Wow, this is two updates in under a month, I'm a little shocked myself. Now there are probably errors in both spelling any grammar but I've missed them. I am still in need of someone to read this stuff over so let me know if you're interested. As always, please do review; there's little that's more depressing than seeing your story get 300+ hits when you post a new chapter and getting 1 or 2 reviews. To those that do review, I can't express how much I appreciate it.

CHAPTER 12: A NEW BEGINNING

-Lily-

'Where to begin?' James asked after clearing his throat. Lily wasn't sure whether the question was directed at her so she remained silent.

The moment stretched out and she felt as though it may be best to say something before it got too uncomfortable. As she began to open her mouth, an awkward sentence just beginning to form in her brain, James saved her the trouble by letting out a sigh.

'First of all Lily,' he began, 'I just want to thank you for seeing this through. When I was putting this idea together my biggest worry was that you weren't going to give it a chance and so you have my gratitude.'

Lily nodded, unsure of where this was going.

'I guess the reason for us being here now, in this room, began six years ago when we first met. I came into the school knowing what to expect, feeling as though I would fit right in, confident that I would be made a Gryffindor. You probably came here knowing very little about the magical world in general, let alone Hogwarts, were sorted into a house without knowing the meaning or tradition behind it.'

Lily nodded.

'On the train ride here I had seen you sticking up for Sirius, who was being bullied for not agreeing with his family's Pureblood fanaticism by some of our Slytherin friends, though the sorting hadn't even happened. I thought what they were saying was a load of rubbish and tried to help out by telling them so but you wanted none of it. I still remember what you said-'

'I don't know who you are but I am quite fine telling these people to leave this boy alone by myself'

'You stuck your tongue out at me in what I must say was a very mature manner and continued to berate them. Sirius came along with me afterward and we soon became fast friends and thought of a plan to show you that I too could handle myself. I made the mistake of wanting to show off for my new friend so at the feast I "inadvertently",' he paused to make inverted commas with both hands, accentuating the word as he spoke it, causing Lily to have to stifle a giggle as she thought she knew what he was confessing, 'spilt some chocolate milk on your robes as we ate, that was the beginning of the pranks and the feud that was to develop between us. It also happened to be the day that I learnt that strawberry milk was your favourite,' James smiled.

Lily found herself smiling too at the memory, 'I told you that if you had to go and spill milk on me you could at least have made it strawberry because I couldn't stand chocolate milk and strawberry was obviously the best.'

'Which I disagreed with, and ended up covered in strawberry milk for my troubles.' James let out a small laugh.

'The point of that anecdote is that from the very first, we got off on the wrong foot. You saw me, though this opinion probably didn't develop for a while, but you saw me as someone who tried so hard to be chivalrous that it bordered on chauvinistic-'

Lily scoffed at this thinking that chivalrous was too kind a word. James appeared to notice what she was referring to as he quickly made an amendment.

'Okay so perhaps you saw me as very chauvinistic. The point is that that was the first impression that I gave you and as the damage had already been done, I didn't see the need to correct it. It wasn't until third year when I began to, well, pay attention to females that I realised my mistake.'

James stopped for a moment and ran his hands through his hair in exactly the manner that annoyed Lily so, but sitting this close to him and looking at his facial expression as well as the action, she noticed that in this instance it seemed to be a nervous habit. It was as though he was just giving himself something to do with his hands while he got his thoughts in order. At the point, James looked up at her again and began to speak once more. She couldn't help but notice an intensity in his eyes that she hadn't seen before, but she now had to listen and couldn't continue to think.

'You had been very pretty over the first two years, everyone knew that, but it was more of an adorable niece kind of pretty. In third yea I, and a few others began to notice that you were actually rather, nay, uncannily beautiful. At this point the only attention we spared each other was through pranks and childish arguments. I had become infatuated with you and decided that I wanted more of your attention so I did what had been working so far; I pulled more pranks, annoyed you more and basically did anything I could to get you to notice me. Once again, I didn't realise my mistake until it was far too late and once I had made it, it seemed pointless to go back.'

