Jilytober 2021 prompt : "I thought that was what you wanted."

your kiss, my cheek / i watched you leave
your smile, my ghost / i fell to my knees
when you're young, you just run
but you come back to what you need

Though they avoided each other expertly, the moment she'd been simultaneously working up her courage for and dreading finally came a few days later, when Lily went to their shared office for a book she couldn't put off retrieving only to find James there rummaging around his desk.

"Er, hi," she said, if only to announce her presence.

He looked around at her sharply, like she'd startled him, and then went back to shuffling through his papers. "I'll be gone in a minute, just can't find something."

"It's fine," she offered, "I'm just here to get a book."

Awkward silence stretched between them, the chasm they'd formed with their implosion only growing wider by the second, and she suddenly couldn't bear it anymore.

"Actually, can we talk?"

He froze, looked up at her, blinked. "What is there to talk to talk about?"

Her mouth moved wordlessly as she searched for how to start this. A million times, she'd rehearsed this conversation, yet now that it was here, not a single version was coming out. "You know," she started lamely, "this weekend."

James arched a brow. "What about it?"

Lily always prided herself on never shrinking, never letting anyone make her feel small, but the coldness he radiated diminished her. "I—I'm sorry—"

He scoffed and returned to the search. "Save it, Evans."

"Will you just—"

"Listen to you feel sorry for me? No, I won't."

"What—"

"I get it, I saw you snogging Ollivander."

What? He thought she'd turned him down because of Garrytt?

She couldn't hear herself think with the way her heart was thundering and her hands were shaking, which is probably why her mouth blurted, "Yeah, because I saw you snogging Selwyn!"

A strange look passed over James's face as he flung back, "After you got a drink with him—"

"—because you asked her—"

"—BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME NO!"

Lily took a half-step back; she'd seen James unleash his temper in only two places: the Quidditch pitch, and anywhere Slytherins were being vile. Having it turned on her was chilling, and all her wherewithal scattered like leaves in the wind.

"I didn't think you'd—she's not—"

"You?" His eyes flashed, something almost dangerous, and his voice sounded abnormally cold when he spat, "No, she's not—but she wants to go out with me—"

"—because she likes the attention—" Lily scoffed.

"—because she likes me," James thundered, "and doesn't fucking care what other people think about that."

Though her mouth hung open, her throat stuck, anger and hurt and guilt blocking her voice in an ugly swirl.

"So if all you came here to say was sorry for not liking me back, I don't want to hear—"

"I do."

James crossed his arms over his chest, hurt cutting across the anger etched in his face.

"I do," she repeated. "Like you. How could you think I didn't, after we—"

He threw his hands. "Well, you didn't like me enough to want to go out with me—"

Her heart pounded in her ears—this was going nothing like she'd wanted it to go, it was like he was a runaway train she was desperately trying to stop—and in a bid for his complete attention, she shouted over him, "I CHANGED MY MIND!"

That shut him up.

She sucked in a haggard breath. "I—come on, James, you just left, you just—broke up with me without even giving me a chance to explain—"

"Explain what? Your no was crystal clear, Evans—"

"Because I panicked! Because I like you, and I was confused, and I panicked—"

Instead of cold, his voice was just sad as it cut across hers. "Lily…you say that, but I—how am I supposed to believe that's true when it doesn't make any fucking sense?"

"It makes sense to me," she said thickly. "It's how I feel. But I…I care about you."

He shook his head slowly, raking a hand through his hair with an exasperated breath. "Fuck, Lily, you…you have no idea how long I've wanted to hear you say that, but now I just…I don't believe you."

Lily laughed humorlessly, hands on her hips. "And how do I make you believe me?"

She'd expected him to be eager, even excited, but James only shrugged. "Prove it."

Lily gaped at him. "James, what—"

His coldness was back. "I was trying to get a second chance with you for a year, Lily. Now I guess you know how it feels."

And he turned around, his task at his desk either forgotten or abandoned, and left.

She didn't try to talk to him again, instead channeling her attention toward the mountain of homework the seventh years had been buried under, but the next night, Mary slid into her bed when she was just trying to doze off.

"Lil, wake up, I can't wait until morning."

She groaned and forced an eye open. "What?"

"I think James broke things off with Selwyn."

Lily sat up so fast her head spun. "What? How? Why?"

Mary grinned at her, though she was shaking her head. "I don't know, I just saw her crying with a couple of her friends by the library earlier, and then just now on my way through the common room I heard Sirius saying something to Peter about getting their mate back."

She held her breath, not daring to believe it, and even after Mary had recited it all several times over in painstaking detail before heading to bed, Lily lay awake, staring at the canopy of her bed, not daring to let herself hope, yet wondering what she should do.

