Taking a break from revision to write this. People seemed to enjoy my Quidditch so I'm happy! Sorry if the drinking offended some people, but it had to be put in to further the story. I hope I haven't lost some reviewers because of it. If you're still reading this and left a review a few chapters ago, could you review again? Just so I know you're still there!
I've seen loads of people answering every single review personally, which I think is kool. So I've decided to do it too, they're at the end of the chapter.
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Chapter 12 : Cocktails and Dreams
'Did Lily Evans just flirt with me? I'd started leaving her alone, and now she's flirting with me?!
'Right I'm going to sort this!' James jumped back out of bed, with the clear decision in his head, that he was going to march right back out into the private common room and ask Lily just what the bloody hell she thought she was playing at!
As he walked across his room to the door he realised he was still in his Quidditch robes, and for some reason carrying his broomstick. Deciding that now was not the time to worry about such trivial matters, he marched purposely on.
He swung open his bedroom door and found that Lily was sitting exactly as he had left her a few minutes ago. Only now, instead of wearing jeans and baggy t-shirt, with her hair roughly tied up in a loose bun, he found that she was wearing a tight red cocktail dress, and her hair was flowing over her shoulders in ringlets. Also, instead of the letter he'd seen her writing, she was now gazing lovingly at that photograph of himself as a three-year-old with a bucket on his head. Again he found himself too busy to be perturbed.
"Lily, what just happened?" he asked a bit matter-of-factly.
"Well you and I flirted, and then you chickened out and left," Lily replied casually.
"Why did I do that?"
"Because you're afraid I'll reject you again. You've never been afraid before because your pursuit of me was only a bit of a mess about. Now it's turned into something more serious. Remus has noticed, if I were you I'd destroy the evidence, if you know what I mean," she replied again flatly.
"You think I should kill Moony?" James said starting to ponder the idea seriously.
"Yes Prongs." Lily looked at him as if to ask why he'd never thought of it before.
"I don't know that I really could you know. I mean he's a werewolf, and it might be a bit hard to find a silver bullet to do the job."
"Yeah but you're a stag. Could you not stab him with an antler or something?" Lily offered.
"How do you know that?" James asked casually. He surprised himself at the level of how much he didn't care she knew.
"I guessed," Lily shrugged. James nodded in acceptance of this. Looking at it now, it seemed so totally obvious that he and his mates would have turned into illegal animagi by the time they were fifth year, and would have started parading around the school grounds at night with a werewolf. He made a mental note to announce it publicly in the Great Hall at breakfast tomorrow.
"Anyway Lily, I still don't think I could kill Moony. He'd be a bit upset."
"Well it was just a suggestion. We could always start going out instead?" Lily said, with a face that looked as though she couldn't care less.
"Yea that sounds cool. Do you want to be my girlfriend then?" James said sounding slightly interested.
"Yea whatever," Lily said sounding positively bored.
The two of them sat staring around the room for a moment, pondering what to do next.
"So..."
"Well..."
The same thought seemed to hit them both at the same time. Suddenly a loud, greasy guitar-solo started. James pushed all the stuff off the desk Lily had been working at and sat her on top of it. He stood up beside her and she wrapped her legs around him. They started to kiss passionately. James felt Lily starting to unbutton his robes, her hands running all over his neck and chest. He also felt a third hand coming from behind his shoulder and ruffling his hair. James looked round to see where it was coming from and was a bit surprised to see Sirius walking apologetically backwards.
"Sorry mate, just trying to help." James looked to see where Sirius had walked to and saw that Remus and Peter were standing beside them. All the time Lily was still undressing him and kissing his neck.
"It's ok. What you guys doing here anyway?" James asked, clearly happy to see them.
"We thought we'd just come and see how things were getting on," Peter replied.
"We obviously picked a great moment to check on you," Remus added eagerly.
"Yeah," James laughed. "What do you think then?"
"I think it's good. At least this way I didn't have to die," Remus said thoughtfully.
"See that's what I thought," James replied sincerely. Lily gave out a frustrated moan. James looked back at her and realised he was neglecting his duties a bit. "Listen I'll be with you in a moment," he said apologetically to the rest of the Marauders. They took a seat on the floor, still watching James and Lily. Peter whipped out a bag of popcorn from his pocket, and started sharing it with Sirius.
James had just started kissing Lily again, when he heard a rap on the private common room door. He was slightly annoyed when he turned to see his parents walk through it. He decided to ignore them and turned back to Lily. Just in middle of another, particularly good, kiss James felt a tap on his shoulder. It was his mum.
"God mum, do you mind like?" he snapped at her. He turned back to Lily and mouthed 'I'm sorry' to her. She answered him with another breath-taking kiss.
"Oh I'm sorry Poppet," James' mum replied. She was quite short, but skinny all the same. She was a very 'mumly-mum', and always took the greatest interest in her son's life and making sure he was happy. "Whose this?" she asked cheerfully. James broke off his kiss with Lily to make the introductions.
