Disclaimer: Everything belongs to J.K. Rowling, the greatest writer EVER, except Alex and Kate.
The Rivalry of James and Lily
Year 1 - Chapter 3
The First Week
The next morning, Lily woke up in a wonderful mood. Yesterday had been one of the most amazing days of her life. She had made one great friend in Remus, a possible friend in Sirius, but also unfortunately, a probable enemy in James. But she hadn't even met the girls yet. She pulled back the curtains on her four-poster beds, to find two of the other beds still with unconscious sleepers inside of them. The third bed was empty. She realized the unoccupied bed was that of Sibyll Trewlaney, and Lily was about to go look for her when the two other girls began to wake up. Lily learned that both of the other girls, Kate and Alex, were also muggle born, but they had been friends before they got their letters to Hogwarts. They were both attractive, and seemed nice and funny, although, Alex was very small for being 11 years old. The three girls decided to get ready and walk down to breakfast together. There, they met up with Sirius, James, Remus, and the slightly chubby boy Lily recognized from the feast the previous night, who Remus introduced as Peter Pettigrew. For some reason, Lily, along with Kate and Alex, felt that they couldn't trust Peter. Lily knew it was bad to make judgments about people before she really knew them, but couldn't shake the feeling...
Lily's thoughts about Peter were forced out of her mind, however, when she saw the huge grins on James and Sirius's faces.
"What did you guys do now?"
"Umm... Why don't you look over at the Slytherin table?" Sirius managed to say through a hale of laughter.
Lily looked over and was pretty amused. James and Sirius had obviously turned two Slytherin's robes bright pink.
"Good job, Sirius!" she exclaimed, for the whole gang, including Kate, Alex, her, Sirius, Remus, and unfortunately Peter and James, had decided to make as many problems for the Slytherins this year as possible.
"Hey, it was my idea," said James hoping for a compliment from Lily, since yesterday he had been forced to tell her she was the greatest person ever. This way, they would be even.
"Your point?" she replied.
Just then, she was again interrupted: this time by the mail. She was rather surprised, and delighted, when hundreds of owls streamed into the Great Hall, looking for their owners. Oe came to her that first morning, but only to say hello. Lily noticed Peter's owl sent him boxes of things he forgot, including a package of whitey-tightey underwear. He turned bright pink when his owl gave him the package, and all the Gryffindors immediately cracked up.
Later, Professor McGonagall passed out timetables. Lily looked at hers, and noticed today she had charms with Professor Flitwick, Transfiguration with McGonagall, and Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor Rupert. Tomorrow she had Herbology with the Hufflepuffs and Professor Sprout, along with Transfiguration again. Wednesday she had charms again and History of Magic with Professor Binns. Thursday she had another class of Herbology and Transfiguration. And Friday she had double Potions by Professor Karkaroff with the Slytherins. She was not looking forward to this class.
"Hey Lily, its time to go to Transfiguration," she heard Kate say.
"Coming," she replied, and made her way with Kate, Alex, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter to the transfiguration classroom. Sibyll still hadn't been seen.
They got to the classroom right as the bell rang, and were surprised to find Sibyll already in there, sitting in the back corner. The girls all sat on one side of the room, and the boys on the other. Unfortunately, Professor McGonagall noticed this and then assigned the seating. Kate had to sit next to Sirius, Alex with Remus, and Sibyll with Peter. That left, Oh God, James Potter for Lily. James and Lily reluctantly took their seats next to each other and began to take complicated notes.
"I can't believe I'm next to you!" complained James.
"Tell me about it, what great luck, huh?" she said sarcastically.
"Just don't talk to me," he stated.
"Hey, you started this conversation, not me, remember?" she retaliated.
"Whoever said I was talking to you? Maybe I was just talking to myself?"
"Ooh nice comeback, Potter-" but she was cut off.
"Miss Evans, Mr. Potter, may I ask, what ARE you talking about?" scolded Professor McGonagall.
"Sorry professor," they both mumbled.
"Nice going," Lily muttered.
"Hey, you're the one who raised your voice."
"Whatever." And they worked in silence the rest of the period. Lily was not pleased however, when James was the only one to transfigure his match into a needle.
Next the gang headed to charms, with Lily and James bickering the whole way. Flickwick, a short wizard, who tried to act strict but severely failed, taught that class. After that lesson, Lily felt much happier, for she was naturally good at charms.
