[fic] Beltane
Title: Beltane
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: James/Lily
Warnings: Sex, at some point. Nothing particularly explicit, unless you count in some dirty talk (which hardly counts as such, I should think.)
Disclaimer: All belongs to J.K. Rowling.
Notes: Sa' demanded some James/Lily. Then she proceeded to prod me until I did write it. I hope this answers your expectations, my dear, despite its lateness and the fact that it turned out to be less a J/L fic than a Marauder one with J/L as the main focus.
Beltane
When Lily slaps James for the fifty-fourth time this year (and turns him down for the seventh this month), they decide that (Chocolate Frogs be damned) it is quite enough. (Also flowers, bouquets thereof, once piled on the High Table with banners crimson and gold-and potted mandrakes, cheapcake, Arithmancy homework, dreamcatchers, and bawling/murmuring/serenading non-Anniversary cards.) They scuttle together by the fireplace, warming April-chilly extremities and bouts, and whisper, This is our Best Prank yet. This will be, and don’t think for a moment it will not, save for a bat-like doubt, one second flopping in Remus’ brain.
Sirius says, This will be our Best yet, and quite honestly thinks he was never so excited since second year, or fifth, or four months ago, possibly.
Peter sneezes, and feels it, everywhere. He says, “Okay then.”
..
After over six years of pillow fights and putting up with each other’s smelly socks every other night, they think they’ve found much enough of a pattern. It applies to everything from Peter’s mom’s mince pies to racing for the best armchairs by the fire in the common room, James’ inability to sleep with the window even one crack open, tricking Flitwick’s dictionnaries with instant-cracking spines, and sneaking in an automatic record player under everybody’s nose, all four of them closing circles, loops without end.
It is Sirius who decides they’ll do the Animagus transformation, with thirteen-years-old exuberance, but it is James who finds the last needed book in the Restricted Section two years later, carrying it back to the dormitory under the Cloak; it is Remus who first thinks up the entire Map concept, right in the middle of King’s Cross station, amidst all the fifth years unboarding the Express (the following two months they excitedly dub the Summer of Owls), but it is Peter who knows Hogwarts best, scurrying between cracks and holes with rodent slimness, working out more secret passages than the other three between them.
There are truths, here, sidled alongside with Remus’ badly behaved rabbits, subtly implied on but never fully alluded to: Sirius’ badly chewed-on lips whenever Regulus is in the vicinity, Peter’s unexpected and developed fear for anything that meows, James’ terrible swallowing down of all stuttering when he catches a glimpse of fair, red hair.
Really quite enough, they think.
..
They’ve got their eyes crisp like autumn apple pie and their mouths sticky with fireworks powder. They’ve got their hands smudged with ink, not all their own, because sometimes in Charms James’ quill will skip from parchment to Remus’ hand without missing a beat, and Remus will snort and bump this hand against Sirius’; Sirius’ll doodle an answer on fingertips, lazily. They’ve got their legs itchy with spring measures, and the hearts of self-animals, loyal and patient and sly and powerful too.
“She’ll give in eventually,” says Peter, “they all do,” but with a tranquil smile.
“’Course we’ll find a way,” says Sirius. “We’re bloody mapmakers,” and falls back on his bed roaring with Padfootian laughter.
“Hallo,” says Remus. “Come and look at this.”
..
They are gone in the morning like pigeons, fluttering laughter on the velvet sides of James’ bed; running, with ankles fast and mocking footsteps, silk ties in pockets and vests knotted around adolescent-thin necks, downstairs, to breakfast in the Great Hall, and buttered toast (this is Thursday). This before James blinks himself awake in the thin line of springy sun through the bedposts.
“Wankers,” James mutters, and then promptly falls back into bed, pillows and blankets and mattress all, to prove his point.
Half an hour later and clothing mostly on, he ties an idle tie, barefoot in front of a cynical mirror-because, well, what, they have free period these first two hours, and he is not about to hasten up his Thursday morning routine for three early-rising traitors. Thus, spirit of conservation kicking in in an unheard-of effort, he pulls on a sock toe after toe, smoothes out his lapels, and is far engaged into the process of pulling out knuts from his robe pockets when an owl runs straight into the window.
“Right. Right,” says James, and opens the window, onto Thursday May.
The owl is the school’s, small and hooty, and James thinks-with thoughtful eyes and lazy wand-it ought to tap-dance.
He reads the letter.
