Just to get it over and done with…

I am not JKR. I do not look like JKR, I do not sound like JKR, and I am neither as rich nor talented as JKR. You get the picture, yes?

Chapter one

"Quills down, please" Professor Flitwick voice echoed through the great hall "that means you too Stebbins! Please remain seated while I collect your parchment! Accio!"

The students laughed as the huge mound of exam papers collided with the tiny teacher, knocking him backwards. Several nearby students rushed to pick up the now slightly flustered professor, who adjusted his pointed wizards hat with as much dignity as he could muster before excusing the students from the hall.

Lily Evans chuckled slightly as she made her way from the great hall down the front steps and into the grounds. The weather was perfect- just what the exam-weary fifth years needed after hours of cramped hands, boredom and mental fatigue.

Looking round, the pretty, red haired girl saw a gaggle of her fellow fifth year Gryffindors sitting by the edge of the lake. She made her way over to them.

"Hey Lils!" Hepzibah Prewett and Alice Fletcher grinned at her from the grassy bank. Lily ditched her bag and sat down next to them and grinned.

"How d'you find the paper then?" Lily asked. She herself was almost sure that she had passed with reasonable merit- her last minute cramming rarely proved ineffective. Hepzibah groaned.

"It was TERRIBLE!" she whined pitifully, banging her head off an open copy of 'A Revised Guide to Transfiguration- Master or Disaster'. "There is no waaaay I passed, that question on counter-jinxes was a killer!" There was a general murmur of agreement. Lily patted her friend sympathetically, all the while aware of the fact that Hepzibah was a self-confessed queen of overreaction.

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Lily assured her confidently "You definitely have brains somewhere behind that bimbo exterior." The girls laughed, save for Hepzibah; who squealed and pretended to sulk, flicking her long straw blonde locks around in a most indignant manner; and in doing so illustrating her friend's joke about her appearance perfectly.

At that moment a loud crack echoed across the previously peaceful landscape, and a source of great commotion appeared to have arisen near to an old beech tree a little way along from the girls. Many of the other students were now making their way towards the scene, some laughing, others looking slightly concerned. A male voice wafted over to them- a stream of foul language mixed with some extremely unpleasant hexes. Another voice cut over the top, this time one Lily was all too familiar with.

"Wash your mouth out! Scourgify!" The sound of gagging and choking cut the air- sounding rather horribly as if someone was being strangled.

A growl of immense annoyance escaped Lily's lips; without pausing she got up, grabbing her wand as she went and marched angrily towards the scene, her gaggle of expectant friends close on her heels.

"JAMES POTTER! Leave him ALONE!"

Severus Snape, an irritable, unpopular boy who was widely acknowledged to have a far superior knowledge of the dark arts than was required or, indeed, taught at Hogwarts, was lying on the grass, pink bubbles spewing from his mouth. With the arrival of his fellow fifth-year girls James Potter seemed to lose all interest in the aforementioned boy- his hand had darted immediately to his hair and he ran his hand through it casually- giving it an interesting ruffled look.

"All right, Evans?" he asked, in what he clearly thought was his most appealing voice. It was lost on Lily.

"I said…leave him alone!" Lily glared at him with enough hatred to wither a devils snare outright; her green eyes glinting with disgust. "What's he ever done to you?"

James smirked at this last remark.

'Well, it's more the fact he exists if you know what I mean..'

The surrounding onlookers laughed- it was clear which of the boys was the more popular.

Behind Lily Hepzibah, Alice and the rest of Lily's friends were still smirking contentedly at her outburst. Fair to say they were more than used to them- having been friends with her near enough five years they were accustomed to her fights for justice- especially ones in which a certain star Quidditch player was involved.

'What's the betting Lily comes up with another of her killer put-downs, cruelly rejecting the dashing young lad's hopes of wooing her?' Aiko Yasui, a small, pretty Japanese girl held up a silver sickle.

'….I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid!'

Aiko laughed.

'Killer, that one was. Absolute killer.' She shook her head in amusement. 'Although in my personal opinion 'If we were the last two human beings on earth I'd thank God for sperm donation' is the undefeated personal best for Lily.'

Lily's rant was continuing; now becoming both more rapid in its delivery as well as increasingly loud and high pitched, finally ending on the words 'You make me SICK!' before she stormed off in the general direction of the castle, her friends trotting after her trying to contain their amusement.

The fifth years' final examination- transfiguration- was the following morning- so it was unsurprising to find a dozen or so of them still by the common room fire in the small hours of the day, all revising hard from their combined notes and textbooks. All that is, except a certain couple of marauders.

"Don't you think you should at least open a textbook tonight?" Remus Lupin made another feeble attempt at exerting some influence over his wayward friends to little avail. Sirius Black yawned in a rather exaggerated way and stretched.

"While I do appreciate your concerns, ole buddy ole chum, you are once again assuming that I am one of these lesser mortals who actually finds revision necessary." He said, in a rather condescending tone. "Do I have to remind you that since Prongs and I successfully managed to complete the animagus transformations just this year- arguably the hardest transfiguration there is- a lowly exam is hardly what I'd call taxing."

"Cocky git." Remus cast an exasperated look at his friend before returning to his revision. Next to him James lay sprawled in a Victorian-style armchair doodling pictures of broomsticks and snitches on an old piece of parchment. Flicking his wand, he made the broomstick fly across the parchment, the tiny, illustrated, red-haired girl astride it reaching out her hand and grasping the winged ball between her fingers. Sirius leaned over and smirked as the girl flew in a circle around the page before landing on the ground and dusting off her robes.

