"Will you marry me?" James blurted out.
Lily stared. She thought she'd heard him, but she just opened her mouth and said, "What?", as the pancake on her fork fell onto the floor.
A blush crept onto James' face. Blinking, he fumbled his glasses off and got up from his chair. He turned around as if to go back to their bedroom—not theirs exactly, because this was technically only James' flat, but Lily had lived there for so long it didn't feel like that anymore—then turned back again, and sat back down in his chair.
"Nothing!" he said, and grinned as if nothing had happened. Then, he leaned back and fell onto the floor with a loud crash.
Lily gasped and rushed forward to help him up. James was fine, of course—he’d fallen off his broom from far greater heights than a chair, and finally not confused anymore she was smiling. Her face felt hot.
"What were you saying again?" she laughed, asking an awkward James, who was rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, his smile wobbling on his face.
James put his glasses back on. Leaning on his elbows, he looked into her eyes and said, slowly this time, "Will you marry me?"
And of course, without hesitation, Lily said yes.
He didn't have a ring yet, James explained, skipping alongside Lily, his hands waving around in the air, as they walked down the street together to tell Remus and Sirius the news. The idea only came to him about five milliseconds before he blurted it out at the breakfast table, so will Lily please give him another chance and let him propose again, this time with a ring and their friends together and everything because it has to be perfect.
For one-tenth of a second, Lily considered saying no. Memories of a drunk James, dancing on the common room table, belting out an off-tune ABBA song, and ending it with "LILY EVANS, WILL YOU BE MY GIRLFRIEND?" came back to her.
Honestly, James was the biggest idiot she had ever met. Which is why, two-tenths of a second later, she said yes.
"Fine," she said, groaning with a grin on her face.
"YES!" yelped James. A few people turned their heads around.
"Keep your voice down, Potter!"
"Very sorry, ma'am," James replied, mimicking a salute and whispering loudly.
The idiot. His hair was sticking out weirdly just above his left eyebrow, and Lily stared at it. She reached out to flatten it, but the strand of hair just popped up again and stuck that way. She sighed, exasperated.
James was smiling lopsidedly at her, just as stupid as he'd looked back in the sixth year, when he'd flown in front of her on his broom in the middle of a Quidditch match, just to be completely obliterated by a bludger right after. Sirius had made fun of him for a month.
Three years had passed, and nothing had changed at all.
Lily turned her head back to the street.
"Nothing too grand, please."
"Okay."
"And nothing too public! Just our friends is fine!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Honestly, Sirius wasn't surprised when James told him. Nineteen, a spontaneous, completely random proposal to his girlfriend while they were eating pancakes and cream together, without a ring, without even a second thought? Oh, yeah, that's James Potter for you.
He was only slightly offended when James told him his proposal plan and asked specifically for him not to tell Lily.
"Oi! How can you not trust me?"
They went ring shopping the next afternoon. Sirius had suggested a shop in Diagon Alley, tried and trusted, recommended by Andromeda, only for James to reject him with a shake of his head.
"Nah," he said. "Lily would like a Muggle ring, I just know it."
So James had pulled him onto the tube. They got onto a street lined with jewelry stores, and sat in shops the entire afternoon, picking through diamonds that couldn't have looked more similar, only for James to frown and say no to almost every one of them.
"Aha!" he would finally say, and then, brow furrowing, would put a silver ring back on the counter. "No, that's far too fancy for her."
Sirius, too, picked through the silver jewelry over and over again, looking for something that might catch his eye, but nothing ever did. "Are you picking one out for Moons, Padfoot?" James asked, after sending about twenty rings back to a very annoyed clerk.
Sirius hesitated. He'd thought about proposing to Remus, but then again, their relationship wasn’t quite like what James and Lily had.
" Not really," he finally admitted." I'd like to, it's just—well." He shrugged.
"I don't think Remus would refuse," said James, draping a hand over his shoulder. "And just for the record, I think you might be better off looking for his ring secondhand."
And of course, the already annoyed clerk had to turn his head around to stare at Sirius at the mention of the pronoun, but Sirius was used to that. He stared right back.
In the end, they left the shiny, jewelry-filled street empty-handed. Slouching his shoulders, James walked ahead, frowning.
Rolling his eyes, Sirius pulled him into a charity shop, just in front of a tube entrance.
