Author's Note: So, if any of you have me on my newly-created Tumblr, you might have seen that two weeks after posting the last chapter (in which Lily has a broken arm) I *literally* fell off my own bike and broke my arm. What can you deduce from this fact? 1) I am prophetic; 2) Typing/dictating this chapter was a labour of love (particularly the parts where they're biking and carefree and happy and not falling to their own deaths). The upside is that it's a bit shorter (aka more reasonable).

A huge, huge thank you to everyone who's still reading this story with me – and particularly the people who keep leaving reviews along the way. You lovely people are the absolute best and reading (and re-reading) every single review is the best part of my day.

OooooOooooOooooOooooO

Lily stared at the piece of paper that had just flown into her room after hovering outside her window. It sported a cryptic and sophisticated message:

Bring popsicles.

She smiled at the brevity. Then she jotted down the rest of her thought and made to leave her room. She turned off all the lights, opened her door as quietly as possible, and headed over to the stairs, relying on muscle memory alone. Making it down the stairs without rousing any of her family members required a very specific set of leaps and twirls; fortunately, she had learned where the spots that always squeaked without fail when she was in elementary school.

She did, of course, know who the author of the unsigned note was – as if anyone other than Sirius would demand desserts without so much as a greeting. The same could not be said of the first night she received one of these spontaneous, late-night messages. Lily had been quite perplexed when a paper airplane had knocked on her window, seemingly of its own accord, with no owl in sight. That time, the letter had simply read 'come outside' in foreign handwriting that was strangely (and, in retrospect, intentionally) intricate and loopy. Wondering what it said about her priorities and self-preservation, she had blindly followed her instructions and marched into what she could only assume was her own murder and/or kidnapping. Much to her surprise, she was greeted by neither friend nor foe, but... a dog. Lily stared at the dog for an embarrassingly long amount of time, but the dog simply sat there and returned her stare. After a deafening silence, she tentatively asked: "Are you Sirius?" She had half-expected the real Sirius to jump out from behind a bush and laugh at her for making such a silly mistake – but alas, her suspicions were correct. Since then, they had fallen into an easy, albeit one-sided, routine. Lily received no notice whatsoever (and once was even woken from sleep), but would promptly drop everything to go enjoy a calm summer evening with Sirius and gossip like a pair of housewives. Unsurprisingly, her mother had in fact heard the two of them on more than one occasion, which had prompted several uncomfortable conversations. However, after repeated assurances that there was absolutely no romantic tension (thank Merlin it was Sirius they were discussing – otherwise Lily would have been completely done for), and after Lily reframed it as a kindness to Petunia, the subject was dropped.

Now in the kitchen, Lily slowly retrieved two bowls, trying her best not to let them clink against the other dishware. She was going to have to break it to Sirius that the Evans family was actually out of popsicles. However, she and her mother had made a large dish of jelly that she suspected would smooth things over. After helping herself to two servings and two spoons, she made her way outside.

"Hey," Lily said simply as she made her way down the yard. Sirius sat up just enough for his head to emerge above the hammock that housed the rest of his body.

"Your hair looks different," he told her, swaying back and forth.

"And that's not all. This isn't even a popsicle," she told him smoothly, handing him his bowl as an attempted diversion.

"What is it?" he asked as he tried to maneuver into an easier position.

"Jelly."

Sirius took the bowl and prodded the bright red gelatinous heap with his spoon. "I thought you said that muggle desserts always lie stationary."

"This one's special." Sirius poked it curiously and watched in awe as it warbled back and forth. Hesitantly, he tasted the dessert, then signaled his approval. Lily grew tired of standing over him and came to join him so that they were both sitting the wrong way in the hammock. It wasn't half as comfortable as she suspected it looked.

"So, are you going to tell me what's up with your hair?"

"Depends," Lily said as she shoved a large spoon of jelly in her mouth. Then she looked away bashfully. "Do you like it?" she mumbled with her mouth full.

Sirius laughed at her antics. "It's more contained," he observed neutrally. "It doesn't really look like you." Lily's heart sank. "Mostly because it looks trendy."

"Ouch!" Lily objected, secretly glad that he was just teasing. "I'm not going to bring any dessert next time," she huffed indignantly.

"It looks very nice," he said reluctantly with a roll of his eyes. "I'm just accustomed to your usual chaos."

"It matched my life," Lily joked. Sirius snorted and had to wipe away some jelly that escaped his mouth.

"So, what happened to it?"

"I just woke up like this," she stated, playing it straight.

