Do one thing every day that scares you.
” Eleanor Roosevelt
Add armadillo bile, I read, followed by a pinch of James Potter’s toned stomach, and Sirius Black’s hair”
I blinked, and the blurred page of my Potions textbook swam into view. James Potter’s toned stomach and Sirius Black’s hair were not on the list of ingredients for the Wit-Sharpening potion. They were certainly on my roommates’ list of topics of discussion, though.
Looking up from where I sat on my bed, propped up against a pillow, I shot Amelia Lance and Chelsea Peakes dirty looks, but they ignored them, all too focused on giggling at a pile of black-and-white moving photographs. They seemed to be pictures of the Marauders, four exceedingly popular boys in our year. There were squeals of “Oh my god! Sirius looks so fine in this photo,” “What are you talking about, he’s always fine,” “Oooh” here’s one of James with his shirt off. He has a sexy six-pack!” or, “I’ve just got an idea! Listen, Chels, when James and I are going out, we can be called Jamelia, Chels! Oh, and you and Sirius can already be called Chelsirius!” followed by, “Brilliant idea, Amy! Why didn’t I think of it?”
I stoppered my ears with my fingers, but their exuberant squeals slipped through the tiniest of uncovered holes. The ingredients of the Wit-Sharpening potion were slipping away from me faster than a fox down a hole. Closing my eyes, I counted to ten, removed my fingers from my ears, and then slammed my Potions textbook shut.
My roommates looked up. “Is there a problem, Lily?” Amelia asked in a honeyed tone. If I hadn’t known how aggressive she could be, I would have thought her sweetness was for real.
“Yes, there is,” I replied just as courteously. “I’d really appreciate it if you two kept your voice down. It’s interfering with my revision.”
“Revision?” Chelsea repeated blankly. She was the nicer of the two, mostly sweet, innocent and unassuming, and was currently dating Sirius Black. “Is there a test soon?”
I exhaled through my nose. “No. It’s for NEWTs.”
Amelia waved her hand. “Whatever. That’s ages away. And besides, if you want to revise, you can always go to the library.”
“I prefer staying in my dorm, where I have all my materials at hand,” I told her coolly, gesturing to my pile of textbooks at the foot of my four-poster bed.
“But you can’t tell us what to do, can you?” she parried, ignoring Chelsea’s don’t-push-it nudges. “It’s an infringement of our rights. You know what, Lily? I believe you’re jealous.”
I blinked. “Jealous,” I echoed. “What of?”
“The fact that you and James can amount to nothing.” She was leaning against the wall, a smug expression on her face. I wanted to slap her.
“And why should I feel jealous?” I sat up straighter against my pillow, staring back at her as steadily as I could.
“Because you’ll never go out with James. You had the slightest chance of going out with him in our fifth year, but you blew it.” Her smile reeked of fake sympathy. Then it disappeared. “And you can’t bear the thought that I’m about to go out with him.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “Who says you’re about to go out with him?” I could kick myself for sounding as though I was a touchy ex-girlfriend of James Potter.
Amelia arched a blonde eyebrow. “He’s been paying a lot of attention to me.”
I didn’t like James Potter. Not in that way, at least. We were just friends. Not very close friends, either, just friends. I didn’t give two hoots whether he was going to date Amelia or not. But the idea of backing down in front of Amelia was appalling to me. “Oh, please. He asked me out over the summer,” I said, twisting the truth a little. James had in fact written to me, asking me if I would have gone out with him had he asked me out, but he only asked that because he wanted to know if he’d matured since our fifth year.
“What were his exact words?” Amelia asked, not believing me. I didn’t answer, and she grinned like a cat that had just cornered a mouse. “Let’s have a little competition, shall we?”
Every part of my brain was screaming for me to decline, but my mouth delivered the words anyway.
“Just name it.”
“You and I can, from now till March, compete for James Potter. The objective is to make him fall in love with either you or me,” she said, beginning to file her nails to express boredom. It was clear she thought that she would win.
