Lunch ended and Lily sighed in relief. James, Sirius, and Remus had a free period while she had charms. Peter was also in her charms class but it wasn't as if that would kill her. If they paired up she'd probably have to work with him but in charms, work was usually done individually anyway.
James, Remus and Sirius stood to leave the Great Hall.
"We'll miss you, Lily," James grinned.
"If that's not a Marauder thing you better brace yourself to be slapped Potter," Lily said, standing as well.
James looked at Peter. "You too, Pete."
Peter looked down embarrassedly.
"Later," Sirius gave a half wave and then strutted out the doors with James and Remus following out behind him.
James parked himself on the grass beneath the Beech tree near the lake. Remus sat down across from him, pulling out a book while Sirius grabbed onto one of the trees long, thick arms and lifted himself up to sit and let his feet dangle next to James head.
Sirius kicked the side of James head lightly. When he got no reaction out of James he gently nudged the side of his head with his foot again.
Cut it out Padfoot…
James said nothing and so Sirius pushed James' head with his foot. Finally, after James ignoring two more nudges he actually kicked his head.
Ow!
James grabbed the foot that had made contact with his head and yanked down hard, then quickly scrambled out the way as Sirius hit the ground where he had been.
"Screw you," Sirius grumbled shoving James. "What the hell was that for?"
"For kicking me you dolt," James exclaimed.
"I was trying to get your attention."
"And what? You lost the ability to talk?"
"This is an important matter," Sirius declared. "Well, actually, not really. But it's of importance to you."
"Shut up and talk," James ordered.
"Alright. Fine. I was just wondering how you plan to make Evans your girlfriend is all."
The bet you idiot. You kicked me for this?
James voiced his thoughts as Sirius stood up and climbed back onto the branch.
"Well I know that's what you were planning. But how the hell do you expect to win if you keep catering to her every wish?" Sirius asked.
I do not cater to her every wish.
"Easy. I don't," James replied.
"Oh but you do," Sirius contradicted. "Lily wants to stay in the common room and work on her essay. So what does James do? He stays with her, let's her work on the damn essay."
"It wasn't because of the essay," James protested. "I just thought It would give me some alone time with her."
"Yeah, her and her potions book. You probably only had half or less of her attention at any one point during that entire 'alone time' with her."
"No. We spent half of that time talking."
True, she got sort of mad at me. But that's besides the point!
"Moony, back me up here!" James demanded.
Remus winced at being brought into the conversation at all and gave James an apologetic smile. "Well, I mean, you did end karaoke early for her."
"It wasn't for her benefit only. Sirius was drunk," James justified.
Sirius leaned against the main part of the tree, in the crook of the branch. "Never stopped karaoke night before."
James glared at Remus. "Well, maybe she'll like you better for it," Remus offered quickly. "You know, seeing a nicer side of you. Girls like nice."
"Yeah," Sirius said sarcastically, "that's how you get a girl, be extra nice."
"It actually does work," Remus told him, "if you're the kind of person going for a long term relationship."
"Whatever. So say this nice thing works. The best it's going to do is get him in the friend zone if anything. And by then it will be too late," Sirius pointed out, "he won't be able to ask her out anymore since he'll have lost."
Oh Merlin, he has a point.
"Yeah, but if he tries to get her to forfeit she'll hate him," Remus countered.
She would.
"So? She'll have to be his girlfriend anyway."
Yeah. But it'd be nicer if she wanted to…
"But how much does the title count for if she doesn't genuinely like him?"
Not much but…
"She may like him eventually."
Eventually?
"Or hate him for forcing her to be something she doesn't want to be."
Yeah, she'd hate me.
"But if he loses there's no chance. At least this way there's some hope."
But it hasn't even happened yet.
"But if he's nice there's a lot of hope. When it's over she could always ask him out."
Would she?
"Yeah, and I could jump off the astronomy tower. Doesn't mean I'm going to."
She'd rather jump off the astronomy tower than date me?
"That's a pushing-"
"Shut up!" James yelled.
Both Remus and Sirius fell silent. They looked at James; "Well?" they prodded in unison.
James sighed and ran a hand through his hair, falling back to lie down on the grass. "I have no bloody clue."
"We could try a different tactic entirely," James said thoughtfully. "I mean, she's supposed to be a Marauder. Show her what Marauders do."
"I'm lost. What are we talking about?" Sirius asked. "Quidditch?"
"Not what guys do. Marauders…we could show her the map."