Lily felt very thoughtful by this point and was beginning to see where James was headed.

'By fifth year I had been on the Quidditch team for two years already which gave a boost to my physical stature thanks to the training and consequently, to my ego. I had girls wanting to date me because I was from a good family, on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team as one of the youngest Seekers in a long time and The training and helped fill me out whereas, to be honest, I had previously been rather skinny.'

This last statement caused Lily to laugh aloud as she remembered James Potter at eleven; relatively tall for his age, skinny and with glasses that made his eyes look a little larger than they truly were, it had been rather comical. She remembered thinking that he looked something akin to a Praying Mantis.

'So there I was, just last year, thinking that I should be able to get any girl I wanted, but the only girl I wanted was you. By that point I had,'

James faltered at this point, looking as though he was bracing himself for something.

'I had, discouraged any interested parties from courting you and the male population of the school knew that to try was to face endless pranking from the Marauders,'

Lily raised her eyebrows at this. She had noticed that while most other girls were dating, she had been unable to find any boys that seemed interested in her. She had always put it down to her looks or her temper but she'd always had school work to occupy herself with so she hadn't thought about it much until now. It certainly did explain a lot. She was about to tell James, no, Potter what she thought of him meddling with her life when he did something rather unexpected. He placed a finger on her lips.

She was too shocked to respond and James took the opportunity to continue.

'I know that it was not the right way to go about things but at the time it seemed logical. Anyway, after all this came the incident after the O.W.L exams last year which was when I finally started thinking about my actions. You see, the persona that I presented to the school was not really how I wanted to be. I underwent a change once I got here which came from feeling the need to impress everyone and live up to my family name. It wasn't until Christmas break that I realised that I needed to be who I truly was, not the person that I thought everyone wanted me to be.'

Lily nodded approvingly and allowed him to continue, holding back her anger at the manipulation of her love life.

'I sent you a note for Christmas rather than my customary present, and once I sent it, even though your reply was not what I hoped, I felt that it was probably the best Christmas gift I had ever given you.'

He was right about that much, jewellery was really only flattering if you were in a relationship, or at least that was what Lily assumed, she didn't exactly have any experience as a base for that theory.

'Once we got back to Hogwarts I thought things were going splendidly until you played that practical joke on me-'

Lily cringed.

'-at which point I wondered whether everyone really did like the fake me better, true enough, you only ever yelled at me but at least you hadn't hurt my feelings. The only other change that had occurred had been that the girls weren't as interested in me anymore, barring Melanie, of course. So I tried to give up. This worked for around two weeks before my friends rather unceremoniously dumped be in the lake to splash me out of my stupidity. We came up with the idea for this 'Change Day' as a way to show that change is real and can happen in numerous ways, frequently good ways.'

James paused again to let all of what he had said sink in.

'It wasn't until today that I truly realised what it is that I'm feeling. During lessons today I was musing about the fact that it was very rare to come across a girl who was beautiful, intelligent and had a great personality. My partner for the term, Lauren Belle, seems to envelop all of these things, but she also appears to have a crush on me. We may have spoken very occasionally in the last six years but only when it was related to class work. Today I think I began to understand how you feel. There is someone who seems to be infatuated with me but they don't really know anything about me. She certainly seems like a nice enough person but that isn't something that you can base a relationship on. The only ones who really do know me are Sirius, Pete and Remus.'

Lily was curious as to why he was mentioning Lauren. She was now certain that he wasn't going to proposition her as mentioning another attractive female would have rendered that request, however elegant, moot.

'The reason for today Lily, the reason that I'm doing all this, is not to gain affection or respect from anyone but myself. I want to drop the walls that I've built to hide myself and be the person that I always have been underneath. I want everyone to know that James Potter is not just a class clown, and I wanted you who has been at the receiving end of so much of my deception, to be the first to know.'

'You probably wondered why I signed one of the notes with my full name. The reason for that is that I don't feel that we have every properly met. Lily, my name is James Orion Potter; I enjoy playing Quidditch, but equally enjoy spending and evening curled up by the fire with a book and a cup of tea. I enjoy pulling pranks, but my favourites are the ones that create mildly funny, harmless situations, humorous, not hurtful. I am reputed to have run out of space on my bedpost for notches, but in truth, there are none.'

