Strange and Beautiful

Author's Note: Fluff, fluff, and more fluff as most everything I write concerning Lily and James tends to be, but you know you love me for it!

Dedication:

For Evie on her 18^th Birthday because she is the BEST and should therefore have a birthday that rivals her awesome-ness, and a special sub dedication to my Duckie without who's late night presence on iChat this never would have gotten finished.

Strange and Beautiful:

…and I've been

Secretly falling apart unseen

To me, you're strange and you're beautiful

You'd be so perfect with me but you just

Can't see

You turn every head, but you don't

See me

I'll put a spell on you

You fall asleep and I'll put a spell on you

And when I wake you

I'll be the first thing you see

And you'll realize that you love me…

“Strange and Beautiful”

--Aqualung

***

He remembers it clearly. The first time he said it, the idea had been spontaneously composed. James had recently found it slightly amusing to watch people become flustered…correction, James had recently found that he liked it when she became flustered because of something he did. He loved to watch her eyebrows shoot up, her expressive green eyes widen in an `I can't believe he just said that' sort of way. But most of all, he loved the way the blush would spread across her creamy complexion, staining her cheeks a lovely colour he most closely associated with that of the raspberry stain he once got on his mother's favourite white tablecloth during a summer picnic.

Completely and utterly spontaneously composed…—they were arguing about some frivolous thing of no importance, the quick and clever banter between them never faltering as they matched each other word for word.

It happened so quickly—if you compared their banter to a dance, this would have been the part where Lily would have thrown in an unknown step-- one that would have most certainly caused James to trip over his feet.

“I don't understand you—not one bit, Potter.” She had said, “Just once, I'd love to see what the bloody hell goes on inside that thick head of yours that makes you think it's okay to go about doing the things that you do—to treat people the way you do. Do you not have a decent bone in your body?”

He was caught off guard, at a loss for what to say, but god damn if he'd let her have the last word, so James had simply said the first thing that came to his mind.

“Go out with me Evans.”

Five words that he would eventually use so often, they would lose their meaning in her mind.

“And why would I ever do a thing like that, Potter?” she said quietly, only after, James was pleased to note, she had recovered from the shock of his previous statement.

“Well, you seem eager enough to find out exactly what makes me tic, Evans—if you go out with me, you just might satisfy your curiosity…on more than one level, if you play your cards right…” he said casually.

He hadn't really know why he'd said it—it had just come out, so he'd laughed It and her curt response of “No.” off the way he did every other comment that managed to completely miss the filter that should have been between his brain and his mouth.

It was all in good fun. He had said this so many times that Sirius, Remus and Peter took it as fact. Had said it so many times that he almost believed it himself…almost. But somewhere along his persistent negations, everything had changed. Up until that day, Lily Evans had simply been someone he had loved to playfully annoy, purely as James saw it, because she was just so fun to watch get riled up, and sometimes, James wonders if it would have stayed that way had he not happened to look up and in her direction that morning during breakfast. Looked up just in time to see her toss her head back and smile widely, the auburn locks of her hair rippling across her back as the musical laughter seeping from her open lips rang in his ears. Her eyes shone brightly, even from a distance and James felt his heart flutter frantically in his chest. It wasn't right, that she had managed to have him frozen on the spot better than any Stunner Spell could have done and all she had to do was…well….be herself.

Some things stay the same after James' revelation: he still enjoys watching Lily become flustered though she's stopped going tongue-tied at his obvious persistence. After some time, he gets used to the most of the new movements his heart makes at her expense; the way it flutters when she laughs or swoops when she runs a hand through her extraordinary red hair… Try as he might however, James can never quite get used to the sinking, heavy feeling his heart seems to take on whenever Lily Evans rejects him, the way his heart clenches when he realises that not once when she smiles as she walks down the halls does she care to give him a second glance.

He tried explaining it to Sirius once, just after the OWL exams had taken place and Lily had rather publicly told him exactly what she thought of him after he'd tormented Snape. It soon became apparent however that while Sirius was good with women, he was not as well versed in matters of the heart.

“Well, if you're that desperate,” Sirius said, after giving James his opinion on the matter, “there are other options…”

James pretends to act offended but secretly stays up contemplating Sirius' words late into the light as he traces the shadowy patterns on the curtains of his four-poster bed.

Magic. So easily the remedy to all problems…

I could do it, he thinks, Evans would never know…

She'd just wake up one day and realise her love for him and that sinking feeling he hated so would go away forever…

Disgusted with himself, James casts the idea aside, deciding then and there that the only spell he ever wants Lily Evans under is one in which she is completely enchanted by his own personal charm.

When she finally agrees to go out with him, James can hardly believe it.

If watching Lily from afar was amazing albeit, in a slightly masochistic way, having her within his reach was a thousand times better.

The date passes in a blur and it's just as James is thinking to himself that the day has (thankfully) gone rather well that another thought passes before him. A thought that try as he might, he can't stop from skittering across his mind: Could it be possible that he had in fact performed some kind of accidental magic on Lily? That he wanted her so badly, his subconscious had momentarily taken over and made it so he could have exactly what he'd wanted all along?

The thought makes him feel queasy and he struggles to keep his face light as they walk back to the tower together.

That had to be it, James thinks, She hates me—she's always, always hated me…she can't be spending time with me under her own free will—

His brain is working at a thousand miles a minute and the way trains of thought zip this way and that make him dizzy… That is, until the world suddenly stops.

James can't think—he can barely breathe because Lily Evans has leaned in and ever so softly pressed her lips against his and the feeling of dizziness slowly drains as his body takes on a state of being that is so utterly indescribable, he knows even comparing it to the sensation of flying would be an understatement.

And James knows then and there that no wand-induced spell could possibly force the sparks that form in the pit of both their stomachs, as they stand there, entwined in one another.

Love is an emotion that cannot be forced, that cannot for all attempts be mimicked and in that moment, James realises two things: One, that he is without a doubt, unequivocally in love with Lily Evans; and two, that there is a good chance that she just might love him back…even, James adds after a second thought, if she doesn't quite know it just yet herself.

-->