James must have thought she had a screw loose, Lily thought as she sat next to him on the second-hand canary yellow sofa that sat proudly in the living room of her one-bedroomed flat. She'd called him that morning and demanded he come over, babbling about secrets and truth and please-don't-break-up-with-me. It was so bad that she even knew she was babbling, but she couldn't stop herself. In the hours since the call, she'd calmed herself down enough to form rational sentences, but her heart was still going haywire.
"Look, James, there's something I need to tell you –"
He cut her off with an easy smile. "You're not pregnant are you?"
"No!" she exclaimed immediately. "Oh Mer – god no, well I hope I'm not, anyway. If you're still talking to me after I tell you what I'm about to tell you, remind me to get a test."
He weighed up her words, looking at her curiously. "So you're not pregnant?"
"Will you be serious for a second? This is important."
"Are you a Russian spy? A closet UKIP supporter? You voted for Brexit, didn't you?"
Her mouth dropped open. "Is that what you really think of me?"
"No, of course not." He reached between them and captured her hand with his. "You know I crack jokes when I'm nervous."
"You think you're nervous?" she demanded incredulously. "I'm terrified you're going to hear what I have to say and then run out of that door screaming about madwomen."
"You're very lucky that mad is exactly how I like my women."
"Remember that after I tell you."
"Tell me what?"
"We've been dating for a while now," she began. She'd had a whole speech constructed, and she'd wished that for once, James would go along with the script in her head.
"Three hundred and four days," he supplied, winking at her.
"You're such a weirdo," she told him, but what she meant was that she was jealous he could wink when all she could do was blink aggressively.
"Oh, come on, like you didn't know."
"No comment." She knew, and the fact he knew too sent shivers down her spine. She really hoped she wasn't about to ruin everything. "Anyway, I really, really like you – "
"Just really, really like?" he teased.
Heat broke out on Lily's cheeks. She'd been wanting to tell him she loved him for a while now, but she felt like she couldn't. Not yet. "Yes. Just really, really like."
"I really, really like you too." That smile did unspeakable things to her.
"Tell me that after."
"I will."
"I'll hold you to that."
"Wouldn't expect anything less. Carry on." His tone was encouraging.
"The thing is, I didn't want us to get past a year without me telling you about this huge part of myself." Inside, she cringed at herself. She hadn't meant to sound so much like she was going to announce she had a conjoined twin poking out the back of her head.
James rarely looked nervous, and this was the closest she'd ever seen him to it. "You're actually scaring me now, what haven't you told me?"
She took a deep breath. Tightened her grip on his fingers. "I'm a witch."
He blinked. Shook his head. Laughed: short, sharp, surprised. "I'm a wizard."
"James! I'm being serious, I know it sounds crazy – "
"I'm being serious, too! Y'know, for once."
Pulling her hand from his, Lily rolled her eyes. "Okay then, prove it."
He reached for his coat, which he'd slung on the arm of the sofa next to him. He rummaged around in the folds of the material before he pulled out a wand.
He pulled out a wand.
A wand.
Her jaw hit the floor.
"Wingardium leviosa." He pointed the wand at a framed photograph of the two of them on her mantelpiece. Sure enough, the photograph levitated and flew around the room at James' direction. Her eyes followed it, enraptured. He was a wizard. A wizard. Her boyfriend – her sweet, thoughtful, muggle boyfriend – was a wizard.
Lily jumped up and ran towards her room.
"Er, Lily?" James called nervously as the door of Lily's room hit the wall as she flung it open. "This probably isn't the best time for you to tell me you were having me on."
She returned to the room brandishing her own wand. "Accio!"
The photograph zoomed towards Lily, who caught it adeptly. She tapped it a few times with her wand, muttering a familiar incantaction. Dropping down next to James again, she handed it to him.
"See?"
He looked down at it. She watched his eyebrows raise as he took in their minuscule selves which were now twirling around the frame, instead of stationary as they'd been two minutes previously. "How?"
"It's a simple spell to immobilise the pictures." She sounded like she was back at school, tutoring younger students. "I do it every time you come over, I'll teach you if you want."
"Oh of course you're better at magic than I am," he said sulkily, waving the photograph in her face. She took it from him. With a flick of her wand, it was back on her mantelpiece. "But I meant how did we not know?"
"I was top of my class at Ilvermorny," she boasted. "Single-handedly won the house cup for Wampus every year I was there." A slight exaggeration; her house had won four years out of seven. "I assume you went to Hogwarts?"
"Gryffindor, where the brave dwell at heart." He raised an imaginary sword in the air in a gesture that made her laugh and roll her eyes simultaneously. "But Ilver – oh, you went to boarding school in America. How did I not notice something that bloody obvious?"
Lily slumped back, cuddling herself into James' side. His arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her tight. "Three hundred and four days, and we didn't know each other's biggest secret."
