Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
A/N: It's been ages, and I'm sorry. Also this is a disaster. I'm a bit out of practice.
Pairing: James Potter/Lily Evans
Prompt: orange flower, mudblood, & France [preferably no severus]
For: FlubberyFlobberworms
:::
Groundlessness
Lily had a plan. It was a rather inglorious one, but it was a plan, and she had gone so long following other people's ideas that having one of her own felt nice. A bit like having solid ground under her again.
It involved a grotesque orange flower and some French croissants. Well, what would have been French croissants if any of the Hogwarts house elves had come from France. Most of them were from northern England or southern Scotland, and so their knowledge of croissants was a bit limited. Lily only knew this because Alice had spent last summer in Paris and came back complaining about the faux-French croissants that frequently appeared on the breakfast table.
So she got the croissants (their French nature being questionable) from the house elves. The flower was a bit more difficult to come by. Lily could have just plucked a foxglove from one of the plants blooming down by the herbology greenhouses, but she had heard that foxglove might possibly be poisonous, and besides, the purple blossoms were nowhere near embarrassing enough.
An orange flower with a thousand fluffy petals and a thick stem, that was the sort of flower Lily needed for her prank. Unfortunately, those flowers didn't seem to exist. Or, if they did, they were certainly not to be found in the Scottish highlands. So Lily had to improvise.
Alice found her sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring at several damp leaves piled on the maroon duvet.
"First step to setting leaves on fire is do it outside. Second involves using your wand," Alice informed her, dropping her bag of books on her own bed and flopping back to watch her best friend continue her staring contest with the foliage.
"I'm not trying to set them on fire," Lily replied. "Obviously."
"Oh, well, pardon me. What are you doing?"
"Trying to figure out a way to Transfigure them."
"Into?"
Lily glanced over at her, green eyes hard. "It's a secret."
Alice sighed. "Sometimes, you are almost as difficult a friend as Remus. Today you may even be approaching Potter's level."
"Oh, piss off." Lily tempered her harsh words with a brief smile at her friend, but Alice swung her feet to the floor and stood.
"Fine, I will." She paused in the doorway. "Lily, you also need your wand for Transfiguration."
Lily flicked her off. Alice laughed, leaving the dormitory for the common room and whatever absurdities the other seventh years were undoubtedly getting up to — they had been increasingly mad over the past several weeks, and earlier Lily had seen Peter running through the corridors with an aquarium full of frog spawn clutched in his arms.
She had more important things to worry about. Namely, how to turn a pile of decaying leaves into an ugly flower.
Lily sighed and pulled her wand from beneath her thigh, where it had rolled when James came in briefly to steal some chocolate for Remus and ended up wrestling her to the bed in order to get to the stash beneath her pillow. He hadn't commented on the leaves, probably thought she just liked them. She might come down to breakfast on Saturday and find the Gryffindor table decorated with autumn leaves, because that was the sort of thing James did. The sort of thing that should have been creepy but wasn't and was nice and was certainly too much.
She directed her wand at the leaves and concentrated on the way she imagined the flower looking. The leaves moved together and then gave up in a huff of air, settling back on her duvet about five centimetres from where they had been originally. Lily scowled at them.
She tried again. This time two of the leaves grew petals. They looked downright monstrous.
"Fuck."
Lily undid that spell and shut her eyes, visualising the transformation she hoped would take place, and then cast the spell. She kept her eyes closed for a long time, much longer than it would take for a bunch of leaves to coalesce into a hideous flower.
She opened them and grinned. Sitting there on her duvet was a disgusting orange flower, more closely resembling a fuzzy cotton ball than anything plant-like. "Perfect." It was a bit crinkly for a flower, but it would do.
The croissant bit would have to wait for morning, so Lily set a permanence charm on the flower and hid it in her trunk before hurrying down the stairs to the common room, where Alice sat playing Exploding Snap with James and Remus.
"Where's Black?"
"No idea," James replied. "He was bored by the lack of explosions that have occurred thus far in this game."
Lily smiled and sat beside Alice, tucking her knees beneath her chin and watching as Remus bit his lip, fingers careful on the backs of his cards.
"Remus scared him off, you mean?"
Remus spared a moment to glare over at Lily, and Alice grinned. "Did you figure out that Transfiguration you were working on, Lil? Maybe James would like to help you."
James nodded. "I certainly could, Lily, doll. What do you need? Turning a spot into a beauty mark? A hairy leg into a smooth one? A — " He cut off involuntarily. Lily had hit him with a silencing charm.
