Disclaimer: I own nothing except myself.
A Long Way in Coming
The next morning I was awoken, quite rudely I may add, by a glaring ray of sunlight creeping into our dorm and alighting upon my neat and organized side of the room, a perfect contrast to Jackie’s rather, er, messy, side of the room.
I wanted, like any other normal person, to stay in bed until I actually felt like getting up, but I hated wasting a good Saturday on just sleeping. So, instead of sinking even farther into the warm blankets and drifting off to sleep, I glanced groggily at my muggle watch, surprised to see it’s blinking numbers show that it was already eleven in the morning. I never slept that late! Half of me was angry at Jackie for not waking me up, and the other half was glad she had let me sleep”I was still exhausted.
Nevertheless I kicked off my sheets and pulled myself out of my warm bed. I shivered as the cold air hit me like a wall of ice, and glared at the open window as I slid into my fuzzy green slippers.
“Just like Jackie,” I muttered as I pulled my equally green and fuzzy bathrobe around me and shuffled to the window to close it. “She gets hot and opens the window, then doesn’t close it when she leaves. Damn her and her crazy internal thermometer. Only she would be hot on a morning like this.” I turned from the window and dragged myself to the bathroom, still shivering and muttering angrily to myself. (As you may have already guessed, I am not a morning person).
I stopped in front of the bathroom mirror and sighed at my reflection. My already creamy pale skin was, as always in the mornings, even paler than normal, making the tiny red freckles dusted across my face stick out even more than they usually did. My dark red hair, hastily pulled back the night before, had all but fallen out of the ponytail, the dull strands falling two or three inches below my shoulders. My half-closed eyes looked, as James always said, greener than emeralds, but had slight bags under them. I sighed again, thinking, I'll be fine once I've showered
“Having fun admiring yourself in the mirror?” a dry voice said from behind me. I jumped, caught unawares, but recovered quickly and whipped around to glare at Jackie. She was perfectly awake and beautiful, as always, smirking at me with one hand on her hips and leaning casually on the door frame.
“Actually, I was! I think I’m quite pretty don’t you think so?” I joked, my face perfectly serious, posing like I was a model.
“Oh, absolutely,” Jackie replied equally gravely. “If,” she added, “you’re going for the whole ‘Severus Snape’ look.” And with that she burst into totally unneeded laughter. I glared once again, then shut the bathroom door in her face, ignoring her rude cackling.
I stripped off my flannel pajamas, freezing, turned the shower on to full heat and jumped in.
Ten minutes later I walked out of the steaming bathroom, towel wrapped around my hair like a turban and another towel wrapped around my body.
Jackie, who had previously been enchanting a paper crane to flap its lime green wings increasingly quickly around our room, looked up and immediately fell to the ground at my feet, bowing and kissing the floor, a mocking smile on her pretty face.
“How may I aid you, Most Powerful Sultan? Or would it be Sultan-ess, since you’re a girl?” She sat up and grinned impishly at me. “I bet you’re wanting one of those medicines now that all those little bacteria have settled down in your throat, don’t you?”
“Jackie, you are too cruel,” I replied, the corner of my mouth turning up at her random silliness nonetheless, as I maneuvered my way across her side of the room to my wardrobe, where I pulled out a worn and faded pair of jeans and a navy blue shirt. “Actually,” I remarked teasingly as I pulled on the shirt, “I feel fine. In fact, I’ve never been better!”
“Girl, your immune system is unnaturally strong. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you sick, come to think of it.” Jackie wondered at the marvel of it, shaking her head ruefully.
“But I think I heard somewhere,” I continued, ignoring jackie, “that colds are extremely contagious; I bet you’re going to need one of those medicines””
“So,” Jackie interrupted me quickly, standing up only to seat herself on her bed again, “do you have anything planned for today? You know, a snowball fight, making Christmas cards, anything that has to do with something we here on Planet Earth like to call the Christmas Spirit? Or do you still plan on studying for that Potions test Slughorn had the nerve to give us? Stupid git thinks he can give us a test the first day after break, doesn’t listen to anything we say, no, he doesn’t, he’s just a self-righteous, no-good…”
I rolled my eyes at Jackie’s now incoherent muttered complaints about Horace Slughorn, the Potions teacher. I didn’t much like him myself, but I wasn’t going to come right out and say so.
