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James played a game with his parents.

He played a game that only had one rule, and that rule was seven.

Yes, a simple word. A number. Seven.

Not very explicit, is it.

The game consisted in relating everything you d to the number seven.

Picking an apple to eat? Count them, and take the seventh.

If there aren’t seven apples? Divide the apples in two groups, separate them, close your eyes, and make one finger jump from one group to another seven times. Then, take a fruit from the group you’re pointing.

Want to read a book? Pick the seventh in the row, or the one whose title is seven letters long.

At what time to get up? Seven o’clock. At what time to go to sleep? Any hour plus seven minutes.

That’s it. The simple rule. Be creative enough to relate everything to the number seven.

James and his parents had started playing when he was, obviously, seven years old. It was created as a way for the boy to kill the time when he couldn’t go play outside during winters, or when he had to wait in a shop when his mom brought him along and ended up chatting with the salespeople.

But it had pretty soon turned into a habit, an obsession. He bought coats only with seven buttons, wore the seventh t-shirt he could find in his drawer, read the seventh article of Quidditch Monthly before any other.

Even at the time of choosing a wand, the number seven seemed to interfere: he visited Olivander’s shop on the seventh of July, and the right wand revealed itself on the seventh try.  

In James Potter’s life, everything was about seven.

Seven can seem stupid as a number to stick to.

But seven’s a magical number.

And James, grown up in a family where love and legends were of the most important concepts, knew it.

Receiving his letter from Hogwarts had been a real delight.

His parents had organized a little party with his neighboring friends, some of whom still had to wait one year before getting their entrance ticket to the School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and James had told them all about how it feels to get of age to go to the reputed castle.

Ah, he had been busy, going to Diagon Alley to pick his new cauldron -- almost giving in to the temptation of buying a small one in gold, which weighted seven pounds -- and to try on his new robes -- seven in total, even if the letter stipulated only three were necessary.

James had pompously told his friends all about what going to Hogwarts was about: he was a young man, now, and he’d need to prove it.

Yes, he was going to be in the same school as the grown ups. He was one himself.

On September 1st, the platform was so full of people that it would have been scary, if James wasn't one very brave young man.

He had never seen this part of King’s cross station before, always and only heading to the platform 7 ½ -- his favorite -- when it was time for summer trips with his parents.

Around him, there were so many different faces he had never seen, so many grown boys and girls, that he suddenly did not feel very sure to be one himself.

James was one very brave young man, but sometimes young men get a sense of uneasiness too. Standing among the crowd was like being an ant in the middle of a race track: panicking not to be stepped on.

To distract himself from a feeling that could have ruined his reputation -- before he could even get one -- James interested himself to those whom, he thought, were to be his classmates. He proceeded to squint at the hundreds of people on the platform, looking no higher that the adults’ chest level, and planning in his head the future seven years he would live at the school.

First of all, he needed a group of best friends.

The seventh I see will be my best friend forever, thought James.

One brunette went by, and two minutes later he spotted a set of triplets with blonde braids. A boy with a rather long neck had his finger up his nose, and a girl with quite a large forehead eyed him in disgust.

Not far from them, a strange family attracted his stare. The parents looked somber, and their clothes were so old-fashioned that it was surprising they were not closed in a museum. The mother, her stern face expressing no emotion, held a frail hand in hers. James craned his neck to get a better view at the boy, but he seemed too young to go to Hogwarts. He was going to resume his search, when his eyes fell on another boy, who looked so much like the stern woman that it would have been impossible for him not to be her son. However, he did his best to stay as far as he could from the rest of his family. From behind his ridiculously arranged dark locks, he smiled at James when he noticed him.

One best friend down, and Mr. Potter Jr. was pretty happy with that one.

Now, I need a mom best friend.

He looked carefully, let his mind play it smart: the result was a thin, pale boy, with scars all over his face and a slightly curved back, standing next to his parents, who seemed quite uncomfortable in the middle of so many people.

he looked just like he ought to, as a mom friend: serious, mature, and melancholic. Like adults.

The last of the group: the one who will be up to whatever we say.

A smal, round boy made his apparition as the seventh of a file of students who waited for their trunk to be pulled up on the train. His nose was long and pointy, and his fingers very fine.

