The morning of the first match of the season brings icy cold temperatures, but there's no sign of rain or snow, which is promising.
It also brings surreptitiously delivered news that, while Harrison will be in attendance for the game itself, he's planning on acting as nothing more than a figurehead. Given the ratio of practices they've each run over the weeks since the holidays, Lily's the one calling the plays.
Lily herself should perhaps be more nervous about that than she is, the sudden weight of responsibility being dropped on her shoulders, but her nerves are somehow no worse than they've been at every other game she's coached.
Because the matter is simple. The Chudley Cannons have a laughable team this year, and Puddlemere is one of the best. She has faith in this team.
From the moment they arrive at the Puddlemere stadium - because luckily, this year's first match is at home - the entire team is in their zone. Every single player has their own pre-match rituals, some weirder than others, and Lily's become used to seeing it all unfold.
The only player she's never witnessed before a match is James. At least, she hasn't witnessed him before a professional match.
Back at Hogwarts, he'd been an absolute menace before every match. While the rest of the team could barely force a slice of toast down their throats at breakfast on account of nerves, refusing to speak to anyone around them more than entirely necessary, James had been a rush of giddy energy, gleefully knocking back a goblet of pumpkin juice and patently refusing to shut the fuck up, even upon request.
Their third-year Beater almost punched him for that, once.
(And even though she'd considered James a friend at that point in her life, she would've wholeheartedly supported that particular punch.)
From her observation so far, he seems to have toned that down a bit. While he's still by far the most high-energy person in the room, beating out even Mari and her relentless pacing habit, he has successfully avoided earning the ire of the people around him.
As if he can tell she's thinking about him, his head swivels in her direction, and she pointedly ignores his eyes.
They haven't spoken a word to each other since her birthday outside of Quidditch, though perhaps due more to her own efforts than his.
She doesn't regret their actions that night - if anything, it's the exact opposite - but she's come to her own conclusions about it all.
If they're going to engage in something - whatever this messy, repetitious thing is that neither of them will name - it's going to be on her terms. She let herself be played by him once before, and she'll be damned if she lets it happen twice.
Thus far, he seems willing to operate under those conditions.
But James isn't her focus right now - or, more accurately, he is, but he's only a seventh of it. He's her focus only inasmuch as he's one of her Chasers, one of the people responsible for leaving this locker room and ensuring that Puddlemere's season opener indicates just how dominant this team can be.
The noise of the crowd outside is gradually increasing in volume, the sheer number of people flooding into the stadium an indicator that they're getting close to game time.
As such, she calls them all into a huddle. If any of them are at all surprised that she's the one calling it, despite Harrison standing next to her with the head coach label across the back of his robes, they don't show it.
She walks them through the basic plays to expect, the strategy for the game that they've all heard so many times at this point that she half expects one of them to roll her eyes at the repetition of it, the most important cues for each of them to remember up in the air.
When she finishes, directing all of them to line up for their entrance, her eyes unconsciously drift over to Harrison. She'd love to pretend she's above that need for external validation, but it would be a lie. She wants Harrison to be impressed, to give her some sign of his approval.
What she gets is the barest hint of smile and a small nod, and that's somehow all she needs.
Adrenaline floods her veins, as if she's about to take off onto the pitch herself, and it takes a fair amount of effort to school her face out of bursting into a wild grin. She's doing this.
While the team gets a dramatic entrance flying through the stadium, the coaching staff of Quidditch teams make their way to their respective coaching boxes with decidedly less fanfare.
Harrison leads the way, ever the symbolic heart of Puddlemere United, enough of an icon in his own right that any attention of the crowd watching them travel to the boxes on foot is entirely drawn to him rather than any of the assistants.
Lily keeps her head down in these moments as she always does - it's only once they're all settled into the box that she lets herself properly take in the stadium.
Though she'd more or less expected the Puddlemere fans to outnumber the Cannons, the sea of navy blue is still far larger than she'd imagined it would be.
