The Photo Album
There was a knock on Lily Evans dormitory door and then it opened before Lily, who was standing on a chair cleaning the bookshelves (without magic), could say 'Come in'.
"You know", James said dragging the 'o' in the know, "There are better ways to spend the holidays?"
He was leaning against the doorframe, his hand still holding the doorknob. Hair messy as it had been a few…um, years ago. He wasn't smiling but he definitely had the ghost of amusement in his voice.
"Like what, go snogging in the nearest broom closet?" she says cheekily as she turns back to dusting the bookshelves.
James took a moment to appreciate his girlfriend's form dressed in short blue jean shorts and an old maroon t-shirt, before he answered her question.
"It's not like you don't like to go snogging in secluded parts of the school Evans." He had shut the door and walked to where the Head Girl was standing. "Besides you can clean your room using magic, why bother going through all this bloody trouble?"
And to illustrate his point, he took out his wand from his robes and with a lazy flick the shelves were clean and the books had started arranging themselves in chronological order.
"Yeah well, I don't like abusing magic. Besides this is good exercise, might make me want to take care of my belongings. Plus I like doing it the ol' Muggle way" said Lily looking at him. And then with a flick of her wand turned it back to how it was.
"But Lily" he all but whined, as he flopped down on her bed causing the mattress to quiver under his weight and finally sag, "I'm bored. And Hogsmeade is open for us today. We could go to The Three Broomsticks?" He finished with hope.
"Potter, as you obviouslycannot see, Iambusy. Go fool around with the Marauders or something" she answers in a breezing tone, now standing on her tiptoes to reach the topmost shelf. As she did so, her t-shirt rode up revealing a small patch of skin on her back just above the lip of her shorts.
James' eyes were glued to that small patch of his girlfriend's skin that was momentarily exposed.
"I'd love to go fool around but I can't" he said gulping, mentally telling himself LookawayJamesLookawayJames.StopitPotter!
"What?" she asks whirling around so that her long red hair flowed around her. This motion obstructed his view of that bloody devious patch of skin.
ThankMerlinhe thought.
"I had just finished making my bed up. Could you at least lie down properly so you don't mess it up again?" She was looking at how James was sprawled across her bed, running a hand through his hair looking at her dresser.
Helooksso-WaitLily,donot gothere.
"And I thank you from the bottom of my utterly bored heart for making it up, but I preferred it messy. I think I need more pillows". He waves his wand and a large number of pillows appear on the bed. Some under his head, some under his feet and some falling off the bed onto the floor.
Lily groaned internally. It was like he was trying to increase her work intentionally.
And the smirk she receives confirms her suspicion.
Bloody hell. Now she'd have to clean thatup too. Sigh.
"Speaking of bored, why can't you hang with the rest of the troublemakers?"
"Well" he said, clearing his throat (also trying to clear his head of that patch of skin and failing miserably), "Sirius is on a date with Marlene in Hogsmeade. And he made it very clear that if I ruined his chances with her in any way, he will make sure to dock my chances with you. So, you see going after Sirius isn't in my good interests at the moment. And Remus has gone home for the holidays. And Pettigrew…wait, I don't even know where heis."
"So you see my dilemma Evans" he concluded.
"Why don't you just help me then?" Lily half expected him to start cracking up on the floor.
His reaction wasn't completely unexpected either.
"Bah" he said shaking his head.
Lily turned back to her work. In the next ten minutes she had completed dusting the shelves. She had just started stacking the books back when James spoke up.
"What's this?"
She turned to see him bent over the bed looking for something kept underneath the bed. His head emerged a few seconds later with his glasses a little sloppy and a large cardboard box in his hands.
A box labeled Photos.
"Photos" James murmured reading the label. "When are these from?"
"Since my first year at Hogwarts. There might be a few from before that too, I think."
"I've never seen this box before in your room" he said lifting the top.
"I don't think you've ever looked under my bed".
"Very true Evans. Very true."
Lily gave him a look before she went back to stacking the books, her current task at hand. About three-fourth of the books were still left.
James pulled out a few random photos from the box. Most of the photos were in labeled envelopes, but some loose ones were lying around in it too.
