Disclaimer: I still own nothing. Does it make you happy to remind me?
Awesome. :::looks at all the pretty reviews:::: Ooh, shiny. Oh, wait, right, um, I supposed to be posting a chapter, aren't I? Well, here it is! A few notes: I'll try to keep this not very cliché as I said. In the books James wears glasses, not Lily, but for the purpose of this fic I am ignoring that.
Replies:
Annieboo92—You're in luck! I'm a little ahead of myself on this story so chapters are longer than for most of my stories. Glad you like it.
Marina—Thanks so much.
Feline-go-meow—Thanks! Great penname. I love cats. I devote my life to my 3. Have you ever heard the saying, "Thousands of years ago, cats were treated as gods. They have never forgotten this and still demand the same respect." One of my favorite sayings.
Amandinka—Thanks for reviewing.
Starborn—hehe I love Lily and James fics. I'm an LJ addict. I heard there's a twelve step program out there to separate us from our need to read/write Lily and James stories, but if there is, I'm staying away from it.
LOL—Thanks. Hope this was soon enough
WalkingCensure—Thanks.
HYPERdingdong39—Thanks so much, Nari!
Mrs.shigwa.cobain—Thanks. I'm trying to keep this from being the cliché Lily is afraid of heights and James has to go on a date fic. As for the "experiences" thing, I can't make any promises. Some forms of torture are too good to pass up. But if I include that, it won't be too elaborate.
Siriusforeva—Thanks!
Wbrliotcekr's—Thanks. Truth is, I don't think I'd trust him either! Let's just hope Lily's trust isn't misplaced.
Crunchie—Yeah, in the first book it says that James wore the glasses. But for the purpose of this story I decided to ignore that and make Lily where glasses instead. As for me not writing, don't worry. I go crazy if I don't write.
DOJ—Thanks. Yay, you're my first review for this story!
ON WITH THE STORY!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Chapter 2: Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
James woke up and looked around groggily. He couldn't see well at all but he knew something was not right. He looked down at a shirt he didn't recognize. The he noticed that the shirt looked like it bulged in places that it never had before. Maybe the shirt was just scrunched up or something. He poked. Ow! There was definitely something there. He sniffed the air. It smelled like apples. And strawberries.
Then he remembered. This wasn't his room. It was Lily's. Heavens above, he was in the girls' dormitory! It suddenly occurred to him why he couldn't see. Lily always wore her glasses. Apparently she was blind as a bat without them. He fumbled for them on the nightstand and put them on. The world clicked into focus. Aha! Now he could see properly. He realized that he was the first one awake. It wasn't unusual in his dorm; he had to fight his roommates for the bathroom. Sirius spent as long on his hair as he did and the others all tried to get in before James and Sirius so they might have a shot at not being late for class or missing breakfast.
He got up and looked in the mirror for the first time since the change. His hair was greasy (not Snape-ishly greasy though) and he had dandruff! He was appalled. How dare she? All this beautiful wavy red hair and she let it get in this kind of condition. It was a disgrace, that's what it was. An utter disgrace.
There was only one thing to do about it. He picked robes, socks, underwear, and most importantly a hairbrush out of Lily's trunk and went to the bathroom locking the door behind him. He opened the shower door to see just what he had to work with. There was a bottle of conditioner, several bottles of shampoo, some razors, a bar of soap, and a bottle of watermelon scented body-wash.
Pitiful. Just pitiful. He and Sirius alone usually had a dozen bottles of hair-care products between them at any given time. The other boys managed along by splitting a single bottle of shampoo.
James was vain; he'd be the first admit to it. If he weren't vain he'd never look as good as he always did. So, when he'd looked in the mirror before, he knew just what he needed to do and how much work he had before him.
He got started. He sat on the floor (still in the shorts and large t-shirt) and started shaving his legs. He was a bit miffed that the girls didn't have any shaving cream and he had to lather up some of the body-wash instead. He brushed all the knots out of his long red hair. It was even prettier this way but he couldn't stand the sight of those flakes! He would not leave the dormitory with flakes; he just wouldn't do it and that was that. Hardly aware of what he was doing, he pulled off the Beatles shirt, the boxer-like shorts, and the underwear and stepped into the steaming water of the shower. His eyes were half closed as he relaxed, lathering the shampoo into his scalp and scrubbing it thoroughly. He vowed silently that no grease or dandruff would remain when he was through. He rinsed, repeated, and then brought on the conditioner. He knew that when he was through with it, Lily's hair might just look as good as he usually did. He looked around for a washcloth and couldn't find one. However, there were several of those puffy loofa-things. He decided to use one of those and scrubbed his face and back thoroughly with the aid of the loofa and the watermelon body-wash. After that, well, he shut his eyes the rest of the way and finished. He rinsed himself off, turned off the shower, and grabbed a towel. It suddenly occurred to him that the towel was supposed to go around more than just his waist. He tried to work out how this was supposed to go. He wrapped it around him under his armpits. He used an anti-wrinkle charm on Lily's robes and put them on. He tried not to think about what he was doing as put on the underwear. He put on the socks and sat down to start brushing his hair. It took a while longer than it usually did, but when it was done, James thought he looked like pretty hot stuff.
