the beginning
If pressed, James would say it started at the beginning of Sixth Year. Mary would call him nostalgic and cite the party Sirius threw at the very beginning of 1977 (and the very end of 1976). Everyone else would roll their eyes and mention the number of things that had ended at that party. Not that they agreed with James, either. The infamous Charms class would be mentioned in the debate, as would the Halloween Feast and the moment James removed his Head Boy badge from the letter and Lily burst into tears. Sirius, not one to miss out on a chance to really tell a story, would counter with the moment Marlene (the oldest) was conceived. Marlene would almost certainly hit him.
James' moment won out, because if "it" hadn't started on the Hogwarts Express, something certainly had. It might've been the infiltration of war into school, it might've been Mary's new haircut, or it might have even been the start of N.E.W.T. level stress making them jittery. Whatever it was, they all agreed the train ride was something to remember.
Remus thought Sirius had started the fight. Not that he'd said anything of that nature to McGonagall upon arrival to school, but he did think it. Mary thought it was Mulciber, Sirius blamed Snape, Dorcas and Marlene (who wasn't even there) blamed Avery, and Peter gave all the credit to James. Nobody asked James or Lily what they thought, because assumptions were that Lily thought it was James, and that James, in his blind rage at the outcome, didn't care.
the train
THE FACTS: the Prefect's carriage was stuffy. Carlisle Adams was an insufferable Head Boy. Sirius, James, and Peter came to this conclusion when they arrived to escort Remus to their chosen compartment. Lily was furiously trying to avoid both James and Snape. Dorcas and Mary were only trying to help. Marlene was in the loo.
The corridor in the train was long, but not particularly wide, and Mulciber made some snide remark about Mary's newly shorn hair (it was generally accepted that it had something to do with an STD and was, on the whole, absolutely vile). Lily stopped short, something snide on her tongue, and then as Remus and James arrived next to her Remus wondered aloud how on Earth the conductor had missed the presence of a troll on his train. Mulciber swore a bit, and then Dorcas swore a bit, and then Avery called Mary a mudblood and made some mention of the previous winter's attack. That was when things got complicated.
the short version
AFTER 10 SECONDS:
—3 windows had shattered
—Mulciber was unconscious
—The skin above Lily's eye was gushing blood
—Sirius was punching the living daylights out of Avery (who was sporting horns)
—Mary, who had been closest to the exploding windows, was covered in glass and had a completely vacant sort of expression on her face
—Snape was covered in soot and looking at Lily with a mix of revulsion and concern
—Dorcas had stepped in front of Peter, holding up her wand
—James' robes were on fire
the aftermath
Carlisle Adams sent sparks into the corridor while Remus pulled Sirius off of Avery. "You five!" Carlisle roared. "Into the Prefect's Compartment! Severus, get them out of here."
Dorcas pressed her sleeve into Lily's forehead as Remus tried to reason with Carlisle. "We didn't start this, Adams—"
"Shut up, the lot of you! Get into the Compartment while I contact your Head of House!" Carlisle's head, which had always been rather big, was now a startling shade of scarlet. It stood out starkly against the green and silver he wore proudly against his collar, the very green and silver that made Sirius' blood boil.
"And what about their Head of House!" Sirius burst out. "Or, I'm sorry, your own? James is on fire, you can't tell me you're fucking stupid enough to think he did that to himself?"
Lily pushed Dorcas away and made for the compartment, slamming the door in her wake. Bits of glass fell out of the shattered window at the force of it. Dorcas, before running after her friend, held up her hand. It was slick with blood. "Of course, don't listen to Sirius! I'm sure a Prefect just happened to give herself a curse wound while her friends went around smashing things for fun," she snapped. "By all means, tell McGonagall. That makes perfect sense!"
Carlisle looked around at the students in surrounding compartments with eyes the sizes of saucers, a sudden panic overtaking his features. "Well, as Head Boy, and a witness to the altercation—"
"You weren't there!" Remus exclaimed.
"—it's up to me to make the first deliberation. Now, all of you, please follow Miss Evans and Miss Meadowes and please wait for further instruction." Carlisle then turned on his heel and barely kept himself from running down the length of the train to find the assigned teacher.
The five remaining Gryffindors trudged into the compartment, Mary looking stricken and James still slightly smoking. Lily was at one of the benches, trying to staunch the bleeding with her cardigan and tipping her head back, all while shooing Dorcas away with her other hand.
"Who got you with a slicing charm?" Remus asked, all but collapsing on the bench opposite her.
