Chapter 28: A Disagreement and a Birthday
James threw himself on his bed, feeling suddenly exhausted. He rested for a moment, then looked up to see that Lily was watching him with amused expectancy.
"Sorry," he said, moving himself over so she could have half. Giving him a smile, she sat down.
"James," she said, "we are completely alone."
"I know." James put his head in her lap and smiled up at her. She twisted slightly to prop up some of his numerous pillows, then laid back on them so she was still looking down at him.
"That means," she continued, stroking his hair, "we can talk all we want without being interrupted."
James groaned, though secretly he didn't mind too terribly.
"Lily," he said, "can't we ever just be alone to snog?"
She laughed loudly.
"This is from the boy who felt uncomfortable snogging an hour ago?"
"Well, it's different when it's just you and me."
"Darling," she said, touching him lightly on the nose, "I will snog you all night long if you can tell me when my birthday is."
"It's-" He hesitated, then groaned. He was sure she had never told him, and he couldn't believe that he'd never thought to ask. Lily clucked her tongue.
"See?" she said. "How in the world can I possibly snog a boy in his bedroom on his bed when he doesn't even know my birthday?"
"Well, that's not on," James said. "Because in the same thought, you could ask how somebody who doesn't know your birthday can be in love with you."
Lily giggled.
"Touché. Aren't you just the cleverest boy in the world?" She bent down and gave him a kiss on the cheek. James shivered.
"Lily, I just felt like you were talking to your son or something. Can't you at least call me something a little more…I don't know…" James trailed off, feeling embarrassed.
"Oh. You'd prefer me to address you like a sex object!" Lily laughed again, and James felt his face turn red.
"What the hell d'you expect me to say to that?"
"Oh, James, I love you." She bent over again and gave him a kiss on the lips. James had no time to enjoy it, because the next moment she had managed to push him off her lap so she could lie horizontally across the bed like he was.
"I'm ruining my lovely dress robes," she sighed.
"D'you want to borrow a shirt and some trousers?"
"Ooh." Lily grinned. "That's tempting. But I like feeling pretty."
"Is this your way of asking me to compliment you?"
"Compliments are acceptable at this time, yes."
"Well you're not getting any. When's your birthday?"
"How romantic."
"Hey, Lily," James said, putting his hand out for hers, "what happened with Sirius tonight?"
Lily turned on her side so she could look at him, taking his hand as she did so.
"Poor Sirius," she said. "Did you know that he was dating Rosie?"
"What?" James turned his head to look at her. "How'd you know?"
"He told me when we were at his flat."
"He actually told you?" James had a hard time believing that Sirius would have told Lily of all people before he told James. Lily smiled ruefully, as though she was thinking the same thing.
"He didn't mean to. He mentioned her when we were talking about you, and by then he'd said too much, so he just…told me the rest."
"Wait, you were talking about me?" James frowned. "What'd you say?"
"Don't have such a low opinion of us," Lily said. "Sirius cares about you a lot, did you know that?"
"Well, yeah. We're like brothers."
"See, that one's hard for me to understand," Lily sighed, "because it feels like such a long time since Petty and I were like real sisters."
James smoothed a long strand of red hair back from her face.
"We've all got a bit of dysfunctionality in our lives, hm?" he said quietly.
"Though that's barely a word," Lily said, "you're right. A bit of dysfunction is what makes us all normal. It's a sort of a…well, it's a terrible beauty, isn't it?" At once she laughed and threw an arm around James.
"I love having you to talk to," she sighed, "even though I've completely spoiled the moment. It's as though we understand each other completely."
"I don't understand you at all," James said bluntly, "and if we understood each other completely we'd be boring as hell. Not to mention we'd probably be the same person."
"Well, that's what I mean," Lily said, "I didn't mean we completely understand each other, it's just…when you say something, it's something that I sort of felt but I couldn't say it, and it's just lovely to have one person who can articulate all the things you've always wanted to say."
"So I guess that means you've always wanted to say `shit' and `fuck' and `bloody hell'."
"Shut up, James, you're completely destroying the moment."
"You said you did that already."
"Anyway, isn't that sad about Sirius?"
"Why?" James asked solemnly. "We won't tell Rosie. As long as Sirius doesn't say anything about snogging Adele, Rosie won't know."
"Everyone will have seen it, though."
"I bet my mum'll keep it quiet, and her sister will too. A lot of things that happen at wizarding balls never gets out, because they're all too big of snobs to admit they've seen something so embarrassingly low. It's one of the joys of the wizarding world." James rolled his eyes.
"But-James, so you're alright keeping it a secret? You don't think that's wrong?"
James looked Lily over, disbelieving.
"He did it for us, Lil! It's not like he did it because he wanted to!"
"We don't know that," she said in a small voice.
James felt himself growing annoyed with her. Everything about her suggested that she fully intended to tell Rosie what Sirius had done, and he felt that there was something sneaky and dirty about doing that.
