This was the part where I laughed out loud, and she glared at me. I shut up, and in those few seconds of silence I thought that maybe Sirius had been right about his 'prude' description. I then toughened my resolve and, through the employ of utter Gryffindor bravery, snatched Lily's arm and pulled her down beside me, effectively burying half of her in snow.
She had shrieked loudly and stared at me with wide eyes. What followed then was a rapid succession of piercing declarations of James Potter's repulsiveness. That was when I realized that I probably shouldn't have done that, or that I might've moved too soon. That was also when it dawned on me that my careful (or not) work for the past two days was slowly going down the drain.
There was a brief silence after she'd finished, during which she took time to catch her breath.
I winced.
Then, she laughed.
I sniffed softly, not wanting to ruin the rare moment of peace and silence between us. I couldn't help it though; it was cold and I was too uncomfortable. "You know," I whispered, "I think the snow's getting to be a little too much."
"I agree," he said quickly, as if he'd been waiting for me to say something first before he would dare said anything about his own agony. He sniffed, too. "Bloody freezing."
I sat up and sighed with relief. "Another one of your faulty misadventures, Potter."
He groaned and dragged himself up to an awkward sitting position. "But I still won the challenge," he said breathlessly, "in fact, I was buried in snow exactly 3 seconds longer than you were."
I rolled my eyes at him. "And why did I agree to do this 'challenge' in the first place?"
"You didn't have much of a choice. I'd already buried you halfway. Besides, you quite liked it. You were, as I remember, laughing your heart out." He grinned smugly.
"Shove it."
He chuckled and stood up, offering me his hand. I gave him mine and he hauled me up. "D'you know what the time is?" I asked.
"Reckon it's around 10 or 11."
"Oh. So, uh, what are we doing now?" I eyed him warily as he smiled that mischievous smile of his that I never missed whenever he was out plotting with his friends. Not that I was watching him, though… I was just looking out for any trouble. I am Head Girl after all.
He grabbed a handful of snow and balled it up in his fist. I backed away slightly as he grinned. "I'd suggest a snowball fight, but that's too much action in one day. Goodness knows, you've had enough snow dumped on your body today." He dropped the snowball and rolled it around with his foot as he smirked roguishly. "You ever made a snowman, Evans?"
"Of course I have."
"Good. We're making one."
I tittered breathlessly in relief and walked over to him. His eyes twinkled as I started making a ball for the head. "This," he said, "is going to be the most artistic snowman you'll ever see in your life…"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
James swatted my hand away. "What are you doing?" he snapped incredulously.
"I'm giving it eyes!"
He snorted. "Black eyes? That's not artistic. It needs to be impressive and striking. This snowman has to have personality, Evans."
"Fine." I handed him the two rocks that I'd been about to put on the snowman. He grinned and transfigured it. I gasped quietly as I saw what he'd done to it. "Are those… emeralds?"
James shook his head. "They're not real. But you think they are because it's an illusion," he whispered dramatically. "A good illusion at that. No need to be too impressed though. This is basic knowledge for transfiguration masters."
"Oh, please." I rolled my eyes as he stuck the glittering stones symmetrically on the snowman's head.
So far, the snowman looked as far from a snowman as it could get. It was actually more an ice sculpture of a real person than two obese balls of snow put on top of each other like most normal snowmen. Both James and I had taken out our wands five minutes after having promised that we were going to use no magic whatsoever.
The snowman was male. James had insisted. I, of course, knew better than to argue. It was roughly 5 feet and 6 inches tall, with thin, lanky limbs. Everything from the neck down had been finished perfectly. It was in fact too humanlike that I would say it even bore a slight semblance to James, only James is a lot taller than it is. Now, the only unresolved conflict was how the face was going to look like.
It had a nose. It looked a little like James's, only a little shorter. It had pinkish lips that we had charmed from a twig into looking like that—James had wanted pale, ghostly lips but I'd protested and said that a boy with pinkish lips was more likely to be kissed than a boy with ethereal lips (he had blushed slightly and surrendered). It had ears; they were molded after mine because we'd decided that my ears are better than James's. I gave it perfectly normal eyebrows, as opposed to James's pleas of giving the poor snowman a unibrow. I had planned on giving it black eyes, which James had obviously disagreed with before he gave it emerald ones. And now there was the hair.
"I reckon we should give him my hair."
