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accidentally (in love)

james potter x lily evans ⊹ enemies to lovers where only one of them thinks they’re enemies ⊹ 3k

The first time Lily Evans encountered James Potter, she was certain she despised him. It was a conviction held with all the righteous fury of a girl who had never been wrong in her life, and she saw no reason to start now. He was, in her estimation, insufferably arrogant. The sort of boy who lounged against doorframes with the lazy confidence of someone who had never once been denied anything. His grin was too easy, his hair too untidy, and his eyes - well, it was most improper how often they lingered on her.

Lily, naturally, resolved to hate him forever.

James, for his part, had no such resolution. From the moment he first seen Lily - storming into the Hogwarts Express like an avenging angel who had been grievously inconvenienced by the mere existence of boys - he had been entirely, irrevocably, and (he would admit, if cornered by Sirius) pathetically obsessed.

She was magnificent in her fury, all flashing green eyes and sharp words, and he had thought, quite helplessly: Ah. There you are.

It wasn't merely James's habitual rule-breaking (though Merlin knew that was irritating enough), nor was it solely his preening after Quidditch victories, strutting about the castle like some golden-plumed pheasant. No, what truly galled Lily was the way he seemed to take up all the air in any room he entered, his very presence demanding attention like some obnoxious overgrown Kneazle begging for treats.

Not even a few days into their seventh year and James had sauntered up to Lily in the courtyard, hair artfully windswept (no doubt charmed so), and declared, "Evans! You're looking particularly murderous today. Anything I can do to help?"

She'd been engrossed in A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration, the scent of parchment and ink mingling with the faint woodsmoke from Hagrid's hut. Lily carefully marked her page before fixing him with her most withering glare.

"You could start by vanishing."

He laughed - laughed! - as if her disdain were the highest acclamation. “Ah, but then who would keep you entertained?”

“I assure you, Potter, my life is infinitely more peaceful in your absence.”

“Liar,” he said cheerfully, and strolled away, whistling.

Lily had spent the next hour mentally composing increasingly elaborate hexes.

"Potter," Lily said icily when they found themselves paired in Potions a few weeks later. She didn't look up from her work, her fingers moving with surgical precision as she diced sopophorous beans into perfect, translucent slivers. "Your presence here defies all known laws of nature. I'd say it was a miracle, but we both know you've never been on speaking terms with anything divine."

James, who had strategically knocked over his vial of salamander blood moments earlier to secure the seat beside her, adjusted his glasses with a lazy flick of his finger. "Evans," he mused, plucking a stray beetle eye from her workstation, "if I let things like logic or divine intervention dictate my actions, I’d have given up on you by now. And then who’d keep you from getting bored?"

Her knife stilled mid-cut. "Boredom," she retorted, "is a luxury I associate with silence. A concept you’ve clearly never encountered."

James grinned, all teeth and trouble, and reached across her to snag a pinch of powdered moonstone. "Silence is overrated," he said, sprinkling the powder into his cauldron with a flourish. "And you’d miss me."

Lily’s grip tightened on her knife. "Like a headache misses a concussion."

"Still thinking about me, then."

She dropped a single, precisely measured droplet of hellebore into her cauldron, and the potion hissed, sending up a curl of smoke that twisted between them like a challenge. "Only as a cautionary tale."

James laughed, low and warm, and the sound did something treacherous to her pulse. "Funny," he said, stirring his own potion with deliberate laziness, "I’ve always thought of myself as more of a romance."

The look she levelled at him could have melted lead. "Delusion is a common symptom of repeated head trauma. Perhaps Madam Pomfrey has a potion for that."

"Already tried it," he said, tapping his temple. "Turns out, I’m incurable."

With the grace of a seasoned assassin, Lily tipped an extra measure of powdered asphodel into his cauldron. The reaction was immediate: a puff of acrid green rose between them, curling around James’s face like a vengeful spectre.

He coughed, waving a hand through the haze, but his grin never faltered. "Point proven," he rasped. "You’d never put this much effort into ruining someone you didn’t care about."

