A tiny L/J ficlet I wrote a while ago. I'd been keeping it in my hard drive, wondering whether it could evolve to something longer, but no luck so far. So I thought I'd put it up as is and see what other people think of it.

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling; the rest is mine.

Thankies: to Annie for BRing, and to Cath for test-reading. :) You girls are awesome.

Reviews are very welcome and appreciated. Happy reading. :)

Lily Evans hastily took off her nightgown, changed into her uniform as quickly as she could and grabbed her schoolbag. Throwing a quick glance inside to make sure all her books were there, she threw it over her shoulder – the last thing she needed was to forget it and have to come back to retrieve it. Afterwards, she picked up her hairbrush and tried to make the red mess on her head resemble normal hair.

She had about five minutes to get to Charms on time – and breakfast was best forgotten for the day. How had she managed to oversleep for so long? And why hadn't someone woken her up?

After a few brushes that got her hair to flatten somehow, she dropped the brush on the vanity table and hastily made her way out the door, to quickly hop down the stairs and...

"WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

She slid on what she had known to be a staircase, but was no longer, until she landed on the Gryffindor common room floor face down. Thankfully for her, it was carpeted.

"Ouch."

Someone jumped to her rescue – James Potter himself, in fact. He knelt close to her. "Are you all right?"

She leaned on her hands to prop herself up a bit, turned around to take a look at the slide leading from the girl's dormitories to the common room, then back to James. "Why is the staircase like that?"

James flushed slightly. "I think some boy might have tried to climb up the staircase."

"And that boy wouldn't happen to be you, hmm?"

Now James was beet red. "I just wanted to make sure you had woken up, because I didn't see you at breakfast, and..."

She nodded and made to get up. James was already up on his feet and offering her a hand.

"Thanks," she said, accepting it. She took a moment to adjust the strap of her schoolbag on her shoulder before heading outside.

"Is that blood?" James suddenly asked her.

Lily's hand came up to her face. "Where?"

"Here..." He touched her upper lip gently with his index finger, as if he were afraid she'd cut his arm off for doing it. A few drops of blood stained it.

"Great," she said, mentally berating herself for falling down the stairs. "Just what I needed." She made to pull out her wand to heal it, but James stopped her.

"Let me do it," he said. He pulled out his own wand and gently healed it. Only a tiny red mark remained.

"Thanks," she said and smiled. James beamed at her.

"What d'you two say, are we going to get to Charms sometime today?" called Sirius from beside the Fat Lady's portrait. Lily hadn't noticed him earlier.

James turned around and fixed him with a deadly glare. Sirius just raised his eyebrows at him.

"Yeah, we really are late," Lily agreed. "Come on, we need to hurry."

James nodded his agreement, though he was still miffed at his friend. He gentlemanly gestured for Lily to walk on first and he followed behind her, while gesturing to Sirius in not nearly as gentlemanly a manner that he intended to strangle him.

Sirius just smirked as he allowed Lily to pass first through the portrait. James slapped him hard on the back before following her.

"You are such a bastard," he mouthed at his friend.

"So I am," Sirius replied cockily, before following him out.

And that's where it ends... unless I can come up with a decent idea to turn this to the prologue of a longer fic. No promises, though.

Please let me know what you thought of it!