(Disclaimer: Yet again, I remind you that I do NOT own Harry Potter.)
(A/N: Thanks to everyone who's taking the time to read this :) It makes me happy! If you have any suggestions than please do tell, otherwise I will never improve and I must!! So yeah, thanks and have a great day :) )
(A/N I forgot to add: Have fun watching your POA DVD!! :) It was so painful, I was in school the whole day and I swear the minute hand moved once per hour. It was torture. Hopefully that wasn't what it was like for you guys.)
Chapter Two: Starting Over
“Evans... Evans!! It’s time to wake up...” someone was shaking Lily gently, bringing her out of a deep sleep.
“Huh? Just a few more minutes...” She muttered, turning over.
“We’re already five minutes late. Come on, get up,” the person continued shaking her.
Lily wondered why someone was trying to wake her up when it was still dark, and how come she was curled into a tight ball in a sitting up position... Then it all came back to her. She had to patrol the corridors with James!
She jumped up out of the chair, startling James, who had been the person trying to wake her. “Come on, what are you waiting for? Let’s go!” she strode briskly towards the portrait hole, and climbed out.
“What was I waiting for?” James asked disbelievingly, following close behind. “You were the one sleeping!”
“I must’ve slept through my alarm,” Lily explained.
“It’s a good thing you had someone responsible, like me, to wake you up,” James was trying not to laugh.
Lily saw the humor in it. James the responsible one? Yeah, right. She responded by rolling her eyes at him, and then quickly looked away so he wouldn’t see her smiling.
They turned down a particularly dark corridor, checking empty classrooms and alcoves as they went. Lily nearly bumped into two suits of armor before she finally got frustrated and whispered “lumos.” She held up her wand, lighting the way before her.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw James smirking. “What?” she demanded, she hated being laughed at.
“You haven’t snuck out many times have you?” he said, grinning.
“In comparison to you? I guess not. Why is it important?” Lily asked icily.
“If anyone was out they’d see you coming from a mile away. Although, if you put out your wand, they’d probably hear you.” Lily scowled, knowing that he was talking about how she jumped whenever she almost collided with the suits of armor. “I bet you’ve never caught a single person during your patrols,” he concluded.
Lily quickly cancelled her light spell, hoping that the sudden darkness would hide her blush. He was right, she hadn’t caught anyone. Remus hadn’t either... except for the one time she’d been in the hospital wing with the flu. He’d caught Snape out and about. When Lily came back from being sick he told her all about it. Snape had refused to cooperate and it resulted in Remus hexing him pretty badly. She wasn’t as mad that day as she probably would have been, Snape’d made her rather upset a few days before and that way she didn’t really need to think up a way of personal revenge..
“So what if I haven’t?” Lily snapped. “Besides, it’s the first night back. No one ever sneaks out.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” James said, but Lily could still hear a hint of amusement in his voice. How annoying, she thought.
“Don’t tell me that the ‘marauders’ sneak out on the first night,” she made sure that her reference to the marauders sounded sarcastic. Although, she actually thought it was rather cute that they’d fashioned a name for their little group. She’d expected James to answer right away, and when he didn’t she looked at him curiously, stepping out of the classroom she’d been checking. She couldn’t see very well, but from what she read of the frown on his face, he and his little group did sneak out on the first night.
“You do?”
“How else would we set up the start of term prank?” James replied, leaning against a wall, totally at ease. Ah, yes. How could Lily have forgotten the start of term prank. It had started in second year and since then it was tradition. They were played on the whole school, and actually quite funny, although Lily would never admit it.
She looked at James as he brought a hand up to cover his mouth while he yawned. Lily watched him as she moved to the next door. He was handsome, even when he was tired and his eyes were half shut. No, Lily thought, I can’t think about Potter that way. I’m just so sleep deprived, I must be delusional. She still watched him though, and as a consequence walked smack into a wall. She stumbled back, trying to catch her balance but she tripped over the hem of her robes and fell into a suit of armor. She tumbled over, and so did it, making a horribly loud noise that Lily was sure would wake the whole castle.
“Lil“ Evans! Are you okay? I can’t see anything. Lumos!”
Lily squinted as James pointed his wand light right at her. She lay sprawled on the floor. Luckily she’d fallen on top of the suit of armor instead of the other way around, or she’d probably have a lot of broken bones. As it was, the side of her face that had connected with the wall was throbbing painfully and she was having trouble breathing. When she’d landed the wind had been knocked out of her.
“Are you okay?” James repeated, kneeling next to her. Lily couldn’t see much except for white light, but from the tone of the voice he was sincerely concerned for her.
“You’re blinding me Potter...” she groaned, putting an arm up to shield her eyes. Instantly the wand light went out.
“Here, let me help you up,” James held out his hand, but Lily ignored it slowly getting up on her own. She stood up, her legs a little wobbly but at least her ankle wasn’t broken or something. Lily looked down at the suit of armor that lay in parts on the ground, then at the wall she’d banged into and started to laugh.
“I think that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done!” She exclaimed, still laughing. Lily saw that James was about to laugh, but an angry outburst wiped the smiles from both their faces.
“Look at this mess!” Filch, the caretaker, screeched. “That was a rare and historic suit of armor!” He turned wildly and faced James. “I’ve got you now Potter!” He spat. “You’ll be on the train tomorrow! Mark my words!”
