Fluff! Get your fresh fluff here! Fluff going spare! We have fluff coming out of our ears! Another short and pointless L/J fic that doesn't really require much thought so I'm writing it during my exams just to keep myself going! More chapters to come. Free fluff anyone?

I don't own anything except the concepts you've never heard of before. I wonder how much money I'd get for them. . . J K Rowling owns the plasticine; I just play with it.

Please don't sue me; I am only a fourteen-year-old with a word-processor and a copy of the New Penguin English Dictionary.

And now, our feature presentation. . .

~*~Three~*~Here Is Your Briefing. . .~*~

James Potter had always loved a challenge, literally.

In his eyes, Lily Evans was a challenge. She was shy, closed, untrusting, timid, apprehensive, anxious, hesitant and altogether the most incredibly fascinating creature he'd ever met.

He made it his goal to get her to open up to him, maybe let him get to know her. It had been after the April Fools' Day in their first year when it had started to work. He and the rest of the Marauders had been clowning around all day, making their shoes larger and flatter, juggling dungbombs in their Potions lesson, throwing custard pies causing general and much needed entertainment on a Monday morning. After lessons and the Marauders had finished pointedly ignoring their homework, James had sought out the redhead and found her in the corner of the common room, curled up under a book that took up most of her lap. James had tactfully overlooked the fact that he was wearing a very brightly coloured curly wig, thought, why not? and strode over to the sofa where his target was sitting.

She looked up at the 'flump' of the sofa, well. . . she looked over the ramparts of her book as if he were a knight that she wasn't quite sure she should let into her tower.

"Afternoon," he greeted smartly, tugging respectfully as his elastic red nose. She drew her book towards her slightly so he could barely pick out a muffled:

"Hello."

"Lovely day," he smiled, and glanced up the ceiling as if they were sitting on a bench in Hyde Park. Her eyes flicked upwards momentarily and then widened. She tried to sink back further into the upholstery of the sofa.

"Are. . .are you going to play a joke on me?" she whispered. James feigned thoughtfulness, held up a finger and pulled a little black book out of his back pocket.

He flicked through the pages.

"Nope, sorry, I'm all booked up with Slytherins and professors until July."

The words came out like that but the meaning came out like:

"I'd like to be your friend."

Then, the most miraculous thing happened: a shadow of a hint of a suggestion of a flicker of a smile appeared on her lips! James's brain punched the air and whooped. Her eyes returned shyly to her book because she had nothing to say. It was a kind of motion that said: "I don't particularly know why you're here, but I'm not telling you to go away." James realised she couldn't really say 'thank you' or something.

James ventured further across the tightrope of luck.

"I could fit you in over the summer, although I'll need an address and postcode. . ."

This time the tiny smile stayed when her eyes looked at him again, and James was getting the strangest feeling. Usually, he didn't feel this kind of raw euphoria when he made someone smile. It was when Lily, from behind her massive book chose to smile at his antics, that a particularly exhilarated sense flooded him.

"I don't think I'll take you up on that," she said quietly through her smile. James tore his eyes away from hers for a moment to roll them and tut.

"Well, that's a shame. Anyone else you'd like us to fit in? Friends, relatives, enemies, acquaintances?"

She opened her mouth and a small breath of laughter came out instead of words. The strange feeling got stronger.

"My sister would kill m-" she started quietly.

"Your sister!" cried James in jubilation. He twisted round to face over the back of the sofa and scanned the room for Sirius. "Sirius, my friend! We have another summer order! Just getting the details!"

"Hooray!" Sirius cheered. James shifted back to face her.

"Anyway. . ." he started and then stopped. Her head was bent behind her book and her small form was shaking. He laid a hand on the top of the massive hardback and peered over, concerned. Maybe he'd gone too far. . .

"Listen, I'm sorry if I. . ."

She interrupted him with a burst of very quiet but nevertheless, very silly giggles.

"Here, are you alright?" asked James. Perhaps he really had gone too far and the shock had pushed her over the edge. She took a hand off her book to brush tears from under her startlingly green eyes.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine, she said dismissively.

Then it truly hit James. She was laughing! Somehow this seemed like the most astounding of miracles. James started chuckling as well, and soon they were having their own private joke on a sofa in the corner of the Gryffindor Common room.

It was getting late, people were starting to drift toward the dormitories. Once their laughter had faded, James stuck out his hand, after removing the electric handshake on the inside of his palm.

"Well, Miss Evans, it was absolutely smashing doing business with you," he said in a formal voice that was just asking to be laughed at; Lily didn't laugh though. She just stared at his hand for a moment.

Then her book fell completely flat on her lap, exposing her in a way, and she fitted her small hand in his, doing all the shaking because James had sort of frozen from shock.

As she pulled her hand away and pulled up her book/drawbridge again, James smiled and got up, taking off the wig and removing his red nose with a snap.

As he lay in bed that night it was all he could do not to whoop, cheer and yell in delight. He WAS a knight and she HAD let him into her castle.

James made a mental note to carry lots of shiny armour polish in future.

***

And that was that.

That burst of ridiculous giggles that he had managed to extract out of her was a kind of trigger inside him. Suddenly everything else seemed a little mundane as long as he just kept her laughing. If he didn't make her at least smile daily then he'd feel as if he'd somehow failed and that he'd let her down. Gradually, all through their first and second years she opened up more and more and the more he found out about her, the more James seemed to like her.

Sometimes he'd feel as if things were going to far, as if it wasn't possible to be as fond of someone as he was of her. Towards the end of his second year, every night he'd lie in bed and make resolution after resolution to slow down. The feelings he was experiencing were so strong that sometimes they scared him a little.

But in the morning, when he came down to the Great Hall and spotted her poking her toast from behind a book, he'd think: "Aw, the hell with it," and things would escalate a little more as they did every day.

Then, in their third year, he had just sort of lost control and kissed her. She had been really quite shocked at first but at least it had taken her mind off that weird Tralewney woman and her bogus predictions. He had kind of made a run for it after that, scared out of his wits that now she hated him or he'd gone too far and made her close up again. Then, that night, he'd found her in her usual sofa by the fire behind an even bigger book than the one she'd had two years ago when he'd first spoken to her. He sat down next to her quietly, wondering what on Earth he was going to say. She hadn't looked up from her book like she usually did. James fiddled with the lose ends of his Gryffindor tie.

"Listen, I'm sorry if I. . ."

How familiar that sounded, he thought before he was interrupted, again, quite familiarly.

Lily let her book drop with a quiet thump, leaned over to take the tie from his shaking hands and used it to pull him into a kiss. And suddenly everything was better than ever.

***

Cheers to my two more reviewers: Blue Smurfette Loves Cheese, hotmegan squareskirt