It’s what always happens: he doesn’t mean to always say the wrong thing to her, to make her hate him, to feel intensely bitter towards her prat boyfriend, to punch blokes that speak unkindly to her. It just happens: the part of his brain that is logical and reasoning snaps when it comes to Lily Evans.
It’s about a week later that he finds her in the library, talking to herself as she plods through homework, and his heartstrings don’t just tug, but altogether snap at the sight of her.
They’re bantering twelve seconds later, but not in a friendly way—he’s glad she’s speaking to him at all the way he’s behaved, but she’s just vexed. At some point, a nickname pops into his brain, and it’s as he’s leaving that he uses it.
“Relax, Snaps, it’s not as though…” He finishes with some jab at her, and she rolls her eyes, a sarcastic remark rising to her lips, until she seems to realize that he’s called her something foreign, and she breaks off mid-sentence, with:
“…What did you call me?”
He only grins and adds: “See you around, Snaps,” before he departs.
James can feel her scowling after him.