Here is my first Harry Potter fanfic. I hope you enjoy. LilyXJAmes forever. 3
Lily was a practical girl. She was not the kind who spent her days mooning after a boy or giggling with girlfriends over one. That is not to say that she was oblivious to the opposite sex—she noticed boys just as much as any other teenage girl. What really made her different was the cool way that she regarded a boy when he flirted with her, like she was amused with his petty attempts at securing her affections. She would flip her hair unconsciously, sigh and politely tell him that she was not interested.
James Potter, however, pushed the boundaries at normal flirting and pressed Lily to violent reactions that no other boy could.
"No, damn it, Potter! I will not go out with you," she snapped harshly, glowering at his cockily hopeful grin. He hadn't even opened his mouth to ask his daily question.
"Evans: fifty one, Potter: zero," James's best friend, Sirius Black, chortled as he sat down beside James at breakfast.
James took the routine rejection in stride; he was accustomed to this and it did not dampen his ridiculous hope. With a grin, he sat across the table from Lily, much to her annoyance. "Pass the syrup, Moony," he said as he loaded his plate full of French toast.
Lily, however, was in no mood to be eating her breakfast across from him and his friends. "Oh, go sit somewhere else this morning, Potter, I'm in no mood for you," she told him icily.
This, too, did not bother him. James was quite used to her hostility in the mornings. By that time, a week before their N.E.W.T. exams in their seventh year, he knew perfectly well that Lily was not a morning person. "Good morning to you too, Evans," he said cheerfully, pouring maple syrup all over his French toast.
Lily had returned to her favorite tactic for dealing with James: developing deafness and blindness where he was concerned. She turned to her friend Alice, ignoring the teenage boys sitting across from them. "Have you talked to Frank yet?" she asked her friend curiously, disregarding the stare of James Potter that she could feel burning into her skin.
"Not yet," Alice replied nervously. "What do you think he'll say?"
Lily regarded her friend's smooth, clear complexion, wide set brown eyes and wavy hair. "He'll say yes," she predicted confidently. "Why shouldn't he?"
"Maybe he thinks that boys should make the first move," Alice fretted. "Maybe he doesn't want to be distracted right before exams."
"If he thinks that you will be putting him before any studying the week before exams, he doesn't know you at all, Al," Lily said with a laugh.
It was at this time that the daily owls began soaring into the Great Hall, each carrying a small letter or package for a specific student. This did not distract Lily; she was familiarized with not receiving any mail—for who was going to write to her? Her parents were Muggles and had no means of sending a letter by owl. Her sister had once gotten a letter to Hogwarts, when they were children, but Petunia despised Lily, and would rather suffer a horrid death than write to her sister. That fact saddened Lily some, but she thought it inevitable; Petunia had always been a bit prone to jealousy when it came to her younger sister.
Across the table, a large barn owl was bringing James the Daily Prophet and a grey screech owl was providing mousy Peter Pettigrew with a package containing extensive advice on his N.E.W.T.'s from his mother, at which Sirius was reading over his shoulder and snickering at.
"No mail today?" James asked Lily, while flipping open the Prophet to read a truly interesting article on the Deputy Minister of Magic's many scandalous exploits of witches in Scotland.
She contemplated pretending she had not heard him, but decided that was unnecessarily rude, as she was seated only a few feet from him. Grudgingly, she replied, "No."
"Your articulate conversation is dazzling," James said sarcastically, grinning at her in a way that made her want to smile back.
Immediately, she was confused. Since when did she want to smile back at James Potter? She should want to hit him with a particularly complex Banishing Charm—such was the norm for Lily. Rapidly, she was losing her appetite. Judging by the amount of students leaving the Great Hall, it was not too early to start walking towards her first class of the day: Potions. Without replying to James's earlier sarcastic remark, she gathered her book bag from beneath her seat and stood.
"You ready, Al?" she asked her friend.
Alice was staring openly at Frank Longbottom, who was seated halfway down the table. "Not yet, Lily, you can go. I'll catch up," she said, her eyes not straying from their target.
Lily started to walk down the hallway, not bothered by the lonely walk to the dungeons. When she got there, maybe she could set up her cauldron early, so as to be ready when Professor Slughorn started class. They would be making Essence of Invincibility, a particularly complex potion that, if made correctly, causes the drinker to experience a very intense feeling of confidence. Professor Slughorn had warned the class that this potion was particularly dangerous if drunk by an already confident person or if drunk too often. Lily wondered if James had been drinking the Essence of Invincibility since he could walk; that would explain his ridiculous egotistical view of himself.
"Hey, Evans!"
