Disclaimer: These characters belongs to J.K. Rowling, and I just like playing with them.
Love Letters
"Your cheeks, blushing roses; your hair; soft and shimmering; you are a flower in bl- Hey, stop laughing!" James threw a pillow at his best friend.
"Haha, Oh, Lily-flower, I looooooooove you!" Sirius crooned, earning him a glare from James and snickers from Remus and Peter.
"It's not that bad," James said, defensively.
"It's the worst bit of drivel I've ever heard," Sirius insisted. "At this rate, Snivellius has a better chance of courting Lily Evans than you do."
James balled up the parchment and threw it at Sirius' head. He got a clean sheet of parchment and started a new poem.
Remus rolled his eyes at the antics of his two friends. "Did you talk to her after the game?"
"Yes," James replied. "I asked her what she thought of the game. She didn't seem very interested."
"You talked about you?" Remus asked disbelievingly.
"Well, it was right after a game, what would you expect?" James asked, crossing out the new lines of poetry he had written.
"You're supposed to ask her about about, you know, her," Remus said.
Sirius laughed again, and James flushed a bit. Obviously, he had no idea what he was doing when it came to girls, and he was becoming increasingly frustrated.
---
"Lily!"
She heard Sirius call to her as she was about to enter the Great Hall. She turned away from her giggling friends, who all thought Sirius was hot, and rolled her eyes.
"Oh, no, James didn't send you to talk to me, did he?" she asked.
"No, this ill-bred scheme is all my own," Sirius said with a charming smile.
"If this is about James-" Lily began.
"What do you have against him?" Sirius asked.
"He's arrogant, self-centered, and trying far to hard to actually be taken seriously," Lily said. She gave an exasperated sigh, then continued. "He's pathetic. Look at this."
She pulled a piece of parchment from her bookbag and handed it to Sirius. He read it quickly and laughed.
"I didn't know he already sent you a poem," he said. "I take it you don't like it."
"Not particularly. I mean, the thought is nice, but the execution is, well…"
"Dreadful," Sirius finished for her.
"Yes." She paused. "Since you're his friend, do you think you could you get him to, well, stop?"
"Hmm, I can try, but he really does fancy you," Sirius said. "He's just not very good with girls. Come on, Lily, there must be something you like about James."
"Well… I don't know why I'm telling you this, but he is very cute. Oh, and the way he flies! The problem is, he knows he's a good seeker, and he just uses it to show off. It's immature. No, I can't go out with someone so egotistical." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than Sirius.
"Ok, I'll tell him that then," Sirius promised.
"Oh, not the cute part! It'll only boost his ego," Lily insisted.
Sirius just smirked as he walked away.
---
"Flying? You're sure?" James asked his friend.
"Yeah. Take her flying, and don't show off, and don't talk about yourself," Sirius said.
"James loves himself far too much for that," Remus remarked.
"I'm not that conceited!" James insisted.
His friends didn't reply.
---
"Where are we going, Sirius?" Lily asked again.
"I already told you, I can't tell you," Sirius said. He gave her another of those charming smiles, and Lily didn't argue.
She followed him across the Hogwarts grounds to the lake, where James was sitting patiently on the bank, his broom beside him on the ground. He smiled at her and patted the ground beside him, but she chose to remain standing.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"To talk," he said with a shrug.
Lily wanted the upper hand in this affair. "Only if you promise to stop writing poetry," she bargained.
James looked at the parchment in his hand, balled it up, and tossed it into the lake. "Done." Lily suppressed a giggle and sat beside him.
"I know the poems are cheesy, but I mean it when I say that you're beautiful, and intelligent, and that I could easily fall in love with you," James said. "Hell, you probably deserve better than me…. I'm sorry, but I really don't know how to go about this. I've never been so taken with a girl before."
James smiled a cute, innocent smile, and Lily melted, despite all her intentions to not give in.
"You're actually rather sweet when you want to be, aren't you?" she asked, though it was more to herself than to James. "I mean, usually you're an arrogant prat."
"Remus more or less told me that too," James admitted. "I suppose I have been. But does it matter so much? I'm willing to change for you, if you'll just give me a chance."
"I suppose… I mean, we can try it," Lily conceded after a moment of thought.
James smiled brightly and jumped up off the ground. He offered Lily a hand, and she took it. He pulled her into an awkward hug, then pulled away to pick up his broom.
"I wanted to show you something," he said.
James mounted his broom, then gestured for Lily to do the same. She sat in front of him, and he wrapped his arms around her to grip the broom handle in front of her.
"Not too high, okay? I'm not very good at flying," Lily insisted.
"All right," James agreed, though grudgingly. This relationship thing would mean he'd need to make compromises. He'd have to get used to that.
James pushed off the ground and settled in at an altitude that was hopefully not too high for Lily, letting her enjoy the feel of the wind rushing past, the thrill that comes with flying, and trying to let her know she was perfectly safe with him without actually saying so (he was trying that whole not-acting-conceited thing Sirius was talking about.)
She gripped his arms tightly, but laughed the whole time.
When they landed, Lily wrapped James in a hug that was considerably less awkward than the first one.
"Thank you," she said, and kissed his cheek.