#tohots

December 1975

“Where’d you even find this place anyway, Mare?” asked Lily.

She, Mary and Marlene were tightly tucked — feet pressed against the wall, knees near faces — into a small nook by the Transfiguration office, each with a neatly rolled cigarette in their hand. It was past 1 o’clock in the morning

“Potter,” replied Mary on an exhale. “I caught him coming here after Potions the other day.”

“I thought Potter didn’t smoke?” said Marlene. She was fiddling nervously with the Zippo lighter the girls had just used.

“Probs goes for a bit of a chug between classes,” answered Mary, making a lewd gesture towards Lily. She had in recent months developed on a strange sort of whim the belief that James Potter fancied her.

Lily answered in kind by raising her middle finger. Mary blew her a kiss.

“Shit. Someone’s coming,” muttered Marlene, just moments after Lily had heard the footsteps herself.

The girls put their fags out on the wall and watched in silence as McGonagall entered their frame of vision. A tall boy with his head drooping down to his shoulders followed behind her. It took Lily a moment to realise it was Sirius Black.

“You will wait here,” ordered McGonagall with a snap of venom rare even for her.

Sirius simply looked up and stared at her, his grey eyes sharp and cold.

The three girls shared a look.

“I need to organise your punishment,” she continued. “You heard the headmaster. We will do our best to deal with this discreetly but it will be a year of detentions at least.”

Sirius nodded, but his jaw was still tight, his expression like ice.

“Do not move from this spot.”

McGonagall turned on her heel and stormed into the office, leaving Sirius behind to slump against the adjacent wall.

“What do you think he did?” whispered Mary.

“Dark magic?” suggested Marlene. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen McGonagall that angry.”

“Naw,” replied Mary, moving forward slightly to get a closer look. She had always been the bravest of the three. “The Gryffindor boys don’t practice dark magic.”

Lily couldn’t help but think that comment was more than just a little pointed, so she bit her tongue, turning to face Sirius once more.

She wanted to believe Mary — and she would, just days later, when the first of the attacks occurred — but right then all she could think about was just just how terrifying Sirius looked.

Leant against that wall, he was somehow rigidly still — like a bloodhound that had sniffed out its prey — his features straight and emotionless, his eyes as wicked as the prisoners of The Prophet’s pages.

But then something caught his attention — the lingering smell of cigarette smoke, most likely — and he raised his head, inhaling deeply through his tall, aristocratic nose.

And he laughed.

It was a deep, echoing, dark bark of a laugh.

Whatever he’d done, Lily thought to herself, he certainly didn’t seem to feel guilty about it.

***

December 1980

“I have business to attend to this morning, Lily,” said Dumbledore as he and Lily reached the entryway where James was standing. “But I will return in a few hours to let you know the exact details of your new role.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lily replied, though the old man had already made it halfway back to the barn.

“Right,” said James, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Shall we get started?”

“Not before she’s had breakfast,” came another voice from behind the door, and out popped Emmeline’s head following it.

Before Lily could explain she had already eaten, the older woman had firmly guided her to the kitchen where she found Nicolas sitting next to a large pile of pastries. He had a mirror in his hand that he was staring at intently.

“Lily!” he exclaimed looking up at her with a bright smile. He had healed a lot since she had last seen him, yet some of the scars were still stubbornly scabbed across his wizened face. “Wonderful to see you here, my dear! Please help me finish some of these off. Emmeline here likes to feed the five thousand.”

Emmeline laughed, but nonetheless, brought another teeming pile of pastries to the kitchen island. James picked up a croissant off the top, smirking knowingly at the whole scenario.

“Well, I want you both to feel at home,” said Emmeline, settling a plate down in front of Lily.

“Emmie, darling,” came — to Lily’s astonishment — a voice from the mirror, “I’ve told you, he has a grapefruit at home and that’s it.”

Nearly a decade in the Wizarding world, and it was still surprising Lily — it wasn’t every day that Perenelle Flamel’s voice came out of a household object after all.

James seemed to have picked up on this shock though, as he smiled gently and added:

“This is a little invention of Sirius’. We thought it would be a good way for Nic and Perry to stay in touch.”

“Ah,” she replied, uncertain of his informality. Even she was hesitant to call the Flamels by their nicknames, and she had known them for nearly three years.

“You know Perry,” said Nicolas. “Always so keen to be back with her hydrangeas.”

“Je te l'ai dit plein de fois, c'est pas la saison des hydrangea!” replied an irritated Perenelle.

James and Lily chuckled.

“You’ve got to be nicer to Herbologists, Nicolas,” said James, taking the seat next to Lily and another pastry she didn’t recognise. “They could kill us all with just a few seeds.”

“That’s the sort of common sense I need in a husband,” said Perenelle, though turning her head Lily could see that the handsome face of the 600-year-old woman was bright and smiling in the small mirror.

“Now, Lily,” interrupted Emmeline from the cupboard. “As you’ll be spending quite some time with us, you must choose your own mug.”

Emmeline levitated about 30 mugs at Lily’s eye height. She couldn’t help but notice about half of them had a lion emblem on them in some manner or another.

“There’s a lot of Gryffindor here,” Lily remarked, giggling just slightly and taking one that had just a subtle Gryffindor crest on the base. James grinned widely as she did so.

