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Do You Reckon People Snog on Ducks?


Despite how James pleaded on Lily Evans’ behalf, Charlus Potter refused to bring her to the dungeons to visit Jasper Odair. “It’ll hurt him more than it’ll help him,” Charlus explained. “It’s against the rules of the Ministry and if we’re caught, it’s bound to come up in his trial and that’s the last thing he needs is another thing to go against him in that courtroom. It’s quite enough he’s got already. I will gladly bring a letter to him, but that’s the best I can do.” Charlus paused and, recognizing the glint in James’s eyes, he added, “Do not go. I mean it.” He stared at his son pointedly.

“C’mon dad, we’re not going to get caught,” James argued, but Charlus simply refused.

Lily and James went outside and sat on the steps of the front porch of the Lupin house instead and Lily crossed her arms, hugging her own shoulders, as she stared at her knees. James bent over himself so he was holding the toes of his trainers. He stared at his feet for several long moments, then turned his head so his cheek rested against his knees, knocking his glasses a bit askew, and he stared at Lily. “Sorry he wouldn’t do it.”

She shook her head.

“I’m sure Jasper would’ve liked to see you. I know I would. If I was in jail. Or any day really. I always like seeing you.” James flushed, realized he was talking too much, and turned back to looking at his toes.

She looked over and she could see his mouth moving as he told himself off for talking too much. Lily watched him a long moment, studying how his hair sort of hung over his forehead and his glasses were crooked. She took a deep breath, “Potter?”

He looked over.

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for, Evans?”

“I freaked out a little bit back at Diagon Alley when I saw Jasper on that paper,” Lily explained. “I… I imagine how I reacted must have hurt your feelings and… well, I didn’t mean to do that.”

James shrugged, “Honestly, it’s about right, isn’t it? I doubt even one more thing could’ve gone wrong on that… ice cream… get together… with… a, er… a mate.” He didn’t want to upset her if she hadn’t thought it was a date.

Lily said, “I thought it was a lovely ice cream get together with a, er, mate,” she said, echoing what he’d called it.

He could see her eyes were twinkling.

He asked, “Evans… was it a duck?”

“Excuse me?”

That conversation was in the old timeline, you idiot, James realized. She doesn’t remember it. For her, it never happened.

He drew a deep breath - nothing like creating his own bleedin’ artefact… “There’s two kinds of things in the world, Evans,” he said, and he sat up… leaned back against the steps, trying to be cool… he ran his hand through his hair… gave her that winning Potter smile… and said, “There are ducks, and there are dates.”

She had an eyebrow raised, an amused smirk already playing over her lips.

“So if this wasn’t a duck… then it was a date, see?”

Lily’s blinked and thought about what he was saying, trying to keep up with him. She thought him goofy. He couldn’t blame her if she did. It was pretty goofy, even in context, but it was especially goofy out of context. He grinned for good measure at her. She bit her lip, then, just as before, “So everything in the world is either a duck or a date?”

“Yes.” He was grinning because it was exactly how he remembered.

“Everything?” Lily looked skeptical, just as he had before.

“Yes,” he answered.

“That bush right there?” she pointed to the rose bushes.

“Duck,” James replied.

“Ned Veigler?” She pointed across the yard where Ned was degnoming again along the edge of the Lupin property, bent forward and having little conversations with the gnomes as he evicted them…

“Also a duck,” James said.

Lily shook her head, laughing, “Idiot.”

James grinned, “But… am I an idiot who’s on a date?”

Lily looked at him. “Or is it a duck, Evans?”

Despite the obviously arrogant way he was holding his body, the playfully obnoxious grin on his face, and the way his words came out sort of thick from being so full of themselves -- she could see the nervousness in his eyes. She wondered if that nervousness had alway been there, all of the times that he’d been arrogant all along or if this was a new development? Had she only just finally looked at James Potter to see it?

