"Hey, look," Marlene nudges Lily while she and the girls are lounging by the lake on a hot sunday afternoon, "it's your not-so-secret admirer."

Lily sighs before putting her book down and preparing her friendliest smile to greet the Ravenclaw coming in her direction. Edgar Bones was 6ft tall, had curly brown hair, dark brown eyes and was apparently hopelessly in love with Lily Evans.

"Eddie, hey," she greets him when he's within earshot.

He blushes slightly at the sound of her voice. "Hello, Lily! I didn't see you at the welcoming feast, so I thought I'd come and see you now and give you the gift i bought you during break."

She blinks in surprise at him. "A gift? Oh Eddie you didn't have to!"

He's already pulling off a small package from his coat pocket and offering it to her.

"Uh, I don't know if they broke or not. I tried to put a spell on them to make them last longer but I don't know if it worked either," she takes the package from his outstretched hand, ignoring the way her friends keep exchanging looks between themselves. "They're called macarons. They're sweets from France, and I know you love sweets, so…"

She takes a few seconds to answer, undoing the delicate bow and finding the colorful sweets inside, some slightly cracked but still mostly intact.

Lily raises her head back up to look at the boy in front of her. "That was so thoughtful, Eddie. Thank you, really."

"It was nothing," he wipes his hands on his pants, his smile feeling forced and nervous.

"Uh… are you okay?" Lily exchanges a quick confused look with Alice.

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying and failing to get the words out. Finally, he manages to recompose himself enough to speak. "When's the first trip to Hogsmead? I wanted you to come with me, we could even go Madam Puddifoot's and see if she has more macarons. If you like them, I mean. You don't have to eat them if you don't, of course!" his face gradually changes color from white to pink to red during his ramble.

Lily feels like she's physically suppressing her urge to groan while she once again forces a smile on her lips. "Uh… sorry, Eddie. I already promised I'd go with the girls, right?" she emphasizes the last word, staring each of her friends in the eyes with a clear message to confirm what she just said.

"Um yeah, totally! It's a tradition for us," Alice chimes in, nudging Marlene with her elbow.

"Yeah, sorry, Bones," she says.

The boy's face falls a little. "Oh, okay then. Some other time, then," he says with a hopeful look on his eyes.

"Yeah, maybe some other time," Lily replies with an apologetic expression. When he waves goodbye and goes back to his friends, Lily turns to her friends with sigh. "Can we not talk about that? I'm tired."

The truth is that Eddie and Lily were never really friends. They knew each other, of course. She knew everyone in her year. But after being appointed Prefects last year, they started doing rounds together. And he was nice, really. He was sweet and a good listener and all but he was just kind of boring.

It started to go downhill when he asked her out for the first time. She politely declined, much like she did right now, and he took it just fine, much like he did right now. The problem was that he just kept asking and she kept declining and now they're stuck in that cycle for all eternity.

Okay, maybe not for all of eternity. But something like that.

Alice elbows Marlene again when she sees the blonde opening her mouth.

Marlene sighs. "Yeah, let's go back to the common room before they form a line to ask for Lily's hand."

Lily gets up and glares at her friend. "I hate you, you know."

"Uh huh, I'm sure you do," Marlene says, extending her hand so Lily can pull her up.

As the redhead follows her friends inside, she notices the marauders splashing each other by the lake shore. They notice the three girls leaving and wave at them. Lily and the girls wave back and three of the boys go back to their little game.

James continues to stare at Lily while she talks to her friends on the way to the castle.

The next day, Lily drags herself away from her bed and into the Great Hall for breakfast. SInce she refused to wake up when her alarm went off, she's slightly late and has to eat alone since her friends have already finished.

She's focusing her entire energy on not falling asleep on top of her scrambled eggs when she feels a tap on her shoulder. She groans in a way that her mom would definitely reprimand and turns around to look into Edgar Bones' eyes.

"Good morning, Lily!"

This time she doesn't even try to smile at him. "Morning, Eddie."

He seems unfazed by her morning grumpiness. "So I thought you and me could get together for a study date after classes today. What do you think? What are your classes?"

"Uh, how about we wait until classes actually start and we have homework to have a study session?" she makes a point to use the word session instead of date, but he doesn't seem to realize she made the change at all.

"I just thought you'd like to get ahead, you know? You want to be Head Girl and all, you shouldn't start slacking right now," he says with a furrowed eyebrow.

Lily has to close her eyes for a couple of seconds and concentrate on not snapping too hard at Edgar. "Eddie, classes start today, it's not like we're in november or anything. You worry about your grades and I'll worry about mine, okay?"

"Okay, it's your call," he raises his hand in surrender. "Enjoy your breakfast, Lils."

"Thanks," she replies in an even grumpier mood than before.

She goes back to her now cold breakfast, shoving her plate back and downing the rest of her orange juice.

"Lils, huh?"

