Archive of Our Own ^beta

I'm on my way,
Driving at 90 down those country lanes,
Singing to Tiny Dancer,
And I miss the way you make me feel, and it's real,
When we watched the sunset over the castle on the hill.

- “Castle on the Hill”, Ed Sheeran –

He was too tall, really, barely fitting in the front seat of her mother’s old and battered Mini Cooper, the one that had been passed down to her for Petunia had thought the car wasn’t her, meaning that it had a few bumps and scratches too many for her liking. Lily, however, loved the forest green car. It was her baby, or – seeing as it once belonged to her mother, who had soothingly called it her baby too – the sister she wished she and Petunia could have been to one another.

What it was not, though, was a car that offered lots of space to five people. Which is why the thought of Lily picking up four boys from the side of the road as she drove all the way from Brighton up to Cokeworth, so they could make their way from there up to St Andrews (because, of course, she had managed to pick up a foursome of posh gents who’d thought hitchhiking up and down the United Kingdom for the summer would be absolutely hilarious) a joke, really.

What was even funnier, when you thought about it, was that the flush on her cheeks had only somewhat to do with the fact that the air-conditioning had decided to give out about twenty minutes into her journey on the – it seemed – hottest day of this sweltering British summer, and mostly with the fact that the young man next to her was – next to being too tall – too fit to be fair. For, so Lily thought a little moodily as she switched gears, one could not be both rich, intelligent and handsome, that was not how the world was supposed to work. There should really be more of an even divide.

“Do you mind me picking the next song?” he asked, already having made himself right at home in her passenger seat and addressing her as though they were old friends and it was completely normal for him to take control over her playlist. He was just one of those people, she had realised, who found themselves fitting in, whatever the social circumstance might be. His finger already very nearly touched the screen of her phone, which played the songs she had so carefully selected and added to her road trip playlist in preparation for her day’s journey.

“Sure,” she answered dryly, “why not?” She thought about adding: For clearly, what’s mine is yours, grumpily, but didn’t think it was very nice nor did she believe it was necessary. It wasn’t his fault that she had decided to pick him and his friends up when she had seen them by the side of the road, holding a piece of cardboard that said: Are you not entertained?! Let us help you out!

Or maybe, she thought, it was his fault. His messy, raven curls, tanned skin, blinding smile and glasses that would have looked nerdy on anyone else, but he made look sexy, had made her do a double take and she had rounded the roundabout, drove all the way back to the previous one and then stopped at the layby, rolling her window down as she’d asked: “Where do you need to go then?” The moment he had stuck his head through her window, his grin wide as he’d said: “Up north,” she had known she wouldn’t be able to refuse him anything at all.

“You sound a little grumpy, Red,” observed one of his friends – the one named after, so he had introduced himself, the stars – from the back. “London traffic driving you mad already?”

“Don’t bother her, Padfoot,” said the sandy-haired and – she had noticed this within seconds – most polite and level-headed member of their group, who’d been named – again the one named after the stars had added this – after one of the wolf children in Roman mythology. Before continuing to offhandedly remark that the other two had boring English names.

“I’m not bothering her.”

“Sure you’re not,” said the tall one from beside her with a snort, eyes on her phone as he scrolled through her playlist. His name was James – “Potter, not Bond, I’m afraid” – he took courses in International Relations at St Andrews University, was a half Greek only child – “although the handsome one in the back ruined that” – played football and liked to go parachuting.

“Red,” Sirius now said addressing her, “am I bothering you?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment James let out a euphoric whoop and Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ started to play, which he immediately started to sing along to. Her head swivelled towards him and she didn’t know what she had expected exactly, but she certainly hadn’t thought she would have found him even more attractive now than he had been a minute before.

“Sorry, Lily,” the sensible one named Remus said from the backseat, “he’s a passionate Swiftie.”

“Knows all her songs by heart too,” Peter – the fourth friend and final member of their group – piped up. “He swears it’s not because she’s hot, but we’re not convinced.”

James ceased his singing. “It’s not,” he glared at his friend here before turning to her, pausing for a moment as he seemed to be assessing her before he ran a hand through his raven curls. “Although I do happen to have a thing for women who are well and truly out of my league.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Convenient that.”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, “it’s rather shit, really.”

“Especially for all of us, you know,” Sirius shoved his head between their seats. “You don’t want to be there when this one mopes,” he pointed his thumb at James. “He is one of those guys that fancies himself in love three seconds after he’s met someone –”

“Am not!”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “You really are, mate. I’ve only known you half my life.” Before James could protest some more, attention settled on her. “What about you?” he asked. “Who out of the four of us is your type?”

