It was natural for me to judge people from the way they looked, and the way they carried themselves. That's just the way I was brought up. I lived in a society where looks and money are everything and where what others think counts more than their education. I lived in a world where social gatherings were held regularly in our mansion in the city, and where arranged marriages between families of the most prominent Muggles within our society were the norm. So it came as no surprise to me when my mother waltzed into my bedroom one evening and began telling me her plans for my wedding at the end of my seventh and final year at Hogwarts. Richard Constantine Rutherford IV; he was going to be my husband, the one person my mother expected me to spend the rest of my life with. He came from a long line of noted Muggles that laid claim to highly successful business endeavors in America and Japan. He was four years my elder, and highly qualified (according to my mother) to be my husband.
Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with her sudden announcement. I was always at odds with my parents with everything concerning my love life; I had been since I turned fourteen. They wanted to secure my future with a man I had never met, while I wanted the opportunity to fall in love. When I turned sixteen, my mother introduced me to Jonathan Bristrom, the son of a wealthy tycoon in Wales. He was short, ugly, snooty and very much a rich man's son. He was everything my mother wanted in a son in law, and everything I promised I wouldn't settle with. It was difficult growing up in the Evans household because although I had had a few boyfriends of my choosing over the years, none were ever approved of by my parents. I didn't care about the money so much, as long as they could love me and provide me with a comfortable life.
My sister Petunia made my parents proud the summer before my sixth year at Hogwarts when she married Vernon Dursley, the son of Graham and Veronica Dursley, Founders of Grunnings Drill Company. Vernon was not my mother's first choice for Petunia, but my sister was a special case. Mum was lucky she got rid of her at all. Everybody knew their marriage had been more out of necessity and convenience, but I didn't want to end up that way. I wanted to be able to choose who I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and I wanted to do it under my own free will. Unfortunately, I had been warned that if I didn't follow our family's tradition, they would disown me without delay.
Frankly, I was tired of it all. I wasn't foolish enough to want to give up the prosperous lifestyle I was living by coming at odds with my parents about it, yet I couldn't help but wonder what life would be like outside of the confines of high society where everything down to what knickers I was going to wear that day were arranged for me. I prided myself in the belief that I was better than the rest of my family because I could look past what people were wearing and what they were driving, but I didn't fool anybody else.
I looked forward to going back to Hogwarts because it gave me an opportunity to live with others that were far removed from what I was used to. I reveled in it, but it was distressing knowing that most of the students at Hogwarts thought me too arrogant to even treat me like a human being sometimes. It wasn't that I acted stuck up on purpose, because I thought I was above that. I only ever did it as I did everything else: because I was brought up a certain way. It happened most often when we returned from the summer holidays. All the girls in my dormitory got together before going to bed and told stories of summer holidays where they went to the beach or simply stayed in London for a few days. When it was my turn, I usually told them about trips to exotic islands I had visited with my parents, or the shopping sprees in Paris I was so fond of. They always looked at me like I was flaunting my life in front of them when in truth, I only ever wanted to fit in. Like I said, I never did it on purpose. Most of the time I didn't even know I was doing it at all, but my alienation of those whose income was significantly lower than my family's was what made me an outsider; I didn't have too many close friends. The girls I mostly associated myself with and called upon during meals and in between classes were from the same social class, therefore it was only fitting that we all huddled together to talk about how great it was to have so much money. I never really liked those girls and was mildly amused by them, but not too many people gave me the chance to prove I wasn't as shallow as they thought I was. Sure, there was a certain level of shallowness to my character, but it was by default. Although I was generally liked amongst certain circles and got along seemingly fine with most of my house mates, there was still a social barrier between us that I couldn't quite figure out how to cross. Blame my parents.
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The night before my trip back to Hogwarts couldn't have gone any worse. For years my mother had been trying to convince me to stop going to Hogwarts and enroll in a 'normal' school. It had been happening every year since my fourth when she thought the novelty of going to a magic school would have worn out, except that I wasn't expecting her to bring up my impending marriage.
"You don't need to go back to that school, dear. You need to stay here to plan your wedding," she said to me. My blood turned cold and I would've hexed her if she wasn't my mother.
"I never agreed to a wedding, mother," I replied through clenched teeth.
"Nonsense, it's all been arranged. We just need to go over the details with you. Eleven months isn't nearly enough time to plan everything adequately and we need you here."
I looked at her and she wasn't my mother anymore; she was a crazed woman. She would stop at nothing to get her way regardless of how it affected me and I was not going to stand for it. We stared at each other outside my bedroom door before I turned my back on her and slammed the door in her face. The last thing I saw that night was a sneer and it was enough to drive me over the edge. Not only was I going back to school, I was going rid myself of my rich girl reputation and I was not going to marry sir "Rutherwank".
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The following morning, I made it a point to walk out of the mansion before sunrise. I was sure my mother was going to try and stop me, so I walked out of the house as silently as I possibly could, making sure Chloe, my owl, didn't make any noise. I ran across the street where I then apparated right outside of King's Cross and I prepared myself to wait several hours until the Hogwarts Express departed.
