A/N: padfootdidit HAPPY BIRTHDAY RHIANNON I LOVE YOU V MUCH AND IM SO SORRY THIS ISNâT BETTER BUT I HAVE AN ACCOUNTING EXAM THAT I MUST STUDY FOR BUT I LOVE YOU WIFE HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAEÂ
He is their favourite teacher. He knows it. Mr Potter, with his loud laugh and lazy stroll. He lets you eat in class. He doesnât care if you accidentally mix up a name on your chart. The stars are not here for humans to map them he will say. Mr Potter will give you a break on that assignment. Mr Potter wonât give out detentions. Mr Potter will laugh and your jokes and make his own. Mr Potter is the best, the ultimate, the dream teacher. Mr Potter loves his students and his job.
And Mr Potter knows that this is  wrong.
Thatâs the worst part, is that he knows. Heâs not stupid and nether is she, they just canât help themselves. He sort of aches for her, and if Sirius heard him say that he would laugh. Then again if Sirius heard he was fucking a student he would shut up pretty fast.
He canât stop looking at her during class. The way she taps her fingers on the desk, the tendrils of hair that fall from her ponytail and the ink on her left ring finger. He just canât help himself. Students have to shove their star charts right under his nose before he even registers they are there. Mr Potter they say Mr Potter are you alright?
 Mr Potter? She says, looking up. Yes, Miss Evans you say back. I donât think Iâve got my telescope in the right position and she isnât looking at him, just fiddling with the stand. They both know sheâs fixed it perfectly, that she always does, but he goes over anyway. Its madness, insanity, but he will stand here and âadjustâ her telescope for fifteen minutes just to feel her legs against his own.
 This is wrong he had said the third night she came into his room. This is going to stop he had said. He had really meant it to, really thought that that was going to be the last night, like he had any control over it.
Yes she had said. And then they were in his bed and he didnât know how they got there.
Some days they just donât leave. On weekends when itâs raining and he has food they will just lock the door. They play gobstones and she loses because sheâs terrible so they just end up throwing them at each other. She tries to show him how to play the muggle game âgo fishâ and he gets so many paper cuts itâs unbelievable. She doodles on his arms with ink and smiles slightly while he talks.
 When teachers and students ask him who drew the stags on his arms his stomach falls out, because what if someone realises. What if a kid from her Defence class remembers her Patronus and puts it together? What if someone sees the PRONGS EATS that Sirius had written on his telescope bag and gets suspicious? What if a teacher has been watching her sneak in at night? What if someone has seen? Â
 He goes home and scrubs his arms until they are raw.
Often he cannot believe what he is doing. He will be sitting in class, and then be bowled over by the fact that he is sleeping with the girl in second row of his seventh year astronomy class what the fuck is he doing.
Lily we canât keep doing this he pulls her from class and keeps holding her wrist as they stand in the corridor. Lily this is my job, Lily I canât lose my job he is almost begging her to do something because he canât, he is not strong enough.
James its fine she is holding his face in her hands. James, she is looking straight into his eye. James it will be okay. It will.
 He lets her hug him right there and when she comes over that night they just sit on the couch. She eats Honeydukes Finest that heâs been saving for his forth years and leans against his chest. She talks about her sister and her fucking pompous arse of a boyfriend while she stains her couch with chocolate stains. He fiddles with her fingers and tells her about the time he and Sirius painted a rainbow on the Hogwarts front door and told everyone McGonagall cried when she saw it because it was so good. Surely it cannot be bad when it is like this. Surely they are not making a mistake.
Often he imagines telling seventeen year old him what twenty-three year old him is doing now. Seventeen year old him would probably laugh, smug little shit, because there would be no way he would even think about doing what heâs doing now. Seventeen year old little shit James Potter would think that it is all some joke, because who cared about girls compared to stars? Stars were magic. Stars were stars. Seventeen year old smug little shit James Potter would give up girls and sex and everything for the stars. Being able to teach about stars? What more could anyone want? Seventeen year old smug little shit James Potter didnât understand how people could sleep at night when they could be looking up at stars. Seventeen year old smug little shit James Potter didnât understand how any human could possibly compare.
