July 17, 1978

Stinchcombe was a sleepy parish and an even sleepier village. The townspeople went about their affairs with a tidy industriousness that called little attention to themselves. There was a sense of balance to the parish within the meeting of the quaint village and the surrounding countryside. The environment allowed the townsfolk to cull the fields and in exchange they kept to their village's borders.

Only one estate imposed its stark humanness on the landscape. The Potter's manor sat atop acres of cleared land, overlooking the vale to the River Severn. Euphemia Potter had assured Lily that the manor wasn't nearly as large as it seemed, that the high-vaulted ceilings lent it an imposing air but that the eight-bedroom structure hardly qualified as a manor at all. Lily privately disagreed.

Lily had only arrived the day before. Since their sending off at Hogwarts, Lily had spent two weeks with her parents, weeks that went a long way in reminding her why parents and children were meant to separate after a point. She and James were set to move into their own flat by the end of the month, but at his parents' insistence, she had flooed down to spend the week getting to know them.

Euphemia and Fleamont Potter turned out to be incredibly supportive of their son's new girlfriend, sweeping aside (for the most part) Lily's wariness from the Head Boy incident. The sitting room was a temple to James, and Euphemia had kept Lily up until one in the morning showing her photographs from his childhood and recounting stories from his conception onward. Fortunately, James was impossible to embarrass, and he took this fawning as a matter of course. That morning, Lily had been woken at the cusp of dawn for a walk of the grounds with Fleamont and then breakfast over the paper. They'd taken her for a tour of the village, pointing out every shopfront as well as those long gone and cooing encouragingly over her familiarity with muggle customs – blatant political signaling for her benefit.

Only with great reluctance had Euphemia agreed to give the young couple a break for a few hours of rest. They would rejoin one another that evening for dinner and a fly through the countryside, leaving Lily and James blissfully alone.

She walked through his room slowly, fingering the contraband from Zonko's and opening up all of his drawers. There wasn't much to see that hadn't been on display in his dormitory at Hogwarts, but Lily still scoured the room. Last night, she had been ushered straight to the guest bedroom on the opposite side of the house, the room Euphemia had pointedly informed Lily was nearest her own.

There was a moving photo of James' family on the bureau. James was gap-toothed and nearly seven in the picture, preening for the camera while his parents gave pristine smiles on either side. Lily couldn't help but trace her fingers around the frame. He'd been so young then, yet he looked like a perfect replica, only stretched up and out with some new definition around his jaw.

"My parents adore you," James said, yawning from where he lay on the bed.

Lily didn't turn away from the photograph. "Of course, they do. I'm a delight."

"More like an intolerable brownnoser. 'Yes, Mrs. Potter,' 'the potatoes are wonderful, Mrs. Potter,' 'do tell me about your work, Mr. Potter,'" James mimed.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "You'll be no different when you meet my parents."

"No way. I'm going to be myself and nothing more. Just wait," James said, "…Then again, maybe being an intolerable brownnoser is your natural state."

Lily pounced on him. The bed shuddered once beneath her weight, blankets shifting a centimeter to the side. From her perch atop his knees, Lily gathered up the little bit of fat she could find on his stomach and pinched. He gave a little yelp that was infinitely satisfying, so she decided to do it again. And again.

Waving a warning finger in her face, James adopted his sternest expression, the one that made him look like a rogue librarian and said, "Pinch me one more time…"

"And what?" Lily challenged. She'd never liked a threat that trailed off with an ellipsis, no creativity.

"Pinch me one more time and I'll break up with you," James said. He looked mighty pleased with himself after the words were out of his mouth, and he repeated his threat another time. "Yes, will chuck you right here and now. Can't suffer a girlfriend who goes around pinching me. I just won't have it."

"Really?"

He was so smug. "Pinch me and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

After that, she never really had a choice. Lily reached down and pinched the flesh between the crook of his elbow. Hard. The skin turned white beneath her clenched fingertips. James grimaced.

"Should I tell your parents I need a portkey home?" Lily asked as sweetly as a person could while maintaining a death grip on someone's vulnerable skin.

"Well…I guess you called my bluff," James said after a pause, and then he proceeded to pinch her in return.

She shrieked at the unexpected assault, throwing her arms up to block his hands. Deftly, James flipped them over on the bed, boxing her in between the brackets of his knees. She couldn't do a thing to stop him as he pinched at her arms and her stomach and her legs and everywhere else he could reach.

"Get off me, you big oaf! You freakish giant of a person!" Lily yelled. Had she possessed the sense to date a reasonably sized person, she wouldn't find it so impossible to buck him off. She had no one to blame but herself.

"Whatever you say, shorty," James said – teasingly, bravely, foolishly.

Things escalated as terribly and quickly as one might imagine.