James was proud of himself. For having the body of the girl he was crazy about completely at his disposal, he was still being a complete gentleman. He'd done nothing wrong so far and in fact he was making her look better than she usually did. He looked in the cabinets of the bathroom (he didn't know that the only thing more scary than looking through a girl's purse was looking through her bathroom cabinets). He was looking for something to help with his long hair. He opened one of the bottom cabinets. He opened it and saw little plastic wrapped pink things. What were those for? he wondered. He decided he didn't want to know what any of it was and that whatever they were they weren't going to help with his hair.
He did however find a drawer with makeup and another one with hair things. He changed his mind and decided to leave his hair down. Lily never wore her hair down and it looked so nice that way, he realized now. He had fun with the makeup. He put on light blue eye-shadow, some mascara, pulled out an eyelash when he tried to curl his eyelashes, he managed to put on just the right amount of blush, and picked out a suitable lipstick. He thought he looked pretty good. In fact, he did look pretty good. He brushed his hair out one more time, and then preformed the anti-wrinkle (again) and lint removal spells his mother taught him on the robes (to pick up any hair that had come out when he brushed it). The hair came together into a ball and deposited itself in the wastebasket. He picked up his (Lily's) pajamas and brought them back to the room.
His new roommates were now awake. Some of them were already dressed in their robes; some of them were still in their pajamas (none of them were undressed). The ones in pajamas were starting to irately tell him off for taking so long in the shower.
Then Alice shrieked, "Lily!"
James blinked, "What?"
"You look amazing. Is there some plot or some guy you aren't telling me about?"
"A plot. I'm trying to drive somebody crazy." James was suddenly very thankful for his quick "story" skills.
"Who?"
"Just some irritating boys."
"I think it's going to work. Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"I wanted it to be a surprise. I'm going to go downstairs and wait for him. You should get dressed."
"Okay, but whatever happens I want to hear the details."
"Okay." Great, girl talk, just what I need, he thought sarcastically.
Alice moved off into the bathroom and James left. He went down into the common room and grabbed a seat and a book to sit down and wait for Lily. Shoot, he thought. I forgot to tell Lily that Sirius sleeps without a shirt on.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lily woke up, surprised to find the room come into vision crystal clear the moment she opened her eyes. She was even more surprised that she didn't recognize the room. She stifled a scream in her pillow and shut her eyes. When she opened them again this would all be a dream and she would be in her room. But she knew that wasn't the case. With her eyes closed she could smell the pillow pressed tightly to her face and it smelled like, well it smelled like Potter to be honest.
"Prongs, are you okay?" asked a concerned voice.
Oh no, it's Remus. How'd he get in here? Then she remembered. In here was Remus's dorm. It was Sirius's dorm. It was James's dorm. It was Peter and Frank's dorm. "Just fine," she said weakly, realizing he was talking to her.
"You might want to wake up if you want there to be any shower water left. Everybody but you and me have already been in the water, Prongs," Sirius said.
Lily felt a weight settle on her bed, or rather, on James's bed. She took the pillow off her face and opened her eyes slowly. Remus was standing there doing up the last buttons on his robes, his hair wet. Sirius was sitting on the bed, half-naked. He had on shorts or boxers on and no shirt. She tried not to look at him. It wasn't as though she'd never seen a guy in swim trunks before, this was same thing. Wasn't it?
"Yeah. You can go ahead, Bl—Sirius. I think I'll skip my shower this morning. My hair's still clean." The truth was she was scared to death of getting in that shower. James's body…she tried to block the mental images and thoughts from her mind.
"Are you feeling alright, James? No fever?" Remus put a hand on Lily's forehead.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"
"It's just, you never go a day without washing your hair. You're as obsessed with your hair as Padfoot is with his."
"Yeah, well, I'm tired." She supposed Padfoot must be Sirius. Where were these nicknames coming from anyway? "Pad foot" implied a certain air of quietness. Sirius was never quiet. And "Prongs" made her think about a fork. Maybe it was some sort of wisecrack about James's hair?
"Did you go out last night anywhere without us?"
"No. Where would I go?"
"Anywhere. The kitchens. The library. Hogsmeade. Wherever you felt like."
"No, I didn't go anywhere. Just walked around the common room for a while. I couldn't sleep." Hogsmeade? James would have a lot of explaining to do! Wait a second, when did I start thinking of him as James? "Where's everybody else?"
