BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY

By: geekinthepink

Rating: T

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing; everything you recognize belongs to either JK Rowling or William Shakespeare.

Thank you again for your lovely reviews! I love you all so much for sticking with my insane idea to suck poor Lily and James into this Shakespearean tragedy. Also, the last chapter was my favorite chapter too, well, until now.

Act Two: Scene Six-ish… Still.

(Also known as: "On Borrowed Time")

The space between the two time-travelers, rather dimension travelers, was incredibly forced and Lily found that her brain no longer wanted to work. She couldn't concentrate on what significance the veins on ivy had when her thoughts were currently being occupied by the simplicities that were James Potter.

Simply put, she hated him.

Not just because he was a prat, a prankster, a waste of talent… really the list could continue like this forever. She hated him above all because he was forcing her to change her mind. Long ago she had decided that this boy, well actually, young man, was the bane of her existence. She had decided that the moment he first asked her to Hogsmeade that she would never fall to his charms, or lack thereof. She hated him because she couldn't hate him, as bizarre and twisted that sounded.

Peeking out over the yellowed parchment of the text she could see the candlelight flickering off of the lenses of his glasses as he appeared to be lost in thought himself. She couldn't tell if he was actually absorbed in the text or if he too was thinking of other things.

The complexities of this situation, of finding themselves trapped in this strange world, had changed something in her opinion of Potter, of James. She couldn't even refer to him by his surname without correcting herself now.

Lily found that she had never pulled her attention back to the forgotten text and instead was still looking at the boy across from her. He was captivating, a fact that made her clench her jaw in frustration. He didn't deserve to be so entrancing. He wasn't overly attractive, his pride often stifled conversations, he was by far the most egotistical person she had ever met, and yet, she couldn't take her eyes off of him.

He must have felt her gaze upon him because he caught her off guard as his muddy, hazel eyes met her own.

"You're staring at me again." He informed her simply, obviously still a little upset with whatever game she was playing.

"I know," she admitted. The words "I'm sorry" formed on her tongue but he must have sensed him because he cut her off quickly.

"Don't even say it. I don't want to hear another apology." He paused, drawing his attention to the plants shown as crude drawings in the books. "Just … find a way for us to get back to Hogwarts and we'll never bring this up again."

He hadn't meant to sound so cold. His pride was suffering, to say the very least.

Just when he had thought that Lily Evans might be warming up to him, she isolated herself as far back in her chair as she could manage, crushing whatever hope he had of the almost-kiss. To be honest, he should have been used to her rejection, it was just… He didn't really know what it was.

James didn't even see her nod before turning back to the brittle books.

For a few moments nothing but the rustle of papers and the scratch of a quill could be heard. The silence was deafening and it caused James to feel even worse. He shouldn't have been so cold to her, they were in a pretty traumatic situation right now, and perhaps she was just acting this way out of some sort of stress or something. It was the most plausible explanation he had.

"I am sorry." Lily confessed quickly, quietly. "I don't know what came over me."

"Lily, stop it." He ordered her in his Head Boy tone, however, with a sigh he quickly softened. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. We're both dealing with something out of the ordinary right now and it's straining both of us." Only, he didn't want to believe his own words. He didn't want it to be true. He had waited so long for her to warm up to him that it was only fair that she had wanted that almost-kiss as much as he had.

"I wasn't apologizing for my actions." She amended, though hesitantly.

James looked at her curiously, his heart fluttering in an un-masculine way. He blamed the trousers, the tight unnatural beasts that they were. He wanted her to say something like "I'm sorry that I never said yes to you when you asked me to Hogsmeade" or "I'm sorry that I cursed you that one time so that your broomstick was glued to your trousers" or even "I love you, James. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that before". Any of the above would have been perfect.

"What were you apologizing for, then?" he prodded.

She looked at him for a moment and he briefly believed that she was just going to start staring at him again. Unfortunately for him, she shook her head, causing all hopes of getting one of his dream answers to fade.

