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They Met At The Fountain


Lily ran, Severus Snape just steps behind her, “Wally! Dexter! Liam!” she cried, waving her arms about into every gap in the crowd, trying desperately to find them. “Where are they, Sev? Find them! Find them!” she wailed, terrified by the words Severus Snape had said to her - by the plans the first years had been thinking that he’d seen. She had to find them. She had to stop them. The bleeding little idiots! They were first years! And she felt the wind leaving her, remembering how terrible a fate she and the Marauders would have had if someone had note come and rescued them when they’d tried something stupid like this… “LIAM! DEXTER! WALLY!” she screamed their names and people looked about at her like she was mad as she jostled about through the crowd of Hogwarts students…

Severus grappled through the students, too, listening, listening… trying to see any of the three of their minds but nothing was coming, no clarity, there were too many thoughts being thrown about, too many minds pulsating and moving about in the crowd leading up to the village. And Lily was holding his hand and calling him Sev again and it was very hard to concentrate when she was doing that, very hard indeed, and he squeezed her fingers, trying to comfort her, to tell her that they’d be alright…

After all, how would three first years ever get all the way to Malfoy Manor from Hogsmeade? Walk? It wasn’t like they could disapparate! Severus was in no hurry, enjoying the nervous affection he was receiving from his Lily….

Then another voice was coming nearer to them, shouting for Wally, Liam, and Dexter, too, and Lily looked up as Remus Lupin and Oliver Kent broke through the sea of students as well, Remus’s face bright with worry. “Lily!” he cried, rushing over, “Lily --” he panted, “The first years… they’re… the idiots. Stolen the… the invisibility cloak…”

“James gave it to them,” argued Lily.

Snape’s face turned red as his eyes met Remus’s, and Remus’s eyebrows folded in disapproval. “Who told you that, Evans?” Remus asked.

“Wally said they stole it,” Ollie spoke up.

Lily looked at Severus.

Remus spoke up quickly, “Well. Regardless of how they got it... They have the cloak and they snuck out of the castle, they’re going for a Floo to go to save Harold Minchum.”

Severus Snape looked up from his shoes, where he’d been staring, and hissed, “Save Harold Minchum? By using the Floo Network and a fancy little cape? Are they idiots??”

“Apparently,” Remus said, nodding.

Lily rubbed her forehead, “We have to stop them…”

“We have to find them first,” Remus said, waving his arms about to indicate the crowded surroundings. “Or… or else try and head them off.”

“Head them off?”

“There are only so many operational Floos on the network in Hogsmeade,” Remus explained. “Part of the security measures following the attacks last Spring was to close the private home networks in the village, and there are designated public Floos. Some are watched more closely than others. Like I doubt they’re going to get through the Owl Post’s Floo, or the Floo at the Three Broomsticks, which are two of the public networks. That leaves the inn and the Hog’s Head.”

“Alright, then, we split up and two of us goes to one and two of us goes to the other and -- oh no. OH NO. Remus, what time is it?”

“Twelve-forty,” Remus replied without thinking about it. And then his eyes widened, “Your date. James.”

“Oh no. Oh Godric no.” Lily hadn’t even realized that so much time had passed while she’d been searching for Liam, Dexter, and Wally. Her heart dropped clear to her feet. “Sev, we’ll get the Hog’s Head! You meet me there, I’ve got to go tell James what’s happened!” and Lily ran as hard as she could down the path, leaving Severus, Remus, and Oliver behind.

Remus frowned and watched her go, then took Oliver’s hand firmly in his own and started down the path. He glanced back a few steps away to see if Severus was coming. Snape was standing in the path… grinning widely. Remus paused, watching him as he stood there, sort of half-chuckling to himself… his shoulders shaking with the quiet mirth.

“Until you’re quite finished laughing at someone else’s pain, Severus, you can at least pretend to give a damn about these first years lives instead of simply using them as pawns in your pathetic chess game against James Potter.” He turned, pulling Ollie along with him over the bridge.

Severus’s mirth died instantly and he glared at Remus Lupin’s back, and wished that Oliver wasn’t there or else he’d have hexed Remus just as gleefully as he might’ve hexed James or Sirius. He walked swiftly to not only catch up but pass the slow-walking Remus and murmured, “They say wolves are supposed to be fast.”

Remus stared coldly at Snape’s back as he disappeared into the crowd of the main street in Hogsmeade.

“He doesn’t even make any sense,” Oliver said, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Who knows,” murmured Remus, and he struggled to try to walk faster, but with his knees he just couldn’t without wincing.




