Lily Loved Him First.
Lily had hated James for as long as she had known her.
That was a fact, etched into the brains of everybody who knew either of them, and probably a few more. The first thing James had done, which was also the spark of this loathing, was to insult her best friend, on the train at the Hogwarts Express, September first. Lily didn't hold much grudges, but for James Potter, she made an exception. An extension of the case could be made to Sirius Black, but somehow, she was much more able to just ignore him, rather than hate every word that came out of his mouth, loathe every part in the world he treaded, hold her guard for everyone who liked him, never accept anything he ever did for her.
James, on the other hand, had a special part of her mind.
So, when fifth year rolled around in orderly fashion, and Lily had erupted back to Platform nine and three quarters, wearing her trademark enthusiastic smile, she expected nothing to change, really. She had learned to live with the downs of going to Hogwarts, and was ready to do just so. She was ready to find Marlene and Rachel, somewhere on the platform, and forget all about… what was that?
In a split second a male rushed past her, obviously in a great hurry and as Lily turned her head towards the side he came from, she only caught a set of brilliant hazel eyes, covered in glasses. That was it, and it was gone. Suddenly captivated by this strange sight, Lily turned to see if it was somebody she knew that had suddenly changed eye-color to something greatly attractive, but then pulled every statement she previously had about those eyes when she saw who they belonged to.
James Potter had arrived to his co-conspirators, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black, and stood with his back to Lily, still obviously visibly him due to the insane mess of a hair he had.
Lily snorts and turns back. Ridiculous. James Potter with nice eyes? The though could make her laugh. And Lily does, a little, while pulling her trunk down the masses of students in search for anyone she knows. Her parents are right after her, but Severus (who was in the car with them) has already gone to look after his Slytherin friends he hasn't seen in two months.
Finally, her father catches the point and tells Lily that he and her mother can get her trunk onto the train in the Prefect's compartment, while she looks for her friends, and Lily agrees to meet by the front of the train once she have met them.
She does, after some running about and bumping into people, and her friends are admiring her Prefect's Badge, and beaming at her with suntanned faces and juicy gossip. Lily has to quickly call her departure, however, because the train is leaving in five minutes, and she has to sit in the Prefect's compartment for the introductorily meeting, but she promises to come back to them after she's done.
Severus is with her there, and they sit there and stare at Lupin, the Marauder nobody would think would end up a prefect, but he's actually listening closely to Longbottom's every word as he explains points, rules, watch lists and whatnot.
(It had to be Lupin, neither Black nor Potter should ever qualify for anything power-related at this school, or Lily would be sure Dumbledore actually was a loony, and Pettigrew didn't have any authority to muster, but still, the idea of a Marauder as a prefect was incredibly strange to them both.)
But what Lily leaves out, at the train, at the feast, and later in their beds, was that strange occurrence on the platform. And she promises herself that she'll never tell anyone either, because she's embarrassed to admit it, but also because the idea of James Potter having anything nice about him is so enormously foreign, that it simply cannot be true.
…
The next day, Lily proceeds with her tutoring, starting with a double lesson in potions. She has no intention to do what she does, but she can't help sending short glances in the direction of the two cauldrons in the back, where Potter and his friends are messing around. Severus catches her several times, but when he finally asks, she just tells him that she's looking for a reason to dock her first points, and for that honor to be to a Marauder, which makes him smile confidentially and nod, before going back to the potion they were brewing.
But she isn't looking to dock points. She can't help but check, and double check, and triple check, if it really is like that, that his eyes are nice. In the beginning, she convinces herself that they're not, just completely normal brown, like many others at this school, but she keeps looking, and she sees them. They're vivacious, they're exciting, they're surprised, they're scared. Over the course of the next few weeks, she maps them out, the different moods, almost subconsciously, and moves from catching herself in the act of staring at him, to get caught by him, and quickly focus on a point behind his head as if she's thoughtfully considering her last Arithmancy homework.
As the weeks move into months, she gradually comes up with excuses for herself to edge closer to him. She goes to Lupin for questions about her homework or Prefect's schedules, and notices, to her grand surprise, that he's actually quite decent for a Marauder, excusing his friends' behavior, laughing at her Ancient Runes jokes, and being generally helpful towards her whenever she asks.
