Seasons' Greetings 2011 ♥ A Gift for starry_laa [2/2]
Title: A Very Potter Christmas
Author: perilousgard
Recipient: starry_laa
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 10, 161
Warnings: None.
Summary: Needing some extra money for the holidays, Lily applies to be a chalet girl for a rich, wizarding family. Of course, that family is none other than James Potter’s.
Author's Note: I am indebted to my awesome friend Terri, who plays the James to my Lily and helped me with a good bit of the ideas for this fic.
As it turned out, helping Mrs. Potter plan the gala kept her very busy, but Evanna insisted on spreading out the work so that Lily also had a lot of down time. When she wasn’t out in the quaint wizarding village that was about five kilometers up the road, buying anything from tablecloths to enchanted lanterns for the garden, she was allowed to roam free. She spent a lot of her time simply exploring the house, which she took to be endless until after the first week, when she finally thought she had seen everything there was. She got herself locked inside the room a few doors down from hers on two separate occasions, but just as James had told her, a light tickling of the knob made the door swing wide open. She had even made friends with Martin, the house elf, who had helped her with some of the baking.
One afternoon, after finishing the last of four dozen frosted pastries, her face and hair covered in flour, James came into the kitchen. Really, in the past week and a half, Lily had seen very little of James. Even when she wasn’t busy, he never seemed to turn up. She had just begun to think that he must have gone to find Sirius. But now here he was, and she looked like a powdered doughnut. Wondering why she was feeling self-conscious, Lily wiped at her face with the back of her sleeve, which only succeeded in dirtying her clothing as well as her skin.
“Pastries?” asked James, looking at the rows and rows of green-and-red, sprinkled sweets that she had spent the last three hours making. “They smell good, anyway.”
Lily nodded. “That’s just four dozen of them. How many guests are going to be at this ball? I’m supposed to make two dozen more.”
“Ah, Mum’s parties usually draw big crowds,” he replied. “The ballroom almost never holds them all, and they end up spilling out into the garden. Has she been sending you all over the place?”
“Mostly just into the village,” said Lily, with a shrug. “It’s not too bad, this, really. She gives me a list of things to accomplish and I get them done. It’s nothing all that extreme.”
James nodded. “And you have a lot of down time.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You wouldn’t happen to have some down time now, would you?”
Lily hesitated briefly. “I might. Why?”
And from behind James’ back came a broom; how on earth had he hidden that? As soon as her eyes landed on it, she was shaking her head, knowing what he had in mind. James Potter with a broom only meant one thing.
“I can’t play Quidditch!”
He laughed. “I’m not asking you to play Quidditch. Just come flying.”
Lily considered herself a girl of few irrational fears, but the fear of heights was definitely one of them. She had been on a broom only twice before-once during the flying lesson given to all first years, and once in second year when she had decided to try out for the Quidditch team (what was she thinking) in order to try and conquer her fear. Both experiences had landed her in the hospital wing, but she had never managed to break anything. Since then, she hadn’t been back up in the air.
Not that she wanted James to know her fears.
She brushed back some stray strands of hair, causing flour to sift down onto the table in front of her. “I’d have to clean up first,” she said, knowing that he was impatient and didn’t like to wait on things.
He shrugged. “I’m not in any rush.”
“I might be awhile,” Lily continued.
“I don’t mind,” said James.
From the way he was grinning at her, Lily thought he could probably sense her hesitation, and she wondered if he too was recalling her humiliating Quidditch tryout in second year. He had been trying out as well-that was the year he had made the team-and no one had laughed louder than him and Sirius Black. Her cheeks burned at the memory. Of course, that had been before he changed his tune and decided that he wanted to date her instead of ridiculing her, but the way he went about it there was hardly a difference.
“Look, Potter, you know I can’t fly,” she said forcefully, and he seemed surprised by the anger coloring her tone.
“Well, I know. But I’ve been told I make an excellent teacher,” he replied.
“If you laugh at me-“
“Lily, the last thing I’m going to do is laugh.”
He seemed serious, and Lily supposed that was what made her mouth form an agreement before her head had a chance to hold it back.
James looked delighted. “Brilliant. I’ll meet you round back.”
He was gone before she had a chance to change her mind.
|||||
About forty-five minutes later, Lily found herself straddling a broom that James had pulled from the shed out back, hovering three feet in the air while James was poised above her. It wasn’t the height, really, that was so bad, but the instability. She felt like she was going to roll off at any second; she could scarcely shift her hands on the broom without wobbling precariously. Lily had always (silently) admired Quidditch players-they could make this look so effortless.
“Maybe you should just go without me,” she called up to James, though she didn’t dare lift her head. “You’ll get bored if you have to deal with me the whole time.”
“No, you’re doing fine!” James insisted. “You’re just hunched over a little too much. Straighten up-don’t worry about falling off-and space your hands a little further apart. Oh, and lift the handle just a bit. Angle it towards me.”
