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For You to Say Yes


It was Lily’s idea to sleep on the beach. They stole blankets and pillows from the cottage, and they laid them out on the sand, started a small fire and roasted sausages on sticks for dinner with hardboiled eggs and cups of lukewarm coffee that they used their wands to heat up. They angled the blankets so they lay side by side, staring up at the stars far overhead, dots of white light in the sky, just talking about Hogwarts and their friends there and the brilliant parties Sirius was going to throw come autumn…

Sirius transformed into Snuffles after a bit, laying between James and Lily so that each of them were using him as a pillow and Sirius’s tail wagged gently for a few moments, curling ‘round James’s knee, while his nose tucked beneath Lily’s hair. They could feel the moment when Sirius fell asleep, the long panting of the dog turning into steady breathing that moved rhythmically beneath their heads.

It had been quiet for quite sometime when...

“Potter?” Lily asked.

“Evans?”

“Just checking if you’re awake,” she answered.

“I am,” he replied. Then, jokingly, “Are you?”

“No.”

He smiled. James closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of being where he was with present company.

“What are you afraid of?” Lily’s voice was quiet.

James opened his eyes, staring at the silhouette of the dog’s fur in his vision. He had taken off his glasses and put then in his trainer for safe keeping, so the world was blurry past the end of his nose and he could only just make out the shape of Lily’s head over the crest of the dog between them.

He took such a long time answering that Lily thought he might have fallen asleep.

“Losing the people I love,” James answered finally. “You?”

“Me, too,” Lily said.

James closed his eyes again. “Evans.”

“What?”

“Will you go out with me?”

Lily sighed.

She didn’t need to answer - the sigh had answered. James said, “Sorry. Nevermind.”

She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure she’d meant to sigh.

He said, “I’m sorry I keep asking.”

“It’s okay.”

He rolled over so that his back was to the dog, and to Lily, and he stared across the moonlit beach, over the silver sand and the shadows of the dunes.

“James?”

“Evans?”

“Don’t give up.”

His heart rate increased. “No?” he asked.

“No,” she said quietly.

He paused. A memory from long ago - a year ago - slipped through his mind… Walking down the street in Godric’s Hollow with Albus Dumbledore...

”Do you reckon everyone has… a soul mate?” James had asked, looking up at the headmaster.

Dumbledore had continued on staring ahead. “A soul mate?” he asked.

“Someone they… belong to... someone they fit with. Like a puzzle piece. Like two halves of the same person.”

Dumbledore had considered this. “I suppose I do.”

“Do you reckon somebody’s soul mate could… not like them?” James’s voice had trembled with worry.

“I do,” Dumbledore answered, “The same way we do not like ourselves at times.”

James had fumbled for the right words to say next, and they’d come out, “If… if there was such a person, that had such a situation, where their… soul mate… didn’t particularly like them… what would you, er, suggest that they do? You know. To fix it?”

“I should tell that person to ask their supposed soul mate what it was that needed changing and I would recommend that they do whatever it is to fix it, if it isn’t too unreasonable… and see what happens.”


“Evans?”

“Potter?”

“If I was to keep asking you… and you were to answer yes one day… I mean… what would have changed between tonight, right now, and then? What needs to change for you to say yes to me?”

Lily still had her cheek pressed against the dog between them. She stared up at the stars. What did need to change to make her say yes? She wondered. He was funny, he was handsome. He wasn’t awful academically. He had a wonderful smile that made her belly flip-flop to see it. He was brave, gentle. Loyal. He did things like howl at the moon…

But he was loud and brash and a bragger with that ego… He was always up to no good, always in trouble… Whenever there was some kind of prank happening about the castle, it was always James Potter behind it.

“I don’t know, just… just growing up, I s’pose,” she replied.

James said, “I turn seventeen in March. I come of age.”

“Yes, we all do this year.”

James chewed his lower lip. “So you’ll say yes when I turn seventeen?” he sounded confused.

“No. It’s less about being an adult and more about acting like one,” Lily said patiently. “And I don’t mean acting like playing at being an adult, I mean that you have adult thought processes and reactions to things.”

“Example?” he requested.

