Disclaimer: All characters are the property of the inestimable J.K. Rowling. I’m not trying to steal them, so I’ll just back away slowly…
* * *
With a yell of surprise, James slipped and crashed to the ground. With a groan of pain, he realized it.
Sirius grinned wickedly. “Aaah, did ‘ickle Jamesie fall and hurt himself?”
James glared at him. “Shut. It. Sirius.” With a groan of pain, he slowly staggered to his feet. “Ow… damn it, Padfoot, why and how do I let you talk me into doing these things?!”
“Because you both are complete idiots,” I said tonelessly in a misleadingly bored tone. Actually, I loved it when they acted like this. It made me seem so…mature-- in comparison, that is. “And speaking of, keep your voices down,” I added in a much more interested tone of voice, glancing around. “If you don’t stop shouting, James, you’ll wake up the whole bloody school!”
“Yeah, so keep that overactive mouth of yours shut, Prongs,” Sirius added with another wolfish grin. “You’d ruin the whole surprise.”
“Are you sure that there aren’t any charms to stop this sort of thing?” Peter said nervously, looking up apprehensively.
“Positive,” James said confidently, flexing his arms for another go at it. “Tell him, Moony.”
“Er, James, all I found out was that it wasn’t mentioned,” I told him hastily. “I never said that there weren’t any-- it was Sirius that told you there weren’t any.”
Sirius burst out in fresh howls of laughter. James’s confident expression slipped for a moment, but he hitched it back into place in a flash. “Ah, it’ll be fine.” He grabbed the rough stones again and pulled himself up, his strong muscles working furiously.
“That’s it, James,” Peter said encouragingly, rushing to stand underneath him as James began to climb. “Keep trying! Remember, the worst she can do is say no!” He paused and thought. "Or push you off."
Sirius roared with laughter. James shot the pair of them disgusted looks over his shoulder and kept climbing.
Sirius and I watched as James topped three feet-- three and a half-- At three and three quarters, his grip gave out. Peter darted back with a yelp as James crashed to the ground yet again.
“You know, how did you convince him to do this?” I asked lightly as James relentlessly grabbed the stones again.
Sirius grinned evilly. “It didn’t take much. There are three things I’ve learned about James, Moony. One: he can’t resist a challenge; two: he’ll do anything to impress Lily Evans; three: he’s cocky. Trust me, Moony, it didn’t take much.”
I laughed knowingly. “I’ve learned three things about James too, Padfoot. One: he’s an idiot; two: he’s an idiot; and three-”
“He’s an idiot,” Sirius laughed. “Personally, I like to call it the Prongs Complex- a firm belief in the fact that you are completely indestructible.”
“The Prongs Complex?” I asked in mock disbelief. “How long did it take you to come up with that one?”
“I’ve been working on it for the past six years. I’ll publish my findings when we leave school.” He grinned and glanced up at James, who was currently at seven feet. “I wonder if he knows that he could break his neck if he falls from up there and we aren’t looking?”
“Well, we’re supposed to be looking,” I reminded him.
“Oh. Too bad that we aren’t.”
“True.” We were silent for a moment. “Sirius?”
“Yes, Remus?”
“This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”
“I know, Remus.”
* * *
Two feet later, James slipped, but didn’t fall, much to Sirius’s apparent dismay. Three feet after that, we were too busy being dumbfounded to crack any jokes. Peter’s jaw was hung off of his face in sheer amazement: all of James’s feats on the Quidditch pitch that he had applauded were incomparable to this.
“If he actually makes this, I’m going to be twenty Galleons poorer,” Sirius said to break the silence when James hit the eighteenth foot.
“If he actually makes this, I’ll turn into a fluffy puppy next full moon,” I said dryly as I watch James top nineteen feet.
“I’d love to see that.”
“Shut it.”
With a grunt of triumph that was audible from twenty feet below him, James drew level.
“Blimey,” Sirius breathed reverentially. “Well, looks like I’d better collect on that bet from Dave Gudgeon…”
“Shh!” I hissed, smacking him to shut him up. “Listen!”
We watched expectantly with matching evil grins as James reached out and knocked on the lighted seventh-year girls’ dormitory window.
* * *
Thankfully, every single sound carried down towards us, so we wouldn’t miss a thing.
James knocked. The shutters creaked open. A girl shrieked with alarm.
“Hi. I, er, fancied a chat with Evans.” James sounded a bit nervous, to our surprise.
