About this chapter...
I'm really sorry that it's insanely long! The first bit was actually supposed to be a part of the previous chapter, but was snipped last minute. :(
I didn't dream that this chapter would be such a monster!! It was by far the most difficult chapter to write. Dialogue-wise, writing-wise, everything. Certain parts of the chapter are in there completely by accident. I kept changing ideas, switching tacks... so if, as you're reading, you get a sense of this, I am really sorry!!
I've decided to end this fic the way I started it, with a double-chapter. :)
The Double-chapter (chapters twelve, and thirteen,) will involve James and Lily's final day at Hogwarts.
Again, thank you for the people who review this story (tenth chapter: IAMaMUDBLOOD, fudge-butter, MourningBlade, randommoment, sunlightdust!) An even bigger thanks for those of you who take the time to read it!!
As always, I own nothing you recognize.
It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them. Joanna Field.
"Lily," Douglas croaked, his breathing unnaturally thick as though he had just ran several, unforgiving miles, "I'm so glad you've come to see me, after what happened, after-"
Lily couldn't even laugh.
"Had I been appointed the task of retrieving you Douglas, I would have done myself the great service of feeding you in bloody, hacked up bits to the Giant Squid,"
This savage response yielded a loud, collective gasp from Douglas's friends, and Douglas was staggering forwards still, unaware of how incredibly stupid he was coming across. He shook his head dully, sending tiny, icy jets of lake-water everywhere.
"Lily, I don't-"
"Understand?" There was a sudden tremble in Lily's voice, and she bit her lip quickly as though were trying very hard not to cry. For a few horrifying moments of stilted silence, she stooped her head...
And then raising it suddenly, she shot Douglas a venomous glare.
"Would a snog in the middle of Binn's class, perhaps in a dark broom-closet better your ability to comprehend?"
Frowning slightly, Douglas's jaw tightened. A look of comprehension quickly broke out like a hideous rash all over his face.
"Of course, Potter," he muttered softly, contempt unquestionable in his voice.
Douglas's nostrils flared as he stole an exasperated glance over at James, who was watching Lily quietly, an odd expression on his face.
"Surely, Lily... surely you don't believe him? He's only jealous, he's trying to break us up-"
"You don't need to lie me anymore, Douglas," Lily insisted firmly, leveling a cold, almost dispassionate look at him, "About how you want to spend time with your friends, or about how you and Roberta are supposedly partnered for some class project, you don't have to," Lily shook her head incredulously,
"Because I'm done. I'm done wasting my time, trying to believe you."
And ignoring Pragna and Belinda's warm invitations for a piece of toast in the Great Hall, Lily swiftly turned on her heel, one of her tearful, green eyes catching one of James's brown ones, and in a moment that seemed to take up less than a second, she mouthed to him, 'I'm so sorry.'
"James! James, are you bloody mental, mate!?"
But James didn't care.
He struggled furiously against Remus's astonishingly firm grip, yelling himself hoarse over his concern for Lily, "I've got to-what if she's? I need to know that-"
"James, she can take care of herself, she'll be fine-" Remus assured him through gritted teeth,
"Of course she can take care of herself!" James grunted defensively, kicking at the air, "But who says she has to?"
"Let him alone, Remus," Pragna suddenly demanded, and Remus shook a little from surprise, turning his head slightly to stare at Pragna with raised eyebrows before letting out a tiny sigh.
"Alright then," he mumbled weakly, releasing James with a small crash on the ground. James promptly yanked his robes straight, and was only slightly stunned at the number of curious gazes he was still receiving from the Ravenclaws quietly milling about the water's edge.
"Ruddy blighters," James muttered savagely beneath his breath, and before he knew it, Remus was clutching him again roughly by the shoulders.
"Right," he said rather seriously, fixing steely, resolute eyes on James, "Second floor, third cubicle from the left-"
"Wait, what?" James spat, a little bewildered, having lost track of the conversation mid-sentence with the sting of Remus's nails digging uncomfortably into the sides of his arms.
Remus mistook the discomfort in James's face for confusion, and looked quite incredulous.
"The lavatory, James! Where d'you think she's going?"
"Blast," Lily swore beneath her breath, screeching to a grinding halt as she heard yet another small, feeble whimper of pain pierce the general clamor of the second-floor corridor from behind her.
'Lord, Lily, are you planning on knocking out every student you happen upon in the corridors?' She asked herself viciously, attempting to conceal her growing irritation by promptly issuing the rather winded eleven-year-old, whose right shoulder she had blindly collided with, a fierce, apologetic smile.
