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An unthinkable thing: Smoke, debris, bright lights and loud shouts, screaming, crying, chaos tears calm to bits, fear and spells flying rend a fall day into two, three, a hundred, a thousand, an unfathomable number number of peaces. One minute, nothing; next minute, everything; several minutes after that, nothing again.
An attack on Hogsmeade on the weekend before Halloween, when the village is at its busiest: students, teachers, families come to see the decorations and the parade, little kids running around dressed as dinosaurs, as Aurors, as princesses and dragons, as the Green Lantern, complete with glowing hands charmed by a parent. It’s unseasonably bright, the end of October is almost never this blue-skied and sunshined, and James has half a mind to believe that Lily did it herself, channeled that special knack of hers for getting the world around her to be brighter, more colorful, better and changed the weather. (They covered Weather Charms in Flitwick’s class last year, and Flitwick had made it clear that they can’t alter the whole sky, they only apply to a limited circumscribed area, but if anyone could bypass the normal rules of magic and make new ones, it is Lily Evans.)
She’s smiling at him—smiling isn’t the right word, she’s beaming, she’s putting the sun to shame with the way she’s glowing, she’s outdoing everyone and everything else in the vicinity without even trying—across the table, leaning forward on her elbows and laughing as he tells a story about Peter and some poison ivy last year. He’s just trying to get from one sentence to the next without losing his train of thought, something he perpetually struggles with when Lily has fixed her attention on him. Everything about her is deeply distracting to him, but nothing more so than the way her eyes look when she’s happy: green unlike anything he’s ever seen, twinkling in a way he only thought happened in clichés. He can’t remember where the story started and he can’t really remember where it’s going, either, but he’s trusting himself to find the end along the way because he’s pretty sure it’s funny and will keep her laughing, and all he knows is that he wants to see her laugh forever.
“Everyone’s staring at us,” she says when he pauses for a drink. “Did you notice that?”
“No,” James says, truthfully, “I’ve been a little distracted.”
“Have you?” She asks, teasing. She nudges his foot with hers under the table, and he taps her back, drums his fingers on the table. “Something in particular caught your eye?”
“Someone in particular,” he says. “She looks beautiful today, by the way. That’s probably why they’re staring.”
“I think they’re staring at you,” she says, “you look really fit in this shirt.” She reaches across the table and tugs on his sleeve and her fingers brush the skin of his forearm and it’s like being burned but in the most pleasant way.
“I think they’re jealous,” James says, leaning closer.
“Of what?” Lily asks, smile playing at her lips behind her mug, because she knows exactly why they’re jealous.
“Of the fact that we’re having a better time than everyone else here,” James says, matter-of-factly.
“As much as I want to tease you and tell you that you’re full of yourself for such a presumption, I think it’s entirely true,” Lily says, setting her mug down. She tucks some hair behind her ears and it falls back in her face immediately the way it always does and it charms James the way it always does, just as much as the slight blush flooding her face, at the sudden shyness when she gets too close to feelings but tries anyway, tries for him, like she said she’s doing. “I am having a really good time,” she whispers, holding his gaze. “They must be jealous of it.”
The smile that spreads across James’ face is enough to make the muscles of his cheek sore, and the way he’s fighting the urge to lean across the table and take her by the face and kiss her here, now, in the Three Broomsticks on the weekend before Halloween—really give everyone a reason to be jealous, look at him, James Potter, on a date with the loveliest girl in school, loveliest girl in the world—is enough to make his arms shake. As far as anyone else is concerned, this isn’t a date, it’s just the Head Boy and Head Girl having a drink together in Hogsmeade because they’re friends, and friends are allowed to have drinks together without it being a date. He’s not going to kiss her yet, not when everyone is watching them, not when they haven’t figured out what they are yet, not when it’s still too soon.
He’s going to take her hand, though, because her fingers have been steadily inching closer to his, close enough to touch, and he’s never wanted to do anything more (except maybe-perhaps-definitely kiss her). He lays his hand on top of hers and the lights in the pub flare brighter, enough for everyone to notice and look around.
The world turns on its head.
The windows shatter and glass and wood chips go flying and James goes flying, too, acts on instinct and tackles Lily to the ground just as a jet of green light strikes the wall where her head was half a second before. They hit the ground in a pile of limbs and she tries to raise her head but James puts a hand on it, keeps her down behind the overturned table as more lights of every color fill the air.
“Stay down!” He shouts over the shouting, the screaming, the coughing.
He squints through the smoke but can’t see what’s happening, can only tell that it’s absolute madness in the Three Broomsticks as people cry out for their friends, cry for help, cry in pain.
“What the f— Lily!”
She’s wriggled out from under him and is crawling for the door, ducking behind furniture and reassuring people as she goes, scrambling as quickly as she can and slipping on spilled Butterbeer and broken glass.
“Lily!” James shouts. “Lily, don’t—Evans! Get back here!”
