joked, clapping her hands together with a wide, false grin. “Normal rules don’t apply to the great and glorious James Potter, do they?”

Merlin, he was infuriating and he hadn’t even said anything. How did he wind her up so much?

Just why? Why, oh why, did he continue think this was at all charming? If Lily knew the answer to that, she was pretty sure she’d be fast tracked to graduation by the end of the month. It was something nobody seemed to know, apparently not even James himself. You would think after six years of trying, he would he switched tactics by now, but no. They were still dancing the same dance and it seemed as though they would be for quite some time. When she had been close with Severus, Lily would have given anything for him to have just left her alone and in peace. Being able to walk the hallways without having told anyone where she was going without James suddenly popping out from nowhere would have been the ultimate luxury. Strangely, however, she now couldn’t imagine him not being around. Their fights almost seemed to give her energy, and were something she found herself enjoying more and more. She didn’t dwell on that too much for worry of what it meant, nor had she dared mention it to anyone. Her father had always said there was a thin line between loathing and...No. That was just ridiculous.

“Hm, maybe,” she said, the firelight flickering in her eyes as they themselves seemed to come to life with their exchange of insults. “Let’s see...they don’t insult me, they are easily trained, they do as they’re told, they don’t generally run off to explode fireworks in other creatures’ paddocks at night, and they take exceptional pride in grooming themselves. That’s it,” she smirked with a click on her fingers, “that’s why I’ve never gone out with you. You’re just the wrong species, Potter. Why didn’t I ever think of it before?”

She bobbed her head from side-to-side as he gave his excuse about his hair, in that ‘yes, yes, heard this before’ manner she had long since adopted when speaking to James. Lily simply refused to believe that he didn’t do it on purpose. If every other male in school could manage to control the hair on their heads even after Quidditch, what made him the exception? But then, in his mind, he was the exception to everything. It was what infuriated her so. Lily had never stepped a toe out of line once in her entire time at Hogwarts. Some accused that this meant she had never had any fun, but she stubbornly maintained that a person could have fun without there being detention at the end of it, which she firmly believed was true. But James Potter got away with everything. And what annoyed her more was that she wished she knew how he did it.

Her eyes followed him as he crossed the fireplace to sit on the arm of the chair he previously occupied. Whereas before she could have just wandered off to the Slytherin Common Room to seek out Severus for company and ignore James, now she was stuck in here. Lily couldn’t put her finger on why, but when it was just the two of them it was as if every molecule of her being had a heightened awareness of where he was, what he was doing, the sound of his voice. After years of bouncing off each other like this, it was like her brain had attempted to wire itself onto the same frequency, but got distracted by an interesting novel along the way and got wires crossed in a rather important section. He did, after all, annoy her five times as much as any other student, despite the fact that Sirius alone was responsible for at least equal amounts of pranks and mischief that went on in the halls of Hogwarts.

His stab at her pride, however, was one step too far. She felt the familiar sudden rush of anger through her like a wave. Her brain, at this point, had long ago learned to stay out of proceedings and just let her get on with it. She could think through what had been said and whether she was out of line (she usually was, but had never once apologised to him, convinced he drove her to it every single time). How dare he? Despite her dripping wet state and the fact that she was sure she would look ridiculous her legs hauled her upright, taking the two steps to cover the ground between them to stand over him now he was perched on the arm, cheeks flushed red.

“Priorities in order?” she questioned with a bitter laugh, her voice raised despite the lack of audience to hear it. “Have you seen the Prophet today, Potter? You know, the section with words and no pictures of men flying on broomsticks? People are going missing, in case you hadn’t noticed. People like me. So excuse me for wanting to go to class and learn how to defend myself and my family rather than prat about on a flying stick pretending that everything is fine and dandy. Some of live in the real world.”

She could feel herself shaking, and after the rant her brain quickly rushed in to deal with the aftermath. She took one, slow breath, making a conscious decision to open her hands which had balls into fists at her side. It was a bit much and a bit serious, but she couldn’t help it. How could he be so damned naive? With a sigh she dropped back onto the couch this time, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and finger. She couldn’t even look at him in case she exploded, in case he had a ridiculous grin on his face. In case he didn’t and instead there was that look she had spotted on only a couple of occasions in his eyes, the one that made her think that just maybe there was more to his chasing of her than the sheer fun of it. Instead her eyes were drawn back to the window as the patter of rain got heavier, the rumbling of far away thunder low against the crackling of the fire.

