Hate Everything About You

Summary: Lily Evans is convinced that James Potter is bad down to the core. What happens when she realises that this isn't true?

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that J. K. Rowling thought of and wrote about. I own Mandy, Amber, and other random characters in the story.

A/N I changed my mind; the story starts near the end of fifth year (right before OWLs start)

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Chapter One: Collisions

Lily was having a particularly bad morning. She'd slept in, and may well have slept right through Charms if it weren't for Mandy (Yelling, "LILY! POTTER IS ATTEMPTING TO KISS YOU! SLAP HIM BEFORE HE HAS THE CHANCE!" always worked). That Charms class was very important, mind you. It was the Friday before their OWLs, and that was their last review class before the exams. They needed it. Badly. Not that Lily was horrible at Charms – it was her best subject – but she needed some time to practice.

During class, Professor Flitwick had insisted that they practiced summoning chams, even though they were fourth-year level. "You never know what will come up in OWLs, so you have to be ready for anything!" he'd reminded them squeakily, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

So the students all stood at one end of the classroom, summoning pillows, then sending them back to the other side of the room into the boxes in which the pillows were stacked. Lily was working with a great amount of concentration, determined not to screw up on such an easy charm, when a pillow flew out of nowhere to knock down the one she was currently summoning.

"Sorry, Lils!" Alice said from nearly the other end of the long row of students facing the pillow boxes. "Pointed my wand in the wrong direction, is all!" she explained hastily.

Forgetting to use the summoning charm, Lily walked over to the middle of the classroom to retrieve the fallen pillow. Suddenly she felt a bit of a tugging sensation, and she glided across the room – right into James Potter's outstretched arms. He'd summoned her instead of a pillow, evidently.

"What are you doing, Potter? You're supposed to summon pillows, not people." Lily said coldly as she withdrew herself from his arms.

"Well you do know that summoning charms require use of a wand, and not just walking into the middle of the classroom where you're in everyone's way?" he said with a smirk.

"Oh shut it, Potter. I know what you're going to ask, and my answer is no. Not in a million years would I ever-"

"-Turn down a request for you to go out with me?" he grinned. A slightly boyish, devil-trying-to-look-innocent type of grin. With a touch – no, a whole heap – of arrogance added into it.

Lily just rolled her eyes. "You know-" she began, but seemed to think the better of it. Instead, she turned on her heel and went back to her spot to practice her summoning charms, this time with an added vigor. 'This day doesn't seem to be getting any better, does it? First sleeping in, then breakfast, then this,' she thought to herself.

What had happened at breakfast was that someone had enchanted the porridge to start singing whenever anyone lifted some to their mouth. This, of course, had been the cause of surprised outcries and the flipping over of porridge bowls. It had been Lily's duty, along with the other prefects, to clean up the porridge mess and stop it from singing (once it had started, it didn't stop). Remus Lupin, the other fifth year prefect of Gryffindor and one of James Potter's closest friends, had found it all quite funny. For the second time already, Lily had been very close to completely missing Charms. Luckily, Professor Dumbledore had let the students go to their classes in the nick of time, to leave the rest of the mess for himself and Mr. Filch to deal with.

And now Potter was pestering her again. Though (unlike the other two occurrences) this annoyance was part of her daily routine, it was the worst to bear. 'Really, he's got nothing better to do than bug me all day? Oh yes, and there's pranks to consider. And snogging every pretty girl in sight. And being a downright jerk. Why can't Potter ever do anything... useful?' Lily thought, not for the first time. The events of today weren't really that surprising, but with all of the extra stress mounted on the fifth- and seventh-years, even the smallest of things that were out of the ordinary could make a person pop.

At lunch, Lily complained to her friends about exactly that. "...I mean, really! I didn't even try to get back at Potter, I just let it slip! What is this world coming to?"

"Really, Lily, if you want Potter to be less of a jerk, letting it slip may be a bit of a better path," Mandy advised, her warm brown eyes full of sympathy for Lily nonetheless.

"That boy has got some issues, though. It's been nearly a year since Potter's started bothering Lily, and he just won't quit! Just give her a break, Mandy," Alice defended.

"When you say 'that boy's got some issues', you do mean 'that monster's the biggest, most arrogant, cowardly, and stupidly persistant prat to ever walk this earth', right?" Lily said, issuing a bit of a smirk. They'd had countless conversations concerning ways they could stop James from bothering Lily, and they'd all ended with something along the lines of Lily launching a long string of insulting words about Potter.

Before Alice could open her mouth to defend Potter as well, their fellow fifth year, Amber, had come to sit with them.

"Hello, girls! Guess who I've got myself a date with?" Amber said, flushed. Her wavy, light brown hair seemed a bit damp. She'd probably just been outside, where it was raining.

"Amos Diggory? Gilderoy Lockhart?" her friends guessed.

