Lily's little problem
Chapter 1:
Never giving up
Lily was sitting in History of Magic, taking notes, concentrating hard on Professor Binns's lecture, when she felt something hit the back of her head.
She whipped around to face James Potter, the arrogant little fart himself.
He sat there with a triumphant smirk on his ruddy face. Acids bubbled in Lily's stomach. She wished nothing more than for him to incinerate on the spot.
"Hey Evans," he said.
Lily narrowed her eyes. "What do you want, Potter?"
He traced his fingers over his desk and looked at her with big, innocent eyes. "What do you mean? One can't say 'hi' to a person without there being a selfish motive behind it?"
She scoffed. "Oh please. With you, it usually just means you're setting me up for something. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go back to actually paying attention in class."
Lily turned back around, only to be hit on the head again.
She turned around, her eyes full of rage. "Potter, if you don't stop, I will hex you into obviation."
James gave her an amused look and leaned back in his chair. "Would you, Evans? Would you really?"
Lily looked outraged. "Of course I would! Now, be quiet. You're going to get me in trouble."
She turned back around, catching up on her notes.
Potter, she thought. He was the most annoying little wart Lily had ever met. He made fun of innocent students. He was constantly messing up his hair. He was a jerk. Lily couldn't stand him. And he was her little problem. She wished he could just evaporate.
She tried to concentrate on the lesson, but that was hard to do with James chuckling behind her, throwing paper balls at the back of her head, saying "Oi, Evans." Lily refused to give him the satisfaction of getting her annoyed.
She spent the entire lesson grinding her teeth and holding her quill so tightly, she wouldn't have been surprised if it popped.
When she left the History of Magic classroom, she was stopped by the second wart in command, James's best friend, Sirius Black.
"What do you want, Black?" She tried to sidestep passed him, but Sirius blocked her.
"I was just going to ask if you'd—"
"NO. I said NO yesterday, and what makes you think that I find paper balls being thrown at the back of my head makes him anymore attractive than he was yesterday?"
Black had asked Lily for her to give James a chance and go out with him. She had no, but clearly he hadn't gotten the message.
"Oh, come on," he said, still blocking her way to the common room. "He's really not such a bad guy. You just have to give him a chance."
Lily stared at him with eyes that could kill. "NO!"
She stepped to the left and Black went that way. Too bad for him he was only doing that to confuse him. She whipped to the right and entered the common room.
Lily raced across the common room and up the stairs to her dormitory before she could be attacked by any more Marauders.
That's usually how her afternoons went these days: Go to class, ignore Potter, dodge Marauders, and finish homework.
Lily always stayed up in her dormitory to do her homework. If she stayed in the common room too long, she would eventually be bombarded by Black and Lupin, begging her to give Potter a chance.
But she would NEVER give him a chance. If the only two male creatures on the entire face of the planet left were James Potter and a slug, Lily would pick the slug. And you know what, she would live happily ever after with the slug.
So she just sat there in her four-poster, doing her homework, trying to forget the arrogant look on James's face.
James was in the common room, scanning around, looking for Lily. He hadn't seen her in the common room for days now.
"Where's Evans?" James asked Sirius.
He shrugged. "You act like I'm the one who follows her obsessively. Oh, wait," he turned to gave James a sly smirk, "that's your job."
Their friend Peter snickered.
James raised his eyebrows at him. "Peter, is there something you would like to say to me?"
He tried to hide the fact that he had been cracking up. "N-No."
Remeus, the fourth Marauder, looked at James. "He was going to say that it's funny the way you obsess over a girl who gives you as much affection back as that plant over there."
James blushed and looked down while Sirius and Peter had a laughing fit.
When Sirius could breathe again, he said to James, "Yeah, it's no use, mate. Yesterday she told me that you were 'merely mucus in the nose of the wizarding world'."
James gave him a confused look. "She called me a booger?"
"If you look at it in the general way, yes," Remeus told them from where his nose was buried in his book.
James slumped down in a chair. How was he going to get her to talk to him? She wouldn't even look at him! Even with his two wingmen, he still hadn't managed to get her to go on a date with him. He was starting to feel discouraged.
"Don't worry, mate," Sirius said, reading the worried expression on his face. "I'm sure she'll come around."
James looked up at him. "Really?"
"Yeah," he said, "in about a hundred years, if she's completely out of options."
James groaned and drooped further into his chair. What was he going to do?
But he wasn't giving up, not now, and not anytime soon. He would win Lily Evans's heart, even if it was the last thing he did. Even if he had to prove himself through blood, sweat and tears. He would lift her off her feet. He knew he would.