Lily slowly followed his instructions, certain that if she tried to sit up and move her hands, she would overbalance. And even though it wasn’t a long way to the ground, she knew it would discourage her from trying again. But surprisingly, the broom steadied when she shifted, and she felt a little more stable. She tipped the front of the broom up towards James and shot up about five feet with a little shriek.
James laughed, pulling up so that he was level with her. “Well, that’s the general idea. Just don’t do it so forcefully. These brooms are guided by light touches. If you keep your grip somewhat loose and just nose it in the direction you want to go, it’ll follow you.”
She peered down at the ground, which seemed a lot farther away now. “Have you ever fallen?” she asked him, squinting in the bright sunlight.
“Of course I have. Just not very often,” he replied. “And if you fall, I’m spotting you. I can have my wand out and slow down your momentum before you hit the ground.”
“We can’t do magic outside school,” Lily said.
“Well, maybe not, but Martin can.” He nodded at the house elf, who was trimming the hedges around the garden in preparation for the gala. “He’s even faster than I am. It may look like he’s not paying attention, but it’s like he has eyes in the back of his head sometimes. He used to get me out of a lot of trouble when I was a kid.”
Feeling slightly reassured, Lily nodded. “I suppose as long as I’m up here, I might as well have a proper lesson.”
James grinned. “That’s the way! We’ll just take this slow, then…”
And they did take it slow; achingly so, because Lily couldn’t get comfortable enough to where she could move at more than three kilometers per hour. After an hour with little progress, James finally sidled so close to her that if tilted her head back, they would have knocked foreheads. A bit startled, she instinctively leaned back and her broom tilted alarmingly, but James reached out and steadied it before she could even squeak.
“I have another idea,” he said, and seeing as she normally wasn’t this close to his face, Lily noticed for the first time that his eyes were hazel. “Let’s touch back down.”
Thinking that he had finally decided to give up on her, she carefully glided back down, actually breathing a sigh of relief when her feet found the grass. She dismounted, starting to hand the broom back to James, but he was still perched on his, hovering just slightly.
“I didn’t say we were done, I just wanted to try something a little different,” he said. “Climb on back.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You mean behind you?”
“Yeah.” There was no shit-eating grin.
Lily crossed her arms. “What for, Potter?”
James smirked. “I would have thought we were on friendlier terms than that now, Evans.”
She snorted. What they were hardly constituted as friends. They weren’t even a they. “I repeat-what for?”
“I’m going to show you rather than tell you. And we can take a bit of a ride.”
Lily wanted to say no, to turn around and go back inside, to get back to the entire reason she was spending her Christmas break here in the first place-but something was preventing her from doing so. James was still smiling at her, and she found herself smiling back. A small ride wouldn’t hurt; the rest of the pastries could wait a little longer. “Just don’t kill me, Potter,” she warned, before sliding on behind him. The broom was clearly not made for two, and she had little choice but to hold on to him if she didn’t want to fall off. She started by just gripping a handful of his shirt, but when he took off, she quickly realized she would need to hold on to something a little more substantial. She didn’t want to even see the look on his face as she wrapped her arms tightly around his middle.
James was a highly skilled flyer; she had watched him play Quidditch enough to know that. But flying with him, Lily had no clue how he even followed what he was doing. The world was whipping by her in a whirl of color and texture, and if she had trusted herself enough to fly at this speed, she would have been too focused on not running into the other players to worry about scoring goals. Of course, James had probably been taught to fly even before he could talk.
She sucked in her breath as they flew out over the water behind the house, and she reflexively tightened her hold around him. “Where are we going?” she yelled into his ear.
“Not far!” he yelled back, maneuvering so that they soared higher, over a bit of forest. Lily took a chance and looked down at the treetops, so far below, and her stomach lurched. She hoped “not far” meant they were landing within the next few moments.
“Look over my shoulder and watch my hands!” James shouted suddenly, and before she could question him, he took a sharp dive into the treetops. Lily’s hold tightened into a death grip as they flew through the woods, zigzagging through the trees. James avoided all of them with the lightest touch on his broom handle, and finally they broke through the trees, into an area where a small waterfall poured into a lake. However, the lake was almost entirely frozen. He landed them on the bank, and Lily brushed back the bird’s nest that the wind had made of her hair and looked around.
“Is this your property?” she asked, looking down at the ice.
“Yup,” James said. “My parents own about twenty acres of land here. It’s actually a bit more than what we have on the main estate. It’s one of the reasons I loved coming here when I was a kid.”
“So…what are we doing here?”
He shrugged. “I like coming here, and I thought you might like it, too. I’m sure Mum can do without you for a little longer.”
“It is really pretty,” she admitted, gazing up at the waterfall. Behind it, the sun was beginning to go down, painting the sky with streaks of pink and orange. “So, did you fish here, or…?”
“Oh, a little of everything,” he replied. “Fishing, swimming…and ice skating.” With a bit of a grin, he stepped out onto the ice.
“Don’t! The ice isn’t even covering the whole lake!” Lily warned, tensing.