Lily almost stopped listening at this. She could have sworn that she just hear James Potter claim that he was a virgin! She recalled Monica saying that Sirius claimed the same thing, even that he had never been kissed. If that was true then it did make some sense that James could be the same.

'And one other fact for now,' James continued with a broad smile, 'strawberry is my favourite flavour too.'

Lily couldn't help but laugh along with James at that comment. She was surprised by how genuine his laugh sounded, it wasn't the usual sneering sound that escaped him when he was tormenting someone, but a deep belly laugh that seemed to resonate slightly.

As their laughter subsided, James continued in a serious tone, 'Lily, I want to become the person that I always wanted to be. I want to explain everything to you in time. I'm not asking you to forgive and forget what I've done, I know that some of it has been very distressing. I only ask that you consider letting me try to become your friend.'

There was no way at all that Lily could say no to a request like that, 'Of course, James.'

He smiled at that, before launching into a story about his childhood.

The evening passed quickly as they regaled each other with tales from their years before school. Lily was intrigued by James' seemingly pointless stories. They not only told her more about who had had been before he got here, but it was also a very interesting glimpse of like as a child in the wizarding world. For his part, James seemed equally fascinated by her stories of the muggle world.

'Really?' James asked at one point, 'you just put stuff in the fidge-rater and it just stays cold, all on it's own? Merlin's Beard, That's amazing! How have wizards and witches lived without this stuff. How long did you say muggles have had elec-city for?

'Refrigerator,' Lily laughed, 'and it's electricity. It's been known of for hundreds of years but a lot of the modern appliances were only invented recently.'

'Wow,' he replied, 'that would make life so much more interesting. Our house elf just puts a cooling charm on things to keep them cold. I bet it would be fun to open a-' he slowed down here and screwed up his face, 'refrigerator and get stuff out.'

Lily laughed openly at this. She could just imagine James or Sirius standing in front of a fridge opening and closing the door. In her mind's eye they were trying to discover if the light stayed on when the door closed. This thought led to her laughing so much that teas of mirth began to roll down her cheeks.

James pouted slightly and waited for her to finish laughing. 'What's so funny!' He demanded.

'One day I will show you a fridge and then you will understand,' Lily said between giggles. A thought occurred to her suddenly. 'James, you mentioned earlier today that the flowers were important, I thought about it and I know that it represents some sort of change but I wasn't sure what. Care to enlighten me?'

'Ah, I'm glad you asked actually,' James responded, looking rather pleased with himself, 'I didn't want to be the one to bring it up, but basically, the flowers represented what I thought of you. To begin with there was only the red roses, they symbolised the way that I thought of you for most of the time I've known you. You were a romantic interest, hence roses. You seemed mysterious and I wanted to be with you so that I was with you.'

Lily frowned slightly at this, wondering where the idea was headed.

'Eventually the roses began changing colour, as did my thoughts. I still wanted to be with you but there were new reasons popping up. This shows my thinking since we got back from Christmas break. I began to see that there was more to you that the beauty and intelligence. There was also a kindness that is very rare, a love of nature and a cheeky side to match any Marauder's.'

'Well I wouldn't go that far,' She laughed.

James smiled and continued, 'after I got unceremoniously dumped in the lake, the flowers of my thought pattern change from just including roses and began incorporating other flowers. This represented the fact that I didn't want to get to know you just for a relationship any more. There were still a fair few roses in the mix but now I wanted to learn more about you.'

She smiled as she saw where the trail was ending.

'Finally the flowers were of every variety and colour, this was to symbolise that I feel as though I want to know you on many levels and that there are myriad things that I want to know about you, more things than I can readily imagine. For example, I've always known you were muggle-born but I'd never imagined having a conversation with you about,' he screwed up his face again, in a way that was nearly cute, 'electricity. In short, my perception has changed from a narrow minded, chauvinistic view to an open minded, caring one.'

