How It All Began
Chapter One
The Introduction or In Which Lily Receives Several Large Surprises
Summary: Lily hates James, and James loves Lily, we all know that, but when Voldemort threatens the world of magic, the Head students of Hogwarts can't just rely on themselves to save everyone. L/J Seventh Year.
Other Characters: Kala, playing as Seamus Finnigan's mum and Alice, who has a boyfriend named Frank who left Hogwarts the year before this story is set.
Rating: PG-13. Mostly, this won't come up until later, but it will be for violence, language and sexuality.
A/N: This is a complete reposting of the fic formerly entitled: "How It All Began". I decided that it needed a revamping, and also, all the chapters were too short. This means that the whole fic will be shorter in the number of chapters, but they will be longer, since I am consolidating several into one. This also gives me a chance to expand on the darker plot that I had been hinting at throughout the story.
The room was dark, and the air was slightly musty. It was devoid of living creatures, except for one small rat with unusually watery eyes snuffling about near the legs of a rickety wooden chair where some moth-eaten blankets were resting.
The air near the rat suddenly rippled, and a tall, imposing man appeared with a pop. The rat squeaked in shock and buried itself into the blankets.
The man laughed a high, sinister laugh, and turned his cold red eyes towards the pile of blankets.
"Come out, my pet," he crooned softly, "I won't hurt you."
The rat slowly poked it head out from beneath one of the more matted blankets, its nose wetly snuffling at the air around him. It turned its pale blue eyes up to the tall, shockingly white man in black robes. The man laughed again, and the rat seemed to cringe at the awful sound.
"What do you have for me, today?" asked the man, in a sinister voice that would have made anyone who had happened upon the room at this time shiver uncontrollably.
The rat scurried over to another corner of the room, and squeaked loudly. The man walked over, looked at the object quickly, and turned towards the rat.
"Is this all?" he asked. The rat squeaked in reply.
Suddenly, the man's attitude seemed to change. "Coward," he spat out, red eyes flashing. "You can't even show your face in a meeting with your master. If you are to be one of us, you must act like it. Think on this. If you do not want to be one of us, then you will not live much longer." The rat's body trembled, and it scurried back towards the blankets. It seemed about to bury itself once again, then seemed to remember its master's words, and turned back towards the man.
There was a blinding flash of blue light, and a man – well, a boy really – appeared in the place where the rat had previously been. Like the rat, he had watery blue eyes, and twitched several times before he had the courage to look up at the man he knew as Master.
"M-my master. L-look closer at those d-documents." His voice was nasal, and the tall man found it difficult to not flinch at the pitiful creature in front of him. Instead, he strode over towards the corner where the rat had indicated that the documents were, and picked them up. He scanned them quickly, and then grinned evilly. He looked over towards the rat-turned-man.
"Yes. These will do quite well. Perhaps I have underestimated you after all. You say here that this boy is your friend? Yes, I know him and his family quite well. I had a – dealing with them this past month. And this girl: what of her?"
"She is a mudblood, my lord, but an extremely powerful witch. The boy has a weakness with her."
"Yessss," the man hissed, eyes flashing dangerously and wickedly, "you did very well today."
Nothing else was heard, except for two pops, and then the room was empty once again, devoid of all movement, except for a slight rising of the dust that coated it.
Lily sighed sadly as she waved goodbye to her mum on platform 9 and ¾ ; this would be the last time she would ever get onto the train to Hogwarts as a student. She was surprised to feel tears coming to her eyes. What am I doing, crying about the end of school before it has even begun? she thought. Instead, she straightened up, swallowed her tears, sniffed, and waved again as the train rolled out of the station. She kept on waving until the platform was out of sight, and she could no longer see the smiling face of her mother as she looked back towards it.
Finally, she turned around, and decided to look for her friends. Suddenly, from behind her came a shout.
"LILY!" and Lily felt a small whirlwind knock into her, taking her breath away, and then another, slightly larger whirlwind crash into her, knocking her over. She fell to the ground and laughed, or at least tried to, as she actually had no breath left to do it.
