Chapter Forty Three
“Will I see you this holiday?” James asked, idly playing with Lily’s hair as they sat on the Hogwarts Express. She sighed with pleasure and motioned impatiently for him to continue. “Well will I?” he repeated, beginning once more after having stopped to see whether she had heard him; her eyes had been shut for ten minutes while a blissful grin had been glued to her face and he half suspected that she had fallen asleep.
“You will if you keep giving me a head massage,” she replied.
“I hardly think that’s fair. You’re definitely just using the fact that I’m your boyfriend to get limitless massages whenever you want.”
“And?”
“Seems a bit… well you’re exploiting me!”
“That I am,” she said, lifting her shoulders infinitesimally in a tiny shrug. “Um yes, you will see me.”
“Oh good. Well we can Apparate so it’s very easy. Will you be coming to me or am I coming to you?”
“Merlin James I don’t know! Can’t we sort out which day it’s going to be first?”
“Well when are you free?”
“Pretty much all of the holidays I suppose,” she replied. “How about we say the… sixteenth?”
James nodded before realising that she couldn’t see him from her position in front of him and said, “Yes. Sixteenth sounds good. Padfoot!”
“Mmm?” Sirius mumbled from behind his pile of Chocolate Frogs, poking his messy dark head out from between Cassie and Remus.
“Sixteenth of December.”
“What about it?” he asked blearily. “Are we going to the Harpies’ match?”
“Well you can but I’m seeing Lily.”
“Oh.” Sirius was about to retreat again when James stopped him, saying, “Don’t let me forget.”
“Prongs I’m a million times more likely to forget about that than you are. Get Remus to owl you or something the day before.” Remus shook his head and waved his finger at his friend. “Nope, don’t try to make me do that James. I’m going to be sleeping all Christmas and eating my body weight in chocolate. Oh and working.”
“Working?” Peter exclaimed as James yelped the same thing. “Why would you be working?”
“Why wouldn’t I be working? I have two essays due in for Ancient Runes.”
“That’s extremely unfortunate,” Mary said, sounding rather like she could care less.
They passed the journey back to London with various amusements and conversations, and various people wandering in and out of their carriage both adding to and taking away from the noise which spilled out of it and into the corridor. Eventually, after almost an entire day of travelling, the train pulled into King’s Cross and the students it contained were set free and let loose over the platform; just like every other year they sprinted from place to place, dashing through the crowds as they searched for their friends and their parents and dragged trunks between the two, a constant babble swelling and shrinking over everyone gathered there. Christmas wasn’t nearly as bad as the beginning of the summer though: although only a couple of students stayed behind to work or to be with their friends the holiday was shorter than the summer and so people felt able, after a quick hug and one last chat, to leave with their parents whereas, at the end of the year, it was impossible to go more than one metre without bumping into a couple of people who were clinging onto one another and promising to have wonderful holidays. The pandemonium was exacerbated by the seventh years, many of whom would often be saying goodbye to people for the last time and so were even worse than the others.
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The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)
Fanfiction(Companion piece to Dwelling on Dreams) James Potter has been Lily's enemy since the first day that they both started at Hogwarts. She has never been interested in his being his friend but, when they and their friends return for their fifth year at...