"This is Lily Evans. Lily, this is my mum." Lily shook hands with his mum, her legs wrapped round him all the time. "Dad, Lily. Lily, my dad." Mr Potter stepped forwards and shook Lily's hand also. "So are we done here?" James asked his parents heatedly. "'cause we were kind of in the middle of something," he finished pointedly.
"Of course Jay," his dad answered in a deep voice. "We'll leave you to it." He was a very tall and built man, and looked very much like James. It was probably because of this he was the only one that could pull off calling him 'Jay'.
"Look Prongs it doesn't matter. You're too late now anyway," Lily said frustrated, and unhooked her legs from around him. "I'm pregnant," she said whilst crossing her arms. James looked at her shocked for a moment.
"What?! And more importantly – how?!"
"It's Peter's," she said with a smirk. James was even more flabbergasted.
"PETER'S?! When?!" Lily started to look slightly more uncomfortable under his gaze; James thought she might even feel a bit sorry about her treatment of him.
"Well you were taking too long faffing over your parents, so we nipped into my room when you weren't looking."
"Sorry mate," Peter mumbled through a mouthful of popcorn, still sitting on the floor beside Sirius.
"WHAT?! How could you?!" James felt like he was going to explode.
"Look Prongs, I said I'm sorry..." Lily started.
"No, no, I mean actually how could you? I was right here the whole time, I would have noticed."
"No mate, it's true. We all saw them," Remus piped up. Sirius, James' parents and Caitlin, who had suddenly appeared, all nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Did no one try to stop them?" James asked, amazed at his family and friends' stupidity. They all looked round at each other, starting to look a bit guilty.
"Look if it helps, Prongs, we were all disgusted," Sirius said as though this would clear up the whole matter.
"Yes Padfoot, that helps a lot," James replied sarcastically. He turned back round to Lily, who was now lazily filing her nails, ignoring the situation she had caused. "What are you going to do then? About the baby?" James asked, slightly concerned about her behaviour.
"I don't really know," Lily yawned. "I know what you should do though."
"What?"
"Open your eyes."
James woke with a start, and found himself in a cold sweat. One thing he was sure of – Lily Evans was starting to mess up his head.
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For the rest of the week James spent most of his time trying to avoid Lily. He wasn't too sure just how he would react if he was left for too long in her presence again. He felt that he had worked too hard to mature into the guy he was today, to risk returning to the bumbling – 'Evans will you go out with me?' – idiot he had been before.
James found that avoiding Lily had been surprising easy. He wasn't sure if this was because he was constantly being followed about by a gaggle of giggling girls, in the aftermath of his Quidditch performance, or because Lily was trying to avoid seeing him as well. He didn't have too much time to dwell on the latter however. His new army of supporters made sure he didn't have too much time for anything. At first he had enjoyed the attention, but as the days dragged on it had started to get him down – especially when Sirius was engulfed into the mob early on Tuesday morning, and hadn't been seen since.
As if answering his prayer, Lily appeared at dinnertime on Thursday, while James was in the Great Hall eating. She arrived pushing and shoving girls this way and that. James watched her with amusement as she gave out a detention to a particularly large, 6th year Hufflepuff girl, for threatening her with her wand. As soon as Lily judged that she had got as close to him as she possible could, he saw her waving and shouting to get his attention. Of course she already had it.
"Uh Potter, I know you're finding all this particularly time consuming," she yelled, although he could make out the sarcasm. "But do you think you could try starting fulfilling your Head Boy duties again?" James laughed at how formal she sounded when she was flustered.
"I'd let him fulfil my duties anytime," he heard a 4th year Ravenclaw say slyly to her friend. He was inclined to ignore it; he'd been hearing similar remarks all week and they'd grown a little old. Seemingly Lily couldn't let it be.
"Oh come on," she said exasperatedly. "That didn't even make any sense!" James saw the look of death the Ravenclaw was giving her, and quickly got up from his seat.
"Uh yea Evans, I'm coming now," he said hurriedly. The crowd parted like the Dead Sea, allowing him to walk right to her.
"Thank you," said Lily, throwing worried glances at the envious faces now staring at her.
"No seriously, thank you," James whispered in her ear and frog-marched her quickly from the hall. Once they were outside, James thought they were safe enough to start walking normally again, and they headed down one of the corridors to start their patrolling. "So has there been any bother this week?" he asked, eager to keep the conversation to strictly business.
"A bit yea. I think they're all still on a bit of a high from the Quidditch match on Saturday." James both looked uncomfortably at the floor for a moment, he had been hoping she wouldn't bring that up. For one he was sick of talking about it, the mob had helped him analyse it from every angle, and secondly he wasn't sure he was ready to bring up their conversation again. He decided to bite the bullet and talk to her about it.
"So did you enjoy it then?"
"Yea it was good," Lily said quickly. Suddenly she stopped walking. "Leanne?!" she said sounding shocked.
'Shit, she still doesn't believe me.'
"Look Lily I told you, there's nothing between me and..."