"Never mind, it's not important." Lily felt that she was regressing through her childhood right now. No longer did she feel like the composed seventeen year old that she had been two days ago, but she was now one of those vile third years with a fetish for the Head Boy.

Of course, James had never progressed past the third year type, so it wasn't too much of a stretch for him to frown at her. "Obviously it was something pretty important if Lily Evans was considering apologizing again to James Potter." He enunciated their names as a small smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth and she scowled at him.

"I wasn't going to say a thing to you." She harrumphed childishly, turning the page of the volume she was currently poring over. Lily had turned the page so violently that James was certain that it might have ripped a little.

"Why do you insist on doing this?" He questioned her in such an exasperated tone that he actually felt exhausted. She was really quite tiring. James decided to make a mental note: Steer clear of redheads; tempers and stubbornness do not equal a good time.

"Why do you insist on being such a thorn in my side?" she retorted, not looking past the muted ink. She was irritated, mainly with herself, but James was proving to be the perfect way to vent out all of her emotions right now.

"I could ask you the very same question!" He set the book down on the table with a loud thunk. "One minute I think that you could actually be warming up to me and then the next it's as though we never left school!"

"Nothing should have changed, James!" She admitted. "Neither one of us should have settled into this idea that we could actually get along."

"Why?" His tone still ranged on that of one who was exceedingly frustrated with everything, but his question was sincere.

"When we go back to school it's going to be like we never left. You are going to go back to your troublemaking friends and I'll go back to studying for the N.E.W.Ts. That's just how things are. We shouldn't pretend to be friends, we're not." In the midst of all of her honesty, she left the part out about how she was growing to fancy him and it scared her to death.

She had never had a serious crush before. Of course there had been a few dates here and there but nothing where she could see a potential relationship. And the fact that the first person she could sincerely see herself dating was James Potter, well that threw her entire world into a dizzying spiral.

Oh bugger.

Actually allowing herself to think of James as potential boyfriend material caused her breath the hitch up in her throat, or perhaps it was bile, she couldn't be completely sure.

"Do you want to pretend that this never happened?" He sounded as though he doubted the sincerity to her words. Frankly, she doubted her own sincerity.

However, it was the typical question of what ifs that flooded her thoughts. It was the weight of the pros and the cons.

Did she want to pretend that her heart hadn't fluttered eagerly the moment that his hand pressed flat against hers in the ballroom? Did she want to pretend that she wasn't relieved to see that he had to share the same Shakespearian nightmare as she? Did she want to pretend that the thought of kissing him hadn't crossed her mind in the last fifteen minutes?

No, she didn't. Well, except for that last one… She was happy to pretend that the last one had never happened.

Slowly, she shook her head. "No, I don't."

"Then why force yourself to?" His tone was cheeky and she felt another scowl find its place on her lips, though it had fallen there out of habit.

"Because you're a complete git." Her words didn't hold any of the same venom or bite that they usually did, and the slow appearance of a smile on her face kept either of them from taking the insult too seriously. "I'm acting pretty ridiculous, aren't I?"

"It's nothing out of the usual." He shrugged it off, smiling just the same.

The disgusting thing was that it was his ability to do so, to be so casual about things that he could just shrug them off and not dwell over them, that she found so endearing. Lily had the unfortunate ability to let things weigh her down to the point of insanity; it probably was incredibly unhealthy for her. It was probably the only thing she'd ever envied about him.

"Right, well then, since we've settled that… I need some help." Lily admitted sheepishly. She hated admitting that she needed help, especially over something such as potions. She was good at that class; it came very easily for her. It was just the properties of all of these plants that were meshing together making it very hard for her to understand what the potion called for.

She laid the book in her hands on the table and turned it around so that James could properly see the text. Leaning in closer to the table, and by default, James, she pointed at a particular paragraph that she was stumbling with.

