[SPELLING & GRAMMAR CHECKED 14/11/2010]
A/N: For the HPFC 'Line From A Song' Challenge.
Prompt: It's not like I believe in ever-lasting love.
I know this is really long, but I felt like I needed to establish Lily and James's relationship before turning it all completely upside-down. My apologies for the length.
It was perfectly clear to everyone in the library that night: the world had officially ended.
Forget Hell freezing over. The Devil had clearly just made a permanent relocation to hang with Santa and his elves. No one was quite sure how Mrs Claus felt about her new next door neighbour. At least having good ol' Lucifer around meant that the fire was always lit.
It was miles beyond pigs flying. They'd opened their own private shuttle service – '3, 2, 1... Bacon!' – and were currently offering discount rocket rides for vegetarians. Each rocket was aimed to land on a McDonalds after its visit to the moon.
This was a revelation of apocalyptic dimensions. Zeus and Amun-Ra were fighting it out with their lightning bolt and beak, causing massive tremors to shudder the Earth with each mighty blow they dealt. The Capulets and Montagues had found out about Romeo and Juliet and were after each other, weapons at the ready, gutting one another with each slash of their swords. Those huge Oliphaunts from The Battle of the Pelennor Fields were basically having a party, trampling whatever was left of the world under their huge feet, including any and all of the hobbits, elves, goblins, giants and people that got in their way (or wore bright colours).
Pretty much, something very, very strange was going on. Something that could not have been anything but a sign of the aforementioned ultimate doom. Something that just happened to be as simple as Lily Evans sitting with James Potter.
Whispers had broken out the moment the redhead had walked into the library, scanned the room, and then casually proceeded over to the Head Boy's table. She threw down her books with a frustrated noise, making James look up from the particularly nasty Defence Against the Dark Arts essay he'd been writing. Lily took the time to shoot everyone who was staring a glare that very clearly said 'don't mess with me' and wait until all the curious pairs of eyes had been quickly lowered back to their work before speaking.
"I have just had the absolute worst day!"
Her voice carried across the quiet library and, like a family of rabbits that hear the sound of a carrot being peeled, every ear in the room pricked up.
Noticing this, Lily lowered her voice to continue, "And you wouldn't believe the amount of homework Slughorn gave me. Everyone else just had to revise the work we did in class, but because 'the work we're currently doing is much too basic for me' (his words, not mine), he expects me to write a two feet – two feet! – essay on the long- and short-term effects of Amortentia. By Monday. Do you have any idea how long that's going to take to write? As if McGonagall's multi-dimension transfiguration spells essay isn't hard enough, we also have the Defence Against the Dark Arts one to do!"
Wordlessly, James held up the essay he was currently writing. Lily tilted her head to read the title: 'Protection Against Attacks from Cursed Objects or Creatures'. Underneath, there were four lines of completely illegible writing, angry lines having been scribbled through almost every word. With a sigh, James lowered the paper.
"I've been here for almost an hour," he said. "I've written ten words: Total protection from cursed objects or creatures is difficult to achieve. No, sorry, eleven words."
Lily smiled sympathetically. "At least you've already done the Transfiguration one. That's one less essay to write."
"Except I have a detention on Saturday night and during that I need to write nine inches for Slughorn on why it's inappropriate to cast a repelling spell on someone's cauldron. I don't think he thought it was funny when all the ingredients kept jumping back out of it onto the desk. Although I can see why he might've been a bit annoyed when the heat from the flame meant the spell got a bit damaged. Moony says the cauldron starting acting strange once it got hot enough."
"Strange how?" Lily asked, wondering if she really wanted to hear the answer.
James shrugged, "Apparently it sort of... half-worked. One side of the cauldron was normal and one side was still repelling things. So once the potion was in there, if it went on the wrong side it started spurting out all around the room. The spell was pretty powerful on that side of the cauldron, I guess."
Lily couldn't help laughing at the tone in which James said this. He was trying hard to be his normal, casual self, but he also seemed very conscious of who he was talking to, and was putting on a valiant effort not to look too proud of the successfulness of his prank. Seeing she was laughing, he relaxed a bit and smiled, his hand instinctively moving to ruffle his hair, relieved that he'd dodged the blow that six years of experience had taught him to expect whenever Lily Evans heard of a prank he'd pulled.
