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“Are you joking?”
His mother raised one eyebrow, looking at him innocently over the top of her glasses. “I would never joke about such a thing, James.”
He frowned. “This is child cruelty,” he told her. “I could report you to the Ministry, you know.”
“You’re eighteen, darling,” Euphemia pointed out, returning her focus to the newspaper in front of her. “Comfortably of age. But you’re welcome to try, you know where the Floo is.”
Sometimes, James could use his renowned charm, his quick wit and award-winning smile (if self-awarded ones counted, which, in his opinion, they did) to get out of things he didn’t want to do. With his mother, as the much longed-for and anticipated only child, it worked maybe sixty-five percent of the time. As he’d got older, and with it, more gobby—and, according to his father, ever more like his mother—the odds of getting his way had shrunk accordingly, the tragic result of dimple effectiveness wearing off. These days, it was a roll of the dice as to whether she would indulge him; it seemed as if this was one of the times that she would not.
He glanced over towards his father for some semblance of support; Fleamont merely shrugged, a ‘not my paddock, not my hippogriffs' expression on his face, as if he had nothing to do with Sleekeazy at all.
“Well,” James said, with a put-upon sigh, “if this is how you want to treat your only son—”
“Sirius would help, but he’s got his shifts at the pub,” his mum interjected. “Anyway, it’s just one weekend out of your downtime—”
“A long weekend!”
“—and you know how well we do out of the Christmas market each year. You might even enjoy it!”
“Yes,” James agreed, “right up to the point when I wither and die from hypothermia.”
“Oh, darling, you are ever so dramatic,” Euphemia tutted, not seeing the irony in the way that she tossed the errant end of her fuchsia and gold scarf over her shoulder. “I don’t know where you get it from.”
He levelled her with a look. “You don’t?”
Predictably enough, the conversation deteriorated further from there.
James had not won the argument. As if there had ever been the vaguest possibility. Nope, he was stuck with running the Sleekeazy stall at the Christmas market, all weekend long.
“Now is the winter of my discontent,” he had intoned, staring nobly out the kitchen window at the frost-covered garden the night before.
“That’s not what that means,” Sirius had said, his version of being supportive, and had sidetracked the whole conversation by trying to summarise the plot of Richard III for James.
(That’d teach him to get Sirius tickets to the Muggle theatre last Christmas.)
So he’d lost the argument, and he didn’t even get the chance to be dramatic about it before it was time to trudge upstairs to bed, knowing he was going to need to be rested and ready to go the next day.
A lot had changed since he had left Hogwarts a mere five months ago. His life was no longer so comfortably predictable: no more Quidditch training to organise, no more patrols around the castle, no more lessons, no more teachers. He still saw Sirius every day, given they hadn’t moved out of the homestead yet (it turned out that his best friend, the one who, as a dog, regularly ate mysterious things off the forest floor, was extremely picky when it came to flats—the hunt for somewhere that suited his exacting standards seemed likely to drag on until summer, at this rate), and he saw Remus and Peter usually at least once a week, where work allowed.
And while before there had been a more even spread of time between studying, lessons, and spending time with his mates, now, work seemed to dominate everything. James had slogged his guts out for an internship with the Ministry’s Curse Breakers, while Pete had taken up a secretarial role in the Transportation department; Remus had managed to secure a job through his father as a sort of freelance research assistant for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. That was nice, in a way; every now and then, when time allowed, they could meet up for lunch in the cafeteria.
Rather than join his friends and earn sub-par wages in a stressful job, Sirius, who declared working for the Ministry akin to “being forced into a lifetime of wearing tweed and talking about the traffic on the Floo Network”, had instead strolled up to the village pub at the start of July and charmed his way into a paid position. It did, at least, mean they got ‘mate’s rates’ on beer and crisps.
James had known that all of them getting jobs and being ‘grown ups’ would change things—he wasn’t daft. It was just a bit of a surprise how much it changed things.
And that was just his close mates. Their other friends—well, in truth, the Gryffindor girls, because by the end of seventh year that group had been all he’d cared about—felt far-flung and unreachable in comparison to the closeness they’d shared by the end of school. Dorcas was studying in Finland under some renowned Magizoologist; Mary had taken on a role at the Daily Prophet (to hear her tell it, doing not much more than making tea and filing, at the moment); Lily was waiting for the start of her Potions Institute graduate course, kicking off in the New Year. James wasn’t sure what she was doing in the meantime. The few times he saw her, he meant to ask, but it either felt like too awkward a question, or he got distracted by…. well, her, and forgot to ask.
(“How should I know?” Sirius had replied, the one time James had asked him instead. “Why, worried she’s found someone to occupy her time if you know what I mean?” This had been followed by several lascivious winks, suggestive eyebrow-raises and pointed elbow nudges, until James had given him a hearty shove and he’d fallen, cackling, off his chair.)
(James wasn’t worried about that. He knew he had no right to be, besides. Seventh year had put paid to that. Any chance that he might have had, the slightest inkling in the way she smiled at him over the breakfast table, or moved closer to read a prefect duty rota over his shoulder, or sought out his gaze across a crowded common room… well, that slightest inkling had faded, quietly, gently, as the days went by and they just stayed, resolutely, friends.)
(He’d always been guilty of wishful thinking.)
(And anyway, he tried not to obsess too much over what might have been.)
(Tried.)
But even with all of these changes, even with the way things felt a little bit more complicated, a little bit more distant, one thing was apparently the same: he was, it seemed, doomed to be out and about in freezing cold weather. In the ‘before’ times, it was Quidditch practices. Now, it was his mother’s devious ways. He couldn’t yet work out why she had set him up so brutally, but he would get there.
‘Cold’ didn’t even begin to cover this weather, actually. The sky was clear and blue, and the sun shone dimly, not that it was doing anyone any good. Overnight, the temperature had dropped to minus six, and as James left the house at just after eight the next morning, it certainly didn’t feel like it had got any warmer since.
He wasn’t sure which genius had first come up with the idea of a Christmas market. But, as he walked and slowly lost all sensation in his toes from the cold even in spite of the warming charm he’d cast on his boots, he was inclined to make it his life’s mission to find out, hunt them down and, if not hurt them, then really annoy them for a while.
There was a time when these markets—cutesy Swiss-style cabins, filled with gifts or consumables—had solely been the business of Muggles in mainland Europe. James knew this because he had spent several winters of his youth being dragged around a few in Germany, and Belgium, and one particularly boring one in Austria by his mother, who found the whole thing endlessly charming. Unfortunately for James, the trend had crossed the channel and flooded every market town or cathedral city from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. For the most part, these could still be avoided with a can-do attitude and a bit of forward planning: that was, until a few years ago, when some bright spark at the Ministry realised that wixen were just as capable of parting with their hard-earned money as Muggles were, dreaming up a magical, mystery market that changed locations each year, drawing a flood of witches and wizards from all over the country to some poor, unsuspecting town for a three-day bonanza.