James wasn’t too sure about this one, but time always unveils surprises, so he confided in his instinct.

He didn’t want more than three best friends and, even if it costed him a considerable effort, he refused building a group of seven.

Last, but not least, my future girlfriend.

That was a particularly stressful moment for James.

The boy with the long neck still had a finger stuck in his nostril -- and James wondered if it hadn’t gotten glued there by a tricky charm --, while the triplets had been replaced in their corner by four lanky kids, each holding a toad in their hands, and deeply into conversation about their pet, in all probability. Standing next to one of the train’s doors, a girl with a long ponytail was holding her mother’s hand, sobbing into a paper tissue, while a few feet ago, a boy was trying to fit some extra socks in a trunk.

Luck struck James when a little girl entered the platform through the magical wall.

She had hair like fire in a winter chimney, and eyes as sparkling as a rose’s leaves covered in morning dew.

As they walked toward the train, the girl’s mother told her something, which made her grin, and James thought it was the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.

He was sure that, no matter if he had seen her as the seventh or the tenth person, this girl was bound to be the person he would most notice in the world.

He felt it when his heart climb to his throat.

For a second, he doubted. He doubted about the seven.

But seven’s a magical number.

And James, who started imagining all the things that his about-to-be best friends and him would do at school to impress the pretty redhead, knew it.

“We then add two tablespoons of asph- Potter!”

Professor Slughorn eyed James’ cauldron with an alarmed expression on his traits: the fact that it was smoking like a train was not normal. He didn’t want a class full of second years -- and, especially, in which he presently found himself -- to explode because of a dumb Bubble Draught gone wrong.

But James barely heard him. His stare was fixed on a red mane, two desks and a few dark pots away.

“Potter!” The teacher cried again, getting as a result to make the whole class turn toward the mentioned boy, but still not grasping his attention.

As he saw the aim of his distraction turn to fix him, James beamed at her. She rolled her eyes, and looked away, annoyed.

Professor Slughorn had to vanish the liquid inside James’ cauldron by himself, because he wouldn’t get his student to focus on anything for the remaining fifteen minutes of the class.

“Did you see that look she gave me?” James asked his group of best friends, as soon as they lived the dungeons to resurface on the ground part of the castle.

“Which one? The exasperated one?” Sirius sighs, moving a lose strand of his dark hair behind his ear.

“Of course we saw it,” claimed Peter, carrying his bag with a little difficulty as his short legs did not allow him to properly keep the pace of his friends. “She looked like she was about to to die of apathy.”

“How do you even know that word, Peter,” Remus said, with a grin that stretched the scars on his face.

The plump boy stuck his tongue out in response.

James’ face turned into a dramatic mask.

“You guys don’t get it! Today was the seventh class we had with Professor Slughorn this year, and it’s the first time Lily looked at me in Potions this month. It’s quite clear that it means something!” James exclaimed, believing firmly in his theory.

“And there we are again, with the dumb number seven,” Sirius sighed again. “James, we’re twelve years old now, you can’t keep relying on old legends and tales that grandparents tell. Drop it already.”

“Keep dreaming, Sirius,” Remus laughed. “He will never, not even if Lily passes in front of him ignoring him totally, like I it will happen as soon as today.”

James grumbled something about his friends being shitty friends, and then remained silent for the whole trip to the shore of the Great Lake, where he and the boys were used to spend their breaks.

Some time later, Remus’ prevision turned out to be exact: Lily and two of her classmates passed in front of the four friends, but completely ignored them, despite them being right in their way.

Still, James did not discourage himself. He was totally sure that exactly -- well, maybe not exactly, but around -- seven minutes had passed from the last time he’d seen her, when she had made her apparition.

Seven’s a magical number.

And James, looking at the silhouette of the girl he had a massive crush on walk away, knew it.

“No you won’t,” Sirius said.

“Please don’t,” Peter added.

“What’s for breakfast?” Remus asked, dropping on the bench next to the other boys.

“A scrambled James Fleamont Potter the First, if he does what he says,” sighed Peter.

James’ glance focused on his recently arrived friend. “I want to ask Lily out on a date.”

