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Be Careful Out There


The next week went by like lightning.

Saturday, Sirius and James came back in the afternoon covered with white paint - the smell of it made Remus ill, so they’d spent a good deal of time scrubbing off in the showers, but Sirius was still exiled to James’s bed that night, curled up about his feet as Snuffles, whimpering all night because his dumb hair smelled like dumb paint and why’d he have to climb on that dumb fence in that dumb class for anyway?

Sunday, James posted a poster on the board in the common room announcing the try-outs for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He underlined and highlighted the fact that they were doing a full reconstruction, so even people who were previously on the team wouldn’t be promised a spot and that everyone was trying out, aside from himself.

Frank Longbottom nudged him at the breakfast table, “Except for me, yeah?” he’d whispered.

James had nodded, “But don’t tell anyone else that. Bloody hell, I’d be mad to get rid of you, Frank.”

On Monday, it was the first Potions class and Slughorn cornered Lily, Remus, and James, and offered an invitation to the next Slug Club brunch the following Saturday. As they walked from the dungeons up to the Great Hall for lunch, James turned to Sirius, “So… how do you reckon we go about getting another Saturday detention to get me out of that bleedin’ brunch?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Sirius had said, grinning as he flung his arm about James’s shoulder.

“Oh gods,” murmured Remus.

They achieved the Saturday detention on Tuesday while Remus and Peter Pettigrew were at Muggle Studies, which Peter had signed up for to replace some of the classes he couldn’t take for the N.E.W.T. years and Remus had decided to continue on in, even without Sirius in the class. Without Remus there to keep Sirius in check, it was easy to earn detention. James and Sirius did it by dismantling the suits of armor on the third floor outside McGonagall’s office and putting on the pieces so that they were all armored up and proceeding to fly broomsticks at one another in the corridor.

What are you doing?!” McGonagall had shouted, coming out of her office after she’d heard Sirius’s shouted followed by the loud crashes of the armor striking each other and James cries when his helmet got stuck turned the wrong way, breaking his nose. “For pity’s sake!” she’d shouted as she had to engorge the helmet to get it off his face. “Episky! Can’t leave you two alone for even a second…” she glared at Sirius.

“Sorry Minnie - we were just jousting is all,” Sirius said. “I mean, I s’pose we could’ve done it without the armor, but I reckon a stabbing by lance would hurt a good deal more unarmored.”

James high-fived Sirius on the way to their afternoon Herbology lesson. He was just glad he didn’t have to go to the damned breakfast.

On Wednesday, Sirius threw himself into his seat in Defense Against the Dark Arts and, as a joke, set Professor Urquart’s chalk to drawing funny caricatures of the crazy-haired nutter on the blackboard until he came downstairs from the office. Professor Urquart stared at the board and shook his head, “Exactly like Mia Black,” he said, shaking his head and looking at Sirius.

“How do you know I did it?!” he asked, his smirk crawling over his face.

Professor Urquart stared at him.

“Could’ve been Remus,” Sirius said, pointing at Remus, who was feeling ill and looking quite miserable, leaning over his textbook. Remus looked up, a confused expression on his face. “Okay so maybe not Remus,” Sirius ceeded. “But it could’ve been James.”

James blinked innocently.

“Well, that’s not very nice, Mr. Black,” Professor Urquart said, “Blaming a good boy like James!”

James grinned.

Lily choked. “Oh Professor, you do not know James Potter if you think he’s good.”

James looked at Lily, his eyes twinkling. “You have no idea just how good I am.” His lips curved suggestively. “But any time you want me to show you… just gimme a shout.” He winked.

Lily stared at him, appalled.

That earned James a second detention - this one for Friday afternoon.

But damn, he thought, was that worth it.

After lunch on Wednesday, Remus had to go to the Shrieking Shack. He was in rather a lot of pain, and took his time through the tunnel under the Whomping Willow, pausing every so often to sit down on the packed dirt floor. He lay crying in the bed upstairs as his muscles tightened and his bones ached and tried to sleep through the excruciating pains that wrecked through his body…

As soon as they were out of classes, the other Marauders grabbed their dinners from the table in the Great Hall, magicking little containers to pack their bits of steak and potatoes into. “Where are you lot going, then?” Frank demanded, looking up at them as they packed their meals.

“None of your business, Longbottom,” Sirius answered.

“Yeah, none of your business,” echoed Peter.

When they went to go, Lily jumped up and followed after them, catching James by the elbow before he could go out the entrance doors - Sirius and Peter were already outside, but James stopped. “Be careful out there,” she commanded him.

James raised an eyebrow, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“Why do you want me to be careful for, Evans? I should think you above all people would want me to get my leg chomped off or something,” he said.

