t o g e t h e r

Any reasonably functioning bloke would start getting ideas after that much one-on-one time during the final month of sixth year. Especially since she’d been very deliberate about asking him when no one else could tag along. It was always just the two of them and she’d been doing this new, suspiciously consistent thing for at least a fortnight now.

But why?

“I’d kill for a slushy Butterbeer right now,” Lily sighed, letting her hand fall. It brushed his as it dropped—casual as anything—as though she hadn’t just liquefied his internal organs with the lightest touch. “Aren’t you roasting in your school coat, James?”

“I know it’s a bit formal for our grand plans,” he admitted, “but I assumed I’ll be freezing once you’ve dunked me in the lake and offered me up as a sacrifice to the Giant Squid.”

“I do enjoy sacrificing you.” She skipped neatly out of his reach, her smile bright as sunlight.

His answering grin came far too easily—it always did with her—stretching across his face until his eyes crinkled at the corners. Honestly, anyone watching might think she’d just delivered the greatest joke in recorded history. His smiles were always bigger, brighter, more helpless around Lily Evans.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m quite used to you trying to murder me after all these years. And anyway, being drowned by you is far preferable to being publicly humiliated by you in class with a giggle-jinx.”

“Please,” she sniffed. “That only happened because you deserved it.”

“It’s not my fault Professor Burbage used the word titillating to describe dragon breeding,” he shot back. “I physically could not not laugh.”

“It’s just a word,” Lily said, rolling her eyes.

“It starts with 'tit' and she was talking about lactating dragon tits luring the male in...” he defended his actions. “It was ironic! And funny! Admit it!” 

“I'll admit that you're immature for seventeen years old,” her reply was dry. "Acting like you've never heard the word 'tit' before."

“I mean, in my defence, I didn’t exactly sign up for lectures on dragon sex.”

“Why were you taking Advanced Care of Magical Creatures?” Lily pointed out. “It was made very clear we’d be covering breeding and conservation care in sixth year. Were all the other electives full?”

“Well, for one, there is a werewolf living in my dormitory,” James said solemnly. “and for two, I need to learn how to care for him properly—including how to stop him panting over Sarah Beckett.”

Lily burst out laughing, her head tipping back, green eyes bright, and James felt absurdly pleased with himself for having coaxed that glorious sound out of her. He laughed too, tension slipping from his shoulders as easily as if her laughter had tugged it free.

“It’s also miles easier than Advanced Astronomy,” he added. “Fewer things to memorise. Less staring at the sky while freezing to death.”

“It is rather nice being a sixth year and taking a few subjects simply because you want to,” she said, springing lightly over a boulder that broke through the path. She landed as neatly as a cat, all balance and quiet confidence—the sort of effortless grace that suggested she had never once humiliated herself by tripping in public. James, who had done exactly that on more than one memorable occasion, found it deeply impressive. “OWLs are finally over…no NEWTs until next year…what’s not to love about this year? Honestly, I do hope I get—”

Her words thinned and vanished into the warm, humming air.

James realised, with a small jolt of horror, that he had stopped walking altogether. He was simply standing there, staring at her with open, undisguised adoration while she talked.

Lily had turned back when she no longer felt his hand brushing against hers as they walked. Now she was facing him fully, and he was still staring—not even pretending at subtlety.

Brilliant.

He must look like a complete fool in her eyes.

“James?”

“Lily?” he croaked.

“Are you paying attention to me?”

“I’m always paying attention.”

It was painfully true. He’d been trying all afternoon to get her alone. Lily was never alone—she drew people the way warmth drew hands on a winter morning, bright and alive and impossible not to gather around. Wherever she went, the room rearranged itself to accommodate her.

He had noticed her the instant he stepped into the Great Hall at lunch. School skirt, white shirt sleeves clinging faintly to her arms in the heat, a few buttons undone down the line of her chest in a way that felt entirely unfair to him. His eyes kept flirting to the curve of her breasts peeking out, which wasn't polite at all to do when a witch is talking to you.

