Disclaimer: All I own are the box on the side of the road I live in and this computer with Internet access that I hook up to the only electric outlet in my box.
Chapter Two
Banana Pancakes
Next morning, which turned out to be very foggy and gray, Lily came from the Head Girl's dormitory and headed straight for the Great Hall, feeling a bit uneasy. She noticed James sitting at the Gryffindor table, picking at his breakfast, and felt something in her chest contract.
She felt sympathetic for James Potter.
Okay, so she had told him to go away, which was nothing. And worse, she had told him she hated him. But she didn't really hate him. He was funny sometimes, and he'd made her laugh before.
Now it didn't look like he'd be making anyone laugh for a while.
Her friend Rosie Rinehart, a tall brunette girl, spotted her and approached, a bowl of oatmeal in hand, as she had not been quite ready to abandon it yet.
"Have you apologized to him yet?" Rosie asked, taking a spoonful of oatmeal and "mmm"ing in delight. "I missed this stuff over the summer. Anyway, have you?"
Lily looked at her, affronted. "What made you think I was going to do that?"
"Come on, Lily, just look at the poor guy."
The two girls looked. He was reading his course schedule that McGonagall had just handed him.
"Er, he looks fine to me."
Just then, Gwen Nelson skipped—yes, skipped—over to James and seated herself next to him, chatting animatedly. Lily almost saw James's eyes flick in her direction for a nanosecond before he turned to Gwen, but she wouldn't have sworn it.
"Look, he's got that blonde git to talk to," Lily said, grumbling and finding a seat, Rosie following her.
The brunette girl raised an eyebrow at the two, who were now talking. "Have you met her?"
"Well, no." Lily rubbed her two front teeth over her bottom lip. "But what was it that Dumbledore said at the end of the feast last night?"
"That we have a new seventh-year student named Gwen Nelson, just Sorted into Gryffindor, blah, blah, and that she went to Cowmoles in America?"
"Right," came Lily's reply. "So you know what that means?"
"Er, no."
"Well, Cowmoles is known for its taking in really talented students."
"How in the name of You-Know-Who do you know that?"
"Well, I don't know, Rosie, I read books." Lily took her course schedule from McGonagall, who had finally made it to the end of their table after having an argument with Sirius about the state of his robes, which were on backwards.
"Professor, I mean, if we didn't have to get up at Merlin's arse crack of dawn…"
Gryffindor now had negative twenty points to start the term with.
"Well, I mean, so do I," Rosie argued. "Read books, I mean. I just don't read all of that nonsense. And what does it matter if she's talented?"
"It means," Lily said, looking at her friend seriously, "that she's one of those perfect girls who is going to have every male student here hanging all over her within hours."
"You're just judging people before you get to know them."
Lily's eyes roamed over her schedule, ignoring Rosie. "Potions, break, and Double Transfiguration."
"Tough luck," Rosie said, looking at her own and deciding to drop the subject. "I have a break now and Muggle Studies after."
"Still on for working in the Obliviator Headquarters?" Lily received a nod in reply. "So you pretty much get to sit around all year."
"Pretty much," Rosie responded. "It looks like everyone's heading on to class. See you at lunch." She took one last bite of oatmeal and added, "You should really take to heart about what I said about apologizing to Potter."
Lily grumbled something inaudible and threw her bag over her shoulder, heading towards the dungeons for Potions.
It was cool and musty down there, as always, and Lily was almost glad to be back. She had barely stepped over the threshold of the dungeon when she heard "Lily, m'lass!"
Professor Horace Slughorn bustled from behind his desk, next to which a large cauldron bubbled, emitting turquoise sparks at odd intervals.
"Morning, Professor," Lily said, finding a seat.
The portly wizard opened his mouth to say more, but just then the Marauders entered, Gwen Nelson in company, her arm through James's, talking amiably with him in her heavily American accent.
"And so I pulled this cat out of the tree, and took her home to keep her!"
James searched for something to say, but found that it was extremely difficult. Should he have said "You're a hero!" or "Go stick your head into the lake while I count to a quintillion"? He settled for just smiling at her, avoiding Lily's eyes, which he was sure were focused on him most malevolently.
He found that talking with Gwen was easier than he had originally thought. All he had to say was "I'm absolutely dashing" or "You're the most beautiful girl to walk the face of the earth," using a different wording each time, and she would agree and add on to it.
The two of them took the two seats at the table in front of Lily, while Remus seated himself beside the redhead, Sirius and Peter sitting behind.
Lily became sickeningly aware of how she was surrounded by Marauders.
"All right, Lily?" Remus asked kindly.
"All right. How about you?"
"A little weak. Full Moon was last Friday."
Lily had known about Remus being a werewolf and the other Marauders being Animagi ever since the beginning of sixth year, after James had put something in her dinner that made her burp up frogs for hours afterwards. That evening, when she had been heading back from the prefect's bathroom to the common room, she had seen all the Marauders but Remus stealing away through the corridors. She had followed them through secret passages she'd never seen before until the three were in the Entrance Hall, quietly opening the huge double doors and heading outside. Lily had finally decided that it was time to speak up, because if they were trying to run away from school, she had to stop them. Though astonished that she had managed to follow them this far, they had told her everything, and that it wasn't safe for her to go outside, and had made her swear that she would never tell. She had, but only for Remus's sake, as she would not have cared if the others had been expelled. Ever since then, Remus confided in her as well.
