the cadence of part time poets

Chapter 20: Pictures of Lily

Girl, you really got me goin',
You got me so I don't know what I'm doin';
Yeah, you really got me now,
You got me so I can't sleep at night...

- "You Really Got Me" The Kinks, 1964

To Remus' surprise, James had been all for Operation: Out With It Evans.

"No, it's brilliant!" He said over dinner, his voice hushed so no one could overhear, but excited none-the-less. "You're already in with the girls, Lupin, why wouldn't they tell you?"

"Because I'm not a girl?"

"Semantics," James said, infuriatingly akin to Sirius, "it's a magnificent plan."

And so there was no going back it seemed. Remus had officially been recruited as the Lily Evans Sleuthing Expert and after confessing that the girls were also planning a party for him, the boys decided that his birthday would be the perfect deadline. It seemed like the best excuse to get everyone in the same room, and as long as they knew why Lily was so angry before then, James could make a big show of apologising.

"I could try and get Moira to talk to her," Peter said, but James only shook his head.

"Doubt it would work—I asked Tara Webb to do the same thing last October and Lindsey Taylor in November, and both times Evans just pretended as though she didn't know what they were talking about."

"You mean she pretended as though she had no idea who you were," Sirius amended. "Apparently it was pretty believable too. She should try acting rather than focusing all her efforts on school and hating you."

"Well, your pranks certainly haven't helped," James said, looking pointedly at Sirius.

"My pranks? Who was it willing to climb up to the gym's rafters to hang a bucket of bacon grease? So don't blame me, I'm not the one trying to woo an Orthodox. And you just know you'd just hate to be left out, Potter."

Sirius, as always, was right. Despite the fact that it was Remus' mission, James demanded a status report on the battlefront almost every other day and was often disappointed by Remus' lack of intel. Most days Lily was busy with school or other perfectly duties and whenever Remus did manage to bring up the subject of James, she would simply change the subject. Marlene on the other hand, played on the girls football team and like James was often swamped with pre-season practices. It left Mary and Lottie, both of whom seemed to have friends all over. Mary's own popularity nearly rivalled James and Sirius' and whenever Remus was alone with her plenty of other students would come up to say hello or strike-up a conversation. This made things hard in the secrets department, but Remus had a feeling that even if he'd had enough chances, Mary would never snitch. She was a gossip and a massive flirt, but she was also startlingly loyal; a sentiment he had spent several 'reports' repeating to James, who was insistent that there must be some way to root out the truth from one of them. Neither he nor Sirius seemed to understand just how difficult the task they'd assigned him was, mostly because they were never around to witness him squirm. Having any of his roommates nearby certainly guaranteed that he would get nothing out of the girls, who seemed locked up tighter than the Tower of London anyway, and so his roommates kept pushing for Remus to spend all his free time away from the dorm where his chances of sniffing out secrets were greatest. This led to Remus quickly realising just how much he'd come to rely on the 4A boys.

It wasn't just the fact that he was growing tired of complimenting Mary's choice of nail colour or having his homework scrutinised by Lily and Marlene, it was the fact that he'd spent most of February shuffling between the girls or else alone. Whenever the boys met the topic was always Lily, and Remus' patience was growing thin. He was either going to have to throw in the towel or just start demanding answers from the girls—neither of which he imagined would make him very popular with either group.