Author's Note: Written for QLFC (Season 4, Round 12). Position: Keeper for the Falmouth Falcons

Word Count: 1,925

Write a non-romantic story about James and Lily.

He hears the first swish of ripped paper on a lazy summer noon.

It isn't something he cares to investigate at first. The Potter household is, like most pure-blood residences, a thing of age: not exactly rickety, but with a personality─and therefore sounds─of its own. Euphemia Potter is a woman of grand sensibilities, who slides her dainty fingertips down hallway wainscoting and teaches her son to enjoy their home's temperament. As such, James knows better than to poke and prod and investigate all the finicky details of his surroundings.

However, James Potter is also a boy of his own temperament, and although he knows better, he investigates anyway. After the third indistinct sound coming from his wardrobe, his imagination conjures wild things, and his ego conjures a challenge to his bravery.

The challenge is accepted.

Too young for a wand, the seven-year-old boy adjusts his glasses and moves with caution towards the mahogany doors. They're a testament to the finality of magic; their once shiny finish is waning.

When he finally pulls open the closet, his movements quick and calculated, all he finds is three pieces of torn paper. Seeing the thin, off-white material makes him pick it up and rub it between his index and middle fingers. It's crisp and smooth, and it's nothing like the parchment in his own home: all sallow and wrinkled. On it are numbers and─he realises after a closer look, his nose almost touching the surface─equations.

Math.

Scrunching up his face in distaste, he's almost about to leave it when another piece appears, seemingly out of thin air. James surveys it closely as it floats down to rest on the floor of the cupboard and then, slowly and theatrically, allows a soft Woah to form on his lips.

A magical wardrobe allows for a multitude of explanations, but James only focuses on one at a time. Stacking the slips of math on one of his rosewood bookshelves, he takes a roll of parchment, slices an inch off, and writes, 'Are you alive?'

Placing the question inside the big piece of furniture, he waits. After a few minutes, he crosses his arms. Staring intently, James stands silent for a long stretch of time; then he grabs his broom and stalks outside and into the garden.

When he comes back, he takes a cursory look inside, shrugs his shoulders, and goes to bed like asked.

In the middle of the night, pale moonlight throwing the contours of his room into shadows, James awakes to the sound of a paper ripping. After an initial moment of confusion, he jumps out of bed and thrusts his head inside the darkness of the closet to find a new piece of neatly lined, white paper, on which it says, 'Who are you?'

It doesn't take him long to scribble something down and place it inside. 'That's not an answer. What's your name?'

For a confused second, he thinks he's still dreaming. The wardrobe doesn't yield any replies at first, and James grows fidgety in anticipation. His fingers rub at the tassels of his bedroom rug, and every so often, he bites a nail.

For a confused second, he thinks he's going mad.

Then he hears another ripping sound. 'Maybe I don't have one.'

'Everyone has a name,' he scrawls so frantically that he scratches a hole in the parchment and has to reach for a new strip.

'You can give me one if you want,' reads the reply. It's on a new kind of paper─the kind that feels soft and smells like flowers. He bets that if he drags it out into the moonlight, it will probably be pink.

'How about Rose?' James cracks a smile to himself. He's mighty clever, using her own tells against her─and it is a her; no self-respecting boy would send back a reply on scented paper. Sensing a kind of victory in the air, James lies back on the floor, his hands behind his head. He can afford to wait; she won't be long.

When he wakes up the next morning, the floor is hard and unfamiliar against his hip, and he has a soft ache in the left side of his neck. As he realises why he's been sleeping on the floor, he scrambles to the closet and brings out the note that has been left for him in the middle of the night.

'How about Lily?'

.ooo.

'You go first.'

James thinks about this for a moment. A part of him knows it's bad to tell Muggles about magic, but on the other hand, she has a magic wardrobe. The Kelpie's already out of the bag.

'A Muggle is a person who doesn't have magic.'

They've been talking through slips of paper─James sometimes makes his into paper airplanes and watches them dissolve while still in the air─for weeks now. Not a day goes by that he doesn't hear from her. She even had the idea of stepping inside the wardrobe to come visit each other.

It didn't work.

Almost immediately, a note returns. 'Do you have magic?'

James wrings his hands, more to be dramatic than because he's actually worried. A part of him is satisfied; he likes the idea that she has questions, and he's the only one she knows who can answer them.

'It's your turn to answer a question,' he writes. 'Besides, you have a magical wardrobe. Maybe you have magic too. Anyway, you have to answer my question from before.'

'Maybe,' her next note says. She's still using the scented paper, and James has grown to like it. Sometimes, he will bring it up to his face and inhale deeply before he reads her reply. He hasn't told her any of this.

