chapter ten, a goddamn blaze in the dark!

february 4th, 1977

"𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐒𝐎𝐕, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐈'𝐌 𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐈 𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔," Professor McGonagall knew all too well that Hogwarts lacks quiet spaces and it's hard for students to find places where the noise level is deducted. Mock exams are approaching and the library is usually cramped— it doesn't help that the library is quite small given the size of the campus, "And I couldn't help but notice you're somewhat a teacher's pet."

"Thank you," she grins, "everybody loves their pets."

McGonagall found that comment strange proven by the puzzled look she expressed, and Lori wiped her own smile away quickly. "Good luck, and," she pauses, picking up some papers she'd just finished grading, "another student I gave a week-long detention to will be joining you at eight... I hope you don't mind."

Lori absolutely minded because people who get detention are unserious and will likely distract her from her very important, optional essay she'd been assigned; she only hopes it's a first or second year who will not be very interested in speaking to her. It was phrased like a question, a prompt. A yes or no question—easy. But whenever you're asked something by Professor McGonagall, the correct answer is to always enthusiastically nod, because it wasn't a question at all. It was a command. "No problem at all, Professor."

As weird as it may sound, Lori admired her transfiguration professor a lot. Her ability to remain stoic and follow rules, not to mention her incessant effort to be a perfectionist at every given turn.

As she studies, she remembers when Tara and she would have sleepovers for a few nights before Christmas Eve's, and Lori's dad Darius would pull himself out of work and take his daughter and best friend to lunch. He had salt-and-pepper-streaked hair that slicked back around his ears and wore brown leather jackets when he shucked the suit jacket. He had a plethora of leather jackets that Lori often stole before going back to Hogwarts. Tara introduced fashion magazines to Darius and he's been obsessed with those articles ever since. It was ridiculous— anyways, a few days ago, Lori sent her father a letter to get her Ovid's Metamorphoses because she was really into Greek and Roman tragedies at the moment, and pre-order the Rumours vinyl (which he couldn't get because they were sold out) so instead, he sent her a recent, immensely popular magazine.

The Lantsovs certainly had their faults, with Darius as an obvious people-pleaser and Lori too bitter and fusspot, but at least they were dependable. (Leia Lantsov, her mother, being dependably absent.)

The headline at the top of the Cosmopolitan she didn't ask for, in big, fluorescent bubble letters, shouted, "36 QUESTIONS TO FALL IN LOVE". Lori sincerely put thought into vomiting. 36 questions to fall in love? Life wasn't a romantic comedy. Love at First Sight, Butterflies Are Free—that wasn't real life. People were messy: they had affairs and stole from convenient stores and abandoned their families. (She ended up reading the magazine before bed that night, though.)

The door slammed open with a crack, causing Lori to spill the ink pot she'd been dipping her quill in. Staining her neatly written notes and blurring the letters together. She looked up in furious shock and found James Potter looking at the door with as much shock etched onto his face.

"That used to be heavier." He muttered, still not so much as glancing at Lori, or the chaos he'd already created in the three seconds he'd been present. Not to mention he was seventeen minutes late.

"McGonagall fixed it over the Christman break." Lori sighed, waving her wand across the paper, trying to reverse as much of the damage as possible. Truthfully, she'd rather have anybody btu James Potter to spend her evenings with— she had to focus and James was a walking-talking distraction.

Potter Swung the door back and forth on its hinges, as though testing its new weight. His school shirt was untucked, jumper nowhere in sight. His crimson and golden tie hung loose around his neck with the top two buttons of his shirt undone. In short, he looked like a mess.

"What are you doing here, Lori?"

She looked over and cleared her throat, "Studying," she answered, "you're late, you know."

Potter smirked, shutting the door gently behind him as he maintained eye contact, seemingly determined not to look away now Lori had managed to collect his attention. He sauntered into the room, pulling out the chair from beside Lori and throwing himself down lazily, his school bag dumped haphazardly onto the floor.

"Got lost."

