A/N

This is really late...sorry...but I have my reasons.

My parents have decided to get a divorce so It's been quite rough :(

To top it off, one of my friends has been constantly ditching me for more popular people. :O

So this chapter is a bit shorter; I also lost inspiration for a while since high school freshman stuff and my mom kept saying how I need to start focusing on nonfiction and dropping all the 'Stupid Fiction stuff'. She said that Harry Potter is stupid and it won't help in life...I don't care though, I'm still gonna continue loving HP. (rebel ;P)

Disclaimer: You know the drill.

Lily was in a rough predicament: whether or not to forgive James. Two hours ago she was leaning towards yes (Probably because she was secretly very glad to have seen him after a boring, Potter-less, Christmas vacation.) But now…

Of course if she was some other girl, she'd forgive him in an instant and maybe even ask for a thank you kiss. But another girl would never have gotten mad at Potter in the first place.

Lily was not just another girl, and this was precisely the reason why James had chosen to serenade to her at dinner and not to Meredith West or Trina Valentine or some other random girl.

He had sang it to Lily because Lily was Lily. But right now Lily didn't want to be Lily. She'd rather be some Muggle girl who had never heard of magic and never will. Then she could go to college, meet a cute guy, fall in love, and have two kids named Hailey and Harry, a boy and a girl.

But Lily was Lily, which was why she was currently buried underneath her bed covers, hoping to escape the crowds of jealous girls who had never had a guy sing to them in front of everyone. Lucky them, Lily thought.

Being Lily Evans had both positives and negatives. 5% of all negatives were caused by Voldemort and the rest (95%) were caused by one James Potter. (Okay, maybe she exaggerated a teensy bit.)

The 'Call Potter You-Know-Who' rule had been revoked. Everyone was grateful, even Lily. It decreased a lot of confusion.

Because nothing too bad had happened last time, so Lily was getting closer to thinking that maybe the game was simply that-a harmless, just-for-fun, game, and perhaps what had happened on Halloween really wasn't intentional and was Lily's own fault for picking something so magic especially when the question-givers had implied that she shouldn't choose something like that.

Now, Lily thought that everything was okay, and there was a brief moment where her heart was suddenly filled with compassion for him. And it scared her.

And, in that moment, without her conscious consent, Lily forgave James. Yep, just like that. (How un-Lily-like.) It was very very very different from what she would've done years ago.

So, on this snowy, chilly day in January, Lily was in her four-poster bed, curtains drawn. She started as she heard somebody enter.

"Hello?" An unfamiliar, high-pitched voice asked.

Oh no, Lily thought, it must be one of those boy-crazy girls!

Her curtains shook and Lily dove back under the covers.

"Relax, Lily," said Alice's voice, "It's just us."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Lily opened her curtains and saw her friends' familiar faces.

"Sorry!" the high voice squeaked, and Lily was surprised to see that it was Mary who spoke.

"Blimey, Mary, what happened to your voice?" Lily yelped.

Because the girl seemed reluctant to speak, Marlene spoke for her. There was a touch of disgust in her voice. "That stupid thug, Crabbe. He fired a hex at her for no reason. I think he was trying to do something worse, but he's not very bright-good thing, too-and this happened."

"We haven't been able to change it back and we thought that maybe you could."

Mary was trying to look nonchalant, but Lily could see that she was afraid.

After a horrible incident two years ago including Mulciber and the Cruciatus Curse, Mary was been considerable more frightened of Slytherins.

"Oh, Lily said sadly, "Let me have a look…Well, Finite Incantatem should work, and if it doesn't, I suppose we'll have to take you to Madam Pomfrey."

It didn't work, so Lily , knowing that she had to avoid other girls, led her friends out the dorm and down the stairs. They went out the portrait hole and continued towards the hospital wing. Lily was surprised, but glad, that nobody had confronted her yet. Usually, after one of the most popular guys in school had publicly displayed affection towards her, Lily would be attacked by gaggles of giggly girls.

But just as they were about to enter the infirmary, Melanie Dainty decided to make an appearance. And yes, her real last name was 'Dainty'.

