The Trouble with Friends…
"I'm flattered that you would think of me, Lily, but I have to admit that Sirius does think for himself on occasion." James smiled and closed his book with a quick snap. "So, you might want to take it up with him."
"I don't buy it." Lily said, her eyes narrowing. "I think that there was something more behind it than Sirius just being cruel."
James shrugged and stretched his arms over his head. "Make of it what you will, Love. I've got quidditch. Tootles."
Lily watched him as he left; her anger was increasing by the second. Why couldn't she say anything to him? Why had she let him treat her that way? Why had she allowed him to speak to her like she was a first year? She was head girl, for crying out loud.
Lily sat in the seat that had previously been occupied by James and put her head down on the table. Her hair formed a curtain around her, keeping the outside world away as she thought back to the train ride home the year before.
Lily looked up when she heard a knock on the door. When James entered her compartment, she could tell he was nervous. He was fidgeting slightly and he was fussing with his hair more than usual.
"Anything you need?" Lily asked, looking at him expectantly.
"I was hoping we could talk." The words sounded like he had to force them out. She couldn't understand why he was so nervous. They had spoken many times in their years. He unabashedly asked her out an uncountable number of times.
"Sure. Have a seat." She gestured to the many empty seats in the compartment and James chose the one across from her.
"So…" He looked at her, as though she would continue the conversation. She sighed and decided that she had better say something before things got any more awkward.
"How are you, James?" She asked politely.
"I'm good. Thank you. How are you?" His speech seemed almost robotic and his eyes kept going from her face to the door as though he was waiting for someone to burst in at any moment.
"I'm just peachy. What is it that you wanted to speak to me about?" She probed, hoping that the conversation would be finished by the time they reached King's Cross Station. She had better things to do with her summer vacation than sit around a train station and listen to a boy who gave her very little reason too be civilized to.
"I was wondering," he started, "if you could tell me why you always shoot me down."
Lily smirked. Are there enough hours in a day? She wondered to herself. "You're very immature, James. Not in a cute occasional way, either. You very rarely act as though you're sixteen years old."
His face fell at those words. "Well, is there anything that I can do to make you think differently of me?"
"You could, for starters, stop tormenting people who do nothing to provoke you." James nodded his head, as though saying that he could handle that.
"The thing about delusions, James, is that the person who is having them believes that they are true." He looked at her curiously, wondering where she was going with that.
"You see, James, you think that you are the greatest thing to walk through those huge oak doors into Hogwarts. You believe that everyone wants you and that you can have anything you want. You think that you're invincible." Lily smiled and continued on, "You're not though, you know. You're no better than the next person. You should start acting that way."
Her words, she realized, may have been a bit harsh, but she wanted to get her point across to him.
He nodded his head and stood up. "Well, just wait until next September. You'll be surprised at how much I'll have changed. I'm going to grow up this summer, you know."
Lily watched him walk out of the compartment and wondered if he really could change, or if the years of pretending to be a god had done their damage.
Not two weeks before James had approached her and professed himself a changed person. "I'm changed now, Lily. I've grown up this summer, just as I said I would." He hadn't even ruffled his hair when he spoke the words.
He looked sincere as he spoke. He looked her in the eye the whole time; his eyes didn't waver or flick from hers once.
And then he began pulling his classic James stunts again. She had caught him humiliating Severus Snape in a fourth floor corridor, he had tossed bits of parchment at Professor McGonagall, and now this. He had enlisted his partner in crime, Sirius, to set fire to all of her hard work. He had some nerve.
"Hey, Lily."
Lily snapped out of her thoughts to find Tyler sitting next to her holding a few pieces of parchment.
"I heard what happened to your notes. You can copy mine." She placed the parchment on the table and Lily smiled and said her thanks.
"I'm sorry about the library." Tyler stood and left before Lily had a chance to reply. She watched her go before pulling a piece of parchment and a quill from her bag to copy the notes.
----
On her way out the portrait hole to go to dinner, Lily passed by James who was just returning from quidditch practice. She thought back to the train ride and then over the two weeks that they had been back in the castle. She shook her head sadly. Apparently he can't change, she thought to herself as she slid into a seat next to Tyler at the Gryffindor Table. Or maybe he just doesn't care.
The thought of James not caring unnerved her a bit. His incessant nagging had become a part of her life over the last few years.
"You're not still moping around about your notes, are you?" Tyler asked, her voice sounded tired.
"No."
"Good. I have some news for you. I hope that you'll be happy for me." Tyler was being a little cold and Lily couldn't help but notice.
"Oh? I'm sure I will be." When Tyler just smirked and made no move to continue on, Lily urged her. "Well, come on, out with it."
