Hey all! Hope you like the story; hopefully I'll update once, maybe twice a week. This is, of course, Jily all the way and R&R! Thanks by the way to my beta Danae; thanks for listening to me talk about this way too much.
Chapter One: Prologue
"It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil." -Henry David Thoreau.
Day 59: At dinner with Mum, Dad, Tuney, the Pig and the Carrolls family. To put it nicely, it's not the most enjoyable activity I've ever been forced to do.
Just three more days; just...
"Lily, could you please put the notebook away? We're trying to eat, dear."
Lily Evans scowled as she slid her leather notebook under the table and picked up her fork. How her writing under the dinner table disrupted everyone eating, she would never know. She might have acknowledged that it was unmannerly of her to do so, if everyone hadn't of been so bloody rude to her all night.
The Carrolls were not exactly nice or entertaining dinner guests. Mr. Carroll, Lily's father's boss, was boisterous and loved talking about his four different holiday homes in America. He also droned on about his new landscaping business or something; Lily wasn't really listening.
Mrs. Carroll did not speak a word, unlike her noisy husband, but instead spent the night looking unimpressed by the quaint, cosy Evans household. When she did speak, all she would say would be something about how nice it was to be experiencing the other social classes.
Tristan Carroll, the couple's only son, had ignored Lily all night; to him, she didn't exist. Only the perfectly manicured Tuney. His eyes never left her all night. Tuney's boyfriend, Vernon Dursley, also known as the Pig, stared daggers at him and muttered something about posh twats.
For once, Lily agreed with him.
So Lily was unmistakably ignored. And plainly bored. She wished she could be seventeen and burn the roast her mother was cooking with her magic. Then they could get takeaway pizza, like they usually did on Friday nights. She wondered how long it would take the Carrolls family to run out the door screaming if she mentioned 'takeaway' or 'pizza'. Or 'magic' even.
Or maybe she could let a Nifler lose in the house. Anything at all, to escape this escape this terrible dinner travesty.
However, her sister and Vernon, or the Twig and the Pig as Lily nicknamed them so amusingly, decided they needed time alone. Well, Vernon decided. Tuney was responding a little too flirtatiously to Tristan's enamoured stares, licking her lips and tossing her bleach blonde hair over her shoulder.
So unfortunately Mr. Carroll, in a moment of insight, realised he might have talked about himself a little too much and decided to bombard Lily with questions.
"Lily, my fiery lamb, where on earth did you get that hair from?"
"What age are you Lily? My Tristan is eighteen next week. We're having a huge party and everything!"
"School starts back next week. My word, I hated school when I was your age! Where might you be attending Lily? Andrew's never mentioned where you go to study."
Lily looked at her parents, helpless. School was not a safe topic and she couldn't lie for Dumbledore's big toe. And she couldn't exactly say she attended a magical school for young witches and wizards. The Carrolls family would get her institutionalised. Plus there was the whole secrecy thing.
Her parents were equally flustered. "Well, Lily attends a boarding school," her mother stammered, her cheeks going nearly as red as Lily's hair. "It's...big and...in the countryside!" Her mother looked remarkably pleased with herself for remembering this vague information Lily had given in a moment of annoyance.
"Yes and Lily's going to be Head Girl there this year," her father said proudly, clapping Lily on the back heartily. "She gets good grades too. Her professors are very happy with her progress. Nine O.W... I mean, nine honours in her GCSEs."
Lily couldn't help but blush. Her O.W.L. results had definitely been a fluke. She was alright at potions and charms but truthfully, she was not as good as...
No. She had to stop thinking about that arrogant toerag. This was a zone free of messy haired boys.
"Professors? As in, science teachers?" Mr. Carroll looked confused.
"Biology!"
Lily had cried the word before she realised what she was doing. All the occupants at the table turned to stare at her; even Tristan Carroll acknowledged her existence.
"I mean... the one with the frogs," Lily stuttered, trying to regain her last shred of dignity. "I do that one, I mean...it's a really great subject...fascinating, really...not for the faint-hearted..."
