For September's @jilychallenge partner @petalsthefish
Prompt: A new teacher for DADA assigns partners for the year and you are partnered with your worst nightmare (your crush’s best mate or your crush him/herself)
Written for the March 2024 @jilychallenge, theme: Fairy tales. Prompts: roe deer (the animal) and Iron John (the fairy tale). Thanks to my lovely partner @chierafied for the beta and the support! I hope you enjoy. :)
Once upon a time, on a great island in the northern seas, there was a lush green forest of ancient trees and rare flowers. It sparkled with dewdrops sitting on colourful petals and sunlight filtering into rainbows through the leaves. Birds whispered their songs with reverence, bugs lent their colours to brown barks and grassy patches, and little creatures scurried about, twigs crunching under their paws. In that forest lived a single roe deer, with auburn fur and green eyes that shone like emeralds. Such was its beauty that it bewitched all who laid eyes upon it, and tales of its glory spread across the island, awakening many men’s ambition. From mountains and valleys they arrived at the forest, each for their own purpose, but all with their eyes set on the beautiful roe deer.
Read the rest on AO3! Completed, 2.1k words.
Not promising anything but we’re curious!! What theme sounds fun!
Lily wants to go to Prince James' ball but has no means of getting there, plus no interest in meeting a pompous git.
Remus has less than zero interest in going to the ball, but it looks like he's going to have to go anyway, despite being a beast.
Prince Sirius has just escaped his step-father's latest assassination attempt. Great. All good.
And Prince James knows he's going to have to turn up to his own ball, and pretend everything is tikety-boo, despite the fact that a curse is due to hit him tonight and send his off to sleep for a hundred years.
All's well then, isn't it??
For the @jilychallenge March 2024 Theme: Fairy Tales
Tales: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin.
Quote: "As you are so clever, you shall sit with me" from Grimm
Fae creature: Unicorn
Partner: @practicecourts (thank you to my partner 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 for organising this lovely March Jilychallenge 2024 fairytale idea!)
A little gift for @mabelexclamationpoint and @theresthesnitch who love Jily and Wolfstar 🥰
Lily Evans didn’t want to go to the ball to marry some spoilt, conceited, pompous git who probably seriously needed to deflate his head. She wanted to go because she had never been to a ball.
She wanted to see all the spectacular ballgowns; the raffish, over-the-top waistcoats and petticoats; the glamorous high heels on the men, and the ornate powdered wigs and strange makeup; she had heard there was at least one break for food as an energy boost between dances – that they served new things called canapés - savoury biscuits filled with meats or cheeses or caviar or salmon. She craved delicious food.
And perhaps a drink of strong, sweet wine (which she wasn’t supposed to have, ever, but she occasionally managed to steal a glug from one of the bottles her step-sister Petunia jealously guarded).
Mostly, she longed to listen to the enthralling music - an entire orchestra! - and to dance, to sweep across the floor, feeling magical and wild, untethered. Her father had taught her to dance, and she had never forgotten.
Lily wants to go to Prince James' ball but has no means of getting there, plus no interest in meeting a pompous git.
Remus has less than zero interest in going to the ball, but it looks like he's going to have to go anyway, despite being a beast.
Prince Sirius has just escaped his step-father's latest assassination attempt. Great. All good.
And Prince James knows he's going to have to turn up to his own ball, and pretend everything is tikety-boo, despite the fact that a curse is due to hit him tonight and send his off to sleep for a hundred years.
All's well then, isn't it??
For the @jilychallenge March 2024 Theme: Fairy Tales
Tales: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin.
Quote: "As you are so clever, you shall sit with me" from Grimm
Fae creature: Unicorn
Partner: @practicecourts (thank you to my partner 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 for organising this lovely March Jilychallenge 2024 fairytale idea!)
A little gift for @mabelexclamationpoint and @theresthesnitch who love Jily and Wolfstar 🥰
Lily Evans didn’t want to go to the ball to marry some spoilt, conceited, pompous git who probably seriously needed to deflate his head. She wanted to go because she had never been to a ball.
She wanted to see all the spectacular ballgowns; the raffish, over-the-top waistcoats and petticoats; the glamorous high heels on the men, and the ornate powdered wigs and strange makeup; she had heard there was at least one break for food as an energy boost between dances – that they served new things called canapés - savoury biscuits filled with meats or cheeses or caviar or salmon. She craved delicious food.
