Work Text:
Status In Quo
or
“The Existing State of Affairs”
There are many love stories in the world.
There are many love stories in the world, and they are told often, on paper and in person and in every medium between.
Some end in marriage, some in divorce; some end without ever encountering either. Some are tales of triumph; others of woe. Some have been told across generations, and some, even now, are playing out in the smallest of moments, in brushes of fingers and the most fleeting of glances.
Within the wide umbrella of love stories, there are great love stories. This is a smaller category—but still significant and far-reaching. Great love stories happen across cultures and creeds, leaving behind an indelible mark: love was here. They inspire poetry and great music, books and fables and ballads. We are all better for them.
Even smaller still is the category of great love stories that feel great even to those who witness them in real-time. These love stories take up room, fill up hallways and bloom in fresh air. The people to watch these love stories look on with fondness, or exasperation, or some combination of the two, thinking, this is something that will be remembered.
The love story that we shall concern ourselves with is singular in nature. This is not because the love starts out misclassified as hatred (that, as it were, happens quite frequently), or because one person spends a great deal longer pining than the other (also rather common), or even because it occurs adjacent to a burgeoning, bloody war (there are many books written about exactly this phenomenon, but that is neither here nor there). No, none of these things bring this particular story to the forefront.
This love story did not just pave the way for a great deal of other love stories to exist, like branches growing from a great, towering tree; it is, in fact, the only reason that any other love stories can exist, and it is the only reason that you and I can read and recount these stories—not only love stories, but any stories at all.
There are many love stories in the world.
But there has only ever been one love story to save the world. And it is theirs.
Year: 1971
Setting: Hogwarts Castle
Status: Beginning
It all begins, as many great love stories do, with a cornish pasty to the face.
How the cornish pasty comes to meet the face is (surprisingly) not important. What is important is that neither party actually means for the cornish pasty in question to make contact with the face in question, but the universe, much in the way the universe often does, enjoys a good bit of laughter.
So does Sirius Black, who witnesses the entire thing with an expression of glee that might better befit a child on Christmas morning.
“Sorry! Sorry!” James Potter yelps in a helpless falsetto as he attempts to wipe potato and onion from Lily Evans’s eyes. He’s been doing both of these things—the yelping and the wiping—for the past thirty seconds, and neither seem to be helping the situation in any substantial measure.
“Would—you—get—your—hands—OFF OF ME!”
This cry from Lily is unignorable, so to that effect, it does its job well. James pulls his hands back as though burned, mouth opening and closing in the unique fashion of an eleven-year-old who’s abruptly realizing that he may not actually have grown into his limbs yet.
“Evans,” he tries once more, “I’m sorry, really I am—”
But his pasty-covered victim is having none of it. “You did that on purpose!” She cries.
(While James has yet to grow into his limbs, Lily has yet to grow into her pride, and this affront to it does nothing to help that process along.)
“What?” James is bewildered. Sirius has yet to stop laughing next to him. “No, I didn’t!”
“You did!”
“I didn’t!”
“Oh, who the bloody hell cares?” Marlene McKinnon cuts in from Lily’s other side. She’s one of the tallest people in their year, and this gives her an air of authority over the other first-years that goes unquestioned. “Come on, Lily. Let’s go clean you up in the toilets.”
Lily sniffs—undoubtedly inhaling some combination of spices, unfortunately for her, as the lower part of her face is still very much occupied territory of the pasty—and nods, and the two get up to leave the Great Hall together. James opens his mouth once again to try and give a final apology or excuse (“Well, how could I know Sirius was going to clap me on the back at the exact moment you turned to ask me about the Charms homework?”) but Lily beats him to it, whipping around from her steady progress toward the door.
“You know,” she says, shoulders back and posture proud despite the food still staining her face and jumper, “I only accused you of doing it on purpose because otherwise that means you don’t have any control over your limbs. That’s really embarassing for someone who keeps talking about how he’s going to be Quidditch captain one day.”
And off she goes.
“What a fucking nutter,” Sirius observes, and, uncharacteristically dumbstruck and seeking some sort of balm for his ego, James only nods.
A fucking nutter, indeed.
