The Odd Couple: Chapter One: Midnight
Disclaimer: I own almost nothing important anyway, so I'm not going to pretend all of this belongs to me either. The plot and the things you don't recognize belong to moi. Most of it belongs to J.K. Rowling, and some other people I'm too lazy to type about.
Lily Evans sat on her bedroom floor, writing a letter. It was about her homework assignment. It was eleven thirty, and her sister Petunia was snoring loudly, every now and then screaming "I love you, Vernon!" It was rather disturbing. Lily couldn't think. She couldn't ask her parents, who were extremely intelligent people, but didn't know this subject, it was new to them. And Petunia would just call her a freak. She could ask her friends Sirius and Remus to help, but Remus was way too often visiting his grandmother, and Sirius, she knew, was on holiday in France, probably flirting with three Parisian girls as she thought. Poor little Peter Pettigrew, he was not smart enough to help Lily with even her worst subject. Now, mind you, Lily was at the top of most every class, even her worst subject. But it wasn't that she couldn't do this simple sheet the head of her house had assigned her. It was just confusing her about something more recent.
Lily wasn't exactly like the other girls of her age. Sure, there were tons of smart girls, tons of pretty girls, but not every girl was smart, pretty and a witch in her sixth year on Christmas holiday trying to complete their Transfiguration homework. If Lily wasn't mad at him, she would have asked James Potter, head of the Transfiguration class, to help her.
There wasn't too much to hate about James Potter, even Lily, who despised him, had to admit that. He had messy, dark hair, that added charm to those soft, brown eyes. He was tall, and had glasses that made him look prestigious. Besides that, which none of the girls at Hogwarts Lily had met, cared about, he was smart, clever and witty. He was always playing pranks, and he was Quiddich captain and star player of the Gryffindor house team. What made Lily hate him so much?
On the train ride to Hogwarts, in their first year, Lily, James and his friends, Sirius and Remus, were in the prefects compartment, watching the sixth year Arthur Weasley play chess with none other than the Slytherin prefect, Lucious Malfoy. Lily had nervously selected Chocolate Frogs and Every-Flavor Beans. James, who had been talking to his friends, knew she was Muggle-born, because she had said so, when she introduced herself. He nudged Sirius and went over to buy some Chocolate Frogs himself. He gave a fake smile and whispered: "You know those frogs? They have cards with pictures of famous wizards and witches in them. And sometimes, when the frog is cursed, the pictures move. Just wanted to warn you." He then handed the smiling witch his money and went over to his friends, silently sniggering.
Lily sat down and began to unwrap the frog, taking a deep breath. She took a little nibble, then looked at the card. At first, it was perfectly normal, it was a wizard named Ptolemy, but then, he sneezed. She threw up the card and the frog in fright, and ran around in circles, unable to get a complete sentence out. She upset the chess match, and James and his friends were sniggering loudly. Lily looked back on the incident with embarrassment.
She's hated him ever since.
Not that he hasn't tried to sidetrack that hatred. Over six years, he's apologized, begged, whined, hexed and did everything he possibly could to get her attention. She ignored him, turned her nose up at him and in every way looked down on him as an idiot boy who lacked manners and poise.
And yet she was writing to him.