A/N: ...I am so sorry. But, um, here *shoves chapter forward* have this extra-long chapter! :O
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, and I don't wanna know what J.K. Rowling would do to me if I tried to take 'em from her. :) I do own the shenanigans I put them through though ;P That's all mine ;P
iAmAMarauderAtHeart: Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it :P
zihinbend: I thought putting a twist on the whole "asking out on a date thing" could be interesting. :P I just wanted to tinker, lol
Guest: Heh, thanks. :) And yes! I'm intending to see this through to the end! I'm very sorry my update schedule is so sporadic; inspiration is a bit of a wild ride for me, and I do apologize for it.
Chapter Nine
Lily POV
"I'M SO PROUD OF YOU."
As Lily recounted the story to Alice- who was an excellent audience, gasping, laughing, and occasionally shedding a tear in all the correct spots- it wasn't until Lily brought up the date with James that Alice flung herself at her and hugged her, nearly strangling her.
"You asked him out, you asked him out, ahhh!"
"Can't- Breathe-"
"Oops, sorry." Alice hastily restrained herself, loosening her grip, and grinning at her. "You really want to date him? Not, like, a pity thing, right?"
Lily frowned at her. "Do you honestly think I'd do that to him after all that's happened?"
Alice shrugged and grinned sheepishly. "Just had to make sure. You hated him a few weeks ago, remember."
A soft smile twisted Lily's lips up and she looked down at her bedspread, smoothing the wrinkles with her fingers. "A lot has happened."
She looked up only to see Alice smiling at her, and she smiled back, and then the other girl was actually sniffling, wiping a bit of wetness away.
"Alice, seriously?" she laughed.
"I can't help it! I've known you were destiny since we were first-years!"
"Oh please, I haven't even gone out with him yet."
"Yes, but it's major progress. You don't hate him anymore!"
"I haven't hated him in a while- I just...uh...tolerated him? Maybe he grew on me." She scratched her head. "Like a mushroom."
Alice burst into giggles and nibbled on a Pumpkin Pastry, flopping backwards onto Lily's bed, and sighed happily. "A really cute mushroom who flies around a broom. Do you like him?"
"Obviously. I'm going out with him." It still felt weird to say she liked James, in all honesty, but it was a weird she could get used to. A new, unexplored, untested kind of weird. And she was ready to experiment.
"Ha! You admitted it!"
She laughed at her, before Alice pulled her to her feet and yanked open the doors to her wardrobe.
"Alice, what are you doing?"
"We have to find you a good outfit!"
"What? I was just going to-"
"Lily Evans. You cannot go on your first date with James and not look fabulous."
"It's just James, Alice," she laughed. "This isn't exactly a normal case."
"How about...this one!"
She pulled out a red cocktail dress, and Lily snorted. "Did you plant that here beforehand? Cause I don't recognize that one."
Alice shot her a mischievous grin but didn't answer- which was an answer- and dropped the dress on the bed. "Fine, fine... It'd clash with your hair, anyway. How about this one?"
Later, when Lily had managed to extricate herself from Alice with a casual blouse and pants on- which Alice was not at all pleased about- nerves were starting to stir her stomach once more.
Whoever thought these were butterflies was an idiot. These were bats.
What if he thought the date she had in mind was dorky?
Well, it was rather dorky, in all honesty, but... Since when did she care about his opinion?
She popped into the Great Hall to grab a handful of chips, nibbling them as she continued meandering in no particular direction. Maybe since Remus informed me the doofus loves me.
Speaking of Remus...
The very same boy backed out of the nearest closet, dragging Sirius by the ear, scowling fiercely, and Lily paused to watch the show. An amused smirk looped her lips upward as she realized she'd caught Remus in the middle of a rant.
"-do you know how much those cost? No, obviously you don't, you uncultured cretin-"
Sirius interrupted with a snigger. "Who says 'cretin' anymore?"
"Cultured people, obviously. Shut up, Sirius-"
"Gonna put me in detention, Your Prefectliness?"
"Don't tempt me."
Lily giggled, drawing the attention of the unfortunate Black, whose eyes widened and he backed up- or tried to. The task was complicated by Remus's grip still on his ear.
"What's going on, guys?"
"Uh..." The boys looked at each other, and Lily arched an eyebrow curiously.