However, Lily isn't quite there yet to be won over by Potter's eyes. She sees his behavior and hates it. She sees him bullying Severus and hates it. She sees him break school rules, and she gives him detention for it. She kind of likes that.
Sitting a cold October evening overlooking James' detention (cleaning up a rather gooey mess he made in the Great hall, with the intention that it be hard to clean up), while reading a spellbook, she can't help sending him malicious grins every now and then. He knows she is, but still keeps his head high and pretends he can't see it, which is an excellent excuse for Lily to stare a little more.
And then it hits her. James Potter has a nice nose.
It comes as sudden as the first revelation, and with the same level of self-doubts, denial and wonder. And she spends two weeks staring at him again, trying to fathom how that pretty nose and those pretty eyes can be on such an ugly personality.
Severus sees, of course, and jokes more about Lily's eyes towards the cauldron in the back, asks her if she's developed a soft spot for Remus, because never in his life would he expect her to think James Potter to be attractive. Lily snaps rather unkind words back at him, introduces the topic of his Slytherin friends and what they might be up to, but is quick to apologize, because although she believes in what she says, he's her best friend, and she can't imagine losing him. Severus is quick to forgive her, but stays silent about her quick gazing down the Potions classroom after it.
When the third revelation comes, however, she's ready for it. It hasn't been more than three weeks before the last occurrence, and Lily, with all her staring, had to understand that it would happen again. What she doesn't understand is the direness of the revelations. His lips.
They're so full, and filled with life and when he smiles, it's like the world is perfect and filled with colors, and his teeth is so straight, and how on earth is it possible to have so soft lips? Lily stays awake many a night after it, imagining someone nice, like Remus or Severus, but with James Potter's features moving closer to her, imagines how it would feel to touch those lips with her own, just softly, barely… Maybe she'll be a part of Truth and Dare in the Gryffindor common room after a Quidditch match or something…
And by December, she feels she can't hold back anymore. It's a passion that demands to be felt, no matter how much she tries to push it down or diminish it. He's everywhere, in her classes, in her lunch, in the library she tries to study in, in her dorm. Lily starts to hate, yet love, the way they always bump into each other, and even manages short conversations. "Pass me the water," one afternoon by the packed Gryffindor table seems like a huge step forward for her, almost as if she's ready to ask him out.
…
She sits by the table in Transfiguration and almost jumps in excitement when she finds out James Potter is going to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas as well as she, yet it also puts a great damper on her holidays. She had planned snowball fights with Sev, and running around the castle, discovering its secrets, and now she had to think about James Potter for the duration of her holidays.
Her joy is furthermore diminished, when she realizes that Sev isn't staying at Hogwarts either, because of a family emergency, and she has to come to terms with being rather alone over the weeks she had planned for.
Lily does plan to get a great deal under control before the holidays end, however. She got a list from each professor about the different things she's going to learn over the course of the next semester, and plans to snuggle up by the fire in the Gryffindor common room, taking her time with the curriculum, enjoying a Petunia-free Christmas for once.
The last night before the rest leaves, she decides something for herself, laying in her bed, unable to sleep, for the n-th time this fall. She won't live in this awful in-between with James Potter anymore. She'll either hate him or like him, not some strange in-between hybrid. And she furthermore decides that she simply can't love him, especially not after what he's done to Sev, and to so many other people at this school.
But hating James Potter isn't as easy as she thinks, she realizes as Lily sits by the fire, watching him prance around like a peacock with some food he and Sirius Black stole from the kitchen. He's still remarkable handsome, and her sudden hatred for him hasn't changed any of that. Lily goes to bed every night the first week, thinking that the goal she has set herself is impossible.
Lily hasn't been able to hate him. To be honest, she has come to like him even more than before, and now because of his personality, which is way more dangerous than any other outer feature. If she starts liking him for who he is, she'll start to defend his actions, the very same actions she hates.
Bu she feels there is a solution to this problem, as she walks downstairs to join the leftover students at Hogwarts for the New Year's party they secretly hold in an empty classroom, and she tries hard to construct the situation for this to occur without it having an outer interaction with James, so she can do it, and go back to her daily life without much consequence.