“Mmm,” grimaced Emmeline, transporting the rest of the mugs back with an elegant swish. “Fleamont — may he rest in peace — was a wonderful man, but, Merlin, his enthusiasm for Gryffindor was a touch… much.”

James laughed — a warm, welcoming, gentle hug of a laugh — tipping his chair back with his head.

“Much is subjective, Em, don’t you think?”

“Hmmm.”

“What house were you in Emmeline?” enquired Lily. Nicolas and Perenelle had picked up a quiet conversation in French next to her.

Emmeline raised her eyebrow, a daring look.

“Slytherin, dear.”

Lily blinked. Of all the Slytherins she knew, Emmeline certainly didn’t seem like one of them.

“Oh,” was all she could reply.

James laughed again, though this time Lily didn’t find it quite so welcoming.

“Oh?” continued Emmeline, her eyebrow still raised. “Didn’t expect that? And they told me you have a Slytherin best friend, dear. I thought maybe you’d be a little different.”

“Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Slytherin,” Lily added quickly, feeling the flush rise in her cheeks.

“Well…” remarked James with a chuckle, and Emmeline simply rolled her eyes at him.

“I’m just teasing, sweetheart. Though I do wish some people,” Emmeline gave a pointed look at James, “would be a little nicer about the rival school houses. I’m hoping you might be able to help there.”

“Me? Why?” replied Lily, taking a pastry for want of something to do with her hands.

“I hear you were quite a force to be reckoned with back in the day. Standing up for all that needed it, regardless of their house, and even if they were Slytherin. Quite an anomaly unfortunately, even in my day…”

James nodded along encouragingly, and it made Lily feel quite sick.

It was true. Lily had done that. She had taken pride in doing that, in fact, for years during her schooldays. She had been blessed with a confidence that many teenagers lacked, and well, it was horrible to just sit there and watch people be teased, people be bullied, Gryffindor or not. What else was she supposed to do? It wasn’t just Sev and Mary who dealt with the cruelty of bullies.

But somewhere along the line that had all stopped. She had stopped.

She wondered when she had stopped.

“I hear this one was one of the worst offenders,” added Emmeline with the sort of sternness of a mother or beloved teacher.

Lily nodded, uncomfortable with where this was going.

Because that was true too, wasn’t it? She wondered also when James had stopped being so cruel.

Had he?

The silence of the English speakers in the room hung stagnant for just a moment before James spoke.

“She really used to rip into me, Em,” He tried to smile at Lily, but she looked away with a dash. “But I deserved it.”

Something about this comment awoke a sprinkle of untapped bravery.

“Well, yes, you did,” said Lily, and not only Emmeline, but Nicolas and Perenelle laughed at the comment. As did James, who caught her eye on the pause, though she could not read what he was trying to say.

“Ok. Fair.” He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I deserve that. But how about we start that tour before my head swells up so big that I can’t fit through the doorways?”

It was Lily’s turn to smile now. That had been one of her most commonly used insults for him in fourth year.

****

Linfred Farm was even more beautiful (and magical) than Lily had realised.

There were more than a dozen rooms on the property, each one decorated in the sort of cosy Englishness that she was sure had only ever truly existed in mind rather than manner: William Morris prints, paintings of rolling hills, piles and piles of mismatched toys and books and other signs of a comfortable life in the country. It was the sort of place that James could show her around with pride — and indeed he did.

She mostly just listened intently — only adding the small, insignificant comment here and there — still unsure of how their relationship was now defined after the events of the previous month.

“Emmeline has set up your room in the nursery again,” he told her, stopping by the yellow-filled child’s room where she’d stayed before. “But please feel free to change. There’s a number of rooms available.”

“Oh no. It’s fine, thank you. Here will do quite well.”

How strangely formal they were being. If only Mary could see her now…

“Right, well, eerrr. That’s it.” He pulled a hand through his thick, dark hair. “I suppose I should get you back to Nicolas. He usually enjoys some television at this time of morning.”

She had watched an episode of Play Your Cards Right with Nicolas last time she was there, but the idea of the very old man tucked up before a television set was still a strange idea to her.

“I never had Nicolas down for such a telly fan,” she remarked.

“You’re not?” enquired James. He beckoned for her to go down the stairs before him.

“Oh, um, I guess not. I don’t own one.”

She didn’t imagine it would go down well with Severus if they did. Not that she blamed him. Muggle items were a contentious point for very understandable reasons.

Still, her mother had loved her films so much when she was a child.

“I love it!” said James, with the enthusiasm of a small infant. “Well, I love cinema. Dorcas has really got me into it. Those moving pictures — what a feat of transfiguration. Of course, it’s not transfiguration but— well, it’s fantastic, isn’t it?“

“You’ve been to the pictures?”

Lily had a hard time seeing a pure blood like James Potter in such a Muggle place.

“Well— no. But I would like to some day.”

It was almost endearing the way he spoke so passionately of something that Lily had known her whole life. She wondered if it explained her mother’s similar affection for the art form.

“My favourites are,” he opened the door to the kitchen for her, “Mädchen in Uniform” (Lily blinked) “and… The Sound of Music.”

“How are you watching these without going to the cinema?” she asked. British terrestrial television would take a few decades to get to that level just yet.

“Magic,” he winked, and she tried her hardest not to blush, turning instead to Nicolas who was still sitting in the centre of the kitchen.