Of Flying Motorbikes and Mice Named Gerald, a harry potter fanfic

For TheRavenclawNinja's Love Song Challenge on the HPFFCF. The song is 'Bike' by Pink Floyd.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like.
It's got a basket, a bell that rings  
And things to make it look good.  
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

"JAMES POTTER! What the devil do you think you're doing!"

Lily finds herself saying that a lot.

She pulls out her wand.

"Why, what does it look like, Lily Evans?" He says, teasing, infuriating. "Fancy a ride?"

"No, I do not fancy anything from you, thank you very much. And I would much appreciate it if you would just make that wonderful little motorbike leave so we can please continue with our breakfast, which you and Black so courteously interrupted."

Lily wonders whether James Potter simply does not understand sarcasm, or if he is just doing this to annoy her. She strongly suspects the later.

"Oh, but Lily! Would you ask for something you think is so marvelous to be removed? I know, you secretly love it."

"Oh, yes, a bloody great flying motorbike at breakfast is my favorite thing in the world!"

"Don't worry," he calls as Sirius zooms the bike up towards the ceiling, ignoring McGonagall's shouts and threats. "Your secret's safe with me!"

Lily scowls as he waves, then flies out of the Great Hall, escaping (for the moment) Professor McGonagall.

And then, thanks to James Potter, almost half the eyes in the Great Hall (the ones not on the retreating motorbike and following professor) are on her. This often seems to be the case with James Potter.

Lily sighs and takes a bite of toast and a sip of tea, trying to forget James Bloody Potter and finish her breakfast in peace.

Really, it wasn't bad the way he and Black went flying all around the Great Hall. It would have been entertaining had he not humiliated her in front of everyone. Like he does so much.

But, a small little voice in her head says, sounding suspiciously like Remus, she was the one who started it. Not him. He did not ask her out. He did not tease her. He did nothing except take a ride on a flying motorbike with his best friend.

And she has no idea why it infuriates her so much.

In anyone else's case it would be sweet, really.

But not for Lily Evans and James Potter.

Lily crumples up the note reading, "I went through a lot of trouble for this and the least you could do is give me the unmatchable gift of your company for next Hogsmeade weekend...Sorry I can't give you the real thing, but it's Sirius'."

Such a little for you, such a lot for me.

Yes, it would have been sweet. Had it been anyone else, Lily would be flushing with the pleasure of being wanted by someone so long and badly.

But with James Potter, it just makes her mad. Alice would say that love and hate are two very closely linked emotions. Lily disagrees.

Alice has a similar mindset to James on the matter of Lily's affections.

She places the small motorbike on the night-stand despite herself, and it immediately takes off and zooms around the room uncontrollably, unstoppable. It is silent, but it annoys Lily to no end.

But she cannot bring herself to destroy it.

 You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I've got a cloak it's a bit of a joke.
There's a tear up the front. It's red and black.
I've had it for months.
If you think it could look good, then I guess it should.

Lily is cold. She is cold and more than a little pissed off.

She is alone on a Hogsmeade weekend and there is no one to blame but herself.

She could have tagged along with Alice and Frank, and been awkwardly third-wheel-ish but warm in The Three Broomsticks.

She could have said yes to Matthew Haddon, the Ravenclaw beater with more muscle than brain and eyes that were remarkably pretty for a bloke.

She could have said yes to James Potter.

But instead she is sitting on a log on the edge of the main street through Hogsmeade, cursing the snow that is slowly soaking through the bottom of her robes and her inability to remember a cloak.

But now she cannot go into The Three Broomsticks because according to what Frank and Alice think, she is in Honeydukes, buying her parents a Christmas present. And then, since all of her friends have decided to get themselves dates for this weekend, she is supposed in many different places at once but cannot go into any of them.

Too bad Frank and Alice don't know how much her parents would freak if she got them Honeydukes chocolate, or how Petunia would refuse to try it and ignore her for the rest of the Christmas holidays, or maybe they would be trying to find her. Or at least Alice would.

But instead they are warm and couple-y at The Three Broomsticks, sipping butterbeer and no doubt laughing at James Potter's unashamedly ridiculous flirting with Madam Rosmerta to get them some firewhiskey.

Lily stands up and stomps her feet, muttering a quick charm and pointing her wand at her robes, but the weak little stream of hot air is useless.

So really, no one can blame her when she does not hex James Potter when he walks up to her. No one can blame her for smiling at him. No one can blame her for being happy that James Potter is talking to her.

"You look cold," he says. One hand is holding his cloak tightly around him and the other is holding a bag from Zonko's and he cannot run his fingers through his hair.

