Cherchez La Femme

Cherchez La Femme: Chapter 2

James did not wake up when his alarm went off the next morning. He woke up to the outraged yells and thrown pillows of his roommates trying to get him to shut it off.

"S'not even light yet," Peter moaned sleepily.

"Issaturday," Remus yawned. "Why early, huh?"

Sneaking a hand out of the curtains surrounding his bed, James shut the alarm off, much to the relief of his roommates, considering it was six in the morning on a Saturday.

"Sodding mffwff-ffuff," Sirius snarled into his pillow from across the room.

"Sorry," James said, opening up the curtains and sitting up groggily, blinking at the weak sunlight filtering through the window.

He got dressed as quickly and silently as possible. Not knowing what time Evans was supposed to be at St. Mungo's to meet with the review board, he had decided to get there as early as possible, to stake the place out and follow her. And then, he'd do...well, he wasn't entirely clear on that quite yet. Surely he'd think of something.

Making his way down to the bathroom, he washed his face, brushed his teeth and artfully ruffled up the hair at the back of his head.

By seven o'clock, he was slumped down in a chair in the ever-busy St. Mungo's waiting area, surveying the entrance over a month-old copy of Witch Weekly with a cup of tar-like hospital coffee in his hand. The coffee kept him awake, but it also created an urgent desire for the bathroom that could only be satisfied once he'd informed the nurse at the information desk to let him know if a redheaded girl came in while he was gone.

Luckily, he didn't miss her. At 8:30, Lily Evans breezed past him without a glance.

*******

Lily gazed mournfully at her reflection in the mirror. There really wasn't much she could do with the hair. She'd wrestled it back into a bun, but that didn't hide the fact that the right side of her head still appeared to be covered in snot.

The fluttering began again in her stomach, but she fought it back, breathing deeply. She'd had the flutters long before this catastrophe, every time she'd imagined sitting in front of the review board. It was just nerves. It was just because she wanted it so badly. Of course, the more she looked at her disgusting reflection in the mirror and thought about how badly she wanted it, the more nervous she got.

"I need a hairband," she decided, trying to think rationally. She dropped her head down, her hands gripping the edge of the sink. "I don't own a hairband," she sighed. She almost always wore her hair down, the better to hide the thinness of her face. The bun wasn't working much better for her than the goo in her hair. "Phaedra does, though."

Lily couldn't say that her accessory-obsessed roommate was a friend, necessarily. But desperate times called for desperate measures and Phaedra was undoubtedly still asleep. Sneaking back up to her room, Lily sent a guilty glance at her roommate's silent bed before pawing through her belongings until she retrieved the desired black headband. It would cover at least some of the mucus, and she'd make it up to Phaedra somehow.

Returning to the washroom, Lily put on the headband and studied herself in the mirror. She looked...sickly. What a fantastic image to put forward to the review board at St. Mungo's Hospital. The butterflies returned, full force.

Lily leaned into her reflection, staring herself directly in the eyes. "You are exactly what they're looking for. You are amazing. You are the candidate of their dreams."

The speech did little to dispel the butterflies or buck up her confidence, though it did reawaken her anger towards James Potter and Sirius Black. As if she hadn't been nervous enough coming into this. As if she'd needed their stupid immature prank to make it any worse. How nice it must be to have the sort of social clout and money and sense of entitlement that they did, to not have to actually work to get anywhere in life, to have the luxury of seeing everything as one big joke.

Shoving them out of her head, Lily drew in a deep breath and let it out, leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. "You can do this. You have to do this. This is everything you've ever wanted. So forget about what you look like and go get it."

"That's the spirit," the mirror responded tiredly. "Up and at 'em."

She ran the words over and over in her head as she flooed to St. Mungo's and made her way down to the basement where the classrooms and lecture halls were located. She ran them over and over some more as she checked in with the receptionist and sat down on a hard plastic chair to wait. When the door to the lecture hall opened and a tall, thin, bespectacled woman leaned out to call her name, they promptly flew out of her head.

Standing, she took as deep a breath as she could manage. Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. They're not going to torture you. They're just going to ask you questions, and you know all of the answers already, so CALM DOWN.

A single chair stood in the center of the room. Behind a large table at the front sat the review board. Lily glanced at them. They all gazed back at her blandly. A tiny, elderly witch in the corner sent her a small smile, which Lily returned halfheartedly.

"What was your name again, dear?" the head healer asked, shuffling through a sheaf of parchments. He was a burly, formidable-looking man.

For one panicked second, she honestly couldn't remember. She cleared her throat to cover. "Evans, sir. Lily Evans."

"Ah. Yes, here we are," he said, fishing out a parchment and glancing over it. "Sixth year, Gryffindor...Muggleborn, eh?"