He began to look at the photos he had taken out. They were photos of Lily and her family in London. They were standing in front of some restaurant arm in arm, the four of them. Lily, her parents and her crazy older sister. Another photo showed them standing in front of a bridge. There were a few photos containing only Lily and her sister. The contrast among the two of them was striking. Lily looked like a ballerina with hands in front of her, her smile – she looked graceful even with her wild shoulder length hair blowing all around her. As for her sister, she looked as if she's jumped in a huge box of flour. Also she seemed fit enough to be Hagrid's faraway cousin. Except that Hagrid looked much better than her.
He then moved to the envelope labeled FirstYear. Most of the photos were of the Muggle kind but there were a few wizard photographs as well.
One showed an eleven year old Lily standing in front of the Hogwarts Express smiling widely. Another showed her and her father placing her luggage on the train. But his favorite was the third one, the one in which Lily was calling out to someone happily as she and her mother posed for the photograph. This one was a wizard photograph.
James decided that Lily was probably very cute back then. Scratch probably. Lily wasvery cute back then.
He then proceeded to open the envelope labeled SecondYear, but soon put it down because it had a bloody awful number of photos of Lily and Snivellus together. James really wanted to sneak Snape's photos out and burn them, but he didn't think Lily would approve of that.
Plus it was the holidays and he had so much time he could spend with Lily, and he really didn't like to waste it on worthless liars like Severus Snape.
So he decided to pull out the envelope labeled FifthYear.
"Wotcher looking at James?" Her voice broke him out of his reverie.
James looked up towards her. Lily had finished with her work and was now putting on a dark blue hoodie which was much too large for her (he later remembered it was his hoodie he had given her on one of their dates, when she'd been cold. Which probably explained why it was too large. She hadn't returned it, and he hadn't wanted it returned.). In fact it was so long that it reached below her shorts. James wondered how she could look thatgood even in clothes that didn't even fit.
"Oi, scoot over!" she said as she plopped down next to him on the bed. He was leaning his head against the head rest but Lily decided to use his shoulder to rest hers.
Not that he minded it in the slightest.
Not one bit.
They started through the fifth year photos together. There were photos from the start of the year. Most of them contained Snape. James inconspicuously tried to remove the ones that had Snivellus in it, but forgot one accidently. Lily found it and handed it to him silently, and the photo joined the others of the Slytherin Boy lying disregarded at the far corner of the bed.
They were looking at photos from the end of the term when they came across one in which Lily and James were standing close to each other, their arms interlinked. They were both laughing and trying to control their laughter but to no avail. Lily was laughing looking at the camera. Her red hair was all around her shoulder, trembling against her cheeks. James was laughing too, amusement visible clear on his face.
Lily remembered her fifth year distinctly. Probably better than all her others spent at Hogwarts. So much had changed that year. Even in the photos. At the start of term she was standing with Severus and somehow she had ended up standing with James Potter, her arms linked through his, at the end of the academic year. After all, the year hadbeen eventful. Not the eventful she'd hoped for, but still eventful.
Incidentally, it had also been the year James and Lily had started behaving in a civil manner towards each other. All thanks to Severus Snape.
Lily stared in shock at the boy lying on the ground, the boy she was trying to help to his feet. A boy who happened to have sticky, oily and smelly black hair.
"What did you say?"
"I said keep your filthy Mudblood hands off me" the boy spat at her.
Lily wanted to do a lot of things right then.
Like tell Severus to stop hanging around with Avery and Mucliber. Tell him that this wasn't like him.
She also wanted to punch him in the face hard. Harder than she had ever wanted to punch James sodding Potter. What kind of a friend goes around calling their friend insults?
But most of all, she wanted to cry. The tears stung her eyes, threatening to overflow like a dam any moment then.
With a stubborn and determined expression she turned away from Snape, and roughly pushing Potter out of the way started making her way back to her dorm room.
"Lily wait!"
Surprisingly enough, that voice didn't belong to Snape.
Potter apologized unrelentingly all the way to the Gryffindor common room, where she said "It's fine. It's not like it's my business anymore" while looking at the misty window pane. She gave him a small smile before she turned and started climbing steps to her dorm room, leaving a dazed Potter behind.
Any other day she would have seized the opportunity like a madwoman to rebuke him and reproach him and ask him to mend his bloody ways. But today she didn't.
Because she didn't care anymore.
She didn't sleep that night. Instead she was up crying into her pillow in the darkness, hoping no one would notice. A small noise startled her. She looked towards the source of the noise, in the far corner of the room.
