All Right, Evans?

Chapter 7

Saturday, 9:28 A.M.

"You can't eat that."

James looked up from his breakfast, which consisted of an amount of starch that only a sixteen-year-old boy could handle. "What?" he asked through a mouthful of bacon, sausage, and hash browns.

Sirius made a face. "You're going to vomit all over the pitch."

"From thirty feet in the air," Peter added, wrinkling his nose when James stuck his tongue out at them and showed off his half-chewed food.

"You should try talking to Lily while you're eating, Prongs," Remus suggested dryly, not looking up from his copy of the Daily Prophet. "That'll be the way to her heart."

James shut his mouth immediately, swallowed, and looked around to see if Lily was in the vicinity. She was sitting a ways down the table, talking to Alice and Marlene, so he figured he was safe.

"You sure know how to get him to behave," Sirius said appreciatively to Remus, who acknowledged the compliment with a modest shrug. Sirius looked back at James. "Evans has got you twisted around her finger and she doesn't even know it."

"Wait 'til she agrees to go out with him and all that charm will fly out the window," Peter said.

James threw an orange at him.

"Sheesh, take a joke, will you?"

"He's just mad because he knows she'll never agree to it," Sirius said. James said nothing, which Sirius thought was odd since James always argued that point. He furrowed his brow, wondering what his friend could be hiding; but Sirius was never one to perpetually wonder in silence, so he said, "Something you're not telling us, Prongs?"

James shrugged, keeping his eyes on his plate. Sirius picked up the orange that had hit Peter in the chest and threw it back at James, who caught it.

"Damn your reflexes," Sirius cursed.

"I reckon I was a cat in a former life."

"Don't change the subject," Sirius ordered. James wasn't going to get out of this that easily. "What do you know that we don't? Come on, spit it out."

"Nothing, it's stupid," James said, finally looking up at his friends. Sirius had his arms folded across his chest, Peter looked confused, and Remus put down his Prophetand quirked an inquisitive brow.

James sighed. "She came to see me last night. Evans, that is. In detention."

And he recounted their conversation, one that he'd been happily replaying in his head since she'd left him in the dungeons the night before.

When he was finished, Sirius whistled, and Peter and Remus were grinning.

"You think it's good, then?" James asked, hoping what he had been trying hard not to hope, just in case.

"I think it's promising," Remus said, "so long as you don't eat anything in front of her."

James returned his friends' smiles. That was good enough for him.

Feeling lighter than when he'd woken up that morning, James left the other Marauders to head down to the Quidditch pitch. He passed by Lily and gave in to the temptation to squeeze her shoulder as he did so; she turned in his direction and offered him a small smile and a wink.

Oh, yes, James thought as he exited the Great Hall. That was most definitely good enough.

Snape watched James Potter leave the hall.

More specifically, Snape watched James Potter leave his seat at the Gryffindor table. He watched him walk past Lily Evans. He watched him touch Lily Evans. And he watched Lily Evans do absolutely nothing about it.

When had that happened? he wondered, frowning. Since when did Lily Evans let James Potter get away with touching her? She was supposed to hate him, so since when did she act like she didn't anymore? Since when had she started smiling at him?

Snape shook his head, trying to rid himself of all those since when?s. They wouldn't do him any good; it wasn't as if he didn't loathe James Potter enough already, and if there was ever a time that Lily Evans didn't care what he thought, it was now.

But he still thought about it, anyway.

"Should we head down to the pitch, d'you think?" asked Regulus Black, who was sitting beside him, jarring him out of his reverie.

Snape looked up to see that the hall was slowly emptying around them. "Yeah," he said, rising from his seat. He wasn't really in the mood for Quidditch, but he knew his fellow Slytherins would be suspicious if he skipped out. "Let's go."