Jilytober Drabble 2 - Study
Lily’s quill halts mid-sentence, “Pardon?”
“That’s my table,” James Potter repeats, one hand shooting into his hair as soon as their eyes meet. His school bag hangs loosely over one shoulder, and there’s a fleck of mud on his cheek—a remnant, no doubt, of the morning they’d spent planting bulbs in Herbology. “I study here all the time.”
Her response to this is the obvious and uninspired, a disbelieving scoff and the lift of an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that you study?”
“If that’s the best you can do,” he easily replies, “I reckon old age has robbed you of your wit.”
“I reckon you’re only two months younger than I am and never had much wit in the first place.”
That bit of cheek elicits the slightest lift of his lips, and his hazel eyes seem to lighten behind his glasses, but his smile falls away before it has a chance to properly settle.
“Seriously, though,” he says, shifting the strap of his bag so it sits higher on his shoulder, “I’ve got that essay to finish for Sluggy and this is my spot. I can’t get anything done in the common room with those first years running around like wild animals.”
“There are plenty of other tables in the library, and I don’t see your name on this one.”
“Actually,” he replies, with a barely repressed note of arrogance, “you’ll find my name right there.” He leans forward, closer to her, bringing with him the scent of something clean and boyish and distractingly pleasant, and drops a finger to the table. “See?”
There, proudly engraved into the otherwise smooth oaken surface, is a small, roughly hewn James P.
“Ta-dah,” says a smug James. “Game, set and match, Evans.”
“So, what? You think now I should reward you for your act of vandalism?”
“What else are you going to do, deduct points and give me a detention for something I did in fourth year?”
“After we’ve just pulled ahead of Ravenclaw?”
“Well, fine, if it gets you to stop lurking around me like a ghost.” She gestures to the empty chair on the other side of the table. “Sit down.”
Instead of flinging himself gratefully into the proffered chair and thanking her for her kindness, he remains where he is, teetering rather dangerously to one side.
“Where are you going to go?” he asks her.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “We can share the table or you can leave. Your choice.”
James expels a loud huff of breath, as if to indicate that she has caused him some great inconvenience, but does as he’s told and sits down, dropping his bag to the floor beside his chair, so Lily returns to her homework.
Except he doesn’t start to unpack, doesn’t load the table with books and quills and rolls of parchment, doesn’t do anything.
For a full minute, maybe longer, try as Lily might to pretend she can’t feel his eyes boring into crown of her head.
Finally, unable to pretend she hasn’t noticed what he’s doing, she pulls her gaze up to meet his, and he rewards her with a grin which tells her that getting her attention was his plan all along, a grin that makes her feel… rather a lot, actually.
He makes her feel a lot. He always has, and though a lot didn’t necessarily encompass particularly positive feelings, once upon a time, now it’s all flip-flopping tummies and thumping hearts and pesky butterflies fluttering away whenever she catches his eye.
“Those bloody first years, eh?” he says, as if they’re enjoying a spot of idle conversation over lunch. “Making us resort to using the library to work, of all places.”
“They’re noisy little shits,” she replies, unable to help herself.
“They get worse every year, you know. We definitely weren’t that bad when we were eleven.”
“I wasn’t that bad, and you were almost certainly worse.” She points her quill at him. “I thought you had a Potions essay to finish?”
“I do,” he says, “but I don’t do well with distractions.”
“What’s distracting you?”
He answers, not in words, but with a meaningful nod in her direction.
Lily’s heart leaps for joy.
She’s got too much pride to admit that, though, so she feigns an annoyance she doesn’t really feel. “All I’m doing is sitting here quietly, Potter.”
“I know, and it’s mightily distracting.”
“My sitting here quietly is mightily distracting?”
“You’ve got a very pretty face,” he says, so bluntly, as if this completely justifies his lack of productivity. “Not that I blame you for my being distracted, that’s entirely my fault and you’re just sitting here quietly, but my plan kind of hinged on you getting up and leaving.”
“You really thought I’d get up and leave?” she retorts, rather than tell him the truth, rather than admit that she finds his face distracting, and that he’s really very lovely, and that they should probably use their time more productively and snog for an hour, or something.
“Why not? I’ve shown you irrefutable proof that this is my table,” he says, tapping the smooth, blank stretch of wood just above the crude engraving of his name, “so you’re just being stubborn at this point.”
“Oh, I’m being stubborn?”
“Fine, then,” she says, and bats at his hand. “Move.”
James jerks his hand away from the table and Lily leans over it, scratching her quill across the blank space above his name, her mouth set in a firm, determined line.
She doesn’t look up until she’s finished, and the nib of her quill has been sacrificed to a fresh, neatly carved Lily E, pettily done in cursive to offset the sloppy mess that sits below her name.
“There,” she says triumphantly, and lets her quill fall across her parchment, “now it’s my table, too.”
He blinks down at what she’s done as if he can’t believe she’s done it.
Neither can Lily, really. Goodness knows what she would have said if Pince had caught her.
Goodness knows what she will say when Pince notices.
“You defaced a desk,” says James, looking up at her after a somewhat prolonged silence.
“Yes,” Lily airily agrees. “I did.
“You’ll have to give yourself detention.”
“I think that nearly six years of winning back the house points you’ve lost us has earned me one reprieve.”
“And that’s what you do with it?” His eyes flick over the engraving again, then he lets out a quick, short laugh. “You realise what that looks like, don’t you?”
She looks down at her freshly carved name, now coupled neatly with his, and feels a sudden warmth rising in her cheeks.
“In hindsight,” she admits, “I can see I’ve made a mistake.”
“It looks as if you’ve written our names together—”
“Yeah, I got that, you don’t need to explain—”
“It looks as if you fancy me—”
“Nobody’s going to think—”
“No need to clarify, I understand you perfectly.” He straightens his posture, drawing himself up, and pretends to adjust a nonexistent tie. “Yes, Lily Evans, I will marry you, but I think we should wait until we’re done with school, or at least until I’ve also come of age. From an entirely legal standpoint, I’m technically still a child for another three weeks.”
“I agree, you are a child, but I don’t think turning seventeen is going to cure you of that.” Beneath the table, she finds his foot with her own and gives it a quick, harmless little kick with the toe of her shoe. “Now, for the sake of my sanity, be quiet and finish your essay.”
He grins at her, nudges her foot in return. “Will you look it over when I’m done, Potions genius?”
“Yes, of course. Will you give me a hand practicing human Transfiguration?”
“Anything for you, darling wife.”
She shakes her head and returns to her homework, but she can’t quell her smile, nor the flush that steals across her cheeks, nor the silly, telling butterflies skittering wildly in her tummy. “Thanks, husband.”
Lily knew it was his table. He studies here every day.
She wouldn’t have sat here otherwise.
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