“It’s fine, Lily. Trust me, I’ve done this for years. It’s a shame we aren’t of age yet, my father taught me a really fantastic Transfiguration spell that put blades on your shoes. But I think it’s slick enough that we don’t really need them.” He skated a little further out, testing his shoes as ice skates. “Do you know how to skate?”
“Yeah, I took lessons when I was a kid,” she replied, though she hadn’t actually touched ice in several years.
“Well then, come on!” he said, gesturing. “It’ll be dark before too long.”
And so Lily found herself out on the ice, which was much more solid than it looked. It took her a few moments to get used to skating again, but she discovered that her smooth-bottomed boots made quite good substitutes for blades. Soon she and James were flying over the ice, though she noticed he stayed close to her and seemed prepared to catch her if she decided to slip.
“I’m fine, Potter,” she reassured him. “I’ve done this before.”
“Well, you can never be too careful,” he said, skating alongside her. “You wouldn’t want to bruise your bum, would you?”
Lily smirked. “I told you, I took lessons. I fell on my bum countless times.” As if to back up her words, she skated a circle around him.
James smirked, too. “You know, I rather like it when you show off.”
“If only I felt the same about you,” she returned sweetly.
He raised an eyebrow slightly but said nothing. Lily twirled a bit in place before coming to a stop, glancing again at the setting sun. “Do you think we should head back?”
“Not just yet.” James skated up to her, and again he was close enough for her to see the color of his eyes. Lily vaguely wondered if he had any concept of the word boundary. But then she supposed he was probably deliberately testing his limits, since they had managed to be civil with one another throughout the duration of her stay. She felt little warning bells go off in her head.
“James…” she started, taking a step back.
“Lily,” he replied, and there was a definite strain in his voice, a longing that she had heard before, but this time it sounded a little different. He lifted his hand slightly, barely a few inches from his side, and then dropped it again. It looked as though he was struggling with his words. “I hope you’ve been enjoying yourself,” he said finally, and Lily could tell that wasn’t what he had really wanted to say.
“I am,” she said earnestly, feeling like she needed to be extra sincere to make up for that puppy-dog look on his face. And it was true; Christmas with the Potters had been quite enjoyable. It had definitely turned out very differently than she had originally thought. “Your mum, she’s brilliant. And you…” She trailed off, not sure what to say. You were a lot more tolerable than I imagined you would be?
“We should probably head back,” she said, skating backwards. “It’s getting dark, and I still have some pastries to make-“
At the same time, James shouted, “Lily, not that way, that’s--!”
And that was the moment the ice chose to give way beneath her feet.
|||||
James was fast on his feet, and Lily thanked Merlin he had brought his wand, or she would have been in a lot of trouble. Half an hour later, she was bundled in front of the fire in the Potters’ living room, a steaming cup of hot chocolate warming her hands. Not too long after that, a Ministry official showed up at the house to apprehend James for his underage magic; she was quickly ushered outside by James’ father, and Evanna remained with Lily and James, reassuring them that there was no way he could get in trouble for saving her life.
“If they try to punish him for it, Jaxston and I will take it up with the Wizengamot ourselves. We know a few witches and wizards on it…the case definitely wouldn’t get very far.” Mrs. Potter was mostly talking to herself, muttering as she paced back and forth on the rug, and James shot Lily an amused look. She returned it halfheartedly, wanting to be angry with him for what happened, but she couldn’t find cause for it after he had rescued her from the freezing water. She probably kind of owed him for that.
After a few moments, Mr. Potter came back and told them that the Ministry would not be pressing charges this time, but if it happened again, there would be consequences. Lily looked at James, who had not looked concerned once, and he met her eyes and shrugged. “Another crime sentence averted,” he told her cheerfully, reaching over and plucking a marshmallow from her cup before she could react.
“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Potter briskly. “As I said, there was no way they’d find anything to justify disciplinary action. If anything, the fact that you two are both safe needs to be celebrated. I should find Martin, see if we can’t whip up a cake before it gets too late…”
She bustled out, and after a brief look at the both of them, her husband followed. Once again, Lily found herself alone with James.
“Another crime sentence?” she asked, repeating his earlier words.
“Yeah, Sirius and I may or may not have been chased down by a Muggle…what are they called? The ones with the cars that have lights on top.”
“Policemen,” said Lily, raising an eyebrow. “What were you doing?”
“Oh, just taking his motorbike for a drive. On the rooftops of London.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, setting the cup of hot chocolate aside and getting to her feet. The blanket slipped off her shoulders, and she folded it neatly over one arm. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“It was an easy enough getaway, seeing as we could fly and they couldn’t.”
“You probably made them think they’d gone mental!” Lily said, but she was laughing. James joined in, and for some reason, that made it funnier. She laughed for a moment longer before falling silent, her mind going back to how it had felt to be completely submerged in water so cold it wiped every thought from your head. If James hadn’t been with her-and even if he had taken longer than he did to react-things could have turned out badly. “Well…thanks for risking legal punishment to save me.”
He scoffed. “That’s a risk I’ll always take, Lily. But, you’re welcome. Are you feeling warmer?”
