It started in the dullest way imaginable.

James Potter walked past her in a corridor. That's literally all that happened.

And Lily's whole life fell apart. Basically. Hyperbolically. Not immediately, but for the sake of the

Okay. To be fair, it was the way he walked past her.

It was his indifference.

Lily's summer had been unexpectedly Great. She'd gone to Greece with her parents and Petunia, and had spent a blissful three weeks drinking frosty sodas on ivory beaches, luxuriating in a series of obscenely large hats and colorful bikinis, and flirting with the bronze-skinned local boys. She hadn't thought about Severus once — okay, several times, but fleetingly — and being out of the sooty gloom of England for nearly a month had brightened her soul.

She felt less... afraid. Anxious? Generally overwhelmed and fixated on the unknown. She felt better. Last year had been horrible.

But on the first day back at classes, James Potter, in his usual, maddening fashion, completely freaking upended all the beach-towel glory of her spirits with one, stunningly oblivious feat.

He walked past her. He didn't greet her — didn't comment on her haircut, or her tan — which he had, in previous years expressed doubt over her ability to achieve. His eyes didn't sweep over her, and he did not grin at her yellow knee socks with bees on them, which she'd figured out how to charm so they buzzed in and out of stitched honeycomb. They didn't even make some kind of... thing about how they were both Heads of the freaking school now.

It was like he didn't see her.

Except he did — their eyes met for a millisecond and he sort of... flicked his eyebrows up in a neutral acknowledgement that she knew — she recognized — because, bloody fucking balls, James Potter had inserted himself so persistently into her life for six long years that Lily knew him better than she'd ever wanted to.

Students streamed past, in shining black satin of varying states of cleanliness. Shoes scuffed and screeched on the stone floor and a small tribe of first years sprinted past, in pursuit of a large Maine Coon. Lily didn't realize she had practically slowed to a stop until she was stabbed in the spine by what felt like the sharpest book in existence— its owner didn't even remove the bubblegum pink lollipop from her mouth, slurping, "whoops, my bad," over her shoulder.

Lily was too distracted by the insane feeling that was happening in her stomach to care. It was overwhelming— insistent— and reminded her of the time she had been upset with her parents as a kid, whilst on a family vacation in Niece. She had staged a hunger strike, naturally, to demonstrate the depth of her anger, refusing to accompany them to their favorite Bistro two blocks away. Her mother, weary from a full day of her daughter's bickering had sighed, battle-worn, ushering her father and Petunia out the door, saying, "fine, Lily, have it your way."

Lily had stood, fuming, glaring at their backs, expecting them to turn around. But the mechanical lock had clicked behind them, their footsteps disappearing down the hotel staircase. Her sense of satisfaction had rapidly, like really quickly, turned to this feeling, the one in her stomach now, in the middle of the 4th floor corridor. Like she had made some kind of irreversible, and wrong decision. Out of pride and stubbornness and... and what had Petunia said the other day? — egocentrism.

Class was about to start and the corridor held only stragglers. Lily glanced down at an abandoned chocolate frog wrapper and caught sight of her garish socks. She flushed.

It wasn't James Potter's job to notice her socks. It's just that he... always had. Noticed things like that. Not limited to socks.

His attention had always been too much. Way. Way way too much. It filled any space, no matter how big— he could easily make the Great Hall feel like a freaking closet— and that made her want to claw her way away from him.

But the absence of attention felt... equally enormous. Whatever was smack at the other end of the spectrum of attention— Lily was feeling that now. He had always been... so much that she had never been able to feel anything other than... that.

The corridor was empty now. Lily was numb. Where was she even going? She didn't know her schedule yet, and her class order had flown out of her brain, in the flurry of all of these sudden, Unexpected Thoughts. And feelings.

So, yeah. James Potter walked past Lily in a corridor on September the 2nd, a Monday, and basically, her whole world began to crash down around her.