Author's Note: I have always been perplexed by the concept of a drabble. What exactly is it? I have asked myself that question more frequently that I really care to admit. From what I have been able to gather, it is just a really short story…kind of like a one-shot, but as short as the author can make it. Anyone who has looked through my favorites list can tell that I really don't read many of those type of stories; actually now that I come to think about it, I have only read about 5 of them myself. Geez!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognizable characters from the best-selling book series Harry Potter written by the talented J.K. Rowling.
See, I Loved You Even Then
Lily's Point of View
"Come on, Lily." Alice exclaimed as she threw my heavy woolen jacket down on top of my lap. I didn't have to raise my eyes from the copy of Cyrano de Bergerac that I had been reading at that very moment to know that she was standing there in front of me with her hands resting on her hips.
"I see no point to it. I simply do not understand why I must sit outside for hours and not actually get anything out of it." I replied sharply bundled up my jacket and threw it at her face with as much force as I was able to muster.
"You see no point in it?" Beth imitated my voice spinning around so that she could walk to the other side of the room. "You know something, Lily."
"What-" I responded without any real interest.
"You are no fun. All you want to do is sit around and read your boring muggle plays. And then when are you aren't reading some long forgotten book by a dead guy, you spend all of your time in the library researching something for school. Don't you even know how to be fun?" Beth demanded, piercing me with a withering look.
I rolled my eyes at that comment. "If you actually ever picked up a book you might realize that reading is not the as horrible as eating a blended happy meal-"
"What is a happy meal?" Beth asked, looking very perplexed. "We have mood specific foods now?"
"A happy meal is a kid's meal from a restaurant called McDonalds. It is a muggle type of food, so you wouldn't know about it. And no, it is not mood specific, but you can't believe they would market it by calling it a sad meal." Alice answered from the other side of the room where she was putting her tennis shoes on. She is a half-blood and having spent most of her time when she was really little with her mom's family; she knows a lot about the muggle stuff.
"Thanks Alice, but I don't understand how eating it after it has been in a blender would be so bad." Beth commented thoughtfully.
"Trust me; it isn't something you ever want to have to experience." I shuddered, remembering the dare that I had gotten into when I was in first grade. I could still taste the horrible mixture in the back of my throat now that I was thinking about it. It is amazing that even though I am now a second year, I can still remember it so vividly.
"Are you okay, Lily?" Alice inquired. She looked very concerned, as if she thought that I was going to puke all over her new golden shirt that matched her eyes to perfection.
"Yeah, I'm fine." I assured her as best as I could. She appeared to be satisfied, but that didn't stop her from taking a few steps backwards away from me.
"Anyways, now that Lily is feeling better, maybe she can answer if she is going to go to the Quidditch match today." Beth returned, her hands once again finding their way back to her hips.
"I believe that I already answered that question; I am not going to the Quidditch match." I replied as I looked back down at the book, quickly finding my place again after I had lost it for the few minutes that I had looked up to talk to my friends.
"Oh, Lily. You seem to misunderstand me." Beth said as she started to chuckle but not in a very comforting way as far as I was concerned. "What I meant was, are you going to come to the match peacefully or am I going to have to drag you kicking and screaming down to the pitch? I say this because I want to know if we are clear that you are not going to get out of this no matter what you say in protest."
"You can't still be going on about this." Alice groaned. "You guys have been going on about this for what feels like my entire life. Please, if for no other reason that my sanity would you please just go." She pleaded, grabbed my hand and squeezed it very hard.
I groaned. I knew that I had about four seconds exactly before she would pull the puppy dog eyes out, something that she knew that I couldn't resist.
"Fine, but I want you to know that I am going to have a miserable time." I grumbled as I stood up and twisted around to get a hold of my cozy winter jacket. As long as I was going, I might as well be as warm as humanely possible in the cold January weather.
"That is your choice, negative Nellie." Beth replied smartly as she held by jacket out for me to grab.
"And I am going to take my book with me." I threatened as I marched out of the door behind Alice and Beth.
