Seasons' Greetings 2011 ♥ A Gift For liebedance
Title: All the Way Home I'll be Warm
Author: firstbreaths
Recipient: liebedance
Rating: PG13+
Wordcount: ~2000
Warnings: none
Summary: James' Christmas Eve surprise doesn't quite go to plan.
Author's Note: liebedance, your prompt was gorgeous, even if it makes me wish we got scenes like that in some canon form for real. Hopefully I did it some kind of justice. A big thank you also to the mods for running such a fabulous fest; I have been singing Christmas carols since mid-October, and this just adds to my insatiable Christmas spirit.
A clump of snow falls from Lily’s shoulder as she shrugs them in vain, trying to burrow deeper into her coat.
Hogsmeade is busy, as she’d expected on Christmas Eve, but most of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd has disappeared inside the stores to make various purchases, lured as much by the promise of warmth as by the enchanted toy elves that make their way along the street, singing about the bargains to be found at Haddock and Lemmings. Lily thinks she might kill for a Butterbeer about now, but everything that the use particular word entails now catches up with her suddenly, like a snowball to the face with its shocking coldness, and she settles for following James as he marches stubbornly in the direction of Hogwarts, wondering what James’ “surprise” could possibly be.
Lily can only hope it involves a new pair of boots to replace the ones that are allowing snow to seep through to her socks (they’re her old favourites, but there’s only so many times a simple Reparo will suffice) and that it in no way involves any of his friends serenading her. She’s not entirely sure which is a greater possibility.
James’ hand is firm in hers though, even through her favourite leather gloves, and she can’t help but smile as he reapplies the heating charm to her scarf and coat, just as she’s fumbling in her pocket for her wand.
“Your teeth were chattering,” he says, with an apologetic shrug as he sidesteps to narrowly avoid stepping on a lady who’s dropped a dozen candy canes, as though he actually has something to be sorry for. “It was cute and all, but I figured -”
Lily’s just about to slap him when she stops in her tracks, realises his hand has slipped out of hers; turning around, she sees him levitating the lady’s shopping back into her back, throwing his hands up and shaking his head as she tries to thank him. She’s almost disgusted by how quickly she’d flooded with a peculiar kind of comfort and warmth she’s only just coming to know the name of at the sight, but it makes her unspeakably proud; James hadn’t been kidding, when he said he’d changed for more than just her, and it’s that, in the end, that makes it so easy to love him.
She tries not to smile too brightly though, just raising an eyebrow as he turns back to her, hands burrowed deep in his pockets. “Clearly I need to be owling Remus and telling him to forget about buying you that book on manners this Christmas.”
“Clearly you need to stop being such a belligerent smart arse,” James replies, but he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close until their ankles are knocking together and they’re almost tripping in the snow, clutching at each other to stay upright. It’s such a blatant contradiction, the easiness and comfort here that they don’t always get when they’re alone, when there are too many things eating at their thoughts; the too hot press of his cheek against hers as the cold wind bites at the back of her neck where her scarf is slipping down her shoulders, and Lily spins on the spot and kisses him quick and proper at the end of the street.
James’ laughter just rings against her lips as he pulls away and motions towards Hogwarts, looming impressive over them in a way that scares Lily, because it’s always had that irresistible tug to her, home, and now she’s being pulled closer to it by a man who, in his own way, embodies that too. She holds tightly to that thought as she trudges up the path behind James; in the six months since they’ve graduated from Hogwarts, visits here have always meant news, nothing particularly good or bad, so far, just news, and that, in itself, is terrifying - the fact that there is a reason for them, newly minted members of the Order of the Phoenix, to know anything of importance at all.
But James is wearing that half-smirk he gets when he’s trying to conceal the fact that he finds something particularly amusing, so she just follows him through the castle grounds, a little bewildered as to how this is so easy. Security has been tight around the castle for months; even Dumbledore is growing weary of the potential for terror. The snow’s eased a little, at least, and she toes at it with her boots as she walks, remembering the hundreds of other times she’s traipsed along the edge of the Quidditch pitch, both with James and without.
