The King of Amsterdam

Author: Queen Nightingale

Rating: M (For Language)

Author's Note: I really love the title of this piece, and it comes from an anonymous online poster on a drug forum. Thank you, to whoever you are. I might use the concept again at some point in the future.

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nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- somewhere i have never travelled by ee cummings

---

You refuse to listen to him.

Not when he flings himself across the room towards you, not when he fake cries, stabbing himself in the eye with his wand to impress you with his waterworks, not when he pervertedly cups his chest and makes eye contact with you across the room in Transfiguration, pretending to fondle himself, with Black and Remus and Pettigrew exploding in laughter from the sidelines.

You refuse to fall at his feet like the rest of the girls do, just because he is powerful in his popularity and athleticism, good-looking (you personally believe it hints at a future pot-belly), and excellent with women.

You also refuse to admit that he is excellent with women, because the fucking dimwit can't even count to ten, let alone know how to court a girl.

You do, however, admit to the fact that you are slightly prone to angry outbursts while around him.

It's not really your fault, however.

How else would anyone react if Potter charmed their favourite robes to have a continuous red splotch right above their arse, making it look like … well, everyone knows what.

So in that scenario, you really do think that you were justified in whipping your bowl of scrambled eggs in the smug boy's face and charming it so that it stuck there. Permanently.

(You were exceptionally proud to find that even McGonagall couldn't manage to unpeel the eggs from his sideburns, since they magically stuck to any hair on his face.)

And then there was the time when just in first year, he knocked you off of the boat to Hogwarts with his elbow, and you grabbed him, and both of you tumbled into the deep, ICE-COLD waters, screaming and hanging onto each other.

Some might call it fate.

You prefer to use the word inconvenience. Or bloody motherfucking idiocy. Or bigoted masochistic pig.

You hate the way that he sprawls out in class and blatantly backtalks to the teacher, completely ignoring their lesson and still managing to obtain seemingly miraculous Es and Os. You hate the way that he messes up his hair, and you hate the way that he winks at all the other girls in the class.

But most of all, you hate the fact that he hates you.

Because James Potter hates you almost as much as you hate him. And that's a lot of hate for one girl to handle.

It's a mutual sort of animosity, the type that has existed for years on years between the two of you. Because how long have you known each other now? Six years? Five years? Either way it doesn't matter, because you know that the hate will never stop.

It probably has to do a bit with your temperaments, with both of you being loud as foghorns when upset and redder than fire-trucks when taunted. It got so bad at one point last year that the easiest way to track you down was to follow the angry yelling, right up to the little cranny where James would be screaming in your face and you would be stomping your foot up and down, whipping out your wand and emitting angry fluorescent green sparks at him.

There is only one good reason for James Potter to hate you, and that might have been because you single-handedly destroyed his relationship with Emmeline.

But it hardly was your entire fault, seeing as how it was evident he was getting sick of her anyways and they probably would have broken up in a week or so. But James just had to be turning the corner when you were dramatically illustrating to Emmeline outside a crowded Divination classroom (the professor was late) why she should break up with James. And maybe, just maybe he saw you doing an imitation of his laid-back swagger, and another imitation of picking at his crotch, and another imitation of him sleazing up to all of the girls in the class. And maybe at that point, just maybe you turned around when the entire corridor had buckled over laughing, and saw his enraged red face behind his glasses before he swiftly turned and walked away. And you got caught up in his eyes, in that one moment of anger, when he bared his soul to you and swallowed you whole.

And then he spat you out.

But really, what did he think? That you were going to persuade Emmeline to stay with the biggest jerk and player in Hogwarts' history?

(Other than Lucius Malfoy and Sirius, James definitely had the most tick marks on his bed-post.)

Emmeline, true to her friends, dumped him the following morning, resulting in him flying up the girls' dormitory on his broomstick, dismounting, and then stomping up to your door, banging on it with all of his might.

"EVANSSSSS!" he hollers, and you roll off your bed in shock, irritatedly hitting your ankle against the hard old floors.

Before we start this off, let's make this clear. You're not exactly a morning person.

