Disclaimer - I own nothing you recognise.
Challenge List at the Bottom.
AN - This is AU. Please don't tell me my timings are off - I'm fully aware.
I'd Follow A Different Path
(if you'd let me)
He twisted his signet ring around his finger, the Potter emblem shining in the moonlight. He'd always been proud of who he was, but right now, he wished he could be anyone else. A different surname, and his problems would be solved.
Never before had he been sad to be a Potter.
"Why did you call me up here?" she asked, stepping from the shadows behind him. He patted the floor beside him, laying his robe out when she sneered at the flood. Rolling her eyes, she sat beside him.
He couldn't help but appreciate her regality.
"I heard the rumours," she said after a long pause, reading the truth from his face. "You got what you always wanted, I suppose."
James shook his head. "This wasn't what I wanted, Narcissa. You know that. What I wanted, I can't have."
"Knocking a mudblood up before even leaving school. It's sickening that, as a Potter, you'll get away with that behaviour."
James shook his head frowning. "Don't do that. Don't call her that, it's not who you are."
The fight drained from her face and she leant heavily against the wall. "What else am I to do, but be what my family want me to be, James?"
With a sad chuckle, James gripped her hands between his own. "Not our department. Emotions I mean. But you should know that I love you. I would have declared that at the top of this very tower, if things were different."
"We have to respect the lines, James. We could never have been… anything. I cannot return your love because I am a Black and you are a Potter, and that might not matter to Sirius, or even to you, but it matters to me."
James shivered against the cold, unsure if it was the winter air or the distance between the two of them, even as they sat side by side.
He slid the family ring from his finger, and slipped it into her hand, closing her fingers around it. "I want you to have this. Don't argue with me, please. I just… had things been different, had I had the power to change things, it would be another ring I'd be offering, but as it is, this is all I have. Don't forget me, Narcissa."
She smiled, a smile he knew from clandestine nightly meetings. It was a smile she smiled only for him.
"I don't think anyone could ever forget you, Potter."
He nodded, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "You should head back to the dorm, it's bloody cold out."
He helped her to her feet, and watched as she walked away, her back straight, her head high, and his ring still clutched between her fingers.
James looked up at the sky, feeling the absence of the ring on his finger. His hand slipped into his pocket, finding a box that held a different kind of ring, with a different kind of meaning.
"Man up Potter," he told himself quietly, his voice carrying in the silence. "Time to do the right thing. Even if it's for the wrong reason."
He left the Astronomy tower for the Library, knowing that's where he'd find Evans, studying for the Newts while she stressed about her future.
Written for;
Showtime - 11. Good For You - (dialogue) "You got what you always wanted."
Yule Ball - 20. Unrequited Love
WC, Book Club - Diana Ladris: (word) power, (action) "reading" someone, (trope) teen pregnancy, (dialogue) "Time to do the right thing. Even if it's for the wrong reason."
WC, Buttons - JamesNarcissa
WC, TV Show - Greg Lestrade: (object) Ring, (word) Respect, (dialogue) "Not our department."
Stickers - Sweets - Ice Mice - Write a fic set in winter
Insane House Challenge - 43. Narcissa Malfoy
Dragon Appreciation Month - WC - 543
Writing Month - WC - 543
Ways To Say - 76. "I want you to have this."