Prompt: Your friends giggle too much.
Lily stepped through the door of Madam Puddifoot's tea shop, and shed her coat and scarf, glancing around skeptically at the frilly pink and lace themed decor.
She'd been on dates here before, but it neve seemed like James' thing. She shrugged off the thought and walked to meet the wizard in question as he rose from a back booth to greet her.
"Evans – er, Lily. You look very nice today." his greeting was awkward and stilted, and after months of dancing around this thing between them for months, she'd expected more than 'you look very nice'.
"James," she returned, moving to greet him with a kiss on the cheek since this was a date after all. He stuck his hand out for a handshake –handshake of all things– jabbing her in the stomach as she moved in.
"I'm– I'm so sorry," he apologized as she breathed out a sudden gasp of air.
"No worries," she smiled, trying desperately to bring them back to the normal rapport they'd established during their long hours as heads together.
A stifled laugh came from the booth behind her, but she dismissed it as another couple out on a date at Puddifoot's.
"So, uhm, how are you?" James asked.
"You mean since you saw me last night?"
He nodded, plastering on a smile that looked more pained than reassuring.
"I've been good, I guess. How was your night?" He responded in the affirmative, and they continued to discuss a manner of insignificant topics from the weather to their last transfiguration essay– which she knew he'd done well on, as had she, since they'd completed them together. Since when had she and Potter made pointless small talk?
They struggled through their tea (lukewarm) and biscuits (dry), the conversation awkward and stilted at best.
Potter had just rattled off an oddly formal and slightly rehearsed answer when she again heard laughter in the booth behind her. Normally, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary to hear young couples giggling to themselves, out on their first dates at Madam Puddifoot's. But this laugh was nothing like the nervous, slightly giddy laugh of a couple on their first date. It was the cruel snickering of someone laughing at another's misfortune.
"Excuse me, for one second," she told James, slowly standing and sliding her wand down her sleeve, to rest in her palm, as she did.
He looked flustered and slightly put-out, but she didn't have time to think on it too much as she whirled around the corner of their booth to face a table full of smirking and snickering Slytherins.
"Potter not quite living up to his reputation?" taunted Dolohov with a cruel grin and equally vile laugh, "Looks like I don't even have to warn you off of dating above your station, Mudblood."
Mulciber continued to snicker in the corner, a sixth year Lily didn't know gave her a lascivious wink, and Sev– who sat in their midst– said nothing, but looked equal parts enraged and embarrassed.
She raised an eyebrow in silent question, but he said nothing, only continuing to glower at her.
Dolohov opened his mouth to spew more hatred, but she was quicker. Lily whipped her wand out, and before a single one of them could react, had jinxed their mouths closed.
"Your friends giggle too much," she said to Sev in the stony, impassive tone she'd learned to take with him, leveling a glare to match.
"C'mon, Potter," she said, as he joined her at her side, "this place reeks of desperation."
She stormed off with one last glare and a flounce of her hair, leaving Potter to trail after her.
"I'm sorry," she apologized when he caught up with her outside the shop, draping her forgotten coat around her shoulders, "I'm sorry I lost it in there, and I'm sorry they were even there. They probably wouldn't have followed to harass you on a date if it wasn't with me."
He started to speak, but she cut him off, not wanting to hear his rejection yet. They'd spent months working together as heads, and had formed a friendship that was as unexpected, as was the more that came after. She didn't know what, exactly, they were. But it was something more than just friends. She'd been elated when he finally asked her out, and couldn't stand the thought of Sev and his Death Eater friends ruining the chance of more.
"I understand if you want to just go back to the castle," she tried to keep the disappointment from her tone.
"I, uh, actually had something else planned. That is, if you want to?" Lily could hear the hopeful note in his voice, and instantly perked at the sound of it.
"Of course!"
Potter smiled and led her by the hand to the river at the outskirts of Hogsmeade.
"Ready?" he asked.
She nodded, and he pointed his wand at her boots, transfiguring them into a pair of ice skates. He did the same to his own, and helped her down onto the ice.
It was nice, and he was a natural, but they quickly fell back into the uncomfortable silence that had plagued them their whole date.
She let him outpace her, desperate to escape this stilted awkwardness they'd fallen into again. She was skating lazy, winding circles down the center of the river when she heard a resounding crack and the solid ice disappeared from under her.
She barely had time to register what had happened before her head slipped below the surface of the icy water. Lily struggled her way back to the surface, fighting the icy current. She gave one great push, and her head broke the surface. She saw Potter rushing towards her, shedding his cloak as he raced forwards, his face a mask of pure panic. She scrambled to grip onto anything solid, but the ice crumbled wherever she touched. She fell back below the water, and struggled to push her way back up, but the frigid water stole the breath from her lungs and made her limbs too numb to do anything but flail helplessly.
