A/N: I watched two romantic movies today, Enchanted and Two Weeks Notice (both excellent, by the way) and just when I was about to go to bed, I got this idea spawned from the thoughts I had from both of them. I knew I simply had to write it, so instead of sleeping like I should have, I fed myself some chocolate to wake me up and began this story, knowing it was a loose idea that would go away if I didn't chase it. So I do hope you like it; be sure to review!

Title: Fairytale Gone Wrong
As Told By: Lily Evans
Year: 6
Rating: T for language
Summary: In Lily Evans's eyes, it was absolutely perfect – her former enemy James Potter and her best friend Anneliese Weathers would be the perfect couple, if they wanted to be. All they needed was the right matchmaker and it would all work out to be the fairytale people only dreamed they could have. So, with the very purest of intentions, Lily unwittingly starts trying to find that fairytale, but what she ends up discovering isn't exactly what her idea of a happy ending was.

"LILY! You're falling asleep again; can't you bloody wake up?"

I feel a whack on my arm and that, coupled with the shouted command in my ear, gets me out of my stupor immediately, and I open my exhausted eyelids to see my aggravated best friend glaring me down for the fourth time tonight. I yawn and try to regain control over my fatigue, like I should, and say, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm still awake."

"Yes, of course you are; everybody works with their eyes closed, right, Lil?" Anneliese Weathers says to me, her tone dripping in sarcasm.

I swear, that girl has no patience whatsoever to speak of.

"I'm sorry," I repeat with a second yawn. "I'm just tired, all right?"

"I'm sorry too," Anne says, yawning with me. "I get cranky when I'm sleepy."

"I can see that," I mutter, rubbing my eyes. "Where are we at now?"

Currently, Anne and I are in the Gryffindor common room at two in the morning, trying to finish Anne's homework for Muggle Studies, the one class I don't have with her, owing to my being Muggle-born and more interested in the Ancient Runes. She has to recreate a model of a telephone as well as explain exactly how it works using a diagram even I can barely comprehend. Unfortunately for the two of us, Anne is absolutely hopeless at understanding any kind of Muggle contraption, which means that I, being official Best Friend, am supposed to brave the year through with her and help her to the best of my abilities with her homework. This includes staying up about five nights a week and not being able to complain too much about how heavy-eyed I am.

Trust me – much easier said than done.

I look at Anne's pathetic attempt at a telephone model with a mix of frustration and a strong desire to go to bed and ask, "Why did you even take this bloody subject? You hate it."

"I thought it would be easy," Anne explains grumpily, crumpling up a piece of scrap parchment and chucking it across the room. "It seemed to be the easiest subject on the list; apparently it's not."

I roll my eyes. "You and your laziness. You're exactly like James that way."

"Eww, stop insulting my humanity," Anne complains. "James can be such a slob."

"But you find it rather cute," I say, grinning.

"Maybe I do," Anne says, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. "What's wrong with that?"

"Don't be defensive," I say with a laugh. However, when this laugh turns into a yawn halfway through, I say hastily, "Let's just finish this. I think I'm going loopy from sleep deprivation."

"If you think I'm like James, then yes, you are," she agrees, touching up the receiver of her phone. "Did I do this right?"

I peer at it. "Yes, you did. Now, do you know how the thing works?"

"I think so," she says. "Read over my essay and make sure I did it right, would you, doll?"

"All right, all right," I say. "But for all the work I did for you on this project, I probably should put my name on it along with yours and take some credit."

"Professor Bruin would hate that," Anne points out. "He already despises me; if I can't even do his retarded 'easy' assignments on my own, he'd hate me even more, and we all know what a tragedy that would be."

I snicker; Professor Bruin is a very old-fashioned teacher, meaning he likes to have everyone respect him and urges his students to get perfect scores on everything because they have the potential to. Anne really hasn't been in his good books lately, seeing as she has lost almost all will to try at all, let alone try hard, and has grown to resent him more than before as a result. He is often the subject of ridicule in regular conversation, and is Anne's favorite teacher because he is so easy to make fun of. I used to object to berating him at every possible second, but now I don't even bother; even if it's harsh and judgmental, Anne's usually spot-on with what she says about him.

