The dreams started about a month into October of Seventh Year. They started slow at first and innocent enough, fun little dreams of the Marauders and Lily's friends all sat near the fire playing Exploding Snap or chatting at dinner. Slowly, however, they started to shift. Instead of it being all of their friends together, they began to focus in on just her and James. Sometimes they were outlandish and artificial the way dreams could be, like the one where she was a star quidditch player and was playing his team but all of the other teammates were octopuses, or the one where Paul McCartney was their Transfiguration Professor. Fun and ridiculous and clearly too dreamlike to be of any real consequence to her but certainly notable. Yet other times they were so completely and utterly simplistic, domestic even. Calm and casual, just them sitting and laughing and holding hands. Everytime one of those occurred, Lily would wake up feeling content, at peace almost. Then the realization set in and the contentment quickly turned to horror. Those were the scariest dreams of all.
After the first few she was able to write them off as a coincidence, simply neurons firing in her brain as a way of dealing with spending so much time with him during the day as co-heads. Especially as they became friends over those first few months, it was really simple and logical, just her brain dealing with him being so present in her life and working it out as she slept. Considering it'd been years of them fighting and screaming, the sudden shift to friendship and laughing was obviously a lot to process.
The dreams didn't occur every single night, at least not at first, more like once or twice a week at max. Just enough for her to spend some time thinking about them during a boring Ancient Runes class and processing them, but certainly not enough to cause any real worry or concern over her well being.
Even when they increased in frequency, from twice a week to six times a week plus that one time she zoned out and started daydreaming during History of Magic (which didn't really count because he was sitting next to her and smelled so good of course it was going to leech into her dreams). It wasn't hard to rationalize those either. It was completely logical that she'd daydream about lying on the Quidditch pitch alongside James, looking up at the stars together, hands intertwined, because after all they had stood near each other in Astronomy that day and he had pointed out Venus's moons to her. It was natural, truly.
And it wasn't difficult at all to make the connections between that day at lunch when she'd almost tripped but he'd caught her with a strong arm wrapped around her waist with that evening, when she had dreamt that same arm was wrapped around her tightly as she sat in front of him on the back of his broomstick as they flew over the school.
They were just dreams. Harmless imaginings of the imagination and the kind of stuff that was covered in day one of Petunia's psychology courses at muggle Uni. Easily explainable and not in anyway shape or form telling of any real emotions she'd possibly be having.
Except that considering how simple and natural some of the dreams felt, she occasionally started mixing up what had happened between dream James and Lily and real life James and Lily. Was it real James or dream James that had brushed her hand while passing a quill in Transfiguration and set a wild blaze of electricity firing all up and down her arm? Did she actually hear real James's breath hitch when she had brushed against him while reaching for the bottle of scalamander eyelashes during potions? Was it real James or dream James that she had stood so close to, close enough to feel his chest rising and falling against her as they hid from Filch in a cupboard?
It shouldn't have been much of a surprise (but of course it still was) when the dreams turned a little more… intimate. When instead of dreaming of lunch in the Great Hall, the scene began to shift to lunch in the Three Broomsticks, just the two of them, followed by hand holding through the streets of Hogsmeade.
Friday night escalated things to nightmare level. Lily had been studying in the common room with Dorcas when the team returned from practice, led by James. Sweaty, grass stained, hair mussed, quidditch gear wearing, James. Lily felt her throat tighten and heart accelerate. His eyes landed on her and instantly smirked, nudging Marlene to point them out before the pair of them headed straight towards her.
"Evans, Meadows," Lily's mouth was too dry to respond. She nodded weakly as Marlene flopped down next to her and looked at her strangely.
That image of him haunted her, snuck deep into her subconscious, permeated her thoughts and took root there to flood her dreams. Filled them with him, sweaty and red, but for a reason far different from quidditch, leaning over her, whispering into her ear while she gripped his shoulders and left scratches in a trail down his back.
She couldn't meet his eye the next day at breakfast.
This process seemed to repeat for the next several weeks: notice something about James during her waking hours that her subconscious would latch onto for the evening, wake up embarrassed, flushed, unsatisfied, and try her hardest to ignore him and stop the cycle. She never succeeded.