"Look," he said, "he didn't want to do it, alright? He told us that, and he waited until my mum dragged us into the parlor for interrogation. If he'd wanted to, don't you think he would've done it a lot sooner?"
"Maybe he told himself that he was doing it for us," Lily said, looking as though she was getting as annoyed with him as he was with her. "Maybe he just used us as a good excuse to do what he'd wanted to do that whole time. All I know is, if you had gone and snogged another girl, I'd want to know about it."
"He did it for us," James insisted. "Even if he didn't, it worked, alright? As long as he doesn't go around doing it the whole bloody winter holiday, everything'll be fine!"
"First," Lily said, pulling her hand out of James's and sitting up, "you won't know what he's doing with Adele over the winter holiday, because it's not as though you'll be watching him the whole time. Second, it's not fair at all to Rosie. When you're in a relationship you have to show some control, and if this soon in their relationship he's snogging other girls…well, doesn't his dating record speak for itself?" James sat up too.
"What's not fair to Rosie is to make her think her boyfriend was cheating on her when all he was doing was risking everything for his best mate!" His voice had risen to a positive roar, and if he wasn't so angry he would've at once apologized for the way it seemed to positively reverberate through the room.
"He knew what risk he was taking," Lily said, her lip trembling a little, "and he should have tried to think of something that might have been more thoughtful for Rosie. I appreciate what he did for us, I really do, but I feel sorry for her. No matter how good it was for us, it was still a terrible thing to do to his girlfriend."
"Lily, sometimes there are more important things than a girlfriend!"
Lily looked as though he'd knocked the wind out of her. James at once realized his mistake, and all his anger disappeared, replaced with extreme remorse.
"Lily," James said again, "I didn't mean-you know what I meant, I wasn't talking about you…"
"I wonder," Lily said weakly. "I don't expect to mean everything to you, but I would think…well, the fact that you were able to say that so easily doesn't say much." She stood up and started toward the door.
"You do mean everything to me, though."
"Tell me that some other time when you're trying to keep me from getting upset at you." Lily stood up. "I'm going to go back to Sirius's flat. Goodnight."
James couldn't allow her to leave. He was convinced that if she went, she wouldn't come back.
"Stay here tonight," James pleaded. "Mum knows we're together, so if you took one of the guest bedrooms, she probably wouldn't mind."
"To be honest, I'm a bit too…I'm not angry, just incredibly sad. I can't believe you said that."
James frowned.
"Lily, when will I have done enough for you that you know that even when I say things like that it's not what I mean?"
"But I-I don't know! You-you and Sirius are so close, and I don't mean to try and break it up by any means, but sometimes-It's-It's hard being the `girlfriend', James!"
"I-" James broke off, feeling nervous. She honestly sounded very tired of it, and a tear was sliding down her cheek, causing the makeup she had so eagerly put on her eyes to run onto her face. He knew it was completely his fault that she looked so unhappy, and he knew he'd just done the thing he'd always told himself he never wanted to; he'd made her cry.
"I'm sorry," James said weakly. "I don't-I mean-"
"I'm not saying I'm tired of being your girlfriend, James," Lily said. "But I hate the label. It means that I'm not-when you've got a brother, by blood or by choice, you're like extensions of one another. You're part of the other. But with a girlfriend, it's…I mean, I already told you that I don't want to break up what you and Sirius have, but I can't help thinking that `girlfriend' doesn't have the same level of seriousness in commitment as `brother' does."
James stayed silent for a moment, thinking about what she'd said. Lily, meanwhile, looked away, looking as though she was trying to stop her crying as discreetly as possible.
"The thing is, though," he said finally, "is when I think about you, I don't think of you like my girlfriend. You're Lily."
"Is that supposed to suggest a completely different meaning to you?" Lily half-laughed.
"Well…yeah."
James didn't know how to articulate to Lily that what he felt for her was different than any label he could put on it. He'd never felt it before, and he wasn't quite sure he believed that anybody else had felt quite the same way, because they'd never loved Lily. He didn't think that they'd come up with a name that quite fit how he felt. He wanted to tell her that he felt all of this, but none of these feelings had words, and the closest he could get was clichés.
It seemed that Lily was trying hard to understand this. Slowly, he could see her relenting, and she sank back on the bed.
"My birthday," she said, "is February twenty-third."
James smiled.
"Well, that's funny," he said, "February twenty-third is my favorite day of the year."
Looking exhausted, she turned to look at him.
"Why is that, Love?"
"Because it's the day you were born, of course."
Lily shook her head.
"You are so ridiculous," she sighed.
"And thanks to you, I'm also one of those disgusting, simpering, lovesick idiots."
"Don't mock us," Lily said, "we lovesick idiots are rather sweet, I've always thought." She was quiet a moment, then said,
"James, we've survived our first fight. Isn't it wonderful?"