But fuck it, she was gorgeous. 

There was even a soft wash of green across her eyelids that made her eyes look almost luminous, and her freckles—which always faded during the winter—had begun to bloom again over her nose and cheeks after days spent in the sun by the lake, usually with him somewhere close beside her. Today, she looked exceptionally pretty though, after-effects of all that time outside. 

The water ahead glittered like a scatter of silver coins, but it was nothing compared to the light in Lily’s eyes when she smiled—sharp and bright and a little bit wicked, like she knew something amusing that he didn’t. The speech he had been polishing in his head all week promptly collapsed the moment her tongue flicked out to wet her pouted lower lip.

“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Lily said lightly, using one of her charmingly Muggle expressions. “Are you alright, James?”

“Soooo—” he began, and then stopped, because apparently that was the full extent of his linguistic capabilities for the day.

“Soooo?” she echoed, tilting her head as she studied him with mild curiosity.

A warm breeze lifted her hair—still much shorter than it used to be—so the uneven ends fluttered around her face. In the sunlight, some strands caught and flashed copper-bright, like sparks. It refused to behave, springing into soft, stubborn waves that made her look a bit like some fairytale woodland creature that had wandered into school by mistake.

The short hair was a relic of the time they had properly become friends—when he’d stopped performing devotion for an audience and started talking to her like an actual person, even when it was just the two of them. Ignoring Lily Evans had never been possible, of course, but Sirius had finally convinced him to stop chasing and start listening. It had worked rather alarmingly well.

“Your hair’s getting longer,” he said quietly, the words escaping before he could stop them. “It’s back to your shoulders.”

His hand moved without permission, brushing a loose strand behind her ear, fingers skimming her temple for the briefest second. “Why did you cut it last summer?”

Her skin was warm from the sun. He found himself wondering—with a sudden, traitorous flicker of hope—whether the colour in her cheeks was entirely from the heat.

“My mum thought I needed a good haircut when I came home,” she said, a touch primly, though her voice softened at the edges. “She wanted to do something nice for me after…everything that happened in June.”

“I like it shorter,” he said. “It suits you.”

“Oh. Er—thanks.” She gave a small, almost bashful smile. “I actually miss it long, though. Still can’t tie it back properly, especially after Mulciber’s little Fiendfyre experiment made it even shorter.” She ran her fingers through the uneven waves as if demonstrating, though the gesture seemed more self-conscious than practical. “I’d love to set his hair on fire in return, but premature balding appears to be a side effect of being a bigot.”

Normally James would have laughed (Lily’s throwaway lines were reliably brilliant) but this time he only looked at her, caught on the quiet softness of her smile as she fussed with her hair.

“I suppose so,” he said at last, voice so low it barely carried.

January had been the first time they’d truly fought side by side. Not their old kind of fighting (sharp words across classrooms, silent competitions for marks or moral high ground) but real fighting, backs to each other, equals at last.

Partners, in every sense of the word except the one he wanted most.

Anyways, back on that fateful morning Mulciber and Avery had two Ravenclaw third-years pinned against the corridor wall, speaking in those oily, low voices that made James's skin crawl. In fact, he felt sick before he even made out the words—the way they loomed was quite enough to gather what was happening.

He and Lily had only been there in the corridor because she’d been grilling him about transfiguration theory outside Charms (angrily, obviously), when Avery’s hand slid under the taller blonde girl’s skirt.

Lily moved first.

Of course she had been watching the scene out of the corner of her eye like James had been. And she had no hesitation, operated with no dramatics—just pulled her wand from it's holster, raised it eyes blazing, and sent a stinging jinx sharp enough to make Avery yank his hand back like he’d touched a live wire. When Avery whipped around and saw Lily he snarled 'bitch' like a rabid animal as the two Ravenclaw girls scurried away. 