And I could never bear giving in to someone just like that.
“You’re on,” I said frostily.
“We’re on,” she confirmed. “The rules are that James isn’t supposed to know of this competition, and the winner will only win when James says the three words, “I love you,” to her.”
“How will the other girl know if James has said that he loves that girl?” I asked.
“We can use Chelsea’s Pensieve for that,” Amelia said nonchalantly. It was no surprise; Chelsea had come from one of those old wizarding families, and a Pensieve was probably just one of the many heirlooms that had been passed down.
“Fair enough,” I acknowledged.
“One last rule: only one friend of yours is allowed to know of this and help you. Chelsea is going to be that friend of mine. Aren’t you, Chels?” Amelia shot her friend a look that dared her to disagree. Chelsea nodded slowly.
“And that friend of mine will be Emily,” I told her. Amelia nodded, looking bored again. Chelsea looked at me as though I didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into, before returning to her album. And Amelia joined her. It wasn’t long before the squeals (this time made only by Amelia) came again.
“Amelia?” I said in a cloyingly sweet manner.
“Yes?” she replied, in a voice just as saccharine.
“Shut up.”
That night, Emily stared at me when I told her about the challenge I’d accepted from Amelia.
“You’re crazy,” she told me matter-of-factly.
I sat down in an armchair and buried my face in my hands, probably looking like the most defeated person in the world. I’d realised, minutes after my agreement to take part in the competition, that making James fall in love with me when Amelia was in the running was a very laughable idea. Amelia was a very tall and pretty blonde, and though nasty most of the time, she was very smart and could be extremely nice if she wanted to (which was only when good-looking boys were around). I wasn’t ugly, but it was crazy to compete against Amelia with my very straight, shoulder-length dark red hair; the only redeeming features of mine were my emerald green eyes. If I’d looked more like Emily Anderson, my best friend, perhaps I’d have more of a chance. She had glossy black curls that I would die for. With those and her ice-blue eyes, she managed to have a lot of admirers.
“I know I’m crazy,” I said, my voice sounding muffled even to myself. “I don’t deny that fact. I just want to know what I should do now.”
“You do realise that if you manage to hoodwink James into falling for you, when the whole competition comes to an end, you’ll only be breaking his heart? Unless, of course, you fall in love with him, too,” she added, then looked at me dubiously. “But that is of course, quite impossible.”
“I know,” I moaned. “I feel evil for doing this to James, but you do understand my need to win, don’t you?”
She did. She’d, after all, been my best friend for seven years, and had seen me in my most maniacally competitive times. “I’ll help you,” she said at last, and I bowed my head further, fervently mumbling my thanks.
“Lily!” a boy’s voice called. I peeked out through my fingers, though I’d already recognised the voice. James Potter’s. He was in my House and in the same year as me. Arrogant as he’d been and pig-headed as I had been, we hadn’t gotten along for the first few years, but ever since he became Head Boy to my Head Girl, we’d become friendlier with each other than I’d ever deemed possible.
Sure enough, through my fingers I saw James sauntering over to my armchair. I sat up properly. “Hey.”
“We need to arrange a prefects’ meeting,” he told me, leaning against the back of my armchair. I almost didn’t catch what he said because I was too busy thinking about how I was supposed to deceive him.
“Oh, yes. When are you free? Does Saturday night sound fine?” I said brightly, trying to chase away my feeling of guilt. What made it particularly harder was that James was standing in a position such that his profile was thrown into relief by the fire, making him appear taller and nobler than usual.
“It’s all right, but Charms club have their meetings then, and a few of the prefects are involved in it,” he said.
I was surprised. Noble though he looked, James was not the sort to keep track of the meetings of the clubs and societies of Hogwarts. No one does that, not even me, and I’m supposed to be the more responsible Head Prefect.
He grinned. “If you must know, Lily, I memorized all the schedules of the extracurricular activities of the prefects. To make things easier, you know.”
