"Blimey, Evans, isn't it too bloody early for you to be up?"
Startled, Lily Evans looks up at James Potter from her plate of sausages. "It is, I suppose," she says, "but I'm meeting my friend for a nice morning walk and then we're going to study together in the library."
With a huff, the skinny boy sits down next to her and dumps a large helping of scrambled eggs on his plate, then follows it up with an alarming amount of ketchup. "Well, I think you're mad to be studying on a Sunday morning, but to each his own, I guess."
She is momentarily grateful that he does not choose to pick a fight with her about Severus (it's obvious to every Gryffindor when she says 'my friend' that she means their Slytherin classmate), but realizes with a huff that he has, actually, managed to insult her anyway.
"Yes," she snaps, turning back to her own pile of sausages (honestly, why should she limit herself to only a few? And anyway, nobody was around to see her. At least, until Potter turned up).
They eat in silence, but she finally asks (rather rudely, actually, her mum would be furious) him why he's awake.
"Had to send a present to my mum," Potter says simply, eyes gleaming with sudden joy and mischief. "It's her birthday tomorrow, so I sent her an absolutely spiffing broom."
She shudders to think what kind of prank the boy has concealed in the present.
"Won't your mum mind a jokey gift?" She asks, reaching for more sausages (I can stand to put on a few pounds).
Potter grins. "Naah. My mum loves these things. And my Dad just laughs, so it's all brilliant. The day I send an actual card, they'll probably turn up here and check me into St. Mungo's!"
She smiles (his grin is infectious), and continues to cut up her sausages. Conversation flows pleasantly (she's rather surprised – she's never managed to have a proper conversation with Potter, because of his incessant teasing of her best friend) for a bit, until he suddenly drop his fork on his (very clean) plate with a satisfied hum. "Oh well, I should go," he says, after a staring dreamily into the depths of his pumpkin juice (she identifies this expression as Post-Good Meal Haze, she has it herself, she knows, after a properly filling meal). "Ever since Remus became prefect, he's been getting after us to keep the dorm clean, and I know Peter must have left a bunch of nonsense for him to step on, so I'm off to clear it all out." He pulls himself out of his seat (why are all the boys getting so tall now?), nods at her, walks away, but then turns around after a few steps.
"Evans?" He asks, a charming grin spreading across his face.
"Um, yeah?" She hastily swallows the sausage in her mouth. The boy ruffles his hair (it's a bit annoying that, everyone knows your hair is nice, you don't see me whipping mine about) and beams.
"Do you wanna go out with me this weekend? There's a Hogsmeade trip."
Oh.
Um.
Oh.
But.
What?
"You... wanna go out with me to Hogsmeade?" She asks incredulously.
He nods eagerly. "Yeah."
She studies him for a bit, then shakes herself and offers him a bit of a smile (oh god what do you DO in these situations?). "Well, sorry, Potter, I'd have to, um... decline. We're not... well, not exactly mates anyway and-"
He adjusts the glasses on his nose, and then nods. "Okay then!" Cheerfully, the boy waves and turns.
"If not now, some other time," he says jauntily.
Lily frowns. "That's a bit... presumptuous." She mutters.
"Sorry?"
"What makes you think I'll say yes the next time?" She asks, irately. How is he so overconfident?
Potter shrugs. "I'll wear you down."
"Wha-" She splutters for a bit, and then pulls herself together.
"No you won't! A no is a no!" She says defiantly.
"And I'm telling ya, it can change." He says, walking away again.
"God, you're annoying."
"You'll break down someday!"
With a huff, she settles back in her chair.
I actually liked him until now. But he needn't be so pushy. Or self-confident. Or...
She is saved from an inner monologue about Potter's cockiness by the sight of Severus entering the Great Hall.
"What's his name?" Lily asks happily, looking up from the exuberant dog she's petting to the three boys standing next to her. They stare at each other for a moment, before the shortest, Peter Pettigrew, speaks up.
"His name's S-"
"-nuffles!"
Everybody looks at Remus Lupin, and he reddens a little. "I mean," he says a little more quietly, "his name is Snuffles."
The dog stops quivering with excitement and turns to give Remus a sharp bark.
