Magic

by scriibble

The first time Lily Evans and James Potter kiss, it's an accident. Admittedly, that accident is all her fault, but it's an accident just the same.

6. Chapter 6

A/N: And, just like that, it's finished.

If you enjoyed this, please let me know! I love hearing favorite parts, favorite quotes, favorite characters—and anything else you all can think of, honestly, I love it all!—and all of it especially now that the fic is complete. Drop me a note here or on Tumblr (scriibble-fics)—or both! I write because I love it, but I post in large part because I hope you all enjoy it.

Much love to you all!

Chapter Six

She kisses him at breakfast the next morning. It's just a single kiss pressed to his mouth in much the same way she'd kissed him for the first time the previous November, but the way the Great Hall silences in their immediate vicinity makes it feel like she's performed some truly lewd and lascivious act. As she pulls away, the brilliance of his smile has her convinced that he sees it rather the same, and that sends her blushing more than the stares of those around them.

"I'm still finding new love bites," she tells him, words murmured so quietly that he ducks his head closer to hers so he can hear. "I had to heal four before my shower this morning."

He nuzzles her cheek, his lips brushing near hers. "Where were they?"

"I want you to guess later. With your mouth."

He'd gone to stroke her lower back, and his hand contracts around her robes. "Fuck," he whispers, the word a little choked, and it twists her insides. He suddenly sounds ravenous, like he hasn't had her alone in days, and it leaves her feeling the same way. It's an abrupt shift from the weak protest of her muscles when she'd woken up that morning with her thighs so worn out that her legs had shaken for the first few seconds after she'd gotten out of bed. With a single word, her thighs tremble for a very different reason, and he presses another kiss closer to her ear. "I have a free period this morning. Skip Arithmancy."

"Absolutely not. James—" She uses his name mainly in protest, but he takes it along different lines and groans into the side of her neck, pleased. Just like that, the power to protest collapses in on itself.

"So, this is apparently our new reality." Sirius' voice snaps her out of the fragile magic spell that had overcome her brain, and James groans louder, though with obvious displeasure, as she pulls away. "We should probably just get used to this, lads. We all knew it would end up like this if James ever got his hooks into her, didn't we? I just expected a bit better from you, Red."

He's the only one who looks remarkably composed about the whole thing. Even Marlene stares at her with utter disbelief, like she hasn't heard months' worth of tales of much more explicit behavior than a whispered conversation at breakfast, and the rest of their friends gawk with even more blatant shock. Dorcas Meadowes has frozen altogether, napkin pressed against her lips. Mary Macdonald has syrup pooling on her plate, her hand suspended to tip the pitcher seemingly without her knowledge. Hestia Jones has her hair half-plaited but forgotten in between her fingers, her eyes as wide as saucers. In total contrast to the immobility of her friends, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin are both on the move. Peter frantically mops up the contents of his spilled goblet, and Remus works with his wand to vanish the pumpkin juice that has threatened to seep onto his seat as well. Only Sirius chews his toast with an almost absent attention to the entire situation, although his gray eyes dance in a look Lily knows well. He's pleased, well and truly pleased, and entertained beyond measure. Further, none of that chaos even begins to account for the reactions of those around their cluster of friends, but she hears whispers starting all around them. Yet, to her surprise, she finds that she hardly cares.

"I guess you don't know me that well, since you apparently still have such a high estimation of me," she tells Sirius, who winks at her.

"Only in comparison to James. I guess I should have known you were a goner too after he came back to the dorm last night, woke me up out of a dead sleep, and told me that you were his girlfriend."

By the day's end, the entire school knows.

Fortunately, by the day's end, she's so happy that the stares and flying rumors don't bother her. She's flying, suspended entirely on air when he takes her hand in the corridor, or kisses her temple as he leaves their station in Potions, or settles his arm around her in the common room. They're all actions he's done for weeks, of course, but never publicly. Somehow, the public nature makes everything feel like the first time all over again, and she's so openly giddy each time he calls her 'love,' or strokes the back of her neck, or presses some joke into her hair, that she can barely breathe. At the same time, his own open happiness almost surpasses hers, which only ratchets hers up further. They're quickly trapped in a familiar game of call-and-response, building upon each other's joy with joy of their own, and the very colors of the world have never looked brighter.

It's not all easiness and laughter and breathtaking joy, of course. It can't be.

He and his friends end up in detention before the week concludes, put there alongside Severus and his friends for reasons that James refuses to explain even after she asks him more than once. "It doesn't matter," he tells her eventually. They've taken up seats on a couch in the common room with her legs draped over his lap and his fingers woven into her hair, but the public nature of it no longer makes her quite as giddy, at least for the moment. "You know how they are. It's just the same shit, different day."

There's a bruise still forming over his left eye, one that will have to come fully to the surface before she can heal it. When she runs her fingertips across it, he flinches a little, but leans into her hand just the same. His cheek is warm against her palm. "You've always told me why you've fought with them before."

He shrugs and casts his eyes away from her face. "It's different."

"You just said it was the same shit, different day."

"Exactly. Different day."

"James—"

He ducks his head inwards towards her wrist. His lips seeking her pulse point, where he presses a faint kiss. "Don't." It's a quiet request, bordering on a rebuke, one he softens as he kisses her wrist again. "Please don't, love. Don't make me repeat what they said. I don't want to say it, and you don't need to hear it."

It's about her, then. She'd assumed as much without any evidence, but the confirmation—and the knowledge that Severus had been there, along for the ride as always—cracks her heart just a little.

He witnesses it happen on her face, his eyes drawn there reluctantly, and it forces his broad shoulders inward as he cringes. "See, this is why—" he begins, exasperation thick in his tone while his forehead creases, but he cuts himself off. Once upon a time, she would have placed the blame for his blatant irritation squarely on her own shoulders, no matter any evidence to the contrary, and felt certain that his anger lies with her. And yet—

That self-blame doesn't come, not even in the seconds that hang between them before he reaches for her waist and drags her into his lap. She knows without asking that he's not upset with her, despite what her anxious brain might want to tell her, and she trusts that knowledge immediately as she wouldn't have before. It's impossible not to trust him as he draws her face into his neck much as she'd first sat in his lap for comfort. He's warm and solid and strong, and not just in his arms around her. He's strong, impossibly so, and she feels something intense and different and unique as she curls an arm around his neck.

She might look like she's clinging to him for comfort like she never has with any other lad, but she's stronger with him. His strength gives her strength, and she knows without a stitch of confirmation that he feels the same way.

The majority of the castle adjusts to their coupling slowly but surely. People really have no choice, not when he's constantly reaching for her hand or her hair and she's constantly kissing him and they're so glued to one another's sides that both sets of their friends seem simultaneously amused and disgusted. It doesn't help that he takes none of her cautious care to heal the marks she leaves behind on his skin, and rumors explode after an incident in the Quidditch locker room where his teammates spot a welt at his waistline that he can't explain away. Really, she has the feeling that he hadn't wanted to explain it away, or perhaps that he simply hadn't stopped grinning long enough to think up some lie.

Then again, he's a shit liar—one of the absolute worst she's ever met—so perhaps he had tried to come up with something and they hadn't believed him. That's his line of reasoning when he explains it all after practice, anyway, his hair still damp from his shower and his smile just barely suppressed.

"It wasn't there this morning, I swear," he says solemnly, mouth jumping just the tiniest bit. "We had that hour after class, and you must have—"

"Show me."

His smile cracks open at that. "We're in the common room, love," he reminds her in his most exaggerated Head Boy voice. "I hardly think—"

"Obviously you hardly think." She's not sure who she's mad at, him or herself or both, but her anger at him subsides when he follows her from the common room to a nearby spare classroom so she can see the mark in question. Really, he probably shouldn't follow her, not when she knows she looks about as murderous as she feels, but the potential danger only seems to amuse and excite him further.

Of course it does. She's not even a little bit surprised about that.

"Show me," she repeats once he has the door locked behind them.

He lifts his eyebrows. "You know, if you want my trousers off, you only need to—"

"James."

He wises up then, and a little of his amusement fades as he opens the buckle of his belt and tugs the line of his trousers and pants down until he hits just under his hips. There, clear as day, she can make out the imprint of her teeth and a blossoming purple bruise. The mere sight of it brings everything back to her in a flash—his hands messy in her hair; his pleas tearing at his throat; her knees protesting as she'd knelt for far longer than she should have, intent on drawing every last sound from him—and she's suddenly hot in the darkening classroom.

"Sorry," he says, the apology softly spoken, as she runs her fingers over the bite. His breath catches in his throat, but he makes no move to reach for her even though she can feel the desire suddenly pouring off him in waves. "It wasn't—I didn't do it on purpose, love, I swear."

