Chapter One: The Conditions Are Set
In a time when teenagers were forced to pay attention to politics, if only to watch if their families were dead, Quidditch was a haven of peace and adolescence.
In a typical Quidditch team, you'll find two beaters, three chasers, a keeper, and a seeker: seven players in total. The game is simple- chasers try to throw quaffles into hoops, keepers try to stop them, beaters try to hit players with bludgers, and the seekers try to catch the snitch. It's a game played all around the world in magical communities. Two year olds play it on toy broomsticks and eighty year olds play it in nursing homes. There's a national holiday celebrated by the entire magical community during the week of the World Cup; you'd be hard-pressed to find a witch or wizard who didn't know the basic rules of Quidditch. Around the globe, even in the tumult of blood purity and warfare, Quidditch is still present. Quidditch is ubiquitous.
But in Gryffindor, between 1972 and 1978, something strange happened. In a game played universally with seven players, Hogwarts suddenly found itself with something never seen before in history. The Gryffindor team had discovered a secret weapon: an eighth player.
"Up!" chanted a class of eleven year old witches and wizards. Some were scared and others were confident, but everyone had their right hand out, palm down, prepared to catch whatever came hurtling up at them.
If only something would come hurtling up at them.
"No, no, no!" cried a frazzled professor standing on a raised platform. It was the third day since term began, but it was the first session of flying lessons. They were just outside the castle. Madam Hooch was tired, and this was the fifteenth time they'd tried summoning brooms as a group. Surely someone within this crowd of scraggly children knew how to use a broomstick!
"I've repeated over and over again- you have to mean it! You have to envision the broom shooting up at your hand! The broom is not a wand, there is no set spell to make it work. It is a sentient being and you must learn to train it!" shouted Madam Hooch.
Lily Evans stared at her broom, lying innocently on the ground. She huffed, and kicked the handle angrily. "Sentient being my arse," she muttered, stomping on the grass.
Her bad mood was interrupted by voices within the castle. Suddenly, the doors of the castle burst open and a group of four boys rushed towards the field. The class looked up, and Lily groaned when she saw who it was.
The four of them had been at Hogwarts for three days, just like Lily, but unlike her personal instinct to blend with the crowd and keep to herself, they had established themselves very quickly as the reigning boys, the 'Marauders', exclusive, attractive, and charming. Lily didn't really care about their names, but as she had all her classes with them every day, she couldn't help but notice some details about them. Two of them had dark hair, one had sandy brownish hair, and one had dirty blond hair. The dark haired boys seemed closest: they were already known for constantly pulling stupid stunts and couldn't be seen without each other. The one with the grey eyes had long hair, strong features, and as aristocratic an aura as a twelve year old could possibly have. The one with the brownish-green (possibly hazel?) eyes wore thin, round spectacles and had an overall thin looking shape- not skinny, perhaps, but definitely skinnier than average. His hair was what bothered Lily the most; couldn't he have bothered to spend three seconds running a comb through that mess? But no matter, she wasn't his mother, after all. The boy with dusty brown hair seemed to have the mildest temperament. She saw that he, like herself, was interested in books and studying, like a proper student. Lily hoped that spending too much time with the other boys wouldn't change that. And finally, the blond boy. He didn't really fit with the other three… somehow, they had a sort of spark in them, a spirit, and he was just a regular old boy. Nothing special about him; a little chubby, perhaps, but a normal boy who could easily duck his head and blend in with the crowd. What made them add him to their group? It didn't make sense.
"Sorry, Hooch!" yelled the boy with long, dark hair as he approached the group. "McGonagall kept us in detention forever."
Detention already! Well, Lily couldn't honestly say she was shocked. Just yesterday, on her second day at Hogwarts, that very boy had put some sort of magical firecracker in her cauldron, when she was in the middle of boiling something. At least she got to bond with the nice Potions professor while cleaning up her Swelling Solution.