It was like a punch in the stomach. Dear Merlin, what if they're all Death Eaters? "Yes, sir," she said evenly. It hadn't gone that far, had it? Surely they couldn't keep her out because of that.

"We've got some new programs starting up that incorporate Muggle and Magical healing methods, you know. It's yielding some excellent results."

Relief flowed through her, and for the first time, Lily relaxed. "Yes, I read about the programs in the brochure and I've read some of the articles that have been published about the findings. I can see how..." she trailed off when she saw a frown cross his face as he squinted, his eyes moving to the side of her head. In fact, the entire side of the table that could see the fruits of James Potter and Sirius Black's labors was staring at it in puzzlement, as if trying to figure out what it was.

Professor McGonagall had told her to just pretend like it wasn't there, to not say anything about it or try to explain it unless they specifically asked, but Lily had a sudden vision of the review board discussing the candidates later that day:

"What about Evans? In or out?"

"Which one was that?"

"The one with bogies in her hair."

Gripping her hands in her lap, Lily sighed. Might as well face the humiliation head-on. "I should probably explain the state of my appearance, shouldn't I?"

"What...exactly...is that?" asked the witch at the end of the table.

"Stinksap," a jocular, male voice said from behind Lily. She squeezed her eyes shut in horror. This can't be happening. This simply can't be happening.

"We're with a candidate now, son," the head healer said. "If you'd just wait your turn..."

"Oh, I'm not here to be interviewed," James Potter explained. She heard him walk up to stand beside her chair and squeezed her eyes shut tighter, still trying to cling to the notion that this was some sort of stress-induced hallucination. "I'm James Potter, and I'm afraid that the state of Miss Evans' appearance is entirely my fault. Hello there, Mrs. Gustafson. Mr. Yokesworthy, congratulations on your new grandson."

Slowly, Lily opened her eyes. The tiny witch who had smiled at her when she'd walked in and the portly man sitting next to the head healer were both grinning at James fondly.

"And Mrs. Thistle never told me she had a daughter," James continued. Lily glanced at him. He had his hands on his hips, pinning down the stately witch who'd asked her what was in her hair with a jokingly stern glare. The stately witch blushed and shook her head.

"James, honestly."

He held a hand to his heart, his jaw falling open in comical amazement. "Mrs. Thistle?! You shouldn't go around looking so youthful. Impressionable young men like myself might think you're still available."

The woman rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, laughing. "Oh, go on."

In the build-up to her interview, Lily's nervous mind had conjured up all sorts of horrible things happening. She'd imagined everything from passing wind very loudly to utterly losing her mind, ripping off her clothes and running through the hospital screaming until orderlies chased her down and dragged her off to the Closed Ward.

It had never occurred to her that James Potter might suddenly walk in and start flirting with the review board.

"What are you doing?" she asked out of the side of her mouth.

His hand came to rest on her shoulder. If she could have done it without being obvious, Lily would have shrugged it off. "I'm getting you into the Healer Training Program, that's what I'm doing," he said in a low voice.

For a moment, Lily could only sit there, shocked. Frankly, she couldn't imagine why he would care if she got in one way or the other. Then anger began building up, and Lily dug her fingernails into her knees. Did he really think that she needed him here to schmooze her into the Program? Did he really think she wanted to get in that way?

She didn't seem to have a choice. Blowing up at him - even interrupting him - wasn't an option. They all knew him, or knew his parents, and James worked his way down the table, discussing long-lost memories, pets...Lily tuned it out after a while.

"Anyway," James finally said, his hand squeezing her shoulder. Lily jumped a little. She'd forgotten it was there. "What you have here is a perfect candidate for the Program. There's no smarter student at Hogwarts. A friend and I set up a little surprise for a bloke as a birthday prank, and she unwittingly ended up covered in it instead. Not unlike the time you and my father intended to douse Alpheus Bones with forgetfulness potion and ended up getting Professor Binns instead, is it, Mr. Yokesworthy?"

The man fell into near-seizures of laughter. "It was the most interesting week of History of Magic lectures in the history of History of Magic lectures."

A few scattered laughs joined in, and James smiled, shaking his head. "Anyway," he said once they'd died down a bit, "I couldn't let her come here all covered in stinksap because of me without coming down myself to explain it. I apologize for interrupting."

The hand abruptly left her shoulder. The review board called out farewells to him, which James answered with a grin and a wave of his hand. And then he was gone.

Slightly dazed, Lily tried to convince herself that that had just happened. The review board was rumbling with talk, what a good boy he was, always into mischief, but so chivalrous to come in here... Dear Merlin, she realized, he's managed to hijack my interview. It was true. The interview was no longer about her; it was about James Potter.

"Sir," she offered weakly to the head healer, "I've been working on a joint extra credit project in Herbology and Potions this year that might have some far-reaching effects..."

He didn't even hear her.