"Was that during the lesson we had that Head's meeting with Dumbledore?" James nodded, and Lily laughed. "Alice had said something interesting had happened while I was gone. I just assumed it was something like Slughorn forgetting to set homework. Whose cauldron was it that you cursed anyway?"
"No one's." James's reply came a bit too quickly, betraying his guilt. He didn't have to be genius to know that, despite their little argument in fifth year, Lily and Snivellus were still not not-friends. She'd be angry if she knew it was his cauldron. So, he forced himself to take a deep breath before adding what he hoped seemed like a careless after-statement, "Well, it was just Mulciber, who might as a well be no one."
Lily's expression screwed up in anger at the mention of Mulciber's name. "If you were going to prank anyone, I'm glad it was him. Have you heard what he did to Marlene after Quidditch last week?"
James nodded. "Yes, I heard about it. She was crying in the changing rooms after the game, but I didn't want to say anything. That's why I sent Tanner to go find you."
"You sent Tanner?" Lily could remember the nervous Keeper approaching her after the game and telling her that he'd be sent to get her. At the time she'd assumed Marlene had sent him. Never would she have ever dreamed that James would have been the one to ask for her help.
James nodded.
"Thank you," Lily said simply. "That was very good of you."
Pretty sure that there wasn't an answer for that, James just shrugged and looked back down at his essay. He could feel Lily's gaze lingering on him as he picked up his quill and started scratching another sentence, completely unaware of what he was writing on the page. Eventually, Lily's eyes dropped from their examination of him, turning instead to the pile of books in front of her. She sighed and picked the top one off the pile, pushing the others to the side and leaning over to get some parchment from her bag.
The second he knew she wouldn't see him, James looked up, unable to stop himself from admiring the way her hair shone as it cascaded down her back. His eyes followed the curve of her neck up to her rosy cheeks, freckles scattered faintly over her skin. With a small smile he looked away, back to his essay, and silently continued his work.
For the next hour, the two sat quietly at their table, practically drowning in piles of books as they retrieved more and more from the nearby shelves, flicking through the pages for a minute before copying down an ingredient or spell. Every so often, their eyes would meet as they both reached for the same book or looked up at the same time, and with an awkward smile they'd quickly turn away.
Each time Lily offered him her shy smile, James couldn't help but marvel at how easy it felt to be friends with her. He couldn't work out how this simple friendship had managed to evade them for so long, and how it could feel so entirely natural now. It was like being with any other of his friends: the peaceful silence that everyone knows is ideal to work in, the occasional glare at younger students who laugh too loudly or drop their books on a table with too much vigour, the comfort of the towers of books, protecting them just a little from the big, wide, scary outside world.
Hearing the clock chiming, James scribbled down the last few words of his essay and, with an exaggerated jab, put the final full-stop on his sentence. Lily looked up at the noise, apparently not having heard the sound of the clock.
"Sorry," James apologised, "I didn't mean to disturb you."
Lily shook her head, closing the book next to her and adding it to the top of one of the many stacks protruding off the desk.
"S'okay," she said, yawning widely. "I've finished the Potions essay anyway. I was just reading that book to put off having to do Transfiguration."
James laughed, "You're saying you'd rather read-" he leant over to see the title "-Brewing in the Workplace than do McGoogle's essay?"
"Definitely."
Lily grinned tiredly at James's disbelieving expression.
"It's not my fault that I don't like Transfiguration - I'm just not very good at it. And I don't like things I'm bad at," Lily explained.
"I can help you with the essay, if you want," James offered, hoping she wouldn't be offended. "I've already finished mine."
"That would be great, actually," Lily admitted. "If you wouldn't mind helping me out."
"I offered, didn't I? We'll go back to the Common Room and work on it there."
Lily nodded, lifting her hands to rub her eyes sleepily.
"What time is it anyway?" she asked, her hands still covering her face.
