[It's always a bad day. They always know it's going to be a bad day, and they always double up on sharp enthusiasm and rough distraction and blunt force affection, but it's always a bad day anyway.
It tracks through like most every other terrible version of this bad day has ever been. James is aware of Remus sinking lower and lower, of Sirius edging closer and closer, of his own body shifting farther and farther forward over the desk while Peter more and more firmly kicks him in the leg to keep his mouth shut. He's aware that the small sniping he's been allowing himself to those around him isn't enough. He's aware that the hard work they'll do when this is over to build things back up toward 'normal' (which is still too low, which is still not good enough) will barely be fixed by the time something like this happens again.
In fact, it's one of the days he's least aware of Lily Evans until she actually throws up her hand to speak.
(It's definitely the day he'll remember as the day he was actually, properly in love with anyone for the first time; the day he was actually, properly aware of something still not quite right in the way his own soul sat in his own body.)
He doesn't actually raise his own hand. His hand is needed to shove at Peter lightly to stop kicking because honestly, if Evans spitting all that out in the middle of class wasn't permission to say something much less divisive, what in the world was?] Professor, you can't.
[There are better arguments. There are principled arguments. This can't quite be that, because they're tried letting him go on about these things and it always ends badly.]
You'll literally ruin detention. Look, of course no one likes that Evans has actually done proper research into a complex issue-- and I'm well aware the classroom is no place for debates about real life issues concerning-- [don't say 'our peers,' brain, don't say it] --properly practical topics. But some of us deeply value our time in detention, Professor, away from the Evanses of the world. She'll just keep-- making a series of cogent points at us the whole time. We'll be tricked into engaging with multifaceted subjects and the deep moral quandaries of our day and age.
[That all sounded vague and general, right? Right. Brilliant. Distracting. Smoothing. Unimportant.]
no subject
It tracks through like most every other terrible version of this bad day has ever been. James is aware of Remus sinking lower and lower, of Sirius edging closer and closer, of his own body shifting farther and farther forward over the desk while Peter more and more firmly kicks him in the leg to keep his mouth shut. He's aware that the small sniping he's been allowing himself to those around him isn't enough. He's aware that the hard work they'll do when this is over to build things back up toward 'normal' (which is still too low, which is still not good enough) will barely be fixed by the time something like this happens again.
In fact, it's one of the days he's least aware of Lily Evans until she actually throws up her hand to speak.
(It's definitely the day he'll remember as the day he was actually, properly in love with anyone for the first time; the day he was actually, properly aware of something still not quite right in the way his own soul sat in his own body.)
He doesn't actually raise his own hand. His hand is needed to shove at Peter lightly to stop kicking because honestly, if Evans spitting all that out in the middle of class wasn't permission to say something much less divisive, what in the world was?] Professor, you can't.
[There are better arguments. There are principled arguments. This can't quite be that, because they're tried letting him go on about these things and it always ends badly.]
You'll literally ruin detention. Look, of course no one likes that Evans has actually done proper research into a complex issue-- and I'm well aware the classroom is no place for debates about real life issues concerning-- [don't say 'our peers,' brain, don't say it] --properly practical topics. But some of us deeply value our time in detention, Professor, away from the Evanses of the world. She'll just keep-- making a series of cogent points at us the whole time. We'll be tricked into engaging with multifaceted subjects and the deep moral quandaries of our day and age.
[That all sounded vague and general, right? Right. Brilliant. Distracting. Smoothing. Unimportant.]