DISCLAIMER:

Here have a JILY chapter. Once again, I'm super sorry its short and trash but you know eh what can u do. They wont stop chattering away inside my head so I'm churning them out as fast as i can badly write them so MY BADDDD

Also I am obsessed with them on Summr vacation bc I am in the dead of summer right now so yeah, lets just pretend they graduate 6th years soon.

#ITSALLJK'S


A CASE STUDY OF JAMES AND LILY

You know that good mood that James was certain would last all day? Yeah, he had no idea how wrong he could have been. He wasn't happy. In the Greenhouse, listening to Professor Sprout drone on about how important it was to know the correct way to extract Snargarluff pods because it would be on their exams. They spent the rest of the lesson extracting said pods and James had some corrections to the professor's technique. Let's have a study in the difference between the Correct Professor Way and The Correct Potter way:

The Professor Sprout Method:

Step 1. Wearing gloves, use a wand-shaped twig in your left hand as a distraction (left handed students feel free to use your right hand but the Snargarluff will think you are stupid).

Step 2. When the vines spring to life and clutch for the twig, throw it into the vines. Using your right/free hand, reach into the centre of the log and extract the pods.

Step 3. Remove your hands from the reach of the vines.

The James Potter Method:

Step 1. Ignore the steps

Step 2. Get your arms caught in twigs

Step 3. Let Lily Evans do it.

James was quite proud of his method. Lily not so much. Not that James cared much. His arms were covered in thorns and the vines had somehow tangled themselves in his hair. Vibrant voracious green in stark black voracious hair. He looked like a crazed Jesus and Lily wasted no time telling him.

"You should be hanging from a cross right now," she said as she cracked open the pods on their bench. James, in his never-ending wisdom, had called dibs on being her partner the second they had walked down the grounds to the greenhouses. Herbology was not his field of expertise. Not that he sucked, but he had to study to pass – something he didn't have to do with anything else. He didn't even want to do it at a NEWT level but Lily had chosen it and there was no way he wasn't going to jump at the chance to hang out with his prefect buddy.

"What?" James asked, pulling thorns out of his brown arms. They squealed as he pulled them out, leaving a tiny puncture wound. They hurt like a motherfucker.

Lily stopped cutting and stared at James, "You. Should. Be. Nailed. To. A. Cross." She repeated. "No wonder McGonagall hates you."

"She does not," James clutched his chest in mock horror. "She loves me."

Lily patted his arm patronisingly. "Sure, she does." She did though, and Lily knew it, but there was no way in hell she was going to make James Potter's head any bigger than it already was. She still couldn't help the smile that spread across her face when he smiled at her. It was just infectious okay. It had nothing to do with that way that she could swim for days in those big brown eyes of his or how she longed to trace the raised veins along his lean arms. No, it had nothing to do with that at all.

"Lils," James said, "you keep missing the pod."

Lily looked at her hands and sure enough they did clutch a wand, but that wand wasn't sending cutting curses into the pods like they were supposed to. No, they were sending them 10cm next to the pods, leaving a decent gash in the wooden bench. Lily's entire face grew red.

James laughed softly. "It's okay love. Give it here, I'll cut them."

Love.

The word fell out of his mouth like honey.

Lily had heard James call every witch, wizard and owl love, and yet, she still froze. (lily snap out of it James didn't confess his love for you and you don't care you don't like james you don't like james you don't like james he has called you love a billion times before like last night- )

Fuck.

"I vomited on you last night, didn't I?" Lily muttered. She wished with every fibre in her being that she hadn't put her hair in a ponytail before class because man what she wouldn't done to hide her face from James' right now.

"You sure did," James shot her a smile as he poured all his concentration into cutting the pods into equal 8th. Slug horn would kill them if they weren't even when he collected them from Sprout.

That smile did nothing for Lily. Or maybe it did a lot – they are so similar sometimes. Like crying not because you're sad, but because you're so happy. Lily had never been able to tell the difference between the different tears. They felt the same to her. Just like right now how she couldn't be sure if she felt like dying because she A) hated the smile or B) hated being without it. She made a mental note to ask Marlene later.

Lily hadn't noticed that she'd been silent that long until James spoke.

"Lils? Are you okay?" He asked so softly that she had to strain to hear it.

Lily looked up and surprisingly found James staring at her, his brow furrowed. Just staring at her like he always had – a mixture of confusion, admiration, free of judgement. She used to hate it. Used to. Sometime between the beginning of 6th year, the late nights spent in prefect meetings, swapping petrol duties with Remus to laugh with James – well somewhere between it all, she'd stopped hating the way he stared at her.

"Lils?"

She shook her head, forcing a small smile onto her face. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little hungover."

"You should have had my hangover cure at breakfast then," James wiggled his eyebrows at her. Strangled laughter bubbled from Lily's stomach, earning an inquisitive look from Sprout and a proud one from James.

"I wouldn't eat that if it was the last thing on earth," Lily said, scooping the pods into their jars. "I could go for a nap right now though."

"We do have Binns class next period," James said. He had written their names on the jar containers – his incredibly neat handwriting what was he a 17th century writer merlin – and was starting to pack his bag.

As studious as she was, even Lily couldn't find Binn's class entertaining. She'd study what she missed in the library later. "If we get there first we can transfigure the desk tops into pillows."

"I like the way you think Miss Evans," James said, running off. "Meet you there."

(I like the way you make me feel, Mister Potter) (I'd meet you anywhere) (fuck).