Lily arched a brow, returning to her potion with a serenity that was utterly unconvincing. "Don’t flatter yourself, Potter. Some experiments are simply worth documenting."

"Mm. And here I thought I was your favourite subject."

"You’re certainly my most persistent."

"Good." His voice dropped, just for her. "Because I’m not going anywhere."

The trouble with James was that he refused to behave as a proper enemy ought. He didn’t gloat when he did better than her in Charms. He didn’t sulk when she delivered a particularly scathing set-down. Instead, he was unfettered, and worse, he gave as good as he got, matching her barb for barb with a wit so effortless it bordered on insulting.

It was intolerable.

But -

There were moments, fleeting and treacherous, when she caught him looking at her with an expression that wasn’t mocking at all. When his usual lazy smirk gave way to something quieter, something almost yearning, and it made her breath catch in a way that had nothing to do with outrage.

(She ignored these moments.)

James, on the other hand, rather thought their exchanges were going smashingly.

He sprawled across the Gryffindor common room sofa like a contented cat, one arm dangling over the side as he absently tossed a Snitch into the air. The firelight played across his features, highlighting the satisfied smirk that had been plastered to his face since dinner.

"She notices me," he announced to no one in particular, catching the Snitch with effortless grace before sending it skyward again.

Sirius, more focused on charming Peter's ink to spell out increasingly rude words on his Potions essay, didn't glance up from his work. "Mate, she threatened to transfigure your bollocks into teacups yesterday."

"Yes," James agreed with dreamy satisfaction, "but she was looking at me when she said it." The Snitch hovered momentarily above his outstretched hand before he snatched it from the air. "And she used that particular tone – the one where her voice goes all sharp and posh, like McGonagall when someone's mucked up a transfiguration."

Remus rolled his eyes. "That's not the compliment you think it is."

"Isn't it?" James rolled onto his side, propping his head up with one hand. "Evans doesn't just waste that particular glare on just anyone. I'm special."

Peter, oblivious to the fact his parchment now read 'The properties of moonstone are remarkably similar to Sirius Black's personality – cold, shiny, and likely to curse you if handled improperly,' nodded sagely. "She does glare at you more than anyone else."

"Exactly!" James sprang up with the energy of a man who had just been handed irrefutable proof of his impending nuptials. "It's basic arithmetic, really. More glares equals more attention equals -"

"Equals you being a complete nutter," Sirius interjected, finally looking up from his vandalism. "But don't let us stop you. Watching you make an idiot of yourself over Evans is the best entertainment we've had since Filch fell into that barrel of Bubotuber pus."

James threw the Snitch at his head. Sirius caught it without looking.

Lily would never admit, not even under Veritaserum, that she sometimes noticed things about James Potter.

The way his laughter echoed in the Great Hall, loud and unselfconscious. The ridiculous way he pushed his glasses up his nose when he was concentrating. The fact that he was, against all reason and justice, good at almost everything when he actually tried, a fact that had forced her to revise her mental classification of him from ‘useless toerag’ to ‘infuriatingly competent toerag.’

This was unacceptable.

She expressed this to Marlene one evening in the library, where they were supposed to be studying but were in fact engaged in the far more pressing matter of dissecting the social dynamics of their year.

“I just don’t understand why he’s everywhere,” Lily muttered, stabbing her quill into her parchment with unnecessary force. “It’s like he’s trying to be irritating.”

Marlene, who had long since learned that Lily’s rants about Potter followed a very specific pattern, smirked. “Or maybe he just likes you.”

Lily scoffed. “He likes the idea of me. The challenge. The second I showed the slightest interest, he’d lose all -”

“Oi, Evans!”

Speak of the devil. The voice cut through the library's quiet like a Bludger through still air. James Potter was currently leaning against their table with that insufferable grin of his, and Lily could feel the disruption he brought with him, like a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure before a storm.

Marlene's lips twitched. Lily shot her a glare that promised retribution.

“Working hard, I see. Care to share your brilliance?” James asked, undeterred. He'd braced one hand on the table, leaning in just enough that Lily caught a whiff of broom polish and something faintly citrusy.

