Chapter 1

James Potter wasn't always the energetic sixth-year Gryffindor that people expected of him. They looked up to the Marauder for his tendency to see an opportunity and seize it, even if a normal person would see the same opportunity and have a few well-placed hesitations – the Goblin Incident of '74 remained, to this day, a taboo topic. But James was not a normal wizard. He was special, unique, and all those other, somewhat flattering adjectives that parents told their only child. James, never one to disappoint, usually acted on his impulses and behaved just how the inhabitants of Hogwarts expected him to.

Usually.

He didn't think that, in that particular moment, he was doing anything wrong, hunched over a table and fiercely studying the parchment in front of him.

It just so happened that on the couch nearest him, fast asleep, was Lily Evans.

His first thought upon entering the Common Room twenty minutes earlier was that Lily should know better than to fall asleep in a very public place, especially the Gryffindor tower where the majority of the school's pranksters made their homes. It was dangerous business, leaving oneself so vulnerable in a place where anyone could wander in and cause mischief. However, Lily had one thing on her side, a knight in shining armor, if you will. She had James Potter. Because the second thing James did was take a seat at the empty table closest to the couch and it soon became clear that no one was going to touch the lovely Miss Evans and get away with it. Not with him on the watch. While James might have taken the opportunity before to maybe steal a kiss or chuckle at whatever (adorable) sleep talk came from her mouth, she just seemed so peaceful that he couldn't, in good conscience, disturb her. And so Lily was left alone as the Common Room slowly emptied of Gryffindors and James sat quietly, focusing intently on his Quidditch plays.

James had responsibilities now. He had the cold, hard truth in the form of O.W.L. exam results that not everything came easy to him. Fifth-year James was naïve, he was distracted, and he was caught completely off guard with the prospect of his future. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't want to become the jobless, rich, snobbish pureblooded stereotype that was slowly becoming of him. He wanted a purpose. Hell, he'd take the meaningless, minimum-wage-paying job if it meant he was out in the world doing something with himself. So after learning that the Auror office wanted next to nothing to do with him after seeing his results, he had focused more of his efforts in his studies, less on the pranking and bullying, and had become a student worthy of the Quidditch Captaincy he had received shortly after the disastrous exam results.

The only person who understood his complete one-eighty had been Remus, and that was mostly because the Prefect had been telling his three best friends for years that education as much more important than the rowdy boys were making it out to be. The Captaincy and a desire to make his ailing parents proud had fueled the motivation in James to throw in the towel on the childish mischievousness and start becoming a proper wizard (he had briefly entertaining the notion of growing a beard, but patches of facial hair looked good on no one). Peter went with James' diminishing roguish behavior as he was wont to do with anything regarding his friend, and Sirius had made it a point to either entice James with outlandish pranks or treat him with condescending disdain.

He wasn't a completely changed man. He fully believed that in a world full of darkness and despair, there needed to be some beacon of light to make the future of the Wizarding world hopeful for a positive outcome. Some of Sirius' attempts at "fixing" James were successful; harmless pranks that brightened the overall spirit of the castle were almost never rejected. Charming the entirety of the Great Hall – students and professors included – maroon and gold for an upcoming Quidditch match had brought smiles to even a few of the professors, Dumbledore included. Fireworks on Halloween night. Dancing bodies of armor. A giant slide leading to the Entrance Hall.

He wasn't a complete ponce.

But despite having witnessed his changed behavior for the better half of the school year, the students of Gryffindor still didn't understand why James hadn't immediately jumped at the opportunity of embarrassing his most favorite lady, not that he ever saw it that way. There was no shame in letting the redhead rest. Merlin knew she was constantly spreading herself too thin.

On occasion, James would glance at the sleeping girl, and in place of the usual smile he donned when looking at the astonishing witch, he couldn't help but inwardly wince at the position she fell asleep in. Her right arm was curled under her head, half holding up what appeared to be a Transfiguration text, half propping her head against the armrest. Her neck looked as if it was bent uncomfortably and her other arm was tucked underneath her. He half suspected it had fallen asleep ages ago. He was half tempted to wake her for the sole purpose of giving her the chance of making herself more comfortable – he'd be more than willing to temporarily transfigure the text into a pillow and his quill into a blanket – but that had a higher chance of ending horribly, horribly wrong. And even though she looked as if she'd need a proper massage to work out the kinks in her neck, her face was blissfully content and he was happy to watch over her for a little while longer.