“Jackie,” I said, breaking into her ceaseless grumbles about the unjust theory of testing, “that is an important exam, and you need the studying!”
She stopped her mumbled tirade and glared at me. “Lils, I may need to study, but I don’t care about Potions. You’re the one who cares about Potions, but you have all the info down like that. So let’s just take a break this weekend, please?” She ended this little speech by gazing imploring at me with her wide, dark eyes.
“Oh, well, I suppose I don’t see any harm in taking one day off,” I finally relented, giving into her irresistible puppy eyes as I unwrapped the towel from my hair and proceeded in brushing it out.
“Yippee!” she cried, jumping out of bed and clapping her hands like a delighted child. “C’mon, then, we don’t have all day!” she said to me, her eyes sparkling, as she grabbed my hand and tugged at it expectantly.
“Hold on a bit, I haven’t eaten breakfast!” I protested, performing a simple drying spell on my hair and pulling it into a tight ponytail.
“Well, me neither! Did you think I would eat without you?” Jackie cried indignantly, still tugging at my arm persistently. “C’mon, let’s go already!”
And laughing, I let her pull me out to breakfast.
Jackie and I burst into the Common Room late that evening, giggling with excitement, rumpling the thick red rug as we slid hurriedly to a stop and levitated our huge basin that just happened to be filled to the brim with white, hard-packed snowballs to float slowly behind the large red couch. We then proceeded to bound over the couch, perfectly in-sync of course, and tumbled to the ground breathless with laughter.
It took some minutes to calm down again, seeing as we had just had a tremendous snowball fight that happened to show no signs of stopping anytime soon, but after a considerable effort both Jackie and I managed to quiet ourselves until our silence was quite satisfactory.
Once Jackie and I were both crouched and motionless behind said couch I felt that it was safe to breathe again. After another two minutes when nobody had come bursting in the Common Room looking for us, I shifted slightly from my uncomfortable position and faced Jackie.
“Jax,” I breathed cautiously, using her nickname, “d’you think they’re coming?”
Jackie turned at my inquiry, her dark eyes sparkling, and put a finger up to her lips at the same time as murmuring, “Any minute now…”
We grew silent, and at the first sound of feet stomping in the outer hallway, we eyed each other wickedly and readied our wands. James was laughing loudly at some joke Peter had made (probably unintentionally; the poor dear wasn’t the dullest tooth in the dragon’s mouth, but he wasn’t the sharpest, either), and we could hear Sirius’ noisy, barking laugh at something one of the portraits had said.
My mouth twitched into a smile at the thought of Adrelia, the young, flirtatious witch in the portrait right by the Fat Lady’s. She was always making not-so-subtle remarks about Sirius’ astonishing beauty, and he did absolutely nothing to stop her. He was as immune to flattery as I am to colds, which I am, just to clarify, by no means immune to. I simply don't get sick very often. Speaking of colds, though…
I felt a steady, creeping itchiness tickle the inside of my nose, which twitched in spite of itself. I sniffed heartily as I heard James utter the password (ghastly grindylows) and signaled frantically to Jackie that I was about to sneeze right as the Fat Lady swung open. Jackie frenziedly waved her wand about my face, paying no mind to my eyes and actually poking them (accidentally, of course) once or twice. It only took a few moments, however, for her to perform the simple anti-sneezing charm. Don’t ask me who invented that one, all I know is it’s etremely useful.
By this time the three Marauders (Remus had already gone to the hospital to get ready for his transformation) had made it to the to the center of the common room, and in five more steps they would be within good firing range. Thankfully, they had been so loud they hadn’t even noticed the noise Jackie and I had made over the, er, sneezing episode.