Lily laughs merrily and goes back to scratching the dog – no, sorry, Snuffles' head. "Poor dog must hate his name, though he definitely recognizes it." She says idly, admiring the mongrel's silky hair. "Who does he belong to anyway? Or did you lot just adopt a stray dog?"
Potter, who hasn't said much but a cautious 'hi' (they haven't spoken since just after their last OWL paper a week ago when The Fight happened), clears his throat awkwardly as the other two look at him in alarm. Frowning, Lily stops petting Snuffles (he whines and noses her hand, but she focuses on the guilty expressions on the three faces looming over her). "What are you lot hiding?" She demands.
"Um, well..." Potter begins slowly, "he's actually... well, he's actually Sirius' secret pet dog." He finishes the sentence in a rush, then eyes Lily doubtfully.
"Of all the..." She trails off, then looks back at the huge black mongrel in front of her (he flips on the ground the moment he has her attention again and wiggles on his back – she pats his stomach absentmindedly). "Has he had this dog stashed away for the past five years?" She asks, sending a sharp look at Sirius Black's best friends.
"No, just this year." Pettigrew says quickly. He pauses, and then opens his mouth again. "Are you... angry or anything?"
Lily snorts. "No, just a bit jealous." She grins and leans forward to hug Snuffles (she hears a strangled sound somewhere from the vicinity of Potter, but ignores it), then pulls away and scratches his ears. "I'd love to have a dog like this!"
Silence descends on the group, but a thought strikes Lily. "Hold on," she says slowly, "where's Black, then, if this is his dog?"
"McGonagall," Potter says smoothly. "He had to hand in his Transfiguration essay a bit late, 'cause Peter managed to accidentally give it to Sprout thinking it was his Herbology essay."
Just like them, Lily thinks, looking back at the happy dog. "Well, if Black's not got the time, is it possible to borrow his dog? I'd love to keep him for a bit." Snuffles barks happily and launches his front legs at her shoulders, then proceeds to lick her face. Before he can do any proper damage to her hygiene, though, he's dragged off by an irate Potter. "Behave," he says darkly to the dog.
Oddly enough, Snuffles whines and snaps at Potter's leg, but settles quietly next to his skinny ankles.
"Is he that well trained?" Lily asks, amazed.
Before the boys can answer, an oily voice from behind them speaks up. "Go on, tell her the truth, Potter. Your mutt is a bit too obedient, isn't he?"
Four pairs of eyes turn to glare at Severus Snape, who had been lounging next to a tree not far away with a dirty looking textbook. He gets up and sneers. "Tell her the whole story behind the filthy mutt." He turns directly to look at Lily. There is an almost imperceptible softening in his eyes, but she ignores it to focus on the anger that rises within her every time she sees her very decidedly ex-best friend. "You should really find out what you're hugging before-"
"Snape." Potter says sharply, a warning clearly lacing through his words. "Shut. Up."
Rolling her eyes, Lily straightens from the position she had been in to comfortably play with Snuffles. What she's about to say is a bit cruel, but she's had enough of Se – Snape. "No, it's actually good advice, Potter," she says coolly fixing eyes on Snape. "After all, imagine. If I had known that earlier, I could have avoided years of hugging a bigoted, spineless Slytherin."
His face falls, but the three Gryffindor boys behind her let out appreciative laughs.
Snape turns on his heel and leaves. She watches him go with a twinge of regret, but it's her last day of school, and honestly, she doesn't want to spend more time and thoughts on Severus Snape's behaviour.
"Tell Black he has a lovely dog." She says quickly, before reaching down to scoop her satchel up.
"Oh, are you going?" Potter asks, his grin sliding off his face.
"Just because I played with your mate's dog, I'm not suddenly your best friend, Potter," Lily says bluntly. She wants to take those words back, but a large part of her isn't bothered. Her mood has taken a decidedly sour turn. And anyway, he's been horribly annoying the whole year.
"You still haven't forgiv-"
"I'll write to you, Lily, this summer." Remus cuts in, and she turns to him gratefully. She doesn't dislike Potter as much as she did before (longer hours in the common room, and silence from his side has somehow managed to do that) The Fight, but she really isn't his friend.
Unfortunately, it's not an easy conversation to actually have. (He has, thankfully, stopped pestering her for a date.)
