“Well, at least one of us got some action today…” said Beth, slightly downhearted and very awed at the same time.
“ I dunno,” said Hannah. “From what I could see “”
“Which wasn’t a lot,” Beth interrupted, smirking.
The girls had made it into Flourish and Blotts “ Lily had complained that she was out of stationary. Who she was writing to exactly, no one asked. Lily still felt out of it. Her ears were starting to pound rather than ring, and her head felt like it had in potions after the lesson on confounding drafts. James’ jet black hair and adorable glasses kept popping up in her mind.
“Well, Remus and Jessa looked pretty comfy…” Hannah continued. She elbowed Jessica, who elbowed her back. During the struggle, Beth came over to Lily.
“Lils…are you OK? You probably need to lie down. And… uh…” Beth started apprehensively.
The other girls had stopped fighting, had rounded the shelf of The Fire-Proof Guide to All Flammable Spells and were watching their friends.
“Yes, Beth?” Lily said, a little irritated.
“Well,” Hannah cut in, “you and a certain Mr. Potter were fairly close on that bench yourselves!”
“What? You had better be joking, because I do not like what you’re implying at all! You know I hate him “ he’s rude and misogynistic and I hate him!” Lily snapped testily. Her temples gave an almighty pang.
“Lily, she didn’t mean anything by it,” said Jessica tamely.
“And if I did?” Hannah said. “Lily doesn’t want to admit how much she liked James following her around.”
Lily glared; silver sparks spat from the wand gripped tightly in her hand. “I’m in no mood.”
“Fine.”
None of the girls said much of anything. Lily knew Hannah was still upset “ she had lost her cousin, Malory, in an attack earlier that year, and it had thrown most of her family into turmoil, putting Hannah on edge more than usual. And yet, this snappy attitude was not at all helpful for Lily’s attitude or her headache.
“So, you ready to go back to one boy at a time?” Jessica asked, turning to the blonde beside her. Hannah nodded and tried to say something, but failed.
Lily looked down at a large encyclopedia, anywhere but at Hannah; of course, her head throbbed even harder as she tried to bend down and pick up the book. “I’m going to go down to the apothecary. I need a Pepper Up potion.”
Affronted, Hannah snarled. “Sorry if I gave you an headache from just talking about him!”
“Hannah, please,” pleaded Lily, feeling utterly sick now. “I didn’t mean it like that. Give the James thing a rest, please!”
“Oh, sure, fine,” Hannah shouted, losing her temper, letting the shop door ding closed behind them all as they left the bookshop, causing several large Fwoopers to jump aside. “James Potter, hottest boy at Hogwarts “ second to Sirius, of course “ has been kneeling at your feet for the last six years. I know you are too stubborn to see that he tried very, very hard last year, in class and out, to impress you! Even if you refuse to admit you have feelings for him, he can see that you’re still the same!”
For a moment, Lily said nothing, as she felt tears of guilt and anger in her eyes. She wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry…” she spluttered. “I-I-I… I tried to talk to him …s-sorry, b-but …”
“Being scared doesn’t protect you, Lily,” said Hannah angrily.
“I know.”
Lily turned away. Dully, she thought she heard Jessica say something. One moment, she was walking; next, Lily couldn’t see properly. Her vision was as though a conjunctivitis charm had hit her. She was dimly aware that everything went blurry before she felt a very strong pair of arms catch her as she fell into black.
“Should we take her to St. Mungo’s?” a voice said faraway.
“No, no… she’ll be fine. She just needs to rest,” a closer and deeper voice replied.
Where am I? Lily thought. She kept her eyes closed and tried to remember. I was shouting… I fell… someone caught me? Who was it? Lily asked herself. Her head felt like a troll had clobbered it.
Just then, she felt a big hand stroking her hair, and a finger gently tracing her jaw-line. She nuzzled up against a broad shoulder, eyes still closed.
“You’re not really asleep, are you?” said a tender voice she knew.
“No,” she told him in a whisper.
“Mm-hmm,” James said back, still stroking her gleaming red hair. “So, are you really alright?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I can get up…” she said, in her weakest voice. What are you doing to yourself? a small voice in her head asked. Shut up! she told it firmly.
“I wouldn’t think so.” He sighed. “What’s the matter, Lily? Are you sick? Are you dying? One too many sundaes?”
“Sundaes?” she repeated slowly. “Since when do sundaes make your head explode?”
“Ask Sirius “ I would prefer not to repeat that incident.”
She grinned, then sat up. From the looks of it, they were in the Leaky Cauldron. To her right was a large fireplace, cracking contently. Lily sat next to James on a very large, dark leather sofa. No one else was in this part of the room, though voices of (she guessed) a hag and a wizard filtered in from the next room.
“Thanks for… er, catching me. I wasn’t feeling so good. Of course, I could have been spared the bickering this morning…”
“You’re…. welcome,” said James, obviously hurt.
Lily looked at him, surprised that he had recoiled.
“That wasn’t an attack, I just “” Lily murmured.
“It’s alright. I don’t care. See you at school, Lils.” James rose to his feet.
“No!” she protested loudly. “No… please, James, don’t.”
He stopped as soon as she said “James,” slightly heartened by this, and after a moment sat back down.
The annoying voice that sounded like Hannah told Lily to make him stay. “Thanks for catching me… both times. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, but uh “ hold on ““ she looked at him, suspicious, “how did you catch me if you had just left?”