She let out a disbelieving laugh as she watched James shove Sirius back.

“It’s just a question, Prongs, lighten up, will you?” She heard Sirius complain from the backseat.

“You really don’t have to answer that,” James then told her hastily, eyes wide and smile a little nervous.

“You only don’t want her to answer that, because you couldn’t stand it if she wouldn’t name you,” his best friend grumbled from the back.

She noted the flush on James’ face. “You’re so full of shite half of the time,” he muttered from beside her, leaning forward to focus on her playlist again.

She decided not to answer Sirius’ question for she really would have hated to admit that she had realised as soon as James had flashed his smile at her that she really had a thing for tanned men with a dimpled smile, a head of messy curls and nerdy glasses. She didn’t think it would be appropriate and – also – it would be extremely embarrassing.

You’re not his type, anyway, she found herself thinking. He likes it when someone is out of his league. That’s not you, sweetheart.

“So, you’ve been friends for a long time then,” she decided to change the topic, get their attention as far away from her as possible. It was hard enough to keep her eyes on the road with him sitting next to her.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Sirius spoke from the back, “you don’t know the half of it. It started on a rainy day eleven years ago –”

“Oh, fuck,” she heard Remus say, although she detected a hint of amusement in his voice, “now you’ve done it. He’s not going to shut up for the next half hour at least.”

“You’re going to love it, though,” James added, sitting back in his seat and turning his head to smile at her softly and crookedly. “He’s quite the storyteller.”

It turned out they were both right.

“A diet coke for the lady,” said James Potter as he walked up to where she had been leaning against her car. Her skin was already starting to turn a little pink from the five minutes out in the burning sun she had allowed herself.

“Thanks,” she spoke, eyeing the bottle and the condensation that slipped down it so eagerly that he chuckled as he twisted the cap for her and handed her the opened drink.

“It’s the least we can do, right?” he asked before coming to stand and lean beside her. “I hope we’re not more than you’d bargained for.”

You are, she thought, but not in the way you’re thinking.

“Of course not,” she told him, smiling weakly and suddenly very aware of the fact that her skin might have had a sheen to it due to the sun beating down on her and quite possibly frying her. She took a sip of the drink he had bought her, feeling his eyes on her as she pressed the cold bottle to her heated cheeks. “The heat is, though.” In more than just one sense, if she was honest. He made her feel quite warm too.

“Rather terrible, isn’t it?” he agreed. “I swear I’m about to sweat through my shirt.”

God, she thought, if he takes his shirt off, heaven knows what I might do.

“Is that why you’re driving up?” he asked then. “To escape some of the sweltering heat of the South of England?”

“No,” she shook her head, “I’m actually going up because it’s my dad’s birthday soon.” She hesitated for a moment only. “It will be his first one without my mum, so –”

“Oh, shit,” his eyes widened behind his glasses, which had slipped down slightly due to transpiration, she figured. Then he collected himself. “I mean: I’m sorry. That must be really difficult.”

“I’m not exactly looking forward to it, no,” she picked at the hem of her shorts. “She passed away two days after Mother’s Day and I haven’t really been back home since the funeral.” His eyes didn’t leave her face and she forced herself not to look back for fear of what she might see there. She hated it when people pitied her. “Anyway, enough of that. No one wants to hear a sob story on a day as warm such as this one.”

“It’s not a sob story,” he was quick to correct her. “It’s fucking awful that this happened to you.” A beat of silence and then – hesitatingly – he continued: “I don’t know what I’d do without my mum, to be honest. She’s kind of my favourite person in the world. Although you better not mention that to Sirius.”

Her heart fluttered at that. “Yeah, my mum was my favourite person too.”

He nodded, hands in the pockets of his light grey shorts now. “Do you look like her?”

“No,” she shook her head, tears inexplicably gathering in her eyes, “I really wish I did. Now even more so.”

Her mother – Rose Evans – had been a pretty blonde with grey eyes that crinkled with her wide smile. She had been tall too, while Lily was a very average height. She wished she had a few inches on her now. Perhaps this would have made her feel less overwhelmed. Perhaps it would have made her feel less impressed by his presence.

“What was your favourite thing about her?”

The question startled her and for a moment she was at a loss for words. No one had every asked her that before.

