Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N—since the rest of my chapters have been abysmally short, this one will be long!
CHAPTER FIVE! Four thirty AM
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Lily awakened feeling a mix of excitement and dread. For a moment she couldn't recall the reason, but as she swung her legs out of bed and her bare feet hit the cold floor she remembered.
Quidditch tryouts.
The Gryffindor team was short two people, a beater and the keeper. Lily was still licking her wound from the fact that James had beaten her to the position of team captain—though she didn't let anyone know that. She just hoped he wouldn't mess up tryouts too badly. Selecting the wrong people for the team would mean a bad season, and she didn't want her last year at school to be dampened by a bad Quidditch season.
She glanced at her clock. It was six in the morning. Breakfast didn't begin for another hour and a half. The rest of her dormitory was sleeping still and she didn't want to wake them.
She quickly got dressed and went in the bathroom to brush her hair and the like, and she quietly went down to the common room, grabbing a book on the way. She had barely even wasted fifteen minutes in the bathroom, so she sat in her favorite squishy armchair and began to read her book. Actually, read isn't quite the right word. She barely got a glance at the pages when someone interrupted her.
"Up so early?" a male voice asked from one side of her. It sounded like someone was on a couch. She turned. Wonderful. James Potter lounged on one of the couches.
"I'm surprised you're up. Shouldn't you be back in your dorm drooling on your pillow or something else equally vile?" Lily hissed. She wasn't in the mood to be talking to James.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile as he replied: "actually, that would be Sirius. I'm up this early every day."
"Ha," Lily said, indicating that while she did believe that Sirius was, in fact, drooling on his pillow, she did not believe that James got up this early every day.
"How can I prove it to you?"
Lily didn't want him proving anything to her. Then something occurred to her. She would make him meet her in the common room early on Monday. If he was lying, he'd have to get up early to prove it, and consequently he'd be grumpy all day. And if he wasn't lying, then there would be no harm done… not that she didn't want to cause him harm, though. She did.
"I think there is," she began. "Meet me down here on Monday at…. Um…. Four thirty." There was no way she was actually going to meet him there, but it would be a fun way to piss him off.
He raised his eyebrows in a "you're completely mad" kind of way, but he consented anyway.
This look was not lost on Lily. "You're the one who said you wanted to prove it."
"Nobody gets up that early," he retorted.
"Simple torture," Lily replied loftily. "Are you backing out now?"
James laughed softly. "You're turning this into a challenge. You're a sadist."
Lily rolled her eyes. "I didn't say I wanted you to hurt yourself or anything. I just want to know how the wonderful James Potter functions on lack of sleep."
"So you think about me so much that you're thinking about how well I function in the morning?"
Lily looked disgusted. "You wish I thought about you that much! The only thing I think about you is as an opponent."
That stung. But he just smiled. "Opponents for nearly seven years," he reminisced.
"Yeah, I won most of that," she responded meanly.
This is kind of weird, James thought. Although it was obvious that they were competing at everything, and there was an unspoken agreement between them about it, this was the first time they had actually talked about trying to beat one another at absolutely everything. He didn't know what to make of it. One wrong move and it could turn into a really nasty argument.
At the same time James was wrapped up in thought, for some reason Lily was mentally kicking herself for bringing up their competition and for being so snotty about it, too. They were tied. She knew they were tied because they had been tied for nearly seven years. It might have seemed like she was winning at one thing and James was winning at something else, but mostly all the students saw were the two most popular students in school (now head boy and head girl) showing nothing towards each other save animosity.
But the past was something that couldn't be changed, and there was still no way that Lily even wanted to attempt friendship with James. Besides, she liked the competition.
"Um anyway," she went on. "Quidditch tryouts today. I hope you actually have something competent. I don't want some losers on the team that are going to mess up the season."
James half-smiled half-glared at her. "You know, there is a reason I was selected as captain."
"Hmph," she muttered and turned her head. James could see he had touched a wound. He knew she was mad that she wasn't captain, but he didn't know she was this mad.
"I feel bad for the team next year," James tried. He didn't care if she was mad, he just didn't want her to stop talking to him.
"Why?" she asked, turning back around.
James raised an eyebrow. "Because four of us are seventh years."
Lily laughed in an evil way. "Oh yea, because they need to find four people to fill our positions on the team. How will they ever replace our awesomeness?" she added in a sarcastic laugh.
"It's going to be hard, I don't think they can do it."
"You have no faith in people."
James raised both eyebrows this time. "Excuse me? I have no faith in people? And… who am I talking to again?"
Lily pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I have more faith in people than you do," she said haughtily.
"Yea right, you won't even—" he stopped abruptly. He had just been about to say that she wouldn't give him a chance. But he would've been attacked for that.
"Won't even what?" Lily asked skeptically.
Just then a group of giggling second year girls galloped down the stairs into the common room. Lily glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly seven. She had talked to James Potter for forty-five minutes!?!?
