Welcome to the story! Author's Notes are on the bottom.
Honestly, it's not like I want to hate him now, thought Lily Evans moodily as she climbed aboard the Hogwarts Express. And if anyone starts saying it, I'll hex them. But then they'll probably be saying the opposite thing anyway. When comes the part when I win? She hefted her trunk up behind her before remembering that technically, she was a full-blown, seventeen-year-old witch, and even more technically that it wouldn't matter either way because it was the Hogwarts Express. Jabbing the trunk with a quick twist of her wand, Lily lifted the feather-light luggage into the center aisle. She exhaled as she found an open compartment and stowed her trunk on the rack. Lily sat down before realizing that, as Head Girl, she really did need to patrol the corridors. She abruptly shot up out of her seat again, her agitation boiling over.
It was James Potter of course, it was almost always James Potter. Enough to give anyone a good head twist, or at least a difficult toothache, James Potter was plaguing Lily's mind as he had all summer. She had tried to not think about how James had been quieter and even kinder since last year. She had refused to immediately draft an answer to his occasional letters the moment his owl swooped onto her desk. She had tried, tried to have a nice, normal relationship with a Muggle boy. And she had found herself moping over how James was taller. This summer had been a trying one.
Lily stalked out of the train and back onto the platform in order to wait for her friends to arrive. She was naturally early, always early, and this year there was no point in settling in so soon. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wound iron of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The strong summer wind blew her thick hair around, which suited her mood well as her stomach churned at the thought of her Head Boy. No, he is the Head Boy, Lily chided herself mentally. He certainly wasn't hers, not at all. Not unless he was different from last year, and far different from fifth year, but rather like he was in third year. Lily huffed at her silent, stupid ramblings and blew a great red lock of hair out of her face, which promptly fell right back in front of her eye. Perhaps it was this bit of hair that stopped her from seeing her very best friends emerge, nearly simultaneously, from the entryway
"Wotcher Lily!" cried a warm voice. Lily looked up and was enveloped in a great hug. It was Marlene McKinnon, a bright-eyed witch with spunky caramel hair and a well-shaped nose. Lily nearly inhaled a mouthful of Marlene's curls before managing to get her arms around her friend. Marlene was just under Lily's height, and Lily noticed a large trunk with an owl cage floating behind Marlene from over her shoulder.
"'Lo Marlene," said Lily brightly, feeling her stomach whoosh cheerfully as her apprehension at seeing James Potter vanished with her friend's joyful greeting. Marlene's presence often had the effect of a good Honeydukes chocolate bar, a trait which Lily appreciated more than the creamy candy itself
"Hey, mate," came another voice from around Marlene. Lily embraced Dorcas Meadows as well; she was a girl with fierce, whiskey brown eyes and straight blonde hair tied in a ponytail.
"Evans," smirked a good-natured, taller girl from beside Dorcas, with her dark hair done up in an elegant knot and a smile playing over her red lips and deep-set eyes.
"Vance," smiled Lily, as Emmeline pulled her into a tight grip. Lily looked at her friends and smiled even wider, the old feeling of Hogwarts companionship slipping into her blood stream.
"We've got duties, Vance. You're a Prefect now, so you'll be dealing with patrolling and such," said Lily in a severe voice, keeping her face carefully stern. Emmeline scowled and gave a rueful snort at Lily's play-act at authority.
"Too bad," the tanned prefect muttered regretfully, looking around as the handsome Caradoc Dearborn boarded the Hogwarts Express with his Ravenclaw buddies.
"Emmy, we know you'll 'check his compartment' anyway," sniggered Dorcas, dodging a swipe from Emmeline's hand. "And you've got to report to Lily here, what a fiasco that'll be—"
"Her and James Potter, that is," interjected Marlene with a sly look at Lily. "He made Head Boy, though no one knows how." Lily was sure she felt her liver shrivel up inside her.
