Notes

by scriibble

On an ordinary Tuesday in October of 1975, James Potter passes Lily Evans a note. She has no way of knowing it, of course, but it's the first note of thousands that will pass between them in the years to come. [companion-ish piece to Eighteen Again, but can be read separately; rated M for inexplicit sexual scenes]

A/N: Welcome to the one-shot I'm calling "Eighteen Again canon divergence"! If you've read my longfic Eighteen Again, you'll notice that the beginning of this follows the hints I've given to Lily and James' Hogwarts relationship within that universe (a universe that is already canon divergent, which makes this one-shot what I'm calling "peak self-indulgence"). Along the way, the path of this fic breaks from the EA timeline and circumstances of Lily and James' eventual coupling. I have no reason for this other than that it just made sense to me in the moment, and when I tried to stick to the EA storyline, it felt forced.

This might be my favorite one-shot I've ever written, and it's definitely one of my favorite characterizations of Lily and James' friendship and eventual coupling. I've written well over one million words in Jily fanfics by this point, but this is the first time I've thought, yes, this characterization totally fits exactly how I see them. I'm always at least a little uncertain of my work, and there are parts of this that still feel that way, but this is the closest to confident I've ever been. It's an awesome feeling.

Let me know what you think! I absolutely live for reviews, and asks on tumblr (you can find me there at scriibble-fics!). Drop me a note here or there (or both!), if you have the time! It means the world.

Notes

On an ordinary Tuesday in October of 1975, James Potter passes Lily Evans a note.

She has no way of knowing it, of course, but it's the first note of thousands that will pass between them in the years to come.

She finds it tucked into the pocket of her bookbag when she unzips the front pouch to hunt down a quill in the middle of Potions. It's a small slip of parchment folded carefully in half, and entirely out of place in the neat organization of her bag.

Heard about Avery, the note reads. I haven't hexed him for a while. I'd really like to, but I figured I'd let you decide if I do or not. Seems fair.

It's not signed. Still, she has no problem identifying the author, even though she's never once seen James' handwriting before. It's neater than she expected—probably because she expected a caveman-like, unintelligible scrawl—but he's drawn a little snitch in the corner of the note. He's charmed it to flutter in a truly lifelike manner, its wings beating a mile a minute.

Only James Potter would have the ego to infiltrate her bookbag, leave an unsigned note, and use a snitch as his signature.

Beyond that, only James Potter would somehow know that she's discovered it, and when she glances towards the chaotic corner of the dungeon where he sits with his mates, she finds him watching her, a lazy half-smile on his face. Truly, since fourth year, he's taken to watching her more often than he hasn't. He's always enjoyed annoying her, ever since he'd discovered her temper at eleven, but his eyes on her have started to feel different somehow than in years past.

"What's that?" Severus asks from across their Potions table, nodding towards her hands as he carefully dices flobberworms with his silver knife. His own hands are covered in mucus, or he might have snatched the note from her. His dark eyes have that look about them.

"A note from Dorcas," Lily lies easily—too easily, really. She's started lying to him with increasing frequency, just like he ignores the continual way that his friends—like Thomas Avery—harass her.

They've never had this sort of space between them before. It hurts.

Severus accepts the lie, and he doesn't inquire further when she locates her quill and scribbles a quick reply underneath James' note.

No, she writes, and then her quill hesitates for long enough that a drop of ink blots the parchment. She vanishes it with a wave of her wand. But big of you to check with me. Who even are you right now?

Again, she hesitates, ruminating over the ugly contortion of Thomas Avery's face as he'd hurled his favorite classic insult at her the day before. "Fucking mudblood," he'd said, hate dripping from his voice.

Thanks. It's written so tentatively that she blots the parchment again on the final 's,' but she leaves it. Severus watches her impatiently—and with no small amount of suspicion—as he waits for her to make alterations to the recipe in his textbook as he'd asked.

She places the note atop James' station later on in class, when she passes him to procure shrivelfigs from the ingredient storeroom. She does her best to pretend that she doesn't notice the way that he watches her with great interest as she walks by, like she offers him in the height of entertainment.

Later still, when class nears its end and she goes to return her equipment to her bookbag, she finds another note. It's attached to the wrappings of a square of shimmering pink coconut ice, her favorite Honeydukes treat. How did he know?

Anytime, Evans, the note reads. In place of the snitch, he's drawn a bludger. Before her eyes, a beater's bat materializes on the parchment to smack the ball away.

How had he gotten it into her things without her or Severus noticing?

"Dorcas again?" She finds Severus watching her, his mouth a thin line. He and Dorcas have never seen eye-to-eye.

"Yes," she says, hooking a handful of hair behind her ear. The lie comes less easily than before. Her cheeks feel warm. "She's trying to cheer me up after the run in with Avery."

He has the decency to look away, but says nothing. Before her eyes, the symbolic gap between them seems to widen.

Does he feel it too?

When she glances unwillingly across the room once again, she finds James grinning at her—a true grin, no more half measures. He looks truly pleased with himself, almost like he knows that he's causing problems between her and Severus. He winks.

Tosser.

xxx

It continues, oddly, the passing of notes between them.

Your hair looks nice today, she finds in her quill case in mid-November, the compliment written on a scrap of parchment clearly ripped from the bottom of his Charms notes.

Stay out of my things, she writes back. She doesn't bother to return the favor and rummage through his belongings. Instead, she crumples it into a ball and throws it at his head in the middle of History of Magic, when Binns has his back turned.

His mates stare, Remus especially. She can't exactly blame them. James has ramped up his pestering of her as the days have passed, continually finding new ways to taunt or tease her, and she's never responded well.

"That boy fancies the pants off of you," Dorcas had said in the fall term of their fourth year. Lily had thrown her pillow at her as hard as possible.

He answers in true James fashion. No, she finds tucked into the pages of her Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook that afternoon. A hand-drawn broomstick flies in a loop around the word.

That evening, she heads to the library to ask Madam Pince for help locating texts on privacy charms.

He breaks through each one, of course.

Git.

"Potter, enough," she says just before Christmas break, after she finds a new message amongst her Arithmancy notes. Happy Christmas, Evans, it says, and he's drawn a little scribbled image of Severus—the hook nose and lank hair give him away—getting throttled by a string of Christmas lights, which cheerily flash different colors.

He looks up from his copy of Which Broomstick?, and his hazel eyes glitter behind his glasses, as she's started to notice that they always do at the sight of her. Again, she clearly offers him the height of amusement, and she hates it. "Don't know what you're talking about, Evans," he says breezily, flicking a page that he doesn't even bother looking at. He's too busy watching her.

She pulls the magazine from his hands and thrusts the parchment there instead. Peter makes a strange, strangled sort of noise, like he anticipates James protesting, although the protest never comes.

James awaits each issue of Which Broomstick? with bated breath, she finds out much later, and she's wrenched a brand-new copy out of his grasp. He wouldn't tolerate that sort of behavior from anyone else, perhaps not even Sirius.

James gives a quiet snort of laughter as he admires his handiwork. "A good likeness, don't you think?" he asks her.

It is, really. He's good at everything, the wanker, including drawing.

"What, do you sit around and draw Sev often?" she asks, and she doesn't miss the way his jaw clenches briefly at the mention of Severus' nickname.

He hitches a smile back over his face quickly. "Honestly—"

"You'd be surprised," Sirius says. He looks like he's fighting back a smile of his own.

Boys.

"Grow up and leave me alone." She drops Which Broomstick? back onto James' lap and turns on her heel.

"You're beautiful when you're angry!" he calls after her back as she stalks away to rejoin Mary and Dorcas, and she hears his friends begin to laugh.

"Told you," Dorcas says when Lily collapses into her usual armchair. She smiles in a truly self-satisfied manner. "I told you Potter fancied you ages ago, didn't I?"

"I can't stand him." Lily can feel her cheeks burning. "He's so—"

"Smug? Arrogant? Entitled? Obnoxious? Impossible?" Mary lists the words off without pause, each one a tick of her fingers. "Rude? Truly—"

"I get it, Mar." Lily can almost hear herself hurling all of those accusations out after finding James hexing some random Slytherin for fun, or breaking some rule just to see if he can, or offering her some cheeky bit of banter. "I wish he'd just leave me alone."

"That's not about to happen," Dorcas says. She's working on her Divination homework, and she speaks much in the manner of one predicting the future with great certainty. "You watch. You better get used to it, because he's smitten."

xxx

The notes continue.

I like your jumper, she finds after Christmas break, the same day she first wears the soft, emerald jumper her mum had knitted her. She has her dad's eyes, which her mum has always loved. She'd started dressing Lily in shades of green from her birth.

She doesn't respond.

Really, she doesn't respond to most of the notes he leaves among her things, as he infiltrates her bookbag, or tucks them into her robes if she shucks them off her uniform during class, or drops them on her desk, or leaves them on her usual table in the common room. She encourages his attention enough by her inability to ignore his verbal banter with snarky responses of her own. She's not about to make things worse.

Some, though, she can't help but answer.

Your Bat-Bogey hex on Wilkes was brilliant, he writes to her one day in March of 1976, and he's charmed the note to flutter to her desk a few seats away in Defense Against the Dark Arts when the professor has her back turned. He's drawn a tiny bat in the corner of the parchment, one that zooms around the page before returning to its spot.

At that, she can't help but smile. You'd do best to remember that before you piss me off next, she answers, and she sends it back. She hears him chuckle.

He gets Remus to pass his response to her, and she feels Remus' eyes on her, bright and questioning, when he sets the parchment on her desk. She ignores his gaze.

No promises, James has written. What did he do?

It's not even worth explaining. The same.