"Not nice, James." Remus set his cards face-down on the floor and fished his wand from the pocket of his robes. "Are you going to help him out?" he asked Lily.
Lily grinned and James clasped his hands in front of his chest, looking from Lily to Remus while Alice leaned back on her hands and laughed. "Maybe," Lily said. "I don't know. Do you think he'll be less rude when I let him talk again?"
"There's always hope," Remus replied, his lips quirking. "Maybe the millionth time will work."
Lily raised her wand and released the charm. James rolled his lips between his teeth, cocked his head so some dark hair fell across his forehead, and then said, "Maybe you would like to transfigure your nose? Make it a little straighter?"
Remus didn't release the silencing charm that time. Even he seemed to think James had deserved it.
James was talking again by breakfast the next morning. Lily thought it was probably to do with Black, but she didn't mind, because sitting on the gold plate in front of James was the perfectly curved fluffy crescent of a French (?) croissant.
Lily had gotten up early to ensure that James received this particular breakfast, and he grinned at her as he sat down. "Special breakfast to make up for the silencing yesterday? It's all right, you're forgiven."
He lifted the croissant to his mouth, pressed it against his lips, and bit down.
The pastry exploded into a crinkly, many-petaled, violently orange flower. James spat out the mouthful he'd managed and swore, "Fucking Merlin, Lily, that tastes foul."
She grinned and stood to laughter from the table around her. "Thought it would."
All in all, she decided, as she left the Great Hall, the joke had been lacking something. Not James's reaction — that was fine. Not the reaction of the rest of the school, or all those at breakfast. They had laughed, that's what she had wanted. But it seemed a little tired, the whole pranking thing. She had thought that she was feeling like she didn't have ground beneath her because she hadn't done anything in so long, but here she was, just having done something, and floating up towards the ceiling.
Not literally, of course. That could have happened, if one of the boys had followed her from the Hall and set a levitation charm of some sort on her. But she was alone on the main staircase, alone and feeling increasingly unhappy, despite the success of that stupid prank. Maybe, she thought, maybe she had gone about the prank the wrong way. Maybe if she had cursed the croissant so that James bit into it and then he turned into an orange flower...or what if there was a flower and he smelled it and turned into a croissant?
Both of those ideas were impossible, in addition to being absurd, and Lily sat down on the top step on the second staircase and rested her chin in her hands. She hated this feeling of groundlessness — anchorlessness — just generally listless, really. She had tried everything: pranks and parties and Firewhisky and classwork and staying up all night and sleeping a solid ten hours and Hogsmeade visits and exercise, but nothing had worked.
Sadness had a way of digging its claws in, Lily thought, and it seemed to have gotten pretty deep into her veins. She moved to the side of the stone steps as a group of Slytherins hurried up past her, and she leaned her head against the banister when one of them stopped. "What're you doing, mudblood? Where're all your little friends?"
Lily didn't need to look up to know that the acidic voice belonged to Bellatrix Black. She also didn't need to open her eyes to know that the other girl's wand was hanging loose in her right hand. She sighed. "Where do you think my friends are, pureblood?"
"Yes, I am, thank you." Bellatrix's voice jumped between vitriol and something like a coo faster than that of anyone Lily had ever met. The other Slytherins let off puffs of laughter — they never truly laughed outright, at least not in Lily's hearing — as Lily looked up at them.
"What do you want, Bellatrix?" Lily asked, pushing herself to her feet and letting her hand fall to the pocket of her robes. She felt her wand there, but she didn't grasp it. Not yet. Fighting might cure her of her listless feelings momentarily, but chances were it would end terribly, with her sad and injured.
"I was just wondering where your friends were. Potter and I have something we need to discuss." Bellatrix kept her eyes on Lily's hand, and the other Slytherins — a group of fifth years whom Lily knew only by sight — moved to form a half-circle around her, some further down on the steps, others on the landing above the two girls.
"Do you?" Lily raised her eyebrows. "Well, James is back in the Great Hall. You want to talk to him, you'll find him there."
"Have you and Potter shagged yet?" one of the fifth years asked. Lily's hand went to her wand, an instant reaction she regretted as soon as she felt the wood beneath her fingers.
"Oh, that's got you all upset." Bellatrix had her wand centered on Lily's chest. "What's the matter? Does James actually have standards? Won't defile himself by sleeping with a mudblood like you?"
Lily kept her wand loose at her side. "More like I won't defile myself by sleeping with a pureblood like him. Got to keep all the scum together if we want to take over, don't we? Let all of you die out."
