Chapter Two.

(Ellie May)

I love waking up in James's arms – a brilliant way to start the day. I woke up because Harry was knocking on the door telling us to get up.

"James." I said, gently shaking him awake. "James, wake up!"

"Mmm." he groaned, snuggling into my side a bit more. Well, if it weren't his dad waking us up I would have happily stayed in bed all day, but Harry was waking us up. "I don't want to get up."

"I don't care. We're going to Diagon Alley remember?" I told him trying to pull his heavy torso up. It was really heavy, but probably because of all the muscle that builds up that six pack of his…

"Alright, I'm going." He groaned and sat up, smiling for some reason.

I laughed, before getting out of his nice warm bed to find some clothes. I managed to dig out some checked blue shorts and a plain white vest, before looking round to hunt for underwear.

Half of my wardrobe was in James's room, so I didn't have much of a problem. I found some in his boxer drawer, and picked it up before heading for his shower. "Be back in a mo." I told him, and turned the shower on.

It was really relaxing to stand in the warm water – it gave me time to think. When I say it gave me time to think, I meant it gave me time to think about James. Again.

It weird, I literally think about him all the time… his messy brown hair, his deep, caramel eyes, his RIPPED body. I suppose not many people have had the privilege of seeing it, let alone every day. I suppose I'm just lucky. The crazy thing is, I think I like him. I mean he's my best mate, but I think I love him. Its nuts, I know, but still… I just can't stop thinking about him.

As soon as I'd stopped daydreaming about James (again), I got out of the shower, dressed quickly and did my hair, before going back to James's room to drag him out of the bed he was no doubt still in.

I was right. I pulled him out of bed and sent him for a shower before making my way down to the kitchen for breakfast.

"Morning Ellie May." Harry and Ginny said when I arrived.

"Morning!" I replied brightly.

"Good night's sleep?" Ginny asked me.

"Yes thanks. What's for breakfast?" I asked, pouring myself a glass of milk.

"There are some crumpets on the side or some croissants somewhere."

"Cool, thanks." I said, walking around Harry, who was stood in the middle of the kitchen reading the Daily Prophet, to the toaster, and put four crumpets on. (Two for James duh!)

When they popped out, I buttered them and sneakily chocolate spreaded them, before tucking in. When James came down, he simply said 'morning' to his parents, then 'thanks' to me and ate his crumpets. He's not a morning person.

He did however, look extremely good in the tight white t-shirt and jeans…

I actually do like him don't I?

(James)

"Aren't Lily and Al coming?" I asked as we stood by the fireplace preparing to leave. It was Lily's first year at Hogwarts after all.

"Nope, they're going next week with the mums." Jake said.

"Why are we going now then?" Ellie asked.

"Because Ginny thought it would be a better idea? I dunno, she probably just didn't want to take all of you at once." Jake shrugged. Ah well. At least we don't have to go to Ollivander's and take forever today.

"Diagon Alley" I said (very clearly, I knew the story) as I stepped into the green flames. I arrived at the other end without consequence, thankfully.

Ellie, Dad and Jake arrived moments later, and after a quick hello to Tom the innkeeper (I sweat he's been 60 forever), we shuffled through the mass of people to the brick wall that leads to Diagon Alley.

"Do we have to go round with you?" I asked Dad. Was I really stuck with him all day?

"If you want me to pay." He said.

Fair point. I didn't want to spend my money on school books!

"So, Flourish and Blotts?" I asked, heading that way anyway.

The book store hadn't changed much. Still that place with lots of books and people that was always very quiet.

Five minutes in the book shop, and I was bored. I looked around for something interesting. Oh, yes. Once again, I saw Ellie. She was certainly interesting.

I hadn't noticed that morning how amazing she looked – her legs looked like they went on forever in those shorts, and it exposed a lot of freckled skin, revealing her figure beautifully.

I walked over to her and snaked my arms around her waist while she was looking at some book about animagi or something. "Enjoying that?" I sighed.

"I dunno, I might buy it and read it later actually." She smiled, before taking my hand and walking over to our Dads.

"Are you both finished now?" Harry asked, and when we nodded, he walked over to the till with our two stacks of school books and paid for it all.

The rest of the day was pretty much the same. We met Rich, one of my dorm mates, in Madam Malkin's though, which was funny. His mother was trying to make him buy this hideous pair of shoes for school. He was definitely not having it.

At lunch, we stopped off at The Leaky Cauldron, before Dad and Jake went home and told us to be back before 5.