"I'm so sorry! Please let me help you with those-" Lily hurriedly tucked in the pleats of her school skirt beneath her thighs, and leaned down quickly to help the girl with her scattered books, and papers.
"Uh, thanks," Still white with momentary shock, the girl absently fell into a small, awkward bow before Lily, assiduously avoiding the eyes of anyone who happened to be watching as she stalked away in uncomfortable silence, the grip on her school books now so ferocious it was as though she had hoped to poke several holes through the pages with the mere nails on her tiny fingers.
Silently uttering thanks that this particular victim didn't burst into tears at her little assault, Lily immediately spun on her heel, and happily resumed her eager march to the lavatory without another word.
She knew she was being childish—really, who cries in the lavatories anymore?—not to mention odiously melodramatic.
She had so loathed it whenever her older sister, Petunia, dramatically resorted to into a great fit of sulking whenever she had been upset with her.
But really, she couldn't help it.
She, Lily Evans, was upset with Lily Evans.
Disappointed, too. Not just at how things had turned out between her and James—which had been, in a word, disastrous—but most of all, most unendurably of all, she was disappointed with what she had irreversibly lost in the process: a chance with James... a real, genuine chance at being with him.
Lily swiped hastily at her soppy lids, having the dignity to blow out her nose on her sleeve once she knew she was outside the corridor earshot.
Merlin, she had mucked it all up, she knew.
'I doubt James will ask me out ever again, after what I did,' Lily reflected bitterly, a sharp sob desperate to escape her dull, aching throat, and then, quite astonishingly, she let out a harsh, resentful laugh in its place.
No.
'Nothing's ever quite that easy,' Lily could almost hear her mother proclaim sagely, the smile that had risen to meet her lips a small, sad one.
Because knowing James Potter he had already forgiven her, Lily Evans, for everything... knowing James Potter he would ask.
And for the last time, Lily also knew, trembling a little as she felt several large, hot tears spill over her lashes, that she would have to say no.
James was gazing anxiously at the filthy expanse of wood before him, the urge to vomit last night's smoked turkey, and honeyed ham rather overwhelming as he sat back gingerly against the squat toilet Remus had assigned to him with confidence moments before, and received an immediate whiff of what smelled horrendously like rotten eggs.
'Quite the romantic backdrop I've secured here for myself,' James wryly commented to himself, and would have laughed appreciatively at the irony of his present circumstance were it not for the great, twisting knot that was currently taking up residence at the pit of his stomach.
"Because you've always dreamed of telling the girl of your dreams you love her next to where people normally relieve themselves," Had been Sirius's caustic remark earlier at his little attempt for romantic spontaneity.
'I have to do this! Lily just seemed so…' James gripped his chin for a moment in an effort to put a name to the emotion that was present on Lily's face when she had quietly, very shyly apologized to him.
'She seemed... seemed... so sad,' James settled wearily for the insipid word with a little, noncommittal shrug, and he supposed he knew just why she was sad.
Douglas bleeding Adams.
James strongly doubted that if Lily had happened upon him exploring the inside of another girl's mouth happily by the lake side that she would have been anywhere near as heartbroken, or upset.
'It doesn't matter,' James thought sullenly, kicking hard at a stray wad of toilet paper that had wandered in timidly from the neighboring stall to his left, 'If she needs someone to boost her ego, I'll be the happy sod to do it.'
And so for some twenty-odd minutes, James sat patiently in the foul, derelict cubicle, his palms sweaty, set firmly on his tense, faintly wobbly knees, his brown eyes watering a little behind their thick lenses as they cast a fiery, purposeful look ahead.
Twenty-odd minutes later—Lily was still a no-show—James was beginning to find the notion of blowing chunks in a girl's washroom increasingly appealing as the horrid smell from the cubicle beside him seemed to strengthen ten fold.
'Merlin, and they say us blokes are disgusting,' James thought grimly, his nostrils paralytic as though daring not to breathe.
And suddenly, quite suddenly, he was spared the trouble of having to smell... well anything, having to breathe even.
Because in the next instant, without warning, the door to his cubicle slammed open, crushing his tilted nose painfully into his unsuspecting face.
'Why?' Lily wailed to herself indignantly, turning her wide, tearful green eyes accusingly at the filthy ceiling, 'Why is it that, some absurd way or other, I always end up hurting James?'
Lily had felt blissfully relieved.
