Chapter 13: Mr Potter's Tale and Confessions

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

(Billy Joel - And so it Goes)

James,

We need to talk. I'll be waiting underneath the beech tree at lunch tomorrow.

Lily

"What the…" James muttered. "Can she ever leave me alone?"

"What's that you're mumbling about?" Sirius asked.

"Nothing," James answered quickly, clutching the note in his hand before shoving it into his pocket. "Let's go for dinner, shall we?"

Lily,

We need to talk. I'll be waiting underneath the beech tree at lunch tomorrow.

James.

Lily frowned. They had gone two weeks without speaking a single word to each other – which wasn't that hard as all she did was eat, sleep and study – and now he wanted to talk to her?

She was trying her best to be annoyed by this. She should be irritated that he had intruded upon her life once more. She wanted to want him to leave her alone. Yet, she couldn't help but feel happy that he wanted to see her. She wondered what he wanted to say.

"So," Sirius said the next day, "I was thinking; now that we've got two whole hours of freedom before returning to the prison commonly referred to as afternoon classes, we might devote some of that time to go over the details for that prank we planned for tomorrow night. I want it to be perfect."

Peter nodded eagerly while Remus merely grunted. "Can't, I'm sorry," James said quickly. "I've got to… study. McGonagall set me an extra essay."

"What?"

"Actually, I've got to head to the library right now. See you later, okay?"

"What? Prongs!" Sirius called after James as he hurried away. "No lunch? Are you ill?!" But James didn't seem to hear him, or maybe he just didn't want to answer.

"Have you forgotten where he's going?" Peter asked. "You wrote the note yourself —"

"Wormtail," Sirius said in an overly patient voice, "he mustn't know that I know about the note since he hasn't told me. And besides, Aurora wrote the note for James. I wrote the note for Lily. So, technically, I didn't write his note. Now, let's go and meet the girls so that we can watch —"

"Honestly, Padfoot," Remus said, "don't you reckon we ought to give them some privacy? I mean —"

"Nah," Sirius said.

"Wormtail?" Remus asked.

"Nah," Peter said.

"Fine then," Remus sighed.

"You don't have to come with if you don't want to," Sirius said.

"Oh I'll come."

"Only because Elisabeth will be there," Sirius teased.

"Oh shut up, will you," Remus said, trying to sound cool but still blushing madly.

"We'd better hurry up, or we'll miss everything," Sirius said.

"I wonder what's for lunch," Aurora mused.

"Well, we'll get to know soon, won't we?" Elisabeth said in an unnaturally cheery voice but Lily didn't seem to notice her bad acting.

"Actually," she said, "I'll have to skip lunch. I've got to… study."

"Study what?" Elisabeth asked.

"Er… essay. McGonagall. Not finished. See you around!"

Elisabeth and Aurora stood still for a while, watching Lily hurry off in pretended surprise, before looking at each other and grinning. "Let's go."

James pulled a hand through his hair to messy it up – as he always did. He could spot Lily now, she was heading towards him.

God, she was beautiful. That long auburn hair glistering in the sun as she moved, the petite figure, those striking emerald eyes that he knew she had though he couldn't see at this distance. Her smile and the way she moved. Her temper and her kind nature, her smell of vanilla and flowers. Her –

"Hey."

James was pulled out of his thoughts with a start and found himself to be staring into those green eyes he had just been thinking of.

"Hey," he said.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"So…" she said.

"Yeah?"

"Um, aren't you gonna say something?" she asked softly.

"About what?" he inquired.

"Well, I don't know, why you wanted to meet me?"

"What? I just got a note from you —"

"What?! I got a note from you!" she pulled out a neatly folded note from her pocket and handed it to James.

"What's this?" he said before reading it quietly. "Lily… We need to talk. I'll be waiting under… what the…" he pulled out a quite wrinkled note from his own pocket and handed it to Lily.

"What? James, We need to talk," she read. "I'll be waiting under… what the…"

"You didn't write that?" he asked.

"No! Did you write that?" she nodded towards her note.

"No!"

"So… you didn't want to meet me?"

"Er, no offense, but… I hadn't planned on it…" James said uncertainly.

"Me neither."

"So…"

"I guess I'll just head back for lunch, then," she said.

Was that disappointment in her voice? James asked himself. Nah, I must have imagined it.

"Yeah, me too," he said. And together, they began walking back towards the castle in silence.

From behind the nearby bushes they had a good view and were within earshot of the beech tree. Sirius had "borrowed" James's invisibility clock and draped it around them as well as possible – they were five people, so…

"Crap," Aurora swore and made a movement as in an attempt to disentangle herself from the others and the bushes. "I'll just-"

"No, you won't," Remus said and grabbed her arm.

