Illicit Love

Illicit Love
Chapter One
Romances Spark


Sitting at the Gryffindor table, cracking ridiculously funny jokes and swirling his pumpkin juice like a fine wine, was James Potter. He was rich, handsome, charming - no wonder all the girls loved him and stared at him wherever he went.

Lily Evans looked at him gingerly, cutting her chicken into small pieces. It was no use having a conversation with her dorm mates this evening as James was talking about the summer vacation he'd be having in the Bahamas in a few weeks. So, naturally, all the girls were watching him chew his steak and sip his pumpkin juice, run his hands through his dark hair, adjust his oval spectacles, and listen to him talk about just how rich and how gorgeous he was to his three "groupies", the equally handsome and charming Sirius Black, the shy Remus Lupin, and the teddy bear-cute Peter Pettigrew.

Okay, so he wasn't actually talking about how rich and gorgeous he was literally, but that's what it sounded like when he was talking about his racing brooms and the girls back home who were interested in him.

Lily kept looking at James trying to figure out what it was that the girls loved about him. She thought those girls were ridiculous, if not stupid. But then James caught her eye and winked at her. She immediately blushed and looked away, not because she was thrilled that he did, she justified to herself, but because he had caught her staring at him.

She decided that she wasn't so hungry anymore, so she said goodbye to Alisa Leone, a dorm mate, who nodded (but wasn't listening), and exited the Great Hall. On her way up to Gryffindor Tower, she took a detour to the Owlery so she could send a letter to her family, who she was missing very much.

She scribbled a note on a spare piece of parchment (the back of her History of Magic attempt to take notes), and sent it off with her tawny owl and watched it fly off into the waxing moon.

"Sending that off to a lover?" Came a voice from behind her. She whipped around and saw James Potter standing with his arms crossed over his chest and his back against the wall.

Clutching at her chest and trying to catch her breath, Lily stated, "Coincidence that you should be here at the same time. Or were you following me?" She arched an eyebrow.

"Mmm...A little of both," James replied.

"You followed me? Isn't that a little low for you? You could have had someone else do it for you."

James rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "That's what you think of me? I'm too good for anything?"

"Well, aren't you?" she asked. "I've heard rumors."

"I've heard them too, and very few of them are true," he informed stiffly. "They're all a bit elaborate, aren't they?"

Lily shrugged. "I guess so. As I don't know you, I wouldn't know if you had a fling with a Grecian Princess."

"I did not have a fling with her. For your information, she kissed me!"

"Calm yourself," Lily instructed, smiling. "I wasn't accusing you of anything - just telling you what I had heard. Anyway, why were you following me?"

"You looked a bit - er - depressed at dinner. I wanted to make sure everything was okay. Are you?"

"My hero," Lily said sarcastically. "No, I'm fine, I just miss my family."

"Really? Me too. I miss my mum and my sister, Jessica."

"And your dad?" Lily questioned. James looked away. "I'm sorry I asked."

"No, don't be - I don't want to talk about it right now, that's all."

"I'm really sorry." James shook his head, informing her it was all right. "So."

"Umm... Do you want to go back to Gryffindor Tower with me?" he asked.

Lily nodded and James tucked her arm under his and led her away from the Owlery. They joked and laughed and chatted all the way up, finding out that they had much in common ("Your favorite color is blue too?", "I like Shakespeare too!" and "I agree the O.W.L.s were less difficult than I thought they would be."), until Lily pointed out that she didn't know where they were. They had been walking around aimlessly for over an hour. James just looked around and chuckled while Lily, on the other hand, panicked.

"I know where we are," James said. "But we're a half hour walk to Gryffindor Tower." He looked at his expensive Wiz-Rolex watch. "It's already fifteen minutes past curfew."

"What are we going to do?"

"Don't you worry your pretty little head," James replied, swooping close to her ear and then quickly away. "You'll need that for you studies." He then led her through a secret passageway and they clambered through the portrait hole a half hour later.

Upon entering the common room, they saw Sirius, Remus, and Peter playing exploding snap in a corner. Other than the three (plus Lily and James) the common room was empty.

Sirius smiled when he saw them and they walked over to where the card tower (was that a Statue of Liberty? Yes...it looked like it) was growing rapidly up to six feet (Remus' height, Lily mused).

