Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Taken

by Amelia Bedelia

"Hey, can we have this chair?"

"No!" Lily yelled, jumping up protectively. "I mean – no, I'm sorry. It's taken." She emphasized the last word, smiling to herself. She liked the way it sounded. "Someone's coming in later. And they will be using the chair. To sit in. Here."

The girl raised an eyebrow and just turned away, attempting to find another table to steal a chair from.

"Good," Lily muttered, sitting down calmly, glancing nervously around the Three Broomsticks. She smiled at a fellow classmate across the room and held up the mug of butterbeer to her. The girl smiled unnoticeably and nodded delicately.

Lily shrugged off the cold reaction from her roommate. There really wasn't anything that could ruin her good mood. In fact, she was beginning to feel better about her choice the night before.

"Lily, owl," Jodi said. She walked away from the window and back to her bed, where she continued homework.
"Thanks," Lily said absentmindedly. She continued her Arithmancy, stuck on a particularly challenging problem. Clicking her tongue, Lily scribbled several notes off to the side, frowning. "So if this goes here, and that number is… Ah, right…"

"Owl," her roommate sharply reminded her.

"Going," she muttered, not wanting to create an argument with one of the few people who actually spoke to her willingly.

Carefully, Lily pulled the letter off of the owl's leg. She slipped a fingernail under the flap, but soon did a double take at the owl, taking in its color, just as it flew off.

She recognized the owl immediately, as soon as it was flying. His name was Brinnon. Everyone knew Brinnon. Not because of his eagerness to play with each and every person he met, but because of his distinct colored feather.

Yes, feather. As in one.

During their first year, their charms class had learnt how to change objects into a different color. The Marauders, specifically Sirius, had found this trick highly useful and chose to charm Brinnon, James' owl, white. Unfortunately, the group soon learned they had no way of changing the color back, so several hours per day were spent searching for a reversal spell in the library. After many weeks, the boys took the easiest and most obvious route, asking Professor Flitwick for the charm, and returning Brinnon to his hazel color. During the weeks, the white had slowly grown on James, so he chose to leave a single feather white in remembrance of the event. This particular feather, however, was only visible when the owl's arms were stretched to the maximum; this was often times the only marker he had to tell Brinnon from the other school owls.

Why is James writing to me? Lily thought, confused. He knows he could just yell up the steps for help on our project if he really needed help.

His letters were often rare, if ever, and Lily was one to know this. She constantly watched over James and his actions, but had no idea why she found him so interesting. Lily knew he wasn't like other people she had met. Many believed her merely to be a petite girl with her nose stuck in a book, silent. Others noted her as a bother and a hazard to the hallways, for each time the bell rang, her book opened up and her vision was blocked, causing several accidents.

But James – he didn't think like everyone else. He had been in her class every year, but Arithmancy was where she got to know him better. Sure, he was originally cocky and self-centered, but after the mask disappeared, Lily saw his true colors and found everything he did somehow important and… precise. Nothing he did was ever careless or reckless. Nothing.

James might have been nice, but he never had much of a reason to contact her outside of the classroom or the school environment. He'd said the casual "hello" in the hallways, but half the time Lily never even heard because she was so wrapped up in her thoughts. And he must have done the same thing for anyone else he met in his classes. James was titled Mr. Popularity, earning the title for his outgoing manner and, generally, caring attitude.