Disclaimer: As sad as it is for me, I don't own Harry Potter. Or his parents. Or their friends.

A note on what you're about to start reading (added after the story has ended): I wrote "Heads over Heels" over the course of nearly four years—pretty much for my entire high school career. During this time, it was the closest thing I had to a diary; it was a fictitious abstraction of my life, emphasizing some parts of my reality while completely changing others (obviously, I never went to Hogwarts).

Given what the purpose this story has served and the way that the past four years have gone for me, "Heads over Heels" can be rather dark. It can also be confusing, and sometimes the characters act in ways that don't make sense. This is how I have interpreted my reality; if everyone always acts sensibly in your life, I want to know the secret to your order.

I think it's important to say that I don't endorse everything that happens in this story. The codependence, gender roles, and secrecy featured in "Heads over Heels" are all parts of my reality whose problematic nature I am still in the process of realizing. "Heads over Heels" is not and never was an attempt to tell a story as it should be, but rather to tell a story as it very well could be. I believe that we are all, to some extent, muddling through issues we don't really know how to handle, and I think that one way to handle them is the way depicted in this narrative. Whether that way is good or healthy is a different question entirely, and I think that this particular narrative shows coping mechanisms and solutions that are problematic and damaging at times. This is not a how-to manual; it's a journey through a messy set of circumstances with few obvious answers.

"Hello, Evans."

Lily Evans groaned as she laid eyes on her worst nightmare. Actually, these days James Potter was her second-worst nightmare—first prize was taken by Lily's ex-best friend, Severus Snape, and his idiotic Slytherin chums. Still, James was a very close second.

"Hello, Evans," James repeated.

"What in Merlin's name are you doing here?" Lily demanded. She and James were in the prefect compartment; only the head boy and girl of Hogwarts were supposed to be there at the moment. That James Potter was head boy was simply out of the question; he must have heard that Lily was head girl and come to the compartment to annoy her. There was still the matter of who the head boy was, though; perhaps he was in cahoots with James and had agreed to leave him alone with Lily for a while.

"I'm head boy," James answered, waving a very authentic-looking head boy badge in her face.

"Very funny, Potter," Lily drawled. "Did Remus lend you the badge, or did you steal it?" Despite Lily's loathing of the lead Marauders, she was rather good friends with their friend Remus Lupin, who for the past two years had been her fellow prefect. This had led to a lot of judgment paradoxes for Lily, who had discovered that Remus was a werewolf and the other Marauders, whom she held in so much scorn, went to great lengths to help their friend—lengths whose specifics Lily would have loved to use against James and Sirius, though Remus had sworn her very strictly to secrecy. Despite knowing how much the two troublemakers did for their friend, however, James and Sirius pulled enough cruel pranks on innocent, defenseless students that Lily felt almost no guilt hating them.

"I'm head boy," James repeated. "This badge belongs to me." He waved the badge in her face again.

"Dumbledore's far too brilliant to make you head boy," Lily retorted. "Seriously, whose badge is that?"

"Mine," James reitterated. He sounded slightly annoyed.

"Stop playing games with me, Potter. You're not head boy. Give up the ghost," Lily insisted.

"Why do you always assume the worst about me, Evans?" James demanded, sounding rather anguished.

"You're an arrogant, bullying toe-rag," Lily replied automatically.

"Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe I've changed in the past year and a half or so? Can't you at least give me a chance?" James pleaded.

"Not on my life, Potter. Now tell me whose badge you nicked."

James fumbled in his pocket for a second before producing a folded, crumpled letter. Lily read it in disbelief. Signed by Professor McGonagall, it named James Potter head boy of Hogwarts. The wording was identical to that on Lily's letter, except that it named James head boy instead of naming Lily head girl. "Now will you believe me?"

Lily shook her head. "Forgery." She took out her wand and performed several spells on the letter to try to prove it was fake, but none of the spells turned up positive for any kind of forgery whatsoever. At last, she pursed her lips and tried to think of an alternate explanation. "Brilliant charms work, Potter," she said finally.

"Charms is your subject, Evans," James replied. "I've trailed you in that class since day one. I could never cast a charm you couldn't detect."

"Did Black or Remus help you?" Lily tried, privately a bit surprised that James knew that charms was her best class.

"Evans, the letter's real. Accept it."

Lily cast several more spells on the letter. Finally, she turned away and sank into a seat on the opposite side of the compartment, burying her face in her hands.

"What's wrong?" James asked. The concern in his voice was so genuine Lily almost wanted to believe it.

"I'm head girl and you're head boy. What isn't wrong?" she retorted.

"Come on, what's so bad about that?"

"Everything," Lily moaned.

"But why?" James challenged.

"You're an arrogant, idiotic, bullying, immature, moronic, big-headed, sarcastic, cruel, reckless, rule-breaking, lazy, egomaniacal toe-rag!" Lily yelled. "I hate you! I hate everything about you, from the way you mess up your hair and play with that stupid Snitch to the way you hex people just for the fun of it! You're despicable! And I have to patrol with you, share duties with you, plan events with you, and make decisions with you. What isn't wrong with that?"

"Evans . . . will you please just give me a chance?" James begged, sounding really hurt.

"No!" Lily shouted.

"Please?" he tried again, but just then a gaggle of prefects entered the compartment, and the matter had to be dropped.

A/N: The ends of the chapters following this one request reviews and sometimes ask for specific feedback. I wanted that feedback while I was writing the story. Now that I am done, I have no plans to rework any part of this narrative in the future, and as such giving me criticism (however constructive it is meant to be) will not actually cause the story to improve in any way. You can say what you want, but I may or may not continue reading reviews of this story, and you should bear in mind that my requests for feedback are now obsolete.