Games2011 ♥ FIC: This Bird Has Flown [PG]
Title: This Bird Has Flown
Author: klose
Team: DOE
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~5200 wordss
Warnings: None!
Prompt:
Summary: "This is our last summer, you realise?" Sirius said. / James nodded. "Yeah. Our last before we leave Hogwarts and get thrust into the world, as it were."
Author's Note: The song quoted within is Norwegian Wood by the Beatles, and the title of this story comes from that song as well. With thanks to heartofoshun for her fantastic beta-reading and encouragement, and also to carterhaugh for excellent typo-spotting and providing some very helpful comments. Extra kudos to them for working on a very tight deadline! All remaining mistakes are my own.
This Bird Has Flown
I was seventeen, with my back against the sand and my eyes squinting towards the mid-summer sun. My would-be boyfriend was on my right, his best friend on my left, and we were quite happy to spend our day watching the clouds pass us by. We hadn't realised just yet how precious our time was - how little of it we had left.
It was summer 1977, and I was stuck in that awkward phase of being a fully qualified witch who still had one year of school left to complete. It hadn't been the best of summers, for all that it was my first without the restrictions of the Trace. Being back home with my parents was wonderful, of course, and there were things about Lancs that I had missed - like the hotpot our local served. Even the Hogwarts house-elves couldn't match it.
Though the good things about being home were very good indeed, they were few. I had no friends at home - not anymore, anyway. The Muggle children I had been friendly with in primary school - at that careless age where friendships were forged and broken much too easily - had grown up, forged new social circles of their own, or had changed too much. Just as I had.
Petunia had moved out the year before, having enrolled in a polytechnic down south. Apparently interning as a secretary for a drill-making company for the summer, she had chosen not to return home. She had been a non-factor for a while, anyway. Just like Severus.
And I was seventeen, crossing the threshold into adulthood and shedding the past like an old bit of skin.
***
"If I didn't know better, Prongs, I'd say you were growing a decent bone in there somewhere." Sirius flipped the Head Boy badge back at James - who caught it easily - and leaned back to lie down on the sand.
"Of course, you would say that like it's a bad thing, Sirius Black," I said, shaking my head. But the ambience made it difficult to say it with any real snippiness. We were on the beach just behind James's house in Cornwall, surrounded by white sand bordered by deep blue waters and sandwiched between rocky outcrops. It was afternoon, and we'd run down the long stone staircase that led from his garden to the beach. Our camp - an elaborate set up of beach towels, a massive umbrella and a picnic basket provided by James's house-elf - was the only sign of life I could see, excepting the native flora and fauna.
"I've always had a decent bone, I'll have you know," James interjected, pulling out a bottle of pumpkin juice from the picnic basket. "Several of them, in fact."
"I suppose your fibula isn't too shabby," Sirius shrugged, accepting a bottle. "And I did hear some Ravenclaw fourth-years raving over your magnificent clavicles on the train back from Hogwarts."
"And his skull is certainly sturdy as a rock," I added, opening my pumpkin juice. "Goodness knows there isn't much in the way of brains in there."
James placed a hand over his heart, making a show of looking quietly affronted - after he finished choking on his drink, that is. "Harsh, Evans. Is that any way to speak to your Head Boy?"
"A perk of being Head Girl, surely," I said, and hid my grin by taking a swig of pumpkin juice.
***
Of course, if you'd told me a year ago that I'd be bantering with James Potter and Sirius Black behind the Potter cottage in Cornwall, I'd have thought you afflicted by a particularly strong Confundus Charm.
But of course, a year ago, my best friend had been Severus Snape.
A year ago, James Potter thought the best way to get my attention was tormenting my best friend. Sirius Black still lived with his blood family. A year ago, both of them seemed too arrogant for me to even bear listening to them, much less carry out a civil conversation.
A year ago, Death Eaters hadn't yet attacked Hogsmeade - or specifically, those of its establishments run by wizards and witches of Muggle descent - on the last Saturday before the start of exams. Many were injured, but no one died, thanks to the group of students that held fort until the Aurors arrived. I was there, along with other Prefects, but the real leader that day turned out to be a boy with messy hair and glasses.
It's funny how much things can change in a year.
***
We attacked the picnic basket soon enough. Our eating was punctuated by the sounds of seagulls being stung by the wards we put up around us to stop them from stealing our food.
I had protested at first - "is it necessary to harm the birds, really?!" - and worn down by my nagging, James and Sirius took the wards off.
Barely a second later, a seagull dived at me, and my sandwich was out of my hand before I could even blink.
"OI!" was the sum total of my response, much to my eternal shame. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed James's arm twitching, as if he intended to hex the seagull - presumably with some misguided intent of defending my honour, because that was the sort of thing he did - but he, like Sirius, was too preoccupied with laughing. I wasn't sure that was a better alternative.
"Still think they're unnecessary?" Sirius asked, after the wards had been replaced - with my help, this time.
Resisting the urge to hex the smug smile off his face, I reached for a new sandwich.
"I guess you have more experience with this," I muttered, but only because they were both staring at me expectantly.
"I'm not sure I heard that correctly, Padfoot," said James. "Did Evans just say we were right?"
Well now, that was pushing it! "I did not say anything of - "
"I think she did, Prongs. We'll need to thank her for that show of confidence, of course."
"Coincidentally, I have an excellent idea of how we might go about that, Padfoot."
As one, they looked at each other, back at me, and pounced. I grabbed at my wand, attempting to hold them back, but I was a tad too slow. James grabbed my arms, Sirius grabbed my feet, and together, they dragged me out to the water, and tossed me in. It was probably a good thing James's nearest neighbour was at least mile away, because I made sure my screams were loud enough to have the Aurors calling - had any been in the vicinity.
"Prats!" I yelled, once my head emerged from the water, along with some other words I shan't repeat here. I lunged at them, pulling them both down to join me.
"Alright, we deserved that," James admitted, once he was done spluttering. Sirius laughed in agreement, shaking water off himself as if he were a dog, and that caused another tussle. We spent the next half-hour thrashing around in the waves, getting completely drenched, and not quite caring that the seagulls were gleefully feasting on the remnants of our picnic.
***
A year earlier, I almost certainly might have hexed them once I had my wand back. But here's the thing: you can't fight Death Eaters together without something changing in your dynamic.
Obviously, you can't just shelve years of bad blood, either. Sixth year had seen me and James forming an uneasy truce, based on that shared experience, but cemented also by the fact that he stopped asking me out persistently. I hadn’t minded that, even - it was more the threats to hex people if I said no that drove me batty. Take that away, and James Potter wasn’t so easy to detest.
