I don't own JK Rowling's Harry Potter, but I own this fanfiction. ;-)
Chapter 1: Introducing Mr. Potter, The Toerag
Sirius Black sat on the floor as he waited in silence, anticipating his opponent's next more. He hoped that James Potter would finally meet his long-awaited defeat.
Across from Sirius, James was looking for opportunities to be successful, but his targets were not easy to reach. Taking his time, with the satisfaction of knowing that Sirius was becoming increasingly tense, he looked at his choices from every angle. Finally, he found the perfect position: left-center.
He proceeded to take his card and place it on the top of the left center tower. This was one of the many towers in a massive castle that James and Sirius were building. Unfortunately, this castle was made of Exploding Snap cards. One wrong move could result in a loud, smoky, and usually fiery explosion of the cards. Still, James not lost a match to Sirius yet. He was determined to keep it this way.
The two 16 year-old boys were sitting in Gryffindor Common Room beside the warm, blazing fireplace. In a comfortable armchair beside them, Remus Lupin, a shy and quiet 6th year whom Sirius and James were best friends with was reading a book. Not far from them sat Peter Pettigrew, a smaller, rounder boy who was also their friend. He was at a desk, playing close attention to some assignment or another. A few other students were sitting in the Common Room, but it was still quiet.
James smirked as he looked confidently at Sirius, who glanced back stonily. James slowly placed his card on the top of the tower. He paused for a second and then slowly drew back. He held his breath and waited, but there was no explosion yet. James let out a sigh of relief.
The portrait door opened as Lily Evans and a few of her close friends climbed gracefully through the hole, chatting quietly. A few people looked to see who came in. Lily, who was very popular, usually caused many heads to turn when she walked into a room. James' stomach did a flip-flop and instinctively, he jerkily raised his hand so he could muss up his hair. (He knew all too well that the usual messiness of his hair was a quality that received a lot of attention, especially from girls in the school. The messier his hair was, the better looking he was; being a slightly vain 16 year-old, James figured that the more handsome he was around Evans, the better. Perhaps she would notice.)
BOOM. Just as Lily and her girlfriends walked by, James knocked right into the castle of Exploding Snap cards when he reached for his hair.
Sirius jumped back just in time and cried, "Aha! I win, finally!" He pointed at James cheerfully, grinning from ear to ear.
James was coughing up smoke as he simultaneously tried to feel if his eyebrows were still intact and look at Lily. There was absolutely no need to look cool, though. Lily's friends had all screamed run away from the explosion, and she was walking away from the explosion with a scowl on her face.
She turned to James, now blowing the smoke out of her hair with her hand, and said coldly, "Thanks, Potter. Thanks a lot!"
James, however, was distracted by the hem of her robes. Unbeknownst to her, they were on fire. "Evans, your robes!" he yelped.
At once, startled at the growing fire on her robes. Quickly she put it out with her wand before James decided to play "hero" and help her. Muttering to herself, once her scorched robes were doused with water, she walked away.
"Hey, Evans!" James called out to her, in spite of himself.
Lily turned around, glared, and raised a questioning eyebrow. She asked icily, "Yes?"
James grinned. "You're welcome."
Lily narrowed her eyes. "And what precisely should I be welcome for?"
James shrugged casually walking up to her. "Oh it's nothing. I mean, just now, who knows how much damage there could have been if I hadn't warned you about the fire?"
Lily rolled her eyes. "Yes, you know, because I wouldn't recognize the bright flames of fire that were about to envelope my body if you hadn't warned me. I'm just so lucky that you save the day."
James, deciding to ignore the sarcasm, nodded fervently.
Lily burst out, "You arrogant berk, it was your fault in the first place! My robes would have been perfectly fine if you hadn't been so concerned about that hair of yours." (James turned bright red at this comment, but stared determinedly at her, grinning.) "You're unbelievable, Potter!" She turned away and stormed up to the girl's dormitories.
James, not looking put off half as much as he should have, called after her. "So you mean unbelievable in a good way, right?"
A door slammed shut in response. James sighed and turned to his friends. "She must be having a bad day or something." Peter didn't even hear him. Many of the spectators in the Common Room looked away rather quickly. Sirius raised his eyebrows in disbelief almost like Lily, but he was grinning. Remus said nothing and returned to his book with a slight frown on his face.
James sat down beside Sirius. "Padfoot, she'll eventually go out with me, right? I'm not that bad, don't you think? I mean, to be quite honest, I'm actually sort of…nice, no?" He said this with complete confidence.
Sirius, was busy bullying a second-year, trying to convince him that eating one of the remaining Exploding Snap cards was virtually harmless, turned to face James. He rolled his eyes while saying, "Sure Prongs, you'll go out with Evans. When Snivellus isn't a greasy-haired prat anymore…"
James glowered at Sirius.
Sirius continued, "Kidding, mate. Only kidding, ok? But, to be quite honest, she doesn't seem to by too taken with you, does she? I guess, you'll just have to give it some time, all right?"
James folded his arms and nodded gravely in response. "I don't know what her problem is!"
Sirius looked at his best mate sympathetically. "Give it a rest for tonight, mate. Go to bed. Get some sleep."
James, who looked extremely frustrated, replied, "Yeah, I think I will. Night, Padfoot. Moony. Wormtail."
Remus and Sirius returned his "good night", but Wormtail was still deep on concentration, looking over the parchment in his hands. James shuffled off to bed.
He didn't sleep very quickly. He didn't understand why Evans didn't like him. And he found her completely insane for refusing to go out with him. Ah well, he thought to himself, she can't resist the Potter Charm forever…
Hello, everyone who has read Chapter 1 in Operation Emerald Arrogance. If you liked this chapter, great. If you found it to be typical of a Lily-James fic, lo siento mis amigos.Anyway, I plan to do a lot with this fic. But I can't promise that it will be anytime soon. Usually, I'm too hasty in writing. So this time, I'm writing this on my terms. As Mrs. JK Rowling says, "You have to please yourself before you please anyone else." So that's my point. I'm going to take my time, writing this, whether it takes me 5 months or5 years.I am determined to finish this, which is a very big task for me. So here's Chapter 1. I hope you like it, and there's more to come, I promise. I just don't know when. Thank you, Refallen.
