empty halls
by show me the horizon
-x-
starry, starry night
portraits hung in empty halls
frameless heads on nameless walls
with eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
— Vincent; Don McLean
-x-
It's quiet. Too quiet.
She glances up from her essay on the properties of the Shrivelfig, watching him hunch over the opposite table, hard at work. There's a crease in his brow and he taps the side of his quill against his lips, obviously deep in thought.
It's been a while since she's seen him like this, she reflects to herself, without his posse and doing work for a change, instead of showing off that he can clinch top grades without studying in the least. She's actually always been in awe of him and his ability to somehow skive all day long and still achieve decent grades; while she studies all the time and just barely beats him.
But of course, she'd never admit this to him, because she's Lily and he's James, and it just doesn't work that way.
-x-
He's changed, she supposes.
Admittedly, he's been in detention only once this year (and that was for hexing a Slytherin in defence of a younger Hufflepuff boy); he hasn't been involved in the Marauder's escapades lately, and he's been more reserved, more quiet around her.
It's hard to explain why she finds herself watching him in their common room while he's studying by the fire, but somehow she finds him alluring. While Lily remains firm in the belief that she's not attracted to him in any way, she reserves the right to say that he intrigues her. She's curious, and he's different. It certainly works that way.
Or maybe it's just the fact that he's suddenly not interested in her any more. He hasn't asked her out in months, as is typical of him — she used to receive ten offers within the train ride to school alone. Maybe it hurts her, now that he's not paying any more attention to her and let's face it, he was the only one in the whole world who even looked at her that way.
Maybe it's because she's Lily and he's James and it feels like the whole world has suddenly shifted on its axis. Because James Potter has finally changed.
-x-
You don't fall in love within a day, Lily knows.
She doesn't feel any different when she looks at him now, but there's something strange about the way her gaze involuntarily lingers on him a second longer than it should, the way her eyes follow him as he walks past her in the corridors. It's more than just polite curiosity now, it's a kind of interest that confuses her.
And when he says, "hey, Lily," just to be courteous before he brushes by her, she just stares at him as if he's alien and peregrine and she's never seen him before in her life. She knows it's queer, but it isn't love, because the heart takes more time than that. You can't fall in love in a day, Lily knows, and she's sure of it.
-x-
"Lilyflower," says Sirius, dropping into the seat opposite her at breakfast, "we demand an explanation."
She takes her time in looking up from her buttered toast, chewing slowly and swallowing before answering. He gives an impatient sigh as she does; he's the exact opposite of her, isn't he? Everything in his life moves so quickly she can't even fathom how he manages to keep up. "What?" she asks finally, brushing crumbs from her lips with the back of her hand.
"It's James," he sighs dramatically, tilting his head backwards. "No, seriously, he's become so boring nowadays. Also, we suspect that you've something to do with it."
"Who's we?" she asks, even though she already knows the answer. Sirius gives her a you can't be serious look, before gesturing to Remus and Peter, who seemingly materialize from thin air behind him. Rolling her eyes, she looks back down at the remaining slices of toast on her plate, idly toying with the tablecloth. "Well, I've no idea what's up with James."
"Curious," comments Sirius, observing her as she picked up her knife and recommences smearing margarine across a piece of bread. Lily glances up at him, rather warily. "What's curious?"
"You're behaving rather strangely, Lilyflower."
"If you ask me, I'm kind of enjoying this change in him," she shrugs him off, shoving a wedge of toast into her mouth. He only raises his eyebrows and continues to watch her as she tries to eat her breakfast in peace.
"Well, I am enjoying the silence, as of now," Remus interjects, "but it just isn't James."
Lily thinks of the old James, with his cocky air and confident swagger, the lilt in his voice as he asked, "Go out with me, Evans?" every few minutes. She swallows hard, and turns back to the three boys in front of her, all of them waiting for her response.
"In any case, I'm not missing the old him."
-x-
Everything's too quiet.
She's not used to it; the stagnant silence that hovers thick in the air when they're alone together. He's really changed over the summer, but for the better—? It's hard for her not to just set down her books and burst out, "what happened to you?" because in all honesty that's exactly what she wants to do right now.
"James?"
"Yeah?" he looks up; hazel eyes meet green, and her heart speeds up. Just ask him, she tells herself repeatedly, but somehow she can't bring herself to say the words. "Nothing," she finally says, lamely. He stares at her for a split-second longer before just nodding and looking back to his Charms textbook.
Yet everything is just so confusing and she doesn't understand any of it, but she's Lily and he's James and sometimes their lives just don't make sense.
-x-
Dorcas Meadowes tastes like regret, he silently reflects.
