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There were times Lily Evans wondered what life would be like if she hadn’t been Sorted into Gryffindor.
The days of wishing she were in Slytherin were long gone, of course — Severus had taken that with him and shattered it, among so many other things — but sometimes she thought she’d quite enjoy the creative intellectualism of Ravenclaw, or the easy camaraderie between Hufflepuffs. With Gryffindors, everything was a fight, a struggle for glory or justice, depending on who you asked. Lily had no problem with fighting for justice, but some of her other housemates’ quests for glory were exhausting to watch.
If there was one thing she could say for Gryffindor, though, it was this: they knew how to throw a party.
Gryffindor had won their first Quidditch match of the year, and the common room had been decked out from top to bottom in banners of red and gold to celebrate the occasion. Animated lions were charmed to prance along the walls, while the ceiling rained down red and gold streamers onto unsuspecting partygoers below. It was a glorious sight, and Lily was beginning to think that glory wasn’t such a bad thing to strive for after all.
She threw herself into the crowd and danced along to the music, which seemed to have been spelled to emanate from the floor itself. She swayed with Marlene during the slow dance and twirled Mary around during a wizarding world top hit and at one point even accidentally elbowed Peter Pettigrew in the face. Her voice was drowned out by the crowd and her movements melded with everyone else’s, until it was impossible to know where she ended and the rest of Gryffindor began.
Merlin, she loved her house.
When at last, Lily stumbled off the dance floor to take a break, she found that her voice was hoarse from screaming the lyrics to songs she didn’t even know. Six years in the wizarding world, and so far none of their music managed to beat Lily’s records back home.
She made her way to a table with refreshments and picked a glass of water: her head was pounding enough already, and that was without firewhiskey in her system. As she drank, she spotted Remus Lupin heading up to his dorm with a book in hand. A few moments later, Sirius Black followed. Strange that Black would leave a party so early, but who was she to judge?
The one high point of the party was that she’d handily managed to avoid James Potter all night. They hadn’t spoken since the Defence O.W.L. that previous spring, and Lily was happy to keep it that way. He’d completely overstepped, taking on the role of her saviour like that, as if Lily was some damsel in distress in need of James Potter’s heroic rescue. She could handle Severus just fine on her own, and the best thing James could do for her was to leave her alone.
Then again, he’d been doing just that all term. If Lily was being honest, it vexed her a bit that James had it in him to be ashamed, or considerate, or anything of that sort. She tried not to think about it too hard, else she was sure she’d only confuse herself more.
“Save a drink for me, Lily,” called Mary as she stepped off the dance floor to join Lily by the refreshments. “Merlin, I’m sweaty. Can I have some of yours?” She gestured at the cup the other witch was holding.
“This is water, not firewhiskey,” said Lily with some amusement. “My head hurts enough already, if I take a firewhiskey I’ll be out for a week at least.”
Mary shrugged and poured herself a shot of firewhiskey with her wand; Lily would have to ask for that spell later. “Suit yourself.” In one gulp, Mary had downed the shot. “So,” she continued, wiping her mouth casually as if nothing had happened, “afterparty in the girls’ dorms tonight? I’ll bring the firewhiskey, you bring your own lovely, sober self.”
Lily snorted. “Mary, I can barely walk and there’s still half an hour till midnight. The only afterparty I’m up to is sitting in a circle playing truth or dare.”
“I’m fine with that.” Mary downed one more shot of firewhiskey and gave Lily a dirty look. “You’re dancing with me on the tables later to make up for this, I hope.”
Lily nodded solemnly. “Wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
Satisfied, Mary turned and disappeared back into the crowd. She’d be up on the tables within minutes, Lily was willing to bet.
For her part, the crackling common room fire and crush of sweaty bodies against her left Lily suddenly desperate for some fresh air. Leaving her water glass on the table — and crafting a silent apology to Mary in her head — Lily wove her way out of the common room, careful not to disturb the slumbering Fat Lady as she crawled through the portrait hole.
Just emerging into the empty hallway gave her an immediate sense of relief. She continued down the steps until she arrived at the door to the Hogwarts grounds, grateful it was late enough that she was all alone in the great castle. Technically, it was past curfew, but energy from the party was still buzzing through Lily’s veins and she couldn’t find it within herself to care. Besides, no one would question a prefect patrolling the grounds after curfew, even if she was wearing a rather suggestive version of her uniform.
As soon as she pushed open the door, brisk autumn wind from outside rushed at her, washing over her face and arms and the back of her neck. Lily stepped out onto the grass and nearly collapsed with how good being outside felt. The pounding in her head seemed to ease with each step she took into the cool night air.
