James was used to being adored.

His parents had been trying for decades to have kids. They were both remarkably well-off, and his dad had quadrupled the family's fortune by inventing Sleekeazy's Hair Potion. Together, they'd graduated Hogwarts, worked, and traveled the world. The only thing they still wanted was a child to raise, and they had all but given up hope until their Healer suggested a risky procedure, one that Muggles used. And miraculously, in her fifties, his mom had finally managed to have a child.

They let their love get the better of them, and James wanted for nothing. He took for granted the fact that he always had new clothes, the newest broomsticks, and private Quidditch lessons since he could walk. Any child in James's position would've conflated talent with money and opportunity, and he was no different. As an only child, he was used to being the center of attention, with his parents and their house elf waiting on his every need. As a kid, his friends were just like him, rich and adventurous. They went through life without a care in the world, as though they already knew that the world's consequences couldn't touch them.

James went to school, and found he was loved there, too.

He was the star of the junior varsity team his first year, scoring goals in every match that Gryffindor played. The year after that, he was the only second year playing varsity. And especially for first and second years, whose weekends were not yet filled with Hogsmeade trips and parties, Quidditch was the main attraction on Saturdays. It was also their window to parties and social events, and people always wanted to celebrate with the winning team and its players.

It was true that not everybody adored James. Some of the other Quidditch players thought he was too full of himself, but James rather felt his stats spoke for themselves. Many of the Slytherins called him a blood traitor, but James didn't buy into their blood purism nonsense – he just hadn't been raised like that. Some of the quieter kids didn't like him, either. He and Sirius would make fun of them; the kids who were chubbier, dressed oddly, things like that. James didn't realize it at the time, but it bothered him that those people didn't like him. He lashed out at them, unaccustomed to being disliked. He knew later it didn't justify it, but it soothed him to know that there was a reason for it, other than pointless cruelty.

There was only one person who didn't like James, whose opinion he actually could admit he cared about.

A couple days after the Sorting, James and Lily had actually started becoming friends. It seemed like the incident on the train with Snape had been forgotten. He liked how smart and how funny she was, and quickly developed a bit of a crush on her. But just a couple more weeks into school, James and Sirius got into another spat with Snape, and that had been that. Lily seemed to make up her mind once and for all that she didn't like him, and refused to speak to him anymore. So James decided that she wasn't worth his time either, and moved on. He dated a couple of girls here and there, but it never went further than snogging.

Sometime during fourth year, he realized that he still liked Lily. He craved their small little interactions, and he decided that he would try and get her to go out with them. He'd never had much trouble asking girls to go on dates with him before, and he hoped that things would be different now that they were older.

So he spent most of fifth year making a spectacle of himself, asking her out. He asked her out over the Quidditch announcer's podium before a game. He asked her out in front of the class when Flitwick stepped out to grab something from his office. He asked Rosmerta to grab everybody's attention in the Three Broomsticks, so he could promise the entire bar a butterbeer if she said yes. But each time, her reaction was the same. She would always roll her eyes and say no, but it didn't stop James. Not until the afternoon after their Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. exam.

It was another spat involving Snape. It was always Snivellus, and it wasn't as though it was one sided. Snape picked fights with them too, as long as he had backup. But this time, Lily really came after James, calling him an arrogant, bullying toerag in front of an entire crowd of people. It was humiliating, and it felt like the entire school was talking about it. After that, he finally stopped asking her out.

Sirius ran away from home that summer, and somehow, they grew even closer. James started picking up some of Sirius's bad habits, trying weed, but nothing harder than that. Sixth year came, and James realized it was becoming increasingly easy for him to grab girls' attention, now that he wasn't constantly asking Lily out. That year, it went much further than snogging for him. That was also the year that he and Sirius stopped bullying for good, although it had been on the steady decline since their third year.

He went home for winter break that year to find out that his mother was incredibly sick. They hadn't even told James about it because he'd barely written to them all semester – but he hadn't been writing to them because he didn't have anything good to tell him. His grades were slipping, and he was partying a lot. He spent the break keeping his parents company, worried about them. It was the first time in his life he had spent a significant amount of time worrying about somebody other than himself, and it was a wake-up call for him. He sobered up when he went back for the rest of his sixth year.

James wanted to be better, and he began by committing that he wouldn't smoke with Sirius anymore, or fool around with girls that he didn't take seriously. He started working harder in school. He made a list of things he was grateful for, of things he had taken for granted. He made a list of things he'd done that he regretted, and he made a list of the things he wanted in life. He applied to be Head Boy, mostly on a whim, not thinking he would actually get the position. He thought of ways to get Evans to take him seriously.