"...in the treatment of memory loss," she finished glumly, to her lap. Some small part of her brain understood that James Potter had probably just gotten her into the training program; the rest of it was seething with anger. At the very best, he'd just brushed aside six years of hard work with a cocky grin and a good deal of arse-kissing, and every day she spent as a healer would be tarnished by the fact that James Potter - and not her own achievements - had gotten her there. At the very worst, her professional career would be much like this. Why pay attention to her, after all? She'd only gotten in because James Potter had helped her out. It's not as if she had anything useful to contribute.

"Well, you've certainly got the marks," the head healer said, making Lily snap her head up. "And your recommendations are unceasing in their praise of your intelligence, abilities and determination." Chuckling a little bit, he made a vague motion towards the door. "And you've certainly got yourself some loyal friends, haven't you?"

Lily had no idea if she managed to make the sneer on her face into a smile, but it must have passed muster, because the healer barely even paused.

"You do know that if you're accepted, the seventh year training program requires extensive coursework on top of your regular Hogwarts studies, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," Lily said, her throat dry.

"And that you'll have to attend all of the weekend seminars?"

"I've prepared for it, sir. I believe that I'll be able to handle it."

He sent her an indulgent smile. "I'm sure you will. Go see to your boy."

Lily hadn't thought it possible to clench her teeth any harder without snapping her jaw. Apparently it was. "Yes, sir," she said, turning away before he could work out the fact that her smile was nothing more than an enraged baring of the teeth.

She was going to kill James Potter for this.

*******

"And then I just grabbed it, like this," James said, snatching the receptionist's fist, which had been playing the part of the snitch in his re-enactment of the recent Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match. She giggled, and he released it, shrugging. "And that was it."

"They say you're one of the best seekers to come through in years," she said, sending him a flirtatious smile. She was engaged, set to be married in June. Neither of them were flirting seriously, and that was the way James liked it best. There were no expectations and no feelings to be hurt, just a bit of banter and the happy knowledge that he was making a lovely and desirable woman feel properly lovely and desirable.

In any case, that was the position he found himself in - his hand wrapped around the receptionist's fist, a flirtatious smile on his face - when Lily Evans came out of the lecture hall. She bestowed a withering glare on him and stormed away.

"Oh. I'd better..."

"...go after her," the receptionist finished, reclaiming her hand, nodding in the direction of Evans' departure. "I'd hurry, if I were you. She didn't look pleased with you."

Trotting off down the hallway, James passed through the doors at the end before breaking into a full-out sprint. Evans was stomping through the entryway when he caught sight of her. "Hey," he called out. She didn't even pause.

Swearing under his breath, James leapt through the barrier between St. Mungo's and the Muggle world. Looking around, he spotted Evans off to his left, still stomping.

"Evans!" he yelled after her. She stomped faster. Breaking into another sprint, James managed to catch up to her, falling into pace beside her.

"So how did it go?" he asked. She stopped so abruptly that he walked on a few steps without realizing it.

"How did it go?" she asked, crossing her arms over her stomach and letting out a long, bitter laugh. "From your perspective, it went perfectly, I'm sure."

Stung by the rancor in her voice, James fumbled around for an answer. "Surely they let you in. I mean...why wouldn't they?" He knew her grades were solid, especially in the courses they cared about. He also knew that she'd been doing plenty of extra credit.

"Oh, they'll let me in, I'm sure. I'll breeze through the next round of interviews. They probably won't even bother to ask me a question. And it's all because of you."

James wasn't entirely certain why she spat out the last word as if it were something slimy that she'd accidentally swallowed, but...okay. He could be humble. He could be more than humble. He'd only come to offset what his prank had done to her, after all.

"It's not because of me," he said. "You got in there. You did the interview. I just explained away the stinksap in your hair."

Her eyes blazed. "Right. And that's all you did."

"Yes. I mean...isn't it?" Confusion reigned. She was angry about something, which wasn't really new when it came to him. He just couldn't quite figure out why.

Her sharp finger poked him in the chest. Wincing, James moved back a step. "I don't want you to help me, Potter," she hissed. "I don't need you to help me. If you have some sort of weird desire to rectify your actions well after the damage has been done, then make it up to me by doing me the favor of staying far the hell away from me."

She punctuated the last statement with a particularly vicious chest-poke, then tried to stomp past him. Almost without thinking, James blocked her. "I was only trying to help," he explained. Though in his mind, the statement should have dissolved her anger, it only seemed to add fuel to it.

"Don't help me!" she said shrilly, shoving him out of her way. "Don't anything me!"

"Evans," he said desperately, grasping at her elbow.