She believes him. Sort of. "Who all saw?"

He shifts his weight. "All the lads."

"Zachary Bishop?"

He realizes that she's caught him out immediately, evident in the sudden stillness in every muscle in his body. "Well—yeah," he admits, and his forehead creases when she draws her hand away from his waist. "But it wasn't—I didn't do it to rub his face in it, honestly. Although—"

He breaks off, and she waits an impatient five or so seconds before she prompts him. "Go on."

"I wasn't exactly mad that he saw."

Yeah, she'd figured as much.

"Don't look at me like that—like you think that makes me a terrible person," he clarifies before she can even ask. "It doesn't. Look—I've had to listen to him talk about fancying you and watch him try to chat you up during prefect meetings for months, and I've behaved myself. If this shuts him up, I'm glad. You'd think the fact that you're my girlfriend now would have done it, but lads are idiots. Since he found out we were going to Hogsmeade, he's asked me more than once, 'What's going on? Is it serious?' like he's still biding his time, looking for his in. If this tells him that I haven't said—well, good. Great."

"What did you tell him when he asked what was going on between us?"

He doesn't hesitate. "I told him that I'm going to marry you."

Despite it all, she begins to laugh, although it's reluctantly given. "You didn't."

"Of course I did." As if reassured by her laughter, he takes a tentative step towards her and reaches for her cheek. "That's what I told him today too. He said something like, 'Yeah, I see why—'"

Of course he had. Boys.

He continues, unabated. "—so I hit him."

Her laughter cuts off abruptly as his fingers slide towards her hair. "You didn't." It's more forceful the second time around.

"Of course I did." That's more forceful the second time around as well. "What, like I'm going to tolerate that sort of cheek about my girlfriend?" There's something fiercely spoken in the title, and his jaw tenses briefly, like he's clenched and then unclenched his teeth. "I wouldn't let it slide even if you weren't my girlfriend, but—fucking hell, he's an idiot." He pauses for a fraction of a second, suddenly thoughtful. "Although he did have the sense to apologize after his nose stopped bleeding. I'll give him that, at least."

"You're an idiot," she corrects. She hears it for the thousandth time: I love you.

"Sure I am, but not about this." He meets her eyes unwaveringly, and challenge flows from his gaze, like he's daring her to argue with him. He looks almost like he'd welcome the fight, but he's welcomed disagreements with her from the moment they'd met. That hasn't changed. "That's not why I'm going to marry you. I mean, don't get me wrong, it helps, but—that's not what you are to me, love."

Fuck his stupidity that has him overlooking things like love bites on his hips, and fuck Zachary Bishop and whoever else had commented in the locker room—every male member of the team, if she had to guess—but—

But, fuck, he's somehow turned it into a moment to prove his devotion to her, and he hasn't even tried. He's not attempting to manipulate the situation or her. He just does that, can somehow make everything about the depth of his feelings, all without hesitation or breaking a sweat. Open honesty rings in his voice, the same honesty that reads all over his face, and it makes it suddenly very hard for her to hold onto even a kernel of anger.

"Can I kiss you?" he asks, gaze dropping to her mouth. "Or do you want me to grovel a little? I will. I could probably get into that."

She doesn't trust herself to answer. "What are you going to do when word of this gets around and other people make the same comments?" she asks. "Punch them too?"

"Maybe. I'm hexing people less, remember, but a punch is a very different thing. I'll take it case by case."

"People are going to talk."

He waves a careless hand. "Let them. I'll set them straight. Can I kiss you?"

"Yes, but—" He silences her with a kiss, one she holds for the briefest of seconds before she pulls back. "You're going to have a hard time getting me anywhere near your cock for a while, just so you know. It's not out of spite—at least it's not entirely out of spite—but if you're so situationally unaware that you can't keep track of your own body, then—"

He laughs, and it leaves her immediately smiling along with him. "That's fine," he says, and he kisses her again. "Teach me a lesson, Evans. I can probably get into that too."

He does, of course. It's a lesson that lasts exactly eight days, eight days in which he does his very best to get her to capitulate, and she unsurprisingly gets into it as well. Really, she's come to realize that there are very few things she wouldn't get into when it comes to him, something that's infuriating and wonderful and terrifying all at once, just like he's infuriating and wonderful and terrifying all at once. Yet, as the days pass, the terrifying aspect of it all starts to fade. As the days pass, as he finds new ways to prove to her just how much he cares for her, she continues to trust in it all. Slowly but surely, she continues to trust in him.

Her own detention falls just after the eight days are up. She lands there aside two of Severus' mates, and it's suddenly her turn to refuse to tell James exactly what had happened.

"What was it you said?" she asks when he presses her on it. "Same shit, different day? It's just that."

He knows her better than that, and doesn't hesitate to call her on it. "Bollocks."

"I don't know what to tell you."

"I'd like the truth."

"I would have too. I assume it's roughly the same truth, honestly."

He stares at her, brow furrowed and mouth flat, before he leaves the common room without another word. The next day, she's not surprised when he ends up beside her in detention, and they scrub the trophies in the Trophy Room side by side. Filch supervises for exactly forty-five minutes before his suspicion lowers enough to leave them to it.

"I'm sorry," James says immediately. He tosses his brush towards the bucket of polish near his knees. "For not telling you before. That was shit. I get it. I'm not sure if we're rowing or not, but I'd like to not row, if it's possible."

She lowers her own brush, although she doesn't set it aside. "I didn't think we were rowing."

His shoulders loosen visibly. "Good. Good, because—I don't have it in me to fight with you. Not seriously, anyway."

The room falls silent again, so silent that she can hear the staircases shifting outside the closed door. He has a certain solemn softness in the way he watches her, and his eyes look so gentle that she can hardly stand to meet them. "Did Mulciber tell you what he said to me?" she asks quietly.

He snorts, the sound entirely humorless. "'Course he did. He couldn't wait to repeat it. He laughed the whole time we were dueling, and kept going on about—" He stops speaking abruptly, and she lets him hang there, his expression one of total discomfort. "You know," he says eventually, and he looks away. "What he'd heard about your mouth. And me."

She can picture it almost too clearly, the scene he describes, and she does set down her brush at that. She feels a bit sick, although she's not sure if the feeling comes from his words or from the silver polish fumes. "I don't blame you for the things he said."

But he blames himself. She sees that as he flinches a little, like she's said something hurtful and said it harshly, rather than the quiet way she'd sought to reassure him. "They're shit," he says instead of answering, his voice as sharp as a razor's edge. "Such shit. They were already running their mouths before they knew that we'd done anything, but as soon as they had even a little confirmation, they couldn't wait to go on about it more. My mates would never—fuck, we'd never talk about a girl that way."

"It's different. I'm not a girl to them. I'm a mudblood."

He flinches again, more blatantly than before. "Don't." It comes out even sharper. "Don't call yourself that."

"It's true. That's how they see me. You know that."

He says nothing. Really, there's nothing he can say.

He looks so wretched, so entirely upset without a single attempt at hiding it, that she can't help but want to fix the look on his face. "Will you come here?" she asks.

He's on his feet and in front of her immediately, and he tugs her up so he can hug her. "Lily—" he murmurs, lips pressed against her forehead, and her heart leaps foolishly at the simple use of her name. "Lily, love—"

His mouth brushes tenderly at her hairline, against her temple, down one side of her face, all areas he's kissed a thousand times before, but he somehow finds a way to make it all feel new again. It certainly feels different than any time he's kissed her before, and she detects the shadow of a message hidden in the way he gently maps the contours of her face like he's memorizing her every feature with his lips. He kisses along her jaw, up the bridge of her nose, between her brows. He kisses over the dimple that graces each of her cheeks, dimples that have formed by then, because she's started to smile. He kisses her eyelids, and each of those kisses comes even more tenderly than the dozens before. He kisses her a hundred other places, over every millimeter of her face, until she finally gives in and pulls him down to her mouth. Even then, he acts with surprising gentleness. His kiss holds less desperation than she's used to, because they're typically both desperate by the time he presses her back against something—in this case, the nearest glass trophy cabinet—but the moment feels more measured than usual. Each of his movements come deliberately, ones he slowly and carefully considers before completion. It hardly matters that his hands smell like silver polish or that he transfers that scent to her hair as his fingers stroke smooth patterns against her scalp. She's suddenly never appreciated him more, wanted him more, loved him more, than she does as he cradles her like she's more precious than anything else in the entire world. She feels that way, certainly, against the reassuring warmth of his body.

