Catch - Musetta
Disclaimer: Let me put it this way... if I owned Harry Potter in all of its glorious franchise-yness, I would sell it on eBay and go live in Vienna.
Above the fact that his hair perpetually looked like cyclone damage, what annoyed her most of all was that he never seemed quite able to say her name.
And sometimes I would try to catch her,
But I never even caught her name...
Her name was doodled all over the margins of the papers he didn't have to turn in, on the back of spare pieces of parchment - if there was any lack of a suitable writing surface, you could be certain he would be tracing her initials over and over in the palm of his hand. He wasn't even fully aware of it any more; it was a switch in the back of his mind that flipped on automatically when his hands were not otherwise engaged. And it was a small miracle, he admitted to himself, that she hadn't discovered it by now. That she hadn't noticed that he looked up ever-so-surreptitiously whenever someone said her name.
If only he could seem to say it himself.
And a thousand times he could bite the inside of his cheek and ask Sirius what in the world he was doing wrong, hoping that someone else could put their finger on why, but that didn't seem to fix it. Six years and six thousand moments wasted in frustrated contemplation wouldn't stop precisely the wrong words from tumbling into his perfectly rehearsed dialogue. So he tried to remedy it himself, tried to hammer into his incorrigibly thick skull exactly what he had to say, imagining if he just kept writing it over and over again that -
"James, what are you doing?"
Inevitably, she had caught him.
He hastily shoved the parchment into the pages of his Arithmancy book. "Er. Just finishing up the Arithma - I was just -"
"We haven't had Arithmancy homework in a week," she said, arching an eyebrow skeptically. Somehow, this seemed to be the primordial order of things: him hardly daring to look up and her standing above him tall as anything, looking down.
"Well, yeah, since you apparently need to know exactly what I'm writing all the time - I had no idea it mattered so much to you," he said.
"Touché." She was grinning now, a perfect self-satisfied smirk. "But when it's my name you're writing, perhaps I should know why."
He raked a hand through his hair. "No consequence, Evans."
"Oh, but I think it is. Because judging from the twelve thousand or so times that it's on here" - he saw with slight horror that she had somehow managed to unwedge it from between the pages of his book and was holding it before her bemusedly - "you know it pretty well. Which doesn't exactly explain why all of this time I was under the impression that you only knew my surname. Kind of strange, don't you think?"
"Of course I know your name," he mumbled. "We're going to be late to lunch-"
She snorted. "No, you're not getting off that easily. You need to say it. Come off it - and you claim to be Head Boy?" she asked, rolling her eyes. "I haven't got a problem with calling you James, see? James, James, James -" She twirled and faced him.
"Okay, I get it-"
"Honestly, I gave up on calling you Potter when I was fifteen. And since you're apparently so fond of doodling my name on anything that'll stand still long enough, the least you could do is return the favor." She was leaning against the edge of his desk - the rest of the students had long filed out of the room - both brows raised, staring at him so intimidatingly that he flushed.
"What's the big deal, anyway? What do you care what I call you?" James asked irritably.
"I care a bloody lot, because - I guess, I -" She swallowed - "I don't know, it bothers me, all right? So don't think you're getting out of here until you say it, and I'll have you know that I've nearly mastered Freezing large objects, and-"
"Oh, believe me, Evans, I have no doubts in your ability to master whatever Flitwick taught us two days ago," he said dryly.
"Good. So say it."
"No. I don't know - later."
She sighed and drummed her fingers on the desk. "If you'd like to use it in a sentence, if that's easier for you, you can do that. It's very simple, you see. For instance, 'Hey, Lily, can you help me with the Potions essay because I'm hopeless?' or 'Lily, you have a really nice name, I don't know why I've had a problem saying it for the past six years' or 'Lily, will you do me the honor of accompanying me to Zonko's on Saturday so I can test a series of progressively sub-intelligent toys on you like I did that one time in third year?' I'm not at all picky, James, but I am quite hungry."
He looked at her for a moment, then at the parchment in her hands. "Fine. I - Ev -"
"Strike one," she said, clearly amused at his misfortune.
"You're not making this easy, you know," he said, mock-glaring.
"But I'm trying, doesn't that count for something?" she asked coyly.
"Not really," he muttered. "Okay, all right. I'll say it. I can - fine. Lily. Okay? Is that good? Lily. Lily Evans. That's your name. Can I leave now?"
She tilted her head and considered him, caught between full-out beaming and laughter now. "I suppose. But practice that, will you? I expect to hear it used correctly in a sentence before Saturday. Or a question. Yes, I think a question will do very nicely."
The full effect of her words had barely settled when James looked up to find her gone.