Remus, however, she loves. (A part of her desperately wishes she could fall in love with him, with his quiet manner, sudden smirks and sandy hair, but she knows the obvious perfection of this match means that it could never happen... and anyway, they're fifteen.) Remus knows how to diffuse a situation.
She exchanges pleasantries with the boys for a bit more, then leaves.
Snuffles follows her for a bit before turning to run back to the boys.
With a sigh, she traces her way back to her dorm, where she'll no doubt be embroiled in another rousing discussion about some book, or makeup, or... look she likes that lot, and they are friends, but this past week without a best friend has shown her how much she needs – and likes – to have someone with the same sense of humour.
She refuses to consider the fact that there are, in fact, people who seem to have just that. (Barring the liking for public displays of rivalry.)
"- and then he just flew away. Bugger even remembered to collect forty galleons off of us once he came back."
Lily bursts into laughter. "I couldn't believe it until you mentioned that. Of course he'd take the money. It's such a typically Black-like thing to do."
Remus smirks as they both sidestep what looks like a first year stumbling around in robes. The Hogwarts Express lurches just at that moment and the eleven year old stumbles head long into a different compartment.
"Yeah. He likes to act like he's better, but he's just as crafty as his family."
The words are said dryly, but Lily feels her cheeks redden. "I didn't actually mean... well, his family..." She's not sure what the protocol is here. Are you allowed to inadvertently talk about the family of an acquaintance? Even if the acquaintance very openly dislikes his family?
Remus hastily tells her not to feel awkward, and she is instantly relieved. The lovely boy always knows what bothers her, and has such a way with reassuring her successfully.
They reach his compartment, and she moves aside to let him go in (I wonder where the girls are sitting? I should have asked them before going for the stupid prefect meeting). "Wait, where are you going?"
She turns to see him looking rather surprised, as though she is expected to sit with his friends. "Um... I'm off to," she begins slowly, but he cuts in. "Oh, come off it, we're going to have to go on patrols again in a bit, just sit with us."
He throws the door wide open and steps in.
Three boys (god, did Potter and Black get even taller?) look up from what looks like Flying Exploding Rummy. "Evans," Potter says delightedly. "What brings you here?"
"We're off for patrols in a bit, so I told her to just sit with us," Remus says easily, flopping down next to Peter (the pack of cards shuffle and separate into four hands).
She expects silence, or some staring, but equality seems to runs this group, more than – as is perceived by the rest of the student body – what James Potter or Sirius Black approve of. If Remus wants someone to spend time here, she realizes, they all accept that decision readily.
And it's probably the same for the other three as well, she thinks, remembering how Peter's cousin Helen once spent an entire week with the boys, when she started her first year (they were in... oh, third year? Yeah, third... that was the year they charmed the tables to abuse students who spilled juice at dinner time).
"Well, then, Evans," Black says, smoothly flicking his wrist to reshuffle the cards. "Fancy a game of Exploding Rummy?"
She's never found social interaction easier than this very moment.
Once their rounds are over, Lily walks back into the compartment along with Remus like she's got a right to it, like any of the four Marauders.
They welcome her back into the fold without a comment.
Potter asks her out, and when she says no lightly, he shrugs. "I thought I'd try. You know, one last go." Black barks a loud laugh at him, and they tease Potter, before Peter changes the subject to something else and...
In a bit, they're loudly debating about whether or not treacle tart should be called a pudding or a tart. She defends her favourite pudding valiantly, and is backed up by Potter. (They aren't surprised by the mutual liking, because they both had been involved in an Incident in fourth year when all the treacle tart had gone missing and turned up in the Gryffindor common room. She'd been in the Hospital Wing for three days, nursing an upset stomach, but it had been worth it.)
Snapping her bag shut with glee, Lily sits back against her favourite squishy armchair with a happy sigh.
Homework for the weekend? Three essays, a detailed diagram, and one book to read.
Homework completed by Saturday night? Three essays, a detailed diagram and one book.
It is only the middle of their first term, but the sixth years already have too much work, and they're fed up. For the first time since term started, Lily's actually managed to finish off her work and win a free Sunday.
She can do whatever she wants.
She can read a book for fun.
She can... fall asleep by the fire in the common room...
Just as she is contemplating charming her bag to walk upstairs so she can sleep peacefully in the armchair, there's a loud crash outside the common room door. Eyes snapping open, Lily shoots up as the whole house turns to stare at the four boys hastily jumping into the room.
