Disclaimer: Pssh...I wish.


EXCEPTION TO THE RULE
Chapter 2: The Only Thing

James' POV

November 5, 1976

"Anybody ever told you how sexy you look in a Quidditch uniform?"

My arms are envelope her waist from behind as I whisper in her ear and I absorb the feeling of completeness, the feeling I only get when I'm with her. Hearing her giggle from my contact instantly brings a smile to my face.

"I've had a few people tell me," She says as she revolves around in my arms and places a kiss on the tip of my nose, "but I love hearing it from you."

"So...do you like?"

A gargantuan smile lights up her entire face. That would be a 'yes'.

"Why wouldn't I? I'm still shocked that you did it. I mean I knew you were serious about us, but damn!" She exclaims and I laugh then kiss her smooth cheek.

She spins around once again and stretched out the back of the jersey so I can read it clearly.

Future Mrs. Potter.

What she doesn't know is that after I got it through owl and ripped opened the package, I spent a good 15 minutes reading those three words repeatedly like a mantra.

She turns to face me again, flinging her arms around my chest and pressing her ear over my heart. "It's perfect," she whispers into the cloth of my black school robe.

"Of course it is, look who's wearing it."

Looking down, I see pink faintly rising in her pale cheeks. I'm pretty confident that it has nothing to do with the cold and I love it knowing I'm the cause of it. If sweet-talking her meant her cheeks would have that rosy color forever, I would do it until the end of my days.

"This is going to show all those nay Sayers a thing or two, eh?"

I examine those beautiful pools of green. She's worried, but she tries to hide it behind the poised mask she's created as a defense mechanism. Lily has always had a thick skin, but she can never fool me. She never has.

Our relationship has been nothing short of perfect. Most had wanted us to get together long before we actually did (myself included). For the first five years of knowing one another, she abhorred me. If I wasn't transfiguring her flower into a slug during first year, I was asking her out non-stop fifth. But in sixth year, everything changed. We became fast friends and a few weeks into the school year, I asked her out one last time.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Again, most approved of our relationship. As far as I know, all of the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff students had no objections whereas a few Ravenclaws opposed. But by far, the strongest enmity towards our courtship came from Slytherin

Slytherins, being obsessed with maintaining the pureblood lines, thought it a great offense on my part to be associated with—let alone dating—a muggleborn. As a result, I was deemed a 'blood traitor' and the jeers of the filthy word 'mudblood' rang throughout the hallways more than ever. Sirius and I would immediately hunt down the culprit and…well…'take care' of the situation. No one should be called that name, especially not Lily. And she won't be called that as long as I'm around.

It's junctures like these that I cherish the most. The quiet, peaceful moments where we can get lost in each other's eyes and shut out the prejudices of the world. There are no harsh words, no condemnation. Just us.

Unfortunately, our time together will only be shared in letterform for the next two days.

Lily's sister is getting married this weekend and Lily (much to her displeasure) must depart from Hogwarts via Floo Network in Dumbledore's office. Despite both Lily and Petunia's opposition of the idea, Lily was practically forced to become a bridesmaid by her mother.

Apparently the small problem that Petunia despised Lily would not interfere at all.

Right...

"I guess I need to get going. They're kind of expecting me home for luncheon. I love you and I'll see you Sunday. I know it will be hard, but do try to behave yourself while I'm gone." She says as she hoists her purse higher up on her shoulder, gives me a long kiss, and walks out of the portrait hole. I don't even bother with trying to hold back a sigh.

"You miss her already, don't you?"

I turn around swiftly to see Sirius behind me, hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. Laughing more to myself than him, I move my eyes to the floor.

"Yeah. I guess it's sort of extreme. We're not even out of school where we see each other every day, especially since we're Heads, and I'm following her around like a lovesick puppy. Kind of pathetic, isn't it?"

My head rises in time to see him smile and shake his head, sending his thick black hair tumbling in every direction.

"When you're in love, it isn't."

"You don't know how much she means to me, Padfoot. I can't put it into words."

"And you don't have to…I already know. Actions speak louder than words."

"I know but it runs so much deeper than that. I mean, I sit with her every morning in the Great Hall, have her in every class, and share a whole fucking private dorm with her…and I still can't get enough. When she's gone, it doesn't matter if it's for a one minute or one day, I feel incomplete. I'm just not whole without her."

Sirius stares back at my face intently with an incomprehensible expression.

"I envy you, mate. I wish I knew how that felt." He smiles sadly and strides into the Gryffindor boys' dorm. My eyes and feet follow him as he stands in front of the mirror on the dresser, leaning on the palms of his hands that are planted a good distance apart.

"So I guess that leaves me to ask you one thing. Where's Marlene?" I ask as I walk over to my bed, pick up a dirty shirt lying at the foot, and toss it carelessly on the ground before plopping down.

"Probably with the girls in their dorm," he says quietly, then resumes, "She's found her motive of the week to be pissed at me. Can't say I blame her. I might have been too if the roles were reversed."

"What happened?"

He releases a sordid laugh and looks at me at long last.

"My cousin Andromeda…you remember her, don't you? The only sane one out of that bunch?" I nod my head yes, "Well, she decided to stop by the other day. I passed her in the halls as she was coming from Dumbledore's office. Apparently they were catching up on something, she didn't really say what it was. Anyway, we went for a walk around the grounds and bumped into Marlene.

