Let the Awkwardness Prevail
. . .
A/N: Hiii! My second fanfiction, lol. I think it's a two-shot; I already have a part of the second chapter written, soo... it's most likely a two-shot, yeah. Anyways, review! And get cyber-cookies! ;)
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. ;)
. . .
"Lily, we're having a sleepover," Alice Wester, Lily Evans's ultimate best friend and confidant announced at dinner that evening.
Lily's spoon paused half-way to her mouth as she threw her friend a daft glance. Off Alice's beaming expression, she blinked owlishly and shoveled the spoon in her mouth. "We are? I wasn't aware."
"What's a sleepover?" Before Alice could reprimand her on displaying such a lack of interest, Lily's other friend Holly, a blonde girl with large hazel eyes, asked, leaning over Lily and peering at Alice with a puzzled, albeit interested, expression. Lily rolled her eyes heavenwards. On her right, Alice abandoned her spoon and rubbed her palms together, satisfied, ready to engross herself into an explanation of the seemingly foreign term.
"Yeah, I didn't know about sleepovers either, until Lily mentioned to me last night, you know. Apparently, it's kind of a party in which guests – mostly girls have sleepovers – stay overnight at a person's place and do all kind of stuff that they want," she flicked Lily a pointed look, who stuck her tongue out at her, "and I think they sound rather fun. Thus... we're having one. I think we three need to... re-bond."
"Oh good," Holly gushed from Lily's left (Lily wondered why one earth she'd chosen a seat between the world's two most annoying people), sounding supremely excited. Lily briefly wondered how the prospect of having to endure hours of unwanted torture sitting around and letting their girly instincts rein their minds, without any apparent reason could pass of as 'good'. More like horribly repulsive, she mused. "Boredom is deadly, I tell you. I tried to find myself a suitable date for today. Failed, though. All the good ones are apparently taken, too busy slash arrogant to consider me or whipped by a certain redheaded Head Girl." She rolled her eyes at her redheaded friend, shaking her head dejectedly.
Lily tossed her an incredulous look. "Don't tell me! You were practically eating Black's face in the Common Room yesterday!"
"Yes, well, you know he's not a one-woman man," she replied hazily, eyes trained on an attractive brunette boy sitting not far away from them.
Alice spoke as Lily stared at Holly dumbly; whose nonchalance had rendered her incapable of a verbal response. "Besides, you know, I figured Lily could do with some fun time with her girl friends. You know how she is when it comes to more important things in life... so callous and uncaring."
Lily rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time in five minutes; she had a vague idea what 'important things' Alice was referring to. She grunted mutinously. "Alice, you seriously need to get your priorities straightened," she said, glaring at both Alice and Holly, who was nodding her head vigorously to approve of what Alice'd said. Alice just blinked innocently.
"Seriously, Lils. Believe me, it'll be fun," Holly soothed, popping a fry into her mouth. "All-girls parties usually are. It's basically men who are responsible for ninety-nine per cent of the havoc caused in our world. Our world would be better off without the male species of human beings."
"Right you are, my dear Holly," a male voice said cheerfully.
Lily looked up to see James Potter and his posse coming towards them, annoyed. Without the slightest sign of hesitation, they slid gracefully onto their seats. Sirius Black immediately started piling his plate with everything. Lily cringed in repugnance.
"James," Holly greeted eagerly, grinning up at him. If Lily didn't know better, she'd have thought her friend was flirting. "Nice day, eh?"
"Very nice indeed." He smiled easily, turning his gaze towards Alice and Lily. "Hey, Evans, didn't see you there. And Alice." He nodded.
While Alice responded with a good-natured roll of her eyes, Lily chose a more impolite manner. Rolling her eyes, she regarded him with a look of badly disguised distaste. "Yeah, I suppose not. I mean, I'm just a very unobvious seventeen year old girl, after all; there is a fair chance you might have missed me," she said dryly, rather graciously in her opinion.
James, ever the charmer, just grinned at her lopsidedly. "Evans, Evans, you're not so obvious in a crowd." He piled food into his plate. "So what're you girls doing tonight?"
"We're planning a sleepover," Alice replied, tucking into her treacle tart. Lily closed her eyes exasperatedly; it was just as she had feared. She kicked her friend lightly on the shin, under the table.
"You are?" James asked, looking surprised. To her right, Holly had already begun flirting heavily with Sirius. He glanced at Lily. "Wait — what are they?"
