All Right, Evans?

Chapter 25: The Effects of Amortentia

Over the next few days, James increased his tireless efforts to make Lily smile. It was about as difficult as getting her to go out with him in fifth year; that is to say, it was impossible.

It wasn't that she didn't smile at all, because she did. The corners of her lips turned up, her teeth flashed, her eyes crinkled – it was all evidence of someone who was actually, truly happy. But no matter how crinkled the corners of her eyes were, the eyes themselves were blank. The green was flat and glassy and devoid of any feeling. Her smile started and ended on her lips, and it was the saddest thing James had ever seen.

"What do I do?" he moaned one night in the common room when Lily was on rounds.

"You could quit whining, for starters," Marlene griped. Really, it was no wonder Lily didn't want to fancy him; he could be such a petulant child sometimes.

James glowered at her before turning to the more sympathetic of the two. "Alice."

"Honestly, James, there's nothing you can do," Alice said as bracingly as she could manage. She wouldn't mind hitting him with a Silencio, if she were honest with herself. "I know you're trying, but sometimes Lily's just plain inconsolable."

"Remember when she'd just laugh, all the time? She was laughing a week ago." What a week, James thought as the echo of that laughter sounded somewhere in the recesses of his memory. He slumped down in his chair and kicked at the floor. "I just want her to smile and mean it."

"So yank her into a broom cupboard and shag her brains out," Marlene suggested dryly.

As tempting as that was, James shook his head and said, "I don't think that'd work."

"I dunno." Marlene's voice was serious now. "She stares at you a lot more now – doesn't even try to hide it the way she did last year, either."

"That doesn't mean he should go dragging her around the castle for a fifteen-minute shag," Alice interjected before Marlene could give him any more bright ideas. "Really, James, just keep doing what you're doing now. That's all you can do."

"But it's not enough –"

Alice sighed loudly, effectively cutting off the rest of James's sentence. "Yes, well, sometimes 'not enough' is the best that anyone can do," she told him.

And it was awful, Alice thought, and so did Marlene. It was terrible that even their best efforts went so famously to waste. But they both knew that sometimes there were things you couldn't fix, and that no matter how much you liked to pretend, not everything was okay. Some things never were. Unfortunately, neither of them were James Potter, nor could they get through to him. James Potter wasn't used to not getting what he wanted, and what he wanted now was to fix this, no matter how unfixable it was.

February 14

Lily wasn't exactly in the mood for the Slug Club, but she'd never managed to turn down any of Professor Slughorn's ridiculous get-togethers before so she didn't see why today should be any different. She liked Professor Slughorn, of course – she thought he was endearing, a bit socially inept at times, but he always meant well.

No, it wasn't Slughorn that bothered her, Lily thought as she made her way down to the dungeons. It was the club part of it all that was irking her that evening. Amos Diggory, naturally, since he was good-looking and Head Boy and a shoo-in for some influential Ministry job post-Hogwarts; Bertha Jorkins, because she just happened to know so much about so many people, and Slughorn might as well have been a gossipy old woman, he enjoyed Bertha's company so much; Gwen McIntyre (Lily didn't bother suppressing her scowl), because she was pretty and popular and Slughorn always appreciated those who were well-liked. The list went on, but Lily found that she was annoyed enough as it was without thinking about the rest of them.