"No. It was pretty much the shittiest few minutes I've ever experienced in my life."
"It means we're a real couple, you know."
"Well, that's good to know," he said, "I'd hate to think we were a false couple. It's rather troublesome to snog a girl you're not in a real relationship with, you know."
"Be quiet!" Lily said, laughing. "You're so mean."
James shrugged, and Lily hugged him.
"What will we do about Sirius?" she murmured.
"Hush," he said, "it's Christmas Eve now. We'll think about it later."
Lily pulled away from him to check her watch.
"It's not Christmas Eve. It won't be until midnight, and it's only ten forty."
"That's it?" James cried, craning his neck to look at her watch. Indeed, it was only ten forty-it felt much later to him. He ran a hand through his hair, amazed. He felt that it had to be at least midnight.
"I know," Lily sighed, stifling a yawn. "I'm so sleepy." She stretched her arms over her head.
"I think that perhaps I'll take you up on your offer to stay here," she said. "If I try to disapparate now, I'll probably end up with half of me in London and the other half in Wales." She shivered, and James laughed.
"I should probably write a note to Sirius," Lily continued, getting off his bed and opening the trunk at
the foot of it. "Have you got any parchment?"
"I think I've got some…" Lily dug through the trunk, finally producing a wrinkled sheet.
"I've found some!" She waved it, and he realized, at the last moment, that it was the Marauder's Map.
"Wait!" he yelped, just as she was about to write on it with the ballpoint pen she had mysteriously gotten from the depths of a pocket in her dress robes. "I-you can't write on it!"
"Why?" Lily asked. "It's just a bit of parchment."
"It's-it's-"
"Oh, is it for a prank?"
"Er-yeah, it is." James was relieved that she'd gotten it partially wrong. There were two things in his life that she didn't know about; the Marauder's Map and his being an Animagus. He'd decided, the first time he'd thought about it, that there were worse secrets he could be keeping.
"Well, I'll find another one, then." She smiled sweetly at James, then continued to dig through the trunk.
"Aha," she said, pulling another piece out. Quickly, she scribbled a note down and folded it up.
"Where's your owl, Darling?"
Though the owl was in James's room, it was a legitimate question. James's room was positively enormous, and there were several large and useless pieces of art littering the room that he'd either received for birthdays and holidays or that his mother had taken to storing there. An owl's cage could easily have been obscured by the enormous statue of Agrippa or the creative interpretation of Morgan LeFay that looked more like a giant banana hanging from a stick than anything.
"Behind the curtain," James said, pointing at his window and leaning back against the propped up pillows. Lily went over to it and pulled open the cage door. James's massively overweight bird, Sophocles, could barely squeeze himself out.
"Are you sure that it's-I mean, he won't die if I send him to Sirius's flat, will he?" Lily looked seriously concerned, and James thought it was hilarious.
"It'll be fine," he laughed. "Fat old bird needs some exercise."
"And you're sure he won't-"
"I once sent him to Turkey," James said reassuringly. "He'll be fine."
Lily nodded and tied the note to the Sophocles's leg. The owl gave her a reproachful look, annoyed at having been disturbed, then took off into the night. Lily stared after him.
"Who were you owling in Turkey?" she asked thoughtfully.
"Nobody. I lied."
"James!" she cried, whirling around to face him. "What if he dies on the way? He might not be able to handle it!"
"At least he'll die attempting to be useful."
"That's so mean!" she said, sitting next to him on the bed again. "What if Sirius doesn't get the note?"
"Lily," James said, yawning, "d'you honestly think he'll worry?"
Lily shook her head.
"You're right, of course. You've mistreated the poor owl, though." She leaned her head against his, and he yawned again, feeling extremely comfortable.
"I should go," she said, attempting to stand up. James put an arm around her waist to prevent her from leaving.
"Why?"
"I'm tired, and I've got to go find your guest bedroom before I faint of exhaustion."
"We have five guest bedrooms."
Lily rolled her eyes.
"It figures. Will you show me which one I can use?"
James shook his head.
"Too tired."
"James, I can't find it on my own."
"Then don't go," he said, shrugging and yawning again. "Stay with me."
Lily watched him suspiciously.
"You planned this, didn't you?"
"No. But it's a pretty good idea, if I do say so myself."
Lily hesitated, then nodded.
"I suppose," she said. "But first let me put on your shirt and trousers."
"Get me some, too."
Lily gave him a look of amused disbelief, but nevertheless, after shutting herself in his closet to change, she tossed him a clean set of pajamas. After they'd both changed and Lily had wiped the makeup off her face with the flick of her wand, they settled on James's bed to go to sleep.
James woke up in the middle of the night and found Lily nestled comfortably in the crook of his arm. He realized, with some satisfaction, that that moment was probably the most comfortable that he'd ever experienced.
-->