Still Young
For Zoe, for your birthday, for everything
There’s a party to mark the end of the summer before Seventh Year, and it’s the first time he has seen Lily Evans in two months.
The heat has been extreme this August, hanging in the air with an unrelenting presence, and what was intended as a house party has wandered outdoors, craving fresh air. Fortunately, Jeremy Booth – the host, a Ravenclaw – lives in the country, released from the prying eyes of any muggles, and the youth of wizarding Britain lark about in the minimal breeze without restraint. Teenagers sit in clusters on a sprawling green lawn, cooling charms cast overhead, and someone has started a game of twilight Quidditch. The atmosphere is lazy: it’s too hot to be excited about the coming year, their last year. Time will come for that the day after tomorrow, when they board the Hogwarts Express for the last time. For now, James Potter lies alone in someone else’s garden, enjoying the sensation of cool grass pressed against his back, and tilting his glasses just so, so that he can track the movements of his Head Girl as she makes her way towards him.
She sits beside him with a flump and presses something that is made of glass and is astonishingly cold to his cheek. He shudders, a gasping oh escaping his mouth.
“Blimey, what was that?”
“A beer,” replies Lily, knocking it against his hand now. Condensation clings to his skin, and James sits up quickly, grasping the bottle neck.
“Is this -?”
“The muggle stuff? Yes.”
“Brilliant.”
She laughs, tossing him her purse. “Open it.”
He does so and peers inside, and a rush of cold air fogs up his glasses. An annoyed sound emerges from the back of his throat, and Lily laughs again. She takes her purse back and shakes it, and the unmistakeable clink of bottles comes from within.
“Undedectable Extension Charm,” she says, “and then a weakened Freezing Charm. I figured you’d want a good cold beer more than Butterbeer or Firewhisky tonight. It’s too damn hot for anything above room temperature.”
“Not me,” James shakes his head. “Got any Gillywater in there?”
“Don’t be cheeky,” she says, but a smile dances around her mouth.
--
Lily takes out a bottle for herself and taps the cap with her wand to remove it. Beside her James mirrors the action, and they look at each other and with smiles that hold a degree of secrecy. They’ve been seventeen for a while now, they all have, but using magic outside of school still feels like a novelty, a small act of rebellion.
“So,” she angles her bottle towards his, “to us?”
“To us,” he reciprocates, and their beers clink together with a fraction of awkwardness. There have been letters passed between them these holidays, long ones, rolls of parchment crammed with handwriting on both sides - his remarkably neat, hers in an inky shambles. They’ve been separated by distance – him in France for weeks, her mother harping on about family obligations and refusing to leave her to her own thoughts for more than a few hours. Still, Lily has told James almost everything that’s happened to her this summer, went into frighteningly personal detail about Petunia’s disaster of an engagement party actually, but they’ve rushed through this, the Big Thing. They skirted around the mutual announcement like a weather report, remarking on it in postscripts and with joking punctuation. ‘A muggleborn as Head Girl? Voldemort will storm the school by October.’ ‘Me Head Boy? It’s the criminals leading the criminals, and I want nothing less than anarchy.’
But now she looks at him reclining beside her, and he straightens as though he feels her eyes on him. His face turns, and James looks at her with an intensity that chips away at her breath. “Congratulations,” he says, and he says it in such earnest, his face so serious, that she wants to press a thumb between his brows and smooth out the crease that has suddenly appeared there.
“And to you, James” Lily replies.
--
She’s matched his serious tone, her eyes holding his levelly, and he kicks himself inwardly for so quickly turning this into a solemn conversation. There’s things he wants to say, of course, but he’s always been uncomfortable when discussion turns heavy, and though he’s infinitely more sensible than he was a year ago he still strives to keep things light hearted. For now he just wants to actually live the banter that’s passed between them in written form for weeks. He has found that when things happen, she’s the one he wants to tell, hoping the words that hurry out of his quill will make her smile, make her laugh, twist her stomach in the same way his jumps whenever her owl appears at his window. He’s worried that he’ll have lost the ability to do that now. The reality of their positions and situation looms so much more real when she’s sitting right next to him.
He forces his voice to adopt an airy quality.
“’Course, it was completely expected-”
“James.”
“What?”
“Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Slip into the old act.” Something about her voice hints at disappointment, and James picks at the grass.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He pauses, weighing his next words. Her opinion (of him) matters more than he’s ever known how to express, and he wants a verbal confirmation of what he suspects.
“I am better now, though, aren’t I?”
--
“Of course you are, you dolt.”
He grins, sheepish. “I have grown up a bit.”
“James, Animagi undergo smaller transformations than you have.”
An interesting smile plays around his lips at this, and she pokes his hip. “Anyway, you haven’t actually changed that much.”
“No?”
“No. You’re just … nice more of the time.”
--
“Nice, am I?” James wonders why that adjective, coming from her, makes him feel so warm. “Evans, you sure know how to compliment a bloke. You’ll be calling me pretty next.”
“Well, you are a bit.”
His neck practically cracks as he turns to look at her. Lily has averted her eyes, and she takes a swig of her beer. Her shoulders, hunched away from him, shake a little. She’s laughing. He’s appalled.
