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Chapter Eight

The trick wasn't to find Lily. No, that was always the easy part. Lily was invariably in the centre of things—in the centre of class, demonstrating the correct wrist movement for Flitwick's newest charm; in the centre of the seventh year girls, gossiping and smiling with the best of them; in the centre of James and Sirius' latest prank, giving the two a tongue-lashing that James, in his twisted way, almost anticipated as much as he anticipated embarrassing the Slytherins.

No, the trick wasn't to find Lily. The trick was to find Lily on her own. That, Remus decided, as he finally found an opportunity after a day and a half of waiting for the right moment to present itself, was the real challenge.

Lily was tucked away in an almost unknown cranny of the library, and thus made a face when Remus came up to see her. "You found me," she complained.

Remus was taken aback. "I didn't know you were avoiding me."

"Not you." She brushed her hair out of her eyes now that she had stopped leaning over her parchment with a quill in hand. "People in general."

"I'm sorry. I can go away again, if you want." Remus said this more out of an expected politeness than any actual desire to leave. Actually, when he got right down to it, this probably wasn't politeness at all considering he wasn't going to leave even if she asked. Not after all the time he'd spent trying to corner Lily on her own.

Luckily, Lily didn't force his hand just yet. "No, it's fine. I could probably use a break." To prove her point, she stretched her arms above her and rolled her head, cracking a few vertebrae in her neck. Both she and Remus winced slightly at the sound.

"What can I do for you?" Lily asked. "And please tell me it has nothing to do with first years getting lost, first years getting homesick, first years being scared silly by some story a foolish fifth year, a ghost or Sirius has told them, and please, oh please do not tell me that about first years transfiguring the toilet into two-tiered spouting fountain because they lost control when someone frightened them."

Remus blinked. It was the only response he could think of to such a wish. At least the only one that didn't involve calling the speaker a liar or laughing hysterically. "Have you had a bad week?" he asked instead, trying to keep his tone sympathetic and not full of thinly disguised mirth.

Shaking her head and sending out very clear signals that she really didn't want to discus the matter further, Lily said, "They never told me that this was what being Head Girl is about. Really. I mean, how am I expected to keep up with my school work when I'm acting as mother to all the little kids and make up for Potter's lack of reliability as Head Boy."

"Right. James." Remus cleared his throat, wondering the best way to approach the topic that wouldn't land the bottle of ink in his face.

"You're right," Lily sighed, causing Remus to blink again. He didn't think he'd said anything at all, let alone something to be right about. "I'm being unfair. Potter truly has amazed me by pulling his weight around in this whole Head Boy thing. You would almost think he cares about this entire school thing."

"Now, Lily, I don't think you're being fair," Remus tried.

Again, Lily surprised him. "Maybe not. I mean, he's been pretty decent about the whole thing so far this year."

Remus tried to regain control of the conversation. "Then why do you give him such a hard time?" he asked.

"Do you blame me? I mean, leaving aside he's your friend, and all that. Can you really blame me when you get right down to it? After all that he's done?"

"What, exactly, has he done?" asked Remus. "When you get right down to it?"

"What has he done?" Lily made it sound like a rhetorical question, as if the answer ought to be obvious, but Remus stared at her patiently, expecting a real answer. He'd promised Peter as much, after all.

Lily grew quiet for a few minutes, actually considering Remus' question, measuring her answer. When she did give a response, he felt as if it were real, not some flippant words thrown together because she was expected to say something, anything.

"Potter… Potter has spent two years making my life hell. I don't think we've had a real conversation since third year, since he ruins anything that resembles it by asking me out every time he sees me. As if he didn't already know the answer, as if he actually cared that I have to turn him down yet again because really, all he's doing is trying to make me miserable for whatever deluded reason he might have that I haven't reasoned out yet."

She sighed heavily, not particularly wanting to have this conversation. "I don't think it's because I'm Muggleborn. He seems to be honest enough when he says he tries not to look down on us. I mean, he does try, and that's already better than more than half of the school.

"No," Lily concluded. "Whatever reason he has for the continued humiliation, it's personal not anything to do with my blood. I can give him that. But other than that—well, it was annoying and tiresome the first three times he did it. Now it's just hell."

"You don't think he actually wants to go out with you?" Remus asked, hoping she wouldn't notice the strange pitch of his voice. He was doing his best to keep his tone calm and not betray the utter shock he felt. Whatever he thought about the entire mess, the idea that Lily thought James was toying with her for his own, indecipherable reasons never crossed his mind.

"Please," Lily said, as if Remus had asked if she didn't want to buy some swampland in Diagon Alley. "I don't get upset with him for it. Not anymore. Not really. It's his thing, I guess. Certainly better than Horace Ingersoll who hits the girls he likes before running away. Thank God I've never had to put up with something like that. I can deal with James, when you get down to it."

"But you put up with him?" Remus questioned carefully, trying not to wince.

Lily shrugged. "He's really not that bad a bloke, at least not anymore. As long as I ignore the fact that he always is pretending to ask me out, I mean. I have a sister; I'm not entirely without experience of putting up with someone who's determined to bother me for no good reason."

Remus tried to process the information he'd received, wondering why he never had bothered to have this conversation with Lily before. Probably because he, like the rest of the school other than Peter, it seemed, believed just as Lily did, when he got right down to it. James asking Lily out and Lily turning him down was part of the natural order of things. That Lily considered it to be so natural that she didn't believe James to be serious about the matter had never crossed his mind.

"Have you ever considered that he might just be completely awful at impressing a girl?" Remus asked quietly before taking leave of Lily completely.

Lily stared after him, unable to go back to her work after the turmoil his words left her in. She could understand them, individually, but together they didn't make sense. There was no way Potter was really that much of a duffer. It had to be an act. It couldn't possibly real.

It just couldn't.

In the next chapter:

His annoying guffaw of a laugh and Irule's horrified face was what tipped Lily off. Horace Ingersoll ran up to her, then shoved her so hard that she was knocked into the wall. Irule was torn between hexing him and seeing if Lily was injured, and the few seconds of indecision allowed the large boy to run away again.

"Are you hurt?" Irule asked, hooking her hand under Lily's elbow to help her up.

But Lily wasn't concerned. Instead, she shouted, "Damn it! It's always me! Why is it always me?"

Around the corner, Peter looked at Sirius, who was currently Polyjuiced as the sixth year Huffelpuff. "Do you think Ingersoll will ever figure out why no one ever wants to go out with him and why all the girls avoid him?"

"He hasn't yet, has he?" Sirius asked. "I just wish I could figure out a way to get this Potion to wear out faster."