Lily let herself sleep late on Valentine’s Day. It was, conveniently, on a Saturday this year, with a Hogsemede weekend scheduled, so by the time Lily did wake up, her dorm room was empty. She took her time heading down to the common room, a few books in hand, expecting it to be empty. Much to her surprise, however, James Potter was lounging in an armchair by the fire. He turned as he heard her footfalls on the stairs, and waved. She hesitated for a brief second, and then walked over to sit beside him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
James tilted his head in polite confusion. “Where should I be?” he asked.
“Well, it’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it?” she said. “Shouldn’t you be…I don’t know, out? In Hogsmede or something?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “I might ask you the same question,” he said.
Lily shrugged. “I’m not that into Valentine’s Day,” she said. “And I just meant, don’t the four of you always do something really elaborate?”
“Yeah,” James said. “And Sirius, Remus, and Peter are doing it. I just didn’t feel like it this year. And don’t try to tell me you aren’t into Valentine’s Day, Evans, I know that’s a lie.”
“No it isn’t!” she said indignantly. “What, you think just because I’m a girl””
“No, no,” James cut her off. “It’s not that. Sirius loves Valentine’s Day more than anyone else I’ve ever met and he’s definitely not a girl. It’s just that I seem to remember someone getting a rather embarrassing display of flowers last year…”
“Oh yeah,” Lily said, guiltily. “I forgot about that. But I didn’t love it!”
“No?” he asked, and laughed as she shook her head emphatically. “Well, I don’t know. I just always kind of figured that the people who hate Valentine’s Day were the ones who didn’t, you know, get any attention on it. And that didn’t seem to be you.”
“Or,” she countered, “I might dislike Valentine’s Day because I recognize that it is a manipulative, fake holiday designed to allow boys to make over-the-top, completely unnecessary gestures to girls who may or may not return the interest.”
James looked at her queasily. “Be fair,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the other way around.”
She grinned. “Bad experience?” she asked.
He groaned. “It’s the reason I’m not taking part in this year’s extravaganza.”
Lily was smiling outright now. “There’s no way you’re getting away with not telling me this story,” she said wickedly.
James shot her a dirty look, and she smiled sweetly at him. He sighed petulantly and then said, “So last year I took Eleanor Greenglass”you know, the Hufflepuff a year below us?”because she’s a Beater on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team and she always seemed nice enough…”
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with James Potter, Lily thought, watching him grow more animated as he got deeper into the story. Casual conversation and verbal sparring are one thing, but talking about past relationships…this is a whole other game. Lily hadn’t forgotten what had happened at the end of their fifth year; back then, it had meant the end of her friendship with Severus, and she had, at least in part, blamed James for that. But, she suddenly remembered, he had asked her out. It had seemed like such a joke at the time, but now she couldn’t help wonder how serious he had been…and if he ever wanted to ask her again.
Of course he doesn’t, she thought. Too much has happened. He barely knew me then. Besides, it’s not like I’d say yes if he did ask. Would I?
“…And she ended up chasing me around Hogsmede with her Beater’s bat, screaming that if we couldn’t agree on names for our first child, then we had no future together at all and I had no business asking her out,” James finished, wincing at the memory, and Lily laughed with him, glad to be pulled from the chaos inside her head.
“Okay,” she said. “I understand why you didn’t want to go this year.” He gave an exaggerated shudder, and she elbowed him in the side. “Who did the other three take?”
James thought for a minute. “Remus asked a girl from Ravenclaw. They’ve been studying together a lot recently,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And you know they’re going to spend this entire day talking about Transfiguration theory or something, and end up ditching out on the date part halfway through so they can go to the library.”
Lily smiled. “That’s kind of cute,” she said.
James looked at her disparagingly. “Not,” he said, “if it’s all he ever does.”
She held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay,” she said, laughing. “Who’d Peter take?”
“Leda, actually,” James said. Lily made a noise of surprise. “I know,” James sighed. “It doesn’t make sense. They’re both so shy…they’re just going to awkwardly not look at each other the whole time. Sirius and Mary are going to have to carry the whole afternoon.”
“Sirius and Mary?” Lily said, even more surprised.
“Yeah, he asked her awhile ago…didn’t she tell you?”
“No,” Lily said thoughtfully. “No, she didn’t. Mary and I aren’t…really as close as we used to be.”
“Oh,” James said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Lily shrugged. “It’s okay,” she said. “I mean, that meeting Marlene had at the start of term, about standing up to You-Know-Who…Mary walked away from it, and that was kind of what solidified it. But we’ve been drifting apart for awhile. She never really got why I was friends with Severus””
“Lily,” James interrupted, “nobody got that.”