(Alright. So, at this point, love story is a bit of an exaggeration.
But don’t worry—they’ll get there.)
Year: 1975
Setting: Hogwarts Castle
Status: Pending
“Merlin’s sake, Potter. Will you get out of my way?”
If it were any other person talking, James would think their voice incredibly shrill as it made such a demand. But not Lily. In fact, not only does he not find it shrill at all, it actually sings a melody as it hits his ears, something strong and anthemic, like a one-woman rendition of a Puddlemere fight song. It’s altogether quite pleasant to listen to.
Not that she’ll have to know that.
“What, Evans,” James replies but makes no room to move, content—as always—to stretch out his long limbs and occupy space in the cramped staircase. It is the habit of someone who has never been told that they are anything but worthy of doing so. “Were you going somewhere?”
Standing almost nearly at his height from two stairs above him, Lily rolls her eyes and groans, hefting the books in her grip so she can shift her weight onto her back foot and pop one hip out. It’s not at all surprising that she’s overly accomplished at nonverbal magic, because it seems like she doesn’t need to speak at all to communicate the message of: fuck off.
“Just to lessons,” she replies impatiently, “you know. The thing we’re all here for?”
“Is that what that is? I’d been wondering.”
“Well, I suppose for you it’s more to see how many people you can terrorize before the seven years are up.”
“I’d guess by your measure I’m pulling very high numbers in that particular vocation.”
“Staggeringly.”
The word choice makes James chuckle, though he knows that Lily won’t actually understand why. It is somewhat of a strategic blunder on his part, though, because she doesn’t even allow herself the time to be confused (unbeknownst to him, Lily has developed somewhat of an immunity to his oddities; more of a result of defeat and resignation than anything else, but it will serve her well later on), instead milking his distraction to slip underneath one of his raised-in-self-congratulation arms and weave her way down the staircase.
“Wait—oi! Hang on a second!”
Without pausing or looking back, Lily calls over her shoulder, “No. I don’t fancy being late for Transfiguration.”
“Yeah, Minnie’s a real party. Anyway—” James picks up his pace to catch up with her and falls easily into her stride. It’s nice being tall. “—I was hoping to talk to you.”
“I don’t know why you’d think that I’d participate in that.”
He ignores this. “So, I was thinking—”
“Oh, then that’s what that burning smell was?”
“Ha-ha, Evans. Very funny.” It is actually quite funny, but it’s not part of their little game to admit something of that nature. “I was thinking that you and I should partner up for the Potions practical next month.”
This is apparently jarring enough to stop Lily in her tracks. She turns slowly on her heel to face him, brows drawn together and eyes cutting.
Cute, he thinks.
“You want to do what?”
“Partner up, Evans. Although I’m re-thinking that decision in light of your obvious hearing issues.”
Levity is apparently not the best course of action, as Lily continues to stare at him like he’s just told her he wants to meet Antony Mulciber under the mistletoe.
(Eugh.)
“Why,” she begins slowly, “do you think that I’d want to be your partner?”
Okay, it’s going to take some mental gymnastics to ignore the hostility in that phrasing, but he’s always been a nimble bloke.
James sends a hand up into his hair, pulling and rearranging. “Well—you and I get top marks in Gryffindor. I figure it would be good for House morale if we paired up and showed Sluggy what’s what.”
She snorts at this. Like, full, nose-scrunching, tilt-your-head-back snorts. The mental gymnastics continue.
“I don’t know if you know this, but I already have a Potions partner, and—no offense—but he’s much better at it than you.”
The ‘no offense’ clause in the statement does very little to abate the offense, which is usually true when someone uses the term ‘no offense.’
“Right.” The casual mention of Severus Snape drags James’s smile down into a flat line across his mouth. It’s not like he’s forgotten about this, but for the life of him, he cannot understand why Lily chooses to maintain the other boy’s association, so there is some small, undeniable part of him that thinks it might be a very subtle case of Stockholm Syndrome, from which he might rescue her with the presentation of himself as an alternate option. “So you do.”
“Yes,” Lily eyes him curiously. “I do.”
