“Lily?” Kathleen said, turning her head to look at Lily. “Are you still mad about Potter?”
The two girls were lying across their beds in their Hogwarts dormitory, their ties loosened and shoes off, too full from the Welcoming Feast to sit up. Lily and Kathleen had headed up to their dorm immediately after the feast, and had stayed there on their beds ever since.
“Yeah, but I’m getting better. I’ll just have to get used to him, right? It’s not like I have a choice anyway. Do I?” asked Lily hopefully. She managed to roll over on her stomach and prop herself up on her elbows, idly blowing away some strands of hair that had fallen in her face.
“You definitely do not a have a choice.”
“Other than resigning as Head Girl,” Lily said moodily.
“Which is not an option!” Kathleen sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed and stared at Lily. “You aren’t really considering that, are you?”
“No, of course not! Being Head Girl is a good thing to put on job applications. No, I think I can handle Potter for until June.”
“You know, he’s only said like two words to you so far this year. It’s not like fifth year.” Kathleen giggled, dodging a pillow that Lily had tossed at her head. Lily joined in laughing, seeing that it had missed Kathleen by three feet.
“That year was the worst, though. With Snape, too. And I’m sure that Potter is just still embarrassed from last year to bother me right now. But his ego will come back any time now.” Lily actually felt a little guilty, thinking of what had happened on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters a few months before, even if it was mostly Potter’s fault in the first place.
“You think so?” asked Kathleen thoughtfully.
“I do.” Smiling slyly, Lily picked up another pillow and flung it at Kathleen, laughing as it hit her in the stomach.
“Ah!” Kathleen bent over, holding her stomach. “Everything I ate for supper felt that!” she moaned. But she quickly stood up and grabbed the pillow, smiling evilly and whacking Lily on the side of the head.
“Ow!” Lily laughed, as the hit caused her to fall over. With no regard for her personal safety, Lily grabbed three more pillows and knocked Kathleen into the huge pile of clothes they had already unpacked at the foot of the bed. “Good thing you have so many clothes.”
Kathleen didn’t answer her, only pulled her into the stack and laughed as all of her whole wardrobe enveloped Lily.
“Fine, fine! Truce!” Lily rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling as she stood up and pulled Kathleen to her feet. “Now that we can move, let’s go down to the Common Room. I think the other girls are still down there.”
In a few moments, the girls had made their way downstairs. Lily closed her eyes as she sat down on the couch in front of the fire, feeling its warmth on her arms and face.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Peyton Scott, the most extroverted of Lily’s dorm mates, asked. She sat down on the floor with Hallie Maddock in front of Kathleen and Lily, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Hey,” Lily said, leaning back into the couch. “I’m just really glad to be here.”
“That’s the general opinion of everyone I’ve seen so far - especially the seventh years,” said Hallie. She smoothed down her dark hair and looked around at the students in the Common Room.
Seeing what Hallie was doing, Lily turned to look as well. Several first year girls were flocked together near the Portrait Hole, and every few seconds Lily noticed that they would quickly glance at the group of second year boys across the room and burst into giggles. Obviously, the boys didn’t notice anything and continued playing their game of Exploding Snap. Lily sheepishly remembered being younger and acting possibly even more clueless and foolish than them.
“Remember our first day at Hogwarts?” Lily asked Kathleen, who was lounging next to her on the couch.
“Yes. I don’t know if we were ever like them, though.”
“No, I’m pretty sure we were worse.” Lily kept her eyes on the girls.
“Well, what’s wrong with being young?”
“It’s not that,” Lily tried to explain. “Look at them. They just think that one of those older guys will just turn around and fall in love with them. But nothing like that is going to happen.”
“Are you talking about yourself?” Kathleen asked, looking concerned.
“What? No,” Lily said firmly. “I don’t know why I’m making such a big deal about it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having hope, even if it’s pointless.”
Lily looked into Kathleen’s eyes and saw something like pity - or understanding - in them. For some reason it bothered her. “But it is pointless. They’re just getting their hopes up for nothing.”
“Maybe so. But maybe not,” said Kathleen, looking like she wanted to change the subject. “Do you want to go back to the dorm now?”
“Yeah.” Lily stood up. “Hey, Peyton, Hallie. We’re going up to the dorm. Did Annis go up there?”
“Yeah, but I think she was going to go to sleep,” said Hallie.
“She is,” Peyton added. “We'll be up in a little while.”
“Okay, I‘ll set the alarm when we go up.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Lily and Kathleen headed up the stairs in silence, the noise from the Common Room fading away.
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“Miss Evans and Mr. Potter, Professor Dumbledore would like a word with you before your first lesson this morning,” said Professor McGonagall as she passed out the Gryffindors’ schedules the next morning. She looked at them until they swallowed their breakfast and nodded, and then continued handing out the schedules.
