Portraits of a Flower in Bloom | Jily

7: The Mocking Games of Higher Lifeforms

~ Monday 5th September, 1977: Charms Class ~
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Lily was absolutely dreading her first charms lesson. She'd never had much patience with James in their Potions class; he'd always mess around and they'd usually only just scrape together the potion by the end of the lesson - and he typically contributed nothing at all. Now she was sat in front of him, just great. She was getting flashbacks to first year when he used to tug on her ponytail and send her paper aeroplanes.

Just as she was reminiscing about her first year, a small paper plane hit into her elbow and crash landed onto her desk. She looked back at James and gave him a confused look: he just glanced sheepishly and gestured for her to open it. On the paper was plainly written 'hi :)' in his signature, unintelligible scrawl.

She sighed and picked up her quill, dabbing it in her inkwell and replied plainly, 'hello what do you want'.

She folded it back into a pathetic attempt at a plane and aimed it at his head. The plane lifelessly flopped to the ground and Lily sighed, jumping off her chair to pick it up.

"Is that really the best you can do?" James was leaning over his desk and watching her pick the paper up off the floor.

"Well Petunia taught me how to do them ages ago, but I was never quite as good as she was," she replied setting in down on the top of his desk and returning to hers, "I thought it would do to make its way to your desk."

"Evans that was as much a paper plane as this is," James took a bit of parchment and crumpled it into a ball to demonstrate his, rather mean, point.

Lily was slightly offended, but it wasn't as though she'd spent years fine tuning her paper aeroplane making skills so responded, "fine then, how do you make yours then?"

James beamed at her question, "I am glad you asked Evans. Get a piece of parchment and I'll show you."

Lily thought about just ignoring him, she should've just let it go. But there was still five minutes until the lesson started and the teacher wasn't even in the room yet. She swivelled round to grab a piece of paper and spun back to face him, paper in hand, and with an unenthusiastic will to learn.

"Well scooch forward then, you'll need to fold on the desk," James frowned moving backwards to give her space.

He proceeded to take Lily through the motions of making one, occasionally taking it off her to correct her work, always leaving her with a slight tingle in her hand when he'd accidental brush her fingers.

"And... your done!" James said triumphantly, as Lily held up her small plane, "okay now try it out."

"Where do I aim?" She asked surveying the classroom for an empty flight path.

"How bout... over there?" James suggested, moving her arm to point towards Severus. Lily scowled and ignored him, deciding not to scold him because she was still holding her breath as the feeling of his hand on her made her feel an unfamiliar annoyance. She moved to aim towards Alice, who sat in the second row in the middle.

"Go for it," James said, letting go of her, after lingering for slightly too long.

She cleared her throat, aimed slightly above the desk and threw it. The plane basically fell out of her hand and onto the ground in front of her desk.

"Ah," James said simply, "so the problem was probably less the plane and more..."

"Yeah, more my pathetic throwing, uh huh," Lily scooted embarrassedly past the people on the desk in front to collect her damaged plane.