SOMETHING BLOOMING

Author: Queen Nightingale

Pairing: JPLE

Rating: M (For Language)

"You're the only girl I've seen for a very long time that actually did look like something blooming."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

She is not beautiful. It is the first thing that you notice about her, sitting languidly outside the Charms classroom, her long pale legs tucked under her schoolgirl skirt, tapering around her waist like an Oriental fan. She is sighing romantically, and as you watch, she turns to the dark girl beside her.

"I just like the idea of it, you know?"

"The idea of it?"

"An explosive love. Romeo and Juliet."

"You and your muggle references," the other girl scoffs, tucking a trail of black hair behind her ear, a smirk erupting at the side of her mouth, "Lily, when will you ever learn."

"Okay, okay, that's a classic, you really should know that one, but fine. I just like the idea of a love so splendid that people would write stories about it."

You press your head against the marble wall and stare at her through your glasses.

"You're crazy, Lily. Bloody crazy."

You speak up suddenly, surprising yourself, and you can feel a large stain spreading across your cheeks, a puddle of vermilion against your coarse skin.

"I can give you that."

The two girls startle for a second, both of them raising their heads. Your eyes connect with Lily's swamp green, and you begin to drown, losing your thoughts.

"What are you talking about, Potter?" the other girl says loudly, gazing at you in shock, "Are you off your rockers?"

"Yes."

You keep leaning against the wall, your clothes draped off of you like theatre curtains, as the two girls stand up, still startled, collecting their books. Marlene is whispering in Lily's ear, and you watch Lily unabashedly as she pulls her hair back from her face, collecting her thoughts, before pulling her bookbag onto her shoulder and standing straight again.

"You're so weird." Lily states the words perfunctorily, staring at you. There is a feeling of electricity in the hallway, and you grin back at her, wide, with your canines. Without meaning to, you run your tongue against your teeth, and they feel like miniature moons cradled by your gums.

"Actually, you know what, Potter, you're not just weird, you're cruel."

"How am I cruel."

"You know exactly how you're cruel," the lanky redhead spits out, coming towards you. Marlene is looking on from behind her, but the door to the classroom is opening, so she slowly starts walking in, casting a backwards glance at the two of you.

"I don't know, exactly, how I'm cruel."

She is right in front of you, her nose hooked like a bird, patches of white skin interdispersed with adolescent bubbles of acne on her cheeks. Her eyelashes are white. You've never seen something so strange in your life. In your mind, you recognize that she is the type of bird who should be preserved in a zoo – the last of a dying, exotic, eternally unique species.

Suddenly her hand is on your face, and you're expecting a slap, but instead her fingers are playing Amazing Grace across your cheekbone, and she is brushing back your hair and looking at you with an expression that you cannot fathom.

"Why me, Potter."

"I don't know, Lily."

She fades away.

You drag yourself out of bed every morning at the last possible minute, smashing your pillow onto the snoring figure sprawled out on the comforters beside you.

"We're late. Fucking hell, Padfoot, we're late again."

"Minnie loves me," the figure mumbles into his pillow, turning away from you, "I'd bang that woman in a second."

"She wants to bang your head against the wall, you are bloody insane, Merlin," you retort, stumbling around the room, pulling on your socks, "Come on! Dumbledore is going to kill us!"

"If they were going to expel us for all of our detentions, they would have already."

"Sirius! I'm not kidding!"

You watch out of the corner of your eye as Sirius moodily clambers out of his bed, and then you dart out of the dormitory into the toilets across the hall. You splash water on your face, and lift your head, and quickly examine yourself.

It's a perfunctory glance. You've gotten used to over the years watching your nose lengthen and your shoulders widen, the sight of cheekbones glaring out of your upper profile like soldiers at checkpoints. Your cheeks are ruddy with the colour of a young man, and as you lengthen yourself up you note, not for the first time, that your frame is still stretching out.

You quickly peek back in, and glance at the freckles spangled across your nose.

"You are such, a girl."

You swivel around quickly and glare at Sirius, who is chuckling at you, shoving you aside quickly to tousle his mass of black hair before the two of you are shoving and exploding down the stairs, racing your growing frames towards the Gryffindor Common Room, where a couple of the lower years stare at you with wide and frightened eyes.

"Where's Remus?" Sirius asks quickly, stealing a pencil off of the table as the two of you rush through the Fat Lady, tearing through the hallways as if your feet were blazing.

"Probably already in class."

"Didn't even wake us up, arse."

"Probably tried to." A memory pops up in your head quickly of being shook by large white hands. "Oh, I think he might have. I fell back asleep."

"What are we going to do, Minnie will not be happy."

You glance at Sirius, both of you suddenly stopping, panting outside of the Transfiguration classroom, your back heaving and your pants barely staying on.

"It will be fine, I mean, it's not like others aren't late, and after all that is one fine bird of a professor - "

The door swings open and the two of you gape like goldfish at McGonagall, who lifts her eyebrow and stares down at Sirius, unimpressed.

