Hello all! This is a fun take on James and Lily's first date, which is actually brought about through a dare from Sirius. I of course, do not own people, places or things mentioned.

Let me know what you think, and enjoy!

Dear Lily Evans,

I request your presence at the statue of Gunhilda on the third floor, at noon on Saturday, September 24th. Wear warm clothing. If you do not wish to meet me there, then I regret to inform you that I will be forced to parade around the girl's dormitory and Gryffindor common room without any clothes on when it is least expected. This of course is not my decision. Please send an owl with your response, which I greatly look forward to.

Ever yours,

James Potter

I arrive at the horrid statue of the one-eyed humpback witch at five minutes to eleven, but James is already there in muggle clothes leaning against it, wearing an utterly bored expression.

"Thought you'd never come," he says impatiently, ruffling his dark mess of hair.

"Why are we here?"

"I wanted to show you my trophies. Isn't it obvious?"

There's nothing to do but panic for a moment. I have to spend an hour looking at trophies with him? It's like what Alexander and Aoife teasingly predicted.

"I'm joking. Though we could detour there later. Ready?"

"For what? What are we doing?" I can't help the annoyance that enters my voice. James Potter is leading me on some mysterious adventure and there's that terrible spark of mischief in his hazel eyes.

"Dissendium."

"What?"

My question is answered quickly as James pushes me back gently, the ugly woman statue shudders for a moment and suddenly a dark space appears where her hump is. James gestures to the marble as though nothing needs explanation.

"It's a slide. Go on."

"You first."

"I need to close it. Trust me, Lily. I'm not trying to kill you. I would've put you on a broomstick if I wanted to do that."

"Trust you," I mutter under my breath. James offers as hand as I clamor onto the witch, my eyes dart around to ensure no one is watching. Normally I'd be entirely against this sort of thing, sneaking around, but there's a level of intrigue involved now that I had been unaware of before.

"Lumos," I ignite my wand and allow myself to slip down the dark tunnel, my feet touching stone ground mere seconds later.

"See, you made it!" James peeks down the slide and follows quickly behind. There's a damp draft in the stone corridor I find myself in. I have absolutely no understanding of where we are.

"How do we get back up?"

James begins walking and I follow closely behind, in fear of losing myself in the dark. "Outside. This is going to take a tad longer than an hour, by the way. Hope you have nothing vital to do."

"I have twenty-four inch paper due on Monday," I answer, irritated. More than an hour with him? What did I do to deserve this? It's bad enough I have to work with him as Head Boy everyday.

"You'll be fine. You're brilliant."

"How did you know about this? Where does it go?"

"Don't fret over it. I have my ways."

The corridor seems to plow around the ground forever twisting and turning like a rabbit's warren, I don't understand what we're doing or where we are going. After what feels like twenty minutes of walking in silence, which I am perfectly content to keep, James speaks.

"Isn't this nice?" He turns to smile at me, the smile that sends too many girls swooning.

"Not particularly."

"We'll be there soon. Do you like stairs?"

"Stairs?"

"Yeah."

"Does anyone?"

James only laughs in response and we continue walking for another half an hour. If this is what dating James Potter is like, I have definitely made the proper decision in keeping my distance.

Eventually we come across exactly what he was speaking of. There's a massive stretch of steps before us, more than a hundred of them I would reckon, and we pause.

"No, I don't particularly like stairs."

James turns around to look at me with a chuckle and looks behind us. "You can come up the stairs, or trek all the way back."

"What's at the top?"

"Part of the surprise."

I consider turning around for a moment, but suddenly James has grabbed my wrist saying, "just kidding, mind your head." There's a familiar twisting in my stomach and the world spins into streak of black and grey and my feet leave the ground. We land and my head collides with stone at the same moment my feet plant themselves, James stifled laughter is unmistakable from beside me. Below us are the stairs, and above us is the ceiling. This is some practical joke surely. There's nothing here.

"What are you playing at, James?"

"Shhh," he holds a finger to his lips and presses both hands to the stone above us, shifting it slightly. A crack reveals a stream of yellow light and I'm terribly relieved despite being entirely disoriented.

The entire block moves and James hoists himself through the hole, reaching down for my hand once he's established himself above.

"Have you just broken in?"

"Whisper. And no. You'll see."

He helps pull me through the hole, and after the moment it takes my eyes to adjust it's apparent that we're in a cellar. It's as cold as the tunnel was, and the light comes from a single floating candle in the middle of the rectangular room. There are stacks of boxes around the space, but they're dusty and indistinguishable. To the right there is a staircase with a door at the stop, daylight streaming through the crack beneath the door. A million questions and concerns flit through my mind, but I'm wary and know James will provide no answers, and I resolve to remain silent.

