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Lily Evans is strongly considering putting her wand to the cabbie’s temple and demanding he turn the taxi around.
They’ve been driving through the countryside for hours, and always the same view: a gravel lane flanked by wild shrubbery and pristine, snow-covered fields. This part of Wales is jarringly untouched by the war ravaging the rest of Britain. There are hardly even trees.
But it isn’t too late to go back to London. Her hand drifts towards the pocket of her coat as she weighs what to say to make the cabbie turn around. So what if going back lands her in prison? At least Azkaban has a view.
Her empty pocket reminds her that it is, in fact, too late for such schemes. The Ministry is Tracing her wand, so she left it with Albus Dumbledore at Order headquarters. And now she’s in Llandeilo, Wales, according to the road sign they passed an hour ago.
Llandeilo. She has no idea how it’s pronounced, let alone its location on a map. Which is the entire point. Hopefully, both the Ministry and the Death Eaters don’t know where she is, either.
“Nice view,” comments the boy sitting beside her in the taxi. He keeps saying this at intervals, even though the scenery hasn’t changed for hours, because he knows it annoys her.
She doesn’t respond. She’s pretending he doesn’t exist.
Up the road, an old white van appears, heading towards them. The taxi pulls over to allow it to pass, juddering as its wheels hit the dirt.
Long seconds tick by. The van appears to be held together by rust, and its driver is a weathered old man who could be anywhere from fifty to eighty. The old man peers into the cab as he trundles past, evidently curious about what sort of person would need a lift to the middle of nowhere.
His eyes meet Lily’s. She glares at him with such fury that the van lurches forward, as if the old man has suddenly remembered he has pressing matters elsewhere. With a metallic groan, the van speeds away.
The boy sitting beside her lets out an amused snort.
“Scared of you, was he?”
She ignores the jibe. She’s not talking to him.
She’s not said a word to him all day, actually: not when they met at dawn to take the train from London to Cardiff, nor on the bus to Swansea, nor in the taxi currently taking them God-knows-where. Dumbledore nixed all magical means of travel — the Ministry is monitoring the Floo and Portkeys, and the Death Eaters can trace Apparition — but Lily hasn’t minded the journey. Watching the boy struggle to navigate Muggle public transportation has been downright enjoyable.
“That man’s probably going to be one of our neighbours,” continues the boy. “You ought to be nice to him.”
This is a stupid thing to say, and they both know it. They’re not going to meet the neighbours; they’re going to be stuck inside a safe house for however long it takes Dumbledore to sort out the mistake that landed them in this situation in the first place.
The mistake this sniggering boy made.
Lily glances at him. He’s staring out the window as though enthralled by the countryside. His untidy black hair rivals the hedges outside, and his coke-bottle lenses are entirely out of fashion. Unfortunately, both of these things only serve to make him more attractive. He knows it, too: every gesture he makes is arrogant, like he thinks he’s God’s gift to the world.
The taxi returns to the road. They pass a church made of crumbling brown stone, ringed by an equally dismal graveyard, and it’s the most excitement she’s had in an hour.
Croeso Bethlehem, reads the sign out front. Gyrrwch yn ofalus.
“Welcome to Bethlehem,” translates the boy, because of course he speaks Welsh. “Please drive carefully.”
Lily slumps, her head thudding dully against the window. This must be Dumbledore’s idea of a joke, sending them to a village called Bethlehem for Christmas.
A few miles beyond the church, the taxi grinds to a halt.
“This is it,” says the cabbie.
Lily hands him a wad of banknotes — she knows enough about the sniggering boy to know he can’t be trusted with Muggle money — and climbs out of the taxi.
The boy gets out too. “Diolch yn fawr.”
The cabbie responds in lilting Welsh, jerking a thumb towards Lily. The boy and the cabbie share a laugh, which she suspects is at her expense, and then the taxi is gone.
The boy drags his trunk across the gravel lane and stands beside her. Their safe house is a small cottage with bumpy whitewashed walls and a steeply pitched slate roof.
I’ve seen bigger garages, thinks Lily.
“Charming place,” says the boy. When she says nothing, he lugs his trunk across the pebbled path leading up to the cottage and vanishes inside.
She massages her temple, then follows. She knows his positivity is a ruse. He’s no more pleased with the situation than she is, but he’s figured out he can get under her skin if he pretends to be happy about it.
Inside the cottage, he’s dropped the fake-happy act. “There’s only one room,” he says, which she can see for herself. There’s a tiny kitchen by the entrance, a rickety wooden table with two chairs, a hearth, and a single bed with a thin metal frame in the corner.
No. There has to be more than one bed. Her shoes tap the cold stone floor, and she opens the door at the far end of the room. She’s hoping for another bedroom, but it’s only the toilet.
She turns to him. His arms are crossed, and he’s glowering at her as if she personally told Dumbledore that a safe house with only one bed would be just the thing.
“You’ll sleep on the floor,” she says.
These are the first words she’s spoken to him all day. The fact isn’t lost on him, because his scowl deepens. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“Crawl into bed with me and I’ll strangle you in your sleep.” She hefts her trunk onto the mattress, claiming it as her own. “It’s death or the floor. Your choice.”
He grumbles something she can’t make out. “At least let me have one of the blankets.”
It’s a reasonable request, which pisses her off, because she can’t refuse without looking like a madwoman. “Fine.”
There are only two blankets on the bed; Lily strips off the thinner one and tosses it to him. He’s eyeing the pair of deflated pillows, so she reluctantly throws him one of those, too. “Satisfied?”
“Quite. Diolch, tywysoges.”
She might not speak Welsh, but she can recognise an insult when she hears one. “I thought you were French. Not Welsh.”
“Living in France doesn’t make me French.”
“Whatever, Frenchie.” She flings herself onto the bed. The mattress springs protest under her weight.
The boy opens his mouth, then apparently thinks better of whatever he was about to say. He takes a seat at the rickety kitchen table with a huff.
Clearly, she can get under his skin just as well as he does hers. Satisfied, she pulls a book from her trunk and begins to read.
Lily sits up. The sun has set, and the interior of the cottage is so dark she’s no longer able to squint at the pages of her book. She gets out of bed and runs a hand along the bumpy wall, looking for a light switch. There’s one in the kitchen, and she flips it.
Nothing happens.
The boy stirs; he’d fallen asleep in his chair. “What’re you doing?”
“Trying to turn on the lights. Obviously.”
There’s another set of switches near the fireplace, which also don’t work. Lily looks for a third set but doesn’t find one. Even the switch in the bathroom is useless.
The boy leans back in his chair, both arms folded behind his head, watching her. “No eclecticity, eh?”
“Elec-tri-city.” She exaggerates the word, like he’s five years old and not particularly bright.
“That’s what I said. Eclecticity.”
Maybe it’s a good thing Dumbledore has both of their wands, because she’s never wanted to hex somebody so badly in her life. “It’s no harder to say than Wingardium Leviosa. Your prejudice is showing.”
A pause. “Ddrwg ’da fi,” he says, sounding contrite.
She almost forgives him, but then he says, “I’m right, aren’t I? You can’t get the lights to work.”
She imagines kicking the chair legs out from under him and sending him toppling to the floor. “A fuse must be out,” she says shortly. “Need to find the circuit breaker.”
“Now you’re the one speaking a foreign language,” he says cheerily. He must be able to sense the steam that’s coming from her ears, because he begins to whistle an upbeat Christmas tune, pouring fuel into the fire burning in her chest.
It takes a Herculean effort to ignore him, but she manages to find the circuit breaker in the bathroom, shoved between the mirror and a tiny wooden cabinet. She flips all the switches three times before she accepts the truth.
Blown fuses aren’t the problem. The electricity in the safe house doesn’t work at all.
Lily grows several degrees colder with the realisation. They are stuck in a poorly-insulated cottage in the middle of winter with neither light nor heat.
Azkaban and its temperature-controlled cells are really starting to seem appealing.
On her way back to bed, she pulls her coat off the hook by the door and bundles herself in it, already freezing.
The boy taps a finger against the table. “You can’t get it to work, can you?”
She wheels towards him. “It isn’t my fault the Order forgot to set up the electricity. Hope you like spending time in the dark and cold.”
“There’s a fireplace,” says the boy in a tone that suggests she’s worked up over nothing. “Just start a fire.”
“I’m not your house-elf. You start a fire.”
The boy shrugs and tips his chair back. “I would, but I don’t know how.”
“And why do you assume I do? Because I’m Muggle-born?”