At first he thinks her 'Maybe' is commenting on his question; it makes him grab his own pen to write something cheeky back. Then he realises she's just being skeptical about her own magic, and he discovers she's written something more.

'And yes, I know what the three R's are.'

Perfect. James isn't quite as interested in all the boring school stuff as Lily, but since he's teaching her about magic, he has been asking her to teach him about the things he doesn't know.

'What are they?'

'You first.'

James sighs. It will probably get him into trouble, but he also doesn't want to lie to her. Now that he thinks about it, the Statue of Secrecy─he's sure he got the name right this time; he's always wanted to visit that and see what a statue of secrecy looks like─is completely wonkers. Why can't he tell his friend that he has magic? She would probably think it was rad.

He balls his hands into fists for a second, trying─and failing─to see the situation from both sides. With big, swooping movements, he then takes an entire page and writes just one word. 'Yes.'

When she doesn't respond immediately, James starts biting his nails.

When she does, her response is shorter than he thought it would be. 'What's it like?'

.ooo.

'What's your last name?'

'You gave me my first name. I don't need another.'

.ooo.

He writes fast, desperate. When he deposits the new note, it falls on top of the old ones. One, two, three, four─and now five.

It feels like loss.

'Where are you?' He can almost hear his own written words echoing in an abandoned hall, ringing out to someone who isn't listening. It sounds like static, and it speaks his name. White noise in an empty room.

His mother calls him down for supper, and he hesitates. She calls again, and he rises on tired legs.

.ooo.

It's been three days, but he can't stop looking. He returns home from school, and he goes straight to the wardrobe. At first, he almost dismisses it out of habit, but then he sees: the pile of five has shrunk to just one.

Falling to his knees, he picks it up with both hands and lets his eyes trail over the neat, cursive writing a couple of times.

'I'm sorry that I disappeared. I'm back now.'

Staggering to his feet, he turns to his desk, rips a quick slip off, writes a few words, and deems the piece too small. He bends over the roll of parchment and writes until he's content, then rips it off a good inch below his last sentence.

She responds immediately. 'I've been talking to someone else.'

'What does that mean? Through your wardrobe? I thought you could only talk to me?'

Her notes are growing smaller and smaller, and James is not satisfied with her answers.

'I found a way.'

'How?'

'Someone taught me.'

'Who?'

'Would you like to meet him?'

James thinks that no, he would definitely not like to meet him, but his fingers have a life of their own, and out of instinct, he writes, 'Yes.'

'Hello. I'm Severus. Are you Lily's friend too?'

'Lily is a name I gave her,' James writes vindictively. 'That's not her real name.'

'She told me that was her name.'

'Maybe she's lying.'

'That's unkind. I would never lie to Severus.'

Something contracts in his stomach, and it takes a while for James to reply. 'Are you together right now?'

.ooo.

'You've never asked me my name, you know.'

'I never needed to know.'

.ooo.

'Are you there?'

He's sitting in his bed, staring out the window with crossed arms and a frown on his face when he hears the familiar sound of a note. At first, he doesn't want to go write something back. He can't explain why, exactly, but he's angry with her, and he's sure he has a right to be. It hurts inside, and he misses her. It makes him want to yell at her, but sound doesn't travel in the space between their wardrobes.

Now that he thinks about it, he doesn't even know if she puts the notes in a wardrobe too.

Finally, he gives in, though. He stares at the paper as if it's going to yield something more. Something more like an apology. But there's nothing.

She taught him a Muggle trick with invisible writing that's conjured with heat, so he tries that, but there's no hidden message on the piece of paper.

It's not even the scented kind.

'I'm here,' is all he can give her.

'I'm so sorry. I'm so confused, but I'm also excited. I've learned so much from talking to others like me. People who are real. And, I'm sorry, but I don't have time to write you anymore.'

James stares at it for a long time. Then he looks out the window again. The sky's gradient starts with a dark blue and ends in a horizontal streak of turquoise. The trees and bushes outside stand black and silent against the still bright evening. It's beautiful, he can logically acknowledge that, but he doesn't feel its beauty.

All he feels is grief.

'Why don't you have time?'

His paper is still the same old parchment. Nothing ever changed for him.

So why will he miss the scent of her letters?

'I just don't want to sit in one place and wait for a reply. I want to talk to people. Have real conversations. I hope you can understand.'

A part of him does. A part of him doesn't want to admit that; it feels like letting her go.

He waits too long, and another note floats down to land on the floor of his closet. He braces himself, then picks it up.

'Goodbye.'