Turnaround

By Madame Solo

Lily Evans/James Potter

Your typical Lily/James 7th year story, but hopefully a halfway decent on.

Author's note:

I am Madame Solo. I write Star Wars fanfiction, don't hate me. I am also a very obsessive person, and so go through different fandoms. I always love Star Wars, but besides that the cycle has been Boys Over Flowers, LOTR (Faramir and Eowyn), Harry Potter/Ginny, Lily/James and more recently, Tonks/Lupin. Only with Lily/James though have I ever branched out from SW fanfiction and tried my hand at Harry Potter.

You might ask why. (Probably not, but too bad. Just skip down to the story.) The reason why is that nearly every story I read I would get tired of it ¾ the way through. It would never go the way I wanted it to. Either the authors would fall in love with their OC's made for Sirius and Lupin, and the story would focus on them, or it would take too long for Lily and James to hook up, or the story would be written from a 1st person perspective (Something I hate in Harry Potter fanfiction by the way) or Lily was too much of a Mary Sue. The only thing my story may be guilty of is the last, but I hope not. I like Lily.

Anyways, the point is that I wanted to write an LJ story that went my way. And so here it is. I've written more than half of it, and so will be posting it in chunks. I am in no way dedicating any promises with this story, but I think I have enough initiative to at least finish it. It's always a good sign if I work on a story about once a week without losing interest. But don't become too faithful with this story just in case, after all, its not Star Wars. I have a bad track record of not finishing stories, although (yay me) I finally finished a multi-chapter Star Wars story called Revival, to be posted on here eventually. So hopefully that's a precedent to me finishing this story. I hate people who don't finish stories.

But I digress, this not has gone on way too long. The only other comments I feel the need to make are these. First, I am terrible at titles, and chapter titles. So don't judge my story by that, I'm just not as emo as some writers here, and hence can't find good song lyrics to use as titles. Second, I don't have a beta for this story, so if you notice a blatant mistake, feel free to tell me. Email, review, whatever. And if you're interested in betaing the rest of the story as it comes, I'd love that too.

Oh yeah, and I love reviews.

That's it, I promise, onto Chapter 1.

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Chapter 1: Rejection

"No Potter, you just don't get it do you?" Lily Evans spun around angrily, her red hair whipping behind her.

The young man following her stopped abruptly, resisting the urge to push his face back into hers. "You know what Evans, I don't get it," he sighed, exasperated. "Please do us both a favor and tell me what will get you to go out with me." He instinctively ran his hand through his messy black hair.

Lily's lip curled up in disgust. "Well first off, stop messing up your stupid hair! Your ego is big enough already, you don't have to fluff it up." She stepped menacingly towards him, but he stood his ground.

James Potter dropped his hand immediately. "And if I stopped that, would you go out with me?"

Her face mere inches away from his, Lily continued, "No. If you want me to go out with you, you'd have to stop being the arrogant...stuck up…bully that you are. And since I don't really think you want to go through a personality change, I recommend you give up asking me out."

James stared into her furious eyes, and the thought of how easily he could have kissed her managed to slip through his mind. Realizing this would only anger her further, he refrained. But it took a lot of effort.

"Look Evans, I know you think I'm a terrible prat…" his hand moved towards his hair, but he quickly jerked it away. "But I'm really not that bad. I mean, yes, I can be a bit of a bully, but I can stop that, although I can't promise about Sirius-"

"What about Snape?" Lily said curtly. "Would you stop picking on Snape if you could then go out with me?"

James opened his mouth, and then closed it.

Lily's emerald green eyes narrowed. "That's what I thought." She whirled around and started towards the Gryffindor common room.

"You know that most of the time he draws his wand first, right?" said James, his voice sounding a little hurt.

Lily turned her head to look back at him. "Yes, but even you can't deny that you go out of your way to pick on him."

Knowing he could not dispute that, James watched Lily slip through the Fat Lady's portrait.

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An hour later James returned to the common room. Lounging on the couches were his three best friends; Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. All three of them looked up questioningly.

"We saw her come in, mate. She didn't look too happy," said Sirius, who was trying only semi-successfully to look sympathetic.

"Yeah, she turned me down again, and then proceeded to list off my faults as usual." James plopped onto the couch next to them.

"Rotten luck, Prongs. Guess you'll just have to try again next year," said Remus, looking up from his Defense Against the Dark Arts book.

It was the last night of their sixth year at Hogwarts, and James had decided to make one more attempt at getting Lily to go out with him.

"Maybe," replied James glumly. "I don't know anymore, I think I might just give up. It's not as if I enjoy being told repeatedly my faults."

Sirius raised his eyebrows. "James Potter, giving up his conquest of Lily Evans' heart? Does that mean you don't like her anymore?"

"Of course I still like her," James scowled, "but obviously my attempts aren't working. I even tried changing this year." It was true. James Potter no longer bullied anyone except a select few Slytherins who earned most of what they got. He had even laid off on pranks for the most part, letting Sirius organize the few that they did. "I don't think she noticed though. You think she'd bother making sure I was still as horrible as she believes me to be every now and then, you know? I think I'll just have to do things a little differently next year is all. Maybe be more…mature about it."

"You mean not asking her out every five minutes?" chuckled Peter.

"Something like that," replied James with a smirk.

"Well, next year will be your last chance. After we graduate, it'll be easier for her to run away," said Sirius.

"Yeah," James mumbled absent-mindedly. "Yeah…"