I explained to Marlene that she was my cousin Andy, the only one I write to each week. Marlene smiled at her and shook her hand, saying she'd heard a lot about her. Andy just looked at her and asked her who she was. Marlene told her that she was my girlfriend and Andy said I hadn't mentioned her in any of the letters."

"Ouch. Why didn't you?"

"You want the awful truth? I forgot. I know, it sounds like another one of my poor excuses and a horrible one at that, but I swear on Merlin's sword it's the truth. She didn't even enter my mind while I wrote them. Not once. Hell, she doesn't enter my mind very often at all these days."

Instead of staring at his own reflection, he looks at mine from where I'm lying on the bed.

"It didn't help when she and Lily got to talking about your family, how welcomed they made her feel when they met. All the stories they'd tell about you coming home for the summer and swooning over this feisty little redhead from school. Yeah, that definitely didn't improve things, but what could I do? I apologized but she still isn't talking to me."

"Things haven't been great for awhile now, have they?" I ask as he cocks his head to the side.

"No, they haven't. There's no spark. Sometimes I think I love her, other times I'm not so sure. I think I do really love the girl…I'm just not in love with her. You know what I'm getting at? When she's gone, I don't feel incomplete."

I can see the cogs working in his head and I wait for whatever might come out as the result.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You know you can. Besides, even if I said no, you'd probably ask it anyway." He chuckled before returning to his somber state again.

"When did you know you were in love with Lily?"

I rake a hand through my hair as I mull over what I want to say.

"My gut instinct tells me it was the first time I saw her at Kings Cross. I think I've loved her since we were green eleven year olds…but I think the realization hit me like a ton of bricks in fifth year."

"Fifth year? Wow, even back then. Those were troublesome times, man…" We share a laugh, briefly recalling all the wilder times, and he nods his head for me to carry on.

"It was when she told me she hated me." He looks at me incredulously and I hold up my hand, signaling that there's more to be said.

"I considered myself to be a big shot on campus. Next to you of course," he smirks, "I had all of these people coming up to me and practically kissing me feet, willing to iron my clothes, and girls throwing their bodies at me like it was the last thing they'd ever get to do. I, as you very well know, indulged in this automatic royalty that comes with bearing the Potter surname. So when she told me she hated me, I was surprised to say the least. Not only surprised by her words, but surprised that I found her attractive even when she was barreling insult after insult in my direction.

"Then by the end of the year…after that whole incident…I really got to thinking. No one bothered to tell me to slow down. No one cared enough to tell me I should focus more on my grades than quidditch. No one except Lily. Only she used a more…erm…colorful means of expression.

"She was the one who made me see things in the long term. I could party all I wanted, fuck around all I wanted, and in the end I would have nothing. I would be a lonely bastard left to drown in money that wasn't even earned by my own two hands. She changed my life, Sirius. She makes me want to do something more, something with a real purpose. She makes me want to be a better human being. It didn't matter that she hated me at the time. I was in it for the long haul. I would've never given up on her no matter how many times she insisted that I didn't stand a chance because I knew she was worth it. All of it."

Sirius' head bows as a slow smile creeps onto his face.

"Like I told you before, I can't even put it into words what I feel about that girl. She's the adrenaline I get from riding my broom high speed and the thrill from pulling off an awesome prank all rolled into one. I could be stripped of this god-like status tomorrow and I wouldn't care as long as I still had her by my side. That's what love is."

Breaking my eyes away from Sirius, I examine the picture by my nightstand.

Marlene had taken the picture with Lily's muggle camera after Sirius' 17th birthday party had ended. After the people left and we'd managed to accomplish a bit of cleaning (the most we could do while slightly intoxicated), Lily and I had fallen asleep in each others arms on the couch. Her head was tucked underneath my chin and my arms were holding her child-like form protectively. It's a simple photograph with no magic except what exists between the two of us. It's my favorite picture to date.

I turn back to Sirius to find him watching me intently, no longer using the mirror.

"You can take away quidditch. You can take away my inheritance. You can take anything I own from my life and I wouldn't care as long as you didn't take her."

I can feel my heart skip a beat as the real meaning my words hit home.

"She's not just everything, Sirius. She's the only thing."


A/N: And there you have it! This chapter is for all of my fellow saps out there :) But don't get too content...it won't all be sunshine and daises for long.

As you can see, I didn't give a lot of further information about Sirius, just mainly his status with Marlene. Obviously this story is an L/J story and will be mostly from James' and Lily's side of things, but Sirius plays a big role…a huge role in it whether the POV's are from him or not. I'll finish with this: you will definitely be seeing more of Sirius. Maybe not in the next couple of chapters because they serve another purpose, but rest assured that he is far from staying in the shadows.

So now that I'm heading off for some R&R, I hope you'll be nice and give me a different kind :) And I've been meaning to ask: what do you think is in the envelope? A letter? A Christmas card? A check for a million $? Well...I really doubt that last one (especially considering that they use Galleons), but oh well. A guess is a guess, right? Tell me what you think!

Next Chapter: Lily reflects, Sirius comforts, and a new level of love is reached.