A/N: I realized that I've had a chapter from fifth, sixth, and now seventh year in a row. This was not intentional and the rest of the chapters will not necessarily follow as chronologically. Each chapter is intended to stand alone. They should fit well together, but there is no overarching plot, aside from the tragic story we know and love. For exposition sake, this takes place in their seventh-year, some time before Christmas. They're not dating yet, but it seems as if they may be soon. *winky face*
*Disclaimer: I do not, nor do I wish to ever, own the rights to the magical world of Harry Potter that J.K. Rowling has so graciously welcomed us into.
Lily quietly climbed through the portrait hole, so as not to wake the head boy in the adjoining bedroom. She had told Hestia she would help her with Transfiguration about five or six hours ago. It didn't take long for the two witches to get lost in the euphoria of being together in their old dorm, casting aside the Transfiguration textbook in favor of Firewhiskey and chocolate. Lily rarely ever drank, even though she was technically of age. It just did not appeal to her. Why would someone ever want to lose control of their own thoughts and actions?
Hestia had always had a way of convincing Lily to compromise her morality for the sake of "friendship." So, here she was, several hours after curfew, attempting to sneak back into the head dorm to avoid questioning from James Potter, who would surely be asleep in his own room at this hour. She was indubitably drunk.
To her dismay, the small common room shared by the head boy and head girl was not dark when she slowly pushed open the portrait hole.
He was seated by the small fireplace, in an oversized sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants. Books and parchment were sprawled over the couch, with a few having been forgotten on the floor. Those are going to slide under the couch and get lost, Lily thought to herself. She internally groaned at her own string of consciousness. Even drunk, she was far too worried about others. The curse of the "mom friend."
He was holding a book, Practical Defence Against the Dark Arts, so close to his face it was difficult to believe he could actually read the words on the page. There was a mug of abandoned pumpkin juice sitting on the table and a plate of food that had not been touched. Lily recalled that she had not seen the head boy at dinner. Had he been here this entire time? Eight hours?
As she walked further into the room, she noticed there were not only parchments on the floor, but something a little more out of place as well. Sticks. Sticks on the floor of the head common room? The pieces of wood were a variety of sizes and shapes. Some still had leaves attached to them and some were almost big enough to be considered logs. How did he even get these in here? Lily almost gave into her curiosity, but, remembering her current situation of intoxication, decided the questions could wait until tomorrow.
She clipped the corner of a table as she tried to swiftly navigate to her own room. The lamp shook and threatened to topple over entirely. Lily attempted to make a grab for it, but, in her drunken state, only managed to knock it over.
James' head snapped up. "Oh…" He calmed down, seeing the perpetrator was only Lily. "Hey, Evans." Back to his book.
Well, that wasn't so bad. She continued to silently walk towards her bedroom door.
"Wait." Damn it. "It's 2am."
"Excellent internal chronology skills, Potter. That what you're reading up on? A useful skill against the Dark Arts, I'm sure." The redhead sighed, pausing at her door to quip back before she entered her room.
James set his book down. "Don't be smart with me, Evans. It's well after curfew. What have you been up to?"
"Nothing." Hiccup. Damn it again. She refused to turn around from her door and give him the satisfaction of seeing just how out of sorts she was.
"Well, if you've been up to nothing, you won't mind helping me with this for a minute."
"Really, Potter, I should be going to bed. It's late and I have-"
He ignored her. "I know that the focus of the spell has to be on the object and not the environment. But when I try and eliminate the environment, I have a hard time with landing. It's like I can isolate either the velocity or the object itself, but I'm having a difficult time doing it for both."
"I'm tired, honestly. Can you ask-"
"So, I guess my biggest question is how I can focus on the object and maintain the velocity. I was finally getting the velocity at a consistently slowed down rate and then my targets started sort of, erm, exploding, in mid-air."
Lily sighed. He was nothing if not persistent. "Okay." She turned away from her door and walked over to the couch. "Let me see you try." Hiccup.
