I'm afraid I still don't own Harry Potter.

Fascination
Summary: Even in their younger years, she had always been fascinating to him.
Pairing: J/L
Word Count: 1,247
Rating: K

"So you're a Muggleborn?" he asked, pushing his too-large-for-his-face glasses up the bridge of his nose. They were standing outside the Potions classroom one scorching afternoon. Professor Slughorn was obviously running late, and Lily was standing outside with the rest of her classmates, waiting with the other Gryffindor girls, because Severus had somehow ingested some Doxy droppings, and was not in class. And somehow, Lily had ended up leaning against the wall next to James Potter.

Immediately, Lily tensed, her fingers fumbling on the clasp of her bag as she went to snap it closed. At thirteen, there were still a few things about the magical world that were relatively new to her. About to embark on her third year at Hogwarts, she still considered herself to be learning, but she still knew enough to know that being a Muggleborn these days was not exactly anybody's first choice.

She nodded slowly, eyeing the boy warily. By the beginning of their third year, James Potter had a reputation that preceded him, but he was okay, thought Lily. He was close with the nice girl in the year above, Sophia, and Sophia McKinnon had a good judge of character. Despite being in the same house, Lily didn't have too much interaction with James Potter, except in big groups. But in her head, that didn't count. She still knew enough about him to know that his blood was as pure as a spring of fresh water, and that girls liked his hair.

But, even as she waited for a dig at her blood (even a relatively soft one, like a snort or a sympathetic pat on the shoulder), the boy started grinning like she had just told him he'd won his own ice cream truck.

"So you grew up with the ... uh," he paused, his eyebrows knitting together.

"The what?" she prompted, not knowing whether to laugh, or to press her books protectively to her chest and march away.

"The box, you know the box, with the pictures," he chattered, tracing a rectangle in the air with his fingers. Lily looked at him for a few seconds in silence, gobsmacked, just long enough for him to look uneasy. Here was a well-respected Purebood – from ancient, wealthy lineage – who didn't seem to care that her blood was tainted or 'impure'. She didn't know where he was just playing with her before making a rude comment, or if he really was interested in the 'picture box'. Lily smiled weakly, allowing herself to hope.

"The television?" she supplied quietly. To her surprise, he nodded so enthusiastically Lily thought his head would pop off any second.

"Yeah," he chirped, grinning. "How do those things even work?" he mused, and Lily, who had limited knowledge of the exact way electricity worked, merely shrugged.

"You just plug it in."

He looked at her as if she had spoken another language, but was delighted that she had done so. Lily took in his bewildered expression with a small inkling of excitement. As much as she loved the castle, and she did adore it, occasionally she felt a pang for her home, for the simplicity of her Muggle sanctuary. Sev, who hated his home, spoke of the 'mundane' Muggle aspect of their lives with disdain, something like a myth, or at the very least, something that made his stomach turn. And most of her friends weren't Muggleborns, or lived a very different Muggle life to hers. So she had no one to help her bleed out the pangs of homesickness when they did strike her.

Except James Potter, she thought to herself, with whom she shared nothing but a cordial relationship – friendly, pleasant, but hardly a deep one by any means – and he didn't seem to mind standing with her and asking her about a television, a contraption most wizards would have found dull and far from illuminating. His whole face seemed pretty illuminated as she explained as best she could how a television worked. It felt nice to talk about something she was absolutely sure of, and James listened, rapt.

He seemed like an entirely different boy from the one she saw around Severus.

"Do you think I could build one?" James asked her, drumming his fingers on his leg as his eyes darted around.

"I'm not sure," Lily admitted, her cheeks going pink as she laughed. "You could always try, I suppose."

"Ah, I reckon me and Sirius could figure it out. We're looking for a new hobby..."

Lily shook her head, smiling at him. "And then, of course, there's the cinema." He motioned for her to elaborate. "Well, those pictures that you see on the television, the programs?" He nodded. "Well, sometimes people make much longer ones, and they're called films, and whenever a new one comes out, they put it on the cinema – er, it's sort of like a theatre, but instead of a stage, there's a massive screen where the picture plays."

He was looking at her now like there was pure gold flowing from her mouth instead of words. "How do I not know any of this?" he hissed, more to himself than to her.

Lily smiled timidly, nudging his elbow. "The Pureblood is lost."

He blinked at her for a second, and then broke out into a brilliant grin – a smile made of pure sunshine, that somehow had the effect that made everyone feel warm and accepted and cheerful. "Hey, let's not start with that, yeah? I don't have much time for that start of thing. Blood is blood. The only thing you really need to worry about is not losing too much of it."

He didn't seem to think that much of what he'd just said, but to Lily it was a miracle. It was sweet, and it was said so simply, as if that should have been obvious. He'd probably not contemplated the differences in bloodlines late at night when he couldn't sleep. He probably didn't think about it all. Because to him, there weren't any differences. It brought her a little faith, somehow.

James had already moved on. "So can you help me with my Muggle Studies homework? I don't know why, but there aren't a lot of books in the library about it, you know? They keep telling us, "Go find Muggle inventions and do a report" and "Explain the circus culture" but how am I supposed to do that if there aren't any books on it?"

Lily blinked over at him and grinned. His eyes lit up with fascination. "Yeah. Yeah, I can help you."

"And you know what me and Sirius really love? Motorcycles! We found some magazines this summer, and they were so wicked!"

Lily just laughed quietly. "Yeah, they are pretty cool." She sat back, happily listening to James jump from topic to topic, Muggle contraptions the focal point of most of them. Here was the real difference, she thought, between the people in the wizarding world. She'd never been more proud. In years to come, she'd remember that moment, before James Potter had grown his head too big, when he would babble on with her about things from the Muggle world. She saw more and more of that James Potter in later years, and it was that moment that reminded her just how much she liked that boy, the one who liked motorcycles and couldn't care less what blood she had. This James Potter was someone she liked to have around.

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