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear, mused Lily as James called out to her. "Leave me alone, Potter," she retorted, not snappily, but calmly; she knew her wishes were not going to be obeyed but was going to ignore him the best she could. Smile at James Potter? No, she was going to ignore him until he moved on. This particular tactic she had been employing on him for almost a month, and he had not yet moved on. It was only a matter of time, she hoped.
He caught up with her, smiling that adorable—no, that aggravating grin. Oh, what was wrong with her today? "Have I ever left you alone before?" he said with a laugh. He pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose with one hand. On some people, glasses looked unbecoming, but James Potter somehow managed to make them not so.
"No," she said, somewhat bitterly, because he had never, in fact, upheld her desire to be left alone by him.
He looked surprised by her tone, but she was back to ignoring him as she walked along the corridor and paid it little attention. There was silence for the rest of the walk to Potions.
Slughorn was not yet in the classroom when they arrived; it was completely vacant except for Severus Snape, whom Lily ignored even more efficiently that James Potter. She had not spoken to him in almost six months, and their last encounter had been hardly one at that. Needless to say, she was not missing him and his fervent obsession with the Dark Arts.
Lily set up her cauldron at her normal spot, in the front of the classroom, in the corner to have the quickest access to the students' supplies. Instead of setting up in the back of the classroom to have the widest range of Dungbomb hurling while remaining unnoticed as the culprit, James started setting up his cauldron beside Lily's, not speaking to her, thankfully, as he got out his Potions book and silver knife and dragon-hide gloves.
Several minutes later, the rest of the class arrived in small groups: Alice and Frank arrived, holding hands, at which Lily grinned happily; Sirius, Remus and Peter arrived together, laughing over something and quickly claiming the seats beside James; the large pack of Slytherins that were friends with Snape and up to their noses in Dark Arts.
Professor Slughorn emerged from his office, eyeing the students who were just rushing into the classroom with distaste before clearing his throat loudly. "Welcome to Potions. As I mentioned in yesterday's lesson, today we are attempting the Essence of Invincibility—Nott, Avery, if the two of you have something so important that it cannot wait, we are all willing to listen." The two Slytherin boys glared coldly at Slughorn, obviously unwilling to share what was written on the piece of paper being passed between them. "Very well. We are attempting the Essence of Invincibility today. I explained everything yesterday to give you the maximum amount of time to complete the potion. The instructions are on page four hundred and fifty-two in your books. Good luck to you all. I will be watching," he warned, mainly towards Sirius and James, who exchanged grins at each other.
Lily opened her book, but did not bother to read the directions; she had gone over them last night while studying for her Potions N.E.W.T. The essence of invincibility was bound to show up on their practical exam and it was crucial for everything this day to go as planned. She carefully measured the correct amount of dragon blood before pouring it into her cauldron. While it mixed with the water boiling the cauldron and diluted, she cut up several gurdyroots into evenly sliced pieces. Potions was an easy subject for Lily; all it required was patience and the ability to follow directions.
Halfway through the lesson, Lily's potion was already the desired shade of blazing orange, and she had only a few more lines of instructions to go. Feeling quite proud of herself, she examined her peers' potions to see how everyone else was attempting it. Alice in the row behind her had managed to create an yellow-green colored potion, and was laughing with Frank over it; Lily smiled at the pair of them together. Snape's potion, Lily could tell from across the room, was orange and was emitting the strange smoke that the potion should be emitting at one of the final stages before completion. Beside her, James had obviously gone wrong with his potion; it reeked strongly of onion and skunk.
"Ah, damn," James cursed as he dropped half of a pint of his dragon blood into the cauldron at once. Immediately, the cauldron exploded, drenching Lily, James, and Sirius with the stinky mess. Lily let out a yelp as the stuff burned her skin and created holes in her robes. The places where the potion had made contact with skin began to swell enormously and very rapidly; by the time Slughorn had made his way over to see what had occurred, Lily had watched James's face swell like a balloon from where the potion had splattered him.
"Hospital wing," Slughorn ordered after waving his wand and clearing the potion off the table. "Madame Pomfrey will need to attend to those burns and you might want to pick up some new robes from your common room before coming back." Lily nodded sheepishly, having the feeling that half of her face must appear as if a hive of bees had stung her; it certainly felt that way. Nodding was painful and she quickly rose from her seat to follow James and Sirius very rapidly to the hospital wing.
This was originally going to be a oneshot, but then as I started writing, I realized it would become the longest oneshot in the history of long oneshots. Therefore, it is no longer a oneshot. I would keep going, but its midnight, and I don't want to end up writing too much. This is my first Harry Potter fanfic, and it is LONG overdue. I love Lily and James. Thank you very much for reading, and have a great day or night or whatever time it is.
Mel.