Jily oneshots

Worst Luck

by lovesickjily

James Potter thought that life worked weirdly for him.

He had almost everything people wanted in life: the looks, the brains, the money, just stuff people generally would wish for if they ever came across a genie lamp. He supposed he could attribute all of that to his loving parents, who had passed their favorable genes onto him and provided him with a vast sum of money that people could only dream of having.

It was no surprise that life could give him the perfect girl to go with his already-perfect life, the only problem being that she had thrown him so deep into the friendzone that if someone were to throw a rope at him, he would still be too far away to grab it to get out of said zone.

There was also the problem that fucking Valentine's Day was coming up, and just like it had done for his entire life, he was going to go through a whole day of feeling lonely and overthinking himself into a state of sadness because he thought himself incapable of being loved— not the kind of love that he got from his family, but the kind that one shared with their significant other.

Every year something terrible would happen to James on Valentine's Day, and he thought it was rather unfair because he hadn't done anything that would have made the universe curse him with an inability to be happy on the day of love.

James never had a problem with Valentine's Day back when he was in primary school because everyone was each other's Valentine. The teachers always threw little Valentine's Day parties where every kid in the class brought treats related to the holiday. Usually he threw away those little cards that came with the candy he'd gotten unless it was Spider-Man themed— he had a strange love for the hero back in those days.

Of course, it all started going downhill when he turned eleven. The teachers had ceased to throw parties because they were too old for such parties. The girls in James's class had protested because their parents told them that they were too young to love, but how was it that they were too old to celebrate the holiday of love? James agreed with them, solely because he wanted candy and cookies, even if the holiday itself seemed too girly at the time.

In the time before James had met Lily, the love of his life, he hadn't gotten feelings so strong towards anyone else, at least not strong enough to make him want to give love and affection to someone else. He'd had girlfriends in the past, but they had never lasted long enough to even have a Valentine's Day together.

He remembered when he had his first girlfriend who sticked around long enough for the wretched holiday, he had walked in on her going at it with some other bloke. At the time James was hurt, but that was nothing compared to how he'd felt in the two years that he had known Lily.

Besides, if Lily— even her name sounded lovely— did actually have the same feelings towards him, she would have already acted on them at some point in the time they've known each other. James knew fully well that he had acted on those feelings in the past before.

It was give or take a year ago when James had moved on a drunken whim that made him think that it was a great idea to suddenly kiss Lily at Frank Longbottom's party, which had later ended in him apologizing profusely for his actions and explaining himself because his drunken state had caused him to spill his heart to her in such a terrible manner.

He remembered she was talking to Marlene, the topic of conversation between the two women irrelevant, when he had made a big show of lazily wrapping his arm around her shoulder and steering her away from her friend. He noted the shrug Lily had given Marlene at her raised eyebrow.

"Hey. What's up?"

"Up?" James, slurred, "Nah, I'm not high. Not this time. Just a little drunk."

"Already?" she asked in amusement.