Lily tilted her head up, wanting to catch a glimpse of the stars scattered across the night sky. Back home in Cokeworth, the smoke from the mill blotted out everything except the sun, so stargazing was only possible when Lily was at Hogwarts. Instead of twinkling white lights above her, however, she glimpsed something in motion among the castle turrets, something almost shaped like…
“Is that a broomstick?” she exclaimed, the high of the party making her voice a bit louder than she’d intended. The broomstick stilled above her, then made its quick descent back to the ground. Lily swerved out of the way as its rider touched down. “Careful, you almost hit me— Oh. It’s you.”
“All right, Evans?” James Potter said pleasantly, his hair messier than usual from his midnight broom ride. Lily tried not to watch as he lifted a hand and ran it through his hair, but really, did he have to make it so distracting? “What are you up to away from the party?”
“What are you up to? It’s nearly midnight!”
“Practice.” James shot her an easy smile. “It takes a lot of work to be that good out on the pitch, I’ll have you know. And technically, I asked you first.”
Here he was, talking like a normal person, as if they hadn’t spent the entire term ignoring each other. “I needed some fresh air,” replied Lily warily. “You know that the party inside is for you, don’t you? I would have thought you’d love the free ego boost — not that you need it.”
Infuriatingly, he ignored the slight. “I did. I do. I love parties.”
That was strange. James rarely ever dodged any question Lily threw his way, much less a question about himself. “You love parties, but you’re out here instead of in there,” said Lily. “So what is it?”
James shrugged. “Felt like going for a ride, I s’pose.” He raised his broomstick. “Want to join?”
“Potter,” she said insistently, ignoring the offer because there was no way he really meant that. “You’ve been acting strange all term, and you don’t have to tell me what’s going on, but at least stop pretending that we’re — that we’re mates, or people who go on regular broomstick rides together.” She could feel her cheeks warming as she spoke. What was she saying? “I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t, I dunno, crash into a turret and fall without Madam Pomfrey around to heal you. But you’re all right now, so.” She turned on her heel and moved to get back inside, already planning to head straight to her dorm and call it a night.
“Wait!” James called from behind her. “Evans, wait!” She heard the sound of a broomstick being dropped on the grass, followed by footsteps jogging behind her. Reluctantly, she turned around. From this distance she could see him more clearly: the moonlight reflected off the lenses of his glasses, illuminated his tousled hair and sharp features and perfect, worried mouth. “Look, I’ve been acting strange around you all term because… because…” He sighed. “I wanted to apologise, and I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Apologise?” Lily wanted to ask for what, just to hear him say it, but it would be useless. Both of them knew.
“Yes. I wanted to say that I — I’m sorry, for what happened after the Defence O.W.L. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that in front of the whole school.”
Lily cringed at the memory. It had been humiliating, getting asked out in front of everyone, but never in a million years would she have expected James Potter to apologise for it. “Thank you,” she said, trying to keep the confusion out of her tone as much as possible.
“I’m not done,” said James, putting up a hand. “I’m sorry that I made it my job to make Sniv — Snape apologise to you, after he did what he did. I didn’t get it at the time, when you said you didn’t want me to make him apologise, but it wasn’t my place and I should’ve listened to you.”
“It’s all right,” replied Lily, more out of surprise than genuine forgiveness.
“But it’s not, though. I didn’t listen to you, I never listened to you. I fancied you, obviously, because you were funny and kind and — well, that’s beside the point,” James coughed. “But I never paid any attention to what you wanted.”
Lily shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unsure of what to say in light of this startling new development. James Potter was showing genuine self-awareness, the same James Potter who would tug on her hair and steal her food in the Great Hall when she wasn’t looking. Suddenly, nothing Lily knew about the world made sense.
Maybe that was just the kind of person James Potter was, though. The dynamic, senseless, world-changing kind.
“So,” James continued, oblivious to Lily’s inner turmoil, “from now on, I’m listening, really listening, to what you want. And if what you want is for me to go away forever and never talk to you again, that’s the least I can do.”
The Lily Evans of a year ago would have jumped at the opportunity to get James Potter out of her life forever. Then again, Lily wasn’t the same as she was a year ago, and apparently, neither was James.
“Forever’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?” she said casually. “A decade should do it, I think.”
James’s apprehensive expression fell away, replaced by the same easy, open grin Lily had grown familiar with over the years. It didn’t irk her tonight as much as it used to. “I’ll be sure to write to you when we’re twenty-six, then. My secretary’s marking it in my schedule as we speak.”
“Please do,” said Lily. “I can’t wait to hear about your five kids and dull office job and all the grey hairs you’ve gotten.”
“Grey hairs?” James looked affronted. “Evans, I’ll have you know that my hair is my greatest pride and joy. I’d sooner die than grow a single grey hair.”
“Don’t jinx yourself,” warned Lily, eyeing his untidy mop of hair. If that was his greatest pride and joy, she shuddered to think what the lesser prides and joys must be.
“Jinx myself? Why would I ever do that?”