The truth behind her hair was far more interesting and Lily found herself reliving the moment. One morning, approximately a week after the boys' original visit, Lily woke up to find Petunia sitting calmly on her bed. In between the two of them was a perfectly square box wrapped in paper adorned with brightly-coloured polka dots. "Good morning," Lily had croaked cautiously.

"It's one in the afternoon," Petunia complained. Then, she clearly remembered she had more altruistic motives for waking her sister up. "This is for you," she said, cutting right to the chase.

"It's not my birthday," Lily had observed.

"It's to say thank you," Petunia had voiced reservedly, as though the words had been forcibly pulled out of her. "For the other day with the boys. And for getting your friends to stop writing."

"You already did say thank you... you know, with your mouth."

"Just open the present and be grateful." Lily complied. She promptly discovered that the pristinely-wrapped box housed a set of hot rollers. Lily had never seen actual rollers before, though she had flipped through countless advertisements in the newspapers over the years. Flummoxed, she looked to her sister for an explanation.

"I know you've always hated your frizzy hair," Petunia said simply. Perhaps not always, Lily had thought to herself, but certainly for the past three years. "Vernon's sister Marge told me you can actually get an iron to straighten hair now... but I didn't know if you would have an outlet anyhow..." Lily shook her head to indicate that her assumption was correct. Petunia went on to explain how to use them.

"I..." Lily had floundered. She was confused, touched, overwhelmed; she didn't know what to say.

Petunia sighed. "How did I know?" she asked, attempting to voice Lily's inner thoughts. Lily nodded. It was indeed one of many questions on her mind. "You couldn't leave your hair alone for two seconds while those boys were here." Lily flushed, looked away, and instinctively (not to mention incriminatingly) pushed her hair out of her face. "You were almost as bad at that other boy. The one with the glasses?"

"James," Lily had told her softly.

"Yeah, the one you couldn't stop staring at." Lily had tried at once to object. "It's okay, Lily," Petunia said with a sigh. "You drive me positively mad sometimes, but..." she trailed off. "Even though you go to a fancy school with magic... you're still just a fourteen-year-old girl with a crush on an older boy."

Their strange heart-to-heart had ended there, as Petunia gave her sister a sweet, albeit condescending, smile and took her leave.

Lily paraphrased this interaction for Sirius' benefit. However, without fully understanding the nuances of the girls' relationships (or, for that matter, Lily's relationship with her hair), he failed to grasp much of the significance. The two of them had actually been functioning better than ever since that moment and Lily had been enjoying the break from all their bickering.

"Well, James'll have to come now. Gotta see the new hair," Sirius said casually as he shoved the last spoonful of jelly in his mouth. Lily's heart sped up a little.

"What?" she asked innocently.

"Hmm?" Sirius murmured. "Did I say something of particular interest to you?"

"I hate you." Lily pivoted to lie in the hammock the proper way and Sirius followed suit, oriented the opposite directon. She did him the curtesy of hanging her feet off the side.

"I think he's going to drop by one of these days," Sirius volunteered. "He seems quite interested in our quality time."

"He's more than welcome to join us. It's not like we're sharing any state secrets."

"I told him that," Sirius agreed. "Actually, I said that you might even prefer these hangouts if he came. And that you might like them better still if I didn't." Lily felt her cheeks go warm, but said nothing. "Then I suggested he bring some butterbeer... some chocolate-covered strawberries... a blanket for the two of you, in case it's a cold night..." Sirius's musings were interrupted by a kick in the shoulder.

"Did you tell him to bring along an officiant and a couple of witnesses too?"

"And a contraceptive potion."

Whatever remark Lily was planning on making, it died in her throat. Even amidst their long history of gossiping and teasing, the comments were seldom that explicit and it made her feel strange to be viewed in a sexual light at all. There was a pause for a split second and Lily suspected that Sirius was questioning if he had gone too far. As was their style, however, they kept talking through the awkwardness. "Now see," Lily complained to keep the conversation going. "I have no idea how much of that was true."

"Oh?" he prompted with a grin, his confidence evidently having returned. "What part did you want to be true?"

"All of it?" she suggested with a cringe to acknowledge her own shamelessness.

Sirius laughed. "I do think he's planning to come visit on his own."

"When?" Lily inquired as nonchalantly as she could muster.

He chuckled again. "Wow, you must be only barely invested in this, what with how casually you asked the question." Lily groaned and covered her face. "I don't know. Maybe some time this week," he guessed. "Are you just asking so you can preen in advance?"

"It would be nice not to be caught with sopping wet hair again," she said, confirming his suspicions.

"Maybe he enjoyed that," Sirius speculated. Lily raised her eyebrows. "The whole 'Oh, you just caught me stepping out of the shower' look," he explained.