The team recognizes this too as the announcers call them out, each player zipping out on their brooms to thunderous applause. This is their home, their stadium, their game to lose.
And Lily, hardly one to let new occasions break her from old habits, pulls out a notepad.
From the moment the Quaffle goes airborne, she's studying every single move rigorously. Though it's somewhat different now, because before, she'd been observing plays prepared by Harrison or other coaches, adding her own feedback to something entirely outside of her. But now, almost every play is one she's run through with them, something she's directed them to do when faced with a certain move by their opponents, and that alters the whole practice somewhat. She's looking in a mirror now, seeing her own work reflected back at her, and having to pick out the flaws in that.
There are many - she's far from perfect, she knows this - and she'll let herself pick every little thing apart without any shame for that.
Because despite all those flaws that Lily's meticulously cataloguing, the Puddlemere team is absolutely fucking dominating.
James makes a sloppy throw, but it sails through the hoops regardless. It's not pretty, a shot she knows he could do much better, but it's still ten points, and it still pushes the team's lead over Puddlemere to triple digits.
It's frustrating though, because she knows he can do better.
But flaws aside, the game is an utter bloodbath. Not in the sense that anyone is playing dirty - there's a remarkable lack of penalties called throughout the entire affair - but Puddlemere trounces the Cannons in a way that's almost embarrassing for both parties. When Mari finally makes a grab at the Snitch, it's a mercy.
Regardless of how pitiful the opponent, the Puddlemere fans are electric in victory. The stadium is alight with cheers, the energy even more electric than it was when they first flew in, the fans ecstatic to witness such an impressive trouncing. While Lily hadn't seen any commentators questioning James' capabilities as a player, it had been well known that his predecessor had been the glue holding the Chaser team together. He'd had big shoes to fill.
And though Lily has her own qualms about his performance, she doubts any of those commentators will feel the same. His stats are too impressive for that, and they just don't know his playing like she does.
The team takes their victory lap, absorbing the spirit of the stadium, before flying down to the locker rooms.
She feels a hand clap on her shoulders. When she looks to the source, she sees Harrison standing directly behind her.
"I'm going to go catch up with some reporters, give them the usual spiel," he tells her. "You can go straight to the locker room and give the post-game feedback."
Lily just nods. "Yes, sir."
The other coaching staff are gone now, filtering to the locker room or elsewhere in the stadium, and Lily's halfway out the door when Harrison speaks again.
"I knew I made the right choice with you, Evans."
Lily can't fight off the smile that breaks across her face at that.
The entire locker room is positively buzzing when she walks in. The most enthusiastic of the celebrations have already taken place, but the energy is unavoidable.
But even despite the excitement and chaos, multiple sets of eyes swing to her the moment she enters the locker room. The team doesn't know about Lily's agreement with Harrison, doesn't know that she's been handed the reins by him, but they treat her like she's in charge nonetheless. Somehow, she's earned their respect.
"Absolutely brilliant work, team," Lily says, a bit louder than necessary, if only to get the last few sets of eyes on her.
James is one of them - he's in the back of the room, and he only notices her arrival when she speaks.
"Kieloch, you got some fantastic blocks in - there were a couple shots to the right hoop that I figured were guaranteed ins and you somehow stopped them anyways." Ozzie grins at the praise. "Those speed drills really worked."
And thank Merlin they did. He's only bitched about them half a million times.
"Ringwald," Corinne's eyes snap to hers, "that pass to McNamara off the right side? Incredible."
"Damn right it was," Charlie agrees. That particular play had baffled the Chudley Chasers - which was the ultimate goal. It had been a little rocky last time they'd run it in practice, but it was near flawless in game execution.
"Prewett - Gideon, that is - don't think I missed that one Bludger going off in the complete opposite direction it was intended." Lily means it in a relatively lighthearted way, and given the way Gideon laughs, it's taken that way as well. "Make sure you're fully getting behind that shot before you swing. But other than that one rogue event, the two of you played excellently - nice shot at their Seeker there at the end, by the way."