“I’ve had a very long, very unenjoyable day Potter,” she explained, though still refusing to apologise, absently rubbing her thumb over the makeshift dressing on her wrist beneath her robe “And I don’t seem to be getting much of a better evening.”

At his little Quidditch defence speech, Lily quietened rather quickly, holding his eyes for a couple of moments without giving anything away before moving back. For once, he’d given a reasoned argument to one of their ‘heated discussions’, and it threw the redhead. She wasn’t used to James being serious, and honestly didn’t really know how to take it. As she sat in silence for a few moments, her mind instinctively began turning over his words, desperately trying to find a loose thread she could work into a giant hole. The problem was, there wasn’t one. Lily knew better than most people how important it was to have some way of escaping reality. Whether it was Muggle children chasing her for her hair colour, or Petunia storming from the dinner table refusing to eat with her ‘freak’ sister, or people mocking her for being friends with a Slytherin, or telling her she wasn’t worthy of the ground she stood on purely because of who she was born to, Lily had long ago discovered the need to have something to retreat to. For her, it had always been reading. After every argument she had ever had – with Petunia, with Severus, with James on multiple occasions – her first retreat had always been to the pile of books constantly precariously balanced at her bedside. Who was anyone to tell her this wasn’t a valid use of her time?

She could have argued, of course. There was always some way her brain eventually worked out a way to twist anything James Potter said into something that could royally piss her off. But what good would it do right now? If she could bring herself to admit it even internally, she was secretly quite impressed. Maybe he wasn’t the stupid, careless idiot she had always pegged him for. He still enforced that belief on regular occasions, of course, but this was the first time Lily could really remember seeing him give a damn about real issues. Maybe the Head Boy title had sobered him up. Maybe he had finally gotten sick of her yelling. Maybe he had even finally started to grow up. Whatever it was, however, Lily would never let herself say it or question it aloud. It would do his ego no good at all, she justified, letting him know that she actually held any positive thought or feeling towards him. And that wasn’t just her incredibly stubborn nature. No, of course not. Moving on.

As her eyes landed on the flickering reds and golds of the fireplace, his flippant comment essentially releasing her made Lily start slightly, casting a momentary glace his way. Though she didn’t know why, the casual dismissal hurt. The two of them had always seemed to draw energy from such encounters. They made her blood race and her heart pound, her skin flush and her hands shake. But this time, James sounded almost as fed up with the whole thing as she felt right now. Probably for entirely different reasons, she knew, but there was still something quietly concerning about it. Her eyes not leaving the flames, she offered up the only reply she could think out, with her brain turning over so many other things; the truth.

“I don’t have anywhere else worth going.”

Merlin, that was depressing. Lily had never really considered this fully before. She had spent the first five years of school alienating herself from the group she was supposed to be a part of. Then she had spent the following year mostly on her own, trying to figure out where exactly she fit in the world of school politics, treasuring the fact that a few Gryffindors had stuck by her throughout the whole affair, Alice, Remus and Mary springing directly to mind. It had only been towards the end of last year that she had really begun to feel at home as a part of Gryffindor house, and it was still something she was getting used to gradually. She had started to really enjoy the company of her housemates, even joining in with celebrations in the Common Room for birthdays and cup wins. It was the hard truth that being on your own simply wasn’t as enjoyable as being with others, something that had taken her years to realise. Something that, apparently, was still ostracising her without her even knowing. Was she really so unwelcome that even Potter was turning her away now? It wasn’t possible, her pride kicked in, answering swiftly. She didn’t allow herself to entertain the idea any longer.

She did, however, begin trying to think of something to kill the awkward silence. Obviously a row was not going to give the same thrill it usually did, so there was no point in starting one. Besides, their previous words had put a lid on that for the evening at least. Lily just wasn’t used to feeling this nervous, at ;least not around the boy currently occupying the room with her. She didn’t appreciate it, and her mind grasped for anything to fill the void, emerald eyes landing on the one thing that may actually start a conversation that might be half-civil. They were heads of the school after all. They had to get along sometime, didn’t they?

