Author's Note: Thank you to my beta, aberrantstrain, who has also become a good friend.

Thank you also to yobadself, for continuing to review every chapter. It means a lot to me!

Chapter 8: The Wrong Idea

Potter cornered Lily in the common room the next morning before breakfast. It was early still, dawn had not yet broken (1), and there were few students milling around.

"Hey Evans, catch!"

She whirled around and caught the envelope that was coming at her head like a Frisbee. "What's this, then?" she asked with a roll of the eyes.

"Your present."

"You already gave me a present before the break."

He had. It had been immaculately wrapped, probably because a Potter house elf had wrapped it. She never did find out what was underneath the beautiful wrapping, since she hadn't bothered opening it before shoving it back in his stupid face.

"Correction: I tried to give you a present before the break. But since you wouldn't take that one, I thought I'd try again with a New Year's present…give you a second chance," he said magnanimously. "You know, to accept a present politely like a decent, normal person would."

Lily narrowed her eyes. "What's the catch?"

One of the first things she had learnt at Hogwarts, between the correct swish and flick of Wingardium leviosa and that you had better decline politely whenever Hagrid offered you a rock cake, was that there was always a catch when it came to James bloody Potter.

Potter raised his hands in the air in front of him in a conciliatory gesture. "No catch, Evans, I swear. Just want to give the girl I like something I know she would like," he said in a tone approximating sincerity. Not that she was fool enough to fall for it.

Nevertheless, Lily turned the brightly covered envelope over in her hand. "And how on Earth would you know what I like?"

It was a valid question. For all that he insisted that he liked her, he hardly knew her. (To be fair, this was in large part because she mostly refused to give him the time of day, so it's not like he really had the opportunity to get to know her). And how genuinely smitten could you possibly be with a girl you hardly knew anything about? Potter knew only the aspects of herself that she revealed to him (which, more often than not, came down to scorn and irritation). Sev had literally experienced her thoughts and emotions as if they were his own.

"Oh trust me, Evans, you'll like this one," he said smugly.

Lily sighed. She really should just hand it back to him, especially now that she and Sev were, well, dating. She didn't want Potter to get the wrong idea. Then again, it seemed Potter was determined to get the wrong idea no matter what she did or didn't do. And she was curious to see what he had gotten her. Potter's gifts were usually large and ostentatiously wrapped. This envelope was very much the opposite of what she expected to get from him.

What could it hold anyway? Quidditch tickets? No, even Potter wasn't so clueless as to think she'd want tickets to a match. She thought for a moment it might contain money, until she remembered that Wizards didn't deal in pound notes. She sighed again, and broke the seal, removing several identical bits of parchment. She peered closely at one. It was covered in Potter's messy scrawl, and she could barely make out what it read.

"What the heck is this?" she asked him, growing more irritated by the second. Of course it would be some kind of a gag gift. She should have known better than to expect anything else.

Potter grinned quite confidently for a boy who had just given the girl he fancied an envelope full of illegible bits of parchment. "Those, my dear Evans, are coupons," he enunciated slowly.

Lily raised an eyebrow in a way that she knew was eerily reminiscent of Sev. She wondered whether Potter would pick up on the resemblance. "Coupons?"

"Yep. Each one is good for an entire day of me not asking you out," he said in a self-satisfied tone of voice.

Lily rolled her eyes, feeling oddly disappointed considering that she hadn't even wanted a gift from him in the first place. She shoved the bits of parchment back in the envelope and Frisbeed it back at him. He caught it deftly in one hand, without even taking his eyes off of her. Of course he would, the athletic prat. Suddenly sick of his face, she spun on her heel and started stalking off toward the portrait hole.

"Wait, Evans!"

She stopped in her tracks and spun around to face him again, hand on her hip. "What is it now, Potter?"

"Hogsmeade weekend this Saturday. Want to be my date?" he asked her cheekily.

She actually growled. (Potter often elicited noises out of her that nobody else seemed able to do.) "No, Potter! I don't want to be your date. Not now, not next weekend, not ever! How many times do I have to shout it into your thick skull before you stop asking me?"

He grinned widely, revealing a row of perfect pearly-white squares. "Should've kept those coupons after all, Evans," he said, waving the envelope between them. She lunged forward, making a desperate grab for it. "Ah-ah-ah! You missed your chance. See, I told you it was a good gift."

