A/N: So this is my first story here and whilst I'm excited I'm not sure how I feel about it... I would love some constructive criticism, but no flames please! Thanks.
Disclaimer: Hahaha, no.
When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Her friends were convinced she had gone mad. Unexpectedly, in the middle of Transfiguration, she had put down her quill with a gasp, clamped her hand over her mouth and stopped.
Stopped writing, stopped talking, stopped listening. She just stared. Stared at the scruffy haired boy with the glasses sitting in front of her.
They waved a hand in front of her face, she didn't see it. They passed her notes, she didn't answer them. And at the end of the lesson, they had to admit something was very wrong with their dear friend. But she shook herself when the bell rang and collected her things, walking out with them like normal.
They all asked her what was wrong. She just smiled and shook her head.
This continued throughout the week, and they watched her closely. They saw how whenever he entered the room, she caught her breath. She was always rushing off to spend time with him, coming back breathless and excited. They saw how she woke up during the night, heart pounding, a smile on her face, and how she was unable to go to sleep afterwards.
They declared that she was in love with him, earning them a blush and a denial, a feeble attempt compared to previous years, where she compared him to an idiotic pig that had never had a bath in his entire life.
When she walked past him in the corridors, she would whisper "I was wrong about you" but he would never hear.
During their patrols, she would walk close to him, just to feel his body heat, and hope against hope that one day he would hold her in his arms.
When he greeted his girlfriend with a kiss on the lips, she would bite her own bottom lip, and imagine it was she he was kissing, not her.
But she missed all the signs.
She missed the way he would hear her, as they brushed by each other in the corridors, and would then turn around, wondering if he actually had heard right. But she was always gone.
During patrols, he would be tensing all his muscles and breathing through his mouth, preventing him from scooping her up and holding her close to him, and being tempted by the way she smelt.
And she would miss how whenever he kissed his girlfriend, he imagined it was she, and afterwards, searched for her face, hoping that she would forgive him.
And he too, missed all the signs.
Their friends didn't though. His best friend told him he was mad, and that after all these years, she had finally fallen for him.
This just resulted in him flirting with her in front of the school, and she walked away angrily, after yet another roof-raising argument in which they both tried to tear out the heart of the other.
She didn't see the pain that flashed across his face when she ripped him to shreds.
Her best friend told her that she needed to find him and tell him, and that he had never been faking it.
This resulted in her rushing to his room, only to find her up there, gushing about the beautiful jewellery that he had given her the day previously. Suffice to say, she ran back down the stairs after she heard him kiss her.
It all came to a head one day, when she shrieked at him about not doing his Head Boy duties because he was too busy spending time with his girlfriend, when really she was hurt and angry that he fancied her and chose her. He retaliated, cutting into her heart scathingly about her inability to love and feel anything for someone other than herself, when really he just wanted her to tell him that she loved him, and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.
But neither of them could read between the lines where the other was concerned, and both stormed off to opposite sides of the castle, anger rolling off them like tempestuous waves.
Because that was what they did.
Ever since they had met each other at the bright and impressionable age of 11, they had argued with each other over trivial topics. As they got older, those topics turned less trivial, and more serious, until neither one could look at the other without anyone noticing the sexual tension that was thick and cloying in the air.
They were stuck in a repetitive cycle of fighting, ignoring each other, and then becoming tentative friends, until one of them couldn't handle the close proximity and spontaneously combusted.
That night she cried herself to sleep, and he paced back and forth in his room, frustrating his friends, at who he yelled, unleashing his frustrations with life.
Then one day, the winds changed. Everyone could smell the change in the air, and the promises it brought.
She sat down beside him at breakfast, and asked him to pass the jam. He did. They both reached for the milk at the same time, fingers brushing, and she laughed. He paused. He had never heard her laugh around him before, and he was mesmerized. He couldn't stop staring, and she blushed when she caught him, asking if she had something on her face. He didn't answer, her peals of laughter still ringing in his ears. She shoved him playfully, reveling in the touch, and giggled, as he shook his head like a dog coming out of water.
Their friends didn't understand it. They weren't fighting. They were, dare they say it, getting along? He helped her with Defense Against the Dark Arts, she helped him with Potions. She sat with him in Transfiguration, and then Arithmancy. She teased him about his fan girls, and he teased her about her tendency to be late. They were becoming friends.
It seemed that they had gotten out of the horrible cycle of hate, ignore, befriend, and were now heading along an uncharted path.
And when he caught her crying in the corridor beside the statue of some ugly troll they were meant to know the name of but didn't, he sat beside her, and held her. She turned into his embrace and held onto his robes for dear life. When he kissed her on the head, she thought she could die right there and she would be content.
But this friendship was not all they both wanted, and so they fell back into arguing. This time instead of having little undercurrents of need and want and desire, there were huge rivers in their arguments. They were surrounded with a deluge of love and hate, and could not float much longer, so they did the only thing they thought was possible and decided to leave each other alone.
But this didn't help things, and only made it worse. She stared at him in all her lessons, and her grades fell through the floor. He gave up pranking, and couldn't even think clearly around her.
In the Transfiguration classroom, he stopped her and asked her why they couldn't be friends. She told him she couldn't do it, when she needed more to be able to breathe. He stepped back, shocked. She mistook his silence for thinking that he did not have any feelings other than friendship for her, and when he realized what had happened, wasted no time in sprinting after her.
He caught up with her outside the library and finally allowed himself the one thing he had wanted to do since he had realized he was in love with her 2 years previously. He kissed her, and it was oh so good, and everything they had ever imagined and more and more and more. When he pulled away and rested his head against hers, she sighed and clutched onto him, as if afraid he would run away.
He didn't go anywhere, but instead pulled her closer and finally, they were at peace.
And when he whispered "Marry me, Lily," in her ear as they studied in the library, she stopped what she was doing with a gasp and put down her quill. She stopped writing, stopped talking and turned around. She stared. Stared at the mature, scruffy haired man sitting beside her. He stared back, and when he thought she wasn't going to answer, she leaned in and murmured against his lips, "You didn't have to ask, James."