Of Stags and Does

She was eleven, and the compartment was empty when she found it. It was just what she wanted. What a good first impression she would make if her classmates saw her crying like that.

Already, she missed her mum and dad, missed Petunia and them being on good terms, missed the normality that had been hiding beneath the excitement of finally going to Hogwarts. This was not the start to her witchcraft-centred life that she had pictured.

The compartment didn't stay empty for long.

The first boy who entered shuffled in almost mournfully, and did a double-take when he realised that it was occupied. But he seemed to decide that it was too much effort to move again and slumped into an empty seat. He was tall and slim, with long black hair and pale grey eyes, and was very well-groomed. It was sad in a way, because it was not the 'made up by proud parents' kind of groomed - he seemed more like a doll, put on display to show the world just how important its owners were. And he was far from comfortable, kept tugging on the neck of his shirt.

The second boy's entrance couldn't have been more different if he had tried. This boy was small and slight, and seemed to have won the war with his parents on what to wear because his luggage was far more polished than he. He stepped into the space like a performer walking onto a stage, and grinned at them both. Converse to their sombre friend, this boy seemed to have been actively seeking out an occupied compartment.

'Mind if I sit here?' he asked. The other boy shrugged. Lily shook her head.

Lily gave him her name when he asked (his was James), but their conversation ended there - within minutes of this second boy's arrival, the first had perked up considerably, and was soon laughing and joking without a care in the world. When a rather snobbish-looking older blonde girl stuck her head in the door and told (not asked) this 'Sirius' to join her and her friends, he told her to do something rather rude and James laughed encouragingly.

Lily just rolled her eyes and decided that drying them and joining in the conversation was probably not the best idea.

She was still eleven, and she was walking towards the stool, her stomach engaged in a sequence of extraordinary acrobatics. She didn't know much about Houses other than Slytherin, didn't have any preference where she went. The only thought that crossed her mind as Severus gave her an encouraging nod was that she would rather not be in Gryffindor if that's where that Sirius boy had went (because it was likely that James would follow, and seven years of them just felt like too much right now).

The hat dropped onto her head, a stale musky scent enveloping her. She had expected it to hurt, just a little, but there was nothing, not even a hint of magic about the whole affair. Until it spoke, barely a second after it had fallen onto her.

'GRYFFINDOR!' it screamed to the hall, and applause erupted from the corresponding table.

She swore.

She was twelve, just turned, and she had just taken a leg-locker curse off Severus, who had been spitting with rage.

'You horrible boy!' she screeched, tearing across the courtyard. James Potter almost fell off the wall he had been sitting on.

'Hey, Evans!' he called. But she had her wand drawn and pointed at him before he could say anything else, and suddenly his friends were alert and wary.

'You might want to point that somewhere else,' Sirius suggested, his own arm rising.

'Come off it, Sirius,' groaned Remus Lupin, perhaps the only one of their little gang she could so much as mildly tolerate. 'You'd never hex a girl, and you know it.'

'I would if she hurt my friend.'

Lily didn't even care. If he wanted to hex her, he could go ahead. She wasn't afraid of them, and she hoped they knew that by now.

'What did I do?' James asked in a rather bored voice.

'You know fine well what you did!' she snarled. 'You need to leave him alone.'

'Do I?'

Her feet brought her two steps closer to him, and Sirius's wand was fully trained on her now. Stupid Black. Stupid Potter. They cared more about themselves than they did about the students who got caught up in their escapades, and it just wasn't right. Someone needed to teach them a lesson, someone needed to put them in their place.

'You going to make me stop, huh, Evans?' Potter asked, laughing. 'Snape's an evil git, everyone knows that.'

'James, stop it,' pleaded Remus.

'Don't know why you even give him the time of day,' Sirius said. 'He's well into the Dark Arts. Heard him call Mary Macdonald a Mudblood the other day. You okay with that? Because we're not.'

It was a touchy subject for her - she had shouted at Severus about that particular incident herself.

'So you're doling out your own personal brand of justice? I know about your family, Black, you have no right to-'

'HEY!'

James was on his feet now, but the smile was gone from his face and his hazel eyes burned like she had never seen them burn before. For a moment, she wondered if she had made a big mistake. Because she saw his weakness, saw that yes, it was possible to get to James Potter, and it was right here - bringing up what appeared to be a rather sore subject for his friend.

