Atop the Popularity Scale

By Dimantrien

AN – Now there's just one thing that bothers me. Why is it that there are people who have me in their favorite author's list (about three-fourths of them, and even with that it's not a lot ^_-) but have never ever reviewed??? Sure, it's not really a big deal, but it's just weird that there are people I don't know adding me in their list but not giving me any reason why they did…anyway, if anybody who is reading this is one of those mentioned above, I'd really appreciate a review, it's sad…but I am a desperate lunatic…

Chapter 3: Anything can Come True

~~~YoU gEt ThE pOiNt?~~~

Everybody was laughing. They were all staring at her, some whispering, some pointing and jeering. A pain filled her chest and she started to run away, the hallway blurring as her eyes filled with tears. She glimpsed for a few precious seconds the other girl—the one with blonde hair and dressed in trendy clothes—who was also joining in taunting her. She tripped and fell, and the noise of cruel amusement washed over her, drowning her, and she couldn't breathe…

"NO!!!" Lily sat up straight in her bed, her breath coming out in short gasps. She was clutching her bed sheets, her palms sweaty. She reached for the mirror on her bedside table and peered into it. Her face looked horrible, ghost-pale and tear-streaked. Starting to get up, she fell back onto her bed again when the person on the bed next to her stirred and yawned. Lily lay perfectly still.

"Lily?" Chase's voice called. "Are you OK?"

Lily remained silent. There was a pause, and she heard Chase lie back down on her bed and settle back to sleep. Barely a moment later the sound of the even breathing of someone fast asleep reached her ears. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

She had had that dream occasionally for as long as she could remember. It was most clear after a day of being taunted by somebody or other at her Muggle school, or when Petunia made a particularly nasty remark to her at the dinner table. Now, after a few days in Hogwarts where she already felt like she fit in, it was all coming back to her.

Why, though? She didn't have any problems with her classmates anymore, after James Potter had called off his prank attacks on her. For a while, too, James and his friends were acting friendlier towards her, and they were some of the most (if not the most) popular students in the school, even after only several days. Chase Tarlise, another instant-fame student (she was considered by many to be one of the coolest first years in Hogwarts), acted very much like a true friend to Lily. She had never had a true friend before, and she knew that it was Petunia who devoted all her life in making sure that Lily was as miserable as possible.

Lily had always envied people who could climb to the top of the social ladder in a matter of days. She had met a fair few of them, most of which were friends of Petunia's, and she greatly disliked their attitude. She felt, for quite a while, that everyone here was the same, but they weren't. On the contrary, they were the nicest people she had met in a long, long time.

She stood up and started to prepare for school. It would be useless to go back to sleep; besides, it was only an hour more before her usual waking time anyway. She vividly remembered waking up too early and going back to sleep—only to be drenched in water by Chase to force her to wake up when she slept too long after that.

As soon as she was dressed, she grabbed her morning-class books on top of her trunk and went down to breakfast. Only a few people were in the Great Hall, and none of them were Gryffindors. Lily felt a bit awkward, sitting in the large Gryffindor table all alone. Thankfully, no Slytherin was a morning person, and their table was mercifully deserted.

More and more people started to enter the Hall after that; first were a bunch of Ravenclaw fifth year girls who were rather vain (complete with heavy makeup and an attitude to fill the Hall to overflowing). Some Hufflepuffs entered shortly after, comforting a girl whose nose had apparently been turned to one of a large rat's; it was shiny and black and as some of her friends tried to make it back to normal, their spells mixed and instead she sprouted whiskers on her cheeks. Something told Lily that she knew who had transfigured her nose in the first place…

As usual, precise Lily had guessed right. Sirius, James, Remus and a boy she knew by face but had never talked to went into the Hall, laughing. The Hufflepuff group, only a few paces away from them, was glaring.

"Pass the bagels, Lily," Sirius said, still in a highly amused mood as he slid into the seat next to her.

"And a good morning to you too, Sirius," Lily said in return, getting a bagel from the basket and dropping it on Sirius' plate.

"Sorry," said Sirius through a mouthful of bagel. "You sure are early today." He swallowed and grabbed the whole plate of bagels himself, tipping them all onto his plate.

"Sirius, you've got an appetite the size of Jupiter," Remus remarked lightly as he, James and the other boy sat down themselves. "'Morning, Lily."

"Hey, Remus," Lily answered pleasantly.

James pretended to look hurt. "Don't I get a greeting too?" he said in a mock-sensitive voice.

