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Lily felt a hand brush across her shoulder, from her left to her right, before one trousered knobbly knee haphazardly stepped over the bench, followed by another, concluded by a triumphant thump as the owner of said hand and knees sat down next to her.
Right next to her.
Honestly, the boy had no sense of personal space.
Lily Evans was not a morning person and if anyone else had rudely deigned to invade her space so she would have huffed and shuffled further along the bench so that she could enjoy her morning cappo in peace.
Lucky for James Potter that she made certain exceptions in her life for fantastic boyfriends.
He grinned at her once he was settled, happy, as always, to begin his day with her – grumpy morning lethargy and all.
“Morning, Evans.”
“Potter,” she said in greeting, staring resolutely at her mug lest she look up and allow him to summon a smile from her.
It was just past eight in the morning. She never smiled before at least nine, she refused to. But she was a sucker for her boyfriend’s adorable face.
He chuckled at the morning skit they had seemed to work out for themselves and wondered briefly if it would still be the same in a few years’ time when they were having breakfast at their own dining room table rather than in a massive hall full of students. The thought came out of nowhere but was comfortable in his brain, like picturing his future with Lily Evans was as natural and as given as the breaths he pulled into his lungs. Maybe he’d bring her breakfast in bed–there’d be no pesky girls’ stairway to contend with in their future home–she’d like that, breakfast in bed. He filed the thought carefully away.
He saw that her loose hair was trapped under the jumper she had no doubt flung over herself in a half asleep state en route from Gryffindor Tower. Reaching over gently he slipped his hand against the nape of her neck and brushed the hair out, tucking stray strands behind her left ear before turning fully to attend to his breakfast.
Lily did her best to hide her smile behind a sip of coffee, her chest warming at the small, domestic, loving gesture.
The boys had come down to breakfast together so she looked across at Sirius who was clearly halfway through a dramatised retelling of last night’s dream.
She saw James nodding along, smiling softly at his best mate. She watched through her periphery as he pulled a bowl towards him and grabbed the ladle for the porridge, as he snatched a banana, peeled the upper half of the skin away and started slicing it into the now porridge-filled bowl, as he effortlessly opened the jar of peanut butter and spooned in two generous dollops of the crunchy goodness.
She thought she must be rubbing off on him because that was her favourite – But before she could finish the thought he had dropped the spoon into the bowl and slid it across the bench so that it sat next to her half-drunk cappuccino.
She looked down at it, dumbfounded.
He appeared to be none the wiser, continuing at a rapid pace to pile his own plate high with toast, scrambled eggs and an inappropriate amount of veggie sausages, all the while laughing at the (multiple) climaxes of Sirius’ story.
When his plate was filled he picked up a fork and got stuck in, his left hand leaving the top of the table to come to rest on the top of her right thigh.
She finally looked up at him and took in his profile like it was the early morning sun. The corners of her lips lifted. Damn him for making her her favourite breakfast and for laughing through his mouthfuls of food and for making it completely impossible not to beam like a lovesick fool at 8:14 in the morning.
She lifted her right hand and threaded her fingers through his atrocious bed head, leaning over only slightly (because he was literally right next to her) to press a gentle kiss to his cheek.
He was still laughing at Sirius and chomping down on his eggs and toast so he didn’t turn to look at her but she felt his thumb caress a few strokes onto her thigh and she smiled again before dropping her hand and picking up the spoon to dig into her breakfast.
“And Circe, literal Circe, turned to me and told me that Binns had been a handsome man in his youth! And then I woke up,” Sirius finished.
Peter was red in the face and Remus was wiping tears from his eyes. James had thrown his head back in a great big (far too loud for this time in the morning) laugh before pushing his face into her shoulder.
“Pleased with yourself, Sirius?” Lily asked, smirking at the satisfied smile on his face.
“It was a hilarious story, Evans. You’d know if you weren’t a deaf and silent beast in the mornings.”