Lily wonders what's in the Zonko's bag, and then she realizes that whatever's in there will probably be used for the pranks that she hates. Pranks that she tries very hard not to find funny.

She glances behind him, where Remus and Sirius are wrestling on the frozen ground and Peter is looking between them and James.

"Yes," she says, and she does not even have to resist the urge to add a sarcastic comment. She avoids his eyes. She does not want to see what she knows is there--confusion and a ridiculous amount of hope.

"What're you doing out here alone? Without a cloak?" And in one movement, he's thrown his Zonko's bag at Peter (hitting Sirius with it), given Lily his cloak, and turned to stare at Sirius.

He is smoking slightly. Remus, flushed and smiling, is trying not to laugh.

"Prongs, you bloody great idiot!" Sirius shouts, jumping as Remus hits his hair with the end of his cloak to put out a bit of a fire. "Bloody hell!"

"Sirius, hold still!" Remus cries. "And Pete, get some snow--or--you know, your wand or something!"

"What the bloody hell were you thinking! You do not throw a bag at me filled with--OW!"

Peter has aimed his wand at Sirius' head and fired a very strong jet of freezing cold water at him. Sirius gives a yelp quite like that of a dog and bounds away, diving headfirst into a pile of snow.

James' lips are twitching as he turns his gaze back to Lily. With a strangely unsure expression (for James Potter) he pulls his cloak tightly around her, and she doesn't even pull away when he wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close to his warm, strong body.

She's cold. She doesn't have a choice. And it feels good to be...

Yeah, near him.

Lily knows this is a bit of a problem, but she can't bring herself to snap at him when she is happy and beginning to be warm, wrapped in his cloak and his arms.

"Sorry, it's got a bit of a tear. I've had it for ages, and prank-pulling does tend to be rough on the clothes." His fingers play with the torn black material that is quite close to her stomach but she just can't whack his hand away. It just doesn't feel right to do that, when his eyes are shining like that and his voice is playful, not teasing like she hates, and she is so warm.

"But it looks good on you," he says softly, almost wistfully.

And then, of course, she feels guilty. And then she feels weird that she feels so guilty, because normally she wouldn't care that James Potter was cold, and whatever else he was that made him look at her like that.

"But aren't you cold?" She asks, trying to keep her voice neutrally cool.

"Nah, I'm fine. Why were you sitting there, anyways?"

"I..." Lily glances at him, then regrets it. "Er...it's a long story." She looks at his friends, and Sirius, slightly singed, is staring at them with his mouth open, Peter is smiling a bit, and Remus just looks incredibly confused and almost indignant, and he raises an eyebrow at her when she looks at him. She shrugs noncommittally, knowing she'll have hell to pay for this later but not really caring.

She also knows she's being a filthy hypocrite, but she tries not to think of that, either.

"We can walk. Let's go back to the common room, get warm."

"Okay."

James gives Sirius a look that Lily cannot understand, but he nods and grabs Remus with one arm and Peter with the other and stalks off into the opposite direction, cuffing Peter on the side of the head and then rubbing his own painfully.

"Does that happen a lot?" Lily asks, hardly even noticing how his hand is running up and down her arm until it stops when she speaks. He looks a bit sheepish.

"Er. Yes. Things like it. Sirius tends to get the brunt of it."

Lily laughs. She laughs at something James Potter has said. She laughs with him. At something he said. About Sirius Black.

She stops laughing because she is so shocked.

He looks about as taken aback as she is. It takes him a few seconds to recover, and then he shakes his head slightly.

"So, care to answer my question?" His tone is a bit guarded.

"Yes. Right. I, er...basically, um..." she felt like anything she said would just be awfully embarassing. "Well...Alice had a date with Frank, and...everyone else was...busy."

"With dates?"

"With dates. Yes."

"And why weren't you?"

Lily thinks for a second. She wonders what exactly he means. And she wonders if the absence of his usual cockiness is all him or helped, in part or all, by her strange feelings.

"Not with me," he adds quickly. "Anyone else. I heard that Haddon asked you." He frowns.

"How'd you know about that?" The only people she'd told was Alice and...

"Remus." He looks slightly abashed.

"Oh. Yes, of course." She is quite used to the amount of surprising things she's done in the last ten minutes, and not being angry at Remus for telling him this is just another.

"Well, if I were you, I'd rather get frostbite sitting naked in the middle of Hogsmeade than go on a date with Matthew Haddon."

"Why's that?"

"He's...a giant prat? Stupid, really, and once he hit Sirius with his bat so hard he had to be in the Hospital Wing for a week and a half."

"If I remember correctly, that was because Sirius insulted him."