James stepped in beside Lily without thinking, taking position just to her left, shoulders almost touching. He remembered that part very clearly—how oddly steady it felt. Like standing next to her made all the fury slot into place nicely, instead of exploding everywhere and causing James to over-react.

He snapped at Avery to keep his filthy hands to himself and Lily said bravely, "perhaps he doesn't need his hands."

It was the first time he considered snogging Lily Evans in public without asking. 

“Awh, Cindy didn't care,” Avery had drawled to them both, smug and possessive in a particularly revolting purist way. “Her father owes my father a favour, so I practically own her arse until that family's debt is paid.”

James did what any remotely decent human being with a wand would do.

He stunned Avery flat onto the stone floor.

Mulciber, apparently offended by their (not shocking) lack of appreciation for sexual assault, retaliated with Fiendfyre. Not proper Fiendfyre—thank Merlin—but still wildly illegal, wildly dangerous, and performed with all the finesse of a drunk troll. A blazing bird of fire burst down the corridor completely out of his control, setting tapestries, portraits, and several unfortunate students alight as it went.

Lily managed to wrestle the thing into something resembling containment, which cost her several more inches of hair (already cut short, and she was furious about it) and her favourite maroon corduroy trousers, which ended up with two enormous, irreparable holes in the arse and one knee. She mourned those for weeks, with the solemnity usually reserved for national tragedies.

James took the fire head-on—twice—while trying to help box it in. It clung to his shirt, burned straight through, and forced him to tear the thing off before it took half his chest with it. This did, unfortunately, leave him bare-chested in the middle of a school corridor, which was not how he’d planned to spend his afternoon.

Still, the twenty minutes he’d spent shirtless before someone lent him a cloak did produce one notable side effect: Lily’s eyes kept drifting back to him, lingering just a fraction longer each time while Professor McGonagall delivered a blistering lecture to the four of them—Mulciber, a groggy and only half-revived Avery, and the two supposed anti-heroes of the hour—about the absolute inadvisability of duelling in school corridors.

“Like what you see?” he’d chirped softly, because making her talk to him was practically a hobby at that point.

“No,” she said at once, flushing bright red. “I’m worried those burns will get infected. You should have gone straight to the Hospital Wing.”

“So you worry about me, then?” He'd felt no better joy to see her flush even deeper. "You secretly care about me?"

“Ugh. You are unbelievably annoying.”

"It's good to know you care."

Detentions followed, naturally. Very long ones, for a while. The detentions were often accompanied by weary lectures from professors who were thoroughly fed up with the escalating fights between traditionalists and reformists. James privately maintained that if the traditionalists would stop behaving as though witches were collectible property, there might be rather fewer altercations.

At least on his end.

The Board of Governors fussed for weeks over the injured students, and everyone involved earned a solid month of detention. Mulciber very nearly got expelled—until his father donated a rather eye-watering sum to the school. Lily ranted about that for the better part of an evening in the common room when the rumour reached them, pacing like a furious little pixie in her dressing gown. 

And yet, somehow, it was all still worth it. The burns, the shouting, the endless lines to copy—all of it. Because something unexpected happened in those dull detention hours. The hostility that had defined James and Lily since fifth year's OWLs vanished all at once. It thinned, then splintered, then quietly gave way to conversation between them about their favourite things: quidditch and magic.

Sure, it had been awkward at first. He'd been more than careful to not say or do the wrong thing in front of her. Then, gradually…it was so easy. She was always so funny and he was...nice, without a ploy attached. By spring, they had slipped into a friendship so effortless it felt as though he might wake at any moment and discover it had all been a particularly elaborate dream.

Especially the part where she picked him out of crowds to stand beside. 

Right now, though, all he could think about was how much he didn’t want to be her friend.

Not just her friend.

Not even her best friend.

He wanted to be hers in an entirely different way—one he was fairly certain she might not appreciate.

Lily narrowed her eyes at him as he considered how to even tell her this, suspicion sharpening her rounded features. “You’re being really weird,” she said, blunt as ever. 