The teen with mousy hair choked on his pumpkin juice. “You what?”

“He wants to invite her to Hogsmeade, next week,” Sirius snorted. “Not that I don’t find it a cute idea, mate, but whenever you have to interact with Ms. Evans, you become such a clumsy slug it’s almost painful to see. Remember the time when you spilled her a pot of beetle d-”

“Alright, alright,” James held his palms up in defence. “I am not that dumb. I thought about that.”

His three best friends narrowed their eyes.

“Your plan?” asked Sirius.

“Easy,” The boy pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I write a note, and one of you-”

“Uh, nope,” Peter voiced his concern, “Lily scares the heck out of me just when I hand her basic stuff in Transfiguration. I won’t go and give her a sweet note from her number one stalker.”

“Same, except for the Transfiguration part,” said Sirius, “I’m not as much of a cissy as Peter.”

He earned himself a slap on the back of the head.

Remus nodded. “If you want to ask her out, you need to do it on your own, James.”

James ran a hand through his hair. “Any ideas?”

The four boys scrunched their eyebrows in reflexion.

“A firework?” suggested Sirius.

“A bit too much, no?”

“A talking doughnut?” said Peter.

“Creepy.”

“A flying note?”

They all approved Remus’ idea.

“Here,” Peter handed James some paper and his quill, which was bit off on the end. “Write.”

The teen adjusted his spectacles, and started scribbling.

“You’re sweating, mate,” Sirius teased him.

Two minutes later, the message was ready.

“Ok, now what?” Peter asked.

“He’s going to levitate it and-”

“Wait,” Sirius took the folded note from his best friend’s hands. “Let me give it a sophisticated twist.” To the others’ worried look, he explained, “Women prefer the fancy stuff, believe me.”

Remus muttered under his breath something about how much experience Sirius could have, on top of his 14 years, and Peter chuckled.

Obviously, none of them knew a thing about the topic either, so they let their friend do what he thought was the best, and swallowed their sarcastic comments.

Folding and unfolding, Sirius put at the service of his best friend the hours he had spent learning handcraft skills instead of paying attention to Binn’s History lessons.

“Tada!” the boy with long hair exclaimed, a few seconds later. In his palm throned a little paper swan.

Peter and James whistled, and Sirius swelled his chest proudly.

“Wait,” he whispered, looking at the flat form. He rummaged in his bag a few seconds, and took something of the size of a baby’s fist out of it: his inkwell.

He fit it in the middle of the bird, and observed the result: the three dimensional effect was perfect, his masterpiece now looked like a real swan.

“Ready,” he claimed, and James grabbed it.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Remus warned them. “It’s very pretty, but doesn’t look stable to levitate. It’s too heavy.”

“Oh come one, Rems. We’re in third year. We can manage a dumb charm.”

“Mmm…”

James pointed his wand at the origami and whispered, “Wingardium Leviosa.”

Trembling, the note raised in the air.

“So far, so good,” Peter murmured, afraid that he would make it fall if he talked too loudly.

Bit by bit, the message progressed along the Gryffindor bench, until it came to a halt above the heads of a group of witches who were actively chatting. The girls did not notice the charmed parchment that attracted curious looks from the neighboring table.

“Now, slowly place it in front of her,” Sirius hushed, eyes fixed on the swan, “Like that, good. No, a little to the left. Wait, that’s Dorc-”

“Shut it, Sirius, he’s got eyes to see. You’re distracting him.”

James’ forehead wore a crown of tiny liquid beads. His arm threatened to go stiff from effort.

“To the right, James, to the right,” Sirius ignored Remus, and craned his neck to get a better look at the scene, invading his bespectacled friend’s field of vision, “What the heck are you doing James- no, no. Lower-!”

“Shut it, Sirius!”

“James, that’s too high, what the fuck, no-!”

A loud splash, followed by four high-pitched cries of surprise, shushed half of the Great Hall’s students. Lily, Dorcas, Mary, and Marlene spluttered incoherent confused words, their faces covered in a thick mixture of pumpkin and black ink. The swan, now reduce to the state of wet pulp, had only one visible bit: the one where James’ name concluded the invitation.