She didn't say anything, which was weird since she was the one who came up to Lily and blocked her way in the first place.

Lily narrowed her eyes in dislike. She never liked Melanie Dainty. She reminded her of those popular, slutty cheerleaders that often appeared in Muggle chick flicks.

"Can we help you with something?" Lily snapped rudely.

Melanie's response was to smile and evil yet sweet smile and say, "Yes. Yes you can."

"Well?" Lily shot back, becoming more and more irritated.

Finally, Miss Cheerleader spoke. "Tell me, Evans," she said Lily's last name with disgust that was evident in her tone. "How do you get a gorgeous boy like Potter to like someone like you?"

Lily was clearly offended. "Excuse me?" she exclaimed angrily.

"You heard me." Melanie said smugly, still smiling innocently.

Scowling deeply, Lily said, "Get out of my way."

"Or what?" The smile had not left her face.

But Lily had pulled out her wand. "Or I'll make your ugly face even uglier." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Alice, Marlene, and Mary were all looking at her with shock.

Melanie gasped dramatically. "How dare you!" She shrieked, stamping her right foot. Clutching her face, she ran past Lily, still hyperventilating.

As they entered the hospital wing, Marlene looked at Lily with befuddlement and a slight bit of admiration. "What's gotten into you, Lily? You're usually so against dueling or fighting physically. I'm proud of you." Marlene said, as Madam Pomfrey handed Mary a potion after Alice explained what had happened.

Lily grunted. "I don't know…But I hate her, that stupid Melanie Dainty. And she insulted me-I really wanted to punch her in the gut right then and there!"

Marlene stared for a few moments. Then, she turned and tapped Madam Pomfrey on the shoulder. The woman turned.

"Yes, dear?"

Marlene seemed like she was holding back a grin. "Uh, Madam Pomfrey? Do you mind checking Lily too? I don't think she's feeling too well. That, or she hit her head on something hard."

Lily slapped her.

It was after curfew, and Lily was in the Gryffindor common room alone, deciding whether to answer the question or not.

One step forward-yes.

One step backward-no.

One step forward-nothing's going to happen!

One step backward-Halloween, remember?

One step forward-that was your own fault!

One step backward-fine, but I promised myself I wouldn't answer anymore!

One step forward-You promised that like five times and you broke it every time…

One step backward-Those questions gave me nightmares!

One step forward-They also got rid of them. This argument is invalid.

With a jolt, Lily realized that she was standing directly in front of the answer parchment. Because her backward steps were considerably smaller than her forward ones, Lily had been slowly making her way towards the rainbow paper with each argument.

Without conscious thought, Lily's green eyes began reading the notice, and she felt her feet immediately freeze and glue itself to the ground.

Darn it.

Well, now she had no choice but to answer, so she began reading.

"Hello everybody!

Did you all have exchange long, tearful goodbye with your clones?"

Here Lily snorted. The Marauders had given people no warning to when the clones would be disappearing, so how on earth would they supposed to know when to 'exchange long and tearful goodbyes'?

Lily had just been playing wizards' chess with a clone (They were great competition since their brain capacity and knowledge level was exactly the same as hers) when POP! They disappeared. And that was that.

But back to the question.

"This question result will be a little different…

We aren't going to tell you how.

But we are going to tell you why. IT's because Sirius got this brilliant idea (Shocking, right-Hey!) and he wouldn't stop bugging us until we agreed to use it. When that didn't work, he half blackmailed and half bribed us, which is why this one would be different.

Now that that's over, the question is…[insert drumroll here]

What's your favorite hat?

Yes, that's the first question.

Bye now."

Hat? Favorite hat? Lily thought, was that the best they could come us with? And just now she was thinking that the question was probably something super special because of the different and 'brilliant' idea.

But back to the question: favorite hat…Aha! Lily remembered a cute little baseball cap that her dad bought her when she was about 7. It was pink-her favorite color at that time, and 'Daddy's Little Princess' was stitched on the front in silver thread. Lily loved it, and she had worn it everyday until she outgrew the little cap. However, she still had it in the back of her closet somewhere, along with some other childhood toys.