Every year since, some sleepy, little-known village turned into a tourist-filled nightmare with the unannounced arrival of the market. Its streets became flooded with identikit chalet-like huts, decked out in wreaths and twinkly lights, and a permanent fug of sugar and mulled wine spices lingered in the air. Although it had only been running for a few years, it had quickly bloomed out of control, each one larger and more lavish than the last. James guessed it had something to do with the general aesthetics of quaint British villages at Christmas, which usually looked (or, cynically, could be made to look) like something off a postcard, or, if you squinted, Narnia, especially in the winter. People seemed to love it, and it had certainly done wonders for the reputation of the Ministry for starting it up, not to mention the value it had added to the Gringotts vaults of wizarding businesses.
This, of course, included Sleekeazy, his father’s company, who’d been doing a roaring trade on their Christmas Grooming Gift Sets every year. Usually, a parade of temp workers were brought in to run the Sleekeazy chalet, but one way or the other—and James, not normally the suspicious type, thought it was done with purposeful malice, presumably to ruin three out of the only ten days he had off from his internship—only one had been hired this year, not nearly enough to look after the store on their own, and they couldn’t even deign to work the full three days.
“How convenient,” James had muttered mutinously over dinner after the betrayal had finally been revealed.
“Not really,” his dad had replied. “The opposite, in fact. Could you pass the potatoes?”
So this was to be his break, then. Freezing his arse off in Heidi’s garden shed for ten hours a day in the hope of shifting some of his dad’s ‘Christmas Spice Hair Elixir’, stuck next to some miserable temp worker who—if previous staff were anything to go by—would have the sense of humour of an injured flobberworm. At least today he’d be on his own; James knew himself to be reliably decent company, even when his extremities were succumbing to frostbite. Only two days to get through in the company of some stranger. He was usually what most would call a social butterfly—or what his brother would call ‘a chatty bastard’—but he’d always found something a bit off-putting about people who worked for his dad. Maybe he was paranoid, but he always felt they were judging him; measuring him against the standards of the great Fleamont Potter, and finding him wanting. There was only so much small talk about the weather he could cope with, anyway.
The only upside of all of this nonsense was that, by luck, or happenstance, or perhaps bribery, the market was in Godric’s Hollow this year, which meant that at least he didn’t have to waste too much time on the Floo network, or Apparating to a frozen, muddy field in the middle of nowhere.
By the time he’d made the short walk from home to the market, most of the other stall-holders were already setting up for the day, and he could see a horde of visitors had started gathering down by the church where they’d set up the designated Apparition Zone. It was going to be a busy one.
Trying not to already feel irritated before things had even properly begun, James made his way to the Sleekeazy hut. As Fleamont and Euphemia were people with a fair amount of sway in the Ministry, they had secured a prime spot on the main drag, such as it was. At least that would mean that he probably wouldn’t have the chance to get bored. Just pneumonia.
As he got situated—switching on the tiny magical heater, which gave out what could only generously be called heat (it was more like being gently breathed on by someone with lung capacity issues)—he checked his pocket, where the two-way mirror lay alongside the wad of parchment that the lads used to communicate. It had been an end-of-Hogwarts project, the four of them each quietly unsure about a future in which they didn’t spend every day together, living in the same room, eating the same meals. It hadn’t taken long, of course, not with their combined brainpower and a relentlessly positive approach, and they all felt a touch more reassured to have the ability to contact each other at a moment’s notice, if they needed to. Much easier than owl post, and far fewer droppings involved, too.
(He had thought, long and hard, about setting up a similar parchment for him and Evans. Ultimately, he’d gone backwards and forwards on it for so long—would it be inappropriate? Would she think he was trying it on? Would she take one look at it in his out-stretched hand and think that all his claims of friendship over the past two years had been a pathetic cover for his actual undying love and devotion?—that he missed his chance altogether.
It was fine. For the best, probably. He wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on any other thing in the whole world if he’d had instant access to Lily Evans stashed in his pocket, even if it was only access via writing.)
The parchment, often filled with the ramblings of at least one of the Marauders, was mainly empty this morning. Not a surprise, really; if they had any sense, they’d all still be in bed. The only message was scrawled across the top, in Sirius’s distinctive cursive, which simply read:
what do elves learn at school?
He shoved the parchment and mirror back in his pocket, and didn’t have the chance to see Sirius’ second message ('the elf-abet'), because the market opened and he didn’t have a moment to himself again until it was time to drag his frozen limbs home.
“Oh, good! You’re still alive!” Euphemia beamed as he trudged through the front door that evening. “There’s soup on the stove for you, dear.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” James replied sniffily, nonetheless making a beeline for the kitchen. “I will not be mocked.”
“If you say so, darling.” She followed him, Summoning a bowl and a crusty loaf of bread to the table. “Did you have fun?”
“Fun,” he repeated, turning away from the soup—vegetable, it smelled like, not that he cared about anything as long as it was hot—to fix Euphemia with a stern stare. “That’s not the word I would use, mother.”
“Oh, dear, I’ve been ‘mother'ed,” she tutted, patting him on the shoulder as she moved to ladle out some soup for him.
He decided to ignore her input. “No, fun is not the word for a day spent in the arctic ice out there, having to talk to people who don’t understand how discounts work, where no ruddy charms last more than twenty minutes because of the wards and the sheer volume of concentrated magic—”
“Ah, well.” His mum placed the bowl of soup in front of him, an unsubtle, but, admittedly, welcome way of cutting off his rant. “You never know, maybe tomorrow will be much better.”
He sat down, and let the steam warm his poor, frozen face. “Yes,” he agreed. “And maybe I’ll be made Minister for Magic.”
“That’s the spirit, dear,” she smiled, as if she had not heard the heavy undercurrent of sarcasm in his voice. “Tomorrow is another day.”
Fortunately, he was too busy inhaling his soup to bother with a reply.
James had slept quite well, and, seeing the sun once more in the clear and cloudless sky, wondered if maybe he could try a bit more positivity today. Or at least he could try to prepare himself more for what inevitably lay ahead: extra layers of clothing, a few secret stashes of Honeydukes in his pockets, a brief chat with his dad about how better to explain the customer discounts available.
However, nothing could have prepared him for what awaited him at the Sleekeazy stall.
A familiar smile. Bright green eyes. Was this a cold-induced hallucination? Because it looked an awful lot like…
“About time!” Lily said cheerily as he came to an abrupt halt in front of the chalet. “I was beginning to think I’d been left to fend for myself.”
Resisting the urge to reach out and touch her—to make sure it was really her, not a mirage, and not to commit an act of harassment so early in the day— James could only stare, eyes wide. He’d thought he was early, early enough to get settled in on the less creaky of the two folding chairs; early enough to seem hard-working and diligent to his new colleague, whoever they may have been. But evidently, he wasn’t early enough, because there she was, Lily Evans, just about the last person he expected to see, straightening tins of Mulled Spice Styling Pomade like she owned the place.