"A bit past ten," James answered
"Urgh. I can't believe it's only ten. I still have at least an hour to stay here and write this stupid Defence Against The Dark Arts essay. Is it okay with you if we go back to the Common Room after that? It's just that I'll need the books here to write this."
She took her hands off her face, grabbing a book off one of James's piles (titled The Defender's Manual) and opening it to the contents. James watched her scan down the page, finding the reference for the chapter on cursed objects and flicking over to the right page. He couldn't believe her resilience, being completed exhausted himself and utterly unable to read or write even one more word. Slowly, he stood up and started gathering books off the table, careful to leave the ones that he'd found good information in that Lily might want for her essay.
He took his time in returning the books to their shelves, watching as more and more people slowly exited the Library, yawning and chatting about how much they were looking forward to a good night's sleep. It was a Hogsmede day tomorrow, but as well as his detention from Slughorn he'd also managed to earn a ban from going out this weekend. It had something to do with a few completely harmless mice having been placed in McGonagall's office (she could transform into a cat, right? She shouldn't have had any trouble catching them). Unfortunately, McGoogle hadn't thought this was as funny as Sirius and James had, and they'd both been banned from the Hogsmede trip. Nevertheless, they'd been talking about going under the cloak or taking the Honeydukes passage and meeting up with Moony and Wormtail when they got there. Although, seeing as he was Head Boy and supposed to be at least a little bit responsible, James wasn't exactly keen on breaking any more rules this week. Two was plenty. Three, if you included hexing that whiny Slytherin who'd been picking a fight with Hayes, one of the Gryffindor beaters. But that guy had had it coming, and was a Slytherin anyway, so it's not like that really counted.
Eventually, James returned to his and Lily's table to find that only a small stack of books were left – the ones Lily would need for her essay – and after quickly marking the relevant pages, he found himself sitting in the almost empty Library with nothing to do but watch Lily as she wrote. He couldn't help smiling at her expression of utmost concentration: bottom lip clenched in her teeth, eyes squinting down at the parchment, hair falling out of its messy ponytail over her shoulders to frame her face. Curious to see how much she'd written, James peered over at the parchment and chuckled when he saw only a couple of lines, the rest of the parchment filled instead with messy diagrams with far too many arrows and doodles, mostly of wonky love hearts and flowers. He watched as she sketched another heart, labouring over the perfect curve of its edges until she was happy with it, then adjusting her grip on her quill to colour it in. The black ink shone in the dimming lights, and Lily added another dot of black to completely fill the inside before noticing James's staring and quickly looking up at him.
"I've never been able to draw hearts properly," she explained hastily, as if he'd asked a question. "That's why I spend so long on them. No matter how hard I try I can never get them right. You should see the hearts Alice draws, they're always so perfect. I know it's stupid, but I sometimes wish I could draw them like she can."
"They're just hearts," James pointed out.
"I know," Lily sighed. "It just bothers me that I can't draw them. I mean, that can't be a good sign, can it?"
James shrugged, sensing it would be a bad idea to get into a discussion with Lily Evans of all people about love. As if he didn't think about it enough in relation to her.
"You ready to go now?" he asked, hoping to distract her.
She looked down at her very incomplete essay, glaring at the empty page as if that would make it fill up with intelligent words and theories. When nothing happened, she sighed again, gathering up the books James had left for her.
"I guess we should go," she said, standing up stiffly and stretching her legs. She noticed the little tabs of paper sticking out of the books and glanced questioningly at James.
"Those are the pages with the information on them," he explained. "I thought it'd save you the time of having to find it."
"Thanks," she smiled. "And thanks for staying back with me, too. I know you must be bored."
"Not really. Moony tends to enjoy hanging around in the Library, too. You get used to it after a while."
Lily laughed, lifting a hand to the Librarian as they passed her. James mumbled a, "Thanks, Professor," holding the door open for Lily as she went through, a wave of heat spreading through his skin when her hand brushed against his leg.
He followed her through the door, falling into step beside her as they walked along the empty corridor. Lily grunted as she changed her grip on the books in her arms, the one on top of the pile swaying dangerously. Wordlessly, James took the books from her, sliding a couple of them into his bag and holding the others in one of his hands.
