Narcissa is Winter.
James has known this from the moment he first spied the youngest Black sister, trailing along like a wraith behind her psychotic sister. Where Bellatrix and Sirius are wild and untamable and passionate about everything, Narcissa is a mystery, a riddle shrouded in big blue eyes with curtains of silver-threaded golden hair that shines with ice. She is the perfect little pureblood princess, the epitome of Slytherin. All poise and grace and ethereal beauty that screams stay away or freeze. He saw her for the first time on the platform to Hogwarts, his first year. She trailed after two Black sisters like an elf, a tiny goddess that was perfect in every way. The thought makes made him ache.
He should hate her.
Really, in all actuality, he should. Because Sirius says she's trouble and Gryffindors can't ever be seen associating with Slytherins and those big sapphires are just like the lake in the dead of winter: frozen solid. No emotion. Nothing but Black pride and pureblood supremacy and the ideals of her motherfathersister crammed into a tiny elfin skull. Sirius warns him away with tales of what Bellatrix – the insane one, the psycho, the loose-cannon – does in defense of her baby sister's honor.
And for a time the tales work.
James does not think of what it would be like to have her body pressed against every inch of his. He doesn't stare at her during Double Potions, doesn't try to catch a glimpse of her pristine platinum head in the middle of the Slytherin table during meals. He focuses on the Marauders, his brothers, and trying to give Minerva McGonagall a coronary before her tenure at Hogwarts comes to an end. There is ice in his heart, and Sirius's tales ring in his head.
There is a girl in his year, a redhead, a Gryffindor with a bonfire inside her soul and springtime in her eyes. Maybe the heat in this girl, this Lily Evans (Muggleborn) will be enough to thaw him out, warm him to his toes like a hot bath.
But the further he sinks into the heat the more he craves the ice.
He craves a crisp winter morning, that blast of fresh air after a snowfall that knocks the breath from your lungs and leaves you gasping in wonder. He craves the caress of a still day that hasn't quite woken up yet. The dawn that breaks just over the horizon that reflects off fresh pristine ice, the early morning that blinds you with its beauty and makes everything else – even summer – seem bleak by comparison. James is running through coals; Narcissa is the water to soothe the burn.
Narcissa is the water laced with nightshade, the water he shouldn't want.
And that is how James spends his third year, stealing glances across the Great Hall at a girl that he shouldn't want no matter how much he is burning. No matter how quickly his skin chars, blisters, chemicals that are just so Gryffindor scorching his in his bloodstream. He masks the burn well, with the practiced ease of one who has suffered for longer than they care to admit. James Potter is a damn good actor and prankster and he masks his pain by inflicting it on another, a Slytherin with greasy hair and a giant nose. It gets the attention of Evans. It makes her spark and spit and blast flame like a bonfire.
The burn hurts so good it might just distract him from the approaching Winter.
Fourth year rolls around and James wonders how he's still alive, why he isn't a blackened corpse on the floor of his family's home. Padfoot and Moony and Wormtail stay the same as well. They play a game, these Marauders, these brothers in House and everything but blood. They tell each other every-damn-thing over bottles of filched butterbeer and firewhiskey in the dead of night. The common room smells of the fireplace and the heavy scent of Padfoot's illegal cigarettes. It's a choking cloying thing, and even while he smiles James feels like he's suffocating.
He casually throws open a window and lets the October wind blast him in the face.
Winter is coming.
James doesn't like foreshadows. Doesn't believe in them. But he feels excitement for the first time in a while.
"Oi, Prongs! What the bloody hell do you have that window open for?" Padfoot calls.
"Nothing, Padfoot," comes the smooth reply. "Bit stuffy in here's all."
The lie comes so easily, so smoothly, and for a moment James wonders if he should've been in Slytherin like the Sorting Hat suggested after all. On the breeze he smells pine trees and that distinct smell that the lake gives off and he wonders if Winter tastes as good as it smells.
Quidditch distracts him for a time. So does pranking, but it's nothing compared to a good long exhausting spin around the field. He's high in the air, he's flying through the cold and smelling the pine trees and water and it burns his lungs – but it's a cold burn so he doesn't mind – and for once in his miserable infatuated existence James is free. Leave it to a couple of solid Bludgers to the head to take your mind off a girl you'll never have.
Then it happens. It, the thing James has been craving since he saw that perfect little elfin Slytherin princess on Platform 9 ¾. He is playing Slytherin, of course, the hated Snakes that take the House Cup almost every year and Professor Slughorn is damn annoying about it. But this year is different. He knows it, feels it in his bones. The air is cold and damp and his glasses are fogging but everything is crystalline in clarity. Regulus is the Seeker for the other team, Padfoot's baby brother with a similar face but different ideals.
And James is better than this pureblood elitist git.
The game is swinging, back and forth and back again. He needs to catch the Snitch. He's looking about so hard it makes his head almost hurt. Movement draws his attention, quick darting movement, almost like an insect. There it is, the Snitch, and Regulus hasn't spotted it. Damn he's good.
James blasts off, willing his broom to hit lightspeed with all his might as the stands and the Snitch and victory approach as fast as they possibly can. Then he sees where he's headed and time. Fucking. STOPS.
