Author's Note: Merry Christmas! I wrote the first half of this back in 2011 and then apparently forgot about it for a while. I found it, decided I'd post it at Christmas time, and then totally forgot last Christmas. I found it again yesterday, and finished it, and up it goes, Christmas Eve morning! Enjoy. I haven't written Lily/James in a long time.

Lily glowered at Potter's retreating back. It was just like him to walk away from an argument like this. And to make her chase after him. He always had to be in control of things, didn't he? Well, she didn't want to chase after him, but she did it. She grabbed his arm. "Potter, I told you to go see McGonagall. You can't just glue a first year to the ceiling and get away with it." While it wasn't in Lily's power as a prefect to give Potter and his friends detention, she could certainly ask McGonagall to give him one. If she could get him there, that is; at this point, that looked like a pretty large "if."

They stood still, facing each other.

"Let it go, Evans. Remus will get him down. He knows where Sirius keeps the glue remover. And let go of my arm."

"That's not the point." She tightened her grip, glaring at him. "First years are not toys for you to play with!"

"You can't even let me half one laugh before the holidays? You really are a Grinch, Evans. You'd think someone whose head was always decorated for Christmas might have a little spirit." He reached out and pulled her hair as if they were eleven years old again, and not fifteen.

She smacked his arm. "Hexing students is not part of the Christmas spirit. Giving gifts, singing, making people happy…that is the Christmas spirit."

He pried her fingers off his arm, flexing it a couple of times experimentally to see if she'd done any damage. "Hexing him made Sirius and me very happy, so it was in the spirit." He pulled up the sleeve of his robe, examining his bicep and triceps. He looked at her with a face like an injured puppy. "I think you bruised me."

"You deserve to have your face used to mop the floor. That student is probably going to end up with a fear of heights now." She posed with both hands on her hips, giving him her best double barreled green glare.

He didn't flinch…much, anyway. He'd grown quite accustom to receiving her stronger glares on a weekly basis, and a regular strength one most days. He shrugged, intending to turn, and found his legs oddly unable to move.

"Where do you think you are going? I told you, you have to go see McGonagall." She hoped McGonagall was capable of coming up with a punishment deserving of the crime.

Now it was his turn to glare. She must have used a charm on him while he wasn't paying attention. He couldn't seem to lift his feet.

She tried to step forward, intending to poke him in the chest…or perhaps his eye. She couldn't move her feet. "What did you do to me, Potter?"

"Me? What did you do to me, Evans? I can't move a bloody inch."

They stood, fuming at one another, certain that the other one had done it.

She got out her wand, pointing it at her feet. "Finite Incantem." She experimentally tried to move and failed.

Potter, certain that she just must have done it wrong, gave it a try himself. His results were the same. Lily bent over, trying to untie her shoe—maybe the spell had only stuck her shoes to the floor. She was able to untie it, but it did no good in freeing her. She didn't look up at Potter; she didn't need to see the self-satisfied smirk on his face to know it would be there. "Do you have a better suggestion? Is this one of your pranks? I'm going to miss the train home."

He tried to transfigure his shoe into a liquid, figuring it might then come up. All he ended up with was a somewhat melted looking shoe that he'd have to replace over the holidays. "I have plans too—Sirius and I had a big project we were going to work on over the break with Peter."

"Heaven forbid you use the break to do your homework…" she growled, tucking her hair behind her ear.

He snapped. "Some things are more important." He stared sullenly at his shoes.

Lily stood up, crossing her arm over her chest. "Any bright ideas?" she asked, dripping sarcasm.

He ignored her, fishing in his pocket and taking out a small mirror.

"And your vanity knows no bounds…"

He ignored her. "Sirius. Sirius Black, get your arse to this mirror."

Lily watched Potter's face change from one of impatience to one of relief.

"Don't be so bloody impatient. Where's that—" a voice in the mirror started.

"Sirius, I need the top five reasons why Evans and I would be stuck to the floor in the corridor outside the Transfiguration classroom. Go."

