Who: Lily & James What: Talking, Walking When: Wednesday, 5 October, 1977; After Dinner Where: Near the lake; Castle grounds Warnings: TBD.
Lily had realized shortly after her conversation with James that tonight was the one night of the week that she had a class after dinner. She swore she'd never had a problem with classes interfering with what she wanted to do until she'd started dating James but that was probably because she what she wanted to do now almost always involved James in some way, shape or form. Normally, she wouldn't have had too much of a problem with having to push plans back by an hour, but Lily was anxious for this evening. So anxious that she'd changed her clothes twenty times after Earth Magic before she was ready to meet James in the Common Room. She'd tried on ten different dresses before she'd decided that the dresses just weren't her and she'd opted for jeans and a sweater instead.
Lily Evans, trying to look nice for a bloke. It was a sign that she really did care.
And that was what tonight was all about, wasn't it? She'd come close to telling him how she was feeling on more than one occasion and today she'd backed herself right into this corner. The truth of the matter was that she was scared. Falling from a broom wasn't the only type of falling she was scared of--but at least she'd never actually had to face the other kind of falling before.
She just didn't really understand what it was about James. She'd gone from wanting to ignore his existence to wanting to date him to sleeping in his bed, curled up with him as many nights as she could manage in what seemed like a split second shift in their dynamic. On one hand, given their negatively passionate history, it wasn't entirely unreasonable to feel so passionate about their relationship so soon. On the other hand, the closer she got to him, the closer she got to hurting if she ever lost him. Because that was the pattern of her life wasn't it? She lost the people she loved: her sister, her best friend and now, in a worse way, her parents. Marlene seemed to be the lone exception to that rule.
So when Lily joined James in the Common Room and twined her fingers with his before heading out to the grounds for an evening walk, she was nervous. Anxious because even if she didn't say it out loud, it still existed and existing made it so risky. He was worth the risk, though. She'd learned that lesson quickly. James Potter wasn't like anyone else she'd ever known--he had a way of getting under her skin, driving her mad, pushing all of her buttons. The thing was, though, was all of that applied to the way she adored him, too. Even moreso than the way he drove her to frustration, he drove her to the point where she had no words to describe the way her heart pounded and felt like it might swell and beat right out of her chest.
By the time the made it down by the lake, the nerves had not subsided but, rather, had turned into something like a nearly tangible current that rushed around her and in her. The thrill was electrifying. She was scared, yes. Terrified, even. But then again, she was Lily Evans. And if she was anything less than badarse, they wouldn't have been dating in the first place.