Underpinning all that was the fact that for all our differences, we shared common principles. I had come to realise that this, more than anything else, was the only way you could segregate people - and as it turned out, James Potter and I were on the same side.
***
We made our way back to shore much later, stopping to rest at the low-lying rocks forming the border between water and land. Just beyond my feet, the blue expanse of the sea stretched across the horizon before us.
It really was beautiful: the water swept back and forth over sand and cliffs in a gentle rhythm, cascading waves providing the only sound other than our words and laughter, along with the cawing seagulls overhead. The only other beach I’d been was at Blackpool, which was so very different. Lying there languidly, while the clouds passed us by, I found myself saying as much to James and Sirius.
"I'd never been to the beach until I first visited James," Sirius said. "Blacks don't do beaches," he added. "Can you imagine my parents in place like this?"
James snorted at that. "The heir to the illustrious Black family running barefoot in the sand just like us common people? Perish the thought!"
"Where did your family go on holiday then, Sirius?" I'd never been particularly interested in Sirius Black's home life, but I found myself curious. Some seconds passed before he replied, however, being otherwise occupied with flicking sand at James in retaliation for the jibe.
"There was the occasional trip to Bath...," he said, over James's protests against the sand attack. "But mum didn't like leaving the house, much less London. Blacks don't do holidays, either."
"We're going to rectify that, though," James said, brushing sand out of his hair. He exchanged a knowing grin with Sirius, their little tiff completely forgotten. "Sirius and I are going to Portkey around the world, after we graduate from Hogwarts and once the war is over."
The last part of his sentence made me sit up a little. Once the war is over. As I internalised the sentiment, I joked out loud about sparing the world the dual nuisances of James Potter and Sirius Black, but my words lacked bite.
***
James went off to collect the remnants of the picnic and maybe get us more food. He seemed to take with him the air of tentative camaraderie that had characterised the whole afternoon, leaving Sirius and me to sit in silence. Uncomfortable as it was, we'd never had anything to say to each other before. But Sirius, I guess, was more uncomfortable with silence than I was, because he spoke soon enough.
"So how've you been spending your summer, Evans?"
Confusion or some similar expression must have shown on my face, because he laughed that dog-like bark of his and said, "What, I'm not allowed to strike up pleasant conversation?”
"You've never struck me as the sort of person who wasted time on pleasantries, as it were," I pointed out. "Anyway, I can't remember when - if ever - you've had a civil word for me, Black."
He shrugged, not bothering to deny my assertion. "I just wondered how awful your summer must have been, if deigning to accept James's invite seemed like a good idea."
Put like that, it sounded rather sharp. "Give me a moment while I consider if I should deign to answer you," I scoffed, leaning back on my palms.
"I don't mince words, Evans. You spend more time lecturing or shouting at us, or sending us to detention, than you do speaking to us." Sirius said, not even blushing at my comment.
"I've never been to Cornwall," I said simply. "I always heard it was lovely. Curiosity brought me here, I suppose."
Sirius raised his eyebrows, and I conceded: "... But I was ready to Apparate back the moment either of you did or said anything stupid."
For that bit of candidness, I was rewarded with a smile. It was a small thing, just a little quirk of his lips, really. But it was a more genuine, emotive expression than I could ever recall seeing on the face of Sirius Black. It was a rare glimpse past the arrogant eleven-year-old I first met on the Hogwarts Express.
"It's not like I went out of my way to give you both detention, anyway," I continued. "But you can't expect me to watch idly when you jinx Slytherins to turn their skins green and silver!"
"That was just Mulciber, and he was asking for it."
I knew Mulciber, a cruel, brutual boy who had recently graduated from Hogwarts, and could very well believe he had done or said something provocative. Whether or not it warranted the kind of response James and Sirius liked to dole out was a different story, and I said as much to the latter just then.
He only shook his head. "Someone's got to stand to people like that, Evans. You're just validating them when you let them carry on."
"Was that why you left from home?" It sounded harsher than I intended, but his words had left me strangely defensive.
"Yes," he said simply, looking me straight in the eye.
I turned away. I could understand being a world apart from one's family, even if it was under completely different circumstances. "Have you spoken to any of them since?"
"Just Regulus, and only a handful of times, at that."
We both went quiet, Sirius lost in contemplation while I considered his words.
"I haven't spoken to my sister much these past few years, either. She isn't too keen on the whole magic thing." The words were out, and I couldn't take them back, but I wondered if I would come to regret my frankness. Sirius was a hard book to read.
"It's not just conversations that we don't share." I continued. "We look nothing alike. We don't even have the same interests. She's a Muggle, and I'm a witch. Strange how it happens, isn't it? We wouldn't be friends if we weren't family. Not that we're friends now."
"That's family, isn't it? People you're stuck with purely by accident of birth. As far as brothers go, though…" He glanced behind us, at the Potter cottage up in the distance, but didn’t complete the thought.
Another silence stretched between us.
"I reckon people are like seashells, Evans," he said eventually. He pulled out several from his robes. There were drill-shaped ones, colourful intricate ones and various others. "We're collecting them for an experiment," he added, as I raised my eyebrows.
"Some of them look completely alike, but turn out to be pretty different." He singled out two pale scallops. Looking closer, I could see they were different shades of off-white, with variations in their chinks and markings. Even the scallop shape wasn't alike, not really. Both looked out of place on the slate grey rock we were sat on.
"Sirius, that... was a terrible metaphor."
"Everyone's a critic. Though you're right, it was rather stupid." Sirius grimaced, pocketing the shells. "Though if you think that was bad, you haven't heard James's life is like a box of Every Flavour Beans analogy."
"Do I want to know?"
"I'll let him tell you himself." Sirius hesitated, and added, "Don't be too hard on him, Evans."
"Any analogy based on sweets can't be that bad," I said lightly. Sirius didn't buy it. The intensity of his expression startled me. I had always known he and James were close, but it hadn't occurred to me that there was a genuine brotherhood underlying it. They really were an obligatory double-act.
You did not get one without the other, and as I returned Sirius’s grey-eyed gaze, I realised that this was how it ought to be.
"I hear you, Sirius." My voice was quiet, but hopefully firm. He nodded in reply, the intensity giving away to shared understanding - before turning to bemusement. I noticed that his eyes were re-focusing on something behind me, his brows crinkled in amusement.
Turning back, I was graced with the sight of James shaking his fist at a group of seagulls, while his wand brandished sparks at the daring birds.
"We should probably rescue him," Sirius said, but neither of us made a move to get up.