She glared at him, but otherwise ignored the interruption and continued, “And we just never really liked the same things. She always wanted to go down to the Three Broomsticks and see how many boys we could get to buy us drinks, and I…I don’t know. I wanted to do something more…exciting.”
“Exciting like…playing pranks on people?” James asked casually.
Lily looked at him. “Well,” she admitted, “I didn’t hate that.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, turning to look at the fire.
She watched him for a moment. His hazel eyes were thoughtful, cast into shadow by the black hair that fell rakishly in front of them. The firelight glowed warmly, softly illuminating the planes of his face”his cheekbones, the smooth angle of his jaw, the laughing curve of his lips…
Flushing suddenly, Lily looked away. “Hot in here, isn’t it?” she asked, walking over to a window and pushing it open. After a few moments, he came and stood beside her, both of them leaning into the windowsill, their hips and elbows brushing.
“It’s snowing,” he said quietly.
“I noticed,” she said, just as faintly, but she wasn’t looking out the window.
“Lily…” he began, turning his head to glance down at her, and she looked away quickly, leaning farther out the window and sticking out her tongue.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding amused, and the moment broke.
“Trying to catch a snowflake!” she said cheerfully, turning back to him.
James bumped her with his shoulder. “It’s not snowing that hard, Evans,” he said.
“Well, you never know,” she said. “So, why were you hoping I’d say I enjoyed pranks?”
His smile was devilish. “Because,” he said, “it’s about time to pull a good one, and I was hoping you’d want to help.”
She turned to him, oddly touched at the invitation. “Count me in,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “I don’t know what to do yet, but it’ll give me a chance to show you the ropes.”
She looked at him in pseudo-outrage. “Excuse me,” she said sternly, “but I might know my way around better than you think. In fact”” she grabbed a handful of powdery snow from the windowsill and threw it in his face, “I already have an idea.”
James sputtered indignantly, spitting snow. “Oh, really?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, turning to face him, her hands on her hips. Then she told him.
A slow smile spread across his face, and his eyes blazed. “You know,” he said, “that’s pretty good.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “No need to sound so surprised,” she told him.
“Oh, don’t worry, Evans, I know you’re brilliant,” he said lightly. “Although,” he added, “I do think we’re going to need to enlist Sirius in this one. And probably Remus and Peter, too.”
“The more the merrier!” said Lily.
---
They spent all of that day planning, parting when the rest of the Gryffindors, pink-cheeked from the cold, streamed in from Hogsmede.
“See you tomorrow?” James said to Lily as they rose from where they were sprawled by the fire.
“Count on it,” she nodded. “Don’t forget to tell them,” she added, gesturing towards Sirius, Peter, and Remus, who had just come in through the portrait and were heading towards the stairs that led to their room.
“I won’t,” he promised, then hesitated. “Although…I didn’t really mind it being just us.”
Nearly at the stairs to her dorm, she stopped and turned, her vivid red hair settling loosely around her shoulders. “Me either,” she admitted. “But it is a pretty big prank. And you know Sirius would never forgive you for leaving him out.”
James acknowledged that this was true, and they both turned towards their respective dorms.
In his, James found his three friends in various stages of recovering from their Valentine’s Day dates. Remus sat by the window, devouring what appeared to be a new book.
I knew it, James thought smugly as Remus turned a page. Nerd.
He looked over at the other two, much to his shock, saw that Peter was lying on his four-poster looking dreamily at the ceiling, while Sirius looked disgruntled.
“So…how did it go?” James asked cautiously.
The question was directed at Sirius, but it was Peter who answered. “Wonderful,” he said rapturously, clutching his pillow to his chest. James looked at Sirius for confirmation.
“Well, it did for Wormtail,” Sirius said, looking miffed. “I swear, I’ve never heard him talk so much around a girl. I’ve never heard Leda talk that much, period. It was weird.”
James laughed, but stopped immediately when Sirius looked at him dangerously. “So, not so good with Mary then?” he asked, trying to keep a dour expression on his face.
“Eh,” Sirius muttered. “She was really…handsy.”
James snorted loudly, unable to contain himself. “What?” Sirius snapped, looking mutinous.
“I just”I’m sorry, since when has having a girl all over you been a bad thing?”
“I don’t know about you, Prongs, but I usually save groping under the table for the second date,” Sirius roared, outraged. “Excuse me for having principles!”
