Oh! Professor?
Disclaimer: I am not the fabulous Ms Rowling. Nothing recognisable from the Harry Potter series is mine. Simply the plot.
Chapter 1: How it began
James Potter was sat on the train, preparing himself for his final year at Hogwarts. Which he would face alone.
His friends had all graduated the year before. Whilst he was stuck here, with no friends for a whole year.
Sirius was training to become an auror with the Ministry. Remus was travelling to America to work with a scientist who thought they had a cure for lycanthropy. And Peter was working at the apothecary in Diagon Alley. But Lily, his sweet Lily, he didn't know where she had gone, she had severed her correspondence with him at the end of the summer, with no explanation why, just a sentence: We can't be together anymore, I'm sorry.
James sighed, cursing his life. Lily wouldn't speak to him. Sirius could rarely speak to him. Remus couldn't speak to him. And lets face it, Peter wasn't the best conservationist. And he would be spending a school year alone, all because he had to finish his seventh year a year late.
His father had been very ill during James' 6th year, and having no other living relatives, had to rely on James, causing him to skip out that school year. When he'd gotten back to school he'd had to complete his sixth year while his friends completed their seventh.
But none of that mattered to James, right now he was more worried about Lily.
Things had been going so well between them, she had tutored him through all the sixth year work, and they had grown close. By the end of the year they had been an item, but it all changed when he got that note. She wouldn't return his owls, answer his phone calls (he'd mastered the telephone in his time at home), and she'd blocked her floo network.
He couldn't help but wonder why she didn't want to speak to him. This is all he could think about, and what he was thinking about when the Hogwarts Express came to a jolting stop at Hogsmeade station.
As James settled himself at the Gryffindor table he quickly glanced around, looking over the four house tables, and the heads table. Where he noticed, Professor McGonagall was sitting.
Not that McGonagall sitting at the heads table was shocking, just that she usually wasn't there, she was usually bringing the new first years in. He scanned the rest of the table, and upon finding an empty seat figured that another teacher would be bringing the new students in for the sorting.
Upon concluding this he heard the doors to the Great Hall open, and many footsteps entring the hall. Gasps came from behind him, he assumed it was just the new students eeeing the night sky on the ceiling, it happened every year, and he was not interested in watching it for yet another year.
He was interested, however, in why the sixth years opposite him were staring at him, it's not like anything had changed about him.
Then he heard it. He heard the Professor introducing the sorting hat. He turned his head, and saw the red hair, the slim figure and the sparkling green eyes of Lily Evans.
He watched as she stood by the students getting sorted, as she put the hat away, and took her seat at the heads table. As Dumbledore introduced her the deafening applause blocked out the subject she would be teaching, and James hoped she wouldn't be teaching him, because he didn't want to yell at his professor.