He struggled to reconcile his friend—his good friend, his friend who, yes, he had been fairly well in love with for at least two years now—in this new setting. Lily Evans belonged in oak-panelled libraries, or in a booth at The Three Broomsticks; she belonged across the desk from him in the Heads’s Office, or teasing him in the Great Hall, or—more recently—meeting up as part of a group at the Leaky Cauldron, where they would take part in the monthly quiz and he would continue to perfect the act of not being as hopelessly besotted as he actually was. She belonged in soft candlelight, not here in the dim morning light of a Somerset morning.
“But,” he said, like the intelligent, well-spoken young man that he was, “hang on. You’re—”
“Lily Evans, yes,” she agreed with that lovely, bright smile. “I believe we’ve met before?”
Oh, sweet merciful Merlin, why was he suddenly incapable of coherent thought? “Yes, but—”
“A girl’s gotta pay her bills.” She glanced at the nearest price tag with interest.. “Are we working on commission?”
“Evans,” he said again, because he didn’t seem to be capable of saying anything else. “What are you—”
“I rather thought you’d be too busy slogging your guts out at that Curse Breakers internship to be out here in the icy tundra—-”
“Break,” he blurted, before clearing his throat. He needed to pull himself together. Urgently, before he made an absolute tit of himself. “Because the work’s so—you know. They make you have longer breaks between stints.”
He still couldn’t quite believe she was here. Lily—his Lily, presumably sent here from the temp agency, Merlin bless them whoever they were (he had to restrain himself from immediately finding out and sending them a huge bouquet of roses, maybe more, was it too much to spell out the words THANK YOU in flowers? Probably.) She was bundled up in enough layers to visit the North Pole, including a fleece blanket she’d draped over her knees. Waves of that beguiling deep red hair tumbled out from beneath her woolly hat, almost as startling against her pale skin as her sparkling eyes.
Not that he mentally catalogued the different ways her eyes could sparkle. He was a gentleman, and perfectly sane, thank you very much.
“I’d have owled you,” she was explaining, gesturing to the folding chair next to hers. He nodded (after all, if he stood there gawping much longer, he’d not only look like a lunatic, but probably also get run over by over-eager market goers) and edged around the counter, falling into the creaky chair at her side. “But poor old Terrence has got an injured wing, so I’m making him rest as much as possible.”
“Oh, sure,” he nodded. A small, sad part of him hoped that was why he hadn’t heard from her much lately. “A nice surprise, anyway. I wasn’t sure who I was going to be stuck with.”
“Just stuck with me, I’m afraid,” she laughed. “Bad luck, eh?”
More like best luck. “I’m sure I’ll cope,” he grinned. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”
If she thought his question was boring, she at least had the decency not to show it. She’d always been diplomatic like that. “No,” she said. “But I’ve been given some notes on the different products, so I’ve been studying up. You can test me if you want—there’s nothing I don’t know about beard cream.”
“That makes one of us, then.”
She smiled, and reached out to brush her thumb briefly—bafflingly, deliciously—across his chin. “You’ve no need for it, to be fair.”
It was times like this when Sirius would pull him aside, grip him by the shoulders and mutter, “She. Is. Flirting. With. You!”, staccato and irritated at his brother’s apparent blindness. But to James, it wasn’t blindness (not beyond his actual blindness, and that was what glasses were for, surely); it was just how they were. Since they’d become friends, moving from tentative to firm to dare he say it close, they’d just been like that—tactile and joking and sweet. It was just how they communicated.
(One time, late seventh year, James had explained it to Sirius as “she sees me like a brother, Padfoot.” After rolling his eyes as slowly and dramatically as he could, Sirius had replied, bluntly, “anyone treating their brother like that needs locking up, mate.”
They’d had to agree to disagree.)
“I could grow a beard,” James replied, feeling this was a point worth defending, if only to get his attention away from how it had felt when her skin touched his. “If I wanted to. But apparently it’s a hazard in my line of work.”
She wrinkled her nose fondly. “What, do they think if you have a beard it will catch fire, or…accidentally catch and house a demonic spirit?”
“You never know,” he said, aiming for a tone of great wisdom. He wasn’t certain he reached it. “And I’d hate to be the first person to find out for sure. I’d be laughed out of my internship.” He cast a grin her way. “Is that what you want, Evans? For me to be destitute and with nary a prospect?”
“Of course not,” she replied sweetly. “You’d have your beard to bring you comfort, though.”
Any further discussion of a beard was derailed by the arrival of their first customer, who Lily leapt forward to deal with, something which James was grateful for—for several reasons. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said he didn’t know that much about Sleekeazy’s stock: his hair wouldn't have behaved for even a potion or lotion from Merlin himself, so what was the point? And, although he prided himself on being persuasive, he didn’t have any experience in sales. It was useful, surely, to watch someone else exemplify those high standards he set for himself, a standard which he could aim for.
And, yes, he was mainly grateful because it gave him a chance to try to gather himself—his jumbled brain, his heart, still thumping wildly in his chest from her fleeting touch—back together. His interactions with Lily, over the years, had always tended to go one of two ways: either he was verbose, full of beans, over-confident you might say; or the very sight of her seemed to make all the words vanish from his head. Neither option was ideal, and he’d long hoped for a middle ground, but it just didn’t seem possible.
Today, he wasn’t—so far—being too much of an idiot, but the surprise at finding her there still hung over him. It felt a bit like his mind was prodding him every few moments, whispering, look, it’s Lily!
He knew it was Lily. He always knew it was Lily.
So it seemed like a gift, however small, to be able to calm himself down a bit now. How he was capable of feeling like that after what couldn’t have been much more than five minutes in her presence, and in spite of so many layers of clothing that the most he could see of her was a few square inches of her face, was anyone’s guess.
He’d always been a glutton for punishment, he supposed.
A brief lull, late morning.
“Well, I can see why I was called upon.” Lily had that lovely, familiar light of mischief in her eyes. “I hope yesterday wasn’t a complete disaster.”
James looked up from where he was trying, in vain, to set the fan heater to ‘oscillate’ instead of its current setting, which seemed to be ‘faintly exhale in no particular direction of value’. “Eh?”
She gestured to the display of waxes and pomades. “I mean, given that I am single-handedly keeping your father’s company in Christmas trade.”
“You make it sound like I have done absolutely nothing all morning," James replied.
“Well—” she started with a laugh.
“I sold that woman some beard cream,” he argued, “and her husband didn’t even have a beard!”
“You may have had fits of luck," she replied, “but you know for a fact that I am out selling you three to one.”
“That seems a bit of an exaggeration.”
“A natural salesperson," she said lightly. ”That’s what they’re saying about me, on the street.”
“0h? The street?” he asked. “Which street would that be?”
She gestured to the fake paving that ran through the rows of shops. “The market street, of course.”
“I suppose you have done a good job with those colour protection clarifying shampoos,” he allowed.
“When one has hair such as mine, it makes the product seem even finer," she replied with a twinkle in her eye.
“I’m going to pretend that isn’t some kind of insult on my own hair,” he said archly, “which we both know you think is absolutely cracking.”
“We both do, do we?”
