A/N: Hello friends! Welcome to the start of another multi-chap! If you've been with me on one of these rides before, you know that I'm not the most consistent updater. I write when I can and update when I finish a chapter. Please try not to let that dissuade you from reading! I try my best. And here's hoping I can break the pattern this time. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this fun little story! Happy reading!

o . o . o

Nice to meet ya, what's your name?
Let me treat ya to a drink

Lily walked down the street at a brisk pace, wishing she had thought to bring an umbrella with her. It wasn't pouring yet, just a slow drizzle, but her suit was expensive and she didn't want the rain to ruin the fabric. Lily kicked herself for the moment of vanity - it wasn't like her, but she had splurged a bit when she'd been promoted and she didn't want the money to go down the drain after only one wear. She was so focused on making her way home as fast as possible, that she barely noticed when her wallet slipped out from under her elbow.

She tapped out a quick succession of numbers on her phone screen, holding it up to her ear so she could hear the ring on the other line. As usual, the line rang and rang and no one answered.

"Tuney," Lily sighed after the beep sounded indicating the voicemail was recording, "please call me back. I know you're still mad, but I really do miss you. I just want to talk and…" Lily felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around, her jaw dropping instantly. "Tuney, I got to go."

Lily hung up the phone and tried to make sense of her surroundings, because there was no way that who she thought was in front of her could possibly be real. It had to be a doppelganger. Because there was absolutely no way that the man standing before her could actually be James Potter, rock god and international superstar, guitarist for The Marauders. There was no way he was here, in London, looking at her a bit shyly.

"Sorry, I think you dropped your wallet," he said with a deliciously smooth voice that confirmed that this had to be James Potter, all while holding out her neat black leather wallet.

"Thank you," she answered, barely managing to make her voice louder than a whisper. Lily cleared her throat, trying to force some volume back to her vocal cords. "Thank you, I'd be totally screwed if I lost that."

"Yeah, it's a real pain having to cancel all your cards and stuff," Potter replied casually, still holding her wallet out to her.

"It's not that," Lily said, smiling shyly and reaching out for the little wallet. "My ID for work is in it, and I can't get into the building without it. And it's a whole process to have to get a new one. I'd be in loads of trouble."

She mentally kicked herself, realizing that she had probably said a bit too much. Why was it that it had been not even thirty seconds and already he seemed to completely disarm her?

"Well then, I'm very glad to be able to save you from trouble," he answered with a grin. "I'm James, by the way."

"Lily," she replied, meeting his reached out hand with her own and giving it a firm shake.

"Lovely to meet you, Lily. Got any dinner plans?"

Lily was taken aback, his question entirely unexpected, and she felt herself flounder for a moment as she tried to process the motive behind it. Was he asking her out? That couldn't be the case. Surely it was just some sort of gesture of reciprocity, a thank you of sorts. Except… he found her wallet, so really she should be thanking him. She was flustered and confusing herself, and she really just needed to take a deep breath. In. Out. Think.

"Um, nothing specific, no," she answered vaguely, trying to suss out what was going on while she spoke.

"Want to grab a bite with me, then?" he asked, his lilting Irish accent sounding melodious even in speech.

"I…" Lily paused, not sure how to answer that. She still couldn't figure out what was going on here or what he wanted.

"I don't know anyone in London, you see," he continued, offering something of an explanation. "Don't really fancy spending the evening alone watching telly if it can be helped, and you seem like as lovely a person as any to get to know."

"So you would've just asked any ol' person on the street to dinner then," Lily answered with a soft, teasing twinkle to her voice.

"I sure am glad that it's you, though," he quipped back, drawing a wide grin from Lily. "It'd be my treat, of course."

"Alright then," Lily agreed, deciding to trust him. Besides, when would she ever get the chance to meet a celebrity again? It's not like they stopped by MI5 every day. "Lead on."

They walked through the streets of London, meandering and chatting idly about nothing in particular. Lily wasn't paying attention to their destination, her eyes skimming over the beautiful elaborate buildings they walked past. Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament. It was a small thing that she loved about her job, that she was surrounded by all the gorgeous old government buildings and museums every day. It didn't occur to her that James might be staying in a fancy hotel until they came to a stop outside the palatial exterior of the Corinthia.

"You're staying here?" she asked, her eyes widening.

"Yeah, they've got a suite designed for musicians, and…" He drifted off as he looked at her expression, an amused grin tugging softly at his lips. "What?"

"It's just kind of crazy, that's all," Lily answered.

"Wait til you see the actual suite," he said, pushing open the door to the grand hotel and holding it open for her.

James guided her through the halls of the hotel and Lily tried not to gawk at the pristine marble floors and gilded walls. They took the elevator to the fifth floor and then walked along the hall until James stopped by a door marked 'M'. He pulled out a key and unlocked the door, pushing it open. Lily stepped in after him, feeling her jaw drop.