Lily stared up at him and there was a flicker of sadness… of apology in her eyes. “You know I don’t want that.”

“Do I, Evans?” he asked. “Do I know that?”

“Don’t you, Potter?”

He shrugged. “I s’pose you wouldn’t want to deal with the mess.”

“Stop it.”

“Do you care about me, then, Evans?” he asked. There was a funny gleam to his eyes - it wasn’t that smirking grin he usually asked with… he was serious.

A lump rose up in her throat. “James…” He raised his eyebrows at her tone. Lily couldn’t bring herself to say it - she wanted to, she really did, but she just… couldn’t. She stared at him for a long moment then, “Just be careful, alright? Bloody hell.” She felt her cheeks go red and hurriedly turned away.

James watched as Lily walked away, hugging her textbooks to her chest as she went. He waited ‘til she got to the doors of the Great Hall. “Evans?”

She paused and looked back.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Good.”

“Yeah. Good.”

She ducked away into the Great Hall and James sighed and headed out the entrance door. He hurried down the steps, taking them two at a time and ran across the grass to where Sirius and Peter were standing and waiting. “Ferfucksakes, Potter, what were you doing?” Sirius demanded.

“Sorry. Evans stopped me,” James answered.

“What’d she want? A quickie behind the hourglasses?” Sirius held his wand up by James’s neck and squinted, “Lumos.”

“What’re you doing?” James demanded, blinded by the glow of the wand. He batted it away.

“Checking for hickeys,” Sirius answered. “And your neck is unsurprisingly bare, Prongs.”

“For Merlin’s sakes, I was only like two minutes delayed, we didn’t have time for hickeys!”

“There’s always time for hickeys, Prongs,” Sirius answered. “Isn’t that right Pete?”

“Sure,” Peter replied.

Sirius waved his palm at Peter as though his agreement was evidence.

“Sorry - when did Peter become the expert on hickeys?” James demanded.

Peter said, “I’ve given a hickey!”

Sirius smiled and patted Peter’s head, “Aw, Wormy. Darling. Do you even know what a hickey is?”

Peter said, “Sure I do!”

“Do you, though?” James asked, and they teased him about his lack of experience all the way to the Whomping Willow.




Lily couldn’t sleep that night. She sat in the window in her dormroom, staring up at the sky, at the stars. She wondered if Jasper Odair could see the stars? Probably not, she told herself. She wondered if he would ever see them again… and the thought that he may not turned her stomach and she had to stop thinking about Jasper Odair because otherwise she might be driven mad with worry.

Her eyes flickered over the trees in the direction of the Shrieking Shack and she wondered what was going on there, what her brothers were up to… what James was up to… if he was in his stag form, if he was safe, if he was being careful like she’d told him to be.

She wiggled her toes and stared down over her knees at her socks - she was wearing two different ones that didn’t match at all.

Lily Evans couldn’t explain the feeling she had in her chest when she thought about James Potter.

It was like even when he was right there in front of her, she still missed him.

And it hurt to think about him, too, she found, so she looked back at the stars and counted the pinpricks in the ebony sky.

A star blazed across the horizon - falling…

Lily Evans closed her eyes and made a wish.




Jasper Odair would tell you that he never fell asleep on 8 September. He would tell you that he sat awake the night entire, that he stared at the bars of his prison cell, that he counted the motes of dust falling through the rays cast by the flickering torch, trying to bore himself to sleep -- but every time he nearly got there, a vision - a flash of an imagined black cloak or a bony, horrible nightmare of a hand would rouse him and he’d panic, looking about in the dark, expecting the chill of a dementor… That’s what he would tell you. But then he’d tell you what happened next and you’d say the boy is crazy, he must have fallen asleep.

For Jasper would tell you that he heard the door of the dungeons open, that he heard a shuffling gait on the stair… the rap-tap-shuffle-shuffle… rap-tap-shuffle-shuffle… of a being coming closer. He would tell you that in the flickering firelight, in the dim orange glow, a figure… wrapped in old brown robes… stood in the shadows outside his cell.

Jassssssssper…..

The name came from inside him… from outside, too… from the figure, from the dark and the light, from all around him….

I can free you Jasper Odair… but for a cost...

Jasper would tell you how he stood up, how he walked across the cell on shaking knees and stood at the bars, clinging on and squinting into the dark, into the shadow, trying to see the face of the man in the cloaks.

Precious seconds, Jasper… that’s all it will cost you. Precious seconds.

Jasper shook his head.

“I wouldn’t ever barter with the devil,” he said thickly, his voice cracking from disuse.

And the figure was gone.