Twenty-three year old James Potter rather wants to punch Seventeen year old James Potter for being such a judgemental prick, if heâs being honest.
Sheâs sitting on his table and swinging her legs after class, Lily someone will see he says and her name is a sparkler in his mouth. His teeth are on fire and it is delicious. Fuck that she says and pulls his tie off, wrapping it around her own porcelain neck and striking a pose Do I look fabulous she asks. Always he says back and kisses her before he can change his mind.
She keeps shoes in his closet. Her stockings are still under his bed. The Herbology book she left is still on his night stand. When heâs doing his teeth in the bathroom he thinks of her and cannot stop smiling, getting white foam all over the sink. Shit. How did he let this happen?
 Iâm sleeping with a student he blurts out to Remus when theyâre sitting in the deserted bar waiting for the others. Remusâs eyebrows shoot up so fast itâs a wonder theyâre still attached to his head. What, James? He splutters, spilling beer down his front, Youâre doing what?
Iâm kidding he says, thumping Remus on the back, Iâm kidding mate, Iâm not really. Half of Remusâs beer is on his front, Thank Merlin Moony says, relieved and whipping his front, shit James if you had, that would have been⌠he takes a sip of his almost empty drink, bad he finishes.
Yeah he laughs with him. Yeah it would have been Moony. He gets up and goes to the bathroom, then throws up in the toilet. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and he canât stop thinking about Lily standing the headmasters office getting expelled and not finishing school and him packing his bags and leaving his astronomy tower and the job he had dreamed of having since he was ten and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck what is h a p p e n i n g this has to s t o p.
 But that night she comes over and she is crying. Her sister is not inviting her to her wedding. She will have to stay at home while her sister gets married. She is sobbing into his neck and he is holding her up. Lily itâs okay he whispers into her hair Lily when your sister gets married we will break into the wedding and eat all the cake. Lily when we break into the wedding we will skip down the aisle in front of them and make them mad. Lily when we break into the wedding you and I will take up all the room on the dance floor and when we leave we will steal all their presents. She is laughing a little now, and his stomach is loosening and he cannot give this up he just canât because that laugh is hitting his nerves like an electric shock and suddenly he is all lit up like an neon sign in a muggle city.
She keeps biting her lip in class, chewing on it like a toffee and he has to ask her to stop because whenever she does it makes his knees give out a little. She laughs at this and bares her teeth at him. I am your weakness she trills, prancing round the classroom at two a.m. in her bra, I am the great James Potterâs weakness. I have conquered him she is laughing and he is laughing and then he is kissing across her collar bone and the freckles on her knees are touching his own and turning his bones fuchsia.
He doesnât not know who tells. Maybe it was Professor Marcy, who had the room next to his and was confused at why he was always talking to himself at night. Maybe it was Annabel Zhang, who always seemed overly interested in why he was always so tired. Maybe it was Elliot Nash, who caught him doodling her initials onto scrap paper and didnât believe his lie. Maybe it was himself. Maybe he just blurted it out one day in the staff room because it was burning his core. All he knows is that he is sitting in the headmasterâs office and the man who smiled when he hired him is now looking at him with disgust.
How could you do this, James he is asking, you are throwing everything away on a seventeen year old girl. Why? And he is sitting there, fully ready to deny deny deny and say the of course notâs and he would neverâs that are sitting on his tongue and then he realises he canât. He cannot do it. He cannot say that she means nothing because that wold be like cutting off his ankles. Seventeen year old James Potter thought that stars meant everything because he had never met Lily Evans. Twenty-three year old James Potter would give up the stars, the sky, his telescope, the sword of Gryffindor, teaching, the world, and the sun. He would give up universes for her. For freckled knees and stealing her sisterâs wedding presents.
Fuck everything he says, standing up. I want something more.
 (They buy the house six months later. It is small with a yellow roof and Lily paints all the walls green and red with paint she found for free outside someoneâs house. James hangs posters on the roof and exhausts himself trying to move in the fridge while Lily laughs and flicks paint on his face. At night they eat Honeydukes Finest sitting on the ground and taking turns to look through the telescope. Lily looks at the stars. James looks at her. Because look. Look how brightly she shines) Â
