Chapter 2
There was a loud SMACK of wood quickly followed by a hissed curse; and James woke with a start.
His eyes adjusted to the world again after being ripped so suddenly from sleep. He twisted himself in his sheets, and upon finding the cause of the noise, he furrowed his brow in frustration. There sat Peter sitting in the center of the dormitory floor rubbing his right knee sheepishly smiling an apology.
“Bloody hell Peter, what the fuck is wrong with you” James spat in a hurried whisper.
“Oh sorry sorry sorry, tripped over my damn shoes” , Peter apologized, still trying to rub the pain out of his knee from what James assumed was an aggressive whack of bone and hardwood floor.
“Maybe if you didn’t leave your shoes in the center of the buggering floor” James hissed annoyed at being woken up. He was a light sleeper, and there were more times than he could count where his clumsy ass friend and roommate tripped in the middle of the night and woke him up.
James, still in a quiet fume, tangled further into his sheets to roll over and check on his other two friends.
There was Sirius fast asleep, who had kicked off all of his sheets and tightly hugged his pillow. A sight that never failed to make James chuckle, and besides Sirius’s bed he expected to see Remus in the exact opposite position, as Remus normally buried himself under mounds of blankets and pillows.
However, once James screwed up his face in just the right squint so he could vaugley see far enough to Remus’s bed, he noticed it was very much absent of its usual 6’3 Remus sized lump.
“Peter” James hissed over his shoulder.
“Hmm?” Peter responded as he was crawling himself back into his bed.
“Was Remus in the bathroom with you?”
“No? Why”
“He’s not in his bed.” James shot back starting to stress.
Peter yawned with a final flop on to his bed “Sirius said something but i’m too tired to remember”
Well James was awake now, and in a rising panic. While slapping his side table in a frenzied unsuccessful search for his glasses he tossed one of his pillows at Sirius’s head.
“MERLIN? what the fuck” Sirius mumbled his words jumbling together in his sleep addled brain.
“Where the hell is Moony?”
James waited a couple beats, guessing his heavy sleeper of a best friend had fallen back asleep, and now being up out of his bed searching for socks, harshly jabbed Sirius’s side.
“Hey! what-” Sirius asked startled, popping up with his hair a disaster, wildly swinging his head around until he settled on James, “Oh Rem, right” “ after a pause to supposedly center his thoughts, “he said studying.”
“Where, Pads?” James pauses, expecting a response, “Sirius, Where is he studying?”
As James was stumbling around looking for socks to throw on to begin his adventure to search for Remus, he looked back over at Sirius and saw he had fallen back asleep.
With an eye roll so aggressive James was worried his eyes might disappear into his head he muttered, “For the love of Merlin, It is two days until the full moon I-“
He paused, his eyes landing on the small clock by his bedside, leaning in closer he examined the hands,
“FUCK IT’S 3 IN THE MORNING.” he whisper screeched toward Sirius’s passed out form to no response.
James was beginning to freak out. It’s always worse when Remus was tired, he should have made sure that he got the idiot in bed on time.
Squinting again to make sure his poor eyesight was not just playing tricks on his eyes in the dark, James realized furiously he needed to find his damn glasses. Again, he slapped his side table a handful of times to finally locate his glasses.
Eventually his hand smacked down on top of a thin piece of metal, having it jab quite harshly into his palm.
“SHIT” he instantly recoiled his hand and yelped quite loudly, yet still not loud enough to garner a response from any of his other sleeping roommates besides Chris, who leaned over with a curious look.
“It’s nothing Chris,” James spat angrily, rubbing his palm. Chris rolled back over with a shrug.
James suddenly felt guilty for his terseness. Poor guy was probably always confused with their antics because he wasn’t really friends with the rest of them. In all fairness he really was the blandest person imaginable, and James couldn’t stand to try and hold conversation with him.
This used to eat at James, worried that Chris may have felt resentment towards them.But this year, James had realized Chris didn’t want to be friends with them either and opted to ignore them most of the time in turn for his small group of Hufflepuff friends? or was it Ravenclaw? James never remembered, but it didn’t matter because if Chris had questions, he simply never asked them.
Fuck, James’s thoughts were rambling why the hell was he dissecting his relationship with Chris again? Oh yes okay a weird colluded thought process to justify why he wasn’t asking Chris if he knew where Remus was.
He gave one last glance towards Remus’s bed to make sure it truly was empty, then quickly snagged a random shirt off the ground, and hobbled into the socks he was pulling onto each foot.
