A/N Hey all! Recently i've been getting back into Harry Potter which made me want to take another look at this fanfic. I never finished it, but I had a lot of fun writing it. Sadly, however, I wrote it in seventh grade, and, predictably, my thirteen-year-old writing leaves much to be desired. I honestly can hardly stand to read back over it, but I decided to give it a shot anyway.
"Damn it, Wormtail, what did you do this time?" asked a very annoyed James Potter, as his friend Peter blew up the potion that they were trying to brew. "Madam Pince is going to have our heads!"
Peter's cheeks turned pink, he looked down at his hands which were covered with a smoking, yellow liquid.
"Give him a break, Prongs; you're not exactly a potions master yourself. And besides, you're the one who insisted we do this in the library," Remus Lupin said, looking over the top of the Daily Prophet, having stubbornly refused to take part in what he had dubbed James and Sirius' latest death wish.
Sirius Black snickered behind his hand. "Come now Moony, we can't blame Prongs; he has a serious medical condition that affects his brain: Evans-obsession. He can't be expected to make good decisions with his… disability." He sighed dramatically. "Yes! He needs to be wherever Lily Evans is, even if that means trying to brew a complicated potion while simultaneously catching glimpses of his love reading through the shelves of books!" Sirius ended the speech with a theatrical sweep of his arms and a very smug look.
Peter laughed, but James however, was not impressed. "Evans-obsession? Really, Padfoot? I'm more creative in my sleep. Have I taught you nothing?"
"You teach me? You know damn well I'm the one who comes up with all our pranks!" Sirius retorted.
"As if! I-"
Remus interrupted James as he saw the looming figure of Madam Pince approaching. "As much as I'd love to hear the end of this riveting debate, I suggest that we avoid Madam Pince's inevitable wrath for brewing a shrinking potion that, as Peter was so kind to prove, is prone to exploding right in the middle of the Magical Creatures section of her library."
Sirius sighed. "If you insist, Mr. Moony."
With that, the four troublemakers gathered up all of their supplies and sprinted around the corner, where they crashed into a certain redhead. A pile of entangled limbs and robes collapsed to the floor, and it took them a moment to un-sort themselves.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Lily Evans said, brushing off her robes. She offered a hand to the boys still on the floor, but her friendly green eyes hardened as she saw whom exactly she'd walked into. She sighed. "I shouldn't be surprised. There's an explosion in the library of course the Marauders would be behind it."
"At your service milady," Sirius said, bowing his head towards the redhead's angry face, grin on his. He sobered slightly with the withering look she sent back.
"Go out with me?" James asked weakly from the floor where he had fallen, Remus reaching down to help him up.
"You, James Potter, are an arrogant-fatheaded toerag who thinks that he can date any girl in this school!"
"So we've heard." Sirius laughed. He got to his feet and turned to James. "Better luck next time, mate!"
"Really!" Lily said, irritation rolling off her tongue and seeping into her words. "Break is in two days and you still manage to get yourselves into trouble before the holidays! Unbelievable!"
"Well we weren't exactly trying," Remus said. He stepped back as the redhead turned her wrath on him.
"And you, Remus! I expect this of the rest of them, but you're a prefect! You should know better!"
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Spit it out Evans; how many detentions do we have?"
"Well, considering the fact that you were brewing a potion in the library," she said, gesturing to the caldron tucked under Peter's arm. "That exploded, and you're going to be out past curfew in," she paused to check her watch. "Oh, thirty seconds, I'd say-"
"You boys! You- you- vandals! You ruined an entire section of books!" Madam Pince, who had finally caught up with them, sputtered. "Do you have any idea how much work it will be to fix all of them? Not to mention cleaning up the mess! It'll take hours!" She was practically spitting in her consternation.
Lily smirked. "I think I'll leave you four in the capable hands of Madam Pince." The boys looked at her with pleading eyes. Her smirk widened, and she walked back to her table and gathered up her books.
I really hope looks can't kill, was James could think as he gazed into the seething librarian's face.
On their way back to the Gryffindor common room, after having received eight detentions each, all of which were to be spent cleaning the Magical Creatures section of the library and mending all the books that had been damaged in the explosion under the watchful eye of Madam Pince, with absolutely no magic, the Marauder's conversation (as it so often did) turned to James' love life.
"Why couldn't you have fallen in love with a girl who isn't evil, Prongs?" Sirius asked.
"She's a prefect! She was just doing her job!" James stated defensively.
"Yeah," laughed Sirius. "Like to see you say that the next time old Snivelly catches us up to something!"
"Are you planning on getting caught then, mate?" Remus asked
"Not at all, not at all."
Lily was practically fuming as she wandered the hallways, heading in the vague direction of the Gryffindor common room. Why are they so annoying? If they have to plan pranks, why do they have to do it in the library? They know about every secret passage in the school, why the damn library? She knew why. Why does James Potter have to be such an arse? Haven't I made it clear that I'm in no way interested in him? She was still lost in thought when she walked into someone for the second time that day. If possible, this person was even more unwelcome than the first.
"Lily?" He was slightly hunched, his shoulders drooped and hands in his robe pockets. His long hair hung loose around his chin, and there was a gleam from his chest as a prefect badge caught the light from the torches that lined the walls of the corridor.