"Er, hi, Lily."
Oh. Duh.
She'd sort of...forgotten to be mad at Remus and Sirius, in light of all that had happened. A few days had passed, in which James had let slip that it was in fact both Sirius and Remus's collaboration on their wild quest for true love, or something of that sort. He'd thought Remus had told her, and Lily had to wonder about the loyalty linking all the boys. Not one had given up the other.
Sirius seemed to notice the change in her countenance, because he held up his hands in surrender and said, "Before you try to kill me, Lils, let me just say-"
"Don't let him say it," muttered Remus.
"-remember that it's hard work trying to find a hiding place for a body. Especially one that would be as well-missed as mine." He smirked, expression turning undoubtedly suggestive.
"Oh, and also," He backed up a few paces, finally managing to get loose of Remus's hold, who still looked murderous, "technically, you have me to thank for your date thingy with James."
"Oh really?"
"Yep. Think about it! If I hadn't enchanted the ball you wouldn't have decided to date him. So," He waggled a finger at her with an impressive amount of sass for someone who knew he was wrong. "You can't prove what you saw in the ball wasn't your actual future, seeing as you really are going to date him now."
He put his hands on his lips, striking a ridiculous pose, looking far too pleased with himself. "So. You wouldn't kill a man on unfounded grounds, would you?"
Lily couldn't help it.
She cracked a smile, trying to erase it before the boys took it the wrong way. By no means were they off the hook.
"Don't encourage him, Lily, geez, one would think you'd have learned by now."
His words only succeeded in furthering her mirth, and she fought harder to control her traitorously amused expression.
"You guys are insane," she snickered at last, only to see Remus regarding her with a sour expression on his face.
"You guys? Plural?"
Sirius sniggered, reaching over and ruffling the shorter boy's light hair and Remus ducked away, glaring nastily at him, and flattened his hair.
Lily eyed them speculatively, hands slipping up to brace on her hips.
Sirius and Remus settled under her gaze, watching her with such wide eyes that she almost felt bad. She wasn't that abrasive, was she?
"Listen, uh, Lily..."
Her eyes flicked to Sirius, hardened chips of emerald.
He spread his hands before her. "I'm sorry."
Her eyebrows shot upward before she could mold her face to one of careful indifference. Sirius Black apologizing? Even Remus looked startled.
Sirius rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "I shouldn't have, uh, done that. Because it was dumb."
"And not your business."
"Yeah, that too."
She waited for the rest of his apology, but when none was forthcoming, her eyebrows lifted again. "Is that it?"
Sirius glanced at Remus, apparently trying not to fidget, and she bit down on her lips before they could traitorously curl upward again.
"Cut me some slack, Lils, I don't do this much."
She tapped her foot, doing her best to exude sternness, simply because seeing Sirius squirm was as rare as seeing a unicorn foal, and she wasn't going to let the sight go so easily.
Remus chose this moment to break in. "What he means is that we shouldn't have pried, because turns out we're even worse at handling this stuff than James is-"
Lily snickered at the casual insult tossed James' way.
"-and..." Remus hesitated, a hand creeping up to rub the back of his neck, mussing the errant strands of pale brown hair he had just batted Sirius away from. "We- I mean, I...was trying to help James."
He held up a hand as Lily's eyebrows shot up, apparently guessing she was about to sass him into oblivion. "That's not an excuse, Lily. I just want you to know James is like my brother, and, well... We were getting desperate." He spread his hands helplessly, baring his vulnerability to her. "We went about it the wrong way. I'm sorry."
Sirius nodded, those onyx eyes watching Lily with such hope she almost caved.
Almost.
"Okay," she agreed, and both let out what were obviously supposed to be silent sighs of relief. She smothered a giggle and went on, "But, if either of you try something like that and let me blame James for it-"
"Hey, I corrected you-"
"-I will curse you so hard your grandchildren will blame you for their misshapen appearances."
To her surprise, both boys smiled- maybe they knew she wouldn't do any permanent damage- and Sirius thoroughly ruined the moment by leaping in the air, yelling about how he was alive, and charged off to go headbutt a column or something. Lily hadn't really looked past that, being too busy laughing and rolling her eyes.