She did, actually, but something told her that it wasn’t completely due to the fire in the hearth. “Yeah, I’m fine. I think I’m going to head to bed.”
“Right,” he replied. “I’m sorry I made you get out on the lake. I’ve never had a problem with thin ice there before…”
She shook her head. “Despite the cold I will undoubtedly catch, it was a nice experience. I haven’t been ice skating in years.”
James smiled at her, relaxing, and Lily wondered if he had been expecting her to whack him ever since his parents left the room. Given their past, she couldn’t say she blamed him. Smiling back, she simply brushed past him and called out a goodnight over her shoulder, and he echoed it back to her, so softly that she almost missed it.
||||
As she predicted, in the days following the accident, she could feel herself steadily coming down with a cold. Luckily, all of the food that was needed for the ball had already been baked or ordered, and all that was left was actually decorating, and picking the remaining orders from the village-that is, the ones that were too big to be carried by owl. Three days before the ball, twelve owls flocked to the house with packages in their mouths, containing Muggle Studies textbooks. Lily was going to be handing them out at the gala to witches or wizards who had not taken the subject in school or who simply wanted to learn more. That was one of the ways they were going to raise money for the society.
She was just putting the finishing touches on the pyramid of books, in between sneezes, when Mrs. Potter tapped her on the shoulder. Lily spun around.
“I’m almost done-“ she started, but Evanna held up a hand, smiling.
“The decorations look wonderful, dear, but there’s something we’ve forgotten. I have a gift for you.”
Lily blinked in surprise. A gift, on top of all she had been treated to over the course of her stay and all that she was earning from being here, seemed like too much. “What kind of a gift?” she asked.
“Well, it’s a borrowed gift,” said Mrs. Potter with a laugh. “It’s mine, you see. But I’ve made a few alterations, so it should be perfect for you now.”
At that, Lily was positive she knew what Mrs. Potter was talking about, and so she wasn’t terribly shocked when she found the dress laid out on her bed. What did shock her was how expensive it undoubtedly was-and also how old.
“It’s from my debut, when I was seventeen,” said Evanna, “so it’s a very old gown, but I’ve modernized it a bit, and changed the color. I wouldn’t have you in anything other than green with those eyes.”
The gown was floor length and made of silk, inlaid with rows of tiny pearls. Its sleeves were slightly ruffled and off-the-shoulder. It was the exact color of Lily’s eyes.
At Mrs. Potter’s urging, she went into the bathroom and carefully pulled it on. She was so afraid to rip the fabric that it took her a good five minutes to get everything adjusted, but when she did, she noticed that the dress fit her perfectly, and it brought out the color of her eyes more than anything else she had ever worn. She watched her reflection in the mirror as she spun slightly, and the fabric seemed to ripple, like the effect that a small stone had when it hit the water.
“This is beautiful,” she said when she stepped out of the bathroom, and Mrs. Potter smiled so widely that Lily was certain she wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of wearing the dress, no matter how concerned she was about messing it up.
“Don’t you even worry,” said Evanna, when Lily voiced her fears. “The worst that can happen to it can be fixed by magic, and if it can’t, that dress has had a long life. I certainly will not be wearing it again. I may just have you keep it, dear.”
“Oh, I couldn’t…”
“You might, once you see the effect it will have on my son when he sees you in it.”
Lily’s head snapped up, wondering what was meant by that comment. “Mrs. Potter, I don’t know what James has told you, but James and I aren’t-“
“He’s told me the truth, dear,” she said gently. “James has only ever said the truth about you.”
|||||
The ball went off without a hitch, despite the fact that the pyramid of books Lily had made nearly toppled over onto some guests a few times. She managed to sell them all, and along with the price of admission, racked up an impressive profit for Mrs. Potter to use for the society. For over half the night, she was swamped by eager, elderly witches and wizards who all wanted to know what it was like growing up in a Muggle household. She shared stories with them until she couldn’t think of anything else entertaining, but then, even the dullest and most ordinary stories seemed to please them.
Finally, the crowd around her thinned, and Lily was allowed to go off and actually enjoy the ball. Before she could even reach the punch table, she was tapped on the shoulder, and she didn’t even have to turn around to see who it was.
“I should have known you’d come pester me as soon as you were able,” she told James, grinning.
He merely smiled back, and she noticed how nice he looked with his hair (somewhat) tamed and a new set of dress robes on. For some reason, her mind jumped to the argument they’d had before break about him being her Transfiguration tutor. From this angle, it seemed like having him tutor her wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But would he remain like this when school started again?
James held out a hand to her. “Would you like to dance?”
After a brief hesitation, she placed her gloved hand in his and took a step closer to him in response. “I suppose I can spare you one dance,” she said softly.
The way his eyes lit up told Lily all she needed to know, made one simple fact very clear: James Potter fancied her. He truly fancied her; there were genuine feelings behind his smile. For the first time, Lily was curious about what would happen if she said yes to his persistent question-the one he had only asked once this year. For the first time, she anticipated when he would ask it again.
Maybe she would say yes.
Maybe.