"I got asked to go to Hogsmeade next weekend, you know." Tyler said as though it were something that happened to her every day.
"That's great! Did you say yes? Who is it?" Lily was excited and happy for her friend.
"Derek." Her happiness faded a bit, but she tried to cover it up.
"That's great. I know that you really like him." Derek was the boy that Lily and Tyler had fought about the year before. Lily knew that it wouldn't work out between the two of them, but she kept her mouth shut.
Tyler looked at her critically. Oh lord, here we go. Lily thought. She scooped some mashed potatoes onto her plate and pretended to be very interested in the different kinds of gravy available.
In the middle of her speech about the abundance of brown gravy, Tyler stood and left the table. Lily turned and watched her go. She stalked out the doors of the great hall, slinging her bag over her shoulders and not once looking back.
Lily shook her head. It was going to be a rough year.
----
Several weeks into the term, Tyler was still convinced that Lily was jealous of her new boyfriend and still wouldn't say a word to her. She pretended that she didn't hear her in the mornings when Lily tried to make conversation in the dorm, and looked the other way when Lily waved in the hall.
One Saturday a few weeks after their initial falling out, Lily had enough.
She said a simple "Hello" to Tyler in the hall that afternoon in hopes that she might get a nod in return, or even an acknowledgment of her existence. All she got, however, was a cold shoulder.
Lily sat down at a table near the back of the library. She didn't bother to pull out her work because she knew that she wouldn't get anything done. She put her head down on the cold wooden surface and wished that she had someone, anyone, to talk to about her problems before they became so much that she exploded.
She finally stood up and started the journey back to the Gryffindor common room. While she was going out, James was going in.
"Hello, Lily." He said with a quick nod of his head.
She smiled politely and nodded back before going back on her way. He stopped her, however, before she got too far out the door.
"Lily, Tyler asked me to give this to you." He handed her a neatly folded piece of parchment. She took it and thanked him.
"Yeah, well, have a lovely afternoon," he called after her.
Once she was out of his sight, she opened the parchment, hoping that it was a note of reconciliation. It was not.
It was, in fact, not even from Tyler. James had used her as an excuse to get Lily to take the parchment. The thought of it made her angry. Didn't he know that she and Tyler were currently estranged? Did he care at all that he had gotten her hopes up and then tore them down again? Probably not, she thought bitterly.
She looked at the parchment one last time before crumpling it up and tossing it into a potted plant, earning her glares from the surrounding portraits.
Go out with me, Love.
She thought about those words the whole way back to the common room. Every time she thought them again, they made her a little bit angrier.
Who did he think he was? He wasn't good enough to lick the dirt from her shoes, as far as she was concerned. What gave him the idea that he could just feign civility and frame her just to ask her out in such a degrading way?
----
James stood by the entrance to the library and watched as Lily disappeared around the corner. He suddenly had the urge to go after her and rip the parchment from her hands before she read it.
He didn't know what was wrong with him. He had changed, but then fallen back into his old ways within days. Being around her seemed to drag out the worst in him; he lacked self control when she was near.
His brain went off on a tangent and reverted back to its old ways. It went back to the ways she detested, the ways that had gotten him into this situation to begin with.
This was only half of his problem though. She seemed to think that he was behind a number of things that he hadn't been.
The first weekend back, she had found him and the other Marauders corning Snape in an empty corridor. While he had not been actively participating, he had done nothing to stop Sirius from carrying on. He had, as Lily pointed out, abused his powers as Head Boy by neglecting to enforce the rules for his friends.
He could see how she was upset about that and he was willing to take the consequences and the repercussions that went along with his lack of action.
What he couldn't understand, though, was why should would not listen to him when he tried to defend himself against her other accusations.
He had not intentionally thrown a piece of parchment at Professor McGonagall, and he had certainly not encouraged Sirius to set fire to her notes. She wouldn't hear any of that though, and she remained set in her view of him as being immature and unsympathetic.
He was rapidly losing hope of ever convincing her that he had actually changed and getting her to give him a chance.
James entered the library and sat down at a table by a window over looking the forest. What do all of those things have in common? He wondered to himself.
A small voice in the back of his head seemed to urge him to think of Sirius. He immediately rejected that idea, but then when the thought came back around, he thought a little harder on it before dismissing it.
Sirius was the one tormenting Snape. Sirius kicked my chair causing me to throw the parchment at McGonagall. Sirius ignited Lily's notes, he thought. With every thought that came, he wanted more and more to strangle his friend.
----
Ah, Part two of three. Will James find a way to convince Lily to change her mind about him? Will Sirius die a premature death? What is going on with Tyler? And just where are the rest of the Marauders? Hmm…Questions, questions.