"Pete and Frank are downstairs. I think they went to the Great Hall," Sirius said as he got up and headed for the bathroom. "You two go down to breakfast, I'll get there soon."
"Oh, the next decade is considered soon now?" asked Remus.
Sirius slammed the door.
Remus snorted. "You know that's how long it'll take him to do his hair."
Lily sat up. "I guess I'd better get dressed." At least it wouldn't be as bad as showering. She stood up and awkwardly took off her shirt. She felt a little odd for a moment. She was standing there shirtless in front of a guy. She chided herself and reminded herself that she was a guy at the moment. She found some robes that didn't look very wrinkled and put them on. When her robes were on she pulled off the pajama bottoms James had been wearing. She thought to herself, Ha! I don't have to wear a bra today. She started to cheer. She hated those things. As a girl, not wearing one was even worse than wearing one, but for this week she didn't have to. Being James would be a piece of cake.
She picked up a brush and started to comb her hair. She was done in about five minutes, figuring she probably had most of the knots out.
"I'm ready," she said brightly.
"What's with you today, James? You aren't yourself. Come on, I'm not Siir. I won't make fun of you, what is it?"
"Nothing," she said quickly. She heard a screeching sound from the bathroom and winced. "What's that racket?"
Remus was wincing too. "Just Sirius singing. Like he always does. Tell me what's wrong, James. Was Lily bothering you?"
So to her face it was always Evans or Four-Eyes but behind her back she was Lily? Interesting. "No."
"Are you sure? You've seemed kind of preoccupied since you missed last week's prefect meeting."
"Really? I don't think I have been."
"Maybe you're been feeling guilty about letting her down?"
"Since when have I ever felt guilt?"
"Did you know that she missed a meeting with McGonagall because you weren't there? James, this time she was trusting you and counting on you to come through for her and you didn't. She needed to be at that meeting with McGonagall. It wasn't just a meeting. She was supposed to get help and do some extra credit. She failed her Transfiguration quiz the next day, if you didn't know."
"How do you know that?" she asked. She thought nobody knew…Alice had tried her best, but though Alice understood it, she had trouble relating the concepts to Lily.
"That's not important. What's important is that you let her down, James. I thought you said you cared."
"I—"
"Don't answer. Just try to remember that next time, would you?" They walked down the stairs and into the common room.
Lily saw James sitting on the other side of the room. "I'll catch up to you in a bit, okay, Remus?"
He noticed where she was looking. "Yeah, okay, James. Just don't mess things up this time." He left.
Lily walked over to where James was sitting. Neither of them looked pleased. Both whispered simultaneously, "What do you think you're doing? Me? It's you!"
James jumped up and Lily noticed something. Her face reddened considerably with what was probably anger. She pulled him to her and whispered in his ear, "Potter, are you wearing a bra?"
"What? That tickles. You mean that thing with the—"
"Yes!" she whispered violently.
"No. Frankly, I wasn't sure what it was for." He frowned.
"You weren't sure what it was for?" she said weakly sitting in his vacated chair. "Go upstairs and put it on. Then come back down here so I can yell at you."
"Why?"
She whispered in his ear, face redder than ever, "Because your breasts, my breasts, are moving all over the place and I don't want guys staring at what they think is me all day." There was murder in her voice. She stood and glared at him.
James couldn't come up with a reply. He crossed his arms across his rather considerable chest and went back upstairs. It took him about ten minutes to come back down. "Sorry. I couldn't figure out how it worked," he said sheepishly. "This thing feels like a dog harness or something." He started scratching his back and the place on his shoulders where the straps were rubbing.
"Well get used to it, it is part of everyday life for girls."
"Why?"
"I already explained that. Why are you wearing your hair down? And, is that makeup?"
"Yes," he said defensively. "Your hair was greasy and had flakes. You should always show off to your advantage. This hair looks much better hanging loose instead of up in a bun like you always wear it. I swear you remind me of McGonagall. You haven't worn your hair down since—"
"I know when the last time I wore my hair down was," she snapped.
"Besides, I think I did a good job with my makeup."
"But you're supposed to be me and I don't wear makeup and I don't wear my hair down."
"Well, you're supposed to be me and…" he stared in horror. His beautiful, black, fluffy, shiny, almost shoulder length black hair looked downright awful and he'd never thought that was possible before. "You didn't brush it!" he accused.
"I did too brush it," she said defensively.
James pulled her down so he could see the top of her head and ran his fingers through what used to be his hair. "There are knots in it." He scrutinized carefully. He sniffed the hair. "You didn't shower today."
"You did?" she shot back.
