The Shrieking Shack

"... Um. Yes. Maybe demons like chocolate a lot, okay!? They were blending in! So we didn't know, of course. That's the beauty of it, they act just like Remus, ONLY NOT! SO THAT WAY WE ARE JUST SO THROWN OFF BY THE STRANGE LITTLE THINGS THAT PROVE HE IS OBVIOUSLY NOT ACTUALLY REMUS AND-- fine. I'm trying, okay? Because-- if you-- this-- James, if you're right, what the hell am I supposed to do about it? He fucking kissed me, for Merlin's sake! He-- WAIT A MINUTE! He KISSED me! He kissed ME! What-- what about Jack?" he asked incredulously, thoroughly confused and dumbstruck by now, and at a completely loss as to what to think of this, other than the fact that even he can't possibly deny that it feels damn good to have one up on that fucking twat.

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG.

"Oh, yes, demons love chocolate and so that must be why Remus loves chocolate, not because it's been his favorite snack for the past, what, size years we've known him? How silly of me." He laughed a second before stopping himself and shrugging again. "If I am right, and I usually am, just saying, I don't know what then. I mean, if he... if he..." It was like James couldn't say it. He swallowed, took another very long drink of firewhiskey and started again. "If he kissed you... and then Jack... I mean, we all know you're better and more awesome than Jack, whoever the hell he is trying to steal our Remus away, but really... I don't know Padfoot. I don't know." He tightened his arm around his friend. "I mean, I don't know, but... just ask him? Merlin, that sounds like a girl answer."

"Ow," Lily hisses as he cleans her scrapes up for her using a standard cleaning charm rather than a medical one. She extinguishes her wandlight for a few moments to cast some light healing charms on her knees, the cool soothing sensation going to work at once even though when she lights her wand again, the skin of her knees still looks somewhat raw. "No, I'm not alright, Potter! I am never alright when you're hounding me," she snaps, lashing out in reaction to the pain of the fall as well as his incessant presence. Giving him a filthy look, as if all the problems in the universe are his fault -she insists that they probably are, actually- Lily climbs to her feet, brushes the dust from her clothing as best she can, and continues on the for the last little bit. She stops as she emerges into a dusty wreck of a room, frowning in recognition. "I've been here before," she realises.

James stops his pathetic efforts as the light of her wand goes out, glancing down at her knees again as she relights it a moment later. His gaze guiltily shifts up to her face, feeling truly horrible about tripping into her and hurting her knees like that. "Hounding you?" He got up after her, following her the rest of the way through the tunnel and out into the Shrieking Shack. "I do not hound you. That's ridiculous. You just... you've been here before?" He stepped into the room, dusting his shirt off again as he looked around. Lily had been in the Shrieking Shack before? When? Why? That made him nervous that someone else would come in here, especially someone like Lily. What if she'd come in while Remus was changed? She could have been hurt or found out the secret or a number of unfortunate things. This news worried him, and he hoped maybe it was just a one time thing, or maybe she didn't actually know this was the Shrieking Shack.

"Yes you do." Lily insists, extinguishing her wand because the gloomy light that filters weakly through the shutters is enough to see by. She watches Potter's face as he changes tact and does not miss the nervousness that's crept into his voice despite himself. "Yes, it's the Shrieking Shack. Oh, don't be such a baby; you look like you're about to wet yourself. There's no ghosts and ghouls here, wild animals must've gotten in and torn the place up before they replaced the shutters," she says offhandedly.

James glanced around at all the scrapes and scratches Remus had put into the wall, a few of them added by himself or Sirius trying to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else. "Yeah, I suppose you're right." He crossed the room, tracing his fingers along a particularly long gash in the wall. "Why were you here, though? No one really comes in here, I didn't think." He glanced up the steps, the room where they locked Remus in every month off to the right at the top of the stairs. Turning around, he looked at Lily again, his eyes falling to her knees which were still scraped, another pang of guilt assaulting him.

Lily frowns as she watches James run his hand along a scratch in the wall. "That wasn't here last time, I'm sure of it. But the shutters are still all locked up tight... how could animals get in still? How would anything big enough to cause so much damage get past the Willow and through the tunnel? It doesn't make any sense," she says, still thoroughly caught up in the mystery of it all. She's distracted, and answers his questions freely than she might if she'd been fully concentrating on the conversation. "I don't think people do come here, really. At least not many, and I think even less get in. I brought Gideon here once on a date; I was curious and wanted to explore."

