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14 November 1978
Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch
08:37pm
Lily Evans was no stranger to a Gryffindor quidditch practice. One of her roommates and dearest friends was one of the Chasers, after all, and had been for three years now. Lily had accompanied Marlene to many a quidditch practice in the years leading up to her time on the team and had continued to sit in the stands and watch the players fly and dive and shoot and play at least once a week even after Marlene had made the team. It was a good way to pass the time; Lily enjoyed watching quidditch as much as the average Gryffindor. More, even, since she had been fascinated by the graceful way her classmates were able to move through the air since she was a wee little firstie with barely any knowledge of the wizarding world.
So when the players started to trickle out of the locker room after practice, their brooms over their shoulders, no one paid her much mind as she waited on the edge of the pitch. They nodded and greeted her as they passed, and kept on walking up to the castle. Except for Marlene, who cocked her head as she approached Lily.
“Hey, Lily!” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, hair windswept. She looked beautiful and lively. She always did, really, but Marlene’s beauty was always elevated when she got off the pitch. “What are you doing down here?”
Lily shrugged. She usually stayed up in the stands until Marlene was already headed off the pitch and met her near the path back up to the school. Tonight was different. “Just waiting around.”
“Oh.” Marlene frowned. “Did I take too long? I’m sorry. We can head in for dinner now.”
“Actually,” Lily said, wrapping her arms around herself against the bitter cold. She had her red and gold striped scarf wrapped around her neck and her heaviest cloak on and she had done a Warming Charm not even half an hour ago, but she was still freezing. “I wanted to talk to James.”
“Oh,” Marlene said again, and there was a knowing glint in her eyes now. “Well, alright then. But he might be a while. He likes to fly a bit longer after the rest of us head in.”
“Yeah,” Lily said, glancing past Marlene to the lone figure high in the sky. “I know he does.”
Marlene studied her for a moment longer, and then sighed. “Here, take my cloak as well since you’re determined to freeze yourself over a stupid boy.”
“As if it’s my fault I don’t like girls,” Lily grumbled, but gratefully accepted the cloak Marlene draped over her shoulders.
“Actually, I’m glad for that,” Marlene said with a cheeky wink. “I’d hate to be in competition with you.”
“No one could ever hope to compete with you.” Lily batted her lashes flirtatiously at her best friend.
“Too right.” Marlene flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder – it would have had a much more majestic effect, Lily knew, were it not in a tangled plait down her back – and then shivered violently. “Merlin, I’m heading in before I freeze to death. See you.”
“Bye, Mar,” Lily said. “Save me some treacle tarts, will you?”
Marlene lifted one hand in the air in acknowledgement as she jogged off, leaving Lily alone with the flyer high above her. Eyeing him, she wandered out on the pitch until she was standing in the center, in the exact spot he stood before each match when Madam Hooch made him clasp hands with the opposing team’s captain.
He was flying in lazy circles over the stands, but every now and then he would put on a burst of speed or wheel around in a sharp turn. She loved the rush of adrenaline she got herself when he randomly dived, streaking for the ground at the end of the pitch as if he were a Seeker and had spotted the snitch, and she knew the rush she got paled in comparison to his. He really was a fantastic flyer. When they were younger she had resented him for it. Now, she admired him.
She was a fair flyer herself, but she wasn’t on the same level as him. She would be hard-pressed to name a better flyer in the entire school. Madam Hooch herself likely couldn’t outfly him.
“How long do you plan to pretend you don’t know I’m here?” she called out to him when he dived again and feinted inches from the ground, careening back up into the sky.
He was grinning when he turned his broom to face her. “Please, I’ve been showing off for you the whole time.”
She felt herself smile back, felt her cheeks flush when he drifted toward her. “You could have at least said hello.”
“Maybe I wanted to see how long you were planning to wait for me,” he shot back.
“As long as it took you,” she told him.
He hovered in place less than a foot from her, legs bent with the tips of his toes almost brushing the dirt floor so that they were exactly at the same eye-level.
“You fancy me or something, Evans?” he taunted, but his eyes were soft and fond.
“Shut up, Potter.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “As if you’re not the one who’s been pining for me since third year.”
“Second, actually,” he corrected shamelessly, tone completely matter-of-fact. “You just caught on in third because I asked you out. Couldn’t figure what to ask you to do as a twelve-year-old who wasn’t allowed on Hogsmeade weekends yet.”
