I'm sorry it took me so long to get this chapter out. However, I can truthfully say that it wasn't me! This chapter was finished weeks ago, but my beta's had some real life problems, and it's taken me a while (until now, obviously) to decide to post this chapter without her approval. I apologize for all mistakes in advance. I edited it to the best of my knowledge, but it's amazing how blind knowing a text really well can make you to its mistakes.

Author: Zarah

Pairing: Lily Evans/James Potter

Rating: PG-13

Summary: It's not as if asking Lily out has ever proven successful, right? So James might as well give up. Give up asking her out, that is. And thus begins a tale that really doesn't pretend to be more than a cute little love story. Well, possibly not all that cute. Or little, for that matter. So, a love story. (Lily/James, with emphasis on the Marauder dynamic as well as their interaction with Snape)

Disclaimer: Many of the following characters are borrowed from the marvellous J.K. Rowling, but for entertainment purposes only. No money is being made from this story. All characters shall be returned unscathed, except for Sirius who'll be locked in a tower so as to keep him far away from all things that even remotely resemble a curtain.

Squaring the Circle

II. Friday, September 6th, 1977

Just James' luck that his last year as Gryffindor Quidditch captain had to start out with tryouts for not one or two, but three positions on his team: a chaser, a beater and the keeper. The beater wasn't so hard; he'd had his eye on John Gersh since last winter, and after Sirius' had been banned from playing Quidditch, John had played both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw with them. It was mainly a matter of making it official, now that James had accepted that Sirius wouldn't be allowed to come back.

He still wasn't entirely sure he had.

For the keeper position, he'd have to talk to his chaser, Anna, about Joshua Huth, a fifth year who showed remarkable talent. However, Anna and Joshua had had a relationship some months ago that was rumoured to have ended with bad blood on both sides, and James wasn't about to jeopardize the team harmony.

As for the new chaser… It was a draw between Giuseppe of the unpronounceable Italian surname, and Lily's friend Alice Devon. Both seemed motivated enough, and while Giuseppe was a bit faster, Alice's passes were more accurate.

James searched the stands for a glimpse of red hair. Sure enough, Lily and Jennifer Whitewater were sitting on one of the highest benches, their faces turned skywards to watch Alice approach the left of the three hoops. She dodged Camelia Sent, another tryout for keeper, and scored. Good aim, James thought, nodding to himself. He dropped down to Lily's seat.

"Afternoon, Evans. Jennifer."

"Potter." Lily's expression was that of someone startled out of a pleasant dream. Next to her, Jennifer looked over and gave him a faint smile before concentrating on Alice's performance again.

"No need to sound quite so happy." Undaunted, James sat down by Lily's side, propping his broom against the banister and squinting to watch Alice against the brightness of the sun. "So, are you here to ogle my fine body?"

Lily snorted. "Hardly, Potter."

"Well, it was worth a try." He shrugged with something close to melancholy while Giuseppe sped past Anna and threw the Quaffle to Alice, who triumphed over Camelia once again. "Good, isn't she," James said to no one in particular. It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Lily said. She turned her head. "Does that mean you'll give her the position?"

"I don't know. Giuseppe's quite good, too." With a frown, he watched Giuseppe overtake Alice and fly an elegant curve, then duck out of a bludger's way, robes flaring. It took James a few seconds to realize that Lily was staring at him. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing." She looked back at the sky, and James sighed.

"C'mon, Evans. What?"

"Nothing," she repeated.

He waited.

Lily glanced at him. "Aren't you going to offer me some kind of bargain? 'I'll do it if you go out with me,' or something like that?""

"Do you want me to?" James asked seriously.

"No!" Lily exclaimed. "Just surprised, that's all. A year ago, you'd have."

"Maybe." Shrugging, James looked up at the players once more. He supposed she was right, but April had changed many things, and besides, this was Quidditch. He wasn't about to let his team down. "I honestly don't know about Alice. Guess we'll have to invite both her and Giuseppe to a practice session, and then the team decides."

"How democratic of you." Lily's voice didn't reveal anything. A breeze stirred her hair, blowing single strands into her face, and she pushed them back behind her ears with an impatient gesture. She seemed to be doing that a lot, James thought.

"Evans?" he asked.

