The Marauding Maps: A Collection of Oneshots

When They Knew (Part 2 - When She Knew)

Lily Evans had always tried to ignore James Potter. That was a well known fact. But something not even she knew until her seventh year was exactly what she felt about him.

When first met him on her very first trip on the Hogwarts Express, she knew there was something about him that she should stay away from. Maybe the easy way he that he would joke about the impending war with a crooked smirk.

By third year his graceful ease had unnerved her further, and Lily was drawn to him when the Potions Professor had told them to partner up to brew a potion that seemed to particularly intrigue him. And as she got to know James over the course of that lesson she noticed things about him she had never before noticed. His "graceful ease" seemed to vanish when he was this close to her. And she smiled, because this James she wanted to get to know.

But, by fifth year, James had his walls back up. He kept glancing at Severus, as though he mistrusted him, and no girl worthy of the title would risk such a close friendship for some boy. But as she saw him laugh with his friends, she began to long more and more to seem him laugh like that with her, instead of the usual, arrogant facade he would put up when he was within 5 foot of her. And she knew she had to save him from himself.

But it wasn't until after Halloween in seventh year, when his walls came down, when she'd had enough of putting up a front, that she realised he could save of herself. It wasn't until he came to her and spoke to her as equals, that she could see just how kind a person he was. And it wasn't until he was walking the streets of Hogsmead along side her that she found the feeling she had been repressing.

It wasn't until the Halloween of '77, when the young Gryffindor brought down his walls, that she knew that she was in love with James Potter. She knew it wasn't his jokes or his smirk, his ease or his intrigue, laugh or his walls. It was his resilience. His insistence. His personality.

It was on that day that she knew, truly why she liked him. It wasn't because he was funnier than her, or because he liked her. It was because he was her. He was her soul mate. And on that day she knew that, maybe, she didn't just "like" him. She loved him.

And it was because she loved him that she stopped ignoring him. She started asking him to Hogsmead, or to parter with him in charms. She stopped talking to him just becauseb she she was a prefect. And that's when he knew something had to be done.