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cazabaranca · 6 months

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Lily (Evans) Potter is.. (another character defense, ha)

James and Sirius are always called little shits and, while it’s true that they were mischievous as hell, don’t try to tell me that Lily wasn’t, too.

So, for Ida, the evidence for my claim, in the silliest character defense I’ve ever written, why Lily Potter (nee Evans) is a little shit.

She has no qualms about breaking the rules/social norms/laws when she’s feels that she’s in the right, it’s important, that she won’t get caught, or that it’s the better way. (rules as suggestions, rather than hard and fast = little shit potential)

-She jumps off the swing, flies through the air, again and again, specifically after her Mum has told her not to. She’s also obviously still played around with this power, whatever it is, because she shows her sister that she can open and close the flower in her hand. -She invades her sister’s privacy to read the letter from Dumbledore. -She is best friends with a Slytherin when she’s a Gryffindor. And at that, a boy no one likes. He is gross, her choice is challenged, her housemates despise him, personally, and Slytherins in general because inter-house relations were not the best because of the war. -Later, she learns that Remus is a werewolf, the other marauders are animagi. The knowledge, even though social convention would tell her to run the other way, does not prevent her from befriending Remus, being friends with Sirius, or trusting Peter with the lives of her family and herself. -She joins a secret organization, which operates outside the law, to try and end purism and the death eater movement. -She marries a pureblood when there is a war raging, telling them not to. -She brings a baby into a world that calls him an abomination. In her letter to Padfoot, she references James using the cloak. She doesn’t mind that he sneaks out, which is against the rules/common sense. Instead, she’s lamenting the loss of the invisibility cloak so he can’t get out and is expressing her sympathy that he’s going stir crazy.

She is sassy as hell. (Snark/sass + friendly/playful = little shit) -At times we see this in a negative light-she lashes out when she feels attacked, has a quick temper, and has a great ability to retort/speak her mind/bite back. But I would suggest that this is because most of what we see is through Snape’s eyes, at his (and therefore, her, worst moments). -In the Prince’s tale, Lily rounds on Snape several times, both retorting and going on the offensive. When she feels attacked, when he’s trying to get away with something, if she feels he’s insulting her, or if he’s hurt someone she loves, she bites back at him. -On the platform, she tells Petunia that she had read her letter when, really, she could have gotten away with it. She reminds Petunia that the magical world can’t be so bad if she wants to be part of it. Again, lashing out. -The sass she hands out to James in SWM. We all have that speech memorized so I’ll save it She rounds on Snape, calls him Snivelley, and tells him to wash his pants. -Slughorn tells us about the cheeky comments she used to give when he’d tell her she should have been sorted into his house

But she has a great sense of humor/overall mischievous nature While we don’t get much in the way of Lily’s snark cast in a positive light, we do get glimpses, and those glimpses are very telling. -The first is the Slughorn thing. He says that she gave out cheeky comments. I can only imagine what those retorts would have been to have left such an impression on him, all those years later, and make him recall her with fondness as one of his favorite students. The playfulness is great. -So if she’s like this with a professor, how would she be with her friends? A million times more, right? Because the girl can sass like no one’s business, and that + playful sense of humor = awesome -This is definitely evidenced in her letter to Padfoot (see below) Her letter to Padfoot. I’m just going to break down this letter, because it’s that important. Really, it’s the only time we hear Lily’s voice outside the context of someone else’s memory or as a dead mother coming to comfort or help her son (think about that and cry, ok?). -She thinks the gift-the broomstick, not the safest thing, Sirius’s gift, is brilliant. She thinks it’s great. -She finds it hilarious that the cat gets nearly gets killed. She thinks it’s brilliant, and the only reason she’s telling him is because she knows he’ll get a kick out of it, too. -The vase from petunia. Absolutely my head canon that on this, more than anything: Lily and Sirius saw eye to eye, they both had messed up sibling relationships and in some way became that for one another-a healthy sibling relationship. So, Christmas, and Lily opens up her present from Petunia. And it is some god awful vase for Christmas. Who knows how many jokes were made. Then she’s like, whoops, y’know that terrible vase Sirius? Harry broke it. It’s not like I’m a witch and could fix it or anything. It belongs in the bin, now. -She says Bathilda is losing her mind. Love it.

