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James Potter had thought a lot about what his first kiss might be like. Now, he would take this to the grave, and deny it if ever accused - he had pride after all - but it was something he’d often fantasized about. It would be romantic, he imagined, on a boat or something. Under the stars, with a stunningly pretty girl he would sweep off her feet. There would be butterflies and fireworks and all sorts of other cliches, and it would be the most romantic thing.
In all of his fantasies, not once did he imagine it to be on the cement floor of an empty classroom, with his three best friends not five feet away. But daydreams are a very imprecise branch of fortune telling - not a branch of fortune telling at all, some might say - and sometimes, these things just happen.
It all started with a VCR.
Lily Evans, James’ girlfriend (his girlfriend! ) of two and a half months, had been lamenting the lack of muggle technology at Hogwarts. More specifically, the lack of films. More specifically still, the lack of Christmas films.
Christmas films, she said on this dreary early December afternoon, were imperative for boosting Christmas spirit, and it was indeed a travesty that she was unable to watch any while at Hogwarts.
“Of course, my family and I do watch loads of them when I come home for the holidays, but it’s not quite the same,” she told James. “We used to watch them all December - to get us feeling festive, you know.”
James - having been raised in a pureblood wizarding family - hadn’t the foggiest clue what a muggle “film” was. He said as much. This prompted a very passionate lecture on the history of film from Lily to a group of enraptured Marauders (Remus, of course, already knew what films were, but Lily’s extensive knowledge on the background of cinematography was impressive enough to hold his attention).
By the time she was done explaining the concept of muggle films, the Marauders had collectively decided (read: James had decided and the others knew better by now than to try to dissuade him when he got that excited glint in his eye) that it was of inestimable importance that they acquire a “muggle film machine”.
It had taken several weeks, many hours in the library, and a veritable myriad of “entirely hypothetical” queries of Professor McGonagall, but - as they always did - they managed it. Thus, two days before the start of the holidays, the Marauders could be found waiting in an empty classroom for the arrival of the most recent addition to their group.
The room had been decorated with popcorn strings, fairy lights, and a rather sad looking holly wreath. The boys had brought pillows and blankets from their own dormitory and had nicked cookies and hot cocoa from the kitchens. They were now sprawled on the floor next to a (probably illegally acquired, but fully functional) VCR and television set. Or rather, three of the four boys were sprawled on the floor while one of them paced nervously back and forth across the room.
“What if she doesn’t come?” he asked. He was talking, of course, about Lily.
He’d asked Marlene earlier to leave a box containing his invisibility cloak and a note on Lily’s bed. The note had been cryptic, simply asking her to make her way to the abandoned fourth floor classroom in the East Wing at midnight, signed with a little doodle of a stag. It had left no hints as to why she should do something like this, but James had been hoping she just wouldn’t question it.
Remus had rolled his eyes at his antics - why the note and the secrecy when he could just ask her in person? - but Peter and Sirius agreed that this was far more dramatic and thus romantic.
(Remus had then argued that it was hardly romantic if the three other Marauders would be there as well, but Sirius had silenced him with a pillow to the face. This, unfortunately, had marked the beginning of the umpteenth Great Pillow War of the Marauders’ Dormitory - the bloodiest battle yet - but that’s besides the point.)
“She’ll come,” Peter assured him.
“But what if she’s been caught?”
“She can’t have been,” Sirius promised.
“But what if she secretly hates me?”
“She’s your girlfriend .”
“Still!”
“Calm down, James,” Remus said without looking up from his book. “It’s barely two minutes past. You’re being stupid.”
“And stop pacing,” Sirius added. “You’re making me anxious.”
James made a noise of frustration and sulked over to where Sirius was sat. He flopped to the ground, laid his head in Sirius’ lap and mournfully grabbed a gingerbread man. “I hate feelings,” he said around a mouthful of cookie. Remus and Sirius shared an amused if somewhat aggravated look, but were spared the task of responding by a knock on the door.
It was their knock; the one they’d come up with in their second year, around the time they’d christened themselves the Marauders. They had told Lily about this knock a few weeks after she and James had started dating, which was quite a big deal to all of them (though she wouldn’t get an official Marauder nickname for another six months).
James leapt to his feet entirely too quickly to be dignified, dropping his gingerbread man in the process, though he did try to make up for his moment of unrefinement by adjusting his robes unnecessarily and strolling as casually as he could to the door. He crashed into a desk. The other three grinned at each other behind his back.
James reciprocated the secret knock, to let her know it was him (which was unnecessary, but it was tradition), and opened the door with a flourish.
No one was out there.
“Evening,” he whispered to empty air.
“Evening yourself,” came Lily’s voice from under the invisibility cloak. He felt her sweep past him into the room and he shut the door.
She had the cloak off by the time he turned around, and she was folding it neatly over the back of a chair. Her hair was tied up in a bun, staticky from being under the cloak, and she’d taken out her usual hoop earrings.
“Alright, Evans?” called Sirius. He was leaning back on his hands so he could grin at her upside down. She grinned back.
