Chapter Text
James Potter was a city boy, born and raised. London was his happy place. He loved the noise and the bustle. He thrived on the energy and excitement. His friends were close by, as were any number of pubs, bars, clubs, shops, gyms, theatres or galleries that they might choose to frequent. Anything he wanted he could was immediately, gratifyingly within his grasp. When you lived in a city like London, the world was your oyster.
Unfortunately, It was also distracting as hell, and in his current circumstances, James needed distraction like he needed a spike through his brain.
What he did need was peace. Quiet. Solitude. Somewhere he could do nothing but think.
And write. Mostly write, if he was honest.
That was how he found himself holed up in Bank Top Byre, late at night, throwing another log onto the fire as the bitterly cold February winds howled across the moor outside.
The Byre belonged to Sirius, having been left to him by his late uncle. It wasn’t entirely clear how said uncle had come to own a derelict Victorian cowshed high on the moorlands of rural Derbyshire, but whatever the reason, it had formed part of the estate that James’s best friend had inherited.
Eventually, the Byre would become a holiday let, but the first paying guests weren’t booked until the spring, and of course Sirius had been more than happy to let James decamp in the meantime. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement; Sirius got someone to iron out any snagging issues without the threat of corresponding bad reviews, and James got the perfect bolthole for a frustrated author struggling with the world's worst case of writer's block.
If you’d asked James to describe the Byre in a single sentence, he’d have plumped for ‘small but perfectly formed’. Its petite proportions were undeniable—the defining characteristic of Bank Top Byre was that it was absolutely tiny, but James didn’t mind that because it provided everything that he needed, cleverly accommodated in just three rooms.
The first, and by far the largest (though that wasn’t saying much) was the main living area. It combined lounge seating, the fireplace, an intimate dining nook and a dinky little kitchen that seemed to defy physics to contain so many modern conveniences in such a tiny area. The second was a modern shower room, tucked away in an alcove just off the kitchen. Finally, there was a bedroom, which wasn’t really a room at all; technically, it was a mezzanine sleeping platform that hung over the dining nook, accessed by a ladder, but it still held a comfortable, kingsized mattress and a handy shelf to hold both a nightlight and James’s glasses.
Sirius had done a great job of the renovation, in James’s opinion—or, to be more accurate, Sirius’s interior designer wife Marlene had done a great job of the renovation. Thanks to her clever choices, the stone-built barn felt warm and cosy, even as temperatures plummeted outside, with thick rugs covering the slate floors, blankets strewn across the sofa, and a fire blazing merrily in the grate.
Most stunning of all was the end wall—or rather, the lack of it; when she’d discovered that it was structurally unsound, Marlene had elected to remove it entirely and replace it with an enormous, triple-glazed window. It was a design masterstroke, providing stunning views out over Dark Peak Moor. James could have—and sometimes did—spend hours gazing at that view. So taken with it was he, that he didn’t even bother to close the curtains at night, when the craggy grassland was replaced by pitch blackness that was equal parts mesmerising and mysterious. Besides, it wasn’t as though there were any neighbours to threaten his privacy.
James had arrived in the middle of January, and quickly fallen into a routine. He woke early and went for a run over the surrounding moorlands, exploring the paths and bridleways that criss-crossed the landscape with only the occasional inquisitive sheep for company. He’d return to the barn for a shower, coffee and breakfast. Then he’d stare blankly at his laptop until lunchtime, before giving it up as a bad job and setting out again in search of inspiration.
Derbyshire, he decided, was magnificent. So far, almost a month into his stay, he’d visited the picturesque towns of Wirksworth, Buxton and Matlock Bath; ascended the heights of Mam Tor and plumbed the depths of Treak Cliff Cavern; eaten tarts in Bakewell and gingerbread in Ashbourne; boarded trams in Crich and canal boats in Cromford; most importantly, he’d toured Chatsworth and Hathersage, hopeful that channelling Austen and Bronte would provide much-needed inspiration.
In short, he had immersed himself in the very best that the county had to offer, and he had loved every moment, but sadly, it was all to no avail, because he had yet to write a single word that he hadn't deleted almost immediately.
With the deadline looming to submit the draft of his next novel, it was becoming more concerning by the day.
With a sigh, he poured a healthy shot of single malt and settled onto the compact, two seater sofa opposite the fire. His laptop sat closed on the dining table to his left and with petulant satisfaction, James angled his body so that he faced firmly away from it. He took a healthy sip of whisky as he gazed out of the picture window into the endless night, deciding that his abject lack of progress was something for future-James to worry about
The first indication that present-James might have a significantly more pressing problem was a loud thump and the sound of muffled swearing coming from the direction of the front door.