Tellingly, he doesn't question it. Clearly, he knows what she means—that Stuart Wilkes, one of Severus' friends, had thrown a casual slur her way just to see her reaction. It's gotten more and more common, to the point that 'mudblood' hardly even hurts anymore. Severus' reaction—his lack of reaction, really—hurts far more.

James reacts, of course. He's James, after all.

Fuck all of them, he writes, and it's underlined twice, as if to really drive home that he means it. Say the word, Evans, and I'll have him apologizing.

Somehow, she doubts that. Wilkes doesn't seem capable of apologizing any more than Avery or Rosier or Mulciber, Severus' other best friends. Still, she doesn't doubt that James would try, and would succeed in making them all miserable, if nothing else.

Yet he craves her permission before he makes that happen, something he obviously never considers when he goes after them for his own laughs. It shouldn't touch her, but it does, just a little.

I can take care of myself, she writes, and she tosses it at his head. His expression has gone a little somber from profile, but the corners of his mouth quirk as the crumpled ball of parchment comes in contact with his temple.

In turn, he has Remus send it back to her. I know, he's written. It's one of the things I like best about you.

Her chest does something strange, something she hopes doesn't show on her face.

Sod off, she replies, and he smiles at her but doesn't respond.

To her surprise, he leaves Wilkes alone—momentarily, at least. By the next week, some new issue has broken out between him and his friends and Severus and his. When the whole lot end up in detention, she has to wonder if it comes in part because of the incident between her and Wilkes.

James has discovered by then what she'll respond to and what she won't. She ignores any and all compliments to her appearance, but she finds herself answering any piece of written banter about her actions or her classroom performance, even when he praises her.

It happens slowly, but the realization hits her all at once, when she's in the midst of answering a note he's attached to her latest Transfiguration essay. Your Volubilis Potion looked perfect, he's scrawled, along with a tiny cauldron that wafts with shimmering fumes. Wish you would have saved me some so I could dose Sirius.

She answers without thinking. I wish you would have asked, because it might have shut him up, she writes, and it occurs to her when he catches her eye from across the room.

They've become friends, almost, or something quite like it.

xxx

It all comes crashing down shortly thereafter, courtesy of an incident after their Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL that somehow involves all of her worst nightmares at once: James and Severus fighting; James running his mouth and asking her out in a truly obnoxious, boastful fashion; Severus hurling that all-too-familiar slur at her with venom in his voice; everyone staring at her with bated breath; her attempts at covering up the shattering of her heart with venom of her own. It's all too much.

Remus finds her in the library afterwards. He used the Marauders Map, he would admit to her seventh year, but she has no way of knowing that such a map even exists at sixteen. Further, she's crying too hard in the Charms stacks to even question how he found her there, or to feel much embarrassment as he stands with his hands in his pockets, shoulders held uncomfortably tense as he watches her cry.

He sits down next to her eventually, and puts an arm around her shoulders later still, once her sobs have subsided more from exhaustion than any real healing. He's never touched her for an extended period before, not as far as she can remember, although they've been good friends since third year, and better friends since becoming prefects together. It should probably feel stranger than it does, his arm around her shoulders, but she's too tired and her heart hurts too much to care.

"I should have stopped it before you stepped in," he says, his voice quiet and bitter. He's angry, and at himself. "I'm sorry. I'm a prefect too, and I didn't—"

"That's not why I tried to stop it." In turn, her own voice sounds almost rough. Her throat hurts from the silence she's forced in her sobs, desperate to maintain the silent sanctity of the library and keep attention away from herself. "I—"

"I know." Remus takes a deep breath. He's shaking a little, something she wouldn't have noticed if his thin frame hadn't sat so closely pressed to her side. "I know that's not why. Snape's your friend. I just—"

"He was my friend."

Remus falls silent. So does she. There's not much left to say.

She stops crying altogether eventually, but it takes time. Remus doesn't move in the meantime, except to produce a handkerchief with a swoop of his wand and a muttered cast, and she mops miserably at her face. The handkerchief comes away thick with black mascara. She can only imagine the state of her face.

"Thank you," she says after what feels like hours. It's fallen dark outside, the fine June day having faded into inky night outside a nearby window. She lets her head fall to his shoulder, and she rests her cheek there, more tired than she's felt in ages. "OWLs were stressful enough. All this—" She doesn't go on. She knows she doesn't need to.

She feels him nod. "You've definitely earned summer break." It's a weak joke, but she smiles a little just the same, although that smile fades as his next words come out more tentatively than he's yet spoken. "James feels really bad."

She doesn't hesitate. "Good."

She hears his throat click as he swallows, and he shifts a little, reaching into the pocket of his trousers with his free hand. "He wrote you a note—" he begins unnecessarily, because she can see the parchment clutched in his palm. Without opening it, she already knows that it's longer than anything he's ever written to her before. The size alone tells her that.

"I don't want it," she says automatically. "Remus, I—I can't. I don't want it. Give it back to him."

Remus expected as much. It reads all over the way he stows the note away again before she's even finished her first sentence. He doesn't mention James again.

Instead, he coaxes her to the kitchens with him. It takes effort, but he persists, transfiguring a nearby book into a mirror so she can fix her face, helping her to her feet, leading the way there. Her curiosity wins out in the end, as he presumably knew it would, because she's never seen the kitchens before. Beyond that, he beams at her when she finally agrees to eat, and she can't help it—she eats more just to keep him smiling. Kind, caring, empathetic, sweet boy—he deserves that. He deserves more than she can give him.

"Thank you," she says again when they return to the common room well past curfew. It's the first time she's used her prefect badge to break a rule, but she's too tired to feel any guilt. "You're a wonderful friend."

He shakes his head a little as he follows her through the Fat Lady's portrait. "You're a better one. You've…put up with a lot. More than most would."

It's her turn to shake her head. "That's not me being a good friend." She hears the exhaustion in her voice, the same exhaustion that has drilled deep into every muscle of her body. "That's me being a pushover who's too afraid to get rid of the root of the problem." Remus opens his mouth, presumably to argue, but she doesn't let him. She hugs him, the touch boundary between them broken. "Thank you again. Goodnight."

James watches it all. She sees that when they make eye contact as she heads towards the dormitory stairs, and she sees Remus go to join his friends by the fire. James reaches out to touch Remus' shoulder—no, to pluck at his shirt, where she's left the traces of her mascara smeared into the thin, white cotton of his button-down. James' face is an open map of concern.

Again, she's too tired to care.

For the first time in four years, she's homesick for the safety and predictability and warmth of her parents' house. Hogwarts has never felt less like home.

xxx

She faces Severus the next night, after ignoring him all day. It goes about as well as she expects, meaning not well at all.

James gives her another day before he approaches her. She's over it all by then—him, Severus, the incident, everything—but she's at least appreciative for the space.

"I'd rather you didn't say anything," she says before he can speak, as they wait for carriages to arrive to take them to the train platform.

He's broken off from his friends to talk to her, and he looks a little lost without backup, or maybe he just looks lost generally. He certainly has a different air about him, as he looks everywhere except her face—at her hair, at her shoulder, at her hands, like he's searching for something. His broad shoulders had curved inwards before he'd even approached her, and they stay like that, the total antithesis of his usual confident posture.

"I won't say much then," he says, and he waits, like he expects her to toss something back, some banter about his refusal to listen to her and give her what she wants.

Normally, she would have done just that, but it no longer sounds even a little bit appealing.

"I'm sorry," he says after silence has grown to an uncomfortable degree. Finally, he meets her eyes, and he winces, like it physically hurts. "Evans, I'm just—I'm seriously so fucking sorry."

He means it. He means it just like Severus meant it. She can see that readily enough.

"You didn't make him say it." She's not sure where it comes from, the excuse that he didn't even offer her, but she hears herself form the words before he can.

He doesn't grab onto the excuse, not like she expects. No, he bats it away quite literally, waving his hand. "He wouldn't have said it if I hadn't started things. I know—" He breaks off, faltering, and licks his lips. "I know how that word makes you feel. From him—" He falters again, and his hand goes towards his hair. He wants to ruffle it, but he stops himself before her eyes, the muscles of his arm contracting as he freezes, and then he drops his hand back to his side. "I'm sorry."

"You don't know how that word makes me feel. You can't, because no one would ever call you that."

"I know how it makes me feel to hear anyone called that, but especially you. I hate it, and I imagine you hate it even more. So I understand a little. I'm trying, anyway."

It's ineloquent and simple and haltingly said, but it's everything Severus would never say to her. It's everything no one has ever said to her, not even Dorcas, who has watched Slytherins throw the word at her and Mary since their first year.

She has nothing to say in response. Not a word.

"Lily!" Mary's voice filters across the grounds, and Lily turns to see her friend's blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight as she steps up into a carriage, Dorcas on her heels.

"I have to go," she tells James, and he just nods. He pushes his glasses up, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, and thank god he does. He misses the way she reaches for him for a second, like she might reach out to touch Dorcas or Mary's shoulders during a difficult moment. For the span of three or four breaths, her heart twists at the sight of him, this poor, immature boy faced with the consequences of his actions for perhaps the first time—or consequences of his actions that he cares about for the first time, because—

Because he cares about her. He cares about her in his obvious, ridiculous way, and deeper than she's ever realized.

She adjusts her hair, pushing the length off her shoulders. "It's fine, Potter," she says, and he drops his glasses back down. He looks prepared to argue with her, to perhaps tell her it's not fine, but she presses on. "It's fine. I'm not mad at you. I'm just…tired."

She'd never handled other people's upset well. Since childhood, she's always set out to comfort and to soothe, even at the expense of her own thoughts and feelings. Yet she finds that she means what she says even as she says it, instead of

speaking to quell his obvious hurt. It is fine. She is tired.

