Chapter Text
They were in the Gryffindor common room, Lily’s head leant against James’ shoulder as they sprawled across the sofa in front of the crackling fire.
She felt him shift underneath her as he looked at the watch on his wrist and nudged her. Her eyes were shut, letting the warmth and light from the flames play across her eyelids and press into the darkness, but she could picture him exactly, looking at the ornate wristwatch his parents gifted him for his seventeenth birthday with a resigned expression on his face, letting out a soft sigh as he jolted his shoulder to alert her to the time.
‘Hey, Evans.’
She pressed her face into his jumper, and let out a muffled groan in response. He chuckled, and it rumbled through him and into her. This was another thing she could picture without looking, the way his eyes crinkled slightly and his lips twisted into a lopsided smirk. There was something to be said for the ease with which she could conjure up his mannerisms, rushing into her mind with ease and fluidity. Sometimes she thought she knew him better than she knew herself.
‘Lily,’ he started again, and she let out another groan, ‘Mary told me to force you up the stairs and into your dormitory at least two hours before we need to leave.’
She sighed heavily, and opened her eyes as she twisted her head so that she was staring at the ceiling. ‘I know,’ she huffed, ‘but I’m so tired.’
He laughed again, and she savoured the sound, holding it close to her chest and letting it fill the space between her ribs.
‘It’s not my fault you agreed to be my date for tonight,’ he said, jabbing her lightly with his elbow.
‘And it’s hardly mine that your dad’s up for the most prestigious potions award in England,’ she retorted, ‘I couldn’t exactly turn down your invite to the most ideal networking event imaginable.’
‘Please,’ he rolled his eyes good-naturedly, ‘forget the networking, you’re obviously in it for my natural charm and sparkling personality. I bet you’d have gone as my date to an extra-curricular Binns lecture.’
‘Yep, you caught me,’ she said, trying to inject dryness into her tone to mask how close to the truth he unknowingly was, that she’d follow him to a Binns lecture, to the Slytherin dungeons, to a Cornish pixie infested cupboard. There was nowhere she wouldn’t go if he asked. He was the moon, glowing and unattainable, and she was the tide, unable to resist his pull.
‘I only agreed to go as I was so unreasonably desperate to see even more of you, because the hours I see you each day simply just weren’t enough.’
He started laughing again, and she continued, smiling, ‘In fact, if we’re really being honest about it all, I actually orchestrated the entire evening just to spend time alone with you.’
James let out a pretend gasp at that, ‘What, you forged Dad’s invite and faked the nomination?’
‘Even worse. Unfortunately,’ she said solemnly, ‘the whole event is a sham. I stole a time turner and went back two hundred years, in order to confund Bartholomew Dolohov, before holding him at wand-point and forcing him to create the Dolohov Award for Mastery at Potioneering. I then skipped ahead a few decades and confunded whichever Dolohov is the current head of the family empire, to make sure your dad was definitely up for it again this year.’
‘As one does,’ he said, matching her expression with a serious one of his own, and nodding gravely, ‘Wish you’d have come up with a better acronym than ‘DAMP’ though, you’ve got no idea how weird it is to walk into Dad’s study and see the word repeated at you four times from his mantlepiece.’
‘Oh, forgive me – I was so busy manipulating two centuries worth of history in order to spend a single evening with you, that I completely forgot to consider the potential trauma my award-naming may have inflicted on your otherwise obscenely blissful childhood.’
‘Fear not, Evans, all is forgiven,’ he said as he patted the top of her hand reassuringly, ‘I could hardly hold a grudge against the girl who time travelled to manipulate one of the most influential wizards of the eighteenth century just to spend a few hours with me.’
His expression had remained carefully even throughout the interaction, and when she caught sight of it again she burst out into laughter. He joined her, and his smile widened as his eyes crinkled. Her breath would have caught, if she didn’t constantly fight tooth and nail against her body’s automatic responses to everything he did.
Mary descended the girls’ staircase while they were still laughing, and she shook her head at James with a comical glare.
‘What time do you call this, Potter? There’s a mere hour and fifty minutes to go before you’ve got to leave, and you haven’t yet kicked Lily off the sofa to subject her to my mercy,’ she said with mock disappointment.
Lily nodded along with posed sincerity, ‘Merlin, James, it’s almost as if you don’t want a presentable date.’
‘Oi, you,’ he pointed a finger accusingly at her, ‘were the one who refused to leave – Besides, you could never look unpresentable.’ He added this last bit casually, as if he hadn’t even considered that with six words he had made her neck flush and her heart skip several beats in a way that had banished all of her earlier tiredness.
‘I, on the other hand,’ he continued, oblivious to Lily’s response to his throwaway words, ‘do need significant preening time to appear presentable, so I’ll be off.’ He waved cheerily at Lily and Mary as he departed, and Lily waved back, decidedly ignoring Mary’s knowing look.