Winter Hair (ff.net)
Word Count: 2.3k
Disclaimer: y'all know I don't own things.
A/N: For Katy (dream-sky-high/not-a-car-crash). I didn't have a prompt, so I hope you like this. :3 Merry Christmas, darling! Also, super sorry for submitting this late!
Description: tipsy!jily talking about Quidditch and some kiss stuff in their seventh year. :)
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Their conversation was about Quidditch.
It was just after midnight and James Potter and Lily Evans were celebrating their final patrol before winter vacation curled up to the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room.
“You’ve never even played the game, how could you possibly understand strategy?”
Due to that part of their nature that they were reluctant to admit that they shared, the pair of Gryffindors were arguing.
“You think that because you’re the Quidditch captain, you’re the be-all, end-all to Quidditch knowledge.”
“Find me the lie, Evans.”
On an incredibly tentative basis, Potter and Evans were friends. As Head Boy and Head Girl, they had an example to set, after all.
“You’re deflecting from the point.”
Exceptions were made for stage-whisper shouting matches in an empty common room.
“That’s because the point is stupid.”
“I don’t understand how – as a chaser, for Merlin’s sake! – you could believe that the point of the game is to catch the snitch.”
Lily wasn’t sure when the firewhiskey entered the conversation, or how Potter had come into possession of it for that matter, but for the time being (and as with most things Potter), she found it best to not ask questions.
To emphasis her point, Lily took a swig straight from the bottle. The drink burned as she swallowed. James had been the last to drink from it. He’d been chewing at his fingernails all night and the residual moisture from his lips clung to the bottle. Lily wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robe.
“It ends the game! If the point isn’t catching the snitch, why would it be the only way to end the game?”
“But you can catch the snitch and still lose the game!”
“You can lose the game and still win the cup!”
The last thing Lily wanted to do was concede to James. Their tentative friendship was hinged on Lily having the upper hand a majority of the time. It was the only way she saw fit to keep Potter’s ego in check.
“Not all games are played in tournaments, so your extension of logic fails.”
“Fine! But catching the snitch and losing is really rare. And it’s not like it’s a strategy you can rely on. I mean, to go into a game with the strategy of not catching the snitch means you’re hoping the other team has a shit defense and a seeker willing to end the game if they get too far behind in points. It’s illogical.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be the chaser scoring five hundred points than the seeker who caught the snitch and still lost?”
“I’ll have ended the game gracefully and on my own terms.” James raised the bottle in a faux toast before taking a drink.
Lily snatched the bottle back from him. Her words were clumsy, her bottom lip grazing the rim as she spoke. “Without the cup. Enjoy your snitch.”
Each mouthful was getting easier. She felt James’ eyes on her as she swallowed, wiping off the lip of the bottle. She tipped it toward him and he lifted it from her hands.
“I guess it’s a good thing I haven’t caught her yet,” he said, more to the whiskey than to her, but each sip he took, she suddenly felt it for him, the burning in her throat settling into her stomach. His words were smooth and warm.
They hadn’t been talking about Quidditch for what must have been several minutes.
“Anyway, you don’t go into a game thinking that you’re not going to catch the snitch and win the game. They go hand in hand.” James said, effectively ending the discussion. Another sip of firewhiskey in silence allowed for the subject to change. “So, any big plans for vacation?”
Lily shook her head. “Vernon will be joining us for Christmas. It’s their first Christmas since the wedding and my mother is insistent about it being perfect for them.”
“Yikes.”
“Mhm. What about you?”
“Fairly standard holiday with the Potters. The house elves have been caroling since October, so the house is a little sickeningly festive.”
“Did they pick that up from you?”
“I’m not that festive.”
Lily felt a grin crawl across her face. “Last year, you wore antlers and a red nose and insisted that everyone call you ‘Rudolph’ for the entire month of December.”
James hung his head, a crooked smile running across his face. “That was because I lost a bet with Sirius.”
“That explains this year’s lack of antlers. Disappointing.”
“I do look good with horns.”
“Shut up.”
Their tentative friendship developed near the end of last term. Lily and James had exchanged a few letters over the summer holiday – nothing of the “I miss you” sorts, but a steady stream of information on the other’s life. Lily’s were filled with a wanting for anything to do with the magical world and James’ detailed his need for friendship after a falling out with Sirius, if read closely enough (the message was perfectly clear to Lily). They shared everything that the intimacy of letters would allow.
Coming back to school in September meant seeing each other. Interacting as Head Boy and Head Girl. Interacting as friends.
This was new. By Lily’s insistence, this was tentative.
“It seems strange, doesn’t it, to be going home with everything that’s going on?” she mused.
James shrugged. “Some people might benefit from a nice, normal holiday.”
“Yeah, I’m sure You-Know-Who will feel better with a little Christmas spirit. As turns out, his war on muggles is widely misunderstood. He just hates Christmas.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Little did we know, You-Know-Who is simply a modern day Scrooge and all he needs is to find the true meaning of Christmas – one that doesn’t involve killing people for sport.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Evans.”
“Am I?”
“Absolutely.” James closed his eyes and took a drink. “But maybe I should loan Voldie my antlers. Just to be sure.”
The same image of Voldemort wearing James’ reindeer antlers and Rudolph nose must have passed between them, because when the pair’s eyes met, a small laugh fell from both of them. And that laugh erupted into a million others.
Without registering exactly how it happened, the two young Gryffindors were lying on the floor, their lungs aching and tears pooling in their eyes.
“I think you win,” Lily said between gasped breaths.
“Win what?” James’ head was somewhere by Lily’s stomach. The low undertones of his sleepy voice reverberated through her.
“I mean, you’re right. A distraction can help. Clearly.”