Gaping like a fish out of water, the boy with glasses saw in horror how Lily noticed this little corner sticking out of the disgusting liquid.

Panicking, he could do only one thing to keep his composure: he counted till seven. There were seven people to his right, seven boiled eggs on the plate in front of him, seven-

“I am going to kill you, Potter!” bellowed Lily, raising from her sit, wand in hand.

As James sped toward the hallway, in the hope of finding security in the first boys’ bathroom he would find, he saw the bright side of the situation.

I. Am. Going. To. Kill. You. Potter.

Seven words… The situation couldn’t be so bad, could it?

For seven is a magical number.

And James, tripping on air as he ran for cover from Lily’s jinxes, knew it.

“Let’s see if Snivellus the creep will appreciat-”

Remus held a finger to his lips, “Shhh!”

Peter almost suffocated as he tried to repress a laugh caused by Sirius’ eye roll.

“Can’t we even hiss about our sworn enemies, now?” the Black boy asked, still holding a snotbomb in his hand.

“Not in the library, Sirius. And sit down, bloody hell.”

There were new scars on the boy’s face. They hurt.

“Oh. I forgot it’s a sacred place. Excuse me, Your Bookiness,” Sirius exaggerated a bow, touching the table with his forehead. “Come with me, ye faithful Peter, let’s trick that cockroach outside of the libr-”

“I said, sit down. ”

The full moon had been two days ago, so Sirius didn’t contradict his friend. He knew the hormones hadn’t calmed down yet.

He leaned back on a chair, and propped his boots on the table, safe to do so as Ms. Pince was away. “What can we hence do to bore time away, oh Holy Stupidity?”

Peter did not appreciate the nickname, and threw him a stained wad of paper in the eye.

“Thank you. That solves my problem.”

Remus silenced him with a dark look, so the rebellious teen had nothing else to do but stare in silence at the fourth Marauder.

James was standing in a farther corner of the room, a book in his hands, observing a group of students from above the volume’s border.

“What a dumb baboon,” Sirius whispered, and he raised to approach his best friend.

When he was right behind his back -- and James hadn’t noticed him, too bewitched by Lily Evans’ flaming hair -- he couldn’t resist the lure, “BOO!”

With a stifled cry, James let the book fall, and turned around to slap whoever the fuck had just scared the hell out of him. What a -- non -- surprise was it to find his best friend strangling himself with a repressed roar.

Before he could properly punch him in the guts for being a total jerk, James felt a burning stare prickling his neck, and when he turned around, Lily Evans was glaring at him.

So were the other students present, but only Lily’s opinion mattered.

He waved at her, trying a shy grin, but she plunged back in her reading without deigning him of another look.

“You’re a di-”

“Language, Potter,” Sirius reminded him, a smirk still dancing on his lips. “You looked like a proper fool, congratulations.”

“I swear, one of those days, I’ll jinx you in your sleep.”

Back at the table where they had left their bags, Peter was having trouble hiding a mocking grin, while Remus looked a little less somber than earlier.

The bell went off, announcing the end of their free hour, the four Marauders raised to head to Transfiguration class. Before they had the chance to cross the exit, a storm of long hair and books stopped them. Three very angry Mary, Dorcas, and Marlene were gawking at James.

“Listen, Potter,” started Mary.

“Lily would like you’d stop having fun at her expenses,” added Dorcas.

“Or I’ll punch you straight in the face,” finished Marlene.

“But-”

“There is not but!” said the girl in the middle, shaking her jet black hair from left to right. “It’s tiresome.”

“She can’t study in peace, if you’re always bothering,” explained her auburn friend.

“And don’t even try to deny, because we saw you holding your book upside down .”

Marlene really looked about to hit him, if he even only breathed too loudly.

Without waiting for an answer, the three girls stepped outside of the room.

From afar, Lily was looking at the scene, hiding her face behind her hair, and Peter -- the only one who saw her -- thought she might have been blushing, but had no time to say anything because, not even a second later, Marlene’s face peeped out the door frame, “This is the seventh time Lily complains to us, Potter, I’ve counted them. And I promise next time we won’t be as kind.”

And finally, she was gone.