The logical thing to do was go to the source. But Lily figured that, given the situation, going to the source's shadow was the next best thing. And thankfully, being Head Girl, she knew when and where students served detentions, and she knew he was in the Trophy Room that night after Peeves tattled to Filch that he'd been behind the dung bombs that went off during dinner.

"Black."

He turned, one hand still polishing the plaque in his hand. "Evans," he greeted lightly. "Don't tell me you crossed Filch too?"

"Not quite," she answered, stopping a short ways away from him with her arms crossed to hide her fidgeting hands. "I wanted to ask you something."

He looked at her curiously. "Ask away."

"Is, um…is James still…"

His eyebrows jumped, hand stopping its polishing. "Is James still what?"

Lily swallowed. "Seeing Selwyn?"

Calculating gray eyes pinned her where she stood, but when Lily refused to buckle, he merely asked, "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

Her cheeks flushed as she answered, "Because we're not…things are…weird."

"Uh-huh."

"I like him," she forced out. "A lot."

Sirius replaced the plaque, picked up the trophy next to it, and resumed polishing as he asked flatly, "And you didn't realize that when you were giving him handy's in the closet, but you did once Selwyn gave him one?"

The weight of that disclosure socked her in the gut, as Sirius had no doubt intended it to. She thought she might be sick.

"Oh, you didn't know they hooked up?" The casualness of his tone didn't match the glare in his eyes. "I thought that was what you wanted. To know what was going on with them."

Her cheeks burned, and she looked away so he wouldn't see her blurry eyes.

"Because yeah, they did. He was torn up about it, by the way. Said he couldn't stop thinking about someone else, but he was just trying to do what I told him to, being, to get over the girl who smashed his heart—"

She'd heard enough. Looking back at him, she flung the most scathing, "Fuck you," she could muster before she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.

Normal life spun on around her, and though she put on her normal smile and said her normal cheeky things, Sirius's words haunted her. They hooked up. He was torn up about it. The Hogwarts rumor mill also confirmed what Sirius had not outright confirmed for her: James and Adelaide were officially not a thing. Hope flickered dangerously in her chest, and the next time Garrytt flirted with her in the corridor between classes, she pulled him discretely aside to tell him that while Hogsmeade had been fun when she'd been a little drunk, she didn't have any more serious feelings for him, and she thought they were better as friends. It was a version of a line she'd delivered many times before, and maybe that was why he took it in stride, like he wasn't even surprised.

A full week from the disastrous day they'd each solidified other dates, Lily figured it was time to hedge her bets and go after what she really wanted. So once they were out of the Arithmancy classroom and starting their usual walk back to Gryffindor Tower together in an ominous deja vu of the week before, Lily stopped, breaking off their small talk, and said, "Actually, Remus—think I can talk to you about something for a minute?"

He gave her a confused look. "Sure, Lily. What's going on?"

She tugged him into an empty classroom, shut the door, and leaned against a desk, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I need…advice."

He quirked an eyebrow at her, a playful smile on his face, as he said, "Excuse me, Lily Evans, Head Girl, is needing advice from me? I'm assuming this can only be about getting some of Madame Rosmerta's secret kettle corn, because there's literally nothing else I know more about than you."

Lily chuckled softly, studying her shoes. "No, it's—there actually is something—someone, rather—you know more about than me. A lot more." She looked up him, saw his soft brown eyes regarding her curiously. "James."

Remus' eyebrows shot up. "What about him?"

Lily hung her head. "Well, we…we had been, um, getting along, I suppose."

"I noticed," he said quietly, and her throat threatened to close as she pushed out what she had to say next.

"But I messed up. Like, really fucked up, and I—god, I wish I could take it all back and do it over, but I can't, and I tried to tell him but he doesn't believe me, and I don't even blame him but I want him to believe me, and I don't know how to make it up to him, and—"

"Lily." Remus squeezed her shoulders. "Breathe."

She hadn't even realized she was out of breath until she tried to suck in a large lungful of air and choked, spluttering like a half-crying idiot.

"I'm sorry," she muttered thickly, wiping her nose on her sleeve, "you must think I'm so pathetic—"

"No," he answered calmly. "To the contrary, I actually believe that you care about him now."

Lily blinked up at him. "What?"

Remus grimaced, dropping his hands from her shoulders to put them back in his pockets. "Er, James might have clued me in on what all, um, happened between you, and Sirius might have been a little harsh in his retelling of your chat in his detention—"

She winced. "Shit—"

"—but I know you, Lily, and I can tell you're sincere right now."

"I am." She gulped. "And I do—care about him."

