WHO: James Potter & Lily Evans (and Prongs, haaa)
WHAT: James figures there's something Lily should know
before they get married.
WHEN: Summer '78
WHERE: Potter residence!
With all the excitment of N.E.W.T.s (HAHHAHA), leaving Hogwarts, moving in, and sending Sirius off on his worldy quest of collecting the best presents for James ever, James Potter had kind of forgotten about the fact that his fiancee did not have the slightest idea that he was an animagus.
That he could turn into a stag.
At will.
Even though it was the most awesome thing on the planet, James was quite sure Lily was going to be a little more than put off with him when he told her. It wasn't that he'd deliberately forgotten. It was just. He'd. Forgotten. For some reason beyond James, he'd never thought it was a big deal until Peter had mentioned it in the journal. Not the being an animagus thing, but the Lily not knowing thing. They'd spent nearly seven years hiding the fact that Remus was a werewolf and almost five with the secret of becoming and actually mastering the art of animagi. So, lying about it was just a natural thing to James, and even though he had showed off his ability to Frank during their time over the winter holidays, he'd never spoken of it again to his friend and Frank had never questioned him.
Maybe Lily would be that understanding.
But she probably wouldn't. She deserved to know, James really did believe; he was willing to spend the rest of his life with her, he should be able to share every last aspect of his life. And this was a pretty big aspect.
The biggest aspect, really.
"Liiiiiiiiiily?" James called from the bottom of the stairwell, hopping from foot to foot because he really didn't want to ruin their first week in their house (the Potter Residence she had called it, ohhhhh man), but knew their marriage would take a major blow if he didn't tell her before the wedding. Trust and all that. "Lily Breeeeeeeeeeeena?"
"I'm up in the guest bedroom!" Lily craned her head back to call to him from her situation in the middle of a sea of boxes. Somehow, she didn't think they really should have gone out and bought this many galleons worth of things for their house... or well, she hadn't thought that at the time, but now that she had to sit and open boxes and tear plastic and put it all together and carry it all around, it wasn't such a good idea anymore. She was currently using the matte knife to rip open the packaging on another lamp.
She should have never let James in to a lamp store.
Bright, shiny lamps in strange shapes and configurations were not something she should have let him be around when he had a bag of money in his hand.
"I'm not moving, so if you want me, you're going to have to come get me!" she called again when, a few moments later, she didn't hear him moving. Maybe he was distracted by the stairs again. He'd nearly slept on them, the first night.
"Liiiiiiiiiiiillyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy," James whined, bouncing a bit more and huffing, falling a bit hard against the wall at the foot of the steps. He dropped his head against the wall a few times before twisting to lean back against it, frowning at Wilbur who was standing at the top of the steps. "Go get Mummy, Wilbur, go on, go!"
The dog didn't move for a few seconds, and when he did the black lab simply flopped down and propped his chin up on his front paws as if getting ready to watch the show. James frowned at him and found himself in a staring contest with Wilbur, until he realized that the dog wouldn't exactly care if he lost the contest. Not that Wilbur would; Galatea, Lily's cat would, but Wilbur was far too lazy to---
"I can't show you up there!" there was definitely no room for Prongs, and for some reason James felt that going up there was walking into a death trap, and he'd rather die on his own terms. Not that Lily was going to kill him, but the Prongs in him was beginning to get that antsy, er...deer in the headlights, feeling. "You have to come down!"
Lily huffed herself and stood up from the boxes, going to stand at the doorway to the guest room. She leaned against the frame and crossed her arms over her chest in that way that said she was on the brink if being annoyed. "What do you want?" she asked irritably, raising her brow at him in skepticism that it could possibly be anything worthwile.
"You know, I've got a lot of stuff to unpack up here, stuff that you bought and dumped in that room, and I'd like to get that done before dinner because--just--ugh... it is too important to wait until after dinner or something?"
James pouted greatly up at his fiancee, crossing his arms over his chest and simply nodding before making his way to the living room that was still rather empty. He'd decided a few minutes ago (aka an hour ago, when he was supposed to be unpacking the boxes that were still towered in the corner) that this would be a big enough space for Lily to have room and not feel smothered by Prongs, well---James really didn't know how big he was compared to humans, but he supposed to shock of seeing your fiance turn into a stag would need a lot of space.