Because she feels so safe, so protected, so overwhelmingly whole, she admits a hidden truth when he drops his lips from hers to kiss her chin, and then her throat, and then her collarbone, each kiss more softly given than the last. "I'm scared," she whispers, her hands tight in his back.

His breath comes heavily, and his mouth lingers just above the top button of her shirt. "Of what, love?" he asks, and he pauses there, like he's drinking in the scent of her skin.

"I'm afraid—" She falters for a moment as his mouth dips lower until he kisses over the thin fabric separating him from her pounding heart. "I'm afraid something will happen to mess this up, or—I don't know. That you'll change your mind, maybe, and I wouldn't blame you if you did. I know what it means to date me. This isn't a war that you have to fight, and—"

"Yes, it is." He rears back from her suddenly, but only far enough that he can look at her. "Look, I—Evans, this isn't dramatic and I'm not exaggerating. It's seriously straight fact, okay?" He pauses, brow furrowed, and looks away. "I'd die before I'd let something mess this up or before I'd change my mind. Honestly, I can't change my mind. Not about you, or about—about how it's not right, all of this, the things that are happening to muggleborns. I'd feel this way even without you, but with you—even if we were just mates, and nothing more, I couldn't—" He licks his lips, his words faltering. "I couldn't let anything happen to you, or to Mary, or to anyone else. It doesn't matter that I don't have to fight. I'm going to fight, and I'm not going to let you down. I promise. I swear. I—"

Footsteps. Footsteps slap against the stone outside the door, and his body stills against hers, like an animal caught in a spotlight. He releases her and returns to his station with a chaser's speed.

Filch reappears with his cat on his heels. James has already sunk back to his knees, and her heart pounds in her throat as she prizes open the case behind her to reach for another trophy. Yet Filch catches wind of the change between them anyway, evident in the sharp lines that cross his face. He must detect the magic in the air, because there's no other hint of impropriety, and he takes up a perch to watch them for the next six hours. The time passes in silence, but she finds James looking at her every time she so much as glances his way. His eyes hold such warmth that she eventually shucks off her robes from sweat that has nothing to do with her exertion.

They end up in the prefects' bathroom again afterwards, and he kisses the bruises from her knees and washes the smell of silver polish from her hair and rubs the knots from her shoulders. She does it all in return as well, and heals the cracked calluses on his palms, ones caused by Quidditch but irritated by the polish until they've broken open. They don't speak much, but there's also not much to say. I love you are the only words left unsaid, but they're both waiting on something—timing, perhaps, or the other person to voice it first. Who knows.

All she knows is that he loves her in return, and she knows it without question and despite the constant workings of her ever-neurotic brain. She sees the feeling trapped just under the surface of his expression, and she doesn't question it or second-guess her perception. Instead, the knowledge soothes her every bit as much as the hot water around them and his fingers in her hair and his hands on her shoulders. He loves her, she sees in the soft crinkle of his eyes and feels in the gentle pressure of his lips on every part of her he can reach, and it's so beautiful that she could cry.

xxx

She finds what they're both waiting for one Friday night in early April.

Absurdly, they're both waiting for Severus, and he's to blame—or to thank, truly—for everything that follows.

She and James take to patrolling together whenever possible, and it doesn't matter that that doubles her patrol hours and therefore significantly cuts back on her NEWTs prep. Really, schoolwork has never felt less pressing in general, and has gotten thrown into the backseat of her life, no longer the priority she'd once considered it. She knows that will fade as June comes closer, but she doesn't let herself dwell on it too much. Her days are too full of smiles and laughter and kisses and held hands, and hours spent in dark corridors on patrol are especially rife with all of those wonderful, incredible things.

Their schedules don't always mesh. He has other responsibilities—Quidditch and his mates, mainly—and she does too, although her friends and various study groups and clubs all look a little too understanding when she trades in obligations for the reassuring warmth of his arms. One of those conflicts rears its head on a night where she's scheduled for patrol and he has a last-minute Quidditch strategy session before Gryffindor plays Ravenclaw the next day. He looks perhaps more annoyed over it than she does, even though he's already ostensibly in his happy place: seated at a table in the common room, surrounded by a plethora of Quidditch diagrams. "I'd rather be out there with you," he tells her, and she very nearly laughs at the unhappy twist of his mouth.

"You would not." She bends to kiss his cheek. "You love Quidditch."

With a hand cupped over her cheek, he pulls her to his mouth instead, and he holds her there even after she makes it clear that she's happy to lose a minute or so to kissing him. He looks considerably happier when she finally straightens back up, her lips almost impossibly warm from his, although there's still reluctance in his tone. "Yeah, it's great," he says dismissively. "But I like you more."

That almost sounds like I love you, if she's not mistaken.

"Finish up early and come find me," she suggests, and he perks up at that, literally leaning forward in his seat. His obvious excitement, even after so many months spent tangled up in her arms, only increases her own. "I assume you'll have pre-Quidditch nerves you'll need to work out somehow."

He's spent the past several weeks breaking down each of Ravenclaw's weaknesses to her, more arrogantly convinced of his team's certain victory than she's ever seen. Still, his answer doesn't surprise her at all. "So many nerves," he says, the answer immediate. "You'd do the team a real service if you'll—"

"Service you?"

He ducks his head down in quiet laughter. "Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Now, go on before I get too ahead of myself and decide to just leave the team to fend for themselves."

The temptation to see if she can push him to that exact place weighs so heavily on her mind that it almost physically hurts to leave him behind. Then again, he's hardly left her side in weeks, and it's made every moment without him a little bit painful.

She's so far gone. It's a mess.

Patrol goes smoothly for a Friday night. Typically, weekends mean far more truant students out of bed, and the lack of a single soul has her convinced that James isn't the only one eagerly awaiting the next day's match. Walking the entire castle twice over, she only catches sight of one other person: Professor McGonagall, who stops to compliment her most recent Transfiguration essay.

"I just finished grading, and it was one of the best in the class." McGonagall's rare smile means perhaps more to her than the compliment itself, and Lily can't help but beam in return. "You've improved greatly this year."

The words slip from her mouth outside of her control. "It's all down to James. He's helped me a lot."

McGonagall's smile widens until it subtracts years from her age. "Yes," she says, tone a little dry. "I assumed he had something to do with it. After all, he's very clearly tried to help you for years."

Lily's still laughing, torn somewhere between mortified and amused beyond all measure, when she hears her name spoken near the Great Hall. He hasn't said her name in years, but she still recognizes Severus' voice before she sees him, and her gut plunges instantly into the depths of an icy cold hell.

He's waiting by the entrance to the dungeons, his hair hooked behind his ears. He's grown taller since they stopped speaking, and the angles of his face have grown almost frighteningly sharp, but—

For a moment, he looks like Sev again, like the small boy in Cokeworth who had introduced her to magic and had made her feel understood—truly, deeply, entirely understood—for the first time in her life.

"Hey," he says quietly when she halts before him. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, his dark eyes on the illuminated tip of her wand.

She doesn't speak. Really, she has nothing to say, and he must know that. How can he not?

"Can I walk with you a bit?" he asks. "I'm—"

"You're not on patrol." It's weak, but it's all she can think to say. She feels slightly stronger, but also slightly cruel, when she adds, "I'd never schedule us on the same night. I've set the rounds that way on purpose."

He flinches like she's raised a hand to him, but he moves past it quickly. "I switched days with Morris. I wanted to talk to you."

"But only when your mates can't see you with a mudblood, right?"

"No. Not right." He sighs and runs a hand over his face. His fingers drag the corners of his mouth, already frowning, into an almost grotesque grimace. "Lily, I'd talk to you in front of them if you'd give me a chance, but you won't. I just need a minute. Just talk to me for a minute, and I'll—"

"So talk."

"Can we walk?"

Her heart hurts, although if it's from the pace of her heartbeats or familiar, overwhelming sadness, she doesn't know. "No. I'd rather not. What is it, Sev?"

It's a slip up, and a foolish one. She's only called him 'Snape' since their friendship had shattered, a change that had taken weeks of practice in her mind over the summer between fifth and sixth year. She'd spent endless nights playing it all back in her mind—the furious contortion of his face when he'd called her a mudblood, the sore rawness of her face from hours of sobbing into her hands in an unused classroom that evening, his abject misery when he'd apologized the next night—and had repeated his name in a loop in her mind. Snape, Snape, Snape, she'd thought, because 'Sev' had died that day along with a giant chunk of her soul. She hasn't so much as addressed him since, and white hot anger courses through her veins the moment she says his childhood nickname, although it's anger directed entirely inward.

She's no longer even a little angry at him. Anger requires care, and she's ceased to care about him entirely—or so she tells herself. Truly, she tells herself that more often than she'd like.