He rolled his eyes up against his forehead to look at her. The angle made his big brown eyes look a little bit crossed. Lily hadn’t noticed how long his eyelashes were before.
“So I won. But that real question is did I catch the snitch?”
“Really?”
“C’mon. Did I catch the snitch and win the game?”
James’ hair splayed around his face in wild sections. Lily had always preferred James’ hair in the winter. He let it grow out once school started and by Christmas, his dark hair swooped lazily around his face.
Lily reached down and pushed a stray lock of hair from his glasses and into the rest of his hair. Just for a second, her fingers lingered there, tangled in James’ winter hair.
“I caught the snitch.”
James shot up and Lily remembered that while they weren’t talking about Quidditch, they also weren’t talking about that, about them (Merlin, did she really just think them in regards to her and Potter?) and she needed to rework her answer, fast.
“Come on, Evans! I pointed out that distractions can help and provided an adequate distraction. That’s definitely me catching the snitch and winning the game.”
“Okay, okay! You caught the snitch and won the game. I was wrong.”
“You were what?”
“I was – oh no. No, you’re not going to make this a thing–”
“Lily Evans admitting that she’s wrong,” he said over her protests. “What a glorious gift you’ve given me.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really. This is such a great moment, I was right and you admitted to being wrong. We should commemorate this somehow…”
Without warning, James leapt to his feet and headed up the stairs, leaving Lily alone on the common room floor. She glanced at the nearly empty bottle of firewhiskey, then drained it in one gulp. Whatever James was planning, she’d probably need it.
He came bounding down the stairs a few minutes later, hands wrapped around something small.
“Did you wake anyone up on your one man stampede?”
“Nah, not even after I tripped over a house elf.”
“James!”
“I told it I was sorry!” He landed on the floor next to Lily. She looked at his hands. He was holding a small box, hardly bigger than a muggle credit card.
“I had planned on just mailing you this so you’d get it on Christmas, but I really couldn’t have planned a better time, given our conversation earlier.” He handed it to her and she turned it over in her hands. “Anyway, now I reckon you can look at it and remember the time you admitted that James Potter was right.”
Lily opened the box and found a delicate silver chain. Lifting it, she saw it was a bracelet with a golden snitch charm strung along the chain.
“Here.” James took it from her and fitted it onto her left wrist.
He was right. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
“Do you like it?”
The bracelet was small, simple, beautiful – it was completely Lily in every possible way.
“Yes, I do.” She smiled at him, hoping it showed all of those words she couldn’t manage to say. “Thank you.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Lily was staring at the bracelet. It was incredibly thoughtful of James. She wondered for a moment if maybe he’d asked someone for help picking out, but pushed the thought away easily. She didn’t want to ruin his gift by making any assumptions about whether it was entirely from him or not.
“Well, Evans, I think it’s time for bed.” Using a chair for support, James climbed off of the floor and offered Lily his hand. She took it with her left hand and pulled herself up. The room was unsteady and she clung to James until it passed.
“Alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. That firewhiskey didn’t hit me until I stood up.”
“Let’s get you to bed, you lush.”
Their hands shifted from clasped to intertwined and Lily didn’t protest. His hand was large and slightly rough against hers. He lead her up the stairs and to her door, his fingers leaving enough space for hers to pull away if she wanted to, but she held onto his, curious about how they fit together so comfortably.
“Here we are,” she said lightly, in the lingering way that every first date ends. This wasn’t a date; this was Potter, her tentative friend Potter, with his finger laced into hers and yet, she was feeling that panic of a night ended too soon.
He moved first, letting go of her fingers and wrapping his arms around the small of her back, pulling her close. Lily drapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him on the tips of her toes.
“Merry Christmas, James.”
“Merry Christmas.”
All too suddenly, he was pulling away, their bodies separate and colder now. Lily turned to open her door, to spend the night awake in bed, wondering what this was that she was feeling and where they were going to go from here. She would wake up in the morning and talk over the details with Mary or Marlene and inevitably avoid James until they all left for the holidays.
That’s not how she wanted the night to end.
She looked back over her shoulder and then there he was, close enough that she could count each of his incredibly long eyelashes, so close that she was likely the one who looked cross-eyed, so close that she was seeing the freckles on his lips for the first time ever. He pressed his mouth to hers and it was a solid kiss, their lips fitting into the groove of the other’s effortlessly.
James’ hands were in her hair and he pulled away, a fraction of an inch, just to press himself into her again, but deeper this time, with more urgency. She was on her toes, her fingers finding his jaw line, tracing it gently with a palm cupped against his neck. She recalled earlier, how his hand felt with hers around it, and wanted his hands on every part of her.
The kiss slowed and Lily fell slowly back onto flat feet. Their lips were the last thing to part, though together they still occupied the same personal space.
James’ breaths were short and shallow. He broke eye contact with Lily, his eyes panning up to the ceiling. Mistletoe.
“That wasn’t there before.”
“I might have told the house elf I tripped over to put it up here.”
Lily kissed him, this time with less need; a soft kiss through a ridiculous grin. She didn’t even know you could kiss someone so sweetly while smiling.
“I caught the snitch,” she laughed.
He ran a hand through her hair. “I won the cup.”
“I think I can live with that.”
The last kiss came from both of them, a gesture they mastered in minutes, and Lily felt certain that the only lips she’d ever really known were James’. He left a small kiss on her cheek and then he was gone, headed toward his own bed and his own thoughts.
Lily entered her dormitory as silently as possible, slipping quietly into pajamas and crawling into her bed. The moonlight fell through her window and her bracelet caught the light.
She understood Potter’s take on Quidditch. Some things are worth leaving the game for.
