Inability to Act by ghostofbambi

Hi all, this is not my first story, but it is the first that I have posted here at UR, I hope you all enjoy it!

Disclaimer: All of these characters, save Stephen Collins (and one or two other insignificant names that I invented) are most definitely J.K. Rowling’s. Bow down to her, do it now; go on.

Inability to Act - Chapter one

James

Lily Evans talks the biggest amount of shit sometimes, he thinks.

Actually, he doesn’t think. He knows. He can’t understand why he is unable to get anybody else to agree with him.

“Well, is there anything else you wanted to say?”

She doesn’t reply, her arms are folded, her head is cocked to the side and she’s looking away from him, tapping her foot impatiently on the cold, stone floor. She’s in a sulk, well bully for her. She thinks she owns the place, Evans does, and in his not-so-humble opinion, she needs be taken down a peg or two. He is only too happy to shoulder that task all by himself, and shoulders it with relish.

“Evans? Hello?”

He claps his hands to get her attention and feels mildly irritated when again, she fails to respond. He has only a couple of hours to draw up next weeks sodding schedule and do all of his homework (and in N.E.W.T year, homework is not a one hour job) before he has to leave with the others, and he can’t officially end the meeting without her say so. He knows she’s doing it to needle him, why only ten minutes ago she was moaning that she was going to be late for an engagement of her own.

“You know, there are people besides you who have things to be getting on with.”

She flicks her lengthy red hair and gives a little ‘hem’ to clear her throat, but otherwise, she remains silent. He usually prefers to drag this kind of thing out until it escalates, but he really is in a rush. So he’ll cut to the chase, use the same ammunition that works on her every other time.

“I know you want me, Evans, but really, keeping me here when you-”

“Oh, get over yourself!” she snaps, her face going rosy. “Meeting over, you don’t need my nod to bugger off if you want to, seeing as you have no problem with other people doing it!”

“You’re not denying it, I noticed.”

“Denying what?”

“You’re not denying that you fancy me.”

“Yeah, I fancy you in a bonfire, perhaps. Get out of my way, I’m late.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be if you hadn’t stood there for five minutes humming and hawing to yourself.”

“”What am I supposed to do, Potter? We’re supposed to take five minutes after we dismiss the other Prefects to arrange our duties, and you had nothing to say!”

“You didn’t ask me!”

“I shouldn’t have to ask!”

“Oh, right. I’m supposed to be a Legilimens now, am I?”

“Well your own, your own, gah! Your own big headed boasting would have me believe so!”

“I thought you knew me better than that, Lily?”

“It’s Evans to you, now get out of my way.” Obviously, the discussion is over. She pushes past him, making sure that her bag hits his stomach on the way out. She likes to hit him. Usually it hurts, because she is a grand master at bestowing absolute stingers upon people when she slaps them, but he always pretends that it doesn’t. He should bring it to her attention, he thinks that a woman has no more right to hit a man than a man has to hit a woman, but he doesn’t. Truth be told, he rather likes it.

He follows her out of the tiny classroom, making sure to lock the door behind him. She watches him closely, as if locking a door is a Herculean task that he might have trouble with. She doesn’t usually hang around like this after a meeting, especially when she’s made plans, but she’s probably waiting for an apology. She is most certainly not going to get one, not from him. As far as he is concerned, he was perfectly within his rights and Dumbledore will back him up on that one. If she knew the whole story, she wouldn’t mind at all, but it’s not his story to tell. And that isn’t even the point; the point is that she’s an irritant.

“Can I help you?” he asks, facing her. Her response is to turn on her heel and flounce away.

Oh yes, she’s a gigantic pain in the neck, that Lily Evans.

“Enjoy yourself!” he shouts, watching her as she stomps down the corridor with her nose in the air and her hair swinging behind her, like a heavy, flame-coloured curtain.

“Psychopath.”

He keeps his eyes upon her retreating backside until she has disappeared from view and sets off on his way, jogging a little to make time. James generally likes to stroll around the school at his own pace. He has never cared for schedules and has always been of the opinion that time can fit itself in around his plans, and not the other way around. He gets an awful rollicking from his mother about it; she is always badgering him to care a little bit more. He’ll never get anywhere in life if he can’t take anything seriously. His mother is unaware that there are some things that James takes very seriously indeed. Lily Evans, for one thing.

Come to think of it, Lily Evans gives him a hard time about it too. She thinks that a Head Boy should be more conscientious.

Ironically enough, even though Lily is never seen without her watch, plans out the subsequent day almost obsessively every evening and rushes everywhere, she is constantly late and he never is. Sometimes he tries to tell her that she wouldn’t be so late if she slowed down a little, but she tells him that he’s being illogical and elbows him in the ribs, after which, of course, she dashes off, only to go flying into an innocent student and drop her numerous books all over the floor. Then she wonders why she has arrived in Transfiguration three minutes after everyone else, James included. So she always has to sit at the front of the class, which she hates, but James enjoys very much, because it gives him a fine view of her spectacular bottom.