"Let go of me!" Aurora said and wrenched her arm out of Remus's firm grip.

"Don't go after them," Elisabeth said.

"Why not?!"

"Well for starters, what are you going to say?" Remus asked.

"Fine!" Aurora pouted. "Let's just watch them ruin their lives then."

"I hate to admit it, but don't you think Aurora is right?" Sirius asked. "We ought to do something, don't we? I mean, they —"

"Some people are meant to be together," Remus said. "And if they are, then eventually, they will be. Let nature take its course."

"Can I ask you a question?" Lily asked James when they had walked about half the way in silence.

"Sure."

"Why did you give up on me?"

She had expected some sort of inquiry, like "what?", or something similar, but there was only silence before James spoke, and it was clear that he knew exactly what she was talking about.

"I suppose that after a while I had reached a point when I realized its meaninglessness," he said slowly. "There is, after all, only so much refusal a man can take. You might have seen it as some sort of game, and to be quite honest I did too, at least initially, but I was actually hoping that one day you'd say yes. But you didn't. I reckon… I just admitted my defeat."

"But there must have been something to trigger it," Lily inquired. "You didn't just wake up one morning and decide 'oh, today I'm not gonna be into Evans anymore', did you?"

"Yeah…" he trailed off. "It's kinda personal."

"Sorry," she apologized, "I didn't mean to intrude, I'm just… curious. You know you can tell me if you want to, even though we aren't really… friends? No pressure though, if you don't want to, then-"

"My dad died this summer," James said abruptly.

"What? Oh, James, I'm so sorry," she said.

"Yeah. Me too." He paused for a while to take a shaking breath. "Anyway. The last thing he told me, it was… well, he told me about this girl he fell in love with when he was at Hogwarts. First year. Love at first sight."

"Your mum?"

"No," James stated, "not my mum. That's the point. There was this girl, and he was in love with her for his entire time at school. He was convinced that she was the one for him – as I was convinced that you were the one for me."

"Seventh year, he got together with her. But later, it turned out that she had never been in love with him – she had only gone out with him in order to make her ex-boyfriend jealous."

"My dad was devastated – said he lost hope in love and whatever. But some years later, he met my mum and fell in love with her. She was his soul mate. He said that he ought to feel grateful that he never got married to his first love, for then he wouldn't have met my mum. And then, of course, I wouldn't have existed," he added in a half cocky, half joking voice.

"Such a loss," Lily said teasingly and punched lightly on his arm to lift the tense atmosphere somewhat. "And what's that got to do with me?"

"Well, history repeats itself, doesn't it? I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, Lily, and that has stuck for the rest of the school years this far. But you never fell in love with me. If I ever got you to go out with me, it wouldn't be because you were in love with me. I would have to trick you to do it or something. Who was I trying to kid? You aren't going to wake up one morning and suddenly out of the spur find yourself to be madly in love with me, are you? I thought I'd just save myself the trouble. Some day I'll find the right woman for me. First love doesn't always last."

"It could be," Lily objected. "Sometimes it is. You're not your father, James."

"Seriously, Lily, why are you trying to convince me to be in love with you again? I know you like the attention, but we both know that you never will fall in love with me. So please, spare me."

"Yeah, but… what if I changed my mind," Lily tried.

"What do you mean?"

"What if I changed my mind about you? Would it be too late?"

"Are you implying that you have changed your mind? Or that you might change your mind? Or that you might consider changing your mind?"

"I don't know," Lily said and looked into the ground while shifting her weight onto one leg.

You never do, do you? Coward.

"Well, either way," James said slowly, "I think… there's been too much water under the bridge... or something like it."

"You're not in love with me anymore?"

He made a sound as if he was trying to give a casual laugh, but it was more of a grunt. "I don't think that's the problem, Lily," he said, somewhat bitterly. "I don't think that's ever going to be the problem."

Just say it, she thought to herself. Just tell him you're in love with him, and it'll all-

"Erm," he said, "I'm gonna go, so… I guess I'll see you around. Take care of yourself, Lily."

She opened her mouth to protest, or to tell him she loved him, but no sound came. Instead she watched him walk away in silence.

"James! Wait!" she yelled.

He stopped hesitatingly and turned around slowly.

"I love you," she said.

"What?" he yelled from the distance. "I can't hear you, Lily!"

"I LOVE YOU!"

She was sure he had heard her this time, yet it seemed that he hadn't, for he just stood there for a while, looking at her before shrugging and turning away from her.

As Lily Evans watched James Potter walk away from her for the second time in the past minutes, the first flakes of snow began floating down through the sky.

Author's Note: OMG. What an incredibly cheesy conversation. I could barely stand writing it, could you stand reading it?

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