“She’s not a beast!” James cried, whipping his face up to mock-glare at his best friend. “Deaf and silent? Yes. But not a beast.”
“Even you can’t possibly defend morning Lily, Prongs” Remus said, recovered now from his laughing fit.
Peter nodded gravely, “I’m surprised she hasn’t hexed you a good few inches away from her. You’re practically sitting on her lap.”
“Boyfriend privileges,” James said, turning to grin at her.
She made a show of sighing.
“You’re lucky you’re cute, James Potter.”
“I’ve always said so,” Sirius said, pouring some more milk into her coffee for her.
She smiled again. Damn these precious boys.
It was just before nine when Lily finished her porridge and started to pack up her things for her first class.
“I probably won’t see you today, Lil,” James said.
Sirius gasped loudly across the table, “How will she get through the day, Prongs?!”, earning him a thump on the head from Remus and an air-borne corner of James’ toast in the face from Lily.
“I know. Have fun at the conference. Blow those stuffy Transfiguration experts away, yeah?”
“I’ll try.”
“You will. You’re brilliant,” she said with certainty, flashing him a winning smile as she stood.
“Evans! You’re alive!” Sirius exclaimed.
“Right on time,” Peter said, as the nine o’clock bell rang for classes.
“Rest in peace morning Lily,” Remus agreed.
She laughed at them.
“I hate you all.” (She really really didn’t.)
“Have fun in classes. I’ll try and catch up with you later, hopefully they’ve exaggerated about this all day International Transfiguration Conference being all day,” James said, running his hand down her arm and pressing a quick kiss to her wrist.
“Doesn’t it include dinner?” The question was hard to get past the dopey smile threatening to split her face in two.
“Yeah, but, when is ‘dinner’, Evans? What does ‘dinner’ mean? How does one define the beginning and end times of ‘dinner’?”
“You’re incredibly annoying.” (Adorable would have been closer to the truth.)
“And you’re late.”
She flicked him on the nose and said bye to the boys before turning and heading to Ancient Runes.
Half walking, half running Lily awkwardly sped her way to class.
Rounding a fifth floor corridor she collided into the back of someone who was–stupidly–standing right at the bend in the hallway.
Polite as ever, even though the person was clearly an idiot for standing there, Lily made to hurriedly apologise before she actually looked up at the face sneering down at her.
Her apology flatlined in her throat.
“Snape,” she said coldly, straightening and trying to even her embarrassingly short breath. She really ought to take up one of James’ invites to go running with him; she was so unfit.
“Lily,” he drawled, “sweet breakfast display today.”
She rolled her eyes. “Still paying attention to things that don’t concern you?”
“I’m not the only one who noticed,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her reply.
“Let me guess, Mulciber, Avery and Rosier saw as well and they’re planning to do something about it.”
Snape let out a frustrated noise and she revelled in it. She hitched her bag further up her shoulder and started walking again. She was late for class after all. Snape followed.
“You shouldn’t take it lightly. They’re not shy. They hate Potter and they’re planning something.”
“After seven years at this school it really isn’t news to me that you and your friends hate James and I.”
He grabbed her elbow. “I don’t hate – you are not the problem here. You’re just part of it because you started dating him. If you just – if you just stopped they would ignore you.”
She yanked her arm out of his grasp. “How thick do you think I am? I’m a Mudblood, Snape and don’t you forget it. You all hate me for what I am. I was born part of the problem and I’ll be part of the problem with or without James.”
“No! You don’t understand.”
“What, so, Mulciber, Avery and Rosier actually want to be my mates? If only I dump James, maybe throw one or two unforgivables his way to really make the break up stick?”
There was the briefest, barest flicker of glee in Severus’ eyes, but Lily saw it. She hated it and she hated him. She picked up her pace.
“Not mates, but they would probably ignore you. I’ve always told you that Potter was a dangerous association. They hate him especially –”
“You hate him, you mean. You always have. You would see him dead.”