The sigh was many things: impatient, weary, cautious. "Yes?"

"How far did you get with your half of the report for McGonagall?"

Her face relaxed, and she turned to face him again. "Mostly done. I wanted to finish it tonight."

James nodded. He was careful not to make his next words sound as if he was asking her out. After all, that never worked. "Same here. How about we go over them together, so we can make sure they're all right? I'm not quite sure what McGonagall expects just yet."

She seemed to be studying his face for what seemed like half an eternity, and he was careful to keep his expression impassive and relaxed. "Yes," Lily said eventually, "all right. We can go over them tonight, when we're both finished."

Sirius had discovered that tapping his quill on the table resulted in a different noise than doing the same with his wand, so now he was trying to beat out a rhythm on the wood that combined the high, sharp thud of the quill and the slightly lower, darker sound of his wand.

James was about three beats from strangling him.

"Sirius," Remus said, without looking up from his essay for Herbology.

Low, low, high. "Yep?"

"Some of us are trying to work."

"Yeah," Peter put in. "Someone tell me why I chose Muggle Studies as part of my N.E.W.T.s."

"Because it's easy. And also," James looked up from his report to glare at Sirius, "ditto. I have to give this to McGonagall tomorrow, and I'm still not quite sure what I'm supposed to write under 'Special Occurrences.'"

"I think Snape may have washed his hair over the summer." Sirius sounded unperturbed. "And you could always resign, Prongs."

Remus snorted from behind Three-Thousand-And-Forty-Five Herbs That Don't Grow In Your Grandmother's Garden. "Just give it up, Sirius. This could be James' one chance to show Lily that there's a decent human being underneath the obnoxious façade. Somewhere far underneath, that is. If she looks really, really hard."

"Thanks, Remus," James said dryly.

"My pleasure. Who better to tell you the uncomfortable truths about yourself than your friends?"

"With friends like these," James started, and Peter finished for him.

"…you won't need enemies anymore."

"Shut up and get to work," Sirius said. He'd actually gotten as far as opening his History of Magic book, and was staring fixedly at a painting of the Giant Wars. It was fascinating in a bloody, slightly revolting way.

"Goblin," Remus' quill was scratching over the parchment, "stop calling the Niffler gold-hungry, will you?"

"I think Remus is having his days before the day," Sirius told the room in general. The moon, three-quarter full, was peering in through the window, and both James and Remus glanced at it while Peter tried to work out the functions of something called a gramophone record. James leaned over the armrest of his chair to read the text below the picture.

Muggles, especially younger ones, love music. A gramophone record, or record for short, is their way of carrying it with them wherever they go. Some of them also use records for a game that requires both speed and skill, and which consists of at least two Muggles throwing the rotating record back and forth over an increasing distance and in ways that makes catching it increasingly difficult.

"Sounds boring," James commented. "I prefer Quidditch any day."

Sirius' head lowered slightly, and James could hear him exhale on a sigh. "Yeah," he said, so quietly that only James and maybe Remus could catch it.

"James?" Remus' voice was dangerously sweet, and that alone made James sit up and draw his parchment nearer. "Do us all a favour and shut up, please. You wouldn't want to confirm Lily's worst suspicions, right?" Remus paused, considering. "Because that's what would happen if your parchment went up in flames."

Hurriedly, James hugged his report close and shook his head. "No, that's fine. I'll be quiet now. Not a word. Not even a sigh. Not so much as…"

Remus narrowed his eyes, and James closed his mouth.

"Thank you," Peter muttered under his breath. James threw him a dirty look, but Peter was too busy frowning at the photographed gramaphone record to notice.

Lily came into the common room at ten past nine, after the Map had shown her in the Library for nearly two hours. Minutes earlier, James had managed to finish his half of the report. He'd also written half of his paper for Charms, and three quarters of his essay for Defence Against the Dark Arts. A productive evening, all things considered.

James waited until she met his eyes, then pointed at a table that was as far away from Sirius, Remus and Peter as possible without coming across as a challenge to Sirius. She nodded and moved toward it while James gathered his things. "Leaving us so soon, Prongs?" Remus asked.

"The fair lady awaits," Peter said.

