Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all of the characters that reside in it, is the creative property of J.K Rowling. Thank you J.K Rowling.
For two long months, Hogwarts had lain almost empty. In these muted corridors dust had settled sleepily into the cracks and curves of the old sandstone, disturbed only by the occasional flick of a small mouse's tail and possibly the padding of the caretaker's cat in stealthy pursuit. The castle, so perceptive to its environment, had gone into hibernation but now it awoke with renewed vitality. As the doors flew open and the students poured in, the shouts and laughter echoed throughout the halls, permeating through the walls and into the castle's heart. Fires leaped up in hitherto empty grates, doors previously locked swung open and Hogwarts seemed to almost hum with the strength of the life that now filled it. The students were home.
That night, Lily sat next to an open window three corridors away form the Gryffindor common room, musing over the irony of something that is so cold it burns as she drew in long, icy breaths of midnight air. She could have sworn that midnight air is different from everyday air. There was a heightened quality and elusive stillness to it that always made Lily crave more.
Her late night musings had been a regular occurrence since first year, when the desire for aloneness had first captured her troubled soul and flown her to this exact spot. Of all the quirky spaces and corners dotted about the castle, this was Lily's preferred hideaway. The deep ledge was perfectly comfortable to sit on for long periods of time, as Lily was prone to do. Heavy scarlet curtains could be drawn over to let Lily completely disappear, as she was prone to wish. If this hideaway could talk, it would be able to chart Lily's time at Hogwarts by all the private moments she had claimed from it. It was where Lily had come to cry over the curt, unpleasant replies from Petunia to letters Lily had spent days writing. It was where she had come to smile secretly over her first kiss, with a boy from Hufflepuff in her fourth year. It was where she came when was too angry with Severus to be anywhere where she might bump into him or some of his horrible friends. And now, on the eve of the beginning of her fifth year, it was where she came to quietly revel in the sense of belonging that she had been missing all summer long. Nobody knew about this place but Lily. It was her sanctuary.
It was also the place where The Thing happened on That Night but Lily would rather not think about that.
She twirled her wand deftly between her fingers and smiled a little. With a small, neat twist a single lily petal sprang from the end of her wand and dipped in the air in front of her just out of reach. Another twist and the petal burst into a million star dust pieces which fell slowly towards the ground ten stories below. Lily waited a few seconds, testing her limits before summoning the star dust back up to her eye level and, in a final upward twirl, the dust particles reformed into a bright, white dove which immediately flew towards the moon and away. Lily watched it go a little sadly.
Sighing, Lily got up slowly and made her way back to the dormitory, another midnight musing coming to an end. She slid in the port hole as quietly as she could and blindly walked across the dark common room. She had made it just past where she guessed the study desks were in the room when she tripped over something big and squashy. Unprepared for the fall, Lily smacked her head off the edge of one of the desks and lay groaning on the floor as the big and squashy something stirred.
"Who's there?" A husky voice sounded through the darkness, "Dammit, hang on a sec. Lumos."
Still seeing stars, Lily squinted in the sudden glare and then groaned for a whole different reason.
"Evans! What are you doing on the ground?" James asked, his bewildered look turning into concern as he noticed the blood trail from her hairline. He was sitting on the ground with his back resting on one of the worn red sofas and had obviously dozed off.
"Oh you know, I thought I'd just lie here for a while and watch you sleep but things got boring so I head butted the table to liven things up a little" Lily deadpanned as she wiped the blood away with her pyjama sleeve. "You tripped me up, Potter, and an apology right about now wouldn't go amiss."
James looked at her for a minute, processing what she just said. Sarcasm took a while to achieve its full effect when one was half asleep. "Well technically it was your fault, Evans. You were the one who fell over me," he said, matching the faint irritation in her tone.
Lily opened her mouth to reply but thought better of it. There wasn't much point arguing. For the first four years of Hogwarts, their relationship had been a string of verbal explosions and mutiny. At an indeterminate point last year they had come to a kind of mutual, silent agreement. Now they acted like strangers. Not speaking was better than all the fighting and bitching. Then there was The Thing that made Lily's head hurt every time she thought about.
Instead she turned her attention to the pieces of parchment littered around Potter that she had missed before in her dazed state. There were pages of notes in different handwritings and hand drawn pictures of corridors all over the school. Curiously, Lily leaned forward but before she could see anything more a muscular hand had grabbed them all together and out of sight. James hastily shoved them all into his satchel and blushed deeply.
"What's that?" Lily asked, her curiosity roused. She would have dearly loved to know what secret things James Potter and his mysterious group of friends worked so hard over.
"Just an essay," James said too quickly. Knowing he looked guilty, he evaded her gaze and instead fixed his eyes on Lily's forehead where the blood was slowly making its way towards her right eyebrow. Frowning, he reached out his thumb and gently wiped it away. Lily was too surprised to protest and even then she strangely found she didn't want to. There was a hot tingling where his thumb lay on her forehead. Every sense was heightened and it was all Lily could do to stop herself from leaning her head into his hands. James had gone quiet too as his dark eyes roamed her face in the dim light and rested on her lips. The whole world slowed down and Lily could have sworn that the antique hands on the clocks shuddered and stopped. James bit his lip.
A bang from one of the dormitories brought them back to earth rudely. James shook his head and then withdrew his hand sharply, looking embarrassed. His hand flew to the back of his head and he messed up his hair, just like he always did when he was feeling vulnerable. Lily felt like she had been doused in icy water the minute Potter pulled his hand away and now her cheeks flamed red with embarrassment too as she scrambled backwards. They both tried to look anywhere but each other.
"I should.. um."
"Yeah me too."
Lily pushed herself up to standing and walked as quickly as she could upstairs without looking back. In the safety of her bed she allowed her mind to turn over the events of the previous ten minutes. She didn't think she had ever had a conversation with Potter that hadn't ended in an argument. Flashes of his drawings mingled in her confused head with pictures of him biting his bottom lip and strong hands reaching towards her. Lily had thought, just for a minute, that he was going to kiss her and strangest of all; she had almost wanted him to. Lily Evans wanting to kiss James Potter? It even sounded ridiculous in her head.
Finally, she slipped into a string of random dreams filled with white doves and twisting corridors.
Author's Note: Hello! For a while now I have been wanting to write my version of the James and Lily story so here is the beginning! I hope this story will be true to the visions of the characters I have in my head and most importantly I want this to be an accurate portrayal of what a teenage James and Lily might actually have been like, flaws and all. I am trying my best to keep the actions and dialogue of the characters believable since the majority of the marauders story at this time is set in high school and I think that's sometimes forgotten. Do you ever feel like the dialogue of characters in books is so difficult to believe? I can never imagine any of the boys I know speaking like a boy from a John Green novel. Maybe I just know a lot of boys with the emotional range of a teaspoon...
Anyway, please review this if you have time as I always value feedback and favourite/follow if the notion befalls you. My next chapter will be finished after I move out but after that I will probably be writing a lot more- no cure like writing for homesickness!
Jem