Monday, October 17th, 9:30 AM

"Look at your finger," she demands, drifting her eyes down to her own.

"Shit."

"Shit indeed," she mutters, tearing her eyes away from her ring finger to meet James' apprehensive hazel ones.

"Time's up!" Flitwick announces to his class, pointing at the sand timer. James and Lily jump in surprise, gaping at their teacher like deer caught in the headlights. Each of them don identical looks of angst, bewilderment, shock, and most prominent, ambivalence while their hearts march to the same furious drum beating. "Back to your seats please."

In a dazed manner, Lily haphazardly collects her notebook from James' desk and stumbles across the room while staring at the ground and bumping into desks and people alike without realization. Her green eyes are wide in confusion as she shakes her head in befuddlement. This couldn't be right, could it? James Potter? Her soulmate? Ridiculous, absurd, farcical, even! She shakes her head once more, hoping that by doing so, she propels the whole topic of soulmates and love into the nearby garbage can. She doesn't even believe in true love, this whole matter was insignificant and beneath her. Yes, she doesn't have to worry about James Potter, the only thing truly important to her is school, her grades, and in the future, college.

Lily brushes hair out of her face with the back of her hand and directs her gaze towards her teacher, ignoring the eyes of James Potter boring into her forehead.

"Would anybody like to present their work?" Flitwick sweeps his eyes across the class expectantly, searching for volunteers in his silent class.

James shoots his hand into the air urgently, the direction of his eyes switching from the redhead determined to ignore him to the white haired teacher.

"Mr. Potter!" Flitwick points at the student, beaming while he does so.

"May I use the restroom, sir?" he requests breathlessly, his blush more conspicuous than ever.

"Oh, yes, of course," the teacher nods his head, an aura of disappointment lingering around him as he hands his pupil a hall pass.

James snatches the slip of paper from the fingers of his teacher and bolts out of the classroom, not bothering to feign nonchalance as he yanks open the door and sprints through the halls. He intermittently glances behind him and ruffles his hair before ducking into the nearest bathroom, rolling up the sleeves of his jumper, wrenching the faucet handle, and splashing cold water on his face, hoping to decrease the heat continuously rising in his cheeks.

His eyes timidly make their way to the mirror in front of him and he flinches at the sight of his reflection, noting the persistent crimson red shade of his face. Water droplets cling to his lengthy eyelashes and dark eyebrows, glimmering like diamonds, and shining like tears. His hair is rumpled and uneven, as if somebody took a rubber balloon and rubbed it on the top of his head. As if that isn't bad enough, he can't seem to rid the dazed expression obstinately dwelling in his gold flecked hazel eyes.

He redirects view from the mirror to his violently trembling left hand, unsure of what he desires to see. His eyes immediately jump to his ring finger, where Lily's initials are scrawled in black ink and lowercase letters right above his knuckle in her bubbly, scripty, slanted, handwriting.

James rubs his fingers over the initials as if trying to make them disappear, but they remain wrapped around his finger like a permanent ring. So it's real, he thinks. Lily Evans is his soulmate. An irrepressible grin of glee forms, consuming his face, and he lets out an elated whoop that reverberates around the deserted bathroom, nearly shaking the stalls.

He'd been head over heels for the redheaded girl since their first interaction three years ago when the two of them possessed only 14 years of age. Had he really been that young when he met her shimmery emerald eyes for the first time? James never would have believed, never would have dreamed that she'd end up being the one made for him.

Throughout his years at Hogwarts School, he caught himself admiring Lily's long locks of hair and placid manor myriad times, but he always instructed himself to get over it, to get over her. There were billions of people on earth, what were the odds that she would end up being his?

He'd been setting himself up for heartbreak all these years by falling for her, yet here he is, standing in yet another deserted bathroom, in love with Lily Evans, but this time, he isn't trying to eliminate her from his memory. This time, he knows she's the one. He knows she's meant for him, and he's meant for her. He knows they're soulmates. Unless she opts to eliminate him from her memory. Fuck. He glances at his watch, only to realize he'd spent nearly ten minutes in the bathroom. Fuck, again.