For now, she hoped the way her smile widened slightly when he pulled her closer spoke volumes to him.
Author: perilousgard
Recipient: starry_laa
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 10, 161
Warnings: None.
Summary: Needing some extra money for the holidays, Lily applies to be a chalet girl for a rich, wizarding family. Of course, that family is none other than James Potter’s.
Author's Note: I am indebted to my awesome friend Terri, who plays the James to my Lily and helped me with a good bit of the ideas for this fic.
As it turned out, helping Mrs. Potter plan the gala kept her very busy, but Evanna insisted on spreading out the work so that Lily also had a lot of down time. When she wasn’t out in the quaint wizarding village that was about five kilometers up the road, buying anything from tablecloths to enchanted lanterns for the garden, she was allowed to roam free. She spent a lot of her time simply exploring the house, which she took to be endless until after the first week, when she finally thought she had seen everything there was. She got herself locked inside the room a few doors down from hers on two separate occasions, but just as James had told her, a light tickling of the knob made the door swing wide open. She had even made friends with Martin, the house elf, who had helped her with some of the baking.
One afternoon, after finishing the last of four dozen frosted pastries, her face and hair covered in flour, James came into the kitchen. Really, in the past week and a half, Lily had seen very little of James. Even when she wasn’t busy, he never seemed to turn up. She had just begun to think that he must have gone to find Sirius. But now here he was, and she looked like a powdered doughnut. Wondering why she was feeling self-conscious, Lily wiped at her face with the back of her sleeve, which only succeeded in dirtying her clothing as well as her skin.
“Pastries?” asked James, looking at the rows and rows of green-and-red, sprinkled sweets that she had spent the last three hours making. “They smell good, anyway.”
Lily nodded. “That’s just four dozen of them. How many guests are going to be at this ball? I’m supposed to make two dozen more.”
“Ah, Mum’s parties usually draw big crowds,” he replied. “The ballroom almost never holds them all, and they end up spilling out into the garden. Has she been sending you all over the place?”
“Mostly just into the village,” said Lily, with a shrug. “It’s not too bad, this, really. She gives me a list of things to accomplish and I get them done. It’s nothing all that extreme.”
James nodded. “And you have a lot of down time.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You wouldn’t happen to have some down time now, would you?”
Lily hesitated briefly. “I might. Why?”
And from behind James’ back came a broom; how on earth had he hidden that? As soon as her eyes landed on it, she was shaking her head, knowing what he had in mind. James Potter with a broom only meant one thing.
“I can’t play Quidditch!”
He laughed. “I’m not asking you to play Quidditch. Just come flying.”
Lily considered herself a girl of few irrational fears, but the fear of heights was definitely one of them. She had been on a broom only twice before-once during the flying lesson given to all first years, and once in second year when she had decided to try out for the Quidditch team (what was she thinking) in order to try and conquer her fear. Both experiences had landed her in the hospital wing, but she had never managed to break anything. Since then, she hadn’t been back up in the air.
Not that she wanted James to know her fears.
She brushed back some stray strands of hair, causing flour to sift down onto the table in front of her. “I’d have to clean up first,” she said, knowing that he was impatient and didn’t like to wait on things.
He shrugged. “I’m not in any rush.”
“I might be awhile,” Lily continued.
“I don’t mind,” said James.
From the way he was grinning at her, Lily thought he could probably sense her hesitation, and she wondered if he too was recalling her humiliating Quidditch tryout in second year. He had been trying out as well-that was the year he had made the team-and no one had laughed louder than him and Sirius Black. Her cheeks burned at the memory. Of course, that had been before he changed his tune and decided that he wanted to date her instead of ridiculing her, but the way he went about it there was hardly a difference.
“Look, Potter, you know I can’t fly,” she said forcefully, and he seemed surprised by the anger coloring her tone.
“Well, I know. But I’ve been told I make an excellent teacher,” he replied.
“If you laugh at me-“
“Lily, the last thing I’m going to do is laugh.”
He seemed serious, and Lily supposed that was what made her mouth form an agreement before her head had a chance to hold it back.
James looked delighted. “Brilliant. I’ll meet you round back.”
He was gone before she had a chance to change her mind.
|||||
About forty-five minutes later, Lily found herself straddling a broom that James had pulled from the shed out back, hovering three feet in the air while James was poised above her. It wasn’t the height, really, that was so bad, but the instability. She felt like she was going to roll off at any second; she could scarcely shift her hands on the broom without wobbling precariously. Lily had always (silently) admired Quidditch players-they could make this look so effortless.
“Maybe you should just go without me,” she called up to James, though she didn’t dare lift her head. “You’ll get bored if you have to deal with me the whole time.”
“No, you’re doing fine!” James insisted. “You’re just hunched over a little too much. Straighten up-don’t worry about falling off-and space your hands a little further apart. Oh, and lift the handle just a bit. Angle it towards me.”
Lily slowly followed his instructions, certain that if she tried to sit up and move her hands, she would overbalance. And even though it wasn’t a long way to the ground, she knew it would discourage her from trying again. But surprisingly, the broom steadied when she shifted, and she felt a little more stable. She tipped the front of the broom up towards James and shot up about five feet with a little shriek.