"Okay." He attempts a smile. "Have a good summer, Evans."

"You too." She hesitates, just for a single second. "I'm sorry," she says, and he looks at her oddly, like she's sprouted a third eye. "For what I said that day. I lashed out, and—well, I meant some of it, but not everything."

He doesn't respond, but she doesn't give him a chance to. She doesn't want to allow him the opportunity to ask what she didn't mean, because she doesn't even know. She rushes away before he can ask, and before she can probe that thought too deeply even in her own mind. If prodded, she might fall apart.

xxx

She expects him to write to her, and she hates herself a little for it.

It's her first summer without Severus, and nothing about Cokeworth feels the same. It's lonely and miserable and she feels disconnected from the wizarding world as she never has before. Severus comes around three times, clearly hoping to mend things, but her family sends him away each time.

"She's not interested in talking to you," her mum says the first time. It's perhaps the rudest things Marie Evans has ever told a guest at their door.

"I'm not sure what you said to her—" her dad begins the second time, but he corrects himself quickly enough. "No, I know what you said to her, but I don't completely understand it. Still, I understand enough to know why she asked her mum and me not let you inside, and I stand by her decision. Honestly, if she decided to make up with you now, I wouldn't let you inside just the same."

Petunia seals it all.

"When are you going to take a bloody hint?" Lily hears her snap the second week of break. Her voice cuts like broken glass, so harsh that Lily flinches. "Lily doesn't want to talk to you ever again. She's finally wised up and seen you for what you are—what I always knew you were, even though she was too stupid to see it. Get lost."

He accepts it then, and she doesn't see him for the rest of the summer. Truly, if Petunia would have allowed it, Lily would have hugged her. Just the same, she doesn't even try. She knows better, but she takes the look Petunia gives her when she rejoins her in the kitchen—all savage triumph and all knowing—as the closest thing to a win that they've shared in years.

She dates a muggle boy that she meets at a local café, a lad she remembers vaguely from the year ahead of her in primary school, and he helps pass the days with far more pleasure than she anticipates. Loneliness evaporates into sunny days spent with his friends and humid nights spent in his arms, to the point that her mum sits her down for The Talk.

"Mum, I'm not—" she protests before Marie Evans can even mention sex, but her mum barrels on anyway, and she and Lily are both blushing by the end of it, mutually horrified at the terms 'sperm' and 'ovulation' and, perhaps worst of all, 'penis.' "I'm not," she says again, but she forces herself to amend her words. "I'm not having sex." Her cheeks burn. "There. Are you happy?"

Marie doesn't hesitate. "Yes."

Still, she does more than she ever has before—although that doesn't really say much, considering her experience with lads has included a few Hogsmeade dates and holding hands across tabletops and scattered kisses and not much more. That summer is nothing that will last, something she expects that they both know before it's verbalized as such near August's end, but it's good in the meantime. It feels nice, so blessedly normal, to wear tiny shorts and handkerchiefs in her hair, and sit on his lap while laughing with his friends, and snog him until she forgets that she occupies the strange liminal space between magic and muggle, fitting in neither world.

James does write her, although exactly once, and it's not even a letter. He sends a drawing of a pile of cats, and it's his most elaborate yet. He's animated the illustration so that the cats seem to breathe, the chests of stripes and patches and solid colors and long hair and short hair all rising and falling, while the occasional tail twitches in sleep.

Hope you're having a good summer, he's written towards the bottom, those same words he'd said to her before she'd all but run away from him on the last day of school.

She can't draw to save her life, and she's never tried before, not in all the dozens of notes they've passed between them. But she tries then, and his tawny owl waits impatiently as she attempts to emulate one of his sketches of a snitch. It sits stationary on the page—she can't cast magic in the summer, not like he can—and it looks rather lopsided in the wings, but she sends it anyway, after debating for far too long what she should even say in return. I hope you're miserable! she settles on, even though it's not strictly true, not like it once was. She rather expects that he'll know that.

xxx

He does.

I was completely miserable, she finds in the front pocket of her bookbag on September 2, 1976. Apparently, it had taken him only until the second period of the day to somehow infiltrate her things.

She no longer minds, not nearly as much as she once had. In fact, she finds herself almost looking for little notes from him, and she knows he sees her smile every time.

Severus sees it too. They no longer sit together in Potions, but she knows he notices. For once, she doesn't care if he sees her write back.

Here's hoping that continues, she drops onto James' desk on her way to the loo, and he catches her on her way back.

"Evans, I need your help for a minute," he says, and he smiles at her so winningly—although, lord, it had never looked winning when he's tried it before—that she finds herself listening and slowing her stroll by their table. "Sirius and I have a bet as to why Pete's potion has gone pink when it should be blue, but you're the expert here, aren't you? Pete, tell Evans—"

"Mark my words—he's going to go hard at you this year," Dorcas whispers when Lily finally makes her escape—and only out of fear for her own potion, which has stayed its true, deep blue. "Again, the boy is smitten. I can't say it enough."

xxx

But he's not the only boy passing her notes.

Everest Matthews, Hufflepuff and Head Boy, notices her that term. She catches him at it far quicker than she had when she'd first noticed James' attention, even though Everest is far less obvious. Still, he's first to compliment her ideas in prefect meetings, solicits her opinion often, and she finds him watching her on more than one occasion, a flush immediate upon his cheeks when she catches him at it.

Remus notices too.

"Matthews is going to ask you out," he predicts in the middle of the term, after one such prefect meeting chock full of the antics that Lily has started to expect. "If he can get up the nerve, that is."

"Am I terribly intimidating?" she asks, and Remus grins at her easily.

"Blokes are always afraid of girls they fancy."

"Is that why you're scared to death of Mary?"

He doesn't so much as blink, even though she's never called him out on it before. "Yes," he answers immediately, but he changes the topic before she can reply. "What are you going to say? To Matthews?"

"There's no guarantee—"

"He's going to ask you out. Come on, Lil. You're too smart to play dumb." He waits for the staircases to shift, and a little of his ease vanishes. "Let me know what you decide, will you? James is going to need a warning. He's still—"

He doesn't finish his thought, although she almost wants him to, and for perhaps the first time ever. Still, she can infer what he means easily enough.

Sure enough, Everest slides her a slip of parchment in the midst of the next prefect meeting. Hogsmeade? it reads. It's hardly the most passionate declaration of feelings or way someone has asked her for a date, but he's blushing as he pushes the parchment her way, like he doesn't have much practice at asking women out. There's something endearing about the way he can't seem to look at her.

Wear your badge, she writes back. I think it's hot.

He ends up laughing so hard that he excuses himself, and she finds that she rather likes that too.

xxx

James doesn't laugh.

"Is Potter seriously ignoring you?" Dorcas asks three or four days later, once she's wised up to it too.

He is. Lily knows it, Dorcas and Mary know it, and James' friends know it—Lily sees as much in the way that Sirius looks at her sometimes, like he's worried and has placed the full blame for that worry onto her shoulders. He's unhappy, clearly.

James, absurdly, doesn't seem unhappy at all. He acts like his usual self, carelessly half-listening in class, obnoxiously rambunctious in the corridors, showboating in the Great Hall, laughing with his mates in the common room. Amongst all that, he simply acts like she doesn't exist.

"He just needs a bit," Remus tells her in undertone one evening on patrol. He looks distinctly uncomfortable, like she's asked him to reveal something deep and personal simply by inquiring after James. "He likes being your friend, but he still—" Yet again, he doesn't finish; yet again, he doesn't need to.

Friend.

She and James Potter are friends, apparently.

Annoyingly? Remus is right. They are friends.

More annoying still? She misses his stupid friendship.

Days melt away, one into the next. Her date with Everest goes well. He walks her to the common room afterwards and kisses her, and it's a nice kiss. It's a nice end to a nice date overall, really, because Everest is just nice—nice and sweet and seemingly quite into her. She could happily while away the hours kissing him, much like she whiled away the summer.

"How'd it go?" Remus asks her not long afterwards, and she stares at him.

"Are you asking for you, or for someone else?"

He opens his mouth, hesitates, and closes it again. "Both," he admits, and she won't tell him a thing after that. Really, he seems relieved by that decision, and she can't blame him.

She eventually takes a note out of James' own book with, well, a note. She spends far too long on it, completely missing out on Binns' lecture on the goblin rebellion of 1508, as she does her best to sketch a full Quidditch set—and to muck up every last bit of it. She gives the quaffle wings, charms the snitch to explode, turns the hoops into nets, makes the bludgers look more like boulders than anything else, and on and on and on, until she can think of nothing else to draw. Quidditch doesn't make sense, she writes underneath, because it doesn't. Even after over five years in the wizarding world and attendance at every Quidditch match Hogwarts has to offer, she still couldn't make heads or tails of the sport.

She doesn't draw out such a detailed scene because she's nervous to send it James' way. She's not.

Still, her heart undoubtedly skitters a little in her chest as she holds the note over her shoulder. He's sitting behind her, whispering incessantly with his friends, and she doesn't doubt that he'll see her move.

She does doubt, however, that he'll accept her offering.

Her hand hangs in the air for several moments, moments in which she knows he sees her, because the discussion behind her halts all at once, like someone has cast a Silencing Charm across the lot of them.

Finally, fingers brush hers, and she feels him take the parchment from her grasp.

Seconds later, he begins to laugh.

He doesn't even try to stifle the sound. Then again, almost no one tries to even feign attention in History of Magic. Binns' lecture never falters—not even when the Marauders set off a whole passel of fireworks the year before—and his voice drones on as James laughs behind her, the sound warm and rich and—annoyingly—tugging a smile onto her face.

