Taking a Break

Prompt: "May I have this dance?"

Setting: Canon, Hogwarts 7th year

622 Words

Swamped with the realities of their seventh and final year at Hogwarts and the sheer amount of school work that had been mercilessly piled on to them ever since the term had begun had resulted in the Head Students quickly finding themselves woefully out of their depth.

James hadn't even been a Prefect so it was all new to him, and while Lily was usually both dutiful and diligent, she'd been prioritising her classes over the Head Student duties.

And now that September was close to ending, the pair of them were forced to finally confront all the stupid Head Student related paperwork that they had been putting off.

Such as the agenda for the next meeting with the Prefects, the rotas for patrolling, the monthly tallies of how many points the Prefects had been docking and incident reports of anything noteworthy that had happened in the past three weeks.

Lily sank into an armchair in the corner of the Gryffindor Common Room with a groan.

They had started to work on the mountain of the neglected paperwork in the library, but had barely started making a dent in it before Madam Pince had come to chase them out so she could close the library down for the night.

And now they were forced to crank out all the rest of it in the Gryffindor Common Room, which on a Friday night was livelier than usual as everyone had a whole weekend to get their homework done.

"Take deep breaths," James murmured from the floor beside the armchair. "We can do this."

Lily was glad for James' confidence because she wasn't so sure.

"Let's just keep at it," she replied with a sigh, reaching to take out a wad of parchment from her bag from where she'd hastily packed her portion of the work.

They lapsed into silence, filled only by the scratching of their quills, and the occasional small voices of frustration.

Lily was frowning at the agenda for next month's meeting, trying to rack her brain because she was sure she'd forgotten something she'd been meaning to include but just what had that been…?

And then the train of her thought disappeared altogether because someone on the other side had just put music on.

Lily looked up from her parchment, her green eyes flashing murder.

"Seriously? Can't they see we're trying to work here?"

But James wasn't in a murderous mood. Instead, he stretched, then tossed his parchment aside.

"We've worked long enough," he decided. "We should take a break."

"What?"

"A break, Evans." He got up from the floor and grinned at her. "They're good for your soul."

"But there's still so much," Lily said, helplessly gesturing at the mess of scattered parchment around her."

"And it will be here waiting when you'll come back to it, refreshed and in a clearer frame of mind," James said, managing to sound reasonable.

And then there was a hand proffered.

Lily looked at it, looked up into the twinkling hazel eyes.

"May I have this dance?" James asked.

Lily set aside her parchment and grabbed James' hand, getting out from the chair.

The song was loud and upbeat, and totally unsuited for the slowly turning waltz James led her into but that just made it all the more perfect. Lily's shoulders slumped as she relaxed against him, and a few seconds later she was laughing.

He grinned at her, wide and bright and to Lily he'd never looked more handsome.

Slowly turning in a circle to the ridiculous song, held oh-so-gently against his warm, lean body, and staring into those laughing hazel eyes, feeling the smile stretch her lips wide…

That was the moment Lily Evans knew she was in love.