She’s not afraid to take risks, if she thinks it will be worth it or if she thinks it’s important. -She attempts to wield and control this unknown power that lets her fly off swings and play flowers. -She befriends this weird little boy, who dresses funny and says strange things. -She leaves her family at the age of 11 to go, quite literally, into a new world. -She goes on a date with James Potter at age 17 [see below]. -She joins the Order of the Phoenix at age 18. -She marries at age 19, while they’re both fighting in a war -She brings Harry into the world -She fights Voldemort not once, not twice, but three times and still would have been fighting if she hadn’t been forced into hiding. Grit and determination, that woman. Ugh. She chooses to date James and befriend the marauders. -to date James. She has a choice, you know. She could just avoid him completely and go their separate ways after school. She wouldn’t surround herself by people she couldn’t stand. That’s just logical. If she really hates him, she would tolerate him for head duties and nothing more. So, either she does a complete 180, or she never really hates him to begin with which, according to Sirius, is closer to the truth. Her objections to James are his arrogance and his habit of hexing others, not his pranking and rule breaking behavior. (We’ve already established that she breaks the rules herself, when it suits her.) She and James are equals, well suited to each other, and that, in part, means similar temperaments. She isn’t a stick in the mud who couldn’t tolerate pranks/having a good time/having fun. So when he tones down the arrogance, (but not the orneriness. If you look at the prequel, even at age 20 James is still an ornery little shit. That didn’t change), she gives him a chance. -her choice to befriend the marauders. Same thing. She wouldn’t surround herself with people she couldn’t stand. If their personalities were really that different, they just be James’s friends, not hers as well. If she really hates Sirius, if she couldn’t stand his antics, if she doesn’t find them, she wouldn’t write him letters and trust him with Harry (it’s one thing to name someone godfather in peacetime, another thing altogether when you have a price on your heads and you’re fighting in a war). If she doesn’t adore Peter, she wouldn’t trust him with the Fidelius Charm.

She was snarky and sassy and witty and clever and showed a complete disregard for the rules when it suited her. She befriended other mischievous little shits because she liked to be around them, because she loved them. I am done.

(Ida, I hope I have done you proud. Have I made my case? I accept worship in the form of diet coke and praise.)

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cazabaranca · 6 months

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Would you write a short story about your College HC, when lily moves in with the boys but Sirius made them sign in the beginning of it all (as a joke obviously) house rules and one of them says not to start anything with a flat mate so James is just really sitting between the chairs if really wanting to kiss lily one evening and thinking Sirius would be mad if he did? I think it would be cute? If not that's alright. Much love to you!

Rule #27

‘The Group with the Pies’.

The move in together, fresh out of school, in their dingy, two-bedroom apartment. A pigeon flies over their heads as soon as they open the door, and Sirius gives the landlady an incredulous look.

Ms. McGonagall, a tall, stern, tight-lipped lady, says that their rent needs to be paid up by the end of the month, hands James the keys, and slams the door behind her.

Sirius’s mouth is still agape.

‘They can’t really expect us to live here, can they?’

James looks at the floorboards and the stripped walls, the mould on the tiles in the bathroom and the threadbare couch in the centre of the room.

He loves it.

Sirius christens that flat one night, bone-drunk and swaying on his feet, taking out a knife and carving the names Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs into the doorframe of the living room.

‘Um, excuse me, why the fuck am I last?’

Sirius shrugs, like he doesn’t give a flying fuck, because he doesn’t, then offers up the reason, ’Because it’s in ascending order of who wants to bone the landlady the most.’

James scowls. ‘Fuck you.’

None of them are particularly good at being adults, as it turns out.