He also started noticing things about his friends that he hadn't before, now that he was thinking of himself less. He noticed how embarrassed Sirius got when his parents tried to give him money for new robes for school, and realized he'd never worried about being able to buy the things he needed. He noticed how Remus stopped to read every hiring sign posted around school, and realized that he'd never worried about being able to find a stable job. And for the first time, he began to feel embarrassed that instead of using his privilege to help others, he'd mostly just basked in it.

James was ready to grow up, and become a better version of himself.

He settled down at the professor's desk at the front, pulling out a piece of parchment and a quill. He paused as he saw Lily round the doorway and came to a stop, looking surprised to see him. She checked the watch on her wrist, and then looked back at him. He tried not to stare, but he liked how she looked with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She had somehow, impossibly, gotten prettier over the summer.

"You're early," she said.

"We said we were meeting at 6:30. It's 6:20," James said.

"Right, I forgot you like to be early to things," Lily said pointedly, raising her eyebrows. James walked into class everyday with the bell, and often a couple seconds afterwards.

"Actually, you know what? I realized my watch has been running late for the last couple of years. Finally got that fixed," James said, playing along.

Lily snorted, settling down in the seat next to him. She began pulling out her stuff, and looked sideways at him. "I'm sorry for how I reacted the other day when you told me you were Head Boy. I'm going to try and put some of my biases aside so that we can have a working relationship."

James laughed.

"What?" Lily said defensively. She had no idea why he was laughing.

"Nothing. It was just the most clinical apology I've ever heard. Very formal," James said, still smiling.

"Are you criticizing my apology?" Lily asked, her eyebrows scrunched together.

"Nah," James said. "I didn't mean to, at least."

Lily just looked at him, her green eyes piercing. After a couple seconds, she turned back to the front. "Okay, let's get started. Today, we have to get through patrol signups, new school policies, and then find a good time to run training for the eight new prefects."

"Right, patrol signups," James said hurriedly. "Fifth and sixth years do three shifts each week. Seventh years do two. So we have to figure out the fairest way to allocate shifts." He wanted to signal to her that he had done his homework, that he could keep up without Lily having to explain everything to him.

"It's by seniority," Lily explained. "We do signups a month ahead of time and then post it in the prefect's bathroom in case anybody forgets. We're exempt because of our other duties."

"But we have to cover if somebody is sick," James added.

"That's right," Lily said, and there was almost approval in her tone. She was surprised that he knew all this, but she figured he had just asked Remus to explain everything to him half an hour before this meeting. "Next, new school policies."

"Dumbledore's inter-house unity plan," James said, with a groan. Lily seemed to share his sense of irritation, because she nodded sympathetically.

"I really hate this plan," she said quietly. Her eyes traveled to the doorway, as though checking to see that nobody could overhear their conversation. "It's too late for exposure therapy. Maybe if we'd done this starting in first year, it would've worked. But now, there's way too much bad blood."

"This just isn't my policy for how to deal with blood purists," James said. "We don't debate them civilly or give them second chances. We don't try to make things work. We hex them."

"Lots of 'we' in there," Lily said. "You and your friends always operate as a unit?"

"As much as you do with McKinnon and Macdonald," James pointed out.

Lily shrugged. "That's fair."

"You know he has us doing this with Quidditch, too?" James asked.

"Really?" Lily asked. She and her friends were rather out of the loop when it came to Quidditch.

"Yeah. Double penalties for red flags in Quidditch, and the teams are supposed to have lunch with each other once a month. Some catered thing with all four varsity teams every month, and Madam Hooch."

"That sounds awful," Lily admitted.

"Yeah, it will be," James said. "But Dumbledore seemed really set on it, and I want to do a good job, so I wrote down some ideas I had. I was reading about traditions that Hogwarts used to have, and you know, we used to participate in this thing called the Triwizard Tournament."

"I've heard of that," Lily said tentatively.

"And part of that was something called the Yule Ball, like a winter dance. I think we could try and plan something like that, when we're coordinating the holiday decorations. Give people something to celebrate while the outside world sucks so much."

"I do like that idea," Lily said. "Like a homecoming dance."

"What's homecoming?" James asked, confused.

"It's a Muggle thing," Lily explained. "In high schools and some middle schools, they have a dance to commemorate an annual game of some kind."

"We could do it like that!" James said, easily incorporating that into his existing plan. "To help make Muggle-borns feel more welcome. We can have it after the last Quidditch game before winter break. Or that weekend. However it's supposed to work."

"That would make the Slytherins pretty mad," Lily said, a small smile on her face.

"Well, that seals the deal. Now we have to do it," James said. Lily's smile grew, just a bit.

"I want to ask you something," James said hesitantly.

Lily braced herself to be asked out again.

"How do you do it?" James asked.

"Do what?" Lily asked, taken aback.