Having managed the final turn to the lavatory without much incident (if one would call tripping on one's bloody left foot, and meeting the floor with one's sodding right cheek an actual incident, she didn't,) Lily was incredibly happy to have, at long last, reached the lavatory, and consequently, in her mind, solitude—or so she'd first deluded herself into thinking—and was so joyful in fact, that she had pushed the door to her favorite stall open with relished abandon, only to be shocked to hear a loud, terrific grunt of pain as soon the door swung forward mournfully, and swung back with a faint creak, revealing a swearing, very watery-eyed James, clutching what appeared to be a severely broken nose.
"James?" Lily prompted rather unnecessarily, horrified, "Merlin, is that really you?" she croaked.
From behind the hand he'd immediately viced over his bleeding nose, James mumbled, "Yeah," in an elaborately casual tone that suggested he had no idea whether or not she might react happily to his being there, or perhaps lash out at him for his horrible, annoying habit of never leaving her alone.
"Here," Lily muttered weakly after some moments, yanking several sheets of tissue paper from the small, lopsided dispenser on her left, not having a clue herself whether or not she should be very happy or terrifically angry that James Potter was here, in the very stall he'd driven her to, sobbing and storming, many times.
James took her offering gratefully, wincing a little in pain as he attempted to stop up the blood that continued to dribble steadily from his chin.
"Lord, James, here-" Shaking her head slightly, Lily took a bold, business-like step forward, and without much warning, yanked hard on the back of James's head. James let out an angry cry, choking a little on the blood that had leaked into his mouth.
"What are you doing?" He demanded sharply, sounding, if not slightly hysterical, a little frightened, as though under the grim impression that Lily was going to beat him,
"Stay still," Lily instructed him in what she rather hoped was a perfectly calm, and thoroughly reassuring voice, hoping to employ the same air of poise and authority her mother often did whenever her and Petunia were moaning on incessantly about some outdoor injury.
To her amazement, it worked!
The tight, almost vice-like grip James had on her shoulder slackened almost instantly, and he had stopped writhing restlessly in her clutch.
Drawing in ample breath, Lily raised the wand she had yanked hastily from her robe-pocket and bellowed, "Episkey!"
As though newly born, James rose slowly from her arms, a wide grin splitting his bloodstained face, "Thanks you, Miss Evans."
"No, er, problem-" And right then, Lily wanted to kick herself.
'Merlin, what is the matter with my bloody voice?'
Lily had a very strong, very disturbing suspicion that whatever it was, it most certainly had something to do with James's face now being only inches apart from her own.
Centimetres.
'Dear God, someone help me.'
"I've seriously got to start remembering that one," James said feebly, shooting her a very small, very embarassed smile, and again, her body responded quite contrarily to her will: her cheeks—blast them!—were now burning furiously as though someone had suddenly swiped matches against them, and her heart—damn it to hell!—was hammering so forcibly against her ribcage, Lily was rather surprised James couldn't hear it at all.
It was mad, really, what he was doing to her!
And without even trying at all.
"If you don't mind me asking," Lily cleared her throat nervously, swallowing a little before speaking again, "Exactly what are you doing in the girl's lavatory?"
"On the second floor, third cubicle from the left…?" James trailed off suggestively, allowing the faintest trace of amusement to cross his lips, and Lily heaved a small, weary sigh.
"I see," she murmured slowly in a tone of defeat, "Remus told you."
Lily flipped her long, red hair over her shoulder, regarding him shrewdly before sighing heavily again, "I suppose you're here to let me have it, aren't you? The customary 'I-told-you-so.' Fine," she grounded out through gritted teeth, "Hurry along with it,"
No sooner had she uttered the four words, did James, looking very much as though he was doing it against his better judgment, rejoinder inappropriately with, "Lily, go out with me."
Lily turned wide, incredulous eyes at him,
"James!" she choked out,
"Well," James grumbled wearily, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets where she saw them curl tightly into fists, "Why the bloody hell not?"
Finding his frustration with her oddly amusing, Lily immediately relaxed her jaw, and schooled her lips into what she hoped was a sincere smile.
And in a faint, thoughtful voice she had never, to her knowledge, used before, she whispered, "Because I like you."
James, who looked quite prepared to argue his forty-thousandth no, opened his lips stupidly, and closed them, swallowing.
He gazed at Lily as though wanting very much to reach out, and ascertain she was real.
"Wait…" he said at length, his voice no louder than a casual whisper...
"What?" he broke out finally, looking very confused.
Had Lily not been deathly serious about her answer, she would have, she was sure, collapsed into a small peal of giggles at the wildly bewildered expression on James's face.
But she was. She had never felt more serious about anything.