Then Potter was there. He was there with her in the water.
He grabbed her around the waist and yelled something, the tip of his wand glowing, then they were propelled out of the water and onto the icy banks of the river.
Immediately, she rolled onto her side, coughing up lungfuls of water.
"Thanks," she whispered through chattering teeth.
He only nodded in response, casting warming charms on the both of them and replacing her soaked coat with his dry one.
"We need to get you back to the castle," his voice was soft, but he wouldn't meet her eyes, "Can you walk?"
She nodded and made to get up, but her body ached and her legs seemed too numb to respond. Gracelessly, Lily sank back to the ground.
"I'll take that as a no."
She only nodded again.
Without another word, Potter leaned forwards and scooped her up as if she weighed nothing. She looped an arm around her neck when he stood, but said nothing as he began their long trek back up to the castle.
He didn't say anything as he walked, and by the time they reached the castle grounds, she'd had enough.
"I'm sorry," she'd meant it to come out forcefully and sure, but it emerged as a barely breathed whisper.
"I'm sorry," she repeated when he didn't respond.
He again said nothing, carrying her silently through the empty castle and up to the Gryffindor common room. He placed her on the chair closest to the fire and draped a throw blanket across her lap, before disappearing up the stairs to the boys dorms.
He reappeared minutes later, arms full of blankets and dry clothes. He turned away to let her change, while creating a little blanket setup by the fire.
Now in dry clothes, she joined him by the fire, leaning against one of the many pillows he'd dragged down with him.
He broke the silence first.
"You know that wasn't the date I'd had planned."
She laughed, and held up a strand of her still soaked hair, "Yeah, me neither."
Potter smiled ruefully at her, "Well that wasn't what I'd had in mind either, but that isn't what I'm talking about. In fact, I lied about all three things today."
She said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
"Originally I was just going to take you to the Three Broomsticks. But then Sirius said I should do something more special–"
"Like Madam Puddifoot's?"
Potter scrunched his nose, affronted, "Ugh. No. I hate Madam Puddifoot's. I was going to take you on a picnic." He said the last part quieter, as if scared of her reaction.
"A picnic?"
"Yeah... I charmed a blanket to be waterproof, and learned how to keep a small fire going in a jar. I even asked the kitchen elves to prepare hot chocolate and biscuits in a basket."
"Potter, that's amazing," she whispered, struck at all the thought he'd put in, "But why didn't–"
"Then my mum wrote me and said something like 'Don't screw this up' and I know she was joking mostly, but then I couldn't stop thinking about all the ways I could screw it up. So I went to the library to–"
"The library?"
"Yes. I went to the library and looked up everything I could about dating and etiquette and I got advice from Moony and Pads…" he trailed off, and pulled out a set of soggy scraps of parchment, each filled with crammed notes in his elegant penmanship. "And everything I found out said a girl wouldn't want to sit on the ground in the cold and eat biscuits, it said they wanted to be wooed. And from what I've heard, Puddifoots is where blokes take the girls they like to 'woo' them. And it also mentioned ice skating being romantic, but I'd never ice skated before, and it didn't say anything about your date falling in…"
She couldn't help but laugh as Potter cited the ways he'd decided he needed to woo her.
"Wait, you'd never ice skated before? But you seemed like a natural!"
He looked sheepish, "I got Remus to teach me. He and his family go ice skating together every Christmas, so he showed me how to do it. Then I just practiced before breakfast and after quidditch out on the lake."
A smile teased the corners of her mouth. "And you thought all that was necessary to woo me?"
"Well, yeah. I didn't want you to be disappointed, and I wanted everything to be perfect, but–"
She cut him off, pulling him by the collar until he was close enough, and then pressing a soft kiss to his lips. He stopped talking.
"It's sweet that you did all that, but you didn't have to," he looked like he was about to say something but she pushed on, "I like you, Potter. I like you despite and because of everything that you are. But I like you for you."
He gaped, looking stunned, as he opened and closed his mouth searching for something to say.
She leaned forward and kissed him again. This time, he kissed her back; one hand settling at the back of her neck, tilting her head to a better angle, the other at the small of her back, pulling her closer. When they finally broke away, he rested his forehead atop hers, breathing heavily.
"You know," she whispered, "I could go for that picnic now."
"Now?"
She smiled and nodded as he sprang up, dashing for the portrait hole.
"Hey, Potter! One more thing," she called after him.
He paused, one hand on the open portrait.
"Earlier today you said you lied about three things: you hate Madam Puddifoot's, you've never ice skated, but what was the third?"
"I said you looked very nice today, Evans, and that was a baldfaced lie."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, you didn't just look very nice, you looked fucking gorgeous today, Evans."
With that, he winked and slipped out the portrait hole, off to fetch the picnic basket for the start of their second, first date.