"S'not a slicing charm. It it was, my healing spell would've worked. Dorcas wasn't lying about the 'cursed wound' bit." Lily kept her eyes closed underneath the makeshift bandage.
"Looks pretty badass, Evans," Sirius said. "How the hell did this happen, anyway?"
And thus started the age old debate, through which Lily was noticeably silent. When asked, everyone in the compartment would contribute this lack of theory to her injury. Everyone except James, of course, who was just as silent as he sat in the compartment with the truth. No matter how much Sirius and Peter and Dorcas thought someone started it, Lily and James knew who had done it. She even had the scar to prove it.
some more facts
Lily had been desperately trying to avoid confrontation. The beginning of the Summer Holidays had been filled with more than a bit of tears, and Lily had no desire to bring any of that back to the surface. But Mulciber saying something to Mary and Remus sidling over like he hadn't witnessed the scene by the lake and done absolutely nothing to stop it had made something snap inside of her. And then, Lily Evans, an incredibly powerful witch, raised her wand and (finally) directed her anger at something other than herself.
But she hadn't said anything, because what had happened hadn't come purely from her wand, and it was for that reason Lily was afraid of herself. And because Carlisle Adams was a right shithead, and Lily didn't want to give him any sort of satisfaction.
As the train grew closer and closer to school, the cut on Lily's head only bled harder, and Sirius' eye began to blacken. James had burns on his arms where the fire had started, but he'd left them as evidence. Carlisle Adams took up residence outside what was left of the compartment door until the train stopped, and Madam Dearborn bustled in, followed closely by Professor McGonagall. Lily was whisked off before the lecture began, but Dorcas made sure she got the full effect in the Hospital Wing that evening.
"It started with disrespect, moved to pure stupidity, and ended with quite the sermon about Inter-House unity," she said, and Lily would've laughed had she not thought it would've started the bleeding up again. Marlene laughed for her, though, curled up against Lily's side like a cat.
"It was one of Minerva's better tirades, I'd say," Sirius chimed in from the empty bed next to Lily. James and Peter nodded their assent, but Remus countered with a story from when they'd been caught charming the toilets to erupt bubotuber pus when flushed. By then, even Mary was laughing. Madam Dearborn shooed everyone out but James, Sirius, and Lily just before curfew, and that was the end of the beginning of Sixth Year.
the beginning, again
If you pressed Lily some more, she'd say that it was the beginning because it was the first time they'd really fought for something. The first time the eight of them had really ever been on the same side. And then Sirius would pretend to throw up, and James would kiss Lily's scar, and Sirius would retch even louder.
the eight of them
LILY EVANS: kind. clever. a bit snide, but always with a hint of a smile. a force to be reckoned with, in every sense of the phrase.
JAMES POTTER: brilliant. loyal. chivalrous to the extent of annoyance, bravery to the extent of recklessness. has some of growing up to do, but all in all a good bloke.
SIRIUS BLACK: too much of everything. too smart, too bored, too broken. always sarcastic, as a shield and as a genuine sense of humor. handsome, and a bit of an ass.
DORCAS MEADOWES: extroverted. empathetic. talks a little too loud and a little too much, but nobody seems to mind because she's an excellent listener. Being one of 5 meadowes children has her craving attention and also not giving a damn.
REMUS LUPIN: withdrawn. perceptive. always seems to be surprising in his will and in his disregard for authority. a little worn around the edges, but still good.
MARLENE MCKINNON: tall. unpredictable. known universally as the fittest girl in her year and to most just friends. always a good time, but she demands a lot and she's used to getting her way.
PETTER PETTIGREW: small. reliable. overlooked. fierce as anything when provoked, but altogether diminutive and frustrated by his perpetual awe at his best mates.
MARY MACDONALD: shy. dry. one of those girls who tells dirty jokes under her breath in class to her best friend, but cannot, under any circumstances, be asked to address the professor. the source of the most biting judgement in the whole school, especially because there isn't anything she doesn't know.
the first middle bit
News of the brawl (for that's how it became known- the brawl) spread through the student body with all the speed and consequence of a wildfire. It didn't help that Sirius wouldn't let Madam Dearborn anywhere near his eye, or that Lily's forehead was almost completely obscured by a pulsing plaster. Or, the entire Gryffindor table noted with satisfaction, gaps in the hair on Avery's head where the horns had been vanished. It got to the point where every student over the age of 13 could be seen openly mocking Carlisle Adams' authority.
No sooner had Lily sat down to breakfast than James plopped himself across from her with a cheerful grin. "All right, Evans?"
Lily groaned. "Sod off, Potter."
"After all the quality time spent in the Hospital Wing last night? I'll tell you, I didn't get a wink of sleep."