James must notice her frown, though, because he just shrugs his shoulders and says, “I may have called in a few favours. We might have driven McGonagall barmy at times, Sirius and I, but we were good at keeping secrets, when we had to.”
At Lily’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “Let’s just say that poor Esmelda Enders would have been more embarassed than usual, had we let some of the things we found in her detention files slip.” He tries to play it cool, brushing a loose snowflake away from his coat and glancing away from her, but Lily just laughs, letting her hand slip into his, as much for the casual intimacy as for the warmth.
It’s funny, the James she’d known in fourth and fifth and sixth year - and maybe even occasionally in seventh year, if she’s telling the truth - would have just blurted out the details, one hand on his jutted hip and a challenging smirk in his eyes, daring her to be impressed. It’s still there, that desire to be acknowledged and rewarded, and he still preens under the attention, but he’s learnt not to expect it.
Which is why Lily stops for a second as they cross over the grounds near the lake, stretching up on tiptoes to plant a gentle kiss on the side of his cheek; not even stopping to check if there’s anyone around in this abysmal weather, because why should she be ashamed of it? James tilts his head to the side slightly, so that her lips graze his, but she pulls back before it can turn wet and pliant and a little like something she’d kind of hoped to get as a Christmas gift, saying, “try me.”
“That’s not how it works, you know,” James says, moving along, and Lily’s kind of tempted just to poke at him a little, because seriously, when -
“Which reminds me - how come you never told me you got detention in fourth year? And for blowing up the storage shed behind the greenhouses at that?"
“That was an accident,” she cries, throwing her hands up wildly. "Well, the explosion was, not the being out of bed after hours because Marcie had ran out of the dorms crying over Black, again.
“And it's certainly nothing worth bragging about; you’d be ashamed of me. I'd cleaned up most of the mess before McGonagall found us, that's why no one ever found out. We only told her because I might have buggered the charm for removing the scorch marks, just a little.”
“I could never be ashamed of you,” James replies, and he’s so awkward in his earnestness that Lily just kisses him again, her hands coming to tangle in his hair. "You did after all, agree to date me, even after all my transgressions in this very spot."
"Trangressions, yeah," Lily mumbles against his lips, snow still settling in the brim of her hat even as she feels suddenly filled with a funny kind of warmth. She kisses him again, hard, adding, "I guess we have a lot of memories here."
She gestures to the lake, partially frozen over, and sighs, something a little like wistful. Her breath is misty in the chilly winter air, and she fumbles for her wand, reapplying the heating charm to her coat again. Lily’s not one for fate and circumstance, not least because she likes to argue against James’ claims that this is just a continuation of what they’d been heading towards forever, but she still feels a connection to Hogwarts, to this patch of the grounds that she can’t quite explain.
Glancing over at James, Lily notices that he’s staring forlornly at his shoes, biting at his lower lip a little as he frowns. It’s a funny kind of sight that she doesn’t quite know how to reconcile with all the versions of James she’s known over the years, both the ones she’s made up in her head and the ones she hasn’t, and she just frowns at him in response, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and quirking an eyebrow.
“You ruined my surprise,” he says finally, glancing up at her, “I mean, I knew we were good for each other, Lily, but -”
“What?’ she asks, and she’s left kind of just gaping at him, because there’s a point, somewhere, where this conversation has become tangential to the actual point of the surprise she knew nothing about, and it’s just like this, with her and James, spinning round and round in self-created circles, only to finish in the same place. “I’m ashamed of you, Potter. All the resources of Sirius Black’s deranged mind - and Remus and Peter’s common sense - at your disposal, and you create a surprise that I’ve somehow managed to ruin without even knowing what it is.”
