if i told you i loved you would you take it the wrong way?
a mash up of a professor!au and a single parent!au for @jilyfest bc single dad!james is my favorite james, second only to alive!james. special thanks to @tobaeregbo for helping me decide on a trope v last minute.
title is from a girlpool song bc i love them and also i’m shit at titles
Lily isn’t in the business of favoring her students. She’s a firm believer in the idea that confidence is just as important as skill in Charms and if her students see her treating others better than them, well, she watches Severus with his Slytherins. She may not be head of any house (yet) but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to provide a support system for her students. And she’ll never forget the way Neville Longbottom came crying to her after Potions one day. She may have been a member of the Slug Club during her own Hogwarts years but that doesn’t mean she’s going to perpetuate any of that thinking with her students.
Except she can’t stop herself with Harry. Thin little first year Harry Potter with his knobby knees and scruffy hair. Harry Potter with his little hand shooting in the air when she asks if anyone knows how to levitate an object. And apparently Harry Potter with the fit single dad, if her fifth year girls have anything to say about it.
She had gone to school with James Potter, known him vaguely, but he had been a couple years ahead of her and though Severus had hated him with a open and deep-seeded passion when they had been friends, Lily found that she didn’t know him well enough to pass any judgement other than that he was quite fit, something Marlene and Emmeline, as well as the rest of Hogwart’s student body agreed heartily with. All she knew know was that his son was the sort of quietly clever boy that would rather not draw unneeded attention to himself. She liked him instantly.
“I hear his girlfriend dumped him with the baby right in the middle of the war,” Lily can hear Beatrice Dobbin whisper not so quietly to Pamela Galston as they worked on summoning various objects from around the room. It’s ten-fifty in the morning on a Wednesday and her fifth years seem particularly talkative that day about a subject she has no knowledge of, but can only guess after hearing whispers of Harry Potter’s dad’s meeting with Dumbledore.
“I hear that he shagged a Death Eater and that’s why the mum isn’t ‘round anymore,” Margot Fawcett says, grinning victoriously as Pamela and Gemma turn to face her.
“Don’t be ridiculous, he—“
“I heard that Miss Dobbins, Miss Galston, and Miss Fawcett are in class currently and should thus curb their tendencies towards gossip for the time being,” Lily says, leaning back on her desk at the front of the room, one eyebrow raised and her arms crossed.
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
