James’s eyebrows shot so far up his forehead that Lily was amazed they didn’t give his fringe a haircut on the way up.
“You’re challenging me?” he asked in disbelief.
Lily crossed her arms and nodded belligerently. “Why shouldn’t I? It’s about time someone had the nerve to cut you back down to size.”
James gaped at her for a moment, and then promptly burst out into loud guffaws. “Well, prepare to be embarrassed then, Evans.”
“Oh, I won’t be the one embarrassed,” she assured him with complete confidence, “don’t worry about me.”
Daintily, she sat down on the chair Charlotte had recently vacated and crossed her ankles primly. After removing a piece of parchment and quill from her satchel and laying them upon the table in front of her, she gestured at James impatiently and indicated he be seated opposite her. “Well?”
Still chortling slightly, he did as ordered.
Irritated, Lily quickly scribed, ‘The Blindfold Bet: co-participants, James Potter and Lily Evans,’ across the top of the parchment and lay down her quill expectantly.
“I think we should set conditions.”
James shrugged, eyeing her with amusement, and ran a hand through his hair to mess it up a little. “Go ahead, Evans.”
“When you lose, I’d like you to publicly announce - to the entire student body of Hogwarts - that not only have you lost this bet, but that you are frequently in the habit of giving out cocky and entirely fictitious boasts about yourself.” She paused, and then smirked at him across the table. “Let’s allow everyone a laugh at your expense for once, shall we?”
James gaped. “Are you mad?”
“No, quite sane actually,” she fired back. “What do you say, Potter?”
“Absolutely not!”
Lily sat back, triumphant, and laughed quietly. “So His Mightiness, James Potter, is worried he might fail, after all?”
James clenched his teeth together, and angrily seized the quill, scribbling her stipulation down in a messy scrawl that made Lily wince.
“Fine! If I lose “ and I’ll be a gentleman and warn you now, Evans,” he added in an undertone, “that I won’t “ I will announce I’ve failed.”
“To the whole school,” Lily reminded him.
“To the whole school,” he growled back.
“But if I win-”
“But if you win, you get the satisfaction of being triumphant,” Lily interrupted, sweetly.
“Oh no, Evans,” he mocked, chuckling deviously. “You got to set the conditions if I lose, so I get to lay down what happens if I win. It’s only fair.”
Lily huffed, but acquiesced sourly. “Fine. What do you want?”
“One kiss,” he leered. “From your good self “ if you’ll be so kind!”
There was a moment of deafening silence, and then Lily shot to her feet.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Potter,” she gasped out, fuming. “There’s absolutely no way I would ever agree to that!”
“Fine,” James shrugged, nonchalantly. “Then the bet’s off, I suppose. And since no-one here will ever know what the outcome would have been, they’ll just have to take my word for it that I can do what I say “ walk around Hogwarts blindfolded.” He paused to meet her eyes and, giving her a small smile, played his crunch card. “After all, aren’t some of your favourite sayings, ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and, ‘right until proven wrong’? Wouldn’t want to be deliberately hypocritical, would you now, Evans?”
Enraged, Lily balled her hands into fists and whipped away from him, but just as quickly whirled back. “Fine-”
“Fine?” James interrupted immediately, a delighted smile spreading over his face. “You mean you’ll kiss-”
“But I’m adding to my condition,” Lily continued, vehemently ignoring him. “When you lose, you must also give a public apology to Severus Snape.”
James yelped, the smile dropping from his face as quickly as a stone plunging into water. “What for?!”
“For everything you’ve ever done to him, of course. For all the fights you’ve needlessly picked purely because your arrogance led you to believe that you were better than him!”
“I am better than that slimy worm!” James roared.
“You’re worse!” Lily shouted back.
They didn’t get much further, however. At that precise moment Heather Dreamwright, best friend of Lily Evans, hurried forwards, wrapped an arm securely around her friend’s waist, and dragged her backwards towards the stairs to the girls’ dormitories.
Simultaneously, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, best friends and co-marauders of James Potter, placed a hand on each of his shoulders, while Sirius Black muttered, “James, mate, I think we need to have a talk.”
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“Lily, what are you doing?” Heather implored her, anxiously wringing her hands. “Challenging that idiot... making a colossal commotion in the common room... it’s not like you, Lily!”
Sitting down on her bed, safe inside their dormitory, Lily took several deep calming breaths. “I know, I know, Heather,” she replied, heaving a big sigh and running her fingers wildly through her hair. “Thanks for coming and saving me. I don’t know what came over me; I think… oh I don’t know... he just makes me so angry! I lost control for a moment.”