“Besides,” he huffed, “I did just fine without you yesterday.” He paused; squinted at her in the weak mid-morning sun. “Where were you, anyway? I thought these gigs were always three-day contracts…”
“Usually they are,” she agreed. “But I’d already committed to a day's work elsewhere, and you know me—”
“Your word is your bond,” James nodded in understanding.
“Exactly,” she smiled. “Luckily, they let me off, said they’d see if someone else could cover the first day.”
“Well, ‘they’ failed at that task,” he told her, affecting an air of weary, put-upon resignation that he thought she’d enjoy (and which she did, if her growing, fond smile was anything to go by). “I was out here alone, fending for myself against the hordes.”
Lily reached out to pat him on the shoulder, a touch that felt like it set him alight even through the many layers of clothing between her hand and his skin. “You poor thing,” she replied. “And then today to have the indignity—”
“Um, excuse me—”
“The embarrassment, of being outsold and outshone by some measly temp worker,” she finished, her smile as bright as her eyes. “You’re being very brave in the face of all this adversity, Potter.”
“Hmm.” There was no plane of existence where he could bring himself to mind about any of this ribbing, not that he was about to tell her that. She could say whatever she wanted to him and he’d just enjoy how much she enjoyed it. “If you say so, Evans.”
She patted him again, her hand lingering for just a moment before she drew it back into her lap, casting her gaze back out to the crowds in front of them, her smile never dimming. “I do.”
The market was busy, and the morning seemed to pass at a breakneck pace—apart from a few short opportunities to chat, it was mainly so hectic that he had very few opportunities to embarrass himself further. He was going to try to forget when Lily came back from her lunch break, telling James that she’d had a ‘roast beef and Yorkshire pudding wrap to die for’ and he’d stumbled through something about being ready to die (to her raised eyebrows and in direct opposition to his brain, telling him for the love of all that is good and pure, SHUT UP ) before he hurried off for his own break.
Not his finest hour. But, he reflected, not his worst, either.
Another brief lull, mid-afternoon.
“Lily?”
Lily looked up from reading the small print on the back of a bottle of Lustrous Shine Conditioning Spray. “Yes, James?”
“It’s pretty cold.”
“No disagreement here," she nodded.
He caught her gaze and nodded his head towards a set of spindly, ornate silver scissors in a box nearby. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “and I reckon that it’s so cold, I could plunge those beard trimming scissors into my leg and I wouldn’t feel a thing.”
She looked as though she were contemplating the prospect. For his part, James was glad that she was giving his ideas due consideration. “Maybe,” she allowed. “It is very cold. But still, I’m not sure that’s such a good plan.”
“Ahh, Evans, that's so sweet,” he said, gloved hand to his heart. “You don’t want me to be injured.”
“It’s more that I’m thinking about the headlines in The Daily Prophet tomorrow,” she replied. “You know—Son of Sleekeazy owner bleeds all over latest line of hair products—not exactly good publicity.”
“Fair point,” he allowed, and paused. “Plus I’ve got quite thick jeans on, anyway. It’d be hard work.”
“But I think the fact you’re considering having to do that means it’s probably time to renew the heating charm, don’t you?” Lily suggested.
James nodded his agreement and reached for his wand, settling in to start the complicated process—a frustratingly, irritatingly, pointless process, because of the wards set up around the market—of applying the new charms. A gentle, faint sense of warmth settled over them, and he cleared his throat.
“So, when is it you start your potions thing again?” he asked, as if he didn’t know exactly when it started.
“First week of January,” she replied.
“Excited?” he asked.
“Sort of.” She hesitated. “I’m bricking it, to be honest.”
“What?” he asked, frowning. “Why are you bricking it?” To think that she, Lily Evans, of all people would be scared of something that she was absolutely perfect for… it was a completely baffling thought.
“Well, you know,” she started, flashing him an awkward smile. He could tell this was starting to get a bit more real for her. “Take your pick. Not being good enough, not being able to get back into the studying mindset after this time out of school, not having the basis of knowledge that so many pureblood families have… The greatest hits, basically.”
He had never wanted to make someone see his point of view so clearly before. Well, that might’ve been a slight exaggeration, but it certainly felt pressing at this moment. “Evans, that's insane,” he told her. “You’re gonna be comfortably the cleverest person there—probably more than the people leading the bloody course! What you don’t know about potions isn’t worth knowing.”
“Being decent in class at Hogwarts isn’t the same as—”
James didn’t like to interrupt (and especially not Lily, who was so beautiful when she talked. Or…did anything at all, really) but he couldn’t let this continue. “Okay, well, ‘decent’ for a start is a vast underestimation,” he pointed out. “And you walked all over pretty much every pureblood in that class anyway. You can’t let this all get into your head. You’re so much better than they are. Everybody knows it.”
“Do they?” she wondered, half joking, sounding a little fainter than she had before.
“Everyone except you, apparently,” he replied, trying to lift the mood a little. “Trust me, Lil. You’re gonna fucking smash it.”
She shot him a small, nervy smile. He wanted to hug her so much that it felt physically uncomfortable not to wrap his arms around her. “Wish I had some of that Potter Optimism.”
He smiled gently back, and settled for reaching out to give her hand a squeeze. “You can have some of mine,” he told her. “I’ve got plenty to spare.”
Her smile finally matched his own, and she gazed back at him for a long moment—a long moment that would have been perfect, he thought, if someone hadn’t come along and asked about anti-dandruff elixir.
The afternoon proved as hectic as the morning had been. Finally, the time came to close up, and they set about their tasks quietly: James guessed she was as tired—and as cold—as he was. It was only then that he thought to check the parchment in his pocket, finding not much apart from another missive from Sirius.
why are mummies such big fans of christmas?
James frowned. Was working behind the bar at the local pub already destroying his best friend’s brain? He didn’t think they were allowed to drink on the job, but—
“They enjoy wrapping.”
He looked up, only mildly alarmed to find Lily at his elbow; her cheeks had flushed a delicate pink, something which he felt he should attribute to the cold rather than anything else. “Eh?”
“They enjoy wrapping,” she said again, nodding to the parchment. “You know. Because they’re wrapped in bandages?” She paused, suddenly looking mortified. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to read over your shoulder or anything…”
“Oh, Merlin,” he murmured.
“I just, you know, happened to glance,” she added, looking more embarrassed by the second. It was endearing, and a bit of an overreaction, given how close they’d become as co-Heads. “Sorry—”
“No,” he said, with a quick shake of his head. “No, you’re fine. I’ve just realised… Sirius is sending us a Christmas joke each day.” At that, Lily’s wash of worry gave way to a relieved, and amused, smile. “And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
“Well,” she considered, a look of mischief in her eyes, “it’s never too late to change your identity and find new friends.”
James laughed fondly. “True,” he agreed. “Sounds like a lot of hard work, though. Especially at this time of year.”