“Am not,” he replied automatically, which was exactly the sort of thing someone being extremely weird would say.

“You stopped dead in the middle of the path and stared at me,” she’d stepped back up the hill, removing more space between them. “You looked petrified, honestly.” 

He hoped the grin he gave her was charming and didn’t look as remotely frightened as he felt. “I was appreciating the view.” 

That wasn’t a lie, because he wasn’t talking about the lake. 

One of Lily’s eyebrows arched with surgical precision. “The view is behind me, James.” 

She said it affectionately, like his stare was cute. Did she think he was cute? That would certainly solve all his problems right now. 

He swallowed. This was it. Say it now, or spend the entire summer writing dreadful poetry and alarming his poor parents and Sanjana (the housekeeper) with his dramatic sighing.

“Lily, I—”

“Yes?” she prompted, her voice gentler now, angling herself so she was closer to him.

James felt his courage collapse into something much smaller and considerably less impressive the second the wind brought the smell of her damn vanilla perfume his way. 

“I was just going to say,” he finished weakly, “we probably should have brought water. You look like you’re about to melt already.”

Lily stared at him.

One second. Two.

Then she laughed—not the bright, bell-clear laugh she usually deployed, but a smaller, grumpier one, laced with exasperation, as if she could not quite decide whether he was being stupid on purpose or had simply been dropped on his head as a child.

“You are unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head, though the corner of her mouth refused to cooperate.

His nose scrunched. “Unbelievable how, Evans?”

“Unbelievably frustrating, Potter.”

“Why?”

“Oh, honestly, never mind.” She huffed, waving him forward. “Come on, you’re wasting time. If we don’t reach the lake soon so I can cool off, I may actually have to take my shirt off for the rest of the walk, because I am absolutely boiling right now."

He almost took off his jacket to throw it at her head for the audacity.

Why?

Because his brain did not so much stop working as quietly evaporate. One moment there had been thoughts—useful, articulate, heroic thoughts—and the next there was only a sort of white fizz, like a wireless tuned to absolutely nothing.

She was willing to strip down to nothing but her fucking bra and skirt? 

And she had the gall to say this in front of James? 

Who thought about her tits more often than he should?! 

What game was she playing at?! He didn’t stand a chance of winning it. He was playing Muggle chess while she was playing wizard’s chess—and she was several moves ahead, smiling sweetly while she dismantled him.

Lily, meanwhile, had already turned away, continuing down the narrow path as if she hadn’t just detonated something catastrophic inside his skull. Her scandalously short skirt brushed her thighs with a soft swish-swish, sunlight catching in her hair, leaving James to stumble after her with all the elegance of a concussed hippogriff, his dignity trailing somewhere behind him in the dust.

He didn’t consciously decide to grab her arm either. His hand simply did it, as though it had grown tired of waiting for instructions from the brain.

She felt his hand encircle her wrist, stopped short, and turned back.

“James Potter,” she said slowly, her teeth barely parted, the words leaking out between them like steam from a kettle left too long on the hob, “what is wrong with you today? I only wanted to have a nice—wait, why do you look guilty? Oh my god—are you finally about to confess you kissed Macdon—”

“Macdonald?” he repeated, going abruptly pale.

“I saw you sneak off with her in Hogsmeade—”

“I was helping her get her friend unstuck from a sticking charm!”

“And then you kissed her?”

“No, you idiot, I wanted to kiss you!”

It burst out of him—far too loud, far too fast, and with all the grace and dignity of a Bludger to the skull.

A breeze stirred across the grounds, lifting Lily’s short hair and blowing it straight into her eyes. She pushed it back on instinct, fingers trembling only slightly, but her gaze had already dropped to where his hand was clamped around her wrist. James hadn’t even realised he’d grabbed her—not until that moment, not until he saw the white imprint of his fingers against her skin, as though he’d been bracing himself against the possibility she might vanish the instant he let go.

