Chapter 6
James sat boltright up in bed at the creak of the door, fumbling for his glasses on the nightstand. Blinking furiously, the ghostly form of Lily Evans took shape in the middle of their dim room. The others were still sleeping soundly in their beds.
“Lily?” He whispered hoarsely. She held up two cigarettes in silent question. He nodded, swinging his legs out of bed with a muffled groan and pulling the first t-shirt he found over his head. He grabbed his dressing gown and gestured to the door. She was through it and gone so quickly James found himself questioning whether she had ever been there at all, but he followed after her, and off they went.
“All okay?” He asked softly, hesitant to disturb the peaceful quiet that surrounded them.
“Mhm.” It wasn’t a convincing answer.
“Just wanted company?”
“You said to come and find you if I wanted to skip off to the astronomy tower.”
James fought a smile. “You’re absolutely right.”
They make it all the way to the tower without even a hint of Filch’s prowling. Lily let him use the lighter again and they sat without speaking for a while.
“Did you ever think we’d get here?” He ventured after a few minutes.
“‘Here’ as in the astronomy tower or ‘here’ in a more metaphysical sense?”
“Here, as in, us.”
“Us?”
“Being friends.”
“James, if you’d come up to me last year and told me I’d be sneaking out in the middle of the night to smoke with you I would’ve sent you right to the hospital wing to be treated for extreme delusions.”
“Rude.”
A small laugh rippled out of her. “How did we get here?”
James took a long, slow drag while he tried to find the right words. “I dunno. I guess after,” he hesitated, “you know, your dad...I just decided it was so pointless for us to be at odds all the time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “At odds is a generous way of putting it.”
“I’m a generous man.”
“So you waited until my dad died to try to be my friend?”
He winced. “No, of course not. But it did make me realize that I could’ve tried harder. Been better. I never really wanted you to be upset with me.” Lily looked so skeptical that he nearly laughed.
“I was never trying to insult you,” he continued, “or make you feel humiliated. I just wanted your attention so badly.”
“My attention?” Lily echoed, surprised.
James nodded. “I just needed you to look at me.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Well it worked. I spent the last five years barely able to look away.”
“Yeah, but I’m sorry all the same.”
“Sorry?”
“It singled you out. Just because it was never my intention, doesn’t mean I didn’t harm you, or make you feel small. You should never feel small, Lily.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He desperately wanted to know what she was thinking, but the look on her face was unreadable. It felt like she was looking right down into the deepest, darkest parts of him.
The response came after a long pause. “I could’ve tried harder too.”
“But-’
“James, we both know I can be a stubborn prig.”
“That feels like a trap. Oi!” He rubbed the spot on his shoulder she’d just swatted.
“It’s going to be too cold to smoke up here soon.”
“Well, we could always…”
“We’re not going to smoke inside.”
“Spoilsport.”
Twenty minutes later they found themselves back in the common room. Lily was looking resignedly out the window at the cresting dawn, and James was looking at the freckles dusted across her nose.
“Would you like to talk about why you wanted to go for a late night smoke?”
Lily bit her lip. “I realized today that I don’t know what my dad’s last words to me were.” She turned to look at him, her eyes wide and dark against her face, two patches of evergreens gleaming through the dim light that threatened to swallow him whole. Her voice was trembling as if she were trying so desperately to keep it steady. “Isn’t that horrible of me?”
James considered her for a moment, thinking over his words carefully. She was silently pleading with him, needing something he wasn’t sure how to give.
“I’m so very sorry, Lily. That’s a terrible loss.” The tension in the air reached its limit, and Lily broke open at the seams. Her shoulders slumped and her face crumpled on itself, like the weight of her sorrow was so heavy that it was dragging her down. She moved slightly, as if stepping towards him, but hesitated. James opened his arms in invitation, and when she threw her own arms around him he could feel her relief. He stood there, one arm around her shoulders and the other curled around the back of her neck, listening to her try to swallow her cries and apologize between sniffles.
When they finally broke apart she couldn’t quite look him in the eye. Murmuring an apology with her eyes firmly glued to the floor she slipped, skittish as a doe, back up the girls’ stairs. She left him standing in the hazy slice of dawn cutting across the room, his damp collar was the only indication she’d been there at all.
By the time James eased back into his dormitory, the full strength of the morning sun was pouring through the window. Sirius was sitting up, the marauder’s map open across his lap. James froze, feeling guilty but not quite sure why. They stared at each other for what felt like years before Sirius whispered, “What the hell are you doing, Prongs?”
James shifted uneasily. “Went for a smoke.”
“That’s not what I asked.” James knew.
“We’re just friends, Pad.”
Even through the shadowed room James could see Sirius’s eyes, the dim light only serving to make them more pronounced. They were burning with accusation. “And is that enough?”
James turned his back on Sirius and got back into bed, pulling the curtains pointedly shut around them.
“You’re an idiot.” Sirius hissed into the quiet air.
James pulled the curtains aside just enough so that he could make a gesture that would’ve earned a smack from his mother had she seen.