As of 03/05/2025, I have locked all of my fics on AO3, making them only accessible to registered users, due to the recent uptick in scraping for AI.
THIS MONTH’S UPDATES
We Are No Strangers to Zonko
CURRENTLY WORKING ON
BTDATS Chapter 12
Wesling Place
April 2025 @jilymicrofics
THBS Chapter 3: Stepmother
CURRENT FAVOURITES
In Search of Something More by @kay-elle-cee
Finniad: Striking Hearts by @merlinsbbeard
I'm So Afraid I Sealed My Fate (Event Statues Crumble If They're Made to Wait by tulipslilliesiloveyou
@jilymicrofics // 998 words // February day 10 prompt: foxglove
had to continue my spy au after seeing this prompt, so enjoy jily's first meeting — this time from our boy’s pov (!!)
———
Naples in August is the kind of job James is usually into.
He loves the city's paradoxical glamour and grit, enjoys good wine and harmless flirtation, and thrives under a blistering sun.
Not today though. Today, none of it is working for him.
The heat. The blinding daylight. The smell. It's all tag-teaming James' delicate — as in, mildly hungover, thanks Sirius — sensibilities, making this outdoor café a regrettable choice to meet Moony’s source.
Known only as Foxglove; further details redacted.
Ruffling a hand in his hair, James scans the sun-soaked piazza for the millionth time. It looks the same as it has for the last hour.
It's grown quiet, exactly how Pete had observed a few days ago. People filtered away from the canary yellow tables after the noon rush, sensibly fleeing the sun's oppressive height. Only a small club of stragglers linger; a gushy-eyed couple gazing at each other over a half-eaten pastry, a redheaded woman sitting alone, scribbling in a notebook and James, in all his slightly ruffled, whiskey-soaked, sunglassed glory.
He's playing it off well, to be fair. Even at his worst, James Potter is exceptionally good at his craft. And live hand-offs are his specialty.
Still, three macchiatos deep and roasting his bollocks off, he is wishing Pete had chosen a place with patio umbrellas.
Because Moony's spook is late.
Thirty-four minutes late.
He know is he hasn’t missed them. It’s not possible.
His sightlines on every entry point into this piazza are pristine, plus he'd arrived nearly an hour early, desperately in need of a coffee.
No one's approached him. No one's even sat down since he arrived.
Not that he knows who he's looking for.
It's unusual, to not know a single detail about a contact, but Moony had vouched; the intel and its source is solid, he'd promised.
It's the only reason James soldiers on, really.
Tapping an anxious rhythm on the table, he squints again at the lackluster street. Uselessly, but it's better than thinking about the obnoxious chair digging into his back.
Coming up empty, he swings back to the only good thing about this afternoon: the stunning redhead a few tables over.
She is so pretty it's bloody distracting. All deep auburn hair twisted up gracefully, sun-freckled shoulders — the Italian sun agrees with every bit of her.
Perched casually in her own yellow monstrosity, she ponders over whatever she's writing between sips from a pristine white cup, like the heroine in the art films Sirius tortures them with.
She is poised and perfectly unbothered, effortlessly chic, so exactly James' type he's pretty sure she's an act of God.
A karmic reward for waking up today.
He can't stop staring, between cursory scans of the piazza.
She hasn’t blinked his way once.
James' phone buzzes against the table, distracting from how when she twirls her pen, no rings wink at him.
It's a text from Moony. Still caught in traffic?
Fully stalled, he taps back, watching shamelessly as the gorgeous redhead taps her pen, then lifts it to her mouth, biting demurely on the end.
James frowns, sunglasses slipping low. 'Course he's unbothered. He's posted up in the shade, keeping an eye on the cryptokey James had tucked between some lilies at a florists' stall down the street for Foxglove, the other end of this deal.
Still frowning, James sweeps back over the plaza. Nothing.
Redhead continues to be ethereal fifteen feet away. A light breeze flirts with few tendrils of her hair.
James fidgets another fifteen minutes, putting off ordering a fourth macchiato and soothing the barista's evil eye with his best smile.
Redhead re-crosses her legs twice, each shift exposing a sliver of skin at the waist of her gauzy white top and trousers that could end wars.
At fifty-seven minutes, James decides to call it.
Foxglove remains a ghost, and he's sweating through his t-shirt. Not the best look for when he heads over to rakishly charm the world’s most perfect woman — the only possible salvage to this day.