Her doe-eyes lifted again, wide with shock. Her eyes were a very particular, luminous shade of green that always made him feel like he’d be under her spell if he looked too long. She wasn't angry about what he said, but she wasn't amused either. She wasn't even exasperated...just stunned.

Oh, brilliant.

He must've broken her.

“What did you just say to me?” she finally whispered.

She’d gone pale enough that the colour had drained from her cheeks, leaving the fresh scatter of summer freckles across her nose standing out like tiny constellations. He had the absurd, hysterical thought that he could navigate by them if he needed to. North: one freckle just to the left. South: three in a crooked line. Kissing each one individually. 

His stomach chose that exact moment to perform a violent, deeply unhelpful somersault.

“Uh…”

Her brows drew together, mouth tightening, voice suddenly sharp enough to slice parchment.

“What. Did. You. Say.”

Oh, fantastic. He thought. Absolutely spectacular work, James Fleamont Potter. 

He had just declared his embarrassingly desperate affection in the middle of the school grounds, physically manhandled her in the process, and now she either thought he was deranged, dangerous, or on the verge of some kind of breakdown. His brain, ever reliable in moments of crisis, supplied nothing except a loud internal scream and the distant urge to fling himself in the opposite direction of her haunting green eyes.

He loosened his grip at once, horrified at himself, but didn’t quite manage to let go.

Because if he did, she might walk away.

And if she walked away now, after that—after everything he’d just detonated between them—he wasn’t entirely sure he’d survive it with what remained of his dignity intact.

Which, admittedly, was not much.

"James, talk." She demanded. 

‘Ten points to Gryffindor for catastrophic decision-making.’ He said to himself scathingly. 

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His tongue felt roughly the weight and texture of a large rock. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“I—I didn’t mean—” he started, then stopped, because that was clearly a lie and also possibly the stupidest sentence ever constructed in the English language. He tried again, voice cracking spectacularly. “No, I did mean—I just—not like—not just—I mean—”

Excellent.

He was word-haemorrhaging.

James forced himself to breathe through his mouth, dragging air into lungs that seemed to have abruptly forgotten how the whole breathing business worked.

“I like you,” he said at last, much quieter now. “Not as a friend. Not as a best friend. Not just because you’re…well…you.” He gave a small, helpless shrug, words deserting him at speed. “I just wanted you to know before term ends. Before you disappear for the summer back into the Muggle world.” His throat tightened painfully. “Before I missed my chance to tell you how I feel,” he added.

Lily stood perfectly still on the sun-dappled path, as if even breathing might tip the moment into something irreversible. Then, very slowly, she turned her wrist in his grasp. Not yanking away but not accepting his feelings either. Just rotating enough that his fingers slipped from bone to palm, loosening his hold without quite breaking contact.

James let go at once, suddenly and acutely aware of himself—his hands, his voice, his entire unfortunate existence. He shoved both hands deep into his pockets as though they had personally betrayed him and could no longer be trusted after grabbing her so roughly.

Lily watched him, her expression oddly careful now.

“So,” she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper, “you didn’t kiss Mary Macdonald?”

James blinked.

Of all the possible responses to a heartfelt confession—outrage, laughter, fainting, spontaneous combustion—this had not featured on the list he’d compiled during many sleepless nights spent catastrophising about this exact scenario.

“Why,” he said slowly, incredulity creeping in, “are you so fixated on Mary Macdonald?”

She lifted one shoulder, but her gaze never wavered. “Because Hannah said—”

“I don’t care what Hannah said,” he burst out, then immediately lowered his voice again, glancing around as if the creeping vines might be listening. “I just told you I like you. I just admitted I want to kiss you. You, Evans. Not Mary. Not Hannah. Not anyone else. You. It has always been you.”

His ears were burning now. His neck probably was too. He was fairly certain his entire head had turned a shade normally associated with overripe plums.

“Me?” she said, pointing at her own chest as though he might possibly be referring to someone standing behind her.

“Yes, you.” He hesitated, then added, “and before you ask—because I know you—this isn’t a joke. I am not joking.”