"I say we wait it out." That drew out another smile. We got to our feet anyway, after a beat, and ran towards James, trying to shoo the seagulls away midst our laughter.
***
Eventually, we settled back in our former camp, and down to a round of savoury pasties that replaced the seagull-ravaged picnic. Sirius conjured a wireless from out of the air - having scarfed down his pasty in two bites - tapped it with his wand, and began fiddling with the controls.
"Don't you need a wand to tune into the WWN?" I asked.
"I'm in the mood for something a little different today." He looked back at me briefly, lips pulled back in a slightly feral grin.
"The WWN doesn’t play much music these days, anyway," James shrugged. "It's mostly news reports and the like."
He was right, of course. My summer nights had been spent listening to the wireless while lounging on the window seat of my room, watching the sun set behind the smoking chimneys that made up our village landscape. There had been the occasional slow jazzy tune by Celestina Warbeck, but mostly it was regretful voices transmitting unfortunate news. Obituaries for fallen wizards (and there were many, these days), updates on attacks and discussions of new ministry policies. The recent decision to allow Aurors free use of Unforgivable curses had been a particularly hot topic.
A minute passed before Sirius' attempts at tuning the wireless were successful. The static gave way to music, but not words; it appeared to be an interlude in a song, or an instrumental epilogue of sorts, full of ringing cymbals and twanging electric guitars.
It stirred something inside me, the way music only could, and even James and Sirius were completely enraptured. It was nice to see that there were some Muggle things that could cross the divide.
The music faded away much too soon, but the opening bars of the next song kicked in, the melody depicted by the beautiful strings of a sitar. Singing followed:
♫ I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood? ♫
The distinctive high notes of the sitar, and the singer himself, were familiar to me. The song brought back images of days spent twirling in the living room with Tuney. Mum and Dad usually sat on the sofa, content to watch us and simply listen as the record spun in the turntable, giving us the music of England… of Merseyside, of Paul and John and Ringo and George.
As quick as it started, the song ended. It was replaced by a piece that wasn’t nearly so catching, and I sighed.
"Wow," said James, looking for the entire world like he'd been Petrified.
Sirius's face was an exact mirror to his. "That was magic."
Enchanted - that's the only way I can describe how they seemed to me in that moment. Not unlike a pair of wide-eyed first years, especially Muggle-born ones. Was that how I had looked, in my early days at Hogwarts?
"That was The Beatles," I said.
"The Beatles," James and Sirius repeated in unison, almost reverently, and I realised the truth in Sirius's words. Magic wasn't just about spells and curses, not really.
***
"So it's a telephone box that's bigger than it looks? And it travels through time?" James stared back at me, showing more interest than I could ever recall him doing in class. I couldn't help but notice the way his glasses slid down his nose as he furrowed his brows in concentrated interest.
"Yes," I confirmed. They had wrung me for every bit of information I could give them on the Beatles (which was little, I had only been 10 when the band broke up), and in the space of twenty minutes, moved quickly on to other Muggle music, Muggle transportation, and Muggle TV.
"Sounds like this TARDIS is just a box outfitted with a massive Time-Turner," James said confidently. "And enhanced with a Concealed Engorgement Charm. It’s a handy sort of thing, though. Still think a motorcycle sounds like the height of cool, Pads?"
We looked over at Sirius, and I realised that we hadn't heard much from him since the discussion about race cars and motorbikes. As it turned out, he'd fallen asleep at some point and James and I hadn't even noticed his gentle snoozing.
"Well, well!" James whispered, taking his wand out. "What an excellent opport- hey!"
"Your own best friend?" I hissed, smacking him lightly. "What are you like, James Potter!"
He shook off my arm and re-brandished his wand. "Relax, Evans, it’s a simple graffiti jinx!"
Sirius's face slowly became engulfed in intricate doodles, but he slept on, completely oblivious.
"All that talent, wasted on silly pranks," I muttered, trying to stifle both my laughter and my admiration for his wand work. It didn't escape me that despite my remark, this self-same wand work had brought down several Death Eaters in last year's attack on Hogsmeade.
"Sirius charmed my Head Boy badge to stick to my forehead for an entire day after it came," James said, his scowl deepening as I laughed at the image of it. "This is just karma."
"He was jealous?"
"Nah, I think it was his way of coping," James joked, but his laugh seemed a bit too forceful.
"That assumes the Head Boy badge changed anything, which seems unlikely since Remus's Prefect badge clearly didn’t."
James nodded. "It's true; my mother says I have issues with authority. I bet you fainted when you heard I was Head Boy, though, didn't you?"
"I didn't faint." I shrugged. I tried to recall my exact reaction upon receiving James's letter, the same one that had invited me to visit. "It took a while for it to sink in, yeah, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing you would joke about, anyway."
My view on the whole matter turned out to be surprisingly philosophical. In a world where magic was real and I was a witch, where I had exchanged scarcely two words with my sister in the past five years, where people like Voldemort and his Death Eaters dominated with their reign of terror - in a world like that, the prospect of James Potter, Head Boy, didn't seem so out of place.
"Being Quidditch Captain, you did have just as much opportunity as the next Prefect to be made Head Boy," I mused.
"... But I'd surely had enough detentions to cancel out any chance of that happening?" James asked, and I couldn’t help but laugh. "The day I got the badge, Pete and Remus came around. We ended up finishing off a bottle of really old - hundreds of years, like - Ogden’s, getting pissed out of our minds, and writing a letter to Dumbledore. Asked him what he was playing at."
"Tell me you didn't."
James grinned ruefully, and I felt something catch in the pit of my stomach.
"What'd he say? Was he won over by your magnificent clavicles?" I added gravely, recalling what Sirius had said earlier that morning. James laughed at that, but didn't respond until after I stared at him intently for a while.
"He said the Head Boy was traditionally a top student with proven leadership quality," he admitted. "Between my twelve OWLs, Quidditch Captainship, and... other stuff, he reckoned I was alright."
It occurred to me then that the "other stuff" had to refer to his role in the Hogsmeade skirmish that had occurred just before Christmas holidays. When the curses had started flying, most people had panicked. Understandably. As prepared as one can try to be, being thrust into open fighting is a shock. (Especially around Christmas time, as silly as that sounds.) I had been the only prefect there, along with Remus - because James had held me up outside Dervish & Banges, trying to talk to me. His friends had lingered in the background, pelting him with snowballs.
The rest of it, in all honesty, is a blur. But I remember that James and Sirius had kept their wits about them, and even Remus and Peter had proven to be more helpful than some of the Prefects and people that soon ran up to join us. I remember James pushing me behind him, his Quidditch-honed reflexes helping me deflect a spell that had come my way faster than I could raise my wand.