"Will you give me the bloody essay now please?" I request irritably after a few moments; I can almost hear my bed calling out to me, I'm so tired.

"I am, I am, keep your socks on," Anne snaps back at me, scratching out a few lines and handing the finished product to me. "Voila."

I take the paper from her and skim over it, looking for grammatical, punctuation, or spelling errors rather than correctness of content – that last is Anne's responsibility, not mine. I don't see any, so I give it back to her and say, "It's pretty good."

"Do you think I'll pass?"

I consider. "Do you want my honest answer or what you want to hear?"

"What I want to hear, if you don't mind," Anne says. "I might cry if I have to do any more for this damn thing."

I smile as convincingly as is humanly possible. "You'll do lovely and he'll keep yours as an example for future Hogwarts students that have the bad luck – er, fortune – to be in his class in later years."

Anne smirks at me, but is appreciative of my lie nonetheless. "Thank you; that is exactly what I wanted to hear."

"Lovely." I give out yet another yawn and say, "Can you tell me what I want to hear and say that I can go to bed?"

"Okay," Anne sighs dramatically. "Fine, Lily. Just leave your poor best friend here for the rest of the night, struggling away to obtain knowledge you already have acquired, and obey your selfish impulses when they want you to do something as trivial and bothersome as sleep."

This is obviously a signal for me to stay, so I sigh as well and moan, "Annie, I'm so tired."

"You're sixteen years old, Lily," she reprimands me. "I'm nearly done, stop being a baby."

I roll my eyes, but otherwise ignore her slight and say, "Thank goodness."

Anne pushed her project out towards me proudly. "Admire it," she orders. "Drool over it. Envision me getting a passing grade on it."

"Admiring," I say, bored. "Drooling. Envisioning. Please can I go to bed? I'll get on my knees if that'll help."

I win a highly aggravated look from Anne when I say that. "Oh all right then," she gives in reluctantly. "Go to bed; I'll join you in a bit."

I hug her tightly, relieved. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"This is the most affection I've gotten from you all day," Anne mumbles.

I choose not to answer that and drag myself up the dormitory stairs, delirious with gratification for my long-deserved break. I love Anne dearly, but she can be extremely unsympathetic to my nerves sometimes, which is, of course, not always a good thing.

Too sleepy to change into proper pajamas, I allow myself to fall onto my bed, too done in to move, and before I have time to think too much about it, I feel myself slipping away into the safe blackness of much-needed sleep.

&&&

I'm not sure if it's morning or not when I wake up after what seems to be only a few minutes. All I know is that it's loud enough to be morning and I am still supremely tired, despite what little sleep I was treated to during the course of my nap.

"LILY! Wake up!" I hear Anne screech in my ear.

"Why?" I groan. "I just fell asleep."

"You've got about fifteen minutes to get to first period because you overslept," Anne announces. "That's why you should wake up now."

I pop right up, awake at once. "What?! Why didn't you wake me earlier, since you had time to get ready?!"

"You were tired," Anne says harmlessly. "You helped me so much yesterday that I wanted to give you as much time as I could to catch up on your sleep."

"Anne, sweetie, that was really nice of you, but now I'm going to be bloody late to Transfiguration," I fret, leaping out of my bed and rampaging to my bathroom to brush my teeth.

Anne shrugs, something mischievous in her expression somehow, and says, "Oh well. I was probably going to ditch class anyway."

I whip around to face her, horrified. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, why not?" Anne is unable to see why I care so much, but I can't see why she doesn't care at all. "I don't feel like going. I get an extra day to work on that horrible project too, don't I?"

"You're coming to class, Anneliese Weathers," I inform her, my tone muffled as I speed-spit toothpaste suds into my sink. "That's final."

"What are you, my mum?" Anne wrinkles her nose. "Please, Lily; one of her is more than enough."

I snigger; it's a well-publicized fact that Anne absolutely loathes her stepmother. Her real mother divorced her father last summer, and her father was so desperate to find another woman that he picked the first one that entered his life; it was just a matter of chance that she was, as Anne told me constantly, a major bitch.