James laughed, pulling up so that he was level with her. “Well, that’s the general idea. Just don’t do it so forcefully. These brooms are guided by light touches. If you keep your grip somewhat loose and just nose it in the direction you want to go, it’ll follow you.”
She peered down at the ground, which seemed a lot farther away now. “Have you ever fallen?” she asked him, squinting in the bright sunlight.
“Of course I have. Just not very often,” he replied. “And if you fall, I’m spotting you. I can have my wand out and slow down your momentum before you hit the ground.”
“We can’t do magic outside school,” Lily said.
“Well, maybe not, but Martin can.” He nodded at the house elf, who was trimming the hedges around the garden in preparation for the gala. “He’s even faster than I am. It may look like he’s not paying attention, but it’s like he has eyes in the back of his head sometimes. He used to get me out of a lot of trouble when I was a kid.”
Feeling slightly reassured, Lily nodded. “I suppose as long as I’m up here, I might as well have a proper lesson.”
James grinned. “That’s the way! We’ll just take this slow, then…”
And they did take it slow; achingly so, because Lily couldn’t get comfortable enough to where she could move at more than three kilometers per hour. After an hour with little progress, James finally sidled so close to her that if tilted her head back, they would have knocked foreheads. A bit startled, she instinctively leaned back and her broom tilted alarmingly, but James reached out and steadied it before she could even squeak.
“I have another idea,” he said, and seeing as she normally wasn’t this close to his face, Lily noticed for the first time that his eyes were hazel. “Let’s touch back down.”
Thinking that he had finally decided to give up on her, she carefully glided back down, actually breathing a sigh of relief when her feet found the grass. She dismounted, starting to hand the broom back to James, but he was still perched on his, hovering just slightly.
“I didn’t say we were done, I just wanted to try something a little different,” he said. “Climb on back.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You mean behind you?”
“Yeah.” There was no shit-eating grin.
Lily crossed her arms. “What for, Potter?”
James smirked. “I would have thought we were on friendlier terms than that now, Evans.”
She snorted. What they were hardly constituted as friends. They weren’t even a they. “I repeat-what for?”
“I’m going to show you rather than tell you. And we can take a bit of a ride.”
Lily wanted to say no, to turn around and go back inside, to get back to the entire reason she was spending her Christmas break here in the first place-but something was preventing her from doing so. James was still smiling at her, and she found herself smiling back. A small ride wouldn’t hurt; the rest of the pastries could wait a little longer. “Just don’t kill me, Potter,” she warned, before sliding on behind him. The broom was clearly not made for two, and she had little choice but to hold on to him if she didn’t want to fall off. She started by just gripping a handful of his shirt, but when he took off, she quickly realized she would need to hold on to something a little more substantial. She didn’t want to even see the look on his face as she wrapped her arms tightly around his middle.
James was a highly skilled flyer; she had watched him play Quidditch enough to know that. But flying with him, Lily had no clue how he even followed what he was doing. The world was whipping by her in a whirl of color and texture, and if she had trusted herself enough to fly at this speed, she would have been too focused on not running into the other players to worry about scoring goals. Of course, James had probably been taught to fly even before he could talk.
She sucked in her breath as they flew out over the water behind the house, and she reflexively tightened her hold around him. “Where are we going?” she yelled into his ear.
“Not far!” he yelled back, maneuvering so that they soared higher, over a bit of forest. Lily took a chance and looked down at the treetops, so far below, and her stomach lurched. She hoped “not far” meant they were landing within the next few moments.
“Look over my shoulder and watch my hands!” James shouted suddenly, and before she could question him, he took a sharp dive into the treetops. Lily’s hold tightened into a death grip as they flew through the woods, zigzagging through the trees. James avoided all of them with the lightest touch on his broom handle, and finally they broke through the trees, into an area where a small waterfall poured into a lake. However, the lake was almost entirely frozen. He landed them on the bank, and Lily brushed back the bird’s nest that the wind had made of her hair and looked around.
“Is this your property?” she asked, looking down at the ice.
“Yup,” James said. “My parents own about twenty acres of land here. It’s actually a bit more than what we have on the main estate. It’s one of the reasons I loved coming here when I was a kid.”
“So…what are we doing here?”
He shrugged. “I like coming here, and I thought you might like it, too. I’m sure Mum can do without you for a little longer.”
“It is really pretty,” she admitted, gazing up at the waterfall. Behind it, the sun was beginning to go down, painting the sky with streaks of pink and orange. “So, did you fish here, or…?”
“Oh, a little of everything,” he replied. “Fishing, swimming…and ice skating.” With a bit of a grin, he stepped out onto the ice.
“Don’t! The ice isn’t even covering the whole lake!” Lily warned, tensing.
“It’s fine, Lily. Trust me, I’ve done this for years. It’s a shame we aren’t of age yet, my father taught me a really fantastic Transfiguration spell that put blades on your shoes. But I think it’s slick enough that we don’t really need them.” He skated a little further out, testing his shoes as ice skates. “Do you know how to skate?”
