So, just thought I'd try my hand at a Jily story, tell me what you think!


I own nothing, all recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling.


Review! Please! It would make me very happy.


"Liiillly flower..." came a drawling voice from behind her.

Lily Evans, Head Girl, did not deign to look up. She was sitting on a comfortable armchair in her dormitory and did not intend to let anybody disturb her.

"Oi! Lily! Get your head out of that book!"

Startled, Lily lifted her eyes from the page and turned around in her chair to see her best friend, Alice Selwyn, dancing up and down.

"What...are you doing, Alice?" asked Lily, fearful for her friend's sanity. Alice was wearing her school robes and they were, for some reason, a bright canary yellow. Upon her head was perched a hat shaped like a pineapple. Then she recognized the symptoms of one beleaguered by Itching Powder.

"Potter." said Alice, spitting out the name. Lily nodded.

"Thought so." Lily handed Alice a vial of bright green liquid, which Alice pulled a face at but drank down in one.

"I still don't get how that works every time I get pranked," said Alice, falling onto her bed opposite Lily.

"I told you, I managed to figure out what they put in their potions of theirs. When Potter gave me a cookie in sixth year I took it straight to Slughorn and over three hours we managed to analyze exactly what was in it, and we made the antidote. Which means, as they use the same ingredient every time, if I can remedy that I fix everything." Lily shrugged and went back to her tattered old book, which was called Charms for the Jinxed; a More Unconventional Way of Dealing With Unfriendly Spells.

"Why are you reading that, anyway?"

"Professor McGonagall's practical, remember? She's always told us that the best way to lift a jinx that transfigured you into something else was with a counterjinx...but I found this book in the library, and apparently before 1562, charms were the best way to go for that. Three counterjinxes were made illegal, though the book doesn't say what they were...apparently they were just too destructive when they go wrong. I was thinking, if I could somehow manage to figure one of them out I could go to the Room of Requirement and try them out, and then I'd have that practical in the bag."

"You'll have it in the bag anyway, you always do, you moron," said Alice affectionately.

"Watch who you're calling a moron," said Lily, mock-sternly, before shrieking. "I have it! I have it! Inimicus meus incapax. They actually have one in here!"

"Where'd you get that book anyway?" asked Alice, eyeing the book suspiciously.

"Nicked it out of the Restricted Section," said Lily casually. "I found it wedged behind a bunch of disgusting moldy Potions books...no one can have been around those for years."

"Merlin, Lily. Who made you Head Girl?"

"Um...McGonagall, obviously. Now, come on, I want to get to dinner. Wait, how'd you get pranked again? If it's steak again, I want to know before I eat."

"Water jug in DADA," said Alice.

"Oh...well, that's new. Come on, I don't want to be late."

Unfortunately for the two girls, someone else...or rather, four other people...had decided to come down the boys' staircase at exactly the same time.

"Oh, good evening, my darling Evans. Will you go out with me on Sunday?" said James Potter, Head Boy, resident Toerag, and annoying git.

Lily was silent and kept walking toward the portrait hole.

"Oh, don't be like that, dear!" sang Sirius Black gleefully. "Jamesie here has just been piiiiiiiining over you."

Alice spared them one look of disdain. The two girls kept walking.

"Ev..."

Lily had jumped around so that she was now nose-to-nose with James. "Sod off, Potter! I've got less nauseating things to do than listen to you."

James was silent, trying to work out what she had just said. "Like what?"

"Cleaning the dungeons with my bare hands," said Lily, before turning away and walking out of the common room with Alice.


At dinner, Lily was sitting next to Ted Tonks. He seemed to be a bit worried throughout the meal. When dessert arrived, Lily turned to face him.

"All right, spit it out, Teddy." The two were very good friends; they and Alice were a sort of threesome. "What's bothering you?"

"You know Andy Black?"

Andy Black, called Andromeda by her vast number of Slytherin relatives, was the most beautiful girl in Ravenclaw house, with wide, sparkling blue eyes, a flawless complexion, long, thick brown hair, and, most beautiful of all, a charming smile that lifted everyone's heart to look at.

"Of course I know Andy Black, who doesn't know Andy Black?" said Lily. "What about her?"

"It's her birthday tomorrow...she's turning eighteen and I'm not sure what to give her."

