crossroads ✿ jily

Chapter Two - Boundaries

The Wednesday following the volatile incident in the corridor and subsequent meeting with McGonagall, Lily sat at her usual table in the library, glancing occasionally at her watch and sighing frustratedly. It was a quarter past seven, and he was late...although she didn't know why she had expected anything different. She wondered if he was even going to come at all, but dismissed the idea in light of the fact that McGonagall was stopping just short of death threats this time. She rolled her eyes...maybe she shouldn't rely on it. He could get out of anything as far as the professor was concerned.

She glanced at the clock again, noting that he was now seventeen minutes late. She wouldn't mind so much, except that now he was wasting her time. Just as she was considering simply getting up and leaving herself, he walked nonchalantly through the doors and looked idly around. His gaze fell on her and his expression changed to a grimace as he regarded her. He made no move to hurry his steps as he approached. She narrowed her eyes at him slightly as he dropped his books on the table with an insolent thud. He raised his dark brows at her and said flippantly,

"I should have known you'd be early, Evans. How predictable."

She glared openly at him now as she replied, "I'm not early...I was simply here on time. You are late."

He shrugged his shoulders, not even bothering to act surprised, and said quite insincerely, "Hmm...lost track of time."

She heaved a great sigh inwardly, but kept her expression completely blank as he sat down and began fiddling with his things. He didn't say anything else, and she wondered when he was going to get down to it. After about five more minutes of this, she asked,

"Well?"

He looked up and eyed her unpleasantly.

"Well what?"

She frowned and clarified as though she was talking to a three year-old, "Your notes? Shouldn't we start?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her and replied, "Is there some reason why we should have to communicate, here? I'd prefer if we just did our separate halves, and then got away from each other."

She felt her blood boil at the implication that speaking with her was the worst thing imaginable as far as he was concerned – as if he was a picnic to be around. She grew even angrier at the realization that the only reason she hadn't been working on it beforehand was because she had been waiting for this meeting...and then waiting for him to show up at this meeting. Expelling a breath, she decided she'd simply have to do it as she'd always done it...after all, what did he know?

Relieved to some extent that she could still work on her own, even if he was sitting directly across from her, she started jotting down some notes. After about an hour of the both of them sitting in silence, he closed his parchment and stood. She glanced up, and he didn't look back at her as he gathered his things. Before she could ask him anything, he walked away, calling sarcastically over his shoulder as he left,

"It's been fun, Evans."

She glared at his back as he strode away, and thought to herself how good it would feel to plunge a dagger right between his shoulder blades. Smiling slightly, as that thought made her feel morbidly better, she settled back in to finish up before she, too, gathered her things together and went back to the Tower. If this was how it was going to be, that was perfectly fine with her. The less talking they had to do with one another, the better.

Climbing through the portrait hole a few moments later, she was surprised to find that Helen and Arabella were nowhere to be found. Frowning slightly, she decided they must be in the dorm for some reason and headed up the stairs. As she got closer to the end of the hall, she could hear a ruckus going on in the fourth-year dorms. Just as she was about to knock on the door, it flew open to reveal Arabella, her wavy black hair pulled back and her eyes flashing, making her look even more dramatic than usual.