“Yeah, I took lessons when I was a kid,” she replied, though she hadn’t actually touched ice in several years.
“Well then, come on!” he said, gesturing. “It’ll be dark before too long.”
And so Lily found herself out on the ice, which was much more solid than it looked. It took her a few moments to get used to skating again, but she discovered that her smooth-bottomed boots made quite good substitutes for blades. Soon she and James were flying over the ice, though she noticed he stayed close to her and seemed prepared to catch her if she decided to slip.
“I’m fine, Potter,” she reassured him. “I’ve done this before.”
“Well, you can never be too careful,” he said, skating alongside her. “You wouldn’t want to bruise your bum, would you?”
Lily smirked. “I told you, I took lessons. I fell on my bum countless times.” As if to back up her words, she skated a circle around him.
James smirked, too. “You know, I rather like it when you show off.”
“If only I felt the same about you,” she returned sweetly.
He raised an eyebrow slightly but said nothing. Lily twirled a bit in place before coming to a stop, glancing again at the setting sun. “Do you think we should head back?”
“Not just yet.” James skated up to her, and again he was close enough for her to see the color of his eyes. Lily vaguely wondered if he had any concept of the word boundary. But then she supposed he was probably deliberately testing his limits, since they had managed to be civil with one another throughout the duration of her stay. She felt little warning bells go off in her head.
“James…” she started, taking a step back.
“Lily,” he replied, and there was a definite strain in his voice, a longing that she had heard before, but this time it sounded a little different. He lifted his hand slightly, barely a few inches from his side, and then dropped it again. It looked as though he was struggling with his words. “I hope you’ve been enjoying yourself,” he said finally, and Lily could tell that wasn’t what he had really wanted to say.
“I am,” she said earnestly, feeling like she needed to be extra sincere to make up for that puppy-dog look on his face. And it was true; Christmas with the Potters had been quite enjoyable. It had definitely turned out very differently than she had originally thought. “Your mum, she’s brilliant. And you…” She trailed off, not sure what to say. You were a lot more tolerable than I imagined you would be?
“We should probably head back,” she said, skating backwards. “It’s getting dark, and I still have some pastries to make-“
At the same time, James shouted, “Lily, not that way, that’s--!”
And that was the moment the ice chose to give way beneath her feet.
|||||
James was fast on his feet, and Lily thanked Merlin he had brought his wand, or she would have been in a lot of trouble. Half an hour later, she was bundled in front of the fire in the Potters’ living room, a steaming cup of hot chocolate warming her hands. Not too long after that, a Ministry official showed up at the house to apprehend James for his underage magic; she was quickly ushered outside by James’ father, and Evanna remained with Lily and James, reassuring them that there was no way he could get in trouble for saving her life.
“If they try to punish him for it, Jaxston and I will take it up with the Wizengamot ourselves. We know a few witches and wizards on it…the case definitely wouldn’t get very far.” Mrs. Potter was mostly talking to herself, muttering as she paced back and forth on the rug, and James shot Lily an amused look. She returned it halfheartedly, wanting to be angry with him for what happened, but she couldn’t find cause for it after he had rescued her from the freezing water. She probably kind of owed him for that.
After a few moments, Mr. Potter came back and told them that the Ministry would not be pressing charges this time, but if it happened again, there would be consequences. Lily looked at James, who had not looked concerned once, and he met her eyes and shrugged. “Another crime sentence averted,” he told her cheerfully, reaching over and plucking a marshmallow from her cup before she could react.
“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Potter briskly. “As I said, there was no way they’d find anything to justify disciplinary action. If anything, the fact that you two are both safe needs to be celebrated. I should find Martin, see if we can’t whip up a cake before it gets too late…”
She bustled out, and after a brief look at the both of them, her husband followed. Once again, Lily found herself alone with James.
“Another crime sentence?” she asked, repeating his earlier words.
“Yeah, Sirius and I may or may not have been chased down by a Muggle…what are they called? The ones with the cars that have lights on top.”
“Policemen,” said Lily, raising an eyebrow. “What were you doing?”
“Oh, just taking his motorbike for a drive. On the rooftops of London.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, setting the cup of hot chocolate aside and getting to her feet. The blanket slipped off her shoulders, and she folded it neatly over one arm. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“It was an easy enough getaway, seeing as we could fly and they couldn’t.”
“You probably made them think they’d gone mental!” Lily said, but she was laughing. James joined in, and for some reason, that made it funnier. She laughed for a moment longer before falling silent, her mind going back to how it had felt to be completely submerged in water so cold it wiped every thought from your head. If James hadn’t been with her-and even if he had taken longer than he did to react-things could have turned out badly. “Well…thanks for risking legal punishment to save me.”
He scoffed. “That’s a risk I’ll always take, Lily. But, you’re welcome. Are you feeling warmer?”
She did, actually, but something told her that it wasn’t completely due to the fire in the hearth. “Yeah, I’m fine. I think I’m going to head to bed.”