“I’m surprised you never asked me to watch you fly,” Lily said haughtily.
“Didn’t need to,” he said with a laugh. “You were always here with Marlene anyway.”
She hummed. He was right. Even back then, when she had thought he was arrogant and annoying, she had loved to watch him in the air. She hadn’t come with Marlene only for him, but he was a big reason.
“You look cold,” he said when a violent shiver wracked her body. “We should head in.”
“No,” Lily protested, stepping up to his broom and laying a hand over his to stop him from dismounting. An all-too-familiar glint flashed in his eyes when they met hers. Her stomach flipped pleasantly. “Take me up.”
“It’s colder up there, Lily,” he said softly.
“You look warm enough,” she observed. It was mostly the adrenaline, she knew, that kept him warm when he was flying. But he also ran hot. She knew that as well. His loose ties, rolled up shirtsleeves, and penchant for not buttoning his shirts up to the collar until being scolded by a professor – usually McGonagall – weren’t just a lesser form of rebellion; he overheated easily.
He looked skeptical, but didn’t move to stop her when she swung a leg over his broom. He smirked when she did it so that they were face-to-face, though.
“Normally people face the handle when they fly,” he teased.
“Oops,” she said carelessly, matching his smirk when she slid her arms under his flying jacket and pulled herself closer to him. He jolted and gripped the handle tighter, a bit caught off guard, when she kicked off for him.
“Lily!” he admonished, his mouth close to her ear when he had regained control of his broom.
“What?” she asked innocently, pulling her head back to blink at him. “Can’t handle it?”
“You know I can,” he said, and she felt his arms tighten around her as they started to rise higher.
“I know you can,” she agreed, and pressed her cold face to his warm neck. He hissed and flinched, only a little, as they glided through the air. After a few peaceful moments, she broke the silence in a whisper of breath against his throat. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” he murmured.
She pulled her head back so she could look him in the face. “Why did you pretend you can’t produce a corporeal Patronus?”
Professor Binns had mentioned Azkaban prison in their History of Magic lesson first thing in the morning, and the awful soul-sucking dementors that guarded it. Emmeline Vance, a friend and roommate of Lily and Marlene’s had asked how to defend against a soul-sucking demon and Professor Binns had mentioned the Patronus Charm before droning on about the history of the prison. When they had made it to Defense Against the Dark Arts a little later, Marlene had managed to completely derail Professor Bickett’s planned lesson on selkies in favour of an impromptu lesson on the Patronus Charm.
“Maybe I wasn’t pretending,” he hedged.
Lily rolled her eyes. “I heard you bragging to the boys about how you’d already done it before class.”
“So you caught me grandstanding.” He shrugged and leaned slightly to guide them into a gentle turn. “Wouldn't be the first time.”
He was right. It wouldn’t be the first time. But saying she’d caught him when she was walking hand-in-hand with him when he’d said it was certainly a choice; she knew he was withholding information. “James.”
“Lily.” He mocked her serious tone, but she refused to allow herself to be baited into an argument simply because he didn’t want to come clean.
“I know you. I know when you’re lying-bragging and when you’re truthfully bragging.” She met his gaze resolutely, pleading with her eyes for him to tell her the truth. “You’ve produced a Patronus before.”
He looked away, out into the rapidly darkening sky and swallowed hard. “Maybe I was nervous.”
She scoffed. “You don’t get nervous.”
“That’s not true, Lily.” He sounded almost offended. “You’ve seen me nervous plenty. You’re usually the one making me nervous.”
“Not nervous enough to completely choke,” she insisted. “You don’t get performance anxiety. In fact, when you’re nervous you normally perform even better than you otherwise would.” Hell, the first time he had truly, earnestly snogged her he had been a trembling mess and completely rocked her world out on her bedroom terrace when her parents thought he had already gone home. “Why did you lie in front of the whole class?”
“I didn’t want to take away from your moment,” he admitted.
“My what?” Lily stared at him horrified.
She had been the first one to produce a fully corporeal Patronus when Professor Bickett called them up to the front of the class one at a time to make their attempt, but there had only been two people called up before her, and they had each managed at least the cool, silver wispy shadows that would eventually, with enough practice, become corporeal. The swell of pride Lily had felt when the silver deer had burst from the tip of her wand to canter around the room the second time she said the incantation had not been dimmed by Remus’s success, or Sirius’s, or Dorcas’s later on in the lesson. It would not have been dimmed by his.
