And when I see the curve of the earth in your willow eyes

I'm a rocketeer, coming home after years at the speed of light

Suddenly you're there, like a pearl in the palm of the universe

Your unlikely skies filling up my eyes

You come as some surprise,

You got me.

-"You Got Me," Ingrid Michaelson

August 2018

James leaned against the edge of Raigan's desk in the hospital wing. It almost felt weird to be back here in the bright, sunlit room, windows open, just days from the beginning of the new term.

James had been in meetings all day long and it had taken more effort than he'd anticipated to get his head back in the swing of things. This summer had made him feel the most removed from Hogwarts he had in years.

Even their routines, even sitting here watching Raigan organize things in a system so neat and efficient no one but Raigan could have come up with it felt a little off, a little discombobulated.

"You got a lot more to do?" asked James.

"Not really," said Raigan, shifting a few things aside so she could look at her to do list. She checked something else off near the bottom. "I should be ready to go in two minutes."

"Oh," said James. It just slipped out.

Raigan frowned at him and tucked her hair behind her ear. "What? Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"No," said James automatically. "I mean... kind of." He laughed. "I was just thinking maybe I could have a Piper night. SInce we haven't had much time this summer and I feel bad about it."

Raigan blinked at him. He thought she was offended, but then she said, "Oh. Okay. Sure. That works out well actually," and she didn't sound offended at all.

"It does," said James with a questioning look on his face. "You got a hot date or something?"

Raigan laughed. "God, no," she said. But she didn't offer any other explanation for what she might now be available to do. He wanted to push, but he had a feeling now wasn't the time to get details out of her.

"Right," he said slowly. "Well... I'm all set for the day so maybe I'll just... head back and..."

"Have your Piper night," Raigan finished.

"Yep," he said slowly, still eyeing her with curiosity. It wasn't like Raigan to be secretive with him. But then, she'd not had anything to hide in a very long time.

He leaned down to give her a quick a hug and said, "Well have fun or... work hard or whatever it is you're doing."

"Yeah," Raigan laughed. "Will do." Her lack of nerves was maddening. She gave him nothing that let on to what she might be up to.

James hooked his thumb into his pockets and started to back away, still contemplating her. He wasn't sure if he was more confused or amused, but something about the situation was definitely suspect.

---

When James got home, he found Piper lying on her stomach on the living room rug with her nose in what looked to be the last few pages of a book. "Hey girly,"he said, walking over and nudging her with his toe."

"Don't talk to me," said Piper with a vague swat at his ankle. "I'm almost finished."

James laughed through his nose. Her eyes were wide and glazed ver the way they always went when she had been reading all day. It made him smile to think this was how she had chosen to spend her day home alone.

He headed into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea while he waited. James remembered how vehemently opposed he and Raigan had been to drinking tea any way other than boiling, but Dawson, who'd been raised on sweet tea in Georgia, was not one to back down on his beliefs. He won them both over eventually, though he never managed to crack Elise who was even more stubborn than he had been.

Raigan always kept a pitcher full in the fridge. Sometimes, James thought it was was her way of making sure this house still felt like their home.

After about ten minutes, Piper wandered into the kitchen, sether closed book on the corner of the counter, bookmark on top, and said, "Where's Mum?"

"I kicked her out for the night," said James. "I needed a Piper day."

"Oh," said Piper, and she brightened. "Can we get pizza for dinner?"

"Delivery?" asked James, smiling to himself. Piper knew how to play him. He couldn't say no.

She nodded.

"Sure," James said, and he grabbed a slip of paper off a notepad in the drawer nearest the doorway. "What do you want on it?"

"Pepperoni," said Piper at once. "Obviously."

"You got it," James laughed, and he scribbled down their order. "Is Auggie around?" he asked.

"Yeah, he's asleep upstairs," said Piper. "I'll get him." And she hurtled up the stairs, returning a minute later with the old brown owl perched on her elbow. James stuck the note in Auggie's beak and they watched him fly off through the window.

"You know what else I was thinking?" said Piper in her best nonchalant tone when the owl had traveled out of sight.

James grinned. He knew there would be more.

"What's that?" he asked, putting his hand atop her head. For once, she didn't dip right back out. "I was thinking maybe we could make brownies," she said.

"Pipe, you know your mum won't let me anywhere near the oven."

"Well she lets me near the oven," said Piper. "And anyways, I know how sort of. We just have to find the right recipe book."

And with that, she jumped up on the counter, stood up so that her head just barely cleared the ceiling, and opened up the small cabinets above the fridge where Raigan kept the cookbooks. She shuffled them around, reading the spines and looking at the covers until she found the one she was looking for, one of the few that James had ever actually seen Raigan peruse. James put his hand out just in case while she crouched down, but she didn't need it. She sat down on the counter, legs dangling, and flipped to the dessert section at the back. A few of the recipes were dogeared, including one for brownies. "This is the one Mum makes," said Piper, tapping the picture.