"No look, Leanne!" Lily said pointing with her wand. James looked and saw his fellow chaser running aimlessly down the corridor, bumping off suits of armour and paintings as she did so. She had her hands covering her face as she did so, in fact James could only recognise her from her long, flowing, blonde hair. She obviously couldn't see a thing and ran straight into him, which knocked her onto the floor in front of him.
"Lea what's wrong?" James asked concerned, offering his hand to pull her back onto her feet. She refused to take her own hands away from her face, and was sobbing uncontrollably. "Lea wise up, I've seen you cry plenty of times before. You cry every time you miss the quaffle!" He was starting to get a bit fed up with her – he hated to see women cry, and yanked her up roughly by her wrist. As he did so he managed to pull her hand away a little from her face, and saw what she was hiding. He froze in the horror of what he saw. Across Leanne's face, written in warts and boils, were disgusting expletives, all running with the theme that she was 'Potter's Whore'. Leanne looked at him petrified for a moment, and he stared back at her in disbelief. It was Lily that finally broke their gaze.
"Vip pulidoso," she murmured quickly, and at once Leanne's face was wiped clean. "That should sort it, but I still think you should go to the hospital wing," she said to Leanne soothingly. Leanne ran shaking into her arms, keen to get away from James' grip – he was still holding her by the wrist. "I'll take her to see Madam Pompfrey, and then I think I'll go and get my dinner. You can finish by yourself can't you?" Lily was looking at James with a look of pure fear, and Leanne was burying her head into her shoulder. Both looked keen to get away from him. James nodded mutely to Lily's question and watched as they both practically ran down the corridor to get away from him.
He glumly decided to complete the rest of his duties alone and it was past 10 o'clock before he made it back to the Gryffindor Tower.
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Back in the common room his story wasn't met by the reception he'd hoped for. Sirius found his predicament hilariously funny, Remus didn't have any words of wisdom for him, although he did look genuinely concerned, and Peter... well Peter never really had anything memorable to say.
"Honestly you would have thought I was the one that had written it all over her face, the speed that she tried to get away from me!" he moaned to them. Looking for a little support, and reassurance that he wasn't a crazed monster.
"Well maybe she thought that if they found her with you again, the bullying would only get worse," Remus offered. James sunk further into his chair, and started to feel very sorry for himself indeed.
"Oh God, why do I have to be so popular with the ladies?!" Sirius cried mockingly out to the heavens. James gave him a sulky glare. "Oh come on, wise up. It's not as though you were the one hurt is it? Personally I don't see the problem with being surrounded by adoring women 24/7."
"Oh do you not?" Caitlin said with an eyebrow raised, as she walked into the common room and perched herself on the arm of Sirius' chair. He slinked his arm around her waist and puckered up at her, by way as an apology. She pushed his head away from her and pretended to concentrate on the conversation again. James decided to try her for a bit of sympathy – she was a girl after all.
"Sometimes I just felt so alone, even though I was surrounded by all those people." Sirius immediately burst out with a laugh like a bark. Remus buried his head in his book to hide his sniggers, and even Peter began laughing at him. Only Caitlin tried to look as though she was even slightly concerned. This would have worked, if she didn't happen to be trying to fight a huge grin from creeping across her face.
"God Prongs, you're even starting to sound like a woman now. You need to start hanging out with the lads more, bring back your masculinity. We'll have plenty of time for that next week," he said pointedly. James glanced over at Remus, it was full moon next week. He would have to go through a horrible and painful transformation into a werewolf every evening for three nights in a row. James could hardly wait for the fun to begin.
"Awwwh poor Jamie. Having to spend quality time with you lot!" Caitlin giggled, and playfully slapped Sirius across the head.
"Jamie?!" all the Marauders said in unison. Caitlin looked a little taken back by their reaction, it had obviously not been what she was looking for.
"What?" she said defensively. "I've called him Jamie before, it's a thing from our childhood!"
"We know you've called him Jamie before," Remus said formally.
"You call him Jamie when you're being girly," Sirius added.
"You're only girly when you have gossip," Peter said knowledgably.
"And you're only girly around the people who the gossip is about," James finished. There was no doubting it – together the Marauders made a brilliant team.
"That's so not true," Caitlin said, trying to laugh it off.
"Caitlin, what's the gossip?" The Marauders said in unison. Caitlin nearly fell off the arm of the chair, and was clearly a bit uneasy. James was sure they had hit on something here.
"It's nothing...seriously...it's....Lily!" Caitlin shouted as she greeted her best friend. "How's Leanne?" Caitlin added quickly.
"She's ok, she's spending the night in the hospital wing though, still a bit shaken up," Lily said sounding exhausted.
"Who was it?" James asked.
"A first year would you believe? From Ravenclaw." The group all laughed as they realised just what effect James was having on girls as young as 11. Lily slumped into an armchair, and closed her eyes. It looked like there was nothing else that she would love more, but go to sleep.
"Lils are you ok?" Caitlin asked her, looking very concerned.
"Yea, just a bit of bother with James' fans at dinner," Lily said sleepily. "Accused me of stealing their boy!" she said sarcastically, all the time getting closer and closer to falling asleep right there in front of them. The rest of the group became more and more relaxed, sitting watching her peacefully.