“I’m wounded,” James replies, laughing, “I am to surprises what Celestina Warbeck is to making my ears bleed; do you not remember the impromptu performance we put on for Flitwick’s birthday in the Great Hall during fourth year?”
“All too well,” Lily says, also laughing now as the memory comes back to her in dribs and drabs; Sirius dancing between the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables, entirely oblivious to Severus’ foul looks, and -
“Didn’t that end up with us out here too? Me, yelling at you for interrupting breakfast, and you calling me -”
“Earbashing Evans, if I recall,” he says, grin sloppy and wide as his hands come to settle at Lily’s waist, pulling her close and tucking her into his side, “not one of my best insults, but I was just a idiot, back then. Especially if my performance that day was anything to go by...”
James pauses, glances down at her with that same insatiable grin, and adds, “we’re doing it again. This was the surprise, I guess. Not us freezing our arses off and insulting each other - although that’s always a fun past time, admittedly - but this. A lot of things happened here, Lily, for better or for worse, and I just wanted to remind you that I was that idiot once, and but I’m also the guy who once stood here and told you he’d never hurt you, and I sort of… it’s stupid, but I wanted to stand here and remind you that we’re better for all of that, and now we can survive anything.”
He pulls out his wand and uses it to drape a little tinsel across his shoulders, and says, “Merry Christmas, Lily.”
The grin’s a little more self-depreciating now, James’ shoulders slumping a little, and Lily just laughs, leaning even further into him and reaching up to cup his jaw, his stubble catching a little under her fingertips and his glasses slipping down his nose she tilts his head down to kiss him. She’s flattered by the gesture and kind of bemused by it all at once, because she doesn’t need the reminder, not really; it’s in the way they’ve been the whole way here, the banter and the knocking knees, the way she feels warm and comforted by his very touch.
Lily glances at the lake behind them though, as she lets the kiss turn deep and a little messy, and she likes the idea of it as a constant, a reminder that they’ve had each other, in some way or another, for their entire lives, except -
“This is exactly what I wanted as a Christmas surprise, James, but honestly - you owe me a Butterbeer; it’s freezing.”
Author: firstbreaths
Recipient: liebedance
Rating: PG13+
Wordcount: ~2000
Warnings: none
Summary: James' Christmas Eve surprise doesn't quite go to plan.
Author's Note: liebedance, your prompt was gorgeous, even if it makes me wish we got scenes like that in some canon form for real. Hopefully I did it some kind of justice. A big thank you also to the mods for running such a fabulous fest; I have been singing Christmas carols since mid-October, and this just adds to my insatiable Christmas spirit.
A clump of snow falls from Lily’s shoulder as she shrugs them in vain, trying to burrow deeper into her coat.
Hogsmeade is busy, as she’d expected on Christmas Eve, but most of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd has disappeared inside the stores to make various purchases, lured as much by the promise of warmth as by the enchanted toy elves that make their way along the street, singing about the bargains to be found at Haddock and Lemmings. Lily thinks she might kill for a Butterbeer about now, but everything that the use particular word entails now catches up with her suddenly, like a snowball to the face with its shocking coldness, and she settles for following James as he marches stubbornly in the direction of Hogwarts, wondering what James’ “surprise” could possibly be.
Lily can only hope it involves a new pair of boots to replace the ones that are allowing snow to seep through to her socks (they’re her old favourites, but there’s only so many times a simple Reparo will suffice) and that it in no way involves any of his friends serenading her. She’s not entirely sure which is a greater possibility.
James’ hand is firm in hers though, even through her favourite leather gloves, and she can’t help but smile as he reapplies the heating charm to her scarf and coat, just as she’s fumbling in her pocket for her wand.