They scanned the list of ingredients and James pulled out his wand and gave it several flicks, summoning a few of the things he wasn't sure they had, just to speed up the search. "Shoot," said James, when only two of the three items he'd been unsure of zoomed his way. "I really don't know my way around the supermarket."

"Well it's all mostly in the baking aisle," said Piper, like the supermarket was a place she frequented. And maybe it was. She and Raigan might've been there twice a week for all James knew.

James glanced over the recipe with a frown. He could see already he was getting himself in way over his head. He had very limited cooking experience to begin with, but his baking experience was... well, there wasn't any. He had never baked before.

James looked up again, about to voice this concern, but Piper was gone.

"Pipe?" he called. "Where'd you go?"

"I'm right here," she said, her voice coming from only a short distance away. He found her sitting on the floor at the foot of the stairs, pulling a pair of yellow trainers. "We have to hurry so we can be back before the pizza gets here," she said in answer to his questioning look.

James laughed and went to grab his own shoes off the mat just inside the door. "You know, Pipe, I'm not really sure it's clear who's in charge here," he joked.

"Yes, it is," she said. "I am." And she flashed him a goofy grin, chin up, and darted back into the kitchen, returning only a moment later with a wad of muggle money that Raigan kept in a jar on the counter for quick errands nearby when she didn't feel like dealing with Diagon Alley.

She passed it to James, who folded it in half and stuck it in his wallet, hoping he'd remember how it all added up, and they headed out the front door.

It was hot outside, the air still and dry, likely the last big heat wave before the end of the summer. The sun hung low in the sky casting an orangey pre-sunset glow over the street. James wrapped his arm over Piper's shoulders as they walked.

"Three more days," he said. "Are you excited to go back to school?"

"Sort of," said Piper. "I don't really want to do homework though."

"Don't worry," said James. "It's gonna be a slow start from me. "I've been too busy this summer to really get ahead on my lesson plans."

Piper laughed. "That's not gonna last. You always assign the most work," she said.

He smiled. "You're right. I can't lose my reputation. I worked hard for that."

Piper just rolled her eyes.

They ended up abandoning Raigan's preferred recipe in favor of a box mix - a brilliant idea James had never encountered before and that Piper had never been allowed to try when, as Raigan apparently told her, you could just as easily make it from scratch with better ingredients. James didn't really know what Raigan was talking about, because the box mix seemed significantly more manageable to him.

Piper had him laughing through four slices of pizza and three brownies a piece with her impressions of classmates and professors, James himself included. She had done a very accurate portrayal of the way James always leaned on the front edge of his desk while he taught, even managing to emulate his exact cadence, his dramatic pauses and specific emphases. He was one hundred percent certain this was something she had practiced and probably performed before for the benefit of her friends.

It amazed him that Piper could honestly feel like she didn't have friends with a personality like that. Piper sparkled. She had a rare gift that Dawson had had too, the ability to poke fun at people without any cruelty. Not to mention her knack for impressions, stupid voices, and caricatured facial expressions.

After they ate, they played three rounds of exploding snap with Piper's new Jinxed album blasting on the record player. James felt like he was twelve years old again, gorging himself on junk food and being allowed to stay up late.

He'd expected Raigan to be home, but now, but at almost midnight, there had still been no sign of her and Piper had started yawning. She had always wanted to be a night owl, but never had been. Piper hit her peak in the late afternoon and then dropped off rapidly about an hour after dinner.

He remembered countless arguments when she was about seven and didn't want to go to bed where Raigan would shuffle her through the bedtime routine, pretend to give in and sa Piper could spend the whole night reading for all she cared so long as she stayed in her room, only to find hr fast asleep ten minutes later with the lamp still on and her book across her chest.

Piper went to get ready for bed while James picked up their mess and put the remaining brownies away (no pizza remained). After a couple minutes, Piper called down a goodnight and James was about to call his back, but he was suddenly struck, for the first time, with a voluntary desire to tell Piper about Elise.

"Hang on a sec," called James up the stairs. "I'm coming up."

He hopped up the stairs and poked his head into her room where Piper was just crawling into bed. He thought about the last time he had been up here with her, how she had cried and admitted to him that she didn't miss her dad, that she felt like James was her dad.

James chickened out. He looked around the room for some excuse to stay, to work his courage back up. He could not wait any longer to tell her. He had already waited far too long and he had asked Piper and Raigan to come with him to the end of summer party for Ministry workers that Friday. Elise would be there too. He could not let that be when Piper found out that Elise was not just a friend.

