Lily Evans was late for Potions. She was sprinting down the corridor, a stitch in her side as her breath came out shorter and shorter, the door to her class coming closer and closer as she ran.
She hadn't planned on being late, in fact she had set off for her class a lot earlier than had been strictly necessary. But because it was Hogwarts and no one could go longer than half a day without a duel breaking out in the middle of the school grounds, she had been side-tracked thanks to the fact that she was Head Girl.
It had involved a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin of all people. The Hufflepuff had been spouting some sort of nonsense about Voldemort going about things the right way, and the Slytherin, who Lily now knew was a Muggleborn, had given the Hufflepuff a good arse-kicking before Lily had stepped in and put a stop to everything. It had taken quite a bit of shouting, at least three Shield Charms, and a threat to take away over fifty points from each house if both students didn't knock it off.
Which was why Lily had barreled into her N.E. level Potions class, completely interrupting Slughorn who was in the middle of explaining something she didn't know about. Her bag was hanging off one shoulder, her robes were hanging from her elbows, her hair which had been put into a bun was now tangled and hanging by Lily's lower back in a large knot.
"S-sorry I'm-I'm late, P-Professor Slughorn," Lily puffed out, her right hand clamped to her side as she bent over, her left hand pressing on her knee as she tried to catch her breath and stop the pounding in her head. The entire class had turned around to stare at her as she staggered to the empty seat that was next to James and collapsed into it.
"Not a problem, Lily," Slughorn replied with a fond smile before resuming his speech. Lily didn't pay any attention to the words that came out of his mouth and instead rummaged through her bag, dragging out a piece of parchment and her quill and ink. She wasn't looking when Slughorn took the lid off of the cauldron sitting on his desk at the front of the class, too busy pulling out piece after piece of her Potions equipment that she would need to measure and make her potions assignment.
Lily's mind was dragged away from her bag and back to what was happening during the class by a strong smell that seemed to have filled the entire class. She wrinkled her nose and grimaced, she was torn between liking the smell and being irritated by it because there was so much of it. She looked around her to see if anyone else smelled the same thing but found that her fellow classmates had dazed looks on their faces and silly, sleepy grins pasted on.
There was something familiar about the smell, something woodsy or musky about it, like it was someone's cologne but for the life of her she couldn't figure out why it seemed so familiar, or even where it was coming from. She leaned over towards James to ask him if he smelled what she smelled when she caught the scent on him. Without even thinking about how loud she was being, Lily found herself interrupting Slughorn again.
"Holy Agrippa James, how much cologne did you put on today? Did you bathe in it or something?" she asked loud enough that Slughorn, and indeed the rest of the class, stopped what they were doing and stared at her. Oblivious to all of this, Lily gave another strong sniff in the air, not noticing the grin that was starting to spread across James's face, and frowned in confusion. Instead of the smell of James's cologne she was getting hit with the smell he had whenever he'd finished polishing his broom.
"Have you been polishing your broom, too?" she went on, squinting at James in confusion. James didn't get the chance to answer, mostly because Lily was on a roll, but also because he couldn't stop himself from smiling even if he'd tried.
"Okay now it smells like books, how on earth does it smell like books, what is going on?" Lily asked, shaking her head in confusion.
"Thank you, Miss Evans, for demonstrating, as I was saying," Slughorn said, a twinkle in his eye as the rest of the class sniggered at Lily's outburst, "Amortentia smells different to every person depending on what attracts them most."
Lily could feel her entire neck and face getting hot and turning red. She looked down and slowly slid down in her seat so she could be seen as little as possible. James had managed to slide even closer to her, that idiot grin of his still on his face, one arm thrown across the back of her bench.
Someone let out a wolf whistle which made Lily turn even redder. She brought her hand up to her forehead to try and limit the exposure her face had to the rest of her classmates. She didn't even want to think about the look of disgust on Snape's face.
"Say Lils, you seem awfully smitten with your Head Boy," James whispered into her ear. She jumped at how close he had gotten to her. She could feel everyone watching them flirt with each other.
"Please, for the love of Dumbledore, shut up," Lily managed to choke out. James's arm moved from hanging from the back of her bench to around her shoulders as he tugged her towards him because Potions class was obviously the place to start acting like a couple and marking your territory. Although Lily was lying to herself fiercely as she tried to convince herself that she hated it and thought it stupid (on the contrary she could not be more delighted).
James leaned down to her ear again, the grin still on his face (Lily was fairly certain it would never leave his face). "You're right, we can discuss this more in depth later."
And because Lily had already exposed herself to her entire Potions class, and the rest of Hogwarts, because news travelled especially fast when it concerned Lily and James, she decided she might as well do it properly and replied with,
"If 'discuss' means anything other than mess around in your bed, I will be very disappointed in you."
a/n: this short one-shot was based on a comic done by wingedcorgi on tumblr