'Don't talk about things you don't understand,' he warned. 'He's nothing like them, and I'd appreciate it if you took your wand out of my face.'

There were people staring now, though no-one seemed to have run for a teacher. And she stared into those hazel eyes, daring them to look away, daring him to break first. But he didn't. And she felt something she tried to push down, something she didn't want to feel for James Potter.

Respect.

Because really, he was defending his best friend the way she was defending hers.

It was that realisation that made her lower her wand, and Sirius followed suit.

'Just leave him alone,' she warned quietly. And she turned, began to stuff her wand back into her robes when she heard laughter behind her.

'He had it coming.'

She spun so fast her long hair whipped against her face. What spell had she cast? The words came of their own volition. In a flash of light, James Potter was on the ground, and his friends dropped to help him.

'What is going on here?' demanded Professor Kettleburn, shouting above the laughter.

James sat up with the help of Remus and Sirius, and even he laughed as he felt the antlers now sprouting from the top of his head.

It was totally worth the detention.

He was eleven, and she was twelve, and he was in the hospital wing prodding at the shrinking antlers she had given him.

'They're quite fetching, James,' Sirius had said, and he had to agree; nobody else would have looked this good with horns.

He spent all day in that bed, with Madam Pomfrey fussing over him and the others visiting when they didn't have classes. But all he could think about was her, and how impressed he was not only with the spell but the fact that she had the guts to stand up to him. She had even held her head high as Professor Kettleburn tore her a new one, waving his prosthetic arm so madly it had begun to work its way loose.

When Sirius visited after dinner, he made him promise not to retaliate ('Mate, I want to shake her hand, not hex her; that was brilliant!'), and Remus spent ten minutes telling him how he deserved what he got until Madam Pomfrey realised the time and kicked them out.

James tried to shrug off the lingering thoughts of just how cool this girl was, but she invaded his sleep and was still there when he woke the next morning.

How was he to know that something very significant had just happened?

He was fourteen, and he was starting to grow into that big head of his. Sirius still towered over them all, and Peter had grown all of a centimetre since he started school, but James had made his own impressive progress. And his hair, that stupid black hair, seemed to only get worse with age. He had tried growing it long for a while before disappearing home for Christmas and returning with it all trimmed and fresh.

His popularity had sky-rocketed too. He was a minor celebrity, and he loved it. James Potter, the saviour of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Snape would still sneer every time he heard his name and showed very little concern or sympathy when half the skin was cursed off his hands before a match. Gryffindor still won. Snape was apoplectic. She refused to speak to him for a week when she figured out that it was his curse. Made him apologise to Potter, and the act almost killed him.

Penelope Middleton claimed she snogged him after the Ravenclaw match. Potter, that is. Said he was a good kisser and had asked her to Hogsmeade. Lily glared at her through an entire Charms class. She was a Ravenclaw, she shouldn't be snogging the boy who had cost them the cup. Where was her house pride?

Marlene told her that house pride had very little to do with why she was so angry, or why Penelope had let James Potter stick his tongue down her throat. Lily didn't speak to her for the rest of the day.

She was fifteen, and so was he, and he had grown up over the summer. Penelope Middleton was a lying toerag; they hadn't shagged beneath the stands of the Quidditch stadium (said Sirius Black when she asked him when partnered in Herbology one day: 'What? Ha, don't make me laugh. James Potter is a pining virgin. See, he even looked up - he knows I'm talking about him.'), but apparently they had kissed. Several times. Maybe they were together for a while. Lily didn't really care.

The entire house threw a big party in the common room for Sirius's sixteenth birthday in October. It was the usual Tower party atmosphere, and the prefect in her had very little trouble turning a blind eye to the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws that had joined the festivities. She loved these things, and she'd be mad to admit that she didn't find the four fifth-year Gryffindor boys riotously funny when they weren't being mean.

Speaking of the boys, Potter tried to talk to her once or twice. She let him once. Sometimes, when he didn't have an audience, he was actually tolerable.

Something happened not long after that, a few weeks at most. Remus was quiet and withdrawn, more so than usual, Peter barely looked up let alone said a word, James seemed lost and angry, and Sirius had started sitting on the opposite side of the room to them all.

It had something to do with Snape and the Whomping Willow, she knew. The timing was just too coincidental. It was pitiful, watching Potter glancing wistfully over at his best friend when he wasn't looking, and shooting daggers at him when he was.

