A/N: Happy New Year everyone! I'm fairly sure I'll be as productive as I was last year - i.e. not at all. Got any resolutions, you lovely lot? I am proud to say I haven't a single one, because I am a lazy and in need of a decent nights sleep and need to stop drinking gallons coffee as a substitute for a missing a week's worth of rest. Hey, I think I've found a resolution I'm not going to keep!
Disclaimer: All rights and reserves and trademarks and afflictions and references and characters and locations and everythings go to JK Rowling, but none to Warner Bros becuase they can't bloody get Lily Evans and James Potter right because JFC have you seen Lily and James in OotP?! Okay Lily BAMF Evans does not wear pigtails with pink bows and James Sexual Potter does not wear his uniform correctly or have tidy hair or ugh there is so much wrong with it I literally yelled at my TV when I was watching it you don't even understand those are my babies you are character raping (says the girl who destroys both during her pointless and crappy fanfiction). Anyway, all goes to JKR, none to the crappy fanfiction writer that goes by the alias of rubies and diamonds.
"Did you really like me all those years?" Lily found herself asking, the fuzzy tingling sensation coursing through her having nothing to do with the Firewhiskey in hand, more so due to the fact that James Potter was sitting with her in the Head's Common Room. Technically, they should be upstairs in their respective bedrooms, asleep, like the rest of their castle mates were. They should be setting an example, for they were Head students, but neither of the could find the will to give a toss. It was late, and they were with each other, and they had Firewhiskey. You couldn't have paid her to give up that moment, not for anything.
Nothing was terribly romantic, she was sure, but still, just being with him made her feel warm and safe and home. That was what she had begun to attribute James Potter to. Home. Trust, safety, warmth, comfort, reliable… all could be related to the boy next to her, watching her with his hazel eyes from behind thick frames.
He was her home.
He had hoped upon hope that this particular question would not come up. It was true, he had followed her for two years straight, asking her out and generally teasing her, professing his love at the most inopportune moments, he sincerity of his bold statements questionable.
He was ashamed, and he hated himself for it, for messing her around all those years, because its so wrong, so, so wrong to do that to someone, even if they are slightly-too-skinny and have frizzy red hair and have eyes that make you want to run and hide because she can see everything with those things – it's wrong.
It started out as a joke, a way to annoy Snape, because he's always known of his affections for her (really, for a girl who could see everything, she must have had some inkling as to his doting of her). And then he found his true joy – annoying Evans until she cracked. He didn't know what it was about it that he loves so much, but oh Merlin, was it fun when she did.
She would fly into tantrums to rival a hippogriff's, hexing and screaming until she was blue in the face. James found it nothing short of hilarious, and so did the rest of the school. So he continued. What the public wants, the public gets, and James and Lily had turned into a main attraction.
He finally stopped in sixth year, when the Marauders sat him down and gave him a stern talking to – even Sirius, who had never made his dislike for Lily unknown. They knew that James didn't really care for her at all, for she was slightly-too-skinny and had frizzy red hair and eyes that made him want to run and hide because she could see everything with them, not to mention her insane temper and bookish tendencies and high and mighty attitude. They also knew, thanks to Lily's ever-so-faithful friends that she may have the slightest of affections for him, and had decided enough was enough, despite what he had to say about it.
His two years of apparent adoration were nothing but lies, a cheap notch on his ladder to social acceptance. He knew it was wrong. It only took his friends to help him to see that, and once he had, all signs of previous infatuation were binned, and he let her get on with her life as per usual.
He didn't like her, not in the slightest, and that was the entire truth. He didn't like her attitude, saddled up on her high horse, her easily forgiving nature, when her 'best friend' treated her like rubbish, called her a Mudblood in front of the entire year and she still forgave him, her prude and snotty ways, how she frowned upon after-Qudditch parties and generally avoided alcohol as a rule, her stupid bloody eyes, the ones that stuck out like a sore thumb.
He didn't know she missed his rude interruptions and declarations of love and how he tripped over his own two feet sometimes just because he was a prize idiot, and she didn't say anything to let him know. Because of all the things that Lily Evans was, brave was not one of those things.
Then, in seventh year, he got to know her. She could be nice – really nice, when she wanted. She could be understanding, and sweet, and selfish, and funny, and stupid, and ridiculous, and angry, and rude, and arrogant, and annoying – but she was Lily. One person capable of so much, bundled up into a slightly-too-skinny frame, with frizzy red hair and eyes that made him want to run and hide because she could see everything with them.
He found out little things about her – how she did drink on the occasion, an occasion James could usually rise out of her, how she loved daisies and hated lilies, just because she was contrary, how she hated tea and loved coffee, and how her favourite color was lilac and when she was sad she always painted her nails that color.
But James Potter did not fall for girls. Girls fell for him. He especially did not fall for stupid and annoying and selfish and funny and… Perfect, he guessed. For she was.
He didn't know when she became perfect, when she became a necessity to his life, like air or the Marauders, but she was. He didn't know when seeing her with another guy on a Hogsmeade visit became unbearable for him to witness, for the jealousy practically ate him alive. He didn't know when he pulled Remus to the side and asked him why the hell he was feeling like this, because he shouldn't, he shouldn't feel like this over a girl he's teased for so, so long, because she's Lily Evans and she's rude and angry and easily forgiving and slightly-too-skinny with frizzy red hair and eyes that make him want to run and hide because she can see everything with them, and he didn't know what to do when Remus only replied with "Karma."
He didn't know when he found himself in love with her.
And now, all because of some stupid question she had to go and ask, under the influence of the bloody Firewhiskey – she's never been able to handle her drink – he's going to loose her.
Because she trust him, he knows she does, she's told him as much, and he's going to go and shatter that image with his answer. Because the last thing he wants to do is lie to her, because lies will always come back to bite you, and he's afraid it will be in the worst possible way if he did so.
So, after taking a deep breath in and focusing on her (as if he wasn't already), eyes trying to convey that yes, he hadn't really liked her for those last years and yes, it was cruel and awful of him to mess her around like that and yes, he was the worlds biggest bastard, but it was also true that yes, he was completely and unashamedly in love with her, he said "No."
A/N: Awfully morbid mood. Might be due to the fact it's three am and I haven't had a decent night's sleep in two weeks.
I say that, yet I know I'm going to spend the rest of the night writing.
Ruby