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When it finally came time to board the train for my seventh and final year at Hogwarts, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I would be sharing my duties as Head Girl with the new Head Boy, James Potter. We had never really spoken much in our six years at Hogwarts, and he was very much a mystery to me. He had good grades, he was very handsome, he was superb at Quidditch and from what I had witnessed, he had an amazing sense of humor. He also seemed like the type of person that lived life the way he wanted to; a quality I deeply envied. We had only spoken a few times in our classes since we first met in our first year, and even spent some time together in fifth year when I courted his best friend Sirius Black for one week, but I never learned much about him in that time. He kept his personal life off limits to everyone outside of his circle of friends and it only served to hike up my interest in him; that one week I was with Sirius was a launch pad for my interest in everything James Potter. I wanted to know why there was so much secrecy surrounding him, but his friends weren't really helpful in that respect. Whenever I asked Sirius a question about his best friend, he simply shrugged and replied with, Ask him about it. I tried putting my interest in him into words, but it wasn't really something I could explain. He intrigued me, and with that came the type of fascination that would only be satisfied once I learned more about who he was. The fact that he was one of the best looking boys at Hogwarts didn't hurt, and the fact that he'd never so much as glanced in my direction before made it impossible for me to ignore him much longer.
It was natural then, when I met up with him in the prefect's compartment, that I would stare at him as if he was an experiment gone wrong. I didn't mean to stare at him that way. Like I said, I was brought up to scrutinize people's appearances; it was an art commonly known at Hogwarts as the Evans 360. When he caught me ogling at him, he smiled wolfishly at me before nudging Remus and whispering something to him before they both grinned back at me. It was a most embarrassing predicament, but it left me wondering. I made it a point to not look at him for the remainder of the prefect's meeting knowing I would get nothing out of him that day without making a fool out of myself, but I had the nagging feeling that he was sort of toying with me. Maybe I was daft, but I think I caught him staring in my direction a few times when I tried catching him off guard. For a person who had never really said a word to me in my life, he was acting kind of funny. I felt like I was thirteen again. I licked my lips a little bit and carefully fixed a strand of my hair behind my ears and surreptitiously looked up at him. He was very quick in his movements to turn the other way in time, but one thing was for sure; he was observing me. I let a smile form on my lips knowing that I had hit some sort of nerve with him, but I was unsure what to do about it. I didn't know what was going through his mind in that moment, so I went to great lengths to concentrate on the piece of parchment I was trying to read for the meeting. Was it possible? Could I even let myself believe that I saw in him what I think I did?
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We quickly settled into our duties as Heads and spent the remainder of the trip between patrolling the corridors and meeting up with our friends. Every so often, I ventured into the Marauder's compartment, the compartment occupied by James and his friends, under the pretense of wanting to speak to Sirius, or of wanting to get to know my colleague better. I attempted a conversation with them at every possible opportunity, but Sirius was the only one willing to oblige. We were nothing more than friends by that point, but by the way he acted around me, I couldn't help but wonder when he was going to grow out of his Look at me! stage.
Each boy in that compartment was different, I noticed, and that made my interest in them reach its zenith. How could four completely different individuals become such close friends? Sirius Black was the rich kid who got everything he wanted, yet hated his pure-blooded family, while Remus was pretty well off by anyone's standards. He was a half-blood and came from a middle class family that lived in Cambridge. His mother was a popular auror within the wizarding community while his father was a Muggle businessman. Peter was the poor one. He came from a pure-blooded family right outside Bristol and was always complaining about his second hand books and second hand robes. His father died before he began his schooling at Hogwarts and his mother worked two jobs just to keep the family afloat. Although he was seemingly the oddball of the group, the other boys took him in as an equal. James, however, was still an enigma to me. No one knew much about his family except for the fact that his pure-blooded ancestry could be traced back to Spain, and that his parents died at the end of our sixth year of natural causes. He was best friends with the three other boys, but he didn't quite seem to fit into any of their classes. He didn't act rich like Sirius, he didn't act modest like Remus, and he didn't act self-conscious like Peter. He was simply James.
Whereas Sirius always wore perfectly tailored clothing, Remus wore well fitting trends, clothing that spoke volumes about who he was. He wasn't flashy with what he wore, and the modesty in which he carried himself in designer clothing from time to time made me really admire him. Peter of course never really liked talking about his belongings, yet I always took him for the type of person who would have boasted about his fortunes had he had any. I just simply couldn't place James in any one of those categories. When he wasn't wearing his robes or Quidditch uniform, he always sported fashionable clothing that rivaled something Sirius would wear, but without the show. I never saw him with an old shirt, or anything that didn't fit him correctly, yet he wasn't nearly as clean cut as Sirius or Remus. His messy black hair looked wind blown at all times and the way he wore his trousers well below his hips sometimes left you wondering if he was some sort of exhibitionist.
So that kept me thinking. Who was James Potter? What were his goals? What were his dreams? What was he like outside the castle walls? Why hadn't I ever heard anything about his family? It was quite natural for everyone at Hogwarts to know some history about everyone's family. Cliques were often formed that way, and it was a very important piece of information amongst the four Hogwarts houses. For example, everyone knows that I'm a Muggleborn. As such, that title automatically places me at the bottom of the social pyramid. Being rich however, negates those strict rules and puts me above all Muggleborns, placing me on the same platform as the half-bloods. Pile on my all around good looks and brains, and I am immediately catapulted to a notch above the half-bloods and right above pure bloods with no money to speak of; pure bloods just like Peter Pettigrew. I'm still no where near being accepted by all purebloods, particularly those from Slytherin house, but I never really cared for their level. Most purebloods don't entertain the same beliefs that Slytherins are so proud of, and those beneath my status make me feel every bit a Muggleborn every time they talk about me behind my back. So where did James Potter fit into everything? He's a pureblood, intelligent and a sportsman, so that placed him at the top of the pyramid, but what about his economic status? How much was James Potter worth, and was it enough of a difference compared to my fortunes to make my parents go absolutely insane if I fell for him?
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A/N: I hope you liked the first chapter! I'll hopefully be updating this story at least once a week. It's only going to be about 10 chapters long and it will only go through Lily and James getting married. Please review and let me know what you think?