Remus, Peter, and Sirius were wordless, and sorry for their friends that he got rebuked again.

But James was beaming.

Seven times. Lily had talked about him seven times.

Okay, maybe it was to complain about him. But this still counted as talking about him when he wasn’t around.

Seven’s a magical number.

And James, positively forgetting about punching Sirius, knew it.

The quill was immobile in his hands, his eyelids were heavy under the flickering light of his wand.

He wasn’t even lucid enough to produce an effective Lumos. What a shame for a fifth year student of Hogwarts

The Charms homework was due tomorrow -- or well, as it was well past midnight already, today -- but he still had not found an answer to all the questions.

He was alone in the common room. The chair was hard against his back, and the image of his bed, with its comfortable pillows and smooth coverts, occupied much more space in his drowsy mind that the Flowericus Imperialis charm did.

A good deal of the available thoughts, anyway, were dedicated to the airy figure that had sat across him in the Great Hall, today. The girl with the hair on fire, with fireworks in the eyes.

Lily Evans.

Okay, fine. She hadn’t sit in front of him. Nor had she been that close.

He had pushed a kid away to get the place in front of Marlene, who was next to Dorcas, who was next to Mary, who was next to Lily -- who seemed to tolerate him more than last year.

Dreaming about the moment when he handed the red hair a bowl of eggs -- indirectly, though, because he originally passed it to Mary, but Lily had some too, five minutes later -- James' head slipped off his closed fist, and bumped on the wooden table.

He didn’t even feel the pain of a coming lump, as tired as he was.

While the boy started snoring, the portrait that sealed the entrance to the common room opened with a faint creaking sound. A shadow swiftly entered, and moved across the place with felted steps.

The girl, for it was girl -- not much older than James, but if you didn’t know her, you couldn’t have told -- worked her way in the semi darkness, avoiding couches, cushions, and lost hats and socks forgotten on the floor, until she reached the stairs that led to her dormitory.

When she set a foot on the wooden stairway, she seemed to think twice about it. Unexpectedly, she swung around, and hurriedly traced her steps back to the middle of the room. For a second, she observed James, whose black rimmed glasses were drawing a diagonal across his face.

His hair, for once, was not that tangled. The girl knew that he had the habit of smoothing it, when he was nervous.

Not because she observed him from time to time, Merlin forbid.

She just knew it.

Peeking over his shoulder, she saw the parchment due in some hours -- unfinished and looking quite crumpled -- begging for someone to fill in the remaining answers.

Her first reflex was to sigh. That boy was such a late doer. Even his best friends had gone to sleep, which meant that they had finished their homework -- or didn’t care about the grade they would get, which was quite probable.

But she suddenly remembered that she was coming from the library, where she had sneaked in to get some more information for the same assignment, and she felt her face heat up.

She was a late doer to.

A bit guilty to have thought bad of her classmate, she silently slid the paper from under his arms, and took the quill from his grip. Chewing the inside of her cheek in sign of concentration, she proceeded to scribble a sentence under one of the empty questions.

She didn’t want to encourage his procrastination. She just hoped to help him a bit.

Not because she liked him, Merlin forbid.

She just was a nice girl.

She resisted the temptation of removing his glasses from his face, afraid that he would wake up and see her, and cautiously made her way toward her bed, leaving her flowery calligraphy under the question number seven.

Lily Evans closed the door of the girl’s dormitory with a muffled thud.

Seven’s a magical number.

And James, profoundly asleep and oblivious of the visit he had just received, knew it.

“Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas, mate.”

Sirius slumped on James’ bed, and accidentally also on his foot, causing him to curse in pain.

“What the fuck do you want, Pads. We’re not even in April,” James groaned as he massaged his ankle.

“We aren’t? I thought today was April fool day.”

“ It’s in eleven days , you moron.”

“So there was no need to wake you up at six in the morning on sunday, then?”

James scowled at the blurry figure that his best friend was before he put his glasses on. Then, he was able to aim properly.

“Ugh,” Sirius retrieved a dirty sock from the floor -- the one that had just hit him square in the face -- and threw it back to his owner. “You stink, Prongs.”

“Let me go back to sleep, Pads. I’ll kill you later.”

