Harry Potter One Shots - All Generations

Jily - Autumn Leaves (James)

Looking at her was like a fairytale. She was leather jackets and flower crowns. She was dancing on the grass barefoot in the summer and making snow angels in the cold winter snow. The feeling of wind in your face as you drove drown the road with all the windows down and the feeling of silence in comfort in the middle of the night. She was comfortable silences and deep conversations.  She was special smiles that were only for you and bright smiles that she shared with everyone. She was the gentle touch of fingers running through your hair and the not-so-gentle touch of breathtaking kisses that were stolen from you as if her life depended on it.

She was a fairytale in every way shape and form. And that's what James Potter wanted to tell her every time he looked at her but she was just so perfect and he only ever made a fool out of himself. It was frustrating whenever the words came back to him because it was always too late to fix whatever he'd said that time. He didn't want Lily as a prize he wanted Lily because she was everything. She was beautiful and amazing and he wanted to love her. By the end of sixth year, he was starting to lose hope and it scared him. If he gave up now, he would lose any chance he had with her and that could happen because she was perfect.

She looked gorgeous with her hair in a messy bun and a large sweater on and the one time he got close enough to smell her she smelled like cinnamon and it was perfect because it was everything because it was her  and she was perfect in every way and she didn't like him. It wasn't like James Potter to give up but by the time he came back for seventh year he'd been worried so much about never ending up with her that he, to the surprise of his friends, never came up with a new part of 'Operation Win Over Lily Evans' and instead he just shrugged when they brought it up and said if she hadn't liked him in the first six years, it wasn't going to magically happen.

Lily had already noticed his deflation in spirit before a week had passed which made him curious. Though it was probably just because he wasn't as in her face as normal and that must be it. So he tried to up his game a little but he couldn't bring himself to do it because Lily wasn't a prize to be won. He had to realize that how hard he tried didn't matter because that's not what she wanted. It hurt when she stopped him in the common room after he'd had a late night in detention, alone because Remus wasn't dumb enough to get caught and because Sirius was stressing too much and he couldn't always let Peter take the blame.

"Potter. Did I bore you or something? You lose interest?" She sounded hurt and James just looked at his feet, she didn't understand that she wasn't a game. He had to make her understand he had to tell her. He couldn't do anything though as he looked up and met her beautiful green eyes. Green eyes that were like emeralds staring at him, they were a breathtakingly beautiful forest and he was lost in them.

It was then that he began to confess everything to her. He finally managed to work the words that he'd been trying to piece together for years and put them on his tongue. He wasn't even near done, he'd only just started but it seemed like he'd been talking forever. Maybe he had, he could talk forever about Lily even if it was to her. It shocked him at first when he realized he wasn't talking anymore but then he realized what was happening. Her lips were on his lips and their bodies were crashing together, working together.

If James had nothing to go off of he would say it was magic but it wasn't that. Magic was something you learned. He realize that they were magic. Not the powers they possessed but this feeling couldn't be anything but the deepest kind of magic. The kind of magic that everyone could feel, no matter their blood. Whether muggle or wizard because he couldn't imagine a world in which someone didn't have this feeling. As he became lost in the moment he couldn't remember his own world without his magic though he knew it had to have been somewhere. To him, Lily Evans had always seemed magic like this. But to think he could be a part of this colossal thing was too much so he just lost himself in her lips.

It was a year later before James felt that much magic. Voldemort was taking over and all they could do was fight for their lives. Sure, he and Lily had married fresh out of Hogwarts but he couldn't do this, not now. He felt lost because he knew that any day he could lose Lily, or Sirius. Remus or Peter. Any single one of them could die right now. Marlene and Dorcas who'd only freshly gotten together. Or Alice and Frank. Gideon and Fabian and their sister Molly who had her own family.

James didn't think he could lose anyone else. His parents had died halfway through his seventh year and people were dying every day. There was a war going on but James could only think of the fact that he and his family were in the middle of it. Sirius didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve for his baby brother to have died without him getting to say goodbye. Remus couldn't help his transformations and the ministry would like him less because most of the werewolves were on Voldemort's side and Peter wasn't right. Peter was acting odd and not himself and James couldn't help but pin it on the war.

None of them were acting like themselves. No more nights were spent getting drunk and laughing anymore. They would sit in silence and listen to every sound in the streets so they might be warned if a Death Eater chose to attack close to their home. Sometimes it was just Lily and James, Remus and Sirius deciding to hide away in their own house and Peter disappearing to who knows where and when the others were gone Lily wasn't afraid to cry.

She cried when Mary died and when Marlene died she was a mess for weeks. Dorcas dying didn't help either and they needed something good to happen for once. And that's what happened as he found her crying on the bathroom floor and he was surprised to find that she was smiling and they were happy tears but she still seemed sad. "James- James I'm pregnant" she said as he asked her what was going on and had to take a moment to process it but when he did he grinned like an idiot.

"Lily! This is wonderful oh my god!" He picked her up and pulled her into a hug, and she let herself collapse into his arms as he spun her around as much as he could in their small, slightly cramped bathroom. "Can I tell Sirius or do you want to? Oh I hope it's a boy but I hope he has your eyes of course. I wouldn't be against it if he looks exactly like you either. Or if it's a girl who is literally a tiny you. Lily this is just, so amazing."

"James. Of course you can tell Sirius. But the child, no matter the gender, had better get your hair because I love your hair so much." Instinctively she reached up and ran a hand through his hair as he smiled down at her, they had suddenly forgotten everything. There wasn't a war going on around them. They weren't fighting for their lives at this moment they were living them.

"Are you allowed to floo or apparate when your pregnant? I don't want to do anything that could hurt the baby." She laughed at how excited he seemed at the prospect of a tiny baby of theirs running around because it wasn't just a dream he was real and Lily was real and this was real. And so, after Lily assured him it'd be fine, they found themselves apparating to Sirius and Remus' place and suddenly, James realized this wasn't a fairytale anymore. He had Lily and everything about her was perfect. She was a cool breeze on a warm spring day and the colour of autumn leaves as they've just begun to change and the crisp air in the winter and the sun against your face in the summer.

She was perfect and she was his.