He tiptoes up the steps ahead of me, and as we approach the door a roar of voices and various sounds grows. James puts a hand behind him to halt me, it grazes my chest unintentionally and I once again decide to say nothing. Who knows where that conversation would go. He opens the door a crack, and then suddenly opens it wider and ushers me through.

The daylight filling the place, which I decide is a shop based on the roar of voices and trinkets, blinds me, but James has grabbed my wrist and leads me away from where we had emerged. And then its clear, we're in Honeydukes somehow and no one seems to be wondering how we suddenly appeared.

"Couldn't we have just walk like normal here?"

"We did walk. But the regular path is hardly any fun." A group of seventh year Slytherins lay ahead, and if I'm not mistaken James' grip on my wrist tightens slightly. It's only then that I remember it is there, and I pull it away.

"So now what?"

He's leading us to the entrance, weaving around the multitudes of students who have come out for the day. "Three Broomsticks."

I could do with something warm I decide.

The moment we enter, James is warmly greeted by Madame Rosmerta who quickly leads us to a two person table towards the back, eyeing me curiously as though in disbelief. It seems even she knows the of oddity of the situation. Promptly, James orders two shots of firewhiskey and before I can protest Rosmerta has left with our order.

"I really don't want firewhiskey," I squeeze my hands together in my lap, glowering at James who only grins crookedly.

"It'll warm you up. Plus, you have to spend another bit with me. Also, don't tell anyone about that passage, alright?"

"If I told anyone I slid down a witches back and walked to Hogsmede they'd think I've gone mad."

The two shots arrive then, a burning ruby colour, their bitter spicy wafting to my nose.

"Lily," James looks at me seriously as he turns his shot around on the table. "Can I ask you something?"

I cringe without meaning to, and shrug. "I suppose."

"Can we be friends? I know I've been a prick in the past, but I'd really like it if we were friends."

"Sure," I respond, my mouth twisting into a grin though I hadn't told it to. What?

"To friendship then," James raises his glass and clinks it against mine, and in one fell swoop we down the liquid, I have to consciously remind myself not to cough it up, but James seems at ease.

"How did you find that passage, by the way? Since we're friends now."

"Nice try, Lily. I'm afraid I can't reveal that. But I can promise you none of our children know it exists, and won't be able to lose themselves somewhere in between."

"Excellent, all of my worries are quelled."

Rosmerta returns and James orders two butterbeers now and we settle further into our seats.

"Have you ever realized we know very little about each other?" He asks. "What's your favorite colour?"

"That's not something I usually know about other people."

"Not even the other girls?"

I shake my head. "I know theirs, but not other people I don't spend a lot of time with. It hardly matters."

"What is it?"

"Purple, more of a lavender shade. Yours?"

"Green," he replies quickly.

"Like Slytherin?" I tease.

James cringes. "A darker green. You have one sister, right?"

I nod stiffly, though I know the woe of the subject is scrawled across my face.

"It would be hard to do what you do, live a life so completely different from your family," James acknowledges sipping his drink. He hasn't said in in a pitying way as others have, more as a passing comment which I appreciate more. "I've always wanted a sibling though. I suppose Sirius counts, though."

"You must be related to him somehow," I say, "you're all purebloods."

"I think so, my father's brother or something married a Black I think. It's too confusing. The poor Blacks are going to inbreed to no return soon, it's a wonder Sirius came out as handsome as he did. Most of my family is in Scotland, and they're pureblood too, but not into all of that nonsense, thank Merlin."

"What is Sirius going to do? I mean once we're done here, where will he live?" I change the topic smoothly; I hardly intend to have a conversation about pureblood absurdities with Potter.

James shrugs. "He's welcome at my place, my parents love him more than they love me sometimes. I think he's got some disowned uncle or other who might help him out. Regardless of housing situations, I hardly know what I'm going to do when we finish here."

"I'll probably end up doing something with muggles," I muse calmly, though inside there's a rise of panic in my chest. I hate thinking about the end of this year. I've done it more in these past twenty-four days that I have in my entire life.

"Don't do that. You're too talented for that. I wish it was a set path sometimes, that all of us were born with one skill that set us up for success in that area. Like Aoife. She's going to be a code breaker, she's known it her whole life and she's perfectly content." The man child in front of my has a quiver of nervousness in his voice and he words pick up speed, "not that I need to tell you this, you know already of course."

I take a long swig of butterbeer, which is delightfully refreshing after the burning whiskey. "What do your parents do?" I hate to admit that he's right, we hardly know very much about each other even after all of these years. Questions between us never swayed past anything that involved school.