Lily inched closer to him and took his hand in hers. She looked down at it, at how long his fingers were compared to hers and the pattern to the swirl of his skin over his knuckles… and the spot where the hair of his arm sort of tapered off at his wrist.. She ran her thumbs over the top of his hand and then looked up at him.

“James. It was a duck.”

“Oh,” he said. The arrogance melted away, the playful grin shrunk… he sat up, drew his hand back from hers, put them both on his knees and stared very hard at Mr. Veigler across the yard.

“May I tell you why?” she asked.

He looked over at her, “You don’t have to. I’ve heard it all before. It’s because you don’t like me like that, because I’m immature and a bully and all that.”

Lily shook her head.

He raised an eyebrow, then, curious, “Why, then?”

“The first part was lovely,” she said.

“I ruined your blouse and tripped all over everything and bored you with talk of Quidditch.”

Lily laughed, “You were a gentleman and held the door and carried everything - which is how you ended up ruining my blouse - but you were nervous and honest about it and you talked about something you’re passionate about, and that made your eyes all pretty.”

Pretty?”

“Sorry.” She made her voice low and rumbly, imitating a very deep male voice, and said, “Manly. You have man-eyes James Potter.”

James laughed, “Much better.”

Lily giggled, smiling at him, then turned serious again, “But then something terrible happened and I was very rude to you and then you, still ever the gentleman, tried to help me and it took me more time than it ought to for me to say thank you, as I haven’t done it yet…”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I do, and I will. I’ll get to that in a minute. But... James, my point is, this is a duck.” She tilted her head, “You don’t want our first date ending that way, do you? With me crying and rushing off to see Jasper?”

She had a point.

James chewed his lower lip. “Alright. It’s a duck.”

“An ice cream get together with a mate,” Lily nodded.

“Yes, that as well.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder and sighed.

He didn’t dare to move. He sat very still, watching Ned Veigler as he slowly worked his way around the perimeter of the yard until he’d disappeared ‘round the side of the house, leaving James and Lily quite alone on the porch steps.

“Evans?” he asked after several long moments.

“Yes?”

“Do you reckon people snog on ducks?”

She laughed and, smirking, she said, “I doubt whether a duck is very good at snogging.”

James laughed, “True, it’s probably rather frowned upon.”

Lily drew away from his shoulder then, and scootched up a step, leaning so she was even with him, but tilted just a wee bit and she said, “But I don’t see why people on ducks couldn’t snog…” she said quietly.

James stared into her eyes, “Well I reckon it might crush the duck if there were people on them… bit messy, feathers everywhere and --”

“Shut up, Potter.” She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his and he closed his eyes. She put her hand on his shoulder and he turned, scooting to face her, his legs bumping hers and her hair fell down around them and he reached up to run his hands over her face and scooped her hair up behind her ear, his palm splayed over the side of her head as their lips moved. He loved the flavor of her, and his heart raced against his ribs as he kissed her…

Inside, in the kitchen, Dora had just finished making cookies - butterbeer cookies - and she had several of them on a platter and two glasses of milk and she’d put them on a tray and carefully opened the kitchen’s screen door with her hip to carry it out on to the porch for James and Lily to share… and she stopped in the frame of it, holding the tray in her arms, because she’d spotted them there, kissing… and Lily Evans had her hands up in her son’s hair and their mouths were all smushed against each other and Dora’s eyes widened and she hurriedly backed into the kitchen, glad when the door shut behind her silently rather than with a slam, and she stumbled to the table and put the tray down. She stared down at it, breathless and unsure what to do.

“What is it?” Charlus was sitting at the table. He was already eating the cookies she’d given him before assembling the tray. She stared at him, her eyes wide as could be. “Dora, love? Whatever is the matter?”

“Fleamont Charlus Potter, your son is out there -- kissing that girl.”

Charlus stared at Dora.

“They’re all tangled up and --” dare she say it? “ -- snogging.”