“Right,” he replied. “I’m sorry I made you get out on the lake. I’ve never had a problem with thin ice there before…”
She shook her head. “Despite the cold I will undoubtedly catch, it was a nice experience. I haven’t been ice skating in years.”
James smiled at her, relaxing, and Lily wondered if he had been expecting her to whack him ever since his parents left the room. Given their past, she couldn’t say she blamed him. Smiling back, she simply brushed past him and called out a goodnight over her shoulder, and he echoed it back to her, so softly that she almost missed it.
||||
As she predicted, in the days following the accident, she could feel herself steadily coming down with a cold. Luckily, all of the food that was needed for the ball had already been baked or ordered, and all that was left was actually decorating, and picking the remaining orders from the village-that is, the ones that were too big to be carried by owl. Three days before the ball, twelve owls flocked to the house with packages in their mouths, containing Muggle Studies textbooks. Lily was going to be handing them out at the gala to witches or wizards who had not taken the subject in school or who simply wanted to learn more. That was one of the ways they were going to raise money for the society.
She was just putting the finishing touches on the pyramid of books, in between sneezes, when Mrs. Potter tapped her on the shoulder. Lily spun around.
“I’m almost done-“ she started, but Evanna held up a hand, smiling.
“The decorations look wonderful, dear, but there’s something we’ve forgotten. I have a gift for you.”
Lily blinked in surprise. A gift, on top of all she had been treated to over the course of her stay and all that she was earning from being here, seemed like too much. “What kind of a gift?” she asked.
“Well, it’s a borrowed gift,” said Mrs. Potter with a laugh. “It’s mine, you see. But I’ve made a few alterations, so it should be perfect for you now.”
At that, Lily was positive she knew what Mrs. Potter was talking about, and so she wasn’t terribly shocked when she found the dress laid out on her bed. What did shock her was how expensive it undoubtedly was-and also how old.
“It’s from my debut, when I was seventeen,” said Evanna, “so it’s a very old gown, but I’ve modernized it a bit, and changed the color. I wouldn’t have you in anything other than green with those eyes.”
The gown was floor length and made of silk, inlaid with rows of tiny pearls. Its sleeves were slightly ruffled and off-the-shoulder. It was the exact color of Lily’s eyes.
At Mrs. Potter’s urging, she went into the bathroom and carefully pulled it on. She was so afraid to rip the fabric that it took her a good five minutes to get everything adjusted, but when she did, she noticed that the dress fit her perfectly, and it brought out the color of her eyes more than anything else she had ever worn. She watched her reflection in the mirror as she spun slightly, and the fabric seemed to ripple, like the effect that a small stone had when it hit the water.
“This is beautiful,” she said when she stepped out of the bathroom, and Mrs. Potter smiled so widely that Lily was certain she wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of wearing the dress, no matter how concerned she was about messing it up.
“Don’t you even worry,” said Evanna, when Lily voiced her fears. “The worst that can happen to it can be fixed by magic, and if it can’t, that dress has had a long life. I certainly will not be wearing it again. I may just have you keep it, dear.”
“Oh, I couldn’t…”
“You might, once you see the effect it will have on my son when he sees you in it.”
Lily’s head snapped up, wondering what was meant by that comment. “Mrs. Potter, I don’t know what James has told you, but James and I aren’t-“
“He’s told me the truth, dear,” she said gently. “James has only ever said the truth about you.”
|||||
The ball went off without a hitch, despite the fact that the pyramid of books Lily had made nearly toppled over onto some guests a few times. She managed to sell them all, and along with the price of admission, racked up an impressive profit for Mrs. Potter to use for the society. For over half the night, she was swamped by eager, elderly witches and wizards who all wanted to know what it was like growing up in a Muggle household. She shared stories with them until she couldn’t think of anything else entertaining, but then, even the dullest and most ordinary stories seemed to please them.
Finally, the crowd around her thinned, and Lily was allowed to go off and actually enjoy the ball. Before she could even reach the punch table, she was tapped on the shoulder, and she didn’t even have to turn around to see who it was.
“I should have known you’d come pester me as soon as you were able,” she told James, grinning.
He merely smiled back, and she noticed how nice he looked with his hair (somewhat) tamed and a new set of dress robes on. For some reason, her mind jumped to the argument they’d had before break about him being her Transfiguration tutor. From this angle, it seemed like having him tutor her wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But would he remain like this when school started again?
James held out a hand to her. “Would you like to dance?”
After a brief hesitation, she placed her gloved hand in his and took a step closer to him in response. “I suppose I can spare you one dance,” she said softly.
The way his eyes lit up told Lily all she needed to know, made one simple fact very clear: James Potter fancied her. He truly fancied her; there were genuine feelings behind his smile. For the first time, Lily was curious about what would happen if she said yes to his persistent question-the one he had only asked once this year. For the first time, she anticipated when he would ask it again.
Maybe she would say yes.
Maybe.
For now, she hoped the way her smile widened slightly when he pulled her closer spoke volumes to him.