Disclaimer: Me no owney Harry Potty...er...Potter. Hey, it rhymed!

A/N: WOO! I'm up to 100 reviews! How exciting! And I couldn't have done it without all of you!: darth spots and darth stripes, SparklingEyesWithACrazyMind, -Jeisa- , Desert Mortician, hermione-G-wanna-be, LazyBoyGilmore, SweetSouthernGal, Isolde Eris, Morrisburger, pigs can fly, CaramelBoost, SweetSummerx3, MarisAlexia, shadowfox5, hermy permy, Mrs Claire Potter, messyblackhair66, messyblackhair66, snackadils, C San, and RandomObsessivePsychoFangirl.

James: Oh my gosh! She's back!

Sirius: And it's only been...what...two weeks?

Remus: That's a record...she really does need to get more organized though.

Me: Now guys. Don't diss my skills. I'm the author, therefore I have the power to kill you all off, just like JK Rowling kills off...pretty much all of you. Except for Remus, but I think he's a shoe-in for Deathly Hallows.

Remus, Sirius, James: Good point...

Yes, it's true, I'm updating and it hasn't even been a month yet! It's a miracle! I think I deserve a round of applause (waits...no one claps...) Aw man. Oh well, I'm just happy that I got it done! I'm actually surprised about how many people actually guessed correctly about what phase two was going to be. Bravo to all of you who got it right (you'll find out if you're right or not in this chapter...tehehe).

Now before we get on with the chapter (although I wouldn't be surprised if half of you have skipped over this author's note yet...) I have a few questions/comments from reviewers that I feel like responding to. I would have sent out replies to your reviews...but I ran out of time and this way is easier, so there! HA. Okay, fine, I'll send out replies this time around.

darth spots and darth stripes : Ouch, they thought your ipod was a bomb? That's a disgrace to the good workers at the Apple company...lol. Yeah, track! WOO! I'm a sprinter, so I do the 4x100 relay, 100, and 200. It's quite fun!

Desert Mortician: Who said I wasn't going to have Lily crush James's heart? lol Personally, I got kind of tired reading about the two of them falling in love over a dare or something, so that's part of the reason why I decided to write this. I think Lily deserves a bit of revenge, don't you?

hermy permy: Oh, you are good. I was hoping someone would catch up on that...

So, have fun, go read, please review, all that good jazz!

Chapter 7: To Fly, or Not to Fly?

"Go on, Lily."

"Give him a wave."

"He's right there."

Despite herself, Lily grinned and pushed Marlene and Dorcas slightly. "Shut up. He'll hear you," she said as she looked to her left as they descended into the common room.

And sure enough there he was standing near the Gryffindor notice board, his wand out. Sirius stood by his side and the two were laughing about some joke or another. They were tacking some kind of poster onto the bulletin board. As the girls drew closer, the boys looked up from their work.

Now. Do it now.

"'Morning Potter," Lily stated, giving a short wave of her hand in his general direction. She even allowed her mouth to turn upwards into a grin.

For a second, a look of surprise spread throughout his features, causing a ripple effect throughout his body. First his arm twitched as if he were going to wave in return but thought better of it. Next he blinked rapidly as if trying to clear his vision (but didn't he wear glasses for that?). Finally, he smiled warmly, though he looked a bit tired. Lily watched amusedly as he stepped towards her.

"Hey, Evans." He stared at her, shook his head slightly, and then nodded off to Marlene and Dorcas. "Ladies."

Getting unnerved with maintaining eye contact with James Potter that long, Lily glanced over James's shoulder and jumped slightly when she met a pair of narrowed eyes watching her. Sirius was leaning up against the notice board, a pile of papers in his arms, as he peered closely at the redhead. When he noticed that Lily had caught him, he cocked his head to the side like a confused dog. Lily wasn't really sure what that look meant, but knowing the Marauders—especially Sirius Black—it was never a good thing.

"…Quidditch practice this afternoon," James was informing Marlene, "but it'll have to finish early because Evans and I have a meeting with Dumbledore—isn't that right, Evans?"

Shoot…am I being that obvious? Lily thought, not hearing James addressing her as she continued to observe Sirius's unusual demeanor.

"What are you looking at, Black?" Lily shot at him abruptly, interrupting James's conversation.

He straightened his back and stood up tall, casually shifting his weight from one foot to the other. All eyes were on him now. "Nothing," he replied innocently, "well, except for the fact that there's dried toothpaste on your robes, but other than that…"

James quickly turned his snort of laughter into a cough as Lily looked down. Bugger, there actually was toothpaste on her robes; how had that gotten there? More importantly, why hadn't her friends noticed it before they left their dorm? "Screw you, Black," she retorted, whipping out her wand and magically vanishing the mess.