Charlus sprang up from his seat as quickly as he could - which wasn’t terribly quickly, as he was still recovering, but quickly enough that the chair made a funny sound as the feet moved across the tile. He hurried over to the window by the counter and carefully pulled back the curtain to peer out. Dora joined him, and there stood both Potters, spying out the window.

“Well bloody hell, look at that! He is!” Charlus said. He sounded quite proud. “Look at ‘im go, too.” He looked over at Dora, grinning wide as the Cheshire Cat. “He inherited that talent from me, it seems, ‘ey, love?”

Dora glared at him, “Charlus! He’s snogging a girl. Our son is snogging a girl.”

“Is he ever!”

“Charlus!”

“What? We knew the day would come. He’s sixteen. I’d be surprised - especially given how well he seems to be doing at it - that this is his first go at snogging a girl.”

“Yes precisely, he’s sixteen.”

“Dora. Honey. Don’t you remember you and I and what we were like at sixteen? Do you remember the day we skivved off our Potions class and canoodled a bit in that old passageway behind that empty portrait in the Trophy Room?” Charlus smirked, letting the curtain fall back over the window.

Dora was scarlet red. “I haven’t the faintest what you are speaking of Mr. Potter,” she said mulishly.

“Oh I think you do,” he said, and he stepped toward her, a grin every bit as arrogantly charming as the one his son often wore, and he slid his arms around her so they lay upon her shoulders and his hands dangled behind her… He used to stand like that all of the time when they were younger and he was a playboy himself and his now salt-and-peppered hair had been much longer then, but his eyes were still the same.

They made Dora’s heart race the same as they had then, too.

Charlus leaned in to kiss her and Dora could feel the chill of that old passageway again, lit by the bottles of bluebell tire that they and their friends had lit to mark the precipices. She could smell the couch and the chairs that Alastor Moody had stolen from the common rooms to funish the alcove with, could remember when she and Charlus were young and first figuring out that what house you were in really didn’t mean a bleeding thing… when they were sneaking about, snogging in every secret place that Charlus Potter knew about the castle…

Charlus whispered against her mouth, “Does your memory better serve you yet, my love?”

“Remind me again?” she whispered back.

And he kissed her once again.

Outside, Lily and James had stopped at it and they sat there awkwardly, unsure what to say now that they’d kissed again. Lily fixed her hair because he’d messed it all up with his fingers going through it and she bit her lips as they curved into a smile…

“Potter?”

“Evans?”

“Thank you.”

“For snogging you? Any time, Evans. Literally any time.”

Lily laughed, “No, you idiot.” She said it lovingly. “For today. For the duck. For being a gentleman and trying to help.”

“You’re welcome.”

At the line of trees at the back of the yard, the gnomes Ned Veigler had just evicted were coming back, like troops returning from battle, jumping into their holes. Somewhere, an owl let out a series of low hoots and the sun was going down, painting everything orange.

“Do you think they’ll send him to Azkaban?” Lily asked.

“Dunno. But I do think my Dad will do bloody everything he can do to stop them from it,” James answered.

“Jasper’s father wasn’t very good to him,” Lily said quietly. “I don’t know the details exactly, but I know they weren’t close and I know he used to make comments sometimes… I mean if you asked him outright, he always talked about what a great family they were and stuff, but offhand he would say things that were very sad.”

James said, “I’m sorry for him.”

Lily replied, “So aren’t I.”

“I mean, he’s a good bloke. Or seems it, I don’t know a lot about him, but I reckon you wouldn’t have been with him otherwise.”

“He’s a very good person,” she nodded.

“Do you love him?” James asked.

Lily contemplated, then, “I s’pose a part of me always will. But am I in love with him? No.”

He stared at her.

“I’m not particularly in love with anybody at the moment,” Lily murmured. She glanced at James, her eyes searching his.

The owl hooted again in the distance.

Hooo, hoooo, hooooo.

“Do you reckon you’ll ever love again?” James asked.

“I do,” Lily answered, and she turned away, letting her ginger hair fall over her cheeks so he wouldn’t see her blush.