I own nothing, I disclaim it all!
On a hideously early morning at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, one James Potter found himself rather rudely awoken from his dreamy state with the realization that the Headmaster himself was staring at him, apparently waiting for an answer on something.
He had been woken up today by Remus, with the knowledge that the Head Boy and Head Girl had a meeting to attend in the office of Dumbledore with the man himself. At five a.m. With the wisdom one can only achieve in the early morning, James logically blamed the Slytherins. Duh. Was there ever a time when it DIDN'T work to blame a Slytherin?
"Er, a yeah. I agree with Lily." He let his eyes slide back to her and drifted into incoherence again. Lily. So pretty. He had absolutely no idea what the topic of discussion was, but he did know that Lily always seemed to have an opinion, and she tended to be right, so, you know, how bad could this turn out?
Ten minutes later James was cursing every single thing that had ever gone wrong in his seventeen years of life, and decided to blame a random Slytherin for his current misery.
Hey! There's one! I blame Malfoy!
"I blame Malfoy!"
He exclaimed this rather loudly, gaining an incredulous look from the fifth year prefect also working on markering posters advertising the EVIL, malicious plot that Lily had suggested to the Headmaster. Which was Malfoy's fault, because of course it couldn't be Lily's fault. So pretty…
"Well, I blame you, James. Lily couldn't have pushed this through without your approval, you know. What were you thinking!?"
James stared rather blankly at the younger student. He didn't even know the kid's name. "Look, er, a" He decided to go for it. "Roger." He picked a name at random. "Yeah, the politics and details of the rather complicated arrangement that the Head Girl and I have agreed upon are too lengthy and involved to get into now."
The kid looked suitably pacified and just a little bit awed at this glance into the complicated world of the older students. He quietly demurred a "Oh, sorry man." and went back to making those perfectly shaped C's and A's with a sharpie. …That's it? Whew, I guess he won't call me on that. I have no idea how this even happened. Huh. Weird shit happens.
"You are so full of it!" Remus cackled from the other side of the room where the prefect was creating lists of activities and James didn't even know what else. "I bet you just stared at Lily the whole meeting, didn't hear what she suggested, and blindly agreed to this hell in order to get on her good side."
Twas true.
"Did not!" James exclaimed hurtfully. He saw the disbelieving look on his friend's face. James stopped and reconsidered. "Well, yeah, I did." Was there anything else he could have done? "She's just so pretty, you'd do the same, I bet!" Ignoring the betrayed expression on the face of the younger child he had decided to call Roger and the girlish giggles and chuckles coming from the end table where Remus worked along with a pretty sixth-year Ravenclaw prefect, James resumed his frantic scribbling. Despite the vague unsettling feeling in his stomach at the fact that that his friend had read him so efficiently, he had other things on his mind. He had been promised a return to bed if he got this job done quickly.
He stood and stretched. James narrowed his brown eyes at the poster that vexed him so. It was a weird material even, not parchment. Lily had supplied it, she said it was a muggle thing. It was still weird. He evaluated his own work. How bad did it look, passable? Probably, he decided. Arms over his head, James sauntered slowly in the direction of the entrance of the Great Hall that would take him back to his nice, warm, soft…
Lily Evans found herself wondering why this was really necessary. With a long suffering sigh the esteemed Head Girl bent to her knees and shook the sleeping figure into semi-wakefulness. She hoped.
"Potter!" She hissed, rather annoyed. "It's not that early that you need to fall asleep on the floor, is it? Really, what drugs are you on? This is not cool!" His head lolled to one side and a muscle in his face twitched. Lily found herself suddenly repressing a giggle. Really, he was hopeless, but with his hair drifting over his oddly expressionless face in that slow way, he was also hopelessly cute. He also looked less like the insanely hyper stalker/prankster/chipmunk she knew he was.
She blinked, surprised at the oddness of that last thought. Chipmunk? She justified her own thought with a harsh expellation of air-turned-carbon-dioxide. Well, he was awfully cute, and he DID have that violent way of exploding into motion to perform dozens of different, seemingly useless tasks that entertained him endlessly. Yeah. Chipmunk. Lily contemplated this silently. Wow. Deep. I actually analyzed his personality. I can't believe I noticed that about him… God, wouldn't it be funny if that were his animagus form?
She couldn't stop the bubble of laughter at this train of thought. She thought wildly, no, he would never stand for it. He'd have the pompous need to be some overly masculine animal, one that had an obvious distinction between the males and females. After all, James spent so much of his time posturing and pretending to be so manly to impress girls he'd need an animagus form that displayed this tendency. Like a peacock.
A lion, maybe? She dismissed the thought. God, no, they lie around all day with none of the frantic, jerky motion James was so accustomed to. It really was funny, the way everyone mooned over James, exclaimed that he was so graceful on a broom, when in fact, James had absolutely no grace of motion whatsoever. He was wild energy, bounding into a restless chase or escape on a pitch, eyes darting everywhere for a better path, an endless dervish of unpredictable motion with a Quaffle.
James awoke to see the smiling face of the girl he so unabashedly chased. He started, and jumped to his feet as best as he could, face burning in the realization that he had fallen asleep on the floor of the entranceway to the Great Hall and been found by his crush. Oh, he was never going to live this down.
She, unfortunately, had not yet fallen for his amazing charm, good looks and personality and seemed to take a perverse delight in embarrassing him in front of his friends. She was close enough to Remus that James was sure the incident would in fact come back to haunt him, probably as soon as later that night.
"I, uh, yeah, hi Lily!" He blurted out.
Smooth. Real smooth.
Oh, god, here it comes. That mocking smile that is still SO cute, a cutting rejoinder, maybe even a crack about his hair-he flattened it self-consciously-, and then would come the taunting of Sirius when the incident made it back to him. He could see the incredulous expression now. You did what!? Where!? And the girl you're crushing on woke you up!? You are such a loser! With this thought, James sunk even farther into absolute despair. He watched Lily with slow horror. He didn't really want to know how she would deign to humiliate him this time, but he had to watch her do it. It was like watching a train crash. A really pretty train crash...
He looked positively heartbroken. Watching him, Lily felt a stab ot pity. She made a split second decision to give him a break. You know, for once.
"Hey James" she said smoothly as she rose to her feet. "You probably should make it back to your dorm. I guess I'm sorry I scheduled the meeting so early this morning. Can I walk you back to the common room? I have something I need to grab there" She fibbed easily without a catch in her voice, enjoying the abject horror, shock, and absolute bliss that whisked over his features. He had just looked so…doomed, staring at her in the most miserable expression; she just had to throw him a frickin bone.
Besides, he still was the cutest chipmunk she'd ever seen.
James floated on a cloud of perfect happiness all the way back to the dorms, not even wondering why when the girl of his dreams broke into wrenching giggles that she quickly recovered from, accompanied him to the staircase that led to the boys' dorms, and eventually left the Common Room without fetching anything at all from her dorm.