“That’s it,” he says sarcastically. “I’m out to get you because of your blood. No, Evans. We’re in a Muggle cottage, and we haven’t got wands. If we’re making a fire, it’ll have to be the Muggle way.”
She hates the way he makes her surname sound like a barb. “I never learnt the Muggle way, Potter. So it looks like we’re shit out of luck.”
“Merlin’s sake, it can’t be that difficult. We’ve got to at least try or we’ll freeze.”
“Well, there’s no wood, and I’m not going outside in the dark to find some.”
“Fine. Then I will.” He rises from the table and makes for the back door.
“You’ll need an axe!” she yells after him.
The door slams shut in response.
He comes back ten minutes later with an armful of sticks and dried leaves. “There.” He deposits his pitiful findings on the grate in the fireplace.
“Fantastic,” Lily says. “That’ll burn for about five minutes. Good work.”
“It’s better than nothing.” He prods the sticks with a poker. “How do we set these on fire?”
“Great question. We’ve no wand and no matches, so…”
“I thought Muggles could start fires with rocks.”
“You’re thinking of Neanderthals. Muggles aren’t cavemen, Frenchie.”
She gets a savage pleasure from the way he nearly drops the poker. “That’s not — look, I didn’t mean it like that —”
“Keep telling yourself that,” she says, though she knows he really didn’t mean it. “They used special rocks, anyway. I don’t think the pebbles in the front garden will work.”
“That’s alright,” he says, clearly trying to be optimistic. “We’ll just — we’ll find another way —”
“There is no other way. Like I said. We’re shit out of luck.”
“Fuck,” Potter says. The sound of the Muggle curse in his pure-blood mouth is so incongruous that for a moment she thinks it’s attractive. Then he storms out of the cottage entirely, slamming the door so hard it nearly comes off its hinges.
There’s nothing else for Lily to do, since it’s pitch dark in the cottage and Potter is no longer around for her to torment. So she slides under the covers, still bundled in her coat, and tries to fall asleep.
The cottage’s whitewashed walls must be poorly insulated, because she gets colder with every passing minute. The temperature is dropping fast now that night has fallen. She ventures out of bed long enough to pull on every pair of socks she’s brought, but her toes still go numb.
She lies as still as possible, hoping the single blanket covering her will trap her body heat, but her hands are starting to numb, too. She cracks open an eye; moonlight filtering in from the window illuminates her icy breath.
She brings her hands to her face and breathes on them, trying to transfer the heat in her stomach to her frozen fingertips. It doesn’t work, and she pulls the blanket over her head with a frustrated growl. There is absolutely no way she’ll be able to sleep in this cold.
The back door creaks open. She hopes it’s a Death Eater come to put her out of her misery, but it’s only Potter.
She lowers the blanket a little to watch him. He lies on the floor in front of the fireplace and yanks the single, threadbare blanket over himself.
She waits for him to moan about the cold stone floor, which must be even worse than the bed. Or perhaps he’ll whinge about only having one blanket, while she’s got a blanket and a sheet. But he simply rolls over, his back to her, and doesn’t make another sound.
His breathing is even, but there’s no way he’s actually asleep. If she’s cold, he must be almost frozen solid, considering he spent an hour outside in the snow.
“It’s too cold,” Lily announces to the dark room. “I can’t sleep.”
There’s a pause, and she wonders if he’s fallen asleep, after all. Then he shifts under his blanket. “Yeah. It’s terrible.”
“It might be warmer with two blankets,” she ventures.
“Fuck off, Evans. I’m not giving you my blanket.”
“No, I meant —” God, this is embarrassing. “We could, erm. Put our blankets together.”
The words hang in the air like her crystallised breath.
When he speaks, his voice is sly. “Are you trying to cuddle with me, Evans?”
“Fuck off,” she says, echoing his retort, and he snorts.
Then he rises from the floor, collects his blanket and pillow, and sits on the side of the bed. “Budge up, then. You’re taking up all the space.”
“Am not,” she mutters, but she moves over anyway.
He spreads out the blanket and climbs under the covers. He radiates heat, and her frostbitten toes immediately start to thaw.
“What now?” He turns so their faces are mere inches apart and reaches mockingly for her. “Ready to cuddle?”
“Touch me and you’re back on the floor.” She tries to scoot away, but the mattress is a single. A blast of cold air tells her she’s already reached the edge.
“Suit yourself.” Potter takes off his glasses and closes his eyes.
Lily watches, incredulous, as his jaw goes slack and his breathing deepens. Within minutes, he’s asleep.
She decides she likes him better when he’s unconscious. His face has lost that infuriating neutral look he’s got while awake. She can’t stand those impassive eyes, nor the slightly raised lips that border on smug. That look is a product of Auror training, or perhaps the war. It says that nothing can shake him, so don’t bother trying.
Nothing except her, that is.
But he looks quite nice like this, with his brow relaxed and a dark curl of hair falling across his forehead. His mouth is slightly open, and she has to admit that he has nice lips. Now that he’s sleeping, she can admit to herself that he is objectively attractive; his face is chiselled like a classical statue, and she suspects he’s got a body to match. Another reason to dislike him.
Lily closes her eyes and tries to fall asleep, too. She’s warm, for the most part, but there’s a chill in her extremities that won’t leave. She tucks her hands between her thighs, though that doesn’t do much.
Potter still hasn’t stirred. There’s so much heat emanating from him — he might have a furnace inside his chest, instead of a heart. If she moves a little closer, her fingers and toes could defrost.
No. What is she thinking? She can’t get closer to him. He’d think she really was trying to cuddle, and she’d never hear the end of it.
But it isn’t fair that he’s sleeping so soundly while the tingling in her hands and feet keep her awake. It isn’t her fault she’s got poor circulation.
Cautiously, she extends her foot until her toes brush his shin. He doesn’t move. She stretches out her other leg so that both her feet are barely touching him. He really is like a radiator; her toes warm immediately.
Defrosting her fingers is trickier. She slides her hands carefully across the fitted sheet, moving slowly, until her hands are tucked underneath him, pinned between his shoulder and the mattress.
Her fingers throb with heat as they rewarm. She sighs with relief. Finally, she can sleep. Finally —
Potter shifts. His arm reaches for her, pulling her closer until their chests are pressed together and his breath is hot on her face.
All her muscles tense. She stares at him, terrified, but his eyelids haven’t so much as flickered. He’s still asleep.
Lily screws her eyes shut, willing herself to fall asleep this instant, quickly, but it’s hopeless. The cold isn’t what’s keeping her awake now. It’s the feel of his chest against hers, the rise and fall of his abdomen brushing her stomach as he breathes. His body is like a statue; with each steady inhale, his abs press firmly against her, then draw away. She wills herself to focus on something else, but it’s like trying not to think about a white Erumpent.
Oh, my God, she thinks. She’s properly warm now. Her entire body is flush with heat that seems to concentrate between her legs. Stop thinking about him. You hate him. Stop it.
But she can’t stop it, and when she finally falls asleep, it’s to a refrain of oh, my God and what the fuck that beats inside her head like a drum.
As soon as the first weak morning rays of sun filter into the cottage, Lily throws herself out of bed and runs to the bathroom. She stares at herself in the mirror, shivering, and bundles her coat more tightly around her. Her reflection is wide-eyed and disbelieving.
You spent the night pressed against James Potter, her reflection says. And you liked it.
She reaches for the tap — the plumbing still works, thankfully — and splashes her face with frigid water, bringing her back to her senses.
What happened last night is nothing to be ashamed of, she decides. Her body reacted a certain way because she’s a young woman who likes blokes, and Potter happens to be a fit one. It doesn’t mean she fancies him. It’s only natural.
The bathroom might boast running water, but there’s no heat, so she strips down and scrubs her most important bits with a damp washcloth as quickly as she can. No way she’s taking an ice-water bath in this cold. Besides, if she starts to stink, only Potter will smell her.
She throws all her layers back on and emerges from the bathroom. Potter is seated at the table, eating something out of a non-perishable tin and poring over a thick stack of papers. Situational Incident Report, London, reads the tab of one of the folders. Something from the Auror office, perhaps?
Potter catches her looking. He sets his tin of mushy peas atop the folder, obscuring its title. “Bore da, tywysoges.”
That either means ‘good morning’ or ‘stop looking at my confidential files, you nosy witch’. She guesses it’s the former.
“Bore da,” Lily responds, copying his rhythm and intonation exactly.
He raises an eyebrow, impressed. “Did you sleep well?”
The question is innocent enough, but she gives him a sideways glance. Did he wake up last night and realise she was in his arms? Does he know what they’ve done?