"His lack of brains, yes. Honestly! He could have been permanently damaged."

Lily cannot help laughing because the idea of Sirius Black with permanent brain damage is just something that you have to laugh at.

"Not that it would have made much a a difference," Lily says, and the way she says it is not nasty and taunting, like she would before, but playful, like his tone earlier.

James smiles, pushes her a bit. "Tell me about it. I'll be laughing at his head on fire for a long time."

And Lily Evans realizes that she will be too, in exactly the same way James does--as a friend. She also realizes that she likes James Potter quite a bit when he's not being a prat, but also that little epiphany will have to wait.

 You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house.
I don't know why I call him Gerald.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.

Lily tries to hide a mouse from Professor McGonagall.

She'd rescued it from Transfiguration right before lunch, where it had narrowly escaped being turned into a teacup.

It was just so...cute. And also, quite irritating, and difficult to hide when it felt like scampering all around the lunch table and scaring little first-years.

And Remuses. Well, not scaring so much as being scared by, but same difference really.

"Lily? Why is your mouse on Pete' head?" Remus looks slightly uncomfortable, whether it's due to her unexpected presence at their end of the table or the mouse's on Peter's head she doesn't know.

"Suppose it feels a sense of kinship," Sirius smirks, only to be smacked on the head by James.

Peter yelps and hits the top of his head furiously, but only succeeds in giving himself a big bruise, and missing the mouse.

But when it leaps off Peter's head it lands on Remus' plate, takes one look at him, and dives into Lily's arms.

"What's bitten it?" Lily wonders.

Remus shrugs, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Doesn't like me, I guess."

Lily frowns. "I guess."

But then James jumps in, simultaneously diverting the attention from Remus and speaking tolerably to her, and leans in from where he was sitting (slightly unbelievably) across from her.

"Has he got a name?" He asks, with a small grin and his hair falling into his eyes. He pushes his glasses up his nose and gazes at her with open hazel eyes.

Lily sighs. She wonders when they've gone from yelling and hexing each other (or rather, her hexing him) to being in the awkward sort-of-friends stage that should be awkward but isn't.

"I dunno. Haven't named him yet."

"Mind if I do?"

She shrugs. "Okay."

"Lily," Remus says. "I do not advise that. James does not have a gift with names."

"Hey! Prongs was your idea."

"It was a joke." Remus rolls his eyes at Lily. "You just grabbed it right away..."

"I liked the connotations," he says, waggling his eyebrows. Remus laughs in a sort of okay you be ridiculous if you want way, and exchanges a glance with Sirius when Lily chuckles a bit.

She can't help it. It was funny.

And a month ago, it would have been completely infuriating, yeah?

Lily sighs again. She wonders where her sanity has gone. But then, when she looks back at James, all messy black hair and an expression on his face that anyone would call adorable, she decides it doesn't matter.

"I think..." James ponders for a moment. "Gerald. There. See? Normal--not too normal, mind you--but just normal enough so that Moony's happy. Okay?"

Lily smiles. "Sure. Gerald."

"I think it fits," Remus says. "He's getting rather old--I wonder how long he's been traumatized in Transfiguration. Maybe it wasn't me he was scared of after all--maybe it was my teacup. And Gerald's a bit of an old name, so...James, you have outdone yourself." He looks rather proud, in an odd sort of way.

James fakes an overly proud look. "Oh, Moony, how you make me swoon!"

"Oh, Prongs, how you make me proud!" Remus counters, and Lily drops her fork so she can duck under the table to stop them from seeing her laughing.

 You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I've got a clan of gingerbread men.
Here a man, there a man, lots of gingerbread men.
Take a couple if you wish
They're on the dish.

"Lily Evans, will you do me the honor of accompanying me to the kitchens?"

It is late at night in the Gryffindor common room. There are no people around. It is just them.

Lily stares at the almost-out fire and wonders which feels warmer--the fire or James sitting next to her on the cushiest sofa in the common room.

It is different. It almost feels like the first time he's ever asked her.

"Yeah, okay," she says with a smile, and everything is worth the look on his face, the utterly happy look on his face.

Lily marvels that she can do that. She can make him happy.

Maybe she likes that a little too much.

"Chocolate, chocolate muffins, chocolate cake, chocolate puddings, dear lord, the elves have really outdone themselves. I suppose they're used to me coming here with Moony--ridiculous chocolate addiction, really."

James turns around, motions for Lily to follow him. "Haven't you ever been here before?" He asks, slightly concerned. After all, for Lily Evans not to have visited the Hogwarts kitchens at least once in seven years, well. James really can't think of anything to say to that.