Un-believable! He was un-fucking-believable! The nerve of him! Just barely resisting the overpowering urge to punch him right in his smug face, she stormed out of the portrait hole to breakfast. The Fat Lady hollered indignantly after her about "unladylike force" and "disrupting my beauty sleep." Lily refrained from pointing out that no amount of beauty sleep was going to change brush strokes on canvas: that was just the way she was painted, and she had better accept it already, because the artist was certainly long dead by now.

She was half way to the Great Hall before the obvious solution occurred to her. Why hadn't she simply told Potter that she couldn't go to Hogsmeade, because she had a boyfriend now? He had given her the perfect opening to tell him about her and Sev. And maybe if he knew that she had a boyfriend, he would finally, finally back off and stop asking her out. Because that's what she wanted more than anything. For him to stop asking her out.

…Right?

Severus awoke the morning of his fifteenth birthday in an uncommonly good mood. Although, come to think of it, he had awoken in an uncommonly good mood every morning since first kissing Lily on Christmas day. It was fast becoming dangerous for his reputation: since they had returned to Hogwarts four days ago, Severus had caught himself staring off into empty air with a dreamy smile on his face, in both Charms and History of Magic. Worse, he had caught himself staring at her with a dreamy smile in classes they shared, like arithmancy and ancient runes. On one mortifying occasion he had caught his own expression in the mirror during his morning shave, and it had occurred to him that the look of a man in love rather alarmingly resembled the look of a man lobotomized.

Regardless, he had awoken in a particularly good mood today, because he had plans after dinner tonight to meet up with Lily for a private birthday celebration. They did this every year, of course, but he had a reasonable hunch that this year's private celebration might involve some good bit of snogging.

His good mood was only heightened when he spied the sizable pile of gifts at the foot of his bed. Evan Rosier and Nathan Avery, who were the pampered scions of extremely wealthy wizarding families, always gave him the most lavish gifts. From Nathan, he opened a black and silver brocade cloak lined with Chinchilla fur and never-fail impervius charms. Evan's gift was his favourite — a black leather cuff with a silver pocket watch set into the front and a wand pocket with a custom-fit extension charm set in the back. With the cuff in place, a single flick of his left wrist just so had his wand sliding out of the pocket and into his waiting dominant hand in a split-second flourish. Perks of being left-handed.

Damian Wilkes, who came from a modest family background, but shared Severus's academic bent, gave him A Treatise on Grindelwaldian Socialism (2), which was doubly well-received since it was so notoriously banned by the Ministry. Even Mulciber, who was more a friend by association through Avery than anything else, gifted him a package of assorted quills, ink, and parchment from Scrivenshaft's, which Severus appreciated if only because it meant that he didn't have to budget any of his own measly savings for stationary for the rest of the term. All in all, the day was shaping up well mint, and he hadn't even had breakfast yet.

They had double Charms with the Hufflepuffs that morning, and since Severus was already proficient with banishing charms, he elected to spend the whole period surreptitiously practising flicking his wand into his palm from his wrist holster, whilst ducking from his classmates' haphazardly banished pillows.

On his way out the door at the end of class, he was thrilled to run into Lily, who had finished Transfigurations early and was waiting to meet him as soon as his class got out. She took his hand and dragged him into an out of the way broom cupboard, whereupon she proceeded to very enthusiastically remind him that it was his birthday. The more vigorously she reminded him of the date, the harder it became for him to remember his name. By the time they stumbled out of the cupboard, they were already five minutes late to DADA.

But Severus knew that even having points docked for tardiness wouldn't ruin his good mood. Because today, nothing could touch his euphoria.

James Potter spent an inordinate amount of time watching Lily Evans and Severus Snape. He watched them brew together, Slughorn's favourite pair. He watched them pass notes back and forth in DADA whenever Professor Moody turned her back to the class. He watched them whisper to each other in the courtyard during break, heads bent together over some obscure tome. Sometimes, he even watched their dots move together on the Marauder's map, until Sirius inevitably snatched the parchment out of his hand, muttering something under his breath about his best friend turning into an obsessed, creepy stalker.