She hid her disgust. Instead she eyed the second years disdainfully and said to James, "I'm going to go back upstairs."
"Yeah, ok," he replied, and actually removed himself from the couch and went up the boy's dormitory, probably to wake Sirius up.
Nobody finds out about that, Lily thought to herself as she ascended the stairs.
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The day had dragged on like a mouse pulling an elephant, but finally it was time for Quidditch tryouts. James wasn't exactly looking forward to them, but he wasn't dreading them either. He was just anxious to get the team together so they could get in some serious practice. He wanted to win the Quidditch cup very badly, even more so than he had in previous years because this year he was the captain.
He had the rest of the team assemble on the pitch fifteen minutes early, just so they could go over anything last minute.
"So, first we'll do anybody trying out for keeper, and then we'll move on to the beaters, ok?" James said to them.
He received nods or small noises of consent.
"Ok," he said, clapping his hands. "Let's begin."
The first twenty minutes of tryouts were positively abysmal. Most of the candidates for keeper were beyond horrible.
James had elected that the three chasers would begin each keeper with some really simple stuff like throwing the ball at the hoops to see if the candidate could catch at all. They expected people to make it past that, so they would try to make it harder and harder the more the person trying out survived.
Unfortunately, most people didn't even make it past the ball-throwing exercise.
During a moment of down time James turned to Lily and said, "I hope this isn't how everyone's going to be."
She agreed. They really needed to see some talent out there or Gryffindor was going to have a horrid Quidditch team.
James was on the ground discussing something with Sirius and Jeremy (the seeker) when the next person in line flew out in front of the goal posts.
"John Bloom," Alyssa whispered to Lily. "Fifth year. I've heard he's actually pretty good."
Lily studied the boy with mild interest. "I certainly hope so," she whispered back. "Hold on a sec," she yelled to Bloom. "James are you done?" she yelled down to James.
He looked up. "Sorry!" he yelled back. Then he turned back to Sirius and Jeremy. "I can't take much more of this…"
"Awfulness?" Sirius supplied.
James laughed. "Yeah. If there's been nobody good in the next ten minutes lets take a break from the keeper tryouts and move on to the beaters ok?"
Sirius nodded, and James kicked off and soared up to where Lily and Alyssa were hovering. Lily handed him the quaffle. James rolled his eyes and halfheartedly caught it, only half watching the kid at the goal.
Amazing. The kid caught it like it was way too easy. By this time a simple catch looked to James like extraordinary talent.
The kid tossed the quaffle back, and James watched Lily throw it from a strange angle, making it look like she was going to throw it in another direction. The kid caught that one too!
"Who is that?" James whispered to Alyssa.
"John Bloom," she told him. "Fifth year."
After some more exercises that were progressively more difficult, James decided that was enough—considering that John Bloom kid turned out to be pretty good, and at the moment was their best shot.
A few more abysmal people to go, and finally the keeper tryouts were finished.
The beater tryouts were uneventful, except when they became frightening, because one kid hit a bludger right towards the area where four of the existing teammates were hovering. As a result they all shot in different directions and actually almost managed to knock a few people out of the stands.
At the end, as they were reviewing the people, it turned out that the best bet for keeper was still John Bloom, and the best beater they had seen was actually a fourth year girl named Katie Stratford.
James was very relieved that they had found a suitable keeper after all of that disgustingly bad attempts at catching the quaffle they all had to endure. The notice about who made the team would go up tomorrow.
Needless to say, even though they didn't play much, the whole team fell asleep pretty fast that night.
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By Sunday night, Lily had forgotten all about her rendezvous at four thirty the next morning with James. But James hadn't. He actually went to bed (kind of) early so that he could get up at four thirty. It didn't matter exactly what he was doing, he just wanted to see Lily. And it had turned into a challenge and he couldn't pass up a challenge.
Lily didn't sleep well that night. She tossed and turned. She had a dream that she was falling, and she woke with a start. Turning on her lamp she glanced at the clock. Four twenty-five A.M. For some reason that rang a bell in her head, but she couldn't figure out why. Did she leave something in the common room or something?
Stumbling from the delirium of sleep, she nearly fell down the stairs. Why exactly was she going to the common room again?
A stair creaked on the boy's staircase. It all came back to her. AGH! She thought. I wasn't actually supposed to be downstairs when he woke up! It was like… a prank or something.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and rubbed her eyes.
"Amazing," she said to James. She knew it was James without even looking. Who else would be up at the ungodly hour of four thirty in the morning?
He was almost as tired as she was. "Ok, so I came… but you didn't say anything about staying," he pointed out, yawning.
"You're right," she muttered.
"I'm going back to sleep. I hope you realize how pointless this was?" he asked.
"Yeah," she agreed. Come to think of it, she seemed to be doing a lot of pointless things around James lately (like ending the prefects meeting.)
They both trudged back up the stairs, and Lily actually did fall asleep properly when she got back into bed.
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End chapter five. I tried to make it long… was it long enough? I still really really love reviews, and I love all of you that did review.