"Anytime, Evans."

"Boys…" Marlene clucked her tongue impatiently as she grabbed Lily around the arm in order to stop her from doing anything rash. She couldn't blow her cover this soon. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily saw James punch Sirius in the shoulder.

"Let's go get some breakfast, yeah?"

As the girls exited the common room, Lily realized something. She never did find out what kind of poster Potter and Black were putting up…

OOO

Remus returned to classes later that afternoon. He strolled into Potions, trying to go unnoticed. Unfortunately for him, James and Sirius were his best friends, and being his best friends the two had decided that he needed a welcome back applause. Grinning out of both embarrassment and happiness, he scurried to his seat and promptly whacked his two friends upside their heads.

"Sorry I'm late, Professor," he apologized, pulling out his book from his school bag.

Slughorn beamed. "Not a worry, my dear boy." He looked around the classroom, the steam from the heating cauldrons making it hard for him to see. Finally, his squinting eyes landed on Lily and he placed his hands on top of his round stomach jovially. "I'm sure Miss Evans can catch you up. Why don't you go join her?"

Lily's head shot up, her hair tied back in a frizzy ponytail, the hot steam causing her usually smooth hair to puff out. Work with a Marauder? Why did her professor always pair her up with the trouble makers of the class? Well, at least it was only Remus. He was tamable, or more so than the others at least.

"Hey, Lily."

Remus plopped his bag down at the edge of Lily's table and pulled up a chair. "Remus, glad to see you're well."

"Madame Pomfrey did her magic on me, I suppose."

Lily added a bit of Salamander Newt to the potion, and it immediately turned a light green color. "I thought Black told me yesterday you're mum was sick?"

Aha. She'd caught him.

She watched Remus closely, who instantly paled and began fidgeting with the hem of his robes. "Yeah, she was sick…and, you know, I must have caught it from her." He dodged her gaze by picking up his Potions book and skimming through it hastily, flipping the pages rather quickly. No one could read that fast.

"Remus," she said quietly, leaning over her cauldron as an excuse to get closer to his ear, "I know."

His foot twitched and he kicked the leg of their table, causing a resounding noise to filter throughout the room. It was lucky that loud bangs weren't unusual in Potions class—or any Hogwarts lessons come to think of it—because no one paid Remus's now colorless face any attention.

"You...know?"

Lily nodded, and backed away, picking up her knife once again. "It's alright," she said offhandedly, cutting up her roots. "It doesn't matter."

"How long?" he whispered, not taking his eyes off her.

"Well, it was kind of hard to not notice that my fellow Prefect disappeared once a month."

"Oh…"

There was a silence as Lily stirred their potion and Remus hid his worried eyes behind his book. Setting down her ladle, Lily carefully glanced around her to make sure they weren't being overhead. Usually Potions class was so hands-on that she needn't worry.

"There is one thing that worries me, however…"

He jerked up. "What?"

"Your friends, and what they were doing out with you last night." She had been thinking about that question ever since last night. They must have been out with Remus; she assumed that they all knew about his condition, being practically brothers and all.

For a moment he simply watched her carefully, as if weighing out the possibilities of how much she already knew. His hand holding the text book began shaking and he gently lowered it down onto the table. "With me?" he repeated slowly, cautious not to look towards his fellow Marauders for help; if he did, it would only make her believe that he was nervous.

"Well, I assumed that's where they were. I mean, it was obvious they weren't really having Quidditch practice until three in the morning…" she explained matter-of-factly.

"Why didn't you tell them off then?" Remus retorted, skirting around the original question by turning this around on her.

For the first time, she looked up at him and met his gaze. "It wouldn't have accomplished anything," she said quickly, her face heating up.

"That's never stopped you before."

Now it was Lily's turn to pale. "I—"

"—And time's up everyone. Bring up a sample of your concoction to be graded," Professor Slughorn weaved throughout his students. Lily and Remus both jumped when Slughorn clapped them both around the shoulders. "Oh, look here! See the lime green color? Now, that's perfection. Ten points to Gryffindor."

Lily clambered to gather up all of her stuff and was just about to walk out of the classroom to go meet her friends when a hand took hold of her upper arm. As the class filtered out of the door, Remus pulled Lily aside and closer towards him. He glanced behind him quickly to see how close Sirius and James were before he leaned in.

"Look, we both seem to have something to hide. I won't pester you about yours if you don't look into mine and my friends'," he said quickly, his breath tickling her ear.

She grinned coyly. "So they are involved?"

If he was stricken by her comment, he didn't show it. "I bet your friends are involved in yours too," he responded.

Her mouth dropped open to retort. "There is nothing going on—"

"Look, it's nothing personal—"

"—Seems like it—

"—but it really is none of your business."

