#prompt 11

Because here’s the thing: Sirius Black is head over heels in love with Remus Lupin. Has been for years. Everyone knows it, too. Not because he tells people, but because he is so ridiculously moon-eyed for Moony that everyone just…knows. And this whole time, he’s been operating under the assumption that Remus is straight. 

“I–what? You’re not queer.” 

“And you’re the expert on that, are you?” Remus asks, sounding almost bitter. “I thought you knew. I’m bisexual.”

“Literally why would I know that?” Sirius asks, trying his best not to get defensive. But really, why would he know that? And why would Remus assume he knows? “You’ve never bloody told me, how am I supposed to know?”

“How are you–” Remus looks at him like he has two heads, and James and Peter start laughing. It’s the first time in five minutes that Sirius remembers they’re sitting there. “Sirius, I’ve been flirting with you since we were fifteen.”

Sirius’s world turns upside down. Again. (If he had the brain capacity to spare, he’d be wondering if that meant his world was now right side up again. Unfortunately, there was barely enough firepower left over in his brain following exams to process this new, life altering information, much less to wonder over the philosophy of having his world warped so many times in such quick succession.)

“You what? No you haven’t.”

“You have to stop doing that,” Remus mumbles. When he continues, it’s back at full volume. “I have been. Just because you’re too thick to notice–”

“I’m too thick?” Sirius gasps. “Moons, the entire school can tell I fancy you, but I’m the thick one?”

“You what?” 

“Sounds like you’re both fucking thick,” Peter complains, rolling his eyes. “Would you two shut up and finally just kiss already? We’ve only been waiting for three bloody years.”

Closing her eyes, Lily leaned her head back against the shed and sunk to the ground, taking a long drag. It was only half-past noon, but some blokes had made a mess of one of her tables at the pub last night, and she hadn't finished closing until after one in the morning. She was already looking forward to sinking into bed.

In the distance, she heard a splash and a shout. It sounded like some kid had flipped his canoe again. She snickered a little; Anne would definitely be more annoyed about switching shifts now that she needed to get her hair wet.

It had been a long summer. Seventh year was going to be expensive — she'd need money to pay the application fees if she wanted to try for a Healing apprenticeship, to pick up a set of dress robes for the Leavers' Ball, to make a deposit on a flat rental after she finished Hogwarts — and Lily was trying to save as much as she could. Most mornings, she got on the bus for her day job at the nearest holiday camp, only to take the 5pm back to Cokeworth, eat a quick supper, and start her evening shift at Oscar's pub. Lily didn't mind hard work, but after six weeks of both jobs, she was beginning to feel run down.

At least she didn't have to spend much time at her own place. Between Tuney's sniping at home and Sev's lurking around the park, hoping she'd forget his horrible behavior at school now that his pack of Death Eater-wannabes wasn't around, it was hard to get a moment's peace.

She took another drag. Maybe she could talk Oscar into putting her on the early side tonight. He owed her, after the amount of mopping up she'd done yesterday...

"There you are, Evans!"

Lily jumped and opened her eyes. She thought she'd heard...but that made no sense...

"Potter?" She blinked. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Improbably, James Potter — wearing a fairly convincing set of Muggle clothes, although his orange checkered polo shirt clashed horrendously with a pair of short, salmon-pink trousers — was striding toward her from the nearby woods, looking far too cheerful for the August heat. "Looking for you!" he said affably. "It seemed a nice day for a visit, and we'd been getting on well this summer, so I thought—"

"Potter, I'm at work." She stared in surprise.

He had the grace to turn a bit sheepish. "Oh, I'm sorry, Evans," he said, looking around. "Is now is a bad time?"

"No, I just—." Lily blushed. She'd given Potter her address earlier this summer — only so he could practice with the Muggle post, of course — and suddenly, she realized that she'd been writing him rather a lot.

Potter made a surprisingly charming pen friend. His letters, full of witty jokes and updates about his summer with his mates, were a welcome connection to the magical world and a relief from her tense avoidance of Sev and Tuney. More than once, she'd found herself looking forward to reading them as she came home from the pub, or scribbling quick replies by wandlight so she could get them in the mail before she caught the morning bus to camp.

"I just — how did you get here, anyway?"

"I stopped by your house," said James, shrugging. "Remember, you gave me your address? Someone — I think your mum? — answered the door and said that you were here." He still looked abashed. "I guess she might not have expected me to come by, but she said you might not be home until quite late, so I thought—"

"That's alright—"

"I can visit another day—"

"No, it's really okay, Potter," said Lily, who by now was quite red. Somehow, it wasn't the fact that Potter had showed up at her job, but the unflattering color of her uniform swimsuit that was on Lily's mind. She hadn't brushed her hair this morning, and she'd been sweating in the heat... "They're not too fussy here, and I'm basically on my break, anyway. It's nice to see you." She took another drag on her snuck cigarette, trying to look a bit less flustered. "You just showed up a bit out of the blue, that's all."

"Literally," said Potter, with a playful smile. He gestured toward the cloudless sky. "Stashed my broomstick in the trees back there."

She groaned theatrically at the terrible wordplay, knocking him with her shoulder. "Too scared to take the bus, Potter?"

"Oh, certainly. Petrol is too advanced for me, I'm still grasping bicycles."

She grinned. She knew perfectly well that Potter had likely passed his Muggle Studies exam with flying colors, as he did most of his others. "If you stick around until 5 o'clock, I'm happy to show you the ropes on my way back to Cokeworth."

"Gladly," said James. He peered curiously around the shed, taking in the archery setup, large lake, and row of cabins just beyond the cricket field. "What do you do here, anyway?"

"It's a holiday camp," Lily explained. "Families come to play games and get away from home for a bit during the summer."

"They don't holiday abroad?"

"God, you're posh." Lily rolled her eyes. "Why go to France, honestly, when you could stay at camp and win the donkey derby?"

"The what?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," said Lily.

"I have to see this. You run a donkey derby?"

"Not me personally," Lily said, giggling. "I'm hopeless with animals. I mostly serve lunch or take shifts dragging the little kids out of the lake."

"Why are the kids in the lake?"

"Oh, we do canoeing on one half and swimming on the other. Except sometimes the canoeing turns into swimming, because there's always some troublemakers flipping their boat on purpose."

James grinned. "Good for them."

"I'm appalled," Lily replied. "Are you trying to make my job harder, Potter?"

"In this weather?" said James. "Nah. I'm giving you an excuse to cool off, I expect."

James's eyes flickered to her swimsuit and quickly away. Lily swallowed, suddenly wishing she'd finished her shift after all. "I'm tied up tonight," she said, "but if you were to come back another day...if I took a night off from my evening job, I mean, and you wanted to go for a dip?"

James looked up. "Yeah," he said, a bit too eagerly. "Just because it's so hot, I mean," he said, smoothing out his tone. Lily noticed, amused, that his voice had suddenly got a bit deeper. She put out her cigarette, noticing that her earlier exhaustion had vanished.

"Well, alright then," she said. "It's a date." James gave her a dimpled smile. She hadn't noticed how sweet his smile was, before.

Where had it come from, this strange new fondness between them? Was it a fleeting thing, driven by Lily's exhaustion and James's boredom — destined to fall off with the autumn leaves when they returned to school, and to the old habits of their old stomping grounds? Or, maybe, could their letters be turning into something, well...a little bit more, maybe, lasting, or...

"Can anyone come to these holiday camps?" James asked, interrupting Lily's train of thought. "Because if donkey derbying is allowed, I want to kick Sirius's arse."