And she couldn't stop thinking about what Snape had said to her during their last argument. James Potter fancied her? Yeah right. The only person James Potter fancied was himself. And so what if he did? She was sure that he fancied lots of girls. Lots of girls sure fancied him. Wouldn't he be better off eyeing up one of them? You know, someone who didn't want to pull their hair out in annoyance every time they looked at him.

'So you wouldn't snog him if he offered?' Mary had asked her.

'Please,' Lily snorted. 'I'd rather hug a Venomous Tentacula.'

They were sixteen now, both of them, and she was no longer friends with Severus Snape. There were some things that she just couldn't do with, and watching her best friend struggle with the choice of darkness and his Death Eather wannabe friends or her was one of them. It should have been an easy choice, but it wasn't, not for him. So, she had made it easy for him.

Again, it was all Potter's fault. She was done with him, so done. She was done with them all.

But James Potter had changed, and just in the space of a week. He spoke to her like he was concerned, like he actually cared that he'd found her sulking in a dark corner of the library. He'd done away with that stupid Snitch and just wouldn't leave her alone.

Worse than that...he was acting like he'd not asked her out, like he'd not just done it in the most humiliating way possible. Because now she was the girl who would rather snog the giant squid than James Potter. And there was something wrong with her, because this was James Potter, and they didn't seem to understand that it just wasn't okay for a) people to treat others the way he had treated Severus Snape, and b) ask girls out like that even if you were joking.

Stupid James Potter and his stupid hair, stupid broomstick and that stupid way he had of getting under her skin.

He was still sixteen, but it was a new school year. Sirius had a girlfriend and she just so happened to be one of Lily Evans's close friends.

It had started towards the end of fifth year, and the two friendship groups had begun to spend a little time together. Once Lily had cooled down over the falling out with Snape, they actually held a few, proper, genuine conversations. They had fun.

He felt rather sheepish over the incident by the lake. Lily had been furious, and the aftermath of the "M" word had really shaken her up. He hadn't wanted to do that to her, had never wanted to put her through that. And perhaps she realised that, because she became infinitely kinder towards him into sixth year, and eventually they could actually call what lingered between them friendship.

But it burned. It burned, and his chest hurt and his mind raced every time he thought of her. Because she was wonderful when she was cheeky and confrontational and strong-willed, but when she let her defences down, when she laughed gently at a joke or tried to hold back a smile when she knew she shouldn't be laughing...she was nothing short of perfect.

She started dating Augustus Rainsworth in the spring, and it took Sirius, Remus and Peter a whole day to get him to leave the dormitory. It was sad, it was pathetic, that a girl had gotten him in such a state, but he couldn't help it. He was in love with her, and no other girl could ever compare. But she was also his friend, and a bloody good one at that, and he didn't want to lose that, didn't want to lose her. So he said nothing. Kept his heart firmly in his chest and his thoughts to himself.

In his mind, he'd jinxed Augustus bloody Rainsworth silly.

She was sixteen too, of course she was, and she had taken all the same N.E.W.T.s as the Marauders (and it was such a silly name, but so them to have a collective nickname to go with their equally silly individual ones).

Potions was awkward. Severus had stopped trying to speak to her at least, but he knew that she was friends with Potter now. So she kept to herself, answered Slughorn's questions about the potions he had prepared for the demonstration confidently but quietly. She gazed down into the Amortentia, the scents of a new book, the air after a rainstorm, and a freshly-waxed broomstick washing over her, and wondered just what James Potter smelled. Probably his own deodorant, laughed a petty old voice in the back of her mind.

He was still a toerag, but was becoming an increasingly more likeable one. Maybe it was Sirius being tied down and not wanting to prank so much and so openly? But that was absurd - Sirius Black would choose James Potter over anything and anyone, even his girlfriend knew that. And when he was single again, not much changed.

Perhaps it was his Quidditch Captaincy? That annoyed her slightly. Oh, she thought he was a fantastic player and did love to watch him in House games, and nobody deserved the Captaincy more than him, but it meant that he now had access to the prefects' bathroom (without talking the password out of Remus Lupin, that is). And he was an idiot who thought it was completely fine to walk around all wet, wearing nothing but a towel tied loosely around his waist, ready for unsuspecting prefect girls to walk right into and be rendered speechless.

