Lily took a deep breath and stepped forward, pushing her trolley into the mass of students that were currently saying their hello's to their friends on platform 9 and . In that moment, she tried to remember what Ella told her before she left.
"Never let people think for a minute that you couldn't totally take them down"
So she flicked her dark cherry red hair off her shoulder and strutted confidently towards the train.
"Merlin, Evans. Your hair has gotten so long!"
Lily turned to her side to find her friend Marlene McKinnon grinning broadly at her. Her honey blonde hair gleaming, her tall figure pulling her into a hug. Marlene paused for a second, her sea blue eyes inspecting Lily before nodding. Lily ignored the way the look made her feel like she was two years old and instead continued pushing her trolley towards the train. Depositing their luggage, they clutched each others arms and headed to their usual compartment.
Mary MacDonald, Lily's best friend, was already curled up in one corner, her small nose in a book.
"Hey Mary" Lily greeted, squeezing herself closely next to Mary and nudging her knees. Mary was a small girl, her thin brown hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, making her face look skinny and too young.
"Lils! Oh my gosh, look at you! You look amazing!" Mary gushed, shoving her book aside and gripping Lily by the shoulders.
Lily chuckled.
"How have you been Mac?" Lily asked, desperate for the attention to be elsewhere. Lily still wasn't used to the attention that her "new look" had brought her.
"Great! We just got back from Monaco last week. Meet the fittest guy..." Mary blushed slightly but Lily and Marlene gasped excitedly.
As they gossiped about Mary's first ever romantic escapade, Lily felt herself relaxing into her old self again. Maybe it was just being around her old friends, or maybe it was just being around magic in general, but she hadn't felt so calm in months.
Listening to Mary gush about her first time with her handsome French man, Lily couldn't help but wince as she remembered her fumbled and forced relations over the summer.
Noticing Lily's wince, Marlene expertly diverted the conversation to Lily.
"So innocent-eyes Mac here has finally lost her virginity-" Mary rolled her eyes at this, "what about you Lily? Meet any brooding blokes in Surry over the summer?"
Lily absent-mindedly started to scratch her blunt fingernails on her thighs, the denim causing the feeling to vibrate and numb the tips of her fingers.
"Well Chris avoided me all summer, but I met a few through my friend Ella" Lily blushed.
Marlene rubbed her hands together excitedly, this was just the type of gossip she thrived on.
"Few?!"
"I suppose you could say I experimented a little over the summer, Ella's all about free love and what not" Lily explained, shrugging her shoulders.
Mary smiled knowingly, and Marlene clapped her hands.
"Yes Evans! I've been hoping to coax this side out of you for years! I knew you had it in you. Who is this Ella and how can I thank her?"
Lily rolled her eyes but keenly explained how she met Ella and how she spent the last month or so.
Ella was a few years older than Lily, studying at the local college in her hometown and the very picture of what Lily aspired to be. She wasn't normally one to follow someone around or be influenced so easily, but after the year Lily had, she felt herself numbly compelled to be Ella's prodigy.
Ella was a blonde, surf-esce, sunny girl. She was enigmatic, beautiful and beyond-confident. She loved people, she loved dancing, she loved life and Lily wanted that too.
At first, Ella had to physically push Lily out of her comfort zone and Lily would often squirm and laugh awkwardly at the situations Ella tumbled her into. But after a few weeks, Lily found herself growing confident. It seemed to leak out of her, she found herself starting a joke and loving the way everyone listened to her and then it went from the way she flicked her hair at the right time when she was flirting with a guy and the guy almost drooling at the sight. Then her confidence seemed to spill out, gushing, she was excited to wear crop tops that hugged her growing boobs, tight jeans that accentuated her long legs and perky bum. She reveled in the way, Ella's friends asked for her opinion and pulled her along first when they sneaked into a club. These kids were older than her, more mature but ultimately more free than she had ever been.
Lily was gushing about how ace Ella was, when Mary shuffled in her seat and accidentally knocked Lily's shoulder. The knock pulled her from her dizzy excitement in relaying her fun summer and she gasped.
"Bugger, I'm going to be late for the prefects meeting and I'm head girl!" Lily exclaimed, rushing out of her seat.
"There she is!" Mary chuckled, "thought for a minute, we lost head girl Lily and was replaced with hippy Lily"
Lily ignored that and instead, rushed out and ran to the prefects compartment.
She rammed into the closed door and immediately found it empty. She gulped down a sigh and went to work in writing down the agenda before charming it to copy onto spare parchment for everyone else.