It was bigger than her apartment, with a spacious living room and a baby grand piano in the corner. A small dining table stood next to it and there was a fireplace nestled in the wall by the sofa. To her right, a staircase wound upward to what she assumed was the bedroom. James smiled encouragingly as she tentatively stepped forward to explore, her eyes immediately drifting toward the view of London outside the windows. As she looked out at them, James dug through a drawer in the small kitchenette before handing her a menu that he had extracted.

"Just let me know what you want to eat," he said. "I'll order in a minute."

Lily perused the menu - a mix of fancy fare and staple British comforts - before deciding on the potato gnocchi. James returned, holding out a hand for her coat, which Lily handed over, and then went back to the entryway. He tucked her coat into the closet and picked up a phone hanging on the wall.

"Hello, Frank?" he said into it. "Yes, can you have an order of the gnocchi and the Corinthia Burger brought up from The Garden please? Thank you."

"Room service?" Lily mused quietly.

"Something like that," James shrugged, returning to the sitting room and plopping down on the sofa.

"Can I ask you something?" Lily said tentatively, sitting down next to him a bit more gingerly.

"Sure," he agreed, looking at her with bright eyes, curious what she might choose to ask him. There were undeniably all kinds of things one might ask a celebrity they'd just met.

"How is it possible that you don't know anyone in London to hang out with tonight?" she asked at last, matching his curiosity with her own.

"Ah. Well, I'm not exactly from around here," he answered, his Irish accent turning the simple words into a joke. "And you'd be surprised how few friends you make when you're in a world famous band."

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"

"God no," he laughed, shaking his head. "No, I just mean that there aren't very many people in my phone to text. My parents still live in Ireland, and the boys from the band are scattered about."

"Do you still talk to them?" Lily asked suddenly, her cheeks blushing as she realized how abruptly personal it was. "Only, you hear rumours… after the band split up. People seem to think you all hate each other now or something."

"We don't really talk very much, no, at least not all of us," James said quietly. "But it wasn't as dramatic as everyone says."

"Will you tell me what happened?"

James hesitated, looking a little bit uncomfortable, and Lily immediately felt bad.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't pry, I was just -"

"No, it's alright," he said, shaking his head. "I'm basically a stranger and I asked you to come hang for the night, I think I owe you answers to a few questions. It really doesn't make for a good story though, sort of just a chain reaction. Peter set things off. He felt like the label was controlling us too much, we couldn't write the kind of music that we wanted anymore. We all sort of agreed. But the rest of us didn't mind so much. At most we talked about splitting with the label and founding our own. We were famous enough at that point, we could've done it. But Peter decided that he wanted to do his own music. That age old tale of a band splitting up because someone wants to go solo."

Lily nodded, surprised that it was so benign, but James went on.

"There were some hurt feelings, mostly because Peter announced it by going to a magazine before he even told us. He must have planned it for a while, because he had a lot of stuff ready for them by the time he did it," James said, with his eyes focused on the fire now flickering in the fireplace. She remembered what James was talking about - the headlines and magazine exclusives when Peter said he was only a few weeks away from having his first single. "But then things just kept piling on. Remus had been struggling for a while. The fame wasn't good for him, and the depression had gotten really bad. Honestly, I think he'd been considering it for a while, but he didn't want to let the rest of us down. Peter leaving gave him an excuse to step away too. So he's gone back to Wales now, he's got a little cottage and a quiet life. I talk to him every now and then, and he seems happier. He wants to open a little bookshop or something, but he's worried it'll get mobbed when people discover he owns it."

"And Sirius?" Lily prompted, noting that James' supposed best friend was conspicuously absent from this story.

"We just aren't the same people who used to be friends," James said with a shrug.

Lily could tell that there was more to the story than friends drifting apart, but it seemed unwise to press her luck.

"Well, I'm glad that you did split up," she teased. "I'll admit I like your music much better than the band's."

"Thank you, I think," he replied, half laughing.

Lily liked the way laughter looked on him, the way it made him look so light and carefree.

A knock on the door told them that dinner had arrived, and James jumped up to go grab it. He was gone barely a minute before returning with two silver-covered plates that were fancier than anything Lily had ever seen before. At least as far as dinnerware was concerned.

"I believe this one is yours," James said, setting the plate in his left hand down on the coffee table in front of her. "Actually, I have an idea. Follow me."

Lily picked up her plate and followed him as he walked over to the staircase and began to climb up it. She had assumed that there was nothing upstairs but the bedroom, and so felt a little wary, but her instincts told her that she could trust him. At the top of the stairs, James pushed open one set to double doors to reveal his bedroom, but continued to walk straight through it to another door. He pushed that open as well, and Lily followed him out onto a long, skinny terrace. It was lined with short hedges, and a dining table stood closest to them. Beyond it were two outdoor sofas with a low coffee table between them and a fireplace at the far end of the terrace. To the right, Lily could see the Thames, illuminated by the windows of London's South Bank. It took her breath away, and she could scarcely believe that London was this beautiful - it was like something out of an iconic photograph.

