Good Girl - Prologue
louisaeve
TW: I will be using swears/ cursing throughout the voice of this story. Also some characters will not hold the same views as I personally do (but you don't have to be worried about misogynistic!James for example (I hope)).
And she looked like an angel spread out on the grass and he sat down in a mix of knobbly knees and overgrown hair, fading acne and scars from falling from heights, always falling from heights, and tried to relax beside her. But she was bright as the sun, running her tongue over her teeth and lips in a way that he might think of as oh so sexual but this is her and since when is she sexual? (she can't be, she can't be, she can't be) (he'll have to rethink her entire being, her entire existence)
Lily Evans isn't a good girl.
Oh that's the common opinion, that's get reputation. But everyone conveniently forgets that she wears ankle boots all through winter and most of autumn and spring, forgets that her sister and her don't speak ('for God's sake Petunia, just because you're jealous doesn't mean that you have to act like a slut') (she regrets that one pretty quickly - it's not like Petunia's ever spent a night with a guy). They forget the lies, the lies the lies the lies. She's nothing if not a liar, made up of half sketched promises which even he doesn't remember. She's willing to do a lot for her image. She lies ('you only like boys Evans') and lies and yet she can't stop yelling. Because when those dark brown glint with hurt, her heart gives a little wrench and at the same time she feels her body give a slight shiver at knowing that she's the one that caused that, that she's the one who had that power over him.
And yes she does get mad at him but late at night she also feels like she kind of provokes him and that sends another little shiver down her back and Lily Evans feels almost as dirty as those damn activists say she is.
(She kind of likes it.)
The next few days passed quickly, with Alice studying frantically in the library and Lily joining her. Their professors had forgotten to assign homework, more worried about their students who actually had tests to sit, and instead left their other students to simply 'revise' for homework, which as expected, didn't go observed.
Rather during their free time (when they didn't think that they should be looking over their notes for the exams they had coming up) the sixth year Gryffindor's amused themselves playing games (occasionally lighting a cigarette) in their dorms and in the Common Room.
However Marlene was in a mood.
Marlene McKinnon was a girl who liked to spend nights with young men regularly and as such, when she couldn't, she found herself annoyed. And worked up. What, you think only men have urges?
And so Lily found herself sitting on Marlene's bed with the owner, Hestia, Fatima and Maisie spread out on beds and the floor around them.
"It's just so boring!" Marlene groaned, her voice dragging the syllables out.
"What's boring?" Fatima raised an eyebrow. "Narcissa Malfoy's gown at the Ministry ball? Because it looked like someone stripped the hospital of its curtains and hung them around her body."
"Abstinence," Marlene groaned.
"So just have sex!" Hestia exclaimed with a giggle, and Maisie threw a pillow in her direction, causing the dark haired witch to let out a shriek.
"My mother has a sensor," Marlene rolled her eyes, and Fatima held a nail polish up against the light of one of the candles lighting the room, examining the colour and density. "She can tell if you've got some. Once Yvonne came home after spending a holiday down under, and she could tell. She'd taken a couple of days to get home, and yet she still managed to know."
"So you don't want your mum to know you're . . ." Fatima trailed off.
"it's weird man," Marlene shrugged. "You know. I just find it strange. So no fun for Marly."
"Shame," Lily gave a cheeky smile.
"You minx!" Marlene sent a charm towards Lily with a flick of her wand, which Lily quickly dodged, ducking faster than any of the others could of moved.
"So what are you lot doing these holidays?" Fatima asked, a smile tickling the corners of her lips even as she rolled her eyes at the others behaviour.
"I have a summer with the sister from hell," Hestia screwed her face up.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Marlene asked.
"Gwen is on my back about Hogwarts and how wonderful it is and how excited she is to be coming and did I hear about the latest Quidditch stats and ooh do you reckon she can get on the team this early?" Hestia imitated her sibling with a smile on her face letting her dorm mates know that she didn't really think that.
"Fun," Fatima screwed up her nose. "Lema is on my back like all the time. Though we don't know if she'll get in though," Fatima was muggleborn and as such her family didn't know if what they called 'incidents' (their suspicions of magic) were actually sings of magic, or just, well, incidents.
"So you're going away these holidays or . . . ?" Marlene questioned.
"Going to one of the aunties," Fatima shrugged. "Mum's suggesting I check to make sure that I'm not interested some best friends son or something of the sort who's training to become a doctor."
"Are you?" Maisie scrunched up her tiny nose and cocked her head to the side as if imagining Fatima with the unknown man.
"Ughh no I don't think so," Fatima shrugged. "He's cute enough but I really don't think I want to be getting into a relationship right now."
"Fatima doesn't want a relationship?" Hestia giggled and her friend shoved her harshly in protest, with a playful scowl in place.
"So what are the rest of you doing?" Fatima stated. "Not that my love life isn't the most interesting thing to be discussed in this dorm."
Marlene poked her tongue out and flicked a scroll of parchment into fatima's direction. "I'm helping Mum around home, Maisie's got that Quidditch thing -"
"It's a summer camp I'll have you know!" Maisie exclaimed in protest.
"And I don't really know what Lily is doing," Marlene continued on like Maisie hadn't spoke.
"I am spending a summer with my family," Lily smiled. "And maybe I'll get a job. We all need to start saving."
"Wise Lily as always," Marlene rolled her eyes as Mary shuffled into the room, her dark hair floating behind her and concealing her face.
