Author's Note: I don't know why I wrote this. It just sort of happened, in twenty minutes just now. I was bored.
Disclaimer: If I had owned Harry Potter, I'd be so sick of the characters I wouldn't be writing one-thousand word stories about them.
For... oh, what the hell, for all of you. For anyone who has ever fought against love and anyone who has ever pathetically surrendered.
On a blustery day in late January, Lily Evans gave in.
"Okay, Potter," she spat, plopping down in the chair next to where he was quietly reading a book on Quidditch moves. "I've come to a decision. I'll give it a go."
James pushed his glasses up his nose and turned gray eyes to gape at her. "You'll—what?"
"I'll go to Hogsmeade with you next weekend," Lily snaps, grinding her teeth together. "Not one of those horrid frilly places, mind, and if I catch you saying one single word about it to your idiot friends I'll—I'll punch you in the nose."
"I—what—why—" James's mouth looked somewhat like that of a drowning fish. It was not that he was not thankful for this red-headed goddess the heavens had apparently deigned to deliver to his lap, who had inexplicably turned on six and a half solid years of hating his guts to "give him a go." It was simply that he had no idea what he did.
"Don't talk," Lily hissed, closing her emerald-bright eyes. "Please. I'll change my mind if you talk." Already it was seeming like a Very Bad idea. But he had just been so… so studious, his brow furrowed and his lips twitching slightly over the words, and normally she hated that, and normally she hated him, but instead of wanting to punch him she wanted to punch him and kiss him at the same time.
Lily thought she might be mad.
Well, no, she knew she was mad if she was seriously asking James Potter on a date. She had once vowed she'd rather date the pet toad of a Slytherin first year. Had she sunk so low? She was definitely mad.
"I think I'm delirious." James said, raising his hand to his own forehead. "Because I cannot believe that Lily Evans just asked me for a date. It must be a fever dream."
Lily very nearly screamed. Instead she reached out with her own white hand to touch his forehead. "You're not hallucinating. No fever," She explained, drawing back from the smell of him. "Though if I'd realized you'd be such a berk about it, I wouldn't have bothered."
"No, it's just… I'm grateful, I am, and I'd love to, I'd bloody… I'd move mountains, you have no idea…"
"I think I have some idea." Lily quipped smartly, one corner of her soft girl-mouth curling up.
"…it's just that last week when I asked you out you told me to sod off and threatened to have my manhood in a jar for your mantle." James blabbered. "And that's not even the worst thing you said, the last year you've gone tame, compared to the last few…"
"Look, I just…" Lily sighed. "It seemed like a good idea, all right, forget it, it was stupid."
"…and I just want to know what I've done, what's changed your mind, so I can keep doing that." James panted. He realized he ought to have been saying something cool and confident, more along the lines of Hah! I knew all along I'd bag you someday, but for some reason these other words keep spilling from his lip. It is a disease, he thought, panicked, a disease and a curse, to always say the exact wrong thing. "And not—not do any of the other things."
He was utterly pathetic. Lily grimaced. It showed up on her face as a smile.
"It's nothing you've done," she said gently. "I was just thinking. And you've… you've grown up, is all, and it seemed… I've got no expectations, I know it'll be simply horrible and I'll have been right all along, but it was something I had to try, this once, do you understand?"
James nodded. His glasses slipped down his nose. He didn't notice. His eyes looked in danger of enveloping his whole face. "I—you're not making sense, Evans, you know that? I think it is the first time in your whole entire life. We ought to—to get a plaque made. On this day in 1977, Lily Evans made no sense. And on a smaller plaque, beneath it, James Potter understood her anyway."
Oh, Lord, he had to stop talking. Lily knew of only one way to make him. Gently, she eased herself forward until her lips were touching his.
"Merlin," James murmured against her skin. "She just kissed me. My life is over. I am ready to die."
"James," Lily said softly, "I do believe it's you who isn't making any sense."
"James...?" He said, blinking. "You called me James."
"It's your name." She reminded him. What was she getting herself into?
He shook his head. "Yeah, it's my name, but you never use it. You always say Potter, or Arrogant Toerag if you're feeling particularly friendly."
"Thought it might be nice," She said, flushing beneath her freckles, "for a change, you know. Most girls don't call their… their boyfriends or what-have-you by their surnames."
"Boyfriends?"
"Or what-have-you." Lily felt ill. She put a hand to her head. "Oh, bollocks, what are my friends going to say? What am I going to tell them? That that last love poem finally swayed me, that I thought it was sweet instead of infuriating? I'll be a laughingstock. This is madness, it is, I should be committed—"
Her rant was cut off by warm lips on her own.
She exhaled, warm and close. "I can't remember what I was saying," she whispered. "You're—you're really very good at that, you know."
James smiled. With another girl he might have said Yeah, of course I know, practice and all, har har, but this was Lily Evans and therefore a case for utmost seriousness.
He was still trying to decide what to say when she laughed a tiny little laugh that twisted his heart sideways and leaned forward to kiss him again.
"You know what, Lily Evans," he said, raising an eyebrow at her once she'd pulled back, fingers to her velvet lips. "I think you are bent."
"I think, perhaps, I am." She flashed him this incredible smile—like the sun, he lived and died in that smile—and stood up. "Hogsmeade. I'll meet you at the gate." And with a whirl of red hair, she was up the stairs into the girls' dormitory.
"Incredibly bent." James muttered to himself, wondering where his book had gotten to. "Bent for me."