James grinned, "I've missed Hogwarts food."
Dumbledore nodded with no guise of gravity.
Sirius sluggishly got to his feet, and scratched his head. "I guess I'll go to the hospital while you and Lily snog in the kitchens."
James glanced nervously back at Dumbledore, but the headmaster was benignly watching Fawkes, apparently deaf to Sirius's remark.
"That works for me."
James was suddenly very glad he had come to Hogwarts and equally glad there was a Head Students meeting. If those two events hadn't coordinated, he wouldn't be seeing Lily sitting on the stone floor across the corridor from him, reading a book. James smiled when he saw her. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail, and strangely enough she was wearing a striped sweater over her uniform that matched the pink and white striped rain boots on her feet. She and Amos were looking a large book opened between them.
Apparently neither of them was very alert, because neither of them looked up until he sat down beside Lily on the floor.
"Wh-James!" Lily laughed. She very nearly jumped on him after she shoved the book off her lap and hugged him. "What are you doing here?"
"I had to see Dumbledore. He said we can go eat in the kitchens after your meeting if you want."
"Really?" Lily stopped laughing and seriously put her forehead against his. "James, does this mean we're actually seeing each other without sneaking? I'm fairly sure deceit is the basis of our relationship."
"If you would feel better, I'm sure I can find a few dusty tunnels to crawl through."
"Let's go wading through a swamp or something."
"As exciting as that sounds, you would have to carry me since I don't have galoshes like you do."
"So maybe we'll go the normal way." She lightly rested her fingertips on his cheek. "I'm glad you came. I've missed you, James."
"And I missed you."
She lightly brushed her lips across his and reveled in being enveloped by James.
"Ahem." Sirius cleared his throat multiple times to get the couple's attention.
"Are you choking?" Lily asked with mock concern.
"Possibly gagging. Don't you have a meeting with the headmaster?"
"Is that why I've been sitting in the hallway for the past thirty five minutes, waiting on our ten forty five meeting? I had entirely forgotten."
Sirius stuck his tongue out at her, and she returned the gesture.
Amos groaned in the corner. "I guess this means I have to carry the book."
James sat in the hallway while Lily and Amos went into Dumbledore's office, and he found himself thinking about Lily.
He could honestly say without a doubt he loved her beyond anything else in his life.
Lily was everything good in his world. She was bright summer days, brisk fall breezes, a flawless snowfall, and the perfect spring day all rolled into one. She was fresh and kind and wholly wonderful.
And she was very pretty. Very. Adorable was probably a very good way to describe her appearance.
James wondered why he, of all people, would be marrying her. There were pretty girls and smart girls and nice girls and funny girls, but very seldom were there girls that had all of those qualities. Lily could do so much better than him. On that thought, why would a girl with two brain cells work together choose him over Amos Diggory. Amos was equally good looking and equally wealthy, but Amos had a much better family and seemed to fit her personality.
He frowned. What was Lily thinking of, and was it a possibility she had made a rash decision?
While James was thinking dark thoughts in the corridor, Lily was rather pleasantly reflecting on her own feelings while half-listening to Dumbledore talk about desks or something.
James was really great. Practically nobody liked him, but she chalked that up to people not really knowing him. He was mean on the surface, but underneath that public veneer, he was really very likeable and sweet, and just perhaps the barest touch prickly. He watched out for the people he loved; Lily knew James would jump in front of any curse to save Remus or Sirius or Peter. He was brilliant, and he was unlike any person she had ever known. She loved him.
"And as a final note, I would just like to mention we have a visitor, James Potter, and I think it would be appropriate for one or both of our head students to escort him to lunch in the kitchens. If you two don't know the location, I'm sure he can direct you. That is all."
Lily and Amos murmured goodbyes and started down the staircase.
"Are you going to escort the guest or am I going to have to?" Amos asked with pretend irritation.
"If you're going to act like that, I will. Good grief Amos, this is ridiculous. I'm tired of you shirking your head boy duties."
They looked at each other and laughed.
"Try not to get into trouble."
"I won't. You're not going back to class, are you? I'm not."
"You're escorting the guest. I'll find something in the tower to occupy me for fifteen minutes until lunch." Amos walked off in that direction, and Lily was left with James.
"Do you mind if we go to the library for a bit and then go to the kitchens later. I need to finished up an assignment really quickly. We've got an hour and a half, so there's plenty of time."
"Fine with me," James shrugged.
They walked down the hallway holding hands silently before Lily asked, "What's wrong? You look upset."
"Several things, actually. There was a problem at St. Mungo's and I got worked up over that, and then I've been thinking about us. Are you sure you want to marry me?"