"This'll cheer you up," he said, as he pulled James over into the pile of old records.
But James hadn't followed him. Following his gaze, Sirius finally saw it too—a gorgeous silver ring sitting silently on the counter, with an empty hole where the diamond should’ve been. Thin, ornate lines decorated it, curving this way and that and making flowers on the edge. It was strange because even though Sirius was sure it was Muggle, he could’ve sworn it had a magic in it that only pulled him in deeper the more he looked. It glowed.
"That's perfect, isn’t it?" said James.
And Sirius had to agree.
Lily could feel the stress around James' proposal, which she found quite funny. Sirius was acting extremely fussy, and every time James did something nice for her, like get her a cup of tea or kiss her on the cheek, Sirius would smile stupidly and make a zipping motion on his lips. Lily rolled her eyes at him and flashed him a finger. She was blushing.
But an entire week passed, and even though she had been anxiously awaiting some sort of surprise, and there friends came and went, nothing came. She only watched confusedly as every time she thought James would do something strange, especially when the boys were around, he would only proceed to be his stupid little silly self.
She thought it might happen, the night James decorated the entire flat with mistletoe he promised he didn't steal, the time he took her to the movies, right after her work, the night before the full moon, when everyone gathered together at Sirius' flat because Sirius simply asked. No such anticipated proposal came. Every time, she would feel herself get just a little bit more disappointed.
When she told Mary about it, however, she only scoffed.
"Ten quid bet he's just forgotten about it." Lily had said, a little sadly, an empty wine glass in her hand.
But even she hadn’t believed herself.
Mary cackled. "Him? Forget about marrying you? Oh, Lils, you're adorable. Have you seen the man look at you?"
Another week passed, and still no proposal. This time, Lily wasn't upset anymore. In fact, she was curious. Just what had James planned? And where was the ring? She tried looking for clues everywhere. First, she'd tried asking Sirius, to no avail—he zipped his lips and shook his head, smiling evilly. Then she'd asked Remus, who lit a cigarette and refused to say anything more. There was no point asking the girls; they were even more clueless than she was, and though she had tried asking Peter he only blushed confusedly and turned away.
Lily checked everywhere. The kitchen drawers. The piano, which she'd opened with Remus’ help. Under the bed. On the bed. In James’ dresser, when he wasn’t looking (she didn’t find a ring, but she did find her favorite of James’ sweaters. Which she then proceeded to steal. Shamelessly.). The kitchen again. The medicine cabinet. James' shoes. Her shoes. She came back unsuccessful every time.
The night James planned to propose, it was party night. After graduating from Hogwarts, they didn't have the privilege of hosting large parties anymore, but the Marauders could never have enough of parties.
So naturally, they still hosted parties, every month, simply for an excuse to have fun and eat cake.
Honestly, he'd have done it sooner—it was agony, waiting to get it done—but the ring simply wasn't done yet, and well, everything had to be perfect.
Everyone came, of course. James had a sneaking suspicion Sirius had told the other girls because they all came early and sat with Lily together to get their makeup done. They'd even brought hair product—the Potter hair product. Which—well, James supposed it would be nice to have Lily looking put together anyway—it was more for her sake than for his.
Anxiously, he cleaned the kitchen, setting knives and forks and plates on the table, and pulling out a big bucket of ice to stuff the champagne in. He refused to use magic—doing it the Muggle way calmed him down.
He wasn't nervous about Lily, specifically. It was more of the nervous before he was going to pull out a big prank—nervous that Lily would already know, because that would ruin the surprise, nervous that something could go wrong, was the champagne cold cold? James checked the ice again, yes, it was. The ring. He patted the ring in his pocket, the quaint little thing sitting neatly in the blue box Effie had made for him. He pulled it out. The diamond, which he'd sent to cut, sat etched in the middle, shining, sending all the light around it in a flurry of rainbows around. He knows Lily would like it, he just had to double-check. He'd put on a nice suit, and even had attempted brushing his hair. (It hadn’t worked.)
He scurried around the sitting room, double-checking his safe firecrackers, charmed to go off when it happened, and the records on the turntable (Fleetwood Mac, which Lily loved), and the camera, which he’d set on the fireplace.