They met at the fountain.

James felt as though every person he passed knew and was looking at him and judging him. Every laugh he overheard was at him for being such an idiot. Every snicker. There goes James Potter, the idiot boy who thought that he had a shot with Lily Evans...

And he stumbled up to the fountain headed north through the village…

Lily was running through the people, pushing, weaving, darting along. People were glaring at her - adults in disapproval, students in annoyance. She finally broke through a knot of seventh years that were standing around the pretzel cart and at one point she heard her name called out and looked over to see Peter Pettigrew holding a horn of popcorn and waving at her before his face folded in concern as he, too, realized the time…

And then she arrived at the fountain headed south through the village…

And James Potter looked up at exactly the same moment Lily Evans looked up and they saw each other through the cascade of water falling from the mouth of a tall statue of a boar with widespread wings. James stared at her, and Lily stared back at him. He looked so good - although he’d messed up his hair since he’d been walking and undone his tie from ‘round his neck, untucking it from his vest and letting it hang over his shoulders. She could tell he’d put some effort into looking really good and she felt even more horrible than she had even moments before.

“James,” she said, and she started ‘round the fountain… but the moment she stepped in one of the two directions to go around, James hurried to go the other way and she had to double back and he quickly turned around and finally, frustrated and desperate, she ran through the water to him and he turned, trying to go back down the road - back the way he’d come - and Lily tripped climbing out of the fountain and stumbled, only just catching her balance, her shoes soaked and her socks dripping now as she ran after him, her feet squeaking in the wet mary-janes. “Jame wait!”

She grabbed his arm.

He turned and shook her off him. “Don’t. Don’t, I don’t want to hear it. It was Severus Snape or it was some other -- I dunno. Serves me right, all that rubbish. I’m done, Evans.”

“James, I was coming. I was and then Severus --”

“Fuck that guy! Alright? Merlin Ambrosius, Evans, just go be with him already! That’s obviously what you want! Go be with Severus Snape and love him and - and - and I hope the lot of you have a grand life with great greasy babies that have huge fucking noses and --” James shook her off him as she tried to catch him again, “And just LET ME GET OVER YOU!” He stared at her, his face all blotchy. “Mother of Merlin, please. May the gods let me get over you. This - us - it - it doesn’t work, it never will. My heart. Gods my heart. I need to go.”

“James, I don’t want Severus Snape!” Lily yelled.

People were looking now. They were whispering. And James felt dizzy.

“You don’t think you do but you repeatedly choose him over me,” James said quietly.

“James, the first years are --”

“I need to go,” he interrupted her, and he hurried to run down an alley that he knew would bring him out behind the Shrieking Shack. He’d go and he’d find Sirius and Sirius Black would know what to do. They could go in the woods - he could be a stag and Sirius would be the dog and they’d run through the trees and he’d feel that peace, that animal peace that the stag had and --

“James! Listen to me!” Lily ran after him down the alley. “Please!”

He would not cry, he wouldn’t. He held his breath, trying to keep the tears inside, squeezing his eyes shut, feeling his heart swell up… He turned the corner at the end of the alleyway and there was the Shack away off on the hill and at the corner of the fence, the big black dog - Snuffles - digging a hole, still trying to get into the Shack for the cloak and then --

“Snuffles?”

It was Regulus Black, running down the hill, his eyes wild - the wrinkled old house elf, Kreacher hobbling after him and James stumbled to a stop when he saw them… because Kreacher being there could only mean one thing… there was news of Harold Minchum.

Lily came running up behind him and she nearly slammed into his back before she realized that he had stopped.

They watched as Regulus approached the dog with wide, disbelieving eyes as the dog stood quite still at the fence post, having pulled himself out of the hole he was digging…

Regulus held out his palm, breathless, completely forgetting that he was trying to find Sirius for a moment, completely forgetting everything except that Snuffles the dog - exactly as he had ever and always been described to him - stood there before him. Huge and shaggy and dirt covered, with his big twitching nose and long swishing tail.

”Do you reckon that Snuffles is real?” he heard himself ask, an echo of a memory.

“I’m sure he’s out there, somewhere,” Sirius’s voice echoed, too.


Regulus approached the dog with his hand splayed.

“Good doggy,” Regulus murmured.

And then the good doggy shook and changed and suddenly there, crouching beside the fence, with dirt on his nose, was Sirius Black.

Regulus breathed, “Animagus.”