"That excuse hasn't worked in five years." Lori rolled her eyes, already deeply regretting her decision to stay in this disaster.

"I didn't say I got lost coming here." Potter amended, his eyes dipping to the table and flicking his wand to clear a missed spot of ink. He stared at the spot for a second longer, playing his loose tie thoughtfully. "Just got lost."

Lori didn't argue back and instead focused on her own work. She took a small glance at James taking out his Arithmancy book, and turning to pages that detailed Mechanics work.

Suddenly, James groaned and Lori squeezed her eyes shut knowing he was going to disturb her. He stood up and instead of sitting back down in his seat, he was sitting on the desk diagonally from Lori. "Have you ever been late, Lori?"

"What's the point of agreeing a time if you aren't going to stick to it?" Lori countered, shifting in her seat that was adjacent to the one Potter's legs were dangling over. He took out some grapes from his bag and set aside brightly coloured sweet packages.

James just shrugged, tossing another grape into the air and flicking his head back, mouth wide open, to catch it. "Life happens, shit gets in the way."

"Life doesn't happen, we do things to make it happen. Even elements out of our control can be placed into order with enough thought."

"You make life happen. I let life happen."

"Wonderful." Lori pinched the bridge of her nose, willing away the faint pulse of pain she could feel beginning to throb in her forehead. "You're a brilliant student, why are you running yourself mad over..." she glances at the book he pushed aside again just to be sure, "Arithmancy."

"Well, yes, I didn't think we'd need seven different formulas to figure out how much a damn car moves," James cursed beneath his breath, "fuck's sake."

Lori pursed her lips, "I take it your friends are still... non-friends?"

"Oh yeah, and this subject is stupid— like, I know how to memorise things, but I can't solve problems, it requires a lot of thinking..." he goes quiet, looks around and then gazes into her eyes, "help me, Lori?"

"No."

"Please, Lori?" His eyes widened and he made a pleading, puppy-like face that Lori couldn't say no to.

"If I am to help you with your work, I'll take it as my personal failure if you end up not understanding anything, so don't mistake my being a tyrannical wench as anything besides determination to make sure you and I both get what we want."

"Lori, dear, I wouldn't dream of mistaking your being a tyrannical wench as anything besides a deeply ingrained part of your personality."

Lori stared at him unimpressed until he buckled uncomfortably.

"Sorry."

"You were trained by your previous captain, right?" Lori asked, deftly ignoring his commentary.

"Are you stalking me?" James taunted. "It would be less creepy if you just asked me about my day. You used to do that, you know." It was sly and powerful... Lori's little comments taking them back to their childhood years have been the cause of his many sleepless nights and he was reluctant on bringing the matter up with her, catching a glimpse of her smallest reactions to the mention of the past.

"If we're talking creeply, stop staring at me in our Transfiguration classes."

"Yes, I was trained by Captain Skyes." James said.

"Right, so, think of me as your Quidditch Captain," she says, and James laughed so loudly that he started to choke on air all whilst Lori remained unphased, "for the next week as you're in detention, I'm gonna have you doing suicides with force problems until you can puke Newton's First."

"I think you're thinking of basketball."

"No, I'm not, loser," she scoffs, (she definitely just confused Quidditch with Basketball) "admit it, it was an appetising analogy, it works."

"No it doesn't and I don't know what an analogy is."

Loris sighed when she picked up on no signs of humour on his stupidly gorgeous face, "whatever," she smiled a faux, sickeningly sweet smile, and shrugged her shoulders.

James looked at Lori silently. Lori grinned back. She could admit she was being a wench, but James had been the wench to her first. She didn't care that it happened after they went to Hogwarts. She didn't care that she was completely different from the person James abandoned, and she didn't really care if James considered himself different from who he was back then, either.