“And you really have no problem ignoring his new extra-curricular habits as long as you secure your Potions mark? Is that it? Slughorn’s approval over muggle-born solidarity?”
In the world of verbal cock-ups, there exists a small, nebulous space in which someone can be right and be an idiot all at the same time. James Potter owns a small rental property there.
“You—” fury rising in her, Lily pokes him in the chest with her unladen hand and wrenches herself away from him, “—are a fucking prick who knows absolutely nothing. Don’t talk to me again.”
At this, the mental gymnastics finally falter, and in their place comes a startling clarity that Lily Evans does not at all understand the boy who claims to be her best friend, and until that fact is rectified, she will remain unreachable, and he will remember all of the reasons that he shouldn’t even want to talk to her in the first place.
(It should be mentioned that—to some degree—James Potter does not at all understand the boy who claims to be Lily Evans’s best friend either, but that is profoundly obvious to anyone who knows him, so we’ll just brush past that.)
“Whatever, Evans!” He calls as she walks away. “I hope the invite to the Slug Club is worth it!”
All she does is flick him off.
“Ridiculous,” he mutters, and then storms off toward the library, even though he should be following her to Transfiguration. It’s not like he hasn’t already taught himself everything they’re going to learn anyway.
In this moment, neither of them understand what they’ve said to the other, not really, but I’d challenge anyone to find a pair of teenagers that feel comfortable admitting this to themselves instead of leaning back on causal antagonism.
Right. That’s what I thought.
Year: 1976
Setting: Hogwarts Castle
Status: Asymmetrical
No one understands the phrase “resistance is futile” quite like someone who really, really does not want to fall in love.
It’s like trying to swim up a waterfall. At least, that’s the best way James can describe it.
He really, really, really does not want to fall in love, least of all with Lily Evans of all people, but it’s the spring of fifth year, Gryffindor is celebrating their most recent Quidditch victory—in which, of course, he was integral—and she’s dancing.
Not even particularly well, is the thing that gets him. She’s not doing any sort of sensual hip-swinging or even showcasing any real talent for dance. But Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy is blasting from the speakers, she’s jumping and singing along to Freddie Mercury, and he’s pretty certain that some sort of hyper-specific cosmic joke is being played on him at this exact moment.
There isn’t, really.
Well. There is, but it all ends well.
Sort of.
Ooh, love, ooh, loverboy
What're you doin' tonight, hey, boy?
Brooding, it turns out.
Remus sidles up to where James sits atop a table and offers him a cigarette, which he takes gladly—Remus is normally not one to partake in self-destructive habits outside of the realm of dismantling his own self-esteem, but two months ago, his best friends succeeded in turning themselves into animals to spend time with his werewolf self and frolick around the wilderness, so in terms of self-destructive habits, this seems rather pedestrian by comparison.
James lights the cigarette with the tip of his wand.
“Alright, Prongs?” Remus presses his own cigarette to the still-burning wand and pulls it back to his lips for a brief inhale. On a cloudy exhalation, he elaborates, “You’re not exactly reveling.”
James’s eyes do not leave the center of the room, where crimson hair is freeing itself from a plait, strand by fiery strand. “No, I s’pose not.”
Remus follows his gaze.
“Oh,” he remarks simply.
“Yeah.” James takes a long drag. Maybe this thing he feels will exit his body with the curl of greying smoke. “Oh.”
Year: 1976
Setting: The Black Lake
Status: In Peril
It wasn’t worth anything, anyway, he thinks. Just a little crush. Nothing to get upset over losing. Especially when she insists on defending Snape of all people.
He’s never going to change, she thinks. He’s going to be the same prat forever, and one day, when they’re graduated and the world has changed a little bit, she’ll tell him how disappointing it was to watch him mess everything up so consistently, and it will feel so good and she won’t ever have to see him again.
Now, they’re both wrong. We all know this. But what they’re wrong about bears some explanation.
For James, he has misclassified not only his own feelings, but in addition, Lily Evans’s feelings as well. This was no blind defense of someone who is, by all accounts, bordering on indefensible; this was the final, futile tug on the last thread of her childhood. This was the world spinning out of control.