James tossed a nearby stick almost to the ceiling. Quickly as it reached the peak of it's arch, he shouted, "Arresto Momentum!" The stick momentarily slowed, before speeding up all at once, bursting into tiny splinters right before it hit the ground. So that's where the mess is from. He looked at Lily and shrugged. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong…"
Lily took out her own wand and motioned for James to throw another stick into the air. "Arresto Momentum!" The stick immediately slowed and continued to fall at a consistent, feathery pace until it safely landed onto the couch.
James groaned in frustration and moved his hands toward his head before looking at Lily and choosing to shove them into his pockets. "This is a spell for second years. Why the hell am I struggling?"
"It's not a second-year spell. It's actually quite complex." Lily thought for a second. "Let me see you do it again." Hiccup. The room was starting to spin.
James complied, murdering yet another twig.
"Okay, so I think it's in the follow-through. Once you cast the spell, you have to continue to guide the object down at the velocity you want it to go." She threw a quill into the air and demonstrated, admittedly with difficulty. The spinning was speeding up and her head felt so heavy.
James tried again, this time safely landing the stick on the ground, if not a bit roughly. His eyes lit up. "Yes! It didn't explode!" Lily giggled, a loud hiccup intruding into the laughter.
James looked at her with surprise in his hazel eyes. "Lily Evans, have you been…drinking?"
Hiccup. "No."
"My god, Evans, you're drunk!" He jumped up from the couch.
Lily pulled away from him, sputtering. "No, I'm not! I had a tiny bit of firewhiskey with Hestia and it didn't even affect me."
James quirked an eyebrow. "Well, then you need to see a doctor about those hiccups and that smell." He leaned closer to get a better whiff, immediately jumping back. "Merlin, Lily, did you gargle with that stuff?"
Lily frowned, blowing hair out of her face. "Not drunk."
The head boy smirked, moving his hands from his lap toward his head once again, then quickly opting to cross them over his chest instead. "After curfew and intoxicated? Why, Lily Evans, I think I've been a bad influence on you." He took his seat back on the couch next to the girl.
The red-head turned away and pouted. "Hestia made me."
"Oh, I bet she did. So should I take the points from Gryffindor? Or would you like to do the honors?"
Lily whipped her head back around. "Very funny, Potter."
His face was serious, though. "I'm not kidding, Evans. We're head students. We can't bend the rules to our advantage. We have to choose to have integrity."
The sarcasm in Lily's eyes receded. "Wh-wh-what?" Hiccup.
"I would expect you to do the same for me." He nodded, solemnly in her direction.
"But I didn't-"
"Do you think 25 is fair?"
She sputtered. "25?! What? N-No!"
"You're right. This was really your first double offense, so we could probably do 20. Although if McGonnagall tries to declare a bias, then I'm pointing all fingers toward you, Evans. Honestly, the things I do to cover for you. It's getting a bit ridiculous. What with the broom closet snagging incident of a few weeks ago-"
"Th-the what?!"
"-and the cheating on Slughorn's last exam-"
"I didn't ch-"
"-and of course when you attempted to murder Dumbledore last week."
Oh. "You're…kidding…" Slowly.
His faux firmness was replaced with a trademark grin. "Who knew that drunk Lily was even more fun than sober Lily?"
"You hate me." Hiccup. She leaned deeper into the couch, closing her eyes and willing the room to stop spinning. "This room hates me. Firewhiskey hates me."
He laughed, leaning back, next to her. "It happens to the best of us."
She scooted closer to him after a few comfortable minutes of silence. "I'm going to put my head on your shoulder, Potter, but it's only because I'm very dizzy and you look very sturdy and I think if I walk to my room, I'll vomit." She slurred, moving her hair to her left side as she placed her cheek on his shoulder. "We're not in love, okay?"
He chuckled, warmly. "I think I can deal with that, Evans."
A few more minutes of silence. He wasn't sure if she was still awake, and he wasn't sure if he wanted her to be. "Hey, Evans?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you in love with that Goff guy?"
