Lily's mind is racing for the rest of the day. So many of the memories that she'd worked so hard to push from her mind, that she'd learned to block out every time she saw his name mentioned in a Quidditch publication, come rushing back to her now that James is so imminently about to become a part of her life again.
She goes for a long run in the afternoon, in the hopes that it'll help clear her mind, but it ends up having the opposite effect - there's nothing along the winding trail to focus on beyond her own thoughts. She can't stop fixating on him, on their past, on all her feelings about their history that she thought she'd gotten over already.
And so needless to say, by the time 5 o'clock rolls around, she's in desperate need of both a drink and someone to vent to - which is why she finds herself at the Leaky Cauldron, nursing a firewhiskey and waiting on Marlene.
She doesn't drink much - the only times she does is when decorum demands it, and even then it's only to keep up appearances and not for the actual sensation of it - but she does make the occasional exception.
And days like today… they're a worthwhile exception for sure.
She doesn't have much of a taste for this place though, at least not since she became of age and ceased to see it as her main point of entry to the magic world. The regulars here are always just a bit too rowdy and disorderly for her taste, the surfaces just a bit too grimy. Although she supposes she's been a bit coddled by her lifestyle in recent years, and perhaps she might not be so judgmental of it otherwise.
The one thing, however, that she's quite certain she'd continue to be repulsed by no matter what the circumstances, are the leering gazes of some of the men at tables nearly, many of whom look to be at least thirty years her senior.
Lily knows she's always been naturally pretty - this knowledge was something she'd once felt ashamed of, as if grasping the weight of her own attractiveness would somehow diminish it or instantly earn her the title of a narcissist, but a few years worth of adulthood have brought her the understanding that pretending to be blind to it does no service to anyone. She's objectively good-looking, bordering on striking - rich auburn hair against alabaster skin, dotted with a nearly invisible layer of freckles, and bright green eyes. She stands out almost immediately in a crowd due to that alone.
She's grateful that she's still wearing rather loosely-fitted clothing, as she's quite sure that anything more form-fitting would only amplify those glances tenfold. She knows from experience that people tend to pay attention to her body when she accentuates it properly - something she's not afraid to weaponise when necessary, but right now, while she's trying to moodily drink in peace, is more of a nuisance than anything.
Lily hears Marlene before she sees her - her best friend has a loud, distinctive voice, and she orders a firewhiskey from the barkeep like she's known him for years.
Unlike Lily, Marlene is dressed in professional-looking robes that make it clear she's come directly from the Ministry. Her blonde hair is neatly curled down her back, and she looks fully put together in a way that Lily herself absolutely does not.
Whereas Lily's the type to draw attention for her looks, Marlene draws it for her charm. It's not that Marlene isn't pretty - because she is, she's stunning really - but she's got a way of carrying herself that seems to instantly make every man she meets pure putty in her hands.
It's a skill quite hilariously put to waste by the fact that she's not even remotely interested in them.
"Would you believe Ishmael is out of Ogden's?" Marlene says as greeting, sliding into the chair opposite Lily. "I had to order the cheap stuff, like some sort of commoner."
Lily herself honestly can't tell the difference between high-end and low-end alcohol - a side effect of how little she drinks to begin with - so her own glass is filled with whatever the barkeep wanted to give her.
"How tragic," Lily replies dryly, with a hint of a smile on her face. "How ever will you survive this atrocity?"
Marlene simply rolls her eyes. "You'd understand if you drank as much as I do."
Lily hums, but she knows that, even if she was the type to drink regularly, she probably wouldn't be able to afford the nice stuff all the time anyways. Her experiences with luxury are… situationally limited. "Perhaps."
Marlene takes a sip, grimacing a little at the burn. "But anyways, you said you had something you needed to vent about?"
Lily takes a moment, trying to figure out where to even start. Marlene's been her best friend since their first year at Hogwarts, so she, perhaps more than anyone, understands the extent of her and James' complicated history and all the feelings Lily has about him now.
Eventually, she just settles for the most direct route. "Puddlemere has picked up Potter's contract."
Marlene doesn't react at first, and Lily can see the exact moment that it hits her. "Potter as in… your Potter?"
"He was never mine, and he certainly isn't mine now, so I'm not sure that descriptor works, but yes. Potter as in James."
Marlene hums, taking another sip of her firewhiskey. "That's… fuck, that's going to be a real fun one."
Lily laughs sarcastically. "That's an understatement if I ever heard one. But honestly, what are the fucking odds?"