"Of course I've been here before. We Prefects aren't as perfect as you think." She is uncomfortable for some reason, but she knows it has nothing to do with him. She has no idea what she's doing, and it scares her.

"Really? I had no idea. I mean, I'm friends with Remus, after all, the worst Prefect in the history of Prefects. Mischievous bugger," he adds affectionately.

Lily smiles. It's something she hadn't known about James Potter, something that makes her like him even more: his friends. Yes, Sirius was obnoxious, but he was Sirius Black, and there was never a dull moment with him around. Peter was just nice to be around, easy to talk to--and Remus, of course, who she used to think was the only decent one in the group, with only one fault: his choice in friends.

How wrong she was.

But there is just something about how James is with Remus--more gentle than with Sirius, nicer than he is to Peter--no pranks, no teasing, except good-naturedly. And even a bit of protectiveness that Lily attributed to James just being James and maybe Remus just being sick so often, or whatever was wrong with him.

"So?" James asks, grabbing two butterbeers offered by an elf. "Anything you want, particularly?"

Lily takes a bottle and opens it, takes a small sip. "Well...I was having the strangest craving for gingerbread men. Weird, really, they probably don't even have them..."

James holds up a hand. "Wait a moment." He slips away, seeming to be almost swallowed by the sea of house elves.

Lily sits in a cushy armchair, in Gryffindor colors, whose presence in the kitchens she strongly suspects has something to do with a certain group of four boys.

One of whom is grinning widely, plopping down into another chair, and holding a plate out to her.

"Take a few," he urges, and Lily just smiles for a second, allows her eyes to gaze at his face for a few moments.

She wonders, again, if it is him or her that's changed.

Maybe it's both.

She takes a bite of the soft, warm cookie. They even have little faces painted on in candy and frosting.

"Mm. How'd you manage this?" She asks.

James finishes chewing before he answers. "House elves are amazing creatures, if you know how to ask them," he says.

"Wait--what'd you do to..." Lily trails off before she finishes, realizing that what she's about to say is not relevant at all anymore.

"What do you take me for?" James grins, but still, Lily catches the tiniest hint of disappointment in his eyes. "Thought that'd changed."

"I'm sorry," Lily whispers, looking at her gingerbread man sadly. "It has."

"Well, then," James says cheerily, "let's move on. What's this with the gingerbread men?"

Lily, once again, blinks, trying to take in just how wonderful James Potter is.

"I dunno, silly, really. I used to make them as a kid. Me and Tu--Petunia would make them, decorate them, and such...I'm just being nostalgic, I suppose." Lily stops talking when she realizes that James is staring at her with a strangely blank expression on his face. "James?"

He jumps, grins, apologizes. "Sorry. Just...er. Distracted. By, um. Anyways."

Lily can't help being confused, but she feels that she owes James, so she looks around for a change of subject.

"James?" She asks faintly. "Did you do this?"

James, whose cheeks had turned a faint pink, looks around when she speaks. "What? Oh. No. No, I didn't."

They both stare as the gingerbread men, one at a time, slowly rise, as if waking from sleep, and walk in an orderly line around the plate once, and start a sort of jig.

Lily laughs softly, shortly, glances at James from under her eyelashes.

"Hey! How come when I do a prank, you--you know, hex me--and when some random something does you laugh? That is supremely unfair."

But Lily laughs even louder. "It's probably just the surrounding magic of Hogwarts--it sees something human-shaped and decides to make it walk."

"And do a jig."

"Yes, of course. Where would we be without that?" Lily gestures at the cookies, and James smiles, an oddly contented smile for him.

And it is then that Lily realizes that James Potter, no matter how arrogant he seems, no matter how confident he looks, is never truly happy with himself.

She wonders if part of that is her fault.

James grabs a dancing gingerbread and breaks it in half, ignoring Lily's cry of outrage when it stops moving, and offers half to her--who, despite her cry of outrage, eats it.

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

 I know a room full of musical tunes.

Some rhyme, some ching, most of them are clockwork.
Let's go into the other room and make them work.

"So," James says. "Where to now?"

Lily thinks of going back to her dormitory and frowns. "Let's not go back to the common room."

"Yes," James agrees, slightly absently, looking at her from the sides of his eyes as if she is about to disappear.

"James?" Lily says tentatively.

"Yes?"

"You know...I'm not going to run off on you."

"Aren't you?"

Lily does not like the look of dejected surprise on his face. She does not like it at all.

"No, of course not. I agreed to come here, didn't I?"