But he’s still reading one of the many memos on the table, not paying her any mind. There doesn’t seem to be any hidden meaning to his words.
“I slept like shit,” she lies. She grabs a tin of halved peaches from the cupboard and joins him at the table.
His eyebrow is still raised. “Really? That’s too bad. I slept like a rock, myself.”
She wants to tell him his face will get stuck that way, but decides better of it. Maybe she’d be less… attracted to him if he had one eyebrow permanently affixed to his hairline.
Not that she’s attracted to him, anyway. Just his body. And only in the specific circumstance of being inches from said body, because she certainly isn’t lusting after him now.
As if he can tell she’s thinking about him, he pushes up his sleeves in a careful, practised gesture. The sight of his forearms makes her lower abdomen clench.
She downs the peaches, juice and all, and leaves the empty tin by the sink. She must be going certifiably mad, reacting like that to Potter’s arms — Potter, who she doesn’t even like, who’s the reason she’s spending Christmas in a sad, cold cottage, who had those same strong arms around her last night —
She needs to get away from him. Some fresh air will clear her mind.
“I’m going to the village,” she says, hastening for the door.
That gets his attention. His head snaps up from the memo he’s been reading. “You can’t leave. We’re supposed to stay inside, out of sight —”
“You left last night.”
“I went for a walk through the fields. Not to a town full of people, and in broad daylight, no less. You can’t —”
“I can and I will. We need supplies, anyway. At least matches and an axe for firewood, so we don’t freeze to death.”
Even he can’t argue with that.
“Try not to miss me too much,” Lily says, and then she’s out the door and halfway down the lane.
The day is warming a bit, and it’s a pleasant walk to Bethlehem Church. She follows the road signs to the village, and after another, less pleasant hour of walking, a cluster of whitewashed cottages pop up like mushrooms along the lane.
She knows better than to hope for a Tesco in a village this small, but Bethlehem hasn’t got any shops at all, from the looks of it. The biggest attraction is a house on the corner that’s identical to the rest, save for a sign on the door that reads, ‘Post Office’. Just beyond that is a pub made of brown stones and a petrol station.
The petrol station seems promising, at least. Inside are a few shelves stocked with various odds and ends.
A thin woman in her fifties perks up behind the register, and a torrent of incomprehensible Welsh tumbles from her mouth.
“Er,” says Lily, “Bore da.”
The woman switches immediately to English. “Oh, welcome, dear. How can I help you?”
Lily sighs with relief. Thank God she won’t need Potter to translate for her. “I’m just looking for a couple of things. Matches, mostly, and an axe, if you sell those. And, er, some newspaper? Maybe some candles?”
“Newspaper and matches we’ve got,” says the woman. “A few candles, too. No axes for sale, but I’ve one in the back you can borrow, if you like.”
“Oh, that would be lovely,” said Lily. She tries to remember how to say ‘thank you’ in Welsh, and her tongue trips over the words Potter said to the cabbie. “Diolch yn fawr.”
The woman smiles. “You’re quite welcome. A visitor to Bethlehem — so exciting! We don’t get many, and certainly not at this time of year. My name is Merryn, by the way.”
“I’m Rose,” says Lily, inventing a name on the spot. “It’s nice to meet you, Merryn.”
“The pleasure’s all mine.” Merryn disappears into a back room and returns a moment later with a well-worn axe. “Here you are, then. Just remember to bring it back, or my husband will wonder where it’s gone.”
“Thank you,” says Lily. “Just one more thing. The place I’m staying —”
She hesitates, wondering how much to confide in this woman she’s just met. But Merryn’s openness reminds her of the Muggle women she knew in Cokeworth. If she can’t help Lily, nobody can. “My place, er, hasn’t got heat or electricity. It’s —”
“Staying in the cottage past the church, eh?” Merryn chuckles at Lily’s alarmed look. “That’s the only vacant house in the village, dear.”
Lily mentally kicks herself for giving away the safe house’s location. Merryn could lead the Ministry — or worse, the Death Eaters — right to their doorstep.
“That’s the one,” she admits, since there’s no use lying about it.
“Most of the houses round here are heated by oil,” says Merryn. “Deliveries happen on the first of the month.”
Lily bites her lip. It’s just before Christmas; there won’t be a delivery for another week and a half. “I see.” She gives Merryn a tight smile. “We’ll just have to make do, then. Thank you again for all your help.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” Merryn places everything into a plastic bag. “And a word to the wise — if you’re chopping firewood with that axe, look for trees that have already fallen. Live wood doesn’t burn well.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” says Lily pleasantly, though Merryn has just ruined her grand plan. There are no dead trees near the safe house.
When she gets back to the cottage, Potter is exactly where she left him, still poring over endless stacks of paperwork.
“Successful trip?” he says without looking up.
Lily sets the axe atop the table in response. “Have you been sitting here all day?”
“Well, we can’t all go gallivanting about the Welsh countryside,” he retorts. “Some of us actually have work to do.”
She can’t believe she ever thought he was attractive. “Then stretching your legs will do you some good. Go cut some firewood. Dead trees only, the live ones won’t burn. And bring back a Christmas tree, too.” As an afterthought, she adds, “Please.”
He frowns, pulling sheets of paper out from under the axe and putting them into a briefcase by his feet. “Firewood I can do, but I’m not cutting down a Christmas tree.”
“Seriously? You’re the reason I’m spending Christmas in the middle of nowhere instead of with my friends and family. The least you can do is cut down a tree for me.”
He laughs incredulously. “I’m the reason? You must be Confunded, because this is all your fault, not mine.”
“Our mission went to shit because of you!”
The accusation that’s been rolling around in her head since it happened spills from her mouth, and there’s no taking it back. It’s as if she’s thrown a knife at the table between them; for a moment, they watch each other warily, waiting to see what the other will do.
He rises from the table, his expression dark. “That’s not how I remember things.”
If he wants to hash out exactly how they landed in this situation, then she is more than happy to oblige. “Yeah? Which one of us is an Auror whose entire career is to keep tabs on Voldemort’s followers? If you’d done your job, you would have known that goblin was going to betray us, and we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
“You’ve got some nerve,” he says coldly. “You agreed to steal the Horcrux from the Lestranges’ vault. You knew what you were getting into. There was always a chance things could go wrong.”
Lily crosses her arms. “I agreed to the mission when Dumbledore asked because I thought I’d be working with a professional.”
“I am a professional!”
“I mean a real Auror like Moody or Frank Longbottom. Not some bloke my age who only got picked for the job because he’s got a magic invisible cape.”
“That’s not the only reason I was chosen.”
“Yes, it was.” She doesn’t bother to modulate her tone, doesn’t care if her words hurt. All the anger, frustration, and fear of the last few days boil over inside her like an overheated cauldron.
He’s not backing down, either. “Well, you only got chosen because you’re the best at mimicking Bellatrix, so that should really tell you something.”
“Yeah, I’m real proud of being a bitchy shrew,” she snaps. “I don’t even get why you’re in the Order at all. You went to Beauxbatons and missed half the war. Coming in now’s a bit late to make a difference, isn’t it?”
That hits a nerve. Potter glares at her, a muscle in his jaw working as if he’d like nothing better than to scream at her. When he finally speaks, it’s clear he’s taking great pains to keep his voice level. “Well, better late than never, as they say. Besides — call me talentless all you like, but I’m not the one who didn’t recognise the Thief’s Downfall until it fucking soaked us through.”
“That’s completely irrelevant,” she says. “Your little goblin pal Griphook had already notified the Death Eaters by the time we got to the Thief’s Downfall. Even if I’d kept my disguise, it was too late.”
“Yeah, but your mistake was what brought the Ministry down on our heads. Caught a glimpse of your face, didn’t they?”
“I think what alerted the Ministry was the fact that Lord Voldemort and a dozen of his closest followers were swarming Gringotts. Because you had bad intel on that goblin.”
“You’re fucking impossible. I can’t argue with you.” He grabs the axe and shoulders past her, wrenching open the back door.
“Don’t forget the Christmas tree!” she calls.
He makes a rude hand gesture as he disappears behind the cottage.
Lily balls her fists against the lip of the kitchen sink and lets out a muffled scream. He’s unbearable, he really is. What happened at Gringotts wasn’t her fault. Her slip-up with the Thief’s Downfall might have made their situation worse — which she’ll admit to herself, but never to him — but it wasn’t the reason their plan crumbled around their ears.
Now the Ministry wants them in Azkaban for breaking into the most secure wizarding bank in the western world, and the Death Eaters want them dead for infiltrating the Lestrange’s vault, specifically. All that trouble, and they hadn’t even managed to steal the Horcrux.