Lily shook her head with a laugh. “No, it’s a Muggle expression. Sort of like… be careful what you wish for, or it might come true.”
James made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “That’s mad.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. How’s this for jinxing myself: I’ll live to be older than Dumbledore himself and die in a mansion surrounded by racing brooms and Galleons and grandkids. There, now that’ll come true.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Why not?”
“Muggle jinxes only work for bad things,” said Lily. “Like dying before you grow your first grey hair.”
“Well, Muggle jinxes sound rather depressing, then.”
“They don’t have real jinxes, not like wizards do,” she said. “They’re just small superstitions. Their way of inserting magic into an otherwise magic-less world, I suppose.”
James looked at her with his brows drawn together. “You can’t honestly think the Muggle world is magic-less.”
“That’s sort of the definition, isn’t it?” asked Lily. “And besides, shouldn’t I know best?”
“All right, maybe, but…” James ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve grown up in the wizarding world my whole life, so all of this so-called ‘real’ magic is just… daily life, y’know? I can do it, everyone I know can do it. It’s magic in the literal sense, but it doesn’t feel extraordinary to me, because I’ve always known it.”
“Lucky you,” Lily said shortly, but James cut her off.
“No, I’m not saying that to brag, let me finish. Most wizards think studying Muggles is a waste of time, because they see it the same as you: who would ever pick a magic-less world over this one? But Muggles are — they’re brilliant, really. I’m serious!” he exclaimed at Lily’s incredulous look. “Look, with a flick of my wand, I can do this — Lumos!” At the incantation, the tip of James’s wand lit up with a blue orb of light. “It’s easy, instant. It took Muggles centuries to figure out how to do it without magic, but they did. They had fire, then kerosene, then the lightball—”
“Lightbulb?”
“Yes, that — they did all sorts of things to try to accomplish what wizards can do in half a second, but they did it. Not through a magic spell or a wave of their wand, but through science, technology: the magic of their minds.”
The Muggle words sounded strange and stilted coming from James’s mouth, but Lily found herself all of a sudden unable to argue. It was difficult to disagree with such passion, and when it really came down to it… James had a point. One that Lily, as a Muggleborn, never saw herself.
“And look, I’m not saying that I’m any expert in Muggle Studies, or that I’d ever want to leave the wizarding world to join the Muggle one. But haven’t you ever wondered why Muggle technology doesn’t work at Hogwarts?"
“It interferes with the magic, doesn’t it?” Lily asked. Truth be told, she’d been too busy feeling fascinated with the novelty of this new world to wonder about any of the things James was bringing up now.
“Well, yes, but why? It’s all metal and wood and glass, isn’t it? The same materials Hogwarts itself is made of?”
“I think so, just in different forms.”
“Exactly! Muggles created all these new forms for the same old materials, but in a way that is so far ahead of literal magic that our world can’t function in the same space as these inventions. Us wizards like to think of ourselves as all high and mighty, but Muggles beat us on quite possibly every front you can think of: population, innovation, you name it.”
Lily leaned her back against a tree planted on the grounds, the rough bark cutting into her shoulder blades. How was it possible that she’d lived in the Muggle world for eleven years and never once looked at things from James’s perspective? Perhaps even if she’d lived as a Muggle all her life, she still never would have seen things James’s way. He had a way of doing that, she supposed — of making her think.
“Anyway, this is all just to say that Muggles might lack magic in the literal sense, but they more than make up for it in ways we can only dream of.”
“If only everyone saw things the way you do,” said Lily, and she truly meant it.
James winced at her words. She knew he must be remembering the tumultuous politics of the outside world, so far away from their small bubble on the grounds at midnight. “I’m sorry they don’t.”
“That’s the third time you’ve apologised to me in the past hour alone, and this time it isn’t even your fault.”
James laughed. “If it makes you feel better, I’m right and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong.”
She couldn’t help cracking a smile at that. “Naturally.”
Eventually, Lily slid down the trunk of the tree into a seated position and patted the spot next to her for James to sit down. Dewy blades of grass brushed against her legs, a welcome relief after standing up all night. James obliged, and the warmth of his side pressed into hers as they sat shoulder to shoulder, watching as the stars passed them by.
“How would you like to experience some Muggle magic for yourself?” she asked out of the blue, mostly to take her mind off his intoxicating scent: an indefinable mixture of sandalwood and broom polish and something wholly, uniquely James.
“What have you got in mind?”
“Accio record player,” recited Lily with a wave of her wand, realizing too late that her record player would have to travel from her dorm down through all of Hogwarts before bursting into the grounds outside. Luckily, it flew through an open window in Gryffindor Tower and landed peacefully at their feet instead, saving Lily a great deal of time and humiliation.
James, for his part, was gaping wide-eyed at the device. “Is that a Muggle record player?” he said in a hushed voice people usually reserved for church worship.