Her eyes narrowed instantly. “Did Sirius—”

“This is not a dare,” he cut in, far too quickly. “And I haven’t had too much firewhisky. I haven’t had any, actually. The house-elves were scandalously uncooperative at lunch.”

Her mouth twitched despite herself, but the hint of amusement vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “You want to kiss me. You. James Potter. Me. Lily Evans.”

“I think we’ve established that, yes, tragically, this feeling belongs to me.” He dragged a hand through his hair, making it worse instead of better. “Because it’s you, Lily.” His voice softened, dropping into something unguarded. “I’ve liked you for ages. Really liked you. You must’ve known that. Especially after the last few months of me trying very hard not to just grab you and kiss you every time you did something adorable like...like...the way you play with your hair.” A beat. “Please tell me you noticed the way I look at you.”

She didn’t answer.

The silence stretched, long and merciless. He kicked at a loose stone on the path, sending it skittering away, then glared after it as though it had personally orchestrated his humiliation. When he dared to look back, her expression had changed. She looked a little less guarded, and less startled. Something in her had lowered its shields by a fraction. That was good. 

“But…James.”

“But what, Evans?”

“Hannah—she said—”

“Bollocks to whatever Hannah or Mary or anyone else told you,” he muttered, exhaustion creeping into his voice. “They’re all idiots.”

Lily’s lips parted. Surprise flickered across her face, then confusion, then something sharper, brighter—something far more wicked. He half expected her to tell him off for being short-tempered after just proclaiming he fancies her. 

“They’re all idiots?” she repeated, uncertain.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Everyone in this castle is wrong when it comes to how I feel about you.”

Colour rushed back into her cheeks, eyes flashing like struck glass. “So you fancy me? You're dead honest? This is not a really bad joke I'll have to hex you for?" 

“Absolutely not a joke,” he said at once. Then, suddenly unsure, “Are you…erm…okay with this? Or are you going to hex me either way?”

Her face did not suggest she was okay.

It suggested she might hex him.

She made a small, strangled sound—half snort, half laugh—then threw her hands up in exasperation.

“Okay with this? Okay with THIS?” she repeated, incredulous. “I can’t believe this. What the hell is wrong with you, James Potter?!”

“Erm…” He blinked, completely adrift. “What?”

Lily stepped forward and jabbed a finger into his chest — not hard, but with unmistakable accusation, right over his heart. “Do you have any idea how frustrated I’ve been?!”

He looked down at the black-painted nail pressed into his robes, as though it might offer some helpful explanation. “Uh…with me?”

“With everyone!” she burst out, throwing her hands up as if launching an invisible Quaffle into orbit. “I mean, Sirius said you still fancied me over the holidays, but I talked myself out of it because then you told me I was one of your friends. You said we were best friends,” she said, ticking each point off on her fingers like a prosecutor building a case. “Then, Joanna Mason said she keeps catching you staring at me in the Great Hall, but the second I try to look, you’re suddenly fascinated by literally any other girl within a ten-foot radius.” Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “And then—oh, then—Peter told me you were just overthinking everything and that I should’ve kissed you the night you won the Quidditch Cup and got it over with!”

“What?” he repeated weakly, feeling as though he’d been dropped into the middle of a conversation already halfway to madness.

Lily huffed, blowing out a sharp breath through her nose like an enraged dragon. “I didn’t listen to Peter. Or Sirius. Or even myself! And then Sirius told me to kiss you last week—again—but it was the stupidest advice in human history. He was drunk, you were drunk, I was drunk, and—”

She stopped dead.

Colour surged up her neck and into her cheeks in a fierce, unstoppable tide, spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.

“And?” James prompted faintly, because his vocabulary had deserted him completely, leaving only the most basic of words required.

Her fingers curled slowly into her palm, knuckles whitening, but she didn’t step back. If anything, she leaned forward a fraction, drawn in despite herself. He could see her chest rising and falling with a fluttering nervousness. 