“Sorry,” he said, clearly taking the expression on her face to mean that it was a question he should not have asked her, “it’s none of my business, really. I just –”

“No,” she rushed to say, “I suppose I just didn’t know how to answer that exactly. No one has ever asked me that before, but I like that you did.” She sent him a smile and was momentarily blinded by the earnest look on his face, the genuine interest she found there. “I suppose my favourite thing about her was her ability to always make others feel like they were the most important person on the planet.” She smiled at the memory of her mother at her eighth birthday party, her smile lighting up the room as she had brought in Lily’s birthday cake, shaped like a witch’s hat, because she had been obsessed with magic. “Whenever you’d be in a room with her, she made you feel like you were worth the absolute world, like you were the sun in her universe.”

“She sounds like an incredible person,” he told her, reaching out for her hand and squeezing it briefly. “I reckon you must be a lot like her.”

Her hand tingled where he held hers, shooting up stars up the length of her arm and all the way up her spine. It was as if an entire galaxy had erupted inside of her.

She wanted to say something, wanted to laugh and tell him that he could hardly know, wanted to remind him that they had only just met, but his friends walked over, loud and boisterous as they laughed and made their way over to her Mini Cooper. He let go of her hand, clearing his throat before he ran his hand through his hair.

She let out a shaky breath before pushing off the car and making her way back inside the car.

They bumped elbows and apologised to one another at the same time.

It was odd, she thought, how you could both be strangers, but also feel as though – at some level – you were quite possibly meant to click, meant to collide, meant to cross paths. As if they were meant to share the same air, even if just for a little while.

His friends had fallen asleep roughly half an hour after they’d made their first stop. Traffic was slow and the music they now played was mellow.

His hands rested on his knees, every once in a while they’d twitch and so would her fingers on the steering wheel. It almost felt as if with every spasm, her heart would flutter and want to expand to welcome him inside her orb. She fancied herself Venus, having finally found her moon that would dance and circle around her.

I must be insane, she told herself. What am I thinking? It’s a good thing I’m not voicing any of this out loud. He would consider me an absolute nutter.

Next to her, he cleared his throat, his breath a little shaky as he asked: “So, you live in Brighton, yeah?”

She shook her head. “No, I just taught English to foreign students there over the summer,” she replied. “I actually live in Oxford.” She always felt a little awkward to admit it, perhaps because so many people in her life had turned their noses up at her for it. “I study Biochemistry there.”

He whistled as if impressed. “I knew you must be brilliant.”

She laughed softly. “Really?” she asked. “How?”

“It’s your vibe, I suppose,” he shrugged. “You look like you could run circles around all of us.” Then he added: “You must be quite the vision in a lab.”

“What?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Just that you’d stand out there, I think,” there was a pink tinge to his cheeks. “I practically grew up in one, you know. All I remember from my earliest childhood is my dad in a lab coat.”

“Your dad works in a lab?” she asked, interest piqued.

“My dad owns a lab,” he said before grimacing as he noticed her raise her eyebrows. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that –”

“It’s fine,” she reassured him. “I kind of gathered that you were a posh one.”

“I’m posh?” this time his eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“You definitely are,” she told him, a little amused that he would not know this about himself. “You look like you could be a prince.” She felt her cheeks heat up there, fearing that she might have revealed just a tad too much.

He, however, seemed not to take her words as a compliment, opting to scoff and roll his eyes. “My mum’s influence, probably,” he breezily replied. “She always forced etiquette on me and wanted me to speak like a proper Englishman, seeing as she’s got a bit of a Greek accent that people tend to make fun of her for a little.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said, frowning slightly, but he merely grinned.
 
“Don’t be. She’s a judge and a damn good and relentless one at that. She can stand her ground. Besides,” and here he sank back further in his seat, “it’s the thing that made my dad fall in love with her, she always says, so it’s all good. He, of course, claims that he loves absolutely everything about her, so –”

“You must take after him then,” the words escaped her before she could consider if it were wise to state such a thing.

He eyed her curiously. “Why would you say that?”

Her stomach swooped, her throat tightened with nerves. “Just that Sirius said you fall in love quickly,” she justified her earlier words. “It sounds like your dad is as much of a romantic.”

He laughed. “Well, yeah, I mean…” he seemed to mull on his response for a moment. “Perhaps so, but I am very much like my mum in practically everything else. My dad is a bit of an introvert, whereas my mum…” the corners of his lips twitch. “She’s got the big mouth and the iron will.” He flexed his fingers. “They are sickeningly in love, though. It was really rather embarrassing when I was younger.” She hummed, a smile playing at her lips and then he cleared his throat: “What about your parents?”

At once, she felt herself cower.