The Byre’s isolation twisted from idyllic to sinister in the blink of an eye. All alone, in the middle of the moors, and no other dwelling within miles? It was like something out of a horror film, now he came to think about it. Well, James Potter wasn’t going down without a fight. He snatched up the poker from the fireside, brandishing it high over his shoulder as he threw open the door—and froze.
The woman standing on the doorstep did not look like a homicidal maniac. Technically, she wasn’t standing on the doorstep either—she was scrabbling around on her hands and knees, using her phone as a torch as she raked through the gravel surrounding the flagstones with her fingertips.
She stared up at James from her awkward position, and for a moment, neither of them moved. Then she, quite understandably, screamed.
It was so loud, and so shrill, that James instinctively shrieked too. A manly sort of shriek, obviously—though he was fairly relieved that Sirius hadn’t been around to hear it.
Simultaneously, the woman-slash-suspected serial killer attempted to leap away from James, but she was clearly off balance and succeeded only in propelling herself backwards, landing on her bottom in what was a rather undignified fashion and sending a battered wheeled suitcase flying across the gravel.
“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?” he yelled at her.
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” she yelled back. There was a visible (and entirely justified) tension in the way she held her limbs, as though nervously anticipating any sudden move he might make, but the way her strikingly green eyes bored into him hinted at an underlying, unexpected obstinacy.
The whole situation was utterly absurd. How on earth was James supposed to make sense of it? “Will you please stop screaming at me?”
“Will you please stop screaming at me?” she countered, lifting her chin defiantly.
Now James was sure that he wasn’t imagining the stubborn set of her jaw, and irritation flared in his chest. “Can you please stop repeating everything I say?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “I will if you put that poker down.”
James was not to be so easily swayed. “That depends on whether you’re here to murder me.”
A look of utter bewilderment crossed the woman’s face. “Why the hell would I be here to murder you?” She gestured at the poker. “It’s you that’s you that’s brandishing the offensive weapon here, so if anyone ought to be scared of getting murdered, it’s definitely me.”
“Okay. That is a fair point,” he conceded, lowering the poker to his side and offering her his hand. “I’m James. James Potter.”
She hesitated for a moment before allowing him to help her to her feet. “Lily Evans.”
Now that she had stood to her full height, James could see that Lily Evans was tall and willowly, and entirely unsuitably dressed for February in the Peak District; neither was he, now he came to think of it, given that she’d interrupted his whisky nightcap. “Look, why don’t you come in, before we both freeze to death. We can work out why everyone’s yelling inside.”
She looked over her shoulder to where an elderly Vauxhall Corsa that he presumed must be hers was illuminated in the light from the doorway. Then her shoulders dropped in… relief? Defeat? He couldn’t tell.
“Sure. Why not?” She brushed specks of dirt and gravel from the back of her jeans, then retrieved the case from the ground behind her. “It’s not like I could outrun you if you actually are a homicidal maniac.”
It was absolutely true, but openly agreeing would have felt ungentlemanly. Instead, James held open the door and stood to the side to admit her, watching as she took in her surroundings. Given how small the place was, it didn’t take long.
Still, it gave James a moment to examine her properly. What he saw was simply breathtaking. She moved with an easy, appealing grace, and those bright eyes were quite astonishing. However, what most caught his attention was her hair. In the soft light of the Byre’s carefully placed lamps, it seemed to glow burnished bronze, falling down her back in soft waves. “So, Lily Evans,” he began, wondering whether to draw her attention to the fact that her sweater was currently accessorised with a couple of leaves from her earlier tumble. “What are you doing out here, digging in the shrubbery in pitch darkness?”
She turned away, running her hand along the granite of the kitchen worksurface. “I… uh… need a place to lay low for a while. Marlene said I could stay here for a few weeks. She told me there was a key hidden under a stone, but I couldn’t find it.”
“Right. I used it to get in. Sorry.” Quite why he was apologising for quite legitimately removing and using the key that Sirius had provided, he had absolutely no idea. Perhaps his brain was still adjusting to having an extremely attractive woman just pitch up in his (temporary) living room in the middle of the night? That was bound to throw anyone off their game.
“That’s okay.” Lily wandered into the living area, and stood warming herself in front of the fire. James couldn’t blame her; it was bloody freezing outside. “So, how do you know Marlene?”
He retrieved his glass of whisky from the kitchen counter. “She’s my sister-in-law.”
