WHO: James Potter & Lily Evans WHEN: September 18th 1976, 2am WHAT: Midnight encounters WHERE: Gryffindor Common Room UNIVERSE: Canon
There was a sharp 'bang' as James' toe snagged on the lip of the portrait hole and he stumbled into the common room. Swearing under his breath, wobbling round to glare at the back of the Fat Lady's canvas as it swung closed, he resisted the urge to hop on one foot. Perhaps that was what 6am Quidditch practice got you - deliriously tired twenty hours later, stumbling through portrait holes with Mrs Norris hissing at your ankles.
Bloody hell. It had been a shave too close, that one. Perhaps the summer had made him a bit sloppy when it came to avoiding the Hogwarts night-patrol.
Swinging back around, James scanned the empty common room, already knowing from the eerie silence that had met his inelegant entrance that the other boys weren't back yet. Hopefully they'd holed themselves up in a passageway somewhere... Two weeks of term was quite a good run when it came to avoiding detention, it'd be a shame to let the team down. Striding to one of the desks in the middle of the room, James reached into his back pocket and fished out the map, crumpled and well-thumbed even as he stopped to spread it over the table...
And froze. From this angle, it was clear things weren't as quiet as he'd thought. There, sitting on one of the faded sofas, bathed in the glow of the final few embers on the fire, was an all-too-familiar figure. For a second his mind went blank. Then James straightened up, stubbornly holding that bright green gaze. The map was deftly refolded as a dark eyebrow vanished into his hairline.
"You really shouldn't lurk around like that, Evans. People will think you're up to something."