Letters From A Stranger || James and Lily ||

Hexed

"What will you do, Flower? Give me detention? Dock house points?"

"I'll kick you were the sun doesn't shine." she said, trying (and failing) to be intimidating.

"Oh. Threat to valuable body parts." he said, nodding, "Impressive."

"I mean it, Sirius."

"Okay, okay. I won't tell him. Jeez, woman. Calm down." He gave the Marauders' map to her then. "Please don't lose it. Moony will murder me."

"Thanks." she said before following the map towards the tunnel to Hogsmeade.

As she sprinted down the dimly lit tunnel with only her wand showing her way ahead, Lily wondered what fifth year Lily would say to her now.

Look at you now, her old self would say, Breaking Merlin only knows how many school rules. For whom? A boy you claimed to hate for five years?

A boy I happen to like a lot, seventeen year old Lily would reply, quite proud at herself too, for admitting it without hesitation. She was past that stage now and was clearly aware that she was obviously attracted to a certain James Potter.

What happened to never falling for his charms?, younger Lily would ask.

It was inevitable, Lily would say, I couldn't help it. It was meant to happen.

After all, they had been through so much now. Five years of skirting around each other and pretending to be enemies. Somewhere along, she was bound to realize that everything had been leading up to this, to them.

Shaking her head, she smiled a bit. This wasn't part of her plan. Forgiving him? Yes, she had chosen that. But falling for him? That was out of her control.

Lily hadn't realized time passing, until she stood in front of the same shop she had walked into a few days before. This time it was a girl behind the counter.

"Excuse me?" Lily said.

The girl looked up, a polite smile on her round face. "Yes?"

"I was supposed to collect something from here today." Lily said, "I had ordered it about a week ago."

"Your name?" the girl asked.

"Lily Evans."

The girl then proceeded to take out a binder from the drawer, breezing through the pages in search of Lily's name. She then opened another drawer and pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper and handed it over to Lily.

"Do you want it gift wrapped?" the girl asked, holding up two sheets of wrapping paper - green and red.

"Green." Lily said, waiting impatiently. Red was her favourite, green was his. Like every other aspect of them - completely contrasting.

She checked the time - it was almost four. Which left her with at least an hour till the party would start.

Lily paid, it cost her almost all of her pocket money for the month, but still worth it, she thought and left the shop. It took her only fifteen minutes to be back in the castle.

She was skipping down the stairs, humming Fur Elise, when she felt like someone was following her. She should have checked the map, which would have been the best choice. But she brushed off the feeling as paranoia and continued walking.

Lily had just passed the Transfiguration class room, when she heard the voices. She turned around.

"Look who we've got here, Avery." Mulciber sneered, amber eyes glinting dangerously.