Harry Potter One Shots

The Way You Look Tonight

James

Amalia Turner loved to dress up. She turned up to every party at Hogwarts wearing a new spectacular outfit, complete with flawless makeup and an intricate hairstyle.

Sometimes, she wore slinky black dresses that clung to her figure, and prowled through the party like a panther to find her next hook up. Sometimes, she dressed in extravagant gowns that flared out around her when she danced, patterned with flowers in riots of colour, and she batted her eyelashes and swished the skirts of her dress flirtatiously, all the while standing tall and with an arrogant curl of her brightly painted lips; a proud peacock. Sometimes, she wore simple white dresses with wide straps and horizontal necklines, that just grazed her knees, and she held herself with a fierce gentleness, her words careful, always managing to catch someone's eye with the slow way she tipped her head back to laugh, or the smooth arc of her neck when she turned to talk to a friend. As graceful and pure as a white swan.

James Potter had seen every single one of Amalia's dresses. At each party his eyes latched on to her as soon as she entered, and they followed her for the rest of the night, as she downed glasses of firewhiskey impressively fast, swayed seductively on the dance floor, and, inevitably, disappeared with a guy or girl she had met only that night, to make out or sleep with them, or whatever Amalia did behind closed doors.

James loved Amalia's dresses, and no matter how many times he told his friends, Hey, doesn't Evans look gorgeous tonight? The truth was, Lily, in her signature princess cut emerald dresses, was nothing in comparison to Amalia.

Why James hadn't confessed his feelings to Sirius, his best friend, or Remus and Peter, his other friends, who were less likely to tease him, he didn't know. Maybe he had gotten so used to talking about Lily, complimenting Lily, sighing, stressing, hell, even crying over her once, that to admit to his friends that Lily wasn't the one, that whatever he'd felt for her had died months ago, was too scary to imagine.

He knew what they would say.

Sirius would laugh and tease him mercilessly, but underneath the careless act he would be upset that James hadn't told him from the beginning.

Remus would frown in puzzlement, and ask if he was sure, and then slowly start to understand.

And Peter. Peter would accept it instantly, and offer him help and some piece of random, useless advice.

So, if he could predict their reactions so clearly, and none of them particularly bothered him, why couldn't he just come clean? In the depths of his heart, James knew why. He could never have Amalia. She was too confident, too gorgeous, too wild, to ever date someone like him. Someone with good grades and a position on the Quidditch team, who had chased the same girl for almost 6 years.

Which was why when he found her sitting alone in the Gryffindor common room waving her wand haphazardly and causing glitter to fall onto her lap, wearing nothing but a faded pair of denim jeans and an oversized red sweatshirt, he had no idea what to do.

Amalia

Tonight was a disaster. The biggest party of the year had already begun down in the Slytherin dungeons, and here Amalia was sitting by the fire in her common room, staring blankly at the wall ahead of her. Tonight should have been fun. Right this minute she should have been getting ready. She could just picture it - she would wear the long scarlet stress with the slit up the leg and the deep V neck that scooped low over her breasts, and the back that scooped even lower. She would stride into that party, toss her hair, wink at the seventh year boys that had smuggled in alcohol, and get a free drink. By the end of the night, she would be knelt on a stranger's bed, her lips sliding messily over theirs, her hands either under a shirt or tugging the straps of a dress off a shoulder, depending on who she fancied that night.