Salt and rust. It's what he tasted of the first time I kissed him. I hadn't planned to do it. Originally, I'd planned to do the exact opposite. I had intended to always hate James Potter. He was an arrogant, stuck up, annoying, spoilt, brattish jerk. He picked on Severus incessantly, he was always disturbing the common room and he thought he was far more important than he actually was.
But lately I'd been coming round to the idea of him not being that bad. He'd calmed down a lot; he'd been brilliant at comforting Alice when her parents had appeared in the lists of the missing and he'd stopped pestering me for a date.
It was strange; it was like it had been part of my daily routine. Get up, go to class, reject James, go to sleep. It felt like a piece of my day had just disappeared. And I didn't like it. I'd decided I had to talk to him, but I hadn't decided when. I just knew it would have to be when his best mates weren't around, because I could do without Sirius singing 'It must be love', complete with lighter in the air.
But then James fell off his broom. Took a bludger to the chest as the Hufflepuff seeker caught the snitch and fell. I mean, it was probably only seven or eight feet, but he broke his nose and lay so still I thought he was dead. I wasn't the only one running onto the pitch; Sirius wasn't far behind me. I'd nearly reached James, when he groaned and pushed himself onto his knees, an arm wrapped round his chest. I dropped to my knees, sending sand flying everywhere. The blood was pouring down his face as I pulled him closer, kissing the blood and the sweat off his lips. I heard him groan again, and I pulled back, suddenly realising that; firstly he had a broken nose and possibly broken ribs, and secondly that I had just kissed Potter in front of the entire school. He shot me large grin at me. "Told you you'd love me one day."
I punched him the shoulder. He was still laughing as he was led to the hospital wing, despite his face being distorted with pain.
That was when we became a 'we'. He loves telling that story, He always pretends that his injuries were worse than they were, and that it was all an elaborate plot to get me to like him. And the he loves the fact that I lost twenty house points for inappropriate conduct on the Quidditch pitch.