"What in FUCK'S NAME DO YOU WANT?!" you scream, most likely waking up every girl in the tower, wrapping your blankets around yourself and angrily padding over to yank open the door. Standing in front of you is an enraged James Potter, his hair sticking up about two inches too high and messy like usual, his round glasses starting to fall off of his nose in his anger.

"YOU MADE EMMELINE BREAK UP WITH ME!" he roars, trying to step into the room, shoving his broomstick in between the crack of the door and the frame, as you lean on it with all your might, trying to close it.

"IT'S GODDAMN EIGHT O'CLOCK POTTER, come back later!" you retort, grunting as you lean all of your weight against the frame.

You suddenly feel a weight bash into the door and you go flying backwards, ricocheting into Marlene's bedpost in the empty room.

"OI!" you shriek, clambering up to meet an enraged James, who is striding across the room towards you, "I think this counts as statutory rape, James, might I remind you that you're not exactly ALLOWED IN HERE!!!"

"Like MERLIN I'm not allowed in here, I'll go anywhere I want. AND you, the little BITCH that you are, are going to pay!"

With his words, you dive across Marlene's desk, rolling past it and skidding in your socks on the floor, jumping onto Dorcas' pile of laundry and frantically pushing your way through it to the door, finally making your breakthrough and shoving through it as James is hot on your tail, hollering curse words as you sprint down the steps, taking them two by two to the commons room, where your entire year is sitting and chatting.

"LILYYYYY!!!!!"

James' voice yells from above, and you swear the entire year turns and watches you dash across the commons, James about a metre behind you, both of you running with all your might around the room. You jump onto the desk where Remus and Black are playing chess, throwing all the pieces here and there with your scrabbling feet and hands, and rip open the window, unlatching the hatch with your shaking hands, kicking away James who is attempting to bat at you with his newest Cleansweep.

"I swear, this is just one straw too much Lily, you just HAD TO FUCK UP MY PERSONAL LIFE," James is hollering at you as you finally manage to unlatch the window, "HOW MANY BLOODY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU TO KEEP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING NOSE OUT OF MY BUSINESS??!?!?", and then you raise your wand, screaming with all your might: "ACCIO RANDOM BROOM!"

To your surprise, James' broom pops out of his hands and into yours, so you throw yourself off of the tower and onto the Cleansweep, hollering out curse-words as you plummet straight towards the ground.

And after two seconds of pure terror the Cleansweep finally comes into action from its downwards spiral and you veer up the broom, yelling in pure delight and looking back to gauge James' face, which is completely flabbergasted, the rest of the Gryffindor common room clapping and cheering as they crack open windows and push each other to get a better view of you, this crazy wild insane fantastic intense BEAUTIFUL girl who has somehow managed to piss off the infallible, perfect James Potter.

Then, you kind of ruin your beauty, as you stick your tongue out, plastering a highly attractive expression on your face and taking your hands off your broom, putting them beside your ears and wiggling them.

"YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE!!!" you yell towards James, pumping your fist in victory and then taking off towards the lake.

You hear him loudly let out a tumble of curse words towards you, and out of the corner of your eye watch as Black and Lupin muscle their way through the crowd, pulling him off of the window frame that he was attempting to climb through, his figure becoming smaller as you whiz away.

And after that, the hatred just explodes.

If your hair was capable of actually starting fires, as its colour might hint at, then James Potter would have been the tequila bottle that the drunk guy at the party decides to throw into the bonfire. If you were the flint then he was the hard stone, if you were the chip then he was the hot-sauce.

It was like milk and cookies, the two of you were that explosive.

In class he starts to antagonize you, ripping you to shreds before your fellow classmates, and laughing cruelly with Remus and Sirius and Peter, but you've got a hard shell and over the years you've learned that only sticks and stones will ever bring you down.

So you deflect the insults, shooting them back at him with your jagged tongue and razor-sharp wit, turning the whole affair into some deadly duel. But you make sure to misfire just as much as he does, after you learn that you can read him through his eyes.

If you ever actually hit a nerve, a vein on his forehead will shoot up, pulsing angrily, and his skin will turn blotchy and red. His hair will seem to stand up at attention, and his hands will ball into large, angry fists.

