The Knickers Conundrum

by margaretday

"Lily entered her dormitory that afternoon, feeling disappointed after Marlene refused to learn how to play the ukulele or sing her a soothing lullaby, and found James Potter lurking around her drawer with a particularly guilty look on his face." All-around nonsense ensues.

A particularly draining – both emotionally and physically – week at Hogwarts had passed. This seemed to be the norm for Lily's sixth year so far.

On that Friday afternoon, she wanted nothing more than to lay in her bed and fall asleep for a hundred years, hoping that when she wakes up, all of her homework will have been written, edited and grammatically correct and that a nice cup of hot chocolate would be waiting for her. Also, that she'd be awoken by chirping birds and a band singing encouraging songs on the ukulele.

Or that she'd, at the very least, get some rest.

She had repeated this wondrous scenario of hers to everyone patient or stupid enough to listen to her lamentations, which – Lily was rather aggravated to realize – didn't consist of that many people.

Lily entered her dormitory that afternoon, feeling disappointed after Marlene refused to learn how to play the ukulele or sing her a soothing lullaby, and found James Potter lurking around her drawer with a particularly guilty look on his face.

"Potter!"

He jumped, removing his hand from the drawer and then putting it behind his back. "Evans!" he said mimicking her surprised tone and nodding awkwardly.

Lily raised an eyebrow, waiting for some sort of an explanation. James merely smiled at her, in the way she imagined a puppy would look at its owner after nibbling their new shoes.

That was a rather disturbing thought.

"So?" she demanded.

"So what?"

"So what are you doing here?"

"Err…" James coughed. "Weekly inspection."

"Sorry?"

"Don't be." he smirked.

"I'm not. What sort of a weekly inspection?"

"Ah. See, Dumbledore appointed me the new… Head of… Cleanliness Ministry. It's still unofficial, though. Sort of a project in wraps, you see."

"I don't see anything. Except you. In my room. Which is –" She let out an exasperated sigh. A second later, she looked at him, eyes widened, cheeks a bit flushed, and generally appearing quite appalled. "How did you get into the girls' dormitories?"

"That's a thrilling tale, one to be told another day." He looked around nervously. "I should go now."

"Yes. Yes, you should," She rubbed her temples, shaking her head in confusion, or exasperation, or both and muttering something to herself. But as he was about to pass her by, her hands shot up in front of him, much in the manner of a karate master. He was a bit startled by that. Also a bit turned on. "No, you shouldn't! Explain yourself first."

"I told you, I'm the Head of the Cleanliness Ministry. And you're the first to know, actually! Don't you feel honoured?"

"Cleanliness Ministry?" Her hands were still in front of his face.

"Yes. I go around people's dormitories and inspect their… cleanliness. The dormitories', not people's. That'd be a bit weird. Anyway, yours is quite lovely. A nine out of ten. Well done."

He tried to zig-zag around her, but she still stared at him suspiciously. "Sit. Down."

"Okay, a ten out of ten."

"Sit."

"Well, aren't you getting very dominant –"

"Potter! Sit!"

He did, his hands still behind his back. She lowered down to stare into his eyes, a gesture she must have thought was intimidating, and it would have been, had she not already unbuttoned her shirt a bit upon entering her room. James, being a sixteen year old boy, couldn't do much to stop his gaze from wandering slightly below her eyes. Lily, being an irritable sixteen year old girl, wouldn't do much to stop herself from smacking him over the back of his head. Not hard, though. She rose up, straightening her shirt. She didn't button it, though, James notices.

"Why are you hiding her hands?" Lily demanded.

He sat on his palms. "I'm not."

She raised an eyebrow. She was rather good at that, raising eyebrows. And then, before he could even blink, she was atop him, wrestling him for whatever he hid beneath his – well – bottom. This was a revival of at least one of James' fantasies. Well, the growling like a deranged bear bit was an addition, but not an entirely bad one.

He wiggled about, trying to sit as firmly as possible on his hands, which he had already started losing the feeling in. There was only so much he could do without his hands so he sort of tried to fend her off using his forehead, which didn't prove to be quite as effective as he thought it would be. It merely gave them both a headache.

"Gimme!" She shouted, sounding authoritative and childish at the same time. Their foreheads collided again and he shook his head, in a bit of a daze.

"No!"

"Get up!"

"I can't!"

"Yes, you can. Up!"

"No, I can't! You're literally on me, Evans – not that I'm complaining – if I get up, you'll smack your head against the bedpost and neither of us wants that." He smirked at her. "Besides, I quite like having you on top of me."

She jumped away from him and fell, quite unceremoniously, on the floor. She looked positively livid (and sort of wonderful), her red hair messy from their wrestling session, her eyes somehow greener than usual, her teeth barred as if she were a maniacal cat.