"Dumbledore gave you a chance, James. Don't squander it."
James looked up, right into my eyes, and after a long moment, nodded.
I turned away, and the ocean breeze pulled most of my hair out its ponytail and into my face, no doubt obscuring it. James spoke after a while.
"What changed?" His voice was quiet.
I pushed hair away from my face. "What?"
"I've been waiting all day for you to yell at me, tell me off, or just up and leave. But we've actually... conversed today. Like ordinary people."
His sudden sobriety gave way to pure bemusement, and it stayed that way in the long moment before I managed an answer.
"Nothing changed." A mirthless laugh escaped my lips, as I considered the falseness of my words. "Everything changed."
I glanced back at James, and he was watching me intently now. No longer bemused, but not serious either. His head was tilted towards me, favouring the side closest to me. Only now did I realise we were close enough that our bodies nearly brushed. Only now did I notice the scar that lay across his cheek, just beneath the frame of his glasses.
In a flash of memory, I recalled that afternoon by the lake. Right in front of my eyes, Severus had used Dark Magic. Out of provocation, obviously, but I knew that spell was one of his creations, just like the cruel Levicorpus that James had turned against him. Our friendship had been strained for months - years, though I didn't realise it till later - and it was over at that very moment, even before he spat out that unforgivable word.
But I didn't want to think about Severus. Not anymore. My behaviour towards James had always been shaped by my loyalty to Severus, though, and now it was shaped only by the boy sitting in front of me: the boy who fought against Dark Magic, looked at me like I was the sun, and tossed me into ice-cold sea water.
When James Potter leaned forward to kiss me, I didn't push him away.
***
I hadn't spent much time thinking about kissing James, not really. But I suppose I expected him to be overeager, hands and tongue everywhere, mouth pushing too much and too roughly. Not slow and teasing, his Quaffle-calloused hand cradling my face while his lips moved firmly against mine.
It lasted an eternity, or it lasted a few fleeting seconds. Either way, I don't know that I was the one to pull away.
"James." For all the quiet caution in my voice, I was a beat too slow in untangling my fists from his shirt. We were still close enough that when I looked into his eyes, they were all I could see. I'd never taken notice before, never looked past the glasses. They were hazel and almost doe-like.
"Sorry."
But it was okay, really, and I mumbled as much. We shared a smile, before turning to gaze upon the ocean. A companionable silence stretched on, punctuated by the occasional soft mumble from Sirius.
"Would you go out to Hogsmeade with me, Lily?"
I ducked my head so that locks of hair fell into my face; I hoped they hid my smile. "Don't push it, Potter."
***
Sirius woke up sometime later, after James attempted to charm a beard to grow on his face. We ended up having a light supper on the beach, supported yet again by James's reliable house-elf.
A quick look at my watch showed that it was near time - if not past it - to be making my way home. Ahead of us, the sun was beginning its descent into the horizon, a golden ball of fire slowly being engulfed by the endless waters. Its light upon the beach had turned to an amber glow, and the rest of the sky, a beautiful blend of violet.
Despite the late hour, I could not bring myself to leave. I wondered how this had happened for all of a few seconds before I decided I didn't really care.
"This is our last summer, you realise?" Sirius said.
James nodded. "Yeah. Our last before we leave Hogwarts and get thrust into the world, as it were."
"What did the world ever do to deserve a pair like you, I wonder?" I said, mock-concern colouring my voice. But the thought had occurred to me, too. This would be the last carefree summer, where days could be spent on the beach without worrying about employment, mortgages... or Death Eaters attacking your home. Days like the one we just had, where time was a careless thought and everything was covered in sand and ocean breeze - days like these were precious.
While I didn't believe in sitting around and moping for anything, much less the "good old days", this proved to be a strangely sorrowful thought. James, I guess, had the same idea, because he pulled out three bottles of Butterbeer from seemingly thin air, and handed them out.
"It's been a weird year," he said, raising his bottle. Behind him, seagulls flew noisily into the pitching high tide. Everything was covered in a golden sheen. "But it's been a pretty good day."
"I can drink to that," Sirius said. I agreed, and the clinking of glass filled the air.
We talked for a while more, discussing our plans for the rest of the summer, and what our seventh year at Hogwarts might hold for us. It occurred to me that golden beaches and blue waters would seem far away and remote in wet, rainy Scotland, and I tried to capture the scene in my mind as best as I could.
"I wish I'd brought my camera," I said.
"You can always come back, you know," James said. I could tell he was trying to be casual, but it didn't quite work. "With a camera, I mean. We've still got three weeks left before school starts. You're welcome here anytime you want."
"And you had fun with us today, didn't you?" Sirius said.
I sighed, making a big show of contemplating it. "I suppose. Apparating does make it a quick journey," I added, somewhat less melodramatically.
"Think about it, at least," James told me. Merlin, if he'd smiled at me like that when he first asked me out, I would have thought twice before saying no.
"I can do that." His face brightened at that, which I didn't think possible. Behind him, Sirius pretended to gag.
I bent my head again, starting to draw circles in the sand. A bit of white soon appeared against the disturbed golden grains, and upon digging, I found it was part of a cream-coloured scallop shell. It wasn't unlike the two that Sirius had earlier shown to me. My hand clenched around it, and I slid it into the pocket of my shorts.
"Maybe you can tell me about your Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean analogy," I said, looking back up at James, my words tumbling out of my mouth in a rush.
Sirius groaned, but James lit up again. "Well, it goes like - "
"Not now," I interrupted, getting to my feet. Sirius followed in kind. "Tell me at the Three Broomsticks, during the first Hogsmeade visit of next year."
James, who had been in the process of rising, fell onto his knees. "You mean that?"
If I hesitated, it was only for the briefest of moments. "Yes."
I couldn't help but smile, and James returned it, eyeteeth for eyeteeth.
"You do realise what you've just signed up for?" Sirius cut in, raising an eyebrow. But his mouth was curved up in an open grin.
"What can I say?" I shrugged, making my way to the stone stairway that led back to James's house. "It's those magnificent clavicles that did me in."
Shouts of laughter filled the air as I turned back to the stairs and fled up the granite steps. Two pairs of feet pursued my running escape, even as the wind whipped my hair behind me, and I sucked in deep, deep breaths of salty ocean air. Magic was real. The Beatles were broken up. Death Eaters terrorised freely, and I no longer spoke to my sister or my first magical friend. But I was seventeen, and I lived in a world that finally made sense.
