"Fuck," said James, to no one.

He stood alone on the rock jutting out over the lake, soaking wet and absolutely bloody freezing, though that was the least of his worries at present. For James Potter was facing something akin to an internal landslide. Some sort of seismic emotional shift was taking place, and he did not like it at all.

You see, being a fifteen-year-old boy was hard. In fact, James was fairly confident that it was the hardest thing in the world and that anyone who suggested otherwise was either lying or had never been a fifteen-year-old boy in the first place and was therefore in no position to judge. For instance, what in the name of Merlin's frilliest knickers was a boy supposed to do upon discovering that, quite by accident and through no fault of his own, he fancied a girl he had no business fancying?

He had tried to discount that stupid dream as nothing more than that: a stupid dream. One of the many weird side effects of becoming an Animagus, perhaps. Dreams didn't mean anything, anyway. They were just nonsense from your subconscious, bubbling up to bother you while you innocently slept. But it was no good. He couldn't get it — he couldn't get her — out of his head.

And now this.

His brain told him that it was ludicrous, that this was Evans, Lily Evans, the swotty little girl he'd known since he was eleven, the girl he'd teased for years, the prefect who spent all her time hanging around that greasy git Snape.

Unfortunately, the brain of a fifteen-year-old boy is a busy, cramped place, easy overwhelmed and prone to sensory overload. Thus his brain, noble organ though it may be, was doing a rather botched job at keeping the rest of its provinces in check. Though the logical bit of his mind declared shrilly that he did not fancy Lily Evans…the rest of him disagreed most profoundly.

This was a lot to process, and so James had simply stood there, rather pink and embarrassed and utterly, stupidly silent while Lily stormed off. She'd moved quickly back towards the castle, shivering in the wind, her dark red hair dripping down her back, her cloak billowing out around what he now recognized to be a very nicely-shaped body indeed. He had never thought too much about Lily Evans' body before. Sure, he'd thought about girls in general — he'd completed a thorough examination of those Muggle magazines Sirius had brought last year — but that was completely different. This was Evans. Lily Evans. He couldn't fancy her. He simply couldn't.

Except…he did.

And it suddenly struck him that he must have fancied her for a while now. The depth of feeling for a girl with which he was presently overwhelmed did not simply spring up in a single moment, even if that moment included a glimpse of her bra.

Merlin, how long had this been going on under his very nose? Why had no one told him?

"Fuck," he said again. "Shit. Fuck. Fucking hell fuck shit bollocks and bugger."

As if in response to this sudden outburst of profanity, a gale of cruel wind swept across the lake, and James, still sopping with lake water, shivered uncomfortably. He shrugged on his cloak, which he'd mercifully thought to throw off before diving in. He ought to get back to the forest where his friends were waiting.

They'd come here to practice transforming into Animagi. It was Pete's idea. ("What if we become something really big and smash up our dormitory?") Sirius was still the only one to manage a full transformation, a fact that needled James constantly.

He'd only meant to slip away for moment to practice on his own — he felt self-conscious with them all staring at him — but then he'd seen Lily by the lake, and he couldn't resist coming over to annoy her. He didn't know why. Maybe he'd wanted to convince himself that the dream had truly meant nothing. Maybe it was because he knew her cheeks would redden at the sight off him, because he knew just how to wind her up, just what to say to see sparks in those brilliant green eyes…

Hell.

As he turned back to the forest, he noticed something that had hitherto escaped his attention: An old book sat in a sodden mass upon the rock. It read: Advanced Potion-Making.

James glared at the book for a long moment. This was all its fault, really. If she hadn't been reading it, then he wouldn't have felt compelled to take it from her, and then she wouldn't have tried to grab it back and slipped and fallen in the lake, and then he might still be blissfully ignorant of this unfortunate new infatuation. Or at least able to keep pretending.

He briefly considered chucking the book back in the lake as revenge, but then he hesitated. Lily would be missing it. She had said it wasn't hers, which meant she'd likely be in a spot of trouble if she lost it…and she'd probably be really grateful to whomever gave it back…

Not that he cared, mind you.

(He cared, a lot.)

So James knelt down, picked up the book, and wrapped it in his scarf. Then, tucking the dripping package under his arm, he took off towards the forest.

"What the hell happened to you?" demanded Sirius as James approached, his trainers squelching with every step.

Sirius, Remus, and Peter were spread out comfortably on the forest floor. Remus had whipped up a small, levitating fire, and they were all happily warming their hands around it. Gratefully, James moved closer to the flame. Its warmth engulfed him like a hot cup of tea.

