For my friend ~ That_Underrated_Dude

【In which James charms his way out of a detention for a prior engagement...】

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He tapped his quill deftly in patterns on his desk, his foot keeping the beat in perfect synchronisation while he stared off into space. Detention didn't half drag. Especially when there was somewhere he'd much rather be.

"Is there somewhere you'd rather be, Mr Potter?" Professor McGonogall asked him austerely, eyeing him with a skeptical gaze (a gaze she found herself using quite often on James Potter and his friends).

James looked up at the professor, wearing a signature shit-eating grin, "actually: yes."

Minerva's eyebrow quirked, it was hard to tell if she was impressed at his boldness or imperilled by his stupidity.
"And where would that be?"

James shook his head bashfully and averted his gaze, all of a sudden quite timid.

The professor pinched her lips together to stop herself from smiling.
"If you don't tell me I won't be able to consider it." She said simply, almost causing James to fall out his chair in shock that she might even consider such a thing. (In truth she was almost positive she knew that his prior engagement was: she'd taught him long enough to know there was only one thing that made him bashful...)

James was hesitant in his tone, "I'm teaching Lily how to fly." He looked back up at her to gage a sense of her reaction; when he got none he continued, "she's never flown higher than six feet! Can you believe that, Minnie?! Six feet?!"

It was plausible that this was true as Minerva knew from experience of teaching that often muggleborns didn't take to flying quite like the other children and so had less experience with the wonders of a broomstick. It was a skill she could live without but something in James' eyes told her that he didn't think so.
"So what you're telling me is that you want to leave this detention early to each your girlfriend how to fly?"

James stared meekly at his quill, feeling a little bit stupid if not put out.

"Get out of here. But I expect you back on Tuesday to make up the time. There's some first year transfiguration essays I trust you can mark for me?"

A wide grin spread across James' face like a wildfire as he sprang up like a jack-in-the-box to collect his things before she changed her mind.
"Of course, Minnie, you're the boss!" He bowed to her (something James and his marauders had always done) before fleeing the room like it carried disease.

'You're the boss!' Minerva shook her head and smiled,
"So you would think."

He found Lily waiting for him by the Gryffindor quidditch cupboard like he had asked her earlier that day.

"You made it at last, I see?"

James nodded, "I wangled my way out a detention with Minnie."

She rolled her eyes, "Of course you did."

"Now, which broom would you like? You've got my old one or Sirius' old one? Both are good but mine is faster." James rummaged haphazardly through the back of the tiny closet to find the aforementioned broomstick.

"Whichever one is sturdier." Lily replied simply, as if it were somehow obvious.

"Then you'll have Sirius'. Always was a pansy when it came to easy-flyers: that's why he's a beater not a chaser or a seeker. You don't need as much speed." He tossed her the broom and she caught it in her right hand.

"Lets go."

Apprehension was already riddling Lily's mind as they reached the crisp, slightly nippy, wind of the late time in the year.
"Right, where will we start..."

"On the ground." Lily nodded as if it were logical.

"No, the whole point of us coming out here is so we're not on the ground. I thought you wanted to learn."

She nodded, "I do! It's just hard to know what to learn when I don't know what I'm building up towards."

This made James unexplainably and very suddenly peppy, she might have just told him tomorrow was Christmas.
"That's easily fixed. I can just show you."

Lily turned on her heel, her auburn hair whipping round with her like a cloak.
"What?!"

He smirked, taking long strides towards her, "I'll show you. It'll be grand, I promise you won't fall." He had reached her by now and her heart was hammering in her chest as she let him pry Sirius' old broom from her grasp.
He placed it on the ground and summoned his own broom with a bored click of his fingers and a call of 'up!'

Lily felt a little sick watching him mount the broom and beckon her closer, "front or back? Your pick."

She grimaced, stomach dropping to the floor with every step she took towards him.
"Back. I'd rather not face death head on."

"Quit being dramatic and get on the damn broom! You shouldn't have much trouble holding onto me seen as we're madly in love now," he winked when she punched him (pretty neatly) in the ribs.

"We've been dating two months, Potter. Don't push your damn luck."

"When have I ever?"

She threw a leg over the broom and wrapped her arms around him.
"Just don't let me fall okay?"