The owl taps, and when James gives him a careless flick with the corner of the letter it takes off, still tapping-James imagines it will teach its brothers and cousins, and by the end of the week they’ll have a music-hall in lieu of an Owlery. He amuses himself with picturing one second how Sirius’ former grand-duke-now Regulus’-would look in glitter and fuchsia mascara; then drops; frowning: the letter.
It says
Hogsmeade Willow. Saturday evening.
Do not speak a word of this to anyone. Trust us; we will know.
BE THERE
& the italics die a furry little death in the crinkled folding corners of the parchment…
Slytherins, James thinks (creases into a ball, swallows: a habit born from McGonagall and Filch, little Map-notes passed from clammy fingertips); Hufflepuffs would not intend and Ravenclaws would not endorse. Stupid, anyhow (the composition). Probably, he thinks, and half-regrets getting rid of it so quickly: Padfoot and Wormtail would have a good laugh over it, down in the common room by the fire, and Moony-clever bugger-would probably be able to identify it from the parchment and ink and penmanship, with poiseful quill. Hah. Slimy serpents.
“Well fuck you, my dears,” he says primly, and closes the window with great deliberation. ‘Tis time for toast, he thinks, and getting a hand round Evans’ waist, today, perhaps; and over porridge maybe he’ll tell Pads about this, if he’s kind. Maybe just.
..
The owl crashes straight into Marlene’s porridge, clearly in wanting of a better wind; sugar-treacle flies everywhere. When the minute, toast-&-milk commotion has died down, Lily feels unearthly grateful for ponytails and their compulsory Muggle elastic bands (two things magic cannot replace, she has learnt: that, and propelling pencils.)-but her fingertips are sticky and marmalade-orange; when she suckles on them, they are sweet-tart-sour-sweet, and James Potter is Gaping at her.
“’s for you,” mutters Marlene, stealing her bowl, “Lily! Right.” Potter passes. Lily! she thinks. Right.
“My porridge.”
“Your letter.”
Lily-right (lion-flower, her mother said) picks up the treacle/porridge/missive (oh, no, please no, mum) with a moue of disgust (I think I’ll-I think I’ll go). It has exactly one crest, two envelopes, three folds, four creases, and a little splatter of treacle-stains like sugar’d freckles.
Hogsmeade Willow. Saturday evening.
you are cordially invited to
a cup of tea
Come
Right. Right, thinks Lily, and glares over at where four boys with scabbed elbows and mouths too wide sit, fighting each other with coffee paw-prints and milk moustaches, bread-crumbs laughter. The note is too clever by half to be Potter’s alone; it’s Remus’ slyness in the cup of tea, Black’s bluntness in the italics, dark and too mischievous to care for any worthwhile ending message. The owl; the owl is Potter’s, or Pettigrew’s.
“Tea parties,” Marlene says, peering over her shoulder, “excellent. Can I come?”
“I won’t go,” says Lily, but folds the note in two, carefully, dog-earing the corner, cautiously, and slips it close in her robe’s inner pocket, to fiddle with and finger at, close to flesh and blood and heart.
..
“’Course; look, keeping it.”
“Zonko’s, right? the black ones with the little silver eyes and bones?”
“S’pose so. Whassup. Prongs? Stuck in the library, finishing the mushroom essay for Sluggy; we have his blessing, shut up. Here goes-“
“Right then. This way-“
“Did you hear a sound? I think I heard a sound. Think I should go rat and see?”
“Might as well hurry this up-whatow! Padfoot, that was my shin!”
“Did you speak, Moony? How strange-I can’t see you!”
“Har-de-dar. Get stuffed, Black.”
“Any-“
“Shut up, you two, I hear someone coming. Diffindo. Who’s got the Map?”
..
There is magic in May, says the book they nick from the library, huddled all three together behind Peter’s curtains, when James snores: magic, fertility, seed, growth, renewal, reproduction, spring, death, evening, birth. It is magic at its most primal and instinctive, the one that crackles between open palms and curled fingers, the high of a leg, the small of a back; magic that is so, so old it is old enough to be denied, when May comes. They read, one head each on Remus’ shoulders, so they make as little noise as three teenage boys possibly can: maybe the centaurs and faeriefolk talk, in the forests, when the planets are exceptionally bright and the first nights sweeten and warm, and smell of copper, but the humans-with fickle mind and fickle thought-they have forgotten this, if not in old legends and myths.
They whisper plans and tricks and maps, shape May-magic with ink-smudged fingers, in the tickle of Peter’s hair on Remus’ nose as he dozes off, the cusp of Sirius’ hand about Remus’ knee, mouth twitching, and all the tight spaces between James’ uneven snores.