Her emerald eyes immediately brightened. “Oh, you’re Sirius’s brother?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, it’s sweet of them to ask you to meet me, but it really wasn’t necessary. The lane getting up here was pretty treacherous with all the ice, so if you just leave me the key, you should probably be heading off if you want to get back down in one piece.”
James’s head snapped round towards her. “Excuse me, what?”
“That’s why you’re here, right? To give me the key? Help me settle in?” Her gaze wandered around the extremely limited space, making it clear how unnecessary that would be. “I presume Marly arranged it and just didn’t tell me?”
James pressed his lips together. “Ah. No, not quite.” He paused, wondering how to break the news. “Miss Evans—”
“Lily, please!” she interrupted. “Miss Evans makes me feel like a delicate regency heroine!”
Something twitched at the back of James’s brain at her choice of words, but he brushed it away, He clenched his jaw, silently cursing his sister-in-law.
“Lily,” he parrotted. “The thing is, I’m not here to hand over the key. I’m staying here. Been here a while, actually.”
Lily blinked hard. “Oh! No, that can’t be right. I only spoke to Marlene about it this morning, and she said it would be fine! Marlene—” Whatever she’d been about to say died on her lips and her shoulders sagged. “—didn’t actually check with Sirius before she offered, did she?”
She looked so defeated that a compulsion to help flickered through his chest. “Could you just hold that thought while I make a call?” he asked, digging his phone out of his pocket. “See if we can’t get this straightened out?”
Lily shrugged and shot him a tight smile that spoke volumes about her lack of confidence in that statement. “Sure.”
With a sharp nod, James tapped at his phone and started a video call with his adopted brother. “Evening, Pads,” he began, when Sirius answered. “Is your lovely lady wife with you?”
“She is! Marly?” he called, over his shoulder, once he’d returned James’s greeting. “Prongs wants to talk to you!”
“To both of you, actually.”
Marlene must have been close by, because she appeared next to Sirius only a few seconds later, blond hair immaculate as always, glass of wine in hand. “James! How lovely to see you!” The smile froze on her face as she took in his expression. “Something wrong?”
“Depends how you define wrong. I believe you know Lily, here?
“Lily! Darling! Sirius, this is Lily, you remember I told you about her! I had no idea you knew James already, Lily!” she exclaimed. Then a frown marred her perfectly beautiful face. “But aren’t you meant to be in Derbyshire by now? I thought you were in a hurry to get to the Byre?”
“Why would Lily be going to the Byre?” asked Sirius, nonplussed.
Marlene looked equally confused. “Because I told her she could stay there.”
“No, James is staying at the Byre,” replied Sirius, shaking his head.
Spots of colour appeared on Marlene’s cheeks. “You never mentioned that!”
“I didn’t think I had to! You said I was in charge of bookings!”
A few minutes of bickering later, and James was pretty sure they’d forgotten he and Lily were even there. Knowing Sirius and Marlene and their propensity to treat such minor disagreements as foreplay as he did, James didn’t miss the heated looks they were giving one another as the argument progressed. Painfully aware of the way that most of their fights were resolved, he decided to end the call before they started doing unspeakable things to one another on the kitchen table.
“I suppose that’s that,” muttered Lily. “You weren’t planning on heading back to civilization this evening, by any chance, were you?”
Her plaintive tone made it clear that the question was asked more in hope than expectation. “I’m afraid not,” he explained, hoping he sounded sympathetic; after all, this was hardly her fault. “I’m due to be staying until Sirius’s first real booking arrives, just before Easter.”
Lily blinked hard, eyes brighter than they had been a moment earlier. “Right. Okay. Well, brother clearly trumps new friend, doesn’t it. I’ll see if I can get a hotel. Um—do you know anywhere close by that I could call?”
“Oh. Well, I’m not exactly local, but I think there are some places in Buxton,” he suggested,
Lily’s eyes flicked to the clock on the wall above the fireplace that showed the hour hand almost at eleven o’clock. “Nowhere closer?”
It was a fair point; driving to Buxton would take at least thirty minutes. “I don’t think so,” he shrugged regretfully. “We’re pretty well out of the way here.”
She shrugged unhappily. “Yes. I suppose that was rather the point.”
It seemed like an odd thing to say, but James let it slide. Instead he brought up the search app on his phone. “Let me help.”
Between them, they called sixteen hotels, hostels and B&Bs over the course of the next twenty minutes, and managed to locate Lily a grand total of zero hotel rooms. Not all of them were fully booked; some couldn’t accept a booking so late in the day. Some were closed for the winter. Some didn’t answer the phone at all. The net result was exactly the same regardless.