“Heya, boys.” She looked around the classroom - at the food, at the decorations, at the Marauders grouped at the far end of the room. “It’s a right party here, isn’t it?”
“Only because James is too chicken to ask you on a proper date,” Remus said to his book.
James blushed spectacularly. “I - that’s not - I have no idea what you - that’s not even a little bit true!” The others grinned at each other. “I just thought it would be more fun with all of us.”
“Sure you did,” said Sirius consolingly. “Anyway, Evans, did you see what we got?” he gestured at the television set; Lily’s eyes widened.
“No way,” she breathed. “Is that -”
“A muggle film machine,” James said proudly.
“He means television,” Peter chimed in.
“Er, yes. A teller… thing. It took about a million years and a hundred different charms to get it to work though. We almost asked Dumbledore for help.”
“Remus was the one who figured it out,” Sirius grinned. “We figured we would watch some Christmas films, like you were talking about.”
“Is that why Marlene asked me what my favourite Christmas film was?” she asked.
Peter. “Yes.”
“And then wanted to know where one could buy a film?”
Sirius. “She was supposed to be subtle about it.”
“And why she then asked me to write it down so she wouldn’t forget?”
Remus. “Indeed.”
“And why you four’ve been acting even more mischievous than usual?”
James. “Most definitely.”
“You guys are insane,” Lily laughed. “Now come on - let’s get to watching this film.”
Lily was the one to set it up, as nobody else - not even Remus - knew how. She sat on a pillow beside James, grabbing a snickerdoodle from the cookie plate as the movie began.
There was, unfortunately, an unforeseen glitch in their plan - that glitch being James and Sirius. They talked so much during the first few minutes that the other three were ready to smother them with pillows.
“How on Earth do they make clay move without magic? Genius, Muggles are.”
“It’s like our moving photographs, isn’t it, only longer and with sound.”
“Where is the sound even coming from? ”
“Prongs, you never told me you were in a muggle film.” (when the first reindeer showed up).
“There are many things I’ve never told you.”
“Prongs, is that your long lost cousin Gerald?” (when the second reindeer showed up).
“Prongs, is that your brother?”
“Is that your uncle?”
“Is that your secret twin sister?”
“You know, Padfoot, that joke stopped being funny about three reindeers ago.”
And so on.
“If you don’t shut up,” Remus growled when, fifteen minutes into the film, they showed no signs of stopping. “I will bite you.”
“Kinky,” whispered Sirius. James guffawed.
If looks could kill, they both would have dropped dead under the glare Remus was giving them. Lily hid a laugh behind a hand at the fear on their faces - their abject terror of this fluffy haired, cardigan wearing, tea drinking, seventeen year old boy who was much smaller than either of them was truly impressive.
They were quiet after that.
***
The movie was drawing to a close, and everyone was nearly asleep. Everyone except Peter, who really was asleep, and snoring loudly. The hot cocoa was depleted and the cookies were finished and the five teenagers were piled together on the floor. They were all touching in some small way. Remus was lying perpendicular to the rest of them, with his legs in Peter’s lap and his head on Sirius’ chest. Sirius had one hand in Remus’ hair, stroking it idly, and the other across James stomach, the last remaining evidence of a brief slapping war of an hour ago. James had his cheek pressed to the top of Lily’s head. He’d been breathing in the smell of her hair for twenty minutes now. It smelled nice. It smelled of coconut and flowers.
As he nuzzled his nose sleepily against her hair, he felt her shift against him. Her face was in his chest and she was clutching his shirt with one hand, her elbow resting on Sirius’ wrist. Their legs were tangled together.
He was pretty sure she was asleep. He was pretty sure, too, that he wanted to kiss her, and he said as much. Mumbled it like kisses into her hair. His voice was so low and groggy that even he didn’t understand what he’d said.
“Whassat?” Lily murmured back. So she wasn’t asleep. James moved his head just slightly, so that his mouth wasn’t muffled by fiery, coconut scented hair.
“Said I think I wanna kiss you.” He sounded like a frog. He was too tired to mind.
“Mmm.” She moved her head in what might have been a nod - an awkward, clumsy, sleepy nod.
“S’at okay?”
“Mmm.” Another clumsy nod. She tilted her head back, then, so she could look at James with sleepy green eyes. He tilted his head down, so he could look at Lily with blurry hazel eyes.
It was slow, the moving towards each other, and rather clumsy. His lips met her cheek first; hers brushed his jaw. He felt her smile on his skin, her breath on his neck, her eyelashes on his cheek. When their mouths met softly - lips parted, eyes half closed, breaths and heartbeats mingling - he realized he had never known peace until this moment. Here he was, on the dusty old floor of a draughty old classroom. He was kissing a girl. A stunningly pretty girl, who had swept him off his feet. There were no butterflies. No fireworks. They weren’t even on a boat. But he was falling asleep and her lips tasted like cherry and she was warm and soft in his arms and it was every bit as romantic as he’d ever dreamed.
Boats made him ill anyway.