"To be fair, you were very good at hiding it." He kissed her hair. "What about that time I said I'd do the washing up by magic and you told me you'd lock me up in an asylum if I tried?"
Covering her face with her hands, Lily's reply was muffled. "I was channelling Petunia – she hates magic."
James pulled Lily's hands from her face and held them in his own, tracing patterns on her palms. "Scared me off telling you, that did, so your plan worked."
"We are so thick. You especially!" she accused.
"Why me? You threatened me with an asylum, Evans!"
"Oh, stop being dramatic. Did you not notice every time I nearly said Merlin, then changed it to 'oh my God' mid-word?" Her parents had both been muggles, yes, but one didn't go to a magical boarding school for the better part of seven years and not pick up habits.
"I thought you had a bit of a stutter, to be honest," he admitted.
"And you didn't take the piss out of me for it?"
"It was endearing."
"I'll keep blundering my way through sentences to keep you sweet."
"It's the only reason I stick around, you know."
She nudged him with her elbow. "Shut up, Potter."
He let out a loud, barking laugh. She twisted her head to glare at him. "What?"
"Potter," he said simply, as if she was supposed to have some earth-shattering revelation about his surname. Which she did.
"Sleekeazy's!" she cried, bolting into an upright position. She turned to face him and brandished her finger at him accusatorily as he grinned. "Your family own the company that is solely responsible for keeping my hair tame!"
"Own it?" he asked smugly, his grin turning into a crooked smirk. "My dad invented the potion."
This morning, she'd thought this conversation would leave him more in disbelief than her. "Merlin's beard, Merlin's socks, Merlin's decaying body, I'm dating an heir."
"CEO, actually. Dad retired two years ago."
He looked so smug, sitting there with his arm flung over the back of her sofa, one of his feet resting on his other knee. As if he hadn't just dropped a bombshell on her.
"All this time I thought you were stuck in some boring office job, making peanuts."
He ran a hand through his hair. "It is mostly a boring office job."
"But you're not making peanuts."
He shrugged. "Galleon-sized, gold peanuts, maybe."
She moved to smack his arm, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him. Well, not quite towards him. On top of him would have been more accurate, as she found herself perched in his lap.
"I can't believe how much money I've wasted bribing Sirius, Remus and Peter not to let anything slip."
"You're joking!" Lily laughed and shuffled herself until she was sat diagonal across him, her right shoulder close to his left one. They'd sat like this countless times before, but this was the first time she'd been aware that the heart beating against her shoulder blade was so like hers. That magical blood flowed through both of their veins. "Those three half-wits are wizards?"
He smiled indulgently at her. "Well, Peter's closer to being a squib, but yeah. We were awful, awful creatures at Hogwarts, if you can believe it."
"Really? I can't imagine any of you causing any kind of havoc," she replied flatly.
"There's something else I should tell you, actually." His face suddenly turned more serious, his mouth pressed in a line. "Don't freak out."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Is this you trying to tell me your other big secret? How many big secrets do you have, James Potter?"
"Not my secret, exactly, but yes. I have a fair few."
When she'd been trying to tell him her secret, half an hour ago, he hadn't made it easy for her. She would extend him the same curtesy. It was only fair. "Wait, wait," she told him, placing a finger momentarily over his lips. "Let me guess."
His expression said 'Lily you're clever, but there's no way you're getting this', but his mouth said, "Give it your best shot, then."
It was about his friends, she surmised, based on the previous topic. She cast her mind back to the multiple times she'd met his mates. There was Sirius, the slightly crazy mop-haired moody one, then Remus, the more reserved but quick-witted one, and then there was Peter, the pudgy one who wasn't as easy to love as Sirius, or as sharp as Remus, but whom she had a soft spot for regardless.
Something clicked in her brain. "Is this anything to do with that time Remus was ill, again, and I asked him if he was a werewolf –" Lily felt victorious when she saw James' eyes widen in shock, "– and you all burst out laughing, although now I can see it was very forced laughter."
"How?" She loved that she could turn confident, talkative James into a one-word replier.
"I already told you, I was top of all of my classes."
"No, I meant," both of his arms encircled her. "How are you mine?"
"Me really, really liking you has something to do with your face, I think," she told him seriously, trailing her fingers over his jawbone. "And nothing to do with all those galleons I now know you have."
He laughed, his eyes lighting up behind his glasses. "I really, really love you too."
As she leaned in to kiss him, murmuring that she loved him against his lips, she thought that three hundred and four days wasn't so many in relation to all the days she'd lived without him, but she'd trade all of those for three hundred and four more with him by her side. The rest of her life would be nice, too.
A/N: Okay so I got this out in about three hours, in a lovely rush of procrastination. I should really read it over again, but those three hours of missed revision can't wait any longer. Hope you enjoyed this little bit of AU fluff.
In an ideal world, I'd have the time and inclination to make this into a lovely long fic starting with their meeting and all of their blunders trying to hide magic from each-other, but alas.
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