"Not a bad way to start the year, Prongs," Sirius laughed, slapping James on the back. They were in the Gryffindor common room, having taken some secret shortcuts to get there quickly. The fire was roaring and hot. The seats were as red and squishy as ever.
"It's good to be home," Remus sighed happily, reclining on a couch. The others agreed heartily.
"So seventh year. We have a prefect and a Head Boy in our ranks. Don't tell me you're going soft on us, Prongs," Sirius warned. "Because I have some great prank ideas for this year."
"How many?" Peter asked. Sirius pretended to count on his fingers, got to six, then gave up.
"Seventy two."
James cringed. "No way, man. One per month, that's our limit this year."
"Who died and made you leader," Sirius grumbled, crossing his arms. "It's our last year! It has to be fun!"
"It's also the most important year of our lives," Remus reminded Sirius. "I don't know if you realise this, Padfoot, but most of us don't have family inheritance to our names. Some of us will have to work for a living."
Sirius waved his hand. "And what a day that will be," he said dramatically. "Maybe I'll be a model."
"I hear you have to be attractive for that profession," Peter said daringly. Sirius was shocked.
"Why you little…" he leapt at Peter, who in his fright transformed into a rat, which meant Sirius jumped right over Peter and landed face-first on the floor. Peter transformed back quickly, laughter rocking his body. Sirius leapt at him again just as the portrait opened and the other seventh years floated in happily.
"That was pretty amazing," Marlene said immediately to the boys. Sirius ignored her statement and ran up to her, his hands gripping her upper arms.
"McKinnon, am I attractive enough to be a model?" he asked desperately. His eyes shined with craze.
"Of course, Sirius!" Everyone had long since learnt to just go along with whatever Sirius asked. The results were often messy if you didn't. Sirius' face relaxed. "I think the more important question here is why do you want to be a model?" Marlene said with a smile, gently pulling Sirius off. He shook his mane of hair out of his eyes.
"Remus was informing me of the secrets of the world," he said grandly. Remus rolled his eyes.
"I told him that one day he'd have to get a job," he said bluntly. Everyone chuckled.
"Hell will be upon us before Sirius willingly gets a job," Hestia teased.
After some more casual conversation, the girls went up to their dormitories. On a whim, James touched Lily's shoulder. She was the last to walk by and paused uncertainly.
"Hey Lily," James began. Her wide green eyes were looking up at him curiously, and James got a lump in his throat. He swallowed. "Uh, thanks for joining in back there."
Lily smiled. "No problem. Better than the alternative."
James wasn't keen to find out what the alternative was, but he guessed it contained lots of screaming and arguing about immaturity or something, so he said goodnight to Lily and she walked away. He turned back to his mates with a grin on his face.
They looked dumbfounded. "What on earth just happened then?" Sirius demanded. James shrugged and grinned. "I don't know, but I liked it!"
Far out of ear shot, up the stairs in the girls' dormitory, Lily was so excited to get back into classes that she couldn't sleep properly. She kept waking up throughout the night, all jittery and impatient. She wished her brain would just rest as she was going to need her energy tomorrow.
In the morning, as predicted, Lily felt like she didn't sleep a wink. She had bags under her eyes and was more pale than usual. Descending down the stairs, Lily's book bag felt much heavier than it normally was. In reality, it was much lighter compared to her other years at Hogwarts – as NEWTs focused primarily on practical work, the theory work was less, which resulted in thinner books.
"Good morning, sunshine!" Marlene greeted Lily when she finally made it down to breakfast. "You forgot to brush your hair this morning."
Horrified, Lily grabbed a spoon and immediately began checking her reflection. "Seriously?" She ran her fingers through her hair. Marlene laughed and handed over a hair tie.
"A bun will hide the knots," she suggested. Lily took her advice and tied her luscious but knotty hair into a loose bun.
"Thanks," she said gratefully, then dug into some toast. "What do we have today?"
"Charms, Potions, then Transfiguration."
"Excellent."
"I'm testing out a new teaching method," Professor Flitwick announced once everyone had settled. "And it involves a seating plan. So from now on you will have to sit in the place I sit you in, and anybody who dares try otherwise will experience…" His eyes twinkled and a dangerous grin appeared on his face. "Well, you'll find out. Now as I call your name, please come and sit in your designated seat. Lily Evans and James Potter, up the front."
Lily groaned. She knew this would happen. From the moment the words 'seating plan' were spoken, her stomach plummeted. Gathering her books, Marlene sent her a sympathetic look while the rest of the class sniggered. Flitwick ignored them.
"Yes, yes. Our school's two Heads sitting together are a good idea, I think!"
Moving on, Flitwick smartly separated each of the Marauders, putting them each at a corner, and everyone else was shuffled in between. Lily was gifted with Marlene sitting on her right.
"God is real!" Lily whispered to herself, shooting her friend a relieved grin. Marlene smirked in reply. "This year should be fun, eh?" she said. Lily shrugged and looked at James through the corner of her eye. He seemed to be drawing something.
As it was, James was only half drawing. He was too busy thinking that Lily looked lovely today, with her red hair in a messy bun. It suited her face. He was sketching a snitch on some blank paper, which was badly drawn and had no detail whatsoever, besides the wings. Just about ready to give up on the drawing and erase it, Lily leaned over.
"It's good," she commented. James shrugged.
"I can do better." Lily's lips pursed and James wondered what he said wrong this time. He tried to fix it. "I mean, when I actually put effort into it the snitch actually turns out realistic," he said hurriedly. Lily looked amused. "I was going to say," she said slowly, "that it's much better than I can do."
