Hello everyone! :)

The idea for this fanfiction came to me a few days ago at 1:30am. Naturally, I couldn't get to sleep until I had written the first chapter, so here we are. But it was important that I waited until today to publish it, because today is 31st October 2011. Thirty years ago today, Lily and James Potter gave their lives to protect their son, and by doing so, they gave us the Boy Who Lived, who defeated Voldemort and defined our generation. I absolutely love Lily and James, they're probably my favourite fictional couple, and so I'm putting this up today as a tribute to them. Hopefully you will all like it :)

Life was something that people liked to keep in an ordered fashion. They divided bits of their life into sections, and these sections would be divided into neat little sub-categories comprising of days or years or even decades.

This was how Lily Evans had organised her life- that is, until she met James Potter. Suddenly, the standard units of time were no longer adequate. Instead, Lily preferred to organise her life with James according to seven dances that they had shared, each marking a chapter in their relationship.

Dance number one
November 1974
Gryffindor common room

"I'm not doing it!"

Lily's emerald eyes were ablaze. She sat with her arms folded sternly across her chest and her jaw stuck out in defiance. She was absolutely livid. To make matters worse, that Potter- that bloody moron, Potter- had the audacity to look at her like she was some sort of amusing spectacle in a circus or a zoo.

"Come on, Evans," he said, his sickening grin widening. "A bet's a bet."

"No." Lily was using a tone of voice that she hadn't used since she was eight years old and Petunia had got to stay up later than her, but she didn't care. She wouldn't let Potter get his way.
"Should have used the Unbreakable Vow, mate," Black smirked. He was always smirking. Bloody Black- he was almost as bad as Potter. But not quite. No one could be as horrendously arrogant, self-centered, egotistical and infuriatingly annoying as Potter.

Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be Potter?

"A bet's a bet, Evans," Potter repeated.

"I heard you the first time," Lily snapped, "and I'm still not doing it."

Potter sighed- like everything Potter did, the sigh was much more elaborate than necessary. "Evans, I'm giving you one more chance. You can dance with me, or... I'll read your diary."

Lily scoffed. "You wouldn't. In fact, you couldn't. It says in Hogwarts: A History..."

"Your beloved book may have been wrong," Potter smirked.

Suddenly, Lily got that sickening sensation in her stomach that had never been wrong before. Good things never happened when Potter was smirking.

Potter pointed his wand at his bag, which had been strewn in a far corner of the common room, and said, "Accio diary!"

Oh no. Here it came, the small green book which Lily treated with more care and tenderness than some parents showed to their own children.

"How...?" but Lily's sense of impending doom had severely crippled her ability to finish a sentence.

"I'm pretty sure we could treat the good lords and ladies of Gryffindor house to a reading, if necessary," Potter said, smirking again.

A small, rational part of Lily's brain was reciting page five hundred and six of Hogwarts: A History- the page where it clearly stated that boys couldn't go into the girls' dormitories, and seeing as Lily's diary never left this area and her dorm mates never knew where she kept it, there was no way Potter and his stupid mates could have got their grubby hands on it.

Sadly, Lily wasn't listening to the rational part of her brain. Alarm bells were ringing. There were things in that diary that could never be revealed...

"Alright, I'll do it," Lily said, and Potter's mouth stretched into that awful smile. "Excellent."

Lily hated the way Potter's eyes greedily scanned her body as she slowly rose from the couch where she had been sat. She hated how Potter towered over her in height, giving him a power that made her uneasy. She hated the way every eye in the room was now fixed upon her. It was making her blush furiously, undoubtedly causing her face to glow a dangerously similar colour to that of her hair. Of course, Potter was loving every second of this. His hand flew to his stupid messy hair, messing it up even more.

Stupid git.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Potter announced. "The other day, Evans here said that she didn't think I would score ten goals in our match against Slytherin, and was even willing make a bet with me about it. If she won, I would leave her alone for the rest of the year. If I won, she would have to dance with me in front of everyone. Well... We all know what happened."

A huge cheer rippled through the room. He would play the hero, wouldn't he? Yes, he was alright at Quidditch. No, that did not automatically mean the sun shone out of his backside. Losing a bet was painfully humiliating enough- Lily didn't like being wrong, and as everyone knew, it didn't happen very often. But now she had got something wrong and as a consequence, she had to be mauled by Potter like she was some sort of prize.

Black started up the music- a particularly slow, overly soppy song by Celestina Warbeck. Lily made two promises to herself- number one, never bet again, and number two, boycott anything to do with Celestina Warbeck.

As Potter grinned greedily and snaked his arm round Lily's waist- an action which aroused jeers and jibbers from the onlooking crowd- Lily wondered if the Cruciatus Curse would be less torturous than this.

The two of them swayed clumsily around and around and around. Lily could feel Potter's hot breath on her face, his hands sliding further and further down her back. Potter was relishing the moment, pulling her closer and grinning that same disgusting grin.

In that moment, Lily had never been more certain of her loathing for Potter. The thought of using "Avada Kedavra!" on him crossed her mind at least eleven times during that one Celestina Warbeck song. She would happily languish in Azkaban as a punishment... Anything would be better than this.
Dance number one was the pinnacle of a time when Lily never suspected that in a few short years, she would be dancing with Potter again, and everything would be different...

What did you think? Please give me your feedback :D Have a great Halloween whatever you're doing!