“I don’t think you will want to.”

Muttering something about never lacking the want to, James buried his head under the sheets.

“I’m serious, mate-”

“Yeah, and I’m James. That joke is so overused it’s not even funny. Give me a rest.”

“-I think it would be interesting to see Lily Evans falling off a broomstick.”

Sending his blankets flying to the floor, James sat up. “What?”

Sirius stood up to hide his grin, “Well, enjoy this hour of additional sleep.”

He got hit in the back of the head with the same smelling sock.

“She’s going to fly?” James was already dressing up.

Sirius hummed. “I couldn’t sleep, and I heard some weird noises coming from the common room. From what I saw through the window five minutes ago, Marlene was dressed in her Quidditch uniform, handing a broom to Lily, out in the grounds.”

Once again, James cursed. “Let’s go,” he said.

“In pajama bottoms? Sexy.”

“Fuck.”

The other boys in the dorm were still fast asleep when, three minutes later, James and Sirius were climbing down the castle’s stairs in a cacophony of steps that could have woken Sleeping Beauty up. The chilly air of the morning stung their eyes as they ran toward the Quidditch field, James carrying his Nimbus under an arm. A

As they got closer, panicked voices were easily audible.

Under the light of a very feeble dawn, they entered the large field of grass that was the setting of so many unforgettable matches.

Fifty meters above the floor, Lily, her eyes closed, was hanging from a shaking broomstick, while Marlene did not know how to lift her up without losing her own balance.

How in the world they had gotten so high was a mystery, but one thing was sure: if Lily fell down, she would get more than a bruise.

Without hesitation, James zoomed upward.

“Let go!” he cried with all the air he could gather in his lungs, when he was just ten meters away from her frail body.

Surprised at the sound of his voice, Lily opened her eyes, and left out a frightened squeal. “No!”

“Come on, trust me!”

“Are you joking?”

From the floor, Sirius was torn between alarm and laughter, while Marlene shouted at her friend to listen to the boy, concern all over her face.

“You don’t want to fall, do you?”

“And- Ah!” The witch tightened her grip around the broomstick. “And I’m supposed to let go?”

“I’ll grab you!”

“Are you joking!”

Now, Sirius joined Marlene in the preoccupied club. “You sure, mate?”

“Shut up, Pads!”

“I don’t want to fall!” Lily cried.

The situation could have gone on endlessly, but Spring decided to speed things up by sending a terrible wind flow to hit the teens.

And Lily, losing her clasp, started falling down.

James, with nothing but her cries filling his ears, dived forward, hunching his back to exploit all the power of his acceleration. His stomach was growling angrily, anxiety gnawing at his chest: what if he didn’t catch her? But he had to. There was absolutely not other way this could end.

None.

He dived toward her.

Like not even his favorite Quidditch player would have done at such a speed, James released his grip on the broom, and outstretched his hands upward. He grabbed Lily by the waist as she was precipitating , and very firmly attracted her to his chest, flexing his arms in a movement that caused him stabbing pain in the sides. She hugged his torso so hard that she could have broken a couple of his ribs, if he hadn’t shouted to her to loosen her grasp.

Lily probably had thought that, once on James’ broom, she was going to be safe, but there was one particular that she did not know: the Nimbus 1500 had been constructed to resist to speed, not weight. Two riders were too much.

So the broom started falling vertically, its beak pointing at the ground, which was approaching at a vertiginous speed.

And Lily lost consciousness.

Sweating coldly, James tried to rectify the trajectory and slow their fall down, all that while holding the girl’s body: inert like a doll, she threatened to fall off the broom at any moment.

Sirius and Marlene were both shouting on the floor -- if any of the two had known to fly better than James, they would have flown in their rescue, but they did not want to make things worse -- and the wind was slapping his face. It was a miracle his glasses were still on his nose.

Every muscle in his body, including some new ones he didn’t know existed, ached as if he was being dipped in a bath of pure fire. It was a duel one-to-one against gravity, against Nature. With a superhuman effort, that knocked the air out of him, James channeled all the strength he had left in a last attempt at redressing the fly.

