Disclaimer: Do not own any of the characters etc…
Summary: He was sure he was the first person to ever see her really smile, and it hurt him to feel the way he felt, he was Adam in the Garden of Eden and she was the forbidden fruit. AU. Drabble.
Authors Note: This is an AU, and a one chapter drabble...
Apple Blossom
In a once upon a time place, they had been friends, secret friends, when she had been part of the miss popular brigade and he had three friends in the back of the classroom. He was largely defined as a nerd, and she just happened to be pretty, popular and smart, yet lonely.
Once upon a Potions lesson, where they had been rather unfortunately for her, partnered for their research topic, a whole month of studying together.
Before that month he would have said that the popular people didn't know the meaning of nice, didn't have troubled lives, and didn't have problems. He was subsequently wrong about that, his new Potions partner was probably the most troubled of them all.
She had told him how she hated the constant paranoia that someone was going to stab you in the back, the constant bitching from other people, having to get up two hours early in the mornings to get a hot shower, to apply make up so carefully, so perfectly. To then go down to breakfast, and eat what they ate, while longing to have a pancake, sneaking two muffins into her bag and taking detours to the bathroom to eat them in a hurry to not starve before lunch time.
She told him, she hated pretending that she was just like them, but her parents wouldn't be happy if she wasn't, her parents who had always favoured her older sister over her, had only noticed her when she got Head Girl, and she hated it.
Once upon a time, they would sneak out past curfew to the kitchens, where she told him, everything about her, and he told her everything about him.
They became friends, but secret friends because who would believe him if he told people that Lily Evans was his friend. Secret friends, because she so desperately wanted to get approval from the people she loved most. Her parents.
They'd pass notes in the corridors while passing each other, send owls in the mornings, go to the kitchens in the middle of the night hidden beneath his cloak.
He supposed that when they shared their first kiss, the one that he had initiated, he thought things would change, how they would he hadn't known, but they had, not in day to day life, but their private moments together became more intimate, and he saw her smile for the first time and he was sure he was falling in love with her.
He was sure he was the first person to ever see her really smile, and it hurt him to feel the way he felt, he was Adam in the Garden of Eden picking the forbidden fruit.
Then the fight happened, Phillip Meadows and Leroy Brown, with three other people he didn't recognise, bore down on him with their fists clenched asking him if it were true that he had been going around with Lily. If it were one on one, he could've taken them, maybe one on two, he could have taken that too, but one on five, he hadn't stood a chance.
He knew it didn't matter what he said, truth or lie; he'd get pounded, so he said nothing.
"Well is it true, she told us herself that she had but she was angry. Is it true that the twerp achieved the one thing every guy in this school wants to do?" Meadows growled.
"Did he get close? Did he bang her? Did he kiss her? Did he slap that silly smile on her face?"
They laughed and he said nothing, he stood and braced himself and hoped to god someone found them before he died from internal injuries that he sensed were coming.
He didn't remember what happened next, he just remembered pain, and a girl telling them to stop, and he remembered the cold floor, a broken rib and being blind without any glasses.
"What the hell are you doing to him?" he heard her voice far, far away.
"Amber told us that you told her that you didn't think he was so bad?" Brown had said.
"How on earth does that translate to beating the crap out of him?"
"Because he is just a worthless pile of crap." Meadows had snorted.
He saw her shake her head, "Just leave him alone, he's never done anything to you."
He tried to get up and had gotten kicked in the side. "Leave. Him. Alone."
"My, my Lily aren't you protective of this one, who'd have thought the stone queen has a heart."
She snapped.
No one could've told you exactly what had happened, because within the next ten seconds the five boys had been hit by various jinxes, and pandemonium had broken out. The next day at breakfast, she had come and sat next to him and his friends, and ate pancakes, and he knew she felt the same way too.
He remembered two days later she received a letter from home, from her parents demanding to know exactly what happened, and if it was in fact a boy who had forced her old friends to relegate her to school trash they would very much like to meet him at Christmas, and that they thought she would never separate from people who were so clearly bad for her.
That day was the first time the world had seen Lily Evans cry, and what's more she cried in the arms of James Potter, warm and safe in his arms, bruised and battered as he was, she wasn't miss popular anymore, no one cared if she cried, no one but him.
He remembered the first time he met her parents, after she had introduced him as her boyfriend, they looked at him and said, "A Potter boy? Well at least he's cute." Well at least her mother had, her father grunted, and said "Can't be worse that Petunia's boy, moron thinks he's getting my damned company. Potters own enough of the world to not want anymore."
But that was all in a once upon a time, now, he smiled, she wasn't just his friend, she was his best friend, the love of his life, and probably most importantly, his very pregnant wife, and mother to his first child.
Laying on his side in bed, his arm wrapped around her rounded belly, burying his face in her hair smelling of peaches, he knew it was a matter of time, before their oldest baby barely two years old would come in and wedge himself between his mother and father, and he knew he couldn't care less, he'd have the most important people in his life all in one place.
What's more, in the morning, he would go to work with his best friend, and be superior to the people he had been inferior to during his whole school life.
Life was a funny thing.
The hardest part about writing this ficlet thingy was writing the summary... who'da thought?
P.S. If anyone is vaguely interested I do have an livejournal under the very creative name of lavamad :P