Lily stopped abruptly. "What?"
"Are you sure you want to marry me?"
"Do you still want to marry me?" Lily asked, her voice rising.
"I don't if you don't want to marry me."
"Why are you asking me this?"
"I'm just checking."
"Why are you just checking? Have you changed your mind?"
"I thought you might have."
"Why would you think that?"
"Think about it. Why would you actually want to marry me when there are a million other wizards out there that are better than me? They're kinder and happier and they have better families. Why would you want me when you could have someone like Amos Diggory?"
"I love you, you idiot. I don't want to marry someone like Amos Diggory who is perfect and who is just like me. Do I act like I want to be with him?"
"Well, no, but I was just thinking it's sort of ridiculous for you to marry me when you're…you. You're perfect and I'm not."
"Oh, James, that was incredibly foolish," Lily sighed, and hugged him tightly. "I love you; I love you; I love you. I want to spend forever with you. I'm not perfect and you're not perfect, but we are perfect for each other. You are the wizard I want. It's always you."
James didn't let her go, even when she stopped talking. "I want you to be happy."
"I will be happy with you. You make me happy."
"I love you."
Lily drew back to smile at her and he kissed her.
They were still standing there kissing when class let out for lunch and the halls became flooded with students.
"Well, that moment's over. Shall we advance to the library?" James asked.
When they arrived in the library, Lily immediately grabbed a book and began writing her essay so quickly her handwriting was nearly illegible, and then she stopped. She absently tugged on her tie and flipped through the book's pages.
"Could I be of assistance?"
"I can do it."
"I was just thinking we could, well, go snog in a corner someplace as soon as you finish."
Lily raised an eyebrow and asked, "Any good at Transfiguration?"
One week later…
"I'll miss this place," Amos sighed.
Lily and Millie were sniffling into tissues.
"I wish you two would stop that."
"We'll never be back. That's said. So very sad," Lily said.
"We'll never walk down those hallways or stand in the stands at the pitch."
"We'll never fall asleep in our dormitory with the other girls."
"We'll never have to write essays, prepare for NEWTs, or have a curfew again," Amos finished.
Millie sighed, "No curfew. Now that you mention it, life might not be so bad."
"As if your mother is going to let you stay out all night," Lily said derisively.
"I'll tell her I'm staying with you and James. She nearly died when I told her you were going to live with him, by the way."
"I wonder why?" she asked dryly. She stayed silent for a moment before blurting, "I really love you two."
"We love you too," Millie said quickly.
"You don't have to be so sad, Lily. I'm sure we'll still see each other," Amos said reasonably.
"But it won't be the same. We won't be together all day long every day anymore. You guys have made Hogwarts a lot of fun for me."
"You made it fun for us. We probably would have been very bored without you," Amos said.
"Nobody else would have encouraged us to walk backward."
"Millie."
"Lily. Don't be sad. Just think all the fun we'll have now. When you can tear yourself from James, that is. He's about a hundred times more uptight than any mother, but you're a smart girl. You can drug him and sneak out some time."
"James is fun," Lily said defensively.
"To maul in a dark library corner, apparently. You traumatized a quarter of the eleven year olds at the school that still think the opposite sex has cooties."
Lily felt her face turn red as she remembered that awkward situation for the thousandth time. "Can't we just please forget about that? I have never been so embarrassed in my life."
"So embarrassed that you two picked back up behind a statue three feet from the library entrance?"
"Perhaps I'm just easily distracted," she answered in a distinctly harassed tone. "Can we just drop it? I don't know why you want to talk about James so much even though you hate him. I don't get it."
Amos shot Millie a look that explicitly said you went too far this time. "Why don't we all change out of our Hogwarts clothes?"
"That's not obvious at all."
"Last time off the train," Lily said regretfully.
"Last time we hug goodbye at the train station," Millie added.
"Last time I have to hear you two say this is the last time," Amos put in.
Both girls hugged him at the same time, and then hugged each other.
"Owl me immediately, Lils. If he's mean to you, just come to my house and I'll go to yours and hex him."
"Okay, I'll do that, Millie. Wish me luck."
"Good luck. Don't forget me."
"Why would I forget you? We're going to take our Apparating tests tomorrow. I won't have time."
"I'd forgotten."
All three of them laughed and gave each other a last look before walking off toward their respective families.
Lily carefully wiped her eyes and began wandering around to find James. She finally spotted black hair mussed in an unusual way, and began threading her way through the crowds toward it. Instead of it being James's stubbornly messy hair, it was Sirius's artfully tousled locks. He was whispering with Remus and Peter.