He pulls lightly at her hair not long after, one of the first times he's ever touched her, and he chucks the parchment over her shoulder with a chaser's accuracy. It lands perfectly atop her neglected notes.

Don't tempt me, Evans, he's written, and—

Later—much later, months upon months later—she would wonder if he'd tucked a double meaning into the note. Perhaps he didn't just mean not to tempt him with Quidditch banter. Perhaps he meant not to tempt her with herself.

She doesn't think of any of that in the moment.

See? she writes back. You can't even defend it. She throws it back to him without looking, and with none of his good aim—not that she tries. He gives a snort of laughter in response.

You hit Sirius, he writes. Wish you'd seen his face. And have you told your boyfriend all this about Quidditch?

Everest plays keeper for Hufflepuff. James is mocking her, or baiting her, or something. It shouldn't make her insides burn with embarrassment—because why should it?—but it does.

He's not my boyfriend.

But he's going to be, he writes. He's an idiot otherwise.

That makes her insides burn in a very different way.

A second piece of parchment lands on her desk before she can even begin to formulate a response.

It's also from James, of course.

He is an idiot, for the record, he's scrawled, like her initial note has broken a dam of thoughts and opinions inside of him that he's tried to keep sealed. And before you say that they wouldn't make an idiot Head Boy, didn't we have Bowen last year? They'll give that badge to just about anyone.

In less than one year's time, she'll throw that same accusation right back in his face. In response, he'll simply laugh.

I didn't ask for your opinion, she finally writes, because she hardly knows what else to say. She didn't ask for his opinion, and she doesn't want it.

His answer is immediate. I'm going to keep giving it to you anyway. Did you expect anything less?

No. No, she'd expected something of the sort. Put that way—

Did she actually want him to say something along those lines? Why else would she even engage him to begin with? He's finally started leaving her alone, something she's sworn that she's wanted for years. Why would she—

The goblin rebellion of 1508 suddenly sounds absolutely fascinating, and she does her best not to let Binns make it boring.

"Oi, Evans!" James calls the second class is over. She turns to find him smiling at her for the first time in well over two weeks, his strong jaw almost split from it. At his side, Sirius watches her with a look that can only be summarized in one word: really? "You know, if you wanted me to explain Quidditch to you, you could have asked me years ago."

She tries not to smile back.

She fails.

"That's not what I—" she begins, tone sharp and insistent, but he interrupts her.

It doesn't bother her half as much as it used to.

"Sure, sure." He picks up her bookbag and hands it to her. "Sit with us at dinner and I'll give you your first lesson."

"Why would I do that?"

He watches her sling her bag over her shoulders, eyes following the movement like he's never seen anything more fascinating in his life. Really, he looks at her like that far too often. "It'll give you a chance to take the piss out of me. You've missed that, haven't you?"

He has her there, and they both know it.

"I've missed deflating your head," she tells him. "Nothing more. It's a service to the school, really. You're insufferable when you're at maximum ego."

His eyes crinkle behind his glasses, his expression warm—and suddenly she feels warm, almost flushed. "Can't argue there, and I'm sure everyone appreciates your service to the school. Maybe they'll give you a plaque for it someday, and put it up in the trophy room. C'mon, you're going to be late for Potions. I mean, I will be too, but nothing would surprise Slughorn less. You, though? There goes your reputation. Can't have that."

She falls into step beside him, like it's the most natural thing in the world. Behind her, she hears Sirius mutter something that sounds distinctly like, "For fuck's sake." He doesn't bother to keep his voice down, so she knows James must hear it too. Regardless, he leads the way like he's forgotten his friends even exist.

xxx

"He thinks you're keeping Potter on the backburner," Mary explains in December, her voice dropped purposefully low, even past the need for quiet brought about by the library. "You know—dating Everest but trying to maintain Potter's interest for whatever reason."

Lily stares at her, mouth open. "Black said that to you?"

"Well—no." Mary twists her quill between her fingers. "Remus implied it, sort of, but—it's obvious, isn't it? He's never disliked you before."

But Sirius dislikes her now. She sees it all over the tense hold of his shoulders anytime she comes anywhere near James and his friends, which has started happening with increasing frequency.

Dorcas rolls her dark eyes towards the ceiling. They've gone slightly pink from her hours of attempts to decipher the tiny print of the Defense text open before her. "Like Lil needs to do anything to maintain Potter's interest," she mutters, lifting a hand to cradle her forehead. Her fingers smudge ink just above her brows. "Black's misplacing his blame there, but it's not like he can blame Potter, can he? They're too good of friends. We are too, but I'm blaming you a little, Lil, because I can't keep up with if we're talking to them this week or not. I can't believe we're talking to them at all, since they keep harassing your boyfriend, but—"

Really, Lily can't either, and it's started to keep her up at night. She's always hated James' penchant for bullying, and she's always especially hated when he's targeted anyone close to her. No bloke who's shown interest in her has ever gotten a pass before. Hell, no bloke who's ever even attempted to be her friend has gotten a pass before, in the case of Severus. More than once, she's had to assume that Remus would have gotten his arse handed to him long before if James hadn't had him as his friend before he'd become hers.

So it hasn't surprised her, exactly, to find that they've taken to harassing Everest. In true Everest form, he hardly even seems bothered by the sudden upswing in hexes and jinxes and taunts and pranks that have come his way—but that's just Everest all over, she's figured out quickly enough. It helps that he's popular and well-liked by almost everyone else at Hogwarts, but it certainly hasn't made things easier when it's come to hanging around with his friends.

Well, she can't exactly blame them for that. If the shoe was on the other foot and some girl was coming after her for dating him, she knows she would probably consider him more trouble than he's worth—which is probably precisely what James wants.

James denies that it has anything to do with her, of course.

Just a laugh, he explains early on, after her first accusatory note asking what the fuck his problem is when Everest arrives to a perfect meeting bald. He's not the only one we got. Even his writing somehow looks blasé.

Quidditch rivalries, he writes another time, after Everest and several of his friends—indeed, much of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team—end up on the receiving end of some truly bizarre prank.

Wrong place, wrong time, he tells her after Everest turns up sporting a balding hex again while on patrol one evening. We couldn't let him catch us out of bed, could we?

She's not a violent woman—she's not—but she has to seriously resist the urge to smack him as the term comes to a close, and on more than one occasion.

Still, even when she gets mad—mad enough to curse him out, to ignore him, to wonder why she'd missed his stupid friendship in the first place—he somehow worms his way back into her good graces every time. It doesn't even take much, which is perhaps the worst part of it all. All he has to do is hide some stupid note in her bookbag or make her laugh in the middle of class or show some brief blip of decency or intelligence or common sense, and she finds herself falling into step beside him again. It's infuriating.

It can't last, and it all comes to a head eventually.

It happens the night before Christmas break, as she and Everest are patrolling, a new part of her routine. Truly, it's become one of her favorite times of the week, because things are just blessedly easy with Everest. He holds her hand and keeps her company on the worst of her patrols into the dungeons, and they never discuss why she wants him to accompany her there, although he asks exactly once. When she brushes the question off, he lets her have her privacy, and it allows her to avoid the use of the word 'mudblood' and the whole, sordid tale of Severus and his friends. Instead, they talk of his friends and hers, and their coursework, and his plans for after Hogwarts, and her career goals, and their respective families. She feels a bit like Summer Lily, just an ordinary girl with an ordinary boy, only this boy can know about her magic. It's glorious.

And they snog, of course. Of course they do.

He walks her back to her common room every time, even though she's learned that Hufflepuff's is down in the basement near the kitchens, and it means that he has to travel seven extra floors just to do it. He won't hear otherwise, and she doesn't mind. Neither does he. Truly, only the Fat Lady seems put out over it, because she sometimes sighs in a truly long-suffering way on the occasions that their goodnight kisses transform into something less quick and more serious. It's gotten to the point that she has him drop her around the corner from the common room, where the Fat Lady can't see them, but—

Well, that all but guarantees that things always turn into something more serious.

That's how James and his friends find them the night before Christmas break, with her body sandwiched between the wall and Everest, her arms around his neck and his knee wedged between her thighs and his hands everywhere, cradling her bum and brushing against the sides of her breasts and twining into her hair and dancing along the outside of her leg just above her knee—

Sirius makes the first sound.

"For fuck's sake!" he exclaims, voice echoing up and down the silent corridor, and there's nowhere for her body to go. She can't pull back from Everest, but she jerks away as much as she can, and her head collides with the wall behind her, hard enough that it stuns her even past the sudden spike in her pulse. She recognizes Sirius' voice before she opens her eyes, and she knows that must mean—

Everest doesn't pull away from her, although he tenses. "Are you alright?" he asks quietly, hands traveling to the back of her head, which throbs under his fingers.

"Fine," she says, even though she knows she'll have a knot to heal come morning. Against her better judgment, she opens her eyes.

She immediately wishes she hadn't, but she can't exactly close them again.

They're all there, of course, because when do the four of them ever separate from each other? Each one is paler than the last, Sirius glaring and Peter with his hand actually over his mouth, like he's never seen anyone snog before—laughable, considering the sheer number of folks she catches going at it every time she patrols. Even Remus, who catches those people too, looks stunned beyond words, but he looks quickly away from her the second she glances at his face, his eyes cast towards James. And James—

He looked less wretched when they faced boggarts in Defense Against the Dark Arts third year, or when the Appleby Arrows lost the British and Irish Quidditch League Cup fourth year, or when he'd tried to apologize to her after the incident with Snape the year before. His face is stark white, completely bloodless, and jaw so tense that it wouldn't surprise her one ounce to hear his teeth suddenly shatter.