"Here is some muggle money, I think you need to buy some more muggle clothes." Dad said. "Keep your wits about you."

As ever, he had to remind me. I think he's still paranoid. Can't blame him though, I know the story better than most people being his son and all.

"Let's go then." Ellie said, and we slowly made our way out of the Leaky Cauldron to muggle London. We managed to buy some cool stuff actually, and ended up with loads of shopping bags. Eventually, at about half past four, we decided to call it a day and made our way back towards the Leaky Cauldron.

On the way, however, we were rudely interrupted.

"Oi! You! Hey sexy." A random guy on the street came up to Ellie, the staleness of his breath indicating that he was drunk.

"Don't talk to her that way!" I stepped in front of her, crossing my arms on my chest. I was easily taller than him, and definitely more muscular. I could fight him and win without magic.

"Is that your girlfriend?" He jeered.

"No, now go piss off down the pub." I told him, waving my hand in front of his face and thinking confundus.

The guy laughed, waggling his head in that way that muggles do when they're trying to intimidate someone.

"You're gonna pay for what you stole, Smith"

Okay, that didn't work the way it was supposed to…

The guy lunged at me, so I had no choice but to punch him back, thinking diffindo at the same time. The guy collapsed on the floor, clutching his stomach. Shit, how come that wandless spell worked?

"Did you use sectumsempra? He's gonna die now, you know the muggles can't fix that spell!" Ellie yelled.

"No, it's okay, they can fix him, I only used diffindo." I looked down at the man on the floor. "Better make sure it looks like we did it the muggle way, we'll leave a knife at the scene and scarper." I said, producing a knife from the palm of my hand.

"Err… James…" Ellie said from behind me, but I'd already noticed. Shit. Police cars.

"I'm arresting you on…" I didn't listen to the rest. I knew it already. Gah!

(Ellie May)

Oh James, the stupid idiot. Ah well, I guess a ride in a police car wasn't ideal for the end of the day, but nevertheless, we ended up in a police station in central London. At least I wasn't the one in trouble.

"What are they doing?" I asked James when I was allowed into the visitor area to see him.

"They've called Mr. Gardiner so hopefully Dad should arrive soon. Other than that I don't know. I think they're trying to put me in young offenders or something. Hah. There's no way I'm going there."

"When your Dad gets here, he'll probably take you out right away with the Auror department. They generally have skills with that kind of thing." I laughed, it was too easy to fool muggles.

Mr. Gardiner was the headmaster of Godrics Hollow Primary school, a mixed magic and muggle school. He is obviously a wizard, but unlike most of us, has a telephone number as he pretends to be a muggle most of the time. We were always told to call him if we were with muggle authorities, and say that he was our father. This was the first time we'd used him for a few years.

Ten minutes later, Harry and Dad arrived. Harry was wearing a muggle police uniform, which made James and I chuckle. He looked more than a bit ridiculous, but I guess the muggles saw it as normal, so they let them come straight through.

"Hey PC Potter." James smirked, keeping up the pretence of being James Gardiner.

"Shut it." He said, obviously meaning the Uniform. "How on earth did you end up here?"

"Some drunk dude tried to attack Ellie, and then punched me so I punched him harder?" James told him, hoping that this abridged version would do.

"I despair sometimes with you James. Did you use magic?" Harry said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, but I didn't use my wand." James said.

"Good, the ministry can't trace you. What did you do to him?"

"Diffindo, split open his stomach."

"Remember to leave muggle evidence?"

"Yes Dad, I know the drill. If you ever use magic in the muggle world, leave some form of muggle evidence to cover your track. I left a knife." James rolled his eyes.

"Well done. Anyway, here's the plan. Jake is going to take Ellie and all of your shopping home now, and then we're going to hang around for 5 more minutes before I have to go and do all of this paperwork that I wouldn't otherwise be doing, to get you to "St. Patrick's Young offender's prison", supposedly in Surrey. It's actually just a made up thing, but it's on all of the muggle systems for the Auror's use, for getting folk like you out of sticky situation. Or to get Wizards out of muggle prison and into Wizard prison. Okay?"

We all nodded, before dad and I stood up to leave. "Come to mine yeah?" I told James, and when he nodded, dad and I left.

"That took a while." I mused when James finally wandered through the door to my room, 3 hours after I'd left him at the police station.

"Yep. Sorry. There was SOOOO much paperwork, and then we had to go to the ministry to do loads more paperwork. Huff." He said, laughing slightly and flopping onto the bed. "Have we got time to ride?"