The night that really ruined her was right after they'd been partnered in defense. When she'd struggled with the incantation and he'd placed his fingers overtop of hers to show the correct positioning. When she felt how strong and flexible his hand was, how warm and long and rough his calloused fingers were. She felt shivers up and down her neck as he breathed closely to her, smelled mint on his breath, smelled the warm musk that was just so James.
All night she twisted and turned in her sleep, feeling those fingers trace up and down her arms, down her chest, twisting and lapping around the valley of her breast, circling each bud, pushing lower and lower, carving out waves of electricity as they squeezed her hips until she could just feel his fingers circling her clit. She could feel the callouses, could see him smirking at her as he'd bring his head down to meet his fingers, following the same trail of his fingers with his mouth, leaving a series of kisses across her skin.
She'd woken in a tangle of sheets sticking to the sweat on her skin, his name on the edge of her lips.
It'd taken a long, ice cold shower, to clear her head successfully. She stood in the freezing water attempting to justify the dream as just a way for her subconscious to deal with the fact that her close friend was decidedly fit. She tried desperately to cling to the idea of the dreams being a symptom of teenage hormones. However, in spite of her most sincere attempts, it was becoming shockingly clear that the dreams were much more a symptom of her real, genuine feelings for James. Romantic feelings. Spurts of butterflies and rampaging elephants that flooded her heart when he smiled. The fact that he could make her feel so on edge with excitement and anticipation when she saw him coming yet also immediately comfortable and the ability to talk to him about anything.
But she missed her chance. He'd been into her before, sure, but that was long over now. He'd essentially told her as much back in September, when he asked for a ceasefire now that they were both Heads. He'd told her he had grown up and would stop asking her out and bothering her if they could be civil, wasn't that admitting that he'd left any possible romantic feelings for her behind him? He was over her. He was over her and it wasn't his problem that she'd just now begun to realize how very badly she wanted him, all of him. She'd just get past it too.
How she was going to possibly get over him when his every waking action filtered through her dreams each night was the real issue. Her fingers were beginning to go numb from the frigid water, nearly shaking as she reached to turn the water off.
She wrapped her towel around her tightly, sheltering her like armour as she met her reflection in the mirror. Cheeks still flushed.
"Get over it," she whispered to herself. She'd avoid him. That was the best solution. The only way to remove him from her dreams was to remove him from her waking moments as well. It'd be hard to avoid him forever, but at the very least she couldn't be alone with him. Groups would be safer.
XXX
The next several days were difficult. Filled with eyes flitting away, nodding answers to his questions that had clearly been asked to engage in a conversation, ducking into bathrooms as he came down the corridor, and in a moment of absolute desperation brought on when she saw him standing there waiting for her in the doorway after potions, clearly attempting to walk with her which was essentially an ambush, and she had no choice but to strike up a conversation with Slughorn on the merits of using crushed salamander spleens verses the ever controversial chopped spleens. He'd gone on for about six minutes before James had given up and moved on to lunch, Lily counted to thirty before cutting Slughorn off and dashing away.
In the end she lasted three days of almost complete avoidance. He found her in the library. She'd done her best at hiding, choosing to study in the dusty Arithmancy section that maximum one person and one ghost seemed to visit per year and the table needed a solid Scourgify charm before she was able to sit down. She'd made it through half of her Charms essay before his hands slammed down on the table.
"Lily, I need to talk to you."
His voice was tense and without looking up she could envision his rigid shoulders and sharp jaw looming over her. Her grip tightened on her quill as she set her shoulders and took a breath.
"Little busy right now, can it wait?"
He scoffed and pulled back the chair opposite her. "You've been avoiding me."
"Not avoiding," she squeaked, sneaking a glance up to see his gaze locked in on her and quickly averted her eyes back down. "Just busy, very, very busy."
She could feel the eye roll.
He reached out across the table and closed the textbook she'd been reading from with a thump, forcing her to meet his eyeline with a glare that he unflinchingly met with his own.
"You can't prove anything," she crossed her arms across her chest.
"The only proof I needed I got when you suddenly, desperately had to talk to Flitwick about the best technique for forging charms which we all know you mastered three years ago. Or when you needed to discuss that stupid Salamandar debate with Slughorn that was clearly boring even you stale."
He stated it all dryly, matter of fact, leaving no room for question or debate. They sat there silently for 93 seconds (she counted) as James leaned back in his chair, a vision of casual confidence.
