Chapter 32: Green-Eyed Monster
"Is everything all right?" Hermione asked, cutting through Harry's thoughts and forcing him to focus on the common room and his present company. "What did Morven want?"
He blinked several times before he found his words. "To talk," Harry said slowly. "He's not at all like I thought he'd be. Did you know he was an Auror and a curse breaker?"
Hermione's frown turned up at the ends as she studied him. "You do have a strange attachment to your Defence teachers," she commented with a slight laugh.
"Not as strange as you," Tildy cooed, making Hermione blush a furious red. The girl, enthusiastic in everything she did, it seemed, had taken a keen interest in Harry and Hermione's future world and what sort of damages they might be doing by staying so long. Perhaps it was guilt for having pushed Hermione into dating Remus or perhaps she was just unnaturally inquisitive. Either way, she took great joy in poking fun at Hermione since learning about Professor Lupin.
"That is completely inappropriate, especially in the common room," she hissed. "Anybody could hear you!"
Eager to keep Hermione from hexing the girl, Harry talked over Lily and Tildy's laughter and his sister's threats. "He offered help."
"Help with what?" asked Lily.
He shrugged. "Everything, I guess. I didn't tell him about us, but I think he might suspect something." He hesitated, not sure if he wanted to continue. "He was a curse breaker, Hermione. He might be able to sort out what happened to us faster than we can. Do you think we should maybe tell him?"
Hermione's brows knit tightly together, and she frowned, not the annoyed frown of a girl being made fun of but a frown of deep thought on very important matters. Her flush of embarrassment faded as she considered Morven and his offer to assist them. "It might help us get home a lot quicker," she agreed slowly, still debating the idea. "I don't remember reading his name in any books or in the Daily Prophet, so he either died well before our time or went about living a quiet life. But I don't know if it's wise to involved him."
"He might be already," Harry said apologetically.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
He flinched, "Well, he said that once he gets started asking questions, he can't stop until he knows the answer. I might have given him enough to get him curious."
"Harry," she groaned. "Of all the foolish things you could have done!"
"Oi! I'm not the one telling people everything in fits of hysterics!" He gestured to the two girls sitting with them. "If anybody here deserves to be yelled at it's you not me."
"They forced it out of me!" Hermione snapped.
"We did no such thing," Lily protested innocently. "We just asked a few simple questions."
Tildy agreed. "If you weren't all flustered from snogging your professor, you could have easily fooled us. I mean, look how well Harry's doing lying to the boys and they're way cleverer than us."
Hermione, tired of having her relationship the fodder for such contention and jokes, took up her bag and marched from the common room, stomping away to the library without so much as a backwards glance.
Tildy giggled until she saw how angry Harry was at her. "What?" she asked.
"That's not funny," he said. "She's gutted thinking that she might have destroyed the future. You need to stop."
She shifted uncomfortably under his intense gaze, looking to Lily for some support only to see the girl's green eyes boring into her with equal intensity. The twin pairs of emerald eyes were too much even for her and she ran after Hermione.
"You're really good at that," Lily smiled.
"Well, she's my sister," Harry shrugged. "Being an overprotective prat is my job."
"Is she really, though?"
The boy shook his head. "No, but she might as well be."
Lily smiled and slid closer to him on the couch so they might talk privately while in the most public room of the tower.
Across the common room, James grit his teeth as Lily took up Hermione's vacant seat directly beside Harry. He narrowed his eyes as she leaned in and spoke quietly to him, her lips so near his face that she might as well have been kissing him, her hair brushing his arm. What little cool he had left flew away when the girl put her hand on Harry's knee; he stood abruptly, nearly toppling the table. "All this time, he said he was talking me up," James glared hard at the messy black hair of his rival as his hands balled into fists so tightly it felt like the knuckles might spring apart. "Bet he's telling her all sorts of rubbish about me just to make himself look the hero, the twat."
"He doesn't have to talk rubbish, Prongs," Sirius said, calmly setting the chess pieces back where they had been before his friend nudged the table. "She already knows what sort of a git you are."
"Oi!" he shouted and swatted the boy none too gently. "You're meant to be helping me!"
"Fine," Sirius sighed, annoyed that he was being forced to choose between his best mate and the boy he fancied. "If you're so worried, why not go talk to her."
"She hates me," James grumbled, falling back into his chair as he ripped the glasses off his face and began polishing the lenses on his robes. "Whenever I try, she walks away or hexes me. I don't get it! There's like no difference between us, but she chooses him?"
"I hate to break it to you, Prongs, but there's a lot of difference between you."
The jealous Chaser snapped his head to stare at his friend. "Like what?" he demanded.
Sirius shrugged. "I don't fancy you, for one thing. He's got more secrets than the Department of Mysteries. You strut around like you own the place while he grins like a fool when people pay absolutely no attention to him. You score all the goals during the game, but he's the hero for keeping hold of the Snitch while losing a vampire's feast of blood. He isn't trying to hit on Evans. You—"
"Yes, I get it, thanks," James interrupted. "So we're different people, but we look almost the same. That ought to count for something. I mean, half the time she needs someone to point out… which is which…" he finished slowly as he stared down at the eyeglasses he still held in his hands, an idea taking shape in his mind.