“Actually,” she said, dragging the word out a little, “it’s really rather complicated.” She could feel his eyes on her as she inhaled sharply. “I’m not actually my dad’s biological daughter, you see,” she told him. It was something she rarely shared with anyone. “My mum actually had an affair when my sister was two years old and that’s how I came to be.” She remembered the looks that the Evans family had always sent her when she was little, the whispers that would follow her. “I reckon that’s why my mum tried to make me feel extra special, because to a lot of people I was the result of her relationship with someone other than my dad.”

“When did you find out?” he asked her. Unlike many other people in her life, his question bore no judgement. Perhaps because he hadn’t known the people involved, maybe because he simply didn’t know her beyond the fact that she was someone who apparently picked up hitchhikers and drove them across the country.

She looked at him for a second, pointed at my hair. “When you’ve got hair like mine, it’s pretty difficult to keep such a secret hidden for long.”

His eyes seemed glued to her auburn waves, as if he was trying to memorise its different shades and bends. As if he tried to make sense of the many directions each individual hair seemed to want to take. Her hair might have been neat compared to his messy curls, it was still very much alive and appeared often to have a will of its own.

“You got lucky,” he said, sounding rather matter-of-fact. “You’ve got brilliant hair.”

She laughed at that, remembered all the times her sister had pulled at it in the past: You freak, she had hissed at her. She could still sometimes hear the snipping of scissors as her eight-year-old sister cut off her long locks when she was only five years old. “Thanks,” she told him, albeit a little reluctant and a little disbelieving. “I appreciate that.”

“Then again,” he continued a little nervously and these words she hadn’t seen coming and caused those galaxies to erupt once more: “pretty much everything about you seems to be just that.”

“You too,” the words slipped out, her cheeks coloured, she wished she could disappear.

Then – from the back seat – she heard Sirius groan: “For fuck’s sake, don’t make me puke.”

“Just listen to me,” Sirius shouted over the chaos that had ensued. “If you just take a left here.”

“Let her drive, Sirius!”

“If Google Maps says –”

A loud derisive snort interrupted James’ argument. “Right,” Sirius spoke, “because Google is all-knowing.”

“I mean,” Remus said with a shrug, “seeing as it has yet to let us down and there are literally hundreds of satellites up there pointing us in the right direction...”

“So what? We’re just going to stay in this car here – unmoving, may I add – for hours? Wait until the traffic has cleared up? They just said on the fucking news that the roads will be closed for at least two of them.”

“All right,” she spoke up, raising her voice in a clear signal to the boys that their discussion needed to be over. She felt a bit like she had when teaching English to a group of twenty Italian students, who had never seemed to stop their passionate chatting, cackling and bickering in their mother tongue. “I’ll take a left here and we’ll go to this tiny little village where there will most likely be absolutely nothing, but at least we’ll get to stretch our legs for a while –”

“Thank you!” Sirius threw up his hands. “At least there is one other person in the group with an actual set of brains.”

James glowered beside her. “Actually,” he articulated, “I was trying to be considerate, seeing as Lily actually has somewhere to be –” At that moment, Sirius cried out so loudly that Lily very nearly crashed her mother’s Mini Cooper into a tree.

“Shut up!” He sounded like a four-year-old on a sugar high, startling all of them. “Shut the actual fuck up!”

“Jesus, Padfoot,” Remus muttered, one look in the rear view mirror told her he had gone impossibly pale, hand resting on his chest. “Can you not?”

“It’s a bowling alley!” Sirius had practically clambered over Remus, nose pressed against the window. “We’ve got to go!”

That’s how – ten minutes and some profuse scolding from Remus directed at Sirius later – they found themselves putting on bowling shoes and entering their names into the machine – Star Boy, Roman Emperor, Peter the Great, Jaylor Pwift, Red – at an otherwise empty bowling alley.

Sirius was a wild bowler, Remus was meticulous and calculated, Peter seemed to favour the gutter, James was – she was not surprised – a natural and she was trying to heed all of their advice all at once (although she was discrediting Peter’s mostly, seeing as she was ahead of him).

“Just take this one,” James said, handing her a bowling ball, “and then just focus. Pretend as though none of us are here.” It seemed to be the best advice yet, seeing as she managed to throw her first spare.