"Before this turns into an even more critical situation," he started, making sure he sat on the object he tried so desperately to hide before raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. The gesture made it look like he was groping himself. This both amused and disgusted Lily. "I think I should just leave. We'll forget this entire incident, yeah? Well, I won't forget you riding me, but I'll forget most of the other stuff-"

"I was not riding you!" she shouted and jumped back to his side, pulling him violently. He had to give it to her; she was a lot stronger than she looked. Mad anger presumably did that to people. She tried tickling him, tackling him, hitting him and biting him, but nothing worked. He was rather proud of himself for that.

"C'mon, Potter, stop pretending and tell me what you were doing here!"

"I already told you-"

"Why are you hiding something, then?"

"I'm not hiding anything!"

"You're sitting on something and you took that something from my drawer. I saw you!"

"Maybe you should get some glasses because clearly your eyesight isn't what it used to be!"

"Well, maybe – maybe I should!" With that, she took his glasses off and put them atop her head. "There. Now you're blind."

"Oh, that's dirty. That's just low." In his blind haze, he felt her around to try and find his glasses, accidentally grazing her upper body part for which he earned another loud smack.

"Get up and I'll give you back your sight," she said, rather dramatically.

"I can't believe you! Lily Evans, the Gryffindor Saint, the beacon that lights our way to the path of righteousness and goodness – blackmailing a man over his physical disability!"

She stopped for a while, pouting. "That sounds horrible when you say it like that."

"Good. You are horrible!"

"And you're stealing my belongings!" She pulled him one more time, and not expecting it and being slightly disoriented this time, he moved a bit. She didn't manage to pick him up from her bed entirely, but she had lifted him long enough to stick her hand down before he sat on it again. He felt her hair in his lap and found his glasses, putting them back on his nose and feeling quite victorious.

He looked down at her and smirked. "You are touching me inappropriately, Evans."

"Move!"

"I don't think I will," he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "I'm rather enyoing this."

She looked at him as if all the hope from her world had gone. "Potter. Please, move."

"No."

"I'm begging you."

"I beg to differ – you're groping me."

"Involuntarily."

"But ever so firmly."

"You're disgusting."

"And you are, apparently, a pervert."

She tried to wiggle her hand from out of – there – but that only served to put several more annoying smirks on James' face so she stopped. "You're not a very good person, you know."

"Au contraire, my touchy friend, I'm exceedingly kind. I'm letting you touch my arse. Many have dreamt of it, but the honour has been bestowed upon you alone."

"Please," Lily snorted. "I've seen Sirius around your bottom more time than I've seen either of you with girls."

"Our touching habits have nothing to do with you, love."

"And thank Merlin for that," she said, disgusted. "Back to the point. You're not a good person at all. See, a good, chivalrous Gryffindor would let me go. I'm tired. My head hurts. A good Gryffindor boy wouldn't torture me like this."

He considered this for a second. "Well… I suppose we all have our flaws."

"If you don't get up," she said, raising her free hand to point a scrawny index finger at him. "I will try to escape by force and in the process break my hand and when they ask me who's to blame for the loss of a perfectly adequate limb I'll point to you, with my other hand, because my right hand will be butchered, and they'll take you to Azkaban and cut off your hair." She finished her little threat with an attempt to slap him. She didn't succeed, but rather just flailed around helplessly.

James let out a throaty laugh. "That's quite the plan you have."

"I will break my hand if I have to."

"It's your hand," he shrugs, making sure to wiggle some more.

"Godric Gryffindor would not let ladies break their hands in attempts to escape from his butt cheeks!"

"Merlin, you're hilarious."

She gave him one last defiant look before jerking away violently. She shouted, her face screwed in pain. The effect was instant. He jumped up, looking at her with a mixture of worry and irritation in his eyes. "Blimey, Evans, are you completely mad? You can't just-"

He blinks. Her face had gone from utter pain to evil cackling in a matter of a nanosecond. She darted away from him with a victorious look on her face.

"That's just not fair," he said, his eyes wide. "You're not a fair player at all."

"Never trust a girl while you're farting on her hand," she breathed out.

"I did not fart!" He gasped. "That's just wrong!"

"Well I'm glad to hear that the guy who's been pressing his butt cheeks against me for the last five minutes has a standard of wrongness!" She rolled her eyes.

And then, as if they had just remembered, both their eyes run to her hand in which she tightly clutched the thing that James had been so keen on hiding. His eyes closed as he sensed his impeding doom. Her eyes widened, her brow furrowed, and her mouth let out an inhuman scream.

"HAVE YOU BEEN SNIFFING MY KNICKERS?"

Words can't properly describe how furious she looked at that point. James seriously worried for his life. She started approaching him, slowly and murderously, and he stepped back, a bit wobbly on his knees. "No, see, I knew you would jump to some horrible conclusion, that's why I just tried leaving and-"

"You were going through my underwear drawer," Her voice was filled with cold, silent anger. Her usually lovely eyes were narrowed and looking more like slits of an evil cat like the one that attacked James when he was a toddler. That cat had orange hair too.

"Yes, well, no, well, sort of," he took another step back. "But I wasn't sniffing your knickers, I swear!"

"Were you trying to steal them so you could sniff them later?"