"Oh, how I look forward to barging in on those lovebirds!" said Emmeline chiefly to aggravate Lily. "They'll be snogging away before prefect meetings—" This time it was Emmeline who dodged, forced to avoid Lily's much more threatening punch to her arm.
"We're not lovebirds," said Lily as the girls boarded the train. "We've never actually snogged, and unless he keeps his ego under his hat this year we won't be sharing that particular experience."
"He was okay last year, funny, less of a berk," pointed out Marlene, as they followed Lily to her compartment. "You seemed to like him a bit, even…"
"Well it was better than fifth year, and it's not like I hate him—" Far from it. "—but he can be such a bullying tosser, and so arrogant, and such a toerag that I just—"
"Have we gotten to the good bit yet, or did I miss it?" said Emmeline sarcastically, dumping her trunk on the carry rack.
"I think you're in love!" declared Dorcas as she collapsed gratefully into her seat. "And you'd better go find him, because the sooner you important folk do the check duties is the sooner you and Emmeline can get back and trough with us when the lunch cart rolls round."
"I am not in love," warned Lily dangerously, blushing a delicate pink as she followed Emmeline into the corridor. Love! Rubbish, really, as we've barely ever had a real conversation… Emmeline was rather preoccupied, floating down the hall and surreptitiously glancing into the compartments ahead of them. No doubt scouting for Caradoc Dearborn again, she's always—
"Looking for me, Evans?" came a surprisingly deep voice from behind. Lily whirled around and saw James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and the bulge of Peter Pettigrew ambling down the corridor. Emmeline, upon seeing who it was, simply rolled her eyes. Lily found Emmeline's greeting to be succinctly discouraging
"Hello, blokes. I'll leave you to her."
"But Emmeline, we should—"
Emmeline waved Lily off nonchalantly and continued down the hallway, quite unconcerned about the position in which she had left her friend. Sirius blew a kiss at her receding back and whispered something to James, causing James to laugh but to also kick him sharply in the leg. Sirius tossed his hair and grinned as Remus shook his head with a small smile. James and his friends, the self-dubbed Marauders, always had their little fun together.
"Evans," Sirius winked, giving her a dark, charming glance before ducking sideways into a compartment. Remus grinned hello.
"Hey, Lily. Nice summer?"
"Why yes, I—" Lily was interrupted for the second time when Sirius' arm appeared to pull Remus and Peter into the compartment, shutting the door with a sharp snap.
James was moving closer; Lily hadn't realized quite how tall he was. Although Sirius had more finely-carved features, no one could argue that they were both extremely attractive. Or at least, Lily thought so. In fact, the only unattractive Marauder was Peter Pettigrew, who couldn't stand up to Lupin's effortless charm, let alone Remus, Sirius, and James together. James is taller than last year, thought Lily pensively, her line of vision directly between his nose and lips. Pretty lips, actually, soft-looking even…as if they—Lily shook her head.
"Spiders in that marvelous hair of yours?" asked James pleasantly, reaching out two long fingers to a fat red curl that was sitting close to Lily's cheek.
"No," said Lily calmly, watching James' hand. Fingers, hand…hand starts with H, like that word with the letters in it—
"Head! We've got Head Duties, James. We need to patrol the train," Lily blurted, color tingeing her face as she regained composure.
"Ah," said James, evidently disappointed, dropping his hand to his side. Then his face subtly brightened and Lily saw a perceptible change in his brilliant hazel eyes.
"James, eh?" he muttered inaudibly, almost to himself. Then he laughed and pulled Lily into a bear hug. Lily oomphed as she was crumpled up against him, nearly suffocated by his T-shirt and her own hair. She smelled a faint spice, an almost musky odor in fact—James Potter will not be thought of as "musky," she told herself severely. Not in this mind at least.
"Miss me, Lily?" he asked exuberantly, looking straight into her eyes. "And I notice you haven't yet properly congratulated me for my stunning nomination as Head Boy. I think a good kiss would be appropriate, and naturally you were a shoe-in for both the kissing and the Head Girl—"
"Hexed anyone yet, Potter?" asked Lily dryly, pulling herself out of his embrace with an amused expression. James laughed.
