Usual Brand

Warnings: None that I can think of, other than Lily angsting a bit about lost friendships. Nothing that wasn't in the books.

Disclaimer: Don't own, not making money from this, etc., etc., you know the drill.

Lily Evans knew several things about James Potter, not the least of which is that he never gave up. She could ignore him, and he'd still ask her out. Yell at him, and he'd give her that attractive grin that looked like he was about to break every rule Hogwarts had ever dreamed of having – as he asked her out. He didn't mind that she was best friends with his worst enemy. He didn't mind that as far as anyone could tell, she was the goody-two-shoes and he was the one who came stumbling through the portrait hole missing a shoe because going back to retrieve it would mean being caught by Filch. Nothing made James Potter realize that chasing after Lily Evans was, well, hopeless.

Or so she thought.

It wasn't until she was boarding the train for her sixth year that she realized anything was different. After the Defense OWL the year before, she'd devoted herself fully to her studies to try to drown out her grief over the realization that she had really, truly lost Sev. Alternating between studying and crying, she'd wondered a million times whether if this time, Sev would change, if she forgave him just one more time, maybe things would finally get better, but then she'd remember that she'd gone down that road before. It always led back to the same place, again and again until she wanted to break down and hit something. If she had noticed James Potter leaving her alone, she probably shrugged it off as him needing to lick his wounds.

The train, though, made her think otherwise. As she started to board, hauling her trunk behind her and cursing under her breath at the weight of the damn thing, someone nearly plowed right into her, calling, "Hey, Moony, Padfoot got us a –"

– and stopping, right there, because James Potter found himself face to face with Lily Evans. He stared at her like she'd appeared from nowhere, and Lily scowled, knowing what was coming next: the smirk, the question, her rejection, his shrugging and moving on as if nothing happened.

But it never came.

"I, uh … sorry, I'm in your way." With that, he went back the way he came.

Lily dropped her trunk and it thunked down the stairs and collapsed onto the pavement of Platform 9 ¾, but she scarcely even noticed. Potter hadn't asked her out, didn't offer help with a smug look on his face like he knew that by lifting a measly trunk he would somehow worm his way into her heart … he hadn't even smiled.

"Is Potter sick?" she asked Mary later when they were swapping chocolate frogs and watching the scenery pass by.

"Not that I know of," her friend replied. "Why do you ask?"

"He seemed … off, earlier," Lily said. "Never mind, I'm sure it's nothing."

And in a way, it was, just not the way she thought. It was "nothing" as in no requests for a date, no flirting, and barely even any eye contact. James Potter, she realized with a surprising amount of horror, had finally taken what she said to heart. She should be happy, she thought; Potter's constant requests to date had always grated on her. Their absence should be a good thing, but …

It wasn't the requests she missed, she figured as she doodled on the edge of her Potions notes as she half-listened to Slughorn's lecture. No one really missed having "Evans, do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?" yelled across the dining hall. No, what she missed was the teenage boy who had done the yelling. The stick figure she was drawing was even starting to take his features, its hair sticking out in every direction, square glasses and a grin that managed to look mischievous to her despite only being two-dimensional. Like it or not, James Potter had been a constant in her life since she was eleven years old, whether it was him trying to read her Muggle book over her shoulder and asking her questions about what it said every two seconds or asking her out at every inopportune moment he possibly could. She was already feeling the effects of not having Severus in her life any more, and losing someone else at the same time, someone she didn't choose to walk away from … it felt lonely.

There was only one thing she could do about it, though.

"Remus," she called after a prefect meeting, "what the hell is Potter up to?"

Remus had stopped walking away and turned toward her at the sound of his name, but looked utterly confused by the question that followed. Lily didn't blame him, but she couldn't explain her plan to him or else it wouldn't work. Remus was the easiest of Potter's gang to get along with, true, but she had no delusions of him being any less loyal to Potter than Black was.

"Don't give me that look," she said, hands on her hips. She narrowed her eyes, as if she was trying to get a clue from his expression. "I know Potter can't be this quiet for this long without something major planned."

"I guess you missed him dyeing Mulciber's hair red and gold, then," Remus stated with a raised eyebrow.

"Like that's anything close to his usual brand of delinquency," she snorted. "Tell him I'm on to him, Remus, and whatever he's planning he won't get away with."

And then she strode off, trying to be as convincing as possible. She made sure to not smile until she had turned the corner and was out of Remus's sight.

The bait was set. She didn't even have any doubts about whether or not Potter would take it. She's set the challenge: "can't be this quiet for this long without something major planned," "like that's anything close to his usual brand of delinquency." His pride as a troublemaker now depended on doing something that would have to be big enough to get her, as a Prefect, involved.

