Lily, Aletha, Janet, Alice and Dorcas were in their dormitory unpacking after their start-of-term feast. Lily was in high spirits telling her friends all about her exciting vacation.

"And I saw this beautiful painting of the Neuschwanstein castle when I visited Germany!" said Lily enthusiastically. "So I tried to paint one at home. It wasn't the best but I decided to paint more. I brought my paints and canvas here!"

"Sounds interesting!" remarked Alice.

"You have muggle paints?" inquired Janet, sitting up on her four-poster to get a better look.

"Yes! But they don't make the people move around and talk. They just stay put." Lily told her friends. "Maybe I should look up the charm that makes them move."

"But you already know your charms very well, Lily." said Dorcas, her eyes twinkling.

"What?" said Lily, absently rummaging inside her trunk.

"James Potter!" the four girls chorused. Lily looked up from her trunk to see the girls grinning mischievously at her.

"What about him?"

"Oh, come on, Lily! Haven't you noticed?" Aletha said in a hushed voice, coming to sit beside her on her bed.

"There's nothing to notice." Lily replied defensively.

"Isn't there?" Janet jumped in front of Lily, preventing her from burying her face in her trunk again, "Doesn't he keep ogling at you?"

"Oh, that." Lily sighed, embarrassed, "Well, what's there for me to do? I can't help him." She flopped down on her bed between Janet and Aletha.

"I am sure it would be great help if you agreed to go out with him." Alice suggested, her lips twitching.

"I heard Madam Puddifoot's is the best place for snogging in Hogsmeade." said Dorcas, settling herself on her own bed and looking sideways at Lily.

"Dorcas!" Lily exclaimed, standing up to hide her reddened cheeks. The four girls went into a fit of giggles. Lily waited, looking out of the window, to let it subside.

She turned around when the laughter had died down and said with as much dignity as she could muster, "I'd rather go out with the giant squid than with that arrogant tosser!"

"Poor James has to compete with the giant squid to win the love of his life!" Janet snorted and once again the four of them burst with laughter.

One bright Saturday afternoon Lily took her canvas down into the common room and set it up by a large window. It was a nice windy sort of day. A cool breeze played around Lily's red hair and she sighed contentedly as she stroked her brush across the canvas. She could hear muffled noises from the dormitory of the boys in her year. She heard Remus bellow "don't do that" and wondered what might have enraged him so much. Probably something to do with Potter or Black. She narrowed her eyes and concentrated on her painting.

A few minutes later Lily heard huge trampling noises on the staircase leading to the boys' dormitories. It was as if an elephant was descending them. Lily's canvas wobbled slightly as the source of the noise suddenly entered the common room. It turned out to be Potter, Black and Pettigrew being chased by a distraught Remus. He had a helpless look on his face. The boys ran around the common room in circles. Lily huffed, unsuccessfully trying to ignore the racket they were making.

The peace and quiet of the common room now quite evaporated, thanks to the boys, Lily turned away from her place near the window, ready to scold the approaching Sirius Black into the next century. But before she could do that, he grasped her shoulders, whirled her around and hid behind her back, knocking over all of her paints in the process.

"Black!" shouted Lily, "You - you - you MORON! Look what you've done! I'm going to report you to Professor McGonagall and make sure you get loads of detentions!"

"No problem, Evans!" Sirius winked and her anger climbed up another notch. Sensing a new outburst, Remus who had skidded to a halt with James and Peter when Sirius had knocked off the paints, now came forward in defense of his friend.

"Lily, calm down. He didn't mean to knock off-"

"You were the one chasing him around!" Lily seethed, rounding on Remus. He automatically took a step back. Peter sniggered.

James, meanwhile, was staring at Lily in awe. To him, he couldn't say how, she looked simply beautiful, even in such a furious state. Lily's eyes flickered towards him once but she decided to ignore him for the time being.

"Look Evans!" Sirius interrupted Lily mid-rant, "Your nose!"

"...absolutely arrogant gits the lot of you! If it's not my paints then it's Severus- what?"

"Your nose!" Sirius repeated, "It's the same colour as your hair!"

James couldn't see what was wrong with Lily's nose but he was spared the trouble of telling his best mate to shut it.

"SIRIUS!" Lily yelled, "One more word and I will turn all of your robes to green and silver like the rest of your family! And I CAN do that!" She emphasized.

Sirius realised that this was a substantial threat and croaked, "You wouldn't."

"Oh yeah? Try me!"

"Certainly-" Sirius began mischievously but at that time Remus and James bellowed "Shut it, Sirius!" After that Remus successfully calmed Lily down and helped her clear out the mess with Sirius. James, still dazed and staring at Evans as if she was something close to wonder was distracted by Peter who was poking him insistently.

"Look." he whispered.

A few feet apart from Lily, James noticed, something very peculiar. The bottom half of a book covered in red paint. James knew it certainly wasn't there before. It's upper half was missing so James couldn't tell the title of the book. He quietly sneaked behind Lily, Remus and Sirius, and pocketed it.