"Thanks," Lily said again, pulling on a loose thread in the sleeve of her jumper. "I really can carry them you know, if it's too much trouble..."
James looked pointedly down at the few books he was holding. They were thin enough to all be held by the spines in one of his hands and clearly not very heavy.
"It's no trouble."
"Really?"
"Really."
Lily smiled, her eyes moving back down to her sleeve.
Wanting to keep her gaze on him, James searched for something else to talk about. Conversations used to be so easy between them (granted, they were usually yelled conversations, but still), so why did it feel so awkward now? He felt nervous and twitchy, an entirely new set of feelings for him. His stomach was churning anxiously, and his fingers were tingling where he'd touched her hands earlier when he took her books.
"So, tell me the truth, are you really that bad at drawing love hearts?"
"Yes," Lily answered, nodding seriously.
"And yet you can brew a perfect love potion?"
"Of course," she said, "But anyone can do that."
"Alice can't. Don't you remember at the beginning of fifth year when Slughorn tried to get us to make them? Hers ended up as this shrivelled little pink thing burning a hole through the bottom of her cauldron."
Lily laughed at the memory, looking up from her sleeves. "You're right, she did! Merlin, I'd completely forgotten that. How do you remember it?"
"We had an argument that day – you and me. Slughorn started it with all his love potion talk. Padfoot and I kept laughing-"
"-sniggering, actually, if I recall correctly-"
"Whatever. We were making fun of all the stuff he was saying, about magic not being able to create true love and all that 'eternally bonded together as soul mates' dragon dung. Then you got angry and started yelling at me because you believed in it all and didn't like us making fun of it."
"You remember that argument?"
"Every word of it."
"Why?"
James shrugged, forcing himself to ignore his increasing awareness of the girl beside him. With everything she said, Lily was drifting closer to his side, and he knew that inevitably their hands would brush against each other soon, and who could possibly guess what would happen after that? The heat in his fingers had spread to the rest of his body, making it feel like he'd been hit with a Teeth-Chattering Charm all over his skin.
"You threw a toad's eyeball and petrified mole-rat at me. The eyeball got stuck in my hair. It took me sixteen showers to get the stickiness out."
"You are the only guy in the world who would care about having sticky stuff in your hair."
"No, Padfoot would care too. And it wasn't just any sticky stuff, it was toad eye goo."
Lily grinned at the highly technical term, lifting a hand to brush her hair off her face, still unconsciously drifting closer to James's side.
They were silent for a few minutes as they turned off the main corridor, taking a shortcut next to a portrait that pretended to be a mirror, then emerging into a much narrower corridor, where Lily was forced to move behind James as he led the way. After taking a few steps forward, Lily noticed that the end of the hallway didn't seem to come any closer as they walked towards it. Wondering if this was normal, she opened her mouth to ask James about it, but he'd already turned left through an apparently solid wall, which dissolved as they went through it, taking them onto another of the main corridors. Falling back into step beside Lily, James looked questioning at her still open mouth, and she quickly improvised something to say.
"You don't still believe in all that stuff, do you?" she asked, looking around, trying to work out where they were.
"What stuff?"
"All that 'I don't believe in soul-mates stuff'."
Without so much as a short consideration, James answered, "Of course I still believe it. I mean, it's a bunch of dragon dung, like I said before, right?" Suddenly, he noticed that Lily was no longer beside him. He turned around to see that she'd stopped in the middle of the corridor, gaping at him. "Right?" he repeated.
"You think soul-mates aren't real?"
He nodded.
"And love?"
He shrugged.
She frowned.
"What that's supposed to mean?" she asked waspishly.
"I don't know. I mean, I guess I do believe in love. But not really..." he struggled to verbalise the rest of his thoughts, hoping that Lily would let him off with his fumbling string of words. She was still standing where she'd stopped, her eyes narrowed.
"Yes?" she prompted him.
"It's not like I believe in ever-lasting love," he said finally, forcing himself not to shrug, because he knew it was a sensitive topic with her.
"What?" she asked, her tone far too calm and polite.