The Nimbus 1500 made the last fifteen meters to the floor in a serie of hiccups and bounces, slowing down just enough to allow the teens not to break their teeth when they finally collided with the floor and rolled separate ways on the field.

Marlene ran to Lily, while Sirius went to check on James, who was spluttering a mix of midges and grass threads and trying to get some air to enter his chest.

The first word that the teen managed to articulate, eagle-spread on his back, was obviously, “Lily?”

As a response, the girl, pale like a color washed blanket, threw herself on top of him, strangling him in a hug.

He felt all the bones of his body turn into a sluggish pulp.

“Oh James,” she said, with tears rolling down her cheeks, “You- You saved my life.”

Her arms were warm on him, and James felt like he could die now, and die happy.

“Nah, it's nothing, really,” he breathed, feeling his energies slowly -- very slowly -- coming back to him.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she whispered in his ear.

“That’s a lot of thank yous, Evans.”

Seven in total.

He smiled, out of air, looking at the kind fingers of dawn drawing a painting for them in the sky.

Seven is a magical number.

And James, feeling the worst and the absolute best he had ever in his life, knew it.

 “What’s so special that you couldn’t wait to show me, Evans?”

The girl shrugged, putting on an exaggerated innocent face. “Don’t want to wait until the shore of the Great Lake to know?” 

“‘Better be something important. ‘m supposed to be studying.”

“You?”

“Why so surprised?”

She shrugged again, hiding a smile behind her long hair.

“Have I told you how good that hair looks on you, Evans?”

“Mmm… At least a hundred times, James.”

“Only?”

She giggled, and James’ stomach took a trip to the moon.

“You sure we need to wait until the Great Lake?”

“Just say that you don’t like my company, and I’ll understand.”

“I would never dare to. I’m not a liar.”

“Then wait until the Great Lake.”

They kept walking in comfortable silence. Spring was bright around them, with countless flowers decorating the grass of the grounds, and the late sun rays heating the trees.

James bitterly thought that, soon, they were to enter the adults’ world. And maybe part ways.

“Almost there,” Lily said.

And it was true for both what he wanted, and what he dreaded.

They climbed a little hill that led to the Marauders’ favorite part of the grounds, facing the Great Lake’s large body from above.

Once on top of the dune, Lily dropped on the floor, sitting cross-legged, and patted a hand on the warm grass next to her.

“Did we come all this way just to sit down ?” James asked.

Lily laughed one of her bubbly laughs. “Don’t like my surprise?”

He immediately slumped on the ground next to her. “‘Course I do.”

And he did.

For a second, they abandoned themselves to quiet, then Lily spoke again, “Actually… We came here because I wanted to be far from everyone else.”

“In a bad mood, uh?”

He still wondered why she had brought him along.

“Not really,” she smiled. “I wanted to apologize for all these years when I thought you were a… Well, a-”

“Jerk?” he suggested, “Idiot, moron, fool, brute, ars-”

“You can say that,” she nodded. “And I’m glad we’re friends now.”

“Incredible. All it took me was saving you from death while exposing myself to it, and ending up in the hospital wing for an entire week.”

The sarcasm was erased by the soft voice with which he said it.

Lily moved a bit closer to him, her knee almost touching his thigh. “There’s also another reason why I made you walk so far from the castle.”

James felt his pulse climb up.

“Is there?”

“Yeah. I needed to build the courage to-”

“To?”

“To do this.”

She leaned toward his face, hers the color of a crimson rose, and hesitantly joined their lips. Afraid that it was all a dream that could vanish, James cupped her cheeks with both his hands, feeling the warmth of her skin on his, the warmth of the Earth for them.

He kissed her as he had dreamt of doing for years, as he had waited for all his life. He kissed her because he was absolutely sure she was the right girl, he had been right to hope all this time. He kissed her because she made him feel like the luckiest man alive, because she made flowers bloom in his chest, hearts fog his mind.

He kissed her, and when she pulled back, he wanted more. But diving into her green stare was almost as amazing as it was to kiss her.

“It took me seven years to understand this,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

But he was not sorry.

Beaming like an idiot, he was not sorry at all.

For seven is a magical number.

And James, finally holding the girl he loved in his arms, knew it.