"Fine!" She broke first. "I'm avoiding you. Are you happy? Are we done here now?"
He barked out a laugh, dropping his hands onto the table and folding them together. "We'll be done when you explain whatever it is I did that made being around me so awful when we were just getting to a place where I thought we were friends, or at the very least capable of being in the same room and having a civil conversation."
"I think it's time I go." She pushed all her stuff into her rucksack hastily, hearing an ink well shatter as she did, and practically running to the door. One of the only benefits of the Arithmancy section is that it at least had a fast exit route, away from the main drag of tables, up the side of the aisles. She could hear James scrambling out of his chair and running to catch up with her but she refused to look back, getting as close to running as she could without risking the wrath of Madam Pince.
She was so close to the exit, the taste of freedom on the tip of her tongue. If she could just get out of the library, she could go left out of view and hide in an alcove until he passed or gave up looking. From then it'd be a simple matter of hiding away in her dorm for the next two to six days before she felt capable of facing him. She was rounding the corner to the exit, nodding tightly to Pince, when she felt his fingers wrap around her wrist and yank her into the nearest aisle.
She stared longingly over her shoulder at the exit as it disappeared as James pulled her along, weaving through aisles. Past Charms, past their table in Arithmancy, straight through Potions, all the way deep into the Divination section where the dust on the books appeared to be older than Lily and James combined.
It was there he finally stopped. Pulling her to the center of the aisle and standing strong in front of her.
It was silent for a tic as she stood there counting the seconds, mentally hoping that if she stayed quiet long enough, James would give up and leave.
Instead he cleared his throat. The noise was jarring in the otherwise silent aisle and without thinking her head turned on its own accord away from the dusty tombs to meet his eyes instead. Big mistake. His eyes were positively smoldering, a storm of hazel and gold glaring down at her. She'd always loved his eyes.
"What?" she bit out, forcing herself to break eye contact and stare somewhere around his shoulder instead.
"Start talking, Evans."
His shoulders looked solid, no way she could charge past them. The way his shirt was pulling taut across them made her wonder if they'd feel as solid as they appeared and how'd they feel on her hands if she dug her nails into them while she-
She ripped her eyes away from his shoulders and down to his shoes instead. "I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered, studying his laces and fidgeting slightly.
He scoffed and brought his free hand to her chin to tilt her gaze up to meet his once more. There were the eyes again.
"It's a little late for all that, Lily." He spoke slowly and quietly, as if she was a young deer he was worried would scamper off. "Now talk to me or I swear to god I'll learn Occlumency just to get a peek at what you're thinking about up there."
Well that was a horrifying thought. Her brain reeled through all the images he'd see if he had actually taken a peek, his body pressing hot up against her, the two of them sitting in a sunlit field, picking dandelions, him wiping away a butterbeer mustache off her top lip as they laughed in the Three Broomsticks, him winning the Quidditch Cup and picking her up to spin her around in front of everyone.
"There," he whispered accusingly, "that blush all over you right now? You're hiding something from me, Evans, and that ends right now." The tone was soft but the words were strong, gaze remaining level with her own, eyes searching her own as if the answer was written within them.
"I've been having dreams," she blurted out, too flustered to be aware of her words and instantly regretting that they had come out. Her insides shrank as she squirmed under his gaze, shifting her weight.
He held steady, keeping his hand still tight on her wrist, not allowing her to move more than a breath away.
"What kind of dreams?" Nothing had changed in his voice, still controlled and level.
"I don't know!" she snapped out, voice far louder than his own, "the embarrassing kind, okay? Are we done?" She twisted her wrist out of his own, somewhat surprised when he allowed her to. She was free, a part of her knew she should run right now and make her grand escape but a much larger part wanted to see what James would say, do, now that the truth was coming out.
She could practically see his wheels turning, mentally piecing together her words with her actions and the ramifications of it all. He was being too quiet, taking too long, and the words were boiling up in her now, desperate to fill the silence.
"They're just dreams, okay? They don't actually mean anything, it's really not that big of a deal even," she insisted, repeating the words she had spent the last several weeks telling herself out loud for the first time.
"If they don't mean anything, why are you still blushing like that? And why would I be avoiding me? And what kind of dreams are the embarrassing ones exactly?" His brow was furrowed and a hand was rooted in his hair.