A moment later, Lily’s shocked voice echoed down to us. “James Potter, you are-”
“Gorgeous? The man of your dreams?” James supplied glibly, not letting her finish. Sirius choked back a snort of laughter. “Honestly, Evans, you know you want me.”
“I’d rather date the giant squid,” she sneered. We heard the sound of the window trying to be shut. James made a small noise of pain. “Get out of it, Potter!” Lily said in exasperation.
“Evans, I’m not letting you shut this window.”
“Potter, I am calling the headmaster if you don’t let go!”
“Evans, you can’t shut the window because if you do, I’ll fall twenty feet and die.”
Shocked silence.
James continued in his irrepressible way: “Of course, if you’re going to push me off, please do so, because I would rather die from a broken neck than a broken heart.”
Sirius stuffed his hand in his mouth to keep his laughter inside. His cheeks were soaked with tears of mirth. I whacked him again, straining my ears to hear the exchange above.
“Well, you climbed all this way, make it quick.”
“I climbed all this way, and you won’t even let me in? You’re a cruel woman, love.”
“Oh, shut it. Say what you want to say from out there.”
“Fine,” James replied, in artful tones of injury. He paused, trying to think of something terribly witty and clever to impress her with. “D’you know, Evans, I wrote a poem for you…it’s here somewhere…”
We heard Lily suppressing laughter. “Maybe you shouldn’t try to dig in your jeans pocket while you’re hanging twenty feet above the ground.”
James smacked his forehead. “Wouldn’t you know it, I left it down with Sirius.”
“I’ll wait while you go get it. Go on. Down, boy.”
This was too much for me. I fell on Sirius with an explosion of laughter-- and suddenly froze as we heard James yelp in alarm above us, and Lily’s muffled shriek. Sirius and I clutched each other and looked up, expecting to see James’s tumbling form plunging down towards us. Thankfully, it wasn’t. Later, James told us that he would have fallen if Lily hadn’t reached out and grabbed his arms.
There was a embarrassed silence overhead once Sirius and I had shut up. “Why, Evans, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Only in your dreams. Do you have your hold again? Can I let go now?”
“You know you never want to let go of me, Evans.”
Lily made a noise of disgust. We didn’t hear James falling; apparently he had his hold.
James was audibly grinning. “I can have him read it to you. He’s just down there.”
“So I heard.”
“No, that was Remus, actually. Sirius is down there shutting him up. Well? I worked hard on that poem, Evans.”
Lily’s confused silence hung for a moment. She was obviously flattered, but didn’t want to show it to the very person whose advances she had rejected for five years. After another moment, she spoke again, her voice not quite as harsh. “So, you climbed twenty feet, probably fell quite a few times… just to talk to me?”
“And to read you the poem, Evans. The poem’s really important.”
That was too much for Sirius. He collapsed on the grass with a howl of laughter reminiscent of his full-moon form-- the enormous, shaggy black dog that we had all become so fond of. To their credit, Lily and James didn’t yell, or shriek, or fall.
“That was Sirius,” James elaborated after a moment.
Lily laughed. “All right, Potter. If your friend reads it, will you go away?”
“Yes,” James promised stoutly.
Lily sighed again. “Fine.”
James laughed delightedly. “Oy, Sirius!”
“Yes, James?” Sirius replied instantly and innocently.
“Read that poem I gave you this morning.”
With a grin, Sirius reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of parchment with a flourish. He cleared his throat importantly and began to read in a ringing voice.
Lily, oh, Lily,
Oh, beautiful Lily,
Your love is my only desire.
My hands yearn to stroke your lustrous red locks
And your green eyes burn me like fire.
Sirius paused for Peter’s and my appreciative laughter. Grinning, he continued.
I’ve tried and I’ve tried,
Lily, dear, how I’ve tried,
But you still turn your beautiful head.
Your words are disdainful and haughty,
You make me wish I was dead.
Sirius grinned evilly. “You really do, Evans,” he called spitefully.
“Keep reading, Sirius,” James ordered.
“Yes, Prongs,” he replied in a deceptively meek tone, throwing a wink in my direction.
Lily, my Lily,
I can’t help it, Lily,
I have to tell you how I feel.
These words are clichéd, but I hope the love’s there-
Lily, darling, at your feet I kneel.