Suddenly Lily sat bolt upright, and gave three loud hiccups.
"What the hell?!" Sirius exclaimed as he jumped out of his seat.
"Evans are you ok?" James said to her.
"I'm fine baby, how are you?" she said in a voice that was very smooth, and made her sound a lot older.
"Uh I could be better I suppose," James answered honestly, still too caught up in himself to really notice the sudden change in Lily's mood. He was staring at his hands, thinking about how to make up for the abuse he had caused Leanne.
"Do you need cheering up?" she said slyly.
"Honestly? Yes I do," James said innocently enough. He heard a movement and looked up to see what was happening. Lily had got up off her seat and was walking seductively over to him. The rest of the group were all watching her in pure disbelief. Now James had a closer look he noticed a funny glaze over her eyes, they weren't their usual brilliant green, and in fact had a bit of a red tinge to them. He knew there was definitely something funny going on.
Suddenly Lily was sitting on his knee and stroking his hair. "Uh now Evans, what you doing there?"
"I'm going to cheer you up." Caitlin and Sirius started to snigger, clearly enjoying the fool Lily was making of herself. Even Remus was laughing, he didn't approve of people being put under spells, but as long they weren't in any mortal danger he never really found the strength to put a stop to them. Peter was just staring at James with wide eyes, clearly anxious to see what his next move would be.
"And... uh... how would you be doing that then?"
"Oh," she whispered to him. "I think I have an idea."
James suddenly felt himself being torn between two very strong emotions. One was to be a gentleman, take Lily up to her room and lock her in there, until whatever spell she was clearly under wore off. The other was to take advantage of the situation, take Lily up to his room and lock her in there, until whatever spell she was clearly under wore off. After a few moments of some hard decision-making, Remus made the choice for him.
"Uh Lily, do you really think you should be doing that?" he said politely. He had obviously decided enough was enough. Lily twisted round in James' lap to face him.
"Awh Remy, are you looking out for me?" she said in a baby voice. "That's so hot!" she exclaimed breathlessly. Quick as a flash, she bounded off James' lap, ran across to Remus, straddled him and brought him into a passionate embrace.
James at once felt the surge of jealously begin to bubble up inside him. He managed to keep control of it however. It was only a joke after all. Remus clearly wasn't enjoying it. No matter how seductively Lily writhed about on top of him, kissing him, Remus remained with eyes wide-open, knuckles white with gripping the arms of his chair in sheer terror. Peter and Sirius were sitting watching Remus' every move, they had never seen him with a girl before, the whole being a teenage werewolf thing meant he wasn't good with women.
As James scanned the room, anxious for anything else to concentrate on, he found that it was surprisingly empty apart from them. He also noticed that instead of staring at Remus and Lily, Caitlin was staring at him, seemingly trying to analyse his reaction. She looked away as soon as he caught her on.
Unable to find anything significant to take his attention away from the horror that was before him, he found he line of vision slipping back to Remus and Lily. Danger sign one was the fact that Remus' knuckles were no longer white, but had returned to their natural shade – he had loosened his grip. Danger sign two was when Remus closed his eyes. Danger sign three was when Peter and Sirius started cheering, confirming what James was thinking – Remus had now joined in with the kiss.
James felt the jealously inside him boil over. Even quicker than Lily had moved, he found himself launch out of his chair and across the room. She pulled Lily roughly off of Remus and heard her land with a thud on the sofa behind him. He then pushed his hand hard into Remus' shoulder, so he was pinned in the chair, and moved his head so their faces were barely an inch apart.
"I think that's enough don't you? We wouldn't want to take advantage of her," he whispered dangerously to Remus. James knew that his face was probably contorted with rage, which was not a pleasant sign. He was a bit surprised that Remus did not look back to him in fear, but more with a look that looked like he was shocked at his own behaviour. James lent off him and turned to face the rest of the group. Caitlin was already seeing to Lily, Sirius had one eyebrow raised at him, and Peter had a strange look of hunger in his eyes.
"Take her to the hospital wing and sort her out would you? And I don't think we should mention any of this to her when she comes round. Agreed?" The others all nodded, which James took as their solemn vow of secrecy – after all they were all used to holding secrets from the rest of the world now. Deciding that the matter was cleared up, James stormed up to his room without looking back.
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countessmel: I'm sorry about the drinking thing, but he wasn't really drunk. I just wanted to make him a bit tipsy so he would slip up around Lily.
BurningIce22: Thanks. I'm glad she admitted it too!
luvsirius: Lol ok here's me updating! Please don't hurt me!
Twilight66: Thanks. I really enjoy your story too.
Oliverwoodschic: Well he did remember the conversation. Thanks for reviewing so much.
kaleidoscope0-0eyes: I liked that line too. Thanks about the characters, I'm trying to keep to what they come across as in the books as much as possible. The ones I make up I'm basing on people I know.
leanne: Do you like your cameo?