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Poll Lily/James Games 2011 - This Bird Has Flown
Author: klose
Team: DOE
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~5200 wordss
Warnings: None!
Prompt:
Summary: "This is our last summer, you realise?" Sirius said. / James nodded. "Yeah. Our last before we leave Hogwarts and get thrust into the world, as it were."
Author's Note: The song quoted within is Norwegian Wood by the Beatles, and the title of this story comes from that song as well. With thanks to heartofoshun for her fantastic beta-reading and encouragement, and also to carterhaugh for excellent typo-spotting and providing some very helpful comments. Extra kudos to them for working on a very tight deadline! All remaining mistakes are my own.
This Bird Has Flown
I was seventeen, with my back against the sand and my eyes squinting towards the mid-summer sun. My would-be boyfriend was on my right, his best friend on my left, and we were quite happy to spend our day watching the clouds pass us by. We hadn't realised just yet how precious our time was - how little of it we had left.
It was summer 1977, and I was stuck in that awkward phase of being a fully qualified witch who still had one year of school left to complete. It hadn't been the best of summers, for all that it was my first without the restrictions of the Trace. Being back home with my parents was wonderful, of course, and there were things about Lancs that I had missed - like the hotpot our local served. Even the Hogwarts house-elves couldn't match it.
Though the good things about being home were very good indeed, they were few. I had no friends at home - not anymore, anyway. The Muggle children I had been friendly with in primary school - at that careless age where friendships were forged and broken much too easily - had grown up, forged new social circles of their own, or had changed too much. Just as I had.
Petunia had moved out the year before, having enrolled in a polytechnic down south. Apparently interning as a secretary for a drill-making company for the summer, she had chosen not to return home. She had been a non-factor for a while, anyway. Just like Severus.
And I was seventeen, crossing the threshold into adulthood and shedding the past like an old bit of skin.
***
"If I didn't know better, Prongs, I'd say you were growing a decent bone in there somewhere." Sirius flipped the Head Boy badge back at James - who caught it easily - and leaned back to lie down on the sand.
"Of course, you would say that like it's a bad thing, Sirius Black," I said, shaking my head. But the ambience made it difficult to say it with any real snippiness. We were on the beach just behind James's house in Cornwall, surrounded by white sand bordered by deep blue waters and sandwiched between rocky outcrops. It was afternoon, and we'd run down the long stone staircase that led from his garden to the beach. Our camp - an elaborate set up of beach towels, a massive umbrella and a picnic basket provided by James's house-elf - was the only sign of life I could see, excepting the native flora and fauna.
"I've always had a decent bone, I'll have you know," James interjected, pulling out a bottle of pumpkin juice from the picnic basket. "Several of them, in fact."
"I suppose your fibula isn't too shabby," Sirius shrugged, accepting a bottle. "And I did hear some Ravenclaw fourth-years raving over your magnificent clavicles on the train back from Hogwarts."
"And his skull is certainly sturdy as a rock," I added, opening my pumpkin juice. "Goodness knows there isn't much in the way of brains in there."
James placed a hand over his heart, making a show of looking quietly affronted - after he finished choking on his drink, that is. "Harsh, Evans. Is that any way to speak to your Head Boy?"
"A perk of being Head Girl, surely," I said, and hid my grin by taking a swig of pumpkin juice.
***
Of course, if you'd told me a year ago that I'd be bantering with James Potter and Sirius Black behind the Potter cottage in Cornwall, I'd have thought you afflicted by a particularly strong Confundus Charm.
But of course, a year ago, my best friend had been Severus Snape.
A year ago, James Potter thought the best way to get my attention was tormenting my best friend. Sirius Black still lived with his blood family. A year ago, both of them seemed too arrogant for me to even bear listening to them, much less carry out a civil conversation.
A year ago, Death Eaters hadn't yet attacked Hogsmeade - or specifically, those of its establishments run by wizards and witches of Muggle descent - on the last Saturday before the start of exams. Many were injured, but no one died, thanks to the group of students that held fort until the Aurors arrived. I was there, along with other Prefects, but the real leader that day turned out to be a boy with messy hair and glasses.
It's funny how much things can change in a year.
***
We attacked the picnic basket soon enough. Our eating was punctuated by the sounds of seagulls being stung by the wards we put up around us to stop them from stealing our food.
I had protested at first - "is it necessary to harm the birds, really?!" - and worn down by my nagging, James and Sirius took the wards off.
Barely a second later, a seagull dived at me, and my sandwich was out of my hand before I could even blink.
"OI!" was the sum total of my response, much to my eternal shame. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed James's arm twitching, as if he intended to hex the seagull - presumably with some misguided intent of defending my honour, because that was the sort of thing he did - but he, like Sirius, was too preoccupied with laughing. I wasn't sure that was a better alternative.
"Still think they're unnecessary?" Sirius asked, after the wards had been replaced - with my help, this time.
Resisting the urge to hex the smug smile off his face, I reached for a new sandwich.
"I guess you have more experience with this," I muttered, but only because they were both staring at me expectantly.
"I'm not sure I heard that correctly, Padfoot," said James. "Did Evans just say we were right?"
Well now, that was pushing it! "I did not say anything of - "
"I think she did, Prongs. We'll need to thank her for that show of confidence, of course."
"Coincidentally, I have an excellent idea of how we might go about that, Padfoot."
As one, they looked at each other, back at me, and pounced. I grabbed at my wand, attempting to hold them back, but I was a tad too slow. James grabbed my arms, Sirius grabbed my feet, and together, they dragged me out to the water, and tossed me in. It was probably a good thing James's nearest neighbour was at least mile away, because I made sure my screams were loud enough to have the Aurors calling - had any been in the vicinity.
"Prats!" I yelled, once my head emerged from the water, along with some other words I shan't repeat here. I lunged at them, pulling them both down to join me.
"Alright, we deserved that," James admitted, once he was done spluttering. Sirius laughed in agreement, shaking water off himself as if he were a dog, and that caused another tussle. We spent the next half-hour thrashing around in the waves, getting completely drenched, and not quite caring that the seagulls were gleefully feasting on the remnants of our picnic.
***
A year earlier, I almost certainly might have hexed them once I had my wand back. But here's the thing: you can't fight Death Eaters together without something changing in your dynamic.
Obviously, you can't just shelve years of bad blood, either. Sixth year had seen me and James forming an uneasy truce, based on that shared experience, but cemented also by the fact that he stopped asking me out persistently. I hadn’t minded that, even - it was more the threats to hex people if I said no that drove me batty. Take that away, and James Potter wasn’t so easy to detest.