In light of how badly things had gone wrong, it’s hard to believe she ever thought Potter would be a good partner for the mission. She’d been taken in by him when Dumbledore had first introduced them. Their preparations before the heist had gone swimmingly, and she’d thought the easy banter between them boded well for the task ahead. The plan had taken shape effortlessly: she’d Polyjuice herself into Bellatrix, he’d be by her side with his magic invisible cape, and their goblin contact would get them into the vault.
It turns out that being handsome and having a prestigious job only get a person so far. And now they’re in Wales, holed up in a safe house during the most wonderful time of year, completely isolated from everyone except each other.
Lily makes herself a sad, cold cup of tea as she fumes and fishes a few more halved peaches out of a can. It’s not exactly a satisfying dinner, so she looks in the cupboard for something more appetising. There’s a large bottle of clear liquid that might be vodka, half-hidden by tins of baked beans. She considers chugging the vodka — alcohol poisoning wouldn’t be a bad way to go, all things considered — but settles for the baked beans.
When Potter returns, the afternoon is late, and long shadows stretch across the cottage. He’s got an armful of decent-sized logs, which he places triumphantly by the fireplace.
“There,” he says. “Had to walk about a mile to find any useful wood, but this should last us a bit.”
Considering the cottage is surrounded by fields and farmland, she’s surprised he found any at all. But she’s not about to let on that she’s impressed. “You forgot something. Where’s the Christmas tree?”
Potter snorts. “Yeah, like I’m gonna do anything nice for you after the way you’ve treated me. You’re mental, Evans.”
Lily rises from the table, grabs the axe that’s leaning against the wall, and opens the door.
“Where are you going?” he says.
“Getting the tree myself. I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t be absurd, you haven’t got the strength. Besides, who’ll start the fire? You know I don’t know how —”
“It isn’t rocket science, Potter,” she snaps. “You figure it out.”
It turns out she really hasn’t got the strength to cut down a tree. She finds a fir with wide, bristling boughs, but half an hour of swinging the axe only leaves a shallow divot in its trunk.
She leans on the axe and wipes a gloved hand against her forehead, sweaty despite the winter chill. It’ll take a week to fell the tree at the rate she’s going. The sun is beginning to set, too.
“Shit,” she says. Potter will be merciless about her failure to bring back a tree. But she needs to get back to the safe house before it gets completely dark.
Orange lights flicker in the cottage windows when Lily returns. She pushes open the front door and is greeted by a rush of tepid air: Potter’s managed to get a fire going.
He’s sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, wrapped in the blanket she’d thrown at him the night before. He smirks as she sets the axe by the door. “I was right, wasn’t I? You couldn’t do it.”
“I only stopped because it was getting dark,” she lies. “I’ll go back out tomorrow and finish the job.”
“Sure you will.”
She looks around the cottage appraisingly; he’s set up the candles for light, and while the fire isn’t exactly blazing, the flames seem hearty enough. It doesn’t completely make up for the lack of central heating, but the marginal warmth is better than none. “Told you starting a fire wasn’t rocket science.”
“Yeah, imagine my surprise when you were right. There’s a first for everything, eh?”
She sticks her tongue out at him, then grabs a tin of Spam from the cupboard. When she goes to sit beside him, he tugs the blanket away from her.
“What, you’re not going to share?” she asks, baffled.
“This is my spot, Evans. Remember?” He jerks a thumb at the bed. “Yours is back there.”
“Your spot?” she echoes. “What are you, five years old? We haven’t got separate spots. You were in the bed with me last night.”
“Only because I was freezing my Bludgers off and had no choice. But now we’ve got a fire, so I can go back to my spot, and you can stay in yours. Everybody wins.”
“You’re a child,” Lily says, but she rises from the floor and goes to her bed. It’s all the way at the other end of the room, and is much colder than Potter’s spot in front of the hearth. She watches him with narrowed eyes as she eats her Spam atop the bed. He looks quite comfortable, while she’s stuck with the drafty air coming from outside.
She refuses to spend another night with numb fingers while Potter gets to enjoy all the heat. After she’s done with her Spam, she climbs out of bed and pulls on its thin metal frame, trying to drag it closer to the fire. Despite the bed’s small size, it’s surprisingly heavy; with each tug, it hardly moves. She manages to shift the head of the bed about a foot, the frame screeching horribly on the stone floor, before she stops to catch her breath. Not for the first time, she misses her wand.
Potter is heating a saucepan full of baked beans over the fire, whistling a little tune. He’s not paying her any mind, and she knows better than to ask him for help, anyway. She pulls halfheartedly on the foot of the bed, then gives up on moving it any farther.
You haven’t got the strength. She scowls, remembering Potter’s words from earlier.
When she gets back to London, the first thing she’ll do is join a gym. That’ll show him.
In the meantime, though, the bottle of vodka in the cupboard is calling her name. That should warm her up, considering Potter won’t share the fire.
Potter looks up as she pours a large amount of vodka into a mug. “What are you doing?”
“Getting hammered.” Lily takes a swig and coughs a little as it burns her throat. “It’s the only way to deal with the cold. And you.”
“Good idea.” He rises and snatches the entire bottle off the table, then takes it back to his spot in front of the fire.
“Don’t put your mouth on it,” she says as he raises the bottle to his lips and takes a long drink. “You’re contaminating it with your germs.”
“My what now?”
Of course a pure-blood tosser like him wouldn’t have heard of germ theory. And he’d only laugh if she told him he was covered in billions of tiny, invisible creatures that spread disease. “Never mind. Just don’t hog the bottle.”
“I’m not hogging it. You’re welcome to have more if you want.” He twists, giving her a dazzling grin. “Provided you ask nicely, that is.”
Her fingers tighten around the mug, but she’s determined not to rise to his bait. “I can be nice.”
“Really? That’s news to me.”
“I’m a very nice person, actually. To people who deserve it.”
Potter lets out a false cough that sounds very much like “Bellatrix Lestrange!”
Maybe it’s a good thing she’s a weakling, after all, because she grips the mug so tightly it’s a miracle it doesn’t shatter. She wants to hurl it at his head.
But she doesn’t, because she’s a nice person. And because she doesn’t need capital murder added to her list of criminal offences. Instead, she pulls out the book she’s been reading and peruses its pages while she works on getting very, very drunk.
Some time later, the mug is empty, and though Lily’s fingers are going numb, there’s a pleasant heat in her stomach and face. She’s been reading the same page over and over, but the words are sliding together and not making much sense.
Potter is still in his stupid spot by the fire. He’s gotten out his files from the Auror office, and the floor around him is strewn with papers. By his knee is the bottle of vodka, now half-empty.
Half-full, she corrects herself. He’s not the only one allowed to be optimistic.
She forces herself to look away from Potter and return to her book. She’s gotten through twelve chapters this evening, and even though the story is interesting, there’s only so much reading she can do before she gets bored. But there’s nothing else to do in this chilly little cottage in the middle of nowhere, no television or radio to pass the time.
Maybe Potter can entertain her. He’s got to be at least as bored as she is, considering he’s got nothing but paperwork to keep him occupied. Even if they end up at each other’s throats, an argument sounds like more fun than twelve more chapters of reading.
She sits beside him, careful not to touch the shabby blanket he’s claimed as his own. His eyes dart towards her as she settles cross-legged on the floor, but he says nothing.
She reaches for the bottle of vodka and refills her mug. “Let’s play a game.”
He’s still looking warily at her. He’s had more than his fair share of drink, but his gaze is keen, and he seems as lucid as ever. “What sort of game?”
“I dunno.” She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Twenty questions?”
He groans. “You want to interrogate me?”
“As if I care that much about your life,” she says. “I’m just bored, and I know you are, too. Don’t bother denying it.” She tilts her head, considering. “Twenty questions might be too many, though. We can start with three.”
“A more reasonable number,” he says. “But I don’t think so.”
Of course Potter is too much of a wet rag to play a simple game. “And why not?”
“I’m an Auror,” he says. “There are things I literally can’t tell you.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me. You just want to get out of answering questions. All take and no give, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” he says, shuffling some papers. “Hideously selfish. That’s why I hunt Dark wizards for a living and work for the Order in my spare time.”
A laugh bubbles out of Lily before she can stop it. He lifts an eyebrow, and she clamps her lips together, suddenly embarrassed. The vodka must be making her giddy.
She changes the subject before he can gloat about making her laugh. “Fine. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want. But we should have a rule where, if you pass, the other person has to make you do something.”
“Do something? Like what?”