For the most part, he kept his attention glued on the parchment. He was much more concerned with the drills he was having his team run. Their practice that morning, though it was a good one, proved to him that the team had a bit to go if they planned on taking the Quidditch Cup that year. There was always room for improvement, or so James told his team every time they had a practice, if just to make it stick in their minds. They were good, there was no denying that. But knowing that you're good and becoming cocky about your skills on the Pitch were two things much too closely related for James' comfort. The last thing the Gryffindor team needed was for their heads to become so inflated they could hardly fly straight. Focus, that was the key. Focus on the wonderful, shiny, brilliant, envy-worthy Quidditch Cup. And only the best team of the four would get it. James, naturally, wanted to be the captain of that winning team.

It was during one of his more focused moments – eyebrows drawn inward, teeth working the corner of his lip, hand running exasperatedly through his hair – that he noticed, out of the corner of his eyes, that Lily woke with a start. She seemed to lie there a moment in order to get her bearings before she was scrabbling for a more proper position, the textbook landing forcibly in her lap and her feet swinging around to land on the ground. And while he would normally drop everything to attempt conversation with her whenever he had the chance, he had come to the conclusion that it was a billion times better if he allowed Lily to approach him first.

He did reward himself with a glance in her direction, however. And although he had a small smile despite his frustrations with his playbook, he noticed her tightened jaw and she was looking too intently at the book to actually be reading it. There were small lines decorating the side of her face from where it had rested against her arm, and he caught her letting out a small yawn, and she was absolutely too cute for him to be able to handle. His smile grew as he turned back to his drills, and he heard her huff in annoyance before he shook his head and placed all of his attention on the parchment in front of him. She didn't need him anymore.

It was several minutes later when James started tapping the parchment vigorously with his wand. "We have to hit them hard and fast," he mumbled to himself, completely unaware that he was speaking aloud. "If we can manage that, we might have a chance at the Cup." He pointed his wand at the drills, watching as the tiny X's and O's swirled around on the page. To an innocent onlooker, it would look like absolute chaos. But that was Quidditch. "Now how to take care of them?" he wondered aloud to the nearly empty Common Room, and he flicked his wand so the players reset themselves to the beginning formation. "What to do…what to do…"

"You should focus your attention on their Beaters and Keeper."

James was jerked from his concentration, looking around for a moment before his eyes landed on Lily. They were the only two in the room, he noticed, but he still found it hard to believe that she had willfully spoken to him. About Quidditch, no less. Last he heard, she hated the sport. It wasn't a deal breaking, but he always loved a challenge.

"Huh?" he responded eloquently, inwardly cursing that she was the only person in the castle who could reduce him to a complete twat.

He watched with no little amount of fascination as she wandered to his side, peering at the parchment with obvious disapproval.

"If you distract them, and our Chasers are as good as they should be," here she stopped with a pointed look in his direction, and he could help the swooping sensation in his stomach, "then they could easily score some goals."

It was silent while James turned the idea over in his mind. He used the moment to silently cheer at the fact that this was Lily and Quidditch. Two of his favorite things coming together. He was overjoyed. If he remained in the mindset that they were discussing strategy, and not the prospect of a date, James might be able to keep his wits about him. He could behave, he could converse with her longer, he could manage to not piss her off.

"Our Chasers know what they're doing. We've got the teamwork. The Keeper's shit and a reserve, it won't be too difficult to catch them off guard." He was about to say more on the subject but it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to separate that he was talking to Lily Evans. And it wasn't a shouting match. It wasn't often that something had the power to distract James from Lily. Quidditch happened to be one of the few things that could hold his attention more than she could, and when he was in the mindset that resolved around the sport, it was sometimes difficult for him to come back to reality. "Now Evans," he said, flashing her a wide, pleased smile. "I didn't know you were interested in Quidditch. I figured you thought it was a game designed for thick blockheads like myself?"

Her sudden fidgeting was not lost on him. "I'm not and it is," she said quickly, her nose turning up and her arms crossing over her chest. He silently mourned the rather open stance she had had with him moment earlier. This Lily was closing herself off to him, and that was no good. "I'll forever stand behind my first impression that Quidditch is a brainless pastime and could very well be eradicated. Unfortunately, I dated one of the blokes on the Ravenclaw team and I now know more about Quidditch than I ever wanted to."

Well, that was certainly unexpected.

Before James could help himself, he was saying, "Who's this bloke and when did you date him?" He attempted nonchalance, but judging by the look that Lily was throwing him, he missed it by a wide margin.

"Here's an idea: mind your own business."