The gang went back to their common room for midday break and lunch, and then headed back to the DADA (Defense Against The Dark Arts) classroom where Professor Rupert was waiting for them. Lily, and by looks of it, the rest of the Gryffindors, were highly anticipating this class. The actual lesson, however, was a bit of a laughable experience. The teacher wanted to show the class how to block hexes, so he had James send some simple curses at him. But each one directly hit the poor professor. By the end of the lesson he had green hair, purple eyes, blotchy skin, and was wearing pink-polka-dotted underwear. The class was in hysterics!
The next day, James woke up in fairly happy mood. He had, after all, been the best at transfiguration, and he had also performed many different hexes on one of his professors without getting in trouble. Yet, there was something nagging him in the back of his mind. Lily was better than him at charms. How could that be? He had always been top of everything he did. Still, Lily had been clearly better than him, and she didn't have any background training in magic. Heck, she didn't even know about Hogwarts until about a month ago. With this thought in his mind, he made his way down to breakfast by himself, not really paying attention to where he was going. Suddenly he felt himself bump into something.
"Watch it, Potter," he heard Lily Evans say.
"Sor-, wait no, you deserved that," he sneered.
He heard Lily mutter something under her breath, but chose to ignore it.
About ten minutes later, James had arrived in the Great Hall to hear everyone in hysterics, and pointing at him. He was very confused, and walked over to a laughing Sirius, who quickly told James that he had a bra on over his shirt!
With that, he looked down and felt himself go red. He tore of the bra, and walked over to Lily.
"You know I'm going to get you back for this, Evans. But, I guess you'll want this back," he said, handing her the bra, "I mean, wait, what am I talking about. Why would you need this? You're flatter than me!" But she was just sitting with a smile on her face that clearly showed that she felt she got the better of James this time.
Soon, it was already Friday and the gang was heading down to double potions with the Slytherins. Nothing had really happened during the rest of their lessons, other than James and Lily bickered some more in Transfiguration, and some Hufflepuff was attacked by the Venomous Tentacula, that had somehow found its way into Greenhouse 1.
As then entered the Potions dungeon, they heard a gruff voice tell them they were late and to sit down rapidly. Then he took 5 points off Gryffindor. Lily noticed that only 3 of the Slytherins were in the classroom, and when the rest ambled in, the Professor didn't take any points off of them. Both Lily and James noticed this at once, and began to argue with the teacher.
"Excuse me," said Lily. "But don't they get points off, too? I mean, they were later than us!"
"Yeah! I mean, we were only 30 seconds late! And that's pretty good for this being only our first week. And them being 5-10 minutes later than us definitely should mean they get a lot more than 5 points off," James trailed off, but at that moment he wished he hadn't said anything, for the teacher, Karkaroff, was giving both him and Lily looks of pure hatred.
"Detention, both of you!" he spat, "And 20 more points from Gryffindor. Don't ever challenge the way I teach. I am your professor, therefore I deserve respect. Now everyone get out your materials. We will be starting with a shrinking solution."
James nodded mutely, but Lily opened her mouth to argue more, until Kate kicked her under her desk to make her shut up. Lily closed her mouth and grumpily took out her materials.
The lesson did not improve as the class went on. A Slytherin, by the name of Lucius Malfoy, had been paired up with Lily to make the potion. Lily immediately recognized him as one of the boys who had had his robes changed pink. Severus Snape, a greasy haired boy, who she also recognized as a survivor of the pink robe incident, was with James. A boy with the last name of Crabbe was with Sirius. Goyle was with Alex, and some ugly Slytherin girls were with the Kate, Remus, Sibyll, and Peter.
As the lesson went on, Lily found out this Lucius Malfoy was rather taken with her. He commented on how pretty she was, and he even mentioned how impressed he was with the curses she had sent at James. He then told her that him and Snape were planning on performing a horrible joke on James and Sirius, tomorrow, when they went downstairs to breakfast. She was so disgusted that he actually liked her that she just stared at him with her mouth open. But, when he said something about performing a trick on James, she snapped out of it. A joke on James? Maybe she should accept. But then she remembered who was also in the joke, Slytherins, and she shook her head in refusal. Plus, she also didn't want to exactly play a joke on Sirius. He had been one of her friends. However, Sirius was a friend with James, maybe he deserved to be embarrassed too...