"I'm sorry." She offered him a smile before pulling her potions scales out of her bag as Professor Slughorn began to teach.
As the class progressed, Lily's mood became more and more sour as she had to listen to Gwen ramble on and on about her old friends, her Quidditch cheerleading squad, her great-grandmother, who was a veela (Lily was shaken by this news), the animals she'd rescued and taken to the Muggle Humane Society, her Animagus form (Lily was surprised by this even more—At least she's legal, the redhead thought with a snort), and just about everything else that was so wonderful about herself.
And worse, James seemed to actually care—he nodded and made sounds of agreement every once in a while. Lily almost chucked her entire potion at the back of that shiny blonde head, but she had worked so hard on it, and class was almost over. Although she did enjoy imagining what it might do to her hair.
"All right, time's up!" came Professor Slughorn's voice from the back of the room.
He began pacing among the students' potions, making sounds of approval or telling them what they had done wrong. Lily received praise for hers—"Excellent, excellent, no less than what I expected of you, Miss Evans!" But when he came to Gwen's, his mouth actually dropped open, for she had brewed the potion perfectly where Lily had not.
The rotund professor spent the next five minutes going on and on about how Cowmoles did indeed produce amazing students, and how she was the best potion brewer he had come across in a long time. "Right up there with Severus Snape," he said, nodding to the sullen-looking boy with greasy black hair sitting at a table in the back.
"What do you hope to be your profession after you graduate?" he asked her.
"A Healer," came Gwen's reply. "I just love helping people!"
Lily abstained from vomiting in her cauldron.
Finally, class was dismissed, and most of the Gryffindors trooped up to the common room for break. Lily was satisfied to hear that Gwen had Muggle Studies to get to.
At lunch, Lily spent the entire time complaining to Rosie about Gwen, and Rosie listened with a knowing smile on her face but did not make any comments. By the time Lily made it to Double Transfiguration, she had gotten herself so worked up that she was fuming.
In Transfiguration, a class Gwen was also in, Lily noted with deep annoyance, they began learning about human transfigurations (Already! Lily thought).
"Now, I'm going to pair you all up, and you will be attempting to change your partner into a chimpanzee. I know that it sounds foolish, but since chimpanzees are the species most biologically built as we humans are…"
She gave them all the incantation and paired them up, and Lily was horrified to hear that she was partnered with James.
At least it wasn't Gwen.
Although she had sworn in fourth year that she would never hate anyone more than James Potter.
But she didn't hate him. He had made her laugh a few times before, and he had stuck up for her against Snape on more than one occasion.
Lily stuck with these happy thoughts as James approached her airily, not meeting her eyes. He exchanged only monosyllables with her as she discussed who should cast the spell first, and finally decided to let him go first, to get it over with.
Oh, Merlin, she thought as she stepped away from the desk, and James turned to her, finally meeting her eyes, his wand raised. I'm allowing James Potter turn me in to a chimpanzee.
It wasn't that bad. Suddenly, she was much shorter and hairier, and then suddenly she was taller and herself again as he lifted the spell. James didn't bother with any monkey business—apparently she had knocked a little bit of sense into him, even if he did enjoy talking to annoying, perky, blonde part-veelas.
"Oh, outstanding, Mr. Potter! Twenty-five points to Gryffindor!" Professor McGonagall cried, rushing to them. "I knew you were splendid at Transfiguration, but this—I was just trying to see where you all stood…oh, excellent! Five more points to Gryffindor!"
Lily caught a flicker of a smile from James, but wasn't sure if it was directed to her. Anyway, she was still irritated with him.
Lily was unable to Transfigure James; he didn't grow more hair all over himself, get bigger ears, or change in any way. He didn't offer her any advice, either, as he normally would have, and she was glad of it, until McGonagall erupted into another bout of praise for Gwen, who had successfully Transfigured Peter.
Lily felt dirty and disgusted and wanted nothing more than to die and join Moaning Myrtle in the second-floor girls' loo.
She consoled herself by thinking that Peter was already pretty much built like a chimpanzee, and that it must not have been that difficult.
"Listen, Potter," Lily finally said as they packed up their things and filed out of the room once class ended. He was on his way out the door, the last one in the throng, but he stopped and didn't even turn around to look at her. It was just the two of them—McGonagall had left in a daze to talk to the Headmaster about James's splendid Transfiguration work—James standing in the doorway with his back to Lily, who was facing him with her books in her arms, eyes closed and wishing that she weren't apologizing to her least—sorry, second-least—favorite person in the world. "I just…wanted to apologize for yesterday. I didn't mean to be so hateful."
"Forget it," James said, finally turning to her and considering her. "Quidditch tryouts are next Saturday," he said suddenly.
"Er, what?"
"If you want to come. Gwen's going to try out. She's supposed to be an excellent Seeker."
"Oh. Gwen," Lily grunted. "Hope you two have fun, then. I have to, er, go…um, dinner. Bye." She pushed past James and strode down the hall determinedly, thinking only of how she wanted to wring perfect little Gwen Nelson's neck after ripping out her intestines and feeding them to Remus at the full moon.
A/N: My second addition! If you all don't hate Gwen by now, please don't tell me, or else I might go drown myself.
Virtual cookies for my very few reviewers! I'm throwing cookies out into cyberspace now.
This time, it will be virtual cake.
The title of this chapter comes from a Jack Johnson song-- "Banana Pancakes." Listen to his music, because he's awesome.
I'm out like Hagrid in a Miss America Pageant.