"Kala! Alice! How are you? How were your summers? I'm sorry I couldn't come to stay!" she said all this in a rush, then playfully shoved them off of her as she sat up. Alice was the first to answer.
"I had an absolutely smashing summer. We went to Italy and saw the historic magic towns. I learned so much history there." Alice's blue eyes lit up with magic, and her curly brown hair fell into her face as she bounced up and down with excitement
"Enough for Bins' essay he set over the summer?" Lily asked teasingly. Alice loved school, and she was destined to follow her boyfriend into the role of auror. Lily was secretly jealous of Alice's talents at witchery – Lily always had to study much more than anyone else to get good marks. Alice rolled her eyes at Lily's comments, while Kala just giggled.
"I couldn't even write enough for that. TEN FEET? I mean, is he crazy?" Alice complained. Lily just smiled, knowing that Alice had probably completed more than her ten feet of assignment.
Kala shook her sandy-haired head in response, then said, "Come on you guys, we have to find a compartment before they all fill up."
Lily sighed at Kala's remark, remembering her new job, and her friends looked at her, questions in their glances.
"I'm Head Girl," she said by way of explanation. Once again, she was seized in a tight bear hug as her friends danced around squealing.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Kala asked. Lily smiled and explained that she had been to busy, what with her ten foot essay and all. Kala scoffed at her for her studiousness, and then Lily said her goodbyes, making the two other girls promise to save a spot in the compartment for her.
She left her two friends, and went in search of the Heads compartment where she would talk to the prefects, and meet the Head Boy. She had been wondering for a month who it was, ever since she got her letter, since Dumbledore didn't mention it. She hadn't ever head of Dumbledore concealing information about Heads before, but then, she hadn't ever been good friends with any of the previous Heads.
She hoped against hope that it was either Remus Lupin, her fellow Gryffindor prefect of two years, or one of the Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff prefects. Perhaps Amos Diggory or Gideon Prewitt. She only hoped that it wasn't the Slytherin prefect, because Severus Snape just scared her. Although, Amos Diggory was also sort of a poofter.
She turned around, knowing she was lost, but as soon as she did so she regretted it. A tall, handsome boy with messy black hair and hazel eyes covered with glasses was walking towards her, grinning slightly in his usual conceited way. Lily sighed, resigning herself to the torture that was sure to come as soon as the boy spotted her. It was James Potter. The egotistical, know-it-all git, who had had a crush on her since before fifth year.
"All right there, Evans?" He asked grinning. She glared up at him, angry that she was shorter than him by several inches, so she had no chance of looking down on him in scorn.
"Not with you around, I'm not," she replied, and then stuck her nose up. It was better than nothing, she figured. He pretended to look taken aback.
"Oh, you have struck a blow on me that I shall never recover from!" He staggered around moaning melodramatically and pretending he was dying until another boy stuck his head out of the compartment next to Lily and Potter.
"Oy! James! Shut up out there! Stop trying to impress the girls!" Sirius Black stepped out of the compartment. He saw Lily, and did a double take.
"The Ice Queen!" He said, pretending to be shocked.
"Black," she replied curtly. He was equally as handsome, but slightly taller than, James. He didn't have glasses, and his hair was slightly longer, but it was the same dark colour as his best friend's.
Turning back to the insufferable Potter, and ignoring Black, Lily said, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm on my way to the Heads' compartment to talk to some responsible people about this year." She brushed by him sharply.
Unfortunately, her grand exit was not to be; James took hold of her robes, which she had already changed into, being the good and responsible witch that she was, and halted her progress. She turned around to look at him with an impatient grimace on her face to find that he was gazing sharply back at her. His proximity made her oddly uncomfortable, and she struggled away from him, snatching her robes out of his grasp.
"What now?" she snapped angrily, hands on her hips, trying to look slightly menacing, "I have somewhere to be that is much more important than here." To her dismay, James was still looking at her with the same confused expression.
"Wait Evans, you're Head Girl?" he asked incredulously.
"Uh-huh," she said suspiciously, "What's it to you?" He swallowed and looked over her shoulder, shaking his head.