The Quidditch world is a relatively small one, but it's also just large enough that it's easy to avoid people you don't want anything to do with. In all her time at Puddlemere, she's never even been so much as within ten metres of James. Which has been absolutely brilliant, and she would've happily kept that up for the next ten or twenty years if he'd just stayed on his own damn team.
But while it's easy to avoid people within the Quidditch world as a whole, it's next-to-impossible to avoid anyone within the same program. She knows all the Puddlemere players like they're her own family, knows all of their strengths and weaknesses and weird pre-game rituals by heart.
And now James is about to be one of those players.
"I honestly can't believe Portree sold him," Marlene thinks aloud. "He was, like, their star player last year."
Lily just shrugs. She's sure it comes down to the fact that Worthington undoubtedly offered the owner of Portree a sum of money they couldn't walk away from.
Marlene keeps musing on it. "I wonder if it's an image thing? Like, they decided his talent wasn't worth dealing with all the bad press?"
Secretly, Lily doubts that's the case. Yes, James' behavior frequently lands him in a whole sort of unfavorable news stories, but no one in the Quidditch world actually cares about that. As long as the players show up to practice and consistently perform well in games, they can get up to fuck-all in their off-hours.
She's quite sure there's more than one team in the league that would even brush off an actual criminal allegation if one of their star players ended up getting charged. It's just the way of the industry.
"But back to the important stuff," Marlene says, changing the subject, "how are you feeling about it?"
Lily sighs - it's the million Galleon question, and one that she doesn't really have a clear answer for. "After everything, I really would've been thrilled to never have to see him again for the rest of my life. And now I'm going to have to interact with him on a daily basis and just… pretend like everything's fine." She laughs bitterly at the thought of that.
"You don't… you don't still fancy him, do you?"
Lily's sour laugh becomes a genuine one at the mere implication. "Oh, fuck no," she answers immediately. "Have you seen the asshole he's turned into? I don't fuck with that at all. I might've liked him in seventh year, but he's a totally different person now - and in all the wrong ways."
Marlene cringes. "Yeah, that's true - he… hasn't exactly handled Quidditch fame well."
"That's the understatement of the century," Lily returns. "I work with famous Quidditch players on a daily basis… and not a single one of them is anywhere as near as bad as he is."
"And it's funny, because I always figured he was the type who wouldn't let the fame get to his head," Marlene muses. "Just because, well, he was a prick for such a long time, then he grew out of it, and you would've thought he would've stayed that way."
Lily hums. "I don't think it's that far-fetched - he always did love the spotlight. Always loved the attention that came with it."
Her friend just shrugs.
"I just… I can't believe I'm going to have to spend every day with him," Lily continues. "And I'm just going to have to act like he's just like any of the other players, like there isn't history between us… although, I suppose, nothing ever really did happen anyways."
"But it almost did," Marlene looks surprisingly earnest. "Seriously, we all thought something would - hell, I'm pretty sure there was a betting pool on it in Gryffindor Tower, and not a single person won it because no one wanted to bet that you two wouldn't get together at all."
Lily laughs derisively, too single-minded to even truly process the fact that her friends were betting on her relationship status. "Well then, I guess none of you took into account the idea that James would just decide to completely forget about my existence as soon as we all graduated."
"No, none of us really expected that," Marlene replies with a grimace. And then, "So, how are you going to handle it?"
"I don't know, I guess I could try to forgive him for all of it? That's the nice thing to do, right?" The words sound so ridiculous coming out of her mouth that Lily immediately laughs. "God, I can't even say that with a straight face."
Marlene snorts at that.
Maybe, years ago, when Lily was young and trusting and hadn't yet been stabbed in the back by so many of the people who she'd once called her friends, forgiveness would have been on the table. But Lily's not that naïve girl anymore - she's gone through too much shit to give a second chance to anyone who's burned her once before.
"I'm going to do my job," Lily eventually tacks on, "because I refuse to let him take that from me. But other than what's absolutely required, I want nothing to do with him."
"Yeah, that's fair," Marlene says, before taking another sip of her drink. "And I'll just hope like hell that Puddlemere comes to its senses and realises they don't want some posh partying playboy on their Quidditch team sooner rather than later."
Lily cackles, delighted that Marlene is indulging her bitterness and giving it right back. "You're incredible, and I'll fucking toast to that."
A wicked grin appears on Marlene's face as she clinks glasses with Lily. "What are real friends for?"
She forgets about it all - about him - for a solid few hours, as she and Marlene order dinner and start talking about anything and everything that isn't related to James Potter. Marlene's consistently full of interesting stories - she's currently got a position in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, and a new bizarre and interesting case lands on her desk almost daily.
As a result, Lily's in a notably better mood when she gets back to her flat, hanging her purse up on the hook as she enters.
