A/N: So, after a shamefully long absence, I am back with a vengeance! First fanfic in quite a while... and will have its funny moments. Hope you enjoy!

First Year

It had started out as no more than a word.

"Peacocks."

Lily Evans looked up wildly from her Transfiguration notes, a curling tendril of brilliant red hair sweeping across the middle of her face from one side. She arranged her face into a confused expression, so that her eyebrows met in the middle, perched like arches over the leafy green of her eyes.

"I'm sorry?"

"Peacocks," James Potter reiterated.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

James sighed a long, exasperated sigh. "Percy the Wild? Eighteenth century wizard? He turned his cutlery set into an army of peacocks."

Lily stared at him blankly, genuinely confused. "What are you talking about?"

He laughed a strange, strangled sort of laugh, and pointed at the parchment that was sitting on Lily's lap. She followed the direction of his finger downwards, and looked towards her lap.

"Oh," she said weakly. "Transfiguration. Right. Thanks."

"And here," James continued, indicating with his arm still outstretched, "it's supposed to read 'a' 'n' 'i' 'm' 'a' 'g' 'u' 's', not 'a' 'n' 'y'… Don't worry about it though, First Year's supposed the hardest, relatively, because you're just getting used to it all."

Lily bent her head back over her notes, letting her hair fall free down the side of her neck and cover her face. There was an awkward silence, a pause, before James sat beside her. The fire of the Gryffindor Common Room cackled welcomingly.

"My name's Potter. James."

"I know who you are," Lily said, not missing a beat and keeping her eyes steadily trained on the notes in front of her. Another awkward silence, and then she heard James draw in a breath beside her.

"So, do you like it here?" he asked her, playing casually with the sleeve of his robes.

"Do I like what here?"

"Living here. The ghosts. The teachers. I don't know, the bloody giant squid. Just… do you like it here?"

Lily sighed before looking up from her parchment – this James Potter boy clearly wasn't going to leave her alone any time soon.

"I don't mind it here. I miss my family though. It's- it's a bit of a shock."

"Really? I found it really easy to settle in."

"It's just that… well, I'd never even heard of Hogwarts before I got my letter. I kept thinking that it was a mistake, they'd sent it to the wrong address or something."

"Ah," James said, nodding wisely. "You're a muggle-born."

"What? What's a muggle?"

"It's someone who's not born magical. Your parents are muggles, so you're muggle-born."

"That seems rather discriminatory."

"What?"

"Discriminatory. It means… sort of unfairly singling out someone or something because of a certain aspect about them that's different from you."

"Oh. Big word. Right."

"Thank you, James" she said, because she didn't know what else to say. "So… what are you?"

James drew himself up to his full height, sticking his chest out proudly. "I'm pure blood. 'Bout ten generations of wizards in my family have come to Hogwarts."

"Pure blood?"

"Yeah. My parents were both magical. But… well, some people say they're pure-blood like it makes them better than other people. People who aren't pure-blood."

"That's awful," she said, and then, as an afterthought, "That's discrimination."

"Oh," and James nodded wisely. "You know Sirius Black?"

"The tall boy with the dark hair?"

"Yeah, him. His whole family is really anti-muggle. Don't know how he ended up in Gryffindor, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out he'd managed to curse the sorting hat so that he could bring down Gryffindor from the inside. His family's been here as long as mine has, and all of them have been in Slytherin apart from him."

"Really? But he seems so friendly."

At this, James' eyes darkened and his brow seemed to become a lot more heavyset.

"He's not."

"You don't know that, though."

"I don't need to know that. I know his family."

Lily looked highly affronted at this statement. "Well that makes you just as bad as all those people who target muggle-borns."

"What?" James yelped. "I'm not disc… dis… I don't make fun of people different from me!"

"Isn't that what you were just doing?"

"Yeah, well, Black's different. Black deserves it. He's almost as bad as Severus Snape." James spat the last two words of his sentence with an uncharacteristically vindictive tone.

"Severus Snape? What are you talking about?"

"Oh, Lily, wait till you meet him, he's got the most greasy hair and the biggest nose and everyone knows he's from a really evil family, they all support You-Know-Who, and-"

"Well, the Severus I know isn't evil, or greasy… and no, I-Don't-Know-Who. Who's You-Know-Who?"

"You haven't heard of… well, no, I suppose muggles wouldn't really know about Him…" James paused, taking a moment to think about what he was going to say. "My dad says You-Know-Who's just a right bastard-"

"James!"

"Oh, right," James blushed, ducking his head apologetically. "Sorry. But he really is, Lily. He's this really evil wizard, he was in Slytherin actually, and he's killed heaps of people and he's got these people who work for him, other dark wizards called 'Death Eaters', and-"

"Death Eaters?"

"Yeah, Lily, they're really scary. They do all his work for him, basically, and help him find people and stuff… but don't worry," he added hastily after spotting the alarmed look on her face. "You're perfectly safe at Hogwarts. Dad says Dumbledore's the only wizard that You-Know-Who ever feared."

"But who is You-Know-Who. Surely that can't be his name."

At this, James looked extremely uncomfortable.

"We say You-Know-Who because people are afraid, Lily. I'll tell you, alright, but don't go saying it everywhere because you'll freak people out, okay?"

Lily nodded, "Yeah, okay, fine."

"His name's Voldemort."

"Voldemort?"

"Yeah. Voldemort and his group of Death Eaters. Snape's dad was one, and I bet he's being recruited up the minute he finishes Seventh Year, the little idiot-"

"Come on now, leave Sev alone!"

James stared at Lily with a blank expression on his face. "Sev? You call him Sev?"

"Severus is my friend, so you just shut up about him, alright?"

"Severus? Is your friend?"

"Yes, he is, and I don't believe a word of what you're saying about him being a Death Eater or whatever it is. He's not like that. He's really nice."

James could see that Lily was clearly getting worked up – her eyes were shining with panicky tears – and though he knew it would only aggravate her, James could still not suppress the bubble of laughter that was threatening to emerge in roars.

"You… ha… you're friends with Sev… ha ha ha… Bloody hell, Lily… ha ha… I thought you were alright." James closed his eyes in hysterical laughter, captured in his hilarity. He heard a slam, and shortly afterwards he opened his eyes – just in time to see Lily's light green eyes turn dark with fury as she held her wand aloft, pointing directly at the bridge of his nose.

"You shut up about Sev, James Potter, you stay away from me and you keep your unhelpful, arrogant, ridiculous comments and suggestions to yourself. Do you understand?"

James, thankfully, had the good sense to stop laughing and look solemn.

"Yeah, yeah, I understand. Just don't… er… don't poke my eye out with that thing, yeah?"

Lily let out a roar of frustration. With a flick of her wand, she cried, "Petrificus Totalus!" And sent James tumbling towards the floor, paralysed. Lily took one last disdainful glance at the stiff body of James Potter lying on the floor in front of her, his eyes wildly searching from one side of the room to the other, helpless to do anything but plead longingly, silently, for Lily to let him up. She didn't.

"Thanks for the information, Potter."

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The first meeting of Lily Evans and James Potter, disastrous as it was, was one that neither of them ever forgot.

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A/N: The person to whom this chapter is dedicated knows who they are.

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