Lily watched as James’s jaw dropped in what she could only guess was horror and disbelief. She knew she had to tell, as much as she would have liked to never see James again, she couldn’t do that to him. She didn’t want to get in trouble either. She’d been in detention once, and didn’t want to repeat the experience. So she did what all Gryffindors do in a tight spot. She lied.
“Oh, no sir,” she said, interrupting the angry lecture he was giving James. He jumped, and Lily guessed that he wasn’t called ‘sir’ very often. “We were patrolling the corridors when we heard this awful racket, no doubt you heard it too. We thought it must have been a student out of bed, or maybe Peeves. Don’t you think, sir?”
Filch squinted his usually bulging eyes in thought, making his face look even more pouched than normal. Lily chanced a look at James, he still had his mouth open. She wished he’d close it, he didn’t look very innocent standing there with a shocked look on his face.
“I don’t believe... are you sure?” Filch asked suspiciously.
“Well, what point would we have in knocking it down?” Lily questioned sensibly.
“I thought I heard laughter...” It appeared Filch wasn’t going to believe her story without getting everything straightened out.
“Er... well, this is rather embarrassing, you see we didn’t put our wand light on because then the student would see us and get away. It was terribly dark... and I well... I tripped over the thing. Once I realized that I was okay, I started laughing. It was a fairly stupid thing, wasn’t it?” Lily knew she had started to ramble. She looked up into Filch’s eyes, determined that he’d believe her and leave.
“The culprit must still be about then. We should split up, we’ll cover more ground that way,” and with that he ran quickly down a corridor opposite them. Lily and James continued to make their way down their own corridor, not daring to disobey Filch.
“I can’t believe you, Miss Saint Evans, just lied. And to save me from suspension no less,” James said after the pounding footsteps of Filch couldn’t be heard anymore.
“I have morals you know, Potter. I couldn’t have just stood aside and let you get suspended when it was my fault, no matter how much that would have made my life happier,” Lily said not looking at James. She held her head high, determined to keep her composure. Lying to Filch wasn’t really that big of a deal in her opinion. Had it been a professor, then she would have been a little bothered by it, but not much.
“Here I was getting the idea that you might be warming up to me,” said James.
“Still cold as ever, Potter,” Lily said huffily. There was a moment of decidedly awkward silence between them.
“What’d I ever do to you to make you hate me so much?” James asked lightly, trying to make it seem like just a throw away question, like he was asking about the weather or something.
Lily thought about it and opened her mouth to answer. “Besides the time in first year when I called you pumpkin head,” James threw in quickly.
Lily frowned, how did he know that was exactly what she was going to say? She’d been incredibly self-conscious of her red hair when she was younger. In second year she’d attempted to make a potion to change it into a beautiful strawberry blond colour. She’d ended up in the hospital wing for a week, coughing up blond fur balls and with painful yellow and black sores all over her face. After that little incident she’d learnt to accept her red hair and now she actually really liked it.
“I don’t like the way you bully people, especially Severus Snape,” Lily said, glaring at him.
“I didn’t do that at all last year!” James protested.
He was right, and Lily hated that. By June of last year he could walk through the corridors without Slytherins recoiling in too much terror. “Yeah, well you used to! Just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean you’re not continuing!” she argued, a bit lamely in her opinion.
James scowled, “I asked what I’d ever done to you, not to others! I’ve never laid a wand on you.”
Lily threw him a disgusted look, and glanced at her watch. “It’s almost time, I’m heading back.” She turned directions, taking a short cut behind a tapestry. She’d been hoping James would leave her alone, but she could feel his presence right behind her.
“Look,” he started, grabbing her arm in a gentle but firm way. “Let’s just start over, okay? Get to really know me.”
Lily tried in vain to yank her arm out of his grasp. “No. I don’t even want to get to know you!” She said vehemently, continuing to tug her arm in hopes of freeing it.
“Like it or not, you don’t really have a choice. We’re head boy and girl, and we’re supposed to be a team. What with all the meetings and patrols we’ll spending lots of time together. Let’s make it easier on ourselves and at least attempt to be nice to each other, if you can’t handle being friends.” James said quietly in a dead serious voice, but Lily heard every word.
She thought it over and realized how much sense it made. All throughout the year they’d probably be seeing each other at least once a day, if not twice. Lily wanted to be a good head girl, one that would be well remembered. She stopped trying to get free from James, and sensing that she wasn’t about to run away, he let go. Nice to James Potter, she thought, what a weird concept. Could she do it? She’d been cold and harsh to him from almost the first day of her first year.
“So, shall we try again?” He asked after a few minutes silence in which Lily had been thinking.
“Alright,” she agreed reluctantly.
“Brilliant. Okay so, hi, I’m James Potter. Nice to meet you,” he said smiling. He extended his hand. Lily paused a moment before taking it.
“Lily Evans, nice to meet you to,” She said, shaking his hand and feeling a bit silly. After one shake, she let go of his hand like it pained her to be in touch with it.
“We’ve got five minutes to be back to Gryffindor Tower, and I don’t know about you, but I need my beauty sleep,” James said cheerfully. He started walking again, with Lily following.
This, Lily thought watching James’s back looming ahead in the darkness, this is going to be a challenge.