A girl walks past him.
Long, dark hair that falls perfectly straight.
Blue eyes, thick, dark lashes.
Golden-tan skin, perfect complexion.
He doesn't know her name, but she's there.
Celia, he remembers. Celia Johnson.
She's as close as a human can be to having no personality. She's bland, generic. The girl who's sweet as honey to her friends and spreads horrid rumors about other girls. She's popular and utterly stupid.
A perfect girl. Shouldn't he want her?
But Lily Evans isn't a perfect girl. She's fiery, snappish, cruel when she needed to be. She's gentle, kind, helping first years memorize theories in Transfiguration and Charms.
He watches her a lot.
He doesn't believe in love. He believes—desperately makes himself believe—that he's only lusting after her.
She's just another girl.
Other boys have said that she's perfect.
Red hair, green eyes, pale skin. The kind of girl whose looks are a cliché because they aren't.
A delicate nose. Finely shaped ears. Freckles lightly spattering her nose and cheekbones.
Not a perfect girl. Nowhere near a perfect girl. But a beautiful one. She's the one he wants, at any rate. And James Potter gets what he wants.