A voice came from the mirror again. "She decided to use the stuff we used on the first year against you and it went terribly wrong. There's a sinking step we didn't know about. You stepped in some sort of really bizarre hippogriff dung. She cursed your feet and you didn't notice. Flitwick missed one of the batches of charmed mistletoe and you're under it." He paused for half a second. "That's five, you want me to keep going?"

Lily swore under her breath—most unlike herself—and looked at the ceiling. Hanging high above their heads was a sprig of mistletoe. "How's the mistletoe enchanted, Black?"

She heard his muffled voice. "Is Evans actually there with you?"

"Black…" She threatened, not that she could do much from where she was, with him only present in the form of a mirror.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist. Some Ravenclaw blokes I know charmed about a dozen sprigs of mistletoe the other night and planted them around the school. If you pass by yourself you're fine, but if you pass by and touch somebody…you're stuck 'til you've had a good snog. Flitwick found most of them and got rid of them. I guess he missed one."

Lily rounded on James (as well as she could, given that her feet weren't going anywhere). "You! You did this on purpose."

He shook his head. "You're the one who touched me. If this is anybody's fault, it's yours."

She wasn't backing down. "If you hadn't hexed that first year and walked off I wouldn't have been chasing you." The look she gave him was utter poison.

A voice called out from the mirror. "You could just snog and get out of there."

Lily's mouth set itself in a thin line, not unlike McGonagall's when she was angry. "Not going to happen."

Potter ignored her, "Look, Sirius, can you get hold of those Ravenclaws and see what they used on this stuff so we can counter it?"

"I can try. Most of the Gryffindors are already clearing out. I have a feeling the Ravenclaws are too. Just snog her and get out of there, Pr—James. You can't miss the train. We need all the time we can get this break—"

"I know, I know." He ran his hands through his hair.

Lily watched, trying not to admit that the mirrors looked pretty ingenious. They could talk to one another no matter where they were, and see each other, like a phone with a camera they could carry anywhere. "Where did you buy that?"

"Didn't buy it," Potter responded offhandedly, his mind still working a mile a minute.

"Christmas present?"

He looked up at her, a little surprised. "We made them ourselves, last year, Evans. I'm not quite as stupid as you think I am."

"Neither am I!" Black added.

She looked at him skeptically, but had to admit to herself it was a brilliant piece of work. There was no way Potter and his friends were capable of something like that. She looked up at the cursed mistletoe. Black did say Flitwick had managed to get rid of most of them. She aimed her wand carefully. "Incendio!" She was starting to sweat, it was getting too hot and she couldn't go anywhere.

"Protego!" a male voice shouted. "Aquarius!"

Lily felt the heat abate one instant, and the then a shower of cool water cascade over her the next. She shook the wetness out of her face and looked up. Potter still had his wand raised and was breathing a little heavily, as wet as she was. No one else was around.

Potter looked truly pissed off. "Why didn't you think before you pointed that thing, Evans? That mistletoe is holding us here, there's a link between it and us. You almost burned both of us. If you've got a death wish, fine, but leave me out of it."

She tried to regain her dignity, shaking her sopping hair out behind her. "Black said that Flitwick destroyed the rest of the mistletoe. Stands to reason I could destroy this one."

"No one was probably under the other ones when he destroyed it." He started to raise the arm with the wand.

She leaned away from him as best she could without falling over, fearing the worst. With James Potter, you never knew what his worst was. "What are you doing?"

He looked at her impatiently. "I was going to summon a couple of chairs out of the classroom. At this rate we're going to be standing here until the spring term starts."

"Oh."

He didn't summon the chairs. They stood there in silence for several minutes. "Potter, you'd better not tell a soul…" Before she could give it a second thought, she'd leaned in and started kissing him, grabbing him by the back of his head, fingers in his hair. The tension leaked out of her body and her hand loosened in his hair. James, never one to miss out on a good situation if he'd been lucky enough to walk into one. Merlin, snogging Evans might be worth missing the train. One of his hands found his lower back, his other hand rested on her hip, and kissed her for all he was worth. His lips were open, and his tongue darted across hers. When she sighed (she would deny it later if anyone ever dared ask), and her lips parted, he slipped his tongue between them. Neither of them was quite aware as their feet inched closer to one another and their torsos met.