His nickname does exactly what she hadn't wanted and spurs him forward, as if it's reassured him of the validity of his mission. He reveals that mission in three terse words, each one carefully spoken. "It's about Potter."

Of course it is.

"No." Suddenly, the anger inside her rushes outwards, and vitriol pours from her mouth. "No, you don't get to—you have no right to say a single word about him, or us." 'Us' still hasn't lost its shine, and sounds every inch as beautiful as the first time James had spoken it in the moments before she'd asked him out. She holds onto that brilliant shine with a literal fist, which closes at her side. "I don't want to hear it, whatever you have to say. God, you must think I'm an idiot if you think I'm going to stand around while you talk shit about—about my boyfriend." She hasn't called him that often, not in the way that James tosses 'girlfriend' around casually and seriously and teasingly and reverently and everywhere in between. She's saved it, kept it tightly cradled inside her chest for her and her alone, and it sounds almost jarring to throw at Severus in anger.

Still, it works. He flinches again, as if she's jabbed her wand into an open wound. "I'm not—" he tries, the words haltingly spoken, but she's already turning. He moves with alarming speed, and closes the steps to her. His hand flies out to stop her, and his fingers lock around her wrist. "Lily, just—will you just let me—"

She pulls away from him so sharply that she almost falls backwards from the force of it. "Don't touch me," she says. Her voice, shrill and sharp, bounces up into the Entrance Hall's high ceiling and echoes back down to them. It sounds like a dozen Lilys have chastised him all at once.

He lifts both hands immediately, like she holds him at the end of her wand and not at the end of a poisonous gaze. "Okay. Okay, I won't. But—please talk to me. Two minutes. That's all I'm asking."

She shouldn't. She absolutely shouldn't, and she knows it. He's not entitled to her time or attention, and he doesn't deserve either. He's picked his side and she's picked hers, and he's had almost two years to try to talk to her. It's not a coincidence that he suddenly only wants to speak to her once she's publicly attached herself to James, or that James is all he wants to talk about. She knows how the conversation will go before it even starts, because they've never once had a productive conversation about James, not even back when they'd both hated him. And yet—

Yet he looks once again almost like her old friend, no doubt aided by his lack of bigoted housemates flanking him, which is the only way she's seen him for years. She can all too easily picture the same agonized expression on his face in Cokeworth, back when he'd once shown up at her parents' door at all hours because his mum and dad had gotten into a brutal row and he'd had nowhere else to go.

Perhaps it isn't fair, but she'll later wonder if he'd banked upon that past affection to get her to stay.

"What?" she asks, the single word a little broken. She hates herself for the question, and the way it's asked, almost immediately. "What do you want?"

She already knows. She knows before he's even spoken.

He starts down a different path than she expects. "I miss you," he says. He drops his hands from in front of him, and once again pushes them into his pockets. "And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything."

Her throat tightens painfully. "You have a strange way of showing it. You let your friends say things—"

"I don't control them."

Sirius' words ring loud and clear in her memory, almost as if he hovers behind her and speaks into her ear. "Stop talking shit about my friend," he'd said to her, his voice bizarrely grave, when she'd once insulted herself. "I wouldn't let anyone else do it, so I'm not letting you do it either."

That. That's friendship, not this abomination of excuses and misplaced blame that lingers between her and Snape.

"I don't control them, but I'm sorry for it just the same," he continues, each word quicker than the last. He seems to know that she's halfway to turning away again, only this time she won't let him stop her. "But that's not what this is about. I—"

She watches him falter, and she waits. He dangles on the edge of something, and she allows him to hang there, dark misery all over his face. "Just say it."

Her allowance pushes him over the edge. "I care about you," he says. When she scoffs, unable to stop herself, he insists, "I do, Lily. I always will, no matter what happens between us. I don't have control over it. You're—you're my best friend."

It's too close, far too close, to the way she feels about him. The tightness of her throat only increases, but she somehow gets the words out. "We were best friends. We're not anymore. We haven't been for years."

"You'll always be my best friend. Always." He takes a deep breath, one entirely at odds with the shallow pace of her chest. "I care about you," he repeats. Intensity reigns in his eyes. "I care about you way too much to watch someone like Potter break your heart, and he will if you give him the chance. You knew that once. You saw him for the arrogant bully he is, and you hated him for it. I don't know what changed, but—"

"He changed. He changed, and so did you, only he changed for the better."

It hits him the hardest of everything she's said so far, more effective than if she'd hexed or hit him, yet it pushes him to anger, not sadness. "You—you're wrong," he says, the words more snarled than spoken. "You're so wrong and you can't even see it. You're just like every other girl now, and blinded by—what? What is it about him that's made you set aside everything he's done, and the way he struts around here like he owns the place, and his—"

She could answer in dozens of different ways. She could tell him about James' extraordinary kindness towards his friends, or how he sometimes helps younger students in Transfiguration, or his willingness to fight battles that aren't his own. She could tell him how James makes her laugh like no one else ever has, or how he remembers things about her that she doesn't even recall telling him, or how he makes her feel safe in a very unsafe world. She could tell him how James sometimes does things to her body that make her forget her own name, or that he often carries her books just because he's determined to be the best boyfriend possible, or how he can sometimes communicate things to her without a single word.

But she won't. He doesn't deserve to hear any of that. He doesn't deserve to know a single fucking thing about James Potter or the way she feels about him.

"Are you done?" she asks instead. "You've warned me. I've listened. Will you leave me alone now?"

Severus ignores her questions. "He's using you," he says flatly. "Purebloods, they'll do this with muggleborn witches. I've heard my friends talk about it before. They've said—"

"I'm sure they've had a lot to say about it, and especially to say about me. They've said that to me, Sev, so I can't imagine what they say when I'm not around." His nickname no longer affects her. She doesn't feel the slightest bit of regret using it, and she wants to use it, only this time as a weapon. It's a knife she wants to twist repeatedly. "What do you do when they talk like that, Sev? What do you say? Do you defend me? Do you tell Mulciber not to talk about what he'd like to do to my mouth, or do you leave that for me to do when he says it to my face?"

He goes white against the lank length of his black hair. "That isn't what this is about."

"Isn't it? What, you care about me enough to not want me to be happy with James, but not enough to stand up for me when your mates talk about assaulting me? Jesus Christ, how much sense does that make?"

"I don't want to see you get hurt."

It sounds like a shield he's conjured in front of himself, and an ineffectual one at that. Truly, she's sure her frustration and heartbreak and nausea could break through any barrier he might place in front of him, physical or verbal. "You don't want to see James make me happy. That's what this is. Don't pretend it's anything else."

"He's using you, Lily."

Somehow, the second time around, it hits her harder than the first. Perhaps the furious simplicity in his tone, one that matches hers word for word, tears through her upset. She's not sure. She only knows that he repeats precisely what Marlene had first suggested weeks earlier, however flippantly. "I don't know why he puts up with you," she'd said, "Although I guess now I do, since I know what you're up to." The mere suggestion that James might have liked her for a purely physical reason had crushed her, had sent her into an anxiety spiral that had lasted days, had almost made her ruin things between them in a demented form of self-preservation.

She waits for all of those fears to come rushing back at the speed of a charging bull. Surely, it's only a matter of time.

It doesn't happen.

Severus takes her silence as an opportunity to continue. "It's his fault my friends said anything to you. If he wasn't out there bragging about—about you, none of that would have happened. But he couldn't keep his mouth shut, could he? Anything they said to you after that, it's only because he's out there running his mouth about—"

"You're wrong."

She hears the wonder in her own voice, her anger abruptly set aside and suddenly nothing more than a distant memory. It stops him up short. For a moment, they simply stare at each other.

"You're wrong," she says again. The tightness in her throat has shifted, breaths coming difficultly for a very different reason. "You can give it up. Nothing you say could convince me that he's using me. I know how he feels. He's told me and shown me in a hundred different ways. I trust that—no, I trust him. Not you."

Excitement. It's excitement that blossoms in her stomach, floods her chest, fills her mouth. She's excited beyond words, because she means it.

Severus' mouth puckers sourly, like he's tasted something foul. "Don't—"

"You don't. Whatever you're going to say—don't. You're wasting your time, and you're way too late. He had me falling in love with him months ago. At this point—"

A choked sound erupts from near the Grand Staircase. She recognizes the noise immediately, and she knows the source even before she turns. Heat rushes to her face, and her pulse skyrockets so fast that she's suddenly dizzy from it.

It's James, of course. It's James, and he's staring at her with the wildest eyes she's ever seen. Based on the look on his face, she has to wonder if he's even noticed Severus.