In contrast, her body floods with heat—with embarrassment, with shame, with horror, and she wishes Everest would step back from her, but—

But, fuck, the second he does, she wishes he hadn't. She wishes he hadn't because he's clearly hard, something she'd noted long before they'd gotten interrupted, but suddenly they're all aware of it. He moves to adjust himself through his trousers, and while she can't blame him and he has the decency to turn his back to the lads to do it, but there's no hiding his actions.

Everest speaks first.

"So—I'm willing to pretend that we didn't catch you lot out of bed, if you're willing to move on without saying anything," he says, all logic and reason, like he doesn't understand the implications of who has caught them. He also apparently doesn't understand why James looks like he does just then, like someone has socked him in the gut or kicked his beloved childhood pet or snapped his broomstick in half—or perhaps Everest just doesn't want to acknowledge it. If so, Lily also can't exactly blame him for that either.

The other three look to James for an answer, of course. They always do.

"Happily," he says woodenly, and he leaves without another word or glancing their way again.

Watching his back retreat down the corridor, his friends trailing after him, Lily suddenly wonders if he'll ever look at her again.

xxx

It's a cruel reversal of the previous June, their conversation on the train platform the next morning. Suddenly, she's looking to him for reassurance, apology lacing her tone, and he's unable to get away from her fast enough.

As expected, he won't even look at her, but keeps his gaze trained steadily over her shoulder, towards where his friends gather.

"I'm sorry," she says, because nothing else can even come close to summarizing how she feels—and even that doesn't do it, not really. An apology can't bring together all the reasons why her cheeks flush from more than the cold, or why the depths of her stomach hold a lead balloon, or why her mouth has gone dry. "I know that—well, I know that you didn't want to see that last night."

A bit of a humorless smile twists his lips, but he still doesn't look at her. "You're right. I didn't." He shakes his head, the movement so subtle she almost misses it. "It's fine, Evans. You're allowed to snog your boyfriend."

She knows that. Of fucking course she does, because who is he, to give her permission for something like that? Pride piques in her chest, hot and bright, but—

The feeling collapses a second later, replaced by something akin to panic. She wants his permission, it seems, the desire faint but insistent. No, maybe she wants the opposite. Maybe she wants him to get mad at her, to protest everything he'd seen, to protest her very coupling with Everest, because—

Her mind slams shut like the door of a Gringotts vault, and her thoughts refuse to budge further.

"But—" He sucks in a breath, and he releases it slowly, his breath a gentle mist around his face. The tip of his nose has gone pink, and he shoves his hands into his pockets. "I can't be your friend. I can't. It's—it's been great, Evans, seriously, but—" His mouth freezes, hanging open for a fraction of a second, before he plunges on. "I like you too much."

Her own body freezes, outside of her control.

Has he ever told her that before? Has he ever actually said, I like you, even if his stupid, attention-seeking behavior has screamed it with subtext for years? It's behind every dumb joke he's ever lobbed her way, every note he's tucked into her possession, every careful caress of his eyes on her face when she laughs, but he's never said it.

Her heart throbs in her throat, thick and painful.

"James—" she says, his name flying from her mouth sharply, almost panicky, when he turns to walk away.

Every inch of him seizes at once, from the tense hold of his broad shoulders to his step, which halts mid-stride. When he turns back around to look at her, hands still deep in his pockets—

Hope reads all over every inch of his face, his gaze bright and wide behind his glasses, as he looks at her for the first time.

She's never called him that before. Not once.

"Yeah?" He licks his lips, and she watches, wondering—

Wondering what it would be like to kiss him, kiss him like she kisses Everest, deep and hard and longingly until she can't breathe anymore.

"Nothing." Her throat burns with the lie. "Just—I'm sorry."

At least that isn't a lie.

The thick hope on his face drops away all at once, crumpling into something dark and despondent. Almost before she can register the change, he turns again. "Like I said—it's fine. Happy Christmas, Evans."

It's not a happy Christmas. She spends far too much of it wondering what the hell is wrong with her, as he infiltrates her thoughts—waking and sleeping both—with alarming consistency.

xxx

They don't talk when they return to school. No notes, no jokes between classes, no Quidditch chat at dinner, nothing. It's almost as if they never started edging towards real, serious friendship.

Almost.

"Potter asked Debbie Barrett to Hogsmeade," Mary tells her tentatively one afternoon in February.

Lily blots her Potions essay so severely that the word viscosity becomes illegible. She lifts her wand to correct her mistake. "Did he?"

Dorcas doesn't look up from her own work, but Mary has set hers aside entirely. The way she looks at Lily has her suddenly thinking of the childhood break of her arm, and the way her bones had looked on the x-ray machine at the muggle doctor's office. He'd somehow seen through her skin to observe the fracture beneath.

Mary's careful blue gaze holds the same power, looking into her soul to spot the fissure inside her chest.

"Yes." Mary twists her quill between her fingers, eyes never leaving Lily's face. "Remus told me. Potter proper fancies her, it sounds like."

Lily can't exactly blame him, even though she wants to. Debbie is cute and enthusiastic and plays Quidditch for Hufflepuff. She's gotten to know her well since dating Everest, and she likes her too.

Liked her too. She suddenly no longer does.

"Good for him." She turns back to her Potions textbook, not quite seeing the words. "I hope they have a lovely time."

They do, it seems, because she spies them holding hands a couple of weeks later. James wears laughter on his face, teasing evident in his eyes even from across the bustling Charms corridor.

She cries that night, and blames it on her period, both to herself and when Mary and Dorcas ask. Still, Mary knows. Somehow, Mary always knows. Truly, it wouldn't surprise her if Mary knew before she did.

xxx

She and Everest break up in April, long after she should have called it off.

He takes it well, all gentle understanding when she outlines that she just can't see it continuing on into the next year, after he's graduated and she's still in school. It doesn't seem fair to keep it going, she explains, especially not when he has NEWTs to study for.

He smiles at her, and the look breaks her heart. "I appreciate how much you care about my NEWTs," he says, and he means it. "You care more than I do."

He means that too, but he doesn't have to care. He comes from a well-established magical family—a half-blood family, sure, but one well-connected and well-off nonetheless. He could earn a 'T' in every exam and turn out alright.

He continues to treat her kindly, of course, something she never questioned for a second. To her surprise, his friends do as well, as if he'd warned them off dropping her entirely. It only makes her feel worse.

Word spreads, and three days later, she discovers a note inside her bag, taped to her bottle of ink.

Hope you're alright. James' handwriting is as familiar and comforting as a warm hug, and she finds herself smiling even before she finishes reading the three simple words, let alone when she spies the tiny cat's paw he's drawn in the corner of the page, which bats at an even smaller snitch.

It's then and there, in the middle of Charms, that she understands that she's smitten.

xxx

It's probably unrelated—she swears as much to Dorcas and Mary, anyway, even though hope blossoms in her chest at the news—but as April fades into May, he drops Debbie Barrett, or perhaps she drops him. It's unclear, but the timing is certainly suspect.

"You're too smart to play dumb," Mary says when Lily insists that it has nothing to do with her, and she sounds uncomfortably like Remus. "You know they've rowed about you."

Somehow, after six years of friendship, Mary still surprises her. She stares. "No. I didn't know that."

In turn, Mary looks surprised as well. "Remus didn't tell you?"

No, Remus hadn't told her, and Lily only just holds back from truly bawling him out over it when they patrol later that day. She can't rip him apart for holding something like that back, not without admitting that Mary's reveal had lit a fire inside her veins, and while she's a good liar, Remus knows her too well to not pick up on any sort of feigned indifference. She has no choice but to not bring it up to him at all.

At least with Mary, she can ask the real questions without fear of judgment or reprisal.

"What did he say?" she demands, and she hears that same note of sharp panic that James had first inspired in her on the train platform before Christmas break.

Everest had never made her sound that way. Neither did her muggle fling. Truly, no boy ever has.

She hates it.

Mary smiles, her eyes again a little too knowing for Lily's taste, even though her words reflect none of that. She phrases it all very matter-of-factly, like she's explaining some bit of coursework. "Debbie's not stupid. She's seen that you're friends again. The whole castle has, because the two of you—you're not trying to hide it anymore, are you?"

No. No, not like she once had when she'd concealed notes from Severus, or when she'd worried what people might say if they saw how hard James sometimes makes her laugh, all after she's insisted that she's hated him down to his very marrow for years.

"I guess she didn't like that," Mary continues. "I can't blame her. The notes, the joking, the flirting—"

The words fly from her mouth on reflex. "We're not flirting."

"You don't have to lie to me, Lil."

It's the closest Mary has ever come to calling her out—at least over James. She treads much less carefully in everyday life.

"I'm not. We don't flirt."

"Sure. Okay." Mary doesn't even try to sound like she believes her, but she also doesn't roll her eyes or sigh or offer any sort of other exasperated clues like Dorcas would. Bless her. "I won't say anything."

"There's nothing to say."

"Sure," she says again. "If you say so. But he's mad about you. You do know that, don't you?"

Yes. No. Something in between, really, because—

Somehow, over the past couple of years, James Potter has become just too good to be true.

xxx

"Can I write to you?" he asks her that June, the night before they're due to head home for the summer.

She's up to her calves in the Great Lake, shoes and socks discarded on the grass nearby, and he's right there with her, his trousers rolled up and his hands dripping from the countless times he's splashed her. It's nearing dusk and their friends have drifted away—their friends, it increasingly seems, because things have somehow escalated quickly in a month like she never would have once believed. Suddenly, Sirius makes her and Mary and Dorcas laugh, and she wants to help Peter in all his subjects, and she finds herself exchanging smiling glances with James when they spy Mary and Remus in the depths of some deep conversation.

