Marauding Lily
Author's Note: The summary is a bit convoluted, but stick around and I'm sure the idea will be clearer.
To alleviate confusion: This is the final version (content wise) for the first uploaded "chapter" of Marauding Lily. I promise I won't be making any more changes. For those who have read the previously uploaded chapters, you just know something extra about the plot; it won't ruin anything than what's predictable anyhow.
Prologue
At the age where most boys believed girls were the vilest things on earth, James found his first love of his life. During a family vacation in London, his mother forced the men of the family to sit through a showing of The Nutcracker. James secretly felt sorry for his father since he found his entertainment by watching a redheaded ballet dancer that was part of the massive entourage of the nutcracker prince.
So began his obsession for redheads.
On September First of 1971, James attached a new list of feelings to girls with auburn hair – the desire to annoy – because a girl with that colored hair knocked him to the ground when he had been busy drinking in the sight of a large red train by the name of Hogwarts Express and relishing the fact that he was grown up and going to Hogwarts. James conveniently brushed off the fact that he was reminiscing right by the platform entryway from the muggle world. When the girl apologized and introduced herself as Lily Evans, muggleborn witch from Surrey, he made himself remember to somehow make Lily feel as uncomfortable him when his daydreaming was interrupted so rudely.
And Miss Evans became a target.
During his second year at Hogwarts, the quidditch craze entertained the school for the first two weeks making the transition from summer to continual classes bearable. After their last class and before dinner, all interested Gryffindors gathered at the quidditch pitch either to tryout for the house team or to watch the flying.
Just like most of the Gryffindor house, Lily Evans was watching, judging, discussing. He smirked when she oohed and awed at his flying techniques and various tricks to distract the keeper in order to score. For some reason, James chose not to give the captain an answer right away when he knew he was pretty much on the team after the day of tryouts. He decided to think on joining the team. After all, quidditch was time consuming and addictive. It was hard enough trying to finish his summer homework while playing for the summer youth team; how was he going to handle the distraction of quidditch and the growing prankster friendship developing in his dorm?
His answers came in the form of pillows. When his friends realized James was waffling about playing for Gryffindor, they endlessly pelted pillows at him until he would be a star quidditch player and they could live vicariously through his quidditch-goodness.
During the first meal after the results were announced, James was surprised to find Lily Evans having a conversation with him during breakfast.
"You will play for Gryffindor, won't you?" she asked without a proper "good morning".
"I am still deciding," James forced out a polite answer that didn't reveal his true position for fear of being attacked. (It wasn't everyday a girl places herself next to him and starts making demands.) He almost wondered aloud why a muggleborn witch would be so obsessed with quidditch after viewing the sport for one season. At least her enthusiasm was a compliment to the game.
Lily blinked at him and continued to interrupt his breakfast, "If you weren't sure, why did you try out for the team in the first place?"
The dialogue repeated during every meal and every class – since they still had all their classes together. Just as James was about to refuse just to spite her, he found the girl pirouetting across the lawn by the lake. At the next meal, he went up to her instead of waiting for her to annoy him.
"Lily," he started with a smile. Her circle of friends looked at each other before releasing their redheaded friend's attention. "Since you are a staunch supporter of the Gryffindor quidditch team, I figure you would be interested in my reply." Lily nodded. "I will join on one condition: you'll give me a kiss."
Lily Evans ignored him from then on except occasional comments about his immaturity.
For the next three years, James prospered with his fellow Marauders and garnered fame as the infamous group of pranksters who brightened dreary school days with their usual serpentine targets along with his performances on the quidditch pitch. While pranks were reserved for Slytherins only, Lily Evans became the receiving end of James Taunts. Stories of her selling her first kiss to James to get him on a team he was already on flooded the gossip channels. But for the record, Lily only kissed James on the cheek but as rumors went – all the gossiping altered a simple friendly kiss to an intimate-for-their-age kiss on the mouth.
With the random comments from peers about the particular event in her second year and James's insolent invitations for Hogsmeade that began in their third year, Lily Evans managed to vanish off the radar. Gryffindor girls rarely knew where she was, and James picked fifth year to take notice of her beyond the title of "redhead to annoy."
Then James fancied himself in love, or at least infatuated with Miss Evans.
Ironically, it was because of her unnatural maturity, her precocious nature that drew out his affectionate feelings for her. The fact that Lily could vanish from Hogwarts gossip even with his persistent dating taunts gave her an aura of sophistication that no other girl had. Despite the fact that the idea of "girls are evil" was thrown out the door as hormones drove adolescents into the arena of dating, boys still considered girls to be strangely different, alien, to their point of view. The alien nature wasn't in Lily. She was just mysterious – smart but not a prefect, friends with various students of all houses and compatible with the most childish or the stuffiest, and last but not least, caring and protective yet not present at the same time.
All in all, Lily was Hogwarts royalty. She was neither perfect nor popular, but no one had anything bad to say about her except the fact that she talked a lot when comfortable and begrudging Slytherins called her a mudblood.
She was the perfect human being – compassionate, open-minded, yet faulty with imperfections (because she did talk a lot when she was comfortable). And James Potter wanted to date her because of that. She was the refreshing girl with whom he could discuss issues with. While he was a hormonal teenager, he knew someone like Lily would be a better life partner than a girl he would snog in a broom closet with. She was the person to mold into whatever role needed of her and still maintain her sense of self. She could most definitely be the anchor to him like his mother was to his father.
But it was too late.
The mature and sophisticated Lily Evans would never cast a second look at the boy who had been asking her to Hogsmeade – whether as a taunt or with sincerity – even if he was elected Head Boy. She was too engrossed the type that was serious and ambitious and semi-fun to notice the school prankster.
Postscript: So it ends here for now. Due to my current obsession for Eats, Shoots and Leaves, it is highly probably that I'll upload a newer version with better – more correct – punctuation.: So it ends here for now. Due to my current obsession for , it is highly probably that I'll upload a newer version with better – more correct – punctuation.
Thanks much for being patient with me regarding the story and my snail-paced writing.
Sincerely,
omniFAIRyous