Sirius stopped shuffling his cards around and glanced at Lily. Grinning, he tilted his head back for a better view of James' face. "Want me to be your second? If she kills you, I promise to plant a nice bush of lilies on your grave."

"Lilies don't grow in bushes," Remus said absently.

"You don't say." Sirius widened his eyes in mock surprise, leaning closer to Remus as if waiting for him to continue. James was quite sure he only wanted to get a look at Remus' cards, and if the way Remus folded them up and hid them against his chest was any indication, Remus agreed.

"Forget it, Sirius. I spent the last two minutes flattering these cards into loving me. They're mine in every sense of the word."

Sirius raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Why is it that everyone likes Remus better?" he asked the ceiling.

Alice, who'd agreed to come to the team practice on Tuesday, was on her way to the girls' dorm. "Probably because his ego is average-sized," she said in passing.

"Hey!" Sirius said. He twisted around, and Remus used the opportunity to study the cards in Sirius' hand. James quickly left to join Lily, dropping his report on the table before choosing the chair opposite her. Fortunately, the position also allowed him to keep an eye on his three friends. At the moment, Sirius seemed to berate Remus for cheating while Peter twisted left and right to get a better look at both their hands, keeping his own safely out of sight. Clever, that.

Lily followed the direction of his gaze. "Do they all cheat? Or just Peter?"

"All." James grinned, partly because Remus had caught Peter looking, partly because for the moment, Sirius was too distracted to embarrass him in front of Lily. "Remus analyses, Peter bluffs, Sirius goes with his instincts, and on top of that, they all cheat. Me, I just cheat."

"Sounds like fun." Lily's voice was dry.

James threw her a challenging smile. "What, think you could do better?"

Her shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. She turned back to the table between them, reaching into her bag for her half of the report. The writing on the parchment was curved and smooth, elegant descenders to the g's and y's making James' work appear sloppy and disjointed in comparison, his letters veering in three directions at once.

Lily unrolled the scroll to reveal the whole length of text. She pointed at an item halfway down the page. "Here, the point 'Prefects.' I wrote down that we haven't had any problems so far." She looked to him for confirmation.

He nodded. "Only a matter of time, though. Actually, I'm surprised Snape has kept quiet so far."

"Definitely." A chuckle that combined humour with sarcasm. "He can't have been any more delighted at Dumbledore's choice than I was. And you've only been a Prefect since, when? May?"

"End of April," James corrected. Since Remus had resigned, to be more precise. "And I'm trying, Evans, all right?"

Lily studied him carefully, then turned back to her report without another comment. James forced himself to loosen his grip on his quill. "I was thinking," Lily said, "about scheduling a Prefects meeting for Friday, after dinner. The meeting on the train was pretty basic. We can work out plans for the rounds and other things until then, and you can look up some curses for your confrontation with Snape."

"Make it Thursday," James said, choosing not to rise to the bait. "The Ravenclaws have the Quidditch pitch booked for Friday, and Frank's on the team."

"Frank?"

"Ravenclaw Prefect, Seventh year."

"Oh, you mean Frank Longbottom? I didn't know he played." A pause. "Okay, then Thursday." She shooed some of the paragraphs on her parchment down, then wrote the new information into the gap. The quiet scratching of her quill was interrupted by a triumphant shout from the table where Sirius, Remus and Peter sat, and James looked over to find Remus smiling victoriously. To James' surprise, Sirius was grinning very slightly, but rearranged his expression into a scowl the moment Remus' eyes turned to look at him.

Sirius was known as one of the worst losers to ever walk the halls of Hogwarts. Huh.

James squinted, but even under close scrutiny, Sirius' face revealed nothing else. Somehow, James felt as if he'd just seen something important, something that maybe, just maybe could help to ease the careful tension that still existed between Remus and Sirius, that reflected on James and Peter, too. Maybe they could…

"Potter." The emphasis Lily put on his name showed that it wasn't the first time she'd called it. Startled, James focused on her.

"Sorry, yeah?"

For a few seconds, silence stretched between them. Then she tilted her head, suddenly focused on him with an intensity that James could feel like a physical weight, sending a flash of shivering excitement down his back. "Something wrong?"

James lowered his gaze down to his hands. Dirt from this morning's Herbology class was still left under his fingernails, and he tried to get it out without looking at Lily. "What should be?" he asked.