They can’t get a consistent shopping list going, their beds are makeshift mattresses on the floor, and the only food in the cupboards is an out-of-date tin of canned tomatoes and half a muesli bar, along with a handful of mouse droppings.

They transform the study and intended dining room into two extra bedrooms, scraping together furniture from flea markets and buying keep upholstery from Ikea, along with side tables and cushions that Remus pilfers from antique shops.

The lot of them are so bad at doing the dishes that they end up eating cereal out of a goldfish bowl. They haven’t owned a goldfish for the past fortnight. Remus managed to flush it down the toilet when he was changing the water.

Sirius counts this as a betrayal.

‘You murdered Goldie.’

‘I didn’t murder anyone. And since when is ‘Goldie’ an original name? Like, it’s a fucking goldfish.’

Sirius curls his lip and stalks off, but the next day he carves ‘R.I.P Goldie’ in the space above the TV.

‘Now you’ll have to look at it every time you watch re-runs of Friends and think about what you’ve done.’

The carving turns into a treasure-trove of drunken messages to one another, a tally on who’s winning in the James vs. Remus Historical Pun Debate, and a sketch of the apartment’s layout because McGonagall told them to plan their fire exits.

It turns into a wall of indents, misgivings, a map of their life so far.

And one night, Sirius and James get into a fight about God-knows-what, probably on the night of the Arsenal vs. Chelsea match, and they end up carving a list of guidelines into the wall, along with Arsenal sucks dick and Chelsea supporters are twats.

The rules are simple.

Rule #1:

Cooking is for chumps.

They keep the number of the local pizza place on speed-dial, have a table booked at the Indian restaurant on the corner every second Thursday and get Remus to bring home baguettes from the bakery next to the florist where he works.

None of them can cook.

James is too lazy, Remus is too busy, and Sirius just can’t cook.

Peter, however, can bake.

He stresses so much in the lead up to the deadline for college applications that he comes home one afternoon with a shopping bag, and Sirius practically snatches it out of his hands.

He and James gather around the bag and pilfer through the contents.

‘Pete, what is all this stuff?’

‘Yeah, what the fuck is crem - crem-eh - cr-ai-m - ’

‘Potter, everyone knows what crème fraîche is, we’re not barbarians.’

‘Maybe you know what cream fuckery is, Padfoot, but not all of us were raised by French aristocrats - ’

‘Prongs, I will bludgeon you to death with this rolling pin.’

Remus lumbers in, takes one look at the pot of cream, packets of flour and and sugar, and the rolling pin raised in Sirius’s hand and asks Pete what he’s making.

‘You’ll see,’ he mumbles ferrying about and banging cupboards and measuring flour.

They get the answer about 40 minutes later, when Pete lifts a glorious, latticed pie out of the oven.

‘Holy shit, we have an oven? I thought that was just where we hid James’s lucky cricket ball on game day.’

‘Padfoot, you fucking prick.’

Rule #4:

Everyone’s clothes are fair game.

Their laundry doesn’t get done.

Ever.

The only thing that’s clean are James’s cricket-whites, which he painstakingly soaks in the kitchen sink after every match.

Sirius makes a point of forgetting that they’re there, chucking all of his coffee grains and Remus’s undrunk tea into the soapy liquid.

Around the flat are piles of clothes, Sirius white, crumpled t-shirts and Remus’s fraying, cotton jumpers and Pete’s grass-stained jeans.

It becomes a free-for-all, everyone taking whatever remotely clean clothes they can grab, even if it means that Pete loses his arms in the sleeves of Remus’s shirts and Pete’s tops are so tight on Sirius that he slashes at them with scissors until they become crop tops, showing off a generous length of his navel.

‘Padfoot, what the hell did you do to my t-shirt?’

‘You snooze, you loose, Wormy.’

‘But that’s my ACDC shirt! It’s my favourite one!’

Sirius gives him a grin, all teeth and malicious snark and a complete lack of care. ‘Exactly.’