Madam Hooch brightened a bit. Maybe these four knew how to properly operate a broom; she knew that that Potter boy's father had been Quidditch captain during her years at Hogwarts, and if she remembered correctly, his mother wasn't too bad with a broom either. She accio-ed some extra broomsticks, and set them lightly in front of them. She sighed, and repeated her instructions for the sixteenth time. "Right now we're trying to get the broomsticks in the air. I trust that you are familiar with what should happen? Hold your hand out in front of you... palm down, that's it. You want to keep your hand angled slightly-"
"Up!" commanded one of the four boys (the boy with the spectacles, Lily noted), not even waiting for Madam Hooch to finish. Madam Hooch glanced irritatedly at him, then gasped as his broom came flying up, obediently rising to his hand.
"Brilliant!" cried Madam Hooch. "Oh, would you look at that! He's got it! Did you hear him? You all need to learn to command your broomstick like that… so assertive… bold… yes, I can see a Quidditch player in you yet! On his first try, too..."
Lily Evans scowled. She'd watched that boy, the one who got his broomstick up. She noticed in class that he was talented, sure, and it should have been obvious that the one person who would successfully "tame his broom", as Hooch had put, would be him. He must have had practice at home with toy broomsticks, she thought bitterly, wishing once again she wasn't muggleborn. But mainly, she was jealous; she read through Flying: A Step-by-step Guide a million times before she got to Hogwarts, and she was clearly better than him at all the other subjects. She knew about Quidditch ploys, memorized all the rules in the ten inch thick books referees used, and she could recite flying theories word for word. And yet he was able to force his broom to work when she, easily the brightest witch in her class, couldn't even do it. It wasn't fair.
Lily watched as he was crowded by their classmates, oohing and ahhing over his success. She frowned. It wasn't like getting a broom up was a big deal, she could literally bend over and snatch it up much faster than this assertiveness nonsense. He was being hailed as a hero for picking up a broom. It made her sick.
James Potter looked up from all his classmates complimenting him and found the one person who was still at the other end of the field. She was scowling at him. James snickered and vaguely remembered her face; she was the smart ginger in his house who had a really bad temper. It looked like she wasn't too pleased about his success.
Pushing his way through his admirers, James approached her and tapped her on the shoulder.
"If you're fishing for compliments, you won't be getting any from me," she muttered angrily, as soon as she saw him walking- no, swaggering- to her.
James paused, and tilted his head to the left. "Need some help?"
To Lily, this was the biggest insult possible to her pride. She didn't need assistance to lift up a broom. She knew all the theories behind it, and she knew how to tame a bloody stick. "No," she snarled, "I don't need help from your big fat head."
He raised his eyebrows and smirked. "Well, this big fat head happens to have summoned a broomstick on his very first try. Try me."
Lily growled and glared at him. Without hesitation, she barked "Up!" for the sixteenth time, pouring all her frustration to the poor stick of wood at her feet. James watched as the broom had no choice but to snap up and cower in her hand. Her knuckles white and body rigid, Lily met James' eyes and lifted her nose smugly. "See, it was easy," she sniffed.
Madam Hooch, seeing Lily's success, walked towards them and beamed. "Oh, another one! How nice of you to help, Mr. Potter. Seeing that you've successfully taught Miss Evans here, would you mind dealing with Mr. Fletchley in the corner over there?"
"Will do, Madam," said James. He ruffled his hair, not that it wasn't messy enough, and half-saluted Lily before turning to a skinny Hufflepuff boy staring morosely at his broom. Lily fumed; how dare he take credit for something he did nothing for?
The rest of the class passed slowly, with Lily summoning her broom easily and impatiently after her first success as she watched her classmates struggle. She walked around, helping her peers and meeting new friends, but she couldn't help but stare back at… what was it? Porter? Putter? It didn't matter. She was furious with him and conveyed this silently as best she could to all the stupidly scruffy hair on the back of his head. Maybe he would forget this injury to her pride, but she would record this day as the day conditions were set: he was a spoiled, egotistical prat, and he had absolutely no shame whatsoever. And she hated him.
James felt the girl's eyes boring into his neck. He restrained himself from looking back, but he couldn't help but be intrigued. Why didn't she like him? The moment he walked up to her, she appeared to have a grudge on him for no reason whatsoever. It wasn't like he said anything rude to her or anything, he was just trying to help. Why did he even care? She was definitely pretty, even his inexperienced twelve year old eyes could see that, but with a personality like that, James would have to watch out for her.