Lily rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh." She sighed and started to get up from the hammock. "Enough of this silliness," she told him. "I have a Latin test tomorrow I should go study for anyway."

OooooOooooOooooOooooO

Since being warned that James might drop by when she least expected it, Lily had been trying to exercise constant vigilance, so to speak. That is to say, she was wearing, and then re-wearing, the three or four outfits she owned that she thought were genuinely cute, shaving her legs every day, and conducting a complete hair and makeup session following supper every night. Since she had no idea what time he would want to come, she also found herself staying up till the wee hours of the morning, abuzz with nervous energy, before calling it quits for the night. More than once, Lily had considered simply writing James herself and inviting him – though on every occasion, she had chickened out. She could hear Mary's voice chastising her, as she had in her last letter, for being so timid and instructing her to start acting like a 'spontaneous upper year' (which had become something of a mantra for the four girls). Add that to my list of things to work on next year, Lily thought resignedly as she began applying her nightly make up.

In the end, however, James truly did drop by when she least expected it – in the late afternoon, right after school. Fortunately, she had been the one to answer the door.

"What are you doing here?" she asked quietly as she stepped out onto their front porch. She was acutely aware that she had been caught in one of her least attractive outfits – though fortunately her hair had kept its curls from the previous night.

"Do you want me to go?" James asked hesitantly.

"No, no," Lily reassured him. No. "I just – didn't Sirius tell you the system? I figured you'd come in the evening." She realized a second too late that she had just admitted to expecting his visit.

"But that's your time," he said lamely, as though he were just now realizing how ridiculous that sounded. Reflexively, he started ruffling his hair.

Lily couldn't help but chuckle. "I think there's enough evening to go around," she told him. "And besides, it's not like we're in a secret club or anything."

James shrugged. "It seems like special time for the two of you."

For a split second, Lily worried that James was wondering whether she fancied Sirius again, but further analysis of his face led her to a different conclusion. "Are you..." She almost couldn't say it, but she also couldn't resist. "Are you jealous?" She felt the corners of her lips tilt up as she studied his face.

"Maybe," he confessed with a faint blush.

"Of what?" Lily asked, forcing him to continue.

"Aren't you supposed to be my friend?" he asked weakly. He too cracked a smile, acknowledging how petty that sounded when voiced out loud.

A bright, authentic laugh forced its way out of her mouth. "I think there's enough Lily to go around too!"

"So," James said after a moment. "I may have had an ulterior motive in coming here," he confessed.

To snog me senseless? a voice asked in her head. It was actually Sirius' voice, and Lily promptly shooed it away. "And what would that be?" she asked instead.

"Can we go biking again?" He had the appearance of a child asking for an extra cookie rather than a fully-grown seventeen-year-old asking to ride a bicycle.

"Hmm," Lily replied meditatively. "Would we call what we did last time biking?" James put both hands in front of his chest as though Lily's words had stabbed him in the heart. She laughed heartily before assuring him that she would be honoured to continue the cycling lessons.

OooooOooooOooooOooooO

"So, are we going to try pedalling again today?" Lily asked sweetly. They had been out on the streets for roughly twenty minutes and had only progressed as many metres. They had continued their prior arrangement of Lily escorting him on foot.

James sighed, extremely reluctantly. "I guess I have to," he said, resigned.

"Have to?" Lily asked with a laugh. "I'm not making you do anything. You teleported halfway across the country – I assume – to order me to drop everything and teach you how to bike."

"Fine," he groaned. "If you're forcing me." Lily laughed again. "Or threatening me, I should say. With loss of life and limb."

"Ooh, life and limb? Glad to know my threats aren't half-assed."

"I was surprised too. But what can I say? You're a real slave-driver."

"Clearly not a good one," Lily pointed out. "Seeing as you're still not pedalling."

"I'm warming up to it."

"I'm sorry," Lily told him, sniggering. "It's not really funny. It's just... biking really isn't that hard. You'll see once you figure it out."

"I'm just building up my empathy for our flying lessons," he said with a dashing smile after touching his feet down for the umpteenth time. She couldn't help but smile at the promise of more one-on-one time.

Be prepared for it to take four times as long. "Okay," Lily said, clapping her hands together. "This time you're going to count out loud to three. And you're not allowed to put your feet down before you get to three."

"Not allowed?"

"Nope. I forbid it."

"There you go, cracking the whip again."

"Maybe we should dispense with the slavery metaphors."

"Seems prudent."

"Ready?"

"Not really."

"Do it anyway."

"One..." he recited, just as he had on their previous visit.

