Lily Evans was late for Potions. She was sprinting down the corridor, a stitch in her side as her breath came out shorter and shorter, the door to the dungeons coming closer and closer as she ran.

She hadn't planned on being late, in fact she had set off for her class a lot earlier than had been strictly necessary. But because it was Hogwarts and no one could go longer than half a day without a duel breaking out in the middle of school grounds, she was forced to intervene as her duty as Head Girl.

It involved a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin of all people. The Hufflepuff had been spouting some sort of nonsense about Voldemort going about things the right way, and the Slytherin, who Lily now knew was a Muggleborn, had given the Hufflepuff a good arse-kicking before she had stepped in and put a stop to everything. It had taken quite a bit of shouting, at least three Shield Charms, and a threat to take away over fifty points from each house if both students wouldn't knock it off.

Which was why Lily barreled into her N.E. level Potions class, completely interrupting Slughorn while he was introducing the potion they would be working on that day. Her bag hung off one shoulder, her robes were hanging from her elbows, her hair which was previously in a neat bun, was now tangled and hanging by Lily's lower back in a large knot.

"S-sorry I'm-I'm late, P-Professor Slughorn," Lily puffed out, her right hand clamped to her side as she bent over, her left hand pressing on her knee as she tried to catch her breath and stop the pounding in her head. The entire class turned around to stare at her as she staggered to the empty seat that was next to James and collapsed into it.

"Not a problem, Lily," Slughorn replied with a fond smile before resuming his speech. Lily was only half listening to Slughorn's words as she rummaged in her bag for some spare parchment and ink. She wasn't looking when Slughorn took the lid off of the cauldron sitting on his desk at the front of the class, too busy pulling out piece after piece of her Potions equipment that she'd need for that class.

Lily's attention was dragged away from her bag and back to what was happening during the class by a powerful smell that seemed to have filled the entire class. She wrinkled her nose and grimaced. In normal qualities it was the kind of scent that Lily would've enjoyed immensely, but there was such a concentrated smell of it permeating the class it made her nose hurt. She looked around her to see if anyone else smelled the same thing but found that her fellow classmates had dazed looks on their faces and silly, sleepy grins pasted on.

There was something familiar about the smell, something woodsy or musky about it, like it was someone's cologne. For the life of her she couldn't figure out why it seemed so familiar, or where it was even coming from. She leaned over towards James to ask him if he smelled what she smelled when she caught the scent on him.

"Christ, James, how much cologne did you put on today? It's as if you bathed in it," she complained loud enough that Slughorn, and the rest of the class, stopped what they were doing and stared at her. She pinched her nose closed in a weak attempt to stop the headache she no doubt knew was coming. "It's making my nose hurt," she went on in a nasal voice that set the corner of James's mouth twitching upwards.

Oblivious to all of this, Lily gave another strong sniff in the air, not noticing the grin that was beginning to spread across James's face, and frowned in confusion. The smell of his broom polish immediately followed the intense aroma of James's cologne.

"Have you been polishing your broom, too?" she went on, squinting at James in confusion. James didn't get the chance to answer, mostly because Lily was on a roll, but also because he couldn't stop himself from smiling even if he'd tried. "You might want to lay off it for a bit, you absolutely reek of it."

"Have you been to the history section in the library again?" Lily asked in confusion as the smell changed once again. "It's like that dusty, old book smell you get whenever you've been searching through obscure texts that no one has bothered to read in decades. Like that one time I caught you searching for books on Animagi near the restricted section."

It was only when she caught the gleeful looks on her classmates' faces, and the amused look in Slughorn's eyes did Lily realize her performance had derailed the lecture.

"Thank you, Miss Evans, for demonstrating, as I was saying," Slughorn went on, as the rest of the class sniggered at Lily's outburst, "Amortentia smells different to every person depending on what attracts them most."

Lily could feel her entire neck and face getting hot and turning red. She looked down and slowly slid down in her seat until only the top of her forehead could be seen. If the ground opened up and swallowed her whole, she wouldn't object. James managed to slide even closer to her, that idiot grin of his still on his face, one arm thrown across the back of her bench.

Someone let out a wolf whistle, which made Lily turn even redder. She brought her hand up to her forehead to make sure no one could see how alarmingly red she turned. She didn't even want to think about the look of disgust on Snape's face.

"Say Lils, you seem awfully smitten with your Head Boy," James whispered into her ear. She jumped at his closeness. She didn't have to look to know everyone was watching them flirt, she could feel their eyes on her.

"Please, for the love of Dumbledore, shut up," Lily choked out. James's arm moved from hanging from the back of her bench to around her shoulders as he tugged her towards him, because Potions class was obviously the place to start acting like a couple and marking your territory. Although Lily was lying to herself fiercely as she tried to convince herself that she hated it and thought it stupid (on the contrary she could not be more delighted).

James leaned down to whisper in her ear again, the grin still on his face (Lily was fairly certain it would never leave his face). "You're right, we can discuss this more in depth later."

And because Lily had already exposed herself to her entire Potions class, and the rest of Hogwarts, she decided she might as well do it properly and replied with,

"If 'discuss' means anything other than mess around in your bed, I will be very disappointed in you."


a/n: hi i was reading over this a few days ago and i didn't like some parts of it so i decided to edit it and i'm much happier with it