They bowled quite seriously for roughly forty-five minutes, waiting for the traffic to clear up and then they booked another game and played at a more leisurely pace. Remus, Peter and Sirius squashed on one couch and arguing a little over Peter’s latest failed attempt, while she and James sat on the one opposite, a little too close for two people who had met only a couple of hours ago. Their thighs touched, their knees bumped into one another when they moved and his arm was slung casually on the back of the sofa they were lounging on, only inches away from being wrapped around her shoulders. It felt, weirdly and almost, like they were on a date, albeit one crashed by his mad, yet alluring group of friends.

“So, Red,” Sirius then piped up, ceasing his discussion with the other two for a moment, grinning wide as his eyes settled on the pair of them, as he lounged back comfortably with his hands behind his neck, “do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend, perhaps? Asking for a friend…” he paused for a moment, eyes flitting to the guy sitting next to her, “literally.”

“Fuck you,” James muttered from beside her as he got up for his turn to bowl and flashed Sirius the finger, “I swear to God you’re such a bloody nuisance.”

“It’s why you love me,” Sirius winked at Lily here. “Honestly, though, are you available or do you have some Oxbridge boy waiting for you or something?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees now, Remus – in the meantime – rolled his eyes at him and Peter watched James in awe as if just looking at him selecting a bowling ball would give him the insight he needed for him to hit at least one of the bowling pins. “You see, the friend I’m asking for has yet to hit a strike when it comes to love, speaking in bowling terms.”

“Bloody hell, Padfoot,” James was bright red now, “I’m right fucking here.”

Her stomach fluttered, her own cheeks having turned a rosy pink as well as she realised that her attraction might not have been as one-sided as she had feared.

Sirius looked at James, his face one of mock horror. “Oh, shit, Prongs,” he said on a gasp, “I was talking about Pete here,” the friend addressed looked up dazedly, a small frown on his forehead, clearly at a loss as to what Sirius had implied, “I had no idea that you might feel the same way about Red here…”

“You know what,” James said, “don’t mind me. I’m going to try and knock over some pins.”

He turned away from them, his back straightening and shoulders squaring as he stood stock still for a moment, as if he was seizing up his target perfectly. Then he moved, his arm swinging back as she said: “No one is waiting for me anywhere.” The ball slipped from his fingers as he stumbled, ball ending up in the gutter.

They were back on the road roughly half an hour later. James was – once more – going through her phone, selecting song after song and waitlisting them, so they would have – in his opinion – the perfect soundtrack to their developing friendship.

(“Friendship,” Sirius had snorted as he had said it. Both James and Lily had ignored him.)

They were roughly four hours away from Cokeworth. Four hours felt like both an eternity as well as too short a period in time to really get to know someone.

She and James had left the bowling alley feeling a little lightheaded, both their hearts beating rapidly. Yet, of course, they were largely unaware of the fact that they both seemed to be having this response to one another. However clear it might have been to Sirius – and Remus for that matter, but he would never be as indelicate about it as his friend – that Lily and James seemed to fancy the sight of one another, the pair were still largely unconvinced.

Lily on account of her own personal doubts and her conviction that – quite possibly so – Sirius had merely been teasing James and she shouldn’t think that he was actually asking her if she was single for James’ benefit, despite the fact that his reddened cheeks and his slipping bowling ball may have clearly pointed out that Sirius was more than just a little right.

James due to the fact that he sincerely believed a young woman such as Lily Evans to be completely out of his league – a student of Biochemistry at Oxford and the most beautiful being he had ever laid eyes upon – as she should have been – he had thought so the minute she had rolled her car to a stop beside them – a model, a film star or a singer like Taylor Swift herself for the looks God had granted her.

Lily, now increasingly aware of the minutes slipping by, had no idea, of course, that James Potter considered her such or she would have happily informed him that he was most definitely mistaken and that she would happily try to squeeze herself into his tight-knit group of people, if he would let her. However ridiculous this might sound.

But how do you say such a thing to anyone at all if you only just met them?

“Okay, okay, okay,” she shouted over the boys’ loud voices in the car, “never have I ever… barfed after a wild night out.”

“Ah, Red,” Sirius complained, “you must think I was born yesterday. You go to Oxford, there is no way –”

“Exactly,” she interrupted him, “I go to Oxford and as such know my limits.”

“No student knows their limits. It’s part of being young, Red. Live a little.”

“What?” Remus asked him. “You claim to feel alive when you’re hungover? I’m pretty sure last time you asked me to kill you so the headache would stop.”

“Slander!”

“All right, all right,” James then said, “I believe it’s my turn now anyway. Never have I ever –” a frown appeared on his forehead, causing it to crinkle cutely, if you were to ask her that is, “– had a s’more.”

“Wait,” Sirius guffawed, “hold the fuck up!”