"Where have you two been off to?" Peter asked.

"Just walking around," James replied.

"Uh-huh," Sirius said, stealthily placing a card upon the statue's head for the crown. "Sure you were."

"We were!" James cried.

"I highly doubt - " Remus started to say, but couldn't finish his sentence because the statue exploded.

Lily took this moment during the commotion to slip away up the stairs into her dorm.

* * *

"Good morning, sleepyhead," was the first thing Lily heard when she passed by James at the Gryffindor table. He smiled at her and patted the chair next to him. "Want some breakfast?"

"That's kind of what I was aiming for when I came down here," she replied, but smiled and sat down. James dished eggs and toast onto her plate and handed her a fork. "My, you are charming."

"Simply the way I was raised," James said with a shrug.

"Women are suckers for charmers."

"And men are suckers for charming beauty."

Lily blushed and looked at her golden plate, pushing her eggs around aimlessly.

"I'm not trying to be cheesy, Lils." They both smiled at the nickname. "I had a lot of fun with you last night. You're so easy to talk to and you like to joke and laugh. You're smart and outgoing and nice. And you're really beautiful."

"You're a charmer all right," Lily said, very pink. "But me? There are several hundred girls in Hogwarts and I'm the winning one? Seems unlikely to me when I don't worship the ground you walk on."

"You're a wonderful person. You're above petty worshipping. Why?"

"Because you're a human being, and although you're charming, rich, and undoubtedly handsome, that's no reason to be harassed over."

"Oh, so you think I'm handsome, do you?" James mused aloud, grinning widely. "Of course I am, who could resist me?"

"You're kind of cocky, you know that?"

"I love your dry and sarcastic sense of humor."

"Who couldn't?" She grinned and he smiled back, showing gloriously white and straight teeth. He had the money to get his teeth beautified both magically and non-magically while Lily only got lucky enough to have good teeth, as her parents couldn't afford to send her to a dentist and orthodontist.

"Would you stop with the flirting game already?" Sirius sat down opposite the two. "Where were you last night?" he asked Lily. "We wanted to have you play exploding snap with us." He poured himself some orange juice and sipped it slowly.

"Well, I figured that the four of you would want to spend your time together talking or, what is it that you like to do? Pull pranks?"

"Someday we'll be known for pulling the best pranks Hogwarts has ever seen," Sirius said.

"Oh, you've had some pretty good ones," Lily said. "Certainly good enough to keep you out of detention. Would you care to brush me up on some of your pranking skills?"

"You could have been in on it last night."

"Oh please, I'm sure I could pull a better prank on you guys than any one of you could ever pull on me."

"I don't think I'll hold you to that one, because I wouldn't want to be in charge of dirtying your very clean slate. You wouldn't want to ruin the title of Perfect-Prefect-With-Head-Girl-Badge-on-a-Silver-Platter, now would you?"

"Who's to say that I'm going to be Head Girl next year? Besides, I happen to like being clean-slated in that department."

"Oh, perfect ickle prefect Lily doesn't like to be unclean in any way," Sirius teased.

"Oh no, Siri," Lily said seriously, picking up a nickname for him. "That's not like me at all. Some departments I don't mind dirtying." She raised an eyebrow playfully. James and Sirius dropped their jaws, knowing what she meant. "Well, I've got to work on some homework. I'll leave you two to prank-planning. Don't disappoint me."

She got up from the table and exited the Great Hall, the two boys' eyes on her back until she was out of sight.

"James, that woman is hot!" Sirius commented, piling pancakes on his plate. "Where did you get her?"

"You say that like she's a flavor of the week, Siri."

Sirius smiled. "I like her. Better than all those other girls you've dated just because you're a nice guy. When are you going to learn you have to break hearts. All women want a heartbreaker."

"Just because I'm not as popular with women as you are doesn't mean I have to start ruining their lives like you do. Besides, I spent a few hours with Lily last night and I think she's really fun to be with."

"Miss Study-A-Lot? She pulled a nice comeback, but is the redheaded beauty really more than she seems?" James shrugged. "How could you have spent nearly two years being a prefect with her and have every single class with her and not talk much with her at all?"