And perhaps a drink of strong, sweet wine (which she wasn’t supposed to have, ever, but she occasionally managed to steal a glug from one of the bottles her step-sister Petunia jealously guarded).
Mostly, she longed to listen to the enthralling music - an entire orchestra! - and to dance, to sweep across the floor, feeling magical and wild, untethered. Her father had taught her to dance, and she had never forgotten.
For the @jilychallenge March 2024 Theme: Fairy Tales
The call of the sea was something that many people felt in their times. The sound of the waves and how it swiftly soothed your thoughts and heart when you were in its presence. That was true for all, land or sea creatures.
The water had a pull that no one could explain but that everyone could feel.
The sea always had a plan, but it wasn’t easy to read or guess until you were already in it for the ride.
Lily could feel the pull upwards, she guessed she always could, maybe because she wasn’t fully a siren, like her peers: she was a mermaid.
Read today’s fic
by @jamesunderwater (itsjamespotter) on ao3!
We wish all who celebrate a happy Christmas Eve 🎄
it's my fic, it's my fic, it's my fic!! ✨️🎅
i really love this one and it's pretty short (under 2k!), so if you have the time i would love for folks to read it and share their thoughts (': <3
Another lovely jily holiday fic today, written by @abihastastybeans (who doesn’t particularly like beans but who thankfully loves to write jily stories we can all enjoy;)
Read The Naughty List on ao3
From the lovely @abihastastybeans another Jily music rec! Everything I Do, I Do It For You (Bryan Adams) Perhaps you could write a James Hood Marauders in the Forest & Maid Lily niece to the King AU to go with it (keeping our fingers crossed;) thank you so much for all your fun challenges this year and some amazing Jily micros! xxxx
A little thing I did! It's for the November Jily Challenge (just in time??!) and I was given a choice of 2 prompts which I don't appear in this chapter, but one will - I promise!
I was partnered with the lovely @annabtg and @eastwindmlk who have given some lovely encouragement!
Title is in Welsh and it means 'I can't escape from this'.
Read here on AO3
@jilychallenge2023 @jilychallenge | September: Back To School | Partner : @ginemrys | Prompt: Hogsmeade/Three Broomsticks, “Here, there’s only one sugar quill left, but we can share.” Read it on AO3 or below the cut.
@jilychallenge2023 @jilychallenge | August: Movie & TV quotes | partner @sapphire1616 | Prompt: “So pick me, choose me, love me.”
Read it on AO3. Rated Teen+ | 1.7k
Snippet:
He briefly stopped scratching his quill over parchment to glance at the fifth floor again. It was almost curfew and Lily would be leaving charms club at any moment. Not that he’d made a habit of learning Lily’s schedule. He hadn’t. They lived together, it was surely expected that he’d eventually learn her habits. He’d not memorised them or anything. That’d be weird. That was not something platonic, friendly co-heads did.
my @jilychallenge creation
theme: movie quotes
partner: @quietlycharmed
prompt: “I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love me.”
Lily Evans just couldn’t believe her luck. And by luck she meant absolute horrific misfortune that made her fairly convinced that a witch or someone had cursed her to be miserable for the rest of her life. It was a shame that she’d only just made it to a quarter of a century existing on the apparent ball of despair that people had named ‘Earth’.
Only she, as unlucky as she was, would end up living with her worst enemy.
Month: April Letters, Notes, and Texting
Prompt: “Haha if we lived together you would get more sleep because I would always make you come to bed with me.” “Haha, if you lived with me, we would get very little sleep, Hahahahaha.” “… haha is that so?” “Mhmm, haha.” “Haha” “Haha”
((I’m sorry this is so so late! And the prompt does get involved - just in a later chapter ;) ))
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
haha, unless…
Lily Evans is not a problem-causer, really, truly - she’s just surrounded by them. How is she supposed to have a normal life when her roommates are completely barmy, her sister hates her (and is planning a wedding), and now some random blokes from Marlene’s class are barging onto her sofa every week to interrupt a hitherto sacred space.
It’s not as if she wants James Potter to be attacked by chavs, become Jesus, buy her coffee, or listen to her ramble about Petunia. Mostly that’s his fault.