She turns next to the person she's been waiting to address this whole time. "Potter," she says, "you did great on paper, and the statisticians are going to have a field day with your numbers. But most of those shots were sloppy, and I know you can do better. Don't rely on luck and a weak opponent like that."
His expression is unreadable, though it betrays the slightest bit of shock before falling into utter neutrality, accompanied by a stoic nod. But there's a fire that sparks in his eyes, and Lily imagines this won't be the end of the conversation about this.
James was Portree's star player, the best among them by far, and she imagines he's not used to being the one receiving any constructive criticism after the game. He may be a star here too in his own right, but Lily's not letting him off easy because of that. Not when she can see so much more potential underneath.
"Dubois, I know you saw that Snitch long before you caught it," Lily resumes, turning her attention to the Seeker. "I respect the decision to wait to catch it against Chudley - I know the fans loved watching that game turn into a bloodbath. But next game, against the Arrows: they're too good to get away with that. Go for it the moment you see it."
The corner of Mari's lips turns upward in a smirk, and she nods.
Lily closes out the speech with a few more parting words, more general encouragement and feedback as well as directions on how to recover from the game to be prepared for practice on Monday. When she's done, she's given a couple of celebratory cheers, and Ozzie even comes over and slaps her on the back.
"Great speech, coach," he grins at her. The title is spoken with a heavy emphasis, like he's communicating some other meaning behind it, and Lily wonders if he's somehow worked out the general gist of her and Harrison's agreement on his own.
Lily doesn't need to linger in the locker room today - she never went airborne, never broke a sweat, so there's no point in changing out of her clothes, though she does take off her coach's robes as she walks to her office, draping it over the back of her chair and leaving her in just leggings and a sweater.
She tucks her play notebook into a drawer, already thinking about plays she wants to modify based on what she'd seen go down today. But instead of getting straight into that work, she lets herself sink into her desk chair, close her eyes, and take a deep breath.
She did it. She lets herself sit in that accomplishment for just a few seconds.
And then she grabs a quill, pops open an inkpot, and gets ready to do the last bit of real work today requires.
It seems fate has other plans.
She hears him before she sees him. Loud footsteps that she somehow immediately recognizes as his and a slamming door announce his arrival, and only when he slams his hands down on the edge of her desk does she look up at him.
"What the fuck was that for?" James asks, the anger evident in both his expression and his tone. That indignant spark she'd seen in his eyes earlier has caught aflame now.
Lily decides to play innocent - she knows it'll only serve to get him more riled up, but she concludes in the moment that she doesn't care much about that. It's more fun this way - not to mention that she finds it kind of hot when he's angry anyways. She shouldn't be letting that be a factor, but it is nonetheless.
"What was what for?"
"You know damn well what I'm talking about, Evans," he seethes, lifting his hands up off of her desk and standing up to his full height. "The goddamn vendetta against me that you seem incapable of letting go of. The entire rest of the team got a fucking 'you played brilliantly' or a 'that move was incredible,' and I got a 'your shots were sloppy'? I mean, what the fuck? Did you watch the same fucking game that I just played, because last I checked, I scored almost half of our goals."
The implication that she's letting her coaching be clouded by any personal animus against him is the thing that annoys her more than anything else.
"That you did," she replies calmly, refusing to take any of the bait he's so clearly dangling in front of her. He wants a fight, but he's not going to get it. Not over this at least. For once, she feels in complete control of herself around him, and she's not going to give that up while she's got it. "I acknowledged that. But your shots were sloppy - they may have made it into the hoop today, but with a slightly faster Keeper or a little more right side pressure from an opposing Chaser, some of them would've been missed shots, or worse, intercepted. You can do better than what you did today - I know it, and so do you."
"Don't tell me what I know," he snaps, almost automatically.
"Well then," she sets down her quill and looks at him with an eyebrow raised, challenging him, "I'll let you answer for yourself. Are you a better player than what you showed today?"