(The two of you have, in fact, had a couple fist-fights, if you can call you slapping him and him shoving you a true brawl.)

But all of those physical indicators are aplenty whenever you insult him. The trick is to look straight into his eyes when you swear, curse, and try to tear him apart, without actually tugging too hard.

Because if you rip too hard then you can see a flash of pain shred across his dark brown eyes, splitting a part of him in half. It's as if you've torn something deep inside of him, exposing his inner self to the world.

And as much as you hate him, you hate actually hurting him even more.

Because in all honesty, the majority of your relationship consists of dramatics and semantics, fake proposals by James and thespian rejections on your part, both of you shimmying lightly over the boundary between cruelty and hatred. It's a very fine line, something that you've become adept at understanding after that first explosion.

James hates it when you talk about his hair, hates it when you insult his friends, and hates it when you insult his personality.

But he's a big boy, and you know he can suck it up.

James DESPISES it when you talk, or even mention his family, his girlfriends or his male ego.

But one day in sixth year, you tear down the curtains behind his eyes, rip them down with your small hands and try to squeeze out tears, tears, any type of remorse because you're sick of his insults and cruelty and as much as you try to not hurt him, he hurts you twice as badly.

It's after a horrible Transfiguration test that you barely manage to scrape up a T on, not even passing, and you're sitting in a little sunlit cranny in the library, beside where you and Severus used to meet.

He comes stomping into the library with his friends, all of them loud and rambunctious boys, before he spots you sitting in the sun at the back of the library, by the small window. You turn your head away quickly, but you can just picture the smirk crawling across his face as he imagines rubbing salt in your wounds.

"Well well, look at little Lily sitting all by herself," you hear him approach you, leaving his friends and skulking up towards you, "Didn't do as well as you wanted to? Or is it just inherent stupidity?"

And you turn your face away from him, but you can't help letting out a little gasp that he doesn't hear, and then there are tears pouring down your face and you're crying because you're a failure and no-one will rescue you. And you're going to fail transfiguration and you'll deserve being called a Mudblood and you'll let down other little kids who don't deserve to be called that, and you feel helpless because you're tired of playing games with this boy who you didn't mean to hurt in the goddamn first place, and why doesn't he just FUCKING LEAVE?!

The voice comes closer, and you feel his breath tickle your ear, and for a second, just a split second, you imagine the voice saying sweet little nothings to you and you imagine leaning back into his tall, gangly frame and having him touch your hair –

And then you're snapped back to reality and you sob because it's just a cruel voice tearing you apart and tearing you down and ripping you to pieces and he's crossed the goddamn line can't he see that he's bleeding your soul?! Doesn't he notice your frame and the fact that you can barely breathe and you're heaving heaving heaving

"What a little loser, can't even pass Transfiguration."

And he's slowly ripping you into pieces and your hard shell is gone and you feel the sobs overtake your body oh please make someone stop it you can't take him anymore please Merlin please Merlin

"Guess Lilyflower isn't so much a flower as a little fucking weed. Can't even live up to her namesake, she's so ugly."

And you feel your self-esteem plummet and you clasp your face into your hands and try to muffle the sounds of your tears because it hurts God it hurts he's hurting you no-one is supposed to hurt you, you're supposed to be beautiful and strong but you can't because you've been chewed up and spit out by him too many times

"For your sake I'm glad that the muggles abolished slavery, no-one would even want to abuse you, you're so fucking stupid and idiotic."

And then he pauses and you know that he's wondering why you're not replying and turning around with a wry grin and taking up his offer to fight him but you can't you can't because he was whispering into your ear the way that a lover is supposed to but he's ruined it, ruined it all.

You turn around and look at him, and then you start to heave in huge breaths and you can't control it when you look in his eyes and you're sobbing because you can't take his shock and his pity.

And he's standing there, slightly leaned over you, looking like the King of Amsterdam without the crown, but then he sees the tears and you collapse and his eyes break and shatter into mirrors all over the floor.

