Forever and a Day ~ James Potter

Alice's Oath

Chapter Fifty

Friday 8th October 1976 ~ 12:34 ~ full moon

Just about a month had passed by since Rosie had finally let go of her pride and let James actually go out with her. Thankfully, Peter had managed to hold his tongue since discovering them together back in September. But it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to ignore the situation, especially since Rosie and James were trying to find several ways to spend secret time together that often involved Peter lying to his other friends.

It was lunchtime after a whole morning of lessons, and Remus was hanging on to his temper by a thread with his golden-brown head lying flat against the old oak table, and what was visible of his skin was so pale it almost seemed to be turning grey. The group was speaking to one another at a cautious volume that allowed Rosie and James – who had chosen to sit opposite one another at the edge of the table – to spend minutes at a time looking at each other. At the same time, their friends concentrated on not creating a beast out of Remus.

Peter, who'd been sitting next to James even more often than he had done before the 'situation' as he liked to call it happened, nudged James in the side when he'd been staring at Rosie so intently that he was inches away from dipping his messy hair into his soup. Rosie swallowed down a smirk and looked over at Alice, who had also been acting very differently for a couple of weeks.

She had taken to – as she was doing currently – perching herself next to Marlene and resting her head on her open palm with an expression full of ponder whenever they weren't walking around. She'd been doing it instead of eating in the Great Hall, gossiping in the Common Room, studying in the library, and even paying attention in her lessons. The girls were becoming more and more determined to find out what was so problematic for their friend, but whenever they'd tried to speak to Frank about it, he only brushed them off and told them she was probably worrying about the work that came with the N.E.W.Ts.

Rosie heard a cough by her side and broke her eye contact with James to look at Mary, who raised an eyebrow at Rosie's plate. She'd been slicing across an empty spot with her knife for two minutes because of her daydreaming and contemplation. She shot a sheepish smile and gently placed down her cutlery, ignoring the itch to look back to where she knew James was still looking and smiling at her.

"It's a good thing we've got no more lessons today," Mary muttered to her, staring over at Remus – who had now adopted the act of rolling his forehead around on the sticky table and groaning quietly. "I wonder what it is this time."

"He looks a lot worse this mon- time," Rosie commented, almost slipping up in her description. "His immune system must be getting worse with the stress of the N.E.W.Ts-"

"And the war," Mary's eyes seemed to have glazed over a little as she immediately continued Rosie's sentence.

She shifted in her seat a little, uncomfortable about discussing such subjects with someone like Mary as she wouldn't be at all in danger if a war were to start. Mary must have been living every day in fear that her family might be the next to go mysteriously missing. "His Dad will be making sure he's safe if there's any sort of threat, and he would've told us about anything serious," she tried to explain reassuringly.

"I suppose..." Mary replied quietly, still looking curiously at Remus and clearly unconcerned by what Rosie had said.

She looked back over to James, who seemed concerned about Mary being cautious about Remus's condition. His eyebrows were furrowed slightly, and he stood up from the bench, taking a couple of steps over to his friend and brushing his shoulder as lightly as possible with his hand, leaning down and whispering something to him.