She expected she would have to wait awhile … which, in retrospect, was really the biggest indication that it had been too long since she and James Potter had any meaningful interaction. Still, she wasn't expecting to hear an explosion on her way to Potions.

When she arrived at the scene of the crime, having run because an explosion could mean people were hurt, could mean a first-year had had some outburst of accidental magic, could mean anything really – there was James Potter, at the center of it all, Black beside him as usual, and neither of them even pretending to be sorry.

Filch was ranting to them about destruction of school property and how if he had his way some medieval form of torture would be absolutely perfect for this occasion, but oh, those bleeding heartthrob professors wouldn't let him. No one seemed to be paying him any attention, though. Lily couldn't help a grin spreading across her face when she saw Potter. It probably ruined the effect of her interrupting Filch to yell at Potter, threatening to dock points from her own house and some other nonsense that she could tell Potter could see right through.

When Professor McGonagall arrived, she decreed that the boys be given separate detentions, beginning immediately. Black would be serving detention with her, and Lily was to escort Potter for detention with Professor Kettleburn.

And this was where Lily started to realize that her plan was going to fall apart. She wanted Potter to stop avoiding her, true, but she had no idea how to communicate with him in a way that wasn't yelling. Years of friendship with Severus had meant that any interaction with Potter had to be decidedly negative or she'd deal with Severus reminding her, however unnecessary it was, of everything bad James Potter had ever done. So when she and Potter started to walk to Professor Kettleburn's office, she could already feel the silence between them becoming tense.

Again, though, she had forgotten James Potter. The boy was intelligent and witty and utterly mad, and could read the tension and figure out the perfect way of smashing it to bits.

"Sirius sure got the short end of the stick," he said suddenly. "I mean, yeah, Kettleburn was harsh back in the day, but he's mellowed considerably since his arm got chewed off. McGonagall is going to eat Sirius for breakfast, but I'm just going to have to feed whatever beast of the week Kettleburn has now."

"Do you ever take detention seriously?" Lily asked, frowning.

"Nope," Potter replied cheerfully. "Especially not after we pulled off something as epic as that. It will take years for them to get the marks of the wall. Years!"

"You could have hurt someone with the explosion."

Potter snorted. "Give me some credit, Evans. We made sure no one was around."

"You can't know that."

"I can." His expression turned serious. "So, good enough for my usual brand of delinquency?"

Lily ducked her head, wondering if that meant he was on to her. She took a deep breath. Well, if he was, there was nothing she could do but go along with him knowing. "Only if you stop avoiding your Prefect like a coward," she said.

"Ouch."

They fell into silence again, and it wasn't until they were nearly to Kettleburn's office that Potter spoke again. "I thought I was an arrogant bullying toe-rag."

"You are an arrogant bullying toe-rag."

He stopped walking and looked at her like a puzzle that he was trying to put together. "Then you should want me to avoid you," he stated.

"Potter …" she trailed off, then sighed in exasperation. She had no good way of putting this. "Avoiding me is stupid. We're in the same house, in the same year, and you're a troublemaker and I'm a Prefect. It makes the world seem like it's turned on its head, and that is something I don't need, not now of all –" she stopped, realizing that the bubble of emotion she felt over ending her friendship with Sev had risen so that it was in her throat, making her voice crack. She swallowed, took a deep breath, then started again. "I don't –"

"I get it," Potter interrupted. "You don't want me messing with your head. Got it. As pranks go, it's pretty pathetic, anyway."

They both knew it hadn't been a prank, that he's been avoiding her for reasons that had nothing to do with troublemaking, but she let the comment pass. Let him say whatever he needed to justify it.

"I'm not sorry for what I said back then," she said instead, quietly because she wasn't sure if Potter wanted to hear it, but it needed to be said. "It was true and I'm pretty sure it still is."

"I know," Potter replied. It was probably as serious as he ever got. "I …" He sighed. "Never mind. You're not sorry for saying it, I'm not sorry for anything I've done to Snape, and … really the only thing I can say is that I can try to tone down the 'bullying' part, but I doubt the arrogant part will ever go away." He grinned, somber attitude fleeing. "Especially seeing how intelligent, charming, and awesome I am."

Lily snorted. "I'm sure." She looked up and met his eyes. "And the toe-rag part?"

He grinned wickedly. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said, and she figured that answered that.

"You're impossible." She wrenched the door of Kettleburn's office open, grabbing Potter's wrist to drag him in behind her.

She could hear him laughing as he followed, saying, "I try, Evans, I try."

END