The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

The Deepest Love - Part Two

It was dark in the woods. 

It was dark in her life sometimes, too.

But the stag listened.

He listened as she poured out her heart, as all the things she didn't dare to tell other people came out of her, all the stuff that she thought made her unlovable and broken... and that stag never judged her. In fact, if anything it seemed to love her more.

Being around that stag made her feel like there was light at the end of a very, very long night and the shadows in her heart were being chased away...

It was like a sunrise.

"Morning Love." James was smiling.

"Today, class, we begin analyzing dreams," Professor Vablatsky was saying.

"Here's my dreams, Evans." James was holding out a parchment and sliding hers toward himself. "Am I in these?" he asked.

"Not even once," Lily replied.

But she'd dreamed about her stag. The stag that was James. She just didn't know that yet.

"You're in mine," he said.

"Just get to work, Potter."

He was grinning down at her parchment, his eyes twinkling as he read, and she was getting so annoyed. She'd been truthful in her dreams. But even reading through her memories Sirius could tell James's parchment was a load of bullshit. Sirius actually rather thought he could remember sitting about in the dormitory laughing as James dictated his imaginings to a charmed quill that scribed the words he spoke down because he was too lazy to actually write, now that he thought about it.

"Evans and I were snogging in the turret off Gryffindor tower for like two hours. That's it, that's the whole dream. A whole lot of snogging after which Evans confessed her undying love for me because the taste of my mouth is just THAT GOOD..." 

"You can't possibly truly be this full of yourself?" Lily demanded.

"Huh?" James asked, confused.

"You didn't really dream about snogging me," she snapped.

"You didn't really dream about snogging a stag," James quipped.

"I wasn't snogging a stag!"

"Yeah? What were you doing then?"

"Can't you bloody read?"

"You want a real one to analyze then?" James asked.

"That would be nice," she answered.

"Okay, well," James licked his lips, and looked at her, and even as he looked at her, he was struggling not to laugh. "The other day, I dreamed I was walking 'round in the woods and I was a stag --"

"WHY ARE YOU SUCH A BEAST?"

"Toerag."

"Idiot."

"Arrogant little cockroach!"

"Arse!"

"Absolute bully!"

James was grinning - and indeed, his smile did look rather arrogant, there was no denying that. "C'mon Evans, give me a try. One date, love, that's all it'll take..."

"The day I'd go on a date with you, James Potter, would be the same day that the Giant Squid learned to fly!"

James Potter's brown eyes stared back into hers, and his face hardened from a joking grin into a pursed lipped expression of determination. "You want the squid to fly?" he asked, and he was unbuttoning the wrists of his oxford shirt, rolling the sleeves up and turning for the door. "Then I'll make the giant bloody squid fly!"