She offered him a smile, handing over the cash box. “At least now you know they’re coming.” She glanced around the chalet one last time, then checked her watch. “Okay, well… I’ll see you tomorrow…”
“Yeah,” he nodded. Tomorrow was a new day, and one where he could maybe actually talk to her for more than just a few minutes here and there. He hesitated, considering asking her if she wanted to go for a drink—Sirius would give them a discount, and it’d be good to catch up properly, wouldn't it, have a chat that lasted longer than a few minutes before they were interrupted, and maybe—
“Have a good night,” she said, giving his arm a squeeze. “Try to warm up.”
“Right,” he agreed, hoping he didn’t look as pathetically disappointed as he felt. “You too, Evans.”
She flashed him one last smile over the swathes of her scarf before she headed off into the evening.
It took him far longer to lock up for the night than it should have.
“Dad,” James started cautiously, waiting with some impatience for his bowl of stew to cool enough that it wouldn’t burn the roof of his mouth off, “...is mum involved in hiring at Sleekeazy at all?”
Fleamont glanced up from his book, eyebrows raised. “As far as I’m aware, your mother hasn’t been involved in anything to do with the business for a long time,” he replied.
“Oh,” James nodded, relieved. “Okay. Good.” A pause; a test of the stew. Still too hot. And then, a flash of concern— “You’re not anything to do with hiring, are you?”
If his father looked curious before, he was doubly so now—he even set his book to one side. “Only at the potioneer level,” he replied. “And even then, I tend to take a backseat so that Ravenna and Marcus can find someone they work well with. Why do you ask?”
It was probably best not to get into all that. His mother wasn’t in the room, but she had remarkable hearing. That plus an impressive ability to get the truth out of anyone. “Oh, um… no reason,” he said cheerfully. “Cracking stew, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Fleamont still looked baffled, but his dad could always be relied upon not to press his son on most things. He often said he’d rather not know. “Not enough tarragon, I thought.”
“Ever the perfectionist.” James gestured to the wireless. “Fancy listening to the Puddlemere game?”
At least this was one less thing to worry about.
Sirius swung into his room nearing midnight, moving across the space to throw open the sash window, letting in an icy blast of air and sinking into his favoured chair, cigarette already lit. Only once he’d taken a deep, contented drag did he bother to address him. “Alright, Prongs?”
James, who had not been close to sleeping but who had been thinking about sleeping, in an abstract sort of way, levelled his best friend with a look of distaste. “Never better, mate. I’ve always loved having a sub-zero breeze rattling around my room at night.”
Sirius just grinned, blowing a stream of smoke out the open window. “Flea said you seemed a bit… off at dinnertime,” he said next. “You alright?”
(It was lovely, of course it was, that James’s parents had taken in Sirius in his hour of need; that they had made him one of the family, treated him like another son; that they had made him understand that not all families behaved like the Blacks did behind closed doors, that he was worthy of love, of affection, and that he didn’t need to change who he was to earn it. James appreciated all that, he really did.)
(He did not appreciate the three of them ganging up on him, however, and it happened far more frequently than it should have. That Sirius could be a real turncoat, the little sod.)
“I’m fine! I was still defrosting from my day on the ruddy market,” James replied, trying not to sound overly defensive. “And I don’t know what’s off about listening to a Quidditch match.” He raised an eyebrow; this was a guaranteed way to get his brother off potentially embarrassing subjects—Sirius could always be expected to have an opinion on Puddlemere. “Did you hear it? Gladmore was—”
“A litany of errors,” Sirius agreed heartily. “Was he flying around with his eyes closed? There are habitual drunks regularly falling off their barstools at work that I’d trust more with a Quaffle.”
“If they don’t bench him for the next match,” James said, settling back against his pillows, “then we’re buggered all the way to the final rounds.”
Sirius heaved a put-upon sigh. “If they’d just read my letters and take the advice seriously—”
“Yes, I hear the professional league teams are really interested in the coaching tips of some random nineteen-year-old bartender.”
“Rude,” Sirius sniffed, stubbing the remains of his cigarette out on the windowsill and pulling the window closed again. “I’ve been promoted to Assistant Manager, I’ll have you know.”
James lobbed a forgotten sock in his direction. “Is that why you’ve got so much free time to send all these stupid jokes? Leaving the actual work to your minions?”
Sirius smirked, dodging the sock with ease as he ambled to the door. “Thirty-one days in December, Prongs.”
“Fucking hell—”
“You’re alright, though?” Sirius stopped, silhouetted in the doorway; evidently, James's distraction techniques had not been as foolproof as he’d hoped. “I know your last case was a rough one…”
Well, that was a gift. James wasn’t struggling with the trauma of his last project with the Curse Breakers (although, truthfully, he’d had a few turbulent nights of sleep immediately following—but that was long gone now), but it sounded better than admitting that once again, he had gotten himself twisted up and round in circles like a Christmas wreath over Lily Evans.
“Oh, you know,” he replied, vaguely aiming for ‘weary acceptance’. “I think these things just…take a while to shift out of the subconscious. I’m mostly fine—don’t worry about me.”
“That’s like telling a Grindylow not to be green,” Sirius replied, although he sounded more cheerful. “Waiting up for you every night, checking the mirror, watching the minutes tick by while you’re battling Merlin knows what—”
“That was almost quite touching, for a moment,” James sighed, tugging the covers up to his chin. “If you’re quite finished, though, some of us have to get up at the arsecrack of dawn tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’m finished,” Sirius agreed unnervingly, “for now. Sleep tight, cherub!” With a wink and a grin, his brother closed the bedroom door behind him, and James was plunged back into darkness, nothing but the looming dread of joke-based harassment, and, conversely, the pleasant nerves at the thought of spending another day with Lily left to keep him company as he tried to doze off to sleep…
working half day today, who wants to join me in visiting our mate prongs in his chalet of pain?
Chalet of pain sounds like a really middle class album title. But I’m in.
yes moony! knew i could rely on you. 12 at the church?
Bugger, seeing my nan today. Make fun of him for me.
see if you can get some more of that fruit cake off your nan, wormy. i spend at least five mins a day thinking about it
12 at the church. Have a nice time with your nan, Pete!
No it’s okay you don’t have to come, very busy honestly don’t waste your time, see you all soon though & yes get us some fruit cake Petey
On Sunday, James felt better prepared—culinarily, if not emotionally. (Emotionally was always going to be too big an ask where Lily was concerned. At least he knew that about himself.) He made sure to get up early, giving himself enough time to try to find his most appealing jumper—navy blue, very soft, Sirius said it brought out the gold in his eyes, although it was possible he’d been winding him up at the time—and have some uninterrupted time in the kitchen. A thermos filled to the brim with hot chocolate went in one coat pocket, and two perfect bacon rolls in the other (just the right ratio of bread to bacon; the ideal smearing of butter and tomato sauce—he knew what he was doing in this arena), and he was ready to go. Ready to face the day.
(Mostly. Waking up to the messages from his mates had shaken him just a bit, and even after he’d responded telling them there was no need to visit, he knew it had been a pointless missive. When Sirius decided something was going to be entertaining—and, even better, entertaining at James’s expense—then there was no stopping him. And once he realised it was Lily who James was working with… well, there’d be no end of comments and jokes and innuendo and embarrassment to look forward to. But at least he knew that there was no preparing for it: he just had to accept his fate and try to mitigate the damage as much as possible. Ugh.)