"No, Anne, I'm not your mother, and I don't want to be," I say. "I'm just telling you that you're coming to class because if you don't, I'll be stuck to deal with James Potter all by myself, and I won't like that."

"Why are you still worried?" Anne asks me, watching interestedly as I slip into the first outfit I can find and throw my hair back into a sloppy ponytail. "I mean, after you kind of shouted at him at the end of the year in June, he's been good about leaving you alone."

I sigh; I hate having to remember the cruel words I'd said to him that day by the Black Lake. James hadn't expressed much concern over the matter, but once we came back after the break at the start of this year, it was evident that he'd done a lot of rethinking and recalculating. He had become a lot quieter, and didn't ask me out as often as he had before. Actually, he didn't ask me out at all; he went on a few dates here and there with other girls, but mostly remained single for this year. I've been pretty surprised by him, to be honest; it's March, so we're well into our last stretch of school, and James Potter doesn't have a steady girlfriend. Still, despite all of these facts, I don't like to be in the same room with him more than I have to be – there's just so much awkwardness between us now, and whenever I'm in his presence, I always feel scrutinized under his frequently intense stares, which is quite uncomfortable. Anne, of course, is unaware of the tender thoughts that go through my head when I think about that summer's day gone wrong, and shows every sign of wanting to plow on in her case anyway, so I continue on as well.

"I suppose he's been good, but do you really want to leave me, your Muggle Studies savior, alone with a guy she doesn't like?" I ask, trying to sound innocent.

She smiles at me and shakes her head. "You totally like him, Lily; it's such a love story for the two of you."

I roll my eyes; we've been through this before, but I don't have the time to pursue it as readily as I usually do. I grab her wrist and scurry off to the Transfiguration room with Anne bumping along behind me, talking at top speed as I go – "I'm not in love with James! He is just another guy, a guy I don't even like. I know you remember every word I told him last year when I yelled at him, and each of them was true to my thoughts about him; I don't care about him! I really don't! He's an egotistical jerk incapable of thinking of anyone besides himself."

"Yes, well, he's been a lot better about that nowadays," Anne says fairly. "I mean, he and Sirius Black don't hex people as much as they did before – you can't tell me you haven't noticed that. James saves his joking around and arrogance for the Quidditch field only, where he really needs it, and he has stopped asking you out. He's grown up a little, like you had wanted him to, and I think you should give him the chance he has now earned."

"Yuck," I say, looking at her with distaste as I turn a corner. "Why do you stand up for him anyway, Anne? Every time I want to say something against him, you always try to redeem him."

"It's only fair," she says, trying in vain to slow me down in my quest to get to class on time. "He doesn't deserve all the bitchiness – ahem, criticism – you give him all the time."

I do not slow down at all out of pure fury this time; I say, "He does deserve it, and you know it. If I didn't know any better, Annie, I'd say you liked him yourself."

"I don't particularly like him because he's a bloody idiot, but he's pretty funny, and probably the cutest guy in our year," Anne says reasonably.

I put forth my biggest effort at not appearing too revolted at this point in our chat. "Funny? Cute? In all the years I've known you, I've never heard you refer to any boy that way; except in first year, when you liked Sirius."

Anne grimaces. "Please, let's not bring back the dirty details of my early, naïve crushes; those are ancient history now, mercifully. And I don't like James – I find him acceptable, but he's made for you, not me."

"Yes, yes, of course he is," I say impatiently, waving aside the part that has to do with me. "I really do think you are in love with him, Anne, to some degree."

"And I really think you've definitely got a few pages glued together for sure if you truthfully think that way," Anne tells me right away as we topple into the classroom with just seconds to spare before the bell.

I'm about to counter her with something else, but I can't, since we are in front of our Transfiguration class, I look horrible in my messy state, and both of us need to sit down. Embarrassed out of my mind, I take my seat in the back of the room with Anne just as the bell rings, and Professor McGonagall starts the day by requesting for us to send our homework up to the front of the room. I take mine out of my bag and pass it up, but Anne curses next to me and starts searching her bag for her own homework.

"I could swear I did this last night," she howls. "Where did it go?"