"You know what," James turned to face Lori fully, prepared to delve deep into how he thinks she's been all weird since their... sort-of-date (?) a week ago, and how much it burns him whenever she takes a dig into his ignorance. But the close proximity of their faces—just inches apart—proved to be a distraction. The words that had been fully formed in his mind, clambering to the tip of his tongue, poised to tumble into sentences, seemed to bubble and melt like sea-froth ebbing away from land. He could focus only on Lori's eyes. The colour, the intensity of her gaze. Dark chocolate with strange flecks of forest-green that spiked around his pupils like a formation of tall trees.

They had almost-similar eye colour, and James would excitedly point it out when they were younger.

Lori cleared her throat. If it hadn't been for this distraction, James probably would have stared to the point it became weird. He was thankful Lori had brought him sharply back to reality.

"You were saying?" She said, there was a small smirk dancing across her lips.

"I can't believe you keep bringing up the past and it bothers me a lot more than it bothers you— we're talking, we're close again, and it's just like when we were kids."

"We're not kids anymore, Potter, you weren't a walking ego when we were younger."

"Yes, Lori, you mentioned my drastic personality change and my growing arrogance more than you talk about the concept of time."

"It's a very important concept!" She snapped, not too loudly, "how can you live without looking at the clock?"

"And what about how uptight you are?" James raised a brow, "I've literally never seen you make a joke, it's like humour doesn't exist for you."

"Uh, I'm funny and I make jokes all the time," she shrugs, "seriously, you can humour me right now and find

James scoffed, "I'll do it randomly to erase the element of surprise."

"Okay, fine, and even though I hate surprises with all my guts and hate your pranks or whatever, I'll take your joke gracefully and won't be offended... I have great humour." Lori hesitantly said all that in one breath, then finally inhaled.

James clicked his tongue and leaned over from his desk towards Lori where she sat, placed a hand on the corner of the back of her chair— his arm right next to her face as his undone tie hung between the two of them. Her heart sped up at the way he was caging her in.

"I think one of these days you're gonna wind yourself so tightly that you snap. You're amazing, Lorelei, loosen up a little."

"Don't call me Lorelei, I hate it." All she said. He opened his mouth slightly, like he wanted to say something, but he shook his head and pursed his lips instead. "Anyways," Lori cleared her throat. "What exactly has been causing you trouble with Arithmancy? Is it, like, the maths or conceptual stuff that's being applied to magic? 'Cause I usually found that it's one or the other when I did my OWLs on it."

"Um, the math, I guess."

Lori clicked her tongue and thumbed through the stack of papers just to James' right. She pulled out the third binder-clipped section of papers. It was, discouragingly, the largest section. "Are you retaking the acceleration assessment?"

James rubbed a hand across his forehead, and Lori felt like grimacing this time. She didn't want to make him feel stupid, she just didn't want to be here. Lori knew exactly how it feels like to be able to memorise concepts down to every commas and full stop's and get stuck on problem-solving.

"Yeah, maybe, I dunno."

"Okay," Lori said. "Well, you'll need acceleration for the mocks, anyways, so..." She handed him a half-sheet of paper where she had written the four constant acceleration equations they were using. "I know it's a lot of formulas but I agree with Death Row when she says having a pretty solid grasp on them helps me remember the concepts behind them because if you know the formulas you can work backward through the derivations, so—"

"Wait," James interjected, his drawn-in eyebrows a symbol of his mind working.

"Sorry," and Lori really was apologetic. "Am I talking too fast?"

"No, I just," James blinked. "You called her 'Death Row'?"

"I hate her and she hates me," she said, and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline like a rocket in shock, "and she's awful which is why I didn't pick the subject... so I gave her an awful nickname."

James looked at Lori, like she was a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece, and this time it was her who felt a little unnerved. Even when they were kids, whether it be from some mutual understanding or just the sort of empathy only children have, James could see through Lori to her core. She fucking hated it now. "That's interesting."

"You know what else is interesting?" He shook his head. "What the slope and area mean on a velocity graph."

He blinked twice, comprehending Lori's ability to flip a conversation on its head. "Okay."

"Do you know what those are? Slope and area?"

