A/N: This is dedicated to Julia (aka maraudeurish)! Merry Christmas and I hope James Potter is under your Christmas tree! Lots of love, from your secret santa :) xx
It was six nights before Christmas, and all through Gryffindor house, many creatures were stirring, including a mouse. Most notably however was not the mouse, but the two seventeen-year-old boys dressed in hoop skirts and bonnets prancing around the seventh year boys' dormitory. Although for Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew this was rather tame behavior. But more on that later.
It was a normal Monday morning in the girls' dormitory. Well, except for the fact that Lily Evans woke up with a bird on her face. It wasn't her owl, Freckle, or in fact an owl at all. Lily locked eyes with the thing. From what she could make out it was brown, severely overweight, and perched on her forehead looking down to investigate the face it happened to be standing on. The next five minutes included Lily screaming and swatting her arms, and her dorm mates hysterically laughing. This didn't seem to bother her bird friend however, who remained happily perched upon her head. And there it stayed through classes and meals for the rest of the day. Even her Professors' attempts to detach the bird failed. Throughout the day Lily's annoyance slowly grew into tolerance, which was beginning to turn into fondness when suddenly at midnight the bird simply disappeared.
And that was the end of it.
Or so she thought.
On Tuesday morning Lily sighed in relief as she opened her eyes, as there were no birds residing on her face. She showered, brushed her teeth and did her hair as usual. It was only when she went to grab her potions textbook that she realized there were two white balls of fluff in her bag. Two white balls of fluff which she realized to be birds. Doves to be specific. Doves which were pecking at her potions textbook and refusing to move to be even more specific. Fantastic. Luckily for Lily the doves were not attached to her face, and seemed happy to spend their day simply sitting next to Lily, occasionally pecking her or flapping. While this was still a strange sight for the students and teachers of Hogwarts, Lily had a sinking feeling these birds would never leave her. Like clockwork, as midnight hit, the birds disappeared and Lily wondered what sort of bird would come next.
Lily awoke on Wednesday morning and all seemed strangely well. She checked in and under her bed, in her trunk and even in the common room and there were no birds. She hoped maybe this week would begin to look up. That hope was lost when she approached her regular spot at Gryffindor table, to see confused and sympathetic faces. Lily sat down to find her plate was already partially full. With a singular egg.
Across the table James Potter and Sirius Black were looking far too pleased with themselves. Lily Evans had experienced her fair share of the marauders through her years at Hogwarts. Usually any sort of marauder-inflicted agony (though they called it affection) was teamed with James Potter asking for a date, or subtlety alluding to how he was god's gift to humanity. But not this time. Which of course made Lily extremely suspicious. The marauders had been fairly quiet this week. Too quiet.
'Potter, Black? What did you do?' From experience Lily knew there was always an 80% chance it was the marauders' fault.
'Us?' Sirus exclaimed innocently, 'You think I lay that?' he gestured toward the egg.
Lily was about to retort when she saw who had actually lay the egg. A hen. On Gryffindor table. With some friends. There were 3 hens staring at Lily. She was beginning to see a concerning trend.
By the end of the week the students of Hogwarts were beginning to think their head girl was pursuing a career as a bird whisperer. By Sunday Lily Evans had developed quite the entourage. After Wednesday's hen incident, Thursday saw canaries flying after Lily, and Saturday involved Lily acting like a mother goose, with her goslings padding after her in a line. Friday was an odd day as there were no bird incidents to report (however Lily noted that James Potter did make a point of dramatically asking for her hand in marriage with 5 rings in a box). Sunday made up for Lily's bird-less Friday, as she was viciously attacked by her avian friends. What started out as a pleasant day reading by the lake, ended with a line of swans running straight at the Head Girl. It took the combined efforts of Lily and Professor McGonagall and a very strong spell to stop the birds, but by that point Lily already looked as if she has lost a fistfight with a bag of feathers.
This brings us to six nights before Christmas in the Gryffindor boys' dormitory. While Peter and Sirius had questionable life choices, for once they had a reason to be dressed in drag. You see, James Potter had a plan. A plan that would win him the love of the girl of his dreams. While Lily has rejected his proposal for marriage (though he wasn't sure why, he had even offered her five rings!), he knew this plan would work. Because obviously the way to woo the girl you fancy is to show your deep understanding of her muggle roots! James did pride himself on being incredibly thoughtful.
