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Disclaimer: It's not mine!
Magic
She was magic.
Perhaps that was a bit of an idiotic thing to think considering that their entire world was magic; she was a witch, he was a wizard and they lived in a magical community… but never-the-less he thought it.
It had always been that way; the air around her just seemed to crackle with possibility. Her exuberance for life, her passion, her joy were palpable every time he looked at her… and it was magic. She was magic. Magic happened when she was around.
Unfortunately his presence didn't seem to inspire the same magical reaction in her as hers did in him.
It had all started with an ill thought out attempt to impress her at the beginning of first year and gone down hill at an alarming rate from there. In fact his singular ability to transform her from the bubbly, polite, friendly Lily Evans into a mythical beast on the rampage was legendary. Unfortunately this transformation didn't have any effect on her magic and he seemed to become more and more woefully ensnared in very unwanted feelings for her the more she got angry with him.
Sometimes when he found himself alone and with nothing to do (extremely infrequently) and his mind by chance took up the subject of her (one of his favorites) he thought that maybe, unlike most of them, her magic (her real magic this time; the stuff that had allowed her to accidentally set his hair on fire in second year) wasn't something inherited, but something she had created all on her own.
Because she believed.
She believed in all things magical.
She believed in all things intangible with a ferocity that seemed to make them real simply by force of this belief. He could remember the first time he'd really been blown away by her faith... in the middle of third year he'd seen her conjuring a swing for herself (magic far above their level to start off with) and then he had watched, transfixed, as she had swung higher and higher only to allow herself to slip from the swing at the highest point of her arc. She had floated gracefully to the ground, landing just inches from the lake. Later he'd tried to do the same thing; only to discover himself flying into the ice cold water. He had emerged with a very muddy uniform, a broken leg and a very bruised ego... along with a very healthy respect for Lily Evans.
It was her faith that let her do things that nobody else could; because she never doubted for a second that she could do them. He thought this fierce faith was where her magic came from. Both the magic of her personality and the magic that had let her set his hair on fire.
She was magical even among all things magical… made all things magical seem mundane even; because of this double dose of magic she had conjured for herself.
How could he not love her?
Not that he did… really! He didn't know every nuance of her face because he loved her… he just liked to look at her; she was pretty easy on the eyes. The fact that he could recognize her footsteps when she walked down an empty corridor was completely inconsequential. As was the fact that he knew her likes and dislikes better than he knew his own. As was the fact that he secretly thought her brilliant and smart and kind and awesomely spontaneous and utterly beautiful.
Really, it was obvious that he didn't love her! Wasn't the fact that he spent approximately half of his waking life fighting with her proof enough?
And really, he only asked her out to get a rise out of her.
The passion in her eyes when they fought didn't send his pulse through the roof or trigger the release of every ounce of adrenalin in his body.
And he absolutely had not wanted to hold her in his arms and protect her when he had found her crying in a secret passage a few days ago.
He'd allowed her to cry into the crook of his neck and get snot on his robes out of pity. And the fact that the Slytherin that had called her a mudblood and threatened her family had been in the hospital wing for the last three days was pure coincidence.
It was funny that no matter how much he told himself and everybody else these things nobody believed him… least of all himself.
But attempting the impossible task of fooling himself was preferable to admitting the other possible reason for his preoccupation with her. Admitting that would make hearing 'no' far more hurtful than it already was.
Perhaps what he was really doing was pretending that he didn't already know that he loved her. Perhaps he was ignoring the fact that he hadn't asked her out in months because his ego was now too bruised to survive another round with her. Perhaps he had turned a blind eye to the fact that he hadn't had more than minor spats with her since they had been made head students. Perhaps he was doing his best to ignore the fact that her eyes no longer held distain when she looked at him… and the fact that she was wearing a new smile that he'd never seen before just for him… and the fact that her magic and the possibility in the air around her seemed to be magnified when she was aware of his presence.