"No, better!" Amber grinned. She looked towards the door of the Great Hall, where someone else who'd evidently just been in the rain had entered.

"No!" Lily said, also looking in that direction, "Sirius Black? You do know that he's just as low as Potter when it comes to dating, if not lower?" Sirius Black was James Potter's best friend, and was considered just as good looking and melt-worthy as Potter was. Sadly, he was just as arrogant... and followed the rule of the One-weekers just as perfectly as well. At least he didn't pester Lily. He only talked to the girls who showed interest.

"Well – yes." Amber confessed, and then said defensively, "But, really, he's quite a nice guy. Very charming. I – I won't be too put out if we break up. I mean, I can always find someone else." This was very true. Many a time had she been asked out by other boys. And nobody had ever turned her down, though she'd turned down many. At least she wasn't quite as serious as the other three girls were, and was more fun-loving, so long-term relationships didn't suit her all that well in the first place.

"Well, we're proud of you nonetheless, Amber," Alice smiled, even though she, too, disliked Black.

"But if that git breaks your heart," Mandy began viciously, tossing her straight brown hair with malice, "he'll have us to answer to." She balled her hand into a fist.

Lily smiled. This was true, of course – even if it was Amber's own fault for falling into the 'Sirius trap'. She laughed and added, "We'll make him wish he'd never been born!"

"Definitely!" Mandy laughed, as she gave Lily a high-five. Mandy had always been the energetic type, and was never afraid to show her emotions strongly and clearly. You really wouldn't want to be in her way when she was angry, though she was generally a very kind-hearted, forgiving person. She wanted the best for people and believed in second chances – a reason why she didn't hate James as openly as Lily did. It seemed that looking out for her friends, as she was sure to be doing during Amber and Sirius' sure-to-be-short relationship, was always Mandy's primary goal.

The girls then spent the rest of lunch hour plotting revenge against Sirius, just in case.

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Potions was the last class of the day, and Lily scurried along the corridors to get to class. She was immersed in the re-reading of her notes, so that she could remember everything for their not-so-surprise review quiz they were having in preparation for their OWLs. Though very shrewd and unforgiving, Professor O'Brien was a fair teacher, and had given them a week's notice for this theory paper they were to write.

In fact, Lily was so immersed in her notes that she hadn't noticed where she was going until she collided into something rather solid, but not cold as the stone walls should be. Not quite as hard, or flat, either. Lily had walked right into James Potter.

Lily, rather flustered, looked up as she heard him say, "Really, Evans, how many times do you plan to collide with me today?"

Her concentration now gone, she stepped back to face him properly. Her flustered, worried look had now turned to a cold, brisk, and thoroughly annoyed expression. She spoke, but with a forced calm in her voice. "The FIRST time I ... collided... with you today was at the cause of your stupid summoning charm, so it was not entirely my fault. And this time, it was completely unintentional, because as you can see on the floor all around me, I was busy reading my notes for the Potions review paper we'll be writing today. Now if you'll excuse me-" She bent down to pick up the rolls of parchment that had been scattered onto the floor.

James crouched down beside her to help.

Lily sighed. "Yet another attempt to win over my heart so that I'll go out with you?" She stood up, her notes piled in her arms.

Rumpling his hair, James stood up as well. He put on a stupid, but flashy, grin. "Well, yes, actually. I hear there's a Hogsmeade weekend once the OWLs are over."

"I don't know #how to make this clear to you. I. Will. Never. Go. Out. With. You." Seeing the smirk on Potter's face, she decided to use another effective means of conveying the message. She spoke slowly, as if to a toddler. "My answer is NO."

The smug smirk on his face only grew more pronounced. "Well why not? Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup... and mostly because of yours truly, the star Chaser. Also, I've got outstanding grades, not to mention looks. And there's my social status to consider as well!"

"Listen. I don't care what you're good at, what you've achieved, or who you hang around with. And I wouldn't care less if you looked uglier than Snape!" Lily began, frustrated. She speculated a bit, and, knowing this was a bit of a lie, spat, "And speaking of Snape, I'd sooner go out with him than with YOU any day!" She pushed James out of her way and proceeded down to the dungeons, her last-minute review forgotten.

James turned to the girls he'd been entertaining earlier and gave a nervous chuckle. "Can you imagine that? She'd rather go snog Snivelly Snape than me!" He tried to make it seem as though this information was trivial; that he didn't care one bit about Lily Evans. The girls gasped and stared down the hall in the direction she'd left, shocked, even though they'd overheard the whole thing. "Well, uh, I – I've got to go... to class, you know. Wouldn't want to – to be, er, late, would I?" said James, trying and failing to sound arrogant and haughty.

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A/N: So that's chap one... is it too long? Well anyways; please review! Hope you liked it. Oh, and I hope I didn't bother you too much with the descriptions of people that I stuck into the girls' conversation before.

((This chapter has been edited... for the good of all readers.))