“Er — I dunno, run around naked in the snow or something. We’ll figure it out.” She stretches out a leg and prods him with her foot. “Come on. This will be more fun than whatever boring reports you’re reading.”
He gives her a long, searching look. For some reason, this makes her flush, but she refuses to break eye contact with him.
“Fine,” he says at last. “Three questions.”
She grins triumphantly. “Great! I’ll go first.”
“Of course you will,” he says with a snort, but she’s too busy thinking up her first question to mind.
“Alright,” she says after a moment. “I’ve got one. Would you rather shag Dumbledore, or live in this cottage for a month?”
He ponders the question, rubbing a thumb across his lips. “Would you be living here, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s easy,” he says. “Dumbledore’s about to find out what a great lover I am.”
She nearly laughs again, and she takes a sip of vodka to swallow the sound. “He’d probably find that a welcome distraction from Horcrux hunting.”
“Yeah — well, assuming we didn’t give the game away at Gringotts. Voldy might move them if he knows, and then Dumbledore would be starting from scratch.”
“We didn’t give the game away,” she says. “And I don’t want to talk about Order stuff right now.”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself. My turn, then. What would you be doing for Christmas if we weren’t here?”
His tone is casual, but Lily’s heart squeezes painfully at the question. She wants to tell him that’s none of his business, and that she’s changed her mind about the game. But she was the one who suggested they play in the first place, and if she passes on this question he’ll surely make her do something humiliating.
“I’d be in Cokeworth, with my family,” she says. She can’t believe she’s telling him the truth. “My sister just got engaged, and I was going to meet her fiance over the holidays. Haven’t seen my parents in a year, either — it’s been too dangerous, I couldn’t risk it.” She takes a breath and tries to sound nonchalant. “I suppose next year will be too dangerous, as well.”
Potter gives her a long look. A crease forms between his brows.
“Yeah,” he says at last. “I guess it probably will be.” He clears his throat, then says, “I haven’t seen my parents in a year, either. They’re older, so not being able to see them — it’s torture. Guess we’re both in the same boat.”
This confession is startlingly human. Something inside Lily aches at the thought of unflappable Potter missing his parents, the same way she misses hers.
She keeps her eyes on the stone floor, not daring to look at him. She doesn’t want to be in the same boat. She wants to be at a harbour very far away from him.
“Anyway,” she says to the floor. “My turn.” She runs a finger across a groove between the flagstones, trying to think of a question that’s as far from the topic of family as possible. “How did you learn Welsh?”
To her relief, he takes up the change of subject immediately. “Oh, it’s a boring story, actually,” he says. “The only other British kid at Beauxbatons was Welsh. We were in the same House and both became Chasers on the House team. I made him teach me a few words. Mostly Quidditch terms at first — hoops, Snitch, that sort of thing. We ended up becoming mates and speaking Welsh for the fun of it — drove our teachers bonkers.”
“That’s… it?”
He gives her a lopsided grin. “Told you it was boring. And I’m barely fluent, mind. I only know the basics and some really excellent swears.”
“That’s all you need,” she says.
“Lechyd da,” he agrees, raising the bottle. She watches him fit his lips around the mouth and wonders if his head is spinning the way hers is. They certainly would not be having this conversation if they were both entirely sober.
“My turn, then,” he says, setting down the bottle. “What you just told me — is that why you hate me so much? Because what happened at Gringotts took you away from your family?”
Oddly, her first impulse is to deny it. The words are on the tip of her tongue — I don’t hate you. I'm just angry. But his tone is matter-of-fact, even resigned. He’s accepted that her hatred of him is as unchanging as the colour of her hair.
Telling him otherwise would be a longer conversation than she’s ready to have — especially considering the amount of vodka she’s imbibed.
“Yeah,” she says dully. “That’s why I hate you.”
He nods, taking this in. “Makes sense. I’m not too chuffed with you either, to be honest.” A corner of his lip rises. “Another thing we have in common.”
She doesn’t like when he’s reasonable like this. She much prefers him being a smug prick. “Here’s my last question for you.” She needs to make this one good. “Why did you come back to England?”
“Er, to join to Order. Obviously.”
“Yes, but why? Dorcas Meadowes told me you requested a transfer from the Bureau de les Aurors —”
“Bureau des Aurors,” he corrects with perfect French pronunciation.
She’s too drunk to mimic the way his tongue shapes around the foreign consonants, so she doesn’t even try. “Well, you switched from the French offices to the British division, anyway. And you joined the Order, too. Why did you come back here when we’re in the middle of a war? Why put yourself in the thick of it? None of it concerns you — you could have stayed in France. But you didn’t. So my question is, why?”
Potter draws a knee up to his chest and rests his chin on it, staring into the fire. The orange light flickers off his dark, inscrutable irises. “I’m English, Evans,” he says at last. “No matter where I went to school. This is my fight, just as much as yours.”
No, it’s not. You could have opted out, but I never had a choice. “Most pure-bloods don’t think like that.”
“They should. You think they’ll get to live their comfortable lives if Voldemort wins?”
For a pure-blood, he really does have his thumb on the pulse of the situation. “Of course not.”
“Right,” he says. “This war concerns every British wizard — and every British Muggle, for that matter. So I came back. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d stayed in France.”
Lily begrudgingly admits to herself that his sense of duty is impressive. Coming back to England was stupid — he’ll get himself killed — but so noble. He probably would have been a shoo-in for Gryffindor if he’d gone to Hogwarts.
“Anyway,” Potter says, rising. “I’ll go get your tree.”
It takes her a moment to remember what he’s talking about. Her stomach flips at the prospect of having a Christmas tree to brighten up this sad cottage. “Really?”
“Really.”
If he’s going to be nice, then she’ll give him a peace offering, too. “The tree can wait until tomorrow. It’s pitch dark and you’ve been drinking.”
“Nah, I’m alright,” he says, though he wobbles a bit on his way to grab the axe. “I’ve faced tougher than this during Auror training. Be back soon.”
As the door swings shut behind him, she tries to tell herself that she doesn’t care if he gets lost and freezes to death. But the vodka she’s imbibed might as well be Veritaserum, because it’s impossible to lie to herself.
She’s glad they haven’t rowed. She wants this shaky truce between them to last the night. And she wants him to come back soon.
An hour later, Lily is trying to revive the dying fire when the front door opens. Potter shoulders his way inside the cottage, carrying a fir tree under one arm.
“There,” he says, leaning the tree against the wall by the hearth. “Satisfied?”
“Nearly.” She fetches a bucket from the cupboard under the sink, and together they hoist the tree into it, using the bucket as a makeshift stand.
Lily steps back to admire their handiwork. The tree is smaller than the one she’d tried to chop down, and its boughs are a bit lopsided, but it’ll do in a pinch. “Not bad, Potter,” she says. “Just needs a bit of decoration to be a proper Christmas tree.”
He stacks another log on the fire, releasing a shower of sparks. “Glad I could live up to your standards, Evans. Ready to keep playing?”
“Oh. Weren’t we finished?”
“I’ve still got one question left.” He flashes her an easy smile.
She knows the peace between them is fragile, the product of a single conversation and copious amounts of vodka, but his smile reassures her all the same. Maybe they can find a way to coexist in the safe house without tearing out each other’s throats. “Alright,” she says. “Last question. Let’s hear it.”
He prods the fire with a poker, and flames lick the sides of the logs. “What would you be doing if there wasn’t a war?”
She joins him in front of the fireplace, watching the fire roar with renewed vigour as she considers how to respond. “That’s a hard question,” she says. “When I was eleven, the deputy headmistress of Hogwarts came to my house and told me I was a witch. Then she told me about the war. So the two things have always been linked for me — magic and the war. I’ve always known I would have to fight. I joined the Order as soon as they’d have me.”
Potter frowns at the fire. She hopes he isn’t feeling sorry for her eleven-year-old self. She doesn’t need pity. “Did you ever let yourself dream about anything else?” he asks.
“I mean — maybe, but it was stupid. Pointless.”
“It isn’t stupid. Nobody wants to be a soldier when they grow up. What else did you want to do?”
He’s going to take the piss, but the truth tumbles from her mouth before she can stop it.
“I wanted to be an actress.”
She glances at him, certain he’ll laugh, but he’s still gazing into the fire, listening. “In my sixth year at Hogwarts, we performed The Fountain of Fair Fortune to raise money for St Mungo’s. Somehow I got cast as Amata — don’t know how I managed that. It was so much fun, and — and I was good at it. That was the happiest I’d ever been at school. It kind of put the idea in my head, that maybe I could work in theatre. If the war hadn’t…” She trails off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.