I was quite impressed, actually. “Nice to see you taking your Head Boy responsibilities seriously, Potter,” I said, raising my eyebrows. Then a movement opposite my chair caught my eye, and I looked over. Emily was making some weird hand gestures, as well as batting her eyelashes furiously. It took me a while to realise that she was miming flirting, and I looked hastily away. Luckily, James didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I’ll have you know that I’m very responsible,” he informed me indignantly. “Dumbledore made me Head Boy, after all.”
Emily’s hand gestures were becoming more and more frantic; it was getting harder to ignore her.
“Sure,” I told James. “Whatever you want to think””
Emily jumped up from her armchair. “James, could I have a word with Lily?”
James looked quite startled. “All right, then,” he said. Before he’d even closed his mouth, Emily had yanked me up from the cushiony reserves of the armchair and dragged me to a quiet corner of the common room.
“Next time when I gesture for you to flirt, do as I say,” she hissed to me.
“Oh, you were gesturing for me to flirt?” I asked, plastering an innocent expression on my face. Judging by the lack of change in her expression, Emily didn’t buy my act one bit.
“This is serious, Lily,” she said solemnly. “I don’t want Amelia to win.”
I felt a rock settle in my stomach. “Neither do I,” I said. “But I don’t want to lie to James. If I were to go out with him just to win this thing, and make him fall in love with me only to dump him after the Easter holidays, that’d be plain awful. At least Amelia’s smitten with him, she won’t dump him afterwards.”
“Aww, Lily, that’s really sweet,” Emily said, her expression softening. Then she narrowed her eyes. “But Amelia’s going to lord it over you. Can you imagine? She’s bad enough now; she’ll be gloating at every chance she gets if she does win. Besides, she only likes James because he’s popular. Who doesn’t like James, for the love of Merlin? Even McGonagall does seem to have a soft spot where he and Sirius are concerned.”
I held up one finger. “I used to not like him. And he used to be the one chasing me. Now I’m supposed to do it.”
A smile tugged at Emily’s lips. “The tables are turned, so they say. C’mon, Lily, it’s not that bad. And you don’t have to dump him as soon as the challenge is over. Keep going out with him for a couple of weeks, and then find a valid reason to break-up. It’ll be painful for him, probably, but I don’t think James would want to be Amelia’s trophy, which she’ll keep flashing at you.”
I glanced over to where James was standing. He was too good to be a trophy boyfriend. He used to be a complete jerk, but he’d gotten a lot better, and in the few months we’d worked together, he seemed even more decent than half the boys in our year.
“I don’t think Amelia’ll be truly getting to know him, either,” I said slowly, warming to the idea. “At least, not as a friend, which I’ll be doing.”
“Yes, she won’t,” Emily said encouragingly.
Then I thought about something else. “But I’m going to have to kiss him!” I cried out, causing a few fourth-years to turn and stare.
Emily rolled her eyes. “Lily, it’s not as if you haven’t snogged anyone before. You went out with Michael in our fourth-year and Peter in our sixth, remember? And if I may add, they turned out to be huge jerks. Bigger jerks than James used to be, even.”
“I guess,” I said. Michael had two-timed me with another girl, and Alex was”
“Gay,” I said.
“What?” Emily looked at me as if fearing for my sanity.
“Alex was gay,” I clarified.
“Yes,” she said patiently, “and he broke up with you to be with that other guy, Richard. That’s still being a jerk. Anyway, before we even talk about kissing, we have to talk about flirting.”
“Ah.”
“Ah,” she agreed. “Show him that you’re interested in him.”
“How?” I said, at a loss. I had never flirted before. Michael and Alex had both just asked me out without letting me know that they’d liked me prior to that.
“Do things like lean towards him almost subconsciously when you’re talking,” Emily explained. “Batting of eyelashes, hand gestures, smiling” body language, basically. Giggle a lot, too.”
“Wait, how’d you know this?” I demanded. Emily wasn’t the type to flirt.