I didn't really like that chapter. I had to write it to keep the story going though. It'll get better again I promise. By the way James is not an abusive deranged psychopath in case anyone thought they were picking that up in that chapter. Please read and review!
I've seen loads of people answering every single review personally, which I think is kool. So I've decided to do it too, they're at the end of the chapter.
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Chapter 12 : Cocktails and Dreams
'Did Lily Evans just flirt with me? I'd started leaving her alone, and now she's flirting with me?!
'Right I'm going to sort this!' James jumped back out of bed, with the clear decision in his head, that he was going to march right back out into the private common room and ask Lily just what the bloody hell she thought she was playing at!
As he walked across his room to the door he realised he was still in his Quidditch robes, and for some reason carrying his broomstick. Deciding that now was not the time to worry about such trivial matters, he marched purposely on.
He swung open his bedroom door and found that Lily was sitting exactly as he had left her a few minutes ago. Only now, instead of wearing jeans and baggy t-shirt, with her hair roughly tied up in a loose bun, he found that she was wearing a tight red cocktail dress, and her hair was flowing over her shoulders in ringlets. Also, instead of the letter he'd seen her writing, she was now gazing lovingly at that photograph of himself as a three-year-old with a bucket on his head. Again he found himself too busy to be perturbed.
"Lily, what just happened?" he asked a bit matter-of-factly.
"Well you and I flirted, and then you chickened out and left," Lily replied casually.
"Why did I do that?"
"Because you're afraid I'll reject you again. You've never been afraid before because your pursuit of me was only a bit of a mess about. Now it's turned into something more serious. Remus has noticed, if I were you I'd destroy the evidence, if you know what I mean," she replied again flatly.
"You think I should kill Moony?" James said starting to ponder the idea seriously.
"Yes Prongs." Lily looked at him as if to ask why he'd never thought of it before.
"I don't know that I really could you know. I mean he's a werewolf, and it might be a bit hard to find a silver bullet to do the job."
"Yeah but you're a stag. Could you not stab him with an antler or something?" Lily offered.
"How do you know that?" James asked casually. He surprised himself at the level of how much he didn't care she knew.
"I guessed," Lily shrugged. James nodded in acceptance of this. Looking at it now, it seemed so totally obvious that he and his mates would have turned into illegal animagi by the time they were fifth year, and would have started parading around the school grounds at night with a werewolf. He made a mental note to announce it publicly in the Great Hall at breakfast tomorrow.
"Anyway Lily, I still don't think I could kill Moony. He'd be a bit upset."
"Well it was just a suggestion. We could always start going out instead?" Lily said, with a face that looked as though she couldn't care less.
"Yea that sounds cool. Do you want to be my girlfriend then?" James said sounding slightly interested.
"Yea whatever," Lily said sounding positively bored.
The two of them sat staring around the room for a moment, pondering what to do next.
"So..."
"Well..."
The same thought seemed to hit them both at the same time. Suddenly a loud, greasy guitar-solo started. James pushed all the stuff off the desk Lily had been working at and sat her on top of it. He stood up beside her and she wrapped her legs around him. They started to kiss passionately. James felt Lily starting to unbutton his robes, her hands running all over his neck and chest. He also felt a third hand coming from behind his shoulder and ruffling his hair. James looked round to see where it was coming from and was a bit surprised to see Sirius walking apologetically backwards.
"Sorry mate, just trying to help." James looked to see where Sirius had walked to and saw that Remus and Peter were standing beside them. All the time Lily was still undressing him and kissing his neck.
"It's ok. What you guys doing here anyway?" James asked, clearly happy to see them.
"We thought we'd just come and see how things were getting on," Peter replied.
"We obviously picked a great moment to check on you," Remus added eagerly.
"Yeah," James laughed. "What do you think then?"
"I think it's good. At least this way I didn't have to die," Remus said thoughtfully.
"See that's what I thought," James replied sincerely. Lily gave out a frustrated moan. James looked back at her and realised he was neglecting his duties a bit. "Listen I'll be with you in a moment," he said apologetically to the rest of the Marauders. They took a seat on the floor, still watching James and Lily. Peter whipped out a bag of popcorn from his pocket, and started sharing it with Sirius.
James had just started kissing Lily again, when he heard a rap on the private common room door. He was slightly annoyed when he turned to see his parents walk through it. He decided to ignore them and turned back to Lily. Just in middle of another, particularly good, kiss James felt a tap on his shoulder. It was his mum.
"God mum, do you mind like?" he snapped at her. He turned back to Lily and mouthed 'I'm sorry' to her. She answered him with another breath-taking kiss.
"Oh I'm sorry Poppet," James' mum replied. She was quite short, but skinny all the same. She was a very 'mumly-mum', and always took the greatest interest in her son's life and making sure he was happy. "Whose this?" she asked cheerfully. James broke off his kiss with Lily to make the introductions.
"This is Lily Evans. Lily, this is my mum." Lily shook hands with his mum, her legs wrapped round him all the time. "Dad, Lily. Lily, my dad." Mr Potter stepped forwards and shook Lily's hand also. "So are we done here?" James asked his parents heatedly. "'cause we were kind of in the middle of something," he finished pointedly.