"Have you a thought, Mr Prongs?"
"I have indeed, Mr Padfoot," James grinned wickedly. "We look alike. Change of eye colour, swap out our glasses and she'd never be able to tell us apart…" He turned to his friend again, still smiling. "Padfoot, would you lend me your talents for a few moments?"
"I am your to command, my friend," Sirius smirked. Despite Moony having the highest grade, everyone knew Sirius was the most talented of them all at Transfiguration. They ran up to their dorm and practiced turning James's eyes green while Harry sat down in the common room, unaware that he would be the unfortunate victim of a prank very soon.
oOo
They leaned closer, eyeing the opaque liquid in the vial, studying its colour, smell and viscosity. James passed the delicate glass container to Sirius, who considered the contents for some time before he handed it over to Harry. As their fingers brushed against one another's, Sirius jerked back, releasing the vial before Harry had a proper grip on it. The glass tumbled down toward the ground.
His Seeker reflexes kicked in, and Harry made a grab for the container just as it hit the stones, shattering and sending globs of liquid all over him.
"Oh! EW!" Harry cried, wiping the foul-smelling slime off his robes.
"Sorry, mate," Sirius said.
"Really, Mr Granger," Madam Pomfrey chided. "It's only liquefied fat." Her reassurances did nothing to ease the boy's discomfort, especially since the adipose clung to his hands and arms and found its way through the weave of his robes onto the jumper beneath. As the woman continued her lesson on treating severe burns, Harry started shimmying from his robes, jumper and shirt, running to the washroom to try to remove the fat from his hands and arms and face. It didn't work. No amount of soap and lukewarm water could remove the adipose, for that was just the way James had arranged it when he charmed the liquid.
Class ended and Harry ran straight to the showers in Gryffindor Tower, throwing off the rest of his clothes and scrubbing himself raw under the scorching hot water. Still the fat adhered to his skin.
Silently, James snuck into the washroom and stole the trail of things Harry had left in his haste to reach the showers. He charmed the door shut with the most powerful sticking spell he knew, not that Harry would be leaving the shower stall anytime soon.
"Success!" he crowed as he dropped the pile of clothes on the floor in their bedroom.
Peter wrinkled up his nose, "That stuff is minging, isn't it?"
"He deserves it, stealing my girl," James defended his actions adamantly. One wave of his wand had the clinging fat falling away and solidifying into a lump that he sent flying into the dustbin. "Let's get me all Grangered up."
Sirius transfigured his friend's eyes to a vibrant, emerald green and attacked the boy's hair to make it even wilder than normal. "Voila!"
"Git," James snorted and dug into the pile of clothes. "It's got to be in here… Got it!" He extracted the leather cuff that Harry only took off for Quidditch and showers, buckling it onto his own wrist. He frowned at how strange it felt and wondered why the boy would wear it constantly when it was so uncomfortable. Still, sacrifices had to be made if he wanted to talk to Evans. "She'll never see the difference."
"I suspect she will," Remus disagreed. "And when she does, you will owe Harry one hell of an apology."
James only snorted again and sent a confident, never-in-a-million-years smirk his way.
"See, Harry never grins like that," the boy pointed out. "You are going to fall flat on your face."
Shaking his head at how wrong his friend was, James turned and ran down the stairs to find Evans. She was not hard to spot, her red hair a beacon to him. She was with Tildy beneath the tapestry of a majestic lion, talking and making notes on a bit of parchment. Remembering that the last time he strolled up to her she threw a stinging hex at him, he hesitated before approaching. It took him a few passes of the common room to remind himself that he was Harry; Evans never hexed Harry. Keeping that thought firmly in his mind, he walked up to the girl.
For one heart-stopping moment, she studied him. "Sit down," she said and moved her bag off the couch so he could sit beside her. "Tildy was just saying that she read about one of those spells on your list. Which one was it?"
"Vecturo. It's not the thing," the other girl said. "Apparently, someone tried to use it on a portkey once and it didn't do anything cool. Not what's happened to you, not by a country mile."
"Yeah," James agreed, not having the faintest idea what they were on about. Had he been properly listening he would have been rather irritated by how little they were actually saying, but he was too pleased with his current location to much care.
"Why are you smiling like that?" Tildy asked.
He realised too late that she was right. He was smiling – broadly, stupidly – because Lily Evans had let him sit down beside her. That smile fell as he remembered who he was pretending to be; she let Harry sit down beside her all the time. To him it was nothing all that special, so he shrugged, "Just happy, I guess."
"Can't imagine why after that show in Healing," Evans laughed. "I'm sorry, but that was funny the way you started jumping around." She laughed harder as she began a ridiculous pantomime of Harry's action in class. The other girl took up her laughter, and James was soon blushing as if he were the one who had stripped half-naked in front of the entire class to escape the sticky mess of fat.
"Oh, shut up!" he frowned.
"Did we hurt your feelings?" Tildy cooed and sat on his lap to kiss his cheek. "I'm sowwy, Widdle Hawwy."