They fall in a heap on the floor, but scramble up immediately.
"Bugger, bugger, bugger," Peter chants as he unsuccessfully tries to charm grey feathers off of his arm.
Next to him, James and Sirius are fighting with some small, winged creature that does not seem happy to be held in two sixteen year old boys' arms, and Remus is attempting to aim charms at the animal.
They are all covered in grey feathers.
People start to snigger, but stop when they hear a sharp voice outside the portrait. "Have you let any feathered ingrates come in here recently?"
Eyes widening, Lily quickly crosses to the boys. "Why is McGonagall chasing you?"
Silently, they mime a whole bunch of nonsense to her. Rolling her eyes, she quickly flicks her wand and charms away the feathers. Carefully, she aims a light stunner at the bird-animal-thing and stuffs it quietly amongst the pillows on another chair in the corner of the common room.
Suddenly, she realizes the silence in the room is very, very obvious. And the Fat Lady is beginning to creak open. "Go back to talking!" She hisses at large, before shoving the four (shocked) boys into chairs.
She flops down into her armchair just as McGonagall walks in.
"Who did it?" She asks impatiently, nostrils flaring.
The common room's din – Lily feels a rush of love for her fellow housemates at the very obedient chaos that had immediately started up after her order – ceases as the room turns to look at McGonagall in a very convincing, collective attempt at mystification.
"Sorry, Professor, but who did what?" Frank Longbottom asks calmly, getting up from his throng of friends, Head Boy badge glinting on his chest.
She feels a rush of love for him too.
The amount of trouble she's going to get in for covering for the Marauders...
Hold on a tick, why the hell is she covering for the Marauders?
McGonagall takes a deep breath (she has a distinct impression of a cat preparing itself for a nice swipe at an opponent) and fixes Longbottom with a disapproving glare. "Somebody charmed mini-Hippogriffs to float around the third floor and dive-bomb the students like kamikaze pigeons," she says, and Lily casts an agonized look at the chair behind her.
Mini Hippogriff?!
"I couldn't see the perpetrator, but I sent a jinx down after them to coat them in feathers."
Oh, that explains the sticky grey feathers.
Lily throws a dark look at Sirius who, for once, has the decency to look ashamed.
"I know they ran into this common room, so there is no need to hide one of your friends."
Longbottom starts to speak to her in the low, reassuring tone he's famous for – oh, all sorts of nonsense about how nobody could have seen anybody enter – when the bloody Hippogriff in the corner lets out a doleful squawk.
Shit.
As McGonagall stalks over to the chair, and Lily gets treated to a hundred scathing looks.
I didn't know it was a bloody Hippgriff! She mouths in panic.
She sends another dark look at James now, who shakes his head in despair.
Oh god, she's dead. McGonagall is going to reverse the spell and track who did it and she is dead.
Why the hell is she covering for the Marauders?! Especially when their esteemed head of house so very clearly knows who actually did this.
Peter pats her leg comfortingly from her left, and she realizes why.
Had to bloody go and make friends, didn't I? She asks herself grumpily. Behind her, she can already hear McGonagall tracing the spell.
"Miss Evans?"
With a sigh, Lily gets up. "Yes, Professor?"
"Explain yourself."
She whips up a completely nonsensical story about being frustrated with her workload, and how, because of actually completing her homework early, she'd gone a bit... bonkers. The whole time, McGonagall's eyes shrewdly keep flicking to the Marauders.
"Detention. Tomorrow," McGonagall says crisply, as Lily finishes her story with a thoroughly bogus account of a fight with a random ghost who made fun of the feathers stuck to her before she reached the Fat Lady. "I will send you word of the job you have to do."
She sweeps out of the common room, and Lily is sure that her lips are twitching.
"What are you lot doing here?"
"Spending a lovely Sunday inside with you, pickling toads for ickle firsties," Sirius says grimly, strapping on protective gloves.
Next to her, Remus starts to count the barrels of toads to be skinned, cut and pickled. "If McGonagall wanted you to do this stuff on your own, she wouldn't have left the room. Or she would have stationed somebody here to watch."
Across from her, James starts to pick up the toads she has already cut and lowers them into the alarmingly green sludge they're to be pickled in. "She knows what you did for us, and she's basically just left us a very loud message that we're to help."