"You're all wet," said Peter.

James sighed and ran a hand through his drenched hair, flicking water off his fingers. "Brilliantly observed, Pete. Any progress here?"

"No," said Peter gloomily. "Still one hundred percent human. Why are you all wet? Did you transform into a fish?"

"What? No. Of course I didn't transform into a fish. That would be bloody useless. I — well, I ran into Evans, if you must know."

A grin flitted across Sirius's face. "Evans pushed you in the lake, did she?"

"No, she did not push me in the lake. I went in after her."

"You pushed her in the lake?" said Remus, looking horrified.

"No one pushed anyone in the lake!" said James. "She fell."

Remus raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, all right, it was sort of my fault, but it wasn't on purpose!"

Sirius and Peter howled with laughter.

"So, you didn't push her in the lake, but she fell, and it was your fault?" said Remus.

"Sort of my fault," corrected James. "It was her fault too. Look, she slipped, all right? And I was being a perfect gentleman and trying to give her a hand out, but she wouldn't let me, and then the grindylows showed up."

"What?"

James tried not to grin. This was the part of the story that made him look rather good. "Grindylows. You remember, water demons."

"I know what they are, James. What do you mean they 'showed up?'"

"I mean, one minute she was there, swimming towards me, and then the next — poof! — no more Evans. What was I supposed to do, let her drown? So I dove in."

It was, he realized, a fairly impressive story, and as he regaled them with the tale, his friends provided a decent audience, gasping at all the necessary moments and that sort of thing. By the end of it, he was feeling much better about the whole encounter. He was a bloody hero, he was. Of course, he made no mention of his newly-uncovered feelings for a certain prefect. The mockery would be obscene.

He concluded his story with a slightly undignified shiver. "All right, I'm freezing. Time to go in?"

"Oh," said Remus, as though he had just noticed James was wet. "Come here. Excaresco," he murmured, siphoning the water off James's robes with his wand until they were dry.

"Thanks, Remus," said James appreciatively, and he made a mental note to remember that spell.

"You could've died," said Peter, gaping at James with an awestruck expression.

"I wouldn't have died," said James dismissively. "I had my wand. Evans didn't when she fell in, though. She nearly drowned." As he said this, he realized for the first time how true it was. He felt pang of worry — was she okay?

"She's all right, though?" asked Remus, echoing James's own thoughts.

"She was still breathing when she left."

"Where is she now?"

"Dunno," shrugged James, trying to appear nonchalant. "She took off. She wasn't very happy with me for saving her life, as it turns out."

Sirius snorted, shaking his head. "Women."

"Yeah," said James. "Women."

Maybe it was his brain playing tricks on him. After all, saving a girl's life was a very intense experience. Perhaps it was completely psychologically sound to accidentally fabricate feelings of affection or attraction or heart-wrenching, soul-crushing, humiliating adoration towards said girl as a result. Add in a poorly-timed sex dream and it was perfectly fathomable that he would fool himself into thinking he fancied Lily Evans.

But he did not.

Nope.

No sir.

He absolutely, most definitely did not fancy Lily Evans.

Of this James managed to convince himself for the rest of the afternoon and all through dinner, and in fact he was feeling quite relieved to have overcome this brief and temporary bout of foolishness…until he climbed through the portrait hole and caught sight of Lily across the room and his stomach did that thing it had only ever done before on a broomstick.

What was going on?

She was sitting on the floor next to that little radio she carried everywhere, knees hugged to her chest. Mary Macdonald was perched on the sofa behind her and was deeply involved in braiding her friend's hair. James had seen girls do this before. He supposed the complicated knotting of another girl's hair was some sort of mystical female bonding ceremony. It did look awfully pretty though, all woven and catching the fire's light…if you were someone who had an opinion on Lily Evans' hair, which he most certainly was not.

Lily, seeming to feel his gaze, glanced over her shoulder. She caught his eye and looked quickly away, blushing fiercely. He felt the familiar tingle of enjoyment he always got at making her blush, but this time it was corrupted with some new, stronger, miserably confusing emotion.

"Hell," he said weakly, and he sank into the sofa like an abyss, hoping it might swallow him up.

His friends settled down around him, and they all dove into their schoolwork, complaining loudly as they did so. Professor Dearborn had assigned a particularly trying assignment, but James couldn't make himself focus…his eyes kept flitting towards the red-head by the fire, who was now buried in a book of her own.