“Your teeth were chattering,” he says, with an apologetic shrug as he sidesteps to narrowly avoid stepping on a lady who’s dropped a dozen candy canes, as though he actually has something to be sorry for. “It was cute and all, but I figured -”
Lily’s just about to slap him when she stops in her tracks, realises his hand has slipped out of hers; turning around, she sees him levitating the lady’s shopping back into her back, throwing his hands up and shaking his head as she tries to thank him. She’s almost disgusted by how quickly she’d flooded with a peculiar kind of comfort and warmth she’s only just coming to know the name of at the sight, but it makes her unspeakably proud; James hadn’t been kidding, when he said he’d changed for more than just her, and it’s that, in the end, that makes it so easy to love him.
She tries not to smile too brightly though, just raising an eyebrow as he turns back to her, hands burrowed deep in his pockets. “Clearly I need to be owling Remus and telling him to forget about buying you that book on manners this Christmas.”
“Clearly you need to stop being such a belligerent smart arse,” James replies, but he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close until their ankles are knocking together and they’re almost tripping in the snow, clutching at each other to stay upright. It’s such a blatant contradiction, the easiness and comfort here that they don’t always get when they’re alone, when there are too many things eating at their thoughts; the too hot press of his cheek against hers as the cold wind bites at the back of her neck where her scarf is slipping down her shoulders, and Lily spins on the spot and kisses him quick and proper at the end of the street.
James’ laughter just rings against her lips as he pulls away and motions towards Hogwarts, looming impressive over them in a way that scares Lily, because it’s always had that irresistible tug to her, home, and now she’s being pulled closer to it by a man who, in his own way, embodies that too. She holds tightly to that thought as she trudges up the path behind James; in the six months since they’ve graduated from Hogwarts, visits here have always meant news, nothing particularly good or bad, so far, just news, and that, in itself, is terrifying - the fact that there is a reason for them, newly minted members of the Order of the Phoenix, to know anything of importance at all.
But James is wearing that half-smirk he gets when he’s trying to conceal the fact that he finds something particularly amusing, so she just follows him through the castle grounds, a little bewildered as to how this is so easy. Security has been tight around the castle for months; even Dumbledore is growing weary of the potential for terror. The snow’s eased a little, at least, and she toes at it with her boots as she walks, remembering the hundreds of other times she’s traipsed along the edge of the Quidditch pitch, both with James and without.
James must notice her frown, though, because he just shrugs his shoulders and says, “I may have called in a few favours. We might have driven McGonagall barmy at times, Sirius and I, but we were good at keeping secrets, when we had to.”
At Lily’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “Let’s just say that poor Esmelda Enders would have been more embarassed than usual, had we let some of the things we found in her detention files slip.” He tries to play it cool, brushing a loose snowflake away from his coat and glancing away from her, but Lily just laughs, letting her hand slip into his, as much for the casual intimacy as for the warmth.
It’s funny, the James she’d known in fourth and fifth and sixth year - and maybe even occasionally in seventh year, if she’s telling the truth - would have just blurted out the details, one hand on his jutted hip and a challenging smirk in his eyes, daring her to be impressed. It’s still there, that desire to be acknowledged and rewarded, and he still preens under the attention, but he’s learnt not to expect it.
Which is why Lily stops for a second as they cross over the grounds near the lake, stretching up on tiptoes to plant a gentle kiss on the side of his cheek; not even stopping to check if there’s anyone around in this abysmal weather, because why should she be ashamed of it? James tilts his head to the side slightly, so that her lips graze his, but she pulls back before it can turn wet and pliant and a little like something she’d kind of hoped to get as a Christmas gift, saying, “try me.”
“That’s not how it works, you know,” James says, moving along, and Lily’s kind of tempted just to poke at him a little, because seriously, when -
“Which reminds me - how come you never told me you got detention in fourth year? And for blowing up the storage shed behind the greenhouses at that?"
“That was an accident,” she cries, throwing her hands up wildly. "Well, the explosion was, not the being out of bed after hours because Marcie had ran out of the dorms crying over Black, again.
“And it's certainly nothing worth bragging about; you’d be ashamed of me. I'd cleaned up most of the mess before McGonagall found us, that's why no one ever found out. We only told her because I might have buggered the charm for removing the scorch marks, just a little.”