Remus nodded and came next to her, leaning against the desk by her side. "James was my first friend at Hogwarts," he said quietly. "I was a bit intimidated by Sirius at first, to be honest. I think you know this, but I grew up in an isolated area, never really saw kids my own age until Hogwarts—"

"—yeah, you've told me a bit about that."

"Well, I also grew up pretty poor."

Lily turned to him, frowning. "You've never told me that."

Remus shrugged. "It's not really something I talk about, I suppose. But we never had much money to start with, just enough to get by, really, with my dad's line of work being somewhat unpredictable. And you know my mum's been ill for a few years now? Well, my dad's had to work less to take care of her. There have been some tight times. But Dumbledore's been really good about it—and so has James."

"What do you mean?"

Remus smiled to himself as he talked. "That first day on the Hogwarts Express, I mentioned I had never had any of the Wizarding candies before, my parents had never bought them, and he bought two of everything—literally every single kind of candy on that fucking trolley—and then insisted I try each one with him because he said he couldn't make friends with someone without knowing exactly which candies they did and didn't like."

Giggles burst out of Lily's mouth at the sheer ridiculousness of it, and yet she could absolutely see an eleven-year-old James saying that. Hell, she could see a seventeen-year-old James saying that.

Remus laughed with her, but then he paused, his face clouding over slightly as he went on, "When my mum first got ill, he had his parents speak to their personal Healer, and they sent over another Healer to our house who was also familiar with Muggle healing, and that Healer still treats her today because the Potters pay her to check up on my mum every month."

Her jaw fell. "That's—incredible of them."

"It is, truly. Euphie sends me a note every month, I think she tags along sometimes—"

"That's his mum?"

"Yeah, Euphemia. Her and James are—" Remus shook his head, chuckling to himself. "Well, they're good at scheming, let's just say that. He looks more like his dad, and he gets his troublemaking streak from his dad, but everything else—it's all Euphie."

Remus grinned sideways at her, his eyes twinkling. "I always thought that's why James liked you so early on. His mum's a powerhouse in the wizarding world; growing up with a strong woman like that is all he's ever known."

A blush lit up her neck.

"I think you'd really like her if you ever met her," Remus added quietly.

Lily forced herself to shrug. "I don't know when I ever would. Meet her, that is."

Remus didn't seem to really hear that last bit, or if he did he ignored it, and he continued on his anecdotes about James.

"Anyway, when we got older…there were, er, times I couldn't really afford things, like Honeydukes or a pint at The Three Broomsticks, let alone nice clothes or books. And I just learned to let James and Sirius pick up the tab for small things, like Hogsmeade, because they can and they both want to—especially Sirius, he'd literally burn his family's money if he could—but even for bigger things, James would just…do things for me. He'd order two copies of a book and say it was a mistake they sent two, so I should just keep the other one. Or he'd bring a stash of new clothes to school that he said Euphie bought for him, but then all of it would be my size and not his."

"Was that his mum, or him?"

Remus chuckled. "Honestly? They were probably in on it together. And it wasn't all about buying things, mind. I remember when I started liking Marlene, and I was a bloody chicken about it, and James went behind my back and somehow found out that she liked me, and then he set her up so that in Hogsmeade, she'd overhear James asking me to list off the reasons why I liked her—which I did, only to turn around and see her behind me practically jumping up and down."

Lily burst out laughing. "I remember that! I think I heard her shriek all the way down the High Street."

As their laughter died down, Remus nudged her shoulder with his. "Lily, I could go on and on. But are you hearing what I'm telling you?"

Lily faltered. "That he—bends over backwards for you?"

Remus gave her a pointed look. "That James shows he cares by doing things for people. He's not going to listen to you tell him you're sorry—you need to show him."

Lily scoffed, throwing her hands in the air. "And how the bloody hell am I supposed to do that? Show up with all his homework done for him? Buy him a bloody broomstick I can't afford?"

Remus chuckled, shaking his head. "You're thinking about it wrong. It's not about gifts. James is swimming in money, he could buy a new broomstick for every match if he wanted. And he wouldn't want you to do his homework, because he actually likes doing it, he needs to keep his mind busy."

She shifted on her feet, feeling more confused than ever. "So…if it's about doing things, but not gifts…"

"Think back to what I told you. Think about the Marlene story. It's about doing something thoughtful that that person would like, or that that person needs, but that they would never ask you to do." Remus grabbed her arm gently. "I'm not going to pry, because it's not my business. But I'll just say that if you think about it that way, I'm sure you can figure out what James is really wanting, or needing, to believe that you care for him."

Lily swallowed hard and pulled Remus into a hug. "Thanks, Lupin."