“It’s… you know, maturity. It’s not hanging Severus Snape in the schoolyard by his ankles because he displeases you in some way by existing, for starters.”

James said, “He hurt you.”

“He hurt me, yes, but I was not the one threatening to magic his pants off in front of the whole school,” Lily said.

James said, “He hurt me when he hurt you.”

“How so?”

“When I heard what happened... I felt like my chest was being crushed by an erumpent. Felt like I’d been sat on by it. I’ve never been so angry and hurt in my entire life. I understood the phrase blinding anger for the first time. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. I just wanted to… to go and get a time turner and go back and stop it.”

“A what?”

James fell silent for a long moment.

Lily realized he wasn’t going to clarify the statement, and she said, “You can’t be angry like that and make rational decisions, James. That’s exactly what I’m saying. You were angry and so you punished him. An adult would have come to me and asked me if I was alright. An adult would have worked with me to make it right. Revenge is hardly a grown up thing to do. It’s reckless. It hurts the wrong people.”

“You heard what he called you. And after you left, after you’d run off, he said -- he said things, Lily. He said things I can’t forgive him for. About you and what he should have done.” James’s voice trembled with the words.

Lily felt sick. She closed her eyes.

“I have this… this instinct Evans… to keep you safe,” James said, “I can’t explain it. I don’t feel it about all the girls or about much of anyone. I feel it about Sirius and Remus. And - and Peter.” Peter was an afterthought. Tacked on. He paused, feeling a bit guilty for that, but then he rolled over and he braced himself on his elbow and stared at Lily over Snuffles’s back. She was curled up into the fluffy black beast, her hand absently scratching him behind the ear, where there was a great deal of soft, velvety fur. James watched a moment, then said, “I’d die to keep you lot safe. Reckless, maybe. But I’d jump in front of a wand for any one of you.” James touched the dog gently. Then he looked at Lily. “I feel that about you. And I have since first year. I remember standing there behind that tree outside the clearing and you were behind the log there and Moldy was looking for us and - and he was about to find you…”

Lily could remember the feeling of cold bracken against her stomach, pressed to the ground, shivering behind that old log. She remembered the terrified look on James’s face when he’d come ‘round the trunk of the tree the log lay next to and he saw her there, trembling… She could still hear the breathing, taunting voice of the Dark Lord, the shuffling of his robes moving over the leaves and grass… looking for them… knowing if he took even a step closer, he’d be able to see her…

“I couldn’t let him hurt you, even if it meant getting hurt myself,” James said now.

Lily closed her eyes.

Twelve year old James - only barely twelve, too - had pushed himself out of the safety of the forest and into the direct view of Voldemort in order to distract him from seeing her… yet he’d done it anyway.

James lay back down on the other side of Snuffles, who was like a great wall between them. If he hadn’t been there, Lily would have rolled over and kissed James just then as she realized that he’d stepped in front of her so many times that by fourth year, when they’d gone to face Voldemort, it had been a joke they had made.

”Are you going to jump in front of the Dark Lord for her too, mate?” Sirius had teased James.

James murmured, “And… and I know at least you and Sirius would do that same for me. I know. I’ve seen you both do it.”

Lily blinked, “When did I do it?”

“At Lestrange Manor,” he said. “You came through the fireplace and Orion Black shot a spell - neither of us knew what spell it was, I don’t think, but I jumped before you to block you and you spun us about to block me.”

She shivered. She had forgotten that. She remembered it now, though, clearly. The thought that had gone through her mind had been James Potter can’t die. She had been instinctively saving him just the same as he had been doing for her all along. And the realization made a funny feeling go through her, one that she quickly packed away to analyze another day. She cleared her throat and turned.

Snuffles eyes were open.

He was staring at her through the dark.

She stared back.

“If I could die for you, Evans, I’m sure I can grow up for you,” James murmured. “But I need you to make me a promise.”

“What’s that, Potter?” Lily asked, still staring directly into Snuffles’s grey eyes.

“You’ll say yes, at least once, when I do.”

She was silent.

“Evans?”

“I will, James.”

.The dog’s tail wagged quietly… just a couple quietly happy sweeps.