“What, do you think yours is that much cooler than mine?” she demanded, offended. It wasn’t as intimidating as Sirius’s huge dog had been, or Remus’s wolf which he had swiftly vanished after producing it, but her little deer had been pretty and sweet and had made her smile. “I love deer!”
“No, no! That’s not what I meant!” James shook his head feverishly, something akin to panic flashing in his eyes at the thought he might offend her. “Your Patronus was magnificent. I loved it. But, well…it wasn’t just a deer. Lily, it was a doe.”
Lily frowned and narrowed her eyes on him. “James, a doe is a deer.”
“I know!” he exclaimed, and the broom jerked to a halt so they were hovering a hundred or so feet off the ground. “But it’s not just a deer. Lily, it’s a female deer.”
Lily stared at him, slightly concerned for his mental state.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “It is.”
“Your Patronus is a female deer,” he said weakly, but then the words began to rush out of him in an almost pleading tone. “And I didn’t want to go after you and make you uncomfortable or make you think I was trying to steal your thunder or make your accomplishments somehow about me or…overwhelm you or anything because…”
“Because?” she prompted, but something in the abject terror on his face made her suspect. Her heart thundered in her chest; her blood sang in her ears.
“Your Patronus is a doe,” he said softly, almost tremulously. “And mine is a…”
He paused again, and she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t wait. She knew. She hadn’t seen it yet because he had pretended he wasn’t capable, but she knew.
“I thought of you,” she said when he took too long to tell her, because she was a Gryffindor, but she was still a seventeen year old girl and she was too nervous to take this particular admission from him.
“You what?” he asked, shaking his head, bemused by the apparent subject change.
“Professor Bickett said we had to think of our happiest memories to achieve it,” Lily said, forcing herself to hold eye contact. “I thought of you. I mean, not only. Marlene was there a bit, and my parents, but I thought of you a lot. Last year, when you kissed me for the first time in that empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express right before we reached the station, and when you showed up at my house over summer and shook my dad’s hand and let my mum bully you into having dinner with them, when you snuck away from the boys in Diagon Alley and pulled me away from my parents and snogged me behind Madam Malkin’s, and when you…”
He cut her off with a heated kiss, one hand lifting from the handle of his broom to cup her cheek. Slowly, slowly, they began to drift back down to the pitch.
“A stag,” he breathed against her mouth when their feet brushed the dirt a moment later. “My Patronus is a stag, and I didn’t want the fact that we’re soulmates to become the main focus of the entire class because I’m bloody in love with you and I wanted you to have your moment.”
The word soulmates shot a thrilling shock through her body. She remembered what Professor Bickett had said, of course, as the lesson had been only a few hours ago.
The Patronus is the embodiment of the caster’s soul. Sometimes, when the connection between two people is strong enough, when their souls are mated, their Patronuses will reflect that fact in a similarly mated pair.
“I’m bloody in love with you, too,” Lily told him, chilled hands gripping his waist beneath his warm jacket.
“Lily,” James said, cradling her face in both of his hands. “Being as we’re soulmates and we’re in love and all, will you be my girlfriend?”
Lily smiled and nodded, then laughed at his goofy grin and pressed herself tight against him.
They’d had a rough start of things back in first year and she hadn’t been his biggest fan for a while, and then he had asked her out to Hogsmeade in third year and she had rather unkindly turned him down. Then in fourth year they had formed a tentative sort of almost-friendship when she had grown closer with Remus, and they had had their ups and downs for a couple of years. But last year had been a good one for them.
They had been friends – truly friends – since very early on in the school year after he had earnestly apologized to her for his part in the awful row they had had at the end of fifth year, and he had begun to shamelessly flirt with her when they had returned from Christmas holidays. He had even shared his broomstick with her a few times after practice, with her actually facing the proper direction. She had waited months for him to finally ask her out again for the first time since the third year disaster, but he never had. She had been heartsick over him as the year had drawn to a close, had driven Marlene mad with her yearning for him and had all but resigned herself to a life of pining for him alone with a pride of cats when he had quietly pulled her away from their friends using the snack trolley as an excuse and had kissed her soft and sweet and shy and asked if she wouldn’t mind if he wrote her over the summer.
