Disclaimer: None of it is mine…

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Lily froze in the doorway of the Prefect’s Compartment.

“Ha… oh no.” she chuckled mirthlessly.

James Potter was sitting next to the window, watching the green countryside roll by. On the front of his robes was the same ‘Head’ badge that Lily wore on the front of her own.

James looked up when she spoke. He shrugged and smiled.

Lily snorted in a ‘just-my-luck’ kind of way and sat down on the seat opposite him.

James looked out the window again. Lily crossed her arms.

They sat in silence.

James started tapping his foot on the ground. Lily stared at it for a moment, and then looked up at his face.

The scene outside the window was being reflected in his glasses, and he gave no sign that he had noticed Lily’s attention. Lily looked at the foot again.

“You’re going to do that the entire ride, aren’t you?” she asked abruptly.

The tapping paused. James’s eyes met Lily’s. He smiled. The tapping resumed.

Lily snorted.

“That is just like you, Potter.” she mumbled, and waited for the confrontation. Usually, when Lily spited James it took him a while to come up with a substantial retort and that began a full fledged battle, more or less.

Lily waited. James said nothing, only continued to tap his foot and smirk at the window.

Lily took a breath, about to plunge into her Potter-Speech number four, (i.e. what an arrogant toe-rag he was) but caught herself. Somehow, those words seemed to have lost their sting to James Potter.

“You aren’t going to completely intolerable this entire year, are you Potter?”

James looked up again, and again said nothing.

“Ugh! You are the most low, arrogant, self-righteous, idiotic toe-rag I have ever met! Honestly I mean that, Potter.”

“Oh and you haven’t meant it the last ten million or so times you’ve said it then, have you?” James said in a low, mocking voice.

Lily choked. This was not supposed to happen, this never happened. James was supposed to do something ridiculously irritating (such as asking her for a date) at this point. James’ rude rebuttal threw Lily for quite a loop.

She had just about come up with a fitting insult, when the door to the compartment slid open and the prefects began to file in.

James stood and offered his seat to a girl from Ravenclaw, winking at her in the process.

Lily was immensely annoyed at this girl, who began to giggle incessantly.

“Well,” James began. Lily looked at him in surprise.

‘And who decided he was running the show? Oh-ho! I think not!’

“Well,” Lily cut over his next word. “Congratulations to you all on becoming your house prefects. I trust-”

“Yeah, brilliant, all of you.” Another wink at the Ravenclaw girl. “I think what we’ll do first is-”

This was not to be tolerated. Lily took a step forward and cut him off again.

“We’re going to assign you to your patrol routes for the remainder of the ride. Alright, first of all… Spuffing and Carole?”

James spoke before Lily could continue.

"You two will be patrolling the north part of the train.”

“Excuse me, Potter!” Lily turned to face him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m conducting my meeting, Evans." he turned to face Lily as well. "What do you think I’m doing?”

Lily ignored his question.

“I will be conducting this meeting, if you don’t mind.”

“You know what, Evans?” James took a step towards Lily. “I think I do mind after all. You are not the only Head.”

Lily scoffed and took a step forward herself. They were mere inches apart, and both looking furious. The prefects in the compartment were all wide eyed, not daring to so much as breathe loudly.

“Well, it’s obvious that I’m the better Head, isn’t it?” Lily was shouting now. “You are the most irresponsible, bullying, lazy-”

“And you are the most overachieving, condescending-”

Lily began again, raising her voice a little louder than James’.

“Irresponsible, bullying, lazy, unqualified-”

“That’s it!” James shouted over her testimonial.

In a split second, James had grabbed Lily’s shoulders, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

It took Lily at least five seconds to realize what had happened. When at last she did, she told the little voice in her head to ‘Shut it!’, and kissed him back.

Lily did not know for how long she was kissing him.

The words

“I’m kissing James Potter.”

spiraled into the foreground of her mind.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“No, you don’t understand, I’m kissing James Potter!”

“So?”

“…………….”

“Holy cricket, I’m kissing James Potter!”

Lily pulled away, hard. She brought her hand up to her eyes and looked down at the ground. Her mouth was open in shock.

James let a breath of air out loudly, and looked expectantly at Lily.

Lily mouthed wordlessly for a few seconds and then closed her eyes, shaking her head.

James cocked his head, in inquiry. Lily opened her eyes and whispered:

“Fine, Potter. You can conduct this meeting.” And with that, she slammed the compartment door open and dashed out into the corridor.

James stared at the door as it slid slowly shut after her. He closed his eyes, smiled, and cursed himself.

“Alright.” he finally began. “Like I said before: Spuffing and Carole take the northern part of the train. Taylor and Jorkins, the section just after Spuffing and Carole’s…”

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A/N: How’d you like that? How does Lily feel about all of this? Review! I’ll update quickly.