"Two," Lily supplied. In struggling to get his feet up to the pedals, he seemed to have forgotten the exercise.

"Three!" he yelped, slamming his feet to the ground. The bike had begun weaving back and forth and he had clearly had to fight the urge to stop prematurely.

Lily gave him some soft cheers and jazz hands. "See? Now that we can call biking." James beamed like a student who had just placed first in his school's science fair.

Half an hour later, Lily was continuing to have the time of her life. The pair of them had slowly meandered over to a nearby park to avoid the swarms of cars returning home from work – which had positively terrified James, despite Lily's repeated assurances that they could see and would easily avoid him. She had taken immediately to the position of 'teacher,' and was thoroughly surprised at just how much she enjoyed being the one in a relationship who was more experienced at... just about anything. Meanwhile, James' nearly agonizingly slow pace of learning had provided an excellent opportunity for bonding and banter alike.

"She's just jealous," James said in summation. They had been discussing (or perhaps more accurately, making fun of) her dear sister.

Lily sighed. "That I'm a witch? On some level, yeah." That level was, of course, so deep that Petunia was able to tout plausible deniability that it ever existed.

"Sure," he agreed, tilting his head to the side as though that hadn't been at all what he was thinking. "But I think it's more that you're prettier and smarter. And your parents obviously prefer you."

Lily froze, her mouth nearly falling open. Aside from a few thinly-veiled remarks about her chest when they had just met, James almost made a point of never commenting on her appearance. The other two compliments might as well have just been incoherent mumbling for the amount of attention she paid them. Lily coughed in embarrassment and reached up to compulsively sweep her hair out of her face – however, her hand merely brushed against the hard plastic of the helmet she forgot she was wearing. She awkwardly returned it to her side. "Right," Lily squeaked after realizing she had been silent for too long. She didn't, in point of fact, agree in the least (what I wouldn't give to be a stone lighter and blessed with straight hair...), but she doubted that arguing was going to get her anywhere less uncomfortable. "Er, okay, this is perfect," she told him, gesturing to the road before them and away from her cherry-red face. "It's well-paved, no cars – which means no excuses," she reminded him. "You're going to bike from here to... that tree," she instructed, having selected a target. "Without stopping."

"What happened to counting?" he asked with a frown.

"This will force you to go faster. Which is actually easier." He gave her a look to suggest he was not buying any part of the story she was selling.

"How do I stop? Safely, I mean. Sirius was covered in bruises last time."

"You're roughly twice my size," Lily exaggerated.

"Oh, at least. So, what?"

"So, it's my bike!" she cried out with a laugh. "Just put your feet down!"

"Fine," he huffed.

"See ya!" she dismissed playfully. And away he went. At first, Lily jogged briskly behind him, but quickly gave up (she always felt self-conscious running anyhow). When James reached the tree Lily had singled out, he planted his feet, stepped over to one side of the bike, and turned around to face her. His face could only be described as displaying pure, unbridled joy. Lily threw her arms into the air as though they had just won the Quidditch cup. James immediately mirrored her, allowing her beautiful mint-green bicycle to cascade to the ground. If it were anyone else, she might have cared.

"Lily!" he cried, gesturing to the discarded bike as though he couldn't believe what he had just accomplished.

"I saw," she told him with a big smile. She resumed walking over to him, but he ran in her direction as well. Once he intercepted her, he did something even more unbelievable: he wrapped his arms around her, effortlessly picked her up, and spun the pair of them around in a circle. As soon as her feet touched the ground, he pulled her close and engulfed her in a delightfully tight embrace. Lily took the split second to relish the sensation of being pressed against his firm chest. And then she pulled away.

"You're the best teacher in the world," James said happily, still holding her at arm's length. He was positively beaming.

"I did next to nothing," she pointed out, though she was smiling just as widely.

"Can I have another demonstration?" James suggested. "I want to see how it's really done."

Lily rolled her eyes, but couldn't seem to tear the smile off her face. Despite reminding him repeatedly that she was, at this point, only minimally better than he was, she walked over to her bike and did her best to show off a smooth ride. James gushed over her in a way that she was not at all accustomed to and when they eventually parted ways for the night, Lily was on cloud nine.

OooooOooooOooooOooooO

After that afternoon, things really started to change and speed-up for Lily. Her days were dedicated to studying foundational areas of muggle academia, exploring literary classics, and learning the romance languages; meanwhile, her afternoons were frequently spent with James, her evenings were frequently spent with Sirius, and, peppered in here and there were curt (but far from unpleasant or aggressive) interactions with Petunia. For their part, Lily's parents were so excited at seeing their daughters have any semblance of a normal relationship, they had long since relinquished Lily to the hands of unknown teenaged boys (even if it was far from their first choice). It was the best summer Lily could remember since starting at Hogwarts.