"She expected us to do it, honestly," Peter says knowledgeably, picking up a knife to skin the toads.
"Smart one, her."
"Yeah, she knows us all too well."
"Brilliant, honestly."
She thinks about protesting, but this is just like that moment in the train when they accepted her into the compartment.
They don't even question this, she realizes. I helped them out, and they're helping me.
With a soft smile, Lily goes back to work.
"Write to me, yeah?" Lily asks as she pulls her trunk out of the train and onto platform 9 ¾.
"'Course," Sirius says easily, jumping out of the train as four trunks follow and neatly land on the platform. James follows, eyeing the trunks grumpily.
"Stop showing off, you bugger. Just 'cause you're seventeen now..."
Blithely, Sirius flicks his wand to make a trunk nick James' ankles. "Sorry, Prongs. But, you know... no."
Remus and Peter climb off the train and they catch sight of their parents. After extracting promises to write from them as well (she can't stand the prospect of spending the summer with only Petunia's delightful company), Lily, James and Sirius make their way into Muggle London.
"So where are your parents, Lily?" James asks, prodding his sleeping cat Arthur.
"Oh they think I'm old enou – will you stop harassing your poor pet?"
"Just checking if he's dead," James says hastily, moving away from her own hands. "Don't need to prod me."
"Listen, just because he ingested some potion Peter made-"
"-you've never seen him make potions, bloke can't make one to save his life-"
"-that said, your cat is obviously just sleeping, let him be-"
"Oh, look, my parents are here," Sirius says in a bored voice.
Startled, they look ahead to see two haughty-looking people talking to a boy very much like Sirius – Regulus, Lily remembers, recalling the younger boy's presence on the Slytherin Quidditch team. Their clothes scream expensive, and they all wear similar expressions of distaste (it seems to be a family trait Sirius – thank god – has neglected to pick up; she's never seen Regulus Black without it).
Sirius ignores his family and walks right past them.
"Oh my god, you're Head Boy!"
"Yeah, Dumbledore's gone barmy."
Lily stares blankly around her, her house telephone gripped tightly in her hand. "But... but... my god, he has finally gone mad," she says blankly.
James chuckles (the sound is a lot lower than before, and it sets an odd sort of squirmyness off in her stomach) and she blushes. "Sorry, I'm just shocked, that's all."
She pauses, then sniggers.
"God, we're going to have to go on rounds together." She says happily.
"Um, yeah." He sounds unsure. "Why is that good?"
"Because you're going to hate it. And Remus is going to tease you."
"...damn, I knew I shouldn't have teased Moony so much."
"Now you'll see!" She says with relish, before giggling. Suddenly, she frowns. "Hang on, aren't you a pureblood?"
Obviously caught off guard, he hesitates before answering. "Uh, yeah, why does... why exactly does that matter?"
"You have a telephone in your home?"
He laughs again (what on earth is her stomach fluttering for?). "Oh, no, I just nipped down to the village to call you."
She has a mental image of him curled around some shop's telephone, and smiles. "You went down to the village just to call me and ask if I'd got a Head position as well?" She teases, unsure of where exactly she's taking this.
His new, deeper voice – it's not fake, like back when they were fifteen, she's sure this is real – isn't a bit bashful. "Of course. Any reason would do, you know. To call. Hearing your voice is worth the short walk."
She hears a lot of sniggering from his end, and rolls her eyes. "And you brought Sirius with you?"
The dangerous, flirty bubble is shattered as Sirius loudly hijacks the phone and tells her the story of how they spent the morning trying to make pudding in Mrs. Potter's kitchen – and how she eventually kicked them out of it.
"Oh, look, Lily, Potter's sitting on that side all alone."
"Oh, we don't call him Potter anymore, do we? We call him Jaaaaames."
"Oh, yeah, James, sorry. Do you want to go sit with him, Lily? Poor old James looks so lonely and-"
"Oh, sod off, you two." Lily mutters, blushing. She takes a big gulp of Butterbeer and sneaks a glance over her mug to see that James is, indeed, hunched over a mug of something – it doesn't quite look like Butterbeer, but he wouldn't have the guts to drink anything stronger in front of everyone in Three Broomsticks, would he? – with a bunch of papers.
