Seven by shoelacy

Seventh

Nothing has changed in the last seven years. From the very first moment she met James Potter, the moment when he dumped a bucket full of green slime on her head in first year because it “matched her eyes,” he has had the same effect on her. Every time she sees him, her face flushes and her heart begins to race. For the first five and a half years of her time at Hogwarts she attributed this reaction to her immense dislike of him. It was not hard to imagine that such a strong emotion could elicit such a response.

It has been quite some time, however, since Lily Evans has felt such a dislike for James Potter.  So why, she wonders as she makes her way to her spot in the library, do her insides stop working properly whenever he’s around? She and James are well on their way to becoming very close friends, so why does she still react to him the same way she did when she held him in such strong disregard?

Lily sits down at her usual table and makes a half-hearted attempt to study. Her eyes flick across the page, but her mind is elsewhere. After some time (Minutes? Hours? How long has she been here?), she feels a change in the atmosphere and looks up in time to see James Potter walking towards her. His hair and clothes are in that neat disarray that only he can pull off, he has a half-smile that widens when he sees her, and his eyes brighten and single her out among everyone else in the room. The reaction is instantaneous: she feels a smile find its way on to her face without quite knowing how it got there, her heart starts beating a mile a minute, and her stomach starts doing acrobats. Her smile grows even wider and her breath leaves her body as James takes a seat across from her, and something Alice said to her last week begins to tickle her memory.

“There’s a fine line between love and hate, Lily.”

Lily tries and fails to recall when, exactly, she crossed to the other side, but then James smiles at her again and she decides it doesn’t matter.

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