Severus has his wand out in a flash, and he hurls a hex James' way that breaks the spell that had overcome the room the moment she'd met James' eyes. James ducks out of the way of the red, angry-looking hex, and he tosses something back in a brilliant jet of blue. Severus deflects the spell easily, and sends it hurtling towards a stone wall with a sickening crack. He has his wand up, ready to add another spell to the fray—and a more serious one, based on the rage on his face—when—

Lily doesn't think. She disarms him neatly, Expelliarmus cast wordlessly. His wand flies out of his hand, and she catches it between numb fingers.

For a beat, no one speaks.

James breaks the silence first, of course. "Alright, Evans?" he asks, and she turns in time to see him lower his wand until it rests casually by his side. His face is a brilliant map of excitement, although how much of that comes from the seconds of dueling and how much comes from what he's walked in on, she doesn't know.

She could laugh, and she very nearly does. The urge bubbles in her chest. "I'm good."

"I finished up early, so I came to find you."

"I see that." Really, she doesn't know what else to say.

He does. "No reason to waste more time on this git. Give him his wand back so we can finish patrolling, love."

The temptation to refuse rears its ugly head, because the determination to challenge him has never gone away, and she doubts it ever will. Yet she can't refuse, not when he's offering her both an out to a situation she wants to avoid, as well as the prospect of something she wants very much: him.

So she listens, although she waits for James to raise his wand before she hands Severus his. She doesn't trust him not to strike again, not when he's staring at James like he's never hated anyone more in his life, and that expression only flickers when he takes his wand from her offered hand. He swallows so loud she can hear it, and his mouth opens and then hangs there for a second before she turns away. "Lily—"

She doesn't give him a chance to continue. She crosses the Entrance Hall and climbs up the stairs, towards James, before he can say anything else.

xxx

James takes her straight to their office without a word. He also doesn't touch her the entire time, although she waits for him to take her hand or put his arm around her shoulders or at least ask her if she's okay.

He doesn't. He doesn't even after they've entered the familiar safety of the tiny room, or after he locks and silences the door, or after he lights a fire in the grate. Once he completes the final action, he stands in front of the flames with his hands in his hair. He stays like that, staring at nothing, while she hesitates near his desk.

Her heart rate hasn't decreased. If anything, it's increased, and increases with each passing second. "Are you—"

"Give me a second," he says. He runs his fingers through his hair a second time and then a third, until he looks as she knows he must when he's just climbed out of bed. She's imagined the scene far too often—and her emerging from that same bed—to think of his hair in any other way. "I need a second, or—"

He doesn't go on, and she's not sure if she's ever wanted him to finish a thought so badly. For the first time in weeks, she's suddenly, unavoidably afraid. Still, she prompts him anyway, despite the dread that crawls up her body from the tips of her toes. "Or?"

"Evans." He says it in warning, and he casts her a look she knows well—hot, searingly hot, and full of desperate, open longing—that vanishes her worries instantly, although her adrenaline stays. "I—fuck, I want to talk to you. I do. But I need a minute or I'm going to jump you, because—that was—"

She should look away from him, but she can't. Her cheeks warm, surely as hot as the fire in front of him. "How much did you hear?"

"A lot. Most of it, I think. I don't know." His voice breaks, the sound slightly hysterical. "I heard what you said about Mulciber—and, for the record, fuck him, and fuck Snape for defending him."

'Snape,' not 'Snivellus.' She knows a concession to her when she hears one.

"I heard you say that you trust me," he continues, although he falls silent immediately after. The wonder she'd heard in her voice in the Entrance Hall has migrated its way to his, and he sounds like he understands the gravity of what that means.

Would anyone else? Would any of her friends, even Marlene, understand what it means that she trusts someone, let alone that that someone is James Potter?

"I meant it," she says quietly, and his throat bobs as he swallows.

He breathes in deeply. "Did you mean it when you said—" For a second, he looks incapable of finishing the question. His throat works furiously, like his mouth has gone completely dry, and she waits. "I love you," he says, voice unexpectedly steady. He's not a man who's ever doubted himself—ever, in all the years she's known him—but he sounds suddenly more certain than she's ever heard before. "I love you, Lily."

The words extend an invitation, an invitation that echoes the one he'd given the night she'd asked him to Hogsmeade. He expects her to say it back, just as he'd expected her to answer in kind when he'd told her he was crazy about her.

Her breath catches in her throat, her heart pounds out of her chest, her legs quiver with something close to arousal, and she waits. She waits and she savors, relishing the moment, relishing the hope, relishing the magic, relishing him.

"I love you too." Her voice sounds unlike she's ever heard it before, so tight that she could swear it has come from someone else. Still, she's never meant anything more in her life. "Obviously I love you too. I wouldn't say that just to piss Snape off, even though I'm sure it wouldn't bother you too much if I did. I could see you laughing about it, honestly."

He does laugh, and so loudly that she jumps a little as his head rocks back from the force of it. "Evans—" he says again, but in an entirely different manner than before. There's no more warning in his tone. It's all warmth instead, so thick and obvious that it slides over her body like a familiar, favorite blanket. "Evans, what the fuck. What the fuck—"

She barely has the time to react before he shoves her onto the messy top of his desk. Her back sends a stack of Herbology books tumbling to the ground, and his hands reach for her face as his mouth presses to hers with no finesse. From the get, his kiss is desperate and greedy with no typical consideration or care, like he's nearer the end of arousal than the beginning. Only after he drops a hand to her waist, where he hooks an arm to pull her to the edge of the desk, does she realize that there's perhaps truth in that assessment. He's already hardening through his trousers, like she's touched something inside him that has him going before she touches him at all, and that hardness increases exponentially when she wraps her legs around his waist.

"Fuck," he says into her mouth as his hips snap forward. Her legs tighten further on instinct, and further still when his tongue sweeps back into her mouth. His tongue twists, swirls, teases the roof of her mouth, darts back out again so he can nip at her lower lip, and the process of it all sends her mind hurtling to the same patterns he's often drawn between her legs. "Fuck—" he says again, weaker than before, when she drags him closer by the back of his hair. They're suddenly both panting into the kiss, breaths mingled and limbs tangled and bodies mutually on fire. "Evans—"

Her name comes out as a plea and a promise both, and she whines a little, one of her hands dropping to tug impatiently at the tuck of his shirt. "I want you," she says as he kisses towards her ear, his lips feverish against her flushed skin. "James, please—"

He stills, his breath hot under her ear. Every muscle in his back feels tensed to the max. "You want what?" he asks, and his voice cracks a little from the intensity of the question. It shouldn't make her shiver, but it does. "Tell me. Tell me, love, and it's yours."

He already knows, or at least suspects and very much hopes. She hears it in his voice and feels it in his cock, which twitches impatiently behind the zipper of his trousers. Still, whether he suspects it or not, he clearly wants to hear her say it, and she'll give him that. Truly, she'll give him anything he wants. She loves him, after all. She loves him so much that she can hardly breathe.

"Fuck me," she says. The words throb in her throat, painful and tight, a tightness that only increases when he makes a short, inhuman noise in response. "I want you to fuck me, I want you inside me, I love you, I love you, I love you—"

She might have carried on that way forever, each declaration only increasing the need for the next, because the demand for him to understand her devotion boils over in her veins. Months' worth of longing, months' worth of desire, months' worth of love has her head swimming and her heart pounding and her body aflame, and she knows no better way to describe it all than to speak the words over and over until he begs her to stop.

He stops her with a kiss instead, a kiss pressed furiously to her mouth as he leans her back onto the desktop until he's stood over her, one hand cradling the back of her head while the other works impatiently at the buttons on her blouse. That impatience culminates abruptly in a broken, frustrated groan, and his hand leaves her head to join the other the moment she's flat on her back. In several short, sharp motions, he has her shirt wrenched apart. Buttons scatter across the desk and onto the stone floor, and he swears as she gasps when his hot, calloused hands close around her bare sides. "Lily—" he breathes, and he brushes his nose briefly against hers, the motion simple and sweet, before he bends to greedily map the newly-exposed skin of her chest.

Her insides twist wildly, and she copies the feeling with her hands in his hair as she twirls curls between clenched fingers. "Touch me," she pleads as his lips skim over the top of one breast. She drops her legs from his waist, and he gives a quiet sound of loss in return, one muffled as he drags his tongue across the thin lace separating him from her nipple. "Fuck, James, just—"

"Don't rush me, Evans." He follows the reprimand by latching his lips around her nipple, and she feels his pleased groan reverberate through every inch of her body. "Don't rush me, and say it again."

Frustration builds as he drops his lips lower, scattering kisses across the taut stretch of her stomach, which heaves with unsteady breaths. "I—which part?"