James froze at her words, tensing slightly he turned to face her, his expression suddenly solemn, "do you seriously think I would ever let you fall?"

She fell in love with him on the spot. It didn't matter that they'd been dating for two months, or that he had dragged her out to teach her to fly a broom in the middle of October, or that mere seconds ago he had joked about the very subject and she had shut him down. She knew this was an eventuality, ever since she first called him her boyfriend she could feel herself falling for him like sand through an hourglass; she just didn't expect it to be like this. So fast, so sudden, so off putting and urgent.
Lily knew James would never let her fall, but in another sense she already had.

"You'd never let me fall."

He grinned coquettishly and stole a kiss from her cheek, "exactly, just hold on right and you'll be fine—" she held on as they took off gently into the air, "bloody hell not that tight! I'm gonna need my internal organs for future use!"

"Shut up, Potter."

"Duly noted."

They rose at a steady pace and despite clinging on for dear life Lily didn't find she was internally giving herself the last rights like she expected to be; she knew she wouldn't fall, this was James she was with but it didn't stop her shaking with the mere prospect of the slim chance that they might meet their demise by crash or a freakish weather incident.

"Alright Evans?"

"Dandy," she choked, her eyes firmly shut.

"You're going to need to open your eyes, love."
The simple clause made her aforementioned eyes snap open.

"How did you know they were shut?! Aren't you supposed to be focusing on flying?!"

For some reason unbeknownst to Lily, he laughed the sort of cathartic laugh that sounded like a peeling Christmas bell.
"I've been flying since I could walk. I think I'm pretty proficient in this department. Don't worry about me and you just focus on keeping those gorgeous emeralds you call eyes open, alright?"

She blushed despite herself, "flattery won't work."

"I beg to differ. Now don't look down, for now, and just focus on what you can see right now."

What she could see right now was (reluctantly) one of the most wonderful things she had ever laid eyes on in her entire life. They were soaring above the Forbidden Forest, barely grazing the trees which were a plethora of autumnal colours. It was odd, Lily realised, that leaves went that colour when they died. Humans went cold when they left the world and yet leaves seemed to be on fire, warm.

"Don't focus on what you might see, or what you can't: focus on what you can see, feel, it makes it a lot easier to enjoy flying!" James explained at a rambunctious, if not slightly obnoxious, shout so she could hear him over the whistling wind.

Lily found herself smiling. She didn't realise this fact until she heard the sound of her own laugh.
It was electrifying, terrifying, it was pure magic, a memory that she didn't think she would ever forget. The world below her seemed to have less power over her, it wasn't important. Whatever she was supposed to do on the ground could wait, everything could wait. In that moment, just that moment, it was only the two of them that existed. The boy she had so quickly fallen in love with and her.

"See? It's wonderful, isn't it?"

She laughed again, pulling herself up closer to James and resting her chin on his shoulder as he swooped round the rocks edge by the top of the black lake that seemed no less than an insignificant puddle to them. He soared higher until they were level with the astronomy tower, the full view of Hogwarts spanned out below them like a tragically, painfully, awe-inspiring setting in a fairytale. She supposed this was a fairytale, she was on a broomstick for Merlin's sake!

Lily kissed James' cheek vivaciously, then his jaw and his neck, peppering her happiness and freedom over every inch of him she could reach.
They were both laughing as James looped round the school for the last time, "steady on, Lily!" James cried over the whistling of the wind as they defied gravity in the most miraculous way.

Lily didn't listen, she continued to squeeze his middle and kiss him in as many places she could reach, praying this would never end.

"See? This is exactly what happens when you let go of all the logic and just enjoy it, look how free it is!" He could barley get a sentence out from the boyish grin that was surely hurting his face.

Lily gasped when he took a sudden dive with effortless speed but somehow she wasn't scared. She would never be scared with him again. Even if it wasn't the right time to tell him, she loved him more than she had loved anyone in her life. If it was anyone else she might have been scared; love was supposed to be dangerous but– just like flying a broom– she had grown accustomed to its thrill and it's freedom, still fully aware that she might crash and burn at any moment, but by some miracle she knew she wouldn't. He wouldn't let her. All she had to do was hold on tight...

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