That was rich, coming from the lass who had just pushed her way into his playmaking while claiming to hate the sport in question. On any other day, James might have pointed that out, but in all honesty, he was just happy that they were talking and she hadn't yet threatened to curse him to next week. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head and gesturing at the parchment with his chin.

"Okay, how would you do it then? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter."

He grinned at the look she threw him but it was just as well, because she promptly leaned over him and pointed to a few of his diagrams. "If our Keeper is good enough to keep their Chasers at bay, and you concentrate on their Beaters, thus distracting them from our Chasers…" she trailed off, tapping her wand on the parchment and effective moving the lines where she wanted them. She looked back at him a moment with a slow, calculating look, and he had to blink and lean forward in order to see what she had done. He got a tantalizing whiff of her perfume, or soap, or shampoo; it was lovely and he had to curb the instinct to turn his nose into her shoulder, which was dangerously close. Instead, he watched as she stepped back, wand still pointed at the parchment she had adjusted. "Then you can urge your Chasers toward the goal posts. It's intimidating to watch three Chasers flying straight at you, yes?" She went on, but James could only stare at the way her hands moved around wildly as she talked, at the animated glint to her eye, her lips. He was fairly certain he could watch her talk about something she was passionate about until the day he died. "…up to your Seeker to catch the Snitch as fast as possible and to distract the other Seeker, but the Chasers are responsible for making goals and separating your team from the other."

Silence fell as she crossed her arms over her stomach awkwardly, and he glanced up from the drills to look at her in awe.

She was worrying her lip between her teeth as if she was about to be rejected, and James got a first-hand look at what an insecure Lily looked like. If it was possible, it only made him love her more. Meanwhile, he was absentmindedly rubbing his chin, already going over a few plays he could try with his team based off of her strategic suggestions.

Lily looked as if she was about to say something else to fill the devastating silence between them, something with finality before she would gather up her things and disappear up the girls' staircase, and James desperately grasped at the inner reachings of his mind for something to say. Unfortunately, his mind was not working fast enough, and what he did end up saying was one of the last things he'd wished to say.

"That's pretty good for someone who only learned about Quidditch from a boyfriend. What position did this bloke play, anyway?"

She rolled her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile, as if she expected as much. "Bugger off about him, Potter."

"It's a legitimate question! It's one thing to date the enemy, but an entirely different can of worms to discuss strategy with them. Where's your house loyalty?"

"Where it always is, cheering on the team in the stands."

"There are lines to be crossed even off the pitch, Evans."

"My sincerest apologies, next time I'll date someone who doesn't play Quidditch, at least then we'll be able to talk about sometime else."

Something clenched in his chest at that, but he smiled anyway. That was definitely a smile blossoming on the corner of her lips in response, and he was not imagining the laugh that bubbled from her a moment later.

"What, what's so funny?"

She shook her head, rubbing one of her eyes. When that was all the answer he received, he went on. "For someone who hates the sport, you know a whole lot more than I'd expected. Have you ever tried playing it? Y'know, actually getting up in the air to see how some of your ideas panned out instead of watching from the sidelines?" James seriously doubted she had, unless the mysterious git of Ravenclaw had taken her up, in which case the boy was going to get a nasty curse to the face the next time James found him in the hallways. Old habits die hard and all of that. "I'd be willing to show you the ropes if you're interested. It could be fun and enlightening too, I suppose. And aren't you all about learning new things, Evans?"

"I didn't have a choice but to listen to him without being rude, and I'm usually not rude to the boys I like." He watched as she sank into the chair adjacent from his at the table. She ran her hands through her hair and pushed it away from her face before sighing heavily. He merely watched with an expectant but patient raise of his eyebrows. "He never asked me to fly with him, so that would be a no. I rather like the sidelines. And what makes you think that I'd be learning something new?" she countered him, arms resting on the table as she narrowed her eyes at him. It wasn't accusatory but it was by no means perfectly friendly either. She sounded as if she'd be confronted and that was the last thing James wanted to do.

"Well, seeing as you haven't gone out flying with your old boyfriend," James stressed the last word, hoping that she might possibly slip up and admit that the boy never existed in the first place (he was nothing if not a dreamer), "and you don't seem to have a broom of your own, I'd be willing to bet you haven't been on a broomstick since Madam Hooch gave us that lesson way back in first year. Have you?" He angled his chair to face her and resumed his previous position, fingers laced behind his head.