"If nothing can get in, then what could have possibly done it? Maybe you just don't remember every scratch on every wall." He shrugged, walking through to another room, pretending to be interested to explore it, though he already knew every inch of the building. He'd been coming here for years. "A date huh?" He chuckled from the other room, leaning back through the doorway to look at her. "Romantic." He wiggled his eyebrows jokingly before turning and going back into the other room, looking at the old chair that had been ripped to shreds. Pity, really. It had been a good napping chair.

"It was, in the end, actually," Lily shoots back, knowing that it's a little on the bitchy side of things for her to talk up her boyfriend to Potter of all people, but figuring it might help him understand it's never going to happen between the two of them. Of course, Lily knows it hadn't been the most traditionally romantic of dates, but it was something she'd wanted to do and he'd happily gone along with her, cheering her up along the way because if Mya remembers correctly, she'd just had a big argument with Severus right before it and had been pretty upset. For Lily, a guy who will try something new because she wants to, and spend his evening making her smile without demanding anything in return qualifies as a romantic date. "And it's such a big scratch, I'm sure I'd have noticed," she says, wandering through to the other room, taking in to see if there's any other major changes, such as the ripped up chair.

"Hey, whatever you say." If she enjoyed it, great, James was mostly just upset that it wasn't him who got to take her on dates and things. He sighed, looking around, wishing that this was a date, that he could just tell her about all the times he'd napped on that chair, wishing that he could maybe take a nap in that chair cuddled up with her on his lap. Though she hoped talking about Gid would make him see he couldn't have her, but it didn't. It just made him want her more, because you always want what you can't have. "Maybe you would have noticed. What could make a mark like that though? There aren't bears or anything in these parts." James moved his hand sadly along the back of the chair, glancing out the window as it started to flurry snow once again.

"Whatever I say? But I say you're a git," Lily points out, smirking at him. She shrugs, chewing her lip in thought and leaning down to scratch absently at one knee, which is irritating her slightly. Well, when she gets back to her dorm she knows Molly will have a salve or something that will leave her legs good as new. "I don't know," she admits softly, looking around and tallying the damage. "I can't think of what sort of creature would be able to get in here when it's been locked up tight, and cause that sort of damage. I imagine centaurs would manage to break in, but there's no earthly reason for them to do something so pointlessly destructive, and they don't have claws anyway."

James shrugs in return to her insistence that he's a git. "After seeing your knees, maybe I am." He sighed, still feeling bad about it. He turned to look at her, watching her check out the place interestedly and try to come up with theories. He loved watching her when she was really trying to figure something out, really concentrated on something and using all she had to think about it. Something in her face changed when she was pondering, and James loved it. "No idea what it could be, then." Other than one of my best friends. James turned around, taking a few steps forward to stand by the window again. One of the panes was cracked, and he reached up to touch it. It shattered as his finger met it, pieces falling to the floor at his feet. "Damn it." He didn't think to look if he was bleeding or not, too busy looking at the pieces on the floor and being sure that Lily wasn't close enough that his stupidity could have injured her again.

Lily remains silent at first; she wants to call him a git, and if he wants to agree with her she's not going to stop him. She watches him, not really conscious of the fact that she is doing so, her mind still ticking things over. She jumps slightly as the pane of glass shatters under his touch and glass tinkles all the way to the floor. "Not to mention clumsy," she adds to 'git', then she notices a trickle of blood slip down from his finger, droplets splashing against the dusty floor. "Oh, well done Potter. Come here," she says, pulling her wand and grabbing his wrist so that she can knit the skin closed with a simple spell after inspecting it briefly. "Don't think there's any glass shards in there, can you feel anything?" she asks, wand poised but not acting until she's sure.

James looks over at her, guiltily, like a child being reprimanded for breaking a vase because that is how she makes him feel sometimes. He held his hand out to her anyway, allowing her to fix it for him. "Thanks." He stared at his finger for a moment, thinking and trying to tell if there was glass in it or something. "I don't honestly know. I don't think there is." His eyes moved up to meet hers, staring into those brilliantly green gems for a moment until he looked away before she became uncomfortable. "Now the wind gets in." He said it rather sadly, knowing he would have to fix it next time they came to the shack or else they'd just get to stand around in here shivering, wishing the snow didn't blow in so much.