One of the others actually snarled. Lily sent up a Shield Charm before his curse could hit her, and she was surprised to see a smirk on Bellatrix's lips.
"You think you're clever, don't you." The other girl glanced around at her hangers-on, shrugged, and slid her wand back into her pocket. "I'll see you around, Evans." She turned back down the stairs, and the others grouped around her, taking up the entire staircase as they descended.
Lily bent her head so her hair fell over her face and she knew that thinking of prejudice was terribly dumb. Terribly. But her head kept turning over everything it meant — everything Bellatrix and the rest meant when they said shit like that — and Lily could neither move nor stop herself from thinking.
So she was still there when James and Sirius came up the stairs, James with the terrible orange flower pinned to the left of his robes, still missing a bite-shaped section of petals at the top.
"Really, Lil, that was quite a juvenile prank." Sirius stood on the step below her, one of his shoes kicking against her feet to get her attention. "We could have come up with that second year."
"But we didn't," James pointed out. "And everyone laughed. Although I hope that flower wasn't poisonous, because if it was I should probably get to the hospital wing."
"It wasn't." Lily shifted. "Did Bellatrix find you?" She looked at James.
He shrugged. "I passed her on the way out the hall, but she didn't say anything." He glanced at Sirius, who was staring over Lily's head, his face closed off. "Maybe because of Sirius, though. Why, did she bother you?"
"I'm going to — I'm going. I'll see you lot in the common room." Sirius ruffled Lily's hair as he stepped past her, and James sat on the step beneath her, so he had to turn his head to look at her. The toes of Lily's shoes were pressing into his back, but he didn't seem to mind, so she kept them there.
"Lily? Was Bellatrix bothering you?" James repeated, his hand drifting up unconsciously to play with the flower on his robes. Lily felt something like warmth hitting her in the heart.
"It doesn't really matter if she was," Lily said. "I mean, I handled it fine. It is what it is, right?"
"That's such a stupid saying." James sounded so defeated that Lily didn't bother getting offended.
She stayed silent until he elaborated. "I mean, it is what it is until you do something to change it. Saying that just means that you're not willing to make any changes."
"What should I do to change what Bellatrix believes?"
James shrugged. She watched the way his hair feathered against the collar of his robes as it rose with his shoulders. "Nothing, I guess. I like you with all your limbs attached. I just meant, in general, that statement is an excuse."
"Thanks for the lesson, Potter." Lily pushed her feet forward so James had to shift a little. He kept his neck twisted, though, looking at her over his shoulder.
"What's got you all upset? It's more than Bellatrix and her crazies. That prank was funny, Lil. Sorry I didn't turn orange, or something, if that was supposed to happen."
Lily smiled. "That would have been a good idea, honestly, but no, the prank was fine. I'm glad you kept the flower. If it turns into leaves, or something, though, it's fine to toss them out." He grinned at her, but didn't say anything else. "I just — what're we doing, James?"
"Well, you're apparently Transfiguring leaves and croissants and I'm just trying to keep you from leaving me behind, really."
"How would I leave you behind?"
"I don't know, Lily." He turned around so he wasn't looking at her anymore and mumbled, "It's just, you are so important, and everyone knows it. Just by looking at you, they know it. How...how kind and smart and good, I mean really good, you are. And then there's me, and Sirius, and Peter, and Remus, sometimes, too — all of us, we're just stumbling. We make people laugh, we try not to take things seriously, and so we fuck up a lot."
"That's the least accurate description of anyone I've ever heard, and you hit all five of us with it," Lily moved over and slid to share James's step. He glanced over at her, and then returned to contemplating the way his robes folded over his knees.
"You think we're headed somewhere?"
Lily shook her head. "Honestly? I think we're headed nowhere, but it's all of us, James. Every single person. Lately I've just been...unable to figure out what I'm doing, and really, I think that's everyone. That's the good part — we're all stuck going towards nowhere together."
"You, me, and Bellatrix? I don't think I'll like nowhere, honestly."
Lily tilted her head to consider him, and then leaned her head against his shoulder. He took her hand in one of his, and she squeezed lightly. "It's not really the place, or idea, or whatever, that matters though, is it? I mean, we can be floating in nothing, but at least we'll still be us, you and me."
"Your prank was all right, Lil."
"Yours are sometimes okay, too."
James smiled and pressed a light kiss against her hair. She still didn't have ground beneath her, but at least she had James beside her. That was better, really.