Or maybe it's just him, because he definitely regrets kissing her — it was an accident. Everything that ever happened between them was an accident, but the whole situation just spiraled out of control and before he even realizes what's happening, he's waking up beside her with a sour taste in his mouth and his heart filled with regret.
"James?"
"This," he says, not even turning around, "was a mistake. A horrible, horrible, mistake. I'm sorry, Dorcas."
She doesn't say anything for a while, but he knows that she regrets it too. "I know, James," she finally says, quietly. "I know." And then everything just falls into place — the way she burst into tears when Marlene and Sirius announced that they were together (tears of joy; she claimed); the way she was always staring longing after the two — and he knows that Dorcas Meadowes loves Sirius Black as much as he loves Lily Evans, and it hurts.
"I want to make this right," he blurts, swiveling around to face her. "Let's just start over, shall we?"
And she agrees, even though she knows that she's just a substitute for Lily and he's just a substitute for Sirius because neither of them can get the real thing, and they know it.
-x-
James Potter loathes himself.
He loathes what he's doing to Dorcas — dating her when he isn't even serious about her, and pushing everyone away because he thinks it'll be better if he keeps his distance; it'll make it easier for him to get over Lily. He loathes the way he finds himself noticing the tiniest of details about her — the fact that she tucks wisps of her red hair behind her ear when she's nervous, that she wears tiny silver earrings that are a birthday gift from her father. He can't even keep his eyes off her, so how's he supposed to move on?
He loathes the fact that whenever Sirius, Remus or Peter approach him, he looks away and pretends he didn't see them, or that whenever Snape passes by him in the corridors, he feels his chest tighten imperceptibly and inexplicably with jealousy, because Severus Snape is in love with Lily Evans and he knows it.
James Potter loathes the fact that Lily will never be in love with him as much as he is with her, and he loathes the fact that in spite of all that, he's still utterly besotted with her.
-x-
She's not very beautiful.
She's not very pretty, even. Put her next to a beauty like Marlene McKinnon and you might as well forget she ever existed. But she's different, and she has a temper, one that defines who she is. He has to admit, he kind of misses her screams of Potter! echoing down the hallway after him as his own raucous laughter rings out. He forgets how it sounds like, these days.
He's forgotten what it feels like to have fun. And for a minute he wishes he could just go back to those days when he was carefree and lighthearted, without a care in the world, no matter how clichéd that might sound.
But the road of self-actualization is long, and he's just barely brushed the start of it.
-x-
The other boy cut lines on the mirror with the razor, and James looks at the glittering pink powder with a horrid kind of fascination. "It's Muggle stuff. Very hard to come by," the dealer offers. "Twelve sickles for a line."
"Take mine," says Rodolphus Lestrange, all but tossing the money at the Hufflepuff. Rodolphus has just barely bent down when he sees James' reflection, and straightens with an unpleasant smile.
"Come to join the party, Potter?" he asks, a sneer curling his upper lip. James shrugs, and Lestrange rolls his eyes before stooping over once more; the dealer offers him the paper tube. "I never pegged you as the sort," Lestrange commented, before pressing his nostril shut and snorting up a whole line with the other. James cringes at the sight, but Lestrange seems almost satisfied as he stands up, brushing stray grains of powder off the front of his robes.
"I'm on patrol," James says quietly. "You've all been caught out of bed after hours. I'll have to give you detention, and report you to the Headmaster because of what you were doing."
"Curfew is for losers," sneers McNair.
"Come on, man," says the Hufflepuff, the only one that James doesn't recognize. "I'll give you a free line if you don't tell on us." James doesn't respond, so he tries again. "Two free lines? It makes all your worries go away, it's that good."
James turns his gaze on the crystal meth on the mirror, and he wonders how something like that could make all his burdens disappear. For a second he is solely tempted, but then he shakes his head. "I'm not falling for that," he says curtly. "All of you, to the Headmaster's Office, now."
-x-
"James!"
He doesn't even turn around as she catches up with him in the corridor, struggling through the mass of students to reach him. Minutes later he feels her fingers curl around her elbow and he looks down at her, attempting a smile. "Hi."
"I heard what happened last night," she says seriously. "You do know that what those boys were doing, right?"
He shakes his head, indicating, that no, he had not the vaguest of ideas as to what they had been caught doing. She bites her lower lip, something she does when she feels uncertain of herself. "Well, it's good that you caught them in time. They could have died."
She smiles up at him; he feels warmth surge through him — and, looking down into her wide green eyes, James Potter wonders how he fell in love with Lily Evans.
-x-
"Do you want to go down to dinner together?" she asks, a hopeful smile on her face that makes him feel even more guilty when he shakes his head.
