After both of them had showered and changed, Lily met James in the common room.
"Are you ready for this?" he asked her, sounding worried.
"As I'll ever be," she said, biting her nail.
James reached up, took her by the elbow, and gently took her hand out of her mouth. "It's okay; it's just like last night."
"Yeah, with three times as many people watching," she scoffed.
"You're just doing what you normally do," he reassured her, squeezing her arm gently. "You're going to the Great Hall and eating breakfast, except this time you're doing it with me."
When she still looked worried, he continued, "We'll just take it one step at a time and it will be over before you know it. I don't think we even need to be all that affectionate, we just need to sit together," he reassured her, looking in her eyes trying to gauge if she was all right.
Lily nodded, but couldn't bring herself to say anything.
"Come on, let's make a move," he coaxed, placing his hand on the small of her back and gently guiding her towards the portrait hole. "Unless you'd like to be late, and then have to walk into breakfast when everyone is already there and can turn and stare at us," he continued innocently, when she didn't seem to want to move.
Lily's eyes widened and she shook her head vigorously, before roughly grabbing his sleeve and pulling him out of the common room. He patted her head jokingly for obeying him, and she smacked it away as they walked the rest of the way towards the Great Hall in silence.
Just before the entrance however, she stopped him, grabbing a handful of his robes.
He quickly turned to look at her, worried that she'd lost her nerve.
Seeing her face pale considerably, he grabbed her hand reassuringly. Shocked at the sudden contact, Lily instinctively pulled her hand away.
James frowned at her before purposefully grabbing her hand again and holding it firmly. "Lily, if you can't even hold my hand, how are we ever going to be able to pull this off?"
Lily smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I'm still getting used to this… being affectionate with you thing," she mumbled, before wriggling her finger so his grasp loosened, then, with the extra space, she twisted her hand so their fingers interlocked.
He looked down at their hands quickly, a little surprised, before looking up and beaming at her.
She took in a sharp breath of air before smiling back at him shakily. Then tossing her hair over her shoulder, she straightened her posture and pulled him over the threshold and into the Hall.
James was so surprised by the way she'd taken his hand that he didn't realise he was in the middle of the Great Hall until he felt her grip tighten significantly. He was proud of her though, because other than that, she didn't filch or shy away when at least a hundred pairs of eyes swung towards them. She ignored every curious stare and walked elegantly down to James's normal seat as he followed dutifully.
She released his hand as they sat down together and began to eat her breakfast in silence, as they both waited for the rest of the room to stop talking about them.
Eventually, the hall began to fill and they regained some anonymity. As soon as Lily deemed it safe for them to talk, she turned to him and asked, "How's that for telling the world we're dating?"
James threw back his head and laughed. Just as he did so, the rest of the Marauders sat around them, not even giving Lily more than a passing glance and a morning greeting.
"Are they always this talkative?" Lily asked. "I expected them to be much more exuberant."
"Oh, normally they are, but it's still early morning. None of them really wake up until after breakfast," he confided conspiratorially, throwing a joking glace at his friends.
"They don't seem very shocked to see me," she whispered, watching the three boys in front of her wearily.
"That's because we're not shocked. James told us he had asked you out," Sirius answered plainly. "And I would like to add that, we can hear you two, so we'd appreciate not being talked about like we can't," he finished grumpily.
"Sorry," Lily laughed, just as James reached across and hit Sirius around the head for being rude.
"Be nice, if you scare her away now, I'll kill you."
---
As planned, James and Lily met that evening back in the tower rooms.
James had come straight from practice and had begged off starting to train straight away, explaining that even he needed time to recover now and again.
Lily smirked at him, taking great pleasure in the reversal of roles.
"Don't look so smug, Evans," he said teasingly, his use of her surname making her stomach flutter, "eventually you're going to be at practices too, and look at it this way, if I'm this puffed out, imagine what you'll be like if you don't work hard over the next few weeks!"
Lily pouted at the reminder of their morning work out and her unfitness when compared to his own, and swore to herself she would work even harder whenever they exercised from now on.
"Why here, James?" she asked, instead of allowing him to make another comment about her fitness. "Why do you always ask me to meet you in the tower rooms?"
"Because no one will hear us if the silencing spells wear off," he answered absently, as he searched through his bag for his water bottle. "And because no one uses this tower, they all go to the astronomy one, so that's where the teachers check. We won't get caught in here."
"Oh," Lily mumbled, wondering how he could possibly know that.
James broke her out of her thoughts, saying, "Okay, up you get, we're going to try a little sparring. Nothing too much, that work out earlier probably has you aching a little anyway, and I want you to be able to move tomorrow," he joked.
"Yeah, and that decision has nothing to do with your sore limbs, I'm sure," she said sweetly.
He smiled but said nothing.
Lily rolled her eyes at him before asking, "Sparring, not an actual duel?"
"Yeah, just sparring for now. No offence, but I don't think it would be fair, and it wouldn't really be a good way to judge you because of the discrepancies in our individual training. With sparring I'll be able to asses your level of knowledge, and I'll use it to create some sort of plan for when and how we practice in the future. This isn't a test of your actual duelling skill, Lily," he warned. "Although this should be a good indicator, this is more about seeing what level you're at knowledge and speed-wise."