He reaches the portrait hole in record time and winks at the Fat Lady before giving her the password. She swings forward to let him pass, not before shooting him a haughty glare. The Fat Lady does not like James, no doubt because of all the times he has interrupted her in the middle of the night while she is trying to sleep, or not sleep, as the case may be. The Fat Lady likes to bear grudges, and she has never forgotten the night after Christmas three years ago, when Sirius and James decided to start singing loudly at her portrait when she was in the throes of a hangover. Personally, James thinks if his carolling bothers her, she should stop drinking so much at Christmas. She is a source of endless amusement to him.

Five minutes later sees him settled on his dorm bed, bag beside him and two day’s worth of homework spread out before him like an oddly distorted fan. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an old, silver watch, Remus’s watch. He never carries one, save for days like these, when timing is of the essence. Luckily, Remus never needs his watch on these occasions, so he bequeaths it to James. James is probably the only person who can be trusted not to lose it; it’s an antique, a very expensive watch. Peter would most likely drop it and Sirius would be wont to leave it lying around and forget to bring it with him. He wouldn’t really care either. Sirius has been known to turn up for certain classes (although never Transfiguration, even Sirius knows better than to cross Minerva McGonagall) extremely late and yawn in the face of angry teachers.

He studies his parchment on which he always summarises the day’s homework. He has Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, Arithmancy and Herbology to do within the space of an hour and forty-five minutes. It’s pushing it a bit, but he didn’t get the Head Boy badge because he had a brain full of sawdust. He’ll just have to knuckle down and concentrate. After some deliberation, he decides that he should worry about Potions first, it’s definitely his weakest area and he has a particularly poignant essay to complete on the subject of Veritaserum, not the easiest of subjects (never mind how easy she says it is), but at least it’s a fascinating one. He dips his eagle feather quill into his best bottle of scarlet ink (for Gryffindor) and holds it against the parchment. Now, what would be a good introduction? The history of the potion, how it came to be? Perhaps he should write a short note on the importance of the potion in today’s society, especially with the steady increase of Dark magic every day? Or maybe he should just go the route he used to be so fond of taking and copy from the textbook? But he hates doing that now, he takes great pride in his work. It would save him a lot of time, though.

Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate...

It’s because she’s crazy, he is sure of it. Surely any sane person would realize, after six years, that the reason they were always late is because they spent half the day falling over and knocking people down, but then, Lily hardly notices where she is half the time. Unless she’s in class, in the library, or engaged in a conversation with somebody, which is when she pays rapt attention, her mind has flown off somewhere that James is sure isn’t anywhere near the castle.

“Damn you, Evans!” he hisses, kicking at one of his bedposts in frustration. This always happens. Lily Evans has a way of popping into his head and saying, ‘Here I am, dipshit!’ whenever he really needs for her not to be there. And not just that, she stays there too, smiling and shouting and flipping her hair and rolling her eyes at him until he’s so annoyed that he wants to throw her away, far away. Sometimes he can manage to last a while without this happening, but he can only accomplish this when he has nothing else on his plate, when he's not in a real hurry, when he doesn’t have anything particularly crucial to do. It’s entirely her fault; this is just one of the many things that she does to anger him. He’ll be thinking about her all night.

He could just pick up his book and try and try until he’s forced her out of his thoughts, but he doesn’t. He tells himself it’s because he can’t, when in actuality it’s because he doesn’t want to. He is perfectly aware of this, but it does nothing to ease his irritability. Lily often sends him into a temper.

She’s mad, he tells himself again, throwing his Potions book on the floor and leaning back against his pillows, completely mad. She’s been cracked ever since first year. If she isn’t doing something completely ridiculous, she’s looking for something preposterous to do. When she’s in a bad mood, everybody knows it; she trudges and glares her way around the castle, leaving no survivors in her wake. If she’s happy, she walks with a spring in her step and beams at everybody as if she loves the entire world. She is bossy and hypocritical and she starts arguments with him at the most inconvenient of times, especially when she knows it’s an inconvenient time. He honestly believes that if she could listen to herself talk, she’d be properly embarrassed sometimes. Now and again, she can be a downright cow. All in all, the girl is a complete nuisance.

Oh, but he is crazy about her.

He can’t figure out why he is so in love with somebody so irritating, but he is. Sometimes he wishes that he could go back to his fifth year, when his crush on her was just that, a crush. His interest in her was only piqued because of her appearance in the first place. Somewhere between Christmas of third and Halloween of forth year, the realization that Lily Evans was completely gorgeous dawned upon him in fine fashion. He is even more confused about when exactly he made the transition from lust to love. He supposes that it was a gradual thing. He always knew that she was intelligent, but he never knew how much so until he started working with her this year, and they started having civilized conversations from time to time. He has also always known that she was funny, the cheeky remarks she makes in Potions or the dry comments she comes up with at Prefects meetings are testament to that. Even though they argue constantly, he feels like he’s gotten to know a side of her that many people don’t see.

He throws himself into his Potions essay for a meagre ten minutes before he concedes defeat. Sighing, he banishes his books to the bedside table with a sweep of his wand and summons the map with another. He unrolls it to examine their route to the grounds, like he does every night. Everyone seems to be in their respective offices. He forces himself not to look at the small circle that represents her dormitory, or to actively search for her name like he so often does, but as always, this does little to quell his desire for her.