"Where's James?" she asked when she finally faced them.
"He was assigned interning duty today," Peter supplied.
And then she was engulfed. Sirius suddenly enveloped her and gave her comically sloppy kisses on the face and Remus hugged her tightly and spun her around. Peter hung to the side until the other two were finished, and then in a voice identical to James's said, "Did you manage to remember to shrink your trunk, or do we have to deal with that?"
Lily looked blankly at them before she began laughing.
"I think we messed up," Remus observed.
"You're right; I should have kept kissing her until a bunch of first years came by."
"I think I would have drowned had you kept it up," she giggled. "That was definitely how it would have been if James had met me, given he'd been completely inebriated and sleepwalking."
"Well, we tried our best. James is going to be at the hospital all day; probably until well after dark," Remus said.
"He didn't want you to be alone here, especially since he said he would come."
"And so we're the stand-ins. Do you want to go get something to eat at Diagon Alley? Then we'll take you home?" Sirius asked.
Three hours later, Lily was left alone with just Sirius in her new home. From what she could figure, Sirius more or less lived there. After Remus and Peter had left, he had went into the kitchen, made a sandwich, and settled in front of the television, which Lily still couldn't figure out why James had.
James didn't even know Muggles used toilet paper, so how could he handle purchasing and using something of that magnitude?
"Lils, are you afraid of the dark?"
"No, Sis, I'm not."
"Why did you just call me Sis?"
"Why did you just call me Lils?"
"Lils is a common abbreviation of Lily. You can't get Sis from Sirius."
"Sure you can. Take out the R, I, and the U."
"How about we go back to Lily and Sirius before James walks in and you start calling him Jim or something equally embarrassing."
"Let's both call him Jimmy and see what he does."
"Probably think we've lost our marbles. I would."
"So why did you ask me if I was afraid of the dark, Sis?"
"Well, Lils, I was going to come back and check on you when it got dark. James won't be home until a few hours after dark, and I didn't want you to be cowering under the bed desperately hoping for light."
"Sirius, I am a big girl, and I can stay by myself after dark. I appreciate your concern though."
"Anytime. You know where to find me if you need me. Otherwise, I'm going to my flat and do a little reading and get ready for my date tonight."
"Anyone I know?'
"I don't know; it's a blind date. I'll come by after it's over and let you two know. On second thought, maybe I should leave you two on your own tonight." Sirius started toward the door, but then he turned back with a laugh, "But only one night. After that, Sirius is back."
"Bye, Sirius."
"Goodnight, Lils."
Lily locked the door behind him and began her private inspection of the flat. She walked through each of the rooms, running her hands across the furniture and spinning around in wonder. Throughout the house, there was a recurring theme: Friends. James had no family pictures, just snapshots of his friends. Sirius's face could be found in every room except the bathroom and Remus and Peter occupied their fair share of pictures too. She was surprised to see that she was in nearly as many pictures as Sirius, even though she didn't even remember when they were taken.
The bedroom was the last room she went in. Ever since she was little, she had thought of bedrooms as the most special of places.
They were rooms in which dreams unfolded.
They were the rooms where little girls pretended to be ballerinas and dreamed of the boy who had that incredibly cute smile. They were the places they giggled with their best friends and cried when they hurt.
She had had her own room for eleven years, and then she had moved in with a gaggle of young witches like her. Now it would just be the two of them, just Lily and James.
After walking around the room once, she took her trunk from her pocket and returned it to its normal size so she could begin unpacking. If she had thought James had forgotten about her even arriving today, the idea would have been dispelled when she saw all of the adjustments he had made obviously in expectation of her arrival. The closet was neatly bisected in half as James had his clothes pushed to one side, and his shoes were in four neat rows along half the closet floor. Lily was shocked he had that many shoes. She hadn't really pinned him a shoe man. He probably had more shoes than she did. Weird. Half of the drawer space had been emptied, and one nightstand had been cleared. Even half of the bathroom had been bared for her use.
In her book, that was just adorably sweet.
Lily dreamily waited for him to come home that evening. She watched some soap opera reruns on the television and imagined what would happen when he came home. Visions of him slamming the door open, running to her, and decla
ring his passionate love for her danced through her giddy mind.
Unfortunately, visions just kept dancing until all she saw was the back of her eyelids. When the mantle clock chimed midnight, she gave up her fight with sleep and trudged into the bathroom for her evening beauty ritual before slinking into bed. She fell asleep with the scent of vanilla teasing her nose and thoughts of James occupying her mind.