In Which James Tried to Ask Lily Out For The First Time

Now, James has always been a prideful being. It's in his blood really, being of pure blood and all. His parents were pretty chill, yea, but they were also extremely prideful people. As were his grandparents, and his great-grandparents, and his great-great grandparents, and so on and so forth. So as a result of this social conditioning, James is really very prideful. So when he met Lily Evans for the first time in Transfiguration class and she told him he had a big forehead and dumb glasses, he swore to himself that we would never anything but contempt for her. Now to be fair to Lily he had introduced himself to her by saying, "Hello there, I am James Potter and you are a ginger, and gingers have no souls and dementors suck souls so you are probably a lost-lost relative to the Dementor family" and scooting his chair as far away from her as possible, so he had that going for him. But regardless, he had made himself an enemy to the short-tempered ginger (who, for the official record, does have a soul) and she had a fierce tongue on her. He was dead serious about his contempt, or as serious an eleven-year-old could be about feelings of contempt towards someone they met only minutes before, even going so far as to carve it into the bed frame of his dorm's bed and proclaiming it to be "the truth, the giant amount of truth, and nothing but what is truthful... or something like that" to a dorm full of shy first years who sub sequentially avoided him for a few weeks.

So after several years of petty pranks and eye-rolling and sass fights, James was sure that his feelings for Lily were nothing but casual dislike and sometimes even a vague sense of neutral emotions, but nothing more. So you can imagine his surprise when he sat next to her for breakfast one morning, accidentally brushed his forearm against hers, and got butterflies fluttering about in his stomach. Basically the gist of his freak out at the realization that those butterflies were directed towards Lily included him flailing his limbs about in horror, upsetting several bowls of porridge in the process, and making Lily yell at him when some wayward porridge landed on her face and robe. So overall, it wasn't a terribly positive experience.

But James slowly (very, very slowly) came to terms with his realization of attraction for the temperamental redhead who had directed a large portion of her fury towards him over the last five years, and decided to put all their baggage into the past and just ask her out. Now why James could have possibly came to the conclusion that that would be a good idea, the world may never know. But regardless, this decision is what prompted James to sit cross-legged at the foot of the stairs leading up to Lily's dormitory, because his ass was getting sore from trying to walk up the stairs only to have it turn into a slide and knock him on said ass. He sat there patiently, twiddling his thumbs and mumbling a German lullaby his completely not-German mother used to sing to him all the time when he was a kid. It only took an hour and twenty minutes, but Lily was soon walking down the stairs, carding her fingers absentmindedly through her hair and humming the Hogwarts theme song (why? Who knows). She seemed distracted, seeing as she didn't notice the long-limbed creature at the foot of the stairs until she stepped on him and was sent sprawling across the carpet on her stomach. She landed with a "oomph!" and a dull pain in her pelvis.

"What the-" she started, turning to face the thing she tripped on. When she saw it was James, her face turned an interesting color- a combination of truck red and eggplant purple. James had never seen that look on her before, and he had to admit- she looked ravishing. He always thought her "I am going to murder you slowly and painfully and then feed you to your own owl" face was adorable.

"Potter," she growled menacingly, standing up and brushing down her nearly immaculate uniform. "What. The hell. Were you doing at the foot of the stairs. Were you trying to kill me." The fact that she wasn't actually asking any questions, just merely stating her questions as if they were facts was a bit frightening, but James stood his ground.

"Oh course not, Lily!I could never kill such a beautiful creature such as yourself." He drawled convincingly.

Lily's face right then was interesting- a combination of anger, concern, confusion, more anger, and concerned-for-his-mental-health.

"Wha—wait… did you just call me beautiful?" she stopped. "Wait… did you just call me a creature?"

James held out his hands in a calming gesture. "Now, now, Lily, I did not mean to offend. I am just here to ask you a question."

She narrowed her eyes in a squinty manner and pursed her lips in what was probably trying to be an intimidating look, but she didn't interrupt.

James stepped closer to her. She took a step back. The crowd of Gryffindors that had quietly gathered around the pair took a step forward.

"Okay, dearest Lily. I have come to terms with something terribly important, and something that involves you."

"Did you steal another one of my bras Potter? 'Cause if you did I will turn you into a chicken again but this time I won't turn you back."

"No, No, it's nothing like that," James rushed to insured her. He ran his fingers through his hair and opened his mouth weirdly wide in anticipation of the question, but before he could utter his proclamation of new-found love, a nearby Sirius Black had accidentally caught his own robes on fire when he stepped into the fire- on purpose- and he was now shrieking and wailing like a small child as the inch tall flame stayed completely immobile on his robe and posed no threat to him. He began twirling around the room in a haphazard manner- knocking over lamps and couches and sixth years. The entire common room as a whole began moving away from Sirius slowly, having had witnessed this same scene several times before. The only person that remained in his general vicinity was Remus, who was trying valiantly to calm him down so he would stand still and he could extinguish the flame. But Sirius just kept on yelling and twirling and he may have even started dancing at one point- but he was still a common room hazard (when was he not a hazard?).

James was still trying to ask out Lily you see, but she had darted from him when Sirius had started yelling, going to save the first years from imminent danger, as was her duty as a prefect.

Some third year had gotten McGonagall in the chaos, and Dumbledore was with McGonagall at the time, so they were both ushered into the common room by a semi-frantic thirteen-year-old who seemed to believe Sirius had gone mad. Which was bloody ridiculous, everyone knew Sirius was already stark raving mad, this was merely a side effect.

So in entered Professor McGonagall and Headmaster Dumbledore, and they eyed the chaos wearily. Sirius was now on top of a table, doing what resembled the tango in a ridiculous attempt to stomp at the back of his cloak and stop the really small and insignificant flame. Remus was beside the table, yelling up at Sirius to "get your arse down here Sirius, or so help me Merlin I will get up there and tackle you and then we'll both catch fire and you'll die before getting that motorbike you've been saving up for!" and some students were running around in a panic but others were laughing and taking pictures and bets. And James was running around looking for Lily because, by merlin, he was going to ask that girl out!

Dumbledore and McGonagall started towards Sirius, Remus, and the table, and joined Remus in his attempt to get him down.

James found Lily and poked her in the back several time.

"What Potter?" snapped Lily, blowing a strand of wayward hair out of her face. She had just spent a minute chasing vigorously after a first year who was trying to escape out the window, terrified of the fifth year dancing on the table.

"I thought you'd want to go out with me, seeing as I am super attractive and all, and I don't believe you when you say that you'd rather kiss Filch then have a friendly conversation with me so what'da say?"

Conveniently enough, when James decided to utter this statement, Remus had just managed to halt Sirius' ministrations and he had quieted down. Once Sirius stopped, Dumbledore had silenced the others panicking as a result of Sirius' panicking. Point is, it was quiet in the common and everyone was now staring in horror, amusement, and pity as they caught on to what James was asking.

Then Lily exploded on James.

Let's just say that it took nearly twice as long to quiet down the common room once Lily really worked herself up, and James' hair took two weeks to stop smoking.

But that goddamn stubborn James Potter just grinning dumbly and swore he wouldn't give up.

A/N: thoughts? Reviews are a huge confidence booster to me, a poor, hapless author and all, so i'll love you forever if you send me a few kind words. And yes this is not complete, i'm planning on continuing with a scene with all the marauders, as indicated in the summary. ta!