As difficult as Lily would have found it to predict mere months ago, biking turned out to be the perfect activity to take up with James. Her relative experience made her feel old and wise – and, for a change, not embarrassed at her level of fitness or coordination. Moreover, biking allowed them to explore nearby parks and ravines, making interesting conversation without any awkward pauses. This was particularly true the day Lily had, at James' request, brewed another scintillating solution. James was just starting to get the hang of biking at this point (including turning and braking) and Lily thought the flat and well-maintained roads would be a good choice.

"My grandparents are ahead to the right, want to see?" Lily called ambiguously to James, who was biking behind her.

"Er," James called back. "That sounds a bit private."

"Nonsense!" she called back happily. "This is a public cemetery. Their remains and epitaphs are for general consumption." As she approached their graves, she dismounted and propped her (or rather, her mother's) bike up on its kickstand. "My tailbone could use a rest anyway," she joked as she started stretching her back. James hopped off his bike as well and Lily showed him the tombstone made out to 'Richard and Rose Ryan.'

"How alliterative," James observed. Lily nodded in agreement. "What are the odds?" he asked rhetorically.

She knew he didn't want a sincere answer, but with the potion on board, she couldn't resist. "I reckon quite high."

"Hmm?"

"Well, a lot of parents don't like alliterative names, sure, and they'd rather pick a first name that starts with any other letter. But some parents will. And since we see it as a binary between alliteration or no alliteration, it's tempting to say that anything under fifty per cent would be 'unlikely.' But actually, as long as the number of parents who prefer alliteration exceeds one in twenty-six, then, statistically speaking, you would be more likely to have a first name that starts with your last initial than you would to have it start with any other letter of the alphabet."

"You're crazy."

"I am not! Look at how many alliterative names there are in our class and in History of Magic."

"I didn't say you were wrong." Tired of standing, Lily took a seat on the grass and began absentmindedly tracing the initials on the tombstone. "Do you remember them?" James asked, taking a seat beside her.

"Barely," she answered. It was probably a lie. Her earliest concrete memory was their funeral.

"What about your other grandparents?"

Lily shook her head. "Passed a few years ago."

"I'm sorry," he answered immediately. Lily speculated internally that he was uncomfortable discussing death and mortality.

She shrugged. "What about you?"

"Never met any of mine." Lily nodded pensively; she had never been a fan of the reflexive, knee-jerk 'I'm sorry.' "This cemetery is very pretty. But don't you find it all a bit morbid?" James asked, confirming her suspicions.

Lily smiled and leaned back. "Not at all," she replied effortlessly. She crossed one ankle over the other to maintain some modesty. "It makes me feel connected."

"Connected to what?"

"Nature, past generations..."

"But, do you really want to feel connected to past generations of, er... dead people?"

Lily giggled. "Why not? We're not so different, really. We'll be dead soon enough."

"Now, that's morbid."

"That's life!"

"Actually, it's the opposite of life..." he joked. Lily smiled brightly. Oh, how she had missed this.

"What's so special about life?" she replied in jest, trying to be a contrarian. Then her ideas seemed to take off without her, causing her joke to morph into a serious sentiment. "Think about how many people have existed in human history. Probably, what, billions? Hundreds of billions?" James nodded to show that he was following. "All of them are dead. All of them! On the grand scheme of things, our lives are the blink of an eye. The odds of us being alive at any given moment are staggeringly low."

"You're dark," James told her, though he was smiling in admiration.

"Enlightened?" she suggested.

"Insane?" he countered.

"Brilliant?" She bent her wrist and rested her chin on her fingertips, as though she were entirely self-absorbed.

"Well, that goes without saying," James agreed. He stood up and offered Lily a hand. She tried her very best to store those three seconds in her deep memory for later enjoyment. "So, did you slip me too much of this potion? Because you're making an alarming, and uncharacteristic, amount of sense."

"I always make perfect sense," she insisted, pouting and crossing her arms.

"You're so cute when you're insulted," he told her, causing her to turn the colour of a tomato. "Particularly today. Perhaps you slipped me a love potion instead?"

Lily cleared her throat and picked up her bike, hoping to hide her face. "As the only one here who's been slipped a Lily Evans love potion—"

"Would we say that you were slipped that potion?"

"—it was, er, not that subtle."

"Oy. Do I want to know what you did that night in private?"

