Papercut

Rating: K+/T (language etc.)

Will you go out with me? read the note that James Potter scribbled on a spare bit of parchment. He had decorated it with little hearts, one of the hearts reading LE+JP in the center. James always thought he was lucky that nobody started calling him JP... he knew it was a common abbreviation for anyone with the letters J and P in their name, but James thought it annoying. It was better off, perhaps, that noone called him that, because he would have hexed them and they would have been none the wiser.

He finished up the tip of the last heart and went to fold the note when his finger sliced open on the side of the fold, droplets of blood beading at the surface of the wound. He let out a little gasp. The kind of gasp where it doesn't hurt, but you're a bit shocked by the quickness and stunned by the amount of blood such a small body part can hold.

"Alas, the romantic knight is maimed," Sirius whispered dramatically.

"Alas," James retaliated, "The court jester is about to have off his head."

Professor Binns didn't seem to notice them talking, he simply droned on. James wondered why he bothered passing notes when he could easily ask her out verbally, she was sitting quite close to him (it had to be that way or he wouldn't be able to properly copy her notes). But note passing seemed to dramatize the whole we're-in-a-classrom-and-trying-to-pull-off-a-romance-without-getting-caught feeling. Of course, the romantic feelings were throuroughly one-sided.

James sucked on his finger as he balled up the note with his other hand and threw it with the force of a toned, muscly, quidditch arm, right at Lily Evans' head.

She shot him a dirty look, for it was only two obvious who the note was from, then she picked it up and read it. Another dirty look, but she scribbled a reply and threw it back.

He opened it up... it was covered in little hearts and his heart leapt. Maybe his injury hadn't been in vain... he flipped it over and in huge letters, the point of the exclamation mark dotted in yet another heart: NO!

He sighed.

"Tough luck, mate," Sirius said. "Maybe she likes her men whole and unscathed... I think it was the papercut that did you in."

"Shove it up your ass," James murmered.

"Love you too," Sirius replied, resuming his usual laid-back position.

James grumbled and pulled out another bit of parchment, this one bigger. Maybe if he wrote her a whole fucking novel...

Lily, my love. I watch you as though you are as far away as the other side of the lake, and yet here you are in front of me. Your hair glistens and your eyes twinkle as you turn to me to express your deep and burning desire to be with me. I love the way your nose wrinkles and your delicate brow furrows everytime you look at me. Every minute that goes by I think of you, and you with me. I injured myself in the process of writing to you, now it is in my hopes that you will take that as a sign for how much a care for you. Now, Lily, darling, will you go out with me?

He threw the slightly bigger ball at her, hitting her square on the head. She shot him a look dirtier than the first but all the same picked it up and read it. She smiled at him, but he couldn't tell whether the smile was sincere or a hint of mock-sweetness. Once again she wrote him another note, not, as he hoped, nearly as long as his. She threw it back, grinning now with a beautiful, silent laughter. He crossed his fingers, sure of the 'yes' that would be written on that very piece of paper, sure that the smiling Lily must mean she had come to her senses...

Potter, you arse. By 'injured' do you mean that papercut?

PS: NO!

Ouch. How a two letter word could cut deeper than the still pulsating wound, James couldn't figure out.