"Only Sirius, and really, that doesn't count. That bloke needed a few dance lessons anyway—"
"Tarantellegra then?" asked Lily, as they slowly began walking down the corridor. She heard a steam whistle from outside as the Hogwarts Express began to chug forward.
"Does it really matter, Evans, now that we're in 'the here and now', so to speak?" asked James winningly, giving her a wink as she looked into a compartment of mousy third-year Hufflepuffs. Lily chuckled.
"You're impossible, James. And I don't much fancy your method of congratulations. Just don't curse everything that moves this year; that'll land you in bind, being Head Boy and all." James just grinned as they continued along for a few moments in silence, a silence which he eventually broke.
"Er, Lily?"
"Yes?"
"What exactly are we looking for?"
Lily shot him what should have been a nasty look, except that she was trying to keep her lips from forming a smile. James felt a singing sensation in his heart; only last year she might have been exasperated and hostile.
"We're…ahem, we're trying to stop wrongdoing and we're confiscating things that are against the rules."
"All right," agreed James. He paused. "You mean anything against the rules?"
"No, only every other thing we find," Lily replied with marked cheek. "Of course anything we find."
"Oh," said James, and then he proceeded to grab her arm and pull her down the corridor.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, breaking out of his grasp with a halt and squaring her hands on her hips. Lily was finding it much easier to be on the offensive with James than to give into his charms. Pride before a fall, she thought ruefully. Maybe if I had started earlier—
"Just didn't want you to see in Sirius' compartment, that's all," said James innocently. Why do I always do this? he wondered even as the words reached his ears. It never works on Lily. Waiting for the explosion, he was surprised when Lily just rolled her eyes.
"It better not be dangerous, Potter, or it's completely your fault."
"Understood, my liege." James snapped a smart salute, unable to contain his look of glee. Lily rolled her eyes again and continued down the corridor. What is the matter with me? I can't let him get away with things. I would never…He's funny, he's charming, well in a stupid way, but this is—
"Out of the way, out of the way," said James imperiously, walking through a crowd of young Hufflepuffs in the center aisle. Lily followed him and swatted his arm, looking apologetic and pained for the Hufflepuffs (although she felt privately that one or two of the wider ones were too thick to have noticed anything).
"James! You can't use your—"
"But they're so…so…smelly!" he suggested plaintively, allowing Lily to pull him away from the gaggle of second years.
"James, don't be a git."
"Fair enough." They continued in this way until the end of the train, and then headed back towards their friends.
"Lily?" said James, as she returned from a Slytherin compartment grimly holding a struggling puffleskein.
"What?" she replied, tossing the disgruntled bird out of a window and shutting the catch sharply.
"Don't the Heads and the prefects sit by themselves?"
"If they want to, yes. But I'm in a compartment already, and so are you," she pointed out.
"Just checking," winked James, pulling to a stop. "All right, this is my place. Take care Evans, don't forget to write and maybe come to snog—"
"Good bye," sang Lily, making her way past him into her friends' compartment.
Emmeline had arrived before Lily and she was playing Exploding Snap with Dorcas. Truthfully, Lily did not think that Emmeline had made it past the Ravenclaw compartment containing one Caradoc Dearborn. Marlene was petting her owl, a great lumpy beast possibly named Matches or Macaroni, Lily never quite got it right.
"'Lo Mrs. Potter," greeted Emmeline gaily as the snap pack exploded in Dorcas' face. Dorcas scowled and waved her wand, wiping away the black smudges.
"You can shut up whenever you'd like," shot Lily while climbing into a seat next to Dorcas, who grinned.
"Had a good snog, Lily?"
"No," said Lily exasperatedly, eyes closed, lacing her fingers together and leaning her head back against her hands.