“Pretty?”
“Yes, just like now, with the moonlight shining on your hair…”
“Rubbish, the sun’s barely gone down.”
“But you’re breathtaking nonetheless.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’re still a tosser.”
“But a nice tosser, I’ve just been informed.”
Lily turns now, her eyes smiling into his. “You’ve always been nice. You just used to pretend you weren’t sometimes. I think you thought you were cooler that way.”
He sighs, remembering a day by the lake when too many choices turned into mistakes that took months to forgive and which neither of them will forget. “I’m not proud of it.”
Soft fingertips brush against his. “I know,” says Lily.
--
She watches him as he frowns, then picks up her hand and examines it. She doesn’t ignore the zaps of energy that flow wherever his skin meets hers – she absorbs them, sure that each one radiates from her in turn. His calloused fingers run the length of hers, folding them over and inspecting the ring on her right index finger.
“A garnet,” she tells him. “It’s my-”
“Birthstone.” He looks up, meets her eyes a moment, and god, something inside her just tumbles. “I know.” His thumb brushes over the red jewel embedded in the thin gold band. “You were always meant for Gryffindor, then,” he says softly. She can see the corner of his mouth upturned, smiling, and all of her is smiling too.
She’s felt this coming, it’s been creeping on her, and she finds herself glad. It would have been so ... disappointing, for them to have come so far over the last year and especially the last months, for it to have dissipated into something that didn’t mean all that much. There’s never been an in-between with her and James. In the early years they were either getting on famously or were at each other’s throats, something which didn’t really change as they approached fourteen, fifteen. She would find herself admiring him only for him to dash it all against a rock by doing something stupid, and she was pretty sure that she’d had the same effect on him.
The effect is different now. Lily can’t pinpoint when it changed or why, but she knows that right now she doesn’t want to be anywhere but in this garden with this boy, knowing that the whole year is theirs for the taking.
Garnet. Gryffindor. Brave.
She turns her hand in his, his palm warm and flush against her own. More zaps. More of this bizarre alive feeling.
Grinning at their two hands, James links their fingers. “Well,” he observes, “this certainly isn’t the old act.”
--
He probably looks like a fool, but James doesn’t care. He just wants to keep looking at and holding Lily Evans’ hand because it is a marvel. Her fingers are thinner than he’d realised and he’d be worried that he’ll break them except they feel strong, emanating life. Even in the twilight he can see small freckles dotting her knuckles and he wonders
Where else? Where else has she got freckles that I’ve never seen?
He feels like he’s on a precipice, he’s filled with a palpable thrill that she’s standing there beside him.
--
Lily wants to laugh at the happiness radiating from James. He’s matured so much, his best qualities now almost always on the surface, almost a gentleman, but still such a boy.
And, she thinks, she’s such a girl, giddy herself to be sitting in the midst of a party holding hands with the boy to whom she’s been writing letters all summer. She wonders why they’re undisturbed when almost everyone in their year is somewhere in this yard, but then thinks that James must have given his mates as strict instructions to be left alone as she had given hers. For whatever reason, they’re by themselves on this patch of grass, and she’s grateful.
She nudges him. “Let’s talk business. What’s the game plan for the year?”
“Well,” he emphasises the word, looking up from her hand, drawing his eyebrows halfway up his forehead and peering at her in an alarmingly accurate impression of Dumbledore. “Obviously we’re commissioning golden statues of ourselves.”
“Obviously.”
“For the Great Hall, I was thinking. They can stand behind the staff table and observe all the goings on of the school.”
“And we’ll demolish the house system?”
His eyes dance. “What are you proposing?”
“Get rid of the old houses. Two new ones: Evans and Potter. The Founders of a new era.”
James chuckles. “So long as Potter gets the Hufflepuff common room.” Lily is confused, and her face must show it, because he adds quickly, “They’re near the kitchens.”
--
“Typical,” Lily snorts, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of making her laugh. They fall silent a few minutes, drinking now and then in peace, and James decides to voice the thought that’s been maturing in his mind since that badge had fallen out of his letter and scared him witless.
“Why us, d’you reckon?”
Lily’s breathing is contemplative. She bites her lip, a thoughtful quirk, and he can see her mind working. Eventually, a smile blooms across her face and she nods towards their joined hands.
“I think Dumbledore could tell we’d put up a united front.”
Absently, he runs his thumb along her palm. We’re united, his mind affirms, and he feels ready. For this role, for the life that is coming, for the path he realises he’d chosen long ago. He hadn’t thought he ever would be, but now he is. He thinks, knows, that she’s ready to, and he thinks Kiss her. Lean over and kiss her.
He doesn’t.
There’s a thrumming promise of soon, of one day, but he doesn’t think he can handle that just yet.
--
One step at a time, they’re moving forward. Moving together.
There are whoops from above, and a blurred figure streaks past them on a broom, t-shirt pulled over his head and bare toes skimming the lawn. “Looks like someone won Quidditch,” Lily muses.
James laughs, squeezes her hand, and when she looks at him his eyes beam at her. “We’re a team now, you and I,” he says proudly. “Isn’t that a terrifying concept?”