He also thought, at some level, that she would understand the intent behind his very ill-timed invitation on a date; that she would look between the lines and see him offering a hand, hear him saying, this is your moment to choose a side—this is your moment to show me you know who he is.
It was too big of an assumption, predicated on too many moments of miscommunication, and now he’s paying dearly for it.
For Lily, we all know that James does, in fact, grow and change. We all know as well that there were many more factors at play during this particular episode than she was aware. But, most importantly, we know that Lily Evans does not just really think that James Potter will never change. She simply hopes that he won’t, because if so, it means that some people stay the same—that, even though it’s not the person she wants to prove this theory, she can still take comfort in the idea that some people won’t ever subvert her expectations, and she can pretend that this crystallized image of him represents just a sliver of her life over which she still has control.
But, as we know, they’re both wrong.
Year: 1976
Setting: Hogwarts Castle
Status: Stalled
Because good stories are nothing without a hearty bit of conflict, and because these two seem determined to draw out the mutual-idiocy stage of their love story for as long as physically possible, both Lily and James begin to date other people in the Autumn of their sixth year at Hogwarts.
Teenagers and their rebellions.
Lily is the first to take up with another contender. It starts two weeks into sixth year. His name is David, and he is taller than her but not absurdly so, and he has—to her knowledge—never done something outragrous or obtrusive in his entire life. Which is good. Definitely good.
Much in the way that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and also in the way that people often do things for reasons that even they do not understand, James asks Melody Pritchard out to Hogsmeade exactly a month later, citing the fact that she is very attractive and understands Quidditch, which are both objectively good things that he would be a fool to ignore.
Both relationships are valuable in their own ways: Lily learns what it’s like to be a girlfriend, how to show someone you cherish them—or, at least, you want to cherish them. James learns how to express himself more kindly, and that sometimes he has a habit of projecting an idea of someone onto who they really are, such that they might never live up to his expectations.
The two couples run into each other at the Three Broomsticks in December, which is only a little bit awkward, because at this point they are both—unbeknownst to the other—coming into the knowledge that so much pain is caused without intention, and just as well, that the parts of people you see in passing will never add up to the reality of who they are.
James and Lily both offer to get drinks for their respective dates, and because of either serendipity or fate or something in between, they end up next to each other at the bar.
“Evans,” says James, tipping his head in cordial recognition.
“Potter,” she replies.
A few moments stretch out in silence. Rosmerta is occupied with a number of rowdy curse-breakers ordering shots of firewhisky a few chairs to their left.
“So…” James passes a sickle coin idly between his fingers. “David Sterling, then?”
Lily shoots him a flat look. For some reason, this feels like enemy territory.
He raises his hands: I’m harmless, I swear.
She doesn’t really believe that, but Rosmerta hasn’t appeared yet, and she’s got nothing better to do.
“Yes,” she says, “David Sterling.” She turns her head and jolts her chin toward the far-right booth in the corner, where a petite blonde girl sits, twiddling her thumbs. “And Melody Pritchard?”
“Yep.”
Conversations, it’s important to note, are much easier to conduct without a mutual air of I-don’t-know-where-we-stand-right-now floating between parties. Just in case anyone was disappointed in the repartee.
“Brilliant.”
Rosmerta may as well have decided they don’t exist, as far as Lily’s concerned.
“Christ,” she mutters, “this is taking—”
“Does he listen to you?”
James’s interjection causes her to blink a few times in confusion. “Ex…cuse me?”
“Er.” It doesn’t seem like James has thought this far into this interaction, which on one hand is extremely unsurprising, but on the other, does not match up with her understanding of him at all. The two of them stare at each other. A hand retreats into hair once again. “It’s just that…that seems important to you.” He pauses, and someone has either started a bonfire on the Three Broomsticks bar, or it has suddenly become July, because they’re both reddening from the neck upwards. James adds, not just a little awkwardly: “That someone listens to you, I mean. He doesn’t seem like the listening type, and you have a lot to say. I hope he…I hope he does, though. For what it’s worth.”
(Neither of them know what this statement is worth. Not yet.)
Lily opens her mouth, and then closes it again, and then—moment of moments!—Rosmerta appears before them with a smile.
