Come to think of it, you don't really know how you end up lying on the couch in the Gryffindor Common Room, half on top of James Potter and half squashed between him and the backrest, but nevertheless that's where you find yourself sometime after eleven on a rainy Saturday night in the middle of November.
Well. That's a lie. You know exactly how you ended up there. It went a little like this...
That afternoon had brought around the second Quidditch match of the season, Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff – Gryffindor's first game that year. The team had marched into battle confidently, led by a very self-assured and cocksure James, and marched out after barely half an hour led by a beyond elated James who couldn't stop praising Marlene, the small and spunky fourth-year Seeker. The entire team had been brilliant, but it was Marlene who took the cake, plucking the Snitch from behind Hufflepuff's Seeker's ear like a Muggle magician and ending the game 350-75 in Gryffindor's favour.
You were there, of course, sitting alone in the stands. Wrapped in your huge Gryffindor scarf, shivering in the chilly air and telling yourself you were only there because Elizabeth, one of the Chasers, was sort of your friend; knowing that it was really all due to the other seventh-year Chaser, that Merlin-damned James Potter who quite honestly irritated you beyond belief sometimes but nevertheless managed to drag you from the warmth of the Common Room and down to the freezing Pitch. Even two months ago he could never have had that effect on you, but late nights spent patrolling the castle as Head Students had shown you that maybe that boy wasn't pure evil, as you had so often thought. In the past few weeks, you might even have gone as far as to consider him a friend.
And really, he had to mean something to you to warrant your current location, or the way you had sought him out in the middle of the traditional Common Room after-party and flung your arms around him (in plain view to boot) and whispered your congratulations in his ear. He'd barely had time to react when you realised exactly what you were doing and disentangled yourself from his slowly rising arms, ducking under the left one and making a quick exit stage left. You crept up to sit on the girls' staircase, watching the party unfold through the cracks in the banister.
Occasionally, you Accio'd yourself a Butterbeer or perhaps a Pumpkin Pasty from the over-flowing table in the corner, and you watched as James, who regularly turned complete circles clearly looking for something or the other, followed the floating food with his eyes like a shark followed ships in the ocean, and you knew that he knew where you were but neither made a move. It was a waiting game, and you were determined to win, never mind that you had no idea where it started, or what the prize was. All you knew was that he had the upper hand, considering that he couldn't come up the staircase.
Except, you know, it turned out he could, because about an hour after your disappearing act he was suddenly right next to you. You were leaning against the wall with your feet against the banister, and quite without warning he was sitting next to your feet on the next step down.
"You," he said without any preamble, "have been avoiding me all evening."
"Have not!" you protest, trying to keep a straight face.
"Oh, yeah? So how come you've been up here all evening? Don't try and deny it, you thought I couldn't get up here. It would have been the perfect hiding place, no?"
"Emphasis on the would," you mutter, only very slightly put out that he saw through your plan so easily. Not that is was a very fool-proof plan. You should have known that he would find a way to get up the girls' staircase. He was James Potter, after all.
"Oh, come on. Now, why are you hiding from me?"
"Truthfully? I don't even know. It just seemed like a good idea at the time." Now that you're explaining yourself, you don't know what to say. You don't know why you've been acting so odd all day – all you know is that it has something to do with him. And because you're Lily Evans, and you're never at a loss for words, you decide to tell him this little thing that you know.
"It's all because of you," you inform him, looking down your nose at his surprised reaction.
"Me?" he asks, "Little old me?"
"Come on," you say, "You're James Potter. There's nothing little about you and you know it as well as I do, unfortunately enough."
"Is that so," he drawls out with a wink. "Nothing little about me, eh?"
"Shut up, James," is your only reaction – and okay, maybe it is accompanied with a smack on the arm. It's almost ritualistic by now. James makes a suggestive comment, you tell him to shut up and hit him, and you move on as if nothing really happened. Which, of course, it didn't. Right?
"Yeah, okay, maybe I deserved that," James says. "But it still didn't answer my question, how is it all because of me?"
"I don't even know!" you say, throwing your hands in the air and then burying your head in them. "I don't know, okay? I don't know anything and I really don't like it."
"Um... okay then," he says, and you feel his hands slowly wrap around your wrists and pull them away from your face. He has to be beyond confused – really, there's no rationality to your actions whatsoever – but he's trying, and you have to give him credit for that and so you lift your face and try a smile. "Much better!" he exclaims, and your smile widens just a little. "There we go... now, how is this all because of me? What have I done and how can I fix it?"
"You exist," you mutter back, suddenly ashamed of the entire situation. There you were, after all, sitting in the girls' staircase with James Potter, no less, a complete emotional wreck for no reason that you could discern. But it feels good to have someone care, so you don't run away like you usually do. Instead, you keep talking. "You exist, okay? I mean, you've always existed, of course – well, not always, but... ANYWAY, you get what I mean, right? You exist and you've been doing it for a while now, but never before has it made me voluntarily go to Quidditch games! Don't get me wrong, I love Quidditch, but that's the point! It used to be that I went to the games to watch the game, but today for some completely inexplicable reason I went there to watch you, and I don't like it! I don't like the fact that I felt I had to come seek you out after the game, and I especially don't like what I did, not necessarily the hugging part but definitely the running away part, and then I had to come sit up here cause I really don't know what's going on, and all things considered I think I should be hyperventilating by now or something, but all I'm doing is sitting here talking at you, which, by the way, is really not the smartest of things to do and... okay, Lily shutting up now."
You're not usually the type to spew out disjointed monologues, but having said all that, you feel just the slightest bit better. He's staring at you with a slightly confused expression, and you can't help but think that at least you're not the only confused person in this stairwell.
"You know what?" he says. "I think we need to get out of this small, confined space. That sound good to you?"
"Sounds perfect," you say, because it really is getting kind of stuffy. And so he stands up, and offers you a hand up, and you relocate to the sofa in the now-empty Common Room. It's only around nine in the evening, but the party has either cleared out or moved to greener plains.
And you sit there on the sofa with him, and you talk things through, and he shows you that, all things considered, maybe the world isn't as scary a place as you thought it was. Eventually you fall asleep, and so does he, and for the first time in your life you don't care about who could see you or what they would think, because everything makes sense for once.
A/N: I... don't even know. The ending is weird cause I had to get it done during a train ride... Which I ended up doing, actually, but I didn't get around to posting it from the train since the Internet connection decided to die at the critical moment.