“They are going to see you dead if you don’t stop this stupid game you’re playing –”
Lily had had enough. He thought she was playing games? All she was doing was being with someone who made her happy, who made everything better, who she loved. She couldn’t stand to hear any more dirty words about good, wonderful, lovely James from the likes of Severus.
“Silencio!” she flicked her wand across her shoulder, barely even looking at him and ran to class, leaving him shocked and raging by a copy of Caravaggio’s portrait ‘The Betrayal’ – impeccably timed spell, she thought dryly as she sped away.
Her conversation with Snape had put Lily in a rotten mood for the rest of the day. By the end of her last class, it seemed like years had passed since James had made her porridge. She missed him pathetically.
She had avoided the boys and Mary and Marlene as well all day. She didn’t want to be in this sour mood in front of them and she didn’t want to tell them about what had happened with Snape. If she could have found James it would have been different. But, as it was, her boyfriend was an intelligent berk who was off wowing the international wizarding community with his knowledge and passion for Transfiguration.
She dragged herself to a prefects meeting in the Heads’ Office and privately ruminated on how boring they were without her Head Boy. Merlin, she was a sap.
“Heading to the Common Room, Lil?” Remus asked at the end of it.
“In a bit. You go ahead, I’ve got to finish up some of this paperwork.”
“I can help with it.”
She smiled her first genuine smile since breakfast.
“No, don’t be silly. There isn’t much, I’ll be along in a few mins.”
“Alright. I’ve got some Honeydukes I need to get rid of before Hogsmeade on Saturday.”
“Making room for a new batch?”
“You know me. So I’ll bring it down and we can polish it off tonight?”
She knew what he was doing. Sweet, sweet Remus Lupin. Pretending to need space for more chocs when she knew he knew she’d had a crap day.
“Sounds great.” And it really did.
The last few prefects left and Lily made to finish up the paperwork.
“Those boys just can’t get enough of you can they?”
She jumped, relaxing only slightly when she saw it was Snape, not Avery, who had remained behind.
“Get out, Snape.”
“We have a conversation to finish.”
“I quite liked how we finished it this morning, actually.”
“Funny.”
“Mmm, I rather thought so. Take you long to lift the spell?”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Lily.”
“Again with the game! I’m not playing any –”
“Yes you are! This whole thing with Potter. It’s stupid. You bitched about him for all those years and now I’m supposed to believe that you like him enough to date him?”
“What –”
“I don’t know what it is or what you are in it for. If it’s to piss off Slytherins or wind me up or –”
“Shut up,” she spat, rising out of her chair and drawing her wand so quickly that it actually startled Severus.
“You shut up about my relationship,” she continued furiously.
She was shaking. Rage as she had never felt before was boiling through her.
“Is that actually what you think? That I’m with James to spite other people? To spite you ?”
“Well I don’t see any other reason why –”
“Silencio!”
He was furious again. It was foul play, she supposed, to pull the same trick twice in a day, but if it ain’t broke…
He started moving towards her, but she hit him with a petrificus totalus and another spell to ensure he stayed upright in his frozen form.
She tried not to let the anger consume her. This was her chance to set the record straight and never let him play it again. It was difficult though, not to succumb to the urge to simply hex him into oblivion. How could he think that? Couldn’t he see? The truth of it all was so blindingly obvious to Lily she couldn’t understand how Snape could have any doubt. How James and her had become a team, an equal partnership, how he was on her side, how he lifted her up in all the ways that mattered, how he knew her, every inch of her body and soul, how he could touch her heart, make it feel like it was glowing, how good he was, how bright he made everything when everything was so dark, how much he loved the people he loved, how easily and completely and selflessly he loved her. And how she loved him right back.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully and then I want to hear nothing from you, ever again.”