She turns her head to the side and faces James, sitting alone and looking much more composed than he should be this early in the morning.

"What?" she says, self-consciously trying to tame her slightly messy hair. She should've at least combed it, dammit.

"That Bones guy, he called you Lils," he raises an eyebrow. "Didn't know you were so close, that's all."

"Oh. We're not, he just thinks we are," she hopes she didn't sound too bitchy, but what other way is there to put it?

James lets out a low hiss. "Ouch, that's harsh, Evans. Even for you."

Lily flinches. "I didn't mean for it to sound so harsh."

"Sure you didn't," he says as he gets up. "See you in class, Lils."

She follows him with her eyes as he makes his way to the doors, stopping here and there to greet some Gryffindors along the way.

She gathers her things and heads for the doors, sighing as she mentally prepares herself for the start of a new school year.

By the time the week is over, Lily has become a permanent fixture in the Gryffindor common room, her fear of running into Edgar keeping her from walking around the castle more than necessary.

He keeps finding ways to ask her out and she's running out of ideas on how to politely turn him down. In fact, she's getting annoyed and honestly tired of being polite. How many times do you have to say no before the guy finally takes a hint?

She gets tired of hiding and just watching from the window as the entire school enjoys the last few days of warm weather by the lake and decides to leave the Gryffindor tower.

First she drops by the kitchen to get an afternoon snack. When she's done with that, she heads for the entrance courtyard to meet her friends. It's when she's about to turn the last corner that she hears it.

Steps, right behind her. And then the voice of the one person she absolutely doesn't want to see.

"Hey, Lils!" Edgar half-yells from the opposite end of the corridor.

Lily speeds up, pretending she didn't hear a thing as she rounds up the corner and collides head-first into someone's chest.

"Woah, woah, woah," James' hands find her shoulders to stabilize her. "Careful there."

Something snaps inside of her when she hears those damned footsteps rounding the corner right behind her, and before her brain cells can even connect with each other to pass the message, she's pulling James Fucking Potter by the neck and crashing her lips to his.

She barely registers the fact that there's no more footsteps behind her.

All her brain can focus on is the way James lets out a little gasp of surprise and freezes for a total of exactly 2 seconds before the hands that were on her shoulders find their way to her neck and waist, pulling her to him and finally responding to the kiss.

It lasts for much longer than necessary. Hands start wandering, James' hair is really really smooth, and his stubble tickles a little but it feels kind of good and the kiss definitely feels good and she's running out of breath.

By the time her brain cells actually start talking to each other and she steps out of James' embrace. He's out of breath too and looking at her with a mix of emotions in his eyes and she doesn't know if she wants to decipher them or not.

"Evans, what are you-"

Lily shushes him, pushing a finger on his lips and looking around to see if there was anyone in the corridor. He grabs her wrist and takes her finger off his face.

"There's no one here," he says with a hint of impatience in his voice.

She takes a few steps back and looks at the corridor she came from and sees that James was right. She still won't look at him and they just stand there in silence for a few moments.

Finally, James gets tired of waiting. "So… are you gonna tell me what just happened there, or…"

"Nothing, it was nothing," how long does it take to get her breathing back to normal?

"Really? So you just couldn't control yourself and decided to jump me out of nowhere?" James crosses his arms and leans on the wall, completely relaxed.

Lily sputters and glares at him. "Of course not, don't be obnoxious, Potter."

"Well, that's the only explanation that makes sense to me, and I gotta tell you, Evans," he pushes himself off the wall and steps towards her, "I'm up for seconds if you are. There's a perfectly good broom cupboard right up there."

"You can go and lock yourself up in that cupboard for all I care," she takes her trademark hands-on-waist and fire-in-her-eyes stance, the one reserved for only James.

"Aw c'mon, Evans. You can stop pretending right now, okay?" his tone is nothing short of cocky and arrogant.

"I did it to get rid of Eddie, okay?" she whisper-yells at him, looking around once again just in case the boy was hiding somewhere nearby.

A mildly confused expression takes over James' face. "Bones? I thought you turned him down last week."

She lets out a little laugh. "I've been turning him down all week, actually."

"So you just used me to get rid of him? I'm not a piece of meat, Evans," he puts a hand on his heart.

"It's not like I chose you, alright? You were just… there," she mumbles, noticing for the first time that her shirt is crooked and crumpled.

"Yeah, like you would've kissed Remus if you bumped into him."

"Maybe I would," but she sounds uncertain and he can read right through her.

"Uh huh, sure," he starts walking back to wherever it was that he was going before their little encounter happened. "See you around, Evans."

She doesn't reply, instead choosing to just watch his departing figure. Her thoughts start wandering back to the kiss they shared minutes before, but she shakes her head and mentally reprimands herself before deciding to go back to the Gryffindor tower.

Her mind's not in the right place to talk to her friends right now, but it absolutely had nothing to do with Potter. Or his lips. Or his stupid soft hair.

No, not at all.