"Of course Jay," his dad answered in a deep voice. "We'll leave you to it." He was a very tall and built man, and looked very much like James. It was probably because of this he was the only one that could pull off calling him 'Jay'.
"Look Prongs it doesn't matter. You're too late now anyway," Lily said frustrated, and unhooked her legs from around him. "I'm pregnant," she said whilst crossing her arms. James looked at her shocked for a moment.
"What?! And more importantly – how?!"
"It's Peter's," she said with a smirk. James was even more flabbergasted.
"PETER'S?! When?!" Lily started to look slightly more uncomfortable under his gaze; James thought she might even feel a bit sorry about her treatment of him.
"Well you were taking too long faffing over your parents, so we nipped into my room when you weren't looking."
"Sorry mate," Peter mumbled through a mouthful of popcorn, still sitting on the floor beside Sirius.
"WHAT?! How could you?!" James felt like he was going to explode.
"Look Prongs, I said I'm sorry..." Lily started.
"No, no, I mean actually how could you? I was right here the whole time, I would have noticed."
"No mate, it's true. We all saw them," Remus piped up. Sirius, James' parents and Caitlin, who had suddenly appeared, all nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Did no one try to stop them?" James asked, amazed at his family and friends' stupidity. They all looked round at each other, starting to look a bit guilty.
"Look if it helps, Prongs, we were all disgusted," Sirius said as though this would clear up the whole matter.
"Yes Padfoot, that helps a lot," James replied sarcastically. He turned back round to Lily, who was now lazily filing her nails, ignoring the situation she had caused. "What are you going to do then? About the baby?" James asked, slightly concerned about her behaviour.
"I don't really know," Lily yawned. "I know what you should do though."
"What?"
"Open your eyes."
James woke with a start, and found himself in a cold sweat. One thing he was sure of – Lily Evans was starting to mess up his head.
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For the rest of the week James spent most of his time trying to avoid Lily. He wasn't too sure just how he would react if he was left for too long in her presence again. He felt that he had worked too hard to mature into the guy he was today, to risk returning to the bumbling – 'Evans will you go out with me?' – idiot he had been before.
James found that avoiding Lily had been surprising easy. He wasn't sure if this was because he was constantly being followed about by a gaggle of giggling girls, in the aftermath of his Quidditch performance, or because Lily was trying to avoid seeing him as well. He didn't have too much time to dwell on the latter however. His new army of supporters made sure he didn't have too much time for anything. At first he had enjoyed the attention, but as the days dragged on it had started to get him down – especially when Sirius was engulfed into the mob early on Tuesday morning, and hadn't been seen since.
As if answering his prayer, Lily appeared at dinnertime on Thursday, while James was in the Great Hall eating. She arrived pushing and shoving girls this way and that. James watched her with amusement as she gave out a detention to a particularly large, 6th year Hufflepuff girl, for threatening her with her wand. As soon as Lily judged that she had got as close to him as she possible could, he saw her waving and shouting to get his attention. Of course she already had it.
"Uh Potter, I know you're finding all this particularly time consuming," she yelled, although he could make out the sarcasm. "But do you think you could try starting fulfilling your Head Boy duties again?" James laughed at how formal she sounded when she was flustered.
"I'd let him fulfil my duties anytime," he heard a 4th year Ravenclaw say slyly to her friend. He was inclined to ignore it; he'd been hearing similar remarks all week and they'd grown a little old. Seemingly Lily couldn't let it be.
"Oh come on," she said exasperatedly. "That didn't even make any sense!" James saw the look of death the Ravenclaw was giving her, and quickly got up from his seat.
"Uh yea Evans, I'm coming now," he said hurriedly. The crowd parted like the Dead Sea, allowing him to walk right to her.
"Thank you," said Lily, throwing worried glances at the envious faces now staring at her.
"No seriously, thank you," James whispered in her ear and frog-marched her quickly from the hall. Once they were outside, James thought they were safe enough to start walking normally again, and they headed down one of the corridors to start their patrolling. "So has there been any bother this week?" he asked, eager to keep the conversation to strictly business.
"A bit yea. I think they're all still on a bit of a high from the Quidditch match on Saturday." James both looked uncomfortably at the floor for a moment, he had been hoping she wouldn't bring that up. For one he was sick of talking about it, the mob had helped him analyse it from every angle, and secondly he wasn't sure he was ready to bring up their conversation again. He decided to bite the bullet and talk to her about it.
"So did you enjoy it then?"
"Yea it was good," Lily said quickly. Suddenly she stopped walking. "Leanne?!" she said sounding shocked.
'Shit, she still doesn't believe me.'
"Look Lily I told you, there's nothing between me and..."
"No look, Leanne!" Lily said pointing with her wand. James looked and saw his fellow chaser running aimlessly down the corridor, bumping off suits of armour and paintings as she did so. She had her hands covering her face as she did so, in fact James could only recognise her from her long, flowing, blonde hair. She obviously couldn't see a thing and ran straight into him, which knocked her onto the floor in front of him.