Rule #16:

Don’t forget to pay the rent.

Forgetting to pay the rent means a forfeit on your life.

Because if you forget to pay the rent, McGonagall turns off the apartment’s electricity and hot water.

When Sirius forgets to pay, James doesn’t have hot water when he gets home from cricket practice, so he washes in segments over the bathroom sink, using Sirius’s towel to dry himself off, which he leaves in a heap on the mattress, leaving a wet-patch that smells like mildew.

When James forgets to pay, Remus doesn’t have light to polish his college applications at midnight, so he works by candlelight, and before he leaves for work at five in the morning, he hovers a flame a little too close to the smoke detector, setting off the fire alarm and leaving James to deal with McGonagall.

When Remus forgets to pay, Peter can’t use the oven to bake, so he uses butter to grease the handle of Remus’s door and sprinkles cinnamon sugar in his bed.

When Peter forgets to pay, Sirius has no power to watch Game of Thrones, so he binge-watches it in the school library and makes sure to leave sticky notes with spoilers written on them all throughout Peter’s room.

Rule #27:

No girls.

Sirius makes this rule two months into the move.

A week before it happens, Sirius brings a nice-smelling, dark-haired girl he met in the pizza place back to the flat.

The boys line up in the living room and don’t say anything as Sirius introduces her as Nancy, but they wave awkwardly, all of them wearing identical frowns.

There’s nothing wrong with Nancy, per se, she’s perfectly polished and well-mannered.

It’s just that it feels wrong.

She’s in their apartment.

In their space.

And she and Sirius are so loud that James can’t sleep the night before his cricket final.

He gets home the next day after the match and doesn’t say anything, just dumps his cricket bag on the couch, bypasses Remus, declines Peter’s pie offer and stands at underneath the doorframe of the living room until Sirius lumbers in and sees that James looks fucking mutinous.

Then he opens his mouth and says, ‘You go first, then.’

Sirius’s eyes widen.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Remus tries to blend into the couch and Peter ends up going to the toilet.

James can’t help but bring up how violated he feels because it’s their space and she’s not even good for him and I almost fucking lost the match and she ate my chocolate bar, Sirius and Sirius can’t help but mention that James is just jealous because the only action you’re getting is with McGonagall and I know you didn’t loose the match, James, you could win it with your eyes closed and why the fuck is it such a problem, anyway?

And James can’t explain it but somehow it makes sense when Peter comes back into the room and says all their money is missing.

Like, it’s fucking gone.

James says quietly, ‘Have we been robbed?’ and Peter just nods.

And James looks at Sirius and Sirius looks at Pete and Pete looks at the floor and for the first time in his life Sirius doesn’t look as though he isn’t affected by this and what the fuck are they going to tell McGonagall?

They send James ‘round with one of Peter’s freshly baked pies and his best lopsided grin and the truth, and McGongall’s eyes widen and she gives them until next month to pay off the rent and helps to fund a safe and new locks for their bedroom doors.

And when James comes back with an apologetic smile on his face it’s to see Sirius carving Rule #27 into the living room doorframe.

And then it all goes to shit.

All of them have got their college applications back except for Pete, and he’s freaking out.

Like, baking-at-5-in-the-morning, there-are-so-many-pies-in-the-apartment-none-of-us-can-eat-them-all freaking out.

And the place is cloying with cinnamon sugar and piles of flour and Pete takes his basket of baked goods to Mrs. Norris next door and offers her apple tart and sponge cake.

Then he breaches the idea of going to the apartment across the hall because with college admissions several people have been moving in around the area and all the boys think they’ve been hearing movement in the adjacent flat anyway -

The basket of food is leaden in his arms and he thinks fuck it and straightens up and marches across the hall and knocks on the door.

And a girl opens the door.

She’s pretty and red-haired and smells like flowers.

And he can see in the background that there are cardboard boxes strewn across the floor but that doesn’t retract from the fact that her apartment is bright and warm and sunny.

