A/N: AU based on the following prompt from Tumblr: "Oh God."

"What?"

"I can feel it."

"…Feel what?"

"A crush. A crush is coming on to me. This needs to be stopped. Hit me or something please, this can't happen."

Enjoy.

(Can also be found on my writing tumblr.)

It's a Small Town

Sunday afternoons, in James' not-so-humble opinion, are the worst part of creation. Nothing exciting ever happens on a Sunday afternoon. Especially not in the little town James lived in, Godric's Hollow, population: practically zero for all intents and purposes.

It was James' belief that Sundays, in general, are rather boring. In the morning, the only activity going on is church, which he, as a rather loud and obnoxious atheist, avoided at all costs. In the evenings, James and the three other boys his age in town - Peter, Remus, and Sirius - tended to get pissed to celebrate the end of the weekend, or because Sirius managed to swipe a nice bottle of Whiskey from his no-good-for-nothin' dad, or because they felt like it.

But between lunch and dinner every Sunday, Peter was with his mother, Remus was doing homework, and Sirius was attending court-ordered therapy, and therefore James was left on his lonesome to do absolutely nothing for five hours.

James did not go well with boredom.

About a month of Sunday afternoons back, he set fire to one of the street cats by accident.

A little while before that, on a particularly boring afternoon, he went to The Three Broomsticks (which was technically a pub but also the only real restaurant in town) and ate seven servings of pancakes, three servings of waffles, and two whole cheesecakes. Around the second serving of waffles he threw up on the floor, only to declare that he was now hungry again and continue eating.

Just last week he had broken the window to the vacant lot on Fifth, which, as he found out later when his mother was forced to pay for repairs, now belonged to a family which was moving in that very week. (Godric's Hollow was so small and insignificant they never changed the names of the streets to anything interesting; the main road was called Main, the second street was called Second, and that was that. James hated that about Godric's Hollow. He didn't understand why anyone would want to move in instead of out.)

Luckily enough, this Sunday Sirius' court-ordered therapy was canceled for some reason or another, and though Remus was still doing his homework and being generally whiny, Peter had been persuaded to skip mommy-time for once and to sit on the steps leading to The Three Broomsticks and make generally rude comments at passersby.

Yeah, James Potter did not react positively to boredom.

It was around three-thirty PM that James had begun to feel hungry, as teenage boys are wont to do. Deciding that, as he was literally sitting on the steps of the closest thing to a diner Godric's Hollow had, he should probably just buy himself something to eat, he said to his friends: "I'm starving. Let's go get something to eat or whatever."

And as the three boys were walking into the pub-turned-family-restaurant James bumped into someone. It was a small thing, really, completely his fault, and had he simply murmured an apology and moved on it wouldn't have been a problem at all. But James was not a polite young boy, and he decided to move on and towards the food that he could already picture.

He was rather surprised to hear a coughing sound from behind him, very clearly expecting him to react to it. Nobody in town expected James to be polite; that simply wasn't who he was, and as everybody in town had known him since he was born, everybody in town knew that.

He turned, only to see the most beautiful girl in all of existence standing right in front of him. She had red hair and green eyes, but most importantly, she was angry at him for not apologizing.

It was adorable.

"Excuse me?" she said when he didn't respond. James continued gawking at her (and, admittedly, at her amazing legs). "Aren't you going to apologize?"

"For what?" asked James. "I didn't do anything. Sirius, did I do anything?"

Sirius shrugged. "Not that I saw. You coming?"

"Hey!" said the girl. "You can't go before you apologize for practically tackling me."

James raised an eyebrow. "You don't seem quite that damaged to me."

"Jerk," she said. "Why won't you just apologize?"

"Why won't you just let it go?" he said. Sirius laughed for no good reason, and Peter joined him.

"Ugh, fine, whatever," the girl said, turning to leave.

"No, wait," said James quickly. "I'll apologize."

The girl turned around, surprised. "You will?"

"Sure," James said, quickly adding - before his courage vanished - "if you tell me your name."

The girl huffed. "Um, okay? Name's Lily. Lily Evans."

Evans. Evans Evans Evans - why did that name sound so familiar? "Mate," Sirius whispered to him, "isn't that the name of the family who's moving into that house on Fifth? The one you damaged?"

Shit.

Lily's eyes widened in surprise. "That was you?" she cried. "Oh, I don't even want your apology. You are nothing but trouble!" She once again turned to leave, but before she managed to close the door behind her, he yelled one last thing:

"Name's James, love. See you around!"

She paused, having clearly heard his name, then slammed the door behind her. James and the rest sat down at their usual table in the back.

"What d'you want to get?" asked Peter. "The usual."

"I'm not hungry anymore," admitted James. Then, horrified: "Oh God."

"What?" asked Sirius, looking at the menu.

"I can feel it."

"…Feel what?"

"A crush. A crush is coming on to me. This needs to be stopped. Hit me or something please, this can't happen."

Sirius hit him. "That girl? The fuck is wrong with you, Prongs?" (How he got that nickname was a long and rather embarrassing story.) "She was a complete bitch, how the hell is that a turn on for you?"

"She was sort of right to stand her ground," said Peter. "James did bump into her without apologizing. And she just moved in. She doesn't know." He didn't have to explain what it was that she didn't know.

"Yeah, well," said Sirius. "She was still a bitch. There's a limit, you know? All James did was bump into her, she didn't have to turn it into an entire thing. What a drama queen."

"Look who's talking," James teased, laughing. "Whatever. I'll get over it soon."

Sirius exhaled in frustration. "Yeah, sure. Can we eat now?"

And so they ordered, and laughed, unaware of the dozens of quite eventful Sundays to come, all caused by this one, extremely boring one. And they talked and joked, forgetting, for the moment, all about the girl with the red hair. And they were okay. They were fantastic.