Bouncing his feet, he welcomed Sirius in, who gave him a large hug upon entering, pulling James off his feet. You got this, Sirius mouthed, giving him two thumbs up. Remus followed right behind him, and he ruffled James’ hair.
"Your hair’s a mess, Prongsyboy," he sighed.
"I tried!"
"Yeah, you probably did," Remus laughed. "Clearly, though, it was useless."
Peter came last. He had brought Firewhisky, just as James had asked, and he winked at James as he came in the door.
"I can't wait for champagne," he admitted, after setting the bottle of Firewhisky right next to the champagne.
As the girls finally came out of the bedroom, each looking more exhausted than the other, Marlene with even stronger eyeliner than usual, Dorcas in her large suit, and Mary giggling in with Lily at her heels—oh, god, Lily. James couldn’t stop himself staring, at her eyes and her hair, which Mary had done so it hung in perfect curls around her shoulders and the makeup that somehow made her look brighter, like she was shining. Somebody (probably Sirius, the shit) had already poured drinks, and she was downing shots, jumping around to the beat of the music from the record.
"Don’t! Stop! Thinkin’ about tomorrow!" she yelled together with Sirius and Mary, her red curls bouncing on top of her emerald sweater.
Excitedly, and forgetting about his ring in his pocke, James hopped around with her, and taking her hands, they jumped in a circle. "Don’t! Stop! Thinkin’ about tomorrow!"
They whooped, and jumped, and laughed, and danced. Firewhisky was delivered, but James hesitated to take too many, and he could tell Lily wasn't taking much either—this was a night they both wanted to remember.
Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up's all you wanna do
If I could Baby, I'd give you my world
Open up
Everything's waiting for you
And in those moments, with Lily's hands in his, their fingers clasped together, the music blasting from the record, James felt like the world had stopped for him. He forgot about the proposal, forgot about the war, forgot about the Order, and Dumbledore because the only world that was spinning were his friends, dancing alongside him, and Lily's glowing smile in the soft kitchen light.
Finally, the record hit an end, and reality hit James like a truck.
"Fuck!" he exclaimed and hit himself in the face. Everyone stared.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
"Shall we switch?" asked a very drunk Sirius, who was now lying on the couch, slumped on top of Remus.
"No," said James. "Wait."
The plan was that he was going to propose during Songbird. That was the plan. He’d specifically picked it out. But he’d been so immersed in dancing around and he’d been so nervous that he couldn’t even remember now if the song had even played. Fuck.
Breathing, he looked around. Everyone was staring at him. Sirius raised an eyebrow. James stared at the takeout on the kitchen table, at the glasses of alcohol by his feet, the spinning turntable that had started making the weird crackling noise, the beautiful brick fireplace, where photos of the Marauders and Lily and Effie and Fleamont and the girls sat, and he thought back, through his years at Hogwarts, the Gryffindor house parties, Peter sneaking in the Firewhisky, Marlene piss-drunk with Sirius on the armchairs, Remus at the music, and everything that had happened since then—the war, the Order, Dumbledore, and, God, Merlin, Lily.
He finally turned his head to look at his girlfriend, the girl he could never stop looking at since they’d first met on the train together, the fiery-headed girl with wits and bravery and the ability to shine, the way she walked into the room and just glowed. The girl who was kind enough to even befriend Snivellus, who sat with him in Potions when no one else did; the girl who was fierce enough to literally slap James in the face, when he’d taken it too far with all the asking out. This was the girl who had single-handedly beat up Mulciber and Avery, for making fun of Mary; the girl who had found out about Remus, and told no one, and stuffed him chocolates whenever she could, because who gave a fuck; the girl who had chased people from the Gryffindor Tower the year Sirius had just ran away; the girl who started a Muggleborn protection society, not just despite of but openly because of the Slytherins who had bullied her.
This was the girl with a fierceness about her that could burn the world down, just because she loved everyone so much, and James could love that about her forever.
But all James could say, staring into Lily's bold, piercing green eyes, tearing up despite himself, was, "Lily Evans, I fucking love you."
And as he got down on his knee, reaching for his ring, he looked up into Lily's eyes again, which were also welling up with tears. The friends around him were all cheering, but James didn’t care.
At that moment, the world was Lily, and Lily only.
"Lily Jane Evans, will you marry me?"
And, of course, without the slightest bit of hesitation, Lily said yes.
And the songbirds are singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before