"I don't have to prove anything to you, Potter," she said defensively, and he practically bounced gleefully. He ignored the glare she shot his way and flashed her a brilliant smile. Oh, so she didn't have anything to prove to him, did she? James couldn't stop his eyebrow from quirking upwards at her words. By merely saying she didn't have anything to prove to him effectively meant that he was correct in assuming that she hadn't been on a broom recently and she actually did want to go out for a ride with him. It was all clearly just a cover-up to make it seem as if she didn't want to go out with him as badly as he was sure she did. Clearly. Perhaps she'd finally come to terms with the unavoidability of their dating. Or maybe she'd decided to give him that one elusive chance he'd been waiting for, a chance that had taken a couple years to get. Either way, if he screwed it up now, he'd lose this chance and there was no way he was going to let that happen. James scratched his chin thoughtfully and looked up at Lily, his natural cocky smile slowly growing on his lips.

"Okay, let's make this a real bet. If you can prove to me that you've actually been on a broom and flown higher than twenty feet, sometime in the past five years, I'll leave you alone for a week." James paused, grinning like a fiend, the gears in his mind turning over excitedly. "If you can't, though, you've got to go on a date with me, and I'll be the one to take you up in the air for a ride."

Her eyes narrowed and he knew he had her trapped. Intrigued. "You can't go ten minutes without asking me out, can you?"

His grin grew. "To be fair, I haven't asked you out this whole year. And it's been fifteen." He winked. "Are you accepting or no?"

James watched as she appeared to be thinking it over. He was right when she spoke up next, the words seeming to be forced passed her lips. "How, exactly, would you be leaving me alone?"

"Parameters, right. Okay. You win, I don't speak with you for a week, including notes and conversations passed to you from anyone else. And I'll keep at least five feet away from you at all times. You'll have a James Potter free week." To make it sound fair, he had to at least attempt at making the deal look good coming from her end as well. He tried not to even consider what the week would be like if he was, by some remarkably, spectacularly, incredibly small chance, wrong. It would be absolutely awful, if that were the case. "But if I win, you agree to a date with me and I take you flying. That includes sitting on a broom with me for a minimum of fifteen minutes. Dinner afterwards is optional but encouraged. Sound fair enough to you?"

"Dinner afterwards is your way of asking me to stick my wand up your arse, if that's what you really want," she snapped. He couldn't help the snort of laughter that followed her threat. Familiar was comfortable, after all. "What happens when I win and you inevitably mess up? I have an addition to these terms. Every time you slip up, including that stupid grin you always try to give me in the corridors, because we both know you will, you have to politely approach Snape and apologize for one of the many pranks you pulled on him over the last six years. I'm sure there are enough infractions to last you the amount of times you'll forget." She sat back smugly, and the horrified look that crossed his face made her laugh. "Also, make it fifteen feet and you have yourself a deal."

"…Lily."

"Those are my terms. Take it or leave it."

He sighed but he knew the odds were stacked in his favor. He wouldn't be forced to go a week without Lily or have to apologize to Snape for anything, because he was going to get that date. It hadn't really occurred to James in the slightest that he might be wrong in his assumption that Lily hadn't been on a broom in the last five years. In all the years he'd known her, the closest she got to a broom was in the stands during a game.

"Alright," he said finally, the cocky grin making another reappearance. "You've got yourself a deal." He stuck out his hand to shake on it, that same something in his chest loosening when her small hand slipped in his. "Now, I'd like to hear about all the times you've been on a broom in the past five years, with all the solid proof to back it up."

Lily leaned forward with a sly smile on her face and beckoned him forward with her finger. James could actively feel his eyes widen and his smooth confidence was quickly and easily replaced with shock. Leave it to Lily to crook her finger and turn him into a pile of teenage hormones. He swallowed whatever clever retort he'd been about to say and leaned forward without thinking. It was as though she had pulled a string and dragged him forward without him being consciously aware of it. For a second, he was almost close enough to get another whiff of her perfume, to see the flecks of gold in her bright green eyes, but then she was pushing his face back and standing with a smirk.

"I can't tell you about all my dates, James," she called over her shoulder as she made her way to the staircases. "You'd feel pressured to top them and make a fool out of yourself. It's such a shame that I'm going to win. Cheers."

James was left with a confused grimace on his face – she called him James – but he was fairly certain he had officially crossed a point of no return regarding one Miss Lily Evans.

- TBC -

AN: So yeah! Thanks for reading. I'm torn between writing the next chapter in Lily's POV or sticking with James'. Any requests? Let me know in the reviews!