In the awkward silence that followed, Lily looked down at her lap. She knew for certain her face was the same colour as her hair. Why did she have to be as awkward as a demiguise?
It was his fault. She was thinking about his stupid, annoying, cocky grin when Mr. Carroll had asked her...
"What is the name of this... this special... school you attend?" Mr. Carroll asked as Lily's mother took away his empty, finished plate. He obviously thought she should be admitted to a mental institution.
"St. James's school for girls!" Lily gasped quickly, then clasped her hands over her mouth. Bloody hell. Her mother stared at her, probably thinking her daughter might actually be mentally insane.
Quickly excusing herself, Lily sprinted up the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She hoped she had not made the conversation too awkward downstairs.
Her room was, in one word, a mess. Clothes were spilling out of her wardrobe, draping over chairs, lying in bundles on the floor. Her mother had stopped trying to plead to Lily to tidy up her room after weeks of nagging. Now it looked like her dorm room in Hogwarts. Rolls of parchment were streamed almost decoratively around the room- some scribbled on, doodled on or blank. A bottle of ink was tipped over in the corner of the room, spilling its contents on the wooden floor and staining it. At least, she thought it was ink. Hopefully it wasn't her essence of dryad bark; that stuff would leave more than a stain.
Only Lily's wand looked safe to touch. It was carefully placed on her bedside dresser, next to the empty cage of her owl, Gulliver. She knew sending her faithful, tawny owl out while the Carrolls were here would prevent any mid-dinner hooting sessions. Besides, she hadn't written to Dorcas in a while.
She fell onto her to the groan of worn out springs.
"Well, that was a bloody disaster," she thought sulkily.
It was his fault, anyway. He was on her so much these days.
"It's some kind of foreshadowing," Lily decided as she rolled onto her front. "He's thought of some amazing new spell to hex me with or some new way to tease me..."
Ow.
Lily's face connected with something uncomfortable. She sat up, cupping the round object in her hands. Oh no. She knew what this object was...
"...So you'll remember me Evans, during the long, James-free months ahead."
Lily held up the small object to her face almost two months ago in Kings Cross station, her eyes crossing over. "A remembrall?" Lily murmured, then looked accusingly at the messy haired boy in front of her. "Is this some sort of Potter-humour joke? Because this isn't up to your usual standard." Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Actually wait...is that you, Black?"She then poked him in the centre of his chest. "Using polyjuice potion again? Well, haha, you got me."
The annoying asshat just smiled and ruffled hisfustratingly messy hair. "Later Evans. Things should be interesting next year. Maybe you'll actually go out with me." He winked and then began to walk away, only to say over his shoulder, "If it turns red, you've forgotten me Evans." Then he strode cockily away, leaving a fuming Lily yelling insults after him...
In the past two months, the remembrall had not turned red once. To Lily, this was infuriating.
James Potter had won again. Since day one, it seemed they always competed for everything; lessons, status, they fought over everything. They even hexed each other when someone, usually James, rubbed the other, usually Lily, the wrong way. James also asked her out twenty times a day just to remind her that she was incapable of ever getting a boyfriend. Plus there was that whole thing with Severus.
But this was a new type of victory. Usually when she came home from Hogwarts, she could forget about him and his teasing. But now, everything reminded her of him; even mundane things like a newspaper or a comb-which he seriously needs to use.
James Potter was imbedded in her mind and it was making Lily insane. Not only that, she was going to have to see him again everyday for the next ten months in three days time. Lily didn't think her brain could handle it. At least she could give him detention when he hexed her now, being Head Girl and all.
"...maybe... I should stop fighting with him," Lily argued aloud. "It would make my last year more enjoyable and I would be stress free for the N.E.W.T.s. I could for once focus on D.A.D.A..."
And for no other reason.
None at all.
None.
"I do not like James Potter!" Lily screamed as loud as she could. "I don't,I don't, I don't!"
"There are other people in this house, you know!" Petunia roared from her room. "Keep the teenage angst for the freakshow!"