It's perfect—the weather, the company, the relief of the end of exams, his question, the hope in his voice.

"You wrote last summer without asking," she points out, and he offers her that smile she's come to see as signature: slow, lazy, dangerous, beautiful—

"I know. I half expected a Howler in return."

"I couldn't do magic at home then, but I can now. I'm of age."

"I know. That's why I asked."

She's too focused on watching him and not aware enough of the path of her feet. Under the dark waters, her toes slip off of a mossy rock.

He catches her around the wrist before she can fall, his hand wet and his grip tight. He's taken to touching her more and more in recent days, fiddling with her hair or flicking her shoulder or nudging her ribs as he teases her, like she never would have dreamed when he'd first tugged at her hair in class that fall. Still, he's never touched her for long, not in the way his fingers encircle her wrist and his body suddenly stands just removed from hers, so close that she can almost feel the heat radiating from his skin.

His throat bobs as he swallows, and she wonders if he can feel her pulse racing under his fingers.

Then he smiles, and the muscles of his arm flex in the fading sunlight as he leans her back slightly, enough that she reaches up to grip his shirt above his shoulder, still unsteady on her feet. "I could drop you, you know."

"You wouldn't." She's never been more confident of anything in her life.

He doesn't hesitate. "No. I wouldn't."

Kiss me.

Christ, she could say it so easily. She could do it even more easily, could shift her hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck, could push herself up onto her toes, and could kiss him like she's thought about for months. He's right there, so close that she can smell the sun on his skin. What would it taste like, to drink in that scent with her mouth on his mouth, on his neck, on his chest, on—

He swallows again, harder than before. His eyes have gone rather glossy as they rove her face, darting back to her mouth again and again.

He rights her with far more gentleness than she expects, like her body is the most precious, fragile glass, and holds her there for a second before he releases her wrist. His hand drops to her waist for the span of several seconds, cradling her hip in his hand as if to support her further, and she can feel the heat of his palm through the thin cotton of her sundress. It burns—physically, emotionally, spiritually, in every way—like nothing she's ever felt before, and—

She wants him to hold onto her forever. Forever, to the point that the loss of his hand sends her turning away from him so he won't catch a glimpse of her disappointment.

"You can write to me," she says over her shoulder, and her voice sounds rather strange to her own ears, caught somewhere in the back of her throat.

The tips of his fingers ghost the back of her neck, brushing lightly at the hairs that have escaped the careless bun atop her head. She shivers against her will, and she pulls away quickly, heading for the grass to just bloody get away from him, because he's overwhelmed her so fully. She hears the smile in his voice. "I can't wait, love," he says, and he's never called her that before—she's never heard him call anyone that before—but—

It somehow sounds right.

xxx

They write that summer.

And they write.

And they write.

"You're popular," her mum says more than once, because the Potters' tawny owl arrives morning and night some days, but Lily always brushes it off.

"That can't always be Mary and Dorcas," her dad says as the heat and humidity of July bleeds into August. "So it must be a lad. I thought you broke up with that one from school."

He means Everest, and thoughts of him—the first she's had in a long, long while—dim her happiness just a little. Still, James has drawn her a cauldron at the bottom of his letter—an exploding cauldron at that, one that shoots sparks across the parchment that are the same emerald as her eyes—and that makes it rather hard not to smile. "I did."

"So who's this, then? A different one?"

She sees no point in lying about it. Her dad will get it out of her one way or another, as her mum never could. They're just too alike, her dad and her, and he knows each and every button to press to get the information he wants. "Yes."

"Like him, do you?"

She shrugs, and knows he doesn't buy it for a second. "He's alright."

"'He's alright.'" Robert Evans snorts into his coffee. "What a glowing endorsement. Did you hear that, Marie? We'll have a new son-in-law before too soon!"

Absurdly? Absurdly, he's right, even though Lily has no way of knowing it at the time. Instead, she chucks a piece of toast at him—one that he ducks, and one that sends her mum into a lecture on proper manners that spans the rest of breakfast.

Remus visits her a handful of times, and he fits in perfectly. His mum is a muggle, so he understands enough to talk football with her dad, and he happily allows her mum to stuff him with baked goods that he doesn't ask for. Her parents adore him instantly.

That means they'll adore James too. It occurs to her within the first fifteen minutes of Remus' initial visit, and it makes her far happier than it should.

He arrives unannounced early one morning in mid-August, not long after the post has deposited a gleaming Head Girl badge in her lap and her mum has dissolved into proud tears and her dad has started beaming.

"I knew it!" he exclaims, and he's grinning himself as he hugs her in her parents' warm, sunny kitchen. "James is going to lose his mind—"

No one has said his name aloud all summer, save for Mary or Dorcas when they've teased her about the letters that have piled up inside her desk, and it sends her heart into her mouth. "James?" His name feels strange on her tongue. "Why—"

"He's Head Boy."

"Who's James?" her mum asks, and Lily sees her own face in the sharpness of her mum's expression, their features so similar that it's like looking into a mirror twenty years in the future. Her mum looks at her like several things have suddenly slotted into place, like she just knows, and—

Lily begins to laugh, and to the point of tears.

She's still laughing when she boards the Hogwarts Express on September 1st, because James looks absolutely dumbfounded in the prefects' compartment, just baffled beyond words, as the Head Boy badge sits limply in his palm. "Seriously, Evans, how—" he begins at the sight of her, like she can somehow explain it all to him, but the words sound suddenly trapped in his throat when—without a second thought, without any thought, really—she launches herself into his arms.

She's never hugged him before, or touched him at all, really, at least nothing past the joking—flirtatious, undeniably flirtatious, Mary was fucking right, of course—way they'd started treating each other the year before. Yet suddenly she finds her face pressed into his chest and her hands clutching his back, and he smells incredible and he's so warm even through his muggle t-shirt that she can hardly stand it all. And then—

After a stunned silence—not just his stunned silence, but the stunned silence of all of the prefects in the compartment—his arms wrap around her, cradling her again like the most precious of fragile glass, and he's laughing against her hair, the sound a little wild. "I can't believe you're fucking laughing at me right now," he says, but he doesn't sound mad. No, he sounds thrilled, and he looks that way when she pulls back from him, although his arms tighten around her for a second before falling, like—

Like he doesn't want to let her go. She understands that feeling a little too well.

"We're going to have fun," she tells him, her own smile stretching to the point that her cheeks protest, but she doesn't care. She also doesn't care that everyone else is staring at them—including Severus, Slytherin's seventh year male prefect, who has gone and will stay a stark white for the entirety of their debriefing.

"I always have fun with you, Evans," James says, like it's the most natural thing in the world, like they've always been friends, like a time had never existed when he annoyed her just to gain her attention and she'd frequently blown her top over it. He means it, too. "There's no one else I'd want to do this with," he adds, and she knows means that as well.

xxx

Dorcas calls her out like Mary never would.

"So, are you going to ask him out or what?" she asks around Halloween, when Lily reaches into her bag for her Defense textbook and comes out with a slab of coconut ice that has somehow materialized between classes.

She knows it's not the time to smile, but she can't help it. I'll see you on patrol, he's written right on the wrapper, and it sends her heart into a frenzy. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she says, and Dorcas sighs before grabbing the candy from her hands. "Dory!"

"Look at this," Dorcas says, tossing the coconut ice Mary's way. Mary watches it fall next to her complicated Astronomy charts, lifts her eyebrows, and says nothing. "Come on, Mar! Don't act like you don't see it. They're constantly flirting. She passes more notes with him than with us. She hasn't patrolled by herself once in weeks. He bloody salivates over her daily, and the places he's wetting in her definitely aren't her mouth—"

"Jesus Christ, Dory!" A nearby table of fourth-year Ravenclaws look up at the sharp tone of Lily's voice, and Lily forces herself to sound a little more library reasonable, although it's hard. "That's—"

"Entirely the truth and you know it! I don't know why you're lying to me, unless it's because you're lying so deeply to yourself. I've always thought he was fit, even if he was a complete dickhead for years, and he's not that anymore. He's gone all proper Head Boy trying to land you, and it's—"

"That's not why he's changed."

She likes him better for it, honestly, the realization that has her defending him so staunchly. James has changed, something she'd watched with trepidation the previous year, but with increasing hope as the fall filters by. At first, she'd wondered—while questioning the size of her own ego, something she'd always hated in him—if he'd altered his behavior so fully in large part to impress her, that same accusation Dorcas lobs out with such certainty. Yet it isn't that, she's come to realize, because he acts the same whether she stands in the room or is nowhere in sight. The previous year, he'd started leaving most people alone, no longer landing detention for the stupid bullying tactics that had always set her teeth on edge—and those who continue to find themselves on the receiving end of his wand are people that she too has countless problems with, so she understands why he still tussles with them. He's taken his Head Boy duties seriously from the start, at first with more uncertainty than she thought he could ever possess, but with increasing confidence. Not only that, but he's grown good at his role, leading prefect meetings like he leads the informal group of his friends, and settling disputes amongst students with a fairness she never thought she'd see from him. He's always been popular, but for the first time, he's started to earn that popularity from something other than pranking antics or Quidditch. People have started to look to him for help and for answers, and he's blossomed under the responsibility.

Beyond that, he's fit. He's so fucking fit that she almost hates him for it, because she finds herself watching him do the simplest things—twirl his wand in class, laugh with his mates, counsel younger students in the common room, dole out justice in the corridors—with more fascination that she's ever watched a Quidditch match. Christ, even Quidditch matches have become fascinating like never before. She's suddenly interested beyond belief, because watching him—watching him play during Gryffindor's turns, watching him watch his competition beside her in the stands when the other houses play—never grows old.