"I think that you were planning on doing it this morning, but you probably forgot," I say wisely.

"Oh yeah, I was." Anne whimpers. "Damn! What should I do?"

"Turn it in tomorrow?" I suggest.

"Good plan," she says, putting away her bag.

I shrug and pull out some parchment and my quill to take a few notes, while Anne plays with the feather on her own quill, not ready to take notes at all. On any other day, I would have tried to make her focus, but today, I decide not to – it's really no use, because when it comes to weaseling out of any notes, Anne is the master. Professor McGonagall clears her throat to begin the lesson, and everyone in the class except for me settles in to fall asleep, while I become the only person actually paying her any attention; it's a very typical Tuesday.

&&&

Once out of Transfiguration, Anne yawns and stretches out her arms. "That was a nice nap," she remarks as we walk down the corridor, me to Ancient Runes, her to Muggle Studies. "I think I'll take another when I get to Professor Bruin."

"See, this is why you never understand things, Annie," I say. "You need to not sleep in class and actually listen to what your teacher says."

"Why?" she asks perplexedly. "It's pointless."

I sigh. "When will you finally take responsibility for your learning and do what you're supposed to do? You have N. E. W. T.'s next year, and you need to get all the knowledge you can now so that you won't have to study as hard later."

"I probably should listen to you and do what you're saying," Anne tells me contemplatively. "But then again, I'm probably not going to listen to you or do what you're saying, so what's the point in even talking about it?"

"Because you're my friend and I care about your future," I say. "I mean, I know you – you slack off during lessons and the day before the tests, you make me stay up all night with you while you moan, groan, and complain about how you are never going to understand everything by the next morning. I hate doing that."

"You hate doing anything that doesn't involve obsessive learning," Anne says. "You're so boring, Lily; live a little."

"I do live," I say, miffed.

"When's the last time you've been out on a date?" Anne asks.

"Erm…" I search my memory as quickly as I can. "Daniel West asked me out in third year and I said yes."

"Study dates don't count," she says. "I'm talking about a real date."

"Well, then I've never had one," I say, blushing deeply.

"Exactly!" Anne throws her arms dramatically out in front of her, nearly hitting a couple of tiny first years as they streaked down the corridor in the opposite way of us. "Lily, this is pathetic! You are sixteen years old, can be drop-dead gorgeous, and choose to waste your life away with homework!"

"I don't like anyone here," I say. "Aren't I supposed to like who I go out with?"

"You don't have to," Anne says. "I didn't like half the guys I dated, but I went out with them anyway."

"Why?"

Anne grins. "Because they were incredibly sexy."

"How deep," I say sarcastically.

"Really, Lily," she goes on. "Ask someone out! Better yet, ask James out. He'll say yes."

"You like James; why don't you ask him out?" I fire back at her, frantic to get this conversation away from me.

"Maybe I will," Anne says loudly.

"Why don't you?"

Anne takes a breath and says, "I will ask him out and possibly go out with him once just to show you how easy it is to go out with someone you don't particularly like. Keep a quill and some parchment with you to take some good notes here; you're going to be watching a master at work."

I roll my eyes, but say, "All right, all right. When are you going to do it?"

"Tomorrow morning." Anne and I reach the fork in the hall passage where we must separate. "You'll see."

"Of course," I say, bored. "Bye, Anne."

"Bye, Lily." Anne waves to me as she walks down to Muggle Studies at a leisurely pace, already bored to tears before she even gets there. I, however, make my rate of walking a bit more brisk so to get there with a bit of time to spare – I like the Runes quite a lot; they're fascinating.

I try my hardest to forget about what Anne is going to do tomorrow, but there's just something in me that doesn't want to forget it. I figure that it's because I know Anne does like James deep down, since it's true, and I manage to get through the rest of my morning thinking about everything that's probably going to go wrong in the endeavor.

Keeping this in mind, I think I am definitely going to need to take some notes on how badly asking someone out can really go so that I have reason to never, ever try it out myself.

A/N: Well, how was that for a first chapter? I dunno, I have a lot of ideas I want to try out for this little story, so please tell me if you liked the start of it and I will try and get the next chapter up as soon as I can!