Sirius was coming up the corridor and had managed to snag one of the Ravenclaws he knew was responsible for the mistletoe. He had him by the back of his robes, steering him forward. As Sirius saw the scene in front of him, he turned around, swinging his captive around with him. "Nothing to see here," he muttered.

The Ravenclaw, of course, peeked over his shoulder and saw Lily Evans and James Potter in the midst of their rather passionate embrace. "Nice to know someone got to enjoy our hard work," he muttered.

James' mouth had left Lily's, and he was kissing his way down her jawline to the side of her neck. Her eyes were closed, and she was only half-aware of the breathy sound she was making. How long had it been since she'd been kissed like this? Had she ever been kissed like this? She needed to end this, now. But…damn.

James was pressing his luck, he knew it, but as Lily seemed to be enjoying herself—and had initiated it—he wasn't quite ready to stop just yet. He wondered if the trail of kisses he'd left down her neck were going to leave a mark. He loved the feeling of her hands in his hair. His heart was thudding his chest. He breathed softly against the wet skin on her neck and started working his way slowly up to her mouth again. The thumb of the hand that was resting on Lily's hip began rubbing gentle circles against the fabric of her robe. Just before his lips reunited with hers—they were so very close that he could feel her breath tickling him—Lily pulled away from him suddenly. Her hands weren't in his hair anymore. In the suddenness of her jerking away, James' hands lost their resting places on her lower back and hip. Not being pressed chest to chest anymore left them both feeling a slight chill in the air.

Lily looked up accusingly at the mistletoe. "I hope that was good enough for you," she said sternly, addressing the innocent looking sprig of greens and not looking at James. After a pause she forced herself to look at him. "Don't you dare breathe a word about that Potter. I have to go, or I'll miss the train."

James watched Lily walk away, amused. Clearly she wasn't quite herself again. The shoe she'd untied before remained on the floor after she'd walked away. James picked it up, looking down distastefully at the goop that was all that remained of one of his shoes. Still, he cradled her shoe to his chest. Perhaps he could find her on the train and persuade her to give him another kiss in exchange for getting it back.

Lily had made her way back to the dormitory as quickly as possible. There were few people in halls to see her. Alice was still in their dorm though. When Lily didn't come back after breakfast, she'd started making sure all of Lily's things were packed herself. She was a good friend.

Alice's round face greeted Lily when she came in. "It looked like you were mostly packed, but I haven't been able to find your potions book. Did you leave it in the library again? Or wherever it is that you and Severus study?" She caught a proper look at her friend. "What on earth happened to you?"

The redhead blinked and hoped she wasn't blushing too profusely. "What are you talking about?"

"Merlin, Lily, that dazed look, the hickeys all the way down your neck, swollen lips: you look like someone dragged you into a broom closet for the last half hour," Alice exclaimed. There was no judgment in her voice. There might even have been some amusement.

She did her best to regain her composure. "The only thing that happened was that I nearly missed the train because Potter and Black decided to commit one of their ill-conceived pranks on a younger student. I wasted a great deal of time attempting to take him to McGonagall's office for punishment, but she wasn't there. She must already be helping the first years find their way to the station."

Alice nodded as if she believed her and tried to keep a straight face. She could find out whatever she needed to know from Black, or Pettigrew, or Remus. Or perhaps even Potter himself. The story behind this one was going to be good.

Lily rounded up her potions book and three notebooks from under the bed where she'd stowed them in relief after the end of her exam. Carefully not looking at her friend, she asked, "I'm going to have to have a long talk with the Ravenclaw prefects in January. Did you know some Ravenclaws bewitched mistletoe this year to trap two people under it if they happened to be touching until they'd kissed each other?"

It was only then that Alice let herself burst out laughing. She knew Lily would forgive her laughing at her, when she wouldn't have forgiven anyone else.