Firelight flickers off the planes of Potter’s face. He rakes his gaze over her, and though her cheeks grow hot, she doesn’t look away. “I could see you as an actress,” he says. “You have that look. Striking.”
She knows she’s striking. Beautiful, even, according to past boyfriends and strangers. Even her prickly sister has admitted as much. But the words sound different coming from Potter. They hold more sway over her than they should.
She busies herself with putting more wood on the fire. “Then the Death Eaters started murdering Muggle-borns onstage, so I had to let go of that dream. But it was a nice thought.”
“Well, it wasn’t a total waste,” he says. “You did make a great Bellatrix.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
But she’s smiling, and so is he.
Their game finished, Lily hugs her knees to her chest, letting the warmth of the fire wash over her. The merry flames dance with mesmerising light, and her eyelids drift closed.
She wakes to the loud, scraping sound of metal on stone.
“Wha —”
Potter’s dragging the bed towards the fireplace. He gives a final heave, and the metal frame comes to a halt inches from her face. She’s still staring as he spreads his threadbare blanket atop the bed.
The implications of this are not lost on her. She clears her throat. “Erm. What are you…?”
“Oh, don’t make this weird, Evans,” he says. “We’ll both be warmer this way.”
He slides under the blankets and closes his eyes, signalling the end of the conversation. She waits another minute, trying to invent a reason why they can’t share the bed again.
But her brain is fuzzy, and no excuse comes to mind. So she joins him under the blankets, and he doesn’t so much as stir.
He’s just as warm as he was the night before. Between his body heat and the fire, she feels truly comfortable for the first time since arriving at the safe house. There’s something magnetic about his face when he’s sleeping — perhaps some obscure kind of magic — because she can’t stop looking at him.
When she’s quite certain he’s deeply asleep, she reaches out a hand and brushes a thumb across his cheek. His skin burns the pad of her thumb, and she craves the heat.
“I don’t hate you, James.” Her voice is softer than a whisper. She needs to speak the truth, even if he never hears it. There are people she utterly despises: Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange, to name a few. But even though James Potter drives her mad, she doesn’t hate him. She never did.
Suddenly, his breathing stops. He shifts a little, and she drops her hand and squeezes her eyelids shut, pretending to be asleep.
“Evans?”
His voice is husky from sleep.
She doesn’t move. The air pressure in the room has increased tenfold, but she forces herself to take slow, deep breaths.
An arm reaches for her, drawing her close. Her face is pressed into his chest, and her legs are tangled between his. Mentally, she catalogues each touch, wanting to memorise every sensation. She could stay up all night drinking in the feeling of him. But the heat and the vodka and the miles she’s walked are working against her, and within moments, she’s asleep.
The next morning, Lily reluctantly extricates herself from James, who is still sleeping, and washes up in the bathroom. By the time she’s finished, the bed is in its usual spot across the room, and James is awake and tending to the smouldering coals in the hearth.
“Bore da,” he says.
The casual greeting throws her. Not twenty-four hours ago they were at each other’s throats, and now they’re exchanging pleasantries? But there’s nothing to fight him over — at least not yet — so she simply responds, “Bore da,” and opens a tin of peaches.
“Breakfast of champions, that,” he says.
Somehow, the comment isn’t as obnoxious as it would have been a day earlier. “Well, we can’t exactly have a fry-up, can we?” she responds, tossing a tin of Spam at his head.
He catches it without looking. “Diolch, tywysoges.”
After eating, she pulls on her coat and an extra pair of socks with a wince. Her feet are blistered from yesterday’s walking.
“Where are you going?” James asks.
“Back to town. It’s Christmas Eve.”
“So?”
She gestures at the tree in the corner. “We need decorations.”
“You can’t go to town just for Christmas decorations.” James climbs to his feet, brow furrowed. “We’re not supposed to be leaving the cottage in the first place. Especially not for something frivolous like decorations.”
Lily blinks at him, tilting her head. “Are you going to try and stop me?”
She wants him to say yes, to grab her and force her away from the door. She wants to feel his strong hands curled around her upper arms. But he stutters, disarmed by her batted eyelashes.
“I — no, of course not. I just — you shouldn’t —”
Interesting. She lets him search for words, enjoying the sudden power she has over him. “It’s fine,” she says, to put him out of his misery. “We’re the only wizards for a hundred miles. It’s completely safe.”
“If the Death Eaters —”
“Why don’t you come along, if you’re so worried?” she says sweetly. “You can keep me safe from those big, scary Death Eaters.”
That snaps him out of whatever trance her eyelashes put him in. “As if you need protecting. One look at you and Voldemort himself would run screaming.” He buttons his coat and winds a wool scarf around his neck. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”
The walk to Bethlehem is long and mostly silent, though Lily keeps herself entertained by periodically commenting on the scenery (“Here we have another cow pasture… Oh, you don’t want to miss the field up ahead, look… it’s covered in frost, isn’t that wonderful?”). The less James laughs at her commentary, the more amusing she finds it — sweet revenge for his behaviour in the taxi — until they finally reach tiny, quiet Bethlehem.
“Bore da,” she says brightly to Merryn as they enter the petrol station.
Merryn perks up at once. “Rose, dear! How are you?” Her expression grows sly at the sight of James. “And who is this handsome young man?”
“I’m Remus Lupin,” says James. He pronounces Lupin the French way, Lu-pon. He says something else in Welsh that Lily assumes is ‘pleased to meet you’, and Merryn beams at him as though he’s just done something extremely clever.
“You speak Welsh perfectly! How remarkable. You must meet my husband, Iwan. Doesn’t know much English, but I’m sure he’d love to meet you two… Iwan!” she calls, wrenching open a door at the back of the petrol station. She yells a long string of Welsh that makes James smirk, and a moment later a weathered man emerges to greet them.
Lily’s eyes bulge. It’s the man with the white van from the other day.
Iwan grins toothily at her, clearly recognising her from the taxi, and makes a remark to Merryn in Welsh.
Merryn laughs lightly. “He says you’ve crossed paths already.”
James leans so close to Lily that his breath warms her ear. “He also said your scowl took ten years off his life. She left that part out.”
“Thanks for translating,” says Lily sarcastically, pushing him away.
Iwan looks at them quizzically and asks something in Welsh. “He’s wondering what brings such a lovely young couple to Bethlehem,” says Merryn.
Lily takes an instinctive step away from James. “Oh, we’re not —”
But James speaks over her. “That’s right, we’re just married,” he says, taking an astonished Lily by the arm.
“Married!” exclaims Merryn. “How lovely! And you’re honeymooning in Wales?”
“Not exactly,” says James. “We’re here for work, actually.” He breaks into a long-winded explanation in Welsh that Lily can make neither heads nor tails of. When he’s finished, both Iwan and Merryn look impressed.
“An actress!” Merryn says to Lily. “How glamorous! We’ve never had an actress visit Bethlehem before. People are going to be talking about you for decades.”
Lily shoots James a disbelieving look, but he widens his eyes innocently. “It’s not that exciting, really,” she says. “Certainly nothing to tell the whole village about…”
“We’ll be headed back to London once she’s finished researching her part,” adds James.
Merryn’s eyes shine with admiration. “You’re very dedicated to the craft, aren’t you, Rose?”
Time for revenge, Lily thinks. “Well, I couldn’t do it without my assistant.” She pats James’ arm gratefully, and it’s his turn to gape at her. “He takes care of all the boring paperwork and phone calls so that I can focus on my art.”
“That’s just lovely,” says Merryn. She turns to Iwan, who’s looking puzzled, and fills him in.
“Assistant?” whispers James to Lily. “You couldn’t have said I’m, I dunno, your bodyguard or something?”
“You’re too scrawny to be a bodyguard,” says Lily. This is a flat-out lie, but he doesn’t need to know she’s been admiring the width of his shoulders. “Besides. You do fill out boring paperwork all day.”
“How are things at the cottage?” interrupts Merryn. “Warm enough, are you? It was cold last night.”
“Er, yeah, it was,” says Lily, exchanging a glance with James. “But we got a fire going, so it’s been… it’s alright…”
“Rose is a method actress,” explains James. “She wants to experience life as an eighteenth-century Welsh peasant. Helps her get into character —”
Lily steps on his foot. “Actually, they’ve made revisions to the script. My character is now a modern twentieth-century girl who would love to have central heating in her cottage.”
Merryn clucks her tongue. “I quite agree. It’s been too cold to go without heat, you’ll freeze to death. Someone ought to do something about that,” she adds with a look at Iwan.
