Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Lucky that I Love You

He made it halfway across the room before he realized he was wrong.

“You have two minutes,” the voice commanded. “Talk.”

Yep. Very, very wrong indeed.

The demand came from her usual spot, the chair in the back corner. He froze, slowly turning on his heel to face Lily Evans sitting with a book closed on her lap, still clad in the outfit she had clearly intended to wear by the Lake. It was with a large pang of guilt that he noticed how pretty she was, even in this moment, with her eyes narrowed darkly at him. So despite his exhaustion and shame, Lily became his priority-- as she should have been from the start of the evening when everything went to shit. He knew he owed her answers, but even when he opened his mouth, he found no words.

Wrong move. Her eyebrows shot straight into her hair, and she crossed her arms. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I could just go to bed. It’s not like I’ve been waiting for hours now. And you know, I was really worried when Mary told me she saw Peter in the Hospital Wing. I thought something horrible had happened, and that I was being selfish and should never have been upset with you in the first place.”

She was wearing a black top and a scarf under her cloak, her hair pulled away from her face so that he can see everything pass in her expression. Words still eluded him, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to tell her. It was that the possibility of losing her paralyzed him with fear, and not for the first time since they started dating, his mind raced with some of the eventualities of not being with Lily Evans. She continued, her eyes (oh, how he’ll miss the way the looked at him) trained steadily at him.

“But that was before Remus and Sirius stumbled in here, which didn’t add up. You four wouldn’t be separated for nothing. And then I heard Sirius mutter about Regulus and Avery and…” she paused, only for a moment but he knew that if he didn’t explain himself soon, then she would fill in the holes herself, and he feared that there wouldn’t be room for him in whatever conclusion she reached in the end. Lily shrugged dejectedly as she continued.

“And Snape,” she finished. “And so the whole evening I thought I was being selfish, and I was just about to go find you when I realized--”

“No, Lily, I swear it’s not--”

“I realized that I was wrong,” she spoke over him. “I wasn’t the one being selfish. My prat boyfriend decided to regress two years in one evening. A record, I would think.”

“It’s not what you think,” James repeated himself, taking a step towards her. He ignored how much it hurt to see her take a counter-step back away from him.

“So you didn’t stand me up to fight Severus?”

“Okay, maybe it is what you think,” James waffled “But I swear, Lily it’s that simple--”

“Oh, my god.” She nearly laughed, her hand jumping to run through her hair. He tried not to smile at that, because honestly, he was closer to crying than anything. “I can’t believe it. Or maybe I can. I don’t know, which one is worse? That I should have known or that I always knew it would happen?”

He dared another step towards her. “I know you’re pissed at me-- I am too! Just, let me explain.”

She crossed her arms again petulantly. “I already gave you two minutes.”

“Two more,” he begged. She nodded. “I didn’t mean to,” he began lamely.

“Well, that makes me feel all better! Issue solved!” She threw her arms up scathingly.

“No, fuck, that’s not how I wanted to-- shit, let me start over.” James ran a hand through his hair, sighing. Trying to see how he could get her to see, that this was more than a hallway scrabble and had more to do with the war than with the House Cup. “We went down to the Kitchens cause I wanted to grab a picnic basket for us, right? I was going to surprise you with extra pumpkin bread from dinner,” he tried a humble smile and she turned her head from him. James sighed. “Sirius, Pete, and Remus and me took a shortcut through the passage near the Prefect’s bathroom, it lets out right near the Tower. I didn’t realize anyone else knew about it, but… That’s when we ran into Mulciber and Avery. Regulus, too, and yeah, Snape.”