She’s not going to, though, because that is not Lily Evans. Lily Evans is not going to sit by when there’s trouble; if she’s not the one making it, then she’s rushing headlong into it. She has no self-preservation instinct, and that’s coming from him and his perpetual savior complex, according to Remus. James doesn’t think before he follows her.
If it was madness inside, then it is hellish outside. The Three Broomsticks is not the only building that has been damaged—smoke is pouring from the front of Scrivenshaft’s and James can make out flames inside, every window on High Street has been shattered, people are screaming and running and falling and bleeding but James is good in a crisis, always has been, he’s good at turning it all off and focusing on what matters, and right now that is finding Lily. He knows she can hold her own—if there’s one thing Lily Evans does not need, it is a knight in shining armor—but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to breathe if he doesn’t find her.
She’s disappeared, though, run into the rushing crowd, so James takes a deep breath and plunges into the fray. He’s buffeted by people running in every direction while he pushes against the tide, towards the center of the chaos. They seem to have gone for Know Thy Shelf, the little bookshop where he and Lily had spent an hour browsing used books just before they’d headed to the Three Broomsticks. Know Thy Shelf is owned by an elderly couple, Norman and Clare, their retirement project. Clare, from Galway, is a Muggle.
It’s Lily’s favorite place in Hogsmeade, and it’s been attacked. If there is a place she’ll be, it’s inside the inferno, looking for Norman and Clare and the sleepy old shop dog, Jane. He runs faster, shoulders his way through the throng and shoves his sleeves up his elbows again, takes his wand from his back pocket and readies himself for whatever comes his way. He throws up Shield Charms in every direction, trying to protect as many people as possible, and Stuns a masked someone. A Stinging Hex hits his shin but he ignores it, keeps running, keeps pushing, keeps firing off spells at attackers.
“Get inside!” He shouts at a group of students, huddling behind a dumpster. “That’s the back entrance to Dervish and Banges—go!”
He doesn’t pause to see if they listen, can only hope they do as he keeps running towards Know Thy Shelf, towards Lily.
He finds himself caught in a duel with two people in masks. Curses coming left and right, purple and red and gold, but if they thought he would be an easy mark because he was alone, they were wrong. Not for nothing is James Potter the second-best dueler in their year, only beaten by one Lily Evans. He has to push that thought out of his mind, though, has to focus on dispatching these two so that he can find her. There is a task in front of him that he has to see through, right now, so he can continue on the greater task: Get Lily.
The crowd splits around the three of them, people running away from this new battle that’s sprung up in the middle of the mad crush. James is drenched in sweat and surrounded by smoke, the sky no longer seems blue, but he keeps his attackers in sight, keeps his head and wits about him even if his heart is still racing down the street, thundering in his ears. One of their hoods slips off, and if he weren’t so good at dueling, James would get hit by the other’s curse out of mere shock.
Severus Snape is glaring at him, teeth bared in the ugliest and purest expression of contempt James has ever seen. So it’s not because he looked like an easy mark: It is personal.
Fine, then it’s personal.
James throws all his weight behind a Stunning Spell, but Snape is too quick. He dodges the attack with an awkward lunge and throws a curse at James in the same movement. James rolls easily and pops back up just quick enough to sidestep a white light that comes so close to his cheek he can feel the searing heat of it.
“We’ve got your little Mudblood, Potter!” Shouts the other. “You can have her back when I’m done with her!”
Mulciber; doubly personal. He’s had it out for Lily since the previous year, and redoubled his efforts this term in retaliation for her getting him expelled—almost getting him expelled, James corrects himself, getting him expelled except that he has a powerful father who appealed, called Lily a liar, said that boys will be boys and that you can’t trust girls like her to tell the truth, they’ll say anything to ruin a promising young man’s reputation. Blinded as much by rage as by smoke, James throws a Stunning Spell in Mulciber’s direction, but he goes wide and has to hear Mulciber’s taunting laugh.
Mulciber is lying; if they had Lily, he’d be doing something to her.
If James doesn’t get it together, he won’t be able to find her.
He slows his breathing, shakes his head, dodges another curse and then fires one at Snape’s legs from the ground. His aim is true this time, Snape’s wand goes flying out of his hand and disappears, and James takes advantage of Mulciber’s momentary distraction to Stun him. Part of him longs to taunt Snape, to rub salt in the wound of losing this duel, but it’s not a part he’s going to heed at this moment, not when Lily is still somewhere-that-is-not-here. He takes off again, sprints past the last few shops until he comes to a skidding stop in front of Know Thy Shelf, almost barreling right into someone.
“Potter!”
“Professor—”
“Go!” Professor McGonagall shouts.
“No!” James shouts back, struggling to make himself heard.
“Don’t make me tell you again!”
“Lily’s in there, I know she is—”
“Go! You’re Head Boy, your job is to lead the students!”