Underpinning all that was the fact that for all our differences, we shared common principles. I had come to realise that this, more than anything else, was the only way you could segregate people - and as it turned out, James Potter and I were on the same side.
***
We made our way back to shore much later, stopping to rest at the low-lying rocks forming the border between water and land. Just beyond my feet, the blue expanse of the sea stretched across the horizon before us.
It really was beautiful: the water swept back and forth over sand and cliffs in a gentle rhythm, cascading waves providing the only sound other than our words and laughter, along with the cawing seagulls overhead. The only other beach I’d been was at Blackpool, which was so very different. Lying there languidly, while the clouds passed us by, I found myself saying as much to James and Sirius.
"I'd never been to the beach until I first visited James," Sirius said. "Blacks don't do beaches," he added. "Can you imagine my parents in place like this?"
James snorted at that. "The heir to the illustrious Black family running barefoot in the sand just like us common people? Perish the thought!"
"Where did your family go on holiday then, Sirius?" I'd never been particularly interested in Sirius Black's home life, but I found myself curious. Some seconds passed before he replied, however, being otherwise occupied with flicking sand at James in retaliation for the jibe.
"There was the occasional trip to Bath...," he said, over James's protests against the sand attack. "But mum didn't like leaving the house, much less London. Blacks don't do holidays, either."
"We're going to rectify that, though," James said, brushing sand out of his hair. He exchanged a knowing grin with Sirius, their little tiff completely forgotten. "Sirius and I are going to Portkey around the world, after we graduate from Hogwarts and once the war is over."
The last part of his sentence made me sit up a little. Once the war is over. As I internalised the sentiment, I joked out loud about sparing the world the dual nuisances of James Potter and Sirius Black, but my words lacked bite.
***
James went off to collect the remnants of the picnic and maybe get us more food. He seemed to take with him the air of tentative camaraderie that had characterised the whole afternoon, leaving Sirius and me to sit in silence. Uncomfortable as it was, we'd never had anything to say to each other before. But Sirius, I guess, was more uncomfortable with silence than I was, because he spoke soon enough.
"So how've you been spending your summer, Evans?"
Confusion or some similar expression must have shown on my face, because he laughed that dog-like bark of his and said, "What, I'm not allowed to strike up pleasant conversation?”
"You've never struck me as the sort of person who wasted time on pleasantries, as it were," I pointed out. "Anyway, I can't remember when - if ever - you've had a civil word for me, Black."
He shrugged, not bothering to deny my assertion. "I just wondered how awful your summer must have been, if deigning to accept James's invite seemed like a good idea."
Put like that, it sounded rather sharp. "Give me a moment while I consider if I should deign to answer you," I scoffed, leaning back on my palms.
"I don't mince words, Evans. You spend more time lecturing or shouting at us, or sending us to detention, than you do speaking to us." Sirius said, not even blushing at my comment.
"I've never been to Cornwall," I said simply. "I always heard it was lovely. Curiosity brought me here, I suppose."
Sirius raised his eyebrows, and I conceded: "... But I was ready to Apparate back the moment either of you did or said anything stupid."
For that bit of candidness, I was rewarded with a smile. It was a small thing, just a little quirk of his lips, really. But it was a more genuine, emotive expression than I could ever recall seeing on the face of Sirius Black. It was a rare glimpse past the arrogant eleven-year-old I first met on the Hogwarts Express.
"It's not like I went out of my way to give you both detention, anyway," I continued. "But you can't expect me to watch idly when you jinx Slytherins to turn their skins green and silver!"
"That was just Mulciber, and he was asking for it."
I knew Mulciber, a cruel, brutual boy who had recently graduated from Hogwarts, and could very well believe he had done or said something provocative. Whether or not it warranted the kind of response James and Sirius liked to dole out was a different story, and I said as much to the latter just then.
He only shook his head. "Someone's got to stand to people like that, Evans. You're just validating them when you let them carry on."
"Was that why you left from home?" It sounded harsher than I intended, but his words had left me strangely defensive.
"Yes," he said simply, looking me straight in the eye.
I turned away. I could understand being a world apart from one's family, even if it was under completely different circumstances. "Have you spoken to any of them since?"
"Just Regulus, and only a handful of times, at that."
We both went quiet, Sirius lost in contemplation while I considered his words.
"I haven't spoken to my sister much these past few years, either. She isn't too keen on the whole magic thing." The words were out, and I couldn't take them back, but I wondered if I would come to regret my frankness. Sirius was a hard book to read.
"It's not just conversations that we don't share." I continued. "We look nothing alike. We don't even have the same interests. She's a Muggle, and I'm a witch. Strange how it happens, isn't it? We wouldn't be friends if we weren't family. Not that we're friends now."
"That's family, isn't it? People you're stuck with purely by accident of birth. As far as brothers go, though…" He glanced behind us, at the Potter cottage up in the distance, but didn’t complete the thought.
Another silence stretched between us.
"I reckon people are like seashells, Evans," he said eventually. He pulled out several from his robes. There were drill-shaped ones, colourful intricate ones and various others. "We're collecting them for an experiment," he added, as I raised my eyebrows.
"Some of them look completely alike, but turn out to be pretty different." He singled out two pale scallops. Looking closer, I could see they were different shades of off-white, with variations in their chinks and markings. Even the scallop shape wasn't alike, not really. Both looked out of place on the slate grey rock we were sat on.
"Sirius, that... was a terrible metaphor."
"Everyone's a critic. Though you're right, it was rather stupid." Sirius grimaced, pocketing the shells. "Though if you think that was bad, you haven't heard James's life is like a box of Every Flavour Beans analogy."
"Do I want to know?"
"I'll let him tell you himself." Sirius hesitated, and added, "Don't be too hard on him, Evans."
"Any analogy based on sweets can't be that bad," I said lightly. Sirius didn't buy it. The intensity of his expression startled me. I had always known he and James were close, but it hadn't occurred to me that there was a genuine brotherhood underlying it. They really were an obligatory double-act.
You did not get one without the other, and as I returned Sirius’s grey-eyed gaze, I realised that this was how it ought to be.
"I hear you, Sirius." My voice was quiet, but hopefully firm. He nodded in reply, the intensity giving away to shared understanding - before turning to bemusement. I noticed that his eyes were re-focusing on something behind me, his brows crinkled in amusement.
Turning back, I was graced with the sight of James shaking his fist at a group of seagulls, while his wand brandished sparks at the daring birds.
"We should probably rescue him," Sirius said, but neither of us made a move to get up.