Lily narrowed her eyes. “I’d sooner share a cauldron with the Giant Squid.”

“Dangerous,” he said, nodding solemnly. “But flattering that you think I’m worth the risk.”

Marlene choked on a laugh.

Lily sat curled in her favourite armchair by the fire, Charms book balanced precariously on her knees. The flames cast flickering shadows across the pages, making the intricate diagrams of wand movements dance like living things. She had been staring at the same paragraph for nearly twenty minutes, the words blurring together in an incomprehensible jumble - because James Potter was holding court by the window, and it was impossible to concentrate.

He stood surrounded by a gaggle of third-years, his back to the fire, the golden light haloing his hair into something resembling a lion's mane. His Quidditch robes were slung carelessly over one shoulder, the crimson fabric worn soft from use. With animated gestures, he demonstrated a particularly daring Wronski Feint, his hands slicing through the air as he described the precise angle of descent.

"- and then you pull up at the last possible second," he was saying, his voice rich with enthusiasm, "but the trick is to commit to the dive. If you hesitate, you're done for."

One of the third-years, a wide-eyed girl with braids, gasped. "But what if you don't pull up in time?"

James grinned: that reckless, heart-stopping grin that made Lily's stomach do something deeply inconvenient. "Then you better hope your reflexes are good enough to catch yourself before you become a permanent fixture of the pitch."

The group burst into laughter, and James - infuriating, impossible James - tossed his head back, the column of his throat exposed as he laughed along with them.

Lily realised, with dawning horror, that she was staring.

The faint scar above his right eyebrow, a souvenir from a fourth-year broom collision with a rogue Bludger. The way his hands moved when he talked, expressive and sure, as if conducting some invisible orchestra. The way his roughened fingers flexed absently around an imaginary Snitch, his knuckles still bruised from last weekend's match.

She was memorising him.

This was unacceptable.

"Admiring the view?"

Lily nearly upended her inkwell as Marlene dropped onto the arm of her chair, a knowing smirk playing about her lips.

"I was thinking," Lily corrected, with perhaps more emphasis than necessary. She snapped her book shut, sending a small puff of dust into the air.

"Mm. Thinking very hard, by the look of it." Marlene's eyes danced with mischief. "About defensive spells, no doubt."

"Precisely." Lily lifted her chin. "In fact, I was just considering the best way to permanently silence certain loud-mouthed Gryffindors."

Across the room, as if summoned by her ire, James glanced up. Their eyes met - and the infuriating boy had the gall to wink.

Lily's cheeks flamed. She grabbed her bag with a little too much force, sending quills scattering across the floor.

Marlene's smirk widened. "Need help picking those up?"

"I need help committing murder," Lily muttered, but she was already kneeling, her fingers scrabbling for a runaway eagle feather quill - only for a familiar hand to beat her to it.

James crouched before her, the quill balanced between his fingers. Up close, she could see the flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, the faint smudge of ink along his jawline. He smelled like broomstick polish and parchment and something indefinably warm.

"Lose something, Evans?" he murmured, holding out the quill.

Lily snatched it back, their fingers brushing. A spark of static - or something far more dangerous - jumped between them.

"Only my patience," she retorted, but her voice lacked its usual bite.

James's lips quirked. "I'll have to work harder, then."

And with that, he was gone, leaving Lily kneeling on the common room floor, her pulse racing like she'd just run a lap around the Quidditch pitch.

(She was in so much trouble.)

James Potter was not a fool, no matter what certain redheads might claim.

He knew the exact moment Lily Evans' hatred had begun to shift into something more complicated.

It had been a Tuesday. An utterly ordinary Tuesday - overcast skies, the usual stodgy pudding in the Great Hall, Flitwick's squeaky voice lecturing about the finer points of Cheering Charms. James had been half-asleep in the back of the classroom, his head propped on one hand, idly doodling Quidditch plays in the margins of his notes.

"Mr. Potter, perhaps you'd care to demonstrate?"

