A/N: A fluffy story featuring many clichés and wise!James. One-shot. JPLE.

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it isn't mine.

oOoOo

Lily Evans stared silently down at James Potter. He was sitting in the chair that she had occupied minutes earlier and had turned it to face her. She stood a few feet away, gazing at him warily. Her Transfiguration book and notes were scattered over the table behind James. She had only left for a moment to borrow notes from Alice, and her worst nightmare had taken her previous place in her library, her former sanctuary.

James's face displayed many emotions. Confusion, nervousness, anger, irritation, sadness, and the smallest hit of happiness. She had known that he would track her down eventually, but had been hoping for more time.

Awkward silence full of unasked questions stretched between them. Lily clasped and unclasped her hands, trying to look anywhere but at him. It was James that finally decided to disturb the quiet.

"You said that you loved me," he said simply. "Yesterday, you said it. Then you ran."

Lily looked down at her shoes, shuffling a toe nervously against the floor. Yesterday. The day of disasters. She had been overworked, overstressed, over-everythinged. She had flown off the handle. She had lost what she had spent so many years cultivating: her self-control. In the middle of the common room, she had screamed out that she loved him.

"It was a mistake," she mumbled quietly. "A stupid mistake."

"You said it," James pointed out, now somewhere between confused and irritated. "In front of everyone. You yelled it out." He met her eyes. "You meant it."

Lily broke their eye contact, staring intensely at the wall. She took a deep breath and scraped her teeth against her bottom lip.

"I can't love you," she said pleadingly, more to herself that him, as if voicing her opinion would make her feelings go away. Her tone was still quiet. "I shouldn't. I'm going to get hurt. I don't want to take the risk."

"But if you don't take the risk, then how do you know that you're not missing out on something that could be great?" James asked, cocking his head. He was strangely amused at her denial.

"If I do take the risk, how do I know that I'm not embarking on a journey to hurt?" Lily challenged, turning to look at a spot above his head.

"You don't," James said seriously. He reached up and took her hands in his. She was too confused, too entranced, to even attempt to pull away. Her eyes slowly followed over to meet his.

"Lily," James began, "you don't know what's going to happen in the future. We could get together, end up getting married, and raise a slew of screaming children. Or we could get together, I could break your heart, and we could break up. Although if we're going with the possibility of pain, I have a feeling that you're more of the type to do the heartbreaking in this relationship."

Lily cracked a small smile as she realized what James said was true. Still, her face returned to its earlier solemn look when James continued to speak gravely.

"Lils…Evans…Lily…" He trailed off. "Anything could happen. Absolutely anything. Tomorrow you could pass the Transfiguration test, or you could get pecked to death by an angry owl before class starts." Lily didn't have time to make a remark about James's invented death situation before he went on. "No one has any idea what's going to happen. But that's half the fun of life, isn't it?"

"Fun?" Lily snorted. "Only you could think that knowing absolutely nothing about your future could be fun."

"It is fun," James argued. "Can you imagine having an exact life plan set out? It would be unbelievably boring. But you don't have a life plan. That's what makes everything fantastic."

"I was right. You are mad," Lily mumbled.

"I am," James agreed. "Extremely mad. But being mad is fun too." He met her eyes, and she glanced away slightly. But as his voice continued, low and soothing, she felt herself being drawn back to those haunting hazel eyes.

"Half the fun in life is taking risks, and not knowing the outcome. If you did, it wouldn't be a risk. Saying, 'I'm going to jump off this bridge, because my life plan says I won't die,' kills the fun of jumping off a bridge. There'll be no exhilaration, no excitement, no fear. You need all of that.

"Look, Lily, that's what life is about. Knowing that you could drown, but taking the plunge. Knowing that you could mess up, but taking the chance. Knowing that it could lead to a huge mistake, but taking the risk. Knowing that you could get hurt, but leaning in for the kiss.

"That's what it's all about. Screwing up, making mistakes, and acting like berks. You only have one lifetime. You could spend it studying for that next assignment, that next exam, or you could go outside and throw snowballs at your friends. Because as that owl pecks your eyes out, at least you'll be able to think: 'At least I finally got to clobber Snivellus with that snowball.' You'll think: 'I finally got to stuff snow down Potter's back.' You'll think: 'I had fun.' You're going to die eventually, and you have no idea when. Tomorrow or in years. By angry owl or warm in your bed at one-hundred. It doesn't matter. You should have fun while you can, and take life for all it's worth. When you die, it's all over. You need to accept the mistakes and flaws now and have fun with them, or else you'll regret it."

"I need to accept people and their flaws," Lily tried, a slight questioning tone in her voice. She was still amazed by the amount of intelligence and wisdom that James had put into his speech.

"Yeah," James agreed softly. "That'd be good. I accept you and all of your problems."

"I thought that I was prettier than Aphrodite, smarter than Athena, purer than Artemis, and queenlier than Hera herself," Lily said with a wry smile.

"You also hate to be wrong, intimidate people, have some early stages of obsessive-compulsive disorder, are an insufferable know-it-all, and your front teeth slightly overlap your bottom teeth," James said. "And I still love you. I love all those things about you, even though you are undeniably flawed."

Lily looked at him for a moment, unsure of how to respond. His hands felt warm and protective as they encased hers. She breathed out slowly.

"You're a berk," she said quietly. "You show off too much. You prank innocent people on a whim. You can't accept that no means no. And you have the messiest, worst behaved hair that I've ever seen in my life." She met his eyes, nervously inhaling deeply. "Yet, for some strange, inexplicable reason, I'm madly in love with you."

"And for that same strange, inexplicable reason, I'm madly in love with you too."

"So," Lily said, shifting from foot to foot. "We've established that we're both strange and mad?"

"I guess that's what love does to you."

"Yeah. I guess so."

James stood up and pulled her closer to him. Without letting go of her hands, he leaned down to plant a soft kiss on her lips. When they broke away, his face still hovered a few centimeters above hers.

"Will you live life to the fullest with me?" he asked.

"Today I will," Lily answered. "We'll take it one day at a time. And if that owl doesn't kill me tomorrow, that may amount to a lot of days."

Grinning, James squeezed her hand. "I promise I'll protect you from the owl."

She smiled back, rising up on tiptoe to kiss him once again. The tip of his nose rested on her forehead as she spoke.

"Now I'm going to leave the library and stop studying," Lily said, "and go out into the snow. If that owl still gets to me, I want to be able to remember that I snogged you in the middle of an interhouse snowball fight and had a wonderful time doing so."

"That sounds like a good plan to me," James said.

"Then we're going to do something spontaneous," Lily continued, smiling. "Something outrageous and incredibly stupid, but, of course, the James Potter thing to do."

James laughed when he saw Lily begin to giggle. He slowly pulled away from her and let go of her right hand, still holding onto her right.

"It's not spontaneous if you plan it now," he told her.

"It'll be spontaneous when we do it," Lily said confidently.

"We'll live today to the fullest, together," James said with a serious nod.

"We will," Lily agreed. "Together."

And hand and hand they leapt out into the snow, ready to make the most of today.