My Only Way Of Seeing You
When he gets here, he's going to be sorry he ever failed that last exam.
Lily pointed her wand at the indoor plants arranged in the Charm classroom, watching as each one singed to a crisp brown colour as small spurts of flames erupted from the end of her wand.
She was pissed off. No, more than pissed off.
Where the hell was he? Did he just expect her to wait endlessly for him while he was probably out playing in the snow just like every other goddamn student in this place was?
She shook her head and stood up from her chair, flinging her bag over her shoulder.
Stay calm. He's not worth getting upset over.
But it was also not worth leaving before their tuition began and jeopardizing Professor Flitwick's confidence in her.
She sat back down, and huffed.
Her gaze shifted to the iced window of the room, and she saw how everyone frolicked about in the snow outside, giggling and building snowmen wreathed in red, blue, yellow or green scarves. It was lovely, and she wished dearly that she could have been out there enjoying the fun too.
But just because of… him… she had to stay indoors today.
Just wait 'til he gets here…"Ah, there you are."
She looked quickly from the window towards the door, and saw a tall, lean figure with messy black hair enter the room. He had his hands behind his back, and his black snow goggles with silver edging matched his ebony robes and his black leather lace-ups. A red and gold scarf protruded jarringly from amidst the black, and she felt anger boil up within her at the thought of who he could possibly be.
She rose from her chair and pointed a finger threateningly at him, just as he hurled a ball of white at her from behind his form. She screamed with fright as the snowball collided with her robes.
But it did not feel deathly cold, she realised, as moisture seeped through to her skin…
It was indeed very warm.
A roar of laughter emerged from the boy as Lily spluttered in surprise.
"P-Potter! Just what was that you threw at me?"
He paced towards her and took off his goggles, and she was startled at seeing him without his bottle-frame glasses for the first time. She looked away from his amber-colored orbs shining in mirth, and forced herself to remember why indeed they were here.
"Thought you wouldn't want to miss out on the fun we were having outside," he said, smiling slightly at her.
She felt a pang of annoyance.
"You do realize that the only reason I'm not out there having fun is because of you?"
He looked taken aback in mock hurt.
"Now, now, Evans, no one said you couldn't come out for a little while –"
"Yeah, I could've been like you, and enjoyed myself for the past three-quarters of an hour, leaving someone to wait for me –"
He looked satisfied.
"So you were waiting for me, were you?"
Her eyes widened in horror.
"No!… I mean, yes! Yes, I was waiting for you, and now that you've kindly decided to turn up, we can begin."
He raised an eyebrow at her.
"I didn't know you were so eager," he mused, taking the chair opposite the one Lily had been seated at. He cut off her protests by saying rather casually, "I wouldn't throw a real snowball at you, you know."
Lily took her chair briskly, put on her reading glasses and prized open the large Charms tome in front of her.
"It was quite real to me," she said, rather miffed. "Though I suppose you mean wouldn't throw a cold one."
"Right," he agreed, leaning back in his chair. "Because, I mean, you looked pretty scared then for a second."
She looked at him beadily over the rim of her glasses.
"Forgive me, Potter, but I'm not used to having things flung at me out of the blue."
"You're forgiven," he said somberly, and she rolled her eyes before flicking to the page that she wanted to begin with.
"Okay," she mused slowly, her eyes flickering over the minuscule prose that lay before her. "What was it that you had trouble with in the last exam? Conjuring charms, was it?"
He shifted his chair closer so that he could see over the book too, and she felt a dip in her stomach as their knees collided under the desk.
"Yeah, that's the one," he agreed, pointing to a sentence on the page.
It was a charm on how to conjure a teapot from thin air.
She raised an eyebrow at him, and immediately raised her wand, spoke an incantation, and a flashing silver teapot appeared before them both.
He applauded her lightly, and she blushed slightly.
"Don't tell me you can't do that, Potter," she said slowly, rather harshly she later thought.
"Nope," he shook his head. "So, are you going to teach me, or what?"
She was shaken out of her confusion at how he said he had found it difficult to perform such a straightforward charm, and looked at the page in the book carefully.
"Let me see you do it," she said thoughtfully, deciding that the best way to teach him would be to rectify whatever he knew already rather than to teach him from scratch.
He looked at her carefully.
"I don't know how to do the wand motion," he said rather seriously.
She drew her wand, and said, "It's a simple motion – just a swish and flick, a bit like the levitating charm, but with more emphasis on the flick."
She showed him again without speaking the incantation. He tried to follow suit, and she was amazed at how utterly… ungraceful… his wand movements were. She stifled a giggle.
"No, Potter, like this," she said, and without thinking, she grasped his hand in hers and mimicked the wand movement for the conjuration charm.
He looked at her quickly with eyebrows raised, and she immediately realised what she had done and coughed slightly.
"Try it again," she managed to choke.
His swish was nimble, and his flick distinct. She was impressed.
"You're certainly a fast learner," she said slowly, almost frowning at his sudden improvement.
He smiled slightly, and she quickly turned her attention back to the Charms text.
"What else did you need help with?"
He thought about it for a while.
"How about the mouse/mouse-trap conversion?"
She looked at him quickly, frowning at him in confusion.
"Potter, these are all reasonably simple charms!"
He stood from his chair quite suddenly.
"Are you calling me stupid?"
Her eyes widened slightly.
"No, not at all –"
He laughed quite coldly.
"I thought tutors are not supposed to call their students dumb, or did that bit of etiquette fly out the door when I turned up?"
She laughed in return, taking off her glasses to regard him more severely.
"Are you kidding me? Etiquette? Since when did you know the meaning of the word, Mr. 'I-Expect-People-To-Wait-For-Me-For-Hours' Potter! And I'm not your tutor anyway, this is a temporary arrangement until I can get myself out of it!"
"NO ONE FORCED YOU TO COME HERE!" he roared, and he suddenly pushed her so that she collided with the wall behind their desk. "And anyway, I thought you wouldn't miss an opportunity to show off some of your charitable virtues to Flitwick by agreeing to tutor me!"
She felt very much entrapped as his hands came to rest on the wall above her head, his facial features set in a frown as he waited for her to reply.
"Charity implies that I would be giving you something that you don't have!" Lily retorted, forcing strength into her voice while her eyes stung with moisture. "We both know that you are a smart-ass that could never possibly fail an exam even if you had Bubotuber Pus in your eyes and amputated hands! So why are you here, Potter? Don't give me this bullshit that you really did fail, because I refuse to buy it!"
A feeling of vulnerability spread through her as Potter's face leaned down over her own, his nose resting inches above hers.
"Okay," he said slowly, his face very solemn. "So I do know what conjuration is about, and I do know how to turn a mouse-trap into a mouse."
His breath seemed to warm her ashen face, and her lips parted slightly as her eyes closed to stop the tears from falling from them.
"So why are you here?" she repeated softly, her eyes opening then to rest on the liquid amber centers of his own eyes.
"I don't know," he said slowly, his gaze traveling down to her lips and his fingers moving to twirl one of the strands of her red hair. "But I definitely know that my charms grade is doomed for the rest of this year."