"How would I know?" Lily threw his question back at him, and if she'd noticed that he hadn't answered, she didn't show it. Instead, she rolled up her report and reached across the table for James' half, her eyes skimming over the text.

James exhaled carefully, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. "Why do you care?" He hoped he didn't sound ungrateful or challenging because he was really just curious and maybe filled with the stirrings of something that might very well be hope. Timid hope. Hope that regarded itself with a raised eyebrow, as if wondering what it was even doing here.

"I don't," Lily said, still reading over James' report. With a cheerful wave, the hope faded back into obscurity.

"Oh," James said. "All right. Okay."

She glanced up with something that could pass as a smile. "Actually, you looked sort of morose. I guess the rare sight threw me. Also, while Snape washing his hair might be a special occurrence," the smile was more pronounced now, "I don't think it's quite what McGonagall meant."

"Sirius suggested it." James shrugged. "Sounded noteworthy to me."

"How come you hate him so much?"

"Sirius?" he asked, surprised.

Lily gave him a look that was an insult to his intelligence. "Snape."

"Oh, I don't know," James said, making a show of faking thoughtfulness. "Maybe because he seems to constantly follow us around, trying to find ways to get us expelled? Or because he's so proud of being a Slytherin he probably congratulates himself daily on being sorted into it? Or," he raised a finger, as if the idea had just occurred to him, "maybe it's because he's a slimy git who's nose-deep into dark magic?"

"All right, all right." Lily raised both hands. "I get it. I just don't get why it's the four of you, and Snape. Well, Black and you, and Snape, mostly. If Black walked out on his family, shouldn't it be Regulus or Bellatrix Black? Or Narcissa Cameron, I thought she was a cousin of Black's or something like that. And it's not as if either of them is any better than Snape."

James had to admit that she did have a point. It was just that Snape was so… so Snape. Regulus was filled with hate he'd inherited from his and Sirius' parents, despicable for his beliefs and the actions that came with them. Bellatrix was cruel and enjoyed having power over those around her. With Snape, it was some of that, and more, and less.

"Aren't there some people who just, you know…" James trailed off in search of a verbalisation that would fit. "People who just rub you in the wrong way? Everything they do, everything they say, everything they are, it's like…" Another pause while Lily watched him expectantly. "Like a constant itch that you just feel you have to scratch?"

"An itch?" Lily gave him an edged smile. "Oh yes, I know people like that."

"Thanks," James muttered.

She laughed, then turned serious once more. "Well, anyway. You'll have to learn to deal with him, Potter. He is a Slytherin Prefect, and I wouldn't count on him to resign in protest because they made you Head Boy."

"Why are you telling me? He starts it at least half the time, Evans." And since April, Snape had been even more determined in his efforts to get James in trouble; provoking him, dropping dark hints about Remus, accusing Sirius of attempted murder.

"As unbelievable as it sounds," Lily rolled James' report up and pushed it across the table, "I'm actually hoping for you to show that you can act your age, if you have to. Somehow, I doubt Snape would react well if I asked him."

James grinned, stretching luxuriously. His chair creaked with the movement. "So you think I'm mature enough to keep the peace, do you?"

"You broke it, you fix it," Lily returned evenly. "And besides, the keyword is 'hope.'"

"Who says that I started it?" James protested. "Why not Snape? Or Sirius?"

Lily tapped her fingers on the table: index, middle, ring. "Because you're you, Potter. And because Snape may be willing to carry on a feud, but neither confident nor arrogant enough to start it himself. Black wouldn't have picked Snape, but one of his relatives, and Remus and Peter aren't even a possibility."

"Whatever," James said. He found himself glaring at her hand and quickly averted his eyes. It didn't matter anyway.

It didn't.

Much gratitude to those who reviewed the first chapter: BlueRazberry, Jewels (thanks for the hint!), my fellow LJ-er Lierian, Ruinsul (what kind of summary would you have preferred? because I freely admit to not being all that good at writing them.), fictionalcandie, Millia, Diabla666 and JadeGreen14. I'd add more personal notes, but it would clutter up the page and distract from the story, so I'll leave it at a heartfelt "thank you very much!"