"Fine then, good morning, James," Lily intoned, patting his hand. As soon as she did, it flashed from pink to purple. Remus, Sirius and the still unidentified boy howled with laughter.

"Argh! What the hell did you do that for?!" James yelled furiously, trying to do the countercurse, but to no aavail, since Lily had added a tricky charm on it that would make it wear off only after three hours.

"For payback," she answered sweetly, and, slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she dashed out of the Hall, before James could think up a curse to throw in retaliation.

***** 

"Man, I never thought I'd see the day when the brilliant James Potter would be hoodwinked by a girl," Sirius sniggered as they made their way to the Charms classroom.

James glared at him. After ten bagels, four croissants, fifteen slices of buttered toast, and three glasses of orange juice, he still hadn't forgotten about Lily's trick. Well, it must be hard not to, since James' right hand was still flashing pink and purple in a very noticeable manner. But Sirius didn't have to rub it in, though.

"And a Muggle-born one, at that," Remus added.

"Will you just quit it, you guys?" James mumbled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his robes. They entered the classroom, where everyone else was assembled. His eyes darted at once to Lily. She was easy to spot since she was the only redhead in the room, and at the moment she was talking animatedly to Chase Tarlise, who appeared quite amused.

Sirius sat down on the desk to Lily's left. "Hello, Lil! You seem to have punctured Sunshine Boy's god spirits today, and as your classmate I should warn you that a joke like yours will not get off easy…" There was a devilish smile on his face, as if he was planning the perfect prank to get back at Lily.

"Lil?" Lily said blankly. "Where'd you get that nickname?"

Sirius shrugged. "Why, you have a problem with it?"

"No," Lily said slowly, and Professor Flitwick came in. Sirius Black, call her by a nickname? A friendly nickname of course, and if that was the case then he must most certainly consider her a friend…

Professor Flitwick launched in on an introduction of Spinning Spells. He demonstrated it with a pencil on his desk, and after that he told the students to practice it as he walked around to observe how they performed.

Lily had her Charms book spinning in no time, but some of the other Gryffindors apparently thought that this was very difficult. Chase had her Hogwarts, a History spinning in a vertical position, but it whirled faster and faster until it ricocheted to her left, hitting Celeste's forehead. As Lily, slightly bored, heard Celeste screaming at her twin about very prominent swollen lumps, she looked to her far right, where James had a variety of objects already spinning on his desk. There was a test-tube-like vial with green liquid in it, an inkbottle, a chocolate bar, and a quill.

Sirius Black was trying to convince Flitwick that he had performed a Spinning Spell on his Sneakoscope. Flitwick wasn't looking too happy with him. Of course, it was probable that the only reason that the Sneakoscope was spinning was because Sirius was lying through his teeth. It wasn't hard to figure out.

Their other classmates weren't faring so well either. Peter Pettigrew (Lily now knew the name of the boy who was with Sirius, James and Remus) attempted the charm, but only ending up sending a sort of zap on the book he was practicing on, causing it to fling itself full in his face in reprisal. Martin Kimball borrowed Sylvia's wand to practice on, which was a dumb thing to do, since spinning it would cause sparks to come out of it, hitting everyone within a five-feet range and causing them to rotate while standing on the spot.  This caused quite a few to go out and get some Anti-Dizziness Draughts, barfing all the way to the hospital wing.

Lily would have felt sorry for Professor Flitwick—who looked very harassed by the end of the period—if he hadn't announced in a peevish manner that they had to do a two-foot essay on Spinning Spells and their counter charm. She brightened, however, when Flitwick assured her that she and James would not be doing any homework since they had perfected the charm so easily. He gave them ten House points each before they were dismissed.

Sirius was whining to them as they left the classroom. "It's not fair, just because you both have brains the size of Jupiter doesn't mean that you get off homework—"

"Sirius, if you didn't want homework, then you should've done the charm instead of arguing with Flitwick about the Sneakoscope just so you could get detention," James patiently noted to him.

"Why? Does he like having detention?" Lily asked incredulously.

"'Course he does. I heard that students who have detention sometimes go to the Forbidden Forest," Remus informed.

"But that's really dangerous! There are werewolves and other kinds of monsters in there, I've heard!" Lily said alarmingly.

"Yeah…" James and Sirius had glazed looks on their faces, as if no one could hope for anything more than to be punished with detention and assigned to go and do something perilous inside the Forbidden Forest.

"Aren't you ever scared of being expelled?" Lily continued.