Part of the reason for dragging himself out of bed earlier than he’d needed to was to ensure that he made it to the Sleekeazy Chalet before Lily did. Yesterday he’d been on the back foot, not his favoured starting point, and it felt important that today was different. It just wouldn’t do to start another day all flustered and stupid, not when it felt like everything was on the line.
An exaggeration, definitely, but it felt real enough to James. These days, interactions with Lily were so few and far between that it felt as if any opportunity that wasn’t maximised to its full potential—whatever that may be—was a waste of time. He’d taken it for granted for seven years that she would always be there. If he wanted to see more of her (if! Who was he trying to fool?), then he needed to make that happen. Put himself out there.
For one, he reflected as he made his way out of the house and into the cold, quiet still of the morning, he needed to find out if she was even single. She was beautiful, she was funny, she was kind—frankly, if she wasn’t seeing someone, it would’ve been nothing short of a miracle. But he could hope for a miracle nonetheless.
And he wasn’t so daft as to think her relationship status was the only thing stopping him from actually asking her out. She’d been single all of seventh year, as had he, and he’d never managed to pluck up the courage to just ask. Clearly, there were other elements at play here. His own fear of rejection and intense, friendship-ending embarrassment being one of them.
Still. Maybe the cold would numb those feelings until they were much easier to ignore, and he would find his Gryffindor courage lurking underneath. Stranger things had happened.
His efforts had paid off; he arrived at the stall to find it empty—in fact, most of the neighbouring stalls were empty, too, perhaps he’d been a bit overzealous with his timekeeping—and set about getting ready for the day, casting the various charms that Summoned the stock out of the locked storage and into a presentable display.
Once the last tub of Curl Care Cream had plopped itself into place on a shelf, he in turn plopped himself into the same chair he’d been in yesterday and fished the picnic breakfast he’d prepared out of his pockets, setting it out on the small, shallow ledge on their side of the front display. He had a brief but deeply felt moment of panic, wondering if she would think he was trying too hard, but soon managed to think his way back out of it by instead thinking about the day ahead.
James would never admit as much to his mother—in fact, he’d deny it to his grave if he had to—but he was finding himself a bit… disappointed, that this was the last day of the market. It didn’t take a genius to work out why that was, of course, something else he would strenuously deny if he needed to, and he knew it was ridiculous, not to mention hypocritical, but nonetheless it was how he felt, and James firmly believed in acknowledging one’s own feelings. Denial helped no one.
He loved his job; he loved his mates; he loved his parents, even when they sent him out to work his way (for free!) to an icy grave. But all it had taken was eleven hours alone with her (he didn’t count the customers as company, as friendly as most of them had been) for him to face up, once more, to the gaping chasm that had opened up in his life when school ended. And it wasn’t because of the teachers, or the learning, or the house elves and their note-perfect apple and blackberry crumble.
It was her. It was always her.
Really, that revelation hadn’t taken the full eleven hours. More like eleven minutes.
So maybe he hadn’t been brave enough, or convinced enough, when they’d been at school; maybe he’d let chances pass him by, forgetting that there were not endless tomorrows on which he could depend. But that could change.
He was a Man now, an Adult with a Job. A Job which involved putting himself at risk, staring danger manfully in the face (relatively speaking; he was still just an intern). Yes, he lived with his parents, something which seemed less grown up on reflection, but still. If he couldn’t pull himself together now, would he ever be able to?
He sat up straighter, shoulders set in determination. He could do this. He could.
Some of that certainty seeped out of him as the minutes ticked by, closer to opening time and with no sign of his esteemed co-worker. He was starting to question his own sanity—he must be there on the correct day, since all the other stallholders were there too; he can’t have misread his watch, since he could see the building crowd of visitors down by the church. He was just building up a good head of steam on the possibility that something awful had happened to her when he spotted Lily approaching the chalet. She was chatting away with one of the witches who worked at the stall next to theirs, her hair in loose waves today only controlled by a different, but equally charming, woolly hat. Relief washed over him as she hurried closer: she didn’t appear to be physically harmed in any way. If anything, she seemed even more beautiful than ever. It didn’t seem right that even just the sight of her could send his stomach into knots, but, well, he was used to that by now.
“Sorry, sorry,” she was already saying as she reached the Sleekeazy stall. She squeezed past the front display and collapsed into her folding chair, out of breath and pink of cheek. “They were checking ID cards at the Apparition point, it took ages to get through…” She trailed off, noticing the thermos and wrapped breakfast parcel in front of her. “Ooh, what’s this?”
“Oh, it’s—not a big thing, I just—thought we should start the day right,” he replied, not sure why he was feeling flustered. “Which of course means…”
“Bacon,” she finished with a beaming smile. “James, you little gem, it’s like you sensed I had a really rubbish breakfast!”
He felt his cheeks warm even as he smiled back in pleased relief. “There’s hot chocolate, too,” he added.
Lily had already unwrapped her bacon roll, giving it an almost lustful look before she took a big bite. “Yuh-mazin,” she managed, with a little sigh of happiness.
“I have my moments,” he shrugged it off with a grin; beyond her, he could see the crowds starting to descend. “You finish that and have your drink, I’ll deal with the first lot of customers.”
She swallowed, pausing to lick a dash of ketchup from her finger. “You’re the best,” she told him earnestly. “Thanks, James.”
Honestly, he lived off the warmth of that statement for at least the next hour.
A pause, late morning, when all the shoppers seemed focused on fresh cauldron cakes and mulled wine.
“So what’s next?”
James shot her a grin. “Surely that’s obvious, Evans,” he replied. “Defrosting myself with firewhisky.”
She laughed, a generous move, he knew that he wasn’t working at his full capacity—had he mentioned it was cold?—and waved a gloved hand. “No, I mean, after the internship finishes. It’s just a year, right?”
He nodded. “Well, I can apply for one of three junior positions in the department,” he said. “Although the competition is fierce. Apparently last year they had fifty-eight candidates for three jobs.”
She crinkled her nose, a move far sweeter than it should have been. “Crikey, that’s some tough odds…”
“Indeed,” he agreed. He usually did his utmost not to think about it; after all, he still had the best part of nine months left, it seemed mad to stress himself out about it all now. But he’d always been a planner, someone who liked to think ahead, even in his more mischievous days, and he sometimes couldn’t help but stew over what his job prospects would be by the end of his time as a lowly intern. “There’s Gringotts, of course, they usually have more jobs going. But that’s a lot of time abroad, so…”
Lily raised her eyebrows. “You don’t want to be travelling to exotic locales?”
James just shrugged. “Remus has a cousin who works there, the last place she went was Svalbard.”
A smile. “The most exotic place in the Arctic Circle, I’ve heard.”
He couldn’t help a smile in return. “And who doesn’t love constant night?” He paused. “I’m just…aware my parents are older. Don’t want to be away too much.”
“That makes sense,” she said softly.
