Septième Amour

Intro:

Well okay, I said that this chapter will be extremely exciting, but it turns out I had to push the excitement to the third chapter. I wasn't expecting this chapter to almost kill me. So now, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the third chapter for some real action to begin.

All characters here belong to JK Rowling (Except for the ones you don't recognize)!


Chapter Two: Arrival at Hogwarts

Lily Evans was sitting alone the prefect's compartment on the Hogwarts express, waiting for James and the other prefects to arrive. She began to fiddle with the piece of parchment on which she wrote her speech and was just starting to read it out loud when she was interrupted when the compartment door slid open.

A grinning James stepped in. Privately, she hoped that he won't mention her visit to Remus' house. "So... have you missed me?" he asked.

"How dumb can you get?" Lily thought to herself, but said coolly instead, "Excuse me Potter?"

James shook his head and sat down across from her, looking out the window. "Nice day huh?" he asked, "When are the other little prefects gonna come?"

Lily tensed. "Don't think you're better than them Potter, just because you're head boy. Dumbledore must've been drunk when he appointed you." There was silence, and then, thinking she'd overreacted, Lily said, "Besides, you should at least know where your dear old Moony quote unquote is. After all, you ­do go to school with him."

"I didn't come with him, I came with Sirius. You'd think you'd have noticed. After all, it's been seven years of school together." James looked slightly hurt.

"Yes well, I have better things to do than to notice you." Lily looked out the window.

A few moments passed in silence.

"Hello James! Hi Lily!"

Lily turned around and saw Gretle Dereson standing at the doorway, smiling at her.

It wasn't long before the two girls began to chat happily, while James just sat there, staring at them, looking slightly disgruntled.

"Hey James. Don't worry, your friends'll come soon enough." Gretle told him.

"Actually don't you mean ­just one friend? Remus and you are the only two Gryffindor prefects in our year." James paused, glancing at Lily, who was examining the compartment.

"Besides, I don't socialize with low-life, especially Slytherins and Hufflepuffs. And sort of Ravenclaw." James added in a lower voice.

Lily rolled her eyes, wondering why the other prefects weren't here yet. She looked at her watch. Oh right, it was only ten forty.

"Potter, how come you're on the train this early?"

Gretle looked at Lily's watch and nodded. "Yeah. You usually come at ten fifty nine, don't you?"

"Yes, but I wanted to spend some quality time with Evans here. Hint hint."

Gretle pretended to only hear the unoffensive part of the sentence (which is...?).

"Who's Sirius hanging out with since Remus isn't here?" Gretle asked, trying and failing, to sound casual.

"Peter."

"Oh."

Lily, seeing James opening his mouth to say something else, quickly began to talk to Gretle again.

At around ten to eleven, a newly appointed prefect called Jordan (from Hufflepuff) arrived. "Whoa! Sweet compartment!"

Lily raised her eyebrows at his choice of words and smiled, saying, "I know, it is, isn't it? It changes every year."

After a while, more prefects began to arrive; James and Remus wandered off somewhere, while Lily chatted endlessly with her friends.

Soon after, Lily felt it was time for James and her to make a speech, seeing as that was what the other head boys and girls did before them.

Lily pushed her way through the compartment, and asked James if he prepared his speech. He looked slightly alarmed. "What speech?"

Patiently, she explained to him.

"Oh." James said, "Whatever, I'll just improvise."

And catching look of Lily's face, James quickly said, "Hey, you couldn't have expected me to know, could you? I wasn't a prefect before."

Trying very hard not to ask him why he didn't bother to find out what they did on the Hogwarts Express, she turned to walk away.

"Evans? Do you want me to get their attention for you?"

Lily shrugged. "Yeah I guess."

There were butterflies in her stomach. "Lily? Why are you worrying?" she asked herself, "it's James that'll be embarrassed if he doesn't have a speech so why on Earth are you so concerned?"

After getting everyone's attention by coughing twelve times, James announced proudly, "May I have your attention please? As head boy, I now proclaim it is the time that we all listen to the dashing Lily Evans' speech."

Lily felt her face grow hot, and looked around for somewhere to stand. Instead, James told everyone else to take a seat on the connected plush sofa.

She stood in the middle of the room and began to read her speech from her parchment, gaining more and more confidence as she went. She knew she was doing fine; a lot of eye contact, and there was a lot of approving faces in the crowd.

She said the typical things ('high expectations for the prefects', 'non-abusage of badge', 'punctuation at the meetings' etc).

James walked to stand beside Lily, most of the other prefects snickered, but the ones who didn't know him well looked at him expectantly.

He cleared his throat.

"Well, it is certainly most honourable for me to be presented with this badge. But since I have it, I may as well try to use it to the best extent of my ability." No one but Lily caught the sarcasm in his voice.

James smirked at Snape, who looked away. Most of the prefects were amazed at his improvising ability (as most of them knew he was going to be improvising anyway. James never really did work for anything).

"This year, I'm hoping that all of you great prefects," he beamed at Remus, "will use your badge responsibly." He sounded rather sarcastic and bored still, but continued after grinning at Lily's face. No one except for her and maybe Remus though, caught him point, just slightly, to Snape when he said the word "responsibly".

He continued for another minute and a half, and ended with, "I hope this year will be an excellent year, for our dear Dumbledore is depending on us for it to be."

There was some scattered applause as James bowed.

