Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all characters © JK Rowling.

Heavily edited and posted on a whim. Enjoy!

James Potter was not interested in girls. He had more important things to think about, like whether or not he could play any more pranks without getting expelled and how the Gryffindor team could win the Quidditch Cup this year. Girls were… well, just not worth his time. Also, he had it on good word that girls were terrible people. Sirius had three girl cousins, so he would know better than anyone. Peter agreed with Sirius, although like James, Peter was an only child and had spoken to a girl maybe twice in his life.

Remus did not consider Sirius's opinion valid, but that was beside the point. Remus never thought anybody was a terrible person. Mostly, Remus thought that James was not yet out of his prepubescent girl-hating phase, and would be a late bloomer. James's mother tended to agree.

But things change. When James was 14, he fell in love, and Hogwarts got a little scarier for everyone involved.

It was the first Potions class of the year, and already he could tell that the year would be boring. Slughorn stood at the front of the room, droning on and trying to catch the eyes of his most famous students.

His eyes wandered when he was bored. James looked around the room—Severus Snape hadn't gotten any less greasy, and Janet Lane was still the shortest girl in Gryffindor. Everything was the same as it had always been. Then he caught a flash of very shiny, dark red hair. He was captivated. James was kind of like a magpie in that way. A lot of people had been surprised when he became a Chaser and not a Seeker.

The hair was attached to a tall girl with excellent posture. James could only see her from the back, but she was awfully familiar looking.

Then Slughorn rattled off a lengthy list of ingredients and asked what the potion was, and her hand shot up. "Veritaserum, or truth potion," she answered promptly.

Whoa, James thought. Slughorn beamed. Her voice was loud, very confident, and also sounded familiar.

He grabbed a quill and scribbled, Who's the girl in the front row who just answered the question? He tossed the note to Sirius, who was asleep with his mouth open at the desk beside him. A puddle of drool had formed beside him. Remus looked disapproving.

The note hit Sirius in the eye, and after some grumbling, the note was returned.

It's Lily Evans, stupid. She's friends with Snivellus and Slughorn loves her.

James stared. He remembered pranking Lily Evans and teasing her a lot in first year, but he was fairly indiscriminate about who he teased. Mostly they ignored each other now, except for a couple times a year when she would be walking with Snape and James and his friends would toss a mocking comment or two in their direction.

James watched her for the rest of the class. A couple times she turned her head to whisper to one of her friends. James had never noticed before that she was extremely pretty.

After class ended, he joined his friends in the hallway. "That's Lily Evans? Evans, who's friends with Snape?"

"Yes," Sirius said after a pause. "She looks better this year, doesn't she? Lost the braces."

"She's hot," James said dreamily.

Sirius looked concerned. "You're mental."

"She has terrible taste in friends," Peter said darkly.

Remus took a bite out of his chocolate bar, swallowed and seemed as if he was about to say something, but then he thought better of it. James couldn't really help being an enormous, delusional tool.

Sirius said it for him, though. "What do you even know about her other than that she's hot and friends with Snivellus? She's probably an awful person."

Sirius thought that being voluntarily associated with Slytherin in any way, even through friends, made you an awful person.

James knew that this had a lot to do with his family, which was frankly terrifying. Over the Christmas holidays in second year he'd gone home with Sirius and the Blacks had spent an entire dinner discussing various ways the wizarding world could assert their superiority to Muggles. At least half the family agreed that slavery should be considered.

Sirius's older cousin Bellatrix was particularly frightening. She licked her lips a lot and used her silverware with an unnecessary amount of force. Bella was a seventh year and James made a point of avoiding her in the hallways.

"She's Muggleborn," James pointed out. "She's in Gryffindor. Snape's a moron, but he's not evil."

"You should learn a little bit about her before you get all devoted," Remus said.

James had an unfortunate tendency to take things to heart to an unhealthy degree. This was why he had a list, titled "Things I Know About Lily Evans", that numbered 149 items by the end of the first week of school.

The list included observations about her classes (she was in almost all of his), her appearance, her friends (other than Snape), her interests and her eating habits. A byproduct of his list making was a renewed hate for Severus Snape, who seemed to spend an awful lot of time with her. James didn't understand their friendship at all—Lily was pretty and smart and Snivellus was creepy and obnoxious.

Maybe they fancied each other! James shuddered, then banished the thought. Lily and Snape had been friends since before Hogwarts. She probably felt sorry for him.

James presented his list to Remus once he was finished, since Remus was more mature than Sirius and less likely to make fun of him. He also showed it to Peter, who nodded supportively and added, "I think that's an excellent list; now all you have to do is talk to her!"

Remus was slightly less enthusiastic about the whole affair. "It's very, um, thorough, James. How do you know all of this anyway?"

"Um." James had stalked her all week, actually. He'd followed her around on tiptoe with a quill and sunglasses and pretended to be a spy. Like James Bond, his Muggle hero. Birds totally loved James Bond.

Remus looked like he knew anyway. "You idiot! She's going to think that's creepy. Why don't you act like a normal human being and just talk to her for a few minutes?"

"I don't have to. I'll tell her how much I like her and everything that I know about her, and she'll be flattered that I took the time to look all this stuff up. And she will realize that Snape is a slimy creep and stop being friends with him."

"I don't know if-" Remus began.

At this point, Sirius burst into the dorm. "I did it," he crowed with the air of a person who had achieved something significant for mankind.

"What did you do?" James asked cautiously. One had to be careful when asking Sirius questions like this, because the answers more often than not tended to run something along the lines of "I put a hex on Snape so that his hair turned blonde and was in pigtails, and now we all have a week of detention because McGonagall reckons you helped" or "I pushed Amos Diggory into the lake and the Giant Squid attacked him".

Sirius did not disappoint. "I talked to Lily Evans! And she hates you!"

"You talked to her?" James repeated dreadfully. "Would you care to elaborate on that?" He preferred not to think about the second part of Sirius's announcement.

Sirius was grinning in a vaguely alarming manner. "Well," he said. "She was reading in the common room and I went up to her and told her that you fancied her. And Lily looked all horrified and asked me if I was serious. I said I was, because I'm funny like that-"

"Actually," Remus said. "Nobody thinks the Sirius/serious jokes are funny anymore."

"I think they're funny," Peter said loyally.

Sirius ignored them. "-then she said you were a bloody great buffoon. Also, she thinks you have stupid hair."

"She hates me," James said bleakly. He felt something like a flourishing flower that had suddenly, cruelly, been cut off from its sources of light and water.

Sirius shrugged. "Nah, she just… well, a little bit. And she wants to know why you've been following her around for the past week."

Remus handed him the list wordlessly. Sirius read it, but he was mostly trying not to laugh.

"How can she not like me? I'm charming and I'm really good at Quidditch!" James was inconsolable.

"Well, you are kind of annoying," Sirius said.

"Can you be nicer to Snape?" Remus said. "I mean, you don't exactly endear yourself to her by constantly hexing her best friend."

"I'll try," James sniffled miserably. "But he's a git."

"That's the spirit," Peter said encouragingly.

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