And with that compliment (it was a compliment right? James thought it definitely was a compliment) she returned to her work. James found himself grinning widely.
Now was a good time to ask her out, wasn't it? She was kind to him! James swerved in his seat to make eye contact with Sirius, who was also sitting at the front, but he wasn't looking at James. Disappointed, he turned again to find Remus – at the back right, exactly diagonal from James – who was staring at him curiously. James mouthed now?
Remus shook his head vigorously. No! Remus didn't need to be within hearing range to know what James was referring to. It happened frequently enough.
James, dejected, looked at his parchment sadly. The magic words, will you please be my girlfriend? were etched permanently in ink. Before Lily would lean over and snoop, James set the parchment on fire.
"Excellent technique, Mister Potter!" Professor Flitwick praised from James' side. "Five points to Gryffindor!"
Lily looked at James from the corner of her eye jealously. James couldn't help but smirk. "Excellent. Not a bad start for Gryffindor for the House Cup, eh?"
Straightening her shoulders, Lily huffed. "Just so you know, Potter, I can do that too."
James, of course, already knew that. However, James knew a good opportunity when he saw it (most of the time, anyway) and decided that he would take it. Talking to Lily made him happy.
"Prove it," he challenged her. With a determined look, Lily pulled some scrap parchment out of her bag, set it on fire, levitated the ashes in the air and shot them at his face. Flitwick scurried over quickly.
"Miss Evans! What on earth are you doing?" he demanded crossly.
"I'm sorry, Professor," Lily said, sounding as if she was about to cry. "The spell just went wrong, I don't know what happened!"
Suspicious, but accepting Lily's explanation, he walked away. Lily was a star student, after all, and she would never lie.
James patted Lily on the back, pretending to believe she was close to tears. "There, there," he cooed. "It's okay to mess up a spell every now and then. It was bound to happen one day!"
With the tiniest hint of a grin on her face, Lily elbowed James in his side (he was so tall, her elbow reached his waist but not his ribs). "You shut up."
"You lied," James whispered gleefully. "This is history right here. I'm glad I was witness to see this!"
"I lie all the time," Lily said defensively. "I'm just so good at it, no one notices."
"Prove it!
Lily shook her head. "One challenge a day," she decided. "No more, no less."
The rest of the class went by rather quickly, meaning that Potions was soon upon Lily. Potions was with both Hestia and Marlene, which made Lily's day despite the class being with the Slytherins. They picked a station near the back of the classroom, far away from James' usual table. It appeared that he was skipping class.
"So how's the seating arrangement?" Hestia teased. The news of the teaching method had flown around the school in minutes, as usual with new gossip.
"I'm sitting next to some Ravenclaw," Marlene shrugged. "But Lily is stuck next to James!"
Hestia's expression was sympathetic. "So how many arguments did you have?"
"None," Lily replied simply.
"What? Have I missed something?" Hestia demanded. Marlene shrugged.
"I don't know, Lils. I count you throwing ashes into his face and lying about it an argument," Marlene said honestly. Lily smiled.
"That wasn't an argument, it was just…" She caught herself. Was she really about to say 'fun'? "It was a challenge," she finished quickly.
Hestia and Marlene exchanged looks. "You have to tell us everything that happened in that class," they decided.
After the girls had gathered all of the needed ingredients for their potions, Lily told them everything that happened without leaving out a single detail. "I don't know," she finished. "He was just so nice."
A derisive snort came from behind Lily, and she spun to glare at the eavesdropper. To her surprise, it was Severus Snape, who hadn't spoken a word to her since the beginning of sixth year. To be fair, Lily hadn't exactly tried to stay on talking terms either. She was better without his acquaintance.
"Don't be stupid, Lily. Potter is not nice. He's probably got some giant prank cooked up just for you," he sneered. Lily glared.
"Shut up, Snivellus," Hestia snapped.
"If you're not careful, Snape, I'll get James to play a prank on you!" Lily threatened. Snape rolled his eyes.
"So he's your little puppy now, is he? Your wish is his command or some messed up kink like that?"
Suddenly, bright green slime was poured over his head. It went through his hair, into his eyes, and down his robes. From behind him, Marlene let the cauldron drop onto Snape's head with a dull thunk and smirked proudly.
"James isn't the only one looking out for Lily, you twat," she said loudly.
The class had erupted; with everyone wanting to know all the details of the incident, any possibility of work being done went out the window. Professor Slughorn was deeply red in the face and puffing madly, unused to this sort of ruckus in the dungeons.
Marlene had received detention for the little attack and it spread around the school like wildfire. Even the Marauders came up to her at lunch to congratulate her.
"Maybe next time we see him, his hair won't be so greasy," James said.
Sirius smirked. "Well if not, we can always return it to its original state."
As they walked away, Remus lingered behind. "I suppose that we might be joining you in detention," he admitted a bit sadly. Then he left to catch up with his mates.
Lily was giving Marlene an earful, though. "You really shouldn't have done that," she kept saying. "He's not worth it, and I feel awful for practically giving you detention!"
"Lily, stop! You're Head Girl, for crying out loud. He needs to be more respectful. Besides, it was totally worth it," she grinned. "I'm liking all of this attention."
"Careful there, if you keep this up the Marauder's might actually recruit you," Lily teased. Marlene giggled.
"After today, Lily, I'm wondering if it would be so bad."