"I have an essay to complete; I'll be down in a little while." She falls silent, before speaking up once more.
"I don't understand."
"What?" he looks at her with guarded eyes, and she gives an exasperated sigh. "You know what I mean. I don't understand why you're pushing everyone away, why you're so determined to be alone most of the time."
"I'm not," he protests, but it's feeble, and both of them know it.
"What did I ever do to you?"
"You didn't do anything to me." Except break my heart, he thinks, but he keeps that useful bit of information to himself, turning away from her to face his half-written essay. The flames in the fireplace crackle, sending a puff of ash flying onto the carpet and breaking the silence.
"Then why are you behaving like this?"
"Look, Lily, it isn't always about you!" he didn't mean to explode at her like that, but his anger is suddenly uncontrollable and speaks through him, almost as if he's being controlled by it. "Maybe it's me, okay? Maybe it's me, and the fact that you've never once looked at me even though I'm so hopelessly in love with you, and you just can't see it!"
She doesn't say a word, just stares at him, open-mouthed. He grits his teeth and goes on. "It was never a joke, okay? I was always in love with you, even though you never had eyes for anyone but Snape." He spits the name like it's poison. "And even though he turned out to be a total jerk and called you a mudblood —"
"You treated me awfully, too," she informed him tightly. He gives a derisive, scornful laugh. "You really are blind, aren't you? That was always just to get your attention!"
She can't think of anything else to say, really. "I know, that back then, you used to think that I was as bad as him," he says slowly, all the energy drained from him; he sounds almost weary. "But the thing is — I was in love with you. He wasn't."
-x-
Love is a strange thing.
Sometimes it hits you full in the face, in other cases it takes you a little more time to realize, but in most cases, it creeps up behind you and whacks you across the back of your head, almost as if to say, you're in love, you idiot.
James Potter had love slap him right in the face, but Lily Evans took a little more time to realize.
-x-
She realizes it when she just can't stop thinking about him damnit — she's in love.
-x-
She was an enigma to him.
The first thing he noticed about her was that she was different from him, and she certainly was, because she'd been brought up a Muggle and he just the opposite. She intrigued him, to say the least, and the more he found out about her the more he liked her. Lily wasn't like any of the other girls, she didn't throw herself at him or even look his way — and that just intrigued him even more, how she managed to remain to cold and distant, he had no idea.
It just struck him one day — I'm in love with Lily Evans. Excitedly, he revealed this to Sirius, who dismissed it with a roll of his eyes and said, "yeah, right." Now that he reflects on it, what he felt back then was probably some kind of hormone-induced haze, but now he knows that he's definitely in love with her.
Because she was an enigma and he was intrigued, and that's how he fell in love with her.
-x-
She returns home for Christmas, and when she sees her mother, the first thing she says is, "I'm in love." Then she dissolves into tears, sobbing unashamedly into her mother's shoulder.
Reyna Evans pats her youngest daughter on the back almost sympathetically, and she says, "I know."
-x-
Sometimes saying that you're sorry is the hardest thing ever, because it goes against everything in your nature to admit that you're wrong. Lily Evans was realizing this the hard way.
-x-
James,
I'm sorry.
Lily
-x-
"James," she says, and he looks up at her with those melting hazel eyes of his, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose (and suddenly that's the most sensual thing in the world.) She swallows before going on.
"We're good, right?"
It's something she's wanted to ask him since that night, when both of them quarreled and everything just fell apart. He regards her for a while, before giving her a small smile.
"Yeah. We're good."
And with that, she can't help but feel that something has finally gone right.
-x-
"It's the last Hogsmeade trip ever," he says, haltingly. She looks up at him with a bemused smile on her face, waiting for the question that will inevitably surface.
"And?"
"And, well," he hesitates, "I was wondering if you'd like to go with me."
She smiles at him. "I'd love to."
-x-
He takes her to Hogsmeade, and they share their first — and long overdue — kiss in a corner, just a little off from Scrivenshaft's; with snow falling in feathers over both of their heads. It's cold yet warm and just a little bit wet — and yet it's perfect.
-x-
She was curious and he was different; she was enigmatic and he was intrigued, and that's how Lily Evans and James Potter fell in love.
A/N — this is dedicated to some pretty amazing people: firstly, my sister, because her OTP is James/Lily; Louise, for being all-around awesome; Amy and Izzie, because they encouraged me to keep writing when I considered giving up on this piece. (:
Also, this is my first ever HP fanfic (long overdue, yes) but I'd appreciate it if you reviewed!
and please do not favourite or alert without reviewing.