November 22, 1977

"Are you going to help me, James?" Lily asked exasperatedly. They were supposed to be organizing student records, but James was sitting and playing with his snitch.

He sat up at these words, "Only if you kiss me!" He grinned.

"James, no we are on duty! We can't!"

James stood, still grinning, and walked over to wear Lily was standing over some files. "Just a peck, and then I'll be really helpful I promise!"

"No!" She hit him playfully with a file.

"Oh come on, Lils! It doesn't have to be a full on snog!"

"No, James, get to work!"

"But I haven't gotten my kiss!"

"Yeah, and you won't get another one until you help."

"Ever?" James looked taken aback.

"Not one more, ever." Lily said triumphantly, crossing her arms over herself.

James looked mortified. "I'm helping! I swear!"

James immediately went to work looking diligently at all the files and sorting them.

Lily felt rather proud that she had gotten him to work, it wasn't a very common thing for James.

o0o

Once they had finished James told Lily to follow him.

"Why?"

"Because I have a surprise." He said simply.

Lily let James take her hand and lead her out of the filing room and up to the seventh floor.

"James, where the hell are we going?"

"Here, stand right there for a second." They were in the hallway with the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. James began to pace in front of the tapestry and to Lily's utter astonishment a door appeared in the wall across from the tapestry.

James beamed at her and took her hand again, leading her to the door.

"This is the room of requirement, or that's what we call it." James said as he opened the door for Lily and gestured at the room.

It was a good sized room with high ceilings and shelves of records on the walls. The middle was empty except for a simple record player in one corner. It was a beautiful room and the floating candles only helped make the room look like a magazine picture.

"James what is this place? I've never seen it before."

"Well, us marauders consider ourselves experts on Hogwarts and we found this particular room two years ago while we were 'gallivanting'", he winked at her. "And well we discovered that if you walk past it three times while thinking about what you want the room to be then the door will appear and become what you want it to be."

"So… you wanted it to be a record store?"

"Well, not exactly. I wanted it to be a place I could put on a record and dance with you." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at her.

Lily felt her heart melt.

"Okay." she said quietly, not really trusting herself to speak.

James grinned and walked confidently into the room and looked over the records. Lily followed and also looked at the records.

"See anything you like?" James asked.

"Well…" She was looking at an old Beatles Abbey Road album. James took it from her hands and put it on the record player in the corner.

The title song came on and James looked at her offering a laughed and took his hand. He whirled her around and danced her all over the room. Lily couldn't remember ever having more fun in her life.

They danced through the whole album, after which James switched it to the Let It Be album. They lay on the floor next to each other breathing heavily from all the dances. It was so beautiful to see the candles floating above them, they looked like stars.

"Lily, are you happy?" James asked suddenly.

Lily sat up and looked down at James. He was looking up at the candles and had a calm, but serious expression on his face.

"I-" Lily didn't know what to say. She had never really been asked if she was happy. She had been asked, "Are you okay?", but never if she was happy. Was she happy? Certainly she was now after dancing and laughing with James, but… the war. She was scared, but she had James and he made her happy. He was asking her if she was happy, didn't that mean he cared for her answer.

He rolled over to look at her.

Lily blushed. "Yes." She said simply. "Yes, I'm happy."

James smiled.

He rolled back onto his back, "Me too."