By Dimantrien
Chapter 1: An Outcast with an Attitude
It was nearing the end of November. The air was unmercifully cold, and the Hogwarts students were more than willing to be in the safe shelter and warmth of the castle than outside in that blizzard. Except maybe for some…
SPLAT! A snowball went smack on the back of sixteen-year-old James Potter's head, forcing him to lurch forward slightly, his glasses askew. He stopped for a moment to readjust his glasses on his face when another snowball collided with his shoulder. The sound of male laughter was heard behind him.
"Ha! Got you good, didn't I, Mister Ace Quidditch Seeker?" Sirius Black sniggered behind him. Dark haired and with drool-worthy looks, the famous (or infamous, can't decide which) master prankster was known to be a menace to all Slytherins, and a god to most of Hogwarts' girl populace.
Remus Lupin, their light-brown haired and normally calm (which was ironic, since he was lycanthropic) friend, spoke up a little ways behind Sirius. "That wasn't fair, Sirius. James asked for a time out, and it's against the rules to attack your opponent when he is temporarily incapable to fight." He was the "referee" to James' and Sirius' rather bizarre game, wherein, out of boredom from not having anyone to prank on (most Slytherins were in the hospital wing, suffering under colds), they had made up rules to the traditional snowball fight. Personally, he didn't think this did them much good, since James and Sirius were highly competitive and would resort to any means to win.
Which, of course, meant that they would break the rules. It was pointless to organize rules, especially for the two biggest rule-breakers in Hogwarts' history. Remus voiced his thoughts to them.
Sirius shook his head. "No, no, Rem. We are following the rules. See, you're allowed to hit your opponent with a snowball when his back is turned, as long as he was in the game, and since James was obviously in the appropriate position for that—"
"No I wasn't! Sirius, you lying, cheating sneak." James interjected.
Remus threw up his hands. "Oh for Merlin's sake, you two are acting like four-year-olds! Which, I would like to remind you, are four times younger than your age, but you are making a damned good imitation of them…"
Both Sirius and James scowled. Simultaneously, there was a sneeze behind them.
"Guys," Peter Pettigrew spoke up, holding a soggy tissue over his nose, "leb's geb inside. Ib's freezing oub here, and I don'b wan' bo be sbuck in the hospibal wing with the Slytherins all week long…AH-CHOO!!!"
"Yeah, let's," James agreed, shivering. He was still dripping with not-quite melted snow. It was amazing how just when he thought it would turn to liquid, it would solidify almost immediately with the below-zero degree temperature surrounding them.
The four friends trudged back up to the castle, bowing down to the freezing gale. As soon as they were inside, a comforting warmth washed over them.
"Incredible…I can actually feel my fingers again," Remus muttered, shaking his hands, which were numb with cold. "You guys owe me big time, making me stand outside in that blizzard what with the full moon so near…"
"Sorry 'bout that, Moony," Sirius sang, his voice annoyingly cheerful. "Wanna go down to the kitchens? I'm starving, and as I was benevolently reminded by Prongs here when he chucked a snowball right in my mouth when I was laughing, snow is absolutely inedible. We need real food." Not waiting for Remus to answer, he slung his arm over his shoulder and dragged him down the entrance hall.
"Hey, waib for me—ACHOO!" Peter sneezed, but James held him back.
"You need to go to the hospital wing, Wormtail," he said sternly, but in a concerned way. "Don't worry about those Slytherins, if they give you any trouble, Sirius and I will make sure to give them a 'warm' welcome as soon as they're well enough to stop sneezing two hundred times a day."
Peter nodded, after all, James was the "leader" of their group, along with Sirius, and he promptly obeyed. James watched Peter disappear around a corner before climbing up a marble staircase. He briefly thought of finishing a Charms assignment that was due a week from now. With too much time on his hands in the absence of Slytherin victims, he had finished most of his assignments whose due dates ranged from three days off to two months. That was a side of the great James Potter; he was responsible, organized and sensible. Well, when he wanted to anyway. The other side was pretty much the opposite.
He strolled down a deserted corridor that was a shortcut to the Gryffindor Tower. And that was when he heard it.
It was the familiar sound of someone crying, and it was coming from the room to his left. Cautiously, he crept towards it and opened the door, but whoever was inside must have heard him, for when he entered there was no one inside and another door on the other side of the room stood ajar.
Quickly, he took out a piece of parchment from his robes and muttered some words. Instantly, the marauder's map unfolded before him, and he saw a dot of a person starting to move away from the room where "James Potter" was marked.
It read: Lily Evans.
*****
"What's up with you, James? James? James!" Sirius practically shouted in his friend's ear.
"Huh? What?" James answered in a dazed voice, snapping his head up after staring at his food-laden plate at dinnertime in the Great Hall. He was thinking about what he heard in that corridor. Lily Evans was the kind of person who was stereotyped as the "weird social outcast" so nobody really paid any attention to her much. In fact, until that incident, he had only remembered who she was.
"I said, wouldn't it be good to enchant Snape's shampoo—if he even had one, that is, though I highly doubt that since his hair is the greasiest—"
"Sirius, just get to the point," Remus groaned beside him, rolling his eyes. There were purplish shadows beneath his gray-blue orbs, a sign that he had just underwent a transformation days before.
"Right. As I was thinking, we should enchant Snape's shampoo so that it would flash pink letters above his head about the feelings he has for whoever his crush is, which, I might add, would humiliate him to no end," Sirius stated.