An hour or so later, when late afternoon had begun to spread a patchwork quilt of clear sky over everything, Lily had opted for a casual- after all, the date she had in mind wasn't meant for fancy attire and plus, it was James. They had sort of gotten past that point.
Alice had not been pleased.
But as she strode down the stairs in a blousy green shirt and comfortable pants, she was nevertheless relieved that James had had the same idea and was in similarly comfy clothes. She didn't realize she'd been a tad anxious about it until she wasn't.
Before she could stop the thought, it cut into her mind: I hope all his comfy shirts contour his muscles like that.
Ha. Alice would have a field-day with that, which was exactly why Lily was never going to tell her about it.
He shot her a lazy grin as she strolled down the stairs and, well, as Lily was rather distracted, she didn't look where she was going, crashed into a first-year (who squeaked and scampered out of the way), and toppled the rest of the way down the steps.
Oh, fabulous first impression, Lily. Really top-notch.
"...ow..."
A low laugh brought her back to reality, as did a calloused hand sliding under her arm and tugging her upright. "Way to make an entrance."
She frowned at him as her vision refocused. "That was not intentional."
"Uh huh. If you wanted to me to catch you, you should have said something."
His smirk both irked and flustered her, and the result was a narrowing of bright green eyes and logic descending to snark him back into place. "Wait... What? Even if that's what I'd been after- which it wasn't, mind you- the whole point of being caught is that you don't-"
"Overthinking it, Lils."
She snorted and straightened her clothes, flushing slightly as she wondered for the first time how she must have appeared- spread-eagled, limbs everywhere, hair a mess, and tumbling ungracefully down a staircase. Admittedly she was near the bottom, so sustaining no injuries worse than a bruise or two, but still. Looking ridiculous was not how she wanted to start a date.
"Think more in-depth about what you're going to say then," she muttered, walking past him in typical sassy fashion and making for the front doors.
"But it complements you so well," he protested humorously, his longer stride easily eating up the distance between the two.
She snickered before she could stop herself and James... Well, James looked far too pleased with himself, but that was his usual expression, so Lily decided not to take him down a notch. For now.
"So. Lily-pad. Where are we going?"
"You'll see." She smirked as he shot her a mockingly wary look.
"Should I be scared?"
"Is that even a question?"
Lily vaguely realized she was flirting, and with that revelation came also the knowledge that she was also enjoying herself.
As they bantered and made their way across the grounds, James got it in his head to sneak a random flower- whose stem tried to strangle him first- from the greenhouses.
"Are you insane?" she asked with a snort, brushing some remnants of plant life off his shoulder.
"But look, now you get a flower."
She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Too much?"
"Yep."
"But it's a Prince Charming move, right?"
She laughed and shook her head, unable to argue with that logic- or that face-, and as he sauntered ahead, she tucked the little white bloom behind her ear.
"You don't even know where we're going!" she called after him with another snort, wondering where on earth he thought he was going.
"I have a pretty good guess."
"Do tell," she said, catching up with him in time to see the triumphant smile light his features.
"The lake."
She squinted at him.
"...the lake is in the opposite direction, genius."
He grinned. "Hey, the Hogwarts ground is in a circle- we could be going the long way. You could just want to stretch out our time together, you know."
He gave her a sideways, lopsided smirk that was as crooked as a bent branch. "Don't be afraid to admit it, Lily-pad."
"Merlin, you're insane."
His smirk widened, and her heart melted. Just a little.
She turned away before he could see her smile and their flirty, easygoing banter began once more.
James POV
"...the Quidditch pitch?"
She flicked a small smile over her shoulder and vanished into the shed, apparently dug around for a bit, and then came back out with two brooms. She tossed one to him, which he caught one-handed, and raised his eyebrows at it. She mocked him for being a show-off, he teased her about being jealous, and then got on to the real question of the day.
"Are you trying to win my heart with Quidditch, Lily?" he asked, pretending to look suspicious. "Why you are clever, aren't you."
She chuckled and mounted the broom, tossing a flirty glance over her shoulder and a teasing phrase that made his heart stop dead. "I thought I already had your heart."
Either he was incredibly transparent, or yes, Lily was that clever.
But he laughed it off, because he knew she was teasing, even though his accelerated heartbeat was frantically trying to tell him it was otherwise, and then they were off into the air.