She gladly accepts the pies and he watches her devour a bite and demands that he teach her how to make them.

He gets back across the hall and calmly explains that there’s a girl living across the hall.

‘A girl?’ Sirius demands, lurching into an upright position. ‘Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Mrs. Norris?’

‘No, definitely a girl,’ Pete says, ‘about our age.’

James looks dumbfounded and immediately offers to deliver all the pies from here on in.

Pete grins.

They all meet officially when Remus drags her back from their English Literature class because it turns out that she got into Cambridge, too.

She introduces herself as Lily and compliments Peter’s baking and refers to them all as ‘the group with the pies’, insults Arsenal and backs Chelsea and offers to review Sirius’s films for his cinematography class.

She makes casseroles and soups in bulk to repay all the boys for all the pies and complains that her stovetop is shit and Peter ends up inviting her over to cook in their kitchen instead.

Then she’s round nearly every night and day, laughing with Sirius or helping Remus with his history notes or baking with Peter.

And it’s when she’s sitting on the couch with them, without socks on and watching Seinfeld re-runs when her bare foot brushes against James’s leg and he has to bite the inside of his cheek that he knows that’s fucked.

He’s very, very fucked.

Rule #27 seems to burn a hole in the back of his head when he looks at her and has to stop himself from smiling.

She eats all their biscuits and talks about design concepts with Peter and role-plays marketing scenarios with James.

‘Potter, why are you laughing?’

‘Lily, take off the moustache, you’ve been wearing it for 20 minutes.’

‘This is serious business,’ she says, tugging it from her upper lip, ‘and besides, it’s ten times better than your moustache.’

He can’t stop looking at her lips.

She fills the place with warmth.

It was fine, before, if a little lacklustre, but she makes it feel like home.

And he can’t help but feel a little distracted by the fact that she reminds him of all the wonderful things, the cinnamon sugar dusting Peter’s pies, Remus’s art textbooks scattering the room, the rolls of film that Sirius leaves lying around, James’s makeshift cereal box designs, the rose placed gently in a jam jar on the window sill, Lily’s sketches of them all that she carved in the wall with the back of Sirius’s house key.

The sketch is dangerously close to Rule #27.

No girls.

One night, she’s not at dinner, and he finds her, in the blue light of her apartment, sprawled in a heap on the floor, clutching a letter to her chest, which is heaving with sobs that make his heart break.

He kneels down next to her and wraps his arms around her and says, ‘You can tell me, if you want.’

And she looks at him like she’s only just noticed that he’s there.

Then wraps her arms around him, sobbing into his chest, and he strokes her hair and decides that the sound of her crying is the saddest thing he has ever heard.

And she explains that the money from home to help pay for the flat hasn’t come, a even with her half-scholarship and her job at a cafe in town, she can’t pay the rent.

And it slips out through his lips without him even thinking about it, but as soon as he says, he’s struck by how right it feels, how normal and finite.

He asks if she wants to move in with them.

‘Really?’ she asks, wide-eyed. His arms are still around her.

‘Of course,’ he tells her. ‘I mean, everyone loves you, and you stole my copy of the Friends DVD, and you practically live with us anyway.’

And she laughs, and it’s high and musical and full of warmth.

She moves in the next day.

And nothing much changes.

Except everything changes.

He thinks about it when they’re lying on the roof of the apartment, staring at a star-spangled sky.

He thinks about the look on Sirius’s face when he wrote the rule on the doorframe.

He thinks about the promise he made.

He thinks about wanting, always wanting, to put his family first.

But then he looks at her and the way she laughs and the freckles on her knees and the starts reflected in the green of her eyes and wonders if he’s a part of their family, now, too.

He’s burdened by the idea that he can’t have this, haunted by the fact that he desperately wants it.

Haunted by the look of her, draped across the kitchen counter, Sirius’s t-shirt falling loosely on her shoulders, eating cereal.