James opened his mouth to reply, but she shouted over his voice.
"WHAT?"
James was so startled by her sudden change in tone that he jumped back in surprise, almost dropping the books he was still clutching.
"I don't know. It's just never really seemed likely to me..."
It was clear in Lily's expression that this was not the right answer. Adjusting his glasses and running a hand nervously through his hair, James took a few cautious steps towards Lily, hoping that would help persuade her not to shout anymore.
"You don't believe in love! You don't believe in deep, true, wonderful, eternal LOVE!"
James thought it wouldn't be appropriate to point out her slight mistranslation of his words. It wasn't love that he didn't believe in – it was all the other stuff: the eternal, true, first-sight stuff. The stuff that he had always thought that anyone with half a brain knew was all completely fictional.
"I can't believe that you of all people don't even believe in love! What have you been telling me for the past seven years then? All that 'I love you Lily', 'you're my soul-mate'? Has that just been a bunch of lies?" Lily turned away with a sneer and said, apparently to herself, "Of course it's been lies. What else am I supposed to expect from Potter?"
The renewed use of his surname stung, and James took a few strides closer, putting down the books next to wall so he could grab Lily's shoulder, turning her around.
"I wasn't lying, Lily," he insisted. "And I definitely never told you that we were soul mates, because everyone knows I don't believe in that."
"I didn't know!"
Now that he could see her eyes, James was startled by the sheer number of emotions coursing through them. Anger was the most prominent, but behind it all there was something else, almost hurt-looking, about the desperation of her stare and her words
"You don't think you could've told all that to me first, before going around telling everyone how much you loved me, how you and I were going to end up together? You never thought, even this year as we've become friends, that maybe I deserve to know that everything you ever said to me before was all a big joke to you? A lie?"
Lily's voice was becoming less angry and her yells had turned into a quieter but equally incomprehensible begging sort of tone. With a start, James realised that tears were coming out of her eyes. She was crying. He had made Lily Evans cry, and he still hadn't absolutely no clue how and why.
"Wait, no, Lily, I wasn't lying to you, okay?"
"You weren't lying? Oh, right! You were just playing a prank on me then? Or maybe it was a great, big joke. Yeah, well, you know what? Next time, let me in on it earlier, okay? Preferably before I start even thinking about trying to be friends with you!"
"Lily, it wasn't a joke either, I promise. I was telling the truth to you all those times, really."
"You've never told me the truth! Never! Not until now, when it all finally comes out. 'I don't believe in soul-mates, Lily'. 'I don't believe in love'."
James thought Lily's imitation of him was truly terrible, but he knew that wasn't the point right now. All he needed to do was get her to bloody shut up so he could just explain it all to her. She was putting words in his mouth with all her hysterical ranting, and to top it all off she was positively sobbing now, tears rolling down her face, snot dripping out of her nose, eyes puffing up and reddening – the whole package. Boy was James a lucky guy.
"Lily. Lily! LILY! EVANS!" He roared the last word at the top of his voice, and almost sighed in relief when her muttering cut off. She was now looking up at him with her big, wide, puffy, sad, sad eyes, if possible, looking even more hurt than before.
"'Evans'?" she repeated, saying more than all her yelling and muttering put together with that single word.
Is that where we're back to? that word asked. Is that all I am to you, now that the game is over? Did anything you have ever said to me before mean anything to you? Or is this it? Is this who we are now, and who we're always going to be? Potter and Evans: enemies, rivals, never able to just put it all aside and realise that we don't need to hate each other?
"Lily," James corrected himself. "Lily. Do you honestly think that I never meant any of that stuff I said? Because if you really do think that, then you're a much stupider girl than I thought."
She let out one more sob, her whole body shaking and, rebelling against what a lifetime of experience had taught him, James extended his other hand to hold her other shoulder, his hand that had grabbed her at the beginning of her hysterics never having moved.
"I said that I don't believe in ever-lasting love, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in love at all."
"What do you believe in, then?"