James grabbed a set of silverware from the dining table and made his way to one of the two sofas, leaving the one facing the Thames for Lily. She followed suit, exchanging the silver cover on her plate for silverware at the table and then taking a seat on the sofa.

"So, where do you work?" James asked before taking a bite of his burger.

"For the government," Lily answered. "I'm an intelligence analyst with MI5."

"And you're just allowed to tell me that?" he said, sounding both surprised and impressed.

"Sure, I'm not a spy," she laughed in reply. "I mean, I don't broadcast it, but it's not a secret."

"What kind of things do you work on?" he pressed, clearly fascinated.

"Broadly - I work on domestic counterterrorism efforts," she explained. "But I'm really not allowed to say more than that."

"You must've been quite the academic then," James observed.

"Yeah, Cambridge," she said.

They continued chatting throughout dinner, learning little facts about each other. Lily talked about Petunia and Mary and the things she liked to do when she was out of work. To her surprise, James seemed to love history nearly as much as she did, and was constantly reading biographies and historical commentaries when he wasn't trying to write music. It was those personal details about him that nobody knew that she enjoyed learning the most, far more than the trivial things.

By the time they had both finished eating, Lily was shivering just a little in the night air. James cleared their plates and ducked inside to grab a plush throw blanket from inside, laying it across her lap. He turned the fireplace on as well, letting the flames warm their skin. Maybe it was the fire or the softness of the blanket, but things suddenly felt intimate in a way they hadn't before. Lily felt like cozying up to James, having him whisper gently in her ear. The idea alarmed her a bit, and she felt the need to check herself. Looking at her watch, she saw that it was 9pm, and it seemed like a reasonable time to excuse herself.

"I should probably go soon," she said softly, her voice breaking as though her vocal cords were trying to keep the words inside. It's not like she really wanted to say them anyway. "It's… well not exactly late, but still. It'll be getting on by the time I make it home."

"You could always stay the night," James offered. Lily raised an eyebrow at him, making him blush as he realized how his offer sounded. "I didn't mean… there's a second bedroom."

"That's really kind, but…" she paused. Why was she fighting so hard to find an excuse to leave? Propriety? It wasn't 1890. She could stay over if she wanted to. She really didn't want the night to end. "Okay, sure."

James' smile lit up like the London Eye behind him and Lily felt her heart pound excitedly in response. God, he really was gorgeous.

"You seeing anyone?" James asked, trying his best to sound casual about the question.

"Nope, you?" she countered with a grin.

"No, no one since… my last relationship ended in a bit of a mess," he answered. "I've taken a bit of a break since then."

"Right, makes sense," Lily said, doubt suddenly sweeping over her. Of course he wasn't interested in her, why would he be? She was just ordinary, after all. He belonged with someone like this girl, and clearly she still had a claim on his heart anyway. This was nothing to him, just some friendly company for a night. "I heard you're a big football fan," she said, changing the topic to something safer.

"Yeah, I love it, my dad and I used to watch all the Liverpool games when I was younger," he replied. "Every weekend, at home or down the pub, we always had to watch Liverpool. It was a nice tradition."

"My dad and I were the same," Lily answered, smiling again. "Only for us it was Tottenham."

"Ooh, Spurs girl, are you?" he teased.

"Til I die," she confirmed with a laugh.

They continued to talk, laughing vivaciously, until nearly one in the morning. James finally saw the time and the surprise was clear on his face. How they had been talking for so long when it felt like only minutes was entirely beyond both of them. Lily tried to stifle a yawn, but James mirrored it, smiling afterward.

"I guess we should probably call it a night, huh?" he said, suddenly feeling the late hour.

"I guess so," Lily agreed.

"Come on, I'll get you set up."

He led her back into the suite, showing her to the spare bedroom. It was every bit as luxurious as the rest of the suite, with a large queen size bed and a state of the art tv. James handed her a sweatshirt, t-shirt, shorts and flannel pants as she ran her hands over the soft cotton comforter.

"I don't know what you want to sleep in, so it's your choice. And I asked Frank to bring up a toothbrush for you."

"Thank you," Lily said, accepting his offer.

"Um, the bathroom is just around the corner, just, you know, make yourself at home," James said.

"Thanks," she repeated, smiling gratefully.

"I'll see you in the morning?" he asked tentatively, somehow unsure if she would still be there when he woke up.

"Yeah, absolutely," Lily smiled. "I assume this place has a killer breakfast."

"It does," James grinned, looking for all the world like she had just made his day. "Okay, well, goodnight then."

"Goodnight, James."