Lily was torturing him.

Specifically she kept smiling at him. And laughing at things he said. And sitting next to him in class and at meals and in the common room at the end of the day. Once she even rest her head on his shoulder while she read over Charms notes.

It was driving him mad.

She knew he liked her. How he felt about her. Everyone did. But since he'd grown past some of the brashness of his younger years he'd thought his behavior had become a lot less offensive and a lot more bearable. So he had no idea why she all of a sudden felt the need to retaliate with all of this special attention.

It more or less started when the two of them went with Remus and Sirius to the first Hogsmeade outing of the year. They'd done all the usual things, had a few drinks at Three Broomsticks, did some light shopping, and he'd thought they were all having a good time. But then Lily took his hand as the four of them walked back up to the castle. Remus and Sirius were a few steps ahead of them giggling and feeding each other chocolates they'd picked up at Honeydukes. James had blushed and hung his head, then turned to peak at Lily. She was looking fondly at the boys ahead of them before turning to smile up at him. Oh, he'd thought, it's a joke, we're making fun of how lovey Moony and Pads are being.

He should have known better.

Not that the feel of her hand in his didn't make his whole arm start buzzing. But jokes were something that friends did, and friends was the most he could reasonably hope for with Lily. He really didn't need her rubbing that fact in his face.

He meant to talk to her about it. Apologize for the umpteenth time for being so uncouth in his love and figure out what exactly he'd done this time around. However, 7th year meant that there was hardly a spare moment between studying and panicking about studying. Not to mention his Head duties. Technically, he did spend some time with Lily as co-heads, but prefect schedules and rounds-reports took up most of that time. Lily was a determined Head Girl, and any interruption to their duties might have lead her to escalate her torture to something truly salacious. Like a hug or something. As it was, she was always leaning into him as they talked, so she probably already noticed how distracted he was.

Finally, his opportunity presented himself in a vomiting 5th year. As Heads, Lily and James normally didn't do rounds together. They'd decided it'd be best to help out the new Prefects at the beginning of term. However, one Friday evening James got a note from a 2nd year Ravenclaw saying that Reginald Blundell was ill and unable to do his schedules rounds. This last minute, James figured that he was the best person to fill-in, rather than run around bugging the other prefects.

Her face lit up with a mischievous smile when she saw him approach at the meeting spot to begin rounds.

"What did you do to poor Reginald?" She asked.

"Nothing," James insisted, a bit hurt at the accusation, "He's just sick so I'm covering for him."

"Alright," she said.

They managed to chat amicably for while, occasionally sending some students back to their Houses or stopping to pet Mrs. Norris because the cat was somehow enamoured with Lily. Mostly Lily chatted about the different things they could do the next Hogsmeade trip. If she still wanted to hang out with the group, surely she couldn't be that angry with him. Hopefully she was getting over whatever he'd done and an apology would put things back to sorts. They could return to mutually ignoring his pining and maintaining their odd friendship.

It was nearing the end of their rounds, James was counting down to when he would be release from the intoxication of her presence, when Lily grabbed him by the collar and pulled him around a corner.

James barely had time to catch himself with a hand on the wall by her head before she was using both hands to pull his face down to hers.

For a moment he couldn't think, because kissing Lily Evans was everything and more than he could have hoped for. But it wasn't real, and it wasn't fair.

He grabbed her wrists, wrenched them from his shirt, and used them to her pin her against the wall. "Lily."

"James..." she said softly.

"You know how I feel about you," he said. Lily giggled.

The witch giggled.

"Well this would be kind of pointless otherwise," she admitted.

"Lily!" he exclaimed again.

"Don't worry, we're not going to get caught." She closed her eyes and tilted her face up to his.

He lurched away from her, releasing her wrists. "I don't know what you're playing at, but I'm sorry, alright? Whatever I did, I get it, I'm an idiot. I'll leave you alone if you want but I thought we were finally getting on and becoming friends-"

"Friends?!"

"-well, we haven't gotten into any arguments - until now I guess - and I thought we had a good time at Hogsmeade-"

"We did!"

"Then why-?"

"Merlin, James!" she said, "I was under the impression that was our first date!"

"What?!" he sputtered, "But...but… Remus and Sirius were there!"

"It was a double date!"

"WHAT?" James was impossibly even more shocked. "When did they start dating?"

"AHUFg!" Lily let out a frustrated sound. "They've literally been together since the end of last year, James!"

"Whaa-, I mean, I knew that they….but I didn't know they'd...Agrippa, I'm a dolt."

"I'm well aware," she said, "I just didn't realize how big of a dolt."

"Wait...you like me?"

"James, I just jumped you in a corridor."

"And we went on a date...and I MISSED IT?"

"Oh you were definitely there," she said, "That was kind of the point."

"So you aren't mad at me?"

"Oh no I'm mad at you."

"But you like me."

"Yes!" she said exasperatedly, "But seeing as I can't so much as get you to kiss me I'm starting to think you're the one who doesn't like me!"

"Nonsense."

"Really? Because I've fancied you for years, and all you've ever done is made a joke of it with all your grand gestures. And you plain ignored me for all of 6th year, but then this year, finally, I thought-"

"I didn't ignore you"

"Yes you did!"

"I mean I was avoiding you, but I definitely noticed you." He continued to explain after she glared at him, "It's just we got in that big row at the end of 5th year so I thought you hated me."

"I do hate you," she said, "You've retroactively ruined our first date and a perfectly good after-hours snog."

"Nah you don't," he smiled, "You like me." She crossed her arms and pouted at the ground in response. He kept going, "I was never joking, I was just an idiot. I've always fancied you. This whole time I thought you were teasing me about it."

"I wouldn't do something like that," she insisted to her feet.

"Yeah, but I'm an idiot, remember?" He took a step toward her.

"But I'm still horribly embarrassed."

James, for his part, was entirely too ecstatic to feel embarrassed. "I'll make it up to you on our next date."

"You could make it up to me now..." said Lily, finally looking up at him through her lashes.

"Huh? It's much too late to go to Hogsmeade," he said.

"Honestly James…" she dropped her head into her hands.

He took her wrists again, but this time brought her hands to his chest. "That time I was joking."

She looked up just in time for James to swoop down and claim her lips.