A Lily and James Christmas
Summary: Christmas Eve was Lily's birthday, but nobody knew it. When James finds out, he is determined to give her a birthday surprise.
Disclaimer: It's not mine, but I want you to have a merry Christmas anyway.
The sun was up, the snow was falling, and the remaining students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were running about, trying to get things in order for the following day. It was Christmas Eve, and the only one who seemed unfazed by that fact was one Lily Evans, Head Girl.
At eleven-thirty that morning, while the rest of the school hurried to the owlry to ship off last minute gifts to family and friends, Lily could be found fast asleep in her dorm room. She didn't care what day it was or that she had only hours until Christmas. She had given herself permission to sleep late because, as past experience had taught her, by the afternoon everything would calm down and she would be free to go about her business without being bothered by the other students.
A loud and persistent tapping at the window brought her back to consciousness sooner than she had planned. Drowsily, she managed to find her way to the aforementioned window to accept the card from the owl that had been waiting there rather impatiently.
It flew away without waiting for a reply, and Lily turned her attention to the card in her hand. It was a birthday card from her parents. How thoughtful of them.
After reading it several times over, Lily collapsed onto her bed again and planned out the day ahead of her. There was still much to do. She needed to find a present for her father. Then she would need to wrap all of the gifts she had purchased and send them. The best place to start would probably be to buy her father's present, and for that she would need to visit Hogsmeade.
She dressed quickly, and donned her heaviest cloak, but as she was passing through the common room on her way to the portrait hole, James Potter decided to place himself in her path.
"If you don't mind, I'm in a bit of a hurry," Lily told him, trying to keep from snapping. They had been getting along unusually well for almost a year now, and although Lily sometimes felt like reverting to her old ways, she always managed to control her temper.
But this time James refused to move.
"Have you been good this year, Lily?" he asked with a grin.
She looked up, fully expecting to find mistletoe hanging above their heads, but there was none. James just smirked at her.
"No, there's no mistletoe," he said cheerfully. "I'm just trying to be friendly. You know, start a conversation, be a good person. I'm spreading holiday cheer, and you don't seem to be very holiday cheerful. What might the problem be?"
Lily sighed. "I don't have a problem, James. I just have a lot to do today. Right now I have to go to Hogsmeade to buy a last minute present."
"Then by all means, go right ahead," he said with a slight bow toward the portrait hole. "Who am I to stop a holiday shopper on a mission?"
"Thank you."
Lily stepped past him and left the Gryffindor tower. James Potter's antics used to make her unnaturally angry, but lately she had been finding herself laughing at him more and more. He had definitely matured, but she couldn't help but think that maybe she had matured as well.
It was Lily's seventeenth birthday, and nobody was there to celebrate it with her. Her roommates were all gone for the holidays, but she always stayed because she would rather be at Hogwarts with Potter and his friends than at home with Petunia for Christmas. Her parents understood. Lily and her sister had never gotten along, and after Lily had received her Hogwarts letter Petunia had barely spoken to her except to call her names. It didn't bother her anymore though, but Christmas at Hogwarts was still a lot more inviting.
She desperately wished that she could celebrate her birthday with her parents. She had absolutely nothing against them. In fact how they managed to raise such a perfectly horrible specimen of an eldest daughter was beyond her. So she kept the birthday card in her pocket and began her hunt for the Christmas present.
Shop after shop failed to have anything interesting, and it was growing frustrating. Lily entered a quill shop as a last resort but quickly left when she felt somebody watching her and turned around only to find the middle aged shopkeeper in the store with her. More than once she got the feeling that she was being watched, but she could never see anyone there.
Finally, she purchased a nice leather wallet for her father and hurried back to the warm castle. She didn't realise that she had dropped her birthday card in the snow, but someone did. As Lily made her way across the grounds, an invisible hand retrieved the card from the pile of snow on which it sat.
- - - -
James Potter threw the door to his dormitory open, and scanned the room for something.
"You!" he shouted, rounding on Remus. "What do you know about Lily Evans?"
Remus looked slightly taken aback. "You'll have to be more specific than that, James. That's a rather broad topic."
"Do you know when her birthday is?"
Somewhere on the other side of the room someone laughed, and Sirius appeared from behind his bed.
"Merlin, Prongs," he said, still laughing. "You've been after the girl for almost three years, and you still don't know when her birthday is?"
"I've never thought to ask," James replied sheepishly.
"And you've never noticed that she seems to get older ever year?"
"Shut up, Padfoot. So does anyone know when her birthday is?"
His three roommates shook their heads.
"But maybe if you just get her a really nice Christmas present, she won't care that you don't know when her birthday is," Peter suggested.
"I need to find out," James muttered to himself before tearing out of the room with his invisibility cloak once again.
- - - -
Lily sat in a chair by the fire, reading a book and warming her feet. She was still cold from being outside.
She may have looked like she was reading, but she had been on the same page for almost ten minutes. She was thinking about her family and friends. There was nobody here to celebrate her birthday with. Her friends had all gone home for Christmas, and she had chosen not to. Lily knew it was mostly her fault that she was all alone for her birthday, but she still wished that she had someone to wish her a happy birthday. For a brief second she almost considered telling James Potter.
It wasn't that she didn't like having a birthday on Christmas Eve; it was just that she didn't like to talk about it. Most people were too busy thinking about Christmas by then that they didn't care about her birthday. It wasn't anything important. Lily liked Christmas, and she would like it the same no matter when her birthday was.
As she was thinking, she had begun to hum unconsciously. Someone under an invisibility cloak in the corner recognized the tune, and his suspicions were affirmed. Lily's birthday was on Christmas Eve. He quickly ran back up to his dormitory.
