James and Lilly- The Beginning

It was a cold autumn day in our 5th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Winter was approaching fast and the rain was meeting with the ground as if they were hail stones and not simple raindrops. The weather was abysmal. My mood however was as gleeful as it could be. Padfoot and I were off to potions and Padfoot was, as usual, teasing me about how Lily would 'never' take me, as he put it. Apparently to her, I'm this overconfident, cocky and even arrogant bully. Another friend of Lily's, Severus Snape who was a young talented wizard, was a target for me in the eyes of my peers. I constantly used spells such as Levicorpus against him, no matter how much and how many teachers would badger me about it. But this didn't bother me. Despite Sirius teasing me I was still extremely happy. On the way to potions Padfoot thought it was time for him to investigate.

"Why are you so...happy? When I or Moony, or Wormtail for that matter tease you about Lily you always tell us to shut up and leave you alone. Why are you not mad? It just isn't right." Sirius posed the questions with a sound of shock weaved into his voice.

"Well, if you must know-" I started.

"I must know, tell me!" Sirius interrupted, eager to hear my answer. He also pivoted so he was walking backwards, me nearly dropping his books while doing so and almost knocking down a small group of first years as if they were bowling pins.

"Ok, ok. Calm down, I'll tell you." I said with a laugh. "If you must know, now don't interrupt" I hastily added, "I heard Lily talking to one of her friends, whose name escapes me, and she said some...well, good things about me." A huge smile now found a new home on my face and a shy and, I admit embarrassed laugh escaped from my smirking mouth.

"Wow...it's a miracle. Lily said something good about you." Sirius forced the words out while trying not to laugh.

"Haha, Shut u-oomph" I said as Sirius and I walked right by our classroom and into our potions master, who was anticipating us walking by the class. He treated it as us trying to ditch class, again. We'd ditched class once or twice before.

"Mr Potter, Mr Black. Take your seats in the CORRECT, classroom please?" He said. Our potions teacher was a rather generously built character, with short black hair and purpley-red robes. I always thought his 'poo eyes' as me and my friends called them were disproportionally small for his face though. I've never really liked him.

Potions went off without a hitch. Well actually someone epically failed and his potion sort of exploded and sent him half way across the class and he landed on another caldron with a huge thud and knocked over a girl's potion on landing, and it sent black gunk all over the floor and we had to evacuate the class. So yeah, it went off without a hitch.

Later, back in the common room, my friends and I were getting ready to go to the Great Hall for dinner. It was a special occasion apparently; we had a special guest joining us. I however spent the whole lecture he was giving, 'he' being The Minister of Magic, lost in my daydreams. I don't even know what he was talking about. I never really cared anyway.

I just couldn't get Lily off my mind. At first I thought that it was strange being in love and I tried to convince myself that I didn't actually love Lily, because my relatives and friends 'don't believe in love'. A lot of my relatives got divorced time and time again and I didn't want to go through the torment which they suffered. One of my aunts fell in love with this guy called Gerry who I didn't trust. Being brutally honest, he was quite fat and he had a habit of...well, I would like to use a more appropriate string of words, but again being brutally honest, he was a total drunk, fat, ugly, squishy-faced slob who doesn't care about how women feel. He just wants them in bed as much as possible. But guess what. She stayed with him through all the abuse he dished out to her because she truly loved him but even after all that, he simply left her with a note saying:

'The times we've had together were great, but I guess you could call me 'Storm'. I'll pluck you up in a whirlwind and take you for a hell of a ride, but at the end of the day, no storm lasts forever. Good luck with your future, and goodbye.'

She was a total wreck for months. I didn't want to go through that, obviously, so I tried detaching myself from the army of my thoughts of Lily. That was too hard though, because I didn't actually want to stop thinking of her and eventually the army of thoughts overpowered me and I realised that I really would go through anything for her, anything at all.

Later that night, back in the common room after I'd changed into more...casual clothing I guess you could say, Peter, Sirius, Remus and I were having a good old game of Truth or Dare. As you could guess, one of my Truth questions was 'Do you love Lily Evans?' Obviously I had to tell the truth or this boggart would come out of nowhere and scare you half to death, literally. So I said 'Yes.' They all laughed. I just looked out of the window and thought of Lily. I knew that I had to tell Lily I was in love with her before the others embarrassed me, so I said I was tired, let out a stifling yawn and went up to bed.

I fetched my quill and some ink, jumped into bed and I started the long arduous task of writing my first ever Love Letter, hunched over like...well, a hunchback. I couldn't imagine the letter sounding good. I got about half way and screwed up the paper, threw it in the bin and shoved my head into my hands in frustration. I said to myself, "Why can't I get this right? AARRGGHH! I suck at this!"

By now it was dark and the hoard of raindrops kept dragging my thoughts away from me kicking and screaming. I couldn't concentrate at all. I retrieved the screwed up paper from the bin, threw it up in the air and uttered the word 'Incendio'. The paper deteriorated in mid-air in the middle of the room and the ashes momentarily floated up and fell as if they were fireworks.

I hopped back into bed, leaving the ashes to get acquainted with the floor, and thought to myself 'What if I just make a fool of myself? What if she doesn't love me back? What will everybody say about this? Oh well, I'm just gonna go for it..'

After a while of thinking to myself, sleep finally took me under her grip. I drifted off into my imagination and once more dreamed of the love of my life, Lily Evans. It must've been the millionth time I'd dreamt of her.