..
There are lights in the branches, by Saturday evening: James follows the path, a little astounded, for the glows are not green but gold, and static, barely fluttering, hardly slithering. On the Hogsmeade Willow they are fewer, and softer too; but a great fire crackles between the curtains of branches, just a little too much on this side of red to be only wood-&-spark. Three figures-with arms and legs alright, and faces grinning-sprawl up high into the branches, lounging about inelegantly, like graceless birds; one is laughing outright, but his mouth does, only. James does not see his eyes behind the black mask.
Another has a flute, which he blows in, slowly, carefully, as though each note was to be weighed and considered, light and high and low, cautiously. It seems to go with the laughter, the crooked wrists and ankles, the angles fading into black fabric and dark bark.
James knows them, he does, knows the poises of their necks and the stiffness in their shoulders, but the thought has not quite yet formed itself clearly in his head that the path creaks again, and swallows up another silhouette, with stumbling steps and a flaming mane of red. (He knows her, too. He thinks, and blinks fuzzily, past the soft glowing lights, the crackle of the fire, and the slow, graceful notes dropping from the branches-)
“Po-“
“Tt,” says the third man, the one without flute not laughter, and the other two fall silent. “You’re thinking, now. Stop it, please.” His voice is so familiar it destroys any possible recognition, and his mouth curls in what is almost a sneer and barely a smirk. Lily-Lily. It’s Lily.-pushes past this, apparently, and asks,
“You-you, wait, you sent the note.”
“We did.” All three voices are low and gentle, strangely tender. And James understands, vaguely, the thought reaching him but barely, as though through water, that there is stronger magic than theirs at work, here, rippling through them all, weaving them together in rich bursts of affection.
It is a strange sort of recognition, one he finds in the hands easing themselves on the branches, the brief chuckles from above, his own rapidly blinking eyes, and the soft of Lily’s mouth, just in reach, just there. He breathes in May, something small and wild and a little afraid that feels a lot like joy.
The laughingman lets out another puff of a smile, grips branch after branch with careless hands, and swings himself down on the grass next to James; he is exactly the same height as him, and his fingers are long and pale as they reach out for his wrists, mouth moving close to his ear to murmur-
“You are a fucking pillock, James Potter.”
Sirius, James thinks, and wants to laugh and bonk him over the head.
But long hands are hard where they curl around his wrist, where they settle at the small of his back; Sirius’ laughter is a little too harsh on the nape of his neck, and James shudders, but does not move. He can see his eyes now, low-hooded, very grey, catching on the silver lines of the harsh-nosed mask: Sirius smells and moves and laughs like Padfoot, easily, carelessly, a great dog in a boy’s body.
“Don’t you know, Prongs,” he hisses-and his mouth is hot but dry, catching on James’ hair and the shell of his ear-“how bloody sick we are of your mooning over Evans? It’s disgusting, the way you look at her, the way you fucking fall apart everytime she talks because you don’t have the balls to get up and kiss the fucking girl. You bloody pansy. Don’t you think I could’ve jumped her a hundred times already if I’d so much as wanted to?”
James’ blood boils and sheers at that, and he snarls out-jerking back-with every intention of beating the impudent fuck into the ground-until Sirius’ grips snares around his arms, sticking, and so searing hot now that all the blood in James’ body pools right down.
“Don’t you ever think, James?” There is a low chuckle in Sirius’ throat, coating the words thickly, raspily, and, with a start, James somehow understands, falls into the rules of the game that is played, curls in his back against Sirius’ chest. “Y’wanker,” Sirius laughs, “look at her. We got her brought up here for you. You just fucking look at her.”
And when he does, he sees that the third boy has climbed down in silence, and in silence has crept up behind Lily; now he is wrapping her hair together, over her shoulder, fingers threading with the red; now, with hands at her hips, he is murmuring in her ear, and the smirking curl of his lips reminds James of dirty-limericks contests, in the early mornings of Griffindor Tower, which Remus always won-with the unabashed hold of the neck and the amused twitch of the lips.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it,” Sirius says, voice rough- “the way the move together, the way they are-plastered together, like you and me, yeah? ‘s so hot here, so many things, here. Prongs, James, c’mon. Go on,” and trails off, and James dares hardly breathe. Remus’ hands are furled, like-almost-like pale-beige, feathery birds, around Lily’s neck, but he is looking straight, straight at him, and, “Fuck, yeah,” Sirius, breathless, says: “Fucking gorgeous, fuck.”