I thought I heard Alice mutter "Oh, for the love of Merlin's misplaced thimble." But then again, Alice wasn't really one to keep stuff to herself, so I really couldn't be sure that I had actually heard that come out from her mouth…But it had sounded an awfully lot like her voice.
In what was too short of an amount of time, I found myself walking out on the path that lead down to the Quidditch pitch. Beth and Alice were animatedly chatting about what their plans were for the rest of the day. I did not bother to add anything to the conversation because I didn't want them to get the allusion that I was anywhere near enjoying myself.
When we walked into the box behind the Gryffindor Hoops I was surprised to see how crowded it was. "I hadn't realized that it was this popular to come to the game" I commented after we sat down in the first row.
"Yeah, she has lived under a rock." Beth said to Alice with a knowing smirk coloring her tone.
"I have not!" I interjected, looking at Alice for any support I might be able to receive.
"Sorry Sweetie, but I am going to have to agree with Beth on this one. You have lived under a rock." Alice responded nudging me on the shoulder gently.
"Aww, that's not fair. Why do you hate me so much?" I replied as dramatically as I could. I knew that they were just teasing me, but I don't usually get so many moments that are just perfect for getting back at them.
"It's not that we hate you; it is just that I don't know how you could have missed how popular Quidditch is around Hogwarts." Beth said as she wrapped one of her arms around my shoulder. "But just so you know, you don't have a leg to stand on with the whole "why-do-you-hate-me" argument." She finished using those stupid air quote things that she knew annoyed me.
"How's that possible? I definitely have a leg to stand on in that argument." I retorted brushing a stray piece of hair that had fallen from the braid that Alice had put in my hair this morning. I really needed her to teach me how to do them because I just felt really pretty walking around with one in my hair.
"You are always leaving us behind to hang out with your icky Slytherin friend. Now before you protest" She said seeing my reaction to her description of Severus being icky. I couldn't stand it when other people picked on him, but when my own friends did it… "It isn't that I hate him personally, but he does take my best friend away from me a lot. And the others that he hangs out with, I don't like them Lily. They are all just so icky." She continued, scrunching up her nose as she said those words.
"I don't like his friends either, but you don't know Severus the way that I do. He is such a nice person if you really take the time to get to know him." I defended the one friend that I have had for a really long time, one who really knew what was going on between Petunia and I.
"I still don't like him." Beth replied, tilting her head up to examine the goal hoops standing in front of us.
I chose not to comment. I knew that I was not going to be able to convince her otherwise. I was also tempted to agree with them the next time that they said I should have been put into Hufflepuff, simply because I liked almost everybody.
"The game is about to start you guys!" Alice poked both of us on the arm as hard as she could, trying to get our attention.
"Oh, this is so exciting. It is Lily's first Quidditch game. It is like she is all grown up." Beth teased me, patting the top of my head in a motherly fashion.
"Whatever." I grumbled, remembering that I was not supposed to be enjoying myself at all so that I would not have to do this again, because Merlin only knows how much I did not want to give up every one of my Saturday mornings for this.
"There are seven players on each team. The chasers are the ones who are going to be trying to throw the Quaffle through their team's hoops. It is the keeper's job to try to block the opposing team from scoring. The beaters are the ones with the bats, and they are supposed to knock the bludgers towards the other team to knock the ball from their grasp. And lastly there are the seekers, and all they do is fly around looking for the tiny, golden snitch so that the game can end." Alice explained during the first few minutes of the game.
I sent up a silent prayer to the gods of Quidditch asking them if they would be so kind as to have the Gryffindor seeker catch the golden snitch in a record-breaking short amount of time.
Beth got up to move to the other side of Alice, probably to that she could talk to someone who actually knows what is going on. I didn't care; I really wasn't paying attention to anything that was happening on the pitch.
I was fully prepared to once again open my book when a figure flying on broomstick caught my attention from out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't make out many of his features; the only thing I could discern was his jet black hair.
And despite how much I wanted to read my book, I found that I couldn't take my eyes of his rapidly moving form, sometimes moving so fast that all I could see was a blur of scarlet and gold.