He decided to explore a different tack. So he fancied Lily Evans. What was so wrong with that? Why shouldn't he fancy her? She was funny. She was clever. She was pretty. Really pretty. Hell, once you got past the years of swotty, nose-in-the-air, goody-two-shoes history, she was hot. All right, so she was best friends with Snivellus. That was more difficult to parse. But really, all that meant was that she was…charitable. To a fault, obviously, but everyone had faults, and being too nice was pretty low on the spectrum.

There was also the rather appealing fact that, once upon a time, she had fancied him. At least, that's what everyone else said. Lily steadfastly denied this, but that was probably because Sirius had mocked her for it so much. Sirius had mocked James for it too, as he recalled, and in response James had spent the better part of the last few years endlessly teasing her to make sure everyone (meaning Sirius) knew that he didn't fancy her back…Oh.

Fuck.

But then again…so what? That's what twelve-year-old boys do, after all. But he wasn't a boy anymore. He was fifteen — nearly sixteen — and it was about time he had a girlfriend. Why not Lily Evans?

"Are you all right, James? You're being very quiet."

"What?" James turned to see Remus watching him from behind A Compendium of Defensive Magic. "I'm not being quiet. I'm being perfectly normal. This is the precise level of noise normal James normally makes."

"Right," said Remus dryly. "That's me convinced. Everything is normal."

"Uh huh." James was momentarily distracted again as Lily rose from the sofa. She turned and said something to Mary, then took off towards the dormitory, the little radio cradled in her arms. He realized with some embarrassment that his friends were still watching him.

"I'm just tired," he said, faking a yawn. "Long day. I think I'll turn in early, actually. I'll finish this tomorrow." He stuffed his untouched essay into his bag and climbed the stairs to his dormitory.

It wasn't until he was safe in the privacy of his four-poster bed that James remembered he still had Lily's book, wrapped in the scarf and currently shoved unceremoniously into the bottom of his bag. He pulled it out, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he freed Advanced Potion-Making from its scarfy prison. It was still sopping and smelled of lake water.

"Excaresco!" he said, pointing his wand at the book. It worked quite well, as a matter of fact, and soon the book was dry and nearly good as new. He'd have to remember to thank Remus.

Pleased with his handiwork, James examined the book curiously. He couldn't imagine anyone being so engrossed in an old Potions textbook, even Lily Evans. But then he remembered the scribbles in the margins; he flipped the book open at random and began to read…not the text, but the cramped notes that filled the rest of the page. They seemed to be mostly corrections to the original contents, of which the notetaker was generally dismissive. However, in a few places, little spells were scribbled here and there, tucked beside an illustration of some spluttering cauldron, hidden under the dog-ear of a worn page. He'd never seen any of these spells before, and judging by the way they were crossed out and modified and reworked again and again, he suspected very few others had, either.

He suddenly remembered how angry Lily had been when he'd grabbed the book, her furious assertion that it 'wasn't hers.' The answer came to him so suddenly he felt stupid for not thinking of it before. Who else was Lily Evans friends with who would lend her a N.E.W.T.-level Potions book?

This copy of Advanced Potion-Making, he was reasonably certain, belonged to none other than Severus Snape.

Once again, he had the urge to punish the book for its unfortunate associations, and it was only through the exertion of great self-control that he did not set blaze to the damn thing right there.

But no…he couldn't do that. This was a gift. He had to use it wisely.

James pulled out a scrap of parchment and a quill and set to work copying down every spell he saw scribbled in the margins. So Snivellus liked the twiddle with spellcraft, did he? Knowing him, it was probably Dark Magic. Well, old Sniv wasn't the only one who studied Arithmancy. James would take them all apart, piece by piece. He'd figure out what each little spell did, and if they were Dark Magic, there'd be hell to pay…

"Yeah, you can PISS OFF, and you can tell the whole lot of them to suck my—"

"Er — mate?" James pulled open the hangings that had previously enclosed his four-poster bed. Sunlight dazzled through the open curtains, and James had to momentarily readjust his glasses in the glare. Blinking through the morning light, he saw Sirius, standing by the open window, mid-spit. "Who are you yelling at?"

"My darling mummy," he snarled, glaring through the open panes.

"She flew out the window?"

"By owl proxy, yeah."

"Ah." That explained it. Sirius's parents never wrote him for nice reasons. He wondered what was in the letter, but before he could make any inquiries of his friend, Sirius began to tear the parchment to bits, his face contorted in fury, cursing with every rip.