Lily shook her head as though she were covering up the secret of the century, hopped on her bike, and sped ahead of him. Give him another week, she thought wryly, and I won't be able to pull this move off anymore.

Later, at his behest, she recounted this dialogue to Sirius as they split an entire package of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (supplied by Sirius, for a change). "You're staring at me," Lily told him, having finished her story.

"Yep."

"But you're not saying anything."

"Nope."

"You look rather smug."

"I would expect so."

"Are you going to say anything?"

"Doubt it."

"That's not like you," she observed.

"I'm trying out this new thing."

"And what's that?"

"It's where I just sit back and let you two lovesick fools make your own mistakes. Otherwise, I've decided you'll never learn."

"You're insufferable."

"I try."

As the summer moved into its final legs, the moments kept getting better and better. A week later, she received the marks of her Latin test (she received 100%) and her history essay (an A+). Unexpectedly, it was James, and not Sirius, who visited her that night. Unbeknownst to her, James had made off with their helmets after the previous ride and charmed them to emit light, such that they rather resembled miners' hats. Given the late hour, the two of them capitalized on their ability to ride right in the middle of the street and Lily was insisting that James learn how to signal. "It's all about fighting the urge to press down with your other hand," she explained to James, who had never dared to lift so much as a finger off his handlebars. After several attempts, he seemed to be getting the hang of it. "Okay, now if you want to say you're turning right, you extend your arm straight like this." She demonstrated with her left arm so he could see. James mirrored her and, as the long night and the long road stretched out before them, their fingers grazed each other.

A few days later, one of Lily's teachers encouraged her to read English at Oxford. The following Saturday, she and James picked a somewhat ambitious bike path. Just as they rounded a corner, a very sweaty and exhausted Lily let out a rare curse. "I forgot about this hill," she said in response to James' inquiring look.

"Should we turn back?" he asked. "If you're scared, I doubt I should even attempt it."

Lily chuckled at his ignorance. "It's not a skill thing," she informed him. "You'll be fine – you're in way better shape than I am."

"That's not true."

Lily scoffed. "Right. Okay. Well, I'll surrender in about two seconds and walk the rest of the way." She saw James hop off his bike in her peripheral vision and mentally thanked him for his solidarity. Then, she gasped as she felt two hands wrap around her pelvis and start pushing her up the hill.

"Look at how fit you are!" he exclaimed jovially. "Conquering this hill like it's nothing!"

Lily laughed – in between pants. "You don't have to do this," she told him. "Gods, I'm probably so sweaty."

"You think this is sweaty? You should drop by the Quidditch change rooms after practice some time," James joked. Despite lugging around the weight of an entire extra person, he didn't even sound remotely out of breath. It was an embarrassingly attractive quality. When they reached the top, he gave her an elaborate bow and a "M'lady," before running back for his own bike.

Things really started to heat up near the end of her semester. James visited as soon as she came back from her Maths final. Comically, as soon as they put on their helmets, it started thundering. More disappointed than she would care to admit, Lily walked her bike back to the garage. "Wait," James called out. "I have an idea." With her permission, he proceeded to shove both of their bikes in a charmed bag and pulled her close. "Do you trust me?" Lily nodded. Then he whisked her away. The two of them landed on an old cobblestone path overlooking a gorgeous canal. Wherever they were, it looked like a very old village. James cheered.

"Where are we?" she asked. She felt dizzy and put a steadying hand on his shoulder, but – and she was quite proud of this – did not vomit.

"Bath. I was just praying it wouldn't be raining here." He was positively radiant.

Lily gasped. "I've always wanted to go." And off they went, taking in the beautiful architecture.

This pattern, too, continued and culminated on the day of her last final. "Where are we off to today?" she asked excitedly. It was now a given that they would be apparating somewhere exciting and Lily was thrilled that her ability to tolerate it had steadily increased.

"It's a surprise," he answered happily. Then he reached into his pocket and produced his infamous Gryffindor tie. It was so unexpected that Lily clapped her hands together and burst out laughing.

"What possible use is it to blindfold me?" she asked after she calmed down. "It's not like I can see where we're going anyway."

"Shh," he hushed. "We're going a little further today," he explained as he started to obscure her vision. She noticed, as she so often did, the smell of his cologne.

"And?"

"And I don't want to splinch you! I like you. But I specifically like you in one piece."

"Aww," she said flatly.

"You have a lot of freckles," James observed. She could feel his breath on her face. "Did you always have this many freckles?"

"Nope," Lily replied simply. "Someone keeps taking me out biking in the sun." She had been, perhaps naïvely, hoping that all the biking might result in her acquiring a trimmer appearance, but alas... freckles were all she got.