“Professor!”
“GO!”
Professor McGonagall shoves him in the other direction and James is swept up by the crowd, irate, so close to finding Lily only to be pushed away. He wants to run back, wants to tell Professor McGonagall to shove it, but there’s a voice in his head that he’d know anywhere reminding him that he’s Head Boy, that she doesn’t need a knight in shining armor, that she’s got this handled and he needs to do his job and be a leader. He hates it when she’s right, except no he doesn’t, but he hates that she’s right about this.
The chaos is dying down, now, the attack over as quickly as it began, Death Eaters Disapparated and only panicked civilians left. James pauses at a small crowd of soot-stained third-years huddled outside of Honeydukes.
“Is anyone hurt?” He asks.
“Maria,” stutters one of them, “it’s her leg.”
James kneels down to look at Maria’s leg, which is clearly broken. She’s clutching it above the knee, ashen-faced and trembling, white with pain and shock, he’s sure. James conjures a splint and braces her, apologizing when she sobs in pain, and then looks up at her friends.
“Can you help her walk back up to school? Madam Pomfrey will take care of her.”
He moves on to the next group, and the one after that, and the one after that, directing students back towards the castle until there is a steady stream of them stumbling up the path. He pokes his head in stores and gives the all clear to those sheltering inside, keeps his eye out for a flash of red hair, for the sound of that voice, anything.
There’s nothing.
When he’s checked everywhere and everyone has headed back up to the castle, James follows slowly, keeps looking back at where the street has been barricaded by Aurors and DMLE officers. They won’t let him back, he knows; the only thing he can do now is wait.
“Prongs!”
James hasn’t even crossed the threshold to the castle when Sirius crashes into him hard enough to knock him into the side of the door, shortly followed by Peter and Remus. They’re all looking worse for wear, covered in ashes and dirt, but besides a few bruises and scrapes, they seem unharmed.
“Lily—“ James manages.
“We thought she was with you!” Sirius says, looking horrified.
“We got separated,” James says, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “I think she went to Know Thy Shelf—“
“That’s where they attacked,” Remus says, softly.
“Who was it?” Peter asks. “Who was behind it?”
“Are you thick, Wormy?” Sirius snaps. “Obviously it was the Death Eaters—”
“I saw Snape and Mulciber,” James says, remembering. “We dueled.”
“Snape and Mulciber?” Remus asks. “Are you sure?”
“No one will believe me, but I’m sure,” James says. “But listen, I couldn’t find her in the village—”
“We haven’t seen her, but if she got back before us then she’ll be in the Great Hall,” says Sirius. “They’re setting up triage there with the Emergency Mediwizards, come on.”
They’ve only made it halfway across the Entrance Hall when there’s a commotion at the door.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, get out of my way, I’m looking for someone—JAMES!”
He turns in time to catch her, the way he will always do. He only has a second to register her flying at him before she’s in his arms and he’s holding her close, hand tangling in her hair and the other arm wrapping around her middle so tight he’s worried it will hurt her, except she’s squeezing him just as hard, equally desperate to make sure he’s real, unharmed, all in one piece.
“Are you hurt?” He asks, pulling away just enough to take her by the face and get a better look at her.
“No,” she says, shaking her head in his hands, her own clutching his shirt at his waist. “No, I’m not—”
“Yes you are,” James says, shaking his head, too, “your face—”
“It’s nothing—”
“Have you seen yourself?”
There’s a bruise blossoming across her right cheekbone and she’s bleeding at her hairline; she has a shiny red patch on her arm and bubbling skin where she was burned either by flames or a spell, and a dark purple welt on her ankle, certainly from a rope. Like the rest of them, she’s covered in ashes, turning her skin grey except for where tears have cut little rivulets through it, and her hair is a tangled mess, but she’s upright and that’s probably why she’s trying to tell him she’s not hurt.
“Calm down,” she whispers, squeezing his waist. “I’m fine.”
“I was so scared,” he says, heart still pounding. “I was so— I thought—”
He cannot stop himself; his hands slip from her cheeks to the back of her head and she tips her head back into them, stretches up on her tip toes to meet him halfway, hands tight on his waist as he kisses her like he has imagined kissing her a hundred times, fierce and full of meaning. She kisses him back, throws her arms around his neck and drags him closer to her height just as he wraps his own arms around her torso and pulls her up to his, up, up, almost off the ground. They pause only long enough to catch a breath, and then they come back together, and he is as desperate as he’s ever been to feel her, to taste her, to know that she is okay.
“People are staring,” she whispers, resting her forehead against his once they break apart again.
“They’re jealous,” James says, echoing himself from earlier. “I’m sorry,” he says, a moment later, “I didn’t mean to kiss you like that, I know we were trying to keep things quiet and now everyone’s staring—”
“Let them stare,” Lily says, pulling him close once more, hands in his hair, breath with his breath, lips on his lips.