For the first time since he stepped foot in her office, his façade cracks. It seems he's finally realising her criticism is genuine. "I - I don't know, maybe," he relents.
She stands up from her chair and walks around to the other side of the desk; it's almost certainly a bad idea, eliminating the one thing separating the two of them, but her body is moving of its own accord, like he's some sort of burning flame and she's the moth that can't stay away.
"You are," she tells him, fingers lightly dragging along the glossy wood as she joins him on the same side of the desk. "My job is to make sure that every single person on this team is playing their best Quidditch, that they're giving each and every practice and game everything that they've possibly got. Everyone else on the team was doing that, or damn close to it, and they got the feedback that reflected that, but you… you can do better than what you put out on the pitch today. So much better. You're damn talented as it is - but you can top that."
James turns towards her as she approaches, and Lily doesn't miss the way his eyes darken, dropping to her lips for the briefest of moments. She feels the briefest urge to laugh at how quickly his anger can morph into desire. It is absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent her intention to instigate that switch, but she didn't think it'd be this easy.
"So no, I don't have a 'vendetta' against you, at least not where Quidditch is concerned - you know just as well as I do from your time on this team that I am more than capable of keeping personal animosities far away from the pitch," she concludes, taking one last step towards him. "I just want to see you be phenomenal, because I know that's what you're capable of."
They're standing far closer than professional decorum would require, and James' hand finds her hip almost of its own accord - like it's natural, like her body is something he already has memorised. His thumb gently trails along her hipbone, and even over the fabric of her leggings his touch sets her nerves on fire.
This time, when his eyes drop to her lips, they stay there. He visibly swallows, before breaking the silence with an, "Evans?"
"Potter," she returns.
That's somehow the magic word, because an instant later, the remaining space between them is gone as James' other hand wraps around her waist and she's quickly reacquainted with the taste of his lips. It's a religious experience, letting herself get pulled into his touch and the way that his tongue gently drags across her lower lip.
It's less urgent than the last time, but only just.
Her hands tangle themselves in his hair, and she parts her lips for him, greedy for everything he's willing to give her. It feels like she'll never be able to get enough of this, never be able to get enough of him.
There's not a breath of air between their bodies, and somehow, it still feels like too much. The problem, Lily soon realises, isn't the space, it's the layers of fabric. So she grabs the hem of his T-shirt, and starts to pull it off of him.
He breaks the kiss for the briefest of moments, pulling the offending garment the rest of the way off himself. Lily quickly pulls her own sweater off as well - and when they're finally skin-to-skin, it's practically heavenly. He's positively burning up, and his inferno is one she can't resist. Her hands start to wander almost immediately, feeling along the taut muscles of his back and abdomen, and all the while, James' lips drop to her neck.
He nips at her pulse point, and she immediately moans.
"Might not want to do that," he mutters into her skin. "You never know who's going to walk into the offices."
Despite his warning, he seems to set out in direct pursuit of teasing even more noise out of her. She's so wrapped up in the feeling of it all - and in attempting to keep silent in spite of the feeling - that she hardly notices when her arse bumps up against her desk. It's only when James cups his hand under her bum and physically lifts her up and lays her on her back across it that she gets the tiniest bit of sense back.
"Shit," she mutters, breaking the kiss as she notices the still-open inkpot just a few inches from her head.
James, for his part, pulls back a few inches, studying her. "Do you not want to - "
She shakes her head fervently. "No, that's not it. I definitely want - it would just be ideal to not spill ink all over my desk and us in the process."
He follows her gaze to the open inkpot. "Oh." He reaches over to put the lid back on it while Lily finds her wand, which is also laying on her desk somewhere.
Once she finds it, she casts a quick Muffliato and locks her door, before looking back up at him, unable to stop the corner of her mouth from curling upwards. "Anything's fair game now."
"I'll take that as a personal challenge, Evans. I want to hear you scream my name."
The challenge leaves her lips instinctively. "You'll have to make me."
"Oh, trust me, I intend to." He smirks in that oh-so-arrogant way that both pisses her off and turns her on.