Swinging it out of reach, she rounded on him, backing him against the brick wall behind him. "I've spent my entire Hogwarts career focusing on getting into the Healer Training Program. I've gone without sleep to stay up and study. I've taken on extra credit assignments. I've read every bloody scientific study they've published in the past twenty years - and as you've probably never read a scientific study, let me just inform you right now that they're the most boring things in the history of the written word - and all of that is bloody meaningless, because I'm not going to get in because I'm qualified. I'm going to get in because your father pulled a prank on Professor Binns with Mr. Yokesworhy."

James stared down at her, taking in the shape of her shoulders under her robes, the angles of her face that she finally wasn't hiding behind her hair, the bright green eyes. "What does it matter how you get in? The point is that you will, and that you should."

She stepped back, crossing her arms, looking down. "I suppose it's all the same to you," she said, her voice strangely deflated. "Well, it isn't to me."

"Evans," he breathed, reaching out for her. She stepped away from him and though James couldn't understand exactly why, he knew that somehow he'd hurt her more than he'd helped her today. "I was just trying to get you in. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"James Potter," she sighed, sounding weary, hugging her arms against her body tightly, "you are the biggest idiot on the planet."

"Yes, I'm beginning to see that," he said slowly, uncertain how to deal with her. "Er...would you like me to go back and tell them to toss you out on principle?"

She looked pained. "No, I don't. I want it too much. Does that make me a bad person?"

James couldn't help the smile that curled around his face. Only 'Stick-up-her-arse' Lily Evans would ask that question of herself. "No, it doesn't."

Evans snorted. "As if I'd trust your opinion on the matter."

It hurt a little. In fact, it hurt a lot. James knew that she disliked him, and that she was justifiably angry with him at the moment, but sometimes she treated him like the scum of the earth. He was certainly no saint, and he knew she didn't like him picking on Snivellus, but the kid was a git, and probably a Death Eater to boot. It's not as if he went around kicking first years or bullying Muggleborns. Perhaps it was just long past time he asked the question, so he did. "Why do you hate me so much?"

*******

Her mind fixated on apparating away, Lily didn't hear him the first time. "I'm sorry?"

"Why do you hate me so much?" he repeated, blinking at her with big, vulnerable eyes behind his glasses with his hair all messed up, looking boyish and entreating. She was powerless against that look, even from the ego king of Gryffindor tower. It was the same look that forced her to defend Severus Snape no matter how many times he called her a Mudblood and turned on her viciously. At the core, she supposed, they were all the same. They just wanted to be liked.

"I don't hate you," she muttered, disliking the fact that she was providing him with an opportunity to continue bothering her.

Shoving his hands in the pockets of his robes, he looked down, shuffling his feet. "I was trying to make it up to you. I guess I kind of botched it up."

"It was a nice gesture," she said with difficulty. "I know your intentions were good, but you can't just go waltzing into people's professional interviews, throwing your father's weight around. It isn't the same as getting in on my own."

He nodded. "I guess I can see that. It's just that you're perfect for this, really. They'd be stupid not to let you in. Thinking that, well...I guess I might've laid it on a bit thick."

It wasn't necessarily as if the ground had dropped out from underneath her feet, but it was certainly rather disorienting. She hadn't seriously considered the idea that beyond trying to make up for what he'd done, he'd thought her truly worthy of getting into the program. It was kind of validating. "That's...thank you."

James smiled his trademark lopsided, goofy smile, though he still seemed to be acting uncharacteristically shy. "You don't have to thank me. It was all true, what I said."

Feeling a little embarrassed about being so mean to him earlier, Lily just shrugged.

"And considering what a mess I made this morning, I'd still like to make it up to you."

The smile came from somewhere. She couldn't figure out where it came from; it just came. "Buying me a tasteful hat would be a good start."

He laughed. "I'll do that straight away. But I was thinking of something a little more."

"Like what?"

"The last Hogsmeade visit is next weekend. Whatever you want to do, it's on me."

His voice was joking, but when Lily looked up at him, his hazel eyes were earnest, turned a pure, soft gold in the morning sunlight. A tiny voice spoke at the back of her mind, that danger lurked there, that some bridge would be burned if she accepted. James Potter and his invitation were Pandora's Box, and the small decision was not as small as it seemed.

And yet...what else did she have, really? Though they were proud of her, her parents had the barest inkling of the world she lived in. She hadn't any close friends, really. She'd always been too bookish and standoffish to make any. Silly as it seemed, and despite the protests of the voice in her mind, Lily considered the offer. Would it be so horrible? As egotistical and self-absorbed as she'd always seen him, Lily wasn't blind to the fact that James Potter was attracted to her. And though it was hardly a date, it was the closest thing she'd have to one at Hogwarts. Boys were not exactly lining up to ask her out, and it would be kind of nice to see what it was like. "Okay," she said.

His face broke into an eager smile. "Really?"

Lily's smile grew in almost unconscious response. The boy was contagious. "Yes."