"Nothing," he said softly, still refusing to look at her. "I suppose you'll find out soon enough." Now it was Lily's turn to look confused. She opened her mouth to snap a witty and degrading reply, but sadly found that Potter was gone. Black however, was a different story. He was still out in the corridor, grinning annoyingly.
"What is it Black? Do you also have the desire to hinder me further?" Sirius shook his head, backing away from her, still grinning.
"Nothing, Evans. Like James said, you'll find out soon enough." With that, he went back into his compartment. Lily stood there for a few moments, totally and absolutely perplexed, then shook her head and made her way to the Heads' compartment.
She arrived at the compartment to see through the glass that some people were in there, milling around, and waiting for the Prefects' meeting to begin. She looked around, pondering once again on who the Head Boy could be. She didn't know any of the Ravenclaws that well, besides the Prewitt twins, and was trying to figure out which could be Head Boy, when someone opened the door.
"Coming in?" a familiar, and very annoying, voice said. "The meeting started five minutes ago. Don't want the new Head Girl to have the reputation of being late, do we?" Lily looked up into the annoying and conceited grin of none other than James Potter. She tried to speak and couldn't. James saw all this and laughed.
"What?" he said, "Finally blinded by my good looks?" He smiled a smile that would have had most girls swooning. Unfortunately for him, it didn't have this effect on Lily Evans. She glared at him for what she thought was about the tenth time today, and shoved past him into the compartment, nearly knocking him over unceremoniously.
James was daydreaming right in the middle of another prefects' meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, he had done well not looking at Lily for prolonged periods of time. Unfortunately, he could only keep that practise up for so long, and the meeting was not moving along all that quickly, what with Lily running it and all. She could be infernally thorough sometimes.
He was just enjoying himself, gazing longingly at her perfect skin, which glowed milky-white, just like an incandescent pearl. He was staring at her perfectly shaped eyes, which glowed with a brilliant shade of green, overpowering even the most luscious emeralds in their strength of radiance. He was looking at her perfect hair, which cascaded down her back in magnificent red curls.
Her whole body was perfect! Or at least, he thought it was.
They were in a prefects' meeting the second week of school and James was already bored of this whole Head Boy business. All he did was meetings, meetings, and more meetings. The one on the train had set the precedent for monotony, and he had nearly managed to sleep through it before Lily yelled at him for being incredibly irresponsible, and how could Dumbledore have ever entertained the thought for a minute that James Potter, troublemaker extraordinaire would ever have the caliber required of him to be a successful Head Boy. He really needed to spice up his life with some pranks! Unfortunately, someone wouldn't let him.
Sirius just said that he was being a baby.
That someone that would never let him do pranks snapped him out of his reverie by waving a hand in front of him. He jumped, causing some of the prefects to laugh. He just scowled back at them, and they looked away quickly, many not wanting to incur the wrath of the Head Boy and be the unfortunate one who was the subject of his friends' next prank.
"So, our Head Boy is having some trouble paying attention?" Lily asked. It seemed that instead of being angry with him, she was slightly amused. This caused him to scowl again. He would never understand his beautiful Lily-flower.
This time, however, his scowl had no effect. Lily just smiled and tapped her fingers on her desk, awaiting a response from her co-Head. James, for a few seconds, refused to indulge her, but he couldn't keep his love waiting for long. Man, did she have him whipped – and they weren't even going out!
"I was paying attention. I'm a good little boy. And besides, this Prefects' meeting is really boring," he whined, but then stopped because he realized he sounded like a little boy trying to get his mother to buy him cockroach clusters so he can give them to his baby sister, insisting that they are delicious sweets. "Right, okay, what'd I miss?" Lily laughed outright this time, instead of just smiling, which confused James even more.
"Look around you. While you were doing your 'whiny, spoilt little boy' interpretation, everybody left. The meeting's over."
James groaned. How was he ever going to get on Lily's good side now? Well, he thought since I screwed this one up, she wont mind that much if I do a couple of pranks, would she? Sirius had been trying to get James to do some pranks since the opening feast, but Lily was having none of it.
That girl was psychic.
Lily and James stood up, and straightened the desk silently in the charms classroom, which they had been using as the place for their meetings, since Dumbledore hadn't quite opened the official Prefects' meeting room. Lily didn't talk, but James tried to.