"Sodding — stupid — spiteful — bitch."

When he could shred it no more, he turned back to the open window and flung the scraps to the wind.

"Want to talk about it?" offered James.

"No," said Sirius flatly. He slammed the panes shut with a shuddering crash, transformed into his dog Animagus, and flounced onto his bed, curling into a ball of black fur and foul-temper.

James sighed, and the sigh turned into a yawn. He glanced around the dormitory. Peter was watching quietly from his own bed; he made a small sympathetic grimace as James caught his eye. Remus was still asleep. That boy could sleep through anything.

James had been awake, of course. He was, as Remus once put it, "offensively awake" in the mornings. But rather than going for a jog around the lake or down to the pitch for a quick practice as he often did, James had stayed in bed this morning, carefully combing over Snape's book, finishing up collecting every little spell.

Now, having gleaned from it every secret he thought he could, James stuffed the book into his bag and lounged back on his bed, arms tucked behind his head, thinking. He'd give it back to Lily in class, and no doubt she'd be thrilled to find it undamaged, thrilled that he'd thought to collect it for her. Fantasies of her delighted gratitude flitted happily through his mind, but he hastily pushed them aside as someone rapped on the door.

Peter, who'd been on his way to the toilet, opened it.

"Where's Potter?" a female voice demanded.

"Er—"

Lily Evans appeared, pushing Peter aside as she stormed into the dormitory. She did not look thrilled at all.

"Evans!" said James, sitting up with a jolt of surprise. His hand leapt to his bedhead and mussed it unnecessarily. "What are you doing here?"

Lily, however, was staring incredulously at the dog on Sirius's bed. "Why do you have a giant dog in your dormitory?"

Sirius growled.

"Oh," said James, as though this were a throwaway concern. "He's having a rough morning."

"What? Oh, I don't even care—"

"You're not supposed to be in here!" squeaked Peter, looking extremely embarrassed in his Pride of Portree pajamas.

"Yeah, I don't care about that, either." She turned to James. "Can I have a word?"

"Just one?" said James.

"Privately?"

"That's not a very good word, if you only get one. Bit dull."

"Potter!"

James grinned. He couldn't help it. It was too much fun winding her up. He was also keenly aware that Sirius, dog or not, was listening. He wasn't about to act like a prat in love. "Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of the dog."

"Fine," said Lily. "Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"The book!"

"What book?"

"You know bloody well what book."

"There are a lot of books in the world, Evans. You'll have to be a bit more specific. What did it smell like?" Why was he incapable of talking to her without going out of his way to piss her off? Why was it so much fun?

"The book," said Lily in a dangerously calm voice that seemed to escalate with each word, "that you stole from me yesterday and then promptly ruined when you shoved me in the lake!"

"I didn't shove you in the lake, you slipped!" said James indignantly.

"Because you shoved me!"

"I did no such thing!"

"Who's shouting?" came a sleepy voice from behind closed hangings. Remus's messy head emerged at last, looking bleary and pale.

"Now look what you've done," James admonished her. "You've woken poor Remus."

"Sorry, Remus, but your friend is being an arse. Just give me the damn book, Potter. I know you have it."

So much for delighted gratitude.

"All right, all right. Don't get your panties in a twist." He rummaged in his bag, pulled out the once-sodden copy of Advanced Potion-Making, and tossed it to her. She caught it and looked it over, unable to keep the surprise out of her eyes at its renewed condition.

James grinned. "Pretty good, eh? Excaresco. Handy little spell."

She recovered quickly. "Did you do anything else to it? If you hexed it, or—"

"Why would I hex your ratty old textbook?"

"I've been in an absolute panic about this all night. Woke up first thing this morning and ran down to the lake to collect it, and you've had it in your dormitory the whole time! For what, a souvenir?"

"I was going to give it back to you today. In case it's escaped your notice, it's not even breakfast yet."

"Why didn't you give it to me last night?"

"Because I forgot."

Lily glared at him as though trying to figure out his angle. Evidently she found this streak of altruism suspect. He responded to her glare with an innocent smile. Then, because he couldn't quite help himself, he cocked his head in mock confusion and said, "What's that? Why yes, it was incredibly kind of me to collect your silly little book and fix it up. No, no…no need to thank me at all. Just glad I could be of service."

"Oh, piss off," she said, and she turned on her heel and marched out the door. He watched her go, a strange twisty feeling gnawing at his gut.