She still had ten minutes until the meeting started, the head boy should have already been here helping her set up. She willed herself to remember Ella and how she would react. Lily had been practicing her patience over the summer, one thing that Ella despised about Lily was her inability to let things go and relax.
So instead of fretting, Lily pushed the parchment away from her and climbed out of her seat. She popped a pink swirl heart lollipop in her mouth, the strawberry sweetness instantly transporting her to the venturesome holidays she just had. She stretched leisurely, reaching her arms above her head and groaning as her muscles tightened in that almost orgasmically satisfying way.
James was late. The boys insisted that he join them in their first prank of the year. It made him late to his first meeting as head boy and he knew that whoever was head girl, he would probably have to flirt his way out of being scolded.
He pushed into the door to the prefects compartment and was thoroughly surprised when he found one Lily Evans, moaning in a way that made his whole body shiver, and stretching her long arms above her head. She was wearing a red and white striped halter neck top and dark blue flared jeans and James couldn't take his eyes off the lovely bare golden-skin that was her stomach. Her top had ridden up in her stretch and James just couldn't believe how fit Lily had gotten over the summer.
He always thought Lily was beautiful but this Lily, in front of him, was another level of beauty. Her cherry red hair was longer and fuller, her skin was more golden, and he could finally appreciate the body that was always swamped under her uniform.
"Potter?" Lily asked, snapping him from his lust-filled coma. She was sucking on what looked like a lollipop and James had to suffer through a painful gulp.
"Right. Yeah. Evans..." he tried to string together a sentence but he still couldn't get the image of her bare, golden skin out of his head.
"You're head boy?" she asked, shocked.
"Right yes, and I'm guessing your head girl?" he smirked, plenty pleased with this arrangement.
He was dreaming.
She laughed.
He wasn't expecting that. He was expecting her usual scoff and a comment about him being late.
But she laughed, and not in a mocking way but in a way in which she was truly amused. It was a happy laugh and the sound made his stomach swirl.
Her laugh faded into a chuckle and he watched as she picked up a pile of parchment and shoved it into his hands.
"Stop gawking and look over the agenda" she smirked.
He gawked more.
Who was she? Where was Lily Evans?
She should be yelling at him for even looking at her.
"I'm going to quickly change into my uniform, we still have five minutes until the meeting starts" she commented.
He watched her leave and he was altogether very sad that he wouldn't see her in those threads again.
He did get a nice view of her ass in those blue tight jeans as she left though, and he grinned.
As their first perfect meeting of the year powered on, James couldn't help but ponder what was so different about Lily. She was now in her uniform, her robes draped across her shoulders and hiding her figure. Yes, her hair was longer, her skin tanned, but it was her eyes that stirred something in him. Her green eyes were fuller now, like they were spilling with life and gleaming with excitement. He knew being head girl was something that she was thrive in but it was so odd seeing her so bouncy.
Last year had been hard on Lily, he knew that. He was close friends with Marlene and Marlene had mentioned that her mother had passed away at the beginning of her sixth year and Lily wasn't coping well. In fact, he remembers Marlene being frightfully stressed about the way Lily was acting towards the end of the year. After Marlene's outburst, he had kept a closer eye on Lily. He always kept an eye on her anyway but this time he made sure to watch her eat, made sure she wasn't left alone in the common room for too long, and made sure she wasn't wandering the halls at night.
As she announced the idea of a sign up sheet for patrols, her hands crossed her chest and he watched as she scratched her fingers across one forearm.
"We've been told that we now need to patrol in pairs, I will put you with your own houses so that you can walk back to your common rooms together as well" she announced, her voice keeping its steady cadence.
James nodded along with her, showing his solidarity.
As she rounded out the meeting, he found himself awkwardly ruffling his hair.
The room emptied and it was just the two of them.
"So I guess were sharing a common room this year" Lily said, no smile on her face.
James wanted a smile though.
"Such a lucky bird Evans, sharing rooms with me? Girls would kill for the opportunity"
He noticed the slight curve of her lip and she tried to reign in a smile. Instead she rolled her eyes at him.
"For the sake of this being our last year..." she paused, gulped and then tipped her head up in confidence, "I'm sorry about my behaviour last year, I wasn't the nicest and um I guess I'll try to be civil now that we're working together and I suppose living together..."
James was astounded. Baffled. Completely turned over.
"Right...nifty. Fine by me" was all he could come up with.
She gave him a polite tight smile and then left.
James had a feeling, he was going to be left feeling baffled more than once this year.