The way she leans over the sink in his tiny bathroom, pouting in the cracked mirror and applying red lipstick across those pink, perfectly-shaped lips of hers.

The feel of her skin brushing against his as they sit together at one in the morning, running over flashcards and plagued with fatigue.

He wants it.

He wants her.

It gets to the last day of exams and Sirius is roaring out of his cinematography assessment and Lily is looping her arm through his and they’re all trawling down to the pub.

Her looks at her across the lacquered bartop, and the weak light from the cheap chandeliers is setting her hair alight, and she’s smiling with Remus and her arm is around Sirius’s shoulders and he let’s himself think, then, that he might be a little bit in love with her.

Just a little bit.

And after they stumble back to the flat Sirius passes out on the couch and Remus and Peter fall asleep in the hallway.

He sits with her at the crappy Ikea kitchen table, giggling and hiccuping over a bottle of wine.

And they’re talking about the end of the year and their exams and she says ‘I like I might like you, James’.

Then she drops her head onto the table and falls asleep.

He loops his arms around her, one around her waist, one skimming the soft skin of her thighs as he carries her to bed.

He laughs weakly into her hair and whispers, ‘I think I like you, too, Evans.’

A week later, they’re sprawled in their apartment after their last jaunt at Uni, laughing and roaring and happier than they’ve ever been.

And James doesn’t have work to distract himself with anymore, not when Lily’s legs are in his lap and her eyes are bright and she’s insulting his soccer team.

She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and Sirius demands he gets the Friends DVD from where he left it in his bedroom.

And he passes her on her way out.

And the hallway is too small and she’s laughing nervously and her cheeks are red and his breathing is unsteady and fuck, the hallway is too fucking small -

And neither of them slam anything before she fists her hands in the cotton of his t-shirt and he slams her up against the wall.

Her lips are everywhere, sweet and tasting like cinnamon and honey, on his jawline and his neck and his own lips, fuck, and his hands grip her waistline, hauling her hips against his as he bites her lower lip and a moan rips from the back of her throat and he whispers her name against her, over and over and over.

And her eyes are bright and they’re both laughing, consumed with the unbent and repent wanting that consumed them for the past month -

And then James remembers Rule #27.

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck -

‘James?’

She’s looking at him with a small amount of uncertainty, her hand grasping his, and he stumbles a bit -

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, grinning and raising and eyebrow.

He doesn’t say anything, and with a set resolve and squared shoulders, he walks out into the living room, holding her hand -

And as soon as they emerge Sirius and Remus and Pete all start clapping -

Sirius says something about unresolved sexual tension and James splutters a bit and mentions Rule #27.

And Sirius and Lily both look at him at the same time and say in unison, ‘James, what the fuck are you talking about?’

And he points overhead where it’s etched into the wall.

And Remus grabs Lily’s hand and leads her over to the couch and calmly explains that her boyfriend is a fucking idiot.

And then Sirius starts laughing.

He’s laughing and laughing and hunched over and James grits out, ‘Padfoot, what the fuck is so funny?’

‘You think - oh God - you actually took that seriously?’

He’s dumbstruck, and Sirius has to wipe the tears from his eyes before he comes over and grasps James’s shoulders so tightly it hurts.

‘Prongs, the fact that you actually took that seriously even though you and Evans have been eye-fucking for the past month - ’

‘Hey!’

‘Hush, Red,’ says Sirius, raising a hand. He takes a breath, then continues. ‘James, you’re practically married to her. And as far as I’m concerned, that rule has been out of date for the past decade.’

There’s a silence.

Then -

‘Well,’ says Lily, jumping up from the couch, house key in hand, ‘in that case, I think we ought to change it, then, don’t you?’

‘Evans, I like the way you think.’ Sirius replies, grinning.

He hauls her up so she’s aloft on his shoulders, and she laughs as she reaches up and scratches against Rule #27.

And James smiles.

Because there, written against the doorframe, are the words:

No girls - unless they go for Chelsea.

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