"Lea what's wrong?" James asked concerned, offering his hand to pull her back onto her feet. She refused to take her own hands away from her face, and was sobbing uncontrollably. "Lea wise up, I've seen you cry plenty of times before. You cry every time you miss the quaffle!" He was starting to get a bit fed up with her – he hated to see women cry, and yanked her up roughly by her wrist. As he did so he managed to pull her hand away a little from her face, and saw what she was hiding. He froze in the horror of what he saw. Across Leanne's face, written in warts and boils, were disgusting expletives, all running with the theme that she was 'Potter's Whore'. Leanne looked at him petrified for a moment, and he stared back at her in disbelief. It was Lily that finally broke their gaze.
"Vip pulidoso," she murmured quickly, and at once Leanne's face was wiped clean. "That should sort it, but I still think you should go to the hospital wing," she said to Leanne soothingly. Leanne ran shaking into her arms, keen to get away from James' grip – he was still holding her by the wrist. "I'll take her to see Madam Pompfrey, and then I think I'll go and get my dinner. You can finish by yourself can't you?" Lily was looking at James with a look of pure fear, and Leanne was burying her head into her shoulder. Both looked keen to get away from him. James nodded mutely to Lily's question and watched as they both practically ran down the corridor to get away from him.
He glumly decided to complete the rest of his duties alone and it was past 10 o'clock before he made it back to the Gryffindor Tower.
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Back in the common room his story wasn't met by the reception he'd hoped for. Sirius found his predicament hilariously funny, Remus didn't have any words of wisdom for him, although he did look genuinely concerned, and Peter... well Peter never really had anything memorable to say.
"Honestly you would have thought I was the one that had written it all over her face, the speed that she tried to get away from me!" he moaned to them. Looking for a little support, and reassurance that he wasn't a crazed monster.
"Well maybe she thought that if they found her with you again, the bullying would only get worse," Remus offered. James sunk further into his chair, and started to feel very sorry for himself indeed.
"Oh God, why do I have to be so popular with the ladies?!" Sirius cried mockingly out to the heavens. James gave him a sulky glare. "Oh come on, wise up. It's not as though you were the one hurt is it? Personally I don't see the problem with being surrounded by adoring women 24/7."
"Oh do you not?" Caitlin said with an eyebrow raised, as she walked into the common room and perched herself on the arm of Sirius' chair. He slinked his arm around her waist and puckered up at her, by way as an apology. She pushed his head away from her and pretended to concentrate on the conversation again. James decided to try her for a bit of sympathy – she was a girl after all.
"Sometimes I just felt so alone, even though I was surrounded by all those people." Sirius immediately burst out with a laugh like a bark. Remus buried his head in his book to hide his sniggers, and even Peter began laughing at him. Only Caitlin tried to look as though she was even slightly concerned. This would have worked, if she didn't happen to be trying to fight a huge grin from creeping across her face.
"God Prongs, you're even starting to sound like a woman now. You need to start hanging out with the lads more, bring back your masculinity. We'll have plenty of time for that next week," he said pointedly. James glanced over at Remus, it was full moon next week. He would have to go through a horrible and painful transformation into a werewolf every evening for three nights in a row. James could hardly wait for the fun to begin.
"Awwwh poor Jamie. Having to spend quality time with you lot!" Caitlin giggled, and playfully slapped Sirius across the head.
"Jamie?!" all the Marauders said in unison. Caitlin looked a little taken back by their reaction, it had obviously not been what she was looking for.
"What?" she said defensively. "I've called him Jamie before, it's a thing from our childhood!"
"We know you've called him Jamie before," Remus said formally.
"You call him Jamie when you're being girly," Sirius added.
"You're only girly when you have gossip," Peter said knowledgably.
"And you're only girly around the people who the gossip is about," James finished. There was no doubting it – together the Marauders made a brilliant team.
"That's so not true," Caitlin said, trying to laugh it off.
"Caitlin, what's the gossip?" The Marauders said in unison. Caitlin nearly fell off the arm of the chair, and was clearly a bit uneasy. James was sure they had hit on something here.
"It's nothing...seriously...it's....Lily!" Caitlin shouted as she greeted her best friend. "How's Leanne?" Caitlin added quickly.
"She's ok, she's spending the night in the hospital wing though, still a bit shaken up," Lily said sounding exhausted.
"Who was it?" James asked.
"A first year would you believe? From Ravenclaw." The group all laughed as they realised just what effect James was having on girls as young as 11. Lily slumped into an armchair, and closed her eyes. It looked like there was nothing else that she would love more, but go to sleep.
"Lils are you ok?" Caitlin asked her, looking very concerned.
"Yea, just a bit of bother with James' fans at dinner," Lily said sleepily. "Accused me of stealing their boy!" she said sarcastically, all the time getting closer and closer to falling asleep right there in front of them. The rest of the group became more and more relaxed, sitting watching her peacefully.
Suddenly Lily sat bolt upright, and gave three loud hiccups.