More things he didn’t like to linger on. “Anyway. I have options. I’m lucky that it won’t be the end of the world if I can’t find a job straight away…”
“You can always fall back on your newfound skill for sales,” she added.
“I think mum and dad would prefer me in a less dangerous job,” he considered. “But I am who they raised me to be, so they’ve only got themselves to blame, really.”
“Do you like the people you work with?”
Her tone was casual, although there was something in it that gave him pause. That, and she seemed determined not to look over at him.
“Yeah, they’re mostly a good bunch,” he agreed.
“Mary said she bumped into you with some workmates at the Leaky Cauldron a few weeks ago,” Lily said next, watching a man try to wrangle three small children away from the Honeydukes stall opposite them.
He paused, trying to remember—ah, yes, after the Melton Mowbray debacle. “Yeah, the team lead thought we could do with a few firewhiskys,” he chuckled. “Macdonald looked a bit alarmed by the state of us.”
Lily smiled, but it looked more like a distraction than a real one. “Sounds like you deserved to be in that state,” she said. He listened to the soft sound of her drawing in a slow breath, almost like she was steeling herself for something. Which made no sense at all. “I didn’t realise Alison Dussitt got an internship with the Curse Breakers, too.”
He hadn’t, either, until his first day; but then, he hadn’t exactly been close with the girl before then. Dussitt had been in Ravenclaw, and kept to herself when they were at school—at least, she didn’t cross many paths with the Marauders, and hadn’t been a prefect under his tenure as Head Boy, and when someone was as quiet as she had been… he’d known who she was, of course, but that had been about the extent of it.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “She’s good fun, actually. I mean, very serious, most of the time, but she has a sense of humour I wasn’t expecting.”
“That’s good.” Lily glanced briefly in his direction. “She fancied you at school, you know.”
James blinked. “Did she?”
“Yep. Heard her talking about you in the library a few times.”
“Well,” he said, not sure what to say, “poor girl. Must’ve had a blow to the head.”
“The Slytherin girls in our year called her Easy Dussitt,” Lily added with a frown. “Not that she seemed to have done anything to earn that nickname, apart from being Muggleborn.”
“Cretins who love word play,” James scowled. “Merlin, I’m amazed we lasted to the end of school without hexing them into eternity.”
There was a silence (or rather, they both fell quiet; there was still the chatter of customers and tinkling of Christmas music on a loop in the background) before she spoke again. “Good to have someone you know to work with, though.”
“Yes,” he agreed. He still wasn’t quite sure exactly what this conversation had really been about. But then maybe he was overthinking it. “I suppose so. Although I’m not sure I could really say I know her.” He thought about it for a moment. “I know she has so much milk in her tea that it no longer should be classed as a cup of tea.”
At that, Lily smiled again, something more genuine this time. “Oh, god, you didn’t put the poor woman through your tea rant, did you?”
He grinned. “Of course not,” he replied. “That would be cruel.”
“It would be,” Lily agreed, glancing his way to briefly meet his gaze. “Although I suppose your rants are always entertaining.”
“Thanks,” James said with a grin. “I’ve been working on some new ones lately. I’ll let you know when they’re ready for feedback.”
She shook her head but couldn’t hide her smile. “You’re all heart.”
“Heart, and frozen limbs,” he agreed, if only to watch her smile grow.
James had managed to forget about the threat of his mates visiting—a busy morning and time spent in Lily’s company had just about wiped his memory clear away. It was only when, around lunchtime, he spotted a familiar pair of heads approaching through the crowd that he remembered, and said, out loud, “oh, bugger…”
Lily didn’t get the chance to question this utterance (she had already turned to him, mouth open to ask) because she was cut off by an all too familiar voice.
“Well, well, well, look who it is!” Sirius appeared, Remus in tow and a distinctly taunting grin on his face. It was a grin that James had long ago learned not to trust. “Prongs and Prongsetta!”
Before James could open his mouth to remind his friend what an utter bellend he was, Lily spoke. “Alright, Black? Been hit in the head, have you?”
“Not yet, but there’s still time.”
How did he manage to make everything sound filthy? It was definitely a skill.
Lily had already turned her attention to Remus. “Have you finished it yet?”
Remus grinned sheepishly. “I think I’ve got about fifty or so pages left,” he replied. “Work really does get in the way of my reading time.”
(James might have wondered what they were talking about, perhaps allowed himself a twinge or two of jealousy over their shared interests, but he was distracted by Sirius Black, trying in earnest to catch his eye and rewarding him with some unintelligible mouthed words and some too-intelligible, lewd hand gestures which left very little to the imagination.)
“It’s not fair, is it,” Lily was saying with a laugh, before shooting Sirius a scathing glance. “It’s so nice of you to take a local miscreant on a day out, Remus.”
“I’ve always been community spirited,” Remus agreed.
“Oh, don’t let the whole pleasant-vicar act fool you, Evans,” Sirius said. “He only does it for the sexual favours.”
“It’s important to be goal-oriented,” Lily pointed out with a straight face. Another thing James loved about her: she didn’t blink at any of his mates’s nonsense. “So, what have you two got planned?”
“A bit of Christmas shopping,” Remus replied, lifting his hand to show a paper bag stuffed with something floral-smelling. “Then I think we’re going to lean into the stereotype and go to the pub.”
“They miss me there, you see,” Sirius sighed. “It’d be unfair to deprive them for too long.”
“Naturally.”
“So how is the dream team going?” he asked next, that familiar, taunting grin returning. “Selling by the barrelful? Does it feel like slipping into a well-loved jumper, the dynamic duo back again for the first time since you had to leave the Head's Office behind?”
James sighed. “A jumper would be warmer.”
“We’re selling well,” Lily replied, almost defensively. “James draws them in with his charm and good looks, and then I go in for the kill with my winning emotional blackmail skills.”
Both his mates laughed—James was too distracted by the fact that she’d said he had good looks, good grief, that was one for the Pensieve, surely—and Sirius leaned against the front display, affecting a leering look that some might have found appealing. “You’re not so terrible looking yourself, Evans,” he pointed out. “Maybe you’re a draw too.”
“A glowing recommendation,” she smirked. “Thanks, Black.”
“Any time, Evans,” he grinned in return. Sirius paused, casting a knowing look in James’s direction, before he made quite the show of looking at his watch. “Well, we’d better leave you to it. Moony gets very twitchy if he doesn’t have some form of sugar every two hours.”
“They’re doing choux bun cauldrons with fresh cream and a hot chocolate bubble centre a few chalets down,” James told Remus. “Absolutely sensational.”
“I’ll buy you two,” Sirius decided. “One for each hand.”
“Interesting that you considered there was a chance you weren’t paying,” Remus replied brightly, before giving a wave. “Have fun, you two.”
“You, too,” Lily smiled.
They watched them walk away, James with narrowed eyes as Sirius leaned closer to mutter something in Remus’s ear, making both their shoulders shake with laughter. Suspicious. Suspicious, and overall unhelpful to James’s cause.
