Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I own nothing. Nada.

A/n: Okay. So yeah I'm in the process of rewriting the part of the story I've already written because, well I'm not gonna lie it was cringing-ly bad, we all know it. Anyway so the first chapter's not incredibly long but... Oh well. Enjoy! Btw if you're reading this for the first time then I suggest you ignore the rest of the chapters for now because they're not gonna make an ounce of sense. Oh and thanks to my absolutely amazing beta, Sineadyyy, whom I love with all my heart and is just so awesome that I just can't! Okay, now on with the story...

Monday

"Hey Lily!"
Lily Evans turned around to see James Potter jogging up to her.
"Potter." She acknowledged his presence, but she wasn't going to start a conversation-
she really wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, let alone to James Potter. Much to her disappointment, he immediately started babbling.
"Ok, so, I know you don't want to date me or anything," pretty impressive, Lily thought, it only took five years to drill that fact through his thick skull. "Well, um, on Saturday, I was thinking maybe you'd like to come with me to Hogsmeade?" Merlin, he just told me he knew that I wasn't planning to agree to date him anytime soon.
"No." She said plainly, she wasn't going to dance around it.
"No, Lily, I didn't mean a date-"
"James, I'm really not going to argue with you about this!" She snapped, she regretted it as soon as it left her mouth, but Merlin, that boy just wouldn't take no for an answer.
She regretted it even more after she saw the look on his face, it wasn't often James Potter looked completely defeated. She didn't know what to do, but she wasn't going to change her mind, so she gave him the best "I'm sorry" look she could muster and sped up to find somewhere she could sit alone with no one to bother her.

It was a Monday afternoon, lessons had just finished and Remus had helped the other marauders get all their homework done over the weekend, so everyone was relaxing in the common room. Peter and Sirius had just started a game of chess when James stalked through the portrait hole with a face like thunder.
"Alright prongs?" Sirius called, not looking away from the chess board. James ignored him and carried on up to the stairs to the boys dormitory.
"What's up with him?" Peter wondered aloud.
Sirius shrugged, "Probably Evans, he'll get over it."