She opened her mouth to retort, but he continued, quicker and quieter than before as his friends approached.

"Deal?"

Remus had never spoken to her like this before. Whatever other secret he was holding, it had to be a huge, serious one. Could it be Potter's bet? No, because that didn't fit with the whole werewolf thing…

"Fine."

They stared at each other. "Oi, Moony, come on. Lunch waits and I'm starving," Sirius's voice rang out.

"See you, Lily."

And with that, Remus was gone. Lily stood against the cool stone wall and she found that she was breathing abnormally heavily. She had to give Potter one thing; he did have annoyingly observant friends. How was it possible that only one day into the dare and already Sirius and Remus were suspicious? Or maybe she was just being paranoid.

Maybe neither of them knew anything. Sirius could have just been being…well…Sirius. He had always found it amusing to humiliate her. As for Remus—well, Remus could have only made it seem like he knew something so that she wouldn't pry into his and his friends' business. A way to blackmail her.

Yeah, that was it. There was no way that they knew she was using James. All she had done was fail to give him detention, let him and his friends off the hook, and had greeted him that morning. There was nothing too odd about that.

One thing was for sure though—she was going to do her best to figure out the Marauders' secrets. And, the best way to do that was to get to James. Darn her curious nature. Now she definitely was not giving up on this dare…

OOO

"I'm ready for phase two," Lily announced to her friends later at dinner.

She hadn't told her friends about her encounter about Remus. First of all, she'd have to explain to them that Remus was a werewolf, and she was almost positive that they didn't know. It wasn't her secret to tell, and she would honor that. She liked Remus, and would hate to do anything to jeopardize his stay at Hogwarts. Second of all, her knew found desire to find out what Remus was hiding had turned the vengeful dare into a complicated whirlwind of using James Potter to get to his friends. She had an odd, but honest, feeling that her friends wouldn't approve of that.

Merlin, she didn't even know if she felt good about it.

Dorcas looked up from her mashed potatoes and Alice actually stopped writing her abnormally long letter to Frank at Lily's propostion.

"Excellent," Dorcas stated, rubbing her hands together in excitement. "Now, we've been thinking—"

"—and decided," Marlene continued, "that it's always considerate for potential girlfriends to pretend to be interested in something that the guy enjoys—" She cut off as a shadow loomed over her.

"Hey, McKinnon, pass these papers along down the table, won't you?" Sirius asked, shoving a stack of parchment into the girl's hands without waiting for an answer.

"We were kind of having a discussion here. Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners?" she retorted, placing the stack of papers beside her without glancing at them.

Sirius grinned. "If you call hating anyone that isn't pureblood and supporting Voldemort as manners, then yeah, I guess my mum did teach me some—or tried to at least. See you later, girls." He walked away and then turned around sharply. "And don't forget; pass on the papers."

"As I was saying," Marlene continued, rolling her eyes, "we think you should do something he's interested in."

"Do something Potter's interested in?" Lily asked for confirmation.

"Yep," Dorcas responded, waving her spoon around enthusiastically and flinging applesauce on the poor second year sitting beside her.

"Potter's only interests are pranks, girls, and the Marauders, none of which I'm too fond of," Lily said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Alice rolled up her letter. "You could help him with a prank."

"Yeah, 'cause that wouldn't be obvious at all," Dorcas said sarcastically.

"Well," Marlene began, picking up the stack of papers Sirius had given her and passed them to her right, towards Lily, "there must be something."

Lily took the pieces of parchment, kept the top one, and passed it to a fifth year boy on her right. "We'll come up with something…" She looked down curiously at the paper she now held in her hands.

Do you enjoy hitting things?

Do you usually hit your target?

Perhaps you should consider being a Gryffindor Beater!

Tryouts are this Friday at six o'clock.

Come out and show your lion support!

The first instinct that she felt was the need to laugh at the poorly drawn picture of what appeared to be Potter on a broomstick near the bottom. It looked more like a black glob on a stick. "Those boys are ridiculous…"she joked with her friends, setting down the paper and picking up her fork again.

And then, one by one, the four girls looked up from their various activities to stare at one another.

They all grinned victoriously.

"Do something that he's interested in…" Marlene repeated slowly.

"And it's not a prank…" Alice said.

"Potter loves Quidditch," Lily stated. No, he didn't just love Quidditch; it was practically his life. If he had a choice between food or Quidditch, Lily was sure he'd pick a broomstick over a necessity for life. It was the obvious answer to their dilemma. It was—

"Perfect," Lily finished.

Sirius had just handed phase two straight into their hands.

