Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns these beautiful characters, I just sob over them at night.
Her dad had been the first one to tell her she'd make a great seeker. She'd been six, and had caught an orange her older brother had thrown at her without even looking, and her Daddy'd proclaimed the fact, with much more than a hint of pride in his voice. Since then, she'd never looked back.
She loved flying, she loved the adrenaline, she loved looking desperately for the snitch, Merlin, she even loved the uniform. Quidditch was what she was born for, and as soon as she hit her second year, she'd gone to try-outs and soared through. Gryffindor hadn't had, she was told, a good seeker for a few years now, and she'd easily knocked out her predecessor: a tall, handsome (yet, she believed, arrogant) fifth year boy. Interestingly though, she wasn't the only second year to make the team: that Potter boy got on as well. She hadn't expected much from him, she had to admit; he was scrawny, he had glasses and he was at least as cocky as that fifth year. She'd reckoned he was just there for attention. But then she'd seen him fly and her heart had flown with him, he was just so…not carefree so much as she was, but literally free. The look of passion on his face, that tuft of hair that blew over his eyes, the pure happiness that he, on that broom, represented: that, she reckoned, was when he stole her heart.
Twelve-year-old-her, she knew now, hadn't really known what love was. Twelve-year-old-her had just been a little girl, a little girl who felt her stomach swoop when he smiled, really smiled, and twelve-year-old-her had soon realised that behind that arrogant façade that came with the name Potter and all the expectation that followed was a beautiful, brave boy, who could win the world and break its heart, body and soul if he chose to.
The youngest two on the team (until fifth year, when Black joined them at the loss of a beater) she was always grouped together with him, and she never minded. Winning mini-games became a jokingly competitive competition, witty banter ruled their every practise, and in the games, when she got bored of scanning the stands for that hint of gold, he would be there, catching her eye and winking, his glasses glinting in the sunlight and his actions setting her stomach on fire. He'd even taken her to Hogsmeade a couple of times – just as friends – but she knew, she just knew, that it could, and would, be more.
Or at least, she'd thought she had.
She wasn't stupid. She couldn't pinpoint the exact game she'd noticed him flying a little closer to that one part of the Gryffindor Stand, nor the exact Charms lesson she'd seen him blush a little as that girl walked past him, but she remembered the first time she'd cried, with muffliato around her closed curtains, over him because of her.
For years she had to watch him fall, and break, and shatter. Every person at some point has to learn how to watch someone they are in love with be in someone else and she knew that and she could handle that, but she watched his heart get ripped out, stamped on, and handed back to him on a fiery little platter and it hurt her more and more every time. She could remember practises when he'd been so angry he'd been sent off, and so sad he'd sent himself off, when not even flying could raise his spirits.
She watched him fall, and break, and shatter, and glue himself together, silently, so silently that if she hadn't known him so well she might have thought she was imagining it. She wondered how long it would be until there was more glue than boy, until she broke he so hard that he could never be fixed again.
It was halfway through sixth year that it happened, that his eyes finally hardened, that he froze himself and locked himself away so far that no one could reach him. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or to cry because he might not have been hurtinganymore, but he wasn't him anymore, that bitch had taken the life from him, left him empty and alone and she hated her so fucking much.
He had looked like a prince in practise, a prince in tight leather, and she'd watched him again. He'd shouted drills, praise, criticism as if he was reading off a menu, and it was only at the end of practise, when she'd lingered behind with Black (the look of concern on his face mirroring her own), that he'd flown himself at all. It was only then that she heard his sobs, quiet as they were, echoing through the acoustics of the stadium.
Black had looked at her, and the pity in his chiselled face had made her sick. How dare he, the boy who had lost his whole family, pity her. Before he could even mutter for her to go, she'd run away.
It became a masochistic little game she'd play with herself. Worse than the watch-to-see-how-many-times-she-makes-him-smile, now it was the see-how-many-times-he-actually-shows-his-soul. She'd catch little glimpses of him, of that beautiful boy, in his smile at a letter from home, in his eyes at Black's antics, and then, just once, in his soft little sigh when she'd hugged him, a silent promise that she would always be there. She missed him, missed the pure, shining life he'd been, the boy with his heart on his sleeve and a smile on his face, the boy who made her feel she could fly, even without a broom.
At a Quidditch after party, the first game of their seventh year, she made a mistake. A big one. He'd been drinking again, but she'd been sober and had no excuse, she'd taken advantage of him, she'd asked him to dance and she'd glowed at his arms around her, and then she'd taken him to her dorm and he'd kissed her roughly, and she'd responded eagerly. They'd rolled over in the bed, him pressed against her completely, fierce and fire as his tongue slipped into her mouth and his fingers into her pants, and they'd bit and they'd scratched and she'd murmured his name and he'd answered 'Lily'. She'd led him downstairs, handed him to Remus (that fucking pity, again) and gone back upstairs, suddenly sober.
Her pillow was sodden the next day, and her face was swollen and her mind was blank, empty as his.
The thing that got her, the thing that really riled her up, was that him and her, they were so fucking perfect for each other. They both loved and lived for Quidditch, they'd both grown up with magic, they could back-and-forth-banter for hours on end, they were both lion-hearted, crazy-as-fuck Gryffindors to the core, and that…that scene in her bed, that had proven how fucking hot they were together.
But no, he was a stupid prat, and he'd rather waste himself pining after her than be happy, that girl who was so damn prejudiced against him and all he was, who couldn't see him for all that he was. The girl who couldn't love him for all that he was.
And then suddenly, one little word that smashed the tiny bit of hope left in her jar. Yes.
And she'd been happy for him. And so, so envious of her. But it was worth it, worth the pain in seeing her glowing face after he'd said 'I love you' for the first time (he'd waited so long to say it), worth the tears that she could barely blink back when she saw him kissing her forehead, and her messing up his hair, because at least she could watch him play Quidditch again, watch him own the air, as he owned her heart.
On the first of November 1981, she'd shed a tear at Magpies practise. Her naturally-red-dyed-black hair blew in her face, and she'd sighed.
No matter how many snitches she caught, she may as well have been sitting in the stands.
No matter how fast she chased, she would never have been Lily Evans.
And he would always have been James Potter.
And he would never breathe again.
AN: So this is a bit different. I'm not really sure about it, but am currently procastinating because I should be on nanwrimo. Might also make this into a full-length fic, but I wanted to post this now anyway. By the way, if these seems to imply otherwise, I do very much ship Limes very hard, I just couldn't get this out of my head.