CHAPTER THREE: Night One

During Dinner Lily intentionally avoided James and sat at the opposite end of the table with her friends. They always ate every meal together, even though they spent all their classes together anyway. She soon forgot all about James as she began to catch up with her friends and greet acquaintances.

James had surprisingly also decided to avoid Lily. He had already bothered her enough for one day. He really did enjoy being around her, and he even enjoyed the arguing to some extent. James had decided because he had not yet formed a plan to seduce Lily, the best thing to do was to let her cool off. It wouldn't be very advisable to blindly begin annoying her when she had just stopped being pissed at him. He did decide however to watch her closely, in case anything she did would help him with Operation Lily, as he had fondly named it.

As he observed the specimen, he was amazed at the rate that she managed to shovel in her meal. Even as she spoke vigorously to her friends, she managed to consume an amount of food that even James would have a hard time topping. Somehow he found it very endearing that she had very masculine eating habits. The really hot part was that she still managed to look fabulously thin.

"Prongs, aren't you supposed to be acting like a human vacuum cleaner right now?" Sirius asked about his friends pause in ingestion, "guys, I think this may be a first… James is not eating at the fastest rate known to mankind. I may very well be concerned."

"Hey you're right… are you feeling okay there bud?" Remus said, joining the mockery.

"Shut up, I'm observing the specimen…" James said attempting to differ his friend's snide comments. His attempts were a failure.

At first his friends looked puzzled. Slowly they all noticed at what he was looking at, and as usual Sirius felt the need to comment, "what a cute little pet name. 'Aaaw, specimen, I love you too. No I love you more, you cutesy-wutesy. No, you're the best little specimen ever, aaaww. You're just too cute in that petri-dish! I love you too…'"

"Padfoot, would you please not? I am trying to concentrate here. Operation Lily will never succeed if you keep on like that,"

"He has possibly gone mad in a matter of five minutes… he keeps making up very odd titles for things, and I fear we may need to get him to an institution…" Remus mock-whispered (really quite loudly) into Sirius's and Peter's ears.

"If you guys are going to talk, then please at least make it relevant to the subject, okay? If whatever you feel the need to say doesn't have anything to do with operation Lily, then keep it to yourselves!" James snapped, now thoroughly annoyed. He soon realized he was getting a few very odd looks and realized he had been half-shouting. He sheepishly began eating his food at a very fast pace indeed.

"Ignore him everyone! He's just possibly mad… nothing to see here!" Sirius belted out, waving his hands as if to say 'calm down, people,' but ended up just getting more funny looks from people than before.

"Thank you for your efforts, but I, um, fear they were unappreciated, the people remain restless," Peter told Sirius, attempting to look grave. James continued to consume his meal at a rapid pace.

"It's good to see you have your appetite back, pal," Sirius said clapping James on the back in a joking attempt to look encouraging, but it just ended up making James just choke on the chicken he had been swallowing. Most friends would have most likely said sorry or tried to at least undo the damage. Unfortunately James was not lucky enough to have friends that cared, and they just began to laugh at him.

"This way everybody, time to get back to the dorms!" Lily called to the tops of the first years' hair. Surely I couldn't have been that short… Lily thought as she made commands to all she could see of their tiny heads. Even though she was not tall for her age she still loomed over the miniature eleven and twelve-year-olds. Lily decided that the prefects could handle the little ones by themselves. She just wanted to sleep. She told all of the prefects the password (dragon scales!) just in case of emergencies, and trudged up to the dormitory that she had gotten directions from Dumbledore to go to.

She entered the lush common room and, despite her fatigue, became excited as she looked around. The common room was almost as big as the Gryffindor one, and had very fancy furnishings. There were armchairs in every house color (an attempt at school unity), a fireplace (already lit), bookshelves, thick soft carpeting, and big wide windows that led to a balcony. In each back corner of the room there was a spiral staircase, one she assumed lead to the Head Boy's Room, and the other one to hers. She realized how similar this common room was to the Gryffindor one, besides it coloring, that is. Lily wondered if that was intentional to make those living there more comfortable.

She made her way up the staircase that led to the door marked Lily Evans- Head Girl, and went into her room. The furnishings there were very much the same as that of the common room, but it had a bed instead of armchairs. Her trunk was of course waiting for her, and she decided to immediately change into her nightclothes. She left her robes in a heap on the floor, ignoring her usual tendencies to tidiness. She pulled on her satin pajama bottoms that had a pink, black and yellow floral pattern, and her almost matching stretchy pink tank top as she passed into the bathroom, cosmetics in hand.

She had begun to apply the toothpaste to her brush when she heard James entering the common room. He apparently did not care half as much as Lily about the furnishing, because from the sound of it he immediately began to trudge up the stairs. She could hear him in his room, no doubt unpacking or changing. No, I don't want to think about him changing, double gross… Soon enough he too came into the bathroom, wearing plaid flannel pats, and no top. Just my luck, he sleeps practically in the nude! Lily thought melodramatically.

She realized she had not yet begun to brush her teeth, the tube of toothpaste still poised over her expectant (or would be, if not inanimate) brush. She applied the toothpaste as she had been meaning to do for so long, and finally began to brush her teeth. She looked at the sink trying to ignore topless-James, also going about his tooth brushing.

"Oh, um, I must have forgotten my toothpaste… could I please borrow yours?" James asked, realizing he had forgotten the probably most important toiletry. Great, now she'll think I'm a slob with no regard to personal hygiene…

Great, now I have to look at him… Lily thought as she looked up and slowly nodded, handing over the Crest©. She was embarrassed that she finally had to admit he had one good feature, his body. She had never realized this before because, well, she had never seen him without a shirt on before. I bet every girl at Hogwarts would pay to be seeing this footage. Lily on the other hand felt embarrassed and a little annoyed. She really hadn't ever intended on admitting anything was at all adequate, much less spectacular, about James. She supposed it was from his many years of quidditch.

James had noticed that her eyes had been reluctant to look at his stunning and impressive torso, and that she had blushed just so slightly when she had finally done so. Ha, maybe all I have to do is prance about topless and she'll fall for me. My features are fantastic, after all, he thought rather arrogantly. This was going to be easy…