"I had to. You keep your hair a mess. Really, it's gorgeous and to let it get in that condition like you did is a crime. And wearing it up all the time, are you trying to age faster or something? An aging potion would work faster, you know."
Her face was bright red. He'd seen her naked!
He must have realized how furious she looked. "Oh stop being such a dunce. I already told you, the words 'teenage boy' and 'disgusting prat who has no self-control' aren't synonyms. It was nothing like that. I was completely concerned with trying to get your hair into a decent state of existence."
She continued to glare at him.
"Well, you've got to shower at some point too, Evans," he said quietly. "You can't go all week without showering, especially considering how you'll smell after Quidditch practice. I'm ashamed that I've got to let you out of the common room with your hair like that and your robes wrinkled when you look like me. Don't you know the charm for getting wrinkles out of your clothes or the one for removing lint?" He started delicately picking strands of black hair off of her robes for her.
"How can you even see what your doing? The hair blends in with the robe."
"I can tell. If you recall, it's my body and I'm used to this. There, I think that's the last one." He dropped the little collection of black hairs on the floor. "Come on, we've got to get down to the Great Hall. I'm starved." They started for the portrait. There was no one around but they talked quietly just in case. "Any problems with my roommates yet?"
"Not really, except that you didn't tell me Sirius slept in his boxers. A warning might have been nice."
"You didn't, like, stare at him or anything did you?"
"No. Why would I stare at him? It's not as though I've never seen a guy without a shirt on. I go to the pool all the time in the summer."
"Okay. Good."
"But his singing…now that was scary." She laughed and found that James, obviously aware of Sirius's tendency to sing randomly, was laughing too.
She smiled easy and carefree.
James thought, Huh, so that's what I look like if I'm smiling naturally.
"You didn't have any trouble with my roommates, did you?"
"No. I was awake before any of them and nobody was undressed when I came out of the shower."
"Good."
"I was going to ask you earlier, what were those little plastic wrapped packages in the cabinet? The pink ones?"
Lily blushed. James was shocked to see his face blushing; he never blushed.
"Is there something I should know?" he asked.
"I'll explain later, Potter," she said weakly.
"Remember, today my name is Evans."
"Right, Evans." She laughed.
Alice couldn't hear what was being said, but she could tell that Lily was actually talking and laughing with James Potter. So that was her little revenge plot. What had Potter done to deserve this sort of heartbreak? Lily was all dolled up, she was flirting with him, and Alice knew that as soon as Lily thought she had him in her fist she would break his heart. Lily wasn't normally the kind of girl to do that, but this was James. James made her life miserable and she was obviously doing some "ultimate revenge" work here. She continued to watch the scene play out, but she didn't go closer to hear because she was afraid of wrecking all of Lily's hard work.
"We've both got Transfiguration first. We should sit together to go over our plans," Lily said, sitting at the Gryffindor table.
"Yeah, you're right." James started shoveling food onto his plate and so did Lily. Fortunately, they both usually ate a lot.
Sirius nudged Remus and Peter. "You blokes seeing what I'm seeing?"
"I'm seeing it, but I don't believe it," Peter said.
"Same here," said Remus.
"James and Lily talking friendly-like. And I always knew Lily was good-looking, but since when did she look like that?" asked Sirius.
"I know what you mean," said Peter, openly staring at Lily.
Remus laughed. He and Lily were fairly good friends. He'd always known she was that attractive. "You boys might want to put your eyes back in their sockets before they fall out."
"Tsk, tsk, I almost feel sorry for him," said a voice behind Remus.
"Why's that, Alice?" he asked, turning to her.
"Because, I think Lily's trying to break his heart," she said, her voice light but something in her face betraying the truth behind her words.
"James is unbreakable," said Peter, he had great faith in his friends.
"Yeah. The Unbreakable James Potter," Sirius said nodding and not taking his eyes from Lily.
Alice shrugged. "She didn't get all dressed up for nothing and if you ask me—"
"Which we're not," muttered Sirius.
"She looks like she's flirting with him. And I daresay he appears to be flirting back."
Peter snorted, "Oh, come off it. This is James and Lily. They fight like snakes and lions."
"Isn't the term usually 'cats and dogs'?" Alice asked.
"Not here. Lions," Sirius pointed his thumb at himself and his friends. "Snakes," he pointed his thumb at the Slytherin table.
"We'll just have to wait and see." She folded her arms across her chest and watched Lily and James get up, plates now empty, and walk in the direction of Professor McGonagall's room. She quirked an eyebrow. "What do you say to that? It's still pretty early to be going to class."
For once, Sirius was speechless.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
So what did you think? Send me more pretty reviews please! I love them. It makes my day happy to see review alerts in my mailbox. I hope you like this chapter. The next one will be up Friday or Saturday. Friday if I get some encouragement!