"Mum is the head of a bunch of societies or something," he says in a bored tone, scratching behind his ear, "I don't know if you have the same thing for Muggles. But they're charitable organizations and what not. I haven't the slightest clue as to why or what they really do. Dad works for the Department of International Magical Cooperation, that's how he met the Carreys and McKinnons. He's always done it as more of something to keep him busy. What do your parents do? I barely know anything about muggle jobs."

"My dad's a professor at a University near my town. It's like, school after Hogwarts and you specialize on a certain topic. He teaches biology, which I don't think I can begin to explain. And my mum is a nurse. I feel sort of bad that there's all these magical quick fixes and she knows about them, but can't use them."

James is silent for a moment, but he's watching me intently and its evident that he's focusing very closely on my words and I have to force myself to keep eye contact.

"I've never thought of that really."

"I told her once about how they regrew one of Sirius' bones in third year after he managed to shatter it somehow. She was horrified, but jealous. You don't just regrow bones in the muggle world. If someone got hit like you do when you play Quidditch, but in the Muggle world, they'd probably never play sport again."

"I saw muggle football this summer. Two men kicked each other and rolled about crying. And they brought stretchers to them as though they'd cracked their necks in half. I watched it with Sirius and we screamed at them the whole time to get up."

"How on earth did you watch football?" I raise my eyebrows, expecting a thrilling yet questionable explanation.

"Sirius was riding his motorbike-"

"His what? How did he get one of those?"

"Found one and charmed it," James says as though there's nothing illicit about the idea. "But, he was riding about one day, I was with him and we were near one of the stadiums and people were going mad. So we apparated inside and that was that."

"You really have no boundaries, do you?" I finish off my butterbeer in hopes that James will take the last sip of his and we can move on. At this point I find that I'm not so much worried about being with him as I am about finishing my paper on time.

"What's the point?" He gets the hint and swigs his last bit and rises.

I stare at the table expectantly, and then back to him, but he only furrows his brows in questioning.

"I thought you were paying," he nods to me.

There's nothing to do but gasp, I can't help it. I should've known better than this - I should've -

"Joking, Lily," he smiles warmly and places a handful of coin that is surely double our charge on the table. "I need to go to Zonko's quickly."

"Really?"

"Really. And unfortunately, if you go back without me, Sirius is going to count it as a failed date and I will have to complete my alternate dare, which I can promise you will be much more terrible than this."

I nod in agreement as we exit the pub, pulling my jacket tighter around my body against the cool air. I squint up at James. "You know I agreed to this to preserve your dignity as a leader. No other reason. I don't want to work alongside someone whose thing is imprinted into everyone's mind."

James seems to know his way around the brightly colored joke shop better than he does the secret passageways of our school, and true to his word he spends no more than three minutes gathering products. Amongst them is Peruvian Instant Darkness powder, something which he has used for his signature prank since I can remember. I've never been on the receiving end, he knows well enough not to do such a thing to me, but basically everyone else in our house has. He sends the stuff to the other Marauders and people on the Quidditch team as letters around their birthday, but disguises it in an envelope from a loved one. Last year Remus refused to open any letters around the week of his birthday and wrote back to each of his relatives thanking them though he'd never opened their cards.

"Will Schuller's birthday is coming up," he provides with a smirk.

"You're going to send the Ravenclaw quidditch captain that on his birthday?"

"I asked Marlene if she though it would be funny," he explains with a careless shrug, "she said yes. Girlfriends know best. Plus we play them first. It'll help fuel the match."

"Boys." I shake my head.

Zonko greets James with the same warmth that Madame Rosmerta did, but he looks at me questioningly behind a pair of bushy grey eyebrows and narrow purple spectacles.

"Who is this beautiful lady?" He directs the question to James with a fond voice.

"Lily, this is Zonko. Zonko this is Lily. Have you never been in this shop before?" James sounds as though he's questioning choices I've made about my personal health.

"Once or twice."

"You're a lucky boy, Potter," he laughs heartily.

"Oh Merlin, no!" I throw up my hands like I'm surrendering to an opponent. "We're not together!"

There's a bark of laughter that comes from James, surprised at my swift response. "No, we're not. But we are on a date. Just not dating. I got dared -"

Zonko shakes his head knowingly and grins. "Say no more, say no more. Have a wonderful day James, Lily."

I all but shove James to the ground as we step back into the streets. Of course people were going to think we're dating! Why hadn't I thought of those repercussions! "You knew people were going to start talking about this!"

Now it's his turn to throw up his hands in surrender, but I'm breathing heavily and wonder if I leave now, can I avoid returning to the Gryffindor common room or my dorm for a while? "Not my fault, Lily! But if it makes you feel better, if anyone asks I'll deny that we were even out together."

"Are we going back soon?" I ask impatiently, deciding it's not worth arguing the other point.

"One more stop," he gives a sloppy grin and begins leading us back on the path from which we came.