Lily perked up, grabbing the opportunity to bite his head off. Bad idea; she didn't want tiny Potter germs lingering inside her mouth. "None of you business, Pott—"
Alice cut her off in a bored tone, "Sleepover is an all-girl party where the invited guests stay up till late, and have pillow fights and paint their finger and toenails, dressed in sexy lingerie." She shrugged offhandedly.
The reaction was immediate. Holly (who'd taken a break from Sirius in order to take a sip of her drink; obviously, the thirst could no longer be denied, otherwise...) choked on her pumpkin juice, but refused to remerge from behind her glass, eyeing Lily with unveiled laughter in her eyes. Sirius's head whipped around, his mouth full to the brim, but he didn't make the slightest effort to hide his snickers. Turning to Lily, he raised an eyebrow and said, "Pillow fights in underwear? Nice. Can I come?" The boy had some nerve, Lily thought furiously. Even Remus was watching the scene unfold with a flicker of amusement in his eyes. Beside Remus, Peter abandoned his plate of chicken legs and turned to stare at Alice with disgusted fascination.
Lily, who'd been preoccupied with throwing Alice lethal glares for brutally interrupting her, turned a hot shade of crimson, her anger at being interrupted melting into an expression of sheer humiliation and embarrassment. She stared at Alice, unblinking, her face the exact shade of her hair.
James gaped openly like a beached trout. It seemed that he was inwardly battling with himself and trying not to form mental depictions of the scene Lily's friend had so graciously told him about. And from the way he turned to stare at Lily (who looked like a hybrid of humans and tomatoes), it was apparent that he was having a hard time.
Nonetheless, James was the first one to recover.
He coughed slightly, and then fixed his hazel eyes directly on Lily's face and smirked. "That sounds really fun," he commented fake-sincerely. Lily fought the sudden urge to plummet him to death. But even as he said it, she had the distinct impression that he was wondering whether Alice'd really tried to pull his leg or not.
She sighed.
. . .
"So what do you reckon a sleepover really is? I mean, they can't just have a party dressed in nothing but lingerie!"
It was then 10 o' clock. Even after playing a very tiring game of exploding snap with Sirius and Peter – Remus decided to sit and watch ("You get violent.") –, drinking two bottles of Butterbeer and sneaking into the kitchens for a second dinner ("I'm a growing boy. I need my food."), James had not managed to forget what Alice had told them. It suddenly seemed like an elusive mystery.
Sirius, who was lying on the Common Room floor flipping through a Quidditch magazine, did not even bother looking up. "Girls, mate. They're weird creatures," he replied absently.
"Why is it bothering you so much, anyway?" Remus questioned irritably, not looking up from the huge book he was currently anxious on reading.
"Yeah, well, what she said.... It's just scandalous!"
"Still, why is it bothering you?" Remus persisted.
"Why don't you shut up?"
Remus and Sirius simultaneously rolled their eyes.
James stared into the fire. A rather disturbing image flitted through his mind, prompting him to shake his head like a dog trying to dry itself. He frowned. "I guess I'm just curious..."
Again, Remus and Sirius rolled their eyes.
"Listen, mate," Remus said, looking up from his book with great reluctance. "I don't think Alice meant what she said. I mean, doing what she said they do is just sick. Even if other girls do do stuff like that," he looked like he was trying not to think too much about what he was saying, a feat James thought rather difficult, "I doubt Alice, Holly and especially Lily would be willing to do it."
Remus had no idea why he was trying to explain it to James. Regardless of what Remus had said, James insisted, "But why did she say that? There must be something... It's times like these when I wish I were a girl..."
Sirius and Remus stared at him with alarm and incredulity; James, however, didn't notice.
"So," James turned to face them both, "do you think it's true?"
"No," they both replied at the same time. The undercurrent of exasperation in their tones couldn't be denied any longer.
"Still—"
At that moment, Sirius crumpled the magazine and threw it at James, groaning. He thought he'd had more than enough. Friendship was overrated, he decided. "Seriously, mate, if you don't believe us... well, then, go spy on them or something. Come to think of it, you've got the Cloak, the Map, and your broomstick... If only you had a brain..." He sighed morosely.
James perked up instantaneously. Spy on them? Well, he supposed he could do that. Only that being discovered at the act would be the end of the nobility that was attached to his name.
He decided he didn't care. He wasn't a Gryffindor for nothing, after all. And it was too good a chance to pass. Head held high, defiance pumping through his veins; he walked up to his dormitories to retrieve the Cloak, the Map and his broom.
. . .
To say James Potter was disappointed was an understatement.
Although the sane part of his repeatedly assured him that the girls wouldn't do any such thing as dance around in underwear, the insane, I-love-Lily-Evans-I-want-to-see-her-clad-in-lingerie part of him constantly hoped against hope that it was, well, true.