“Remember when you were still friends with that Snape guy?” she said. Most of my friends in Gryffindor were incapable of calling Severus, my ex-best friend, anything other than “that Snape guy” or “Snivellus,” a nickname that the Marauders had kindly gave him. I nodded slowly, unsure of where this was going. “When you were off gallivanting with him last time, I had to hang around with Amelia and Chelsea.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
She waved her hand in dismissal. “It’s all over now, and besides, I learnt a couple of things.”
“Like to avoid them as much as possible?” I suggested.
“That one I learnt within the first hour of spending time with them,” she said, grinning back.
I looked over to James again. The idea of having to bat my eyelashes at him, as well as giggle in his presence made me feel queasy. James caught my eye and raised his eyebrows questioningly. I motioned to him that it was all right for him to leave.
“Lily!” Emily said, catching me in the act.
“Oops, he’s going back to his friends. Guess I can’t try flirting with him after all,” I said, trying to inject as much disappointment as possible into my tone.
“Lily,” she repeated, this time almost growling my name.
“All right, all right! But I need time to adjust to the idea, Em,” I pleaded.
“There’s no time for you to adjust,” Emily said severely.
“What do you mean?”
Emily turned me around one hundred and eighty degrees. “I mean that.”
“Ah.” I was looking into the corner of the common room the Marauders usually held court. Amelia was sitting coyly beside James, purring to him. Their legs were almost touching. Chelsea’s legs were touching Sirius, and the two of them were engaged in murmuring sweet nothings to each other. Remus and Peter were sitting nearby, talking to each other but looking faintly bored.
“My guess is that Remus and Peter and James need to be saved from Amelia the atrocious,” Emily remarked, with a knowing sidelong glance at me.
I sighed. “And here comes Lily Evans to the rescue.”
Emily, smiling winningly, propelled me towards the corner, and when I reached there, James, Remus and Peter looked up at me and smiled. Amelia scowled.
“H-hey,” I stammered.
“Lily!” James said, looking very pleased to see me. “So the meeting is on, then?”
“Meeting?” Amelia said, pouncing almost immediately. “Meeting for what?”
Thankfully, Emily decided it was time she intervened. “Amelia!” she cried soulfully. “I was just looking everywhere for you. There’s just one Muggle Studies assignment that I didn’t quite understand, can you please help me?”
It was clear from Amelia’s face that she wanted Emily to sod off, but with James around she couldn’t risk being unkind. “Of course, Emily,” she agreed, her niceness as fake as a wooden Galleon. “You know I’ll help you with anything.”
“Brilliant,” Emily said, smiling like anything. “You’re the best, Amelia. My stuff’s upstairs, so could you please…?”
“Sure,” Amelia said, reluctantly getting up and following Emily away, throwing me a poisonous glare. Emily gave me the thumbs-up.
It was the all clear signal.
Peter insisted on knowing what meeting James and I had planned.
“A prefects’ meeting,” James said.
“Oh,” Peter said, and he looked disappointed. “I was hoping for something more exciting, like a meeting where we could sneak out of school and drink Firewhiskey or something. I’d love to drown my sorrows.”
“You can drown them in the homework the teachers are giving us these days,” James said darkly.
“Besides, Wormtail, how could you think that of Lily?” Remus said. “Lily never breaks any rules.”
I smiled, but I was wondering if that was the way everyone thought of me. Ever obedient, living life playing by the rules. On task in everything. Always in control. Of course, I'd broken a few rules here and there throughout my career, but I'd never been caught, and thus the image of my reliability. But other than that, I suppose I've always been in control - up till today. My smile became wry. If only I was in control of my mouth and didn’t agree to take part in Amelia’s stupid competition.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Remus asked, now absently staring out of the window, where the moon was on its way to becoming full. I sat down, glancing at him thoughtfully. In our fifth year, my then best friend Severus Snape, had shared his theories with me on Remus’ true identity. He’d thought that Remus was a werewolf, and I hadn’t believed him at that time, but I realised that it all made sense. Remus did disappear every once a month (even now), on the night of the full moon. He did come back from those night time outings with a few scratches here or there. My doubts were fully vanquished when Sirius had told Severus to go to the Shrieking Shack on the night of the full moon, and Severus had foolishly did as Sirius had told him to. Severus had refused to tell me how he’d escape with nothing but a scratch across his arm, but I’d heard from a few rumours that it was James who had rescued him. (The rumours had said that James had single-handedly saved Severus from a nest of Acromantulas, but I could tell fact from fiction. I mean, Acromantulas in the Forest? Please!)