Lily only holds his gaze for the briefest of seconds before looking back down at the cut finger and healing it quickly. She drops his hand like it's a hot potato, shoving her own hands into her cloak pockets quickly as if that will erase the contact ever having happened. "Well there's this rather nifty spell you could try. It's called Reparo, perhaps you've heard of it?" she says, looking around for the window she and Gideon had used to break into the shack, figuring it will be easier to walk back through the front gates and risk being caught by Filch or a professor, than to struggle back through that awful tunnel.

James literally facepalmed as she told him to use reparo. It was like all logical thoughts left his mind when he caught sight of her eyes like that, when they had moments where they were touching without shouting at each other, having an actual quiet minute of getting along. It was like it erased bits of his mind or at least stopped them from communicating with each other, and he was useless for the stupidest simplest things. Pulling out his wand, he traced a line from the shattered glass on the floor up toward the open pane, sending all the pieces back into their place as they sealed up perfectly, as if it had never been broken or cracked to begin with. He turned around, satisfied with his work, when he saw her glancing around quite intently. "What are you looking for?"

"Well, Gideon and I broke in through a window, so I figured we'd be able to get out of the same one, and get back to school. I don't want to go back down that tunnel - what if we can't stop the tree from the inside at the other end? I'm sure there's a way, because obviously whatever comes in gets out again, but it's dinnertime and I'm too hungry to mess about so I'd rather take my chances with Filch than a PMSing tree," she says, mentally retracing her steps from her previous visit.

"Good point. Freezing the tree long enough to crawl out of the tunnel could be potentially problematic." James followed her through the house, looking around and checking all the windows. Finally he found one that was sort of cracked open. He walked over and tugged on it, finding that it opened quite easily and wasn't too far from the ground below, just a small jump. Maybe this was the one they used. "Hey, this one look familiar to you?" James tugged up the diagonal piece that would hold it open, sticking his head out to see how far of a jump it was and figure out the best way to help Lily down. He'd jump, but he couldn't let a lady jump down into the snow, not if he was any kind of gentleman at all. He wasn't sure she would let him catch her, but he would figure something out for her.

Lily checks out the window James has found. She thinks it's not the same one, but it opens and that's what they need right now. "It'll do," she confirms, joining him as he sticks his head out into the gathering darkness, apparently plotting their escape. Lily's tummy grumbles slightly and she sighs in impatience. "Come on, Potter, are you going to jump out or are you scared of heights all of a sudden? If you need, I'll go fist and prove to you that the fall won't kill you," she offers, resisting the urge to either give him a shove, or pull him out of the way so that she can make her escape.

"Relax, relax." James pulls his head back inside, turning to look at her amusedly before swinging a leg out, sitting on the windowsill for a moment, and then kicking his other leg over and jumping lightly to the ground, landing this time much more gracefully than he had in the tunnel. Turning around, he looks back up to the window, extending an arm up toward Lily. He gives her a genuine look, wanting her to see that he really does want to help and make it easier for her, not wanting her to get hurt again and still worried she just might be more injured from the earlier incident than she's letting on. "I'll catch you, if you'll let me."

James' amused look makes Lily wish she'd opted for option one, which had involved shoving him out head first. She waits for the thudding sound of his landing before swinging her own leg over the sill, bringing the other around to join it as discreetly as possible given that she is wearing her school skirt, which Mya did not think of before now and oops Lily is pissed at her again. She smooths the material down around her legs, pleased that she doesn't think she's flashed her knickers about too heinously, and regards James' outstretched hand for a moment. She can tell he's actually being sincere about wanting to help her, but she doesn't make the connection between that and the angry-looking scrapes still marring her knees, and she rolls her eyes. "Honestly, Potter, do I look incapable?" Waving off his offer, she pushes herself off the windowsill and gasps as her shoes thud hard into the light smattering of dirty snow and her knees buckle a little on impact before she catches herself. Well, that had been a lot easier when she had been more appropriately dressed for breaking and entering. Lily shivers and pulls her cloak tighter around her. "Well, straight down the road, I guess," she says, taking a few steps in the direction of the road back to Hogwarts because she knows nothing of secret passageways and the like.