"Oh Merlin Lily, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean it that time …"

And you've buried your face into your hands, and you're attempting to calm yourself, but you can't manage to make the tears stop. You see feet approach James and he shoves away the other person and comes closer to you, where you're sitting on the chair, your elbows on your knees and your face in your hands.

But you heave in a sniffle and attempt to shield yourself from him.

"I-I jj-just faii-ii-led the Transfiguration tt-ttt-test," you heave, hiccupping around the words and not lifting your face from your hands, since crying into your palms is better than looking at him, and then with the words you shove out of your lips you just dissolve and clutch your knees and bury your head into your thighs, letting loose your flowing tears.

You feel him standing there awkwardly as you sob, and it's the most horrible moment in the history of the world, because you didn't mean to stop the game, the awful game, because now he won't notice you, but you can't help it because you're more fragile and kinder than him than he is to you, even if he doesn't ever realize it.

"I-I-I-I," you stutter, and then you feel him slide into the plushy chair beside you, lifting you up and smoothly transferring you to his lap, where you leak big tears onto his perfect robes, burying your face into them, "I-I sss-sstudied ss-sso hard-dd-ddd."

"It's okay," he murmurs, taking his hand and smoothing it over your hair as you grasp onto his robe and try to remember how to breathe. He's somewhat awkward doing it, as if he's trying to remember how to comfort someone, but something about being near him that calms you down, and you slowly manage to only hiccup and heave about three out of every ten words.

"I didn't mm-mean to hurt your feelings with Emm-mmell-ine," you whisper, burying your face deeper into his robes as he holds you, slightly uncomfortably, "I-I-I ddd-idn't know that it would hurt you. I didddiddidn't mean to do it, I was just jjj-joking. Everyone knows that you're perfect."

"Perfect?!" James replies, snorting, and surprised, you lift your gaze to his for a heart stopping moment before dropping it back onto his chest, "I'm about the closest thing from perfect that there is."

"Bb-bb-but you never try in class, or –"

"Lily, I try harder than everyone else in class," James says, and you can feel him smirking a bit as he holds you, starting up stroking your hair again, "I have the extra work of attempting to make it look effortless."

"Bb-bbbbb-bb-b-"

"Shhhh," he comforts you, stroking your hair as you try to relax the tears coming from your eyes, "And I insult you all day long, you obsess my thoughts and every action. It's fucking bloody goddamn ridiculous, our arguments, and I plan out the insults and everything."

"I kkk-knew it!" you crow, sitting up a bit higher in his lap and instead leaning onto his arm, staring straight at his face and sniffling, poking his shoulder, "Those ww-were way too good to be just thought up on the spot."

"But shhh," he replies, placing your finger to his lips, and staring deep into your eyes, "It has to be our little secret. We can't have the world knowing that we actually care about the arguments."

"I never said that I cared, it was only you," you retort, a huge grin on your face as you slowly trace the outline of James' lips, his eyes widening and staring into yours, slightly darkening, "So you're the o-only one with the secret."

The two of you sit together, under the sun, your eyes firmly placed on his lips as you lightly dust your finger on them, his arms clutching you to his lap and his eyes wide and open, trying to pierce open your face.

It's a bit weird, but you like it.

Then he suddenly grabs your hand from his lips and gently pushes it aside, and cups your face in his hand and brushes his lips against yours.

And it's completely and utterly perfect, with this angry smart fascinating enfuriating enraging boy under the glittering sunlight in the back of the library, as his hands move down your body and yours entwine with his.

And his lips press gently against yours like an apology or a love note, and you breathe in his smell and smile against his lips before he breaks it off, breathing a bit heavier than before.

Not wanting to break the moment, you press your finger against his lips and mouth "shhh", grabbing your bookbag from the ground and turning away from him, slowly melting off of his lap and gently placing your feet on the ground. You look behind you, wink at him, and softly walk out of the library.

You never see the small, innocent smile that brightens up his face as he watches you leave. Later that night, when everyone is asleep, he lies awake, staring up at the ceiling of his bed, and realizes that you've managed to finally paint a crown on his head, truly making him the King of Amsterdam.

So James grins up at the ceiling, and imagines how to ask you out to Hogsmeade that next weekend.

Roses, or paint-bombs?