Whatever confidence she had felt swelling inside her from her conversation with Remus was quickly dashed when James continued to ignore her in such a thorough fashion that Lily legitimately wondered at one point whether she had accidentally disillusioned herself.

She spent Saturday holed away in the library, needing distance from the noise of the common room to think. She'd been wracking her brain for days, observing James constantly in the hope of discovering some heretofore unnoticed fact about him that would light a spark in her brain for what to do, but none came. He was as James as ever—laughing, joking, strutting—yet the moment his eyes accidentally landed on her, his face became a mask of indifference before he turned away.

He'd said to prove it. But what would satisfy the doubts he clearly harbored? What did he need? She felt drained, hopeless, because how could she ever answer that when really, only he could? But she had to try, had to do something, and the more she dwelled on it, the more she thought that even if she didn't know what he needed, she knew what he was owed: her truth.

Late Sunday afternoon, Lily stood just outside the castle gate, her winter cloak billowing around her. It wasn't horribly cold for October, but it was decently chilly even in the sun, and she planned to be outside for awhile. She checked her watch. Five minutes. If all was going to plan, that is.

The Gryffindor team usually practiced early on Sunday mornings, so she had gotten Remus away from the rest of their friends after breakfast under the guise of having an Arithmancy question. He had smiled encouragingly after she'd told him the basic parameters of her plan, and he had assured her he would take it over from there. She just needed to be outside the castle gate, in front of the column so she'd be blocked from view, by four o'clock.

At four-oh-one, she heard footsteps approaching from behind her in the grass, followed soon after by the creak of the gate opening. James stepped through, then froze when he saw her, simply staring.

Thinking the probability was high that he would keep walking on by without saying a word, she stepped in front of him and simply said, "Hi."

He chewed his cheek. "What're you doing out here?"

She summoned all her inner strength to hold her voice steady. "Waiting for you."

He frowned. "I'm meeting Remus."

Lily couldn't help her smirk as she shook her head. "He was decoy."

James sighed, looking off over her shoulder. "What are you doing, Evans?"

She stepped closer to him. "Showing you something. Now"—she grabbed his arm, starting to twirl on the spot—"don't splinch."

Lily pulled James with her through time and space, landing on soft grass in a thicket of trees. The sun was already in its descent, sending golden beams shining through the branches. She turned to face him, biting her lip as she took in the surprise on his face.

"Evans…where the fuck are we? What the hell is going on?"

She ignored him for the moment, casting a handful of protective enchantments around them to keep them from being seen or heard, then reaching into the depths of her charmed pockets to pull out a blanket that she spread on the grass before sitting with her legs crossed.

"I told you, I'm showing you something. And, well, telling you something. Will you just please sit?"

He stared down at her, a muscle ticking in his jaw, but eventually relented, sitting down heavily on the other half of the blanket so that he faced her, elbows looped tensely around his bent knees. "Alright, I'm sitting." She didn't miss the lingering iciness in his tone. "Care to tell me where we are now?"

Lily gazed around the copse of trees, a sad smile forcing its way onto her face. "This is where I learned what magic was."

There was a moment of silence, and then he repeated, "Where you learned what magic was."

She nodded. "From Severus."

His face went through a flurry of emotions, shock to confusion to bewilderment to anger again. "Wait—what? Why—"

Lily cut him off. "I didn't meet Sev at school, James. I knew him before. From here. Home. My parents' house is about a ten minute walk away."

His mouth opened and then closed.

She stared into the distance, seeing her memories like a mirage. "I used to come here as a kid with Petunia—that's my older sister—and play, even before I ever met Sev. I have so many memories here with her, from when we were young. Then at some point when I was about ten, Sev kind of…showed up. He lived down the way, and he had been watching me—he lurked the same even back then—because he had seen me be able to do things. And we…became friends. I mean, I remember sitting with him, in this exact spot, when he explained Ollivander's, the Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts. God, I begged him to tell me it was all real—that it wasn't all a joke."

Lily pulled her eyes over to James, seeing the last lingering rays of the setting sun reflecting in his glasses. "Those memories all feel tainted now. Petunia hates me for having magic, she's practically disowned me as her sister, and Sev has gone over to the dark side. He keeps trying to still be my friend, even though I told him this past summer I wasn't going to talk to him anymore and that he needed to leave me alone for good."

He was watching her with a pained look on his face, though he didn't say anything.