"They're just stupid and random and unrealistic," she spluttered, feeling the blush reach down to her toes.
"So tell me about one!" He demanded, "what happened in the most recent one? Did I kill you or something?"
"Oh please you don't get it at all, you buffoon." The embarrassment quickly was turning into rage and the words were pouring out.. "You didn't kill me, you kissed me. Okay? More than kissed me really. You happy now?"
James was decidedly not happy. His expression turned only more incredulous with each passing second as her words took effect on him. His left hand dropped from her wrist to join his right firmly rooted in his hair, pulling and twisting.
She stared at him expectantly, waiting for a response, a realization, a reaction, anything. But instead he just stood there. Dumbfounded or disgusted or downright confused.
The seconds ticked by and her discomfort level rose as each one passed. The rage faded back to embarrassment and formed tears pricking at the back of her eyes, blinking furiously and squeezing her nails into her palms to try and stop any from leaking out.
"Are you going to say anything or just stand there ripping out your hair?"
He continued to stare, unmoving.
"Goodbye, James," she spat out, crossing her arms tightly across her chest and pushing straight through him.
She heard him splutter something and got about six steps ahead before hearing his thundering steps behind her catching up to her. She pushed ahead until she felt his hand grip her shoulder and turn her around again
There was a scream on the tip of her tongue as she was pulled around to face him. "What, Jam-"
Her exclamations were silenced as he pushed his lips down onto hers. She hesitated for a moment in shock before throwing her arm around his neck and pulling him against her, leaning up on her tiptoes and responding enthusiastically. His hand from her shoulder pushed up to caress her cheek, other hand pressing hard and unforgiving into her hip.
"Was it like that?" The words were a whisper, hot against her face, barely a breath of space between them. "In your dream, was it like that?"
She barely nodded before pulling his lips back down to meet hers.
It was harsh and unyielding and not the kind of first kiss she had ever imagined for them but was certainly something taken right out of her dreams. She felt his hand tilting her head, adjusting their angle to fit perfect against each other as his tongue reached out to meet hers. Hot and heady and unbelievably perfect.
She didn't notice them turning until her back was pushed up against the shelf. Corners and spines of the dusty volumes pressing up against her barely registering when there was so much of him to feel up against her. His scent surrounding her entirely, permeating the air around her until all she could think, smell, feel was just him.
He pulled back again, still barely a centimeter away and clearly reluctant to do so. "Wait, wait," he heaved, "what exactly about a dream like that is 'unrealistic'?"
She stammered unintelligibly for a moment, head filled with fog and fist curling tighter in the fabric of his shirt to anchor herself and him next to each other, "I just meant that we were friends now and you didn't want to be…. you know."
He cocked an eyebrow inquisitively, "enlighten me."
"With me! Romantically speaking!" Her cheeks burned again, and eyes flitted down to where her hand was twisting his shirt.
Until she heard laughter. Actual laughter. One quick look at his face confirmed it, James Potter was actually laughing at her.
"Dear God, Evans," he brought his hand to caress her cheek, thumb tracing her lower lip. "Evans, if I ever, and I mean ever, say I don't want to be with you 'romantically speaking' you might as well Avada me right then and there because that is clearly an imposter."
He didn't give her a second to respond, crashing his lips back down onto hers.
And then he was snogging her again, harder. This instantly shut down her brain, eliminating the potential to analyze the implications of what he had just said because of course there would be time for analysis later but right now, in this moment, there was no time for that. There was no time for that because James Potter was snogging her in the depths of the library and it was so much better than any dream she'd ever had. She had no idea how long they'd stood there snogging, hands pulling hair and bruising skin and leaving her so utterly weak in the knees that she became vehemently grateful for the support of his arm around her back and the shelf she was leaning on. Minutes, hours, days, years, until she was so out of breath that she was practically sighing against his lips as they both slowed down, exhausted but so unwilling to separate, lips still brushing as they breathed in and out.
Her eyes remained closed and she pressed their heads together, lips no more than a centimeter apart.
"Hey Evans?" He sighed out, kissing her again chastely.
She hummed in response, rubbing her nose against his lightly and pushing up for one of those chaste kisses of her own, feeling his glasses press into her nose.
"Go out with me?"