"Fine," she moaned, but dutifully got up and positioned herself a few feet away from him.
"But I'm warning you now, when we do start to duel properly, we can't muck about and I can't go easy on you. I won't. It won't get you anywhere; you need to learn to take everything and anything, and you need to do it the hard way because none of your competition is going to take it easy on you. Once you're in the real world no one is going to be lenient – the competition doesn't give their prey a chance to recover before sending the next spell, and neither do Death Eaters."
"I understand," replied Lily. "If you were to go easy on me, it would show a lack of respect for me and my abilities, anyway."
He nodded, satisfied with her response, before saying, "Normally, the way to start training is just to use one spell and fire it back and forth – one of us on the attack and one of us on the defence. We alternate, trying to throw the spell and shield as quickly as possible. It's a good way to warm up; it promotes speed and it also helps to makes casting the spells become like second nature," he explained, throwing a weak tickling hex at her which she blocked easily.
Lily nodded to show she understood, briefly admiring him and the authority he exuded when he was in his captain mode, before returning her own weak tickling hex towards him that he blocked with out any effort at all.
"We'll progress up through the basic spells," he continued, even as he upgraded to throwing a Stunner at her. "Eventually, we'll start working with the more advanced hexes, and then when you're reacting at a speed I think is good enough, we'll start using more than one spell at a time. It'll be more and more complicated as we progress, and before you know it, you'll be fast and have an extremely large arsenal of spells and shields at your disposal."
"Wow."
"Yeah, you probably won't even notice it's happening," he said reminiscently, nodding his head indicating that they had been trading spells without her really realising it for their whole conversation.
"That's so cool!" she exclaimed.
"Yeah it is, and you're doing well so far. You're already at a level where you can subconsciously cast and defend against the smaller spells, which, trust me, is more than some people. Some just can't work fast on their feet. But don't get overconfident, neither of us is really trying and we're not throwing anything above a basic level of difficulty. It is going to get harder and you are going to have to work, no matter how talented you are."
"I know," she confirmed seriously before a wicked smile spread across her face. "I'm so going to be able to kick Catreena's arse!"
He laughed before becoming serious. "As tempting as I know that is, you can't. Once you're trained up there are a strict set of rules you have to follow, and attacking a student who doesn't have the same level of ability as you is a big no-no. It's a major responsibility you agree to take on when you decide to become an official dueller – the better you are, the more careful you have to be."
Lily stopped smiling at his seriousness. "I had no idea."
"It's not something that we spread around," he said slyly, before trailing off suggestively, "Now defending against an attack is a whole different matter…"
"Got it," was her simple reply and he winked at her before she quipped dryly, "Is that how you used to justify attacking Snape all the time, you called it defending against attack?"
He smiled a little grimly. "I think you'll find that I often was defending myself. But it would be pointless to try and deny that sometimes I did start it, but back then—"
"You mean the beginning of fifth year?"
"Yeah – I technically wasn't on the team back then, so I was still a…layman."
"So that's why you suddenly laid off of him, because you made the team?"
"Partly – I'm not proud of it… but yeah, there was the team and…I decided it was time to grow up a little bit. But also… let's not forget, that's he's on the Slytherin team now and has had all the same training as me."
Lily nodded to indicate she'd accepted that information.
"Okay, so back to training. If it's all right with you, I'd like to try and get you doing as many of the spells non-verbally as possible, and perhaps, depending on your aptitude, try some wandless magic. But the wandless is just for you and is not to be used in the under-eighteen competitions," he stressed. "Nevertheless, it's a valuable defensive tool that can be used should the situation arise," he said gravely, making a blatant allusion to the uprising threat of Voldemort.
"Umm sure," Lily said, too overwhelmed to say anything else, but fascinated with the idea of wandless magic and wildly impressed that James might be able to teach her how to master it.
He watched her try to hide her excitement and smiled at her eagerness. "I really think you're going to be good at this, Lily. Having the right attitude is nine-tenths of the work."
She blushed and smiled radiantly.
James shook himself out of the stupor he'd fallen into when she'd smiled at him like that, and said, "Okay, I think that's enough for now. From now on, three days a week, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, you meet me in the mornings for Muggle exercise, and in the evenings to go over spells and strategy. And then once you're on the team, practices are Mondays and Wednesdays, okay?"
"I think so," Lily answered""Okay," Lily answered uncertainly, overwhelmed by the amount of work involved, and wondering how the hell she was going to keep up with her assignments and even more curious as to how James managed with the same amount of work, plus Quidditch.
"You're shocked," he noted shrewdly.
"Yeah," she admitted. "I had no idea how much effort you had to put in."
"A lot of people don't put in that kind of effort, but that's why I'm one of the best and they're not, and that's why you're going to be one of the best too. Don't worry, you'll get used to it and I'll bet you'll even start to love it after a while," he assured, giving her a calculating look.
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AN
I was so overwhelmed by all the reviews - they really do mean a lot - so thank you!