"Yeah, there's about 2 hours left of light." I shrugged, throwing him a pair of Jodhpurs. "Shall we ride the other two today, seeing as we rode Tufnell and Speckles yesterday?"

"Yep. Then go for a swim in the lake? We ought to go and see Dave anyway." He said.

"Yeah, we should. Okay then." Dave was one of the riding instructors that lived across the lake at the boathouse. There were loads of lakes near me, seeing as I lived in the Lake District, but even though James lived in Godrics Hollow and I lived here, floo was so genius that it didn't matter.

Anyway, the riding school thing, I don't know if we've explained. My mum is a muggleborn witch, and used to live on a farm. Now she run's a riding school business on James's property. It seems pretty muggle, but on the side, she breeds magical horses, and it's surprising how many people use them actually. Anyway, James and I both have two magical horses each, Tufnell and speckles at Grandma's in Offchurch, and Godric and Eclipse in Godrics Hollow.

The great thing about the type of magic horses that Godric and Eclipse are, however, is that they are tied to us. As we get bigger, so do they and they will basically only get old and stuff when we do. It's great.

Tufnell and speckles are cool, but they don't do that. They just sort of magically enhance everything, and go really fast. Or jump really high and stuff. Godric and Eclipse do that too I guess.

Anyway… We tacked up and quickly mounted Godric and Eclipse for a quick ride. They're beautiful – both of them – Eclipse is jet black with a white star on her forehead, and her whole coat shines in the light. Godric is chestnut. He's very strong, but very agile, and somehow looks proud and regal – almost royal.

We went on a beautiful Gallop across the hills, and on the beach, until finally going back to turn them out, making sure we didn't take too long.

"I think I need some new tack too." I told James, as my reins were basically dead. That's what we were going to see Dave about.

(James)

She looked AMAZING in that Green swimming costume. I just wanted to run my hands down her beautiful long legs and hold her forever. But this didn't seem like an option as she dived off the boating platform into the lake.

"You coming in James?" She asked, grinning.

"Hell yeah!" I yelled, and bombed in after her.

She laughed and swam over to me, giving me a hug. It made my day. It was obviously a wet hug, but it was amazing. I got that warm tingly sensation all over, and I ran my hands over her bare back, never wanting to let go, and never wanting to stop touching her smooth warm skin. I was mesmerized really…

"Race you there?" She asked, letting go of me suddenly.

"You're on!" I grinned, starting to swim for the opposite shore. It felt good to swim through the cool lake so late in the day – very refreshing, but all I could think about was Ellie's bare flesh near me, just crying out to be touched. Ten or so minutes later, we reached the shore that was Dave's house, and walked towards the door. It was just about warm enough that we didn't need to worry about clothes for keeping warm.

"Well hello!" Dave said when he opened his door. "How are you both?" he said in his thick Scottish accent.

"We're fine thanks Dave." I told him. "How are you?"

"Well, I'm very good, thank you, though a wee bit bored I must say. What brings you here then?" He asked, leaning on the door frame.

He was a very small gangly man, with a stubbly beard and a large nose, and he also seemed to blend in with the door.

"Well," Ellie started. "We were just wondering if you would come with us down to the riding shop tomorrow, we need some new tack, and to fit a saddle before we go back to school?"

"Of course I will! You know how much I like it down there. This tack is for Godric and Eclipse I presume?"

We nodded.

"Well then, I'll floo down to Godrics Hollow in the morning and see you there shall I? Jolly good! I'll see you in the morning kids."

Dave, is a crazy squib, so he knows all about magic and can floo, but can't actually do magic. He's definitely crazy. Very crazy. But at least he's nice.

It was beginning to get dark by now, so I said: "Looks like we should go home then?" When she nodded, I picked her up over my shoulder and started running towards the water, laughing all the way.

It was actually just an excuse to touch the soft skin on the back of her thighs though, it was so smooth, warm and touchable…

(Ellie May)

I shrieked as he put me over his shoulder, and started laughing loudly, but secretly I was glad he'd done it.

Not only was his hand on the back of my thighs, giving me a warm tingly sensation that made me want to touch him forever, my face ended up right by his backside, and (involuntarily of course) my eye's wondered, taking in the glorious sight….

Splash! I landed on my back in the water, James falling right on top of me. Who knows what this would have looked like, but I just felt my heart beating so fast that I thought it was going to burst. I think James would've actually been able to hear it if we weren't laughing so much.

"Come on Big boy," I laughed, smacking the arse I'd just been staring at. "Let's go home."

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