“I wonder where Jackie and Lily went off to in such a hurry,” Peter commented slyly, and I saw him glance quickly over to the couch where we were and give a barely perceptible smile, before his chubby features smoothed into their normal confused expression.
Jackie and I ogled at each other in wonder; how had Peter, of all people, figured out where we were hiding?
“I have no idea, Peter. D’you think they had to use the loo?” James continued, his face a perfect mask of slight puzzlement. I glanced at Jackie from the corner of my eye only to find that she was also glancing at me from the corner of her eye, and I knew we were both considering the same exact thing; Should we surrender? At once, we both smirked; we didn’t know the meaning of surrender.
“Or maybe,” Sirius went on with a wicked grin, and all three boys started advancing slowly to the couch, “they’re right in this room, just waiting to ambush us with a rather large tub of snowballs…”
Now, up until that very moment, Jackie and I had been trying to ignore the fact that they knew exactly where we were and were also knowledgeable about the “rather large tub of snowballs” we had. We were not, however, as stupid as coconuts, and we both simultaneously and wordlessly decided that whatever small chances existed for us to win this little ambush (can you win an ambush?) would be lost if we did not fire right then and there.
We stood up from behind the couch. We registered the none-too-surprised look on all their faces. We watched them smirk and raise their wands. We smirked and raised ours in turn, ready to fire our snowballs as soon as they made any sign of sending couch pillows magically our way. We were counting on them being ready for the barrage of snowballs they were soon to receive, but we were confident we could overcome them. What we weren’t counting on was them having their own rather large tub of snowballs that had been hidden under a certain unnamed invisibility cloak.
“Fire!” Jackie yelled (a bit unnecessarily, I mean it was a bit obvious that that was the perfect moment to shower them with our lovely volley of snowballs), drawing her wand behind her so it brushed her back and then flinging it forward suddenly so that a perfect line of five snowballs abruptly hurled toward Sirius. I hastily imitated her movements and another line of snowballs flew straight at James.
I think they all got hit a total of twice. Jackie and I got hit fifteen times. The rest of the many snowballs were littered around the room (not melted in little puddles, because we had put anti-melting charms on them) from when we had missed our selected targets.
Anyway, the point was, after a very quick and fun five minutes, Jackie and I were sorely losing. We had to think fast in order to hang on to whatever remaining dignity we had. And so, I did what I had to; I applied a multiplying charm on our one remaining snowball so that it morphed into ten equally sizeable hard spheres of snow. I then added another simple charm that would cause said snowballs to collapse as soon as they hit the certain person, so that they would slip with all their freezing coldness into the worst places, making the previously mentioned people who would be hit with the previously mentioned snowballs wince, gasp and dance around.
My plan was genius.
And it worked perfectly. Jackie and I revelled in their identical expressions of terror as the snowballs neared them, and we laughed wickedly as all three of them winced, gasped, and danced around, and we gave each other a high five and headed jogged up the stairs before they could retaliate; we knew how to stop when we were ahead.
“That was perfect!” I exclaimed to Jackie, giggling madly from exhilaration. “Absolutely brilliant!”
She laughed along and then replied, “I know, it was fun.”
Once we reached the top of the stairs we turned around and smiled sweetly at the defeated Marauders, waving to them.
“Thank you, oh Powerful Marauders, for deigning to have fun with us this day,” Jackie said in a mockingly humble voice, flourishing her long red hat and bowing.
“What she said,” I added, grinning.
Peter was still dancing around and making little yelping noises, making Sirius eye him with bemusement and offer to remove the snow magically, as he and James had done.
“Oh,” Peter, replied to Sirius’ offer, blushing (but still hopping from foot to foot), “well, I guess that’s good, er, thanks then, Sirius.”
“Right,” Sirius answered, his tone slightly disdainful, but he performed the charm quickly.
This only put Jackie and me into yet another of our giggling fits that we get when we’re so tired we’re hyper.