James would have been watching Snape and Evans right now, too, except that they were late to arrive to DADA class this morning. Where were they? James had seen them on the train, as they always did. But something about them had seemed different. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was almost as if —

Just then the door to the classroom slammed open, startling James out of his reverie. The scratching of quills and rustling of parchment abated as sixteen heads turned in unison toward the heavy oak door. Evans rushed in, Snape skulking in right behind her.

"Miss Evans, Mr. Snape. You're late," snapped Professor Moody (3) in her heavy Scottish brogue. "We are starting our group projects today, and the students have already formed their groups. Miss Evans, you can join Mr. Potter and Mr. Black," she said, gesturing toward him and Sirius. "Mr. Snape, join Mr. Rosier and Miss Shacklebolt, please."

Instead of scuttling off to join their new groups, Snape and Evans stood rooted in place, turning to look at each other in bewilderment.

"Well?" Professor Moody did not look impressed.

It was Lily who spoke. "You're — you're separating us?" she asked, her voice pitched high with disbelief and even a bit of indignation.

"Yes, I'm afraid that I am. It's groups of three for this project. If you wanted to work together you should have arrived on time."

Lily's eyes widened comically. "But…but! We always work together!" It was true. They did.

Snape's distress was better concealed. He laid his hand on Lily's forearm. "It's okay Lily, it's just one project. We'll work together next time," he murmured to her softly. But his deep voice carried in the dead silence of the classroom, as everyone was riveted by the present exchange.

Lily stomped her foot. "But Se-ev!" she whined, the class breaking out in snickers at her petulant display. Snape quietly cringed beside her, his cheeks colouring a red to match Lily's school tie. As much as he fancied Evans, James couldn't imagine ever letting her talk to him in that way. Especially not in front of other people. Even his own friends gave Snivellus shit for it, he knew.

"Come on, Miss Evans. I haven't got all day." Professor Moody's lips had thinned to a state normally achieved only by McGonagall's. Evans was treading on dangerous ground here.

Thankfully, Lily seemed to snap out of her self-absorbed Princess bubble, and James watched her as she flounced over to him, a cute little pout on her face.

"You may be surprised to learn this, Evans, but the world won't actually end if you're separated from your boyfriend for an hour," crowed Sirius from his place next to James.

James and Sirius had spent the past four and a half years teasing Evans by calling Snivellus her boyfriend. Mostly because it still got a rise out of her, every time. Sure enough, she didn't disappoint them today.

Evans whipped around, eyes narrowed and hand on her hip. "He's not my boyfriend! We're just friends," she said, predictably.

James looked over at Snape, expecting him to be similarly indignant, as he always was. But this time, there was a peculiar expression on his face that James couldn't quite place. It gave him pause.

But before he could examine it any further, he became distracted by what Evans said next: "And anyway, you're one to talk. I bet Potter can't even take a shit without you following him to the toilet to moon over him."

Evans really could be fantastically vulgar when it suited her. Must be her crass Northern roots. She and Snivellus did come from that industrial hell hole after all. But wait — what exactly was she implying about him and Sirius? James looked over at his best friend to see him blushing. Why was he blushing? James could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Sirius blush; he didn't think some asinine comment from Evans could be enough to do it.

Fortunately for Gryffindor's balance of house points, Professor Moody seemed not to have heard Lily's vulgar little comment. "Now, I want you all to use this class to formulate your topics for your group projects…" she said, voice carrying over the din of restless student chatter.

James spent the rest of the class trying to convince Lily to be his date on the upcoming Hogsmeade weekend. Lily spent the rest of the class turning him down, insisting that even if she wanted to go with him (which she didn't), she couldn't, because "Sev and I always go together" (which they did). Sirius spent the rest of the class in an unusually quiet mood, avoiding both James' and Lily's eyes.

1 - In fact, sunrise in Iverness, Scotland on the morning of January 6, 1975 was at precisely 8:57 am. God, I love Wolfram alpha!

2 - "The Greater Good"? The East European connections? Grindelwald was obviously a communist. Common ownership of the means of production? Check. Just replace "means of production" with "muggles." ;)

3 - Professor Moody is Marlene Moody's (Lily's friend) sister.

Check out AO3 for pictures of Sev's gifts, and see you next week! Oh, and please remember to leave a review! Ask me questions, complain, tell me what you think! I'd love to hear from you guys.