He stood in the middle of the living room and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead when he went to rub his eyes. Oh, the headache that was forming was not one that James saw disappearing any time soon.
It wasn't very often that Lily gave in to James. She was most likely going to regret doing it in five minutes. But the pout on his face had made her curious, and after much internal struggle, she decided that just this once she had room to let him have his way.
But if whatever it was that he wanted her to see was another fucking lamp, she was going to take his head off. The Muggle way.
About two minutes after James had left, Lily appeared in the threshold of the living room. "What?" she asked. "If you've got something to show me, I'm giving you thirty seconds." She began to count off aloud and ticking on her fingers lazily. "Thirty... twenty-nine... twenty-eight..."
She was TIMING him? What the fuck was that! Wasn't he the one that was supposed to be leading this conversation?
"But Lily---" James started, but she kept on counting and now he had less than twenty second and he wanted to panic, he did, but uh, hello, he had no time to and James raised his hands in a frustrated fashion as if clenching onto invisible prison bars, because that's how he felt, he felt like he was listening to the countdown of a bomb and it wasn't fair to Lily to think like that but she wasn't giving him the chance and he knew he had already had like a year to tell her this but now he wanted to do it right now on his own terms and James got himself into such a tizzy that he transformed into Prongs right there without thinking about the consequences.
It happened sometimes, especially in the beginning, when they were still learning how to control their powers. He'd ended up in a very awkward position stuck through the top of his curtains back at Hogwarts because a nightmare of sorts had popped him into Prongs and his antlers had gotten stuck and thank goodness he'd been able to transform back before Ben or Frank had woken up asking what the hell was that bleeting noise.
Well. At least he was bigger than her now. By a lot. She couldn't do that much damage.
Wait. This was Lily Evans we're talking about.
He was screwed.
"Nine... eight... come on, James, I swear I'm walking out of here in five... four... thre---"
The problem was, by the time her count would have hit zero, she wasn't counting anymore. Hell, she wasn't sure she was breathing anymore. How could she with a--deer or... no, stag, that's--well, a whatever, a deer-like-staggish animal standing in her living room where her fiance had been moments earlier and and what was--and--he was--and--ohhh she needed to sit down.
Lily backed up out of the living room, wide-eyed and looking like a deer in headlights (oh haha) until her back connected with the wall on the other side of the hallway. She sank back against it, unable to take her eyes off of her fian--no, that wasn't James--that--thing, the animal the... whatever it was and...
"Wh--where's... what have you..." She couldn't even form a coherent sentence, that's how much shock she was feeling, fantastic. "--my--where is James--what... what have you done with... oh Merlin..."
Prongs didn't exactly like the negative vibes coming from this other person and it took James a moment to come into full control of the form and---ah, okay, friend, mate, even, don't worry, it's just---he bowed his head to take a breath and calm himself down before he transformed back and stood a bit rigid. James stared at Lily as if being examined, his teeth slightly clenched and shoulders scrunched. He'd shown Frank Prongs out of desperation, but this was the first time that he was...what? He was...looking for approval. Right.
"Lily," James managed, jerking slightly forward, but the look in her eyes, the look that he'd terrified her---it kept him stuck in his place. He put a hand to his head and looked down. "I---this is how I helped Remus, during---the full moons. I'm sorry, I've been trying to tell you---I just---it--I'm sorry."
Lily wasn't sure how she was supposed to respond to that, to any of this, really. Her fiance had just transformed into an animal and back--an animagus, fuck, was he really? That wasn't, he couldn't be registered--and was now trying to explain that he'd done it to help his werewolf friend and... and they'd been dating-slash-engaged for a year and he hadn't told her? No, Lily Evans knew how to feel. She knew that she felt bloody furious, that's what.
"You never told me? You never told me!" It was amazing how anger could shove the voice right back into your mouth, and oh was it back. She had a big piece of her mind to give him right now, ohhh. "We've been engaged for months and you didn't think this was an important enough little detail to tell the woman you're marrying until three weeks before the bloody wedding? James Potter, I swear to Merlin, I'm going to kill you! KILL you! Your friend can tell me he's a--a werewolf" --the word was said in a dramatically lowered voice-- "but you can't tell me you're an illegal bloody animagus!?"
