Rowdy

"Potter," said the blond one — Mulciber — turning. His voice had shifted, sharpened. "This is none of your business."

"No," James agreed easily. "It isn't."

He pushed off the wall and walked forward. Not quickly. The unhurried walk of someone who had never once in his life worried that a corridor wasn't wide enough for him.

"So why don't you walk away," Mulciber said, "before I make it yours."

"You know what's funny," James said, not answering, stopping at a distance that was a foot closer than was comfortable, "is that I had Flitwick's essay due Thursday and I was actually on my way to the library to start it. So I'm already in a terrible mood."

"Is that meant to be a threat?"

"It's context." James tilted his head slightly to look at the first-year girl, and something in his voice went different — not softer exactly, but deliberate. "You alright?"

The girl looked at him with the specific expression of someone who doesn't know whether a new adult is better or worse than the current one. Lily recognized that look too.

"I'm fine," the girl said. Her voice was smaller than her chin-tilt.

"What's your name?"

"Anne."

"Anne." He nodded like he was filing it away. "Nice to meet you. You can go. I'll be right here."

A beat. Mulciber laughed — the kind of laugh that was just contempt with sound attached. "She's not going anywhere until I say—"

"Mulciber." James looked back at him. He still hadn't reached for his wand. "She's eleven. She's going to class. And you're going to let her, because I've got a very clear memory and Slughorn's got a very open ear, and I'd really rather not spend my evening getting someone's prefect badge revoked."

Silence.

Lily, frozen in the mouth of the corridor, watched Mulciber's jaw work.

"This isn't over," he said, but it had already deflated, the way threats do when the person making them knows they've lost the room.

"Sure," James said, in a tone that meant I've already forgotten you.

The three Slytherins left. There was some shoulder-jostling and muttered words she couldn't make out, but they left, and James stood where he was until the sound of their footsteps faded.

Then he looked at the girl — Anne — and his face did something Lily couldn't entirely name. Easier, maybe. Like he'd set something down.

"You've got ink on your chin, by the way," he said.

Anne touched her face. "I was taking notes."

"Noble work." He fished in his bag, produced a handkerchief that had Property of Sirius Black written on it in green ink, and held it out. "Don't ask."

Anne took it, wiped her chin, held it back out.

"Keep it," James said. "He's got about forty of them. I nick them constantly." He paused. "Which corridor are you supposed to be in?"

"The — the main one. I turned around somewhere."

"Right. Come on, I'll walk you out. I've got to go past it anyway."

Anne looked at him. Lily could see her deciding. Then she picked up the bag that had been dropped at her feet — at some point during all of this, someone had knocked it there — and fell into step beside James Potter, who was at least a head and a half taller than her and was already pointing out where the second left was.

"If you take this passage," he was saying, leading her toward where Lily was standing, "and you turn at the—" He stopped.

He'd seen her.

For a strange, suspended moment, they looked at each other. Lily was still holding her own bag. She was aware, suddenly, that she'd been standing there for the entirety of that exchange, doing nothing, which was not something she would typically do and had no explanation for except that she hadn't wanted to interrupt something she didn't understand yet.

"Evans," James said.

"Potter," she said.

He looked at her for a moment longer. There was something careful in his expression — like he was reading the situation, checking whether she was about to say something that would require a response. She'd done that to him before. Called him out mid-act. He knew her voice at twenty paces.

She didn't say anything.

He nodded once, slightly, and walked past her with Anne at his elbow. "Second left," he was saying again, "and then you'll see the painting of the fruit bowl, and after that it's—"

Their footsteps faded.

Lily stood in the corridor alone.

***

She thought about it on the way back to Gryffindor Tower. She thought about it in the way you think about something that doesn't fit properly into the category you'd put it in — the way a note lands wrong and you keep running the melody back to find where it shifted.

She'd seen James Potter do impressive things. He was objectively talented, and she had spent a lot of years not giving him credit for it because it seemed dangerous to, because he wore it like armour and pointed it at people like a weapon. She'd seen him duel. She'd seen him take the most complicated Transfiguration problem in their year and solve it in twenty minutes on a Tuesday morning like it was nothing. She'd seen him make an entire room laugh.

She had not seen him do what he'd just done.

Because the thing that didn't fit — the thing she was running back, trying to find the shifted note — was that there had been no audience.

There was no one in that corridor who mattered. No one he needed to impress. Black wasn't there. McGonagall wasn't there. She hadn't even announced herself. He hadn't known she was watching. He'd walked into a dead-end corridor, found a first-year backed against a cupboard door, and—

She can go. I'll be right here.

He hadn't made a speech. He hadn't hexed anyone. He'd just — stood there, until the space was clear, and then handed over a handkerchief that wasn't even his and pointed out a shortcut.

She thought about the word Mulciber had used. The way James's face had gone when he heard it — and she'd been watching his face, she realized, because she'd been waiting for the performance, the moment he made it about himself. That slight stillness. Not dramatic. Not performed. Just — something settling into place, a decision made.

She thought about Anne's face when he'd asked if she was alright. The way the girl had looked at him like she didn't know whether to trust it yet.

I know that look, Lily thought. I've had that look.

She had never, in six years, seen James Potter make anyone feel like that.

She thought about that for the rest of the walk back, and then she stopped thinking about it because she didn't want to think about what it meant that she'd noticed.

***

She saw him the next morning at breakfast.

He was at the far end of the Gryffindor table with Black and Remus and Pettigrew, and they were doing something with a piece of toast that seemed to involve a bet and some kind of levitation charm. Black was laughing so hard he'd knocked his goblet over. Peter was trying to catch it. Remus was reading.

Completely ordinary. The exact James Potter she had a decade's worth of opinions about.

She sat at her usual spot, opened her Transfiguration notes, and did not look down the table.

"Lily." Diana Fosh dropped into the seat beside her and stole a piece of toast. "You look like you're doing maths."

"I'm reading."

"You look like you're doing maths at your reading." Diana poured herself pumpkin juice. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Mm." Diana bit into the toast and looked at her with the expression of someone who had been Lily's best friend since second year and knew exactly what nothing sounded like. "Is it the essay?"

"Yes," Lily said. "It's the essay."

It was not the essay.

Diana let it go, because Diana was tactful in the way that people were tactful when they'd decided to wait you out. They talked about other things — Quidditch, the Charms homework, whether or not Professor Slughorn's dinner invitations had a hierarchy. Lily ate her eggs. She kept her eyes on her notes.

She looked up once.

James Potter was watching her from the far end of the table.

Not the way he usually looked at her — that particular look she'd learned to return with a flat stare until he glanced away. This was different. Shorter. Like he'd just checked that she was there, the way you check on something you've been half-wondering about.

When he saw her looking, he didn't grin. Didn't raise an eyebrow. He just turned back to Black.

Lily turned back to her notes.

The maths she was doing, she thought, was very simple.

She had spent six years categorizing James Potter as a very specific kind of person, because he had given her every reason to, because the evidence had been consistent and loud. And last night, in a dead-end corridor, with no one watching — or so he thought — he had done something that did not fit the category.

That was all it was. An anomaly. One data point didn't rewrite six years.

She picked up her quill and underlined something in her notes that didn't need underlining.

The maths, she thought again. Very simple.

She just couldn't figure out why it kept coming out different.

***

Maybe, she thought. And then didn't think it again for two weeks.