A/N: Just a short one for chapter 2. I'm going to be on a 12-hour car trip tomorrow, so expect the update on Sunday. Let me know what you think!
December 19, 1977
The castle was rich with the sound of students packing and laughing and making their melodramatic, tearful goodbyes, but tomorrow the corridors would echo with their own ringing stillness as the student body departed for winter hols. It was to be a classic, white Christmas, with snow already packed a meter high on the ground, and if it weren't for her boyfriend, Lily would have been eager to leave. Bound for their first time apart since they'd started dating two months before, Lily sat on the floor of his dormitory, strongly debating whether she could stupefy him and sneak him home in her trunk with no one the wiser. The stupidly sweet faces he was making at her gift weren't helping matters.
In truly typical fashion, the two had decided to make a competition of their first ever gift-exchange. Bragging rights would go to the victor, and Lily had tackled the challenge with her characteristic gusto. Those efforts had paid off. James had done well, true, giving her a tasteful yet obscenely expensive bracelet that was charmed to tell her the weather and currently rested on her pale wrist. His bags of coin couldn't hope to compete with her gift, however.
A golden snitch, and not just any snitch, but the one that Lewis Thurston had caught to win Britain the World Cup in 1971, one of the most oft-discussed matches in history – six days of play, Turkey up by 130, and a narcoleptic referee – and the first professional match that James had ever attended alongside his parents. Since he'd tossed aside the gift wrappings, James had held the snitch in his palms with all the gentleness one might show an injured baby bird. He was half a second away from making cooing noises to it.
Seeing the way his eyes took on a bright zeal, half-lidded but intense behind his specs, the same look Lily sometimes caught directed her way when she was talking with one of her friends or studying with James in the library, made the steep cost worth every minute of misery. (The legendary snitch had been one collectible of many in McGonagall's envy-inducing collection, and Lily would be waking up at 7 am for the rest of term to mark first-year Transfiguration papers as payment for their professor's parting with it.)
"Marry me," James breathed, gazing with unfiltered adoration at the love of his life. It just so happened that was the golden snitch and not his girlfriend.
Lily chuckled with the self-satisfaction of someone who knew they had won, and said, "I already gave you one wonderful gift today. Don't go begging for a second."
"You're right. I'm never asking you for anything ever again. You've already given me so much," James said.
"What are the chances you remember that promise come tomorrow?"
She'd lost him to Quidditch mode, the place his mind sometimes disappeared to wherein he'd take on a singular discipline. All he could focus on were dives and maneuvers and the crack of a beater's bat. No time for pranks or class or even girlfriends.
Lily didn't begrudge him his passion. Instead, she was charmed by it. Standing up from the pile of blankets she'd assembled on the floor, Lily went to him on the bed. She stood beside him, one arm wrapped loose around his shoulders – tendons and muscles relaxed like the world had rolled right off Atlas's shoulders – and she pressed a kiss to his head.
Muffled by the messy mass of his hair, Lily whispered, "Happy Christmas, James."
Shocking her every expectation, James tore his gaze away from his beloved snitch to stare her straight in the eyes, one arm coming to lock around her waist. "The happiest Christmas, Lily."
She smiled.