“Macnair came in from the left every time in the match at the end of last year,” she started quietly, leaning forward to pull out one of the sheets of parchment James had clearly spent the afternoon working on and pointing to the wide side of the pitch he had drawn out. “You need to get Dawlish to stay on his right to keep him from swinging in, rather than staying on the perimeter of the pitch.”

It was as much as she could do to offer a truce as she sat back again, shrugging her shoulders lightly.

“At least, that’s what I could see from the stands. I’ve been in the Gryffindor stands for every game you’ve played since First Year. I might hate flying, but despite what people think girls do understand sport sometimes.”

Now, now Lily, she warned herself carefully. We’re meant to be building a wobbly temporary bridge her, not insulting his opinion of you. Although it was just so natural to do...

Lily could tell from his words alone how difficult that had been for him to say. She knew exactly how he felt. There was double the normal awkwardness here though. Lily had always been a proud person and had serious difficulty in admitting when she was wrong. She prided herself on having the right answers for everything, even going so far as to occasionally correct professors in classes, which she was surprised she didn’t get pulled up on by the teachers. Nobody liked being told they were wrong. But everyone liked to be told they were right, and Lily couldn’t help the little swell of joy inside at his (partial) admission. His words had been chosen as carefully as hers though. Just as she hadn’t truly apologised, he’d not come outright and told he he’d planned it wrong. They had so much history of tearing each other apart in situations like this it was taking actual effort from them both to keep the peace. For once, she truly related to him. It felt so wrong to her, but yet so natural.

The compliment confused her even more. Normally James’ compliments were either for himself or a prelude to immediately hitting on her. But neither of those applied here. He simply let it sit in the air, a pleasant enough remark that from anyone else would have drawn simple thanks before she retired to whatever it was she was doing. But there was just something so off about it coming from James Potter, something so intriguing to her. He’d never acted this way around her before, and she wondered not only where it had come from, but also how far it was going to go. Reason dictated, of course, that for him to carry on this way she had to keep acting the same way too. Therein lay the problem. This was completely unfamiliar territory to Lily, and she was uncomfortable in such new situations. Lily was the kind of girl who liked to know the whats, whens, hows and whys of everything. She felt like Bambi struggling to stand for the first time on shaky, unsure legs as her tongue struggled to form her reply, so strange it was to her.

“I don’t think so,” she started, a short nervous laugh even managing to squirm its way in. “I’m Ministry-bound after Hogwarts, at least that’s the plan. I’ll leave the Quidditch to people who are actually good at it. I assume it’s something you’ve thought about?”

It was a little backwards, but it was a compliment on something James did well, and it left an odd taste in her mouth. She couldn’t decide whether she liked it or not. But she had wondered at times what her classmates would do after school finished and they were flung out into the world. Lily herself had considered being a Healer for a while, but in Fifth Year decided to aim for the Experimental Charms division at the Ministry instead. It played to her strengths, and in her opinion having a few more Muggle-borns in high ranks in the Ministry would only help current affairs. She’d never asked anybody though, she realised. It seemed so obvious a topic now she thought about it.

As she sat with her hands linked, her thumbs twiddling awkwardly, an idea flashed through Lily’s head so odd that she had to take a moment to check herself. She had been wondering how long this could last, and knew it would only be as long as they both held out their own ends. James was obsessed with Quidditch, naturally competitive. There was one way so simple she wished she’d thought of it years ago, if only it pulled off. She took a deep breath before swivelling on the couch slightly to face him directly.

“Look Pott – James,” she started, making the correction not as smoothly as she would have liked. Not the best start. “This is clearly awkward for both of us, and I’m pretty sure we both know why. So, I have a suggestion.”

Right, here it was. She wondered if he would take the bait.

“I suggest we call a truce. Even if it’s just for this evening. I won’t insult you or start an argument if you agree not to try to get me to go out with you. Do we have a deal?”