"The sun looks good on you." Before she had time to digest that particular comment, they had disapparated. After a moment's break, they did so again, and then again, until finally James removed the blindfold.

"Are you hell-bent on making me vomi—" Lily faltered when she turned around and spotted the Eiffel Tower. What objections could possibly hold up against the prospect of biking along the Seine River?

OooooOooooOooooOooooO

"Are you looking forward to school starting up?"

Lily turned her head to look back to Sirius. To celebrate finishing muggle school, they had walked back to the pond they had first visited at the beginning of the summer. En route, they had stopped off at a corner store and purchased popsicles. She ruminated on his question briefly. "No."

"I thought you hated summer."

"I... did."

"Not anymore?"

"Not this one."

"And why's that?" He was sporting a very cocky expression.

"Gee, I can't imagine." She sighed heavily. "I feel like we're in some sort of summer trance or something."

"You and Prongs?"

"No, me and Petunia." She rolled her eyes. "We meet up, we go biking, we laugh. He compliments me, touches me..." She was sure she was blushing. "He's charming. And I'm charmed. It's almost..."

"Like you're dating?" Lily nodded, feeling silly and vulnerable. "So, what's the problem?"

"It's just so easy right now," she whined. "It's effortless. There's no school, professors, job pressure, friends, or..."

"War?"

"Yes, that."

"So, you're worried real life's going to hit," he surmised. Lily nodded. "You think he'll forget about you?"

"He's been known to before." Sirius chuckled. She gave another deep sigh. "The two of us, right now, we're in some sort of magic bubble."

"But bubbles burst."

"They have a tendency to, yes." She could feel their time dwindling by the second.

"Maybe this one won't. Maybe it will solidify into a... bullocks, I don't know," he said, giving up. Why don't you just ask him out?"

"14."

"I know."

"17."

"I know."

"You were taking a break from advice-giving."

"I know."

"Go take it up with him then," she said, without giving the line much thought.

Sirius perked up immediately. "Do you want me to?" He looked supremely thrilled.

"No!" Lily yelped. "No. No. I didn't mean it." Sirius held his hands up in surrender.

OooooOooooOooooOooooO

"Umm, Lily?" Alice asked tentatively. She, Mary, and Marlene had just pulled her into a different room on the Hogwarts Express after stealing her away from the Marauders' compartment.

"Nice to see you too?"

"Is there something you failed to mention in your many letters?" Marlene asked knowingly.

"Er, nothing's coming to mind."

"See, you told us all about every muggle grade you got – not that we asked – and nearly every conversation with Petunia," said Mary. Lily tried to restrain a smile at being called out so openly. She had sent rather dry letters all summer. "But maybe, in all those extremely boring details, did you forget to mention a few much more exciting details?"

Lily stared at them all blankly. "Maybe about James?" Alice suggested.

"I told you guys about James," Lily insisted.

"Want to try us one more time?" asked Mary.

"He and Sirius came to visit, I taught him how to bike, we went to some interesting locations..." She knew they had heard this all before.

"Yes, yes, we heard the filler parts of that novel," Marlene said impatiently. "Do you want to spill about the good parts now?"

Lily felt herself frown and tried to wrack her brain. "I really don't know what you're getting at."

Alice turned to the others. "So, there's your answer," she said, mostly to Marlene.

"No way," Marlene insisted.

"What 'part' is it that you think I left out, exactly?" Lily asked with air quotation marks.

"The part where you and James start dating?" Marlene asked, a little too loudly.

Lily frantically looked at the closed door behind her to make sure it was closed. "What are you talking about?" she hissed. "I would definitely remember that part."

Realizing how unusual they would appear to anyone passing by, the girls unanimously decided to take their seats, lean in, and lower their voices. "We saw you," Marlene told her enigmatically.

"Saw me what?"

"We don't know what we saw, Marls," Alice commented.

"Sure, we do," she disagreed.

"Even I'll admit, it looked fairly suggestive. And unlike Marlene, I'm not just saying that to get the jackpot."

Lily chuckled. At least part of this conversation was becoming clear – she remembered that Marlene did indeed have money on the two of them getting together the summer before fifth year. "I hate to break it to you, Marlene, but nothing happened. Though I have no idea what you think you saw... or when."

"We saw you just now," Mary huffed.

"Like a few minutes ago?" Lily clarified. "When I was sitting in a compartment with James and three other boys? Merlin, I thought you were going to tell me you saw James snogging my doppelgänger or something." No one laughed at her imagery.

"You weren't just sitting this whole time," said Alice.