"Give her a ring whose stone matches her eyes," said Alice, tucking into a plate of peach cobbler.

"No, those are cliche, and she must have had a dozen given to her. Get a really rare book from that new bookshop. I haven't had a chance to go down there yet, and I'm really looking forward to it on Sunday." Lily gave a dreamy sigh.

"You're going with Jordan Halford, right?"

"No...he's going out with Mary Macdonald, where'd you get that idea?" asked Lily.

"You need a date for Sunday though." Alice pointed out.

"Um, why?"

"To get back at Potter! Sheesh! Every time Potter pranks us, you go out with someone with the full understanding between you both that it's just to get back at Potter."

"Ooh, how'd I forget that?" asked Lily, smacking her forehead. "Actually, there's someone I've been wanting to ask out for a bit...since last month...I'm thinking of a real...relationship?"

"You, Lily? You who have never gone out with ANYONE for any reason than just to get on Potter's nerves?"

"Yeah..." She leaned toward Alice and whispered, "Remus."

"He's your type," Alice nodded approvingly. "Bookish, quiet, reserved...you should ask him."

"I will. Tonight."


That night, Lily waited in agony for the common room to empty. Finally, only Remus was left doing his Defense Against the Dark Arts essay.

"Um, Remus?" she said, looking over at him from her book.

"Yes, Lily?" She liked the way he said her name. Like a friend, not that annoying, 'Evans, will you go out with me?' that James was always spewing.

"I was wondering...would you go out with me to Hogsmeade?" She saw a strange look on his face and backpedaled furiously. "Just as friends, that's all, I want to go to the bookshop and...maybe a butterbeer..."

"Yes, I'd like to. Do you mind if I bring my Transfiguration stuff? I mean, the practical is on Monday, so..."

Lily beamed at him. "I'll bring my book, too. There's a really old spell I wanted to discuss...that'll be great! See you then!"

After awarding him with a dazzling smile, she blushed slightly, and vanished up the girl's staircase.

Remus put his head in his hands and wondered what James was going to say when he found out.


He didn't really have a reason to.

"Evans asked you out?" asked Sirius in disbelief ten minutes later. "Lily Evans, Jamesie's prized paramour, actually waited for you in the common room and asked you out?"

"Yeah," said Remus, who was feeling a little dazed.

"Bloody hell, mate, Prongs is gonna be mad at you," said Sirius.

"I know. But I really couldn't let her down, and besides, it's just as friends. We'll be bringing out stuff for the practical."

"Only you, Moony," snorted Sirius. "Would ever think of bringing a book on a date."

"It's not a date!" protested Remus. "She said, 'just as friends,' and..."

Sirius snorted again. "Listen, mate, it's a date. She likes you. She just probably got startled by your expression, and that's why she said just as friends."

"Oh." said Remus. Then, "I hope I didn't offend her."

It was just then that James Potter entered the room, groaning and smelling strongly of polish.

"How was detention, Prongs?" asked Sirius.

"Brutal," groaned James. "Filch is a maniac." Then he noticed the way that Sirius and James were looking at him.

"What...what are you guys looking at me like that for?"

"This is going to come as a shock," said Sirius bracingly.

"Yeah..." said Remus, looking faintly sick now. "It will be...it's about Evans."

"Tonight, Lily-flower waited in the common room until she and Moony were the last ones left in it," said Sirius, watching James carefully for signs of desperate behavior. "And she asked Moony out."

The reaction James had was exactly the one that his two friends had expected.

"What? She...what? How could she...ask Moony..."

James collapsed in a chair. "Well, at least Moony refused," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes, looking thoroughly miserable.

"I didn't." said Remus, expecting the worst.

"YOU WHAT? YOU KNOWINGLY AGREED TO DATE LILY EVANS WHEN I'VE BEEN TRYING TO GET HER TO GO OUT WITH ME SINCE SECOND YEAR?"

"You went about it the entirely wrong way mate. Face it, you ruined your chances with her in first year before you even liked her."

"It's just as friends," said Remus. "We're going to study."

This did not quell their infuriated friend. James looked murderous.

Remus and Sirius sighed, and waited for their friend Peter to come back up from the kitchens. It was going to be yet another long night.


So...review! I will update soon, within a week. If you give me reviews I will update faster :P :)

-A Diamond in the Rough