"Sev?" she asked, then berated herself internally. He is not your friend! She thought, looking at the Slytherin in front of her. He hasn't been your friend for almost a year! "Snape." She corrected herself coolly. Lily turned and started to walk away, but froze as she felt him lay a hand on her shoulder.
"Lily wait."
"Get off me Snivellus!" she cried savagely, shrugging out of his grasp. She instantly regretted her words and had to bite back the apology that involuntarily rose to her lips. It was cruel, and she knew it, but some part of her was brutally glad as she saw the horrified expression on his face. Good. Maybe now he might know how she felt.
Snape withdrew his hand. He swallowed, but valiantly continued. "Lily I've told you I'm sorry! I didn't mean to call you… that… that word; it just sort of-"
"Slipped out?" She choked on a laugh. "We've been over this Snape. You've made your choice and I've made mine. Now please, just leave me alone." Her voice was tired, and she turned away from him before continuing. "You won't want your friends to see you consorting with a 'filthy little mudblood.'"
Snape cringed. "Don't call yourself that!" he said forcefully.
Lily looked back at him, incredulous. "Yeah, I guess you've got that covered."
Snape took a step forward. "I've told you I'm sorry a thousand times, Lily, and if you want, I'll do it a thousand more! Just give me a chance-"
"You don't get, do you?" Lily asked, turning to face him, abruptly aware of hot anger dripping through her veins. "It's not that you called me mudblood, it's who you are! Who you've become!"
Snape straightened and met her eyes, long nose quivering, but he refused to look away. "I never meant to hurt you, you've got to believe me."
Lily gazed up at the cracked stone of the ceiling. "Yeah, I do, Sev, and that's the problem. You never meant to hurt me, but you were completely fine with hexing Augustine Bowman with Mulciber last month."
His forehead wrinkled. "What's she got to do with this?"
"And Hannah Gap a few weeks earlier, and Elijah Copeland before that," Lily continued. "I know what you and your friends do in your spare time," she said, glaring at the taken aback expression on his face. "I guess that those mudbloods just didn't deserve your protection."
"Lily-"
"You-Know-Who doesn't believe in that sort of discrimination, Sev," she said sarcastically. "He believes in persecuting the entire muggleborn population, not in making exceptions for childhood friends. You better get your act together if you plan on joining up after we finish school. We Wouldn't want the other Death Eaters to discover your dirty little secret, now would we?" she started to walk away, but Snape's hand darted out and grabbed her wrist before she could take a step.
"None of that was serious, we were just joking around!" he said desperately.
"Joking around? For Merlin's sake, Sev is this all a game to you? Hannah was in the hospital wing for two weeks! Even James Potter never did anything like that!"
Perhaps it was cruel to mention James, but Lily would be lying if she said she didn't feel a rush of pleasure at Snape's stricken expression.
He started to say something, but was interrupted before he began.
"Are you giving Evans trouble Snivellus?" A cold voice asked.
As if summoned by the mention of his name, James Potter stood a few feet behind Snape, leaning against the corridor wall, arms crossed and an easy smirk on his face. Despite herself, Lily noticed that his hazel eyes caught the light through his lopsided glasses, giving them a soft brown look. Like liquid gold.
For a moment, she wondered if he had been eavesdropping on their conversation, but a quick glance around them told her that that was impossible; there was no where to hide. She supposed that like the multitude of other things that came so easily to him, James Potter simply had impeccable timing.
"Potter!" Snape said angrily. "Keep your arrogant self in your own business." Based on the barely-veiled surprise in his voice, Lily assumed that he hadn't heard the Marauder approach either. "Don't you have a fan club who'll be wondering where you are?"
James shrugged the jibe off with a small smile. "They can wait, Snivelly," he said. Turning to Lily he asked, "Would you like me to escort you back to the common room?" and stretched out his hand.
Lily looked from James to Sev, quite possibly the two people she hated the most in the school. The bully or the Death Eater? She started to turn away from both of them, but at the last moment, she grabbed James' hand. She looked into Snape's face, boldly confronting the betrayed expression that she knew she'd find there. "Don't call me Lily." With that, she turned and headed back towards Gryffindor Tower, practically dragging James along as she went.
As soon as they got to the common room, Lily dropped his hand as if it had bitten her.
She started to turn away, but James called "Evans," and she looked back at him. "Don't I even get a kiss for saving you from that slimy git?" he asked with a smile and a wink.
Lily sighed. "You really are hopeless aren't you?" I should've just walked away.
"Dunno. How 'bout you go out with me, and I'll tell you?"
Lily sighed again and turned, but she found a small smile had tickled its way across her lips.
A/N and there's the first edited chapter. Originally I was going to edit all of these and then upload them all at once, but since there were 22 chapters (and trust me, significant edits need to be done on every one) I decided that was too huge of a goal, so now I'm editing a few at a time and uploading each when I finish them. For the first few chapters the plot is going to remain generally the same, but one thing i'm noticing is that the over-all plot lines I chose to follow as a seventh grader are perhaps even more questionable than the writing itself, so there is a very big chance that later chapters will be almost unrecognizable. As it is, there's a lot of changes even in the few I've edited that hopefully make them actually readable.
Since this story has been abandoned for so long, I'm not sure if any of the original readers still remember it, but whether you're a new one or you somehow stomached the seventh grade version, please review and look out for the next chapters which should hopefully be coming shortly!