The flat itself isn't anything special - she makes a decent salary in her coaching gig, but given that she lives by herself, she doesn't see the need for anything much larger. Much like her office at Puddlemere, the whole thing has a sort of warmth to it that makes up for the small size.
She's in such a good mood now that she really doesn't know why she does it - perhaps the three firewhiskeys she'd consumed over the course of the evening are fuel - but she finds herself walking to the side of her bed and reaching underneath it.
After a good bit of searching, her hand makes contact with what she was looking for, and she pulls a black box out. It's not much larger than a shoebox, and there's a thick layer of dust along the top - evidence of just how long it's been since she's looked at it.
She pulls the lid off, and sure enough, the contents inside are exactly as she'd left them. A stack of photos, followed by a few torn-out magazine articles.
She picks up the photos first - despite the years and the ways that the subjects of the images have changed, the moving figures looking back at her are the same as ever.
First is the Gryffindor Quidditch team of 1977-1978. Lily had tried out and made the team that year, something that surprised pretty much everyone in the House - no one even knew Lily could play, much less be good enough to make the team. Well, no one except James, that is, as he'd been giving her lessons for most of their sixth year and had practically begged her to try out for their vacant Seeker spot.
She tries not to think too much about the gravity of the role he played in introducing her to the sport that's become fairly central to her existence.
In this picture, though, they're all attempting to look at the camera rather stoically - but then someone mutters something and they all crack up. She doesn't even remember what the actual joke was, but she does remember just how much they'd felt like a team in that moment.
Next up is a shot from the Hogwarts Express, of Lily and Mary and Marlene and Dorcas and James and Sirius and Peter all squished into one compartment, with Remus behind the lens of the camera. Lily's legs are across James' lap, and he's laughing at something she's saying. Meanwhile, Marlene is rolling her eyes and Sirius is trying to throw a Bertie Bott's bean and catch it in his mouth.
She continues to flick through all the photos, as the number of people in the images gradually starts to dwindle, until every single one is just of Lily and James. There's one of them in the middle of a snowball fight, another where she's explaining something to him while they study together, and even one where she's just pulled off charming his hair bright green.
And then the final one, which is the one that feels the most like a stab in the gut. The two of them are up in the Astronomy Tower - for some reason, the Gryffindor seventh years had all decided to take a break from NEWTs studying to spend an evening up there with food nicked from the kitchens and wine smuggled in from Hogsmeade. In the photo, she and James are sitting side by side; she's got her head resting against his shoulder, and he's got an arm wrapped around her waist as he looks down at her with a sweet expression.
If Lily didn't know any better, didn't know what happened just a few weeks after this photo was taken, she'd think the two people in that picture were going to end up together.
Truth be told, her heart still aches looking at this picture. She didn't lie when she told Marlene she doesn't fancy James anymore - she doesn't fancy present-day James at all. But past-James, the boy who always brought her sweets while she was studying and made her laugh even on her worst days and would've died to defend the people he cared about… she misses him.
It's for the best that nothing came of this picture though - something clearly illustrated by what's directly underneath it.
As she pulls aside that last photograph, the tone changes dramatically. Unlike the photographs, which unearth some sense of nostalgia in her, this fills her with something that toes the line between anger and disdain. It's a magazine article with the title Quidditch's Newest Bad Boy emblazoned across the top of the page. Underneath are a series of pictures from a random nightclub, all with James front and centre. He's taking a shot of heaven knows what in one, dancing with a brunette in another, and snogging a totally different girl in the third.
Everything that follows is exactly the same: all snippets from Witch Weekly or the social section of the Prophet, starring James in some vaguely incriminating position - sometimes with his newest flavour of the week, sometimes obviously drunk or hungover, sometimes just generally looking like a complete pompous ass as he lounges in the VIP section of a club. Nearly every article also includes a reference his prowess on the Quidditch field though, as if his ability to throw and catch a Quaffle with some degree of consistency is somehow a justification for the rest of it.
Truthfully, Lily's got no fucking clue why she's kept these, why she's let them infect the otherwise pleasant memories in this box associated with James and her Hogwarts years. But then again, it's an apt metaphor for what those stories have done to those memories within her own mind - tainted them with the knowledge that the dream of a boy from back then would soon become a nightmare of a man.
All of it feels dirty now. She's kept this dumb box of memories even as they've gotten ruined in the aftermath, and… god, she just wants to lock the gates on that part of her life and throw away the key forevermore.
She wants to burn it all.
And so that's exactly what she does.
"Incendio," she whispers, before she can think it through enough to regret it, and watches as the corner of an article catches fire.
