Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine. Nor is the basis for the plot. Just the arrangement of words is mine.
"I hate him." Three words had echoed through her mind for six years now. "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him." He had given her nothing but trouble since first laying eyes on him. "I HATE HIM!" Now, in the first term of seventh year, Lily was running around the lake as fast as her conditioned legs could carry her. The fury of her feelings was matched by the tumult of the lake in a rare September storm.
She had thought she was safe. This was the young man that had made her first year at Hogwarts a living hell. He had made her feel stupid and inferior and... The list went on. She had built an icy wall around her heart to prevent any feeling for him, which might be caused by raging teenage hormones and a ruggedly handsome face. Yes, that was it. That was all this was. The girl slowed her pace to a walk. It had to be hormones. Otherwise, Lily couldn't live with herself. To think that Lily Evans, the ice queen, had fallen for that person... No, it was unthinkable. It must have been hormones. Yes, that decided it.
So why was it that it wasn't a physical thing at first? At the end of sixth year, she had started receiving anonymous notes, with a single deep red rose. Every week throughout the summer, an owl, different every time, arrived in her bedroom and left a note written on heavy paper on her desk. Always with a single red flower and signed, "A man who loves you." After a few of these, Lily started writing back. Now she cursed the day she ever put pen to paper.
The anonymous writer was everything any girl could want. Smart, kind, considerate, mature. When Lily mentioned she preferred carnations to roses, the flower changed, but the notes didn't. Still signed, "A man who loves you." She began to look forward to the day the owl would come. When she had a particularly vicious argument with her sister, the next letter would offer comfort and suggestions of revenge.
Each letter revealed something of the person writing it. How she couldn't guess who it was, she had no idea. She had thought she had known this person. She had known, or thought, that he was an insensitive prat, an immature prankster, a stupid boy. But perhaps because she didn't know who it really was, she fell in love. Lily wasn't sure when, but sometime during the summer she had began signing her letters "With love and affection."
The letters that revealed such a perfect man continued with the start of school. Except they began arriving more often. She began asking advice from the mysterious writer. A particularly nasty spell, a problem with a friend. The answers were good. She began to appreciate the writer even more with each passing day.
Until the day that she caught him. Going to the owlery to post a letter to her mother, she happened to see a single deep red carnation on the wide windowsill. Around the corner, Lily heard a voice calling an owl. A voice that had given her so much grief, with constant nagging for dates and fresh starts. A voice that made her answers seem incomplete and inferior. A voice belonging to James Potter.
Lily decided that the letter to her mother could wait. But the letter with the carnation arrived right on time. Signed "A man who loves you." Lily's answer that day was nothing like her former ones. This one described every injury to her pride, every moment of lost sleep, every aggravation she had with the Potter boy. She poured her rage at being fooled into her pen. She forced the paper to show her disgust of his arrogance and immaturity. And sent it. Without her usual "With love and affection."
The next day James wasn't his usual grinning arrogant self. He sat across from Lily, ignoring her icy glares. "Lily... Listen to me. A man who loves you." James started telling Lily how she had intrigued him from the beginning. How each glare and insult from her was like a knife to his heart. Why he had started sending those letters. He begged once again for a second chance, to correct whatever wrong he had given her in the beginning.
The speech was everything the mysterious writer had been. And nothing like the James Lily thought she had known. It made a crack in the icy wall around her heart. Thin as a spider's web, but still there.
That evening, a single carnation appeared on her pillow. With a note that said simply, "A man who loves you."
The crack grew. And Lily would look James in the eye when they passed in the hall. Another carnation appeared a week later, this time on her favorite chair in the common room. Lily held it for a moment before leaving it on the table and fleeing to her room. But the next day, they were put together for a project, and something stirred in her heart towards her handsome partner.
Another week, another carnation, with a change to the signature- "I miss you. A man who loves you." Lily smiled as a chunk broke from the ice covering her heart.
Not a week, but only three days, and an owl came with the next carnation. Lily considered, but couldn't bring herself to write another note. She couldn't bring herself to tell James she had missed the letters, too.
And then came the realization. The realization that James, through the letters, had filled a hole in her heart she hadn't known existed, and that it was now empty again. The realization that the boy she had known and hated had changed into a man she needed. The realization that she loved James Potter.
This couldn't be. It could never happen. James knew Lily hated him. He knew she could never forgive him. Lily couldn't tell him.
But they were forced to be together, with head student duties. Lily tried to rebuild the icy wall, but it was melting too fast. Then came the day that an accidental touch made her heart skip a beat. And then the day she held his eyes longer than necessary. The day he took her elbow to help he up the stairs and she didn't jerk away. The day she found herself thinking that he was exactly as he had seemed in the letters.
Then one day, James met Lily outside the common room. With a single deep red carnation. She took it. Looked deep into his eyes. Could feel his eyes burning into her soul and seeing the warmth in her heart toward him. The feeling apparent in his eyes startled her. Without saying a word, Lily dropped the red flower and ran. Ran outside and around the lake.
"I hate him!" Halfway around the lake, the clouds burst open. Rain poured, drenching her fiery hair. A lightning bolt in the nearby forest stopped her dead in her tracks. "No." She sank down into the mud. Salty tears mixed with pure rain on her cheeks. "I don't," she sobbed. "I don't. I don't hate him."
Footsteps on the soft mud were drowned out by the noise of the storm. A hand, gentle on her shoulder, pulling her to her feet. The pair stood a moment, Lily held in strong arms. "I don't hate you," she whispered to the face above her.
"I know." The soft reply, then the face came closer. Lips brushed hers, gently. "I know." Lips touched again, arms pulling closer. "I know." A small, crooked smile. "I am, after all, the man who loves you."
And the rest, as you know, is history.
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