At first, once I realized that I was staring, I felt awkward because I really wasn't watching anyone else. In truth, I didn't possess the information that would lead to any understanding of what was going on in the game…And no one knew that I was only watching one person. One very captivating person I amended in my thoughts.
But who was it? I didn't know anyone who was on the team given the fact that I hadn't cared to ask about it until right this very moment.
"So how do you like the game?" Beth asked when there was a momentary break in the action because the Hufflepuff team was having a time-out.
Before I could think the better of it, words started falling out of my mouth. "Well, I don't hate it. But I wish that I actually knew who some of these people are." My felt my gaze resting on the back of my dashing, dark-haired Quidditch player. I didn't have any proof that he was dashing, but I figured that no one could fly that well without being dashing.
"You apparently have a particular player in mind…might I ask which one?" Alice questioned following my gaze out across the field to where the Gryffindor players were flying.
"Umm…Number 18" I replied softly, feeling my cheeks warm at the knowledge that I was so transparent.
"Number 18?" Alice questioned as if she could not believe her ears. When I nodded in affirmation, she just looked at me with a pitying expression on her face.
"Why are you looking at me like you have to tell me that my dog died?" I question feeling my brow scrunch up.
"Because number 18 is none other than James Potter, and all the other girls in our year have super-mega-huge crushes on him too." Alice responded with a knowing tilt in her eyebrows.
"Ohh," I responded. Thankfully I didn't have to respond further because the referee just blew the whistle and almost as if drawn in my magic my eyes flew to find none other than James Potter's face out on the pitch.
Now that I knew it was him, I wondered how I didn't recognize him before. No one else has such startlingly dark hair and I knew that he was indeed dashing. Of course it was him.
I was not going to just be another one of those girls that where falling all over him, that I was going to be one of the small few who would remain resilient to his charms…that was what I was telling myself. Furthermore, I resolved that I was not going to look at him for the rest of the game.
But that resolve proved pointless, because after about fifteen minutes of pointedly looking in the opposite direction, I felt my gaze being drawn to him in the same way a paper clip is drawn to a magnet.
Yep. I was enthralled already. It was the same thing as giving a vaccine to a person who was already dying. It was a nice gesture, but in the end, the person is just doomed.
I could do nothing to resist my impulse to stare at him for the rest of the game. And yes, it was the rest of the game; I couldn't seem to help myself. I couldn't let him know that I liked him, but I knew that there was going to be no way that I was going to get over this stupid infatuation. I could watch him without anyone else actually knowing that I was watching him, just James.
I guess I'll actually have to start coming to the games with Beth and Alice I thought to myself as I walked back up to the castle after the game by myself because they had rushed off in the other direction to celebrate the victory. Whereas I, I wanted to go back up to my room so that I could do nothing but remember the look on his face after he realized that the Gryffindor seeker (whoever she is) won the game. I didn't actually see it, but I could tell that he would be smiling and his eyes would most definitely be twinkling.
That was when I knew that I was hooked. I was making plans to go to more Quidditch games.
God, my friends were right. I do belong in Hufflepuff. That could be the only possible reason that I was infatuated, with the other 100 girls in my year, with James Potter.
Author's Note: Well that just totally failed at being a drabble. It's like a drabble on steroids, or better yet, a drabble pumped up on awesome. I hoped you all liked it. The main purpose was to show how Lily started going to all of the games, because admittedly it isn't exactly in her character to do so. But as shown in Chapter 29 of Charmed Love she does go, and has gone, to every Quidditch game for most of her time in Hogwarts.
~Fanfiction Recommend~ The story I would like to recommend to you all is called A Pick Up Line a Day Keeps Lily Evans Away by Fairytalefantasistx3. It is a very funny story, and kind of the closest thing to a drabble that I have every really read. I know that she hasn't updated in a while, but if you put it on alert, I am pretty sure that you won't regret the decision whenever she does decide to update.
Love Always and DFTBA, Allison.