Even with only the moonlight to aid her eyes, she could've sworn that she'd seen a shoe there. But one moment it was there and the next it was gone.
She must've been imagining things, she told herself, burying her face in her wet pillow. Shoes can't walk by themselves.
The next afternoon she was sitting in the library trying to work on her Potions essay (she really couldn't get her mind off yesterday's incident) when a shadow fell over her. She looked up to see Potter standing there with a book, a piece of parchment, his inkpot and a quill in his hand.
"Can I sit here?"
"No" she replied, going back to her work.
"Come on Lily."
"As you can see I have no space left here" she said motioning to the table that was covered with textbooks.
"There's nowhere else to sit Evans. The library is full."
Lilylookedaroundher.Itreallywascrowded.Whenthehelldidall thosepeoplecomein?
"Sorry, no."
"I'm going to keep asking until you say yes, because I have a lot of work to finish before tomorrow. Can I sit here?"
"Potter, I told you no."
"Evans, may I sit here?"
"No, go away. Study in the Common Room."
"The Common Room is very noisy. Can I grab a seat?"
"Can't you understand the word no?"
"I do understand the word no. Now can I finally sit here?"
Lily refused to answer him. Maybe if she didn't say anything the bloke would get a hint and shove off.
But of course, Potters don't shove off when they're told to.
Lily was staying quiet so now he had started talking. About what, Lily didn't know. She wasn't listening. Her head was throbbing, she hadn't slept the entire night, remember?
"Fine! But if I say yes will you shut up and do your work in silence? I have a bloody headache."
"You should go see Madam Pomfrey" he said stacking some of the books to clear some space on the table.
"I think I'll live."
Since when did Potter care about her headaches? Not since very long, she thought, he's been giving me headaches all these past years.
To her surprise Potter quietly got to his work, maintaining silence. Once in a while when she'd be looking at something thinking about the incident he'd ask him something from his Charms textbook he didn't understand.
Lily had the funny feeling that Potter was pretending to need help in Charms from her. Despite him barely studying, he managed to stay in the top five in the class along with Sirius and Remus. It left her greatly puzzled.
But Potter had shown up at her study table the next day, and the next and the days to come. Lily now just let him sit instead of going through all his jabbering and talking again. You know, savor quietness and all that.
Of course it wasn't long before they returned to their old ways: arguing and quarreling. But somehow it started happening more often and most of the time Potter started it. Lily would be completely tired and sapped of her energy after the fights and as soon as her head hit the pillow she'd be off to slumberland. It made her somewhat suspicious of Potter's designs.
What? She was Evans and he was Potter, she was allowed to be doubting and distrusting.
Once she asked him, "Is this one of your schemes to keep my mind off that incident that happened the other day?"
Towhichhisbrilliantreplyhadbeen, "Pssh…no.Whydoyouthinkthat?" inarathershiftytone.
She shrugged. What ever that boy was doing it was working. She didn't have the energy or the time to think about Snape anymore. She'd be tired to her bones at the end of the day that she'd fall asleep almost instantly, having no energy left to think about Snape anymore. She felt relieved. Maybe that was the reason she didn't oppose spending time with Potter.
But things changed over a period of time. Was she the only one seeing it or had Potter really stopped hexing and troubling innocent passer-bys for fun? Of course there were still pranks, but they were actually funny now.
There were other changes she noticed too. He'd started showing up to classes on time, dragging with him a disgruntled Sirius. He had even stopped asking her out. Also now their quarreling had turned into somewhat humorous banter, which was more than fine with her. They'd even been thrown out of the library a handful of times for talking and laughing too loudly in the library.
She realized she laughed and smiled more when she was around him. Hell, she even had a friend who wasn't Alice Prewitt or Frank Longbottom.
She also realized she might have wasted the last four years hating the wrong boy.
She was pulled away from her thoughts by James nudging her and saying, "Hey Lil, look at this. This is …it's beautiful."
Lily raised her head from his shoulder warily to look at the photograph he was holding. Glancing a look at his face as to guess what had him so amazed she turned to the photograph.
He was holding a Muggle photograph. She could tell through her half open eyes because the people in it, namely James and Lily, weren't moving. It was the same picture as the last one, the one where there arms were interlocked and they were laughing. Only this one had been taken with a Muggle camera.