But suddenly Lily remembered that she couldn't possibly put that she remembered how embarrassing some previous question results had been and those were when she answered normally. Putting a childish answer would only cause more embarrassment.

Lily sighed and began thinking of another type of hat. The Marauders wouldn't know if she lied anyways. (Hopefully.) Finally, Lily decided on a beret. She had gotten one when she visited France two years ago and it was pretty cute too. (Though it was nothing compared to her princess cap.) And how could anyone make a beret embarrassing?

Lily smiled, glad that she had found an answer.

Rise and shine, Lily thought to herself sleepily as sunlight streamed through the window.

Yawning, Lily slipped out of bed and entered the bathroom.

A light green beret was sitting on the marble counter. Green. Lily loved green. It was her second favorite color. Her first was hazel (for some reason) It was just such a lovely color.

Carefully, Lily wore the hat and looked in the mirror. Cute.

She stood there silently, waiting for something to happen. Nothing. Now she was confused. Wasn't there supposed to be at least some boom or something? She kept on standing there, but there were no sudden transformations or explosions.

Now utterly bamboozled, Lily took of the beret and stared at it. Still nothing.

With a nonchalant shrug, Lily washed her face, brushed her teeth and left the bathroom.

Lily was still slightly suspicious. Why had nothing happened? Perhaps that was just part of the question…

Breakfast was the usual. Everybody ate and chatted about random things; boys talked about quidditch and girls giggled about boys. Thoughts of the mysterious hat slipped from Lily's mind.

"Hey, Lily, was there a hat in the bathroom?"

Lily immediately knew they were talking about the Marauder's hat. She swallowed her food and nodded. "Yeah, it was a beret..."

Alice frowned thoughtfully. "Did it, you know, do anything weird or out of the ordinary?"

"Well, no. That's what I was thinking...I mean, you think the Marauders would be a bit more creative than just making a hat appear in the lavatory."

Marlene said, her mouth full of food,"I 'et ers 'or 'oo et!"

"...What?"

Marlene sighed, and swallowed. "I said, I bet there's more to it!-Honestly, you guys should learn how to understand me when I'm talking with my mouth full!"

BOOM! People screamed and jumped aside as a gigantic, glass cube appeared of out nowhere in a big cloud of smoke. Lily coughed and squinted to see through the fog.

"Well, here it is!" Marlene wheezed. "The other part of the Marauder's question that we were all waiting for!"

I don't like this, Lily thought, I don't like this at all! Perhaps she should just escape while she had the chance. But her feet were rooted to the spot. Not because of a spell or because of super glue, but because she was so nervous her feet had frozen. Lily didn't know why she was suddenly so scared; there had been exciting question results before and Lily had never felt this way about any of them.

With a sinking feeling, Lily watched. A picture began to appear, like a memory in a Pensieve. And Marlene appeared.

The real Marlene gasped and narrowed her eyes at the three dimensional screen. Then Sirius Black swaggered in, but he was in black and white, while Marlene stayed in full color.

"T-this is MY d-dre-dream..." The real her stuttered. "I dreamed about this last night!"

She turned purple, green, red and white as the dream finished with the dream Marlene and dream Sirius in a very flirty banter.

Marlene's dream ended, and it faded into another dream with a random Ravenclaw as the main character.

While Marlene was busy hiding her face, other dreams played. Alice's was about Frank (obviously). Mary's was about er...popcorn, oddly enough, and finally, as the last one, there was Lily's.

In horror, Lily watched as she was surrounded by orbiting Potter heads. She couldn't take the laughter and the stares anymore, so with her face tomato red in embarrassment, the the redhead fled the Great Hall, with her friends close behind her, all eager to escape the crowd.

A/N

Short ending, I know. More of it will be explained in the next chapter when I get more inspiration to write back. :/ I just wanted to get a chapter out ASAP since I made you all wait an extra TWO months and then some.

Thanks for understanding you guys, and please please review! It'll make me feel better :D

REVIEW!

And once again, sorry for the delay and PLEASE REVIEW :D