epiphany
even after all these years
we just now got the feeling that we're meeting
for the first time
.the script.
"for the first time"
He has so many smiles. She's labeled them. There's one for each day of the week, Monday's is usually the biggest, then it dwindles down in size as he gets fed up with the time it takes for Friday to hurry up and get here already. There's one for when he's flirting, and it ranges in brightness depending on how hot the girl is. He has a flattery smile for the teachers and people who say hi to him in the halls that he doesn't know. He has a lazy smile that he shoots at McGonagall when she's asking him where the hell his assignment is, the one that precedes the simple, "My dog ate it" and that infernal Sirius Black's howling like he's an actual dog himself. There's the smile he beams at her, all lace and sugar and glitter, when he says, "You, me, Hogsmeade next week" and she says, "No." There's the wide grin, the one that's all teeth, the one the girls talk about when he passes by, the one everyone is a prey to, the one no one is safe from. No one but her, of course. She's the only exception.
Except that maybe she's not, because he's smiling at her right now from across the Defense classroom, and she knows that it isn't a real smile, that it's just one of his fake ones. She knows. She does. Really.
But that's not a fake smile. It can't be. She's never seen it before, and she knows all the fake smiles. This one's crooked, one corner of his lips twitched higher than the other, and his eyebrows are up high in earnest, and his eyes are small and the edges are crinkled and he looks more… real than she has ever seen him. He blinks, realizes she's looking right at him, and turns away, still smiling. And Lily has known James Potter for years, years and years of teasing and flirting and fake smiling, but she feels like she has only just seen him right now, for the first time.
She thinks that if he's capable of giving her a real smile, then maybe she's capable of being a poor judge of character. Because there's a thousand and one things hidden in that one true smile, in the swift upwards curl of his lips, in the soft twinkle in his hazel eyes, and maybe she wants to know what they are.
-end-
A/N: This fic was written in response to the October 29th post over at the P R O M P T S, P R O M P T S, P R O M P T S forum.