"I say we wait it out." That drew out another smile. We got to our feet anyway, after a beat, and ran towards James, trying to shoo the seagulls away midst our laughter.
***
Eventually, we settled back in our former camp, and down to a round of savoury pasties that replaced the seagull-ravaged picnic. Sirius conjured a wireless from out of the air - having scarfed down his pasty in two bites - tapped it with his wand, and began fiddling with the controls.
"Don't you need a wand to tune into the WWN?" I asked.
"I'm in the mood for something a little different today." He looked back at me briefly, lips pulled back in a slightly feral grin.
"The WWN doesn’t play much music these days, anyway," James shrugged. "It's mostly news reports and the like."
He was right, of course. My summer nights had been spent listening to the wireless while lounging on the window seat of my room, watching the sun set behind the smoking chimneys that made up our village landscape. There had been the occasional slow jazzy tune by Celestina Warbeck, but mostly it was regretful voices transmitting unfortunate news. Obituaries for fallen wizards (and there were many, these days), updates on attacks and discussions of new ministry policies. The recent decision to allow Aurors free use of Unforgivable curses had been a particularly hot topic.
A minute passed before Sirius' attempts at tuning the wireless were successful. The static gave way to music, but not words; it appeared to be an interlude in a song, or an instrumental epilogue of sorts, full of ringing cymbals and twanging electric guitars.
It stirred something inside me, the way music only could, and even James and Sirius were completely enraptured. It was nice to see that there were some Muggle things that could cross the divide.
The music faded away much too soon, but the opening bars of the next song kicked in, the melody depicted by the beautiful strings of a sitar. Singing followed:
♫ I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood? ♫
The distinctive high notes of the sitar, and the singer himself, were familiar to me. The song brought back images of days spent twirling in the living room with Tuney. Mum and Dad usually sat on the sofa, content to watch us and simply listen as the record spun in the turntable, giving us the music of England… of Merseyside, of Paul and John and Ringo and George.
As quick as it started, the song ended. It was replaced by a piece that wasn’t nearly so catching, and I sighed.
"Wow," said James, looking for the entire world like he'd been Petrified.
Sirius's face was an exact mirror to his. "That was magic."
Enchanted - that's the only way I can describe how they seemed to me in that moment. Not unlike a pair of wide-eyed first years, especially Muggle-born ones. Was that how I had looked, in my early days at Hogwarts?
"That was The Beatles," I said.
"The Beatles," James and Sirius repeated in unison, almost reverently, and I realised the truth in Sirius's words. Magic wasn't just about spells and curses, not really.
***
"So it's a telephone box that's bigger than it looks? And it travels through time?" James stared back at me, showing more interest than I could ever recall him doing in class. I couldn't help but notice the way his glasses slid down his nose as he furrowed his brows in concentrated interest.
"Yes," I confirmed. They had wrung me for every bit of information I could give them on the Beatles (which was little, I had only been 10 when the band broke up), and in the space of twenty minutes, moved quickly on to other Muggle music, Muggle transportation, and Muggle TV.
"Sounds like this TARDIS is just a box outfitted with a massive Time-Turner," James said confidently. "And enhanced with a Concealed Engorgement Charm. It’s a handy sort of thing, though. Still think a motorcycle sounds like the height of cool, Pads?"
We looked over at Sirius, and I realised that we hadn't heard much from him since the discussion about race cars and motorbikes. As it turned out, he'd fallen asleep at some point and James and I hadn't even noticed his gentle snoozing.
"Well, well!" James whispered, taking his wand out. "What an excellent opport- hey!"
"Your own best friend?" I hissed, smacking him lightly. "What are you like, James Potter!"
He shook off my arm and re-brandished his wand. "Relax, Evans, it’s a simple graffiti jinx!"
Sirius's face slowly became engulfed in intricate doodles, but he slept on, completely oblivious.
"All that talent, wasted on silly pranks," I muttered, trying to stifle both my laughter and my admiration for his wand work. It didn't escape me that despite my remark, this self-same wand work had brought down several Death Eaters in last year's attack on Hogsmeade.
"Sirius charmed my Head Boy badge to stick to my forehead for an entire day after it came," James said, his scowl deepening as I laughed at the image of it. "This is just karma."
"He was jealous?"
"Nah, I think it was his way of coping," James joked, but his laugh seemed a bit too forceful.
"That assumes the Head Boy badge changed anything, which seems unlikely since Remus's Prefect badge clearly didn’t."
James nodded. "It's true; my mother says I have issues with authority. I bet you fainted when you heard I was Head Boy, though, didn't you?"
"I didn't faint." I shrugged. I tried to recall my exact reaction upon receiving James's letter, the same one that had invited me to visit. "It took a while for it to sink in, yeah, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing you would joke about, anyway."
My view on the whole matter turned out to be surprisingly philosophical. In a world where magic was real and I was a witch, where I had exchanged scarcely two words with my sister in the past five years, where people like Voldemort and his Death Eaters dominated with their reign of terror - in a world like that, the prospect of James Potter, Head Boy, didn't seem so out of place.
"Being Quidditch Captain, you did have just as much opportunity as the next Prefect to be made Head Boy," I mused.
"... But I'd surely had enough detentions to cancel out any chance of that happening?" James asked, and I couldn’t help but laugh. "The day I got the badge, Pete and Remus came around. We ended up finishing off a bottle of really old - hundreds of years, like - Ogden’s, getting pissed out of our minds, and writing a letter to Dumbledore. Asked him what he was playing at."
"Tell me you didn't."
James grinned ruefully, and I felt something catch in the pit of my stomach.
"What'd he say? Was he won over by your magnificent clavicles?" I added gravely, recalling what Sirius had said earlier that morning. James laughed at that, but didn't respond until after I stared at him intently for a while.
"He said the Head Boy was traditionally a top student with proven leadership quality," he admitted. "Between my twelve OWLs, Quidditch Captainship, and... other stuff, he reckoned I was alright."
It occurred to me then that the "other stuff" had to refer to his role in the Hogsmeade skirmish that had occurred just before Christmas holidays. When the curses had started flying, most people had panicked. Understandably. As prepared as one can try to be, being thrust into open fighting is a shock. (Especially around Christmas time, as silly as that sounds.) I had been the only prefect there, along with Remus - because James had held me up outside Dervish & Banges, trying to talk to me. His friends had lingered in the background, pelting him with snowballs.
The rest of it, in all honesty, is a blur. But I remember that James and Sirius had kept their wits about them, and even Remus and Peter had proven to be more helpful than some of the Prefects and people that soon ran up to join us. I remember James pushing me behind him, his Quidditch-honed reflexes helping me deflect a spell that had come my way faster than I could raise my wand.