"I believe in being able to love someone so much your heart aches when you're not with them. I believe in missing someone enough that you'd give up every other day of your life to just be with them for one more moment. I believe in needing someone to the point where you can't see or hear or feel anything else in the world other than them. And when that person looks at you it's like all the light in the universe has been fixed on you, the sun and the moon and all of the stars, just because you know they can see you.
"But I don't believe that there's just one person like that in each person's life. I don't believe there's one person who you fit perfectly with and that everyone else is just there. I don't believe that in any life form in any world there are two things that only need each other and nothing else. If that sort of dependence existed, then one life would never be able to go on when the other one had gone."
Lily's voice was cautious as she asked, "But don't you think it would be romantic?"
James smiled softly, looking straight into her eyes. "Yes, it would be romantic, but it would also be cruel. Nothing should have to depend on anything else so entirely."
"Why not?"
"Because everyone needs to be able to survive on their own before they can survive with somebody else. What if that bond ended one day? You can't depend on things being ever-lasting. Not even love."
"But what if it is?"
"Then the joke's on me, and I'm glad to be proved wrong. It's not that I don't want eternity to exist, Lily. It's just that I don't want to rely too much on it. Believing in forever sometimes means you don't appreciate the right now."
Lily smiled. "I don't see you doing any 'appreciating'."
"Do you want me to?"
"Only if you want to."
Fully aware that they weren't talking about the type of appreciating he'd meant anymore, James answered, "I do."
And he kissed her. Just like that. No more talking about it or crying about it or yelling about it. Just finally doing it. Tears and snot and puffy eyes and all.
Lily inhaled sharply as James's lips met hers, her heart hammering at a million miles an hour at the feeling of it. It's not like she'd never thought of doing this before, but now that it was actually happening, it all felt so raw and real that it completely overwhelmed her.
James tried to hold back as he moved his lips against hers, conscious of her explosive, unpredictable temperament. But he thought it was good sign when she lifted her hands to encircle his neck, forcing her body closer, and he could no longer resist the temptation of kissing her properly. She gasped as he slid one of his hands down to her waist, pressing his body impossibly nearer to hers. He skimmed the fingertips of his other hand up her neck, over her cheek and into her beautiful hair, letting it slip through his fingers.
Eventually, breathing became a necessity and they broke away from each other. Their bodies were still so completely entwined that they couldn't move far apart, and when James looked down to meet her gaze he couldn't have backed away even if he'd wanted to. Her stunning green eyes were fixed on his, staring at him with undisguised passion and adoration.
He stared back at her in equal wonder, feeling as if he'd never truly seen her before now.
Her hair was messy where his hand had been running through it, her face flushed, her eyes still red from crying. The freckles on her cheeks were as faint as ever, but he still couldn't resist leaning down and kissing each and every one, thrilled at the feel of her warm skin under his lips. Lily sighed quietly and the sound vibrated through James's body, bringing back that Teeth-Chattering Charm feeling about a hundred times stronger than before.
"If I didn't believe in love," James whispered. "How could I be so entirely sure that it's what I'm feeling now?"
Lily laughed a little, her breath tickling his cheek.
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe you're stupider than I thought."
James pulled back to look at her expression, rolling his eyes at her teasing smile.
"Do you want me to help you with your Transfiguration essay or not?" he teased back. "Because calling me stupid is certainly not the way to achieve that."
"Well then, what is the way?" she asked coyly.
"Kiss me again?" he suggested.
She grinned. "I was hoping you'd say that."
And, with that, she leaned in and pressed her lips to his again.
The world might have ended then. The apocalypse might have come, with Zeus and Amun-Ra and 3, 2, 1... Bacon! and the Oliphaunt party. But even if it had, Lily and James would never have noticed, so entirely caught up in being together and being in love and being in the right now.
Which is probably why they didn't notice that jolt, that ripple, that tiny change that happened as they kissed; the almost insignificant sound of a final puzzle piece falling into place, a final drop falling into the bucket, making the water finally spill over the edge. Maybe, if they hadn't been so in love, they might've noticed the prophecy that was sealed with their kiss, the future that was decided for them at that moment.
Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered, even if they had noticed. As long as their love could last for their lifetime, maybe that could be all that mattered. It's not like they believed in ever-lasting love.