“”Night, M’rauders,” we chorused, and they all waved to us, all saying different things: Peter beamed and said cheerfully, “Good night! See you tomorrow, then!”; Sirius bowed dramatically, saying, “It was a complete pleasure spending the day with you, my ladies, a complete pleasure.”; while James murmured so softly I could barely hear, “’Night, Lily,” which for some reason made me blush, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. Why had he ignored Jackie?
Our goodnights said, Jackie and I, yawning from the day’s play, stumbled into our dorm. I brushed my teeth (Jackie, being the lucky girl that she was, had perfect teeth without ever doing anything with them) and slipped into my pajamas before jumping onto my bed.
“’Night, Jax,” I said thickly through a yawn. But she wasn’t done with me yet.
“So,” she started off innocently, “I wonder why James is ignoring me.”
“What d’you mean, he’s ignoring you?” I asked. I was ready to go to sleep, but I wasn’t going to pass up a good conversation, and besides, I was curious as to why James hadn’t said goodnight to Jackie as well. “I mean, he just, er, forgot to say goodnight to you,” I continued, slightly awkwardly.
“Right,” She answered sarcastically. She sat up in bed and eyed me thoughtfully. “He was looking at you awfully intensely, Lils.”
I sat up, indignant with disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘intensely’? I didn’t notice anything different.”
Jackie rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah, I mean he always looks at you like that! Lils, don’t you see, he likes you! A lot!”
I snorted, but the serious look on Jackie’s face made me doubt my utter certainty a little. “Impossible,” I remarked casually as if to reassure myself that it really was impossible. Could James like me as more than a friend? This only made me snort again. No way.
“Impossible!” I repeated more firmly. “James and I have been friends for three years now, there’s nothing else between us except friendship. And besides,” I added, a bit sadly, “he’s perfect. He could have any girl in the school he wants, why would he choose me?”
“What’s that I hear? Is that Lily Evans being jealous?” Jackie exclaimed, a small smile growing on her face.
“No,” I replied, my own face growing hot as I realized what I had just said. “Wait a second,” I suddenly said, realization dawning upon me. “Jax, you don’t like James, do you?”
Her mouth dropped open so wide I could have shoved my head in there and she wouldn’t have noticed. Wouldn’t have been a good idea, though. She gets bad breath, sometimes, from the not brushing her teeth, you see.
“Are you kidding me?” she finally yelled. “He is so not my type!”
This sent me into a fit of laughing, seeing as Jackie didn’t really have a “type”. She was totally independent, she had never had a boyfriend, and I honestly didn’t know if she ever would.
Jackie smiled wryly and opened her mouth to begin again, but I cut her off before she could start.
“Jackie, seriously, just let it go, James and I could never”I mean, we would never”well, you know, we’re just”we’re just friends, honestly, so can you just let it go? Please?” I was practically pleading, but you had to understand, this was a bit of a difficult subject for me. If James liked me as more than a friend, I would die of embarrassment, not to mention our friendship being ruined. No, James and I would never work out.
Jackie seemed to understand some of this, and she nodded her head and settled back into her bed.
I sighed with relief and lay down as well, blowing out the lantern by my bed and pulling up the covers.
“’Night, Lils,” Jackie said in contrite tones.
“”’Night, Jax,” I answered warmly.
That night, however, sleep didn’t claim me as quickly as it usually did. However many times I tried to push a certain messy-haired, bespectacled, charming boy to the back of my mind, he insisted on being in front. However many times I tried to worry about Remus out there, transforming painfully, my thoughts would return to James, and I would wonder what he was thinking. Damn Jackie and her thought provoking conversations.
I rolled over impatiently and waited for sleep to come. Sleep was a long way in coming.
A/N: Phew, chepter two is done! Yay! Well, I have yet to write chapter three, but with the help of the mods it'll be up soon. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story! Oh, by the way, I'm not going to say that I won't update til you give me fifty million reviews, but a quick, 20 second review would be nice. Thanks a million!