“Have you got any Christmas decorations, by the way?” asks Lily.
Merryn laughs and gestures around the small shop. “Do you see any?”
Lily doesn’t, but she’s not deterred. “An extra string of lights, or some tinsel, maybe? I’m not picky.”
“We might have lights.” As Merryn leads Lily through the shop, Iwan and James strike up a boisterous conversation in Welsh.
At the bottom of a shelf, there’s a cardboard box with a single string of lights inside, gathering dust. Lily pulls it out and follows Merryn to the register. She glances at James, who is gesturing wildly to Iwan, and lowers her voice. “This might be a long shot,” she says to Merryn, “but… I was hoping to get Remus a present, maybe? For Christmas?”
Merryn smiles, half-fond, half-exasperated. “You certainly are a city girl, Rose. This is a petrol station, not a gift shop.”
Lily drops her gaze to the box she’s holding. The Christmas tree will look sad enough with a single string of lights for decoration, but a tree with no presents? It’s unthinkable. She has to get James something.
“I was hoping to get him a football,” she admits. It isn’t a Quaffle, but it’s close enough. “Have you got…?”
Merryn shakes her head. “That’s not the sort of thing we sell, dear.”
Lily sighs and pays for the lights. “That’s alright. It was a long shot, anyway.”
As they’re leaving, James gallantly carries the box of lights for her. “Hwyl am nawr!” he says, waving to Iwan and Merryn.
“Rose, Remus — wait!” calls Merryn. She gestures above the door.
Lily looks up. Directly over her head is a sprig of thin green branches with white berries. Her mouth goes bone dry.
“Mistletoe,” says Merryn, though the explanation is entirely unnecessary. “Go on, don’t be shy!”
James looks at Lily as though he’s been asked to kiss a Manticore. Oh, come off it, she thinks. He can pretend to be afraid of her all he wants, but he called her striking last night. He must be attracted to her — even if it’s deep down. Besides, she’ll never miss a chance to get under his skin.
“Kiss me, darling,” she says in her sweetest, most innocent voice. James stares at her, unmoving. She bats her eyes at him, the way she did earlier, and he sucks in a sharp breath.
Then he bends down, closing the gap between them, and presses his lips to hers.
By the time she’s registered the sensation of his warm mouth against hers, his stubbled skin scraping her cheek, he’s already upright and out the door. She knows she should follow, but the air around her feels thick and unreal, as though she’s dreaming. She puts her fingers to her lips, rubbing absentmindedly.
He really kissed her. She didn’t think he would.
A sigh from behind her breaks the spell. “Young love,” says Merryn wistfully, resting her head on Iwan’s shoulder. “There’s nothing like it. You’re a lucky one, Rose.”
By the time Lily catches up to James, he’s nearly left the village. “Slow down!” she pants.
He doesn’t slow, nor does he look at her.
“In a hurry to get back, are you?” she teases. “You’re probably dying to decorate the Christmas tr—”
“We’re not supposed to be out in the first place!” he exclaims.
“So? I didn’t make you leave the cottage. You came all on your own.”
“Yeah,” he says, “and that was an enormous mistake. Thanks for the reminder.”
He’s clearly trying to outpace her. As she hurries to keep up, she gives him a shrewd look. “You’re upset because you kissed me.”
“I am not,” he says, a touch louder than necessary.
“You are. Well, I didn’t make you do that, either.”
“Is that right? You were practically begging for it!”
“I didn’t beg,” she says with as much dignity as she can muster. “Besides, you were the one who told them we were a couple. It would have looked suspicious if we hadn’t kissed.”
“No, I didn’t. Merryn assumed that we were, and I went along with it.”
“You took it a bit further than that,” says Lily. “You said we were newly married.”
“I was improvising!”
“So was I,” she says with a quirk of her lips. “Come on, Potter. It isn’t a big deal. Unless you’re embarrassed because you’re a bad kisser?”
He skids to a halt, and she nearly collides with his back. “I am not a bad kisser.”
“You had Spam breath,” she says, though he’d actually tasted like toothpaste.
James runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Yeah, well, you had canned peach breath.”
“That’s better than Spam.”
“Maybe, but not by much.”
They resume walking. He stays ahead of her, but he’s not actively trying to outrun her anymore.
“Thanks for saying I’m an actress,” she says to break the silence. “It was fun to pretend.”
He snorts, but doesn’t respond.
“Oh, did you not like being my assistant?” she says. “I thought you’d find it funny.”
Begrudgingly, he says, “It was funny.”
“I know. I’m hilarious.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he says, but he’s smiling ruefully now.
Lily swings her arms, feeling light as a feather. She really does like teasing him, though she might like it more when he smiles.
When they return to the cottage, she gets to work hanging the single set of lights on the skinny fir in the corner. She steps back to admire her handiwork: the lights zigzag back and forth on the boughs like a winding trail up a mountain.
Behind her, James coughs. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Belatedly, she remembers there isn’t any electricity, and her shoulders sag. “Shit.” Her dejection lasts only a moment before she perks up again. “That’s alright. I’ve got a new plan.”
“Do tell,” says James, but she’s already bounding out the door.
She returns with an armful of pinecones, and after rummaging in the kitchen for a bit of twine, she sets about hanging the pinecones like ornaments on the tree.
“There,” she says when she’s finished. “Doesn’t that look nice?”
Nice is a stretch. It’s still the saddest Christmas tree she’s ever seen. A pinecone drops to the floor, and neither of them move to pick it up.
“It looks like bad performance art,” says James.
“That’s your fault for getting such a scraggly tree,” she retorts.
James is using the last of their wood to make a fire in the hearth, so she takes a tin of mushy peas out of the cabinet and sets it beside him.
“Thanks,” he says.
“That’s not for you,” she says. “It’s for Santa.”
An amused huff of air escapes his lips. “I thought Santa got sherry.”
“We drank all the alcohol. Besides, maybe his reindeer like mushy peas.”
James laughs, and the sound warms the room more quickly than any fire. “We’ll be in trouble if Santa finds our safe house. Suppose he tells the Death Eaters?”
“I hope he does,” says Lily, getting into bed. “They’ll put me out of my misery. It’ll be the best Christmas present ever.”
James laughs that deep, easy laugh again. She pulls the covers over her head so that he doesn’t see her smile.
The next morning, Lily jerks awake to someone pounding on the door.
She bolts upright in bed, fear flooding her body before her brain can catch up. James is already out of bed, listening at the door. He’s holding a poker from the hearth like a baseball bat, ready to smash a Death Eater’s head in — or perhaps a Ministry worker. The incessant pounding at the door does seem more like the Ministry’s style than Voldemort’s —
On the other side of the door, a man’s voice yells a string of unfamiliar words — a spell? Lily braces, ready for the cottage to be blown to bits, but then —
James’ posture shifts, and he breaks into a grin. “Iwan?”
He slides back the deadbolt and opens the door. Standing outside is Iwan, wearing a red hat and sweater and carrying two bundles wrapped in newspaper under his arm. He looks for all the world like a Welsh Santa Claus.
“Nadolig Llawen,” says Iwan gruffly, then adds, “Happy Christmas.”
He holds out the newspaper-wrapped bundles, which James takes. Then he jerks a weathered thumb at the white van outside and says something else in Welsh.
James’ eyes widen. A torrent of enthusiastic Welsh streams from his mouth. Iwan nods as he responds.
The men are so engrossed in conversation that they seem to have forgotten Lily’s there. “Erm,” she says. “Bore da, Iwan. What’s going on?”
James turns to her, beaming. “It’s a Christmas miracle, Evans. Iwan’s brought us oil to heat the cottage.”
He sets the two newspaper-wrapped bundles under the tree and follows Iwan outside. Lily rises from bed, still bundled in her coat, and watches them from the window. The men fill the tank behind the cottage, then traipse inside, and Iwan shows James how to use the range cooker in the kitchen to heat the cottage.
The last thing Iwan leaves them with is a covered dish filled with roast lamb, potatoes, and parsnips.
“Is this from Merryn?” asks Lily.
Iwan nods.
“It looks fantastic,” she says. Awkwardly, unsure if he’ll even understand her, she adds, “I’m sorry for glaring at you on the road, Iwan. You and Merryn have been so generous, and I’m so thankful for your help. Diolch yn fawr.” Thank you very much.
Some things must transcend language, because he gives her a yellow-toothed smile.
By the time Iwan trundles away in his white truck, one wrinkled hand waving out the window, the warmth of the cottage is as soothing as a mug of Butterbeer. Lily sheds her coat and hangs it on the hook by the door. James does the same, then pushes up his sleeves, and she wills herself to look away. Veins twist up his arms like lights on a tree, and she wants to trace them up his bicep, but they vanish under his cuffs at the elbow.