The problem, however, is that James is busy with his friends, celebrating both new and old year, and getting to him is about as easy as getting through to a niffler in a jewelry store. Twenty minutes to twelve, Lily gives up and leaves. The people are loud, the year is almost over…
She walks up to the Astronomy tower, the highest tower at Hogwarts, and climbs up on a block of stone she'd usually rest her telescope on, right on the edge. An incredible surge goes through her, a mixture of fear and excitement, and she lets her legs dangle off the edge of Hogwarts highest tower. She finds a rock and throws it, watches it fall into the great abyss. In its place is a cascade of fireworks, blue, green, red and yellow. All the other students prepare themselves for the show, or competition more like. Color predicted house, and they all compete in having the prettiest, the biggest, the loudest and the most intricate firework in the group. Lily watches as the colors take over the sky, painting it in green snakes, red lions, yellow badgers and blue ravens. The badger nibbles at the lion, who roars, and lunges at its attacker, and they both disassemble in a loud crack above her. They're quickly replaced by replicas from below Lily, however, and joins in on the show once again.
She sits there and stares. There's no one around, just her. And as the new year enters, she watches a lion getting eaten alive by a snake, hoping there's nothing symbolical in it.
A door goes up behind her, and Lily turns where she's sitting, expecting it to be the wind or something alike.
It's not.
In the doorway, holding onto the frame with one hand to not tumble over, and holding a bottle of some Muggle alcohol in another, stands James Potter, his glasses askew, his eyes a little droopy, and a goofy smile plastered on his lips.
Lily is annoyed. It's not like she wanted him there, she came up here to be alone, and here he is, with that pretty face, that nose, those lips and those eyes! What on earth did he do to get those eyes?
She turns entirely, raises an eyebrow and slips off the edge down on the roof. "How did you find me?"
She realizes that it's an agreed truth that he came up here looking for her, even if their interactions has been scarce the past five years. Non-negative ones even more.
"I have a map…" he slurs, and she looks down at the bottle. Wine. Half full. He's drunk. "It shows me where everyone is." The last word is supplied with a goofy smile, again, and Lily has to restrain herself from returning the smile. She was supposed to be mad at him!
"Of course you do," she replies curtly, just to make sure he understands that she doesn't want him to be here… or does she? She honestly doesn't know. His lips are very inviting, very soft, wet too…
"You know…" he slurs on, not even noticing her stiff eyes on his lips. "Wizards have this tradition at New Years… We kiss. And I missed mine."
He sends a goofy grin in her direction, expecting a hex or maybe a slap he can show to his friends when he comes back downstairs. But she does neither. Instead, her mouth twitches, as if she's holding back a smile. "Muggles have it too."
"Oh." He tries to smile, but fails, his face isn't working properly, so it's only a half of one.
He cant make out her emotions, they aren't mad or angry, like they always are. They are the way he'd seen her over the past half year, sending glances in his direction, her eyes burying into his skull, wondering, thinking. She smiles softly, and it's like rays of sunshine coming from them. "You drink that all by yourself?"
He lifts the bottle, watch its emptying contents, shrugs. "S'pose so."
"You won't remember anything tomorrow, will you?" She asks, angling her head to the side.
He shakes his head. "P'ro'bly not."
She is close. Way too close, he notices. Her eyes are green, like the Slytherin fireworks, but her hair is red like the Gryffindor ones. Her skin is yellow. Hufflepuff. Her dress is blue.
"Good," she says, and kisses him on the mouth.
James is unable to breathe as she moves her lips on his, and his mind erupts into fireworks. Eyes, skin, dress, hair. She's all over him, all around him, like a whirlwind of emotions and colors, and his world is magical and colorful and beautiful and sober all at once.
She's the center of the world. Everything's revolving around her. No. She is the world. Everything and everyone is part of her, and she's the reason the universe isn't torn to pieces.
She breaks the contact, and steps back a step. He let his eyes surge through the colors again, dress, hair, eyes, skin, dress, eyes, skin, hair, just to try to get back to where he was, to the feeling of understanding every speck in the universe, but, aside from her right in front of him, the world is dull and awful again. He wants her to do it one more time. He wants to get back to where they were. She smiles.
"There. Now I can hate you forever."
No. James turns around just in time to see the last strand of red disappear, and he wants to run after her, but he's rooted on the spot. She disarmed him, cut him open, and left him. He wants to shout, wants to make her come back and do it again, but she's already gone, and his world would never be the same. He needed it. He needed her. One more time. All the time. He couldn't stand watch her leave.
She might be able to hate him forever, but there wasn't a chance of him forgetting this.