I frowned. "But he's got your nose and your gender."
"And he's got your height, your ears, and your eyes—" he reddened a little at this "—that's three, Evans. I've only got two. So I say we give him my beautiful hair."
"Oh, fine. Whatever."
He grinned cheekily as he plucked out a strand of hair from his head. He stuck it on the snowman's head and charmed it. The trademark unruly black hair slowly crept and scattered aimlessly over the snowman's imaginary scalp. I scrunched up my nose as it started to develop a very strange parallel to James, who gave a gasp of delight behind me as we both watched.
I turned to look at him. "I suppose you're gonna give him glasses now?"
His eyes widened in excitement. "Evans! That's a great idea!"
"What?! No! You can't do that! That's four things derived after you; I've only got three."
He rolled his eyes as he took off his glasses, made a clone of it, and stuck it behind the snowman's ears. He turned back to me and pointed at the snowman with his thumb over his shoulder. "He's a looker."
"Should've been a she," I mumbled.
"Oh come on!" he cried. "Tell you what…we'll give him a book. You like books, right? That's one other quality after you." He waved his wand and snow from the ground rose up and wrapped strategically around the snowman's torso to form a bag. I raised my eyebrows as an indication that I was impressed… just a little. He flicked his wand again and a book stuck haphazardly out of the bag.
I hit James lightly on the arm. "That's Quidditch Through the Ages!"
He nodded. "The perfect book for young Pierre."
"Pierre?"
"Yes. He's French."
"No, no, no. I say…" I thought for a moment before proudly saying, "Harold."
James gave a cry of disgust. "That's an ugly name!"
I gave him a cold look. "That's my grandfather's name."
"Oh." He ran a hand through his hair, his neck slowly going pink. "Well…" he sighed, "fine! We'll call him… Harry. That's the farthest I'd go for a compromise."
I grinned complacently in concurrence as he rolled his eyes. He walked forward and inspected the snowman. James raised his wand and made a small whooshing sound as he flicked it over Harry's forehead. I walked over to see what he'd done. I gasped. "What did you do that for?" I asked as I stared at the still-healing scar on the snowman's forehead that looked to have been gashed by the tip of a sword.
"It's a souvenir from one of his vicious battles, Evans, because, as you may or may not know by now, Harry here is a warrior." As he said this, James waved his wand and gave Harry his own fake wand, grasped tightly in his left hand.
"Oh?" I said taxingly. "And I see he's also left-handed."
"No, of course not," James said tartly. "He has his wand on the left because he's gonna need his right hand for this…" He waved his wand again, and Harry's right hand held a long sword made from ice, still tainted with what strongly appeared to be blood.
James grinned happily. "He used that to kill a… a snake… and a dragon. No… three dragons."
I stared at him dubiously before shaking my head and laughing. "You are sadistic."
"I am not sadistic!" he protested.
"The sword has blood on it, James!"
He was about to laugh with me, but he stopped. He instead stared at me with wide unbelieving eyes.
"What?" I asked.
"What did you just say?"
I rolled my eyes. "I said, the sword has blood on it, J—" I gasped. He gasped loudly in return. However, his gasp was more excited than horrified, unlike mine. His eyes were glinting energetically, but he sobered at the look of alarm on my face and quickly lost his smirk.
He walked toward me cautiously and moved to touch my shoulder. He sighed as he carefully did so. "S'okay," he said quietly as I saw a hint of another smile on his lips, "you'll be fine. It's not poisonous."
I looked up at him with wide eyes and he smiled softly. "Let's go," he urged me forward with a gentle push on my back, "the house-elves would've made some cocoa. They always do in winter."
We walked off into the castle, a little over three inches apart from each other. James swiveled around after a few steps to wave at our snowman. "Bye, Harry!" He shot a charm at it with his wand. "That'll keep him there for a while." He looked at me. "Maybe we can visit him with Sirius and the others sometime." He snorted lightly. "I know they'd be thrilled to meet our warrior snowman."
I nodded dazedly and repeated after him as we continued walking, "Yeah… maybe sometime." I looked back at Harry and closed my eyes briefly as I thought about it. Our snowman. It was something that we did together and belonged to both of us. And I had called him James. …Out loud.