“I’m with James because I love him. And I love him for no reason other than the fact that I do. There are a million things that made me fall in love with him, but none of them matter because I do now and I will forever. It is real. The realest thing in my life. I couldn’t care less that it irks you or that it fuels hatred in the Slytherin Common Room. There is nothing that could threaten me, or nothing that could be given to me, to make me give him up.”
If Snape hadn’t been frozen in place there is no telling what he might have done. Drawn his wand on her, collapsed onto the floor, blasted the whole fucking room apart. But he was. So all he could do was fight against the knowledge that these were the truest words Lily had ever spoken to him–he did know, he could see–and hope that she couldn’t hear the sound of his heart shattering inside him.
“Don’t ever speak to me about James again.”
She vanished the unfinished paperwork and levitated Snape’s body out the door of the Heads’ Office. She locked it, lifted her spells through it and slid down the frame. She heard him pound furiously onto it. She was glad, because maybe that meant he couldn’t hear her as she wept on the other side.
Lily never made it to Gryffindor Tower, choosing instead to spend the night on the couch in the Heads’ Office. She’d sent a note to the others, hoping it would appease them enough to stop them from coming to find her. She couldn’t face them and James wouldn’t be back until late. He’d be tired, he’d go straight to sleep.
The next morning she woke and walked like an inferius to breakfast.
James was already there. She felt the heaviness in her bones lift at the sight of him.
“Hey,” she said, sliding in next to him, right next to him. Personal space be damned. “You’re up early.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her proximity.
“Got back late last night, went straight to sleep. I wanted to come down early for some alone time, but you’re a bit later than you usually are. The boys will be down soon.”
“Yeah I ended up sleeping in the office.”
“Oh really? Why?” he asked, concern igniting in his eyes.
“Just fell asleep,” she murmured, smoothing away the crease in his brow.
“Okay,” he said uncertainly, “are you alright?”
She would tell him later today. For now she wanted some porridge and she wanted to hear about his day.
“Yes. Now tell me about yesterday.”
He was dubious, looking at her suspiciously. Her lips twitched.
“I’ll tell you all about my day later, but I will say one thing – I missed you.”
She clocked the flicker of surprise in his eyes, but it was quickly overshadowed by that softness that embered them as he smiled the smile he reserved just for her, leaning forward slightly to nudge her nose with his.
“Lily Evans! Saying something nice to me before you’ve even had a coffee! I missed you too.”
“Yesterday was actually pretty sick.” He pulled a bowl towards him...“Met lots of people, had lots of interesting conversations.” There he went grabbing the ladle...“Might have wowed one or two experts.” The banana...“Potentially found some holes in Gamp’s Law with this wizard from ShangHai – he was mental, I loved him.” Peeled and sliced...“McGonagall complimented me in front of other human beings. Living, perfectly able to hear human beings, Lil. Now there’s a moment for the history books.” Two spoonfuls of peanut butter...
“Even so, don’t think it was worth spending an entire day away from you.” The perfect bowl was slid under her nose. He turned to look directly at her.
“Starting to worry I’ll be hard pressed to ever find anything that is. You might be stuck with me for life, Evans. Sorry.”
He’d said it jokingly but she knew he was serious. They were the loveliest words she had ever heard.
She beamed at him. At just past eight o'clock in the morning, Lily Evans unleashed the light of the sun onto his face and before he could even blink she had framed his cheeks with her hands and planted a lingering kiss onto his crooked smile. She hoped the press of her lips would leave something visible, hoped that others would look at his face today and see what she had left there, hoped no one else could possibly mistake what they had for anything other than what it was: real love.
“I love you,” she said, as they broke apart.
He checked his watch. “Okay who are you and what have you done with my girlfriend?”
She giggled. Giggled. Before 9am! James’ eyes widened in surprise again, but before he could make another comment she was dragging him back down for another kiss.
If she cared, if anything else in the world mattered at that moment other than James, she would have noticed Severus Snape getting up from the Slytherin table to leave the Great Hall. But she didn’t and nothing did.