"All of it."

She should have seen that coming, really.

Her pride piques with a sudden stab to her chest. "You're the worst," tumbles from her mouth, and he pauses just above her skirt to glance up at her. His eyes shine behind his glasses, brilliant and bright, and she doesn't need to see his mouth to know he smiles. "The absolute fucking worst. I don't know what you want from me, but you—"

"Yes, you do." He pulls his glasses off, and they join his Herbology books on the floor in short order. "I've been pretty clear about that." His fingers reach for the laces on her shoes, and his eyes remain locked on her face as he slides one shoe and then the other off her heels. He drops both to the floor. "I want you to marry me, Evans. How many times do you need me to say it?"

Laughter mixes with frustration in her throat. "You're such a prat."

He laughs against her stomach, his breath tickling her skin. "You can keep saying that too, if you want. I'm not against it. Like I've said—it makes me harder." Before she can respond, he drops his head underneath the hem of her skirt, a hem he pushes further north as he skates his lips across her inner thigh. Her legs immediately open wider outside of her control, and he swears gently into her skin. "Fucking hell," he mutters, and he no longer sounds even the slightest bit amused as his fingers crawl up her left leg to reach the top of her stocking. She's somehow winded him, and she'd like to bottle it, how his tone switches to one full of thick heat at the drop of a hat. His lips join the progress of his hands as he slowly unrolls her stocking, and he presses kisses across every inch of revealed skin. His tongue dances across her thigh, his teeth nip at the underside of her knee, his lips lightly linger at her ankle, and all with such incredible care and at such an unhurried pace that she can't speak so much as a single word. She can only watch, fascinated and enthralled and tortured, as her calf somehow becomes the most erogenous part of her body when he lifts her ankle to prop upon his shoulder so he can decorate kisses there.

"James—" she finally manages when his hands move to her other stocking. He fingers the elastic around her thigh with slow strokes, and desire floods her mouth until she has to swallow more than once just to regain control over her voice. He nuzzles the space just above her knee, eyebrows lifted as he glances back towards her face. "I love you."

The taunt on his face collapses into a welcome, familiar expression of longing. "Yeah?" he asks quickly, as quick as the lick he gives to his lips. His tongue brushes her skin, and he gives in when she whimpers and returns it there with more purpose, sucking briefly at the inside of her thigh. "For months, I heard you say."

"Yes. Yes." The second 'yes' comes out more aggressively than the first, caught somewhere between the truth and desperate encouragement as he brings his head higher, until his mouth travels along the lace that lines her knickers. That, more than anything, drives her forward. "I've—I knew I was falling in love with you way back in January, but—even before we went to Hogsmeade for the first time, I just knew I loved you. And then—fuck, James, you've made me so happy—so happy that—oh—oh—"

Her words die in her throat as he gives into the pressure of her hands and launches his mouth between her legs. His tongue offers none of its typical teasing as he swipes over the center of her knickers a single time before he zeroes in on her clit. Once there, his mouth feels impossibly hot and unbearably promising as he draws a quick, tight circle that sends her head flying backwards. "What the fuck—" he says for a third time as he pulls her stocking down with all of the haste he hadn't exhibited on her other leg. His fingers grip her thighs afterwards, opening her legs even wider, and his tongue twists cleverly over the soaking fabric of her knickers as he presses beautiful, incredible, searing affirmations between her legs. "Evans, I've been in love with you for years—years—" he says, his voice wild and wondering and perfect all at once. "I never thought you'd give me the time of day, let alone—if I'd known you felt like this, I would have asked you out months ago. But I figured you didn't even—I thought sometimes maybe, maybe you felt something, but even then—fuck, I just didn't know—" He drags her knickers down her legs with such frenzied impatience that they don't even make it to the floor. They continue to hang around one ankle even after she bends her knees and brings her heels to the polished surface of his desk, intent on pressing against his mouth fully. "Oh, Christ—" he breathes, tongue tracing her folds. "Christ, Lily, you're soaked."

She has no idea how she could be anything else when he resumes the tender circles around her clit, caresses no longer hindered by her knickers and accompanied by a series of persistent moans each time he exhales. She feels each expression of pleasure in every inch of her skin, which vibrates with gratification unlike anything he's ever inspired in her before. It goes deeper than the heat that floods her stomach and the sparks that shoot into her limbs, inspired not just by the physical sensations he expertly coaxes from her body, but from the words he continues to speak in between panted breaths.

"I love you," he repeats over and over again, so many times that she loses track. "I love you—you're beautiful—you're incredible—so fucking incredible—just—marry me, Evans—"

A realization hits her abruptly around the third or fourth time he speaks a proposal into her cunt.

What had initially started as banter—or she'd at least taken as banter—has started to sound more and more serious. Or perhaps she's just started to take it more and more seriously, as something that he might one day potentially mean, and she might potentially answer with one of the breathless yeses she gives in response to the talented work of his tongue.

She could come easily just from the feverish tone of his voice and the sweet promise of his words, let alone the physical reality of his actions. The combination gets her close quicker than ever before, and she forces herself to stop him before she falls over the final peak. He manages to act even more disappointed than she feels, like she's personally insulted him by even briefly denying him her orgasm, and she can't help but laugh at the sudden reversals in their attitudes. Suddenly she has the presence of mind and self-control to slow things down, and suddenly he swears with furious exasperation when she gets him to halt the attention of his mouth long enough for her to sit up.

"Love—" he protests, his cheeks flushed and his eyes pleading, before she surges forward to capture his lips in a kiss. His mouth slides wetly under hers, and she tastes herself on his tongue as he crushes a hand to her hair. He only breaks away when she reaches for his trousers, and he gives a long, slow exhale as she plucks at his belt. "Lily, I want—" His voice breaks twice, once over her name and once over wanting, and only that could convince her to stop. Her hands freeze, and his eyes remain locked there, even while hers return to his face. "I want you," he says, and his gaze flickers to hers. Whatever he sees there makes him tip his chin up to look at her fully, and briefly distracts him from her hands so close to his cock. "C'mon, you know that. I've wanted this for years—wanted you for years—even before you kissed me. The second you did that—let alone when you started surpassing even my filthiest fantasies—it was—"

"Really? You're apparently not terribly inventive in your fantasies. That's a bit disappointing."

He snorts with quiet laughter, and a smile creeps slowly across his jaw. "You know what they say—undersell and overperform. I can't give too much away just yet." He glances back down, where her fingers remain against the button of his trousers, and she hears him swallow. "Look—we don't have to shag. That's not what I want from you. I can wait. I'm fine waiting. I don't want you to think—" He swallows again, harder than before. "I'm not using you, love. That's never even—"

It's her turn to stare. "Is this because of what Snape said?"

Snape. He's become 'Snape' once again. 'Sev' no longer exists.

"No," he insists, but he lies as convincingly as ever, meaning not well at all. The false bravado rings in his tone for the entirety of two or three seconds before it drops fully. With it, his face drops fully too, and he sighs. "Look, I just—I don't want you to even have to consider that as a possibility. I don't want that anywhere even near your head, Evans, and I don't want it to—to, I don't know, get in your mind and fester or something. I don't—"

"I didn't pay him any mind. Honestly, you've already pretty much made me forget that I even saw him tonight."

A second smile flickers over his face, one that holds a familiar tinge of arrogance. "Evans." His voice carries warning once again, a warning completely at odds with his expression. "Don't appeal to my ego. That's not even remotely fair."

"I'm not above playing dirty, so I don't know why you think I am."

She can peg the exact moment that he recognizes his own words tossed back at him, and his smile softens slowly but surely as his hand slides from her hair to her cheek. There, he traces a knuckle across her cheekbone, much as he had on their first date, and the gesture holds the same sort of abject wonder as his eyes follow the caress. "Fuck, you're something," he says, gentle reverence in his voice. "You're—I don't know the right words for it, but—you're something, Lily Evans."

Her name sounds like an incantation on his lips. Between that, and the heat in his eyes, and his fingertips on her skin, she shivers a little. "Do you want me to keep playing dirty?" she asks after a moment, a moment so heavy that she jumps slightly when the fire crackles behind them.

He doesn't jump. In fact, he watches her with such intensity that she's not sure if he heard the fire at all. "Yes," he says, the answer quick and shameless and a bit hoarse. "Obviously. I'll always answer 'yes' to that, love."

"Always?"

His hand travels down to the side of her neck, where his fingers splay so wide that he can surely feel her pulse hammering wildly. "Yes. Always. There won't ever be a time when I don't want you. I read that in your palm too."