"Neither did I," Lily retorted, "what with you moaning in pain all night over a simple burn."
"Evans, please, when you're around I only moan in pleasure." James grinned, altogether to pleased with himself.
Lily reached for the toast and tried her best to glare underneath her plaster. "When I told you to fuck off, I meant it."
"Before I obey your every command, I just want to ask how you're doing. You know, after yesterday. And how the fight started." James watched as Lily's cheeks colored and she sat up straighter.
"Nobody knows who started the fight," she said, a bit too quickly. Mary threw herself onto the seat next to Lily, already groaning about her N.E.W.T. schedule.
James raised his eyebrows. "We're not done talking about this, Evans." He slid out of his seat and sauntered down the table to where the rest of the Marauders sat, but not before he shot Lily one last glance over his pumpkin juice.
"What was that about?" Mary asked, taking a break from complaining long enough to steal a slice of bacon off Lily's plate. "Has he finally admitted he wants to shag your brains out? You know, because he's in love with you, can't live without you, thinks about you in the small hours of the morning?"
Lily once again tried to glare as the plaster pressed uncomfortably on her forehead. "He doesn't think about me in the small hours of the morning, and he isn't in love with me. He just likes to get on my nerves. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't start spreading rumors about me, it's only the second day of school."
Mary grinned. "You always say that truth is the most important thing, and then you complain about me spreading it around the whole school. What kind of mixed messages do you plan on sending next?"
Thankfully, Lily was saved from answering by McGonagall, who had come round with schedules and needed to know if she was going to continue with Ancient Runes. Mary mercifully dropped the subject. James, however, did not.
fumes
The last class of that first Tuesday was Potions, and Lily had never been more grateful to see Slughorn than she was in that moment. McGonagall had started the day with a truly awful speech about mounting pressure and then assigned a three foot essay, Professor Cassidy had launched straight into a N.E.W.T. level translation of an ancient Aztec curse, and their new Defense professor, Carmichael, was a bloody idiot. Not to mention the stares and whispers the plaster on Lily's forehead was still attracting. Even, it seemed, from Slughorn himself.
"Miss Evans, are you sure you're all right to complete today's assignment? I'm afraid the fumes from this particular salve can get very thick, and I wouldn't want your injury to, in any way—"
"No, Professor, I'm quite alright—" Lily tried to insist as all her feelings of relief at finally being in the Potions classroom disappeared.
"I'll work with Lily, Professor, and make sure she doesn't hurt herself." Lily gave James such a withering glare the majority of the class was worried he would end up with a set of horns to match Mulciber.
Slughorn, missing the looks that passed between his students, beamed. "Yes, of course, Mr. Potter. What a wonderful idea! Page 37, everyone."
As Lily moved her cauldron over to accommodate James at her table, she could feel Severus' eyes on the back of her neck. "You started the fight," James muttered. Lily almost screamed out of pure exhaustion. With the day, with her life, but mostly with James. She settled for a terse "excuse me?"
"It was you who started the fight," James said, his eyes flicking involuntarily to Lily's knife, which was slicing audibly through a Mandrake root. "What I really want to know is what spell you used, because that first blow packed a punch. I didn't hear you say anyth—"
"How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone before you listen?" Lily burst out. Her grip on the knife was white-knuckled. "It's bad enough that you humiliate me in front of the whole school without a single word of apology, but now you're trying to get me blamed for a fight that we were all a part of?"
James blinked. "You wouldn't let me apologize. The end of all last year I asked to talk to you—"
"To gloat, and say I told you so! I'm not going to listen to that shit from you, Potter. Not last year, and not today." And, to Lily's shame, she couldn't fully hold back the tears from sounding in her voice.
"I am sorry," James said. The student at neighboring tables had stopped working (not that Sirius had ever started). "I was sorry from the moment it ended like that. I never meant for you to get hurt—"
"But you meant it for Sev, didn't you? And that's the problem, you and your little posse, you go around hurting people because you think they deserve it—"
"I don't understand how you can be so blind to the fact that he does deserve it! Listen to what he called you, look at what he's said about Moony!" James had gotten rid of his apologetic stance the minute Lily had mentioned Snape by name, and now the potions of eavesdropping students were so neglected that they were starting to spit acrid smelling sparks.
"This has nothing to do with Remus!" Lily practically shouted. "It has to do with you! And if you think—"
"What I think is that he's a conniving little—"
"And you wonder why I don't want to talk to you!" Lily burst out, so loud that Slughorn looked up from the ingredients he was organizing in the back of the room. Lily started gathering up her finely (and aggressively) chopped root. "Let's just work, yeah?"