“What can I get you two?”
And thus begins a rather desperate attempt by both parties to articulate that they aren’t together, just adjacent to each other, which is completely different, Rosmerta, and actually my date is back there, so thanks but I’ll just take two butterbeers and then I’ll fuck off until I get my face to stop burning.
With a startled laugh, Rosmerta complies, reaching behind her to procure four glass mugs. The two each throw their money on the counter with a bit of excess aggression, and once the drinks appear, they grab them and turn nearly in tandem.
Maybe the following happens because Lily’s tired of James having the last word. Maybe it’s because she wants to even the Quidditch-field with him, when for so long it feels like he’s had the upper hand. Maybe she just wants to say something to him without it being a joke or an insult.
Nevertheless, when he takes a step toward his booth, she clears her throat and speaks to his retreating profile.
“I hope she challenges you,” she murmurs, butterbeer held aloft and gaze bouncing everywhere that is not his face.
James stills, eyes wide, and Lily takes the opportunity to elaborate. “You like people who don’t let you bulldoze them, and frankly, I think your ego needs it.” She swallows. “So, I hope Melody challenges you like you need.”
She leaves without another word.
When she gets back to the table where David waits, he asks her what she and Potter were talking about, and she shrugs. “Oh, you know him,” she sighs, waving a hand that she hopes is nonchalant, “just saying the normal nonsense.”
He’s sipping his butterbeer as she talks. When she finishes, he asks her to repeat herself.
Year: 1977
Setting: Hogwarts Castle
Status: Reinstated
Lily and David part ways on the fifth of March, 1977.
James and Melody stop seeing each other on the seventh of March, 1977.
Both breakups become the talk of the castle; not just because it means that two of the most impressive students in Hogwarts are now single, but as well, the fact that they became so only two days apart from each other.
The two Gryffindors in question do not speak about this oddity, as they’ve only just begun speaking at all, courtesy of Minerva McGonagall and her cruel machinations of assigning term-long Transfiguration projects to unwitting teams of two. The first week of March transitions calmly into the second, and then the third. Neither is particularly broken up about their relationships ending.
However, when they end up in the library doing their final bits of research on historical Animagi (James keeps grinning to himself and Lily doesn’t know why), they share a short, calculating look between them, like two duelers waiting for the first spell to come.
But the tension fizzles and sputters, hindered by the pressing deadline of the Transfiguration project and the potential wrath of Professor McGonagall should her two best students perform in any manner other than exceptional. The eye contact breaks; books are pulled closer and read with unfocused gazes.
It only takes about ten minutes for one of them to cast the first stone. Who does it, though, surprises them both.
“I guess I was right, then,” Lily says quietly and without looking up from her parchment. “I guess Melody wasn’t very challenging.”
A pause ensues, during which she worries that she might have overstepped, crossed a line in the sand she thought was an entryway instead. But this is James Potter after all, and the lines in the sand between them have only ever existed to keep him inside—never, really, to keep her out.
“Well,” he replies, just as quiet as she and sounding, for lack of a better word, fond, and she hasn’t looked up, but his gaze feels hot on her cheekbone. “In fairness, I was right first.”
This invites another pause.
Go ahead, it says, make the leap.
They both burst into inexplicable laughter, loud and happy and just a little bit confused. Madame Pince ejects them from the premises moments later.
(It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.)
Year: 1977
Setting: Diagon Alley
Status: Levelling
The Death Eater attack changes everything and nothing at the same time.
It’s the first attack that either James or Lily has ever witnessed with their own eyes. It happens midday, with the sun still high and the street still clogged with passersby, and all of a sudden, there are no safe places, just the crumbled ruinations of buildings and the ones that are soon to follow.
“Get down! Do you hear me? Get—down!”
James has come out of nowhere—and not even in the apparition way; more like the I’m much stealthier than you have ever given me credit for way—to drag both Lily and Mary behind a small wall of broken brick, one that used to be a broomstick store.
“James!” She yelps. “What are you—”
He interrupts her, looking frantic. “Have you seen Sirius?”