“Presents,” she says a little wildly. “Iwan brought us presents, didn’t he?”
James tosses one of the bundles to her. “This one’s yours.”
She catches the package — barely. It’s heavy and rectangular, which means it’s either a book or a cornerstone from the cottage’s foundation.
“You first,” she says. The gift James is holding is round, and she has a sneaking suspicion she knows what it is.
He tears the newspaper off with the enthusiasm of a child. Beneath the wrapping is a black and white ball, softened with age and slightly scuffed, which he weighs in his hands. “What’s this?”
“That’s the Muggle version of a Quaffle,” she says. “I’m going to teach you how to play football.”
“Football,” repeats James, and he proceeds to bounce the ball on his foot as though he’s been doing it all his life. “Sounds fun. Alright, your turn, Evans.”
Her gift turns out to be a large, hardcover tome that has clearly been well-loved; the pages are dog-eared and yellow with time. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Volume One,” she reads, running her fingers across the embossed title.
James looks disappointed. “Sorry, Evans. I asked Iwan if he had any plays by Beedle the Bard, but he said all they had at home was that Shakespeed guy. It might not be any good.”
He looks so genuinely crestfallen that Lily stifles a laugh. “I’m sure there are a few hidden gems inside,” she says consolingly. “I’ll take a look this evening, you’ll see.”
The range cooker in the kitchen is working its magic; the cottage is cosy with heat. Staying inside is tempting, but they bundle up once more and head into the garden with the football. Lily explains the rules to James and tries to pretend his commentary isn’t funny (“No hoops, just one big goal area? For this little ball? You’re about to eat shit, Evans.”).
He takes to football like he’s been playing it all his life, and she does, in fact, eat shit.
As fiercely competitive as she is, it’s hard to feel bad about losing when she’s having so much fun with him. Electricity runs through her when their feet and legs connect. It’s impossible to take the ball from him; he twists away from her like a pro, blocking her with his back. When their bodies collide, it’s incredibly distracting — though if he’s distracted, he doesn’t show it. She finally manages to kick the ball away from him, and it’s her proudest moment.
The final score is a measly one point to his seven.
“Good game, Evans,” says James jovially, sticking out a hand. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his breathing is heavy.
Lily shakes his hand ruefully. “Beginner’s luck.”
She heads towards the cottage, but he doesn’t follow. “You coming?” she asks, turning.
“You go on,” he says. “I’m going to fetch us some kindling.”
While James is out, Lily takes the best shower of her life. The hot water feels exquisite on her oily scalp, and she scrubs herself twice to get rid of the week’s buildup of grime.
She emerges from the steamy bathroom with clean, towel-wrapped hair. James is at the hearth, prodding at the flames inside.
“Dinner?” she asks, turning on the range cooker the way Iwan showed them.
“Please,” he says. “Merryn’s cooking looks heavenly.”
The food smells heavenly, too, as it heats in the oven. As she sets the table, she hums a Christmas tune. Preparing dinner while James tends the fire feels delightfully domestic, and their newfound rapport is as comforting as the heat running through the pipes. If she has to spend Christmas in Wales, she could hardly ask for a better one; the cottage feels less like a prison and more like a home.
Merryn’s roast lamb is divine. The potatoes and parsnips are a close second, and they spend twenty minutes eating in silence, save for occasionally mumbling, “This is so good.”
When at last they set down their forks, their eyes meet across the table. Lily gives him a bright smile before she can stop herself.
His eyes wrinkle warmly at the edges, and he returns her smile with a languid ease, like a pleased cat. “That was fantastic.” He leans back in his chair to stretch. “I’m stuffed.”
To Lily’s surprise, he rises and collects her plate. “No, don’t worry about it,” he says when she starts to protest. “You cooked, so I’ll clean up.”
“Merryn cooked,” she says. “I put the food in the oven for twenty minutes.”
“That counts,” says James, and he starts to wash up at the sink.
She tries not to stare. He’s being so considerate. She’s having a very hard time remembering why she used to hate him.
Since she has nothing else to do, she settles by the fire with the book of Shakespeare’s plays. Reading the lines of Lysander and Hermia feels like hearing the voices of old friends.
When James has finished, he sits cross-legged on the floor beside her. “Anything good in there?”
“Shakespeare was a genius, Potter,” she says. “Every line in this book is gold.”
“Is that so?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Go on, then, Amata. Give us a show.”
Give us a show sends her mind to forbidden places. She flips through the tome at random while her over-excitable neurons burst like Christmas crackers. When she can focus on the pages again, she sees the opening lines to Much Ado About Nothing.
“Something funny?” asks James, and she realises she’s smiling.
“You’ll like this one,” she says. She begins to read aloud. “‘Enter Leonato, Governor of Messina, Hero his daughter, and Beatrice his niece, with a Messenger…’”
Two hours later, the fire has burned to embers, and Lily’s throat is hoarse from doing all the character voices.
“‘Strike up, pipers,’” she concludes. “And they dance.”
She closes the tome.
James is leaning back on his elbows, his feet stretched in front of him. His eyes are closed, and nods contentedly. “You were right, Evans. This Shakespeare fellow could give Beedle a run for his money.”
“Told you so,” she says smugly.
An amicable silence stretches between them. Though the fire has nearly gone out, the cottage is as warm as ever.
Not a bad Christmas, after all, she thinks.
James pulls his threadbare blanket over himself and turns over on the floor. “Well, goodnight, Evans.”
This takes a moment to register. “You’re not —?” She stops herself. You’re not going to sleep in the bed?
Then she remembers; they were only sharing the bed for body heat. There’s no need for that anymore.
She pushes down on the disappointment rising in her chest. “Goodnight,” she replies. The words come out stiff, but he doesn’t give any sign that he’s noticed.
She gets into bed, but sleep doesn’t come quickly. The space between the bed and the hearth has its own gravity, like a black hole, and she’s uncomfortably aware of the distance between herself and James.
Being in bed without him feels wrong. She tosses and turns but can’t get comfortable. At the other end of the room, he’s so still that he might be made of stone. She can’t even tell if he’s breathing.
At last, she whispers into the darkness. “James?”
The mistake leaves her mouth before she can pull it back in. Shit. I should have said Potter.
There’s no sound except the hammering of her heart in her ears. Even so, the room is suddenly crackling with tension. She’s certain that he’s snapped awake all at once.
His reply is cautious. “Yes, Lily?”
Her heart thrums when his voice makes the shape of her name. She swallows. The sound is much too loud.
“It’s too cold. I can’t sleep.”
There’s a shuffling noise by the hearth, and then he’s standing beside the bed. “You’re cold? Really?”
She lifts her eyes to look at him, but she can’t make out more than his darkened outline. If she’s going to make a fool of herself, she might as well go all in. “If you’re cold too, we can — we can still share the bed. If you like.”
His sharp intake of breath splits the air. No words follow, and the seconds that tick by are agonising. She fights the urge to bury herself under the blanket, humiliated.
At last he says in a measured tone, “That’s very sweet of you to offer. But the floor isn’t so bad now that we’ve got heat. There’s no need to worry about me.”
He’s using his Auror voice with her. He sounds oddly detached. Professional.
But he doesn’t walk away. He hovers above the bed, waiting for her response.
“I’m still freezing.” She tries to sound indifferent like him, but she fails miserably. Her voice is as fragile as frost on the ground. “If you held me, I’d be warmer.”
He exhales shakily, like she’s unbalanced him. She braces, ready for the rejection that’s bound to come her way.
Then the mattress creaks, and he joins her under the blanket.
A hand, large and gentle, touches her face. She can’t see anything, and her heartbeat drowns out all other sound. She puts her hand atop his, and heat radiates into her palm.
“Do you feel better now?”
He’s so close that his breath warms her eyelids.
“I’m still cold,” she whispers. “But if you kissed me —”
Before she reaches the end of the sentence, his lips are on hers.
She kisses him back, and now she’s warm, but warmth isn’t enough — she wants to be set on fire.
She pulls him closer until their bodies are pressed together, just like that fateful first night, back when she was in denial and he was — Insufferable. Confident. Funny. Kind.
Judging by the way his hands are sliding over her body, she can add attentive and generous to that list of qualities.
He kisses the soft spot where her ear and jaw meet. “Warm enough, Lily?”
She’s feverish with desire, but she says, “Not yet.”
He smiles against her throat. “I can fix that.”
His lips return to her mouth, and he sets her ablaze.