Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters here mentioned. They're all owned by the genious JK Rowling.
James Potter was going back to the Gryffindor Common Room after a day that turned out to be very different than he expected.
Until the year before, he hadn't realised why he liked to jinx Snape that much, more than other people. Sure, they had hated each other since the very beginning. But after some time, it wouldn't matter that much. What really bothered him was that Snape, unlike him, had Lily's affection. They were friends, but James knew that, like him, Snape was in love with Lily. She didn't seem to return the feelings, but they were always together. The only contact she had with James was when he wanted to scream at him for doing something stupid or being a jerk.
This afternoon, he had jinxed Snivellous just for the fun, he admitted, but he was able to see the anger in Lily's eyes when she came to them. He had seen her trying to defend her friend and he knew she hated him. A lot.
He had heard her refusing to go out with him. It was probably the millionth time she did this this past year. He could see why. For their first three years at Hogwarts, he had annoyed her as much as he could. Then in the fourth year, he had realized how great she was. But at the same time, other girls started paying attention on him and that made him go out with some of them. Ok, not some, plenty. That certainly wasn't a good thing for his reputation, right? The thing is, he had only seen this afterwards, when she said it. And it was too late.
James wondered about how much effort he had put into making Lily want to go out with him. It wasn't too much, actually. Sure, he had asked her out a million times, but hadn't done anything this past year to make himself a little better in her eyes. In fact, it probably got worse. She hated him even more than she did the years before, as it was possible.
He remembered the day he had told his friends about his feelings for Lily. Padfoot had suddenly stopped smiling, looked at him seriously and said he had a problem. Oh, really? Moony asked if those times when asked about why he kept asking her out during the year and James anwered it was because she's always been the only girl who refused to go out with him were only lies. Of course they were. Moony didn't seem very surprised actually.
"It was obvious, James, obvious. I know you aren't exactly an expert in emotions and it would be hard for you to see that James Potter, the guy who gets any girl he wants, had fallen in love with the only one that didn't want him."
It was hard to hear this. One thing was realizing he didn't ask Lily out only because he wanted her to want him. Realizing he was, indeed, in love with her, was something way bigger. And seeing worry in his friend's eyes, the fact that he was worried about what could happen to James because of this situation, that he didn't have a chance, was terrible.
He kept trying, until now. But nothing seemed to make her change her mind about him. Today, as always, he had heard her refusing the invitation. He could see she thought he was only doing it to impress everyone, to tell them that even Lily Evans, the first one to reject him, had fallen for him as well. But it wasn't true. He really loved her.
And today he made a fool of himself in front of her. Yeah, he could be the kind of guy who wanted attention sometimes, but it shouldn't happen when she was watching, it wouldn't make her like him at all. But he saw Snape staring at her adoringly and it was too hard for James to handle this, so he jinxed him. Not his greatest decision, actually, since Lily came there to defend Snape.
He couldn't understand how she had him as a friend. Sure, they seem to have a strong bond between them, to James's diguise, but this past year he had been worse than ever. James knew all this so-called friendship that Snape had with some other Slytherins was suspect. He knew Snape was getting into Dark Arts and he didn't know how Lily could handle this.
He had heard Lily screaming at him, telling him to stop jinxing Snape. He had heard when Snape called her a, he hated saying the word, mudblood. He had seen the sadness in her eyes, even when she tried to hide it. He tried to make him apologize to her. And he had heard when she said she didn't want James's help, that he was as bad as Snape. Which had a huge impact on him, since he was only trying to make Snape regret the word he had said, as he hated people who judged other by blood, even more when they were supposed to be friends. Lily had compared him to a guy who, especially now, James considered the worst kind of person. That would be enough to make him give up on her.
But James had seen something else this afternoon. When he, in front of everyone was attacked by Snape's spell and made his revenge, making him upside down with his pants off, he had seen, in the laughing crowd, for a single second, Lily's expression changing. For a moment, before she started screaming at him again, she almost seemed she was going to smile. That's what made James thought that yes, it was small, but there was a chance that he could make Lily stop hating on him. There was a small chance he could convince her of his true feelings.
The chances were small, yes. But from now on, there was hope, after all.