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Somebody’s


James Potter had been on the way to dinner when he’d heard the voice.

He’d been running along down the stairs, taking them two at a time, looking forward to roast and potatoes in the Great Hall, having worked up an appetite up in the astronomy tower with Maryrose - his lips were still swollen from all the snogging, his robes off kilter and his tie loose about his neck. “‘Ello, Chang,” he called, nodding to a fifth year Ravenclaw boy who glared as he tromped past, a disapproving glance at his wrinkled robes.

“‘Lo Potter,” Chang muttered, watching as the untucked Potter went on by, running down the stairs ahead of him.

James had nearly made it to dinner when he heard it.

Jaaaaaames…

Jaaaaames Potter...

He’d suddenly crouched there on the stairs, clutching his head for how terrible the voice sounded - like a sudden onset of a migraine, it seemed to split his brains right open. Before, he’d only ever had it happen as a dream, and suddenly he understood the madness in Peter and Remus’s eyes when they’d described hearing it in their waking hours. Now there was a madness about him as James looked about, his fingers scraping the wallpaper. Nobody else in the stairwell seemed to have heard it. None of them reacted, at any rate, and they only passed by giving him funny looks for the way he was kneeling there on the stairs... He grit his teeth, so tight it hurt. He punched at the wall to be rid of some of the pressure coursing through him.

It was impossible. Impossible. Mopsus was dead, so why was his voice echoing in James’s head now?

Jaaaaames Potter…

There was no mistaking it, though.

“Alright, Potter?” asked Pandora Jenkins, coming down the stair behind James, arm in arm with Xenophilius.

Xenophilius disengaged from her arm and hurried over, kneeling before James on the stairs in concern, staring up at his dark brown eyes with a sort of wild expression in his own eyes that was quite alarming, even through the fog of Mopsus’s voice.. “Potter?”

James looked up, “Did you hear --? It?” James’s eyes met Xenophilius’s. If it had been anyone else before him, he never would’ve asked - but Xenophilius was a believer in the oddest things… If anyone would believe him, Xenophilius would.

“It?” Xenophilius asked.

“The voice,” whispered James.

Xenophilius stared up at him and shook his head.

James whispered, “I heard someone calling my name. Just now. Someone… someone I thought dead.”

Xenophilius considered this. “Well, if you’ve heard their voice… then they must be living. At least a bit, yeah?”

James stared at Xenophilius.

“Maybe you should ask them if they’re living?” Xenophilius suggested. “I think I have linkstone in my trunk, shall I go and fetch it for you?”

“A linkstone?”

Xenophilius nodded, “It’s a special stone… Attracts ghosts and other supernatural beings, you see. So you can communicate better… you know, with the other side.”

James stared at Xenophilius. He shook his head, “No… No I’m all set. But thanks, Xeno, you’ve given me an idea.” He pushed himself up from the stairs and Xenophilius smiled as he stood up, too.

Xenophilius watched as James ran off up the stairs, shrugging to Pandora, “He doesn’t want the linkstone,” he said to her.

Pandora said, “Perhaps he doesn’t know what a linkstone is, exactly,” she suggested, thinking that most people wouldn’t have a clue, seeing as Xenophilius seemed to know about a good deal of quirky magical objects and creatures that others questioned the authenticity of.

“Perhaps,” Xeno said. “I would have shown him, had he asked me.”

“I know, love,” said Pandora.

It was thus that James ended up in the Divination Tower. It was thus that James had followed the voice, which had gotten louder and stronger the closer he got to the tower room. He’d stepped inside and emerged from the shadows by the door to walk down the raised seats through the little tables to the front of the room - the carpet all covered with dust and broken clock cogs and wheels. He stood, looking around.

“Hullo? Professor Mopsus?” he called out, feeling foolish. “Professor?”

But there was no reply.

“Of course there isn’t a reply, you bleedin’ idiot, Potter,” he muttered to himself, “The man’s dead, he can’t answer.”

There was a creak behind him - from the curtain that covered the stone archway that led to the room with all of the clocks… and James turned to look at it… a sort of breeze rippled the curtain ever so slightly… “Hello?” he murmured and he stepped toward it, his foot crunching on a clockface.