She picks up her prior work on his belt, and his eyes drop down to watch her progress with a fresh crease of longing across his brow. "I know you're not using me," she says, and he gives a quiet noise of relief when his buckle falls open. "Although after you promised to fuck me into a wall after our first date—such a gentleman, honestly—I've—"

Heat crawls up his neck, reddening his ears. "Fuck off. I've never taken the piss out of you for things you've said when—"

She ignores him, and easily. She's had years of practice at it, after all. "—definitely imagined you using me just like that."

He freezes entirely, down to the breath halting in his lungs.

She feels as flushed as he looks, and she doesn't doubt that her cheeks match his. "I liked it," she says, the words trembling just the tiniest amount when he looks again to her face. The intensity of his stare does nothing to lessen her heat. "A lot. You can use me like that anytime you want, James."

"Oh." The exclamation comes out breathless, rife with pleasure and pain all at once, and it's followed with a swear so low that she feels it physically strike deep in her stomach. "Fuck—" he says, and desire once again floods her mouth as he drags her face up to kiss her.

It's the opposite of the way he'd kissed her in the Trophy Room, when he'd cradled her with such careful consideration and tenderness. Instead of barely-there gentleness, his lips bruise hers, and he buries both hands in her hair much as he typically does when she kneels before him. He makes a noise that reminds her of that as well, a wordless plea that drags a whimper from her in return. He groans as her teeth graze his lower lip, and soon they're trapped in the familiar game of call-and-response that has swiftly become her favorite competition. She counts a point for herself when he breaks first, both the kiss and the chain, as her hand finally slips down the front of his trousers.

"Oh, fuck, Evans—" he says, his breathing labored and his lips traveling towards her jaw. "Fucking hell, I never thought you'd—to hear you say that, Merlin—"

"Is there enough light in here?" she asks as his gaze drops again to stare at her hand's disappearance. "You said you wanted to see everything. You said you wanted me to ride you. Take me to the couch and I will."

They get there eventually, but it takes time.

It takes time because he becomes convinced that he needs her clothes off before they get there, and he loses his innate dexterity in a sea of arousal. His fingers become clumsy, fumbling without purchase against the clasp of her bra after he peels off her shirt, and then struggling similarly with the zipper on her skirt. He ends up swearing with more anger than longing by the end, but the two have clearly become melded in his mind. They've become melded in hers too, inextricably intertwined to the point that she has to wonder if she'll end up wet and breathless the next time they dive into one of their familiar rows that still haven't decreased since they'd put a label on their relationship. She tells him that, words spoken into his neck as she pulls his shirt down his arms, and his hands contract in her hair.

"You're setting yourself up for a lot of fights in the future," he warns as they tumble down onto the couch in a mass of tangled limbs and bare skin and desperate caresses.

"Good," she tells him, mouth dropping to his chest. "I can't wait." Absurdly, she means it.

She ends up on her knees in a mocking homage to the slow, taunting way he'd removed her shoes and stockings, hard at work at his own shoes, and it gives her a new appreciation and understanding for his deliberate actions. Suddenly, it no longer matters that he'd just had her so close to the brink of climax that she's fairly certain that she could still get herself off by crossing her legs and rocking in just the right manner. It no longer matters that she wants him so badly that she can hardly see straight from it, literally dizzy from longing and the lack of proper breaths she's taken since he'd first kissed her. It no longer matters that she's about to get something she's literally dreamt about for months, something that she could have at any moment she desires. All that matters is the perfect, pleading way he repeats her name when she drags his pants and trousers down his legs, planting kisses across his hips and thighs while she slowly unties his shoes. Crackling fury and desperate need mix in his tone as his fingers slide repeatedly through her hair, and every pass of 'Evans' from his lips sounds better than the last, each one a verbal confirmation of the reciprocation of her desire.

She could spend hours listening to him say her name in just that way, and she will. She absolutely will—just some other time.

"Look at me," he pleads eventually, after his voice has gone so hoarse that she hardly recognizes the sound. Yet he looks entirely like him, all ruddy cheeks and wild eyes and mouth swollen from her own, and he drags a thumb across her parted lips when their eyes meet. "Lily, you're killing me."

'Lily' never ceases to make her insides twist. It does then too, and perhaps more intensely than ever. "Good," she says. "Good, because I can't believe you were going to just—just not shag me when I was begging you for it. You're downright cruel, Potter, and you—"

His cock twitches as he laughs, and she can't help but think that she's never seen a more perfect encapsulation of their relationship than arousal and amusement meeting all at once. "I love your lessons. Never stop teaching me." His words come out choked, and what follows is even more so, as she finally pulls his pants and trousers off entirely to join his shoes and socks on the floor. "Listen, if you don't come up here right now and use me, Evans—fuck, I don't know what I'm going to do, but—"

Something does it for her, although if it's the thought of using him, or his desire for it, or the unspoken threat, or just him, she doesn't know. She only knows that something sends her scrambling into his open arms, something makes her kiss him like she needs him to live, and something makes her press her body to his entirely. He groans into her mouth, hands migrating to her arse the moment she slides across his cock. They've played the same game more times than she can count, and often to the point of climax for both of them, but it suddenly feels altogether different in some way she can't voice. The promise of what lies just moments away sends her gasping, and his tongue brushes her lower lip. She tips his head back, pulled by the back of his hair, to hunt his tongue down determinedly.

"James—" she breathes into his mouth, the single syllable so quiet that she almost doesn't hear it, but he does.

"Look at me." It comes out more demandingly than before, and one of his hands doesn't falter in slowly rocking her hips against his, although the other travels up to push her hair away from her face. His fingers tremble a little against her scalp, and with the curtain of her hair removed, she can see the firelight dancing across his face. His eyes blaze up at her more intensely than ever before. "I love you."

Once again, it comes out as an invitation, a prompt to say the words in return, and an eager one at that. She has to wonder if it will ever sound any other way, and she rather hopes it won't.

"I love you too," she tells him, and his quiet noise of pleasure seems more related to her response than to her hand dropping to line his cock up with her entrance. That truly says something, as the physical sensation sends his entire body seizing, coiling as tightly as a wound spring. "Can I—"

He doesn't let her finish the question. "Yes," he says quickly, and his throat crackles as he swallows. "Just—just look at me. I need to see your face."

She hesitates for a moment, although perhaps 'hesitates' doesn't describe it all properly. 'Savors' might once again better encompass the way that she feels, or 'relishes' or 'lingers.' She does all those things at once—savors, relishes, lingers—in those magical final seconds before she takes him inside her for the first time.

Those final seconds pale in comparison to what awaits her on the other side. Truly, she can only describe the difference as a world of black and white transitioning suddenly to color, a sensation that has little to do with physical pleasure and much more to do with the exquisite expression on his face as he watches her with such open affection and bliss and love that she stops breathing.

He does as well, and she waits for his gaze to drop to the meeting of their bodies, but it doesn't. He continues to stare at her face, eyes wide, like he aims to commit every inch of her expression to memory.

"Oh," he breathes, that perfect exhalation, when she makes the first move. She rolls her hips in a slow, careful twist, and his entire body tenses again. His eyes squeeze shut for the barest of seconds, and then fly open again to trace her face every bit as lovingly as his fingers stroke her scalp. "Lily—Lily—"

It all goes rather quickly after that.

Moments fly by in frantic repetitions of her name and his spoken in return, and pass in hot experiments of her hips that he aids with his hands. Her estimation of her closeness proves completely correct, as she quickly discovers the perfect angle to grind against his pelvis until she teeters on the edge of stars, and she doesn't stop him when climax nears again. Really, she doubts that he has the capability to stop even if she'd tried, because he looks about as gone as she feels, and immediately too. Once again, he appears both very far away and intensely present when he captures her face gently between his hands as if to anchor her. He truly does feel like the only thing keeping her in place when first her fingers curl on his shoulders, and then her toes curl against her feet.

"Look at me," he prompts every time her eyes close, the words endlessly patient and unendingly demanding all at once. "Fuck, Lily, look at me. Look at me, look at me, look at me—I need to see your face, I need to watch you come—"

That does things to her that she should have seen coming, although she hadn't. She also hadn't anticipated the sheer greed on his face as he says it, something so dark and hungry that she has to assume that it could make her come even if she hadn't hovered on the brink. "Oh, that—" she says, and the look darkens further on his face until her thighs shake. "Say that again. Say that again, and—"

"I need to watch you come," he repeats, and he groans, his own eyes fluttering shut, when she squeezes his cock outside of her control. "Fuck." His hips thrust up under hers with fresh purpose. "Do that again. Fuck, fuck, fuck—"

It's almost too much, the perfect torture that reads all over his face and his voice and his body. Truly, he's almost too fit, just the most beautiful physical specimen she can imagine, his neck arched and his forehead furrowed in the restraint that ropes down through his shoulders and across the taunt muscles of his arms. Her heart hammers painfully in her ears, in her temples, in her throat, in between her legs, and she squeezes him repeatedly, building pressure in both her body and his. "James—" she says for the thousandth time, but she hears a new spike of panic in her voice. He hears it too, and his eyes snap open. "James, I—Christ, I—"

Her world shatters shortly thereafter, broken into innumerable fragments that she can't even begin to piece together again, but she doesn't care to try. Truly, she cares about nothing except the look on his face and the fire in his eyes, both so hot that they sear her skin.