It took Lily quite a while to decide how to react to this statement. The fact was, she had just been told something very deep and romantic by a man. The Elizabeth Bennet inside her wanted to swoon while the rational part of her brain tried to digest the information.

Eventually she was able to come up with a response, 'there were still roses in the trail,' she observed.

'Yes,' James replied unabashedly, but also with no elaboration.

'One of the notes said that you weren't planning to ask me out tonight,' she continued the train of thought, worried at what she would hear next.

'And I have no intention of doing so, tonight,' he said genuinely, 'There are still roses in the trail because I am still romantically interested in you and it would have been a lie of omission to not include them. That said, my main goal at the moment is to find myself and become happy with that person. If we end up friends through that process then I will consider it an added bonus.'

Lily was very impressed with the maturity James was showing, in fact, they seemed to be getting along much better that she would have thought possible. Their conversation continued for what must have been a lengthy period of time, for when Lily looked at her watch, she noticed that the time was half past eleven.

'Oh dear,' she said, rising abruptly and trying to regain feeling in her mostly numb legs, 'it's already half past eleven, we should have been in bed hours ago.'

'I thought off that too,' James said, 'I took the liberty of bringing a tent and a sleeping bag if you would like to spend the night here. I chose a Wednesday because we have no classes until after lunchtime tomorrow. I'll just head back to the common room and you can stay here if you would rather. It is a pretty magical place.'

Lily nodded and looked around her once more, trying to take in everything about the room, though it appeared to be more of a hidden grove in a forest. When she pulled her attention back to the scene around her she had a smile on her lips. James had set up the tent magically and was standing by her. He held out his hand and she tentatively took it, unsure of what he was doing. She was quite surprised by his firm grip as he shook her hand much like she had seen her father do with businessmen.

'Goodnight Lily,' He said formally.

'Goodnight James.' She whispered in response. James moved off toward the door and Lily moved into the tent he had set up. Though the hour was late, she was certainly not ready to sleep, she had a lot of thinking to do and there was opportunity for a sleep in the next morning. She was unsurprised to find that the tent was larger inside than it had appeared from the outside. She went into the bedroom area and lay down on the bunk, fully intending to think her day through and decide how she felt about all of it. As soon as her head touched the pillow she found herself dreaming of a picnic in a field of wildflowers.

-Sirius-

'So how do you think things are going?' Monica asked the three of them in general.

Sirius looked at the clock before answering, it read eleven o'clock, 'Lily hasn't arrived back in a rage yet so I'm going to say it went well, in fact, I thought they'd be back long before now, maybe it went very well,' he smirked.

Monica laughed at his not so subtle innuendo, 'I don't think so Sirius, James has a lot of ground to cover before Lily will even want to be his friend, let alone anything more than that. Anyway, I don't think I can wait up any longer. I'll just ask her what happened in the morning.'

With that Monica got up from the couch where they had been seated, watching Remus and Peter play chess. She leaned down and kissed him chastely on the lips which caused Sirius to smile. He had only ever kissed one girl and at this point he would be happy to kiss her exclusively for the rest of his life.

'Goodnight Mon,' he whispered.

She smiled and kissed him again, 'goodnight.'

Sirius watched her walk up the stairs and out of sight with a goofy smile on his face. He turned back around to find Remus and Peter doing a mock rendition of the goodnight ritual.

'Oh goodnight Sirius, dahling,' Peter mimicked poorly, sounding more like a middle aged woman than the sweet young lady he was trying to impersonate.

'No don't leave me,' Remus replied with a broken hearted looked on his face, 'I can't possibly last until morning without seeing you're radiance.'

They proceeded to make mushy kissing sounds before bursting into laughter.

'Har har, very mature,' Sirius said in a bemused tone, 'just you wait until you have girlfriends, then you'll be in for it!'

Remus and Peter both seemed a little crestfallen at this statement and went back to their game rather quietly.

Sirius knew that Remus had trouble committing to a relationship due to his "furry little problem". He thought that as soon as he trusted someone enough and told them, they would run away and regard him as a monster. Peter's reason was similar, a fear of rejection. He was definitely not a stand out among the Marauders, while still a very capable wizard; he was overshadowed by the others and as such, often overlooked.