"Stay out of things," James said, shaking his head, and he seemed to be genuinely asking. "With the way the Slytherins act, especially around you and your friends. I've seen it. Especially when your friends don't seem to want to stay out of it very often."

"I don't know," Lily said. Her friends had asked her the same thing before. "I guess… I've always thought that acting a certain kind of way towards Slytherins doesn't help. I've never wanted to sink to their level. And I know that if I do, I'm just going to prove them right, and push them farther to the right. I won't lie, it's hard sometimes. They make it really hard."

She looked at him, realizing that she had genuinely opened up to him, probably for the first time ever. She'd had a bit of a talk with herself before the meeting, knowing that she needed to be patient with Potter, and certainly not snap at him in front of the other prefects. She knew she needed the other prefects' respect to work with them, and she wouldn't gain it if the two of them just bickered while trying to run a meeting. She just hadn't quite expected it to go this far.

"Anyways," Lily said, changing the subject. "That's a great idea. I was thinking of a Quidditch mixer myself, but I actually like this better. It's more inclusive of everybody."

"A Quidditch mixer is a good idea," James said encouragingly, but Lily shook her head. "No, it's too similar to do both, and I like this better," she insisted.

Before they could get to anything else, all the Ravenclaw prefects filed in. They were a bit early, but James and Lily began introductions, especially with the new fifth years. James tried his best to act natural, but he felt like a bit of an outsider, especially as Lily began giving them advice for studying for their O.W.L.'s. These people genuinely already had their lives together, while James only had a long record of detentions to show for his time at Hogwarts. How was he supposed to lead a room full of people like that?

He tried to channel the same person that barked orders during Quidditch practice, which helped. He let Lily guide the meeting, and added things as she went. He recognized and respected the fact that she was much more prepared for the position than he was, so he tried to be helpful without dominating the meeting and drawing too much attention away from her.

When it was over, they walked the Gryffindor prefects back to the common room. James would've loved to spend more time with Lily, but apparently, the new prefects felt exactly the same way. He knew she was the class salutatorian, and they seemed to have endless questions for her. They wanted to know about the classes, about her internship at St. Mungo's, and she kindly acceded. Nobody seemed to really care that James played Quidditch, which was mostly what younger students asked him about, so he fell behind with Remus. Remus had been watching him with amusement, as James lagged behind the group. He was sort of hopping around it, as though hoping the more he moved, he might catch Lily's attention again.

"Come on, let's go back," James said, seemingly giving up. They waved goodbye and made their way back to their own suite, where Sirius and Peter were lounging in the common area.

"How was your meeting?" Peter asked.

"Went well, I think," James said, shrugging.

"He did good," Remus said. "He's trying to be modest. It's weird, isn't it?"

"Extremely," Sirius agreed. "So, you tell Evans you're hooking up with Charity?"

"Shut up," James said, sitting down on the couch next to him. He'd wanted it to be just a one-time thing, but it had really taken off since the semester started. He'd been perfectly clear with her that it wouldn't turn into anything, but she didn't seem to mind.

"She's probably going to find out sooner or later, from Macdonald," Remus said, trying to be gentle. They all knew it was in James's best interest, seeing how hard he took his numerous rejections from Evans.

"Oh, you mean Sirius's new friend?" James asked pointedly.

"Don't change the subject. I'm not hooking up with Mary," Sirius said, and then winked. "Yet."

"We don't spend the night together," James said. "And I don't even see her that much. It's only been a handful of times. I'm going to end it."

"When? When you start making headway with Evans?" Remus asked. "Because that's not a good idea."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll stop," James said, starting to sound annoyed.

"Alright, alright," Sirius said, changing the subject to keep things from escalating. "Peter and I were going over another plan to target the Slytherins."

"What's the plan?" Remus asked.

In response, Peter held up a single sheet of parchment. It looked like the "Wanted" posters that were appearing in the Daily Prophet, in every single edition now. The new Minister of Magic, Minchum, was going after Death Eaters even harder than his predecessor. The posters were everywhere. But where the name and picture of a Death Eater should've been, it was blank.

"What are you going to do?" James asked, and he sounded taken aback.

"Avery, Mulciber, Snape, Rosier," Sirius said. "And some of the other Slytherins. As well as their family members. We're making copies and spreading them everywhere in school before Monday morning."

There was silence.

"They'll never forgive you for this," Remus warned, and he sounded solemn. "Going after their families."

"You don't have to tell me how deep pureblood ties run," Sirius said darkly. It was like a shadow had crossed his face, and he looked almost like a different person. His expression was angry, vengeful.

"And I bet you can pinpoint people who are actually Death Eaters," James said quietly.

"I grew up with these people," Sirius said. "I've got a good idea of who is, and who isn't. I'm not just going to do it blindly. I'm going to do it with deadly accuracy."