He follows her before she can even fully return down from where he's sent her. He presses his face into her breasts in the final moments, where he says her name into her heart, a single, broken, "Lily." He remains there, immobile against her, long after they've both caught their breaths.

For a while, neither of them speak.

Once again, what is there left to say?

"We're staying here tonight," he says eventually, after his skin has cooled to the point that sweat no longer gathers along the nape of his neck. She runs her fingers through his hair, and he shivers a little when she adds her nails to the mix. "I'll transfigure the couch into a bed, and we'll stay here. I might even let you sleep a little."

"The room isn't big enough for a bed."

He hears the challenge in her voice, and, in turn, she hears the smile in his. "It's big enough for a small one. We'll just have to get cozy."

"You just want to show off your Transfiguration skills."

"I have lots of ways I want to show off for you, Evans."

Her body betrays her reaction, something no amount of cool replies can cover. She flutters around him, and his entire body jerks in response as he hisses softly between his teeth.

"Don't move," he demands when she begins to pull away. Still, he allows her to clear just enough space that he can suddenly see the perfect fit of their bodies, and he groans. "Fucking hell, you—I couldn't even look at the rest of you, because your face, love, but—" His hands drop to her breasts, to her hips, to her thighs, fingers skimming and palms caressing and eyes tracing each movement as if he's never seen anything more fascinating. It's enough to make her squirm, and he groans again and grips the back of her thighs tightly. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life," he says, voice rich with meaning, like he hasn't seen her naked nearly daily for months. He manages to make it sound altogether different, and it shouldn't be different, none of it should be, but—

It is. It is, although she can't put her finger on why.

"Stay here with me tonight," he says again. It's even less of a request than before. "I can't—there's no way I can say goodnight to you after this. I can't."

His raw honesty stops her response short, killing off the sassy reply that she'd already planned. She touches his jaw, and he looks up from the rather dazed way he'd continued to watch the progress of his hands. "Promise me we'll still win tomorrow even if I keep you up all night."

His smile comes slow but steady, until he's fully beaming against her palm. "Evans—" he says, her name chidingly spoken as laughter breaks through. He kisses her once, twice, a third time, over and over in between chuckles that escape from the depths of his throat. "Evans, you love me. There's no way we're not winning after that. We'll beat Ravenclaw, and then I'll find Snape and thank him for the assist in all this. I can't wait to see his face when I tell him—"

"You will not."

xxx

He does, of course. He follows through with all of it exactly, like he's planned the entire bloody thing from start to finish.

Ravenclaw falls victim to his demanding practice schedule and the endless pressure he's put on his team. Gryffindor outperforms them at every turn, their keeper more effective, their beaters more relentless, their seeker faster and more agile. She knows she's biased, but she still thinks their chasers play most brilliantly of all. James scores a ridiculous sixteen goals, and she screams herself hoarse from the stands, his number painted on her cheek and his spare jersey shrunken to fit her torso perfectly.

She meets him on the field afterwards along with most of Gryffindor house, but he spots her immediately among the milling masses. She can see the exact moment that he catches sight of her, because the entirety of his face changes. He goes from smiling easily to positively predatory, and his eyes sweep over his jersey on her body like he sees right through it. The moment she reaches his side, he drags her into his chest for a scorching kiss. Somehow, it feels like they've spent consecutive weeks apart, and not like he'd kissed her goodbye on every part of her body before they'd gone to breakfast.

Fresh cheers erupt—she blames Sirius later, and assumes from his grin that she's right—but she hardly hears them. The flush that springs up from her chest to her cheeks has far less to do with the public nature of the kiss than the kiss itself, and the smell of his skin, and his windblown hair between her fingers, and the familiar tension in his arms as he clutches her tightly. "You look so fucking good wearing my name," he says against her mouth, his hand sliding into the back pocket of her jeans. "Think about it. Lily Potter. It has a certain ring to it."

She laughs, and not just because his joy is so infectious that she can't help herself. He also has a point. 'Lily Potter' sounds beautiful, especially coming from his mouth. "You played brilliantly," she says, and he brushes his nose against hers gently.

"That's down to you. There was no way we were going to lose today. I told you, Evans—you're magic."

No, they're magic, the two of them together. They're the strongest magic she can imagine.

"Fuck the common room party," he adds before she can respond. "I don't care if I see anyone else today. I just want to be with you, and the rest can—oh, hold on."

He doesn't release her, exactly, but he does pull back more than the few inches of space he'd cleared from in front of her face. It's just enough room for him to lift a hand above his head—the one not contentedly cupping her arse—so he can wave it lazily. "Oi, Snape!"

Her stomach drops. "James, don't you dare—"

He ignores her, although it presumably comes a bit more difficultly to him than it does to her. He'd lavished attention on her all the same years she'd spent the ignoring him, after all. "Thanks for the help last night!"

She catches the sight of dozens of enthused, interested faces as she turns to unwillingly follow the hazel path of James' eyes. The Gryffindors all around them—and some Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws beyond that—have all stopped to watch, no doubt eager for a brawl almost certainly in the making. The flush of her cheeks redoubles the second she sees Severus some feet behind them. Fortunately, no longer looks like 'Sev,' that boy from Cokeworth she'd glimpsed the night before. He has once again become 'Snape,' mainly because his horrid pack of mates stand around him. Their expressions all match the poisonous glare that Severus aims James' way.

James ignores that too, and his grin looks genuine. "Evans and I, we had a long talk thanks to you," he calls over, and he also ignores her fingers pressing painfully into his biceps. "I appreciate your concern, but you're fucking blind if you haven't realized that I've been in love with her for years."

She's not sure if she wants to kill him or kiss him or both. "James—"

He squeezes her arse, just once and very gently, his hand still in the back pocket of her jeans. "So I'm not using her, just so you know. Now, she might be using me, but I'm fine with that. Really fine with that. I can't imagine a bloke that wouldn't be, you know? She's such a bloody catch. You get it, I'm sure."

Fire floods her body. "I swear to god, Potter—"

He laughs, head rocking back with pleasure until his teeth glint in the afternoon sunlight, and damn him. Damn him, because he looks so happy that she wants to smile along with him, and she only just resists the temptation. "You're beautiful when you're angry," he says, and he ducks his head to kiss her again, as if Severus and his great public spectacle no matter even register in his thoughts. Still, it clearly hasn't left his mind entirely, because his eyes crinkle teasingly as he adds to her in undertone, "I could take my jersey off and show them what you did to my back last night. That would really drive home exactly how you're using me, and how fine I am with it."

Kill him. She wants to kill him. "You wouldn't."

He lets her hang there, more uncertain by the second, for the span of a few breaths. "You're right, I wouldn't," he admits, and he kisses her again, gentler than before. "I'm still not keen to put you off me, and that should have cleared up how I feel about you, don't you think?"

She doesn't know if Severus and his friends still stand behind them, or if they've moved on. Really, she doesn't even know if her and James' friends still linger nearby in the crowd that must certainly feel some measure of disappointment that his mockery of Severus hadn't escalated into a horrific duel. She can't focus on anything except the brilliance of his face and the perfect symmetry of his jaw and the way his heart beats frantically against her own. "You're an idiot," she says.

He chuckles quietly. "I love you too," he says, and—

And he bloody winks at her, like he's heard the love implicit in her tone every time she's said those words for months. Her breath catches in her throat, and she has to wonder just how exposed she'd left her thoughts and feelings and soul before his gaze, and for how long. The look in his eyes, soft and tender and teasing all at once, tells her everything and nothing simultaneously.

At the same time, she no longer cares. It no longer matters just how much he's known about the way she feels, because there's no longer a single thing that lies unspoken between them. She knows how he feels about her, and he knows how she feels about him, and they're all the stronger for it.

Perhaps she'll ask him someday exactly what he'd known and when he'd known it, but—

Not just then, when all she wants is to kiss him. Flushed with victory, flushed with a heady sense of irritation and enchantment unique to him, flushed with love, she pulls his mouth down to do just that.