She angers him because he longs to hold her in his arms, to kiss her nose or even touch her for more than a fleeting second. She angers him because she is so utterly beautiful that it pains him to look at her, and pains him even more not to. She angers him because the depth and intensity of his love for her is surely some sign of weakness, something that people like Sirius and indeed, Lily herself would laugh at. She angers him because she is not his to love, and because if she was his, he would love her more than Collins ever could, would make her happier than Collins ever could. She angers him because she should be his and she is too stubborn to see it. She angers him because it is this unwavering stubbornness that makes him admire her so much. Her hair, her eyes, her laugh, her wit, her intelligence, her eccentricities, her temper, her confidence, her pride, even the way she’s not quite there and that bloody stutter she sometimes has, that stutter that she really hates, they all anger him because they all conspire to form a woman that he couldn’t find anywhere else if he searched for a million years, and he can not and will not settle for anyone other than such a woman.

He hates Stephen Collins for taking her. Collins, he figures, is not the right match for Lily. He is too quiet, too simple and too calm for Lily. She is only with him because she feels like she has to be, she doesn’t love him, not at all. He has seen them together, and she is not Lily when she is with him. She is a shadow of Lily, a more composed and quiet Lily. She doesn’t spark or shout or laugh like a Lily should, like he has seen her do for the past six years. Unless she can only be herself around Collins and she is doing a fantastic job at fooling the rest of the world, the only logical conclusion he can make is that she is not happy. It is a conclusion that he clings to with both hands.

He suddenly wants to seek her out and shake her, shake her until she sees sense, until she sees that she should be with him, that she can love him, that they can love each other and that they can be happy together. James has convinced himself that she just needs to let go.

Don’t be stupid, Potter, he tells himself, shaking his head. She does love him. She adores him. Lily and Stephen are completely right for each other. That’s what she always tells James. Thinking thoughts like these will only serve to drive a man insane. Heart sinking, his eyes stray towards the map again.

And he finds her.

He shouldn’t get so excited, because all he’s found is a small, barely noticeable dot with her name above it, moving along the Entrance hall in the direction of the staircase, but even the sight of her name on paper is enough to make his heart thump in his chest. Somewhere, in the very back of his mind, a voice reminds him that she had mentioned going on a date with Collins, but a quick scan of the map shows Collins in his own bed in his own dormitory. So she’s not with him. He feels triumphant, like he’s just won some kind of epic battle. Maybe, maybe, because of him, James Potter, she was in such a bad mood earlier that she dumped Collins in the meanest and coldest way possible and clattered her way out of the Astronomy with a view to finding James and shouting at him some more. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?!

It is a silly thought, but a sustaining one. He’ll throw a party on the day she dumps Collins, and then he won’t invite her, just to piss her off. Good plan. Of course, he reminds himself, she will stay with Collins forever. James thinks that staying with Collins forever will ruin her, but that could be and probably is only his overactive imagination, it’s like him to be so desperate for her that he’ll imagine things like this, like sometimes when he thinks he has caught her looking at him, or sometimes when he thinks that she might just be flirting with him. Wishful thinking.

Does he have enough time, he wonders? He really shouldn’t, she’ll suspect something, most likely, and he is supposed to be leaving with the others in about fifteen minutes. No, it is probably best that he doesn’t. He won’t.

A moment later and he’s tearing out of the common room at lightning speed. He needs to see her.

Sprinting along the dimly lit corridors, he berates himself for leaving to find her, and yet he doesn’t turn back. Like a strange compulsion, the relief he will feel when he sees her will, even if only for a second, outweigh all the anguish and pain he will feel later, when he is longing to find her again and is urging himself not to. Mentally beating himself around the head with heavy objects, he rounds a corner and even though he already knew she was there and her name remains on the map, it’s still a surprise to see her.

He already regrets his decision

“What are you doing out here, Potter?” she asks, her voice is cold and sharp and she doesn’t look in the least bit happy. She never looks happy to see him.

I’m here for you, Lily, he wants to say. He is here for her; sometimes it seems as if he exists for her. He wants to tell her that she is everything, absolutely everything. The only way he could possibly describe his feelings for her is to tell her that she is everything. She is the castle, the magic, his favourite foods, his friends, his books, his broomstick, everything. Lily is everything that makes him happy. She, inarguably, inescapably and unendingly, is.

She won’t laugh at him and she won’t even be scornful, because although Lily Evans may be a bitch sometimes, she is far from being heartless, but she will turn him down. And even though she turns him down at least once a week whenever he throws a casual invite at her; this is not the same. If he told her, if he confessed his love to her, his overwhelming love for her, then he would be handing her his heart, his hopes and his dreams and she will undoubtedly hand them back.

It is easier to pretend that she does love him and that he was just too foolish to risk it than to actually risk it and never have that thought to exist on. He supposes that he’s being cowardly, but he has to make some sacrifices.

He should answer her question, but everything he wants to say is everything he can’t.

So he says nothing.