"Fine." James snapped, suddenly sullen.
They worked until their potion was perfect, ladling it into a vial and waiting for Slughorn to come collect it. "I am sorry," James said again. When Lily didn't respond, he rubbed his eyes under his glasses, face weary. "Fine. Just don't say I never said it."
It was just then that Slughorn bustled up, admiring the potions and declaring it "fine work as usual." By the time Lily looked up, James was gone.
Dorcas linked her arm with Lily's as they climbed the stairs to the Common Room. "That was eventful," she remarked, squeezing Lily's arm. "But I'm sure it doesn't hold a candle to the stuff that Clarence Adams has got up to in class, especially since he's got a free ticket out of detention when Carlisle's wearing that badge."
Lily smiled, just as weary as James. "Tell me about it, Dor."
we didn't start the fire
"There's no way she performed a spell that powerful without a shout."
"I'm telling you, Padfoot, it was Evans! She even got all squeamish when I asked her about it."
Remus groaned. "You didn't."
The Marauders sat in their dormitory with a pile of Chocolate Frogs in between them. Their first night of school ritual had been interrupted by Sirius' refusal of treatment and subsequent quarantine in the Hospital Wing, and had been rescheduled for, understandably, the second night of school. The celebration mostly consisted of gorging themselves on leftover trolley candy (some stolen, some purchased) and getting trashed (a ritual only observed in more recent years). This time, they'd missed the trolley being unfairly imprisoned, and Remus had to break into his personal stash of chocolate. He was already in a bit of a mood to begin with, and this didn't exactly help.
"You fucking ass, you actually went up to her and asked if she exploded a train?" Remus threw a wrapper across the circle at James. "Why am I friends with such wankers?"
"I know it was Evans. I'm positive."
"To be fair," Sirius added, "the train didn't explode. It was just a couple of interior windows, nothing too exciting."
"I know it was Evans!" James waved around a picture of Merlin (the 27th Merlin in James' Frog collection) for emphasis. "Mulciber wouldn't have done it. There's too many of us, and he's a pussy."
"I agree with you on one of those theories, mate," Sirius announced, handing his bottle of firewhiskey to Peter. "I'm all for exposing Mulciber. But Evans, explode school property? Even if it was just interior windows, that's still not like her."
"Don't forget when she punched Avery so hard he had to get a tooth fixed with Madam Dearborn, or the pure number of times she's hexed me just for telling her she looks fit in a sweater," James countered. "She's not the princess everyone makes her out to be—"
"Why are we arguing about this again?" Peter tried (and failed) to whisper.
"Because our dear Prongs is in love with a certain redheaded vixen who will never give him the time of day," Sirius said in a singsong voice. "And he can't help himself from getting close enough to stare down her shirt."
"Fight or no fight, you two really are going to explode the entire castle at some point." Remus bit the head off a frog vehemently.
James, in retaliation, shoved Remus hard. "I'll bet you ten galleons we're friends sometime this year."
"What's the definition of 'friends?'" Peter asked, his words beginning to slur.
"No more yelling matches," Remus began, and James groaned. "You have to hang out together for reasons that aren't school. You have to be on a first name basis."
"And," Sirius added, glint in his eye, "when we ask her, on New Years Eve, if you two are friends, she had to say yes with some measure of conviction."
"Wormtail, can you draw up the terms?" Remus asked, more smug than he had any right to be.
James blanched. "Hold on, it was a theoretical bet—"
"I invoke section three, clause six of the Code! The minute you include a price, the bet is real," Sirius crowed. James groaned and slumped onto the floor, looking utterly exasperated and not altogether in control of himself.
The rest of the night was spent hunched over a roll of parchment, creating rules and singing them into effect.
the bet
Participants: Moony (challenger), Prongs (challenged)
Wager: James Fleamont Potter will be friends with Lily Marie Evans by 12am on January the First, Nineteen Thousand and Seventy Seven
Amount: 10 galleons
Stipulations: Lily Marie Evans and James Fleamont Potter must have ceased all shouting matches for two weeks prior, interact outside of forced situations, call each other by their given first names, and (when asked), Lily Marie Evans must call James Fleamont Potter her friend with notable conviction
Signatures:
Prongs _
Moony _
("D'you have to write my middle name so often? It's awful.")
("Mine is Orion, stop complaining. At least your first name is regular.")
("Do you even have a plan of action for how in the world you're going to pull this off?")
("Yeah. I'm going to confront her about the fight, learn all her secrets, and then we're going to get married on a beach. Piece of fucking cake.")