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She’s tried not to spend the whole evening just watching him. A challenge, but she’s always liked a challenge, and this feels like one of the biggest she’s faced. Don’t stare at James Potter. Don’t let yourself be drawn back into that orbit.
The thing is, she likes it. She finds herself seeking him out, now, sitting with him in the common room or ambling down to Quidditch practice at his side or sitting opposite him in the Great Hall, where she can look right into those beguiling hazel eyes and let that smile warm her to the tips of her fingers.
Yeah. She’s pretty far gone.
But she’d usually rather be there, with him but apart from him, than try to fight that pull, try to push back against whatever it is that’s deep inside her, desperate for his attention. She has never wanted to be that kind of girl, and especially not with him, but here she is, finding herself willing to do just about anything if it means he looks at her again and talks to her again.
Exams finished this morning, and the seventh years were given a later curfew to celebrate the occasion. The Gryffindors piled out of the Great Hall after lunch, collapsed in a heap by the lake, and had barely moved since, basking in the sun, brains overwhelmed, eyes hazy with exhaustion. At one point, moved by a sudden burst of energy, James had leapt up, stripped down to his boxers and raced Sirius into the cool, murky waters. Lily had allowed herself a minute or two of watching, as covertly as she could under the wide brim of her sunhat, admiring the way the droplets snaked down his torso, the way his muscles flexed and eased as he grappled with his best friend, cackling with glee.
She pretended to read her book for five minutes, then idled over to the shallows, lifting the hem of her dress to stand with Remus, taking in the scene as if she hadn’t been watching intently not that long ago. It was all a careful dance, this, being around him, hoping to catch his attention but not be seen to be doing it all at the same time. She even laced her fingers through Remus’ at one point, laughing just a little bit louder than she needed to at what he had said.
James didn’t look over.
The sun set, but the group stayed outside. Going in now would feel like admitting that this was all nearly over, that they were finished with school and about to become adults. Around them, she can see other clusters of seventh years, fighting against the same inevitability, eking out just a little bit longer of their student lives.
She casts her gaze around, trying to find him in the darkness—only a few gentle bluebell flames, in jam jars and one, in a beer mug stolen from the Three Broomsticks, cast any light across the group. There is Mary, soft blue flickering on her face as she smiles back at Sirius and Peter; there is Marlene, lounging back against Dorcas, whose arms lace round her like the best kind of security, chatting away to Remus. They all look content. Grown up.
She finally finds James, a little way away from their crowd, flat on his back, one hand resting behind his head while the other is splayed comfortably on the grass. He has a knack, she thinks, of looking comfortable no matter where he is. And although she’s tried, tried her hardest, to hang back and be aloof (a word no one has ever used to describe her), it’s just too easy to pick herself up off the grass, wander over to him, and lay back on the ground, hands at her sides.
He tilts his head just slightly, a smile tugging at his lips, before he returns his focus to the heavens above them.
She lets the quiet linger for a minute, maybe more, enjoying the promise of what’s to come, the scent of honeysuckle lingering in the warm night air. She feels acutely aware, like a tug in her belly, of how close his hand is to hers.
“Stargazing?” she asks eventually, voice soft, unassuming.
She can sense his growing smile, even though she’s not looking at him. “Well, I did get an A in O.W.L Astronomy, Evans…”
“Of course,” she smirks, and crosses her legs at the ankle; the shift makes her skirt flutter briefly around her knees, settling a little further up her thigh. “I can’t believe you didn’t continue on to N.E.W.T.”
“I didn’t want to make everyone else feel inadequate,” he replies.
She tilts her head, then, unable to resist. His face is bathed in the soft glow of the half moon, relaxed, happy. She wants, more than she can understand, to reach out and trace her finger along his bottom lip. “Find me a star, then.”
He meets her gaze for a moment, then shifts his attention back to the skies. When he moves his hand to point upwards, his skin brushes hers, and that now-familiar sensation, that pulsing current, rushes through her. “There,” he says; she follows his finger to a twinkling amongst the inky-black. “That’s Antheia.”
She frowns just slightly, trying to remember her own Astronomy lessons. “Antheia…?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “Named for the myth of the goddess who wandered, desperately looking for her love, but when she found him, she couldn’t speak, so she threw herself into the heavens to watch him for eternity.”
They lay there, silent; his arm comes back down to rest at his side.
Then: “You made that up, didn’t you?”
“I did,” he confirms, and they both tilt their heads at the same time, meeting gazes with a smile. “Convincing, though, wasn’t I?”
“A bit,” she admits, with a roll of her eyes. “Is Antheia even real?”
“She is. The star isn’t,” he says, and the smile stills to something more intense, more loaded. “She was the Greek goddess of flowers.”
She stares at him. Since they became friends in the sixth year, since her feelings towards him have evolved and grown into something she never expected, she’s been surprised at how often he can leave her speechless. It’s a bit embarrassing, how long it takes to find her voice again. “Oh…”
He looks away, back up at the stars. “So you’d be up there with her, wouldn’t you,” he murmurs, and suddenly, sounds not quite so sure of himself. “Doesn’t sound fun, though, does it? Watching for eternity.”
That’s how it’s felt, even just today. Watching, forever, and trying so hard not to. “Is this your way of saying you want me to fling myself into the sky?” she asks, trying to sound light.
“Not at all,” he replies; she watches the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows, the flicker of his deceptively-long lashes behind his glasses. “I’d miss you if you were a star.”
Another pause, and then they both laugh, almost guiltily. He looks over at her with a wry grin. “Am I the first person to ever have said that to you?” he teases.
“You know what, I think you are,” she replies, and somehow, her fingers tangle with his in the grass. He looks down at their hands, clasped together, an expression on his face like he can’t quite piece together what is happening to him. “But that’s just you, isn’t it, James Potter?”
He smiles, just a little. “I think that’s a compliment…?”
“It is,” she assures him; her gaze drifts, like the breeze, to his lips for a moment. “You have a way.”
“A way,” he repeats thoughtfully.
“A way,” she agrees.
His free hand, the one not tangled in hers, moves almost of its own accord to ghost a line down her cheek, down her jaw. Her breath feels shallower now: he’s gazing back at her, eyes wide. She remembers him looking at her like that before, back in fifth year. They’d been sat with their respective friends round the fire, and she had glanced up from her book to find his eyes on her, mesmerised, bathed in the orange glow of the flames. She’d just looked away again, not wanting to see that, to think on it too deeply, to encourage him in any way. Now, she just gazes back.
“I’d miss you if you were a star, too,” she says quietly, the hint of a smile on her lips, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to lift his hand, to tuck herself into him, to guide his arm round her and rest her head on his chest. She can hear his every breath, hear his heart thumping as quickly as her own.
For a few minutes, they just lay there, staring up at the sky. She doesn’t know this, but his thoughts follow much the same pattern as hers: the feel of his skin, warm against her own; the smell of him; the feeling of being right there, exactly where she should be, after all this time. She wants to kiss him, and he wants to kiss her, she knows he does. It will happen. She’s suddenly more sure of that than anything. They will kiss, and it will be like throwing herself up into the heavens.
For now, though, they have time.
His voice is so soft as to almost be inaudible, but this close, it doesn’t matter. “Alright, Evans?”
She smiles, and tilts her head to catch his gaze. There it is again, that wonderment. She could live this life a thousand times just to see that look on his face. “Alright, Potter,” she murmurs.
He brushes her hair from her face. Smiles, too. “Want me to find you some more stars?”
“Yes, please,” she replies, and so, he does.