They had exchanged countless letters, sometimes two in a single day – his poor owl – and he had come round her house and met her parents after only two weeks of letters, and had come back a few days later, and a few days after that, and then again, and again until her parents began to ask why he wasn’t around if he took too long to turn up. Her mother was half in love with him herself, and her father liked him a whole lot, so much so that they had both pretended not to notice that she had clearly just had the daylights snogged out of her when she and James returned to them in Diagon Alley after lying that they were going to say a quick hello to some friends.
Then they had returned to Hogwarts for their seventh year, and they were both the Head students and he still hadn’t asked her out. They still talked all the time, and flirted, and he still pulled her aside for private moments and sweet kisses and heated snogs, and on Hogsmeade weekends they were always together, but usually with a group. He never kissed her in front of anyone else, though. Not even their friends.
Marlene half believed Lily was lying about all their snogging.
Remus and Peter acted like nothing was different. Even Sirius never mentioned it, making her wonder if James hadn’t even told his best friends.
But.
He clearly cared for her. Deeply. Even before she knew he was in love with her, she had known he cared deeply for her.
And when she had asked him about it just a few nights ago when they were alone in the Prefect common room tidying up after a meeting, he had been completely reasonable with his answer.
He didn’t realize she wanted people to know.
Not their friends, of course. Their friends knew. Hell, he had admitted that he had told the boys what he had planned for her on the Hogwarts Express the night before they boarded the train home. The boys all knew he had spent the majority of his summer with her. They simply pretended not to know because James had thrown an absolute fit and sworn he would make their lives hell if they ruined this for him.
But everyone else who had thought she hated him for years. He had been holding himself back from her for fear of her discomfort with the entire school suddenly realizing she didn’t hate him.
She had told him he was a right fool for that, and had taken his hand in hers in the corridor on the way back to Gryffindor Tower, and he had fixed her a plate of food when she was running late for breakfast yesterday morning, and she had sat right next to him, squeezing into a non-existent space between him and Sirius that had Sirius shooting her an affronted, disgruntled, sleepy glare as he moved over to make room for her. He had taken her hand in the corridors between classes, had carried her books for her, had made a point of waiting for her at the door after the one class they didn’t share. He had even stayed in the library with her until closing time last night when she had been nervously revising for their Charms exam.
He still hadn’t kissed her in public yet.
“I’d better get you inside and fed before you freeze to death,” James said. “Being a good boyfriend and all.”
“I’m perfectly cozy right here, the besotted girlfriend I am.” She snuggled closer to him, protesting when he shifted so his feet were flat against the ground and bearing some of their weight.
“You may be cozy, but my ass is sore after three hours on a broomstick,” he complained, but she could hear the grin in his voice.
“Your ass is fine, Potter,” she said, pointedly checking it out as they dismounted together.
“You’re insatiable, Evans,” he teased, but he turned and walked ahead of her in silent invitation for her to continue staring.
She laughed and caught up to him quickly, slipping her hand into his in a now-familiar move as he lifted his broom over his other shoulder.
Before they made it off the pitch, she pulled him to a halt. “Wait. Will you do me a favour?”
“What is it?” he asked.
“I want to see your Patronus,” she told him and suddenly, now that she had said it aloud, she was absolutely desperate to see it.
He looked at her for a moment, and then silently reached for his wand in the inner pocket of his flight jacket. Pointing it at the center of the pitch, he said, “Expecto Patronum,” and a brilliant, majestic, beautiful, massive stag with high, symmetrical, many-pointed antlers erupted from his wand. Its movements were sure and powerful as it cantered around the pitch.
Awestruck, Lily drew her own wand. “Expecto Patronum.”
Her Patronus, a pretty little regal doe half the size of his stag, met his in the middle of the pitch. They circled each other for a moment, and then the stag went still, and the doe nuzzled against him, their long necks meeting in a sort of embrace.
Lily let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.”
“I feel like I should thank you,” he said, eyes brighter and perhaps a bit damper than normal. “But I’ll just say you’re welcome.”
“Smart man,” Lily murmured, and kissed his cheek. “Come on, you’re right, I am freezing.”
They turned again to leave the pitch and behind them, their Patronuses lingered for a brief moment standing together in the evening light before they silently faded away.
“One more favour?” she asked as they made it into the blessedly warm castle and headed toward the Great Hall for dinner.
“Anything,” he promised.
“When you wallop Ravenclaw on Saturday, will you snog the living hell out of me right there in front of the whole school?”
He stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at her. She met his eyes with a steady gaze. The grin that spread across his face was quick, and wide, and ecstatic.
“Yeah, I think I can make that happen.”