"Shh. Too late. Too dizzy. Sleep. Need."
"Because if you are, that's cool. But he's kind of a git and I kind of hate him and so I just thought I'd like to know exactly where we stood with him."
"We?" Hiccup.
He shrugged the shoulder she was leaning on, bouncing her head and causing her to groan. "Yes, we. As in the united front of head boy and head girl. I think it's best if we are on the same page with everything. So do we love this guy? Or are we just shagging him until the main event comes along?"
Hiccup. "Potter, it is far too late to be discussing my intentions toward my boyfriend. I'm sorry-our boyfriend. And I really don't like the use of the pronoun "we," when discussing shagging him."
"I just meant-"
"Purely for the sake of being on the same page-" Hiccup. "we're not in love with Danny Goff. And we're not shagging him. In fact, we are quite aware of his git status and plan to end things with him as soon as this round of exams is over."
"Oh." She felt his hands raise from his chest toward his head once more, before rerouting back to his lap.
She sat up in frustration. "Merlin, Potter, mess your bloody hair up."
"Wh-what?"
"Do it. I know you want to. Take those stupid hands and put them in your stupid hair to fulfill whatever stupid nervous twitch you have."
He stared, defensively, at the redhead. "I don't have a nervous twitch."
"Yes." She said, pointedly. "You do. And look—I know I've insulted you about it before, but I'm over it. Time has taught me that it's not an intentional personification of your ego. It's just something you do." She put her head back on his shoulder.
After a few minutes, she slurred, "Danny really is a git." Hiccup.
James laughed a deep chuckle that Lily could feel through his shoulder. "Yeah, he really is."
"Ya know, Potter, when you're not disagreeing with me, I kind of don't mind being around you."
"Well, gee, Evans, you really know how to make a bloke feel special." He sounded offended, but she could hear the smile in his voice.
"I just mean that when we're not fighting, I kind of almost think you're funny. And nice." Hiccup. "When did that happen?"
He chuckled again, moving his arm from the back of the couch to drape over her shoulder, casually. "I've always been funny, Evans. And you're just saying I'm nice because you're all liquored up."
"No." Her speech was getting slower. "You're nice. Like real nice."
He finally gave in and reached his free hand up to his hair, running his hands through it one, two, three times. "Well, I guess we all have to grow up sometime, huh?" His voice was still light, but she could hear a new quality about it. He had put a lot of thought into this subject before.
"It just takes some people longer than others." She jokingly nudged him, bringing back the deep-diving conversation to the surface. The idea of having a serious conversation with James Potter was frightening and Lily Evans wasn't sure if she was ready for that yet.
He gave a small snort in response before settling into contemplative silence. She had grown up a good deal, herself, in the past year. With the intensifying threats of Voldemort, it was getting more difficult to just focus on getting good grades and who's dating who at Hogwarts. People were dying. Hogwarts was safe—at least it had been so far. But in a few months, she would be graduating and entering the "real world." A world that was becoming overwhelmingly dominated by people who didn't think she had the right to practice magic, and, in some cases, even be alive.
She thought about the boy sitting next to her. He was a pureblood. His fears were not the same. But Lily had learned too much about the head boy to think he didn't suffer from a different kind of fear. James Potter desperately feared for the safety of his friends. Lily considered the boy's actions over the past six and a half years. They always came down to the same thing: devotion. To an occasional fault, certainly. But everything James did was out of commitment and love for his friends. If you were special enough to find yourself in the circle of people he cared about, you could rest easy, knowing you had a hell of a support system. Am I in that? Lily thought to herself. She considered verbalizing this pondering, but decided against it, knowing the looseness of her lips was only due to her intoxication.
"You smell nice, too." Where had that come from? Hiccup.
He laughed, loudly. "You are so drunk, Lily Evans."
Hiccup.
"And merlin, does your breath smell awful."
A/N: Thanks for reading! :)
