Professor Puffapod's Plants
sweaterweather21

Chapter 4: Failed Dares & Humiliation
Third Year Essays

The Potter Problem
By Lily Evans, Year Three

Alright, this is another "deal with your emotions first" assignment from Professor Puffapod. I purposely glared at Potter when she announced the assignment, who only winked and ran his fingers through that tornado he calls hair.

Things have changed since you've read about my dilemma last year, so here's our relationship in a nutshell: Potter's obsessed with humiliating me; my greatest desire is to curse him into next week. There's actually a curse for that, I read it in Survival among Giants: a Memoir by Charles von Drachesbett. I think it would be pretty easily adapted to humans.

Okay, I'm getting off topic. Truth is, Potter and I had some kind of a weird truce going on for a while until he broke it by asking me out on Monday, which went something like this…

I was walking to Potions alone because I wanted to get there early and ask Professor Slughorn about our Potions assignment. Out of nowhere, Potter appeared in the middle of the hallway. This was a rare sighting of him; he was without his little band of friends. The rest of my year has taken to calling them "The Marauders" (my use of quotation marks is necessary, because I most definitely do not call them that). Their idea of a good time is to play thoughtless pranks that usually involve turning the Slytherins' hair pink (Severus's in particular). I have a right to be indignant; they stole the color-changing concept from me, after all! James Potter may be an airhead, but surely he can remember when I cursed his hair green back in first year. Those were the days.

Gah, the topic of Potter just gets me off subject. I was talking about yesterday in the hallway. He just appeared out of nowhere and started walking alongside me without saying a word. I was confused, but at least he wasn't bothering me. So I ignored him. And he ignored me. Aside from the occasional sidelong glance toward him, I kept my eyes glued straight ahead, hoping this was just a one-time awkward sort of happening that we would just pretend never happened.

I should really just stop wishing for things, because I swear, if there's a Merlin out there, he hears all my wishes and just twists them around.

Instead of forgetting about the little incident, James Potter had to open up his fat mouth and cement it in my mind.

Just as I was about to turn into the dungeons, Potter suddenly grabbed my shoulder and turned to face me. My eyes were wide and it felt like I stood there for an eon, simply blinking at him a lot, my mind whizzing. His face uncharacteristically grew redder by the minute until he seemed to blurt out a jumble of words all at once. I grimaced in confusion as the expression on his face seemed to fall.

I still had absolutely no clue what was going on. Here was this weird side of James Potter that I had never seen before—he wasn't teasing me, had just made physical contact with me, and was actually blushing!

Of course, then I, Lily Evans, decided to keep my composure and not get flustered. I behaved in a totally mature manner.

"What?"

The words spit out of my mouth like rocket fire, blasting across the empty corridor and ricocheting off all the stone walls. Now it was my turn to blush a bit. I certainly hadn't meant for it to be so loud.

He shrunk back at bit at the unnatural force of my outburst, but it didn't take long for him to regain a bit of his confidence. After all, if he managed to throw me off my game, this whole thing hadn't been a total loss, had it? His face turned back to a normal flesh color, but I still noticed that his ears were still a bit red.

He surprised me by piping up again, but the bigger surprise was the words that came out of his mouth. "Lily, will you go out with me?"

I reacted by turning into a robot. I'm pretty sure I stopped blinking entirely, but I'm positively certain that a couple minutes passed before my face registered any kind of emotion. Probably a couple more before I actually understood what he had just said.

Needles to say I was shocked. In all my rants about hating Potter, this possibility had never occurred to me. I disliked (and still dislike) Potter very much. I had no idea he was planning something like this!

I finally looked up at him. My confused green eyes met his serious hazel ones. My jaw dropped open and I left it hanging there. Then the weirdest thing happened. Potter was still looking at me, and after what felt like an hour of me standing there slack-jawed, he reached over and gently nudged my chin up.

My skin tingled where he touched me and suddenly I remembered what was going on. This was James Potter, my mortal enemy ever since first year. He's arrogant and believes he owns the school. His hair sticks up and he smirks too much. His favorite pastime is either playing pranks on the Slytherins or making fun of me. Why hadn't I responded yet?

Finally coming to my senses, I narrowed my eyes. "No thank you," I replied as coolly as possible. Then I turned on my heel into the Potions classroom, leaving him alone in the hallway.

I took a few moments to collect my breath in the dark doorway. What had just happened? It felt so wrong. I don't even know what's going on. I felt like I was hallucinating. It's like if someone just told you that Dumbledore was an evil overlord just training all of the Hogwarts students to be his own little minions. It makes absolutely zero sense.

But the weird thing is that if he asked me to go on a date, it meant that he actually wanted me to say yes. There was no way he would've asked if he wanted me to turn me down. Unless it was a dare.

Yes, that was definitely it. There was no way Potter actually wanted to take me to Hogsmeade. He just wanted to gloat to his friends if I said yes. Thank Merlin I came to my senses and turned him down.

I still haven't told Cal and Alice. It's just that it would be so embarrassing to admit that to them. They just would've teased me about it and tried to read more into it than was actually happening. They aren't particularly nice to Potter or anything; they just don't understand my utter loathing of him. It's just really hard to describe, and I don't know what to do but I don't want to tell anyone.