"Dumbledore gave you a chance, James. Don't squander it."
James looked up, right into my eyes, and after a long moment, nodded.
I turned away, and the ocean breeze pulled most of my hair out its ponytail and into my face, no doubt obscuring it. James spoke after a while.
"What changed?" His voice was quiet.
I pushed hair away from my face. "What?"
"I've been waiting all day for you to yell at me, tell me off, or just up and leave. But we've actually... conversed today. Like ordinary people."
His sudden sobriety gave way to pure bemusement, and it stayed that way in the long moment before I managed an answer.
"Nothing changed." A mirthless laugh escaped my lips, as I considered the falseness of my words. "Everything changed."
I glanced back at James, and he was watching me intently now. No longer bemused, but not serious either. His head was tilted towards me, favouring the side closest to me. Only now did I realise we were close enough that our bodies nearly brushed. Only now did I notice the scar that lay across his cheek, just beneath the frame of his glasses.
In a flash of memory, I recalled that afternoon by the lake. Right in front of my eyes, Severus had used Dark Magic. Out of provocation, obviously, but I knew that spell was one of his creations, just like the cruel Levicorpus that James had turned against him. Our friendship had been strained for months - years, though I didn't realise it till later - and it was over at that very moment, even before he spat out that unforgivable word.
But I didn't want to think about Severus. Not anymore. My behaviour towards James had always been shaped by my loyalty to Severus, though, and now it was shaped only by the boy sitting in front of me: the boy who fought against Dark Magic, looked at me like I was the sun, and tossed me into ice-cold sea water.
When James Potter leaned forward to kiss me, I didn't push him away.
***
I hadn't spent much time thinking about kissing James, not really. But I suppose I expected him to be overeager, hands and tongue everywhere, mouth pushing too much and too roughly. Not slow and teasing, his Quaffle-calloused hand cradling my face while his lips moved firmly against mine.
It lasted an eternity, or it lasted a few fleeting seconds. Either way, I don't know that I was the one to pull away.
"James." For all the quiet caution in my voice, I was a beat too slow in untangling my fists from his shirt. We were still close enough that when I looked into his eyes, they were all I could see. I'd never taken notice before, never looked past the glasses. They were hazel and almost doe-like.
"Sorry."
But it was okay, really, and I mumbled as much. We shared a smile, before turning to gaze upon the ocean. A companionable silence stretched on, punctuated by the occasional soft mumble from Sirius.
"Would you go out to Hogsmeade with me, Lily?"
I ducked my head so that locks of hair fell into my face; I hoped they hid my smile. "Don't push it, Potter."
***
Sirius woke up sometime later, after James attempted to charm a beard to grow on his face. We ended up having a light supper on the beach, supported yet again by James's reliable house-elf.
A quick look at my watch showed that it was near time - if not past it - to be making my way home. Ahead of us, the sun was beginning its descent into the horizon, a golden ball of fire slowly being engulfed by the endless waters. Its light upon the beach had turned to an amber glow, and the rest of the sky, a beautiful blend of violet.
Despite the late hour, I could not bring myself to leave. I wondered how this had happened for all of a few seconds before I decided I didn't really care.
"This is our last summer, you realise?" Sirius said.
James nodded. "Yeah. Our last before we leave Hogwarts and get thrust into the world, as it were."
"What did the world ever do to deserve a pair like you, I wonder?" I said, mock-concern colouring my voice. But the thought had occurred to me, too. This would be the last carefree summer, where days could be spent on the beach without worrying about employment, mortgages... or Death Eaters attacking your home. Days like the one we just had, where time was a careless thought and everything was covered in sand and ocean breeze - days like these were precious.
While I didn't believe in sitting around and moping for anything, much less the "good old days", this proved to be a strangely sorrowful thought. James, I guess, had the same idea, because he pulled out three bottles of Butterbeer from seemingly thin air, and handed them out.
"It's been a weird year," he said, raising his bottle. Behind him, seagulls flew noisily into the pitching high tide. Everything was covered in a golden sheen. "But it's been a pretty good day."
"I can drink to that," Sirius said. I agreed, and the clinking of glass filled the air.
We talked for a while more, discussing our plans for the rest of the summer, and what our seventh year at Hogwarts might hold for us. It occurred to me that golden beaches and blue waters would seem far away and remote in wet, rainy Scotland, and I tried to capture the scene in my mind as best as I could.
"I wish I'd brought my camera," I said.
"You can always come back, you know," James said. I could tell he was trying to be casual, but it didn't quite work. "With a camera, I mean. We've still got three weeks left before school starts. You're welcome here anytime you want."
"And you had fun with us today, didn't you?" Sirius said.
I sighed, making a big show of contemplating it. "I suppose. Apparating does make it a quick journey," I added, somewhat less melodramatically.
"Think about it, at least," James told me. Merlin, if he'd smiled at me like that when he first asked me out, I would have thought twice before saying no.
"I can do that." His face brightened at that, which I didn't think possible. Behind him, Sirius pretended to gag.
I bent my head again, starting to draw circles in the sand. A bit of white soon appeared against the disturbed golden grains, and upon digging, I found it was part of a cream-coloured scallop shell. It wasn't unlike the two that Sirius had earlier shown to me. My hand clenched around it, and I slid it into the pocket of my shorts.
"Maybe you can tell me about your Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean analogy," I said, looking back up at James, my words tumbling out of my mouth in a rush.
Sirius groaned, but James lit up again. "Well, it goes like - "
"Not now," I interrupted, getting to my feet. Sirius followed in kind. "Tell me at the Three Broomsticks, during the first Hogsmeade visit of next year."
James, who had been in the process of rising, fell onto his knees. "You mean that?"
If I hesitated, it was only for the briefest of moments. "Yes."
I couldn't help but smile, and James returned it, eyeteeth for eyeteeth.
"You do realise what you've just signed up for?" Sirius cut in, raising an eyebrow. But his mouth was curved up in an open grin.
"What can I say?" I shrugged, making my way to the stone stairway that led back to James's house. "It's those magnificent clavicles that did me in."
Shouts of laughter filled the air as I turned back to the stairs and fled up the granite steps. Two pairs of feet pursued my running escape, even as the wind whipped my hair behind me, and I sucked in deep, deep breaths of salty ocean air. Magic was real. The Beatles were broken up. Death Eaters terrorised freely, and I no longer spoke to my sister or my first magical friend. But I was seventeen, and I lived in a world that finally made sense.
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