Which is why the next morning, with her usual breakfast of eggs on toast, James would provide Lily with some light entertainment. It was perfectly timed, just as Lily was about to pick up the Daily Prophet, a cow appeared on Slytherin table. The shrieking from the opposite side of the room let James know the second part of todays entertainment was in plan. While he respected the Slytherin Quidditch team's regular choice of attire, deep within him he knew they all had the urge to dress up a bit more. The Great Hall was bustling with laughter as the Slytherin quidditch team, joined by Severus Snape, looked down to see their regular robes replaced with full milk-maid outfits. All eight of them perfectly matching. This of course was concentrated around Severus Snape (head milk-maid), who couldn't seem to move away from Slytherin's new cow. James snuck a look at Lily. She looked a mix of amused and mortified. She turned to threw a suspicious look at James and Sirius, who smiled and shrugged. Sadly the morning's entertainment only lasted a few minutes as Dumbledore charmed back the uniforms and removed the cow.
Lily was beginning to become a little concerned by the strange happenings at Hogwarts. To reinforce her confusion, the next day Lily entered her dormitory to be greeted by a line of she toy drummers. While she considered this to be a one up from the birds, it was still rather bizarre. And of course, to continue with the theme the day after that, Lily awoke to a drawing on her bedside. It was a horribly drawn picture of pipers, with a scrawled note that read 'sorry, couldn't find actual pipers!'. Well, whoever Lily's mystery gifter was, they were getting lazy!
It has reached Christmas Eve, and Lily has yet to reach a conclusion about the strange gifts she'd been receiving. Lily Evans was sat looking out window onto the grounds of Hogwarts, when something caught her sight. This something was Sirius Black, who happened to be dressed in a frilled hoop skirt. She had never seen someone so enthused about wearing a dress. Sirius caught Lily's eye and smiled coyly. Oh dear, she thought, this could not be a good thing. Then he started walking towards her. Well, walking was a loose term, he seemed to be almost strutting. Lily opened her mouth to ask, but Sirius silenced her with a raised eyebrow and finger to her lips. He moved to stand two metres in front of Lily, and started waving his arms. Two lines of students (just about 9 first years Lily noted. And also Peter Pettigrew) now stood behind Sirius all in giant skirts. Out of nowhere music started to sound, and the first years with their marauder guides began dancing. If it could be called dancing, it was more so terrible choreography of synchronized movements. They continued their 'dancing' for about a minute, before breaking into a final pose featuring Sirius laying on the ground like a 40s pinup girl, surrounded by first years waving jazz hands and smiling at Lily. And then as if nothing had happened, they walked away, continuing about their evening as if breaking out into a dance routine was perfectly normal behaviour. Lily looked around her to find James Potter smiling at her from a corner. She had been used to attention from James, but usually that came in the form of invitations or flirting, not dance troupes and large amounts of birds in her life. Lily smiled back, as strange as it was, something gave her the feeling her pre-Christmas period had something to do with James.
On Christmas morning at Hogwarts, the snow the night before has coated all the trees outside, perfect weather for a Christmas morning hot-chocolate in front of the fire. The common room was peaceful with so many students at home for Christmas, leaving Lily able to snuggle up in her favorite chair, with a novel. Her peace however didn't last long, as James Potter came walking up with a perfectly wrapped box.
'Merry Christmas Lily!' he handed her the box. It was small, and fairly light. Lily smiled in response, slightly nervous as she had a feeling all the strange happenings in her life over the last fortnight may have been something to do with James. He remained standing in front of her, smiling pointedly. Of course, he wanted her to open it now.
Lily lifted off the lid, to see a dozen tiny golden bells. They were enchanted and ringing softly. The bells were beautiful, though Lily couldn't deny her confusion. James pointed to writing in the box of the lid. It was a poem.
'On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me…' Lily read aloud.
'Yeah! I read it was a muggle Christmas thing so I thought maybe you'd like it. So I've been leaving you presents. I thought I'd bring a muggle tradition to Hogwarts!' James looked nervous but very pleased with himself.
It was just like James – a bit overdramatic and unnecessary, but undeniably thoughtful. Lily couldn't help but smile as James gave her a quick peck on the cheek and walked away. There was one thing Lily was sure of, she was glad James hadn't realized the gifts in the twelve days of Christmas were meant to be cumulative.
A/N: I apologise for this being sort of badly put together and full of errors, it was a bit of a push to get in by the deadline! But I hope any readers (and of course Julia) liked this :)