Disclaimer: Not Mine.
AN: I'm sick of everyone thinking that James is so misunderstood by Lily. That he's capable of little evil and lacks bad judgment, apart from all those pranks. If you haven't caught on yet, I think he's made bad decisions, and isn't as innocent as people think. I don't place it bellow him to use an unforgivable curse. In fact, I don't put it bellow him to use an unforgivable on Lily, his precious Lily.
But other then that, it's your same old same old Lily loves James, James loves Lily story.
"The key to human to animal transfiguration…" Lily couldn't pay attention anymore, regardless of how hard she tried. She was just too tired.
It had happened again last night, that horrible thing she couldn't get rid of, no matter how much she tried. This time, it was worse.
She was on patrol with James when he made a joke and they both laughed. When she looked at him after her fit ended, he was smiling this soft smile that spoke of care and happiness and love.
Lily felt a tug on her heart that urged her to lean forward and press her lips to his and tell him "yes" to the question he had stopped asking a year ago. But she had ignored that instinct for so long that it didn't make an impact. It was the fact that she could see that he wanted to, too.
There was a silence, not uncomfortable, but filled with tension and the irrefutable change that was about to happen. They had balanced in the middle of a delicate relationship for too long and now was the deciding factor between two futures.
James and Lily stood in the corridor, eyes locked. Slowly and cautiously, James raised his hand and rested it on the side of Lily's neck, his thumb stroking her cheek.
"Lily, breathe."
She did, and she processed the fact that James was going to kiss her and she really didn't mind. At this point, she just wanted him to get on with it and do it. When he leaned down and pressed her to him with his other hand on her lower back, she titled her head and met him half way.
It really was better then she had expected. All that tension finally gone, passion taking its place as James walked her backwards into a wall and continued kissing her.
He trailed his mouths down the side of her neck, only pausing long enough to whisper in her ear, "You can have all of this, Lily. You're the one who won't let me love you."
James disintegrated into dust and Lily collapsed into a heap on the corridor floor, sobbing.
It was then she woke up, crying and with an ache deep in her heart. It wasn't the first time she'd had a dream like that one, but it had definitely been the worst.
It was that dream that she was obsessing about in Transfiguration class when she just couldn't pay attention anymore, because that dream was so wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time.
James Potter certainly wasn't helping either. He was sitting right in front of her, tipping back in his chair ever so slightly with his hair strewn about his head so carelessly. He was spinning his wand, clearly not paying attention to the lesson.
He really was beautiful, as cheesy as that sounds, she couldn't help thinking. He was just being him, purely him.
"No, James. Really, you've asked me a hundred times, what makes you think the next hundred are going to be any different?"
"Just see were I'm coming from Lily." James practically spit across the common room.
"It's Evans, to you. I'm trying to see this from your point of view, but I just can't get my head that far up my arse." Lily smirked, evidently pleased with her insult.
"Ouch, Lily. "
"Whatever Potter. It isn't like your ego can't sustain as petty a blow as I can give." Lily started to gather her books, her papers falling to the floor in her haste. She hurried to pick them up, but James bent down and grabbed one at his feet.
At first glance, there was nothing special about it. Notes, they looked like. Notes from Transfiguration. On further inspection, he saw something else though. Something that he thought wasn't there at all. He blinked. No, still there.
It was him. Well, the back of him at least. His shoulders, and his head, and his hair that Lily complained about so much. Lily. He looked up at her.
She was frozen, the fire lighting her pale skin eerily. "Crap" was the only thought that was going through her mind. She must have drawn it in transfiguration while she was daydreaming. Crap. Life seemed to suddenly retake her, and she flushed a deep red.
"Lily, what is this?"
James was cut off as she blurted, "I Gottago." Before she turned on her heels and swiftly made to run out of James company. As she took a step, her shin collided painfully with the coffee table.
Surging forward, James gripped her upper arm, pulling her to her feet.
"Don't touch me." Her voice was filled with venom.
"Lily, lets talk about this," James pleaded.
"Potter, let me go. NOW. You decided to end our friendship when you asked me that infernal question."
"Lily, you know it's happening. We've been friends for a year, Lily. A year! Tell me you haven't felt anything in a year. You can't just sit here, pretend its not, and ignore it!"
"Yes we can, James. I've done it for years."
James couldn't decided what surprised him more, the fact that he wasn't just imagining it, or that Lily just admitted repressing, well, he wasn't quite sure, but repressing something. Lily had gotten to her feet, and wrenched her arm out of James' grip.
She was halfway to the stairs leading up to her dormitory when James shouted, "LILY!" She just turned and smiled sadly before continuing to the stairs.