She realised there were no other real conditions, and it was all very likely to go wrong (and yet another argument would doubtlessly commence about how whichever one of them it was didn’t keep their end of the bargain), but if it made the evening more bearable for both of their nerves it was worth a shot, wasn’t it? She lifted her hand and offered it to him over the arm of the chair, waiting on his reaction. This was either going to go very well, or very, very badly.

“Turned them down?” she repeated, shocked. “Are you mad? You’d have been set after Hogwarts with a position like that.”

But then he gave his reason, and Lily felt her heart leap into her mouth. It sounded stupid, but she had never really thought of James as being a real person. He’d always just been annoying James Potter, the arrogant prat who made every day of her Hogwarts life hell by being able to track her down no matter how hard she tried to avoid him. She’d never considered the fact that somewhere out there he had a family, parents who were looking out for him. Or, it seemed, that needed him to look out for them. Perhaps it was because he’d never mentioned them. But then, why would he? The two of them never talked about real things, things that everyone else would discuss naturally with their friends. But then, again, they had never been friends. Her eyes steadied on him, soft and worried as he refused to glance her way. She had been about to say something, but he quickly dropped the subject and looked her way once again.

He seemed to recover his mood quickly, his trademark grin plastering his features. It was amazing how something so simply as her offering not to insult him brought such a real smile to his face, even if it was partially in amusement at his own joke. It wouldn’t have surprised her actually if one day his persistence was diagnosed as some disorder or nervous tic. Nothing she had ever done had gotten him to stop. She’d tried everything; yelling at him, insulting him, making a fool of him, actively ignoring and avoiding him. Everything, that was, but this. Of course, since no other tactic worked she hardly held high hopes for this one, but even if it lasted the night it was better than anything else she’d tried in the past. She shook his hand with a smile, ignoring the shiver she got from his touch and passing it off mentally as simply a leftover sensation from coming in from the rain outside. She’d almost forgotten about the storm.

“Done. I look forward to not having to jinx you in the hallways.”

It bothered her that this was the truth. As he went to withdraw his hand, however, hers stayed holding his, resting on top of it on the arm of his chair for a brief moment as her eyes met his, the smile dropping from her face into a much softer expression, something she doubted he’d ever seen before from her; compassion.

“I’m sorry, by the way. About your parents. It’s horrible when you realise they aren’t the super humans you always thought they were.” Lily had never considered sharing things with James. He’d never seemed like the sort of person she could talk to about things like this, mainly because she’d been convinced he would use it as a reason she obviously needed him to protect her at all times. Now, however, reassured that he wouldn’t want to be first to break their fragile accord, she found herself unexpectedly more relaxed. “My dad got struck by lightning a few years ago when he took me out to look at the stars. I didn’t know magic then, I had to call the Muggle ambulance service for him. He was in hospital for two weeks. He says he’s fine now, but sometimes...” She shrugged her shoulders, before nodding her head towards the window. “It’s why you’ll never see me out in that.”

She offered a small smile of understanding. It was wholly unnatural to Lily to think she and James had anything worth noting in common, and she did so hate being proven wrong. It was only when she finished her little story that it dawned upon the rational part of her brain that not only had she not removed her hand, but that her thumb had been absently stroking the back of his own. She withdrew it quickly, as if burned by the fire in front of them, tucking it into her sleeve to prevent it from any more unacceptable behaviour. Where in the name of Morgana’s wand had that come from? Ten seconds agreeing not to argue with James Potter and already she was acting as if they’d been the closest of friends as long as they’d known one another. No, no, this simply would not do. She had to be more careful. The last thing she wanted to do was encourage him to break his side of the bargain. Or drag herself into breaking her own.

“They erm...” Why the hell was this so difficult? Even the volume of her voice seemed reluctant to carry on, as low as the crackling of the logs. “They must be very proud of you, wanting to help like that. A lot of people would have taken the first escape route that came along.”