Lily gave an almighty heft of her hips to dislodge him and began her counterattack in earnest. In James' favor was his superior strength and long limbs, able to keep her locked in one place as he straddled her waist; In Lily's favor was her righteous fury and the piercing sting of her nails as they sunk into him with every pinch.

To an outsider, it might have looked like they were hellbent on killing one another, but their giggles would have given away the game. Nearly every cry of pain was followed up by a laugh of victory. After hours of restricted contact – a polite hand around her waist or a covert brushing of hands beneath the table – the ability to touch him freely was blissful. He was strong and broad and hers as he lay on top of her. Just to revel in it, Lily pinched his hip.

Determined to end things once and for all, Lily snaked a hand up to rest feather-light against James' throat. She'd learned less than a month into their relationship that he couldn't bear to have anyone touch his neck. They – the Marauders, Lily, and Alice – had sat in the common room, experimenting with their endurance to withstand a gentle touch against the vulnerable expanse of the throat. Everyone had hated the sensation except for Remus who was able to achieve a zen-like calm as people tickled along his skin. James, however, had reacted the worst. He couldn't take it. With a great deal of cajoling and kisses, Lily was able to relax him to the point to accept a soft touch to the side of the neck that slowly drifted along, but he'd seized up several times during the process like he was expecting a knife to the throat. Insultingly, he'd managed better with Sirius. The trust was already built there.

Perhaps he'd been right to distrust her, because she certainly put her knowledge to use now. James spasmed around the hand at his throat, ear tucking into his shoulder as he tried to hide his neck entirely. Lily held firm and added a tickle for good measure. Busy twitching, James was unable to protest as Lily flipped their positions and straddled his waist.

A simultaneous clearing of a throat and a staccato knock at the door interrupted them. They'd purposefully not closed the door entirely, and Euphemia now peaked around the open corner. Conscious of their position, Lily tried to roll to the side (and off Euphemia's son) as fluidly as possible.

"What is it, mum?"

"I was preparing myself afternoon tea and thought I'd ask whether you two are hungry," Euphemia answered.

Having been fed an extravagant breakfast and even more extravagant dinner the night before, Lily couldn't imagine eating another bite. Her stomach already bulged from the servings she'd forced down out of pure politeness. She shook her head.

"Mum, I'm perfectly capable of making my own tea if I decide to," James said, a hint of annoyance there in his voice.

"Of course you are, dear," Euphemia said. "Well, if you change your mind, just let me know."

When Euphemia left, she made sure to leave the door wide open to give anyone passing an unobstructed view of its inhabitants. James threw his head back dramatically onto a pillow.

"You realize she only came in here to check up on what we were doing," James groaned.

"My parents wouldn't let you in my room in the first place," Lily reminded him. Personally, she thought Euphemia's war between respecting her son's privacy and maintaining decorum was funny. Euphemia had probably hovered on the other side of the door for a few minutes, debating whether she could enter and searching for an excuse.

"We told them we're moving in together in less than two weeks! Don't you think they could ease up on the restrictions a bit?" James said.

"It's their house, and you're their son," Lily said, the only explanation needed.

James sighed. "I know, I just…I can't sleep…without you next to me, I mean. It's unnatural, and I lie awake thinking about how it feels when you're beside me."

Without discussion, it had become a matter of course that Lily would sneak up to the boys' dormitory for the night during their last two months at Hogwarts. Sirius had moaned, loudly and often, about the loss of his privacy, but no one had raised any legitimate objection. The two had developed all the intricacies of a long-married couple. Lily liked to sleep on the left on her side, spooning was acceptable and James' arms wrapped around her waist even better; she required at least two pillows and would inevitably become hot in the night and need her blankets and James to go. James, on the other hand, liked to stay perfectly parallel to the mattress with only one pillow, he required a mountain of blankets to keep warm from the start, and needed Lily to remain in contact with him throughout the night, usually by holding hands or hooking one leg around hers for when she threw his arms off in her sleep.

She knew what it was like to fall asleep to the sound of James' shallow snoring, to wake up with his breath hot and slightly wet against the back of her neck. Lily hadn't struggled to sleep without him while she was staying with her parents, but she had missed their connection. Everything faded to a haze of safety when they were pressed together.

"I know. I miss you, too," Lily said quietly. She ran her thumb across his bottom lip, and James closed his eyes at the tenderness.

"All of this," James groaned, "because they don't want us having premarital sex." Lily could actually spot the moment the answer occurred to him, and James flailed into a sitting position with so much violence that he nearly knocked her out of the bed. "What if we got married? Then, they'll have to let us share a room! Lily Evans, marry me right now!"

Lily was spared from having to answer by Fleamont. Walking by the door, he said casually in passing, "Jimmy, if you think your mother would let you share a room just because you eloped, you're less bright than I believed."

Grinning so wide it felt like her lips might split, Lily said, "Yeah, Jimmy."

Then, just because she could, she pinched him.

A/N: Have I mentioned that I really love these two? Review & let me know what you think.