Okay, so here's the next chapter – hope all of you like it!

Much thanks to:

People who put me on their alert and favs list.

the The Best James and Lily Stories C2 for adding me.

michaeljnluver: hi – thank you so much for the review! I'm glad you liked the chapter and I hope your collarbone gets better. I've never had anything broken before, but my friend had her collarbone broken once and it didn't look all that pleasant. So best of luck and get well soon! Oh, and I'll try to update more often, but I can't make any promises :-)

Disclaimer: Once again, I don't own the Harry Potter stuff, only the characters you probably don't recognize.

-------------------Chapter 4: Some Hard Thinking And Fluffy Pancakes--------------------

a couple weeks later…

"Hey, Lily!" James called, sprinting down the corridor to catch up. "Wait up!"

An exasperated Lily stopped suddenly and spun around, causing James to nearly crash into her. They both noticed, or rather, Lily did, that their faces were awfully close to each other.

"Potter," she began through clenched teeth. "Would you mind, you know, giving me at least a foot and a half space between us?"

"Oh, right, sorry," James hastily muttered.

"So… what?" Lily asked impatiently, getting tired of waiting around for nothing.

"Oh, yeah," James hastened. "I was wondering… if you would like to go to Hogsmeade with me next weekend…"

"Uh…" Lily hesitated. "Wait… NO, of course not, Potter! Why would I do that? And more importantly, what makes you think that I've changed my mind about you since the last time you asked me out!"

"Oh, well, just thought I'd ask," James gave her an annoyingly charming smile. And James and Lily walked in silence down the rest of the corridor and turned in opposite directions at the end of it.

Why did I hesitate when he asked me? Lily thought to herself. I never had trouble sending him away before, but now I hesitate? Lily Evans does NOT hesitate. And come to think of it, he hasn't asked me out for an unusually long time… Like a couple MONTH'S time… It must be a record for him or something.

Still slightly confused, Lily walked the rest of the way to Charms class.

--------------------fast forward to that night in the common room-------------------

"Hey, way to go, Jamesie-boy!" Sirius thumped him on the back after hearing James' story of the almost successful venture that afternoon.

"Thanks, Padfoot," James said with a big grin on his face. "Wait, don't call me that."

"What? I think it suits you nicely," argued Padfoot with a cheeky smile. "Go ask your, or almost yours, Lily dearest if you don't believe me."

James shot him a nasty look, but settled back to write his transfiguration essay nonetheless.

Across the room, Lily was working with Trinity and Scarlet on their Transfiguration. They had finished the essay, but the three of them were assigned practice on turning a stack of paper into a stack of hot pancakes. They were each waving their wands enthusiastically at the large stacks of scratch paper, but Trinity had only made her's a bit rounder, and Scarlet made her's a bit thicker. Lily was having no such luck. Every few minutes they would each glance unsurely at the Marauders – the transfiguration experts, each of them thinking the same thing – I wonder if they would help us. Fortunately for Lily and Scarlet, Trinity worked up the nerve to go and talk to Remus.

"Hey, Remus," Trinity began. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Yeah, sure," he replied coolly as the other Marauders exchanged glances then began to give Remus fake, overly enthusiastic winks and thumbs-up signs as he walked away with Trinity. Trinity, being the nice person that she is, pretended not to notice, but she had a hard time suppressing a smile. Finally James and Sirius let up and the two were able to talk in private.

"Okay," Trinity took a deep breath. "I have sort of a favor to ask you."

"Sure, ask away," Remus replied.

"Well, the thing is, Lily, Scarlet, and I aren't all that great at Transfiguration–"

Remus finished the request for her, "So you want me, James and Sirius to help you guys, but the other two probably won't want to ask for help, so you came to me to help you get the other Marauders to offer first. Is that it? Because I was thinking the same thing."

"Wow," Trinity breathed, totally shocked, but smiling a bit. "That's exactly what I was thinking. Great minds think alike, I guess."

"Yeah, well, I guess we better get used to it," Remus grinned.

They each walked back to their respective groups and told them the plan. Lily and Scarlet looked a bit surprised, but as soon as James and Sirius heard what was to be done, they both had silly grins on their faces, practically bouncing in their seats. And soon enough, the three smart Marauders walked over to the three struggling girls to offer their assistance. The three of them accepted, though Scarlet and Lily a bit more hesitantly than Trinity. But, seeing as the Marauders had helped them the last time, they let them have their fun.

"Okay, so, pancakes, eh?" Sirius asked. "You know, I really like pancakes. They're so fluffy and buttery and syrupy and cakey and chewy and goldeny and toasty and–"

"Can we please just get on with the spell?" Scarlet asked exasperated.

"Oh… right… the lesson… sure," he replied, still wishing he had pancakes.

"So you just wave your wand, right?" she started to swish it sideways.

"No, like this," Sirius held her hand with the wand in it steady and helped her through the motions of a graceful downward swish. "Now just say the spell."

"Stacium Pancake," she said. Much to Scarlet's amazement, the stack of slightly thicker than usual papers turned into a very golden brown stack of pancakes.

Meanwhile, James was helping Lily do her stack of papers, which seemed to rather despise the idea of becoming edible.

"Stacium Pancake," Lily enunciated. "Stacium Pancake. Come on, come on… Why won't you turn into breakfast?"

"Hold up," James said. "Maybe you're not visualizing the papers becoming pancakes. You just have to believe that they will. Here, watch…"

James whipped out his own wand, and in his lazy manner from having done the spell so many times, casually glanced at Lily who was watching him intently. This made him so happy that they were getting along so well, that the stack of pancakes that resulted from the stubborn stack of paper had little heart-shaped sprinkles stuck to the butter and on the top was a hardened piece of frosting that spelled "Lily" in cursive.

"Oh, well, I think you get the idea," James said, a bit flustered as Sirius shot him an amused look from across the table.

"Yeah, well, let me get a new stack of paper," Lily agreed as she pulled out another large stack. "Okay, let's see. Visualizing. Stacium Pancake."

Miraculously, the stack of papers turned into fluffy brown pancakes, no butter, but it was still a big improvement. By this time, Trinity and Remus had finished and were talking happily together.

"Well, I think our work here is done," said Sirius as he got up to go.

"Well, see you," the three girls said.

As the Marauders got up to leave, they each grabbed the top pancake off of their pupil's stack and carried them over to their seats to pick up the messy, open bags. James however, carefully took the top pancake with the "Lily" frosting on it and gently pulled off the hardened frosting and handed it to Lily with a cheeky grin. Halfway up the stairs to the boys' dormitory, they each took a bite out of the pancakes and realized that they tasted like, well, paper.

"Hey," Sirius turned around. "You girls don't make that great pancakes."

"Oh, go to bed already!" the three of them yelled jokingly as they hurtled the leftover pancakes at the fleeing boys running for cover in their dormitory.

Lily, looking rather happily down at the pink frosting name, decided that it was too nice to eat… even if it came from James Potter, the arrogant prick… who really wasn't all that arrogant or a prick anymore, come to think of it. So, not exactly knowing why, she did a simple preserving charm on the frosting and stored it in her trunk after getting up to the dormitory with Trinity and Scarlet, both of whom looked rather cheery themselves.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, so there you go – Chapter Four. Wow, I've really been writing a lot in the last couple of days. Well, hope all of you liked it, and PLEASE REVIEW:-)

Claire Belle