“I’ve never gone camping,” James raised his hands in defence, “you know that mum has a distaste for what she considers to be a return to the time of the hunters and gatherers. Besides, you should know this about me. We’ve known each other since we were eleven for goodness sake.”

Sirius’ exasperation seemed to grow with every word that escaped James’ mouth. “You’ve really never had the only good thing to ever come out of America?”

“I resent that,” Remus muttered. “There’s plenty of great things that made it out of America.” He went largely ignored.

“Red,” Sirius tapped her shoulder, “we need to stop at Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s or whatever. We can’t have my best friend be a s’more virgin for a second longer –”

“Cars only just started moving again,” she protested. “We will never make it before dusk if we stop now.”

“Also,” James added, “there is no rush whatsoever when it comes to my loss of s’moreginity. I can live to see another day without one.”

“Hardly!” Sirius snorted. “I cannot believe you never told me this before.”

“It just never came up!”

“How is that even possible?”

“We were always too busy planning pranks.”

“Fair, I suppose.”

“Nice of you.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. You must know what this means.”

“What?”

“For our next holiday, we’re going to go camping and we’re going to roast marshmallows over a fire and make s’mores out of them. It’ll be great. Like this hitchhiking adventure we mindlessly and without any experience whatsoever embarked on.”

A brief pause followed.

“Red here can come, I suppose, and the two of you can share a tent –”

“Would you cut it out?” James’ fingers tousled his curls up, his other hand on his face in an attempt to hide his fierce blush, even though he clearly wasn’t successful for she noted it anyway. “How about you stop and think about what you might say, so I don’t have to die an embarrassed man?”

“That sounds boring,” Sirius said. “I bet Red here wouldn’t mind sharing with you, even though – admittedly – she does seem like a bit of a bore, seeing as she’s never puked her guts out after having had a few drinks too many.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment, actually. Thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” Sirius grumbled. “It wasn’t one, but okay.”

“Anyway,” Remus interrupted, “how about I go next? Never have I ever not finished a book I started.”

“God, I beg of you: get me out of here!”

“I’m really sorry about him,” James told her as they waited for his friends to return from the gas station they’d disappeared into in the hopes of finding a toilet. “I’m sorry about us, really. It’s probably a lot like travelling with a bunch of four-year-olds.”

She laughed. “Don’t give Remus too little credit. He’s at least seven, I think.”

He snort-laughed. “Don’t let him hear you say that,” his voice was deep, his shoulder bumping lightly and experimentally against hers, as if he was testing out whether this was allowed, whether she liked it. (She did.) “He will be devastated to hear you didn’t compare him to an eighty-year-old granddad.”

Their shoulders were touching, their hands dangling precariously close to one another. The back of his hand so much so that – if she wanted to – she could lift a finger and let it brush against his tan skin. It was incredibly tempting to do that. Just like it was very appealing to let slip that she would like to share a tent with him if he would ever take Sirius up on his suggestion to go camping, so she could experience his first s’more tasting and that she would love to watch the stars with him, stay up all night and chat and… use their mouths for other purposes altogether if he so wished.

“So…” his breath hitched a little in his throat, “I know this is weird –” Yes, she thought, yes a million times over if you’re suggesting what I hope you might be suggesting, “– but you mentioned that not everyone was all that thrilled you… happened or came to be, I suppose, and I was just wondering if you’ll have someone with you for support at your dad’s birthday.” She inhaled sharply. “I know it’s not my place, but I kind of, well, yeah –” there was a reddish tint to his face, “– I suppose I don’t like the idea of you – of any of my friends, really – not having anyone who is there for them and –”

“Friends?” She very nearly shrank.

“Well, yeah, I mean… we’ve spent hours together by now and it doesn’t take long for people to know they click with someone, right?” The hand of the shoulder that wasn’t touching hers flew up to his hair now, his glasses had slid down his nose slightly. “I mean, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like we do, you know. I figure that we click.”

His eyes questioned here, there was something in there that made her believe he was begging her to agree with him.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, moving a little away from him now. The loss of his body heat against hers should have been a relief given that it was so hot that she might as well melt, but somehow it wasn’t. “I think we click too.”

A grin pulled up the corners of his lips. “Good, because I –”

“It’s just that –” she swallowed hard, her mouth was very dry all of a sudden, “it’s just that I thought we didn’t just click as friends, I thought we might click a little… more.”

His eyes widened as he pushed up his glasses up his nose. “Oh.”