"I dunno," he said. "Could it be acceleration and displacement?"

"No, love," Lori said, handing him his book back with the pages opened up to a few practice problems that take the questions through step-by-step. "You're just saying famous physics words."

"With these equations," Lori continued, pointing to the half-sheet, "try doing these problems. Tomorrow when we get to, like, electrostatics and magnetism, there'll be more hardcore conceptual things to work on, but for mechanics it really is just pre-algebraic maths. And, even then with electrostatics and stuff, there are more mnemonic devices with those, so it's not so bad."

"Lori, you know I sucked at algebra."

"Which is fine. I'll help you." She's only making him do those stupid train problems because it's a guarantee they'll show up in the final exam— he needs to know more advanced acceleration work problems.

"One more question."

"Yeah?"

"Do you think you could get someone to fall in love with you through science?"

Lori sighed because she thought his questions were about the work, and that was a weird question to ask out of literally anything. A simple, "So, you can't mix the variables because they're different objects?" would've been fine. She wouldn't have even blinked at an, "All I do now is set the equations equal to each other and solve, right?"

"Okay, James, sweetie, I know it's hard to keep up with my brilliant mind when you have below-average IQ but this is physics, not psychology... say it with me, Phy-sics—"

"Lori, you're so rude to me, I love it, and I know what physics is," James sternly says with a straight face, "I know love is my area of expertise—"

"I'm literally here to help you with love," Lori was definitely not that upset about James constantly discrediting her but since last week, James has been downright depressed about his friends, "Love is one of those weird things, Potter."

"But, do you think it's possible?" he continued.

Lori shrugged, her pencil settling between her fingers as she looked at him, "Well, I suppose if you were, like, some brainiac scientist, science-y girls would fall for that stuff... why, is Lily a science girl?"

"Not like that—uh. You know, like, can you make someone fall in love with a scientific method or something?"

Lori sniffed through her nose. She knew what James was asking, but she really didn't want to admit that she read those horrid Cosmopolitan magazines her father gets sent. But, James had been incredibly mopey and destitute all day. Lori was all-too familiar with him getting rejected by his own true love and his friends in a row, and lots and lots of bullshit—but just because she didn't really care, didn't mean she had to be heartless, right? (Okay, so she cared about Potter's happiness just a little bit.) "There is an article I read. About sets of questions that bring people closer together, like, increases intimacy."

"You're serious?" James was disbelieving.

"My dad reads Cosmo even though my mum hated it, Potter," she said, ignoring the look James gave her when she brought up her mother. "Yes, I'm serious."

"You believe in it?"

"I believe in science, yes, and maybe these things can be legit," Lori admitted against her will. "I mean, facts and all, you can't argue against that."

"You don't think you can just get someone to like you by being charming?"

"I think when it comes to romance, you need a lot more things than a charming personality," she smiles softly, "that's why I'm here to help... you think charm fixes everything but that isn't ever gonna get Lily to kiss you, or date or whatever."

Another memory surfaced in Lori's mind, pushing through the murky blanket of fog fabricated in the face of unabridged fear.

"My mum used to call me that," she said quietly.

"What?" asked James.

"My mum used to call me Lorelei—she never liked shortening my name because it was her mother's name, so I don't like it when anyone calls me that..."

James blinked. Breathing steadily was proving to be harder all of the sudden.

"There's something I wanted to say to you, actually."

"Is it another one of those stupid questions?"

"No, what I'm going to say is gonna sound real cheesy, don't hate me." James looked concerned and it made Lori laugh a little. "I can't get you off my mind," when he said those words, Lori's heart stopped. Genuinely stopped. Her breath got caught in her throat and her eyes were paralysed on his. "Ever since we started talking again, I couldn't stop thinking about how fun it would be if you were with me every second of every day, if you are the one."

After his rant, he clutched the edge of his desk and let his head fall in relief, letting out a large exhale as Lori's jaw hung open, speechless and feeling a dull tug at her heartstrings.