"What the hell?!" Sirius exclaimed as he jumped out of his seat.
"Evans are you ok?" James said to her.
"I'm fine baby, how are you?" she said in a voice that was very smooth, and made her sound a lot older.
"Uh I could be better I suppose," James answered honestly, still too caught up in himself to really notice the sudden change in Lily's mood. He was staring at his hands, thinking about how to make up for the abuse he had caused Leanne.
"Do you need cheering up?" she said slyly.
"Honestly? Yes I do," James said innocently enough. He heard a movement and looked up to see what was happening. Lily had got up off her seat and was walking seductively over to him. The rest of the group were all watching her in pure disbelief. Now James had a closer look he noticed a funny glaze over her eyes, they weren't their usual brilliant green, and in fact had a bit of a red tinge to them. He knew there was definitely something funny going on.
Suddenly Lily was sitting on his knee and stroking his hair. "Uh now Evans, what you doing there?"
"I'm going to cheer you up." Caitlin and Sirius started to snigger, clearly enjoying the fool Lily was making of herself. Even Remus was laughing, he didn't approve of people being put under spells, but as long they weren't in any mortal danger he never really found the strength to put a stop to them. Peter was just staring at James with wide eyes, clearly anxious to see what his next move would be.
"And... uh... how would you be doing that then?"
"Oh," she whispered to him. "I think I have an idea."
James suddenly felt himself being torn between two very strong emotions. One was to be a gentleman, take Lily up to her room and lock her in there, until whatever spell she was clearly under wore off. The other was to take advantage of the situation, take Lily up to his room and lock her in there, until whatever spell she was clearly under wore off. After a few moments of some hard decision-making, Remus made the choice for him.
"Uh Lily, do you really think you should be doing that?" he said politely. He had obviously decided enough was enough. Lily twisted round in James' lap to face him.
"Awh Remy, are you looking out for me?" she said in a baby voice. "That's so hot!" she exclaimed breathlessly. Quick as a flash, she bounded off James' lap, ran across to Remus, straddled him and brought him into a passionate embrace.
James at once felt the surge of jealously begin to bubble up inside him. He managed to keep control of it however. It was only a joke after all. Remus clearly wasn't enjoying it. No matter how seductively Lily writhed about on top of him, kissing him, Remus remained with eyes wide-open, knuckles white with gripping the arms of his chair in sheer terror. Peter and Sirius were sitting watching Remus' every move, they had never seen him with a girl before, the whole being a teenage werewolf thing meant he wasn't good with women.
As James scanned the room, anxious for anything else to concentrate on, he found that it was surprisingly empty apart from them. He also noticed that instead of staring at Remus and Lily, Caitlin was staring at him, seemingly trying to analyse his reaction. She looked away as soon as he caught her on.
Unable to find anything significant to take his attention away from the horror that was before him, he found he line of vision slipping back to Remus and Lily. Danger sign one was the fact that Remus' knuckles were no longer white, but had returned to their natural shade – he had loosened his grip. Danger sign two was when Remus closed his eyes. Danger sign three was when Peter and Sirius started cheering, confirming what James was thinking – Remus had now joined in with the kiss.
James felt the jealously inside him boil over. Even quicker than Lily had moved, he found himself launch out of his chair and across the room. She pulled Lily roughly off of Remus and heard her land with a thud on the sofa behind him. He then pushed his hand hard into Remus' shoulder, so he was pinned in the chair, and moved his head so their faces were barely an inch apart.
"I think that's enough don't you? We wouldn't want to take advantage of her," he whispered dangerously to Remus. James knew that his face was probably contorted with rage, which was not a pleasant sign. He was a bit surprised that Remus did not look back to him in fear, but more with a look that looked like he was shocked at his own behaviour. James lent off him and turned to face the rest of the group. Caitlin was already seeing to Lily, Sirius had one eyebrow raised at him, and Peter had a strange look of hunger in his eyes.
"Take her to the hospital wing and sort her out would you? And I don't think we should mention any of this to her when she comes round. Agreed?" The others all nodded, which James took as their solemn vow of secrecy – after all they were all used to holding secrets from the rest of the world now. Deciding that the matter was cleared up, James stormed up to his room without looking back.
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countessmel: I'm sorry about the drinking thing, but he wasn't really drunk. I just wanted to make him a bit tipsy so he would slip up around Lily.
BurningIce22: Thanks. I'm glad she admitted it too!
luvsirius: Lol ok here's me updating! Please don't hurt me!
Twilight66: Thanks. I really enjoy your story too.
Oliverwoodschic: Well he did remember the conversation. Thanks for reviewing so much.
kaleidoscope0-0eyes: I liked that line too. Thanks about the characters, I'm trying to keep to what they come across as in the books as much as possible. The ones I make up I'm basing on people I know.
leanne: Do you like your cameo?
I didn't really like that chapter. I had to write it to keep the story going though. It'll get better again I promise. By the way James is not an abusive deranged psychopath in case anyone thought they were picking that up in that chapter. Please read and review!