He could feel Piper's eyes on his back, so he reached for the first thing he saw, a kids storybook, battered from how many times it had been read, still on the bottom of her bookshelf with a few other childhood favorites.

"Remember this?" James asked, bringing the book over to her. There was a cartoonish picture on the cover of a little girl, witch hat still on, lying on bed while her mom read her a story. Big purple letters across the top read "Goodnight Little Witch."

Piper smiled a little. "Yeah," she said shily. She had heard the story so many times that at age three or four she would fill in the ends of sentences. She'd memorized what came next.

James sat down on the edge of her bed and opened to the first page. To his surprise, Piper laid her head down to listen and cuddled up to him. He put his legs up on the bed and scooted further down to get comfortable, wrapping one arm around Piper, and began to read.

"The sun goes down at the end of the..." he paused, looking down at Piper to finish the sentence.

"Day," she smiled, laughing a little bit.

"Little Witch is tired from so much..."

"Play," said Piper, laughing harder now. He could feel her back shaking under his hand. James flipped the page with one hand and continued to read all about how Little Witch put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth, had a sip of water, curled up under her covers, read her own bedtime story, and finally gave Mummy Witch hugs and kisses goodnight. At these lines, James kissed Piper on the top of the head and gave her a squeeze. He closed the book and set her on her nightstand, drawing the fingers of his other hand up and down Piper's spine.

'Why'd you have to go and grow up, Pipe?" asked James.

She shrugged. "It was an accident."

James laughed. "Thanks for hanging out with me tonight. I stand by what I said last year. You're not allowed to get too cool for me."

"I won't," said Piper sleepily. Back rubs always put her to sleep in minutes when she was little.

James saw his window closing. He took a deep breath, not really sure where to start. "So I've been... meaning to tell you about something," he said. "It's not a big deal, I just want you to know."

Piper didn't say anything so James forced himself to continue. His tongue felt heavy and sluggish like someone had put a tongue-tying jinx on him and it was just starting to wear off. Why was he so nervous?

"You remember my friend Elise?" he said."You've met her a couple times now."

Piper nodded and he had a feeling she already knew where this was heading.

"She and I are... not just friends anymore," said James slowly, quite sure that if he didn't get it out early on, it would not come out at all.

"Oh," was all Piper said.

"Like I said it's not a big deal. It's not going to... change anything. I just wanted you to know. She's pretty important to me. We've known each other a long time. Sort of," James amended. "But anyway, I told you we had dated before, when your parents were dating. She's in your mum's wedding pictures and she was at the hospital with me the day you were born and she used to babysit you before your dad... she just would've been a part of your life all along, probably. We were going to get married. Or I was gonna ask, anyway. I never got around to that part. When your dad died, a lot of stuff changed, and I picked you and your mum over everything and I don't regret that. At all. I can't imagine not being a part of your life the way I am. But Elise was really important to me too and she still is and I just didn't want you to think I was keeping her a secret from you."

Piper rolled away from him and faced the wall. She was very quiet. James stomach twisted in on itself.

"Do you... do you have any questions or anything?" James asked. "Comments? Concerns?"

Piper shrugged and shook her head.

"Are you mad?" James asked, quieter still.

She shook her head again.

"Pipe," said James, putting his hand on her shoulder. "You know you're still my best girl, right? Always. Nothing's going to change that."

"I know," she said, but she didn't sound too enthusiastic.

"Well..." said James. "I just wanted to tell you that and... you know, maybe you could talk to her again on Friday at the ministry party. You liked her, right?"

"Yeah," Piper said, and this at least sounded somewhat genuine. After a pause, she added, "She nice."

"She is," said James. "I think you'd get along really well," he said. "That would make me really happy." She hadn't given him much encouragement at all, but James was so relieved to hear these few somewhat positive words that he felt himself starting to get a little carried away.

"I'd like to take you to our house sometime," he said. "It's on the beach. I think you'd really like the beach."

Piper rolled back towards him, frowning. "Our house?" she asked.

"Sorry. Her house," James corrected quickly, but the damage had been done. "It was our house before. It's her house now."

"Is that where you've been all summer?" asked Piper. "Not just working late."

James hesitated. "Some of the time," he said. "Sometimes I was actually working late."

"Oh," said Piper again and she rolled away towards the wall again with an air of finality. "I'd like to go to bed now. I'm tired."

"Yeah," said James. "Of course. Um... let's talk some more about this later, okay?"

"I guess," said Piper. James sighed. This had not gone as well as he'd wanted. He reached over and smoother back her hair.

"I love you sweetheart. I had a lot of fun with you tonight."

Piper nodded and, when he leaned down to kiss her hair again, she said a very quiet, "Love you too."

With one last squeeze of her shoulder, James stood up to go. He shut off the lights on his way out, and headed back downstairs, not quite sure how to feel.