"What about it?" she asked, stifling a yawn.
"Lily look at it carefully. What do you see?"
She rubbed her eyes and sat up properly (to straighten her back) , and taking the photo from his hand and leaning onto his lying form.
"It's the same as the last one. Except this is Muggle."
"No Lily look at the photo carefully."
She did look at it carefully.
The photo was of the two of them standing on the King's Cross Station on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. In the photo, Lily was laughing looking at the camera, her hair twirling around over her shoulder. Her green eyes looked as if they'd grown a tiny shade lighter, from her laughter. Then there was James, standing next to her, his black hair messy and his glasses sloppy. He was laughing too, but he wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking down at her. It was a good photo, because Lily thought she could even see the light dancing in an intricate pattern in his hazel eyes.
And then it dawned on her.
They didn't look like two friends together in that photo. They looked like people who meant more to each other than just friends.
"We look like we're together, don't we?" she said, looking at the photo smiling. "And now I know why I was teased so much that summer."
James sighed.
"Lily look at yourself. You look absolutely… beautiful in that photo. I mean, I always thought Wizard cameras were better than Muggle ones, but this is amazing. It's like catching a moment in time and preserving it. Holding onto a fleeing moment."
Lily couldn't tear her eyes away from his face. For the first time in her life she couldn't find words. So she just leaned up and kissed him softly on the lips before resting her head on his shoulder.
He moved his arm and pulled her closer into his side, so that her head was on his upper arm and her arms around him. Her hair was spilled on the pillow, still slightly wet from the shower before.
It wasn't long before she was asleep. He kissed her forehead as he moved to disentangle his arm, but found it impossible without waking her up. He didn't want to wake her up.
So he just summoned the blankets kept at the end of the bed to spread over the two them as he flicked off the light with his wand, finally closing his eyes too.
PAGE BREAK
"Okay Lily, don't open your eyes till I tell you to. Keep them closed."
She was sitting on the large grandfather chair near the fire in the common room. Apparently, James had decided to give her her Christmas present early. To which he had shook his head in fake sadness and corrected her that he was giving her her Early Christmas Present extra early.
Nonetheless, there she sat with her eyes closed growing impatient with every passing moment.
"Hey, no peeping!" James warned when he saw that Lily had one eye open. She sighed and closed her eyes.
"Hurry up James! You know I'm not good at waiting."
After a few moments of searching through the cluster of books, essays and quills, he found it.
"Aha! Here it is!"
He placed a rectangular box in her lap after putting down his schoolbag. Then he made himself comfortable on the other large grandfather sofa next to her.
"Can I open them now? I mean my eyes."
"Yes, open them and then the present."
Lily opened her eyes to see a black rectangular box sitting in her lap.
"This isn't a prank, is it?"
"It's not a prank. How many times do I have to tell you it's nota prank? Just…open it."
Lily had opened the cardboard box and was now pulling a thick book out of it, when James spoke again.
"Look, it's not your actual present, okay? I have an actual Christmas Present. This is something I thought of, I mean I wanted you to have… It's fine if you don't really like it.." he trailed off.
He is actually nervous about this.
The book was a maroonish silver in color and had gold rims around it. At first Lily thought it was blank, but when she tilted the book she could read a single word etched on the cover.
Memoirs.
She knew what it was before she opened it to the first page.
But the page wasn't empty. Someone had written something in it. It was James' scrawl. She could tell it apart anywhere in the world.
Dear Lily,
I'm not exactly sure what idea I had when I thought of this, but I wanted you to have something to keep your memories stored permanently. Not that you can't store it in your heart or anything…but I think you have a lot of photographs that you should save so you can look on them years from now, some more miles farther down this road. I'm not sure if I'll be a part of that journey of yours, but I do wish..For you..that you make so many memories, so happy and so great that you run out of space in this book for keeping them.
I'll give you a heads up, shall I?
Turn the page,
With love,
James.
Lily turned the page and found the same still photograph they were looking at the day before, stuck on the first page.
Underneath the photo were the words:
Because a moment is all you need.
So…did you like it?
Another thing that's been on my mind.
Why is that I find that over four hundred readers have read my story in a day's time and only three of them have reviewed? It's really disappointing, you know.
So..Review guys. Just drop a line to say what you liked or didn't like about the story.
Keeping my fingers crossed,
.