"Lily! Lily, talk to me!" James continued to beg her, unable to find the strength to go to her. He felt glued to the floor. But that wasn't the worst part of it, not at all. The worst part was that she was walking away from not just him, but them. He had walked around for years with the image of them in his head, and to some unknown extent she had too. He had clung on to any pitiful shred of hope that he could find that them could even exist while his friends told him to just let it go. But he hadn't listened to them, just dreamt what they could be. He should have listened to them. But she could just walk away from all the possibilities he saw. All that possibility, it couldn't just mean nothing to her.
And then he felt something snap. Maybe it was his sanity, maybe his discretion. But the cause was irrefutable. It was the fact that she could so easily give them up without a second thought.
"Imperio!"
He really didn't know why he did it, but he knew he didn't regret it.
Lily felt the spell hit her back, though the only reason she knew what spell it was, was because she had heard James yelling it. She wouldn't have known it any other way. The feeling was unlike anything else. She was more relaxed then she had ever been, all sense of responsibility and the desire to escape left her. Her mind seemed fuzzy.
This must be what it's like to feel drunk, she thought to herself.
The fact that James had Imperio-ed her lost all of its effect. Whatever he wanted, she would unquestionably act on.
"Lily, turn around and look at me." His voice was unlike she had ever heard. Aggressive, controlling, and unnaturally calm at the same time.
As she turned around, she saw him with his body stiff, eye closed, and hands curled tight by his sides. He took a deep breath before speaking.
"Lily I don't want to talk to some Imperio-ed zombie. Be yourself. Think like yourself. But don't act like yourself, because at this point I don't think I'd handle another rejection well."
Some of the fuzz that muffled her natural thoughts melted away, and that fact that James had used an Unforgivable sunk in a little deeper, but not enough to cause Lily panic.
"I really hate to do this to you Lily, don't think I don't. But you don't listen. You hear, you don't listen to a bloody word I say. You stand there and say I have my head up my ass while you sit on your high horse and judge me. You use me for your little games and laugh about my pathetic declaration in front of the whole school. Have you ever thought about what this is like for me, Lily? Because I was in love with you for three years, still am as much as I hate it, and you just disregarded that little fact and acted like I wasn't a human with feelings and cares. Because I do care about you Lily. And that's not going anywhere anytime soon. You could put up with it when we were friends! How is it that just giving me a chance would change any of that? Yes, I'm a prick sometime, but am I really that disgusting to you that you can't even let me care about you? " By the end of his rant James was so worked up he had his hands tugging in his hair. He collapsed onto the couch, cradling his head in his hands.
The sight was so personal; Lily felt that she shouldn't be watching it.
"Come here." The command was spoken softly and with out malice, but it was still a command and Lily felt herself walk to the couch.
James had straightened out his body so he was sitting normally, and patted the seat beside him. "Sit down." She did.
Lily didn't know how long they were sitting, not quite close enough to each other for them to be touching, but closer then they ever did when they were just friends. Her originally rigid position eventually gave way to a more relaxed one, and it was only then when James spoke.
"It isn't that hard is it? Just being with me. We haven't fought for months, Lily. Why can't you trust that we might just work?"
The desperation in his voice was painfully to hear. Had she really caused this? James looked at her, and whipped a tear of her cheek. Lily didn't even know she had been crying, but when she felt him touch her cheek she immediately stiffened and pulled away from him as much as the curse would allow.
James looked at her, confusion written across his face, until he realized that she didn't even trust him to not take advantage of her in their current situations. "I'm not going to hurt you Lily, I never mean to!" She still cowered away from him.
"You can't even trust me to respect you, can you? I'm not a monster, if that's what you still think." Lily shook her head. "Then what Lily, talk to me."
"I can't James."
"You can, Lily. You can tell me anything."
Lily merely shook her head again. James sighed, his whole body appearing as though it had deflated. His face took on a blank look.
" I can't make you do anything, Lily. I can't make you love me, and I'm not going to try to anymore. I'm sorry for what I did tonight, it obviously did nothing to help." As he spoke, she could feel the curse evaporate, leaving her in charge again of he actions.
James stood, but before he left, he leaned over Lily still sitting body. He cradled her head in her hands, and kissed her softly for only a second.
Lily had the will to resist, she just couldn't find the power. She now knew full well James had preformed Imperio, on her no less. She knew full well he just spilled his heart out to her. She knew full well that she had been insensitive before. She couldn't find it within herself to deny him something so insignificant as an innocent kiss.
Innocent kiss would be an understatement. Innocent it may have looked, but James put enough passion that deceptively gentle kiss that Lily was shell-shocked.
He couldn't feel that. He couldn't feel half of what that tiny kiss said he did. Because even feeling half of what he showed he did for as long as he said he did and not doing anything about it had to be humanly impossible. Their faces were still a hair width apart when he pulled away an second after he had leaned in, and Lily almost kissed him again because she was curious to see if it said the same thing as before, but, remembering what James had said earlier, didn't. She didn't want to use him again.