James snorted. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but with that hair of his, it would be proper to assume that he bathes it in oil instead of water. And since oil repels water, he would get it through in his idiot mind that it wouldn't come off no matter how many gallons of water he pours on his overlarge head." His two friends laughed.
"Well, there's only one way to find out if he does wash it," Sirius said with a shrug. "If our spell works, then that means that he actually has the decency to take a bath once in a while."
"Point taken," Remus said. "The charm's Adoncherrium, I looked it up the other day. Now the only part left is deciding which of us will sneak into the Slytherin common room and perform the spell on Snape's shampoo—"
"I wouldn't fancy entering their bathroom and finding Snape taking a shower with a pink, heart-printed shower cap on his head, singing the Sorting Hat's song," Sirius said with a shudder. Then his face lit up. "But I wouldn't mind taking my camera with me and capturing that humiliating moment on film and reproducing it to add another item to our '1000 Embarrassing Moments of Severus Snape' list."
"No, we can't let Sirius do it, he'll get caught before you can say hex. I'll go to their tower," James volunteered. Sirius scowled.
"No, you can't go around sneaking into other Houses' towers in the middle of the night and getting caught because you're a prefect, Prongs," Sirius argued. "A saintly, law-abiding, perfectly disciplined prefect. Or you're supposed to be. So you can't be the one to do it." He looked pleased at his quick thinking.
"Fine, then who will we send there? Peter?" James said sarcastically.
Sirius laughed. "No way! Sure, Pete's nice and all, but he's useless at charms. The highest mark he ever got from that subject is a ten on a forty-item quiz."
James sighed. "If it makes you so happy, you can go. But if you get caught you'll have to tell authorities that we didn't have anything to do with it."
"Ahhh. Trying not to add another blot in Prefect Prongs' already stained record, huh?" Sirius remarked with a grin.
"I doubt that there are any white spaces left in his permanent record. Why Dumbledore declared him a prefect is beyond me," Remus said with a wry smile.
"He only did it because he knows that it'll prevent me from taking part in any pranks," James answered darkly. "If that was the case, then he should've assigned Sirius instead. Too bad there're only two prefects per year—fifth and up, that is. And one of them's always a girl."
"Who's Gryffindor's sixth year female prefect?" Sirius asked curiously.
James shrugged. "Dunno. Haven't met her."
"But you should! You always have those prefect meetings…" Remus reminded.
"Yeah, but I don't have to work directly with her," James pointed out. "Anyway, I have to go. I still haven't done my Charms essay…"
"See ya later, Prongs," Sirius called as he left, still shoving food into his face. It was a wonder that he could do that and still have girls giggling and gaping at him with a glazed look on their faces.
*****
James entered the common room, which was almost entirely empty. There was a girl sitting in a desk at a corner of the room. She had her back to him and he didn't recognize her, but he decided to acknowledge her anyway. "Hi. What're you doing in the common room all alone?" he asked, walking over to her.
The girl didn't respond, but turned around for the source of the voice. James' eyes widened. It was Lily Evans.
They just stood (Lily sat) there for about a minute, looking at each other, before Lily turned back to the book she was reading.
James shifted his position uncomfortably. "Er, why don't you sit by the fire or something? There's a lot more light there…" he trailed off since Lily obviously wasn't paying any attention to him. He couldn't help but wonder what her answer would be if he asked her why she was crying in that empty classroom.
"Um…Lily?" he asked somewhat nervously.
Lily shifted her position slightly, which he took as a "Yeah, what?"
James cleared his throat. "Well, I was…uh…wondering-er-why was…I mean, why were you in that empty classroom earlier this day, crying?" He suddenly pondered if he had done the right thing.
At first there was no reply from the redheaded outcast. Then when James turned around, thinking that it was pointless to get answers out of a person who was probably both mute and deaf, she slammed her book shut and stood up. He looked back at her.
"Why don't you just mind your own damned business?" Lily snapped at him, but he saw the look of fear…and something else…in her eyes. It was a kind of haunted and melancholy emotion that James was sure depressed people had.
Nevertheless, James' eyes flashed. "Excuse me, but I was just concerned," he retorted.
Lily snorted. "The only thing you popular people are concerned about are your looks and what others think of you," she scoffed. "There's hardly any room for concern, is there?"
"At least we don't just skulk in a corner, snapping at anyone who tries to extend sympathy to them!" James was furious. How could anybody say that about him? That he was just a typical dumb jock who got carried away with popularity? He wasn't just going to stand here and let this outcast, who thought she knew everything, to openly mock him.
"Why don't you get lost and snog a bimbo in a broom closet somewhere?" Lily mockingly suggested, waving him away.
James glowered at her. "This is my common room as much as yours. You can't order me around," he said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest.
"You won't go? Fine. Stay here and wait for your ditzy flavor-of-the-day. I don't need this crap." Lily started to stalk away towards the girls' dormitory.
"Right! Go back to your weird friends. Oh, I forgot, you don't have any friends, do you?" James couldn't help calling after her. Lily stopped momentarily, her head bowed, but then she walked again and disappeared at the staircase to the dorms.
James suddenly felt guilty that he had offended her like that, but then another voice told him that Lily had insulted him, more so than what he had said to her. He relaxed.
Just as he was walking in the same direction as Lily did he notice something glistening on the blood red floor. He stooped down to check them out.
Tears.
*****
AN – Review me! That's all I'm asking for.