The small blaze spreads quickly, flames licking at the edges of the papers as they start to shrivel and turn black, sending everything up in smoke. It's almost enchanting, watching as the memories - both good and bad - are incinerated in a burst of red and orange and gold.
The very last thing she sees before it all turns to ash is that one picture of them on the Astronomy Tower.
Good fucking riddance.
Seventh Year, June 1978
The bass beat of the music is so loud that it's rattling the chandeliers in the Gryffindor Common Room - Lily thinks to herself that either someone did some awfully powerful silencing charms or that the faculty of Hogwarts have just decided that there are no rules in the aftermath of the Quidditch Cup final, because there's no way the party would be allowed to continue like this otherwise.
People are dancing and talking animatedly to each other all throughout the room, and there's a makeshift bar set up in one corner. The actual trophy has long since been abandoned on a random table, and the only evidence that this is really a Quidditch party instead of just a normal one is that occasionally someone will shout 'Gryffindor!' and be answered with a chorus of cheers.
Lily takes a sip of butterbeer, quite comfortable in her place on the couch, away from most of the action. At one point, Marlene and Mary were there with her, but then Marlene snuck off to go snog Dorcas somewhere, and Mary went off in pursuit of another drink and never came back to the couches. She's dancing with a sixth year boy now.
So now she's alone, watching the party continue to unfold around her, feeling a bit like Jay Gatsby in her sense of detachment from the debauchery.
"Liiiily!" That distance is abruptly shattered, as James jumps over the back of the couch and practically on top of her.
It's abundantly clear to Lily that he's had more than his fair share of drinks tonight - although she supposes he's probably earned it. They'd clinched the Quidditch Cup in their final year and he has a professional position waiting for him on the other side of graduation - what's one night of letting go and celebrating that, really?
His proximity also has the unintended side effect of making her suddenly feel unexpectedly warm - she hopes he'll chalk the pink in her cheeks up to alcohol consumption rather than the reality in which she's blushing because of the way his thigh is pressed up against her own.
"My favourite and most wonderful Seeker," he says to her with a wide grin. "What's got you hiding out in the corner of a party? You're missing all the action!"
"I can see all the action perfectly from right here, actually," she replies, taking another sip of her butterbeer.
He laughs, and he's so close that Lily can smell the firewhiskey on his breath. "You make the game-winning catch and you're still completely sober at the victory party - you sure are a wild one, Evans."
"I'm not completely sober," she defends, waving the butterbeer at him as proof, even though the stuff is barely alcoholic.
"You're still sitting in a corner alone while everyone around you is fucking celebrating the shit you accomplished," he retorts, before pushing himself up to a standing position and only wobbling slightly. "Come on, you don't need to get drunk, but at least dance with me. Pleeeease?"
He holds out his hand, and Lily takes it, because of course she does. She doesn't even think twice about taking him up on an offer to dance, because she's been trying for months to pretend like she doesn't fancy him and failing miserably to the point that everyone can read her feelings like an open book except him, and she'll take him up on whatever he offers.
Once he pulls her up to standing, he doesn't drop her hand, not as they start moving towards the center of the room, not as they start making their way through the crowd, not as someone just as drunk as he is bumps into him. His hand only leaves hers when the force of that bump, combined with his own intoxication sends him slamming into a table.
And not just any table, but the table where the Quidditch Cup is sitting - and the force with which he collides with the wood sends the cup teetering dangerously.
It'll almost certainly break if it goes falling to the ground, and so Lily is actually immensely grateful that James let go of her, because it allows her to reach out and catch the trophy at the last possible minute, saving it from catastrophe.
"Shit!" James swears, finding his balance again. "I don't even know how that - "
She just shakes her head at him admonishingly, but she's unable to hide the small grin from the part of her that's somehow amused with his antics. "This is why we can't have nice things," she tells him, looking around for a more secure place to put the trophy, far away from the sea of drunk teenagers. "I'm going to take this away so that you can't break it again."
She spots a nice high shelf in the corner of the room, and levitates the Cup over to it.
"Now that my buzzkill sobriety has saved the day," she says as she turns back to James, "still want to dance?"
He smiles at her, and Lily finds that she doesn't really care that he's a little too drunk. She should probably be annoyed that he's been partying so much that he almost broke the thing he cares most about, but it's somehow oddly endearing on him; she's definitely seeing him with rose-coloured glasses, but she can't really find it in herself to be bothered by that.
"You're too pretty to be a buzzkill."
At the time, she'd thought that night was an exception from the norm; James wouldn't always be that reckless and so willing to risk the things he cared about for a one-night good time.
In hindsight, maybe that night should've been a warning.