"No! There was no sniffing involved or planned! Do you think I'm a complete pervert!"

"Just a minute ago, you refused to stop me from breaking my arm because you enjoyed having my fingers on your buttocks."

"That sounds horrible when you say it like that," he frowned. "Besides, you didn't break your arm."

"Potter," she cocks her head to the side, a faux friendly smile on her lips. How she managed to make a smile seem so deadly and dangerous (and really nice at the same time) was beyond him. "Why were you stealing my underwear?"

"I wasn't!"

"I am one second away from hexing your bollocks off."

"That sounds like something Sirius would do to someone."

"He does have a good idea every now and then."

James looked desperate. Lily was getting closer. He took one step back only to hit the wall. Being pinched against the wall with Lily closing in on him might have been amusing at a different situation. Why was Lily so keen on ruining his fantasies by acting like a murderous banshee? It was really rude.

It was still amusing, in a slightly masochistic sort of way. Then again, that's how things usually were with Lily Evans.

She raised her wand. "I am tired, Potter. Exhausted and annoyed and very sleep-deprived. I haven't eaten chocolate in a week. I will hex you. And I will enjoy it."

"Fine!" He shouted at last because the thought of getting hexed by Lily – as much as he hated to admit it – was quite a bit frightening. She was a very creative hexer. "Fine, I'll tell you. But remember this in ten year's time when we're married and you ask me why I don't do nice surprises for you anymore."

He ignored her glaring at him at the mention of marriage, and walked over to the drawer that had inspired such murderous tendencies in here. She followed him, a suspicious but curious look in her eyes and a wand trained on his privates.

"Open it."

She doesn't move her eyes away from his for a second as she jerks away the drawer's knob, opening it. James looked down at the drawer. After a couple of seconds, so did Lily.

Placed gently atop her underwear were three pieces of parchment with what seemed to be notes from Transfiguration and Potions, their assignments for next week. Next to that, a cup of brown liquid, ornamented with tiny little snitches and smelling divine.

"Hot chocolate and homework," she said incredulously, lowering her wand. She looked up at James who was mussing up his hair.

"It was supposed to be a surprise," he explained lamely. "I overheard you saying how tired you were at lunch. You said you craved hot chocolate for about a week now. And I also figured, given the amount of times I've spent copying your History of Magic notes, I might as well do something nice in return."

She frowned. "When did you copy my notes –?"

"That's not important right now."

She smiled but quickly lowered her head, pretending to stare intensely at the drawer. "You did this, for me? As a surprise?"

He nodded. "A failed one, apparently."

"Still." She raised her face, smiling. "A nice one."

"Well, I've told you – I can be quite nice occasionally."

"Yeah," she nodded lightly, the look on her face now completely softened, the maniacal, hysterical glance gone from her eyes. "Why the underwear drawer, though? Of all things-"

"Oh, I –" he looked very flustered, and ran a hand through his hair again. "Well, I was trying to find a nice place to put the surprise and I know you always shower after lessons so I figured you might want to change your underwear after, right? And I was, um, sort of arranging your stuff around the cup so it doesn't warm them up or something… I really didn't want to touch your knickers, Evans, I tried very hard not to… Well, I did want to touch them, but not like that." He smirked. "I'd rather you have then on you while I'm touching them."

She punched his shoulder, laughing. "You big tosser." It was a beautiful sound, her laughter, one that made all the smacking and kicking she provided him with on a daily basis worth it. James laughed, too.

"That's a very nice thing you did," she said. "Thank you."

He looked confused (as it was fairly rare for Lily to say nice things to him) then jovial then utterly, cockily proud of himself. "Well, you know, that's what I do."

She rolled her eyes.

"You're welcome," he said, more seriously.

She took a sip of hot chocolate, closing her eyes in pure delight. He took this time to note how utterly beautiful she was when she wasn't trying to kill him, which was a bit redundant by now, but he did it anyway.

"Want some?"

He smiled. "No. It's for you."

"A gift is best used when shared," Lily said, quoting what her mother said to Petunia on each Christmas when she refused to even show her presents to Lily.

He smiled thankfully and took a rather large chug from the cup, hissing slightly because the warmth burned his tongue. Lily chuckled.

"You're an all right bloke, you know that?"

He grinned like a madman. "I am?"

She looked away. "You know… Sometimes."

"I knew you loved me!"

"Ugh, scratch that," she rolled her eyes. "Occasionally."

"There really was a large amount of groping happening on your bed, there, you know –"

"Very rarely," she noted pointedly, snatching the cup away from him.

"You can't hide your lust forever!"

"Almost never, really."

She pushed him out of the room. Stopping at her doorframe, he grinned at her, as radiantly as he usually did. She sometimes hated him for it. (She didn't, really.)

"Out of curiosity," she said, "what would you do with my knickers if you've managed to trick me into letting you out of the room?"

"Oh. Well." He smirked. "Sniff them, probably."

She smacked him, screwing her face in a look of utter disgust. "Pervert!"