“No,” Lily whispered back, “it’s a bomb.”
It was almost comical how quickly James leapt away from the player, his expression a picture of abject terror. That is, until he caught sight of Lily doubled over with laughter. “I’m sorry, that was mean,” she said in between laughs. “I shouldn’t be… laughing at you right now.”
“That was mean,” James grumbled, settling himself back down. “The music better be worth it.”
“Oh trust me, it will,” said Lily, sorting through her vinyls. “If you grew up with Celestina Warbeck and the Weird Sisters all your childhood, this is about to change your life.” She slid one record out from the pile she kept at her bedside at all times and waved it in the air for James to see, temporarily forgetting about the dark. “Here, this is one of my favourites.”
James squinted at the cover. “Does that say… Fleet Wood Mac?” he asked, sounding the name out as three separate words.
“Fleetwood Mac,” corrected Lily, biting her lip to keep from laughing. “Want to hear what real music sounds like?”
“Sure,” said James, sounding genuine. “How does this record player work? Where does the sound come from? How does it know which song to play?”
“You should ask the person who invented them.”
“Really? Who is that?”
Lily couldn’t hold back her laughter this time. “I don’t know, James. Maybe it’s easier if I just showed you.” She placed the Fleetwood Mac record on the turntable and hovered the stylus over her favourite track. “Ready?” At James’s enraptured nod — she would have found it amusing if she hadn’t been so caught up in the moment, too — Lily lowered the stylus.
Instantly, a haunting guitar melody filled the night air around them, drowning out the crickets chirping and water lapping against the shores of the Black Lake in the distance. Stevie Nicks’ voice rang out loud and clear, pouring her song into their ears:
Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her?
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?
Lily closed her eyes, prepared to lose herself in the music as she always did. As the first verse ended and the chorus began, however, they abruptly flew back open.
Merlin’s beard. She’d forgotten how romantic this song sounded. And she wasn’t listening to this alone in her room, or surrounded by Mary and Marlene; she was sitting here with James, just the two of them, listening to Fleetwood Mac with nothing but the swaying trees to accompany them.
This was a terrible idea.
All your life you’ve never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you heaven?
Will you ever win?
“We can change it if you want,” Lily offered, already moving to pause the record, but James placed his hand over hers to stop her. His palm was warm and steady and callused, and practically enveloped her own.
“I love this song, what are you talking about?” said James, pulling away. Lily found that she quite missed the feel of his hand on hers.
Merlin, what was she thinking? Stevie Nicks’ hypnotic singing must be getting to her head.
Slowly, she let herself relax back against the tree. It really was a good song, and there was no reason she had to let James ruin it for her. Still, as the record played on, she couldn’t help thinking about how close he was to her, how every time the wind ruffled his hair she wanted to run her hand through his soft locks and smooth them back down, how every time he opened his mouth she felt the inexplicable urge to—
“Did you know this song is actually about a Welsh goddess?” she said out loud, trying to distract herself from her thoughts.
James looked up, his brows raised in surprise. “Really? Wales?”
Lily nodded as the song faded away, feeling quite foolish all of sudden. Was that really the best conversation starter she could have come up with?
“Moony’s mum is a Muggle from Wales, and I can’t remember her ever mentioning this song,” said James.
“I don’t think the band is actually Welsh, it’s just based on a Celtic legend.”
“I’ve always loved legends, I used to ask my mum to tell me Hindu ones all the time,” said James. As he spoke, Lily took the record off the turntable and slid it back into its sleeve; one unexpectedly romantic song was quite enough for one night. “Have you ever been? To Wales, I mean?”
“No, but I’d love to go. Love to go everywhere, really.” Lily placed the record back on her pile and glanced at James. “How about you? Where’d you like to go?”
“I want to be with you everywhere,” he replied without hesitation, the words spilling out of him as easily as pearls. “As mates, of course. If you’ll have me.”
Lily hesitated. James said he would listen to what she wanted, but she hadn’t said the words out loud yet. Maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe it was obvious, in her eyes, her hands, her—
“Not as anything more, I promise,” James continued, and the moment shattered. “Those days are behind me.”
Perfect bloody timing, thought Lily, surprising even herself with the force of her bitterness. Outside, she compelled herself to smile. “I think I can make time for one more mate in my life.”
“Really? No more decade-long wait, even?”
“Mmm, I’d ask your secretary to hold off if I were you.” As James opened his mouth to reply, she quickly added, “Don’t push your luck, Potter.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Evans.” He slid closer to her on the grass and began sifting through her records, slipping one out of the pile seemingly at random. “C’mon, let’s listen to more of this real music.” He put the record on with a fair amount of help from Lily, and together, they released magic into the air.
Apologies to Mary, really, but this was the best afterparty Lily could’ve hoped for.