"What!" She practically shrieked. "James—!"

James gulped harshly. "So, like— this isn't... I only meant—"

"Shut up, shut up and let me think, just—give me a second," Lori told him, turning away and biting the insides of her cheeks to hide the brightest smile she had ever let out.

When she turned around, she saw James' cheeks turning red, flustered. He looked like he was suffocating and she arched a brow in confusion.

"I didn't think you'd actually stop talking," she said. "And breathing."

"Oh, thank god," He let out a long breath and prepared to divulge into all the thoughts he managed to collect in the matter of 30 seconds at most. "I just think you're really pretty."

"James—"

James sat up, fully facing her confidently despite his crimson cheeks. "And you're hot, Lori, like, really hot and you're warm and sweet like pastries and I get nervous around you."

"James." She softly uttered his name, having to process his words in a matter of seconds. Because within seconds, all her thoughts were cut short when his hand reached to the side of her face, turning her towards him. His other hand found the other side of her face, cupping her cheekbone gently.

Her breath immediately caught in her throat again, eyes tightly shut. Her stomach hopped in such a rush, she felt breathless. Like someone had knocked the wind out of her.

But he didn't kiss her.

"See," he shrugged, pulling back, "you were proper ready to kiss me."

"James, what the actual fuck?" Lori clenched her teeth, swallowing the lump already forming in her throat.

"Deep breaths, Lantsov, you were all about humour and jokes and— and you were shitting on my charm so I just..." He trailed off realising Lori, in fact, did find humour overrated. Or maybe she just didn't like his sense of humour.

Lori's cheeks warmed, reddening more, if that was even possible. At that point, her flesh was practically radiating a heat that was powerful enough to scold, and she loathed herself for it. Exposing herself so freely. What happened to the façade? The mask she wore so vigilantly?

Without another word, she flung her satchel over her shoulder and started to storm away— her eyes already prickling with unshed tears.

James quickly jumped to the ground in front the desk, and sprinted to stand in front of her before she could reach the door. Lori cannot believe how much of a jerk he has been the entire evening— granted, she has been acting weird in the wake of her confusing feelings but James seemed reluctant on proving her right by acting arrogant and uncaring.

"Lori, I was joking," he said, frowning, he held out his hands to stop her from escaping, and his hand brushed her bicep slightly, "It was a joke."

"Well, it wasn't a funny one," she scoffed, voice on verge of wobbling, "who do you think you are?"

"I didn't mean to offend you— it was a joke!"

"So, you play with people's feelings for shits and giggles—? You know what your problem is, Potter?" She arched her brow, and when he parted his lips to speak, she cut him off, "you want everything instantly— you don't like waiting... just because you apologise doesn't mean they have to forgive you on the spot, you can't wait for your friends to make up on their own account without butting your head in."

"Lori—"

"I may be obsessed with the concept of time but you're obsessed with urgency which is far worse... it's not hard to think— like, do you even care about others or you just try helping to please yourself?" She shook her head and she knew she was being excessively harsh but she couldn't stop... because she was bitter and cold and lonely... "You claim to be in love with Lily but you're off with other girls all the time, in front of her, snogging 'em and messing about."

"I was just teasing," he says, pretending like he doesn't care. If she's going to hint that he is uncaring and only pleases others for self-satisfiction then he'll just act like he doesn't care. Albeit in the next seconds, he realised that his action to get under her skin and loosen her up a little backfired, and so did his snarky attempt to get the upper hand in their back-and-forth bickering the entire evening. It's like they were waiting for each other to snap first. 

She shook her head and brushed past him, shoulders shoving into his as he stumbled back a little, all silent and still. Lori only let the first tear drop once she heard the door slick shut behind her. 

𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗮'𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 !

okay, that was inevitable given how snarky they were subtly being the entire chapter. sorry everyone, we need the drama and a bit of james potter being a fool. also that "teacher's pet" comment at the start is taken from B99, I'm obsessed.