"Nope," three voices answered her firmly.

"Dumbledore wouldn't expel us," James explained a bewildered Lily, "he's really close with some of our parents, mind, so all we'd get is about three weeks' worth of yelling about discipline when we get back home for the holidays." His friends laughed.

"Besides," Sirius jumped in, "the only way that we'd get seriously in trouble is if we sneak out at night or something, but so far we've only just done pranks and stuff, so there's no need to feel threatened yet."

Lily still looked doubtful. How could they stand here and talk so casually about breaking rules? All her life she had been devoted to school rules and regulations, because she knew that that was what was right…and she remembered too vividly her old headmistress' intimidating speech in the beginning of each year that whoever broke even the smallest school rule would pay dearly… Ever since then she had been afraid to do anything wrong, out of fear of the fact that if she did, dreadful things would happen to her…

"Hey Lily! Lil! Earth to Lily Evans…" Sirius waved his hand in front of her face, snapping her out of her thoughts.

"Huh? Oh, I'm sorry, what did you say?" She blinked, realizing that she had totally spaced out while they were talking. She wondered if Sirius was mildly irritated by her lack of attention.

Instead, Sirius just grinned. "Ah, lost in your thoughts, are you? What were you thinking about? Or maybe, just maybe, who?" he asked in an I'm-going-to-get-a-kick-out-of-teasing-you tone.

Lily felt the blood instantly rise in her cheeks. "W-what? I wasn't thinking of anybody!" she said defensively. "I was just wondering why you could be so relaxed about rules—"

The mischievous grin in Sirius' face widened. "Aw, c'mon, Lil, don't tell me you haven't ever broken a rule before, even just once…" Lily shook her head. Sirius' jaw dropped.

"Never?" James prodded. This time he was the one who looked incredulous. "No, really, as in, not a single time in your whole life???"

Lily almost laughed out loud. They were blowing this break-the-rules thing way out of proportion, acting like it was a miracle—no, a tragedy if anyone they knew hadn't ever broken a rule.

"You know what this means, don't you, boys?" James asked his two friends.

"Lily Evans is a straight-laced, rule-devoted goody-two-shoes!!!" Sirius answered energetically. Remus, at his side, chuckled.

"I am not," Lily said hotly, watching Sirius singing the words annoyingly while skipping beside her as they walked.

"Lily is a goody-two-shoes, violators make her nauseous, her clothes are always clean and neat, for her, strict rules are all a treat," Sirius singsonged, making up lyrics as they moved along.

"Shut up, Sirius," Lily shouted at him, for he was singing at the top of his lungs. People were turning to stare. James was sniggering; Remus was trying to suppress a laugh but wasn't doing it very well.

And Sirius didn't shut up. "The most straight-laced girl you'd ever meet, she'd probably lick her teachers' feet, if it was written in the book, all she'd need was one quick look…" (sorry, but I suck at limericks, or any other form of poetry for that matter…^_^;)

Remus had calmed down long enough to say, "Sirius, stop it already, Lily's not like that at all…" The laughter died in James' throat when he saw Lily, whose eyes were starting to get watery, her whole body trembling with embarrassment.

"To defy the rules she wouldn't dare, that's what makes all the people stare, disbelieved, and say, 'that gal's a geek!', she's a living, breathing, rule-worshipping freak!"

Lily burst into tears and fled down the corridor, away from the whispering on-lookers, away from Sirius' admirers who were giggling at his cruel words, away from the people who thought that her feelings were just a toy they could mess with and discard without a second thought. The latter, she was sure, consisted of Hogwarts' entire student body.

This is just a nightmare, she told herself, a nightmare just like all the others, and any minute now I'm going to wake up…

She tripped on a turtle shell that was, queerly, in the middle of the hallway, and she fell to the floor with a dull thud. The pain was real, and there was no denying that she was awake.

But this was a nightmare. Only, apart from the others, this was the waking kind.

***** 

AN – Awwwww…poor Lily *sniff* Well, that's why it's called drama, ain't it? Though I'm not very good at it coz I am not a sap…then again, I am a hypocrite so sometimes I am…er, I think I'm having one of my just-a-little-more-crazy-than-usual moments… Anywayz ciao! I've got exams coming up for the third time this schoolyear…=(  Better go and study *gags at the thought* Well, pity me…bye peoplez!

Oh yeah…and thanks to Jemi Fal and animegirl for reviewing! I just hope they haven't forgotten about this fic already…-_-