"This plant says that it has the same properties as the bay leaf but also that it could be potentially dangerous if used incorrectly. It doesn't say what would be incorrect usage of it but I'm certain that it sounds familiar. If we added it to our current potion, what would happen? I mean, would we create some sort of time portal that couldn't close or something?" she questioned.

James scanned the paragraph, the name of the plant sounded familiar to him as well. It wasn't until he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose that Lily noticed that she had been paying rapt attention to him, so much so that she was now sort of leaning against the table that they were situated at. She justified it as she was trying to see the pages of the book better in the dim candlelight.

He looked up from the book to see Lily hovering maybe a foot away from him. A small flush caused his ears to glow red and he looked back down at the parchment. Wracking his mind for seven years of Herbology and Potions information was probably the best exam preparation that he was going to get.

"I don't know exactly what would happen." He admitted finally. "We could risk it and try it, or we could try and come up with plan B." By now, James had managed to pull his gaze away from the text and look over at the redheaded girl who was uncomfortably close to him at the moment. He was caught off guard by the fact that she had locked her eyes with his.

However, it was Lily that momentarily struck dumb. Words were no longer on her list of abilities as every time she opened her mouth to speak she found her lips pasted together. It was, of course, James's fault. There was something about his eyes that didn't allow her to pull away. The muddy browns and greens were comforting, and if she looked a little closer there was a faint touch of gold laced through.

The ironic humor to Lily was that his eyes fit him perfectly. Not just in the physical sort but in the metaphorical as well. From afar they just looked to be a plain brown; much like James could easily be dismissed as a prankster and part of that silly Marauder gang or whatever term they used. If you got a little closer, you found the deep greens; the part of James that showed that he wasn't just a prankster but a fitting Head Boy and good student.

But if you perched yourself closer, a dangerous close as Lily was right now, you spotted the gold. It was, perhaps, the part of James that made you realize just how far into this you had gotten. It was the part that made Lily realize that she could never view him as the same havoc wrecking pre-teen she had sworn to despise. She was in lust with him. She would go far enough to say that she could possibly fancy him.

"Lily…" The soft whisper of her name was enough to break her out of her metaphors.

She snapped abruptly to attention, focusing more clearly on the boy in front of her. "Hmm? Oh, sorry." Luckily for both of them, she wasn't sorry enough to pull away from her precarious position over the table.

James was fighting an internal battle, he wanted nothing more than to close the space between him and Lily, but he also knew that in doing so he could potentially ruin whatever friendship they might have forged over the past couple of days – it seemed much longer than that. Though, he had never been the type to worry about the consequences, so it came as no surprise when he leaned forward slightly to close the gap between their lips.

Lily was taken aback at first, unable to respond in any way. She had hoped with the smallest shred that he would close the space between them, but now that he had, she was frozen.

James didn't seem to mind, however, as he continued kissing her, reveling in the moment. She wasn't pulling away so he figured that was a good sign. Slowly, her eyes fluttered closed and she remembered the correct way to go about kissing someone, responding to James's kisses happily. She was certain that she felt him smile into the kiss when she did so.

Her lips were slightly chapped from the recent abuse she had caused during her reading session, her habit of biting her lip causing them to swell easily against the increasing force of the kisses being showered on her. As much as she hated to do so, she separated herself from James with a soft pop that was actually quite humorous if one were to think about it.

"It's really uncomfortable leaning over this table," she explained half-heartedly.

James grinned at her, fascinated to see that the redness and swelling of her lips was actually caused by him. "Understandable." Simple one worded responses were actually all he felt that he could manage right now.

"What were we talking about before all of that happened?" Lily questioned, sitting back in her chair. She pulled a text book to her and tried to remember the task at hand. Obviously James had proven to be a distraction even more so before that kiss, because every word on the page looked foreign though she knew she had been looking at it before.

"Um…" James began, breaking off in thought. There must have been some magical properties in that kiss as he couldn't remember a single thing except how wonderful it had felt to finally have been able to kiss her. "You were saying that you fancy me?" he teased, having no better answer.

Lily rolled her eyes, "You wish."