As they skimmed the tops of trees, James sped up to her and said lightly, though underlying curiosity peeked out, "Wow, breaking all the rules to be with me, Lils?"
He indicated the Forbidden Forest swaying like so many green hands below them.
She huffed a laugh, but didn't answer his unspoken query.
As they soared over the forest, however, he got an answer. Or, part of one, at least.
She dipped below the canopy and he followed, eyebrows flicking upward as he wondered what the wonderful, intelligent, creative Lily Evans had come up with this time.
He found her nestled in the fork of a tree and he tilted his head at her, landing beside her and stowing his broom in a convenient hole in the trunk. He hoped no squirrels or woodtruckles were nesting there. He'd rather not fight off the creatures of the forest today, of all days.
"Lily...?"
She pressed a finger to her lips and pointed to the clearing below them. And for a moment, James didn't see anything, but then... Then a sprite danced into view. And then another, lacing its delicate fingers through the first's. From up in the tree, concealed to all but Lily, he couldn't make out their elvin features, but he watched as more and more poured into view. Little dots of lights surrounded the fairies, in every color imaginable, and they spun together. Where their little feet landed, mushrooms sprouted, bright red and spotted white. They traced shapes and colors, flying through the air as easily as he might swim through water, though no broom supported their spindly weights.
He had never seen these creatures before.
And for what seemed like ages, they spun and worked their magic, sprinkling leaves with gold and stringing cobwebs with phosphorescent beads. They interlocked hands and formed towers, dancing and celebrating to something he didn't understand, but was too captivated to ask.
When it was at last over, the pixies slipped away into the brush as swiftly and silently as they'd come. Even the perpetual glow that followed them seemed to dim, vanishing with them and their unearthly grace.
"What were those?" he asked, after a moment, his voice sliding through the awed silence she and him had sunk into.
Lily brushed a strand of red hair back behind her ear, her eyes alight, and said, "Fae. They- They only do that once a year, and no one knows why yet. Some say it's to commemorate the cycle of life and death. Others say it's a dance to find their mate, sort of...like humans with dances and...that sort of thing."
He grinned at the flush of red in her cheeks.
She scowled at him, though the blush filtering through her freckles said she was not as confident as she wished to appear. "I read about it in Care of Magical Creatures, okay? I just thought it would be cool."
Summoning his courage, drawing up his cool reserves of confidence, he reached over and gathered her chin in a few fingers.
"Beautiful," he reassured her, with a quiet smile. And she smiled another one of those heart-stopping smiles.
The rain came out of nowhere.
One moment, they were hanging out in a tree, chatting and flirting and generally making James believe he was dreaming, and then the next, the sky was growling thunderously at the earth. They had just enough time to scale down (Lily thankfully not falling this time) and grab their brooms before it came sheeting down like so many bullets.
It drenched them to the bone, turning the world silver-gray and blurry, but he could feel a laugh rumbling out of him like the giddy teenager that she had reduced him to. He leaped on his broom and shot low to the ground, having no intention of getting zapped by lightning, and called over the roar of the storm.
"I'll race you, Lily-pad!"
He won, of course. Captain of the Quidditch team, being the best Seeker in about a century, and all that gave him just a little edge. But Lily wasn't bad at all- she had a few tricky maneuvers up her soaked sleeve, like letting the wind carry her momentum or casting hasty spells to speed herself onward.
He protested that that second one was cheating. She laughed and told him he would have used it if he'd thought of it first.
Nah. He could win without magic, as he then proved to her, and he was still determined to be irritatingly smug about it, and she still sent a jet of water from her wand at him for being ridiculously annoying-on-purpose.
An all-out water war followed, until what parts hadn't been soaked by rain definitely were now, and, squabbling and giggling, the two ran for the shelter of the broom shed. Not that it really mattered. They couldn't have gotten any wetter if they tried.
"This water cannot be good for the brooms," said Lily's voice from somewhere ahead of him, the inky, liquid darkness of the shed hiding her from view.
"That would be why there's a drying charm."
A snort sounded from ahead and he lit his wand just as Lily dug hers from her pocket. "I was just about to use it."
"Oh, sure. Of course you were."
"I was!"
He chuckled and shook his head, sending droplets flying as Lily dried the brooms and then directed her wand-tip at herself, a stream of hot hair making her clothes stick to her skin as they came into the halfway stage of not-quite-dry and not-quite-wet.