"A bad one, then? That's surprising, I heard good things about Potter."
"Vance," said Lily, cracking one eye open at the offending character. "I suggest that unless you want to arrive at Hogwarts without legs, you keep quiet about Potter's snogging abilities, Potter, or anything having to do with, oh wait, Potter."
"Let's talk about other people's snogging then," suggested Marlene wickedly, kicking Lily. It was such an uncharacteristic thing of Marlene to say that Lily did open her eyes. "I heard someone had a Muggle fling over the summer."
Lily blushed, and saw to her surprise that Dorcas and Emmeline were red in the faces as well.
"You two?" Lily gasped, shrieking with laughter at two witches least likely to go with Muggles.
"He was very good-looking, and he had that hair I love," said Emmeline defensively.
"You mean you as well?" scowled Dorcas to Lily, mistaking her meaning. "Anyone we know, Lil?"
"His name was Jim McGuffin. He wants to be a newsman or something. Excellent eyes," said Lily with a chuckle. Still not really that tall though—no, don't start. "Think he thought I was a little round the bend though, it wasn't going to be long-term anyway."
"No, naturally you have Potter," smirked Emmeline.
"Well who was your summer boyfriend?" demanded Lily. Emmeline flushed again.
"I…I don't actually remember," she admitted embarrassedly, holding up her hands as the three girls roared with laughter. Moments such as these with Emmeline (who, although brilliant in classes, would sometimes forget if she was wearing shoes or not) were priceless.
"Don't even ask me about mine, I won't say anyway," said Dorcas as the noise subsided. Dorcas always kept things close-to-cuff though; no one really thought to ask her any more. "And what about you Marlene, eh? No Muggles?"
"Wizard," said Marlene with a quiet smile as Emmeline guffawed her approval. Lily took hold of her hands, glad for her friend.
"Who was he?"
"Well," began Marlene, eyes sparkling. She had obviously been waiting to tell this to her friends. Lily suspected that Marlene was eager to share as Marlene never had as many boyfriend stories as Dorcas or Emmeline. Or Lily, for a matter of fact, though James Potter had been a large part of a distinctive cramp on her love life. "It's that bloke you went out with, Lily, a few years older than us. Remember Sturgis Podmore?"
Lily gasped and chuckled. "Good old Sturgis! Blonde hair, skill with a wand. I thought he was a bit boring though. You met him again?"
Marlene laughed, "Yep. Diagon Alley. Still boring of course, but he rescued me from my pesky neighbor Harold, little stalker that he is. He's just growing to that age, you know, and I'm the only female without wrinkles for a kilometer around. Anyhow, apparently Sturgis's working into the Ministry, some stupid thing about unicorn dung I thought, but I dumped him after a few weeks. We had nothing to talk about, really—"
"Not after unicorn dung, I should think not. Is Harold Skively still following you around, Marley?" asked Emmeline.
Marlene sighed, "Yeah, odd little kid. He—" There was a knock on the door, the lunch cart had arrived. The girls spent the rest of the trip eating and chatting, giggling like mad at Emmeline's outrageous tales of harrowing uses of magic and Lily's general situation with James Potter. As the countryside became gradually grew wilder and wilder, Lily felt her heart ease in her chest. There will be no problems this year with Potter, she thought to herself. I'll just act natural. Perfectly natural.
Hello there! This is my first fanfic, and I'm a wee bit proud. It's very fun to write these things, and here is some stuff (disclaimers and notes and the like) that people usually write. There is absolutely nothing made up here besides the story, but you all knew that… Seriously though, every name or unnamed person is an invention of J.K. Rowling. Anyone. I swear. This is Totally. Canon. That made it a little more difficult, but cool. Hope you enjoy it. The first 5 chapters were all put up at once. The rest are added with notes as I write 'em. Reviews exceptionally, hugely, and graciously welcome! Keep looking to the bottom for future notes. Thanks lots…
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work." Mister Mark Twain, a hero.