On the steps of Honeydukes I'm thrilled by the off chance that there's another secret passage way that will take us straight back to the castle. But James seems to actually want to purchase something because he's weaving through the crowds of people rather than to the cellar.

"What's your favorite sweet?"

"What?" I look up at him as he pauses, watching me expectantly like a puppy ready to bolt after a ball.

"What's your favorite? You deserve to get something out of this train wreck."

"I wouldn't call it a train wreck," I say quietly so that he can't hear it. It's the truth. It's not as awful as I thought, though I am dreading any questions that will follow from onlookers, but it could have also been a hundred times worse. But whose to say it won't be yet.

"Hmm?"

"Exploding bonbons."

James' eye grow wide and his grin spreads wider. "Really?"

"Is there something shocking about that?"

"Didn't know you'd go for something so thrilling."

It's impossible to tell if he's being sarcastic, because he turns around quickly and edges to the back left of the store where I know they're kept. My money is on sarcasm however, because there are a number of first or second years buying the candies, which are considerably less adventurous than other products around the shop.

"Which are you favorite?" James turns back to me as he approaches the shelves.

"What do you mean?"

"Flavor-wise."

"Peach and raspberry. But you know they come assorted-"

James' mischievous grin resurfaces. "They don't have to." His hand reaches into his pocket and he taps his wand lightly. The first six boxes of the sweets begin rattling and a few of the younger students jump back. James snatches one of the middle boxes and hands it to me. "Look inside."

"James, I shouldn't open it yet."

"I'm paying for it in the end. We're not stealing. Look."

I do as he says and sure enough the inside of the box glows in glorious shades of orange and berry red. "How'd you do that?" I ask in awe, though I do feel slightly guilty for the children who will not be receiving my preferred flavors.

"Potions is your specialty, Charms is mine."

As we make our way to the counter, James grabs himself a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and a chocolate frog.

"Do you collect them?" I ask curiously.

He nods. "I'm missing two. I had Uric the Oddball but then I lost it near the lake in third year. And I need Falco Aesalon. We all compete, Pete, Remus, Sirius and I. First one to get them all without trading gets to prank the others for six months without retaliation. We're each two away. I've had about fifty Babayagas, stupid wench."

"You're going to be fifty years old before that happens."

"It's quite possible actually, but that's what makes it so fun. I have this image of winning when we're about eighty and slipping them each a sleeping draught, and everyone thinking they've died."

"That sounds terrible," I shake my head.

"I wouldn't put it past them to do the same."

James hands over the money for our purchases at the counter and the instant we leave the shop I pop a bonbon in my mouth and he rips into his chocolate frog, which he actually tosses away into the damp street before it can hop away.

"Did you get one of them?" I ask after a raspberry candy has exploded in my mouth and as he flips his card around.

"Nah. Oswald Beamish. I do have only two of him though, so that's rather impressive." James tucks the card into his pocket, surely keeping it just incase he loses the others.

"Couldn't you just do what you did with the candies for the cards?"

James shakes his head. "I know how many of each flavour of candy is in each box of those so it's simple. But it's impossible to know the distribution of the cards. Not to mention that would go against the rules we made."

We begin taking the normal path back to Hogwarts, and though the day is damp and foggy I prefer to be outside than in that strange tunnel. He takes care to keep a modest distance from me as to not spark questioning. Our chatter remains casual and light, and as more time passes I forget more and more why I ever disliked him so much. It's still in the back of my head of course, the hexing, the blatant disregard for rules and authority, the cockiness, but it is more clear now that he is not only those things.

I learn that he faithfully believed that he would be the captain of the Wimbourne Wasps until he was fourteen, that he takes Divination solely because he likes having a class he can laugh through for an hour and half every other day, that he thinks Peter has really become his own person in the last two years - something I agree on - and that he has an irrational fear of a threstral knocking him off of his broom during a match and no one believing that it wasn't his fault.

By the time we get back it's nearly two-thirty, and I am suddenly very eager to escape to my dormitory. I realize that in two and a half short hours I've come to enjoy James Potter's presence, and the thought is utterly foreign and terrifying.

I turn to him as we enter the entrance of the castle. His hazel eyes are steady and manage to capture mine. "I really need to do my assignment now. But thank you, I can't believe I'm saying this, thank you for a decent day. It was not nearly as unbearable as I presumed it would be."

James bows slightly with a hand on his chest and a grin. "Thank you, I will take that as a compliment. But I was going to show you last year's Quidditch trophy. That's actually what I'd planned the whole time, I got a tad side tracked…"

Of course he couldn't last so long without eliciting an eye roll.

"Bye James," I spin around and wave behind my back. "Have a good night."

"See ya, Lily," his reply comes, and from its softness, I know without glancing back there's a smile plastered onto his silly face.

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