"... ... because her teaching style is just so incredible and I am stunned by the generosity that she displays towards her students, especially towards two young men who are having such a difficult time because one of them has insomnia and the other is just so tired from his work load I mean - "

"Detention."

You are wiping the trophy case, glaring at Sirius, who seems engrossed with something in the palm of his hands and is leaning back in a chair.

"What's up, bruv?" the tall boy says, looking up, grinning cheekily at your directed and dramatic frown, "Don't be mad now James, it's just another detention."

You roll your eyes and turn back to the trophy case, "At this rate if we graduate I'll be happy."

"Don't be negative, mate, you both know we will."

You grit your teeth and go back to wiping the glass, swearing under your breath at the amount of effort that it takes to clean it.

A feminine voice rings out from behind you.

"They probably should have given you toothbrushes. Would have helped you get the dirt out."

You swivel and stare into the too-close face of Lily Evans, with her hand on her hip, a wry smirk on her face.

"You boys know that you can easily just magick that stuff away, right?"

Sirius looks up from his palm, moodily glaring at her, and you feel a glaze of vindication sweat over your eyes.

"I take it you haven't thought about that?"

You glance over at Sirius, who shrugs at you, before you angrily throw down your towel and pick up your wand, humiliated.

"You two have had over fifty detentions, and every time they send you to the trophy cabinet, and every time you haven't thought about this? Not even once?"

Her eyes are shining and wet, and you feel like dipping your finger into them and maybe throttling her nervous system.

"I'd suggest because it does seem so dirty," Lily says slowly, speaking as if to a child, peering at the trophy case, "That you use the scouring charm. Normally does the trick. Do either of you boys remember how to do that?"

You look over at Sirius, who is staring at his palm with a magnifying focus, and then you look up at the ceiling with a terse inhalation.

"Have you come here with a point to prove, Lily, or do you just enjoy hanging around the trophy case on a Thursday evening?"

She bursts into staccatoed laughter, the noise wrapping around her like extra fabric from a ballgown.

"I couldn't help it. The two of you looked so miserable."

"So you came by to enjoy yourself."

You watch the smile slip off of her face and tuck itself into her pocket, a new expression of shock and dread giving birth in her forehead.

"Don't give me that attitude, Potter, just because you didn't think of the charm. I'm trying to help you out."

"Funny way of helping out," you growl back, miserable, turning towards the trophy case and angrily scrubbing the frame.

"What are you doing? You can just use the charm!"

"I don't want to use the charm. That would be stupid."

"How would that be stupid?"

Sirius' head is bobbing between the pair of you, his mouth slightly dropping open.

"It would be stupid because I'm here to do my punishment."

"So just because I actually told you how to do something easily, you refuse to do it."

"No. That's not it. When I am given something to do, I do it."

"You can easily do it another way!"

"There is no other way, Lily."

"It is incredibly simple, Potter, all you have to do is wave your wand and say those words. That is why we are going to school."

"You are so bloody annoying."

"I'm trying to help you out!"

Out of the corner of your eye you watch Sirius slink off down the hallway, motioning with his hand that he'll be back in five minutes.

"You aren't trying to help me out."

"Yes, yes I am!"

You fling down your rag in anger and turn away from her, running your hands through your hair.

"Go away, Lily."

"Scourgify."

You turn back around and the trophy cabinet is glistening, literally sparkling clean, not a speck of dust in sight. Lily is holding her wand defiantly and glaring at you, jutting her chin out.

There is a pause as you look at her, caught somewhere between anger and gratitude, and suddenly the realization that the two of you are alone in the hallway slams down into your consciousness with the weight of a falling piano.

You don't say anything. You simply stand there in your loose uniform and watch her, Lily slowly starting to fumble. You watch her until her chin starts to shudder and her posture slumps a little bit, and she unfolds her soul onto you.

"I'm sorry. I was genuinely trying to help."

You nod, tersely. Up close, you can see that her hair is not pure red, but a mixture of blonde and gold and orange and burgundy – the individual strands coiling together to create a lion's mane of a shade.

You watch as her back straightens again, and she fingers her skirt, looking down at her shoes as you stand there in silence.

Before you know what is happening, she places her hands on your shoulders, and suddenly her mouth is in front of your left eye, and you flinch, but she breathes heavy left, then right.

Her weight retracts and you are stunned, standing there with your glasses fogged up. She is a blurry figure and you are shocked that she didn't want you to look at her in focus.

"You stare at me a lot, Potter. I can't take the intensity."

"It's James, Lily. My name is James."

There is silence, and you are pretending not to be bothered by the quickly receding circles of humidity on your lenses, and she is now staring at you staring at her both of you pretending not to be bothered in general.

"Okay." You say, finally breaking the silence and pulling off your glasses, wiping them on the edge of your shirt, "Okay, fine. Thank you for the charm, Lily."

"It's one of my unavoidable personality traits."

You scowl back at her, a grin spreading across her face, and without meaning to you feel the upper corner of your lips teased towards the ceiling.

"Do you know what you are, Lily?" You hear yourself speaking, but it is as if your lips are numb. "You are a love story. Your entire character. You are a romance novel, and I am reading it right now, and I am scared. I've never met a girl who was a storybook before."