Tuesday

Gryffindor sixth years had double potions with Slytherin first thing on a Tuesday morning. It was the lesson of the week which everyone commonly dreaded the most. However, Lily Evans disliked it more than most. This was because she had to spend the entire two hours feeling the eyes of Severus Snape burning holes in the back of her head.
Lily secretly still missed Severus, it had only been a matter of months since they'd had their fight. Well, it was less of a fight than it was him calling her a mudblood and her refusing to meet his eyes ever since. Sometimes she wished that they'd actually had an argument or at least something, the worst part of the whole thing was that she still had no idea why it had happened, one minute they were best friends, the next he seemed to hate her. Whenever she considered this, she always came up with one conclusion: he really did hate her. She wasn't sure whether or not she really believed this, really, she blamed it on the Slytherins. Severus new "friends" had never been anything but perfectly wretched to her, she'd decided that they must have bullied Sev into it.
Across the room, whilst Lily was concerning herself with the events of last June; James was busy thinking of the events of the previous day. It had been a while since James had asked her out, he'd assumed she'd have come round with time but she'd had since first year, time obviously wasn't what she needed here. James hadn't given up of course, he'd just realised that he needed to try a different tactic, harassment really wasn't working.
Neither James nor Lily were listening two hours later, when Slughorn dismissed the class. Alice Prewitt tapped her best friend on the shoulder when she realised that Lily wasn't getting ready to leave. "Come on, Lils, let's go then" Alice almost whispered. Lily looked up "sorry, Alice," and proceeded to clear her books away. The girls were the last to leave the classroom and so when they saw the crowd of people in the hallway, they had no idea what was going on.
Lily and Alice were on the outside of the crowd, and the people all packed tightly around whatever was happening in the middle, completely blocked their view from it. What they would have seen, had they been able to, was James Potter and Severus Snape, both clutching their wands tightly, each of them ready to hex the other, should the opportunity arise.
Behind James, Sirius Black was standing looking absolutely livid and behind him, there was Remus looking pleadingly at the back of James' head and Peter looking excited beyond control and yet at the same time, terrified into paralysis.
Just as Lily and Alice started to elbow their way through the crowd to see what was going on, Professor McGonagall came around the corner, and people began to disperse so as to avoid any kind of punishment, unfortunately, Alice and Lily didn't realise what was happening, and only saw McGonagall after it was too late to make a run for it.
"What's going on here?" McGonagall's stern, shrill voice filled the corridor. James immediately let go of his wand and Sirius tried his best to look sorry. When no one answered she said "alright then, 5 points for each of you from your houses and unless you all want to spend Saturday polishing trophies with Filch, you can all get to your lessons." Sirius shot Snape another look before turning and walking in the direction of their charms classroom along with everyone else.
"What was that all about?" Asked Alice, who was a lot friendlier with the marauders than Lily was really happy with. "You know what Snape's like" answered Peter, sounding slightly angrier than he had looked at the time. Lily resisted the urge to point out that it was more likely to have been James or Sirius who had started it, not Snape, because she was still supposed to be angry at him.
Charms, much to Lily's delight, went quickly and before she knew it, she was sitting up in her bed, reading.
It was still quite early by most people's standards and so the common room was packed full of people, passing away the evening, chatting about homework or quidditch, or whatever had happened to them over the day. This is were Alice found herself sharing an armchair (which was technically only big enough for one) with her boyfriend of just over two months, Frank Longbottom.
On the sofa and floor around them, the marauders were chatting away with every one else. Well, the marauders excluding James that was, who had barely spoken a word all night. Noticing this, Alice untangled herself from Frank and sat next to James.
"Alright Potter?" She asked, jokingly.
"Not really," he mumbled.
"What's wrong?"
"What d'ya think?"
"Lily?"
He nodded. Alice sighed, she knew that Lily just about tolerated James Potter and that was only because Alice had insisted that she didn't completely right him off. Alice also knew that Lily was stressing out about Snape, which was starting to annoy Alice because he really didn't deserve her worry.
"James," she started, "okay, so I'm not telling you this because Lily's my best friend and you're literally the last person on the planet that she'd be okay with knowing about this, understand?" James looked a bit confused but nodded.
"Listen, she's been stressing out about Snape, she's seriously worried about him, I know, I know, she's acting really stupid, but she cares about him, but, she did spend most of her childhood with him. Anyway, I think it would be great for her to go out with you (despite the arrogant git that you are), she needs something else to think about apart from Snape. Just, give her a while to get over him, okay? Wait until after Christmas, at least, it's only another couple of months."
This didn't really make James feel better, but he agreed to anyway, before going up to bed.

A coupe of hours later, the rest of the marauders bounded up the stairs, not the slightest bit tired, they weren't going to bed, they were looking for James. As normal as it was for James to be rejected by Lily Evans, he really wasn't taking it well this time, and the boys were tired of watching him sulk.
Little did James know, Sirius had been listening earlier when Alice had told him about Lily's worries about Snape. The boys jumped on James' bed where he was lying, face down, wishing he didn't exist.
"Alright, young prongs-y we, have a plan," Sirius started, "so, you know how Lily is having super Snape issues or whatever, well, it's a good thing you're friends with three geniuses-"
"James, for the record I don't think this is a good idea," Remus interrupted.
"Shut up moony, don't listen to him. Where was I? Oh yes well we all know little Snivellus is up to something, I mean he and his mates, well whatever they spend their time doing, it won't be good, so here's an offer for Evans, the two of you, Saturday, following some Slytherins around."
Sirius looked eagerly at his best mate as James considered the idea. It wasn't a bad idea, it's not exactly how he'd planned to spend his time with lily, but it was better than nothing. On the other hand, Remus had thought it was a bad idea and he was usually right about these things. "Why don't you like it, moony?" James asked, hoping it wouldn't matter.
"If you were Lily, would you want spend the day, with anyone, let alone you, stalking your ex best friend?" James thought about this, he didn't agreed that it probably wasn't Lily's idea of paradise, but she'd be way to curious about Snape to say no, and it was only to get her to get to like him enough to give him a proper chance. After a few moments of debating, James made his mind up.
"It's worthy a shot isn't it?" He said, and planned to ask her the first chance he got the next day.