"Shove off," he pouted. Being Harry was suddenly not so much fun when the girls were laughing at him.
"Oh, go on, Tildy," Evans said between giggles. "You have to show Hermione that book anyway. She won't be satisfied unless she reads it for herself."
Sighing, Tildy gave him one last peck on the cheek before she hopped off his lap and raced from the common room to find Hermione. James scowled at her as she left, feeling a complete arse for having put a friend, even a duplicitous friend like Harry, through such humiliations. He continued to scowl as the girl's laughter petered out. With the silence hanging around them, he grew nervous that perhaps Remus had been right, that she could tell that he was not really Harry. His heart stopped when she huffed angrily. His transfigured eyes darted to look at the pretty redhead, expecting to see a wand pointed at him. Instead, he found her looking at a letter.
"What's that?" he asked.
"My sister, Petunia," she grumbled.
He knew Lily had a sister; that the girl was as Muggle as her parents, but that was all he knew. He never saw the girl at King's Cross but had never questioned her absence. "Is she alright?"
"That's debatable," she replied bitterly. "She took a pair of scissors to my favourite dress. Mum found it in the bin after I'd left for school." She shook her head, sighing sadly and looking as if she was ready to cry. "I don't understand. We used to be best friends."
"She's jealous," he said without pause. "Who wouldn't be?"
She smiled. It was a kind smile, not at all flirtatious, but it was enough to make his heart swell. He shifted a bit closer, feeling her silky hair on his arm and smelling her subtle perfume. It didn't matter that she thought he was Harry, he would enjoy every second of her company and maybe arrange for a little more.
"So," he said, trying to sound casual, no mean feat when he was so intoxicated by her presence, "what are you doing this weekend?"
The girl shrugged. "Nothing much. Why?"
"I thought you might like to go out with me."
Her eyes narrowed a bit and she pulled back to get a better look at him. "What?"
"Would you like to go out with me?" he repeated.
"Harry," she said, dropping her voice and leaning in, "are you feeling alright?"
He grinned. "Yes."
"What about, you know, the consequences?"
James knew that 'consequences' was some type of code word, but he wasn't sure what it meant. He could only assume she was referring to the fall-out that would inevitably occur with the Marauders if Harry had ever dared to ask Evans out. "Don't worry about it," he said. "Come on, Evans—"
The girl groaned.
'Bugger,' he thought, 'She knows. I pushed too far. It was too fast. What did I do?'
"Don't you start calling me that, too," she warned. "I have a hard enough time with you looking like that prat Potter. I don't need you sounding like him, too." Her voice trailed off slowly, her eyes narrowing again as she considered him.
Somehow James knew she was thinking back over their very brief conversation. He bit back the curse words that threatened to spoil his façade and stretched a cheeky grin across his face. Harry was always grinning cheekily at people, or maybe just at the Marauders. Whenever Evans was around, James had a hard time focusing on anyone else; Harry could strip naked and do the Hustle and still James would only know what Evans was doing as it happened.
"What's the matter with 'Evans'? It's a fine nickname," he said, keeping the grin on his face.
"Only Potter calls me that," she wrinkled her nose up as if his name offended her.
"And you just called m—him 'Potter', so I think he's justified," James commented with a smirk.
"Fine, but that doesn't mean you have to start, too."
He sighed. "That just means I have to invent a new nickname for you. Let's see… Lily is a flower, so… Petal?"
She snorted. "No way."
"Blossom."
She shook her head emphatically.
"Flower. Blossom. Hmm… Lily," he said again. "Lily…flower—" The girl vanished from sight as did the couch supporting him. He released a shout of surprise as he fell backwards, landing hard on the solid stone floor of the entrance hall. "What the hell?"
He frowned his confusion at the hall and stones and students passing around him. That was unexpected, and also unexplained. Standing and brushing his trousers off with as much cool indifference as he could, he started back toward Gryffindor Tower, contemplating how he had gone from grinning and happy in the presence of Lily Evans to lost and bruised in the entrance hall.
"Portkey," he decided, recognising the feeling of the hook yanking him around the middle from the one time he had travelled via Wellington boot years ago. "But I haven't got a portkey. Or have I?"
He studied his clothes and searched his pockets, assuming his friends had slipped one onto him as a joke. He found nothing. His pockets were empty except for the items he had placed there himself. The only things he couldn't be sure of where the things that were Harry's – the glasses and leather cuff. Considering that they were both things that Harry wore daily, he doubted it could have been either one.
"So it was a spell, then," James decided. "Gits ruining my only opportunity with Evans." As he marched closer to Gryffindor Tower, he considered the nickname he had always used for her. He had never realised she didn't like him calling her by her surname all the time. Maybe if he stopped, she would have one less thing to hate him for. It was a start.
"Lily," he said to himself, considering what he could call her. "Lily. Flower—"
The hook took hold behind his navel again and tore him from the marble stairs just as he was within sight of the portrait of the Fat Lady. He stumbled and fell to the stone floor of the entrance hall once again.
"What the hell is this?"