"Yes. Yes, I suppose you did." This brings a smile out of him, and they smile at each other for a few seconds, and it is incredibly corny, and Lily is just thinking that, when she tells Alice this, she is sure to make an annoyingly big deal out of it, and, if James tells his friends, they will surely take the mickey out of him, when they hear footsteps.

"What time is it?" She asks James, whispering, stepping back towards the wall.

"One," he says, glancing at his wrist. "Too late?"

Lily frowns. Why is he so completely unconcerned about a teacher, and, by the sound of the sharp clicks on the stone, Professor McGonagall, coming towards them?

"I know you're used to this sort of thing, but I'm sorry I don't have much experience," Lily says, and takes a moment to worry about whether he'll not like her if she shows how she doesn't sneak out that much, how she's not at all competent at dodging teachers, but would rather break down and admit all her wrongs to them.

But she is being ridiculous, and she knows this, even while she's thinking it.

"Don't worry," he says, and flings something like a cloak over them, pulling her silently along in the opposite direction as the footsteps. Lily notices he is bending down somewhat, so he is closer to her height.

After a few minutes and many stairs, James flings a door open and they are in a smallish room, complete with couches and more than a few sweet wrappers on the floor.

Lily looks up as James pulls the cloak off of her, but then he is not there.

"James?" She asks. She spins around, but then feels a hand on her shoulder. She jumps.

"Lily."

He is standing there, with a strange, silvery looking cloak dangling from one hand, and the other resting on her arm. He quickly withdraws that one, and instead stuffs the cloak into his robes.

"What's that?" She asks. "And where are we?" She looks around and notices more details about the room--there are posters up, mostly about Quidditch, but one with the phases of the moon on it. There are Gryffindor colors, and there is a family tree that has only three names on it, with the rest burn marks, as if someone has blasted them away angrily.

"That," James sighs, "was an Invisibility Cloak. This is the Room of Requirement. And that," he adds, seeing Lily looking at the family tree, "is Sirius venting his anger."

Three of his secrets (or two, one of Sirius') and Lily feels like she does not belong. But then she glances at James and that feeling disappears almost completely.

Lily steps closer to the tree, and sees that the three names are Sirius Black, Andromeda Black, and Alphard Black. She looks at James questioningly.

"His mum blasted him off the family tree at his house when he ran away two summers ago to my house. Andromeda's engaged to a Muggle-born. Alphard gave Pads some money, and he'd never been as evil as the rest of them. I think he made Sirius' mum be a bit...well, less evil. Didn't do much, but..." He shrugs.

Lily feels a strange surge of affection for Sirius Black. It scares her almost more than this liking of James Potter.

She nods. "Is that a real Invisibility Cloak?" She asks, looking towards where he had stowed it away in his robes.

"Yeah."

"Where'd you get it? I thought they were very rare." Lily does not think before she reaches for it--all she thinks is that she would like to see it. But she reaches her hand into James' robes anyways, her fingers gently pushing his robes apart. She stops when he shivers slightly and moves to grab the Cloak for her to see.

She blushes slightly, but runs the Cloak through her fingers in awe.

"My dad gave it to me. It's been passed on through the family."

"Are you going to give it to your kids?" The question is supposed to be innocent, but their eyes meet and Lily blushes even harder, while James just gives her a small half-smile.

"I hope so," is all he says.

Suddenly, the room and its contents do not seem at all important to Lily. Neither does the Cloak, and she lets it fall through her fingers. James does not even notice. He breathes her name and she feels a slight shiver go through her.

James is not moving, so she reaches up and wraps her hands around the back of his neck. Their eyes meet, and Lily sees James' honest eyes turn slightly darker.

James still does not move. She lets her breath out slowly. She knows why he is still, why his hands are dangling at his sides, why his eyes are slightly scared and slightly hopeful.

Lily Evans stands on her tiptoes and presses her lips gently but firmly to James Potter's.

Her eyes are closed but she feels him sigh softly, feels his hands brush across her hair and his thumb stroke her cheekbone.

James pulls away, after a second. Lily's eyes are still closed, and she can feel a ridiculous smile on her face, but she does not care one bit.

James' hands are shaking slightly and he will not look her in the eyes. It scares her a bit, because James always seemed so strong--annoyingly strong, sometimes--and this, this utter weakness, not of body, but of...something else...it scares her. Especially since it is because of her.

"James?"

"Yes?"

"I think I'm--wait no, that's not right. James Potter, I am...completely, madly in love with you."

James all but beams, his expression clearing, and Lily's mouth curves up involuntarily.

"Well, that's good, because I'm completely, madly in love with you too, Lily Evans."

And his eyes are light hazel again, honest and open and clear and full of what must be love. He leans down, kisses her again.

So Lily kisses him back.