“Well, I’m done,” James said to his friends, who were eating breakfast with him. He took a final sip of pumpkin juice and stood up. “Lily?”
Lily stopped talking to Kathleen and looked to him. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said, remembering that she was going to be polite to him.
“Okay,” answered James, and he began walking towards Dumbledore’s office.
“I’ll see you at Charms,” she told Kathleen, who nodded as she took a bite of bacon. Lily sighed, hesitating, then picked up her bag and went after James.
“Hey,” Lily called after James, half-jogging to catch up with him just outside of the Great Hall.
He turned to look behind him and smiled when he saw it was Lily. “Hey.”
Lily bit her lip as the two began to walk in silence for a while. She never really knew what to do in awkward situations like these. Glancing up at James, she saw that he didn’t seem to notice anything. He looked down at her, and she quickly looked straight ahead.
“So what is your schedule like?” James asked, sounding as though he was actually interested instead of just trying to make small talk.
“Well, pretty busy.” Lily frowned, trying to think of something else to say about it. “Er, I have Charms first.”
“So do I,” said James. “Where’s your schedule?”
Lily got it out of her bag and handed it to him, watching as he scanned the piece of parchment and waiting for his comment.
“You’re in almost all of my classes.”
“Really?” Lily tried to sound indifferent, struggling to see how James felt about the news. She thought he would be smug or something about it, as he would have been a few months before, but now she couldn’t read the emotion on his face at all. “That’ll be fun.”
Lily hoped that James hadn’t noticed how flat she had sounded, because she hadn’t meant to, but he had. He exhaled quietly and stopped walking.
“I’m sorry about the last six years,” he said suddenly, surprising Lily. He paused for a moment, and she almost answered him, but he continued, “I know you’re mad at me and all, and you deserve to be. I can’t change anything about that now, though. But I won’t constantly be bothering you this year. I want you to know that you don’t have to worry about me.”
“I want to believe that,” said Lily slowly, trying to find the right words. “But it’s only been a day, and I don’t trust you yet. Sorry.”
“I know. I don’t expect you to. But at the end of last year, what you said. . . .” James trailed off.
“Don’t tell me that’s what made you repent of your ways or something,” Lily said disbelievingly, laughing.
James looked slightly sheepish. “It was true, even if it was harsh.”
“It was more than harsh. But you kind of deserved it.”
“I know,” he replied without hesitating as they stopped at the gargoyle in front of the entrance to Dumbledore's office. “It did make me think though.”
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“So what are we going to do about Moony’s furry little problem this time?” asked James, grinning as he walked down the corridor with his friends after class.
“Remus’s rabbit still acting up?” a Ravenclaw girl asked with a smile.
Sirius snorted, but Remus elbowed him in the side then answered with a straight face, “Yes, actually. We may even have to do something drastic.”
Peter snickered as the four continued walking. “We should do something really fun for the full moons this year!”
“Well, of course we’ll do something fun, Wormtail,” said Sirius, sighing. “We always do.”
James grinned but looked away when Kathleen and Lily passed them. “Did I tell you what she said this morning?” He turned back to his friends, who rolled their eyes and made other annoyed expressions.
“Only about four times,” said Sirius, raising an eyebrow and slapping James on the back. “But it really wasn’t that great, you know.”
“Well, it was a start,” Remus argued for James, trying to counter Sirius’s pessimism. “It’s only the first day, for Merlin’s sake!”
James made himself smile at Remus, but glanced over his shoulder to see Lily’s diminishing figure nonetheless. Her red hair swung back and forth as she laughed and shook her head, and James found himself wondering what she was laughing about. This wasn’t the first time he had wondered what she was thinking. . . .
“That Ravenclaw girl wasn’t so bad, was she, Moony?” Sirius teased, nudging Remus and bringing James’s attention back to his friends.
“Felicia? She’s nice, but I don’t really think-”
Here, James interrupted him. “I think she might like you.”
“You know, you don’t actually have to fall in love with the girl. Dating is never that intense,” Sirius said quickly as Remus opened his mouth again.
“That’s easy for you to say. The girls always come to me after you dump them, begging to know what they did that was so wrong,” Peter complained.
“Well, what should I do? Lead them on after I don’t like them anymore? Breaking it off is really the lesser of the two evils.”
James rolled his eyes as they entered the Gryffindor Common Room and headed for their dormitory. “Is the Map still in your trunk, Padfoot?”
“It is. Why, you have some great idea for a prank?” Sirius replied interestedly. He began to search through the trunk at the foot of his bed and pulled out an old piece of parchment.
“Maybe,” James answered with a grin. He tapped the parchment and the other three gathered around, not ending their planning and laughing for several hours.