Lily shook her head, fiddling with her fingers in her lap, and admitted, "It's hard for me to let people in. I gave Sev so many chances to do the right thing, and he didn't. I'm still giving my sister chances, even though she throws every one back in my face. I suppose the girls are really the only ones I have, and even then, I never really talk about Petunia, or this side—the Muggle side—of my life. I know I'm, you know, considered popular, but I've never had a real boyfriend. I always figured anything I tried would fall apart anyway, so I just kept things…fun. Fleeting. When we started…it was just physical for me. Or at least, that's what I thought. What I told myself."

She forced herself to look up, look him in the eyes, even though her voice cracked and her hands trembled. "It scares me, how much I like you. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, that it took losing you for me to realize that." She sucked in a breath, trying to gather her wits. "This—us—having feelings for you—it took me completely by surprise. I'm not used to losing my head like this, and that night…god, that whole day had been awful, Sev had given me an ultimatum and asked me to Hogsmeade, and when you asked I did panic, but I also just wasn't ready, and now, I—I just wish I could take it all back and start over."

Belatedly, she noticed that she could only see James's face because he had conjured candles to float in the air, illuminating them along with the rays of growing moonlight. His eyes were locked on hers, the candlelight making his eyes glitter like gold behind his glasses. She sniffed, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I tried to be angry at you, but really I was just jealous and mad at myself for messing everything up when the truth is that I didn't realize how hard I've been falling for you until I had to miss you."

James stared at her, unmoving, but Lily accepted his silence as penance for the grief she'd put him through. Swallowing hard, she whispered, "Please don't be done."

A flash of pain crossed his face, breaking his trance as he reached for her. "Fuck, Evans, c'mere."

He rested his forehead against hers, his hand at her neck, and though Lily squeezed her eyes shut, tears of hesitant relief still leaked from the corners.

"I'm sorry, too," he murmured, and his voice sounded choked as he confessed, "I wanted to hurt you, and move on just to spite you, because I've been so fucking miserable without you, and—fuck, seeing you with someone else wrecked me, but trying to be with someone else to get over you wrecked me just as much."

She cleared her throat softly, voice shaky as she asked, "Do you want to? Move on?"

He pulled back from her, tilting her face toward his as his eyes furrowed behind his glasses. "That's what I've been trying to figure out."

Lily chewed her lip, not knowing what to say to that and feeling rather like she was turned inside out, all her feelings exposed like raw skin.

James's eyes flitted down to her lips and back up again. "You're really…falling for me?"

She nodded, unable to help her smile. "Yeah. But if I'm too late, I"—she swallowed hard—"I understand."

Dread pooled in her stomach as the seconds ticked by, James just staring at her with that curious concentration, but then instead of answering, he asked, "What did you mean when you said you weren't ready?"

"When you asked me," Lily explained, "you said you really fucking liked me. And that…I think I'd been in denial, sort of, that we were becoming something more than just…friends with benefits, I guess. Look, you have to understand I only started feeling differently about you a couple months ago, I hadn't even admitted my own feelings to myself, and then you just—slapped me in the face with them, and I—I just needed some time to, I don't know, process everything. And I sort of did, that night and the next morning, I knew I'd messed up, I knew I needed to talk to you, but by the time I'd gotten the courage to leave my room, you'd…"

He winced, and Lily cut off, knowing they didn't need to rehash the sequence of events they had let spiral from their wild emotions.

"Lily," he finally said, fingers trembling against her skin, "this is taking all the Gryffindor I've got, but…if you're ready to give us a chance for real, then…yeah, I want that."

A grin split her face, and she leaned toward him without thinking, bringing her own hands to his cheeks before shyly catching herself as their noses bumped. Shaky breath mingled between them, and when she felt James go still, saw the fleeting glimpse of his confusion at her hesitation, she leaned over the rest of the way and kissed him.

Dizzy giddiness erupted in her chest at the first touch, and she left it chaste, pulling back before he could really react to catch her own breath. He inched back toward her, chasing her mouth, and she kissed him again, this time feeling the stomach-flipping bliss of his lips pressing back.

Slowly, cautiously, they found each other again, crossing the chasm they'd created with thumbs brushing cheeks and fingers sifting through hair and lips sliding in a familiar, comforting rhythm that soothed the aching emptiness his absence had created.

Only when they started to get both hungry and cold did they break apart long enough to agree to head back, and she had just charmed the blanket back into her extendable pocket when James wrapped his arms around her shoulders, drawing her into him, and murmured, "Thank you."

She didn't follow. "For what?"

He spoke the words into her hair. "Trusting me enough to bring me here. To let me in."

Lily buried her face into his chest, inhaling his scent as she wrapped her arms around his waist, and told him with a watery laugh, "It took all the Gryffindor I've got, you know."

James didn't tease her, didn't make a joke; he simply petted her hair and pressed a long, tender kiss to her cheek. "I know."