And: “Look at her, y’nance, just bloody look at her. You’ve been wanting her for the last three years, been whining to us how beautiful and stunning and perfect she is, she’s right here. She’s right fucking here, Prongs, and all you have to do is reach out and you’ll touch her-and she’s so close to the fire, her skin’ll be hot and her hair and her neck and her breasts and belly and thighs, too. And, look, see how she’s looking at you, yeah? see how fucking beautiful she is when she wants you, Prongs, because every-single-word Remus’s saying to her is just making her skin on fire-like this-"
And passes his thumbs across the tender-inner skin of James’ forearms, and the touch is searing, really fucking burning, lighting up every nerve extremity in his body, making him gasp and pant and writhe in Sirius’ grip.
“Fuck,” he mutters, with feeling, because Sirius is hard too, behind him, against his hip, and the breath of his nape is hot and rumbling in a laugh, “Don’t mind me, Prongs, don’t you fucking mind me, I’ve got my own tonight. Look at Evans, Lily, look at her, she’s all yours tonight, we’re giving her all to you tonight,” and his voice gentles and softens, now. “But then you have to give yourself to her, too.”
..
Potter is gaping, mouth open, eyes open, collar too; blinking, quickly, fussily, when Black-from behind-slides button from hole and button from hole, all the way down. Remus digs his fingers into her hips, says: “Like him like this, Lily?”
(Down her robe pocket, there is a paper boat, which Marlene folded into shape, earlier in the morning, in Advanced Potions: Lily remembers each crease of the parchment, each pliable fold the way Marlene’s hands moved with stunning stealth. Parchment-a wrinkled piece straying into sleeves, forgotten, only to fall out upon reaching out for the dried lizard-tails-and now shaped into form, between fussing, ink-stained hands. And now in her pocket.)
“Like him like this, Lily?” Remus hisses, looking straight out, over her shoulder and James’. His hands gentle, soothing thumbs over hipbones, tracing the sharp and the dip and the small, strangely in tune with the slow, soft flute-notes that fall from the branches, wingless. “Sirius’s breaking him out, you know, spreading him in, so he won’t be a stupid cuckoo ever again-tonight. He’s managing rather well, I’d wager.
“D’you know, we listen? every night-every right-bloody night, and twice sometimes, he’s loud enough, always forgetting his Silencing spells, always thinking of you, Lily, always. He says your name, always, you know, when he jerks off-pardon me-masturbates-in bed, every night, so loud we can hear him, all the time.” He nips, gently, at the junction between neck and shoulder, where her hair strays in short little strands of red, and a drawn-out shudder creeps up along her spine, like a little animal with cool-tipped paws. “Every night, Lily, saying your name over and over, like a prayer.”
She remembers that, in January, Alice coaxed Frank Longbottom into ceding them part of his stash, and she and Lily and Marlene and two Hufflepuff girls trooped, freezing, in the dip of the roof, fingers catching on saliva-slick white paper, feeling euphoric, foggy, not nearly close enough to seventeen; remembers the sweet smoke curling and furling in her mouth, the blinking tingle at her temples. This, this feels the same, Remus’ words coiling on her tongue, in her throat, Remus’ fingers curling about her wrists to tug at her cufflinks. They slide apart with a quiet click.
The flute notes are, she thinks, raining; the boy above-Pettigrew, Pettigrew-laughs between them, lightly, carelessly, playing on, urging on, like this is something to lead to, like this will mean something, in the end. And maybe, she thinks, maybe it will, because Potter’s eyes are entirely too wide and Black’s words must be entirely too dirty and for the first bloody time she wants to-“Take off his glasses?” Remus suggests, in a breath, against her ear, and then she does.
“Oh,” Potter says, gaping at her, with his stupid eyes and his stupid face and his stupid hair, all here, all over the place. There are fingers in her own hair now, only not Remus’, and she agrees,
“Oh.”
“Uh-oh,” Black laughs, a short throaty bark of a laugh, and he has sidled up with Remus now, against the trunk of the willow, Pettigrew above them, grinning around the mouth of his flute. “Uh-fucking-oh, mate, get on with it,” and Potter does, breathlessly so. Little buggers, Lily thinks, eyes only half-closed, because Potter’s nose and forehead are brushing her own, and then: Oh, oh. Git, you, then.