OOO

Lily sat in the back of the library, her head bent over a piece of parchment that she was currently using to write her latest Charms essay. Her long, red hair swept over her arm and she hastily pushed it over her shoulder. She found her focus slipping…

Her friends were currently scoping out other hopeful Gryffindors who were going to show up at the Beater tryouts in order to get a sense of the competition. She hoped that none of the competitors were going to be any good. It wasn't that Lily disliked flying; it was just that she wasn't the most coordinated of people. In first year, during their first flying lesson, she'd got bucked off her broom after two seconds of being on it. Then she'd almost slipped and flipped right over the head of the raging stick when she'd gone into too deep of dive. Yeah, her memories with a broomstick weren't happy ones, but she did enjoy being up in the air.

Perhaps Dorcas should give her a few lessons before Friday.

"Stop thinking about Potter, Lily, and focus," she muttered to herself, placing the palm of her hand on her forehead. Now, what were the three ways of disarming an opponent?

"You know," said a deep voice from behind her, "it's unhealthy to talk to yourself."

Lily placed her hands over her eyes and pushed into them hard until her vision erupted into tiny stars. Maybe she was imagining things…perhaps Potter wasn't right behind her...

But that theory was immediately tossed out the window. She tensed and dropped her hands from her face when he placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's also unhealthy to get stressed over homework."

"Potter."

Her mind was going blank as his large hand moved across her shoulder to a spot right below her shoulder blade. What in the world did he think he was doing? "I thought you had Quidditch practice," she stated, trying to keep calm.

The dare, the dare, the dare…

His hand was really beginning to annoy her. If it weren't for the dare, she would have slapped him by now. Casually, she moved her elbow to her left and knocked her quill to the ground. Using that as an excuse, she shrugged off his hand and bent down to retrieve her writing utensil. When she emerged, he'd taken a seat beside her.

"Yeah…it was quite pointless though with only one Beater," he replied, pulling her half-finished essay towards him without her consent.

"I see…"

She watched him as his hazel eyes zoomed across her work. That was the main problem with Potter; he had no respect for people's personal space. He always had to be up in everyone's business.

"You misspelled desinobrevis, and it doesn't disarm an enemy; it only stops their spell momentarily," James corrected suddenly, pushing the essay back towards her.

Lily huffed loudly, her pride stung that James Potter was correcting her in her best subject. "No, I'm pretty sure it makes the opponent drop their wand."

"No," James argued back, but his tone of voice was offending, "you're confusing it with decidobrevis."

Her eyes scanned her parchment and then she pulled her Charms book towards her and flipped to the chapter on Disarming spells. There was a short period of time where Lily read the section. Then, swallowing her pride, she glanced up at him and grinned sheepishly in a rather tight way.

"Er…Thanks," she said wearily, scratching out her mistake and fixing it again.

He simply grinned and watched her.

For a while, the only sound was the scratching of her quill. Why was he sitting here helping her anyways? He must really want those five galleons from Sirius. Too bad, because if Potter acted like this all the time…

"Say, Evans, do you know anyone who may be a good Beater?" he asked, rocking his chair backwards onto its two back legs.

She dotted her last period, and then rolled up her essay. "Perhaps…" she said, purposefully toying with him. If he was going to annoy her while she tried to do her homework, she might as well bug him as well. She smirked.

James allowed his chair to fall back onto all four legs with a snap. He looked over at Lily. "Perhaps? Perhaps as in yes, but you don't want to tell me? Or perhaps, as in, no but you want to make me crazy with anticipation?"

Throwing her quill into her bag, Lily threw a strand of hair out of her face. "I guess you'll have to wait until Friday to find out, Potter."

Dear Merlin, she was flirting with him, and it was actually kind of fun. Well, fun as in it was funny to see the different reactions taking place on his face. He didn't know quite what to make of her. It was as if he wasn't sure if it was a joke and therefore didn't know if he could laugh or not, or if it was that she really did know someone but liked withholding the information from him.

"You're cruel, Evans," he said, brushing his hands off on his pants.

Giving him one last look, Lily swung her bag over her shoulder. "You know," she began, "your future Beater could be right under your nose." She grinned innocently and then flaunted out of the library, feeling his eyes on her back the whole way out.

Oh, I do love writing those James and Lily encounters. I can't wait until this story really starts to pick up... I guess I should use that as an incentive to write faster...I'll do my best.

Next chapter: Beater tryouts! What fun!

I hope you all enjoyed the chapter! Please review! It'll make my otherwise boring day a bit more brighter! lol OH! and as a side note, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3 last night with my friends. IT WAS SO AMAZING! But it made me depressed. That's all I'm going to say. If you haven't already, go and see it! It really is worth it!

Anyways, have a great day!

--HeyLookTheSnitch