He really had grown up.

Then she was seventeen, Augustus Rainsworth asked her out, and of course she said yes. The seventh-year Hufflepuff Beater was handsome and charming, and she couldn't think of a reason why she should say no. Perhaps that should have set off alarm bells - the fact that she actually tried to find a reason, even if only for a moment.

They argued a lot in the end. He accused her of spending too much time with the Marauders, even asked her to cheer for Hufflepuff in the upcoming Quidditch final. The last straw was when he tried to get her to spy on her own team for his and she dumped him very publicly. He hadn't liked that, and accused her of sleeping not only with James Potter, but with the other three Marauders too, before catching himself and commenting very loudly on her supposed frigidity. She thought he might have hexed her when she told him (and the gathering crowd) that the reason she wouldn't sleep with him was because the mere thought made her throw up a little in her mouth (untrue, but he had crossed a line).

She hadn't wanted to cry, but she had, and perhaps James Potter was being held back by Slughorn for acting up in his class and had missed it all, but Sirius Black was there and had heard every word. She had pleaded with him not to tell James what Augustus had said, and perhaps it was a testament to the strength of their friendship that he agreed.

Having said that, Augustus Rainsworth missed most of the cup final due to an illegal Bludger move by a certain black-haired, grey-eyed, rougishly handsome Gryffindor Beater that earned the other team a penalty and the Gryffindors many boos. Rainsworth was in the hospital wing for days and never did seem able to utter another word to her after that.

She was far too happy (and rather amused) to chew Sirius out when they won the cup yet again. The Gryffindors swamped the team as they touched down, and Captain Potter was hoisted into the air in jubilation. He scrambled down when he saw her, grinning wildly, with that stupid messy hair, and he threw his arms around her.

'We did it!' he cried. And he really was in tears. Men. They got far too emotional over sports.

But he was her friend and she was ecstatic that he had led the team to victory in his first year as Captain, so she hugged him back, it didn't matter that he was all sweaty and smelled of that and...his freshly-waxed broomstick.

Oh.

They were still seventeen, both of them. It was their last year at Hogwarts, and a war raged around them. She feared for her family, feared for the people Lord Voldemort stood against. It was a different year, a darker year. Because they knew the world they were about to walk into, and for all their exams and careers advice, none of them felt at all prepared to step out into it.

She had spent a summer at war with herself, too, trying to reason out the suggestion that she fancied James Potter. She realised that she was right eventually, when they met again on the Hogwarts Express and seeing his face was the happiest she had felt in months...she didn't fancy James Potter, she was in love with him.

But she was just a silly little girl and this was a silly little feeling, and it would go away eventually.

Only, it didn't.

It was September, and she was walking with James around the Quidditch pitch. His eyes were scanning the air, darting between the goalposts. She could almost hear him making plans and plays, plotting how he could win the cup one last time before he left.

He was tall now, and very handsome, in that unassuming way that she liked. Still slim, but his build had settled into a rather nice athletic state, and those shoulders...

She didn't know why she did it. She didn't even know what he was talking about, what they were talking about, only that the sound of his voice and the way the wind pulled at his hair was doing funny things to her, and she just had to do something about it.

She kissed him. Pounced on him, really. He was shocked, startled, and she regretted it almost instantly, but what could she do? There had been a look, moments before - she was sure he had wanted to kiss her too!

And he had. Because suddenly he was kissing her back and screw Fizzing Whizzbees, she was definitely levitating right now.

It was her first kiss with a boy she was sure she was in love with, so she had expected to take stock of everything, to memorize every touch and taste and categorise it in that growing part of her mind and her heart that was dedicated solely to him. But she couldn't think, at all, she could only feel. She could feel his hands, one at the small of her back, holding her gently to him, the other lost in her hair. She could feel his lips, gentle yet strong. And she could feel a small supernova in the pit of her stomach, feel the hunger in his kiss, the longing in his touch. When they parted, she felt lobotomised, and it would have been okay because she was pretty sure she had just experienced the best life had to offer right there.

'Evans,' James breathed, their foreheads touching.

'Go out with me,' she panted. Did they even sound like words to him? Even her thoughts were dazed.

'Isn't that supposed to be my line?'

And she realised that maybe he hadn't been joking that afternoon by the lake in fifth year after all.