James had blinked owlishly at Flitwick's expectant expression. "Er. Demonstrate what, Professor?"

The class had erupted into laughter. Lily, sitting two rows ahead, had turned, just slightly, her profile illuminated by the grey light filtering through the dungeon windows.

"Honestly, Potter," she'd said, and there it was - that pause. A hitch in her breath. A flicker of something unreadable in those green eyes before she delivered the killing blow: "Even a flobberworm could pay attention for five consecutive minutes."

The class laughed harder. James had grinned, playing along, but inside, his mind was racing.

Because Lily Evans never hesitated before insulting him.

He'd replayed that moment in his mind approximately seventy-three times since.

James lay across his four-poster, the frame creaking softly as he shifted. His glasses sat perched between his fingers, lenses catching the flickering lamplight as he twisted them absently - first by one earpiece, then the other. The hinges gave a quiet protest, the well-worn metal bending just shy of too far before he reversed the motion, over and over. The rhythmic click-click of the arms folding and unfolding was the only sound in the otherwise silent room, save for the occasional rustle of Remus turning a page of his book.

"Moony," James said abruptly, "what does it mean when a girl insults you, but she hesitates first?"

Remus didn't look up from Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms. "It means she's reconsidering her life choices."

James threw a pillow at him. It hit the book with a soft thump, sending a puff of dust into the air.

Remus sighed, fixing James with a long-suffering look. "It means," he said patiently, "that she's thinking before she speaks. Which, in Lily's case, is revolutionary."

James sat up so fast he almost fell off his bed. "You think she's -"

"I think," Remus interrupted, "that if you don't stop being insufferable, she'll go right back to hexing you on sight." He adjusted the book on his lap primly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to finish this chapter before Sirius comes back and sets something on fire."

The incident occurred in the library, because of course it did.

Lily had staked out her usual table in the far corner, near the Restricted Section - a spot so secluded that even Madam Pince rarely ventured there. She was trying to make sense of a particularly complex diagram of wand trajectories when the unmistakable sound of James Potter's laughter drifted from somewhere behind the Curses and Countercurses shelf.

Lily told herself firmly that she was not listening. She was certainly not straining to hear the murmured conversation that followed - a low, teasing exchange between James and Sirius, by the sound of it.

"Ow! Bloody -"

A loud crash. A hissed incantation. The distinct, horrifying sound of several hundred ancient tomes toppling like dominoes.

Against her better judgment, Lily rounded the corner to find James sprawled on the floor, half-buried under an avalanche of books, his glasses askew and a thin trail of smoke rising from his sleeve.

"You," she said flatly, "are a menace."

James blinked up at her, his hair even more disastrous than usual. "Evans! Fancy meeting you here."

Lily crossed her arms. "What were you doing?"

"Retrieving a book for Remus," he said, as if this explained everything.

She eyed the smoldering sleeve. "By setting yourself on fire?"

James grinned, unrepentant. "It was a tactical miscalculation."

Behind him, Sirius emerged from the stacks, clutching a crumbling volume titled The Dark Arts: A Practical Guide. His expression was the very picture of innocence which, in Lily's experience, meant he was absolutely guilty of something.

"Evans!" Sirius said brightly. "Just the witch we needed. Potter's gone and botched a simple Retrieval Charm."

James made an indignant noise. "I botched nothing! That book bit me!"

"Why am I not surprised?"

Sirius nudged a fallen tome with his foot. "Because you have the great misfortune of knowing us?"

Lily sighed. Then, against all reason, she held out a hand to James.

He stared at it like she'd offered him the keys to Gringotts.

"Well?" she snapped. "Are you going to lie there all day?"

His fingers closed around hers, warm and slightly calloused from Quidditch. The contact sent an inexplicable jolt up her arm, like catching a Snitch mid-dive.

(She would not think about this later. She wouldn't.)

But as she hauled James to his feet, his shoulder brushing against hers, his laughter warm in her ear, Lily realised with dawning horror that she was in very deep trouble.

And from the way James was looking at her, eyes bright behind smudged glasses, he knew it too.

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