"Er, of course not?" Lily guessed, still feeling rather confused. "We were chatting, catching up, sharing a snack, and other similar platonic activities?"

"You had your head in his lap," Alice said meaningfully, with wide, unwavering eyes.

Oh. Lily looked away and started biting her lower lip. There had been a brief moment when she had laid down on the bench of the compartment with her head on James' lap. Lily, James, and Sirius had boarded the train before they saw Remus and Peter (James had actually picked her up at home and side-alonged her to the station). In order to save seats for the others, Sirius had instructed them to spread out. From there, the position had sort of... just happened. Lily wasn't sure what was more unusual: that it had happened at all, or that she had thought nothing of it. "That must have been at least an hour ago," she said after a moment.

"Yes, we'll admit," Marlene said casually. "It felt almost like watching zoo animals doing something interesting in their 'natural' habitat. So, we opted not to disturb you and performed some ongoing reconnaissance instead."

"That explains why I saw Alice walk by so many times," Lily remarked. "I thought maybe you were lost."

"When we came back, your head was no longer in his lap," Marlene continued, as though Lily hadn't said a word. "But he was holding your hand."

"He was giving me a fake palm reading," Lily spoke up, excited to have a reasonable defence for this one. "As a laugh," she added, when none of the girls acknowledged her.

"But then when I came by – not believing my ears – he had his arm around you," Mary chimed in.

"Oh, that was just for a minute," Lily brushed off quickly. "Sirius was teasing me and he was cheering me up." She was beginning to feel as though she had taken the stand at her own criminal proceeding and was quickly being drowned with increasingly damning evidence.

"And, of course, you do realize the position we found you in when we came to get you just now," Marlene said sternly.

"I was reading his Muggle Studies textbook aloud – also for a laugh – and he was reading over my shoulder."

"Lily," Alice said more gently. "Don't you think it's possible there's another explanation?"

Lily opened her mouth to tell her friends, again, that if she were dating James Potter, she would know about it, but she took a sharp exhale instead. "Okay," she said, bringing her hands up to her face. "I didn't leave any content out of my letters. But I suppose it is possible that I was a bit stingy with... the descriptions."

"Spill," Mary ordered.

Lily didn't know where to start. "Did he kiss you?" Marlene asked after several minutes of silence.

"What? No," Lily denied immediately. "Nowhere close."

"So, what did you two do, Lils?" Alice asked.

"Flirt? Maybe? Probably not?" She couldn't help but cringe at her own awkwardness. "I don't know. He would... hug me, brush my hair out of my face... we almost held hands once. He pushed me up a hill another time. He said a couple things suggesting I was... I don't know, pretty?"

"You are."

"Thanks Mary." Lily smiled. Then she sighed. "Maybe I'm not describing it very well. Nothing he did was all that shocking. But, put together, it was just very... intimate. Special. It was like we had some weird kind of magnetic attraction."

"But no kissing," Marlene clarified.

"Absolutely not."

"You didn't go on any dates?"

"Other than biking dates? No."

"And on these biking dates you didn't... go for food or go dancing or go see a film?"

"No."

Marlene sighed in exasperation. "Fine, no money for me," she told Mary in defeat.

"Sounds like maybe they could be dating soon, though," Mary replied with a smile. Lily sighed to herself. That would be nice. "Are you going to say anything to James, Lily?"

She let out an awkward, self-deprecating chuckle. "That would be a 'no.'"

"I thought not."

"Who says she has to say anything? Just go snog the bloke," Marlene insisted.

"Oh Merlin no."

"I was only joking."

"You still want to date him, though, right Lily?" Alice asked.

"Er... I wouldn't say no," Lily tried to say neutrally. Part of her screamed that these were her friends and she should be fully open; another part of her screamed that she was only 14 and it would never work. A more dominant part reminded Lily that the last time she thought she and James would get together, her turned up with a girlfriend faster than she could blink. That part strongly advised her not to jinx anything.

"Grand," Alice replied happily as though Lily had given a far different answer.

Privately, Lily leaned back in the bench and retreated into her thoughts. If the girls had noticed the change in James, then surely her precious, magic bubble hadn't popped simply because of other people. Somehow, the idea that other people now knew made the new dynamic strangely real and tangible – in a way that simultaneously excited and terrified her. There's still plenty of time for your bubble to pop, her inner pessimist reminded, even as the rest of her brain was screaming like a group of Beatles fans. With a breath, she tried very hard to overrule all of her many battling parts. Just relax. It's early. You don't know where it's going to go, but it's amazing and it's lovely and you're going to enjoy it. And just like that, Lily decided that she was going to be a spontaneous upper year by sheer force alone.