James didn't move right away, letting their breath mix, letting them breathe each other's recycled air. He suddenly backed away and walked to the staircase, but turned as he reached it. " I love you so much it hurts, Lily. I wish you knew that."
That was when Lily broke down. Not a mild break down. A sobbing, shaking, heart-tearing breakdown. She did that to him, to that beautiful, stupid boy who she loved and never told. And it was self-inflicted. That was the worst part of it. It didn't have to happen like that.
And that was the only thought running through her head as she rocked back and forth on a creaky couch in the middle of the night. She couldn't cry, she was past that. She could have healed all that pain that he felt, so she let herself feel all the pain she had caused him.
How he hadn't thrown himself off the astronomy tower, she didn't know. All she could feel was remorse and an ache so deep I was past her bones, into her very cells.
It was over an hour before she could get up and drag herself up the stairs to her room, but once she did she couldn't bring her self to step inside. She just stood there in the doorway with a hiccupping sob until Alice woke up and led her inside.
Alice sat Lily down on her bed, asking "Lily, Lily honey, what happened."
All Lily could do was bring her knees up to her chest, wrap her arms around her knees and shake her head.
"He told you, didn't he?" Lily gave her a sullen nod.
"That bloody prick! How dare he hurt-"
"Alice, don't blame him."
"Lily, look at you. You're a mess, you can't even hold yourself together. He did this!"
" I did this to myself."
No amount of arguing on Alice's part changed Lily's mind, and eventually she lets the poor girl crawl under her covers and find peace in her sleep.
James collapsed on his bed when he reached it, unable to hold himself together. His ache was a more familiar one. He was used to this ache. It was ingrained in his flesh by now, it was so usual and expected that it had to have a physical representation, he thought. But no, it was just there, somewhere behind his heart.
Part of him hated that he ruined their delicate relationship. In all fairness it had been working. James was Lily's friend, her best in fact. That always seemed enough for Lily, but they both knew something else was there, they had to. Something that was never named, but kept James unhappy with being just friends and Lily scared to be anything more. That something was all James could think about when he asked her if she'd like to have dinner with him on Saturday.
He honestly expected a different response, because this time in did it in private and didn't make a spectacle out of it. And things were going great between them, they were so close and spent so much time together. They were practically dating without the physical part of it. Why was it so absurd that he wanted that too?
"James,"
"Yes Evans?" James was startled to say the least. It had been two months since she had talked to him, two months since that horrible night in the common room. Those two months hadn't been pretty.
The sudden, abrupt ending of so long and close a relationship wasn't easy on either of them. Any conversations were stunted by awkward silences, until any attempt at conversation stopped. Even the mere presence of the other was a harsh reminder to both of them the mistakes they made. The friendship just withered until it died.
Though neither of them would like to admit it, they missed each other. It wasn't as hard on James as it was on Lily, for James had always loved her from a distance. But after such a long time of friendly intimacy, the sudden withdrawal was even hard on James.
Lily was devastated. She had lost Sev, and now James. She had a hard time getting out of bed the first week, because she had to go to classes with him and pretend things were normal, and that was hard. But talking about what had happened was even harder; it was out of the question. It was too terrible to repeat, to hard to rip open scars still fresh. So she simply stuck to her routine and tried to move on. She wasn't happy though, because without James to light her day, her world seemed so much darker.
So when Lily broke the silence two awkward, horrible months after that fateful night in the common room, James was startled to say the least.
"James."
"Lily?" James got up from his seat, and turned toward Lily. She took a step toward him. Now they were closer then they had been in weeks. She took another step. Now they were face to face. She looked as pretty as always, he thought.
And that's what he was thinking when she leaned up and kissed him. So lightly James almost believed he was imaging it. But however brief it was, it was a kiss, and it was over so quickly James didn't even have a chance to respond.
Instead, Lily whispered into his lips, "I forgive you, okay?"
Exactly what, James wasn't sure, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she was ready to try again, ready to give them a chance. She believed in them. Maybe she needed to truly miss him before she could love him, maybe she couldn't go from being his best friend to girlfriend so quickly, or maybe she just needed time. James didn't care.
He wound his arms around her waist, pulled Lily to him, and kissed her. It was different then Lily's first hesitant kiss, this meeting of lips was passionate and not tender. It was packed with 7 years of regret and hatred and hope and love. But as they pulled apart for air, they smiled.
A/N: Well, there you have it! Drop me a review, anything is appreciated. Seriously, I don't care if all its says is :), I'll still love it! Thanks for reading, When you notice the Stripes