His thoughts drifted to Monica, as they seemed to be doing with relative frequency now. He thought about how they had spoken after he had shown her the flying pig. She'd said that she was not about to go out with him just because of one gesture, no matter how sweet. At first he had been a little crestfallen but she had not closed the door on him so he kept trying. He'd done everything he could think of the show her that he was interested in her, and for the right reasons. He began walking her to classes, talking about anything and everything that came to mind. They discovered that they had a lot of similarities and that even their different interests were still interesting to the other. Sirius was a Beater for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and though Monica was afraid of flying, she loved watching the matches and found the aerobatics sport fascinating. Monica had grown up on a farm and absolutely adored horses, an animal that seemed to have been forgotten by the wizarding world. Sirius had confessed that he had never seen a horse before, and when Monica had showed him a photo of a big black horse named Mr. Darcy he had admitted to being eager to meet him.

Their friendship had progressed quickly and when the first Hogsmeade weekend had been announced for the previous Saturday, Sirius had worked up the courage to ask Monica to go with him. He was surprised at how overjoyed he had been when she had agreed; while always known as a flirt, he had never been on a proper date with someone he really liked before. The date itself was like something out of a dream. He felt nervous the entire time and probably made a fool of himself by trying too hard to say nothing foolish, but Monica had taken it in her stride, giggled politely and his bad jokes and laughed at his good ones.

When he had walked her down to breakfast that morning he pulled her aside to the same place that he'd shown her the flying up every bit of courage he possessed, Sirius had spoken,

'Monica, I wanted you to know that I'm really grateful that you gave me a chance to get to know you. Not only because it was very kind of you but because I've discovered that you are a lot more than the person I thought you were. I always knew that you were very pretty, beautiful even, but I didn't dare to dream that we had so much in common or that we could be such good friends. The thing is, with this discovery came the realisation that what I felt for you that caused me to ask you out in the first place was more than a whim. I've loved every moment we have spent together and,' he'd paused at this point, trying to frame what he wanted to say, 'and I'd be honoured if you would consent to be my girlfriend.'

Monica had looked at him long and hard, after the first ten seconds he was feeling very nervous. After thirty seconds he was nearly ready to run away and was seriously considering doing so when she replied softly, 'Okay.'

Sirius had felt as though his world had lit up, a feeling of warmth was flowing through his body and the butterflies in his stomach had changed from nervous to happy. He reached out and slowly pulled her into a hug. After holding her for a few moments and wondering if anything could feel as wonderful as that, he pulled back and looked into her eyes.

'Monica,' he began his question, 'may I please kiss you?'

She nodded, smiling and that was all the invitation he needed. He leant down and very slowly and gently kissed her.

It had been his first kiss and he was very worried about doing something wrong but his fears were put to rest when she wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed softly.

They'd pulled apart and walked into the Great Hall hand in hand before Monica had sat down next to Lily, 'go sit with your friends,' she'd said, 'I need to talk to Lily, you could walk me to class though?'

Sirius had nodded and smiled. The memory of her wanting him to walk her to class made him feel pretty special.

He was brought back to the present by a persistent, sing-song calling of his name.

'Sirius... Sirius,'

He looked up to see that James was back, the clock now read eleven-thirty, apparently he'd been day-dreaming for a while.

'Prongs,' he said, 'how'd thing go?'

'Better than I thought,' James replied with a smile.

'Brilliant! Let's hear all about it.'

As James began to tell them about his day Sirius briefly recapped his thoughts about Monica and made a resolution. He had to help the other three find what he had, for no one deserved to miss out on feeling loved.

So what do we all think of James' confession?

I for one firmly believe that If James really was an absolute... Let's say Poopie Head, all along, even changing wouldn't have eradicated Lily's doubts and theis seemed feasible. Please let me know what you think and pass on any suggestions or criticism that you have :)

Also, thank you very much to

Shine

and cat cruz 93

who were nice enough to review after I posted the last chapter. It really helps motivate me to write when I know that people actually want to read.