There is silence as she tries to fathom what you are saying, and you nearly stumble back, almost ashamed by your honesty.

Her voice is quiet, and as you put your glasses back on, she comes back into focus, looking down at the floor.

"Is it a good book?"

"The character development is fantastic," you reply, turning away from her, confident now in your gained upper hand, "But I'm not so sure about the ending."

She is nothing special. If women were skyscrapers then she would be a faint gray building, flickering in the corner of the taller, angry rectangles dusting the clouds with their hats. If you were riding a broom down to Spain you probably wouldn't even be able to spot her shape.

But there's something else.

It wasn't in the curve of her awkward hips or the way her feet splayed out, too beautiful and too large. It was in the adjectives that she tore out of the sky, pasting them to her lips and spitting them out, coarse and loud in the classroom. Somewhere over the course of a year you had fallen in love with the guttural curse of her voice, crackling like the hum of a muggle television set, the way that she tossed her hair back and the slow roll of her shoulders when she was tired in class.

She was too bold, too brilliant, too breathtaking for a life of dim characters and colors. Her face was a collage of stark features: Roman nose. Thick lips. Wide eyes. But it wasn't about her beauty – you could buy that in a drugstore and shade new genetics into her face, into anybody's face, if you wanted to – it was the way that her personality turned her small city shape into a tower plastic-wrapped with gold plating and metal vines that pierced the moon.

You wanted to walk all the way up to the top floor, no elevators, no apparating – and dine, lying on your back, gazing up at the dead stars: God's version of Detroit's bankrupt streetlights.

Through her quagmire eyes you know that you could find something greater than time.

You're racing through the air, your body tense on your Cleansweep as you clutch your face to the wood, your glasses tearing against the skin on your nose, and there is the sound of cheers because they found the snitch, and you are in shock, and Sirius is beside you, and you are numb because Slytherin won the first game.

There is a mob of green trickling onto the field, and Sirius is hovering beside you, the two of you silent, the rest of your team flying off towards the changerooms.

"It's fine, James, we'll get them next time. We always do."

He pats you on the back, and then you hear the sound of his broomstick shuddering away, leaving you alone, a pinprick figure in blood red and gold staring down at the silver and green beneath you.

You stay up there, hovering by the goal posts, darting in and out, for a good thirty minutes. You stay there and watch the stands empty out, the colours trickling away as if rinsed down a drain, the silver running off the green turf after a couple minutes, the red pouring down from the stands, the blues and the yellows dripping off into the distance.

You don't want to come down. You don't want to see her eyes. You don't want her to recognize your sadness.

You heave a deep breath and pivot downwards, feinting before you hit the ground and then twisting towards the stands, where you pull up as soon as you see a solitary figure in red, gazing at you.

"I thought you did really well, James," her voice echoes in the empty stadium, and you feel something drop in your stomach. You can't look at her eyes.

"It's fine, Lily. You don't need to lie."

There is a silence between the two of you – there is always a silence between the two of you – but then you dismount and sit down beside her, a good foot away from where she is standing. Without commenting she moves closer to you and squeezes your hand into both of hers.

"I'm fine, Lily."

"No, you're not."

You drop your head, and she presses her lips to your shoulder, and you feel sorrow welling up in the hollow of your collarbone.

"It's a silly game."

You feel her hand on your face, and you are turning, and she is lifting your glasses onto your hair, and her thumbs are on the bags under your eyes, her other fingers reaching around your ears into your hair.

"I think you are lovely."

"What are we doing."

The sentence is quiet, but she freezes in response. Her pupils are large and magnificent, chalkboards underneath black fringe.

She moves to withdraw her hands from your head, but you press your palms against hers and stare at her, unashamed.

"James ..."

"Answer me, Lily."

There is sadness in your stomach from the game but your heart is pounding and her eyes are crinkling and she's starting to look down so before you know it you are tilting her jaw up and running your fingers across her blemished skin and looking into her eyes and your lips her lips your lips

She bites down on your lower lip and you blink, looking at her for a second, her eyes closed, her hands in your hair.

You move back because you suddenly were on top of her on the bench, and she blinks, her hands dropping to her side.

"What?"

Her voice is weak, nervous. She is lying across the wooden stands, her chest rising up and down, her hair messy and a kaleidoscope of reds across her forehead. You pause for a second, memorizing the moment.

"... James?"

The sound of your name trickling out with the taint of her voice is too much for you to handle, and you move in closer, your breath and her breath, two centimeters away from her lips, your eyes locked on hers and your hand moving down to gently touch her waist.

There is nobody around. It is silent, a dimly lit magical stadium, and you are hovering over her, a dragonfly tentatively whizzing over a lake of infinite depths.

"... James, what are you doing?"

Her voice is shy and her eyes are shy and she is vulnerable and there is a tear in your throat that forces you to lift your hand and push back her hair before pressing your lips to her temple, then her cheek, then her ear, and then once again hovering over her mouth.

The words bubble out of your mouth like an elixir of the Gods.

"This is where the world starts."

You kiss her. You are falling in love.