Narcissa Black in all her Slytherin glory is staring at him with those sapphire eyes that sparkle and the Snitch is headed right for her. He can't pull up now. Not when victory is so close. And people are screaming, shouting, throwing encouragement and insults and taunts and war-cries. But he can't hear them. Because all he can hear is the blood pounding in his ears as his hand closes around the golden sphere that feels like success. And the whisper of an angel that sounds like
"I knew you could do it . . ."
And then he's in the stands. James is in the Slytherin stands after just catching the Snitch and his head is pounding. Everything hurts. People are screaming. Fists pound his torso – probably Malfoy and McNair and his gits – and feet kick his legs. But he has the fucking Snitch and Narcissa looked at him so it doesn't matter.
Then tiny elfin hands haul him to his feet and James is standing once more, hand in the air. The stadium erupts. But he's more focused on the petite body pressed tightly against him. It's cold and austere, wrapped in silk despite it being the middle of February, and he catches the subtle scent of mint and licorice.
James knows it's Narcissa.
"Meet me in the third floor corridor at midnight." It's a whisper, barely enough for him to make out above the din. But James nods anyways, grips his broom, and flies away like it never happened. Instinct tells him that's how it should be. The instincts of a Potter are rarely wrong so he listens closely.
The next several hours pass in a blur of screaming, butterbeer, Padfoot and Moony and Wormtail clapping him on the back endlessly, firsties being levitated by their ankles, vomiting in the corner, and The Rolling Stones on repeat. James doesn't feel trapped here. No, he feels suspended in space, drifting out in the open sea with beer foam spraying him in the face. But eventually the party reaches such a frenzy he's able to grab his invisibility cloak and sneak through the portrait without any problem.
It's nearly midnight.
He doesn't wish to be late, not for this one.
The clock strikes twelve like in Cinderella and James is standing in the cold corridor on the third floor of Hogwarts. It is his fourth year and It has happened without warning. The big meaty organ beating in his chest feels like it could explode from pounding. Idly, the thought that Filch might hear his heartbeat before Narcissa even gets her. Damn that would be unfortunate.
Then she emerges from the shadows like an angel of Death, a vision in silver and emerald that makes the sapphire of her eyes glow. Her hair is spun sunshine, that thin sunshine you find on Christmas morning as day breaks. And James falls in love all over again even though Sirius says she's trouble and she's a Slytherin and logic dictates that this is fucking stupid.
"I see you watching me." There's no pre-empt, no tip-toeing around the issue. She's very like her courageous cousin in that moment: blunt and to the point.
"Who doesn't want to watch you?" James responds casually. He can smell her on the air, that lovely mix of cool mint and licorice. It soothes the burn that has been plaguing him since the Sorting Hat screamed "Gryffindor!"
Narcissa steps forward, arms crossed, and shivers. Immediately, automatically, James wraps his arms around her tiny waist. It's a perfect fit. The perfect Winter princess leans into his chest and murmurs something about being cold. Irony must be laughing his ass off because while he craved the cold, it's obvious that his faery craves the heat.
So when aurora-stained hair brushes past his chin and frozen-lake eyes stare up at him, James doesn't hesitate to lean down and capture her perfect pink lips with his own.
They taste like strawberries and snowflakes and mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.
James must have hit Heaven, Nirvana, and Elysium as his world explodes with the contact. He knows now. This is wrong and the stars have crossed – like Romeo and Juliet – but he doesn't give a flying fuck what the constellations are saying right now. All that matters was he was cool. Nothing burned. Everything was soothed and perfect and wonderful and it just felt so damn right his head was spinning.
He pulls away and grins, that lopsided easy grin he's known for, but this time it isn't faked. It's perfectly genuine. Oh God, this angel was going to be the death of him, he can just feel it. But death doesn't seem so scary now that he's looking at her.
Narcissa smiles at him and it's beautiful, so beautiful. She leans in closer. Dainty fingers clasp around his wrists and James is spiraling downward in a broken mess of nerves and unreasonable love. That perfect perfume of spearmint and licorice and pine trees floats around them like Amortencia. For the first time in forever, he feels at home.
She is so tiny and petite it makes him ache. James draws her close to him, keeps her tiny body tucked under his chin and pressed against the cable-knit sweater his mum sent him for Christmas. Narcissa hums under her breath. The sound vibrates on still cold winter air.
"I don't understand you," she whispers.
"I'll never be able to understand you," he replies.
But – for fuck's sake – does he really want to? That would ruin the mystery, remove the ethereal quality from his Slytherin beauty. Narcissa laughs a laugh that makes his heart ache. There is broken glass in it, broken glass from a shattered heart, and he wishes that he could put the pieces back together.
"I've wanted you to see me since that first time on Platform 9 ¾," James confesses.
"I didn't think you saw me," she answered quietly. "I thought you were looking at Bella."
James shakes his head, smiling at the adorable little Slytherin princess ensconced in his arms. "Never: your psycho sister can't hold a candle to how beautiful you are."
A pretty blush stains Narcissa's cheeks. Maybe the heat has finally seeped under her skin after all.
Because even though Narcissa is the Winter, James is the Summer.
They are antithesis, opposites, black on white and Yin on Yang.
What a wonderful strange way to spend eternity, James thinks. He doesn't know what's going to happen in the future, how things will look within the next few years. But at this point all his fucks are spent. The stars can cross for all he cares. All that matters is Narcissa pressed against his front and the constellations twinkling outside the castle as Winter approaches.
It is a wonderfully fucked way to spend eternity.
Because James loves the Winter far more than he loves Summer.