Which...made it a bit hard to stop staring.
Lily POV
She soon gave up trying to dry herself completely- it was taking too long, and she'd just get wet again once they headed back to the castle. So instead, she directed her attention to putting the semi-dry brooms back on their shelves, standing on tiptoe to reach.
A rustle reached her ears a moment before James passed her and took the broom off her hands, replacing it in its rightful place with an amused, "Shorty."
"Hey, you're technically supposed to be short, you know. Seeker and all. You must be the tallest one in the history of Seekers, and I'm pretty sure that's..." He looked at her, brows raised, lips quirked, and she tried to breathe. "...not allowed."
"Are you trying to flatter me or insult me? I can't tell which."
She snorted and waved him away, starting to pick her way over the brooms still scattered on the floor, obviously left there by less-responsible people than herself. Hmph. However, the light from James' wand only reached so far and-
-she tripped. Again.
This time, however, James caught her and placed her back on her feet, though he dropped his wand in the process.
"Thanks," she murmured, a little irked he had needed to rescue her- a leftover from their previously dissolved rivalry.
"Are you absolutely sure you haven't been fishing for me to catch you this whole time?"
She rolled her eyes all the way up until her chin was tilted up and her gaze was on his. "If I was trying to do that, Potter, wouldn't it be so much more dramatic to fall from a broomstick?"
"Dramatic, yeah. Sensible, no. And you're nothing if not sensible, Lily-pad."
"Well, I'm glad you know what sensibility is, at least, even if you don't use it."
He smirked, the distance between the two of them somehow lessening, and he bent a fraction closer. Lily's stomach lurched as she realized he had not picked up his wand.
"Better to understand both sides of the coin to pull off the best kind of mischief, you know."
The pale light from the forgotten wand at their feet set white glows against the hazel backdrop of his eyes.
"You sound like you've put a great deal of thought into this," she murmured, swallowing. A faint tingling crept from the crowd of her red head to the tips of her painted toes, and she prayed she sounded at least vaguely normal, because she was no longer at normal mental capacity around James. When did that happen.
She tried for a careless smirk, like she hadn't just suddenly noticed how very close he was, or what the faint light was doing to his jawline, or what she wanted to do to his jawline.
Ludicrous.
"Mmhmm," he murmured, shifting forward a couple of degrees, blessedly not noticing her heart catapulting itself into her throat. "Glad you accepted at last?"
That jolted her out of the James-induced haze long enough to scowl mockingly at him. "Hey, I asked you."
He laughed softly. "Well, yeah, but wasn't that kind of like an acceptance to the hundreds of suggestions I've offered?"
He was so close. His fridge of inky hair brushed her forehead and she couldn't stop staring at his mouth.
"Uh- No."
"Hey, you went out with me, right?"
"Technically, you went out with m-"
His mouth was on hers before she could finish, a barely-there, masculine chuckle buried between their lips.
She forgot how to thread thoughts together into coherent sentences. She forgot what breathing was like. She forgot how her body and her brain were supposed to function like a normal human being's, because the average human being didn't have James Potter's arms snaking around their waist or his lips on theirs, so they could take their normal human functions and get out.
So her lips stayed nestled against his as she molded further and further into him, like she was made for him, like he was made for her. Like they were made for this moment.
The storm hissed lightning and cracked a whip of thunder above them that Lily did not hear as his mouth drew across hers, long and languid and deep, like he had all the time in the world and intended to savor every moment of eternity. And it was only when he coaxed a small noise from the back of her throat that Lily's hands buried themselves in his hair and pulled him closer, no longer wanting him to be slow, or gentle, or careful.
But to her surprise, he parted from her, leaving her with breaths whooshing out of parted lips.
"Wh- What's the matter?" she whispered.
"Nothing," he answered, meeting her eyes for a moment, before leaning forward to barely ghost his lips over hers again. "Nothing at all."
A/N: What do you guys think? Was the image in the ball Lily's actual future or a result of Remus's magic? XD And, y'know, James halting it at the end just makes sense to me- that he wouldn't want to take things so fast when everything up until that point had been very slow going. So... Uh... I hope it was worth the wait. :) I'm thinking there will be at least one more chapter, possibly two ^^