Perhaps he tried to ignore all of this because she was magic… and maybe sometimes he seemed arrogant, but he was not arrogant enough to believe he had even the smallest sliver of a chance with her, she had at last got that point across, and he had at last come to the realization that he wasn't good enough for her.
...But she was driving him insane with that smile, with the way that she innocently brushed past him in prefects meetings, with the way she called him James and looked at him with those irresistible, beguiling eyes.
So really it wasn't a surprise when he snapped.
It wasn't a surprise when after yet another torturous prefects meeting he lost control.
She stood at the table in the middle of the room gathering together her scattered bits of parchment. All the rest of the prefects had already made their hasty escapes from the three hour long meeting.
And anger and frustration burned in his chest. He had had enough! She had put him through three hours of heaven and hell and damn it, he wasn't a eunuch! His sanity was fraying more and more at the edges with every minute in her presence and if she didn't know what she was doing to him then he was going to make her see.
He advanced menacingly upon her from his side of the room.
She looked up when she caught his movement in her peripheral vision. She felt as if she had been scorched when their eyes met.
She backed away unconsciously as he prowled towards her eating up the distance between them; distance that she suddenly felt was her only ally.
"Lily," He growled, "What are you trying to do to me?"
"What do you mean James?" She replied uncertainly, almost tripping over her own feet as she backed away from him.
"James?" He demanded, "Its James now is it?" With every step she took back he took one forward… invading her personal space; their noses a hairs breadth away from touching.
"Do you want me to call you Potter?" She asked incredulously. Her back hit the wall and he took another step forward, trapping her.
"I want you to stop messing me around!"
"What are you talking…?" She started.
"Don't play dumb Lily, it doesn't suit you." He growled out, cutting her off.
"I have no idea…" She began again, but again he cut her off.
"No idea? You've done a complete three sixty in your attitude to me in the last few months! You're calling me James and smiling at me, brushing against me… you're playing with me! You don't want me, but you want me to want you, is that it?" He demanded.
"That's not true." She replied quietly, averting her eyes from his.
"Well what is? Do you like me? Is this what friendship with you is like? What do you want?! Because I can't figure it out and I don't even think you know!"
"I want… I don't know… I'm confused…" She said, staring at his chest because she couldn't meet his eyes.
"I hadn't noticed!" He bit out sarcastically. She continued to stare at his chest; searching for words that seemed to have suddenly disappeared from her vocabulary.
"I... want to laugh when you tell a joke…" She began uncertainly, "even though I know last year I would have found it distasteful. I want to do stupid things when you walk into a room just so you'll pay attention to me, and I have to restrain myself so I don't act like a fool. I want to know how your day went and I want to tell you about mine… so I'll find all sorts of excuses to sit at dinner until you come back from Quidditch practice. But mostly I just want to have feelings that make logical sense! Though apparently that's not going to happen."
He watched her trying unsuccessfully to study her toes. He himself was trying to take all the information in and resisting the urge to pinch himself in an attempt to make sure he was awake. If this was a dream he had no intention of waking himself any earlier than he would normally be woken by Peters irritable demands for Sirius to get out of the shower.
She looked up at him and he was confronted with her dazzling green eyes.
"Sometimes I just want to let go." She whispered. "Like I did when I was little and I would fly off of the swing set and float to the ground. Sometimes I just want to have faith like that again. I want to believe that it'll be okay if I let go… I want to believe in the magic I feel when you're around."
For one stretching moment he stared at her, unable to believe his ears.
And then his heart leapt and he grinned; he smiled the most face splitting smile that had ever graced his face as he looked down at the top of her red head.
He inched ever so slightly closer to her. And then she made the mistake of looking up, exposing her vulnerable green eyes to his.
And before she could even process the heart-stopping smile on his face he was kissing her… kissing her like she had never been kissed before… and it was pure magic!
Maybe, James thought, he was an idiot… because obviously he'd gotten everything with her all wrong. And he'd never been so completely happy to be wrong in his life.