"Whatever." Dorcas waves an impatient hand. "We can argue about that later. Just ask him out already, Lil. I almost wish he'd take some other girl to Hogsmeade, so you could stop acting like such a stubborn bint. That'd teach you quick."

It would. It absolutely would, because just the thought of James with someone else—holding some other girl's hand like he'd held Debbie Barrett's for months; sitting beside some other girl at Quidditch matches or in classes; kissing some other girl, as she's dreamt of him kissing her—

"Are you alright?" James asks her later that night as they patrol the Defense corridor. She doesn't turn to look at him, but she can feel his eyes on her, and hear the worry coloring his tone.

"Yes." Her answer comes out clipped, and she has to force the normalcy that follows. "Sorry. Just—stressed. You know."

"You're always stressed. That's who you are."

Fair, really.

"That's not what this is," he decides several paces later, when she can't conjure anything else to say. "This isn't how you act when you're stressed, love."

It's obviously not the first time he's slipped and called her that, and it's started to feel less and less like slipping every time. It sounds almost purposeful just then, echoing through the empty corridor, and his tone probes at her like gentle fingers prodding an open wound.

She flinches, and he sees it happen. His hand reaches for her, and just brushes her lower back before she twists away from him, her heart in her throat. "Evans, what the—"

She kisses him.

She has no idea why it happens then. After all, she's spent collective months imagining what it would feel like to kiss him, fantasies had by her own choice and in the depths of her subconscious at night, and she's never acted on them before. She's pictured how it would feel and taste and smell—his stupid, messy hair between her fingers; the heat of his mouth; the heat of his body; the pressure of his tongue; the scraping stubble of his cheeks—but it's somehow even better, better than anything she could have ever dreamed. He freezes against her, muscles tense as her hands rope into the back of his hair and her body molds itself to his and her chest seems to ignite with relief, and he remains immobile just long enough that she second-guesses it all.

She's misread him, surely. He's about to pull away from her, his expression gentle as he lets her down easy, informing her with all the care of a friend that he hasn't felt that way about her in years. Obviously, she's missed her chance.

Then he kisses her back, and the relief in her chest crests to new heights.

"Lily—" he says against her mouth, and he's called her that before, but it's never sounded sweeter, even though he sounds haunted or perhaps tortured, her name a helpless plea. "Lily, love—"

That's a first, as new as the way her body tips backward until she's pressed into the wall, half-dragged there by her arms around his neck and half pushed there by his impatient strides. His own arms have gone around her—one hand tangled into her hair, the other flat against her back—and suddenly he's crushing her in the best possible way, his body a hard slab of muscle and tensed past surprise. She's as light as air in his arms, and she's whimpering outside of her own control as he opens his mouth to hers, his tongue slow, sweeping, desperate as he moans, the sound low and deep in his throat that sends her insides twisting. Her legs open outside of her control as well, desperate to accommodate his body, to drag him closer, and his hand on her back drops to clutch her thigh. Suddenly he's lifting her leg and opening her further, his hand hot and hard as he rocks his hips against hers, and he's rolling in a way that shows her that he's as hot and hard in his trousers too.

"Fuck, Potter—" escapes from her mouth before she can stop it, and it sounds unlike any other time she's ever said it. He presses his forehead to hers, his breaths heavy. She's out of breath herself and unable to catch it, the messy curls at the back of his head like a lifeline as electricity pools in her stomach and lower still.

"Merlin." He sounds almost pained—pleased, but pained just the same—and his hand shifts higher, underneath her skirt, until his fingers reach the line of her knickers. His pupils have taken over the entirety of his irises as he pulls back to look at her, and his cheeks have gone ruddy, as flushed as hers feel. "Merlin, the way you make that sound—it's even better than I've dreamed—"

His mouth meets hers again, and she can hardly stand it, the depth of his kiss and the perfect friction between her thighs and the slow stroke of his fingers against her hip. It's so much that she can't breathe, let alone think, and she's so dizzy that she knows she'd fall if he didn't hold her in place. It's intoxicating and incredible and terrifying, and—

At the same time, she trusts him not to drop her. She trusts him completely.

She wants more. She needs more, more of his mouth, more of his body, more of his hands, and there's suddenly nothing she wouldn't let him do, and nothing she doesn't want from him. She wants him to reach for the buttons of her shirt. She wants him to take off her knickers. She wants him to shift his hand the few inches to reach in between her legs, because it's all almost too good, but she knows his fingers will feel even better. How many nights has she imagined his fingers in the place of hers while hidden behind the drapes of her four-poster bed or shut behind her door at her parents' house? And suddenly he's so close, his fingers gentle but calloused, a contradiction she's never considered in all her thoughts of him, but, again, just better, better than anything she's ever expected—

A door slams from further up the corridor, sending her nearly out of her skin.

He jumps against her as well, and his mouth breaks from hers all at once. "No," he says immediately. He sounds winded, like he's run several miles. "No, Evans, you can't—"

He's caught her out before she has, because she only realizes after he speaks that she's already started to pull away from him.

"We're on patrol," she reminds him, and she sounds strange too—not quite winded, but just addled, like she's lost her head a bit. She feels that way too, overheated and desperate in something close to hunger or thirst but different entirely, and entirely different than any way she's ever felt around any boy before. "I need to go. You—you should stay here."

They both know why. A lake might have flooded her knickers, but no one will know that. He, on the other hand, has no way of hiding the tent of his trousers, at least no way aside from several concealment charms, which she doubts he can manage. She can't either. Charms is her game, but she doubts she can manage so much as a Cheering Charm just then.

"But—" His eyes scan her face, like he's searching for weak spots and determined to break her resolve, but whatever he sees there convinces him to let her go. "Will you—look, take care of it. Take care of it and meet me back up in the common room."

She steps outside of the reach of his arms. "Tomorrow."

He sighs, and he lifts his hand to his glasses, wrenching them off his face. "Evans." He doesn't even sound surprised, really, just frustrated. "Evans, you can't just—"

She can't run away. She knows that. Besides, she's a fucking Gryffindor, bold and brave. The Sorting Hat might have considered her for Slytherin, but she's never doubted that she belongs in her house.

Not until then.

"Tomorrow," she repeats, and she takes off down the corridor, away from him.

He lets her go without another word, although she hears his voice travel up the corridor before she rounds the bend. "Jesus Christ," he says, the words low and twisted.

It's her favorite muggle swear.

xxx

He's stubborn. She knows that. There's no way he won't wait up for her, even if she avoids the common room.

She's stubborn too. She knows he knows that in return, so she knows they're probably at a standstill.

"Are you alright?" fifth year Laurel McMurry asks as Lily escorts her back to the Ravenclaw common room. She'd slammed the door that had ruined everything, and Lily had caught her snogging Slytherin Edward Milton in an abandoned classroom. It's protocol to separate students caught fooling around, and she feels much more comfortable accompanying Laurel to her common room than Milton to his, although he's never acted particularly nasty towards her.

It's also protocol to take points for out of bed behavior, but she doesn't have it in her. She's a lot of things, but she's not a hypocrite.

James had asked her the same question, which had somehow started it all. For a second, she doesn't know if she wants to laugh or cry or both.

"Fine." It's still a lie, but she makes herself smile at Laurel, and it works enough to erase the concern from Laurel's face. "So, you and Milton? Since when?"

Really, if she had more of a rulebreaker's streak in her, she might try to persuade Laurel to do something stupid with her, just to avoid her own thoughts. James would have in her position, she knows, and he would have had a million ideas already half-formed, because chaos seems to percolate in his brain at all hours.

Instead, she bids Laurel goodnight, and she goes to sit in the prefects' bathtub until her skin has gone wrinkly and all of the bubbles have popped in the bath.

When she finally returns to Gryffindor tower, she finds him waiting up for her despite the time, because of course he is.

"I wrote you a note," he says the second she steps into the deserted common room to spy him seated at a table, as hard at work in his Transfiguration textbook like it's the middle of the day, not after two in the morning. He sounds casual, and he doesn't wait for her to cross the room to take it from him. He sends the folded parchment flying to her with a flick of his wand.

She freezes by the portrait hole, the note clutched helplessly between her hands. "Potter—"

"Read the note."

Does she have a choice?

She does. She does have a choice. She can refuse. She can march to the fireplace and toss the note atop the crackling flames. She can tell him to fuck off, like she has countless times before, and flee to the safety of her dormitory.

At the same time, she absolutely doesn't have a choice. She hasn't had a choice around him for ages, really.

She opens the parchment.

What the fuck was that? he's written in thick bubbles letters, and he's drawn himself underneath, a scrawled figure with messy hair and exaggerated glasses and a comically blank expression. As she watches, cartoon James' head promptly explodes, sending dots of hair and brain and flesh scattering around the page.

It's perfect—really, truly perfect—and she begins to laugh.

"Good." She looks up to find him smiling at her, that same beautiful, slow, incredible smile that never ceases to make her heart skip a beat. "You made me wait long enough that I wrote you about twenty others, so I wasn't sure which one to go with. I'm glad that was the right one."

"Did you keep the others?"

"Of course. I'll show them to you, if you'll come here."

He's offering her another choice. She can tell him no. She can tell him no and he'll bid her goodnight. He's not going to chase her.

He doesn't need to chase her. She's already his—Christ, she's been his for ages and she's hated it, and she hated it even while staring into nothing in the prefects' bathroom while the water went lukewarm and then cool and then cold all around her.

She doesn't hate it any longer. It's impossible to hate anything, or to even attempt to summon the care to ask after the notes he's promised, not when he reaches for her waist and she slides into his lap like it's the most natural thing in the world; not when he laughs with breathless wonder as she buries her hands back in the reassuring thickness of his hair; not when she bends to kiss him at the exact same time he pulls her down, eagerness all over his face.