The girls immediately felt a chill fill the air. Ever since part of they way through the year Mary had been different. No longer was she bright, or bubbly. Rather Mary was a shell, an inversion of her former self. She kept her head down and didn't talk at class nor at the few meals she made it own to the Great Hall for. Almost like a ghost from a Muggle horror story, Mary, their former friend, kept to herself, gliding through the school with her head down and in a book, her black locks curtaining her face always.
"Hey Mary," Hestia smiled sweetly as was in her nature to do so. "We were just talking about what we were doing this summer. Are you up to much?"
"I'll . . . " Mary started before clearing her throat, her voice coming out harsh and cruel. "I'll be staying at home most likely."
"We should pop by," Lily grinned brightly, trying to heat the icy chill in the room with a big pumping heart and warm words. "We'll probably be in London for a bit of summer, and now we can Apparate well . . . we should be able to do a lot."
"That's very kind of you," Mary said softly, laying her pyjamas carefully out onto her bed, as if they were made of paper and if she wasn't oh so careful, they would crumble apart.
"It'll be fun," Lily exclaimed, although Mary showed nothing more than a glint of her eye before she went off into the bathroom, ducking her head once more and carrying the cold with her, much like Winter with it's dark cloak snagging onto Spring.
The girls share another glance before Fatima stands up and announces she's going to get ready for bed as well, her voice taking on an unusually high pitch which contrasts with the throaty tone she normally speaks in. The outside world is creeping into Hogwarts one witch at a time, and it's oh so easy to forget that they're children.
"Evans," James greets Lily with a tilt of his head, Sirius and Peter sitting a while away under the shade of another tree, looking over some notes for an upcoming exam, Lily presumes.
"Potter," she lets her lips curl into a smirk, let's herself just slip out of her persona. "Why abandon the merry band of thieves?"
"The what?" James frowned.
Lily gave a small laugh to herself. It was tragic, the wizarding world managed to remain completely ignorant of the outside world. And yet if she didn't laugh she would cry so she let a laugh lift to her lips. "Whatever you call your friends. Gryffindor 6th year guys? Doesn't really roll off the tongue does it?" Lily raised an eyebrow.
The sun had shone upon them in this moment, and although it was so very nearly summer, the sun still didn't like to shine and so she, like most of her peers, had chosen to take advantage of the bright light and spend a day out on the grounds of the great Witchcraft school and taken her time to indulge in some reading (she could ignore the exams she had to sit until she really had to sit them).
"Not really," James gave a grin, in a way completely characteristic, sitting down next to her on the grass, all awkward and long limbs compared to her own short and curved oh so carefully. The glasses he was wearing cast a glare into her face and Lily found herself awkwardly screwing her face up and looking away slightly, her green eyes squinting closed.
"So you studying?" Lily raised an eyebrow. "Or hosting a James Potter festival?"
"Why?" James tried to look cool, slinging back on his palms in a way that under no circumstances looked comfortable, but was obviously feeling very awkward and a slight flush had began prickling the back of his neck and his cheeks and his ears as Lily appeared to be less than welcome in her approach to conversation with him. "You'd attend?"
"I'd be front row," she rolled her eyes and swatted him with her paperback of 'The Chocolate War'. "Why've you abandoned Sirius as he enjoyed his morning smoke?" She gestured vaguely in the direction of Sirius, who held a cigarette between his pointer and middle fingers, blatantly ignoring the glares her was receiving from the few Prefects who were still in the mood to reprimand their peers. As much as Lily didn't want to ruin her image as a Prefect (and therefore her part of her defining characteristics), she didn't want to get up more and instead allowed her mind to simply dismiss Black and let him do whatever the fuck he wanted. She had important characterisation to get back to.
"Do I need a reason?" James shrugged, awkwardly. They were constantly fitting on the bridge between amicability and hate. It was a self destructive cycle and as much as Lily wanted to point that out to James with grim glee, she this time wanted her image more and so she restrained.
"Of course not," she placed a a cheery smile on her pale lips which were cracked and bleeding slightly due to the coarse and cool winds in Scotland. "We're house mates," the smile didn't fool herself, but perhaps by the slight dip James' head gave in an almost on edge moment, he did, even as Lily picked at the few freckles that had managed to creep off of her face and onto her arms, the brown there dark, an onyx, against her pale skin compared to the sandalwood sprinklings starring her face.
"Right," James said nervously. (If he was completely honest with himself there was something - the same thing that mad her so utterly fascinating - about Lily Evans that was off-putting, that made you look twice, made you think about what you were seeing and yet when you looked back you saw only a glossier coat of the same varnish as before and it made you feel slightly anxious).
"I better get going," Lily stood up and picked up the book she'd been carrying. "Alice is coming out of an exam and I promised to be there for her because well it's exam time and she needs to be surrounded by people she knows," Lily smiled once more and folded the book, with a hair ribbon keeping her place. "Unless you wanted something?" Lily turned back to James, a smile on her lips and her mask in place.
"No," James shook his head and stood up, nearly tripping over in the process. Lily barely restrained herself from giving a giggle of laughter and instead pursed her pink lips, her tongue darting out to moisten them. "No I'm fine," he said in response and Lily walked off and James went back to Sirius and Peter (where on Earth was Remus anyway?). Maybe that was why he liked Lily in that awkward why teenage boys were want to do so. Half in admiration and half wanting to harass her, to make her his own. No matter how against her character it was for her to be someone's instead of somebodies (and although a lot in Lily's life was grey her morals were black and white) and yet James still felt this way because how was a guy meant to act around a girl who wasn't interested in them? Who was older? More attractive? Didn't need men, didn't need any men, in her life?