“Well, I was talking to the other Marauders and then I realized that…well,” James stumbled on his words.
The Marauders had all been having pretty much the same conversation as the girls had started with, but it drifted to Sirius talking about Quidditch, while James had daydreamed about Lily. At some point, he realized that he hadn’t told her that he was Head Boy. This was a fairly significant piece of news, and Remus had told James it was a good idea to let Lily roll the thought around in her head before going back to school. Naturally, he had forgotten about it the second he saw Lily in the street, and had rushed up just in time to catch her as she fainted.
“Yes?” Lily asked, bringing James back to Earth.
“Realized you had a birthday, and I hadn’t sent you a card. So, happy birthday, a month late.”
She eyed him keenly. “My birthday?” repeated Lily, highly unconvinced.
“Yes, Lily darling,” he said, with an air of certainty that made her believe him. “So, we need to get you to a healer.”
“I don’t need a healer, I need twenty seconds of peace. Between my sister, my friends listen to the Wizarding Wireless all night, and you,” she added, looking at him pointedly, “I haven’t had any time to just rest.”
“Yet,” he said, “you claim your head exploded. Thing is, Lils, most people don’t have overheated brains from simple overwork.” They both looked at each other for a moment, before James said, “That didn’t make sense, did it?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Ow!”
“Want me to kiss it and make it better?” he suggested, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s under control, thanks.”
He shrugged.
“Will they be wanting you back?” he said. She turned, and saw that Hannah and the others were talking with the adults over near the door.
“They can wait. I’m ill.” He grinned, taking this as a sure sign of a change of heart. “Are you still on the team?” she asked, inventing a way of stalling before he left.
“Yeah, unless McGonagall kills me first.”
She smirked. “And you did your… homework?”
Homework? What in the world was she doing?
“Never off the job, are you?”
“Nope,” she replied.
The seconds lengthened. Neither James nor Lily said anything; instead, they sat, looking at the fire. Lily, for one, was amazed that such a civil conversation had occurred.
A slightly rebellious part of Lily, the one that she imagined as Sirius, was screaming inside of her. Ask him out, ask him out! He likes you… you like him…
No, I don’t! she argued. But Hannah’s words rang in her ears, adding to her growing frustration. “Being scared doesn’t protect you, Lily..."
“Were you going to get me something for my birthday?” she asked after some deliberation.
“If you still want one,” he said, obviously confused by this question.
“I get to choose?”
“I… suppose.” He took this moment to give her a lop-sided grin, which only further encouraged her to proceed.
“Do you have a coin?”
Despite the bewildered expression on his face, he dug through his long black robes, and finally retrieved a shiny bronze knut. “What are you doing?”
“Flipping,” she said simply. “Thank you.”
He scooted over one cushion closer, to see to the coin on the coffee table in front of them.
“Heads, you get me a new quill,” said Lily, tucking her flaming hair behind each ear. “And tails “”
“I get a kiss.”
She stared, wide-eyed, then, after an awkward second, smirked. “Fine.”
Not even believing his luck, James ruffled the back of his untidy hair “ a habit he had all but rid himself of.
In the milliseconds while the coin sat on Lily’s slender fingers, then rolled in the air, and finally fell, Lily tried not to wince. Her head was buzzing again, and the little voice of rebellion was quiet; a much louder and more responsible voice had taken its place.
CLINK.
She didn’t dare look, but bit her lip. James, however, sat forward. He looked at her, a growing smile. Lily knew before James had even begun to say, “tails.”
She tried to smile, but butterflies were attacking her stomach. Kiss James? She didn’t even want to sit next to him in class!
“Deal’s a deal,” she said under her breath.
Very quickly, she tilted her head forward and felt his lips brush her own.
As it turned out, he was a great kisser. A fantastic kisser. World champion kisser. It wasn’t the length of the kiss, or even the depth, but the feeling she got from it… One of the many perks was the throbbing in her head had dulled substantially.
This was what she had been missing? Why hadn’t she agreed to date him before?
She pulled away, and found his eyes flickering. Was it happiness or victory?
“Thanks,” she managed to say.
“You are most welcome,” he said, looking not in her eyes but still at her mouth.
“Lily!” said Hannah loudly, as Remus called, “Prongs!”
All of the sudden, they both snapped back into reality; Lily and James jumped to their feet.
“Oh, Lily, I’m so sorry!” said Hannah, coming around the table and wrapping Lily in a huge hug. “You have a cold, and all I could do was yell at you!”
Lily was still looking at James, who was staring back in return.
“Prongs!” said Sirius, joining the group by the hearth. “We need to get back. Your lovely mother is expecting us.”
“Alright,” said James, not breaking his gaze.
“Come on, Lily, my mum says you need some sleep,” said Jessica, taking Lily’s hand. No one had noticed the lingering glances Lily and James were sharing…
Can’t we stay? I just need to… ask James something… you guys go ahead.
She had half a mind to say this, but couldn’t muster to energy to speak.
Within seconds, Lily found herself being dragged out the door, though she wasn’t sure if she was glad or not.
James stared after her for another few seconds, then followed Sirius, Remus, and Peter toward the back door.
“What’s the matter, Prongs?” asked Remus, seeing James’ distracted eyes.
“Tired,” James said.
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By the way, I've written past 31, and planned through the end, so the only halt on my postings is validation and my own sloth.