Potter’s hands are at her hips, all heat, all one-two-five-ten fingers like as many searing points, and at some point she had clutched the tails of his shirt, apparently; she frowns down at her hands, because, if not, she might be staring at his collarbone, protruding cleanly, veiled with a thin sheen of sweat, and higher up, the defined lines of neck and chin and jaw.
Potter’s fingers dig down on her waist.
“Care,” Remus murmurs, already distant, hovering at the very corners of her eye: she sees his smile repeated on Black’s grinning mouth. “Take care, James.”
Potter’s breath hitches, and, with a gasp, he kisses her again-with his hair tickling her cheek, and his shoulders tensing, grounding, underneath her spider-shy fingers. Oh, oh, Lily thinks, blinking against his neck, and breathes out a shaky sigh when his hand tingles at the crack of her robes.
“Touch him,” Remus says, with that quiet little tilt at the end of the word that makes it almost a question.
“Touch her,” says Black, roughly, the edges of his grin sharp and cutting in his voice.
The flute overhead wraps the coda into itself, lazily.
So help them, they do.
When Potter’s hands cup her breasts, and Potter’s mouth leave red marks on her throat (red and angry and she does not care), the flute sounds high and clear, joyous, triumphant, and the colour-fine silhouettes at the corners of their eyes laugh, tangle, laugh again, wildly, sharing secrets-but when Lily’s hands tug at his waistband, struggling with buttons, wiping clothes from skin like water, like magic, the flute is sweet, and low, and the figures (dark now, and blurry) murmur encouragements, slow coaxing for heat and skin and flesh-and when their arms and legs are wrapped so tight together the fire’s core might just be right there between them, instead of several feet away, the flute fades on a last dying note, and the figure leave like strangers, with quicksand footsteps, until there are no more sounds around them but those of the night.
There is a moment, between slick slide and thrust, between blinking, between breathing, when everything is still, more acute, cutting cleanly through silence: the fire crackles and sizzles, red and gold and high, and the willow’s tumbling branches rustle with the passage of a cool, night breeze; their breaths are harsh and loud in their ears, their mouths wet, their eyes wide open, and startlingly clear.
It passes, then, and Potter is coming, in a rush, between her thighs, with a soft whimper, in the soft of her neck, between her breasts, against her mouth and shoulder and belly, everywhere; Lily threads her fingers through his stupid, stupid hair, and lets herself shudder. They fall quickly, quietly, and what little of their clothes they have disposed of pools around them like spring leaves.
“I love you,” whispers James, against her ear.
..
They stumble into the Great Hall at five odd in the morning, and laugh so hard at the sudden flurry and scuttle of house elves that they crash the Hufflepuff table and toss breakfast at each other until their eyelashes are coffee-dark and their mouths peppered with toast-crumbs. James kisses them off one by one, promptly licks across Lily’s jaw, and proceeds to doze off in the crook of her neck.
“I’ll sleep, I think,” she says, “all day. Off, Potter, your nose is wet.”
And afterwards, when they stand behind the Fat Lady’s portrait, sleep licking at their ankles:
“I don’t put out on first dates, you know.”
“The second, then,” James says, with the sated feel of coffee and porridge settled deep in his gut. “Or third.”
“Perhaps,” says Lily agreeably, and then, as an afterthought: “I still want to slap you.”
“By all means, Evans. Hogsmeade week after next, then?”
“Right. And Charms tomorrow morning.”
“Right,” James says, grinning, and feels warm.
They are all three awake, when he steps in the dorm, shucking off the Cloak with footsteps slow and fingers slower. Peter is sprawled over his bed, nibbling on a Chocolate Frog leg, reading the Quidditch gazette; Sirius and Remus sit crosslegged on the windowsill, with pillows across their denim laps and heads bent low together: they have undergone a severe case of Potterhair during the night, so it appears. Their eyes are puppy-wet and their grins bashful, hesitant, a little, when they look up, at James, standing in the doorway with the Cloak slipping from his fingers. It smells like blue morning, here, and the sweetness of the clove between Sirius’ fingers.
But indeed this was a Prank Well Done, he thinks, and then makes them wait just a little while longer, just because.
Then: “Nice fluting skills, Wormtail,” he says, and Remus’ sudden little huff of uncontrolled laughter is something he has only ever heard twice before, ever.
“Ta, Prongs,” says Peter, grandly, and Srius chucks a pillow at James’ head.
..
End Notes: I’m falling in love with those boys. I won’t be writing a crossover, Sa’. I won’t.