Written for the Romance Awareness Challenge: Write about someone casting a spell (or getting a spell cast) to find their soulmate, (event) Yule Ball and the Speed Drabble (Jily, "You ready?" / "No, but let's do this." and "But you're not properly dressed.") on the Hogwarts forum.
Word count: 1270
home is wherever I'm with you
For some reason, James' first reaction when Lily opens the door is, absurdly, to say, "But you're not properly dressed."
"Hello to you too, James, it's lovely to see you," Lily replies, rolling her eyes. Thankfully, she seems more amused than mad, so James breathes out a sigh of relief.
"Hi Lily, it's lovely to see you," he parrots back.
Lily huffs out a laugh, but steps back to let him in. "For the record, you surprised me as I was about to put on my dress. I prefer to leave it for the last minute, but I guess I should have anticipated you being early for once."
"Hey, come on, I'm not always late!" James protests, but Lily just raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.
"If you say so," Lily says dismissively. "Make yourself at home, I'll be back in just a moment."
"Need any help?"
For a moment, Lily looks tempted, eyes raking over James' body slowly. "Better not—I know what kind of help you'll end up giving me, and I think we should at least attempt to get there on time."
James can't help it; he laughs. "Alright, I'll leave it to you then."
Lily rolls her eyes again. "You do that, yes." She ducks inside the room James knows is her bedroom, and James shuffles awkwardly toward the kitchen/living-room. Lily's roommate isn't here tonight, so James knows that the discarded plates are all his girlfriend's.
"You ate without me?" he asks loudly, trusting that his voice will carry over to Lily. "Lily, how could you? I thought you loved me!"
Merlin, he can just see Lily's exasperated eyeroll at this.
"Well, I thought you loved me too, and then you told me we had to go to this stupid Ball thing!" Lily protests, her voice growing louder as she exits her room and steps into James' sightline. "Besides, I know what we 'eat' at these types of things, and I won't be that girl whose stomach can be heard from a mile away."
"There are Silencing charms for that, you know," James points out. "Also it's really not…" he trails off, blinking rapidly, as his train of thoughts leaves him. "Wow, you look… Gorgeous."
She really does—to James, she always does (always has, too, even when she had hated him and cursed his name every day), but somehow now, in this golden dress, she looks like a goddess.
"Thank you. You're very handsome yourself," she adds, winking.
"Thanks," James laughs.
Lily sighs. "You sure we can't just stay in tonight?"
"Well, we could, but…"
"I know, I know, this ceremony is important and it's an honor to have been chosen for it," Lily replies with the tone of someone who's heard these words a million times.
"Hey, hey," James says, taking Lily's hands in his. He looks her in the eyes, and says, "tell me what's wrong. Come on, if you're really that against it we can skip, no one will blame us—well, some people might, but your opinion is the only one who matters to me."
Lily kicks him lightly in the shin, a tremulous smile playing on her lips. "Shut up, you're going to make me cry, and this makeup took me too long to get ruined like that."
"You'd still be the prettiest woman in the room, though."
"You're too sweet, you know I'd look like a drowned panda."
"But a very cute panda," James corrects, and is pleased when that gets a laugh out of Lily. "Come on, just tell me what's going on."
Lily sighs heavily, but James knows he's won.
"It's just… You're going to think this is stupid, but I… I don't really like the idea of participating in the ritual."
James frowns. "What do you mean?"
"I just…" Lily licks her lips, eyes darting left and right quickly as she tightens her hold on James' hands. "I guess I just don't like the idea of a spell telling me who my soulmate is."
What she's not saying hangs in the silence between them—that maybe they aren't meant to be, that maybe the spell won't say what James has been hoping it would since Lily Evans first walked into his life.
"You know it doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to, right?" James finally asks. It had been his idea, yes, to accept the Ministry's offer to participate in this year's Yule Soulmate Ceremony, but Lily had agreed too. "As I said, we don't have to go if you don't want to."
"That's not—that's not it. Come on, James, you have to know that I love you right now. I don't need some stupid, overly political party to tell me that I'll spend the rest of my life with you."
And in that instant, James can see it—the both of them, starting the family they've only barely dared thinking of, growing old together… He blinks and the vision is gone, but the feelings stay, warm and soft in his chest.
"Well, if that's your way of proposing to me, it really could use some more work," James jokes.
Lily shrugs. "Would you like me to get down on my knee? Because I could, but I think this dress might rip if the shoes don't kill me first."
James laughs. "Maybe just try a ring next time?"
"Duly noted," Lily answers dryly. "Anyway, shouldn't we get going?"
"We should," James replies, but he makes no move to do so.
Lily raises an eyebrow questioningly.
"Did you know," James starts, "that the spell the Ministry uses for their ceremony is actually one you can find rather easily if you have access to, oh, let's say, an old family's library?"
"James Potter, do you mean to tell me that you went looking for that spell?"
"No, Lily, I'm telling you that I found that spell. If, you know, you were interested on skipping out the party and trying it on our own."
Lily's eyes crinkle up as she smiles and toes off her shoes. "I think that's the best idea you've ever had," she replies. "But won't you miss the Ceremony?"
"The 'stupid Ball thing', you mean?" James asks laughingly.
Lily blushes. "Okay, fair, I deserved that. But won't you?" she asks, tugging at James' hand until they half-fall, half-sit on her sofa.
James shrugs, smiling. "I'll read about it in the Prophet. I'd much rather we both had fun than you be miserable all evening. Now come on, do you want to try out that spell?"
Lily looks pensive for a few moments. "You know what? I think I do!"
James' smile spreads on his lips so fast it gets painful. "You ready?"
"No," Lily laughs, "but let's do this."
The words fall from James' lips easily, echoed by Lily less than a second later, and slowly the world around them fades away.
Finally, the incantation ends and James and Lily's hand, where they're wrapped around their wands as they cast the spell, start glowing.
The light is indescriptable, beautiful beyond words.
"Does this mean?" Lily whispers, as though she can't quite believe her own eyes.
"I think so," James replies in much the same tone.
Any other words are lost as they fall into a kiss, their smiles almost too wide to do anything but press their lips against each other's.
"Guess we're soulmates then," Lily finally says.
"Guess so, yeah," James echoes breathlessly.
Their wands fall to the floor with a cluttering sound, but neither of them cares. They have other things to busy themselves with.