James, again, pointedly did not look up her skirt, no matter how tempting it was. When she jumped after denying his help, he watched her a bit nervously, ready to reach out should he need to. One hand darted out momentarily as her knees buckled, but the instant she had righted herself, his hand froze in midair before returning to his side again, knowing she wouldn't appreciate being touched since she was standing capably on her own now. "Had to ask. What kind of man would I be if I didn't?" He thought about offering her his arm as they made their way along the snow and grass covered hills around the Shack back toward Hogsmeade, but he knew she wouldn't take it. Abandoning the thought, he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked alongside her back toward the main road of Hogsmeade. He contemplates for a moment about using the secret passage in Honeydukes, but decides against it. He couldn't be sure what Lily would do if he showed it to her, whether her Prefect self would want it closed off, or if she would start wondering if he'd known about the one by the Whomping Willow from the start, and he couldn't take those chances. Nope, they'd have to go back the long way. The wind picked up, sending his scarf flapping behind his neck. Noting that Lily didn't have hers, only her cloak to keep her warm, he reached up and removed the scarf from his neck, holding it out to her. It was growing cold as dinnertime approached, and if she had to have just a skirt on, he felt that her neck should at least be protected, his scarf still warm from his neck. "Want it?"

Lily keeps her commentary as to what kind of man she thinks he is to herself, too tired and cold and irritated to deal with that conversation. Especially when they've had it a hundred times before, anyway. She busies herself with guarding against the wind and the chill as much as she can, hunkering down into her cloak even though it still doesn't close off well enough to keep her neck warm, and it keeps flapping annoyingly about her legs. It's a few long seconds before she registers his voice over the increasing sound of the wind, and even then it's mainly the dull sight of his scarf flapping about in the gloom that catches her attention. She looks from it, to him, and realises that she's not in much of a position to argue. Reaching out, she takes the scarf and wraps it quickly about her neck where it sits warm and snuggle and smelling like... well, Lily can't put her finger on what that scent is, but it's not unpeaslant. Maybe they're using something a little different in the laundry, and she hasn't noticed before now. "Well, it's the least you can do after the damage you've done to my legs," she says, because all that was easier for her than a simple 'thank you' would have been, and the way the wind and cold bites into her scraped knees does make her wince a bit.

James turns the collar of his jacket up, hoping to block off some of the wind that blew in now in the absence of his scarf. "The very least." He smiles again, looking away from her and up the road through Hogsmeade, now nearly empty as most people had gone to dinner. He would have rejoiced if he knew Lily liked the way his scarf smelled, because well, it smelled like him. They continued on in silence, passing through the entry gates to Hosgmeade and heading back up the winding path toward Hogwarts. James walked a bit closer to her than he would have attempted normally, hoping that perhaps he could block at least a little of the wind from hitting her. Finally they reached the gates to Hogwarts and made the walk up to the main doors, where James pushed one open and held it fr her. "After you." He made a goofy sweeping motion with his arm, a smirk spreading across his face yet again as the warmth from inside the castle greeted the two cold teenagers.

Lily walks in silence, keeping her nose buried in the scarf even though it kind of tickles a bit because it's warm and soft and the more she sniffs it, the better it smells to her. If she ever meets a House Elf, she'll have to ask him or her what they've changed about their laundry detergent. It's easier, she realises, to bear Potter's company when that company is silent. Hmm, maybe next time she runs into Sirius she'll tell him that she can give Potter a chance in the barest sense of tolerating his presence if he ever becomes a mute. She trudges up the steps, cold and hungry, her knees stinging almost constantly now, intent only on the warmth of the indoors and a hot meal. Before she can reach the door for herself, he's ahead of her and holding it open with that goofy gesture and cocky smirk and Lily sighs and the ridiculousness of him as she passes through. She pauses and there's a moment of weirdness; usually their conversations end with either her storming off leaving him behind to nurse his wounds and his wounded ego, or with him running for his life from her wrath. There's none of that right now. It's just sort of neutral. Or like they've just reached the end of a date. Lily has to force herself not to snort aloud at that. Yeah, a truly awful date. Somewhere between her intention of taking his scarf off and no longer touching it ever now that she's inside and it's no longer necessary, and that actually happening, Lily forgets that the scarf doesn't belong to her. "I'm going to dinner," she finally says, turning and walking on to the Great Hall without another word to him, still absently smelling his scarf as she goes.