The rest of the Hogwarts trip was uneventful. Prefects strolled in and out of the compartment, some to visit their friends in other compartments, and some on duty.

As the day progressed, the prefects became slightly bored and settled into doing more quiet activities, like reading, napping, just looking out the window, or playing cards (not exploding snap much because Lily kept on glaring at the players for disrupting the silence).

The Hogwarts Express finally began to slow down and eventually stopped. Chatter immediately filled the air and everyone stretched a bit and there was a hustle as they filed slowly out the compartment door.

"Wait!" Lily shouted. Everybody turned to look at her, annoyed.

Reddening a little, Lily said, "Have you forgotten? I need two prefects from each house in years five and six to go outside and monitor the younger students."

"We know!" a girl from Slytherin said loudly, rolling her eyes. "Potter already reminded us while you were out patrolling."

"Yes well I'm not omniscient you know." Lily snapped.

The prefects continued filing out. Soon, only Lily and James were remaining.

Lily was almost at the door when James somehow stepped on her foot. "OW!!!!!!!" Lily exclaimed.

"Sorry Evans!" James said.

"You need to take off a few pounds." Lily said bitterly.

James grinned.

Lily turned to leave, slightly annoyed. After all, James was partially responsible for the Slytherin girl's comment.

"Hey Evans?"

"Yeah?" Lily turned.

"I should've told you I reminded them."

Lily nodded. "Yes well... I guess it wasn't your fault. I'm NOT omniscient you know."

James looked slightly confused.

"Probably doesn't even know what that means." Lily sighed, and smiled a little in spite of herself.

Right before the feast ended, Dumbledore beckoned for Lily and James to go and stand in front of the high table.

During the entirety of the headmaster's speech, Lily and James just stood there, Lily smiling and James looking bored. He began to pick at a piece of wood that stuck out from the table. Lily tried her best not to look at him.

Dumbledore never did make his speeches very long, and Lily was never more grateful. Her legs were beginning to ache, and she felt a little awkward standing there.

After the rest of the students began to file out of the Great Hall, Dumbledore approached them, smiling benignly through his half-moon glasses. Lily wondered why he had picked James. Just to torture her maybe.

"Well, that'll be all you have to do tonight." He said, eyes twinkling. "The other prefects are away taking the new students into the dormitory... Why don't I show you the head prefects' room? They refurnished it this summer."

Lily gaped at him. There was a special room for the head prefects? That was new.

"Come along then Lily, James." Dumbledore said, already beginning to head out of the Hall.

"Sir?" Lily heard James ask. "Sir, what's the point of a head prefects' room?"

"Well of course you two should plan events together without any interruptions. You are, after all, the executives. Shouldn't you be allowed a special treat?"

Lily was in a trance. Plan? ... Together? SPECIAL TREAT?!

"If you and Lily could come here every Friday afternoon perhaps? Just to talk a little. Interaction never hurts." He chuckled.

"Now, the events that ought to be planned by the two of you are the decorations for the Great Hall for Christmas, and Halloween. Teachers will help of course."

Dumbledore looked back at Lily and James and smiled.

"But I mainly want you to worry about the yule ball. I do believe that the yule ball is the one large festivity that is entirely up to the two of you."

They rounded several more corridors and finally arrived at a mahogany door on the third floor. Dumbledore smiled even wider and opened it from the side, his baby blue eyes practically dancing.

The door opened. Lily gasped in awe. James said, "Whoa..." in a very low voice.

The room was beautiful.

"Wow!" Lily managed to say.

It was very much like the great hall. The ceiling was the same, and there were floating candles, casting flickering shadows on the polished wooden floor. In addition to the candles, there were beautiful, reflective, golden bubbles that seemed to float around.

And it was huge!

"It's the size of a standard football field." Lily thought. Her 'wow' had echoed just slightly, even though the "room" was filled with beautiful furniture.

Bean bag chairs (or at least they looked like bean bag chairs) were scattered here and there on the floor. Lily walked slowly towards them and settled on one, studying the fabric.

She tried to swallow a gasp as the "bean bag chair" wiggled a little, as though content someone was sitting on it. The fabric of the chair began to change colour from lavender to a shade of blue. Lily got up and continued to walk around.

There were seven large five-seat couches that seemed to be jiggling a little. Like jelly. Lily resisted the urge to go and pinch it.

She ran her hands along the smooth wood of the large, rectangular table in the middle. It was the deepest brown she'd ever seen, and the table was as big as those used to host meetings in large muggle companies. A large dangling crystal chandelier towered above the table, hanging in mid-air.

There were three large "bookcases" on the left wall behind the table.

One bookcase was filled with many unusual books with old fonts.

The middle "bookcase" contained different objects Lily had never seen before. They were structures of the most wondrous shapes, and they seemed to be slowly changing. Most of them were silver, but a few crystal spirals twisted slowly.

The last one only had two shelves. The top one was filled with many different shapes of mirrors, and there was a sneakoscope on the bottom shelf as well as several pieces of parchment.

"And only the two of us are allowed in here?" James asked hoarsely.

Dumbledore nodded.

"Well, I'd better leave you two then. Halloween decorations need to be done. I suggest you work on it. Good night." Dumbledore walked away, pleased, leaving the two awe-struck prefects lying on the couches.

"Well." Lily finally said. "Hogwarts continues to surprise me still."


A/N

Well, finally I finished it. Don't tell me all that typing was for nothing. Now PLEASE review!