"No!" Sirius was quick to shake his head. James feared he was going to get whiplash. "No. I never agreed to this. We can't show her."
"Why not? It's not like she'll say anything. Not like she can say anything, she'd lose if she did," James clasped his hands together and put them behind his head comfortably. "I think it's a good idea I mean-"
"You mean divulge our secrets so she can call us all irresponsible and dishonest?" Sirius cut in. "Yes, Prongs, spiffing idea."
Ignoring your sarcasm.
"Yeah, it is. She'll be-"
"What? Overjoyed?"
"No I was going to say-"
"Exactly Prongs, no is right, she won't. She won't be 'pleased' at all and it'll cost us all our heads."
"Shut up for second and let me finish." James sat up to see Sirius nod and roll his eyes in agreement before falling back onto the grass. "She'll be amazed that we showed her. It will get us onto her good side."
"But is that the goal here?" Sirius asked. "Get on her good side? I thought we were supposed to make this week miserable and terrifying to the point where she'll quit and you'll win."
"I don't think so," Remus wondered aloud. "I thought the point was to show her you're not the Prongs she thinks you are."
I thought the point was to get her to…not despise me.
"Here's an idea," Remus set his book aside and leaned back on one elbow, "we use Sirius' tactic, sort of. We could move the MOWW party to tonight and then if Sirius' plan fails, then she either forfeits or you use your plan to make things better between you two."
Move the Middle Of the Week Wednesday party to tonight…I could definitely go for that. Except for patrols and detention.
"Sure," James agreed. "But it's going to have to wait until after patrols. About nine o'clock maybe."
"Alright," Remus shrugged. "And don't forget to actually show up at your detention today."
"Sure thing Moony."
James missed dinner because of his detention. He ended up only having enough time afterwards to grab a dinner roll and a small piece of quiche before heading off with Lily to go do patrols.
"Anything interesting happen at dinner?" James asked as they left Gryffindor common room. It was nearing eight o'clock and the hallways were empty.
Lily laughed, "Not really. I mean Remus and Sirius got into a debate about whether or not Divination was a good class to have. Peter just nodded along. That was about it."
"What about you?"
"What about me?" Lily questioned back confusedly.
"Well, do you think Divination is a good class?"
It's not necessarily a bad class but…
"I think it's alright. A total waste of time for some people, but I guess if you have the talent for it it's useful," she answered logically.
"Well that's certainly more thought on it than Sirius and I had. We only took it last year since it was an easy class to pass. Honestly, you make up a ton of bull that has about a fifty-fifty chance of actually happening and you fly by with all E's at least," James chuckled.
Lily shook her head, "That's awful."
"Hey," James held up his hands in defense, "it not my fault it works."
"Is that what clears your conscience about everything?" Lily asked with a side glance at him.
James rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, "Not for everything. But, you know, it does help with most things." He nudged her, "You should try it."
Wonder how great life is when you live thinking like that. Not for anything that's actually wrong or harmful to others of course but…Merlin, just to spend one day with that kind of mindset…
"Maybe I will." James caught a glimpse of the slight smile gracing her lips.
"You know," he said, "you have the rest of the week to try our methods."
Maybe that's not such a bad idea.
"So what else did you talk about?"
"Nothing really," Lily told him. "That was the gist of it; they let me eat in peace."
"Damn," James cursed, "they were supposed to ask why you why you don't like me."
Lily smirked, "They did. I told them there wasn't enough time to discuss that."
Something about the way Lily said it, teasingly, like some sort of inside joke between them, made it okay for him to laugh. And he did.
Lily looked at him like he was insane. "What? No retort? Or is this your way of admitting you really are insane and unstable?"
James ignored her questions and instead changed the subject to the task at hand. "So how much longer is this going to take?"
Lily looked at the empty corridor ahead of her. "Let's just head towards the dungeons, and then we can go back to Gryffindor Tower. That should take up the rest of the hour if we walk slowly."
James nodded, "Alright. Sounds good."
"Hey," Lily called out, seeing a couple of second years wandering down a corridor. One of them took off running and the other struggled to try and catch up. "Hey!" Lily yelled. "You two are supposed to be in your common rooms!"
James laughed, "I think they're aware of that Lily." At her annoyed look, more caused by the second years than James, he shook his head. "Here, I'll handle it."
James went in the same direction the two boys had run. There were just about to turn the next corner when James pulled out his wand and flicked it in their direction, effectively dragging both boys back to where he was. "Where're you headed?"