The latter of those two feelings wins out quickly though, as James' hands work their way lower, gently dipping his fingers under the waistband of her leggings at first, then quickly abandoning all subtlety as he pulls them off her entirely, taking her knickers with them.
Once they're completely off, James lingers there for just a moment, kneeling in front of her hips reverently like they're his altar and he's ready to make confessions. And then he does just that, pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh before positively worshipping her, dragging his tongue between her legs in a way that makes her hips practically shoot up off the table.
She can feel his laugh as his tongue circles her clit - even that is a massive fucking turn-on, damn it. The heat coiled in her stomach steadily builds with each new movement of his mouth on her, and she suddenly just needs all of him, right now.
"Potter," she whispers.
He lifts his head only as high enough as required to murmur, "Yes?"
"I need you inside of me," she demands, trying to sound authoritative, but with his mouth on her it comes out as more of a plea than anything.
But James takes her instructions anyways, and he's clearly just as desperate as she is, because he doesn't even bother to properly tease her about how needy she sounds. Instead, he wordlessly pulls his joggers off, running his hand up and down his shaft a few times before lining his hips up with hers. And when he drives into her for the first time, she thanks her lucky fucking stars that she soundproofed the room, because their collective groans would be entirely unmistakeable to anyone who might happen to walk into the offices.
He lingers there for a second, fully inside her and not moving at all, head buried against her shoulder as he swears, "Fuck, you feel so good."
She wraps her legs around him as he gradually finds a rhythm, hard and fast and intense and hitting a spot inside of her that's absolutely brilliant. Her hands move restlessly, tugging on his hair and dragging her nails down his back, as he starts to touch her again and it's not long at all until the tension building in her stomach hits its peak, an intoxicating mix of pleasure and pain as she knows her release is coming.
"Say my name," he mutters against her skin, his voice low and commanding.
She just whines, a desperate sound that she'd be embarrassed by if she had enough sense to think about anything at all.
"Say my name, Lily," he says again. His hips shift just a little on his next thrust, and she completely loses her mind.
This time, without even thinking, she complies, his name coming out like a prayer. "James."
And like it's some sort of magic cue, her words quickly turn into a ragged cry as the tension finally breaks, and her whole body is aglow.
If heaven's a thing, she's quite sure she's just gone there.
He comes not long after her, biting down on her shoulder to stifle a shout.
They stay like that for a moment, her legs still wrapped around him and the weight of him pressing her into her desk.
"Now that…" she says breathlessly, "that was phenomenal."
James lifts himself off of her, looking rather pleased with that response. His eyes trace over her body once more, like he's seeing it for the first time all over again, even though he'd been touching it himself just moments ago. "I'll do my best to keep up with your rigorous standards from now on."
She can't help but crack a small, self-satisfied grin at that, pushing herself upright so that she can collect the clothes that have been discarded on the floor of her office. Her sweater is somehow entirely on the other side of the room.
Once she's dressed, and he is too, the casual ease of their interaction starts to fade somewhat. James clearly doesn't know if he's meant to stay or go, looking between the floor and the door, perhaps waiting on her cue one way or the other.
She walks back over to her desk, taking a seat in the only chair in the room, making her answer clear.
He moves to the door. As he's turning the handle though, Lily feels the need to speak again, to acknowledge him one last time.
"Potter?"
He turns to look back at her.
"We've got work to do at practice on Monday. I don't want to have to call your shots sloppy again."
There's an unexpected fondness in his eyes as he grins at that. "I'd expect nothing less."
And then he's gone, and Lily's left alone in the office.
She looks around briefly, at the displaced ink bottle and the way so many of the papers from her desk have been shoved to the floor, and she giggles to herself, because god, all of this is just absolutely absurd, isn't it? She'll admit to fantasising about shagging James on countless occasions, in all manner of settings, but on her desk in the middle of the Puddlemere coaching facility has never once been a chosen spot for those daydreams.
But fuck if it didn't exceed every single one of them.