Chapter Five
Divination and Fantasies
This is stupid Lily was thinking as she listened to Professor Grimm's long-winded lecture on prophecies. Why did I take this stupid class? No one takes it seriously anyway. She could hear the hushed whispers of the people in the back who were obviously not listening to Grimm's lecture.
She turned to Will and rolled her eyes at him. He managed a small smile and went back to doodling on his parchment. Mike was sleeping on a cushion he had propped up on the table, with his hair all over the place. Since her friends were obviously not providing her with distractions she turned her attention to the rest of the class. The usual cliques were grouped in the back, except for the Potter twins who had taken up a table of their own and were whispering furiously at each other. Lily watched them with interest for a moment. Then turned back to her parchment, not wanting to be caught staring at either of them.
Mike jerked awake suddenly as Grimm approached their table, still going on about her psycho prophecy babble. "...the medium through which we will be exploring prophecies today are incense burners. Can anyone tell me how an incense burner can be used to make a prophesy?" She looked around at the restless class. She suddenly seemed to notice the Potter's lack of attention. "Mr. Potter, if you'd be so kind, I'd like you to move up here where I can be sure that you will not interrupt my class." James glared at her and gathered his belongings, shooting a look at his sister as if to say that their conversation was not done.
Lily smirked until the realization hit her that "up here" meant her table. She groaned inwardly at the thought of tolerating Potter for a whole class period. He sat down opposite her, avoiding her eyes. Grimm continued, "Well?... Did anyone do last night's reading?" she sighed, "Very well... The art of burning incense involves the interpretation of smoke and achieving the unique trance-like quality that will allow you to fully..." Lily began to space out again. She really didn't care about this. She turned her attention back to Potter who, she realized, was staring at her too. She glowered at him and he turned his head away, almost embarrassed. Mike nudged her and grinned sleepily. Nothing ever got by him. Will, meanwhile was still entranced by his drawing.
At this point Grimm had begun distributing incense to each table. Lily immediately began depositing the incense herbs into the miniature pan and lit a fire under it. The smoke began to appear. For a moment she just stared at it then abandoned the idea of even trying and sat back on her cushion. This was just too stupid. The rest of her group members weren't even paying attention.
Mike was examining the small satchel of herbs, "Do you think we could smoke this crap?" Lily who was accustomed to these types of stupid questions didn't even bat an eyelash.
James looked at him oddly, "Yeah and die," he replied, rolling his eyes at Mike. He turned back to the smoke, looking as though he was actually studying the smoke patterns.
"You're actually taking this shit seriously?" Lily asked bluntly.
"Why not Evans? It's a class isn't it, I thought you loved class?" he said, mocking her, as he continued to record the smoke patterns.
"Because it's a load of rubbish is why. You actually think staring at that stupid smoke is going to tell you whether you'll be Minister of Magic or when you'll die or whatever? It won't! None of this is real, it's just people bull shitting their way around lucky guesses."
"Come on Lily, let him do the stupid assignment, it's not that big of a deal," Mike said, still examining the contents of the satchel, not sounding as if he cared at all.
"Hey Evans, just because you don't understand something–"
"Understand something! I don't need to under–"
"...Doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate, or at least sometimes anyway. Do you think Dumbledore would be okay with us learning about something so–"
"Well Dumbledore's okay with a lot of things Potter, that's no justification–"
"It doesn't matter, don't dismiss something just because it makes no sense to you!" Lily almost hexed him but controlled herself. He always had this effect on her– annoying her to bits. He always had to play the devil's advocate, it wasn't like he ever took any other class seriously and yet he had the nerve to preach to her about taking divination seriously!
She sat sulking for a moment, until she felt something poke her knee. She looked down and saw that Will had slipped her a Sugar Quill under the table and was smiling at her serenely. She immediately smiled back. Will always managed to find a way to cheer her up.
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"There you go, all done!" Lily put down the scissors and gave Will a mirror so that he could survey the work she'd done on his hair.
"So you won't complain that my hair's getting too long now?" he asked her.
"Oh come on, I only trimmed it! And it wasn't the length, it was how messy it was getting, and you know how I detest boys with messy hair." He gave her a significant look.
"Then you better get out of here or else you'll run into him!"
"Will! What would make you think I was talking about a specific person?" she laughed. He shrugged, waved briefly, and walked into the bathroom to wash his newly trimmed hair. She almost left, after all she was in the boy's dormitory (a place she wasn't really allowed in) but decided against leaving and instead spread herself out across Will's bed. She picked up the book on his night stand: Trials of a Crazy Goblin and began reading. She giggled, Will had such weird taste in books.