Before that incident, I hadn’t thought much of the Marauders, apart from the fact that they were popular, loved making mischief and adored bullying students occasionally, James and Sirius being the worst of the four. But afterwards, my impression of Sirius went rapidly downhill, whereas James and Remus gained my respect. Well, not James so much, though he was exceedingly courageous for saving Severus (his dislike for whom James had made no secret of). It was Remus I’d admired, because apart from his prefect duties and studies, he still had his lycanthropy to juggle, and turning into a werewolf was, from all accounts of books, not at all easy. And he didn’t complain at all about how tired he was (must be). I’d thought that Dumbledore would appoint him Head Boy, but instead James Potter was appointed.
“Lily?” James said, snapping his fingers in front of my eyes. I blinked. “Sorry, but you were staring at Remus…” He blinked, and squinted at me.
“What?” I asked, bemused.
“Do you…” he began in a low voice, and then motioned for me to come closer. Curious, I bent down and he continued in my ear, “D’you like Remus?”
I leaned back in such a hurry that I bumped my back painfully against the wall. “No!” I said loudly, causing Peter and Remus to look at me in confusion. Chelsea and Sirius even came out of their own world to gawp. I smiled around at all of them to assure them that everything was all right, and then turned back to James, who looked highly amused, though there was something rather lacking in his expression. “I,” I whispered furiously to him, “do not like Remus. Not in that way, at least.”
“Really?” James said dubiously. “My bad, then…”
My mind raced. There had to be some way I could show James that I was interested in him.
“Why would I be here, then?” I asked, though my voice came out little more than a squeak. I grimaced on the inside. Why couldn’t my voice be sultry?
“I don’t know.” He looked amused again. “Why?”
“Because I felt bad,” I said, my mind racing ahead of me. “Emily took such a long time talking to me” - I rolled my eyes in false impatience - "and it was rather rude of me to let you go off like that, so I - I decided to come and talk to you to, you know, make up for lost time." I gave him the most dazzling smile I could manage.
He smiled back, still looking a tad confused. “It wasn't rude at all,” he told me. And then there was a silence, because I didn’t know what to say. Damn it! My mind seemed to go blank when I needed it the most.
“All right, then, I’m going up to bed,” I told him at last in my smokiest voice, which was, unfortunately, not very smoky.
“Goodnight,” he said, and he was echoed by the rest of them as I got up and then walked slowly to the staircase that led to the girls’ dormitories. That couldn’t be all! Emily didn’t chase Amelia upstairs just so that I could say goodnight to James along with a few random words! At the foot of the stairs, I chanced a glance at the corner I’d just left. Sirius and Chelsea were talking, Remus and Peter were poring over a bit of parchment, and James was giving the common room a sweeping glance when his eyes locked with mine. I froze.
Then, with the last reserves of my courage, I winked. He seemed startled, but then he grinned, and winked back. Heat rising in my cheeks, I scurried up the stairs, knowing that what I just did was probably the most forward thing I’d ever done to a guy. I'd probably regret what I'd just done later, but it was necessary to get the ball rolling.
What really scared me was that I’d actually enjoyed it.
A/N: This is the long overdue first chapter. I had to keep writing and rewriting it, because a few days after every rewrite, the chapter nearly always didn't seem right to me. I hope you've enjoyed reading this story as much as I'd enjoyed typing it out.