"Thank you, Remus," Lily said 10 minutes later, "you too, Sirius." she added grudgingly. She smiled and threw a filthy look at James and left for her dormitory.

Remus immediately rounded upon his three friends. "Look what happened! Can't you stay quiet for a while?"

"If you hadn't chased us around, Moony, this wouldn't have happened." Sirius pointed out. "So it's your fault, really."

"Will you stop calling me that in the common room?" Remus hissed.

"There's no one here except us." James told him, his eyes still on the staircase leading to the girls' dormitories where Lily had disappeared.

"What are you looking at?" Peter asked curiously following his gaze.

"The Evans in his imagination." drawled Sirius.

James' eyes snapped back to his friends. He scowled. "Of course not." He tried to say as convincingly as possible.

"Lily, eh?" teased Remus.

"No, no! I- I, er, I was thinking about that book!" James improvised.

"What book?" chorused Sirius and Remus. It was James' turn to look smug. "Let's go upstairs."

As soon as the boys had reached their dormitory James wasted no time in telling them about the book covered in red paint.

"So you just picked it up?" Remus demanded incredulously.

"Of course. It wasn't there before and it appeared when the paint spilled on it. Half of it is invisible. Only the bottom half is visible as it came drenched in paint." James explained.

"Let's get more paint, then." Sirius said excitedly.

An hour later James and Peter materialised our of thin air, shrugging off James' invisibility cloak. They had just returned from Hogsmeade with paints and sweets. Sirius impatiently spilled paint upon above the visible part of the book and it slowly materialised before them. The silver embossed writing on its cover read "THE INVISIBLE BOOK OF INVISIBILITY"

James, Peter, Remus and Sirius grinned in triumph.

A few days later the four boys were sitting in their dormitory, stuffing themselves with sweets they had bought from Honeydukes. Frank had been surprised and demanded how had they managed to get so many sweets before the Hogsmeade weekend. "We have our sources." Remus had replied mysteriously, surprising his friends with such a display of mischief.

The said boys now sat diligently going through the book of invisibility, huddled around James' bed. Remus kept reading spells aloud which he found interesting.

"Aparecium - a revealing spell that exposes concealed objects."

"And I thought revealing did something else entirely." Sirius snarked.

"Well, now you know." Remus said absently, missing the sarcasm. "It can be very useful though."

"It's lucky Peter noticed that book lying around." Sirius said, sucking on his sugar quill.

"Lucky Lily- I mean, Evans, had paints." said James, mentally smacking himself. He randomly turned the pages of the book to distract his friends.

"Yeah," Sirius drawled, "it gave our knight in shining armour, here, a chance to ogle his not so distressed damsel."

"More like seething damsel." Remus snorted, turning the pages back to where he had been reading.

James frowned. "That's a bit rich coming from you two, seeing as you were quite terrified of her."

"If you hadn't been staring at Evans and helped us we could have got out of there faster." said Peter, who was sitting opposite James.

"I wasn't staring." James said automatically, "I was just a bit distracted."

"By Evans' fiery temper?" Sirius teased.

"She always looks nice." James mumbled, looking everywhere but at his friends. It turned to be difficult as the three of them were grouped around him.

Peter stared at him disbelievingly. Remus smirked knowingly at him.

A huge grin was spreading upom Sirius' face. "James fancies Evans!" he bellowed thumping James on the back.

"I don't fancy her." James said, growing increasingly uncomfortable under their scrutiny, "I really don't. Can we please just drop-"

"You do fancy her." Peter told him, amused. "Since first year."

"That's ridiculous!" James jumped out of his bed.

"You do, James! She keeps nagging me about why you keep staring at her." Remus informed him.

James was stunned and momentarily forgot to be embarrassed. "She- she noticed that?"

"We all did, mate!" Sirius said joyfully. "Never tried to hide it, did you?"

"Um- no, not really." James admitted sheepishly. Then feeling slightly better that his friends weren't taking the mickey out of him he said in a rather small voice, "I think she is the most wonderful person in the world. She's beautiful. I could just keep looking at her for hours if I got the chance."

Silence issued after this pronouncement.

"So what do you want to do about this?" ventured Peter at last.

"Oh, I dunno..." James said uncertainty, "can I do something?"

"You should try to become friends with her. She's a nice person." Remus said kindly.

"This is huge, James!" exclaimed Sirius, clearly not having listened to a word Remus had said, "You should ask her out!"

"But not now!" Remus protested, "He'll make a prat of himself..."

"She's a pretty girl, Remus. If James doesn't ask her out soon someone else is bound to. And we are not exactly in her good books right now, so how would she know James fancies her?" Sirius explained, uncharacteristically serious.

Remus couldn't find an argument against that so James decided on the worst.

"That's the best." he whispered.

A/N Hello! Hope you like this chapter! It's been a long time since there has been an update. Just wanted to let you all know that this story hasn't been abandoned. Reviews are always welcome!