I LOVE YOU, BUT YOU'RE NOT MINE
Every Halloween, Camilla Wilson turns another year older. Another year of her life waiting for James Potter to love her.
[COMPLETED]
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CAMILLA LIKES THAT IT'S RAINING OUTSIDE. She likes that on her birthday the sky is crying with her. Today she turns twelve and she couldn't hate it more.
Twelve is such a dull age for a girl. She's not a teenager just yet but she wants to be one so badly. Childhood is not all it is cracked up to be, Camilla discovers. There is nothing warm and fuzzy about a father in prison and an alcoholic mother. All it has done for her is give her the need to escape. Whether it be through books or music or writing or thinking about James Potter, she does whatever it takes to enter a world she has control of.
Halloween is a great day for a birthday for a girl like Camilla. She can be anything she wants. Well, almost anything.
Camilla wants to be Lily Evans. She wants her long red locks and her big green eyes. She wants the freckles that dance around her pale skin and the curve of her hips. Most of all, she wants to be the one that James Potter adores.
James has only known Lily for two months. James has known Camilla for eleven years. He has had eleven years to discover any feelings for Camilla and he hasn't. In eleven years, he never found one thing about Camilla to love.
So that is why Camilla is crying on her birthday. She's crying because she can't be Lily Evans.
She'll try though.
Maybe if James knows how she feels then it will all be different. Maybe if she just tells him how much she cares about him then he'll realize that he's felt the same all these years.
This year, she's written a letter. She's far too cowardly to sign her name (maybe she will when she turns a more sensible age like fifteen or sixteen). Camilla is going to sneak it into one of his textbooks during Charms. They sit next to each other and he's fairly aloof so he won't notice.
She's reading the letter over again to make sure it's good enough.
James,
I replay the memory of our first meeting over and over again in my mind to feel a sense of comfort. I think that I love you, but I'm not quite sure the meaning of the word yet. I just want you to know that I think you're amazing.
She doesn't sign it. She just folds it up into a small square and tucks it in the pocket of her sweater.
Camilla checks her watch and feels butterflies in her stomach. It is five minutes until Charms class which means five minutes until she sees James. She gets up and begins walking the familiar path all by herself. She's smiling as she does, but tries not to. Looking foolish is not something she enjoys.
She enters the classroom before a lot of students. Camilla has a tendency to show up earlier than she's meant to because she's afraid of being late. Being late is a very bad thing to be at home and she doesn't want to risk being punished for it at school. Students are trickling in as she feels the letter burn a metaphorical hole in her pocket. James will arrive any second and sit next to her and greet her as he always does.
Sirius enters and Peter follows and then Remus which means that James is right behind them. He enters with so much confidence that the whole room looks at him in such a natural way. James Potter is able to make himself the center of attention without even trying and that's one of the things Camilla loves about him.
He sits next to her without much thought and puts his bag down beside his feet. He looks at her and smiles.
"How does it feel to be twelve, Millie?" He grins. James is the only one who calls her Millie and she still does not understand why. She finds Camilla to be a perfectly suitable name. To her, Millie is a cat's name. Millie is a sweet, almost childish name. Yet she lets James call her Millie all he wants because it makes her feel special. To Camilla, it makes her feel important to James in the sense that he has thought enough about her name to assign it a nickname. It is also just something special that they share and she wishes not to deprive herself of that.
Camilla blushes but rolls her eyes to hide it. "You've already asked me that today. I told you... it doesn't feel any different."
"Yes but maybe you made a brilliant discovery between now and breakfast that you'd like to share."
Camilla only laughs in a polite way and watches as James turns his attention away from her for a brief moment. He is looking around the room with his eyes in a very inconspicuous way, but Camilla notices. She knows that James is trying to spot Lily just so he knows where to keep his gaze for the remainder of the class. Lucky for him, Lily always sits by the front so it will appear as he's just very interested in the lesson. Camilla knows the truth though.
She knows everything about James. She knows that the first thing he does when he enters a room is search for bright red hair. He has never told her this but somehow she still knows. It is not hard to notice when his eyes dance around the room, away from Camilla.
Class begins and Camilla is suddenly uninteresting to James. He is looking at Lily and there is not much Camilla can do about it. The letter is hotter now than it ever was. It is not hot in the way that fire is though. Instead, it is hot like ice. It shouldn't be so painful, but it is.
So she takes care of it. She digs into her pocket and rips it in half underneath the table so nobody sees and she tosses the pieces of it in her bag.
Camilla will have another birthday. She will have another chance to tell James how she feels.
A/N:
i know this is shorter but dw the chapters will get longer as they get older. as @potterblacks puts it, it's to show how her thoughts get more complex as she grows up
anyways i hope y'all like this impulse publish! how are we digging the present tense? it isn't what i'm used to but i wanted to give it a go!
i'll be posting sporadically this month with the last chapter being up by halloween! i wanted to do something spooky for y'all <3