James signed his resignation. “I guess there’s no room at the inn.”
“The lapsed Catholic in me never expected to have this much sympathy for Mary and Joseph,” muttered Lily, darkly.
“Look, it’s really too late to be heading out now anyway,” he pointed out. “You said it was treacherous enough earlier, so the lane will have completely frozen up by now. I’m surprised you even made it up without four-wheel drive.”
Lily turned to face him with her hands on her hips. “Well then what exactly am I going to do?”
It was a fair question, and it had only one reasonable answer. “Stay here tonight. We can work something out in the morning.” She hesitated, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. “Lily, if I was going to murder you, I’d have done it already.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment before capitulating. “Okay. Where’s the spare bedroom?”
“There isn’t one.” James glanced pointedly at the mezzanine, and Lily’s cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink.
“Oh! That’s… it?”
“Yep. But look, you can have it. I’ll manage on the sofa,” he offered, cursing that the Byre wasn’t large enough even for a three-seater.
“Absolutely not!” she replied, hotly. “I’m the one that shouldn’t be here. I’ll take the sofa.”
“But I insist,” he replied, equally firmly. “My mother raised me to be a gentleman. The sofa is actually very comfortable, and as I’m sure you can see, Marly has a bit of a thing for blankets, so I’ll be perfectly fine.”
There was a long pause. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
“Certain.” He picked up the whisky bottle and presented it to her. “Join me for a nightcap before we turn in?”
Lily laughed, softly and humourlessly. “Why not? On the rocks, please.”
James headed into the kitchen (which took him precisely three paces in the compact space) to find another glass and some ice, then poured them both a healthy measure. “So, Lily Evans. Since we’re going to be roommates, we should probably get to know one another. Tell me a bit about yourself.”
She shrugged, accepting her glass and leaning back against the kitchen counter. “There isn’t much to tell. I’m twenty-nine. I live in Leicester. I’m really very boring.”
Now it was James's turn to laugh. “I find that very hard to believe! What do you do for work?”
There was another long pause, as though she was reluctant to answer. “I’m a biochemist. But I’m taking a sabbatical at the moment.”
That was something James understood all too well. “Right. Burned out by the rat race?”
“Something like that. But that’s enough about me,” she declared, though it didn’t escape James’s notice that she’d told him practically nothing. “What about you?”
“I’m also twenty-nine, and I’m a Londoner born and bred.” He paused for a moment, aware that now it was his turn for a little reticence. “I’m a writer.“
Lily’s face lit up. “Really?” she exclaimed. “And what is it that James Potter writes?”
James shook his head softly, swirling the whisky in his glass. “James Potter has written absolutely nothing that you’d have heard of.”
Which was not only true, but a perfect example of the importance of asking the right question. He felt a bit guilty about the deception—but only a bit. After all, it was hardly the first time he’d been evasive about his work.
“Fair enough.” She drained her glass, and then smothered a yawn. “Well, it’s been a long day, I’m going to turn in. Are you sure you’ll be okay on the sofa?
“Absolutely certain,” he reassured her, despite not, in fact, being certain at all; the sofa was very small, and James was very tall. But he hadn’t lied about it being comfortable. He’d just have to make the best of it.
Lily shot him a heart-stopping smile, then fished around in her case, withdrawing a tshirt, yoga pants and washbag. Her case was haphazardly packed, which surprised him—tshe didn’t strike him as a haphazard sort of a person. Though what the hell did he know? He’d literally only just met him. “Well then, I’m just going to use the bathroom.”
“Sure! It’s the door at the back of the kitchen.”
“Yeah, I figured,” she observed wryly, and she had a point; there was nowhere else it could possibly be, after all.
While she was in there, James shimmied up the ladder to retrieve his own night attire from under the pillow, quickly changing before Lily had a chance to return. As he stripped and pulled on his pyjamas, he pondered his surprise housemate. She really was quite extraordinarily beautiful, and clearly extremely clever. He wondered why she’d been so reluctant to talk about herself—not that she was under any obligation to spill her deepest darkest secrets to him, a complete stranger.
It wasn’t long before Lily returned from the bathroom. She bid him goodnight and climbed the ladder to the mezzanine. Within a few minutes, James could hear her breathing slow, becoming deep and regular as she succumbed to sleep.
James banked the fire, and settled himself onto the compact sofa, and it immediately felt as though his knees were tucked right up by his ears. With a sigh, he wrapped one of Marlene’s carefully chosen blankets around himself. It was going to be a long night.