He dashes out the doorway, only to nearly run over none other than Lily Evans, his soulmate. Triple fuck. James feels his heartbeat intensify once more, as if trying to escape his chest. Hoping she won't notice this minor, insignificant change, and unsure of what else to do, James diffidently runs his hand through his hair, about to ask why she's standing right in front of him, when she opens her mouth to speak.

"It isn't fake?" she asks, an almost undetectable tremble invading her voice, which is softer than normal and laced with a dash of fear. Yet James notices the tremble and his mood plummets below the ground. In that moment, he wants nothing more than to envelop the girl in his arms and hold her until her worries dissipate and vanish into the air. Instead, he suppresses the urge and forces himself to plaster a reassuring smile on his face.

"Yeah, it's real," he answers, his head tilted down in attempts to look her in the eyes, though she doesn't look at him. "Is there anything wrong?"

"Shit," Lily hisses, not angry with James, but furious at the situation. "Shit, shit, shit."

"What's the matter?" he inquires, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion as he places his hands on her shoulders in hopes of calming her down.

She hesitates for a moment before biting her lip and admitting, "Love kind of scares me a bit." Her cheeks are tinged pink and her eyes are filled with embarrassment as she finally meets the gaze of her soulmate.

"Hey, it's alright," James soothes, his voice low and more calming than he ever thought it could be. "We'll be alright. Unless you want to forget me for the rest of your life, that is," he jokes.

"No, 'course not," Lily shakes her head distractedly. "And I'm not made of glass, you know, Potter."

"Oh yeah, I know you're not," he clears his throat. "I just felt like you could use some reassurance?" He regrets his choice of words the moment they fly out of his mouth and into her ears. He felt as if he portrayed her as a hysterical, sobbing mess, or an emotional train wreck, rather than a teenager reasonably apprehensive to take her first steps into the imbroglio of love.

"Don't worry about it, Potter," she attempts to grin at him, hoping to ease the lingering tension. "I'm not the same as I was three years ago, is all."

"Yeah, sorry, I just..." James trails off, his voice disappearing from his throat while the strain between them reappears. What's he supposed to say? "I just care about you?" "I love you?" "You, Lily Evans, mean the whole world to me and I'd willingly throw myself down the staircase to hell for you?"

"I know," Lily nods her head, grasping the message behind his words, though not voicing them. "Shall we head back to class?"

"Yeah, Flitwick's probably wondering where we are," he awkwardly lowers his hands from her shoulders and crams them into the pockets of his jeans. The two teens walk in unison on their short trip back to the classroom, both of them directing their vision towards the tiled floor, never uttering a word.

Once they enter the room, they split directions and walk to their designated seats, neither of them noticing the small smile making an appearance on Flitwick's face as he glances up at his two students from his desk.

"We're continuing the assignment we started last class. Miss Evans, now would be the appropriate time to have headphones in," he informs them before returning his attention to the computer in front of him.

James nods, acknowledging the words of his teacher, while Lily places both earbuds into her ears, hoping to drown out the silence of the classroom, and more importantly, her thoughts.

Yet the earbuds fail to distract Lily from the continuous furtive glances coming from her soulmate across the room. They fail to stop Lily from staring at the boy herself. They fail to intercept the faint fluttering of her heartbeat every time she catches a glimpse at that glowing pair of bright, hazel eyes.

Stop staring, she reminds herself. It's rude, not to mention creepy. So she chooses to stare at that finger. The finger of soulmates, ring finger, the initial finger, whatever one wishes to name it. Though she's not surprised to see it, Lily still feels her heart do a backflip when she sees James' initials, clear as day, written on her finger in neat cursive writing, much unlike her own. Where'd he learn to write cursive in the first place? It's not as if school teaches that anymore, she chews her lip.

"Your papers are due in ten minutes, everybody!" Flitwick announces from his desk.