Really.
chapter one: make herpes reimburse you
this looks like a great story! Multichap Muggle AU 💕
Read Part 1 here
Read part 2 here
Uncanny Valley, that was what muggles called it. Like being in France except everything felt different, and he couldn’t quite catch what everyone was saying – different phrasing, idioms, completely different accent. Québécois felt so similar and yet so foreign. He loved it. Of course, one couldn’t just apparate to Canada, so coming here had been far too time-consuming for his liking. But once in Montreal, finding her hadn’t taken him long at all. She had always said if she continued living as a muggle, she would never have had the money to go to university, but she would have liked to study nursing. Student nurses got paid, badly. Evans was impressive. What was the best hospital in Montreal, he asked? Jewish General Hospital, he was told. A taxi ride, sweet-talking the right people, and Bob’s your uncle*.
“Afternoon, Evans,” he says, walking up the steps.
She’s fiddling with the key in the lock, auburn waves blowing into her face, shopping bag clutched under her other arm. She nearly drops it when she hears him, whirls round to face him – leaning on the porch, black leather jacket, tight jeans, all cool, calm and collected. Distinctly cool, perhaps cold, it is worth noting.
“Sirius,” she says.
It annoys him that she still remembers not to call him Black.
“I need a word.”
She stares at him, as though weighing up whether she could get rid of him some way. But she knows she can’t, not with his wand pointed at her and the stubborn look on his face. She’s not stupid.
She steps aside and motions for him to enter, emerald eyes guarded and wary. He stands in the kitchen as she busies herself putting the food in the fridge, the cupboards, avoids looking at him or talking to him. Patience was never his forte.
“Evans,” he says.
She looks up, frazzled.
“I just started working on the general medical ward. I’ve been nursing someone in the isolation room with meningitis. If you want to speak to me, you’ll have to wait. I need to have a shower first.”
He can’t figure out if she’s telling the truth or avoiding him for a bit longer. He wants to ask her why she went shopping or put everything away, if she’s so concerned about contamination, but she’s already gone.
“Merlin, fuck,” he says to himself.
He finds a bottle of Irish whiskey, pours himself a generous tumbler, and sits himself down on the couch, takes in his surroundings. He’s surprised to see a photo of her friends – Lily with Dorcas, Marlene, Mary, Alice. He gets up and wanders around the tiny sitting room, picks up another photo from Hogwarts, this time Lily with the marauders. James has his arm around her in this one, has eyes only for her. He pulls her in closer, plants a sweet kiss on her temple. She looks up at him, enthralled.
Funny. Weird as fuck.
To hell with it. He opens the cabinets in the sitting room, pulls out a few old records, her Gryffindor scarf, her old potions books. A blanket he recalls her mother made her. Her graduation scrolls. An old cardboard box. Letters.
Interesting.
@jilychallenge | Partner: @blitheringmcgonagall | April 2023: Letters and Texting.
Prompt: First date - “ Words We Should Never Have Left Unsaid / P.S I Still Wait For You’.
I’m so sorry it’s late but I literally had to force this thing out of my birth canal. xoxo
Also mahoosive thanks to @blitheringmcgonagall who helped me decide the most embarrassing events to happen in chapter 1
Read it on AO3
If you asked James Potter if he loved the theatre, he would answer very diplomatically that ‘yeah, it was alright’, and ‘sometimes the tunes get stuck in your head, you know’, and ‘my mother brought me up on a diet of show tunes, I can’t help that I sing them out loud sometimes, God’.
As a matter of fact, being a naturally curious and inquisitive (and sometimes lonely) child, Euphemia Potter had enrolled her son into a summer of theatre classes in the hope that it would use up his endless energy and perhaps guide her son onto the path of acting so that she would always have some free theatre tickets. As naturally, if her son chose that path, she was sure he would succeed.
This looks fun 🙌🙌
So excited to read this!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥰🥰🥰🥰
Ten days before the wedding and he comes home from training to find Marlene McKinnon sitting on the low wall outside his flat, smoking a cigarette. The door is open and there’s a muggle contraption inside making an infernal noise.
“S’ up?” she says, without moving. She is the epitome of cool – backcombed blonde hair, black leather trousers, black eyeliner, The Cure t-shirt, red Doc Martins.
He raises his brow.
“Do I want to know about…?” he waves his arm vaguely in the direction of his home.
She shrugs, chips at her black nail polish, takes a long drag of the short cigarette.
“I can explain.”
He snorts, sits down beside her on the wall, and waits in companionable silence. A muggle man emerges after a while, wearing navy overalls, pencil behind his ear.
“There you are, love, all sorted,” he says, grinning at the two of them, like he’s just done them a massive favour.
