The Marauders: Year Four

Books and Bikes

Books and Bikes

James was having a rare moment of doing homework. McGonagall had approved of his list of personality traits he'd handed in after working with the other Marauders on it, and assigned him a new job of writing a paper about the first ever animagus. What this meant was that he had to go and learn about this mysterious bloke, a guy who could turn into a falcon, and he was in the library trying to find entries on him in the midst of the history books. He was sitting at a table near the back of the library, surrounded by tall towers of texts, when suddenly Lily Evans sat down opposite him and shoved two of the stacks apart to look at him.

She cleared her throat to get him to look up, and he did, putting his arms over the textbook to cover what he was reading about. "What?" he asked.

Lily leaned over the table so she was fairly close to him and James could actually focus on her eyes even over the top of the frames of his glasses. They seemed even greener the closer they were like that and he stared into them. "What's going on with Sirius and Remus?" she asked. "You have no idea how much I want to tell Rey what's going on! But I also want it to be a surprise. Potter, this whole waiting game is absolutely torturing me."

James said, "Well it's going to go on a bit longer, I'm sorry to say."

"Why?" Lily groaned, sitting back. "What could possibly be stopping him? If he likes Remus, and Remus likes Sirius, then why are they wasting time?"

James adjusted his glasses, which had slid down his nose from the angle he'd been holding his face into look at her. "It seems that Remus has obtained himself a boyfriend."

Lily's eyes went wide, "Excuse me?"

"Yeah. At least that's what Sirius is on about lately. Sirius's brother told him he'd seen Rey about the castle with some other boy," James explained, "And I keep trying to tell Sirius that Regulus is just trying to cause trouble, but - really, you know Sirius can't get something out of his head once it's in there, so he's been obsessed."

Lily looked quite concerned, "Remus hasn't mentioned anything to me about seeing anyone..."

"Hasn't mentioned it to any of us," James said, "Which is why I think Regulus is full of dung, but I can't get that through Sirius's porridge-brain. He's so jealous over it."

"Well jealous is good," Lily said, "It means he's really interested. It means he wants to be the boy Remus is with." She rubbed her hands together.

"It means he's not making a move," James said.

"Do you know where Remus is?" Lily asked.

"Muggle Studies," he answered. "He's in with Sirius for the class, actually."

"What're you studying?" Lily asked, suddenly realizing she was witnessing a rather rare event.

"Transfiguration," James replied. "Some extra work for McGonagall."

"Impressive, I didn't know you or Sirius ever came to the library unless you were up to no good."

"I doubt Sirius has," James laughed.

"Probably not." Lily glanced at the piles of textbooks, then got up. "I'll let you get to it, then. I don't want to interrupt you actually being industrious."

James watched her go and he chewed his lower lip. It was one of the first times ever that they'd held a conversation that hadn't included her telling him to bugger off, he realized. It felt funny, having spoken like a real human person to Lily Evans. It made him rather excited and sort of breathless.