“He’s been making us both angry for six years, Lily,” Heather replied, her voice filled with worry for her friend. “Don’t let him start getting to you now.”
“I know, I know, you’re right,” she sighed. “I just really want to teach him a lesson, show him “ and everyone else “ that he’s just a pathetic little attention seeker at heart.”
“Well, maybe they already know that,” Heather reasoned. “We figured it out, after all.”
Lily snorted. “Have you seen the way people look at him in the common room? Him and the other three mugs he hangs around with? The first and second years are especially vulnerable; they idolise him, and nothing I say seems to get through. Sometimes, I just want to shake some sense into them “ get them to realise that he’s really not worth their adoration.”
“Well, that may be true,” Heather acknowledged matter-of-factly, sitting down next to her, “but all you succeeded in doing out there was embarrassing yourself. You’re a Prefect, Lily! And you’re behaving worse than a second year on love potion; shouting and fuming in front of the whole House, making up ridiculous bets, and generally making a massive spectacle out of yourself.”
“Oh God,” Lily cringed, fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands.
Heather stoked her friend’s hair and wrapped her into a hug. “Now don’t worry, we’ll sort this out. If you behave properly we can have this all cleaned up in no time and the gossip will probably have died down completely by tomorrow morning. All you need to do is go back down there, apologise to the students in the common room, tell them to forget the entire thing, and try and restore some order.”
Lily looked at her aghast. “I can’t do that!”
“What else can you do? You can’t go through with it!” Heather retorted.
“But if I don’t, he’s won,” she replied, frustrated.
“Does that matter?”
“Yes!”
Heather sighed, and gently ran a hand down her best friend’s crimson hair. “Lily, you’re never going to get people to realise what he is, love. He’s the Quidditch star of Gryffindor, the boy every first year girl has their earliest crush on and the ringleader of a group of lads that every first year boy aspires to be like.” She snorted, and then continued. “Fighting that opinion would be like trying to push a mountain troll up the marble staircase, with one hand tied behind your back.”
Despite herself, Lily smiled at her friend. “I know. I know all that, I really do, Heather. I’m not quite that blind yet.”
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, before Lily sighed roughly, clenching her fists in her lap. “But I can’t let him win this one, Heather,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I just can’t. And I know it’s idiotic, immature, very slightly vindictive and very largely pathetic, but I just can’t back away now.”
Heather sighed, and gave her friend a weak smile. “Well, my shoulder’s here for you, Lily. I have a feeling you’re going to need it before this is over.”
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“Prongs, mate,” announced Sirius, as soon as the three of them had tossed the black haired boy through the entrance to their dormitory. “What’re you playing at?”
“What?” replied James, innocently. “She promised to kiss me!”
“I don’t really think,” began Peter, slowly, “that manoeuvring her into kissing you is the best plan if you eventually want to go out with her.”
“Ha!” proclaimed James, rapturously. “She’ll change her mind about dating me as soon as I’ve kissed her.”
Remus shook his head in disbelief. “You think one kiss is going to undo six years of squabbling?”
“You obviously have no idea of the power my kisses hold, Moony,” boasted James.
Remus rolled his eyes at his friend. “Look, you’ve got the perfect opportunity to change her opinion of you. Just go back downstairs, apologise, and tell her that perhaps she was right and that you did get a bit carried away. She’ll thank you for getting her out of a sticky situation, and you won’t look like the arrogant bastard she obviously thinks you are.”
James pouted. “I’m not an arrogant bastard.”
Remus sighed. “Then prove it to her by dropping this whole charade.”
“You’re such a spoilsport, Moony,” James huffed, before turning to Sirius for support. “You think this is a great plan, don’t you, Padfoot?”
Sirius looked torn. “Depends how you look at it, mate.”
Then, when James looked hurt, he carried on. “I think it’s a great idea for a laugh “ Marauder-style “ and if you were betting against Snivellus then I’d be right there with you doing a blind three-legged race around Hogwarts.”
“But..?”
“But,” replied Sirius, “and I never thought I’d say this, mind, but Evans didn’t look too happy with you out there. If you really want to impress her, then I’d stick with Moony’s plan.”
There was silence for a moment, as James looked backwards and forwards between his three friends.
“But if I do that, then I don’t get a kiss,” he said finally, his voice plaintive.
The marauders looked at each other.
“Oh, by Merlin’s spotty underpants,” exclaimed Sirius, suddenly. “Are we the famous Marauders or aren’t we? Do we run from competition? Do we bow down to a girl? Do we throw away the opportunity to have a bit of fun and make a bit of mischief? No! We don’t!”
Peter looked around at the others and grinned slyly. “I think it’s time we came up with a plan, boys.”