After scurrying down the stone staircase, nearly slipping more times than he could count, he finally stumbled into the common room.
He had planned on just doing a quick scan to see if Remus was in there, but because his often reclusive friend usually wasn’t in such a visible space, he was more focused on getting to the portrait hole. Remus always had some weird obscure corner in which he would study to not be bothered. Shit, James realized he had been stupid in forgetting to grab the map to easily locate Remus.
However, in Jame’s quick glance he screeched to a halt in surprise. There did not sit Remus, but Lily Evans.
From the view he had he could only see her from her shoulders up, and god, was she beautiful as ever. He loved when he caught glimpses of her like this, fully relaxed and unaware of the world around her. Lily’s hair was pulled up into a messy updo of sorts with her wand sticking through her hair, a hairstyle he noted, that she did often while studying, and in front of her was a book suspended in the air. She was absentmindedly chewing on the nail of her thumb while ever so often swishing her fingers to turn the page.
He then cataloged her outfit, she wore a very thick brownish chunky knit sweater, her favorite she stole from her dad he remembered. However, most curious to him was the pair of glasses perching on her nose, that looked distinctly like, Rem-
Oh god fucking shit, he was supposed to be looking for Remus, he needed to go. But he also then realized that he had very little clue what state of dress he was in, because he was standing in the corner too dark to see now, and also didn't know what clothes he had been grabbing. All he did know was that he definitely was not expecting nor wanting Lily to see him in such an outfit.
He took a couple more steps forward, quieter now, because he had decided he’d rather pitch himself off the astronomy tower than have Lily see him like this, and if he walked very quietly maybe it would be as if he had his invisibility cloak on and she wouldn't notice him.
Although, in his fixed stare on Lily he failed to remember there was a small side table right in his way, and with a loud CLANG he ran into it with his full force.
Before he could even hiss a curse of pain he saw a flash of red hair snap up at him with a deep frown. He watched as her mouth opened to begin to scold him, a movement of hers he was quite familiar with, and then as she seemed to notice that it was him, he watched the insult die on her lips.
All he could offer was an apologetic grin for breaking her silent reading space, as he awkwardly scratched the back of his neck, mouthing a quick sorry.
She took a moment deeply sighing, and muttered “Nice outfit Potter, you buggering clumsy idiot”
James, now in more lighting, took a moment to actually account for what the hell he was wearing. Oh good fucking god, he thought to himself, he was accidentally wearing one of Sirius’s black t shirts that looked like it had been through war. (Sirius had turned into padfoot to destroy it “it’s for the fucking aesthtic you wouldn’t get it James”. Sirius was right, even as James now wore the shirt he did not “get it”) . It also didn’t help that the shirt was two sizes too small, so it hugged Jame’s body in odd places. He then noticed he was wearing two drastically different socks, one long quidditch sock that almost went up to his knee and the other a thickly knitted green one from his mother. However, most mortifying of all, was that James was still in his blue and white checkered boxer shorts. Oh God help him.
Despite the fact that James knew his face had gone nine different shades of red, he would be damned if he failed to make a comeback, so he sputtered out “erm, um like the glasses Evans.”
She clicked her tongue in feigned annoyance “My eyes were killing me after squinting writing the paper for Potions, and Remus had his reading glasses down here and I did not” she gestured to the book in front of her.
“Remus?” James asked, “like my Remus?”
“Yes Potter” she chuckled gingerly “Your Remus, the one laying in my lap dead asleep”
James shook his head again, Merlin, the hold Lily Evans had over him, he had AGAIN forgotten that Remus was the reason he was down in the first place and as he moved around the obstructing view of a different couch he saw Remus curled up against Lily.
All six foot three inches of the boy was wrapped up tightly, his scrawny legs hidden under a blanket, while his arms were locked around Lily, and his face buried into her big sweater.
For a fleeting second there was a pang of envy, and then quickly followed by an overwhelming flood of a bright and burning emotion that James couldn't quite name. It pulled at his core in a funny manner and made him oddly aware of his own heartbeat. Because, for all of Jame’s jokes and prodding, ridiculous asks of Lily’s hand in marriage at quidditch afterparties when he was two stops past drunk, or horrendously cheesy valentines day letters every february. This, this moment right here, Lily softly running her hands through his trembling and sick best friend's hair, was when James knew he was really and truly in love with Lily Evans.