“No, I don’t—I haven’t…”
“Fuck.” He runs a frantic hand through his hair and takes a steadying breath before pinning both Lily and Mary with a sharp look. “Stay here. I have to go get Sirius, but I think the Aurors are on their way.”
“What?!” Lily reaches out and grabs his arm, and the two of them still momentarily, him in blind shock, her in fear. “You can’t actually be considering going back out there—”
“Yeah,” chimes in Mary, “are you absolutely mad? Don’t you see there’s a bit of a battle going on?”
But he won’t be deterred.
“Sirius is out there,” he hisses, “he went to get our Transfig books. I don’t know where he is—”
“That doesn’t mean you can—”
But he’s gone before she can finish her sentence, and her fist clutches around nothing, the phantom feeling of his bicep in her grip. Then, it’s Mary that has to hold her back, because she’s too incensed with him to remember what’s going on around her, and she is going to absolutely kill him if he gets hurt like this.
“Get your arse back down here!” Mary pulls her down and back under the cover of the rubble wall. “What, is everyone insane today?!”
And then three sounds break the air in immediate succession: an explosion, a yell, and a howl of rage.
Lily looks up from behind the wall as the third tapers off into the surrounding noise of battle. A man in a dark cloak is holding James Potter by the throat, grip tightening. It doesn’t look like James has his wand.
“Well, well, well,” the man sneers, and Lily’s breath is caught in her esophagus, ballooning into a scream that she has to actively suppress with a hand over her mouth. “You’re Fleamont Potter’s son, are you not?”
“That I am,” he croaks, and then he smirks, and Lily wants to cry and tear her hair out and maybe slap him on the back of the head.
“You come from good breeding, young one,” the cloaked man says. “Ever thought about joining your ilk on the winning side?”
Even as his face begins to purple from oxygen depletion, James’s features contort in rage, and Lily can predict what happens next without any sort of expertise in Divination.
He’s going to say no. She knows this intrinsically and without question, as though she’s been unkowingly cataloguing all of his little behaviors and quirks like little clues leading up to this moment; each one a different part of him that points the same direction, leads to the same conclusion like stones laid down to form a narrow walkway.
She knows he helps Remus during the Full Moons. She doesn’t know how he does, but she knows he does, and she knows that since last year, Remus has returned from the Hospital Wing earlier than he used to, spine straighter, smiles easier.
She knows he took Sirius into his home after the boy was excommunicated by his family. She heard the stories, the way Sirius showed up in the rain, welts and burn marks littering his arms and torso, nothing with him but the clothes on his back and his wand tucked into his back pocket. She doesn’t know how much of that is true or a product of exaggeration, but she believes whatever she hears, because she can see how Sirius hovers by him, how they pass looks between them that share some mutual understanding that the rest of the world will never be privy to.
She knows he’s been tutoring Peter in Charms, but only in the odd hours of the night under the light of a candlestick, because the other boy is so embarrassed by his lack of skill in the class that he can’t bear the idea of anyone knowing. She caught them once, huddled together in a corridor late at night, and she didn’t even have time to ask before James was placing himself fully in her view, telling her he knew this meant detention, so she should just dole it out and get it over with. She also knows that one second Peter was there and the next he wasn’t, like he’d become invisible or simply ceased to exist.
And now, because of these things, she knows that he’s going to deny this man, and even though it’s what he should say, part of her wants him to lie, to say he’ll consider it, because it looks like this man might kill him, and James Potter can’t be killed just like the sun can’t be snuffed and just like energy can’t disappear. You can’t kill James Potter, it simply can’t happen, the universe can’t allow it—
But before she can think to do anything—something, Evans, do SOMETHING—a battle cry rings out from a few meters to her left, and at once, the cloaked man is hurled into a nearby wall. James falls to the ground and coughs, hands scrabbling for his wand.
“THAT’S RIGHT, YOU FUCKER,” Sirius Black’s voice erupts like a tidal wave over the small alley. “YOU TOUCH MY BROTHER AGAIN AND I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF.”
The Aurors arrive within the next minute, and when they do, Lily has her arms flung around James, screaming insults—“you’re so stupid, where was your wand, don’t you ever throw yourself into the fray like that again”—into his shoulder.