Footsteps on the stairs snapped Lily out of her trance, but she didn't see anyone upon looking around. She shook her head and closed her book. These invisible people would be the death of her yet.
Assuming that most people would have finished their business in the owlry, she retrieved her parcels from upstairs and left the Gryffindor tower to send them. It took her longer than usual to get there as she clumsily dropped boxes along the way and tripped over statues that she managed to run into. Finally, she made it to her destination and sent her gifts with several different school owls.
Then she stood by the window and looked out at the Hogwarts grounds. Everything was white for as far as she could see. Snow covered the ground, the trees, the roof of Hagrid's hut, everything. It made Lily smile. She loved the snow. She closed her eyes and remembered her ninth birthday when she woke up to three feet of snow in her yard. She played so hard that day that she was sick for Christmas, but it was all worth it. Snow was always worth it.
When she opened her eyes again, she could see three people having a snowball fight. Upon closer inspection she recognized them as the Marauders minus one. James was missing.
Sirius looked up and saw her watching.
"Hey, Evans!" he shouted. "Come play!"
"No, I can't," she called back, shaking her head.
"Oh, come on! Don't be a scrooge. It's Christmas Eve, and we have an odd number of people."
Lily sighed and looked around.
"Fine!" she shouted. "But I can't play long."
She ran back to the Gryffindor tower for her cloak. As she was leaving again, James appeared. He looked at her through narrowed eyes, and she backed away slightly.
"I was just going to join your friends in the snow," she told him. "You should come join us."
He continued to stare her down. "I'm on to you, Evans."
Confused, Lily managed to back into the portrait hole.
"Yes, well, it's been nice talking to you. Goodbye, James."
She ran all the way from the tower to the entrance hall. The Great Hall was decorated for Christmas, as it was every year even though no more than ten students usually stayed for the holiday. Lily stopped to admire the decorations, but then left the castle to find the Marauders.
They were having an all out snow war when she found them, and Sirius quickly pulled her onto his team.
"We're losing," he informed her as they ducked behind the wall of snow he had built. "We need to take Remus out. Peter can't survive alone."
"Hey, I ran into James in the common room before I came down here," Lily told him. "He was acting unnaturally odd. He said something about being on to me. Do you know what he meant?"
"Who knows," he replied distractedly. "All I know is that he's not down here helping me win, and you're not doing a very good job either."
"Sorry," she muttered and then proceeded to join the fight.
The snowball fight was nothing to laugh about. The boys were absolutely vicious, and they did not cut Lily any slack because she was a girl. She was slightly afraid that she would be bruised for Christmas.
After about a half hour, Peter started shouting about an invader, and all attention was immediately turned to attacking the newcomer.
"Hey!" James shouted, shielding his face. "What's the matter with you people? It's only me!"
"Quick, Prongs!" Sirius cried, jumping up and grabbing his friend by the sleeve. "Quick! The bunker!"
The two boys came crashing down beside Lily behind the protective wall of snow.
"Oh, Evans is on our team," Sirius said nonchalantly when James looked confused. "We can't lose with three people on our team."
- - - -
"I can't believe we lost," Sirius complained less than an hour later when the Marauders and Lily collapsed in front of the fire, soaking wet.
"We wouldn't have if someone hadn't cheated," James grumbled, shooting Remus a death glare. "You can't knock down somebody's fort to win a snowball fight! It's against the rules of war."
"But we won," Peter pointed out.
"By cheating!"
"You four are really serious about your snowball fights, aren't you?" Lily asked, laughing slightly.
"Of course we are!" Sirius said firmly. "If there's one thing the world lacks today, it's true snowball fighters. We have to preserve snowball fighting for future generations."
Lily laughed again. "That's a little pathetic, don't you think?"
"No, why would it be? Do you know what I think is your problem, Lily Evans? I think you-" Sirius paused and looked past Lily. "I think I forgot some Christmassy something that I had to do somewhere…with Remus and Peter. Come along you two. We need to go do something somewhere. Goodnight, Lily!"
"Goodnight…?" she replied in confusion as three of the four boys left the common room.
The Marauders never stopped confusing her it seemed. First James, then Sirius. This train of thought reminded Lily of her earlier meeting with James, and she turned her attention to her remaining company.
"James, about earlier," she began.
He smiled at her. "I'm on to you. I told you already."
"But what do you mean?"
"Happy birthday, Lily."
She was silent. She couldn't figure out how he knew it was her birthday, but the way he said it made her feel special. Somehow it made her whole day worthwhile.
She blinked. "How did you know?"
"Look up."
Lily looked up to see a sprig of mistletoe hanging above her. She shook her head and looked at James disbelievingly.
"You did this on purpose," she said accusingly.
"Maybe," he replied. "But what are you going to do about it?"
"What can I do about it?"
"Absolutely nothing. You're at my disposal now." He cocked his head slightly. "How old are you today?"
"Seventeen."
James leaned in and kissed her lightly.
"One."
Then he kissed her again.
"Two."
He repeated this seventeen times, counting in between each one.
"And one to grow on," he said after the seventeenth kiss.
This time James kissed her longer, pulling her closer and enjoying every moment. Lily wrapped her arms around his neck. This was definitely the best birthday present ever.
Unable to go without air any longer, Lily pulled away and rested her forehead against his.
"Happy Christmas, James."
"Happy birthday, Lily."
- - - -
A/N: This little one-shot is my Christmas gift to you. I hope you enjoyed it, but please understand that I wrote it at about two o'clock this morning and without the help of a beta reader, so it might be a little rough. I wanted to post something for Christmas, so here it is. Thanks for reading it.
Merry Christmas!
Cat