Chapter 3
Lily studied James as he stood there in front of her, looking like a dog waiting for someone to throw him a tennis ball. She rolled her eyes,
“Sit Potter ” she instructed, gently patting the spot on the couch next to her.
As he sat down she saw Remus shift and let out an almost inaudible snore, she smiled slightly, grateful the boy didn't seem to be phased by the sound of her and James’s talking.
Every conversation between James Potter and her was doomed to be laced with the hint of a fight and doused in heaps of sarcasm, and thus was hard to contain to a quiet whisper.
It had always been this way between her and James, since they had been eleven and just off the train.
James would tease her mercilessly while simultaneously pretending to profess his dying love, so she would spit back some sort of snarky retort or flat out ignore any attempts of his at getting her attention.
However, in the past school year and a half, due largely to her falling out with Sev, they had stumbled closer into a meaningful friendship than that of their original antagonistic ways
Her reminiscing paused when James finally spoke
“Thanks, I….I didn’t know where he was.”
“I gathered.”
“Would have forced him to bed hours ago if I knew,” James replied rather sheepishly.
“Yeah, it totally slipped my mind what the date was.” she responded.
The two sat in a couple moments of silence before Lily spoke again.
“You know you shouldn’t let him isolate himself because he’s afraid of frustrating you”
James looked startled and confused “I- What?”
“He stays away from you lot on purpose” Lily continued. “Remus isn’t dumb, he knows he can be a right tosser before the moon, and he’s terrified he’ll do or say something that’ll make you guys not want to come and help him. I mean merlin's beard Potter, you three need to grow thicker skin if you’re going to let scrawny ass Remus Lupin get to you. Good lord, he folds his damn socks. How scary can a person who folds their socks be?”
James just stared at her dumbfounded by her words, and Lily took his stupid fish like look as a means to keep going. However, in her hurried rush to continue her scolding before she lost the confidence; she missed the small lopsided smile creeping onto his face.
“Also, not to mention, I know you are men and men aren’t supposed to be touchy feely, but sometimes people, specifically Remus, need this” she gestured to the sleeping boy curled up in her lap like a house cat, “he needs your physical affection and reassurance as well, not just your strong headed arrogance in trying to barrel through any and all obstacles for him.”
She took a deep breath. “Just, I- he’s always sick and tired but god James.” her voice wavered. Lily didn’t know if it was because it was late at night and she was beyond tired, or that she could feel Remus’s fever through her sweater, but long overdue tears were threatening to come.
However, she kept on as James was still silent in front of her, “I worry James, Merlin do I worry, and I just wish” Lily fought against the single tear that was brimming at the edge of her eye. “I wish he would let me worry more or so something or ju-”
Lily’s rambling was suddenly and quickly halted as James leaned forward, and gently grabbed Lily’s face, pulling it towards his own. Their foreheads pressed against each other.
No longer able to stop the tear from falling she let it slip down her cheek.
She saw him notice the tear and then with the lightest of touches James brushed it away, and then took his hand under Lily’s chin, bringing her head up ever so slightly so their eyes met.
“Lily Evans, I am going to kiss you. Is that alright?” James asked so delicately it was almost as if he had painted the words out in front of her instead of speaking.
Lily had a storm of emotions, her usually focused mind clouded and completely useless for forming coherent thought. But, in one single lightning strike of clarity she nodded, “yes please”
James laughed faintly, their breath becoming one as he leaned closer whispering
“Oh Evans, ever one for manners”
and then suddenly Lily short circuits.
James Potter was kissing her.
And she was kissing him.
Their lips pressed together with the fervor of a repressed passion, there was the faint click of Remus’s glasses on her face against Jame’s wired rimmed ones, and she was overwhelmed with the soft smell of cinnamon that wrapped around her nose like the smoke from a blown out candle. She felt her heart in every part of her body, beating in time with James against her, and in her stomach there seemed to have been an exploding star trying desperately to escape.
but as quickly as it had begun it was over.
Testing that her brain even had the ability to send commands to her body she tried opening her eyes. After a great deal of effort she got them open, but still remained breathless as if she had just been plucked out of the depths of a dream.
James was still inches from her, and he was looking at her as if she was the only person in the whole universe that mattered. It spurred something in her she couldn’t understand, couldn’t possibly place, which frustrated her. She was Lily Evans, top of the class, she knew everything, and she’s always understood everything. But this, this she did not know.
She realized James must have noticed her frustration, as his expression changed into one of worry as he asked “i’m sorry, did you not, was it alri-”
But before he could utter out another word Lily tugged at the fraying collar of the ridiculous shirt he was wearing and the pair yet again melted into the other.
She lifted her hand to the nape of James head and slightly pulled at the back of his hair, willing him closer, she felt as if she needed every part of her to be close to him.
Time seemed to have ceased to be a thing that mattered because Lily could not remotely tell if it had been a mere twenty seconds or twenty years that she kissed him before they again pulled away. Once more the two rested their foreheads against the other.
It seemed like lifetimes later when a quivering breath that hitched in Remus’s chest that brought the two’s attention back to the boy curled up into Lily.
James spoke first, “I oughta carry him back up. His back will ache if he sleeps all night like that”
“I suppose” Lily whispered back.
A few more seconds passed as they stared at each other, the air seeming to buzz around them with palpable energy.
James pushed himself up from the couch and over to the front of Lily while she gently peeled Remus’s arms from her waist. James then bent down and cautiously placed one hand under Remus’s legs and another on the small of his back.
As James stood back up, Remus’s head fell slack against Jame’s shoulder and he muttered something neither of the two conscious could understand.
James shot Lily a smile and moved to leave, but Lily uttered a soft “oh”
Realizing she was still wearing Remus’s glasses, she took them off and leaned upwards on the couch, extending her arm so that James could reach her. James stuck out his pink, and she carefully balanced the glasses there.
But before he could turn to leave again he leaned down, a feat Lily noted must have been difficult with the awkwardness of carrying his significantly taller friend, and he bent over her head and pressed a gentle kiss into the top of her hair.
Lily, still reeling from everything, failed to form any words besides.
“James”
“Lily” he smiled.
There was a pause, the two just staring at eachother.
“What was-” she started
“A thankyou”
“for?”
James gestured with his hands the best he could with Remus in his arms, and Lily raised an amused eyebrow.
He sighed lightly, “Everything Lily. Everything.” and he finally turned to begin his descent up the stairs. Leaving Lily, still dumbfounded on the couch.
She watched Jame’s slow process up the stairs until he disappeared. Eventually she noticed the poor book still hovering in the air, stuck on the page she had left it at; before she mumbled the spell to cease its suspension her eyes scanned over the last lines she had left unread.
“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, had been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself”
Lily then sighed dramatically and fell backwards onto the couch staring at the ceiling of the common room.
“Damnit James Potter, you won” and the book collided soundlessly among the cushions.