"Awwww, ikkle Jamesie's in luuurve!" James blushed slightly and crumpled the parchment beneath his fingers, scoffing.

"Shut up Padfoot, you're just jealous! And I am not in love. I could have any girl I wanted to!" Sirius smirked again

'Jealous? Of what?" He taunted "I think you'll find I've never been rejected in my life. And while the fact that you could 'have any girl you wanted' is highly debatable, since you only want one girl. And, no offence mate, but she definitely wont let you 'have her'."

James's usual mischievous smirk disappeared. Grunting something about 'being tired' he grabbed his schoolbag and stormed up the stairs leading to the boys dormitories. Remus looked up from his work, looking sternly at Sirius.

"What?" Sirius attempted to look nonchalant "What?"

0o0

Three floors above where the marauders sat engrossed in their varying amounts of revision, Lily Evans lay sprawled out on her bed. She had refused to join her friends in the common room, telling them that 'that pathetic excuse for a human being would just wind me up' and was instead revising on her own, surrounded by six other empty beds. Although avoiding the common room had seemed like a good idea at the time, she was now starting to regret it. The lack of company- combined with the fact that she knew her transfiguration notes word for word- meant that the only things left to think about was going home in two weeks, something she dreaded passionately every year and even more so this year, when came the time of Petunia's eighteenth birthday party. Lily would be expected to make polite small talk with the likes of Desperately Dull Deborah, Terribly Tedious Tina and a large selection of Petunia's other, astonishingly boring friends gossiping about topics which held no interest whatsoever for Lily

The thoughts of this were almost enough to drive Lily down to the common room- but not quite. Luckily at that precise moment Aiko and Hepzibah flung themselves noisily into the dormitory, thankfully interrupting Lily's morose musings with a highly excited discussion about the merits of Puddlemere United (Aiko's team) against the Holyhead Harpies (whom Hepzibah practically obsessed over due to the combined facts that their training ground was a mere half mile from her house and that Myfanwe Davies, who lead the harpies to win the European league in 1970 had once told Hepzibah that she 'showed promise' as a chaser.)

"I'm telling you, Zi, the harpies have got NO chance next season! Williams and Davies were brilliant but they're hardly in their prime anymore are they? Davies is practically geriatric in the Quidditch world!"

"Yeah but Puddlemere United? I mean come on! The Canons are practically a more feasible bet to win the league next year!" Hepzibah scoffed.

Lily - who took a passing interest in Quidditch but never really considered herself a follower - was at least grateful for the distraction.

"Hey" she interjected, "you know Ludo? That cute Hufflepuff guy who left last year? Apparently the Wasps are really interested in him as a beater!"

Aiko and Hepzibah seemed to consider this piece of information worthy enough to merit discussion; they stopped bickering instantly.

"Reaaaallly?" Hepzibah asked, with a somewhat indecent amount of relish.

"Well, he was really talented" Injected Aiko.

'Yeah, in more ways than one…………'

The three girls laughed and the conversation descended into a discussion about the merits of various young attractive Quidditch players, pushing all thoughts of Petunia and her awful party to the back of her mind.

Lily wished she could say the same three weeks later. The holidays had arrived in what seemed like a hideously short amount of time, and she found herself standing amongst a group of some of the most boring people she had ever met, telling them that yes, The Edward Fisher-Lee School for gifted youths was in fact a fantastic place to go. Lily had at first been slightly puzzled over why Petunia had told her friends that she was 'gifted' rather than 'an abnormal circus freak', however after having listened to Tina and Deborah wax lyrical about how clever/ talented/ pretty their sisters were and how 'Daddy' was going to buy them race horses/ yachts/ private jets/ small islands in the Seychelles she had realised that for these girls three bedroom semis in Surrey clearly wasn't enough. Lily had barely been able to control her derisive snort when Tina had claimed that 'Daddy is hiring a boat for my 18th, he says we can take a holiday to New Zealand as well', when Lily knew for a fact that Tina's father was a car salesman at the local Ford dealership and was about as likely to be able to afford a trip to New Zealand than he was to sprout wings and take a quick trip across the Channel.

After about half an hour of this tedium, Lily had thought that by no means could the party possibly get any worst. She was about to be proved wrong. It was about a quarter to eight when the doorbell rang sharply, and for some inexplicable reason Petunia and her friends seemed to become ridiculously excited about something. Well, at least, they had all started squealing in a sort of ultrasonic way that, had Lily been with one of her friends at the time would have merited at least a sarcastic quip or mocking imitation. Since - in reality - Lily found herself completely alone amongst a large group of her sister's friends who were all dressed in ridiculous muggle fashions involving stack heels and pigtails the worst she could do was wince and scowl.

The source of the squealing was all too soon to be revealed to her.

A group of large, pompous looking boys- the sort who attend private grammar schools and fancy themselves popular when they are in fact merely bullying, fat and self-opinionated- were standing in the doorway and, to Lily's utter disgust, the largest, most pompous looking of them all had his arm draped in a rather sleazy manner around her sister's shoulders. Petunia's normally pale, bony features had become uncharacteristically flushed and she was batting her eyelids in a way that she obviously fancied was attractive, although in Lily's eyes was the sort of thing to induce projectile vomiting.

"Everyone' gushed Petunia in a breathy, girly voice completely different from the norm 'This is Vernon!"

0o0

Reviews, anyone?