Things were going perfectly surreal and I was feeling not a notch below weird.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
James and I were sitting beside the fire that night, in the middle of another chess match, when the Marauders exited the common room, saying that they had business to attend to. I found this hard to believe since I knew very well that they were only leaving so that James and I could be alone. In fact, I was a little offended that they actually thought that I would buy their excuses and not notice their stupid little schemes. I almost snorted.
"So…" said James, moving a castle, "about what you said this morning..."
I looked up from the game. "What did I say?"
He gave me a long look before finally speaking. "A word that starts with a 'j', ends with an 's', and is held together by three letters that sound strangely like 'aim', only it's spelled differently—a sexy kind of different. Does it ring a bell?"
I rolled my eyes. "That was a complete accident, I assure you."
"Yeah, I know," he said offhandedly, "but it amuses me. I mean, you just said it like… I dunno… like blagh." He made a face as if he were vomiting. I grimaced in disgust. He looked up at me again with that always-present, almost infuriating glint in his eyes. He shrugged. "It was sudden like that. Queasiness and vomiting is sudden, eh?"
I couldn't help from laughing out loud. I put my face in my hands and tried to stifle my giggles, highly amused yet ashamed of myself for laughing openly at one of his juvenile antics, which I am in no position to call juvenile since I found it oddly entertaining. I opened my eyes to see a widely beaming James Potter, eyes alight with glee.
"Well… look who just made Evans laugh," he said wistfully, almost as if talking to himself.
I watched him curiously as he made his move on the chessboard. "You know, I did call you by your first name. Don't you think it'd only be fair that you call me by mine?" I said this very casually and praised myself silently. I was in fact dying to hear him say my name for reasons that I haven't quite unraveled just yet.
He looked up at me and smiled another one of his smiles. "I think that would be the just thing to do. Tell you what… I'll call you by your first name once I feel like it or get hold of some unavoidable urge to do so. For now, you be on your lookout and keep your ears open." He winked before looking down at my latest move. He grinned happily before he nudged his queen and asked it to walk very, very slowly toward my king as he hummed a melodramatic, suspenseful tune. I bit back a shocked gasp as my king fell to his knees. James lifted up his queen triumphantly and waved it in front of my nose. "What can I say, Evans? The queen is THE most versatile player in a chessboard."
I shook my head as I laughed silently. "I don't think I've ever told you, but you're highly entertaining."
He grinned. "Coming from you, that's the best compliment I've heard in years. Although… it does make me sound like a clown…"
"No, it doesn't," I countered. "You don't have to be a clown to be entertaining. You can be just James, and I'll be equally amused."
He leaned back on his chair, a small smile on his lips as he watched me amiably. "Just James…" he murmured and I nodded slowly as I whispered my response.
"Just James."
A/N I'm sorry if the Harry-snowman took up a little too much space for this chapter. I didn't want it to have so long a description, but I couldn't help it. Anyway, hope that was an okay chapter at least. Oh, and… just as a sort of warning.. no.. not really warning, but reminder.. or maybe not 'cause I've never said this before.. but anyway, whatever it is, I'd just like to say that the chapter after this one would be the last chapter of the fic. At first, I thought the story was going to be much longer, but I figured I'd end it in the next chapter. And I do have my reasons, which I'll be explaining and you'll be reading in chapter 10. I decided to tell you now, just so I don't shock you when I start screaming "THE END!!" … or "THE BEGINNING!!" Eh?
Thank you for the reviews! I love you guys.
child-of-scorpio (Oh, I hate it when computers do that. Well, good luck with that and I hope it's better soon. You gotta give it a little kick and some chastising at times for the evil little spirit in there to calm down and be good. Of course, you should never listen to me. Don't kick it! And by the way, LOVED your new chapter!), martian doll (::squeal:: You're my second Pinay victim! I feel so loved. Thank you!), Professor Drusilla S. Silvers (I broke a record? Me?! Wow. I am very, very flattered. Thank you! Oh, and some extra thank you's for recommending me to your dad! (o:), Realmer06 (Haha. I've always thought those kind of things were very quirky… but amusing anyway. Oh, and thank you!), Shadowrayne (Aahh! I rule?! Yessss! Finally! :D Oh, and I LOVED how you put that.. "making him sweat for each small triumph" ..that's sounds so nice.), The Black Mage (In reference to the O's, I have no clue what you're talking about. But tha's okay. All oddities are welcome in my home… or fic. :D Thank you!)