The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Forty

James fell silent as he struggled to make sense of what she had just said, frowning adorably as he wracked his brain. “What? I don’t understand. Can you please say what you just said in English please?”

Lily huffed and cursed the stupidity of all boys throughout history. “Are you asking me out Potter?” she asked, trying to push him towards what she had meant.

“I always am. I’m just waiting for you to see how much I love you… what? Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked confused as Lily rolled her eyes at him.

“You’re not asking me out James!”

“Er… Lily will you… go out… with… me?” he said slowly, completely out of his depth.

“Yes.”

“Yes!” James parroted excitedly, an enormous grin breaking out over his face. Suddenly Lily’s words filtered through into the part of his brain which could think rationally and he froze. “Wait, what? You’ve never said yes before. Is this a joke?”

Lily sighed again, barely able to restrain her frustration at the idiot in front of her. “No Potter, this isn’t a joke,” she said. Silence fell over the pair of them and she smiled at him tentatively whilst he stared at her, puzzling out what had just happened; he was having a lot of difficulty believing that their conversation had just happened and Lily swore she saw him pinch himself as his brow furrowed. She stepped towards him and placed her hands on his shoulders, pushing herself up on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. “It’s not a joke James,” she whispered, “I promise. It really did just happen.” His indecipherable eyes, which Lily knew would be hazel if the moonlight hadn’t leached them of all their colour, gazed into hers and after another few moments of silence he beamed at her, shattering the silence which stretched between them with a cheer which startled Lily and made her jump. “Merlin! Are you serious? You’re serious! Oh Lily! I’ve been waiting so long for this!” he cried, babbling incoherently as she chuckled and let him spout hundreds of nonsensical phrases, repeating himself over and over again.

“Oh my god,” she breathed as she watched him gesticulating maniacally, “I’m going out with a complete idiot.”

At that very moment the door behind her opened and out stepped Sirius, whose face betrayed his surprise at seeing the two of them there. “Prongs! Evans!” he cried. “What are you doing here? What about the party?”

“Padfoot!” James yelped simultaneously. “What are you-” His question was interrupted by Cassie coming out from behind the door too, “Oh Cassie!” She aimed a pathetic half-wave at them and ducked her head as Sirius said, “Well… we’ll just be going then,” and dragged her away into the darkness.

Lily watched them leave before turning back to James.

“You don’t think they…?” James started tentatively before trailing off.

“I don’t know,” she replied, almost certain that they had; James’ hadn’t exactly kept his voice down and she had known Cassie for long enough to be able to read her easily. “We should probably get back to the party though,” she murmured.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed, “wouldn’t want to get caught by Filch.”

They headed back down the passages in silence, creeping through the darkness towards the Gryffindor common room; both Lily and James were caught up in their thoughts, too overwhelmed by what had just happened and what that might mean to them to talk much; any noise would make the chance of being caught more likely too and neither of them much fancied detention. As they moved through the gloom James marvelled at how Lily followed him, her hand tucked securely in his when just a couple of years before she would have refused to do anything of the sort, probably seeing it as the worst form of torture imaginable; he still couldn’t really understand how, in one day, he had gone from being able to count the number of times he had kissed Lily Evans on one hand to being able to kiss her whenever he liked and his heart leapt at the knowledge.

Lily, on the other hand, was thinking about their whole journey, moving through the years of hatred - well severe dislike, she amended - and arguments to their uncertain and unstable standing as friends; it was amazing, she realised, how people and their opinions could change without really realising it until it was too late; in the shadows she also mused on the flimsiness of fortune and fate: would she always have ended up going out with James Potter regardless of what happened or was her sudden agreement to their Hogsmeade trip an event which would have changed everything if it had never happened? If she hadn’t met Snape before she found out that she was a witch, if James had been kinder to him all those years ago, if she had accepted what was going to happen and cut Snape out of her life long before he did it for her would things have changed? Would she and James be such good friends that they decided not to endanger their relationship by being something more? If one of them was just a little bit different, if the Sorting Hat had put her in Ravenclaw instead, would any of this have happened?

Or was it always supposed to be?

Would they always have argued, always have had to mature and grow closer? Would she always have sworn that James Potter was the last person on Earth she would ever have gone out with? Would he always have been determined to win her over? If she had given in sooner would they have become friends or would they have be celebrating an anniversary by now?

Was that spark always there?

Lily sighed and tried to really experience their walk back to the oblivious party, to really feel James’ large hand in hers, to listen to their footsteps echoing through the corridor and bouncing off the walls, dampened by the darkness, to analyse the twisting of her stomach: was it fear, excitement or something else?

She had said yes to James without really thinking it through - of course she wanted to go out with him, there wasn’t a question about that and that surprised her slightly - she hadn’t realised quite how far gone she was until he had asked her and it had felt like a missing piece of the universe had fallen into place - but Lily was completely new to this; she had stepped off the map and entered utterly uncharted territory, with each step she was carried further and further away from the cocooning safety of the darkness, further away from the place where he had asked her out and, by extension, further away from the place where she could take it back. She slowed down, taking each step slower and slower because she knew that everything would become real when they re-entered the party and reality. Her stomach flipped uncomfortably and she wondered whether her mind thought she had leapt over the edge of a cliff: that was the only way she could account for the swooping sensation, the feeling of falling through the air, which she was experiencing now.

It was fine for James, she decided; he had made no secret of how he felt about her - despite the fact that she had thought that he was joking - and so had had a long time to grow used to how he felt about her. For Lily, however, this was all new and, although she supposed that she had had a suspicion, a small voice loitering in the back of her mind, telling her that she liked him more than she cared to admit, she had never actually thought that he would end up being her boyfriend.

She wasn’t just Lily Evans anymore; now she was Lily Evans, one part of Lily and James, and she had no idea what that would do to her life. No longer was she completely independent, able to do anything without truly hurting anyone; now, if she wanted to drift through life unattached, she would have to have that dreaded conversation with James, the one where she was at risk of hurting his heart so much that it scarred; it was as if, with that one question and that one word, they had tied hundreds of invisible knots to join them; if she wanted to cut them she would have to physically separate her soul from his.

But, despite all this doubt and turmoil raging within her, Lily knew, with complete conviction, that she was happy.