"I like you, James," Lily reiterated slowly and distinctly, and to her shock, James's look of confusion was replaced quickly by one of annoyance.
"I heard you the first time," James retorted with some impatience, furiously cocking an eyebrow, "I'm just waiting for you to make sense,"
Lily exhaled deeply.
Merlin, why her?
"Don't you understand James?" Her normally hard voice was impossibly soft, imploring,
"No," James answered simply, crossing his arms, and shooting her a frank stare, "No, sorry. Because for the first time in two bloody years I've heard the one thing that I've always wanted to hear you say, and now you're telling me that's WHY, you can't go out with me?"
Without really thinking, she hadn't been doing much of that lately, Lily tearfully curled up her fists, and blurted out in a horrendously croaky voice that seemed more appropriate to a toad rather than a seventeen-year-old girl, "You don't deserve me, James."
Lily had no idea what she'd intended to happen by saying this, but it was certainly not what happened next...
James had grown absolutely rigid as though she'd petrified him, the skin surrounding his jaw tightening noticeably as though he were gritting his teeth.
His eyes, normally bright as though they hid a particularly delicious secret, appeared strangely dead, flat as they gazed at her, unflinching in their disbelief.
Realizing that he must have misconstrued what she'd said, Lily hastily lowered her burning eyes to the wet floor, and mumbled in a voice tight with shame, "You deserve someone better—
Someone who'll believe you when you're telling them the truth... someone who won't put you down because all you were trying to do was protect them..."
Biting her bottom lip, Lily finally willed herself to look up at James, "Am I that someone, James?" her voice was struggling clearly with the urge not to tremble.
James stared at her wordlessly for about a minute, and for Lily, it had all been she needed for an answer.
Only half-aware of what she was doing, she blindly lifted the latch to the abused door, exitting the cubicle with an aching sob she'd attempted to smother rather unsuccessfully with both her sleeves.
She had been halfway to the lavatory exit, rubbing empathically at her swollen eyelids, when James, having snapped himself out of his astounded daze, had yelled out, "I don't care, Lily!" just as a timid-looking Hufflepuff had entered the lavatory, and just as quickly exited, shock evident on her face the second she'd glimpsed James, shouting and wringing his arms over his head as though he were violently beating off invisible flies.
Lily was helplessly rooted to where she stood, a little frightened herself over his little spectacle, and James, having broken into a little run after her, stopped in a huff, so that they were standing a few feet from one another.
"I don't care," James repeated loudly, fiercely, the brown eyes he'd turned on her quite serious, and Lily's breath was caught in her throat.
"Well..." Lily calmly averted his eyes, "I do."
To her shock, one of the slim, pale hands she'd been staring at, unthinkingly, to avoid James's gaze was suddenly seized by fingers that were only slightly larger, longer, and more tanned than her own.
She froze, gaping at them with her lips falling open from surprise.
"You care too much, Evans," James smiled ruefully at the top of her bent head,
"And, listen... about the putting me down stuff... you were on the mark about everything. I was a pompous git, I was an insufferable arse, I was a bullying, arrogant toe-rag and every bad, foul thing you've ever said about me-"
Lily shook her head mutely, hot tears starting at the corners of her eyes again, and James gripped the hand he'd seized a little tighter.
"The thing of it is, nobody every made me feel ashamed about it before."
"So," Lily let out in a shuddery croak, "you're saying… that I made you want to be a better person?"
James looked a little taken back at this succinct assessment, but nodded vigorously after a moment's consideration.
"S'exactly it," he affirmed confidently,
"That…" Lily piped up again, her voice still thick with tears, "That… I bring out the best in you?"
James was grinning.
"Oh, yeah, totally-"
"That," Lily gently ran the back of her free hand across the space beneath her eyes,"I was completely, utterly, absolutely right about... everything?"
"Yes, everything. Completely. Utterly, absolutely," James was saying all this very fast,
"That... maybe, at this very moment, you can hardly wait to take me in your arms, and jam your tongue down my throat?"
James had had his mouth open at the ready, but before he could utter anything remotely intelligible, having only achieved an absurdly enthusiastic 'Yurgh-!', he backtracked instantly with a contemplative frown.
He seemed quite convinced that Lily was testing him.
"Er-" James shifted his shoes about him nervously, tracing circles on the floor, looking deathly uncertain,
"Yes?" he blurted, one eye cracked open, while the other was tightly shut, and Lily's lips broadened into a clean smile.
"Good. Then it wasn't just me."
James had barely a second to properly register what she'd said, before Lily, with a strength she hardly knew she had, yanked James easily towards her with the hand he'd been holding, and urgently met his half-open lips.