“Never without entertainment when Sirius is around, are you?” Lily asked with a smirk.
“No,” James sighed. To be fair, he thought they’d got off quite lightly. He was well aware that Sirius could have been worse. “Never…”
The afternoon sped by, as busy as ever, and James worked hard not to show how disappointed he felt when it came time to lock up. It felt like they’d barely scratched the surface. This was just one of the reasons he offered to walk her to the Apparition point, relief sinking through him as she said yes.
They set off, footsteps crunching through the compacted snow and ice, away from the warm lights of the closing market and towards the dimly lit church in the distance. It was a balancing act, trying to not fall on his arse, something made harder by how stiff his legs felt after a day of sitting in the cold. He also was determined to make the most of the last few minutes they had alone together, even if those minutes were going to be spent traversing a slippery cobbled path with very little light to guide them.
“So what’s next? More market work?”
“I doubt it,” she replied. “This nannying agency has got me pretty well booked up until my course starts—the money's okay, but some of these kids… ” She shot him a grin. “Although you and Black make a lot more sense to me now.”
He frowned slightly. “But I thought you were with the temp agency?”
“Hmm? No,” she replied, with a brief, confused frown. “No, I’ve been with Tender Care Nannying Agency since July. I was nannying when I got this job, actually,“ she smiled. “Looking after a cluster of pureblood under-tens at a party and I bumped into your parents.”
He came to an abrupt halt, blinking in surprise.
He’d been had. Lied to. Set up, and by his loving parents, the two people who should be looking out for him in this world. James had to take a moment to process this—-the sheer scheming audacity, the Machievellian level of lies and subterfuge…
…it was quite impressive, really. In an annoying, interfering sort of way.
Lily was still chattering away, although at least she had noticed that he’d stopped walking; she stood, hands stuffed in her pockets, as if nothing had changed. “...and when they said you needed some company, and would I be interested, I thought why not?” Her cheeks had flushed a pretty pink, although James couldn’t be certain that wasn’t from the temperature. “Better than dealing with yet another tantrum over pumpkin juice, or whose turn it is to use the red crayon.”
James shook his head. “I dunno. I’m not sure my company is worth two days in the freezing cold…”
“Agree to disagree,” she replied lightly. A pause, then, “are you alright?”
He frowned. His brain felt like it was struggling to catch up with what was happening around him. “Yes?”
“You just…” She gestured to where they were standing. “Suddenly stopped walking, so—”
“Oh,” he said, and nodded, gesturing to the path ahead. “Right. Yes, all fine. Onwards, and all that.”
They set back off again, falling into step together with an ease that James didn’t want to think too hard about. So his parents had set this all up—that didn’t change anything, did it? For all his ‘I’m a grown up now’ posturing, he still hadn’t done or said anything that was a true reflection of how he felt about her. And even now, as the last chance slipped away, he couldn’t even—
“I’ve been thinking a lot about lost opportunities,” Lily spoke up, interrupting his spiralling thoughts.
He didn’t think she intended to be cryptic. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Mary‘s been going on at me about fortune favouring the bold and all that, about how I can’t just wait and wait and wait for the universe to do it for me, or I’ll find my luck will run out, my time will run out, and you’ll be snapped up by some beautiful curse-breaking goddess who understands the rules of Quidditch.” She offered an awkward smile, the sort of smile she did when she was trying to joke her way through something uncomfortable. “Although I can see how that prospect could be more appealing than some titchy ginger who wouldn’t recognise a Wronski Feint if it plopped down in front of her wearing a name tag.”
There was a ringing in his ears. He had to have misheard her, because—what? “Hang on," he started, his heart thrashing against his chest.
“It’s just, I can’t not say it anymore,” she said. She’d come to a stop now, and so had he, an unconscious decision since his brain didn’t seem to be able to keep up with what was happening. “And at least this way, I can get it off my chest and I don’t have to keep thinking and thinking and pining and suffering like some… some…Byronic fool.” She would not look him in the eye. “I could maybe start to get over you.”
Merlin’s sainted aunt.
She was… she had been…
Over him?
“Over me,” he repeated out loud, this time, his voice straining just a touch.
“You’ll turn me down with kindness, won’t you?” she asked with a nervous laugh. It made his chest feel tight to hear it. “That’s the sort of person you are. I expect a high degree of embarrassment anyway, but—”
“No I won’t,” he replied, perhaps too abruptly, because all signs of that nervous smile vanished into the darkness.
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “Alright. I just was hoping to get home before I have a cry—”
Fucking hell, this was getting away from him. He had to pull himself together. “No, no, I mean I won’t. I’m not going to turn you down,” he said in a rush, ”with kindness or otherwise. Hang on, this isn’t coming out right…”
Finally, finally, Lily looked up to meet his gaze. Even in the darkness, he could see a glimmer of something like hope in her eyes. “You mean—”
“I mean I don’t want you to start getting over me,” James continued, taking a small step to close some of the gap between them. “And I don’t want some curse-breaking goddess to snap me up, because that would be unfair on her, since I’m so utterly and completely gone for someone else.”
Everything around them was still, silent, an incredible contrast to the chaos of the past two days. Lily stared up at him from amongst the swathe of scarf and hat and coat, and it took all his self-control to resist the urge to reach out, to tuck a curl of red hair behind her ear; to let his hand linger at her cheek.
He could wait a few more minutes. To make sure this was done right.
“You are?”
“I am,” he nodded. “Have been since…probably fourth year, if I’m honest.”
Finally, she smiled, and this time there were no nerves there. “Sixth year, for me.”
He dropped his head for a moment, letting out a laughing sigh. “Are you saying we could’ve….?”
“Spent seventh year snogging each other senseless?” she asked; he felt her gloved hand at his chin, lifting it so she could gift him with another smile. She was closer, now, too. “Apparently so.”
“Well,” he said, when her hand didn’t leave his jaw, “it sounds like we have some catching up to do. If you’re open to that.”
Lily’s laugh was always a glorious sound: he wanted to know what it tasted like. (He knew—couldn’t believe his luck—that he’d soon be finding out.) “I just bared my soul to you, Potter, take the hint—”
James leaned down, halting what he was sure to be the rest of a sentence he would enjoy hearing—but he didn’t think either of them would care as his lips met hers.
He’d had plenty of time to imagine what it would be like, kissing Lily Evans; it had been one of his favourite day dreams, after all. But nothing, not even his remarkable imagination, could have possibly lived up to the real thing. To the way it felt slipping his arms around her, drawing her against him; to how it felt having her cup his face in his hands, like he was the most precious, beloved thing in her life; to the way she warmed him, even out there on a frozen footpath in the depths of winter.
There was no way he’d have been able to prepare himself for the real thing. He should’ve known, really: Lily had always had a way of confounding his expectations.
They drew back only a little, both smiling, both a little bit breathless. It took all his strength not to just kiss her again, frostbite be damned.
“Hint taken,” he said with a grin. “Fancy finding somewhere a bit warmer?”
She laughed, standing up on her tiptoes to steal another quick kiss. “I thought you’d never ask.”