At these last lines, Sirius bowed floridly and retreated into the shadows, nodding to myself and Peter as we laughed, and applauded, and whistled. He leaned against the wall, silently shaking with spasms of laughter and glee. In an instant, Peter and I grabbed him, dragged him down, and clapped our hands over his mouth to shut him up.
Above us, James and Lily were silent.
“Well, Evans?” James asked after a moment. “I know it isn’t exactly fine literature, but there aren’t any spells or textbooks for writing love poetry, so I had to improvise. It didn’t really help that Sirius and Remus and Peter were all looking over my shoulder and trying to help-”
“No,” Lily interrupted. “It was…it was really good, James.”
The three of us down on the ground stared at each other. As far as we could recollect, it was one of the very few times that Lily had called him by his first name.
“Definite improvement,” Peter whispered shrilly. Sirius silenced him with a look, listening avidly. All three of us could tell that something rather important was happening up there.
“You’ll notice that I’ve tried to improve for you, Evans,” James said cheerfully, in his irrepressible I’m-Head-Boy-but-that-doesn’t-stop-me-from-having-fun way. “I haven’t hexed old Snivelly- er- I mean, Severus- in almost two weeks.”
“You’ve stopped messing up your hair, too, I see.”
“You can mess it up, if you want to. I think I could live with those perfectly manicured hands running through this tangled mess.”
Sirius’s jaw dropped in pure glee at James’s sheer nerve. Only James Potter could slip in a sexual innuendo during a moment like this. He and I exchanged wild, I-cannot-believe-this looks and cocked our heads to hear the end of the conversation.
James’s voice had dropped so low we had to strain to hear it. “So…d’you want to go out sometime, Lily, since I’m such a good boy?”
Silence.
Complete silence.
All breathing from the four Marauders had ceased.
“Yeah…yeah, James, I think I do.”
“YES!” James shouted exultantly. “Yes, yes, yes- whoa!”
“James!” Lily shrieked.
Sirius and I froze.
“Uh-oh.”
“This won’t end well.”
“Definitely not.”
“Should we save him?”
“I think so. It took him a long time to get this date.”
“You’re right.”
In unison, we yanked our wands out and shouted, “Arresto Momentum!”
James slowed and stopped two feet from hitting the ground. Eighteen feet above him, Lily and three of her roommates were hanging out of the window in horror.
James grinned, reclining on his cushion of air, and gave her the thumbs-up. “See you Saturday, Lily!”
Lily laughed helplessly and pulled her head back inside.
As soon as it was clear, the three of us crowded around James, offering our wholehearted congratulations. James was grinning, albeit somewhat sheepishly, but most shockingly of all, modestly. I could not believe that he wasn’t going to brag all about it-- maybe James really had changed. Or probably it was shock. Right, shock. Definitely shock.
Up in our dormitory, he slowly turned back into himself, joking and laughing and throwing things at/with Sirius. He exaggerated Lily’s acceptance, turning it into a passionate declaration of love and somehow added several long kisses into the events.
Eventually, he had us all in stitches. “No more, please, Prongs,” Sirius choked, doubled over on his bed. “I can’t breathe.”
“Don’t ever change, James,” I laughed, wiping tears from my eyes.
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.” James yawned hugely. “Blimey, but I’m tired. Goodnight, everyone,” he said briskly, pulling the scarlet drapes around his bed closed.
“Goodnight, James,” we chorused, sliding our curtains shut. Sirius reached out and tapped the light with his wand.
* * *
Two hours later, there was a slight tap on our windowsill. “Bloody-” Sirius’s lamp flickered on.
“What the hell’s going on?” James asked sleepily, yawning as he pulled back his curtains.
“Window,” Peter replied thickly, blinking at the light.
Being closest, I moved to the window and pushed open the shutters. I looked around for a moment, then glanced down and jumped.
“Hi,” Lily said, leaning her elbows on the sill. “Sorry, but I fancied a chat with James.”
---
This story, to my great honor, is going to be featured in the March Mod/Author Chats!! Thanks to everyone who put in a good word, I guess (I really don't know how they pick the stories to exemplify the topic, so I'll just thank people). The topic of the chats is (you guessed it) L/J romance. I'm very flattered and honored that Prongs Complex was picked.
I would also here like to apologize for the fact that I'm currently not happy with the prequel, so it's been deleted. Whether that is permanent or not, I can't say. Currently, though, no plans are being made for a sequel. Sorry, all.