It's all softer than before, slower and sweeter and less heated need and more tender reverence in his hands upon her back and his mouth on hers, all of it slow and almost lazy, like one of his smiles. There's no rush, like he's trying to prove something to her, and he voices that point finally, after the fire in the grate has died down to crackling embers. "I like you," he says, brushing her hair back from where it has fallen to hang in a curtain around both their faces. He watches the path of his fingers, lips slightly parted, like he can hardly believe that he's touching her.

It's not the first he's said it, but it sounds so, so much better the second time around, promise in his voice instead of pain.

He waits, and she teeters on the edge of something—something deep and heavy and inside her heart and head and chest and entire body all at once—before she cracks.

"I like you too," she says, and it all comes tumbling out, dragged from her mouth by the grin that splits his face. Suddenly, she'll do anything to keep him smiling at her like that, and there's honesty thick in her voice and heavy in her body as she relaxes against him, releasing tension that she hadn't realized she'd held. "I've been mad about you for ages. I wanted you to kiss me last June before break, and I've never stopped thinking about it. Even before that, I couldn't stand when you weren't talking to me, and I hated seeing you happy with someone else. Dorcas said today that it would serve me right to see you go out with some other girl. That was all I kept thinking about when we were patrolling, about the way you used to smile at Debbie Barrett and how much I hated it, and how much I hated myself because I knew I had no right to feel that way. It was just horrible, because Dory's right, and I—"

His hands fly from her abruptly, so quickly that he cuts her words short. His body moves strangely, the motions of his arms short and jerky as he pulls his glasses from his face just as he had hours before, but he doesn't hold them in his hand. He casts them aside impatiently, and then he reaches for her hair again, crushing her mouth to his with the same heated fervor he had in the corridor, all reverence aside.

He's proven his point, apparently, or she's pushed him past trying to prove it. She doesn't know which one.

It doesn't matter. Not really. Nothing matters except for the way he kisses her and the way she can suddenly touch him exactly like she's dreamed about, running her hands from his hair to his shoulders and down his arms, tracing the contours of the muscles she's watched flex as he's hurled quaffles halfway across the Quidditch pitch. "I'm mad about you," he comes out with all at once, and he snatches her hands quickly in his own before she can follow through with the growing desire—no, the growing need—to pull apart the buttons on his shirt. "Fuck, Evans—stop for a second. Just for a second, so I—"

"I don't want to."

He stares up at her for a moment, and then he begins to laugh, that same wild laugh he'd given when she'd hugged him on the Hogwarts Express at the start of term. "Love to hear that—seriously, love to hear that, I can't stress that enough—but—"

"Go to Hogsmeade with me."

She doesn't plan the words, but suddenly there they are, the same ones—and spoken the same way, a statement, not a question—that he's hurled at her in the past.

He literally stops breathing, apparent mainly because he'd breathed as heavily as her before she'd spoken, but also because his chest stills entirely. "Ask me again," he says after a beat, and he sounds more than a little floored. "Or—tell me again, I guess. I might like that better, honestly. I like it when you boss me around."

She could smack him. She might, honestly—but something about his face suggests that he might like that too. "James—"

"That's good enough." He sucks in a breath, one so deep it sounds like it hurts, like his lungs have remembered how to function all at once. "I'll go with you. Obviously I will."

"I'll tell you again, if you'd like."

The corners of his mouth quirk. "Go on, then."

"You're going to Hogsmeade with me."

He laughs again, releasing her hands from his, and she finds herself laughing with him, happy beyond words. "Yeah, I like that. No surprise there." His fingers seek her face, thumbs painting gentle paths on either side of her mouth as he cups her jaw. "I was never going to go with anyone else," he adds, and there's something achingly tender about it all, his hands on her face and the note in his voice. It twists her insides in the best possible way. "Not when you were even a possibility. How do you not know that by now? How many notes do I have to leave in your bag before you get it, Evans?"

The warmth of his hands and his eyes and his words combine to form the world's most perfect torture, as he watches her mouth again, his eyes clouded over with the same glossy haze that she'd seen in the lake the previous June. "Get what?" she asks, even though it's not the question she wants answered. Why aren't you kissing me? weighs more heavily on her mind, closely followed by, what do I have to do to get you to kiss me?

He pauses, clearly teetering on the edge of something of his own, and she lets him hang there.

"I'm serious about you," he says eventually, and it sounds like the confession of a dark sin. "Really serious. I have been for years, even though I rarely showed it properly. I'm sorry for that. I—"

The apology seems to flow naturally, unlike the halting, uncertain way he'd spoken to her on the final day of their fifth year, when he'd clearly hardly known what to say. The words do something truly strange to her body, knocking the air from her chest and sending her legs tightening on either side of his hips, somehow touching her emotions and turning her on all at once. It's bizarre, really and truly, and nothing she expects from herself, but—

On the other hand, it makes sense. Over the years, he's conditioned her to appreciate even the tiniest hint of personal growth, and an apology is the biggest clue to that growth that she can imagine.

He feels her legs tense, and his eyes drop to where their hips meet and to the lifted hem of her skirt, a sight he takes in for all of half a second before his brow creases. "Oh, Jesus Christ," he mutters, the same muggle swear he'd given in the corridor, but it sounds entirely different. His voice is low, once again almost pained, and he's already hard against her, but she feels him twitch in his trousers. "I'm serious about you," he repeats, and he sounds a little more normal, although there's strain in his throat. "Serious enough that I'm going to need to say goodnight to you in a minute, because—"

She's never wanted to hear the end to a sentence so badly in her life, but he stops himself. Her chest burns with desire. "James—"

"Don't." The word comes out sharper than any way he's ever spoken to her, and it shouldn't make her pulse spike even further—it shouldn't—but there's something almost erotic about it, because he sounds about as panicky as he's often made her feel. "I'm already hard, Evans. Don't say my name like that and make it worse."

His restraint is sexy. There's no other way to put it. The openness with which he wants her, and the way he seems to just hold himself back from—

Well, she's not sure from what, exactly, but she wants to find out. Badly.

"Go to bed." He makes it clear that it's not a suggestion. "Go to bed, or—"

She wants to hear the end to that too, really, but her body has other ideas. She gives in and kisses him, and his instructions collapse within a second. He groans against her mouth immediately, hands shifting to drag her impossibly closer, and the thought hits her all at once.

This is what her mum had wanted to warn her about. This, right here, that feeling of I-need-this-so-bad-that-nothing-else-matters that she's never felt when snogging any other boy. It's madness, just something outside of logic, and it floods every inch of her body.

He's going to end up killing her, or giving her life. Nothing in between.

Despite his protests, the fire dies completely in the grate before they go their separate ways. He doesn't seem too put out over it.

xxx

Yet again, she takes a note from his book with a note, one she has ready to go before she leaves her dorm the next morning. His face seems to glow when she sits down next to him at breakfast, with a happiness past anything she's ever seen from him before—ever, in seven years—but the look somehow redoubles when she drops the parchment beside his plate.

I'm serious about you too, she's written, the words she'd realized in the wee dawn hours that she hadn't said in return, even though she means them with every fiber in her being. And I was about half an hour away from shagging you in the common room last night.

His reaction is everything. He laughs. He chokes on air. He smiles, brilliant and bight. He groans, like her words have shoved a dagger through his heart—or cock, maybe. It's all so dramatic and over-the-top—and yet absolutely genuine and totally him—that his mates stop talking and hers just stare at her, like they've never seen anything more insane in their life.

Except Mary, of course. Mary smiles, small and private, as she reaches for the flagon of pumpkin juice beside her.

"That's why I told you to go to bed—" James begins, his voice strangled and almost hysterical, as he tucks the note away into the pocket of his robes with far more care than she would have thought him capable of just then. His eyes remain on her face the whole time—no, on her mouth, and his gaze has gone glossy and dazed but bright and keen all at once, a complete contradiction that, again, is somehow everything.

He wants to kiss her, but he won't. She sees that written all over his expression and the restraint that once again ropes his arms, his forearms flexing atop the table like he only just holds himself back.

She kisses him instead.

It's almost entirely like she'd imagined kissing him in the lake the year before, her hand slipping to the back of his neck to bring his head down to hers. Just like in the corridor the night before, he freezes for a second, but she doesn't second-guess her actions in the time it takes for him to gather himself together. She can feel him smile against her mouth almost instantly, and then his arms slip around her like it's the most natural thing in the world, kissing her in the middle of breakfast in the Great Hall where everyone can see them.

A crash echoes nearby, like someone has dropped their goblet—Peter, if she had to guess—but it doesn't make her pull back. Neither does the sudden hush of the voices all around them, like the entirety of the Gryffindor table has spotted them. Nothing could incentivize her to break from his mouth, not when his fingers brush her cheek and then slide into her hair, not when his hand on her back strokes a smooth, warm path down her spine.

"For fuck's sake!" Sirius exclaims, and that alone does it. She's laughing even before she ducks her head down, because she's heard him say the same three words hundreds of times by that point, but never in quite that way. He's beaming at them when she opens her eyes—no, at her, like she's given him something he's wanted desperately for years. That something is the way James smiles at her, like she's the only person in the Great Hall, his fingers still soft and gentle in her hair. "About fucking time, you two! I was starting to think it wasn't going to happen!"

James acts like he doesn't hear the words at all, a true rarity, given how in-tune he and Sirius usually are. His eyes rove her face in a tender caress, and when he speaks, it's soft and low and just for her. "I'll write you back in Transfiguration," he promises, licking his lips. "I have a lot to say."

She really, truly can't wait.