"It's been a secret for almost five years! And I never...it's just---it's just that and---and I had---it---I didn't---I---well! But--I never--" He sounded like a bloody buffoon and let out a frustrated sound, because he was going to get this done and even though he knew he deserved to be yelled at for keeping such a huge secret from Lily, he was at least going to hold his own. After taking a few more breaths, James finally looked up at Lily, shaking his head. "I didn't intentionally try to hide it from you for this long."
He'd been so used to hiding it that the thought of having to reveal the secret to anyone under circumstances that weren't life or death had never crossed his mind. James hadn't felt like he was holding a big bad secret from Lily until Peter had made such a big deal about it (for good reason, apparently), and had only not told her when Remus revealed his secret because it involved other people as well and---it just hadn't occurred to him.
James had the slight urge to remind Lily that the only reason (at the time, James was a bit sure Remus would have allowed his secret to be told after they got engaged) was because Lily had broken up with him, and it was to help mend problems, but James wasn't about to try and flip the blame game on her. He'd still have had to tell her, if he wanted them to work.
"I should've told you, I know, I'm an idiot, and I've got a million things I could use as excuses but I'm not going to because---I should've just told you and---it---you can," he involuntarily winced, "ask me whatever you want or...whatever else you want to do with me."
That phrase was usually some sort of a sexual suggestion, but James was sorely disappointed when his brain reminded him that he probably wasn't going to get laid until he was too old to have children.
Lily felt herself deflate, but only slightly. James had to know that it always helped with her when he admitted that he was being an idiot, or was wrong (if only because he would have never said it during the first six years of their relationship). That didn't mean he was off the hook, though. This was Lily Evans, after all, and she was a hard person to get around when she felt like she had been wronged. Right now she really felt like she had been wronged.
Her glare melted into a disappointed frown as she looked up at him from her place on the floor. "I don't want to ask you anything. And I don't know right now what I want to do with you," she answered him honestly. "I'm really... I'm not happy, James."
Quietly, she stood up and walked past him, into the living room and then over into the kitchen. Lily busied hereslf with starting a pot of tea, because after he had revealed something so... monumental... well, it felt wrong to just be sitting there and doing nothing. And she needed to buy herself a little bit of time to think. After all, there was an illegal animagus living in her home now--it was hard to understand exactly what that meant. For him, for her, for both of them. It wasn't like she was just going to not marry him for it (though she was guilted to say the thought, for a split second, had crossed her mind before she realized how ridiculous that was and stamped it out), so she needed some time to... prepare her mind, in a sense.
He'd rather have had her continue to scream at him.
James deflated immediately as he watched Lily walk away with that look, one he'd memorized over the years and had learned to hate the most out of all of Lily's expressions. There were lots of times when he thought his jokes were funny or that his pranks were brilliant, but when he got that look, the look that read she'd thought him better of something...James felt like crumbling into pieces. He could handle Lily mad at him, he got mad at her too---but he could only remember once where he'd been thoroughly disappointed with her, and remembering the way he'd felt was causing him to get ready to pack his bags.
Dropping his head back for a moment and shutting his eyes, James somehow made it to the bottom of the stairs and put his head in his hands, unsure of how the hell he was going to fix this.
Lily had calmed down considerably by the time the tea kettle screamed at being finished, or at least felt like she had composed herself a bit more. She reached up (on tiptoes, it was a curse) and took two mugs out of the cupboard. She poured tea into each of them and finally peeked out of the kitchen, searching for her fiance--she hadn't really heard him move, and did end up spotting him at the bottom of the stairs. Lily found herself taking a deep breath again before she pushed herself out of the doorway to go and stand over James.
Don't get her wrong, even though he looked like he was suffering from a great personal crisis, she did not feel guilty for the way she had reacted. She wasn't exactly feeling like forgiving him, either. But she still didn't like to see him like that, and even if she was mad at him.
Lily nudged his arm with the second mug. "Come on," she said tiredly. "Take this and get up and do something useful around here. I may be pissed at you, but that doesn't mean you get to sit around and mope while I unpack."
