Rumour Has It

"I see you standing there."

"Hm? Oh, hullo. Fancy meeting you here."

James rolls his eyes, turning back round in his seat and staring dutifully down at his open library book, trying to ignore the goings-on behind him. He lasts about a half-second before his eyes stray back to the witch making a poor attempt at perusing through the shelves behind him, the very same witch who'd been trailing absently after him as he'd left Gryffindor Tower for the library fifteen minutes earlier. The same witch who had turned up to Quidditch practice before that. And who had taken the seat behind him in Charms after lunch, where she then proceeded to spend the entirely of Flitwick's lesson staring fixedly at the back of his head.

Funny, but James has always imagined having Lily Evans stalk him would somehow be a bit less...annoying.

"What exactly is it that you think I'm going to do?" he asks.

"Do? Why should I think you're going to do anything?"

"For fuck's sake, Evans, it's a sodding rumour—"

"If it's just a rumour," Lily replies, "then you shouldn't mind me checking up on you, should you?"

James groans loudly, turning back in his chair again before woefully dropping his head down to the table. Honestly, he doesn't know who started the bloody rumour. Normally he'd peg Sirius, but there was no way Padfoot would be as foolish as to whisper a tale about James supposedly pulling some catastrophic solo prank two nights before the lot of them had actual plans to be traipsing about the Forbidden Forest with a werewolf. Sirius liked a laugh, but he'd never have one at Remus's expense again. They'd learned that lesson the hard way. So the rumour had to have started somewhere else, though James hasn't a clue where. All he knows for certain is that Lily Evans had apparently declared herself The Prefect Who Will Stop the Prank when she caught wind of it this afternoon and has been dogging his every footstep ever since.

No sixteen-year-old girl should be taking so much pleasure at ruining a bloke's fun as Lily Evans now seemed to be thinking she was doing to him, James thought grimly. It just wasn't right.

"If you're not bothering to be stealthy about it anymore," James starts on a sigh, "why don't you just sit down? Better vantage point and you can help me do this bloody Charms work. It doesn't make any sense."

He doesn't turn to watch her, but James can practically see her mulling over the possibility in his head—body stopped, chin tilted slightly, those damned green eyes of hers narrowing thinly while her mouth pursed neatly into a puckered bud.

He's done a bit of stalking himself, here and there.

The chair scrape is what he hears first, a moment before he lifts his head and finds her easing her way into the seat across from him. She drops her bag atop the study table and begins to pull things out of it—a textbook, a half-filled scroll, a quill and an inkpot that has a prominent chip on the upper lip.

"Whatever you're planning," she tells him as she unpacks, "you'd best give it up. If you think I'm leaving you alone for even a moment, you're mad."

"I should really be embracing this more than I am," James says, eyeing her critically. "But I've had this dream before, and this is not quite how it usually goes."

"How does it usually go?"

"The Lily Evans Stalking Me dream? Well, we're not in a library for one. And generally there are less clothes, for no apparent reason."

As she slips out of her robes and begins rolling up the long sleeves of her school shirt, James reckons he almost sees her smile. "Never in a library?" she asks.

"Not that I can recall. Why? Got a library fetish?"

"No, but I've always rather pegged you for one. Maybe it's the specs."

James fingers lift automatically to the wired frames of his glasses, tracing the long end of the curved earpiece that's certainly seen better days with his hand. His head cocks slowly to the side and he strives to figure her out. "Is this a new tactic or something?" he asks. "Flirt with him to distract him? I don't think I'm objecting, but I'd just like to have it clear."

"I'm not flirting with you," Lily says. "I'm buttering you up."

"So I'll tell you what my prank plans are and you can thwart them."

"Exactly."

"Ah. Sounds much the same as flirting to me."

"Yes, but the motivation is quite different. That's the important bit."

James leans back in his seat, placing his folded hands over his chest and regarding her curiously. "You know, I'm not sure about all that. I'm sort of starting to get the feeling that you're enjoying stalking me."

"I am trying to keep you from blowing up the school," Lily says, dipping her quill in her inkpot and gently tapping it against the chipped lip. "There's pleasure in that, certainly."

"You're sure that's all it is?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, you're welcome to start taking your clothes off at any time, in case you change your mind."

This time, he does get a smile, though it's one of those "you-ponce" ones that she's keen on tossing about when she knows she ought not be amused. Over the next two hours, he earns a dozen more of those, along with a handful of reluctant laughs, and even one or two grins that maybe—maybe—he might be able to chalk up as genuine. She makes him work for it, of course, and never misses the opportunity to stick a pointed barb in his direction, but she's so clever about it and gets so smug afterwards that James can never really be irritated with her. By the time dinner has come and gone, they have completed the dreaded Charms assignment, muddled their way through Slughorn's latest Potions reading, and even managed to successfully answer a few of McGonagall's murderous midterm revision questions, though not without a bit of tears and collateral bloodshed.

"No more!" James moans much later, slamming the Transfiguration textbook closed on Lily's fingers. She's still arguing some point, wiggling her fingers from out of the closed text, but his head pounds and he throws his arms up in defeat. "Fine! You win! The answer is the Gartlin Principle! I concede."

"Well, of course you do," Lily says, preening smugly. "You're wrong."

"About many things, apparently," James mutters. "I once thought you appealing, didn't I?"

Lily laughs at that, as if he's told some grand joke, which of course he has—it's moments like this when he knows exactly why two years and more rejections than he cares to recall has done little to nothing to cool his ardour where she's concerned. Lily Evans is the goddess divine that the rest of them can only lavish at the feet of, and she's such a good sport about it that he can't even resent her for it.

Truthfully, the night had been more enjoyable than even he expected. He doesn't want to read too much into the fact that he's almost certain the enjoyment was mutual, but it's been awhile since he's bothered making an outright arse of himself in front of her, so he reckons he's due for a romantic set down soon, anyway.

"You're not right about everything, you know," he says as they begin to pack up their things, the evening coming to an end. When she glances at him questioningly, he holds up his wrist and taps his watch pointedly. "Nearly curfew now. I'm about out of time to run a scam, aren't I?"

"About, yeah," Lily agrees reluctantly, a strange flicker of something passing over her face.

James only grins.

"So that leaves us back to the original dilemma, doesn't it? Buttering up...or stalking with the sole intent to flirt?"

"If I wanted to flirt with you," Lily says, hiking her bag up her shoulder as she rises to her feet, "I just would have done."

"But that's not true, see. You'd feel the need to be all tricky about it. For appearances."

"Hm. You might be on to something there." She's quiet as they make their way out of the library, tossing a quick wave to Madam Pince as they depart. As they clear through the library doors, she begins to slow down, finally turning around to face him. "Of course, if I really wanted to be tricky," she continues, "I would have just planned this whole thing from the start. Spread that rumour about the stupid prank myself."

James laughs. "'Course. That—"

But there is something in the way she looks at him just then—something in the way she walks slowly backward down the corridor, her mouth twisted up to one side, her eyes sparking smugly, her cheeks dusted with just the faintest painting of a pale pink...

James's entire body freezes.

No.

No.

No?

"Evans, did you—"

"Night," she calls, turning around swiftly and taking off down the corridor with unprecedented speed. James hardly has time to call out to her—"Did you?"—before she quickly—maddeningly—disappears from sight.