"Nowhere," one answered quickly. He was the scrawny and smaller of the two, and the faster one.
The other hit the first one. "Shut up Paul! Now he's going to ask questions."
Well he's definitely the smarter one.
"You should listen to this one," James told the scrawnier one, Paul, with a nod in his friend's direction. "So where are you really going?" James looked at their ties, Hufflepuff.
"Craig says he found a secret passage," Paul said. "We were going to check it out."
James laughed as Craig hit Paul again. "Well you didn't have to tell him that you idiot!"
"Sorry," Paul apologized shamefully.
James laughed, "We could give you a detention for this you know. Hogwarts is filled with secret passageways; it's not worth a detention to just see one. Now, what you want to do is pretend you're first years and don't know how to get back to common room. Then there's no detention and you search for passageways tomorrow. Right?"
Both boys nodded with lost expressions.
"So let's start over," James told them. "Where're you headed?"
Craig grinned, "We don't know where our common room is from here…"
James pointed in the right direction. "That way. And next time try not to get lost." He ruffled both of their hair and they looked up angrily. James gave them a look to say 'you're 'first years' I'm seventh. I just saved your asses'.
They both slapped wide grins back on their faces and tanked James before heading off to their common room. James caught a clip of their conversation while leaving. "Filled with secret passageways?"
"I know, jeez I thought one was cool."
"Man, Craig, we've gotta ask him about those! You think he knows where they are?"
"We can ask him about those! That was James Potter you idiot! He's like, the Marauder leader with Sirius Black. You can't just ask him to tell where all the secret passageways are."
"Oh well maybe if we-"
"No way Paul!"
Lily laughed walking up to James, "Way to 'handle' the situation."
"Ah, I remember sneaking out in second year. Obviously I was better at it but...at least they're trying."
They continued to walk in a comfortable silence for another ten minutes before Lily turned to James. "So, how terrible was detention?"
"Not so bad, tomorrow's will probably be worse," he shrugged. At Lily's questioning look he elaborated. "Filch definitely isn't a fan of ours."
"What's constitutes as 'not so bad'?" Lily queried.
"McGonagall had me clean her classroom non-magically and sort through the first years essays by house," James replied. "I've been through worse…You've never had detention have you?"
"Not true," she disagreed. "I was lost my Transfiguration essay and McGonagall gave me a detention for it."
"One detention?" James gave her an incredulous look. "That hardly counts."
"Hardly, sure, but it still counts."
"Whatever you want to believe, go ahead."
It counts!
One detention does not count.
They doubled back as they reached the dungeons and slowly began to head back the way they came, towards Gryffindor Tower.
"So what else is happening tonight?" Lily questioned as they neared the Fat Lady portrait.
Well, she'll see it in a minute anyway.
"A party," he answered simply.
Lily raised an eyebrow. "Is there ever a day where you boys don't have a party?"
"Men," James corrected. "And Thursdays are usually calm."
James gave the password and the portrait swung open, granting them entrance.
"You guys do know that other houses aren't supposed to be in here, right?" Lily looked around the room. Music was playing loudly and people were shouting and laughing even louder to be heard over it. There was a mix of houses, but nobody in the room wore a green and silver tie.
"'Course. We usually have Peter by the portrait anyway so nobody outside of Gryffindor gets the password."
"Hey! Prongsie, you're here!" Sirius yelled as James stepped into the common room.
Nobody gets drunk tonight. And if they do I am not cleaning it up.
"Hey Pads," James greeted.
Did they already start…?
"Okay!" Sirius yelled getting the room's attention. "All girls willing to play Seven Minutes in Heaven need to drop something in the hat now!"
Seven Minutes in Heaven? The muggle game? Oh Merlin no…
A/N: Alright so there's chapter 11. I sadly did not get to 200 reviews. And I would have held off on this until I got my 200 reviews but I felt bad denying the people who did review a chapter. So I expect A LOT of reviews for this chapter.
Now to Anonymous who reviewed last chapter: Hagrid states that Lily and James were head boy an' girl in their year in chapter four of Philospher's Stone.
And while James was said to have been playing with a golden snitch J. K. Rowling once stated in an interview that he was chaser not a seeker, though they also say that's where Harry got his quidditch skills from. You could also say he switched positions somewhere in his years.
Also thank you to Liz who also pointed this out. Thanks for reviewing!
Anyways,
Scarlett