Her heart beat frantically, while her mind tried to analyse the inflection of the ‘oh’ he had just uttered. “And I know that’s even weirder, because it’s not as if –” she laughed at herself. “I mean, this isn’t me, okay? I’m not one of those people that just feels, I’m always a little guarded, keep people at bay half of the time and I think that’s because I’m just so messed up having grown up the way that I did with everyone knowing I wasn’t my dad’s –”

“Lily –” he licked his lips, turned to her, his hand reaching for hers, but they were interrupted.

“All right, we’re back!” Sirius announced loudly, stomping past them, not having perceived that he had just interfered with a moment they seemed to be having. She moved away from James, deliberately letting her eyes not meet his and she thought she heard him mutter a soft fuck, but she couldn’t be sure, because Sirius drowned him out. “Remus told me I had no time for a number two, so we better hope I don’t get gassy, because no one would survive that.”

“We can open windows,” Remus remarked dryly and with a roll of his eyes.

“On a motorway?” Sirius cocked his eyebrow. “You know Pete here gets earaches.”

She got into the driver’s seat, very much aware of the fact that James seemed to dawdle for a moment, let his friends get into the car first before he also ducked in and sat down. His eyes focused on her side profile, she pretended not to notice this.

“We’ll just have to make do, won’t we?” she proposed in an attempt to diffuse the bickering and to distract herself from the fact that she had just bared her very heart and soul, reaching for her phone to start Google Maps, fingers bumping against James’ as he had wanted to do the same. A spark shot up her fingers. She dropped her hand. “Sorry,” her voice was pitchy.

“No, no, no,” he said, sounding incredibly awkward, “it’s your phone, I shouldn’t have –”

Silence filled the car for a moment, something which hadn’t happened so far that day. Something had shifted in the air too and this had nothing to do with what Sirius had warned them for only a minute ago.

“Why are you guys so weird?” Suspicion made Sirius narrow his eyes. “Did something happen?”

“No,” both James and Lily were quick to deny at practically the same time.

To stop any further comment, she turned the key and started the engine, reversing out of her parking spot as James turned the music up just a little louder, Harry Styles’ voice filling the car as she breathed out in relief.

He slept with his head against the window, clutching his glasses between his long fingers. She glanced at him every once in a while, his mouth slightly open, his chest moving evenly with every inhale and exhale. Seeing him like this had an almost calming effect on her, although this might also have to do with the fact that now that he was asleep, he couldn’t respond to what she had just revealed to him about an hour before.

They had roughly two hours left to drive. She had seen her sister’s messages pop up on her phone and she hadn’t even needed to read them to feel the sentiment of them due to the quick succession of the messages she received. She didn’t doubt that her sister was complaining that she wasn’t there yet.

The boys in the back were also quiet. Peter snored softly with his mouth gaping open, Sirius looked so good in his sleep that it was unfair, while Remus met her gaze in the rear view mirror and sent her a soft smile.

“Peace at last, right?” he asked, voice soft in consideration of his friends.

“Yeah,” she said on an exhale, flexing her fingers on the wheel. “It’s a lot closer to what I imagined this drive up would be like.”

“Do you regret picking us up from the side of the road?”

She considered this for a moment, her lips pursing before she shook her head. “No, I quite enjoy this little curveball,” she confessed. “I have to admit I was not looking forward to driving up all by myself.”

“A little background noise can be most welcome sometimes, can it not?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s been a little background noise,” she smiled, “but I do agree with you. It’s been really nice to be part of your journey and to get to know all of you.”

Remus chuckled softly. “We’re a lot, I’m sure,” he said with a shake of his head. “But you seem to be able to keep up with us pretty well.”

She hummed, checking her mirrors and switching lanes.

“I’m sorry if we interrupted something between you and James earlier,” Remus then piped up. “If I had known, I would have distracted Sirius a little bit longer.”

She felt herself flush. “Oh,” she squirmed a little in her seat, “there was nothing to interrupt, we were just chatting –”

“It didn’t seem like nothing,” Remus said knowingly. “Not to James, at least.”

Her eyes flitted briefly to the sleeping figure beside her. He was as peaceful as he had been minutes before, his face having an almost angelic quality. She found herself thinking she’d quite like to stare at him for hours.

She didn’t say anything, decided to focus on the road instead.

“Perhaps you’ll get another chance,” Remus told her, there was something that sounded a lot like reassurance in his voice. “Some things sort themselves out almost. Some things are meant to be.”

If she hadn’t found herself slowly but surely falling for the man sitting in the passenger seat beside her after having met him only half a day before, she would have laughed at Remus, but now that she realised that sometimes fate had a strange way of surprising you and intervening when you least expected it, she didn’t.