Suddenly the dormitory door flew open. Lily almost groaned out loud when she realized that it was the person she'd least wanted to see at the moment. None other than Potter himself. Even more surprising, he was alone. He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of her and stuffed something into his pocket as though he did not want her to see it. She just gazed nonchalantly at him, she'd decided that she wasn't going to let him get to her, otherwise he would win. At what, she didn't know, but what she did know was that seeing her get frustrated was a source of satisfaction for him.
"What're you doing in here? Get out," he said, walking towards her. To that, she simply reclined even further into Will's bed, smirking at him. He stopped and stared at her for a moment. She noticed his ears turned slightly pink, and all of a sudden he turned around and walked towards, what she assumed to be, his own bed. He turned back around as if to say something else to her then seemed to decide against it.
She realized how awkward the situation was. She had positioned herself on the bed in quite a provocative position and though she wasn't used to receiving attention from boys in any way that had to do with her body, she was beginning to understand this power girls had over boys. Even a stubborn ass like Potter couldn't form a coherent sentence all because she was taking advantage of the fact that she was a girl and lying on a bed in front of him. All of a sudden this new power she'd discovered didn't seem quite as good anymore as she realized that she was exploiting herself for it. She sat up in a hurry, feeling disgusted with herself.
Only then did Potter seem able to say something, and it wasn't really what she had expected, "Would you like a Chocolate Frog?" he said in a hurry, his voice cracked on the last syllable and he blushed a little.
"If it's not poisoned, then sure," she said trying to sound as though she hadn't noticed all the awkwardness before. Potter rushed towards a chest of drawers near his bed. He opened a drawer and a large amount of Chocolate Frogs came spilling out. "What the hell do you need all that chocolate for?" she asked not really expecting the nervous reaction she got.
"Nothing!" He said a little too hurriedly. She narrowed her eyes, she hadn't really been expecting an answer, assuming that teenage boys ate a lot anyway, but his reaction suggested something different.
"Are you sure they're not poisoned?"
"Yes, definitely. In fact, I'll have one too just to prove it to you!" He threw her one and took one himself. They each opened their chocolate and ate in silence until Lily commented that she'd gotten Dumbledore on her wizarding card.
"Yeah? Me too. He's my favorite, you know. I have about a hundred and twenty Dumbledores," he said as though looking for something to fill the silences with.
"That's a lot of chocolate," Lily commented, almost slapping herself after hearing how lame and obvious it sounded. She didn't know why this situation was so awkward. Usually they would yell at each other and get on with their lives, but she supposed this had to do with the fact that she'd introduced a whole different aspect to their relationship (quite unintentionally) relating to the fact that she was actually a girl.
Lily heard the shower go off in the bathroom and realized that Will would be out in a second.
"Thanks for the Chocolate Frog Potter, but I really have to go now." He seemed to snap out of the stupor he'd been in.
"Oh, okay. I- I guess I'll see you later then?"
"Yeah, I guess." And with that she left the boy's dormitory. James watched as she crossed the room and disappeared through the door. He felt his stomach do a double flip and couldn't help but look back towards Will's bed and remember how she'd looked lying there. He shook the image out of his mind, feeling guilty. Though he thought she was very pretty, she wasn't like the other girls and he felt weird thinking of her as just a girl and not Lily, like he did with some girls. This was the first time he'd seen Lily act blatantly sexual and though it seemed like she hadn't meant it, it certainly made him look at her differently.
The door slammed open, shaking James out of his thoughts, and for a moment James was hopeful that Lily had returned, but it turned out to be Sirius. James sighed, whether in relief or disappointment, he wasn't sure.
"Was Lily Evans in here?" he asked immediately. James simply nodded. Sirius smiled wickedly. " I saw her coming down the steps.It was just the two of you in here wasn't it?" He raised his eyebrows at James suggestively.
James attempted to change the subject before Sirius got any more ideas. "She saw all the chocolate Sirius!"
"So what?"
"So, we need it for the patronuses we're producing. And if she figures that out, it'll only be a matter of time before she figures out why we would need to do patronuses, right?" James was extending this a lot further than he needed to, but he wanted to avoid Sirius' implications at all costs, for some reason they made him very uncomfortable.
"James, calm down! Evans is smart but she's not a mind reader. She can't infer all that from the fact that we have a lot of chocolate. We're teenage boys! We eat a lot, so what?"
"Fine, fine Sirius." James agreed hurriedly, sorry that he'd brought it up.
Lily remained on James' mind for the rest of the day, interrupting his worries about his sister, the transformations, and everything else. As he collapsed into bed that night, he couldn't help but call up the image of her on the bed, that had been played through his mind nearly a hundred times that day. As he began to push it away he stopped himself and decided that he'd worry about feeling guilty tomorrow but for now he would allow his mind to relive it as many times as it wanted.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Please don't forget to review! I'd really appreciate your comments.