Shit! Lily had barely started the assignment during the previous class, and now she had to complete the thing in ten minutes. She leans to the side and rifles through her binder before reemerging with a wrinkled, slightly torn sheet of loose leaf paper. She starts furiously scribbling her disarrayed thoughts, hoping at least a few of her sentences end up sounding coherent, until she glumly rises to her feet to hand in the sheet of paper ten minutes later.

Lily notices James' equally dazed appearance and glances at his paper, only to see scrawled sentences, the handwriting there identical to the writing on her finger. Her eyes linger on the paper, unsure of where else to go, before they rise to meet him. The corner of her lips quirk up in attempts of forming a small smile, but she winces, perfectly aware of the grimace on her face.

In response, a genuine smile breaks across James' face, like the sun emerging from behind dark storm clouds and bringing blinding light after hours of relentless rain and thunder. His smile evokes a grin on Lily's face and she beams at his perfect, dimpled cheeks, instantly enlivening her day.

"You didn't really finish the assignment either, did you?" James murmurs under his breath.

"Nope. Honestly, I don't even remember what we were supposed to be writing about," she mumbles back, a slight chuckle resting in her voice.

"Ah, you'll do fine. You're one of Flitwick's favorites, I'm the one that should be worrying," he grins.

"Pfft, you must be thinking of Slughorn," Lily retorts.

"Point is, you're naturally the favorite of all the teachers in this school. After all, who couldn't love Lily Evans?" James teases.

"Oh, shut up, we all know you're McGonagall's favorite student."

"Got me there, Evans. Minnie will always harbor a soft spot in her heart for me," his grin morphs into a smirk, though a playful one, rather than the more commonly seen pompous smirk.

"Don't let your head get too big, Potter. You're arrogant enough as it is," she counters. Lily had never met someone whom she could speak with so casually, so flawlessly, so effortlessly. Most people were never able to comprehend her wry, almost insulting, sense of humour, which caused her to choose to remain silent and hold up her intelligent, quiet girl façade, yet she could call James Potter arrogant while knowing he wouldn't take offense by it. Perhaps this soulmate thing isn't so bad, Lily thinks, handing her paper to Flitwick.

"Only for you, Evans," James whispers, his minty breath tickling the outer part of her ear as he hands his paper to their teacher and allows his already prominent smirk to widen.

She doesn't respond, and instead smiles at the ground as she makes her way back to her desk, not feeling stressed while talking to someone new for the first time in years. She loves how even after less than a minute of conversing, she feels wonderfully at ease with him, as if they'd been close friends since their youthful, innocent, childhood.

James flashes yet another smirk accompanied by a wink in her direction before leaning to his left to strike up a conversation with Remus. An amused smile rests on the brown-haired teen's lips as he glances at Lily and rolls his eyes at his arrogant friend.

The ginger haired girl shrugs, matching his entertained expression, before looking down at her notebook and resuming the incomplete sketch sitting at the corner of the page. Lily spends the remaining half hour of class casually doodling in her notebook while listening to Flitwick's lecture one verbs, occasionally lifting her head up ever so slightly to peer at James, blushing and diverting her eyes when he catches her.

The bell rings in the ears of students and teachers at 10:30 sharp, causing the students to swiftly scoop up their belongings and bolt out of the classroom and into the bustling halls. Flitwick notices James Potter waiting for a certain redhead before accompanying her out of the room. The instant they leave, he starts composing an email to his fellow teachers of the seniors. He furiously types for a few seconds before hitting send and leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head.

"It's happening!!!"

a/n: This book, which started out in my head being 30 chapters at most, is becoming a lot longer than I anticipated. Also, the picture above is how I imagine James and Lily's initials to look like. I spent more time than I'm willing to admit making them. Fun fact: James' handwriting is based off my own.

I'm also adding the approximate time each chapter is happening along with the date. I went back and added that chapter one happened at about 9 AM.

Another thing, for those who don't know, freshmen year means 9th grade, which is started at the age of 14, sophomore is 10th at the age of 15, junior is 11th, age of 16, senior = 12th, age of 17.

Bye, loves!
~Madeline