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Kisses.

Heavy breathing, huge boy-hands pushing at her body, a red blush spread across her face. Petunia never knew I saw her first kiss.

He was the kid who worked down the launderette. I'd seen him every Saturday when I was younger. Nine years we'd been going to that launderette. I'd watched him grow from a scabby seven-year-old who sat in the corner playing GameBoy and stuck his tongue out at me to a tall, skinny sixteen-year-old with spiky hair that he'd dyed blond. But I hadn't been to the launderette recently. Petunia had started moaning about how she was too old to be seen out with her kid sister. Only now had I realized the truth.

I sat for almost ten minutes, watching them share saliva before I went in and lay on my bed and thought about the time when I'd want some boy's lips on mine. I wondered if I ever would.

Kisses.

It was obsessive. It was compulsive. I couldn't stop planting kisses all over him. On his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to have him and I just kept kissing him - over and over again.

'Lily!' James' voice had a laugh in it. 'Stop putting your saliva all over my son. He'll end up a total softie.'

I laughed too. Giddy, crazy, lucky laughter. I dropped another kiss on Harry's nose and thrilled in his tiny giggle. I picked him up and cuddled him close. Suddenly, I felt the oddest sensation - like the gentlest tickle you could ever imagine. Harry had kissed me.

Kisses.

Kisses in the dark, shared confusion, exciting fumbling and desperation. Kisses in the light, where the world is turning around you and yet all you can see is a wide expanse of skin and hair and maybe a fallen eyelash. Kisses in public, a proud declaration of love, or of lust. Kisses in secret, when love is so pure that it isn't for anyone else to know about.

It's strange what a kiss can do to you. How sharing spit with a total stranger can make your stomach turn inside out. How dancing your tongue inside someone's mouth can evoke emotions that you'd never even imagined. How perfectly sensible young women will dream lazily about boys with scruffy hair and terrible dress sense if they can do enough things with their tongue and lips and mouth. That amazing sense when you feel that heat in your mouth and you know that the two of you are sharing breath and sharing heartbeats and sharing life.

It's strange what a kiss can do to you.

Kisses.

'Petunia?'

'What?' I hated it when she snapped. Usually I would've shut up right then. But this was important. I had to find out right NOW.

'Where did I come from?'

'Mummy's tummy.' She replied promptly and glibly.

'How did I get there?'

This caused her more problems. Her face twisted round until she finally had the answer. 'Mummy and your daddy kissed and you got there.'

'So if I kiss Mummy she'll have another baby?'

The superior look returned to Petunia's face. 'Of course not, IDIOT. It has to be a boy. She has to kiss a boy. And it's a special kind of kiss.'

'What kind of kiss?'

'That's a secret. Now leave me alone.'

Kisses.

It was summer and autumn all at once. It was evening and the sun was casting long shadows on the patio where I was. The leaves on the trees were beginning to turn and there was definitely a touch of autumn in the summer breeze. I love it when the seasons change and the world says goodbye and hello all at once and you can just watch it happen.

I was sitting on my mother's lap with my head resting on her chest. The radio was playing softly. She smelt of cigarettes and perfume, with a bit of Coca-Cola mixed in. I breathed her in, absorbing her. My eyes drew heavy and I felt her kiss the top of my head.

'Lily! Wake up, my love. You've got to leave for Hogwarts in an hour.'

Kisses.

I missed meaningless kisses. When you're fourteen kissing is no big deal, the most you may be required to do is let him stick his tongue in your mouth. At seventeen it was a lot more complicated. There were rules. If he kissed you sweetly you were required to pay him back, as teenagers tended to euphemistically put it.

I missed being able to kiss someone behind the Greenhouses and that be it. I hated the emotions attached to it, the obligations. I liked kissing, I wanted to do kissing. But kissing was no fun if you know that he was waiting for more, that kissing was simply a forerunner and he was mentally counting his condoms. Sometimes even his flavoured condoms. Kissing was no longer an activity, it was a means to an end. I missed the days when kissing felt romantic and passionate.

I missed the days when a guy kissed you and you felt special, chosen, when you felt attractive. The first time I was kissed it was a self-esteem boost - I was pretty enough that someone wanted to kiss me. But at seventeen it was almost a self-esteem drop - did I look like a slag?

But one day James Potter found me crying in the grounds and kissed me like that was all he wanted. And I fell in love.

Kisses.