"Hey, Lily?" he asked.
"What?" she snapped back.
Man, she sure changes tempers quickly, James thought. "I'm sorry," he said, trying to sound as sincere as possible.
"No you're not," she said, and shook her head, letting her shining red hair cover her face slightly, and walked out of the classroom. James ran after her, trying desperately to get her attention, but she was having none of it.
"Lily, wait!" he cried.
"Go away Potter."
"Why?" he asked, not bothering to check his whine this time.
"Because Potter, I only talk to people who have grown up."
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do Evans," shouted James down the corridor, his memory suddenly flashing back to earlier in the summer. He shook his head to clear it, and he slowed to a walk, his head hanging. He would never get her. At least not at this rate. She has too many prejudices against me. But wait...I think I have an idea...At that, James walked up to the common room and began to formulate his plan.
Later that night, Lily was busy attempting to complete her small mountain of homework, while at the same time trying to pretend that Sirius Black, planner of all bad and mischievous events at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (well, co planner anyway), didn't exist. At the moment she was pretending he did not exist, he was attempting to coax a load of bright third years into doing his homework for him. Really, he was even worse than Potter. Even worse that he's a womanizer, she thought, frowning darkly, at least Potter has no clue how to talk to us girls.
Finally though, she had had enough. She stood up, knocking the table with her homework on it over, causing a loud crash. This caused Sirius to look over as she stalked towards him. The common room quickly cleared, anticipating the shouting match ahead, and not wanting to be part of it.
"Black," she said menacingly, "or should I call you padfoot? I think its time you did your own homework for a change." At that, Black's face drained of color, and he nodded in agreement, surprising Lily. She had heard Potter and Lupin use that nickname for him before, when she was evidently not supposed to be listening, and she had wondered if it had any meaning.
Apparently it did, and she wondered what...
She wandered up to her dormitory, looking for Kala and Alice. They were both sitting on Kala's bed, talking about boys.
"Yeah, Sirius is so fit, but he's such a ladies' man. Anyway, he wouldn't look twice at me," Alice was saying as Lily jumped onto the bed with them. Alice turned and smiled at her.
"Hey Lily! We were just talking about who we'd rather snog. This one was for me – Sirius or James." Lily laughed.
"Who'd you pick?" she asked, curious to know the answer.
"Well, I'd rather have Frank any day, but I picked James, as long as he learned to talk to women at some point in his life."
Lily was shocked at her friend's revelation, "Why though?" she asked curiously, "it's not as though Potter is cute or anything."
Kala just laughed at Lily's bewildered expression, and said, "Someday you'll see."
Lily frowned at her friends. Obviously, they saw something that she didn't. Perhaps she ought to try and find out what it was…
James and Sirius were both sitting on Sirius' four-poster bed. It was about midnight, but neither teenager was tired, and they had both been silent for a while now. James was cleaning his broom and Sirius was picking at some lint on his pyjama trousers. Finally, Sirius decided to breach the silence.
"James, mate?" said Sirius.
"Yeah?" said James, not bothering to look up from his work.
"I think…well...I think that Lily might know about us."
At this, James' head shot up. "What?"
"Yeah. She called me Padfoot earlier, but we only use that when we're alone. How could she know it when she doesn't know about us?"
James shrugged, not paying much attention to the conversation. "Maybe she just heard us when we thought there was no one around. Besides, no one has strange nicknames without a reason. She probably thought that it meant something and decided to see if it did by using it on you. Judging by your worries, I'm guessing that you gave her the idea that they do mean something."
Sirius was not reassured. "Maybe. But James?"
"Yeah?"
"If you know all that, then you spend way too much time thinking about how Lily thinks."
A/N: Well, I hope you like the new version of The Desperate Days.
Chapter Two Preview:
"Dumbledore told me that I have to spend that Saturday decorating for Halloween – you know – Head duties."
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"Knowing what that class contains, I probably will vomit," said Alice, voicing Lily's exact thoughts.
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Lily looked down to see a single tiger lily lying there on the table in front of her, although she was certain it hadn't been there before.
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-Crystaltambaia