I just wish there was a book I could look up the answers to. If this was a question on my History of Magic homework, I could easily head to the library and find the answer. I have no way of knowing what to do! Maybe I'll check the library just in case…

What It Feels to Fail
By James Potter, Third Year

It's absolutely awful, if you were wondering.

Looking back on it, I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking. I guess if I'm being honest with myself about it, I really wasn't thinking.

Before I start explaining the awful, embarrassing details of the terribly unfortunate encounter I have just endured, let me give you a little bit of background information about myself.

I'm not used to failing.

Okay, so maybe that's not as dramatic as it sounded in my head, but I'm wounded here. My pride has just been blown to smithereens and I have absolutely no explanation for it.

It's just that, my whole life, I've been used to succeeding. The whole Quidditch situation last year even ended up in my favor. Tommy got injured during a particularly brutal December practice a couple weeks after I wrote about it, so I cracked the starting line-up the next game. Good thing I did too, because I scored 50 points in my debut. Take that, Livingston! I'll admit, I still hold a grudge even though he graduated last year. I'm not trying to brag, but after my performance against Hufflepuff there was no way he could put Tommy back in the line-up even though he was all healed up. Good thing Wood got the captainship this year; at least he doesn't play favorites.

I'm not going to be falsely humble, I absolutely hate people who do that. You know, those Ravenclaw girls who pretend to get all nervous when the professor is handing back the essays? They talk in hushed tones to each other – "Oh Merlin, I don't even want to know how badly I did!" and "I know I got a T, I just know it!" It drives me bonkers. Of course they got an O. They stayed up late the previous night studying; they know that and so does everybody else. So why on earth do they act like they're going to do terrible?

Me? I take the opposite road. I know I'm awesome and I'm not hesitant about letting other people know that.

Okay, that did come out a little arrogant, but I have a right to be. I'm not one of those idiots who brag and brag and brag and eventually get put to shame. I won't get humiliated because I can back it up.

First of all, I've got mad Quidditch skills, as I've already covered above. But the thing is—anyone can have a talent for Quidditch. You've really got to put in the extra hours if you want to be great. That's what I'm doing. I don't get up an extra hour early for no reason. Cal and Sirius drag their sorry arses out of bed (mostly because I make them, but that's beside the point) every morning as well because they understand, like me, that hard work is the key to success. And by Godric, I'm going to succeed.

But I won't limit my successes to the Quidditch pitch. I'm good at magic in general as well. I'd have to say my best subject is Transfiguration, simply because I've never gotten any mark less than an O. I suppose that class is mostly a result of natural talent, but I have to do work in other classes. History of Magic, for example. I hate that class with a fiery passion, but Mum threatens me with a Howler if I can't get above an A. That's the only reason why I actually stay awake in that class as opposed to Sirius who has gotten a bit of a reputation for snoring.

What's the point of putting in all the hard work if I can't boast about it sometimes, right?

I know this may cross the line of confidence and arrogance but I have to add this final bit. I'm not bad looking. I mean, I know everyone tells me that my hair looks like it's inhabited by its own personal tornado, but other than that I'm a solid 9, according to Sirius at least (but I'm pretty sure his scale is off considering he gave himself a 10). I'm tall for my age, my glasses aren't that dorky, I'm in shape from playing Quidditch, and overall I don't resemble a troll. What more could a girl want?

Astonishingly, I can think of one redhead who would disagree.

Believe it or not, my accurate description of myself did have a point. I'm not the type who enjoys listing all my virtues in essay form for no reason.

You see, I had to do it! I needed a bit of confidence after Evans smashed it to pieces!

Finally I've gotten to the point of this essay, which is the fact that Evans just turned me down.

I, James Potter, Gryffindor extraordinaire, swallowed my pride and summoned all of my courage to ask Lily Evans on a date and she said no.

That was all she said too. Well, actually at first she lost her cool and screamed "What?" at the top of her lungs but once she calmed down she just flat out rejected me. She didn't even give a reason.

Why wouldn't she want to go out with me?

No wonder Puffapod thinks the plants have been acting wonky lately. If it's true that they pick up on human emotion, especially mine, it's no wonder they haven uprooted yet and killed themselves.

Sorry. That came out a bit dramatic – I swear I'm not like that in real life. At least I'm not as bad as Sirius—swear to Merlin, that bloke gets tears in his eyes every time his favorite shampoo bottle runs low.

Ahhhh, that's more like it. Making fun of Sirius never fails to make me feel better…

Speaking of Sirius, he's just reminded me of something. I caught him up to speed about my humiliating rejection in the beginning of class. Remus was more than happy to tend to the plants for a while Sirius and I talked (well actually he wasn't, but he's easily bribed with a bit of chocolate, so it's basically the same thing anyway). Anyway, Sirius has some pretty wonky ideas most of the time but I agree with him about this one.

Lily Evans embarrassed me badly, as much as I hate to admit it. However, I'm a Marauder for a reason and there's no way she's going to get away with it.

She better watch her back.

a/n: Don't shoot me! I'm terribly sorry for the horrendous delay in updating this. I have no excuses. Sadly, I also have no guarantee when the next chapter of this will be uploaded (I'm aiming for under a month!) but as a bonus, I've decided to include Remus's POV, which should be interesting! Thanks for sticking with!