He takes his eyes off her long enough to craft an appropriately flippant text to Moony about the quality of his acquaintances, and suddenly his goddess is sliding into the seat across from him.
She’s even prettier up close, almond eyes a startling green like moss after rain, one lone freckle dotted just below a swoop of dark eyelashes.
Folding her arms along on the tabletop, she leans in and smiles — sweetly but knowing, a little impish.
It is devastatingly attractive. James delights in it.
Confident women are his catnip and here she is, forest-floor eyes challenging him to something. He's not sure what, exactly, but he's in.
“You’ve been staring,” she speaks first, and her accent is British.
A fellow ex-pat, how intriguing.
Recovering, James mirrors her pose, flexing a little, and flashes a grin he knows can only be described as wolfish. “Apologies, couldn't help myself. You know how good you look, yeah?”
She laughs — also devastating — and slides closer, a knee brushing his. “Are you waiting for someone?”
His brief hesitation is answer enough. Instead of bristling, her smile turns sly.
Holding his gaze, she reaches for his hand, brandishing the pen he’d been so jealous of earlier. Her nails are neatly manicured, fingers gentle as she scribbles a string of numbers into his skin, eyes magnetic.
It's so intensely intimate for a moment, James forgets he’s supposed to be on a job.
The magic shatters the second she smoothly slides a USB to his palm, curling his hand over the cool plastic as she pulls away.
Because of course, of course, this painfully sexy woman is his fucking mark.
Of course she's excellent, too.
Before he can recover, she’s on her feet with a cheeky wink, breezing around café tables as she makes a swift exit onto the busy street.
By the time James hits the corner, barely seconds behind, she’s already vanished.
If you're writing 18th century dialogue, this website lets you search words and phrases to double-check whether they were in use & meant what you intend. It doesn't include every period-accurate use of a word/phrase, but it certainly helped me separate genuine 18th century grammar from the vague tangle of 💬old-fashioned fancy-speak💬 I've internalized from TV and video games.
Not to reinvent the wheel over here but humanity is sooo right about tea. It really is the perfect finnicky little thing to do. You can use it as an excuse to get up and transition to the next thing for yourself or with others; you can use tea as the centerpiece for socializing; you can use it as a meditative device or a comfort ritual or as medicine or to soothe pain or to set intentions or go to bed or to wake up. And most tea is pretty inexpensive, healthy and sometimes you can just harvest the ingredients yourself. And there's a set amount of time it takes to heat up the water and prepare your cup and let it steep, which is all part of a ritual that makes it fast but not instantaneous which is. Good.
@annabtg oh, how excited I am to tell you about this. It is pretty much just Jily and friends if they were in the movie, but I’m challenging myself to write it in my own way so that it’s not word-for-word or scene-for-scene. Some dialogues are iconic, and that cannot be helped (they simply must be included). But most other things I’m trying to do my own way, hence why I didn’t pop this fic out in a few weeks like I had originally planned.
Here’s an outtake from Chapter 1 (unpublished):
The over-sweet chemical smell of mandarin reed diffusers, caramel perfume and antiseptic wipes engulfed Lily as she stepped into Level Four of Witch Weekly’s office building on Monday morning. The office was dimly lit, as she was the first to arrive; she flicked her wand at the clusters of sconces, floor lamps and candles as she crossed the floor, weaving between cubicles until she reached her own. Lily was lucky to be seated beneath a window, which she inched open to let the fresh morning air squeeze through.
Armed with her computer, notepad—which was inked full of research notes—and a steaming mug of green tea, she began drafting the first copy of her newest article idea: How to Effectively Integrate Squibs into Wizarding Society. The office brightened as she worked, voices and high heels joining the click-clacking of her keyboard as the cubicles around her filled up.
Set in the 2000s, of course. It’s a magic-meets-modern-technology fic full of quick quips and a tonne of flirtatious behaviour.
Bonus: link to a yummy yummy aesthetic teaser post for this fic.
I firmly believe Lily was the accidental heartbreaker of Hogwarts. Not because she was trying to, but because she was so casually kind. She’d lend a Ravenclaw her notes because they were sick, or help a Slytherin with their Transfiguration homework, and they’d spend the next three months pining. Meanwhile, Lily is just oblivious, eating toast, while James is in the background fighting off half the school population with a stick.
thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
Well. I’m Not a Poet, I’m Just a Woman. @uncertainwallflower - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