Letting his curiosity (and his hormones) get the better of him, he'd waited impatiently till the Common Room was empty, before mounting his broomstick, throwing open the window and taking off into the dark winter night. Once outside, he'd decided that the Invisibility Cloak was of little use as it kept slipping off him, so he threw it right back inside the Common Room through the open window, where it landed not far away from the crackling fire. He'd consulted his map, and off he'd been.
Thus, here he was, hovering before the window of the girls' dormitories.
Inconspicuously, he tried to peer inside the small room. There were five beds altogether; two were occupied by sleeping girls and the other three had been shrunken to the size of a chair (Lily's work, most possibly) and pushed against the wall in order to create more space in the cluttered room. The space which James supposed the three beds had previously occupied, were three mattresses. He squinted. Holly was lying flat on her stomach, Alice was curled up in a strange position and was doing something to her nails with her wand, and Lily was sitting with her legs tucked beneath her: From the looks of it, she was putting every fiber of her body in an effort to restrain herself from falling asleep.
James held his breath as Alice, as if sensing his presence, looked around the room, then returned her gaze to her nails. He swore the girl had the ears of a bat.
He yawned. So this was a sleepver?
"So, Lils, what do you think of Pacian Goldstein of the Chudley Cannons?"
James pressed his ear against the window, straining his ears to hear what Lily's answer. She jerked awake suddenly. "Huh?"
Giggling lightly, Holly threw the magazine towards Lily, who caught it despite herself. Lily was a very tactful girl; she cared for her friends' feelings. She wouldn't want to hurt them by falling asleep during a 'party' which was of such importance to them. "Look for yourself."
"Goldstein?" Alice drawled from her spot. "As in, Anthony Goldstein's brother? Well, if Pacian is anything like his brother, then I assume he's very good-looking." She leaned towards Lily, who was inspecting the picture with a critical (and bored) eye.
Still, James thought, the point of having these... these sleepovers was rather stupid. Stay up late into the night to discuss the looks of Quidditch player?
"Nah," Lily said, "His nose is kind of freaky. Too big. Looks like he's got a giant hidden up there or something. It reminds me of Petunia's fiance."
Even in the dimly lit room, James could see Alice and Holly roll their eyes. He smirked, examining his own nose in the window glass.
Soon his ear was hurting from being pressed against the hard, cold window. He drew out his wand from his robes, which were slightly wet from the drizzle, and looked at it thoughtfully. Pointing his wand at his left ear, he muttered, "Scourgify!" He repeated the same process with his right ear. To his amazement, the girls' voices grew louder.
"I suppose she would think that after those... dreams," Holly smirked.
He saw Lily turn to look around the room nervously, before she hissing, "Shut up!"
By then, Alice's wand was lying abandoned beside her and she was grinning from ear to ear. "Yeah, speaking of which, anymore dreams?"
"No!" Lily almost shouted, sounding scandalized. "Look, you two, this is neither the time nor the place to discuss that."
James was definitely interested now. He looked from Lily to Alice, wondering what kind of dreams could cause such embarrassment to her.
"Why not?" Alice pressed, turning to Holly, "Hey, in the last one, they did it by the lake, right?"
Nodding, Holly burst into laughter. Alice joined her, chortling obnoxiously, and they both watched Lily as she buried her head in her hands, clutching their stomachs to prevent further laughter.
James's heart, however, was clamoring against chest, galloping wildly and occasionally tripping over itself. It was then he heard it: "If James found out, he'd never let you live it down, Lily, never!" Alice gasped through chortles.
He almost fell off his broom.
He was convinced it was a dream.
At that exact moment, Lily's face retrieved from behind her hands and their gazes met. As if not quite believing what she was seeing, Lily squinted then shook her head, eyes widening steadily. She paled visibly, mouth agape. Then she let out a scream.
"Lily? Lily?!" Both girls had stopped laughing by then. "What's wrong?!"
"She looks like she's seen a ghost!"
"Seen a ghost? She looks like one herself!"
Raising a shaking finger, Lily pointed towards the window, where James sat transfixed on his broom, hovering in the cool night air. Her friends followed her line of vision.
"Oh my God."
In her rage, Alice grabbed her wand, a demented expression crossing her face. Standing up, she walked over to the window, reaching out towards it—
James was frozen. Utterly frozen.
As he saw Alice approach the window, he did the only thing he could think of: He glanced at Lily and he winked.
Then he did the second thing that came to his mind: He fled.
. . .
A/N: Continue or not? :D