Lily could feel James tense considerably against her, his shock at her kissing him rendering him quite motionless as Lily, delighting with surprise at the warmth of his lips against hers, lifted her free hand almost unconsciously from the vicinity of her hips, and clutched the back of James's neck firmly with it. James's lids slipped close then, the one hand that had been gripping her fingers now rising steadily to his shoulder, placing her hand there, while his other hand snaked, almost unnoticed, about her waist, eagerly pulling her closer to him.
Lily could hardly believe it.
She was kissing James Potter.
The very same James Potter who'd made horrid fun of her braids when she was eleven, calling them carrots.
The James Potter who'd snuck Eloise Mitchell's frog into her book bag in third year, so that she nearly fell sideways from her seat in Transfigurations, positively shrieking with bewildered fright when what she'd thought was her battered copy of ''Transfiguring the Inanimate" let out a loud, reproachful "Ribbit"—
The James Potter who'd laughed at her unrestrainedly when she couldn't get her broom to come up to her hand on their very first Flight class with Madame Hooch, telling her that she couldn't very well be good at everything, it would be damn unfair, but that at least she looked mighty good trying.
The James Potter who'd "accidentally" spilled an entire goblet of pumpkin juice on her shirt one breakfast during fifth year, insisting plainly that she took the ruined article off then and there so he could have it properly washed for her at the earliest opportunity.
That James Potter.
The very same James Potter who'd told her the truth readily even at the risk of losing her.
The James Potter who'd put her awful, daft, apish, inflated git of an ex-boyfriend on a boat, and left him, quite happily, stranded in the middle of the Hogwarts Lake for three straight hours.
The James Potter who'd sat, waiting patiently for her, braving the stink of rotting eggs, in a girl's lavatory.
The James Potter who'd continued to gaze at her... still with that infernal longing in his eyes when she couldn't even look at herself in the mirror... three inches of dark, red hair framing her face, and thought she was still beautiful anyway.
The James Potter who "didn't care."
And as the hand that James had planted against her waist rose to twist itself playfully in her hair, Lily couldn't help thinking, with a joy that threatened to bubble from within her uncontrolled, that at that very moment, she didn't care much... about anything, either.
"Several sunlit days later..."
James had only thrust the door to the lavatory open about halfway—his hair looking only slightly mussed than usual, and his tie hanging at a very funny angle—when immediately, Lily fell back against him, screaming, looking rather shocked to find their friends, some with bits of toast sticking out of the corner of their mouths, caught in a complicated-looking snarl of limbs, and robes, thrashing feebly, beneath them.
"Told you I heard them coming," wheezed Sirius weakly from the floor.
Sirius, Lily was amused to see, laid spread-eagle on his back beneath an only just conscious Belinda, who, upon opening her eyes, turned an immediate, inordinately violent shade of red.
"Merlin, Bla-Sirius sor—!"
Wisely abandoning her butchered apology, Belinda raised herself hastily from the floor, affording Sirius a rather generous view of her shirt-front.
"No problem, really, not hurt or... anything—Ow!"
Sirius twisted his head about to glare reprovingly at Remus,
"The bloody hell, d'you that for?"
Remus carefully lifted his head from Peter's plump stomach, wincing,
"For being the dog that you are," Remus retorted savagely, and James, quickly appreciating the unintended irony of this remark, as did Sirius, burst out laughing wildly, much to the surprise of Lily and her friends, who, though having no particular idea why, began to laugh heartily as well.
Having recovered herself, Lily leaned down gingerly to help both a dazed Pragna and Belinda steadily to their feet, James eagerly returning the wide, congratulatory smiles that Sirius, Remus, and Peter all shot him in turn
"That's it, then?" Sirius affected an incredibly loud yawn, "Shame,"
He turned to face Lily,
"You made it too easy, Evans," He smiled wickedly at her, and Lily raised an incredulous eyebrow, knowing she'd been forgiven.
"On the contrary, I think I made it unnecessarily hard,"
They couldn't help it.
They all laughed loudly again at that.
Response to randommoment's review: I didn't realize how confusing that bit involving Remus, and Sirius would be!! Again, sorry!
So for anyone else confused: Being the nosy friends that they are, Remus, Sirius, Peter, Pragna, and Belinda had all been eavesdropping on Lily and James's conversation with ears pressed against the lavatory door. James opened it, and well, Belinda and Pragna, who were the closest to the door, fell on top of the boys, who, consequently, fell on top of the floor. Sorry it was so confusing, really!