It was odd, the way a single moment could change things. Sometimes the changes were small, almost imperceptible. Sometimes they were noticed briefly, then flittered away on the wind without a further thought. These were the more common changes, ones people lived with every day without realising anything was going on at all. There were some moments, however, that changed a person’s life permanently. Most probably didn’t have to many of these to deal with, but those that did found a long-lasting mark etched into their minds, a memory that refused to fade no matter how much they willed it. Lily was no stranger to these sorts of events. All of the ones she had been faced with before had revolved around one boy; Severus Snape. Her meeting him had been her introduction into the magical world, she one she now spent most of her time in and the one she planned on dedicating her life and work to after school. He had been her best and sometimes only friend, until he dealt another of those moments to her, this one far less kind and inspiring.

Now, though, it seemed a new young man had decided to fill the void left in this area. For six years Lily Evans had hated James Potter, in the truest sense of the world. She couldn’t have found a kind word to say about him if she’d been tortured, and the very idea of spending time alone with him had made her feel sick. In all honesty, she had thought herself better than him, and she’d let it show. Her parents had always told her to be modest and humble about her achievements, that it was impolite to put someone else down, and despite the fact she had been a walking poster against bullying in Hogwarts these past few years every conversation she had with James ended up with her using words her father would have been ashamed to hear coming from her mouth. She’d expected nothing more than this returning for her final year of school, and the thought of being forced to spend time with him to fulfil their roles in the school had knotted her stomach with dread.

Her stomach did feel knotted now, that was for sure, but it wasn’t for that reason. All it had taken was a handshake and an offer of temporary peace and James Potter was suddenly a real person. Someone with a life outside of hexing Slytherins and Quidditch matches, someone who actually cared about something other than his own reflection in the mirror. She was thoroughly unprepared for not only that, but for her own reaction to it. The sad look that haunted the back of his eyes reminded her of every students she’d seen cursed and sent scrambling across hallways, of Alice’s a couple of years ago when nobody had given her the time of day. Worst of all, they reminded her of her own occasionally when she sat in thought, and it was all she could muster not to reach out for his hand again just for some form of comfort. It wasn’t appropriate, wasn’t proper, wasn’t them. But then why was that normally quiet voice at the back of her head screaming at her to stop being such a bitch to him?

“No, no, that’s not what I was...that’s not what I meant,” she interrupted quickly, suddenly very aware that he could have taken that comment in the complete opposite way she’d intended it. All she ever was to him was sarcastic, why should he have thought any differently there? If this truce was going to work, she was having to put the effort in as well. Without warning, she felt what she could have sworn was physical pain as he dropped his head into his hands. James Potter was so full of life, sometimes too full of it in her opinion. Seeing him this unsure – this broken – wasn’t right. And Lily did not like change, not something as big as this. Hoping the sacrifice of her pride was worth it, she quietly rose from her seat to kneel in front of him, tentatively reaching up to take his hands down, searching for his eyes as he attempted to avoid her gaze.

“I just meant, they must be proud to have a son who’s turned out to be a good person. Honestly, it’s just a shame it’s taken seven years to be introduced.”

She let that hang for a moment, not wanting to press him anymore. She knew from her own experience how awful it was when you didn’t want to talk about something, and someone relentlessly prodded you for information. Sometimes all you needed was to be left alone, or for things to carry on as they always had, just so you could pretend for a little while. Thinking on this she sat back on the couch, tucking her legs and feet up as well to get more comfortable, draping one of the red and gold tartan blankets folded on the back of it over her lap. Maybe a touch of normalcy was what was needed here. Not enough to break their deal, as she was not about to lose to James Potter even if he broke down in tears in front of her crying for his long-lost teddy bear, but just something to lift the conversation. And him. Because as much as she couldn’t explain it, and it pained her when that happened, she wanted that bloody stupid grin back on his face.

“Besides, they’ll need to stick around. I mean you, parental authority? Really? Your future kids are going to be a bunch of hell-raising little rug rats and you’ll do nothing but encourage them to put Exploding Snaps under one another’s beds to get their own back.” She even let out a laugh at the idea. She could just picture a house of chaos, especially if Sirius ended up being involved in any way. “They’ll doubtlessly inherit your blatant disregard for anything resembling rules. Merlin knows they’ll need someone to keep them in check, and I imagine they’d have had plenty of practice dealing with you and Sirius.”

A smirk. A quirked brow. Was this banter from Lily Evans? The world was surely about to descend into fire and brimstone. It was a sure sign of the apocalypse.