She parked at the Cokeworth train station, shutting off the car’s engine. The boys in the back gathered their stuff, backpacks were slung over shoulders as she took her phone out of the car kit holder and busied herself by opening her sister’s train of messages about their father’s birthday cake and the fact that she was running late.

James was still sat in the passenger seat beside her, his hand on the door handle.

“You coming, Prongs?” Sirius asked, cocking his head.

“Yeah, I’m –” she heard him exhale shakily. “How about you check the train times? I’ll be out in a minute or so.”

Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, nerves raced through her veins. She couldn’t look at him.

“All right, mate,” Sirius said.

The boot of the car slammed closed and three out of the four hitchhikers she’d allowed in her car trudged of to the train station. She let out an uneven breath.

“I hope it’s okay that I’ve stayed behind for a bit,” he sounded as anxious as she felt. “I just wanted to have a chance to thank you and –” a swallow, “– and to maybe come back to what you said earlier about us clicking a little more than just as friends –”

She felt incredibly warm, her face had likely turned scarlet. “You don’t have to –” she bit her lip. “I know it wasn’t necessarily well-timed and it’s okay if I freaked you out –”

“No, please,” she looked up at him then, he had turned towards her fully, “you said what I was too much of a chicken to admit and –” he ducked his head, laughed a little. “I suppose what I would really like is to get your number, so we can – I don’t know – keep talking and maybe meet up some time?” She pushed some of her hair behind her ear. “Or maybe I should give you mine, so you can make the call and decide whether you’d like to see me again or if you’d rather not –”

“James,” she said, her fingers trembled as she held out her phone to him, their eyes met, “I’d really like to get your number.”

His face was like the sun.

“Really?” he asked and she laughed loudly this time.

“Yeah,” she let her free hand fall on her lap, fingers inches from his, “I really, really would.”

He took the phone from her hand and eagerly typed his phone number in, lips forming the numbers as he did and looking up at her sheepishly: “I don’t want to put in the wrong number and risk you never being able to contact me.”

“That would be a tragedy.”

“Luckily, I know where you live.” He grimaced then. “Fuck, that sounded so much more nefarious than I had intended it to –”

“It’s okay,” she giggled. “I know what you meant.”

He handed back her phone, their fingers touching, their breaths catching, their eyes meeting.

“I, uh –” he leaned a little towards her, “can I –?”

“Yes,” she breathed, leaning in as well.

Then, a fraction of a second before their lips were set to meet, a knock sounded behind them and James – startled – hit his head on the roof of her Mini Cooper.

“Fuck,” he said, rubbing the top of his head.

“Are you okay?” she asked, reaching for him.

As she did, she heard Sirius shout a loud: “Oi, lovebirds! Train departs in five.”

“I swear, Padfoot,” James groaned as he frowned at his best friend and brother over his shoulder, “terrible fucking timing.”

He opened the door to the car then and clambered out. She did the same on her side, rounding the car and coming to stand in front of him on her tiptoes, pressing her lips against his in a fleetingly nervous kiss.

He stared at her dazedly when she pulled away, biting her lip as she stared at him uncertainly. She was about to step backwards when his arms circled her waist and he pulled her back against him, lips coming down to meet hers a second time. This time less fleeting and less nervous, their lips parting within seconds, his fingers digging into the skin of her arse as she pushed herself up harder against him.

He made her see absolute stars. The Milky Way paled in comparison.

“Three minutes,” Sirius then warned. “You might want to swap saliva at a different time.”

They parted.

“Text me,” he said, breathing heavily. “Please just –” he pressed his forehead against hers, “soon.”

“You’ll have one before you’re on the train.”

They untangled themselves, Sirius shoved James’ backpack at him with a roll of his eyes and then saluted Lily, turning around to rush back to the station. James walked backwards, a grin lighting up his face as he pointed at her phone.

“Better start texting now,” he raised his eyebrows. “Otherwise you might not make it.”

“All right,” she told him, lifting her phone, but eyes not leaving his. “You hurry up, though, or you might not exactly make it on.”

“I wouldn’t mind too much, to be honest,” he shrugged.

“Soon,” she told him, repeating his earlier words.

“Soon,” he nodded and then – with a final lingering glance – he turned around and started to sprint.

She watched him, let out a disbelieving breath of air and then turned her face to the screen, starting a text to – she rolled her eyes here, although it was fondly so, her lips tingling still – Jaylor Pwift.