His hair is falling, somehow, in that perfectly messy way over his glasses and he's got a scarf loosely entwined around his neck, which, coupled with his long overcoat, is rather delightfully calling attention to his shoulders.
Lovely shoulders.
Her two dorm-mates giggle and poke fun at her staring, and she groans.
She's developed an alarming crush on James Potter.
They're quiet.
The rustling of paper is all that permeates the warm silence of the common room. Blinking, Lily allows herself a few seconds of reprieve before working on the Prefect schedules some more.
She looks up at James, who is struggling with the Hogsmeade weekend schedules, then at the clock. It's close to three in the morning.
It's nice, working together like this. They rarely ever get any alone-time (she's past trying to deny that she would, in fact, like to spend time with the boy without any of their mates around) with James unless they're working.
He's grown up, somehow. He's a bit more serious, a bit restrained.
Well. Only a bit. The other day he hexed Johnathan McCarthy's hair to turn bright magenta just because he called Snuffles a mutt before sending Snuffles off to chase him up a tree (that dog, she has decided, is very odd – he's generally missing, most of the time, and he's a little too human to be normal).
But he's funny, and so charming. (James, not Snuffles.) And they have gotten quite close, you know.
"Lily?"
She snaps out of her reverie to realize that he's looking right at her with a twinkle in his eyes (oh no, you cow, you've been staring). "Yeah?" She says, looking back down at the rolls of parchment in her lap (bloody Ravenclaw prefect schedules, she doesn't really care about how the Arithmancy Society's meetings run late, though why a prefect thinks they can skip rounds for that, she doesn't know).
"You were staring."
"Was I?" She asks, relieved to hear a perfectly disinterested tone coat her words.
There is a rustle as he gets up. Then the space next to her is cleaned of paper (he dumps it all unceremoniously on the table they've already covered with Hogsmeade notices), and he drops down next to her. One arm curls around her shoulders.
"Yep." He pops his 'p' nonchalantly.
She manufactures a slight frown (nonononodon'tgrin) and leans into him (how is he smelling nice at three in the morning? I probably smell horrid). "I don't remember doing so willingly."
He runs a hand through his hair and nods. "It's entirely possible that it was done unconsciously. You just couldn't resist my attractiveness."
She smirks and shakes her head. "Or maybe you have a really big splotch of food on your nose leftover from that treacle earlier and I couldn't resist staring at that?"
"Either way," he tries to stay off-hand, but one finger self-consciously rubs at his nose, "we can agree you were staring."
"Well, I-"
"It's okay, really."
"Oh, is it? If I was, that is, staring."
"Yeah. I had to be staring to realize you were, right?"
Lily grins, feeling a blush creep up around her collar and towards her cheeks.
It is entirely possible that James Potter has a crush on her as well.
"Alarming news," she murmurs, leaning into his arms more comfortably.
"The worst," he says, nodding.
They fall asleep.
"Bit early to be up, yeah?"
Lily grins up at Sirius, who flops down next to her and reaches for toast.
"I couldn't sleep," she says happily, smothering ketchup on a plateful of sausages (she's celebrating, she's allowed to have some extra sausages).
"Sound a little too happy about tha'," Sirius says through a mouthful of toast.
She tries to dampen the grin spreading across her face, but she can't. "Yeah, no, I just... we just got a lot of work done with, that's it."
"Oh." With extreme difficulty, Sirius swallows his toast. "So you and Prongs spent the whole night together?"
She can feel him building up to a good amount of teasing. "We were working," she says hastily.
(Stop grinning now, Lily, stop.)
"Is that all?"
Sniffing, Lily turns away from her friend (who is grinning at her rather wolfishly, bearing an uncanny resemblance to his wild-not-wild dog). "I don't know what you're referring to," she says loftily.
They eat in silence, until she finally can't take it anymore. She needs to tell someone and she's sure James will tell him anyway, so honestly –
"We're going to go for a bit of walk later, though. Just to um, celebrate us finishing with the schedules." (Oh, look, she sounds all shy.)
A dim memory flashes in her mind.
"God, you're annoying."
"You'll break down someday!"
Damn. He was right.
She piles more sausages on her plate (he'd better like a girlfriend with an appetite, no way am I cutting down on these) and smiles again.
She honestly doesn't mind that he was.