Everything is different, but at the same time, nothing has changed.
Year: 1977
Setting: Hogwarts Castle
Status: Escalating
They have a common room to themselves now. Just the two of them.
The cosmic joke continues, it would seem, although this time it’s not just James who thinks he’s the butt of it.
They each have their own loos, thank Merlin. It’s bad enough that their laundry is returned to them in adjacent stacks right at the foot of the splitting staircases to their respective bedrooms, but the idea of witnessing the other in some state of undress after a shower is enough to cause each of them to choke on their own saliva if contemplated for too long.
Now, folks, this is where we can really get into the “love story” business.
(Finally. I know.)
It starts out in quiet moments: reading together, homework done side-by-side. But then it’s the loud ones, too, the fights with Carrow and Rosier, the muggle-rights campaign that Lily chairs and James puts up flyers for all around school, the muggle way, because the spell to stick them on is too loud and he doesn’t want anyone disturbing his progress.
And then, before they even realize, it’s every kind of moment.
It’s sitting together at lunch with the Marauders on his left and her friends on her right, and it’s her accidentally-on-purpose wearing his practice jersey to a Gryffindor match and watching him nearly fall off his broom at the sight of it, and then they’re snogging at a Quidditch party in November and everything is bright and beautiful, and she’s telling him she loves him so quickly it makes her head spin, and he’s in every part of her life and she’s in every part of his, and there isn’t a moment together that doesn’t feel like a breath of clean air, the kind that fills your lungs and sits, cool and calming and vital.
They love each other so fiercely and with such reckless abandon that the entire school takes note, can’t help but feel the grandeur of this love lighting up the grounds, and it’s something to bask in, something to look upon in wonder, something to study in hopes of imitation.
It is—after all—a great love story.
Year: 1979
Setting: Devon
Status: Succeeding
The wedding runs with an astounding lack of hitches.
Lily suspects that this is because James gave Sirius some sort of don’t-fuck-this-up pep talk, but she’s good enough friends with Sirius now—ma sœur, he calls her when they’re both drunk, maybe when he thinks she won’t remember, maybe when he knows he won’t—to know that not even that would have disabused him of mischief, so he must have decided to be calm all on his own. It’s the most unexpected wedding gift he could have given her.
The entire thing is a small affair, taking place on a random Sunday, the only one where everyone they needed could take off of their Order missions. It is quiet, it is peaceful, it is incandescent.
Lily dances with Remus and Peter and Sirius in turns, because marrying James means marrying the Marauders, and she slips her palm into Sirius’s hand and pretends that she doesn’t see his eyes welling, pretends that hers aren’t as well.
“You know,” she whispers over the soft cello sonata he’s chosen for their dance (once a classical music snob, always a classical music snob, after all), “I’ve always wanted brothers.”
He makes some strangled noise and turns his head to look out of the small reception hall.
“Well, that’s because your sister is shit,” he replies wetly, and she throws her head back and laughs, and her husband—her husband!—ambles over to cut in, eyes sparkling.
“May I?” He asks Sirius, like there’s even a need to do so.
“Go for it, mate,” the other replies, “she’s a shit dancer. I can’t believe you didn’t splurge on lessons before this.”
“Hey—”
But he’s already slipped away, and James is there, oh, God, James is there, and they’re married.
“Hello, beautiful,” he murmurs as his arm slips around her waist and his head dips to press a kiss to the crown of her head.
“Hi, husband,” she replies because she can, and they share a smile, something secret and small, and this is it, this is the fairytale she’s always wanted, this is the prince and the princess and this is where the storybook closes, this is the happily ever after, because no matter what waits for them outside, she has this this this.
(Fairytales don’t save the world.
For now, though, that can be all it is.)
An announcement rings through the reception an hour later in a distinctly Marauderish tone:
For those asking after the bride and groom, they snuck out about twenty-five minutes ago. You’re all welcome to keep dancing, though.
Year: 1981
Setting: Godric’s Hollow
Status: Complete
A good love story will break your heart, Lily's mother used to say.
It’s a small mercy. The heartbreak doesn’t last long.