She was just as drawn to him as he was to her, he realised with a jolt.

“And the most frustrating part,” she said, voice tight and shaking now, “the most painful, horrible part of the last six months…has been wanting to kiss you so badly I thought I might actually burst into flames.”

The words tumbled out in one breath—furious, breathless, and mortifyingly sincere.

So naturally, James’s mind went utterly, spectacularly blank.

He didn’t know who moved first. Later, he would insist it had been her. Lily would insist it had been him. In truth, it happened too quickly for any reliable witness to say—including the two people involved.

One moment there was space between them.

The next, there wasn’t.

James’s hand found Lily’s waist as if it had been practising the journey in secret for years, fingers splaying there instinctively, pulling her closer before his courage had time to realise what it was doing. His other hand slid up, hesitated only a fraction of a second, then threaded into her hair, the silky strands tangling between his fingers, warm from the sun.

And suddenly, they were kissing.

Soft—that was the first thought that managed to surface through the fireworks detonating in his skull. Her lips were nice, and warm, and very, very soft. Her mouth pressed harder to his with a strange mixture of indignation and relief, as though she had been waiting far too long and was not pleased about it, but also had no intention of stopping now that she’d started.

Her mouthed opened wider, tentatively, against his.

For one wild, disorienting instant he forgot how kissing worked entirely.

Then instinct took over.

He kissed her back earnestly. His grip tightened at her waist, drawing her closer still, as if proximity alone might prevent the witch from running away from him once it ended. She broke away just to lean back in and capture his lower lip in her mouth, tugging playfully. James then felt Lily’s fingers dig deeper into his school jacket, her nails poking into his side, as their mouth met wide and hot and desperate.

Lily's left hand shifted to hold his bicep, trailing up his arm to keep his fingers where they were still threaded in her hair. He tested her with a gentle pull back from her kiss, and Lily followed, her eager mouth chasing his. It was like a magnet, the pushing and pulling of their lips together, and he was addicted to the feel of it.

James was mindless, a little dumbstruck, but that could be because they were kissing sloppily now, emotions taking over feelings. She made a small sound against his mouth—half sigh, half something more—and her hand came up to fist the back of his head, clutching hard enough into the roots of his hair that his head tilted, changing the angle.

Everything else fell away.

The path, the lake, the castle, the entire inconvenient concept of reality.

There was only Lily—her hair wrapped in his fingers, her tongue warm as she slid it against his, the faint taste of something sweet he couldn’t place, and the dizzy, terrifying certainty that this was the best thing that had ever happened to him. The best thing that might ever happen to him, if he were honest. 

When they finally broke apart, it wasn’t because either of them wanted to.

It was because some young second years came up the path, and started making dramatic smooching sounds. There had to be four or five of them that were giggling as they wandered around the sixth years in the middle of the narrow path.

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G, Potter and Evans like owls in a tree…”

James felt Lily’s mouth curve against his, like she found it amusing too, but they didn’t give the kids the slightest glance. James especially didn't care that they were being teased since he was hyper focused on the way her chest was rising and falling rapidly against him. He opened his eyes to examine her though, to take in this new version of Lily Evans he was lucky enough to experience.

Her forehead was hovering just shy of his chin, eyelids still fluttering between closed and open as if she were worried that opening them fully might undo the snog spell she was under. Her fingers were clutched into his jacket so hard, that her long nails were pinned into his side. Plus, her lips (his new favourite feature) were parted from pleasure. They were a darker pink from all the snogging, and looked even more kissable than they had before he'd tasted them.

“Well,” he said faintly, voice a little unsteady, “that first kiss was overdue, don’t you agree?”

"Yeah," she agreed, eyes still fluttering between her dreams and reality. "Way overdue, in fact..." She noted, opening her eyes finally, all just to scrap her fingers through his hair playfully, “Our second kiss will be much more punctual.” 

“Will it?” He leaned down just far enough that their noses were barely touching.

“Yes.”