'I don't care who's line it is,' she said. 'As long as you promise you'll keep kissing me like that.'

He was seventeen, and he was in love, so in love.

And she loved him back.

He really didn't know what else to say on the matter.

They were eighteen, and they were graduating. Her fingers were locked around those of a boy she had fallen deeper and deeper in love with over the past nine months. There had been hiccups, definitely, but they had survived them all. They had survived Hogwarts. The thought made her laugh. It was the world out there that they needed to survive.

They were to be inducted into the Order of the Phoenix; an underground resistance movement against Voldemort and the Purification Movement. They wanted to fight, and fight they would.

His hand gripped hers, he held her back as the others walked back towards the castle. A moment later, his arms were around her, and hers around him.

'Promise me,' he said, 'that we won't let this war get between us.'

She wondered where that had come from, but assured him that it wouldn't with a soft kiss to the neck.

'Nothing could get between us,' she promised. 'Ever.'

They stood there for a while, holding one another, not wanting to admit that their time here was over, that they needed to grow up. But he had already grown up so much. They both had.

She was almost nineteen, and it was snowing, and she was holding in her hand a ring. The question hung on his lips, the answer stuck somewhere in her throat.

It was a beautiful ring. His grandmother's, apparently. The diamond glistened in the blue moonlight, the distant sound of happy conversation drifting through the windows of the nearby house.

'Yes,' she whispered at last. It had taken no thought, no thought at all. And then the ring was in his hands, then on her finger, then his lips were on hers but they were both smiling far too much for it to be a real kiss.

There was not a moment in her life that even came close to this, to being eighteen and engaged to James Potter, and his stupid hair.

She was nineteen, but he was still a month behind. There were so many people there. He had not expected so many to show; it was just a small event, after all.

Her head was resting on her shoulder as they swayed gently to the music, and he held in his arms the girl he had pined over for so many years. Lily Evans.

Only now she wasn't Lily Evans. She was Lily Potter.

It was easy to forget that they were still at war when he was with her, and that was one of the many things he loved about her. She made a dark world a little brighter just by being there.

He still teased her, and she him, but that's just how they were. The joker in him would never die, and the smirking eccentric in her never would either.

They could have been seventeen again, in Hogwarts, ending their sixth year. He could have been watching her Patronus leap around the classroom, could have felt cold and shivery when he should have felt warm and happy. He could have been pretending that he couldn't conjure his own until she had challenged him and the Gryffindor within had bitten and the stag nearly knocked her off her feet. She could have been pale too, and yelling at him, demanding to know what he was pulling. And he could have been holding back everything within him as she apologised later, wondering if her desire to excuse the happening was due to the fact that maybe she had wondered too...

But they weren't, and he wasn't, and neither was she. The stag and the doe had found one another at long last.

She was nineteen, and she was pregnant.

How? They had always been so careful. But that was a lie; they were completely and utterly careless, often caught in moments of weakness and war-grief, and it was actually a bloody miracle it hadn't happened before now.

Yes, she was pregnant...and she was happy. The timing and the situation were hardly ideal, but she was a married woman, she was happy and in love and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her husband and raise many happy children. She didn't care about the war, as short-sighted as that sounded, because there was a life within her that she was overjoyed to be carrying.

And James was ecstatic too. He had jumped, he had yelled, and he had spun her round so fast she became rather dizzy.

'Are you sure?' he asked.

'Positive,' she said. 'It's happening. We're having a baby!'

He laughed, and he kissed her, and his smile could have torn his face in two.

'Moody's going to kill us,' he said. 'First Alice, now you...he's losing half his best wands.'

He was twenty, and he was a father.

He couldn't believe it.

That little, wrinkly thing was his.

It was so loud. It pooped itself regularly. It was like a machine: milk in, poop out.

Harry. Little Harry. Harry James Potter. His son.

He never thought that he could ever love anyone, or anything, this much.

For the first week, all he did was sit there, alternating between holding the baby and holding Lily whilst she held the baby. She had never been more beautiful to him. This woman, mother of his child. Love of his life. Hogger of bedsheets.

'He has your hair,' Lily told him one day as Harry slept in his father's arms.

'Dad's nose.'

'Mum's toes.'

'Your eyes.'

Yes, they were twenty, and they were a family.

It was funny how life worked out sometimes.

AN - Please review :)