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James rested his left hand on Lily's bare knee. Without looking, she patted it twice with her right hand, as to say, that's nice, but not now. James studied her face, one eyebrow raised, and cautiously slid his hand two inches higher.

"Oi, do you mind, Potter? I'm reading," she laughed, her green eyes still stuck to the page.

Her parents had sent an owl with a care parcel during N.E.W.T.s revision, and while Lily had managed to finish all of the Muggle sweets, she'd only now gotten a chance to read the novel her mother included. ("The author's photograph doesn't move?" said James, somewhat condescending, jabbing a finger at the back cover as if to nudge the picture to life.)

Having finished their seventh and final year at Hogwarts, James and Lily were London-bound to King's Cross station, and James had had the forethought to reserve a private compartment on the Hogwarts Express. Strictly speaking, there were no private compartments on the Hogwarts Express, but James Potter had long-discovered that a couple of galleons and a few small favours opened many doors for him.

"Just taking advantage of being alone," he said, leaning over to kiss her exposed and freckled shoulder.

Lily, deliberately and happily annoying him by continuing to read, had chosen a casual knee-length red dress for the trip home. Its hem had risen when she first sat down, and a beam of June sunlight stretched across the compartment to warm her cream-coloured thighs. Her dark red hair was tucked behind her ears. Every so often, a rogue strand fell onto her face, and James watched, impressed, as she dug one hand around her bag for a kirby grip without breaking concentration.

James was recognisable, as always, by his messy black hair and circular wire-frame glasses. An eleven-inch mahogany wand stuck out of the front pocket of his jeans.

Before the train departed Hogsmeade Station, James had cast a Privacy Charm, turning the normally see-through corridor windows into opaque black glass. When he told his friends that he'd be riding with Lily for most of the trip, he'd expected Marauder backlash. To James' amazement, only once had Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail walked past the compartment to tease him through the locked door and drum their knuckles on the glass.

Lily lay the book down on her lap (one index finger stuck between the pages, keeping her place) and looked at her boyfriend, seated to her right.

"I realise we're alone..." she said, grinning, "but, I'm on a good chapter."

An ear-to-ear smile broke out across his face. One of James' favourite things about Lily was her ability, and likeliness, to challenge him on anything. While he was certainly no longer Evans' sworn enemy, not much about their earlier dynamic had changed.

James recalled the usual rows between them as Head Boy and Head Girl (patrol schedules and inappropriate passwords, mostly), as well as their late-night swims in the Prefects' bathroom. She'd often dared him to underwater breath-holding contests, and, every time, he'd been distracted by her stark-naked curves and surfaced first for air.

He had still not completely forgiven Lily for insisting they watch Saturday Night Fever at the Muggle cinema over Christmas... but he thought of how she looked at him, the tiniest smirk, when she pulled him towards her by his Gryffindor necktie or the frayed collar of his Quidditch jumper. He loved every moment of their time alone, and instead of their relationship adding more stress to his sleepless seventh-year schedule, James discovered that the brilliant red haired witch had kept him from going mad.

"You'd rather read a book than snog a Quidditch God, Evans?" said James.

"It's a pretty good book," teased Lily.

She slid the book away from her down the compartment seat, and turned to James. She ran a hand through his hair, and James relaxed into the moment.

"But... I think... I'd rather... snog... you," said Lily, kissing him gently between words.

James peeked down at the pleasing swells of her cleavage, a very nice view from his angle.

He mentally cursed the shapeless black robes and wool jumpers they had often been required to wear. It wasn't until his and Lily's first Heads' meeting last autumn that he'd gotten a closer look at the small but shapely mounds on her chest. The first-floor Heads' office was sweltering, and he and Lily had ditched their robes due to the unseasonal September heat. She'd taken off her Hogwarts jumper to reveal a form-fitting Muggle band t-shirt underneath ("Rush," she'd said), and it'd taken all of his willpower not to stare below her neck.

She often shared titbits about Muggle culture, the kind of perspective that wasn't taught in Muggle Studies. He'd learnt that space exploration was a priority (Muggles not only wanted to map planets, but to go to them), that chores took "forever", and that Lily preferred the stillness of the family photograph she had kept on her nightstand for seven years, even when James had offered to buy her a wizard camera to update it.

It had taken him years to see all of who she was: her cleverness, and her sadness, and her inability to truly hate anyone who'd wronged her (and how it ate away at her). He realised that his younger self had seen her as a perfect shell of a girl, and that he'd done himself a great disservice by taking so, so long to really know her.

On the train, James reached over and hooked his fingers under Lily's upper left thigh, his right hand now hidden under the fabric of her dress. He flicked his thumb lightly at the elastic hem of her knickers, and the urgency of their kisses deepened.

James had felt a throbbing in his trousers for some time now, but it was Lily who'd straddled herself over his lap, facing him, green eyes wild. She re-positioned herself even closer, and James moaned quietly and involuntarily at the sensation of her hips rolling back and forth, his 18-year-old brain screaming to release his erection from his jeans, and tear off the knickers that kept him from entering her.