Suddenly pieces of the clocks that lay on the ground around him started to… collect themselves… to put themselves back together… to fly up from the floor and disappear through the curtain. A great deal of clinking and clicking was coming from within. James stepped toward it, his head cocked, his eyes searching the dark, and he raised a hand up to move aside the curtain and when his palm touched the material, it turned to smoke and his hand passed right through it. It felt like ice cold water to the touch and James yanked his palm back as it started to go numb and he took a couple steps away, not liking the feeling he’d got when he touched it and not trusting being too near to it.

When he backed up… he backed right into somebody… and when he turned about --- everything went black.

When he woke up, that was all that James Potter would remember of what happened.




Lumos.”

The Divination classroom was dark by the time Lily Evans arrived, but her wand lit up the floating dust particles alright, too. She held the wand high. “Potter?” she called into the room, her voice a high whisper. She crept through the room, her wand light illuminating the carpet.

Where had all the cogs and wheels gone? She wondered. Last time she’d been here the floor had been positively littered with them and she’d believe that somebody might’ve cleaned it up except that the dust had settled long on the cogs and gears and left a funny pattern of their silhouettes against the carpet.

Their disappearance was recent.

There was a horribly creepy air about the room and Lily clutched her wand. “Potter?” she hissed, glancing down at the Marauder’s Map to confirm he was still here… he was… and very close for her footsteps on the Map were so very close to where his were stationary… and then she rounded the teacher’s desk… and there he was, laying on the floor. Lily hurried forward to him and laid the map down no the carpet to shake him gently, “Potter!” her voice was barely above a whisper. “Wake up, Potter!”

James’s eyes fluttered ever so slightly. “Evans?” he murmured and he looked up at her through thinly opened eyelids.

“Yeah, it’s me, Potter. Are you alright?”

James whispered, “Reckon I’ve been better.”

“What’s happened?” Lily asked.

James shook his head, “Dunno.”

“Where did all the clock bits go?” she pressed.

“I dunno,” James said. “They… they were sort of… floating together and connecting one another… and… and they flew in there --” he pointed to the curtain. “Don’t touch it though! It makes your fingers numb with cold!”

Lily stared at the curtain uneasily, then turned back to James. “It’s creepy in here,” she complained.

James nodded.

“What’re you even doing up here? Do you remember that much at least?” she asked.

“I heard his voice,” James said quietly, “Mopsus’s, I mean.” He struggled to push himself into sitting up. “He was… calling my name… like he did before…”

Lily took hold on his wrist and pulled him to his feet. He was shaky on them… and there was something about the way he stumbled that made her think of the night in the woods… of her stag… and she had to push the thought away (now was for sure not the time to be bringing up the stag). He tripped, and she caught his hand in hers, and she paused, staring at her fingers folded about his… She looked up and their eyes met.

She pulled her hand out of his quickly.

“Sorry they’re sort of clammy,” he murmured.

“So aren’t mine,” Lily answered.

James shook his head, “Yours are soft. They’re always soft. In a good way.

Lily stared at him.

Right in the eyes…

“Potter?” she whispered.

He leaned closer. “Evans?”

“Are you -- I mean… Can you -- It’s just… your eyes just now… they reminded me of -- of some.. Somebody’s.” She stammered.

James stared deeply into her eyes for a long moment. Brown on green… brown on green… “They remind you of somebody’s?” he repeated.

Lily said, “Yes.”

“Couldn’t possibly be my own?” he chuckled.

Lily stared up at him still, even as the eyes danced with amusement. Then, “It’s my stag’s eyes, see.”

James stared at her. “Your stag, you say, Evans?” he repeated… and that grin spread across his mouth, his lip hanging up on his tooth…

“Yes,” she said, “The one in the forest… I dreamed of him - I told you - right… right over there --” she turned to point to the table they’d once shared during classes with Professor Vablatsky, over a year ago now, but when she turned --

Lily let out a shriek and James leaped around her, spreading out his arms protectively, becoming a human shield. James cursed in his mind - he’d been so bloody close… HER Stag, mind you! he reminded himself, HER Stag! I’m HER Stag!

But there was no time to say anything, no time to reel in the glory of the moment…

For in the air, hovering, brilliantly blue-white and wholly his own entity… as Mopsus, the Blind Seer.

Luckily, having heard that he was HER Stag, he could’ve taken on bloody anything.