“Thanks Mr. Smith. How much do we owe you?” Marlene says, stubbing out the cigarette on the wall and rummaging in her black satchel.
She pays him and watches him leave, scanning the street, hand on the wand in her pocket, eyes narrowed.
“Still worried in case a Deater follows him?” James says.
“Yup,” she nods. “Force of habit. Can’t seem to stop. Even after three years.”
“Some things don’t change easily.”
He’s talking about something else entirely and Marlene knows it.
She takes a deep breath, turns and faces him head on.
“I got a telephone installed, line’s connected now. Lily wants to ring you. She’ll phone you before the weekend, after seven some time.”
It’s simultaneously the worst and best news he has heard since she left.
“Why?” he finally manages to say.
“Because.” Marlene shrugs again. “She wouldn’t say.”
He runs a hand down his face.
“What the actual fuck.”
She stands closer to him, grabbing both his shoulders.
“Just talk to her, yeah?” she says.
Like it’s perfectly easy.
“Please. She deserves one conversation.”
He can’t seem to answer so he doesn’t. He nods, brusque.
“You’ve gone quieter in your old age,” Marlene smiles back at him, then leans in and gives him a strong hug, suffocating.
He laughs then, smiles back at her, even if it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“I love you both,” she says. “You coming Friday to the local? Dorcas’ll be there. So will the lads. She got a promotion. Assistant Editor.”
“Holy shit! Congrats!” he gives a low whistle.
“Will we see you?”
“Probably,” he says, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the concrete.
It depends on the call. It depends on what Lily says.
***
The phone rings on Friday night, at 7pm exactly. He’s been walking up and down the hall, repeatedly, for the past two hours. He picks up the receiver and finds he cannot speak.
“James? Hi, hello. It’s Lily… are you there?”
He laughs then, short and bitter. As if him not hanging on to every word she says was ever an option.
“James?”
“Lily.”
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
There is an awkward pause.
“Hi,” she repeats. “Thanks for taking my call.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Hello?”
He takes a deep breath, looks up at the ceiling.
“What do you want, Lily?”
He didn’t want to sound like a pathetic looser. A weirdo who still thinks about her most days. He tries for polite, detached. He hears her swallowing.
“I was hoping we could have a brief talk.”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“I, er, when I was, I was surprised to receive the invitation to Remus and Sirius’ wedding. I didn’t feel it was right to go. But they insisted. To the point of visiting me on a number of occasions. And they were my friends, are my friends. I don’t want to upset them. I’m so happy for them…” she pauses, and she sounds like she’s short of breath for some reason.
“Yes, I’m happy for them too. They both deserve to be happy.”
“They do. It’s… it’s just… difficult. I wanted to ask you a favour.”
“A favour?” he slides down the wall, until he’s hunched into the corner, on the floor, telephone cord in his left hand, twisting it repeatedly.
“If I come, I… I don’t want to talk to you. It would be too… difficult. Too hard. I couldn’t… I’ve told them. If I come, I’m not sitting at your table and I’m not talking to you.”
He makes a sound, so she knows he’s listening.
“I can’t do it.”
“I understand,” he says.
He hears her long exhale.
“Thank you, James.” She sounds relieved.
“Would you do it again?”
“Sorry?”
“Would you walk away, without saying a word? Would you do anything differently if you could go back?”
A heartbeat.
“No, I would do it again, every time.”
He’s glad she can’t see his face. His knuckles are white from how hard he grips the phone.
“I won’t talk to you, I won’t even look at you. You needn’t worry.”
“Thank you.”
“Goodbye Lily.”
“I hope you are alright.”
He’s perfectly fine. His heart isn’t breaking down this long-distance line tonight.
“I’m fine. I’m not missing you at all. I’ve moved on. Made new friends. Met new lovers.”
He sounds so plausible he can almost convince himself.
“Good. That’s good, James, I’m so glad to hear that.”
If she’s been feeling any remaining sliver of guilt about how she left him, he’s made it easy for that to evaporate.
“Yeah, so, you needn’t worry, I’ll leave you alone. It won’t be any problem.”
“Okay. Thank you, James.”
If she says James one more time he will scream or sob or punch something.
“Goodbye,” he says, formal, brisk.
“Good –"
He hangs up the phone, before she can say anything more hurtful. He’s struggling to understand how he was ever in love with her. Why he was ever in love with her.
@jilychallenge2023 this is from April, but I kept going… 🩷
