#random Jily dump

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

Taking a leaf out of @bcdaily's book, enjoy this random excerpt from a fic I started years ago and will definitely never finish.

When Sirius lead the way back inside the house, which the collective household had spent the better part of a day decorating—a testament to how much they loved Remus, or how much James enjoyed drawing Adipose faces on square balloons—James followed, and split off near the living room, where he found most of the guests, and his mum, who beckoned frantically for him to come over.

"There's a girl waiting for you by the front door," she told him, pointing towards the door that opened into the hallway. "I think she's here to deliver something."

"Probably Beatrice with the cake."

"No, she said her name—wait, no, come here!" cried his mum, as he turned and made to walk away, her hand closing tight around his forearm. For reasons that were utterly beyond him, she began to brush invisible crumbs from his suit jacket—he'd gone full Tennant for the sake of the party, red Converse and all—with such force that he felt as if he was one wrong move away from a violent pummelling.

"What are you—" he began, then cried out in pain as she caught him hard in the chest. "That was a rib, woman!"

"Stop whinging, I'm just trying to help you."

"Help me with what?"

"You'll want to look presentable before you go out there."

"Why?"

"Just trust me, you silly boy," she said, and made as if to grab his tie, but James darted out of the way. "I'm just trying to fix it!"

"Ten always wore his tie tucked in!"

"It's leaning to the left!"

"Yeah, well, so am I."

"A tie should look smart, not—" his mother began, to which James turned and fled at a flat-out run, bursting into the hall with unnecessary speed and startling a girl who, until that point, appeared to have been examining a painting of the Santorini coastline that his parents had mounted on the wall.

Correction. A very beautiful girl examining a painting of the Santorini coastline.

She'd jumped when he came running into the hall, but seemed to recover fast, and bestowed upon him an extraordinarily pretty smile.

"That was some entrance," she said, sounding amused. "Are you training for a marathon?"

He was still wrong. The word 'very' was sufficient for most things, but it fell short in this instance, because this girl, this lovely, pink-cheeked, ivory-skinned miracle, with waves of dark red hair and incomparably stunning eyes, was clearly the most beautiful girl James had ever laid eyes on in his life.

The most beautiful girl in the world was standing in his parents' hallway, for some reason, while he, like an idiot, was fully dressed as the bleeding Doctor and couldn't pretend that he wasn't, because she'd very likely heard him yelling to his mother about the favoured position of Ten's tie, and he had a sonic screwdriver tucked behind his ear.

"Um," he said. Um. That was it. A sound. He'd made a sound. Well done.

Maybe he'd get really lucky, and she'd know nothing about Doctor Who, and he could pretend that the screwdriver was a really fancy pen. Woman liked fancy pens. A fancy pen meant a fancy man.

"Are you dressed as the Doctor?" she said, eyeing his costume curiously.

The fancy pen idea shat a brick and ran for the hills.

"Er, no," he lied, his brain twitching frantically. He wished there was a way to rid himself of the screwdriver in an inconspicuous manner. "This is just how I dress."

"Are you sure?"

"Totally sure."

"Oh," she said, and the tiniest crease appeared between her eyebrows. "It's just, there's a two-foot tall Dalek cake sitting outside in my van right now, and that's telling me a different story."

Were James as pale as her—and it was particularly fortunate at this moment that he wasn't—his face would have been redder than his trainers.

"You're from Lily and Bee," he said, burning with shame. "I mean, from the bakery."

The girl nodded, pointing to her own chest. "I'm Lily, if you hadn't guessed, since you've already met Beatrice—if you're James Potter, that is, which I hope you are. He's the one I'm looking for."

She was looking for him she was looking for him she was looking for him she was—of course she was looking for him, she was delivering the cake he'd bloody commissioned. "I'm him. I'm James."

"Not the Doctor?"

"Well, yeah," he admitted, and glanced down at his outfit. "But only on very special occasions."

She smiled politely, an image he wished he could record and play back when he remembered this conversation, so he could let his mind linger on the one thing he'd done right in all this ugly embarrassment. "I'm sorry if there's been any confusion—it's actually me who made the cake. I was on holiday for the week when you consulted with Beatrice and now she's on holiday and it's a whole thing, but it's all finished and ready, so no harm done."

"Ah, okay." He could do better than this. "Nice romantic week away, was it?"

Not like that.

"I was in the Lake District with my parents," she replied, regarding him with some curiosity. "So no, not particularly. Can't really sneak boys back to a Windermere-adjacent cottage with really thin walls, though I got to hear them going at it, which was horrifying." She pulled a face. "Anyway, I assume you're going to need this cake, yeah?"