"You haven't talked to her either." James said. "But I really don't know." He pulled Lily's full-yet-disheveled plate over to himself and started eating from it. Sirius eyed him carefully. "What? I'm not going to let this precious food go to waste."

"You and your food!"

"You and your women!"

"Speaking of which...." James saw right away that Sirius was eyeing a pretty, blonde Ravenclaw fifth year. Sirius nodded to James and got up from the table to catch up to the blonde at the double doors.

* * *

"Hey you. Want to go to the library with me?"

Lily looked at the grandfather clock on the far side of the common room, then looked back at James. "It's nearly ten o'clock, the library isn't open."

"I know, but that doesn't matter." He pulled out a large piece of silvery material from behind his back.

"Where did you get that?" Lily whispered excitedly, knowing exactly what it was - an Invisibility Cloak.

"I got it for Christmas last year," James said with an elegant shrug. "So. Do you want to go?"

Lily looked around the common room, which was surprisingly empty for a Friday night and debated. On the one hand, she could stay Miss Perfect Prefect or she could throw a little excitement into her life. And the fact that it was James Potter asking her and that he was very cute did put a little weight on the Just This Once side of the scale. So, she nodded and accepted the hand that James was holding out for her. He pulled her through the portrait hole and, once a few feet away from the Fat Lady, threw the cloak over the two of them, and continued their venture to the library.

"What did you want to come here for?" Lily asked once they had entered the book-filled room.

"I thought that would have been apparent to you once I asked if you wanted to attend me here," James said with a smile. "Actually, I just wanted to charm a book that was left in here. But I can't remember which book it is. Sirius keeps changing it's cover...."

James led them to the Restricted Section ("Oh, my," Lily thought, "this isn't good.") and started looking through the books. Lily shuddered at seeing the books seemingly open by themselves. She tried telling herself that there was nothing to worry about, but she couldn't help think that with every movement they made, there was someone watching them, listening to them, and making...noises? That couldn't have been right. She decided to strike a conversation in order to get her mind off of her fear.

"I can't believe you are in here," Lily whispered to James. "You're a prefect after all! If you are this mischievous, how'd you become a prefect?"

"You only get in trouble if you get caught." He grinned at her. "Besides, being chosen as a prefect goes by smarts, not clean slates." He picked up another book. "I think this one is it."

He opened the book and instantly dropped it. He let out a loud, pain-filled scream and shook his hands up and down. Lily grabbed his hands and looked at them. They looked just like they had been burned by an iron or a stove or.... Well, they looked burned all right.

"Who's in 'ere?" A croaky voice called out in the darkness. "Someone's in 'ere -- I can smell yer nasty teenage hormones."

"Filch!" Lily whispered to the now-quiet James. She was about to say more, but James covered her mouth with his aching hands. The two saw Filch walking back and forth until he shouted, "Aha!"

Lily jumped, but the caretaker was nowhere in sight. James smiled but didn't take his hand from her lips.

"Trysting in the library, are we?" he said. "That'll give you both five detentions. Now get out of 'ere before I string you up by yer thumbs!"

Lily and James heard shuffling and a familiar groan. The couple passed and Lily had to place her hand over James mouth to keep him from belching laughter. There was a familiar blonde Ravenclaw (half-dressed from the last time James saw her) who walked past followed by none other than the Sexy and Suave himself.

Sirius Black.

Lily found it hard to keep herself from laughing too. How many stories had she overheard Sirius tell about his famous love-trysts all over the school. According to those legends (or truths, she still wasn't sure which was the better title for the tales), he had never been caught. Narrowly escaping was his idea of heated romance, not to mention how most of his stories ended.

Filch took one last look around the library before exiting and shutting the doors behind him. Lily waited until she was sure that Filch was out of earshot before she took her hand off James' mouth. Only then did James take his still burned-looking hands off her mouth. Not more than two seconds later, they burst with roaring laughter.

As Lily was trying to catch her breath and wipe away the tears from her eyes, she noticed the way James was looking at her. It was like he was either seeing her for the first time or completely shocked at something. Either way, his face was expressionless.

She immediately felt self-conscious and wondered if she had something in her teeth (she loved freshly ground pepper, after all). But that thought was discarded as it became obvious that she didn't when James leaned forward and softly pressed his lips to hers.

* * *