“I could never be ashamed of you,” James replies, and he’s so awkward in his earnestness that Lily just kisses him again, her hands coming to tangle in his hair. "You did after all, agree to date me, even after all my transgressions in this very spot."
"Trangressions, yeah," Lily mumbles against his lips, snow still settling in the brim of her hat even as she feels suddenly filled with a funny kind of warmth. She kisses him again, hard, adding, "I guess we have a lot of memories here."
She gestures to the lake, partially frozen over, and sighs, something a little like wistful. Her breath is misty in the chilly winter air, and she fumbles for her wand, reapplying the heating charm to her coat again. Lily’s not one for fate and circumstance, not least because she likes to argue against James’ claims that this is just a continuation of what they’d been heading towards forever, but she still feels a connection to Hogwarts, to this patch of the grounds that she can’t quite explain.
Glancing over at James, Lily notices that he’s staring forlornly at his shoes, biting at his lower lip a little as he frowns. It’s a funny kind of sight that she doesn’t quite know how to reconcile with all the versions of James she’s known over the years, both the ones she’s made up in her head and the ones she hasn’t, and she just frowns at him in response, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and quirking an eyebrow.
“You ruined my surprise,” he says finally, glancing up at her, “I mean, I knew we were good for each other, Lily, but -”
“What?’ she asks, and she’s left kind of just gaping at him, because there’s a point, somewhere, where this conversation has become tangential to the actual point of the surprise she knew nothing about, and it’s just like this, with her and James, spinning round and round in self-created circles, only to finish in the same place. “I’m ashamed of you, Potter. All the resources of Sirius Black’s deranged mind - and Remus and Peter’s common sense - at your disposal, and you create a surprise that I’ve somehow managed to ruin without even knowing what it is.”
“I’m wounded,” James replies, laughing, “I am to surprises what Celestina Warbeck is to making my ears bleed; do you not remember the impromptu performance we put on for Flitwick’s birthday in the Great Hall during fourth year?”
“All too well,” Lily says, also laughing now as the memory comes back to her in dribs and drabs; Sirius dancing between the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables, entirely oblivious to Severus’ foul looks, and -
“Didn’t that end up with us out here too? Me, yelling at you for interrupting breakfast, and you calling me -”
“Earbashing Evans, if I recall,” he says, grin sloppy and wide as his hands come to settle at Lily’s waist, pulling her close and tucking her into his side, “not one of my best insults, but I was just a idiot, back then. Especially if my performance that day was anything to go by...”
James pauses, glances down at her with that same insatiable grin, and adds, “we’re doing it again. This was the surprise, I guess. Not us freezing our arses off and insulting each other - although that’s always a fun past time, admittedly - but this. A lot of things happened here, Lily, for better or for worse, and I just wanted to remind you that I was that idiot once, and but I’m also the guy who once stood here and told you he’d never hurt you, and I sort of… it’s stupid, but I wanted to stand here and remind you that we’re better for all of that, and now we can survive anything.”
He pulls out his wand and uses it to drape a little tinsel across his shoulders, and says, “Merry Christmas, Lily.”
The grin’s a little more self-depreciating now, James’ shoulders slumping a little, and Lily just laughs, leaning even further into him and reaching up to cup his jaw, his stubble catching a little under her fingertips and his glasses slipping down his nose she tilts his head down to kiss him. She’s flattered by the gesture and kind of bemused by it all at once, because she doesn’t need the reminder, not really; it’s in the way they’ve been the whole way here, the banter and the knocking knees, the way she feels warm and comforted by his very touch.
Lily glances at the lake behind them though, as she lets the kiss turn deep and a little messy, and she likes the idea of it as a constant, a reminder that they’ve had each other, in some way or another, for their entire lives, except -
“This is exactly what I wanted as a Christmas surprise, James, but honestly - you owe me a Butterbeer; it’s freezing.”