James collapsed helplessly into giggles. Peter observed him over the edge of his pillow. “It probably didn’t help,” he added, “that Mary wanted to go talk to the cute seventh-year boys at the next table over.”
Sirius growled and threw another pillow at him. Peter tucked it behind his head. “Thanks,” he said.
“Oh, don’t worry Padfoot,” James said, finally regaining control of himself. “Lily said that Mary’s pretty boy-crazy. Actually, wait, hey…” he said, as though this thought had just occurred to him, “she’s basically a girl version of you!”
“I am not boy-crazy!” Sirius said indignantly. “Or girl-crazy, for that matter. I just…like having fun!”
James snapped his fingers. “Fun! Right. Moony, get over here.”
Remus looked up suspiciously. “Why?” he asked.
“Because,” James said, “you’re going to love this prank.”
---
James woke early on Monday, excited. He lay in bed for a few minutes, trying to convince himself to go back to sleep, before deciding that that was quite enough of that behavior. He catapulted out of his bed and onto Sirius’s.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” James shouted, sounding for all the world as he had on Christmas mornings when he was a child. Sirius groaned and swatted at him. James took away his pillow.
As Sirius swore at him, James, convinced that his best friend was getting up, performed the same wakeup call on Peter and Remus. Peter curled into a tiny ball and tried to ignore him, but his resolve soon broke. Remus, as it turned out, had been awake for hours, reading his book beneath the bedcovers so they wouldn’t catch him and make fun of him.
James decided to let this slide. Instead, he hopped around the room putting his socks on, singing, “Operation Winter Wonderland is about to commence!”
Sirius and Peter, in various states of dishevelment, just watched him. Peter was puffy-eyed and yawning, and Sirius, whose normally elegant hair was tousled and sticking up in the back, said lowly, “What is wrong with you?”
James stopped singing and flung himself onto Sirius’s bed again. Staring his friend in the eye, James said seriously, “It’s prank time. Aren’t you excited?”
“Not as excited as you are,” Sirius grumbled. “It’s been who-knows how many years now, and the idea of spending time with Lily Evans still turns you into a four-year-old.”
James beamed and shrugged carelessly. Leaping back to his feet, he cried, “So do I need to walk you through the plan again?”
“No,” Remus and Peter chorused together, but James paid them no mind.
“We all go down to breakfast,” he said. “I find Lily, and we get under the invisibility cloak to cast the spell, because we very well can’t do it out in the open, can we? Then””
“Hey Prongs,” Sirius said suddenly, “does Lily even know you have an invisibility cloak? You may have left out of the planning process.”
James considered this for a second. “Well,” he said, “she will. Anyway, next””
“Okay,” Sirius said, cutting him off again with an air of finality. “We know what to do. It’ll be fine. It’ll be more than fine.” And he pulled on his robes emphatically.
---
Lily made her way down to the Great Hall alone, keeping her eyes peeled for the four boys her year. She had almost reached the doorway when a hand shot out from a nearby broom closet and pulled her inside.
“Okay, Potter,” she said, trying to sound stern, as her eyes adjusted. “This whole squeezed-into-a-broom-cabinet thing is getting old.”
“And hello to you too,” James said, and she guessed that he was smirking. “I just figured that, by this point, it’s a good-luck tradition. And also we couldn’t very well put this on outside, could we?”
A cool, flowing bundle of fabric was thrust into her hands, and Lily gasped. “Is this an invisibility cloak?” she asked quietly.
“Yep,” James said, sounding proud.
“Well,” Lily said dryly, “this certainly explains a lot about you.”
“Come on,” James said eagerly. “Let’s get this on.”
After some wriggling and rearranging, they managed to get the cloak to cover them both, although they had to crowd together to do it.
“All right,” James whispered, pushing open the door. “It’s show time.”
Lily, who told herself that she was not in the slightest distracted by the fact that his arm was around her shoulder, tucking her against his side”so he could hold the cloak closed, of course”slid her wand from her sleeve. “Ready when you are,” she whispered back.
Carefully, they made their way to the Great Hall, where breakfast was in full swing. “Well,” he said, as they slipped into a corner, “it’s now or never.”
Beneath the cloak, they both raised their wands and waved their wands in the identical motions that they had been practicing for the past few days. For a moment, Lily held her breath, convinced that it wasn’t going to work, and then snow began falling, fast and thick, from the ceiling.
Within minutes, the entire Great Hall was blanketed with several inches of fresh snow. Students were shrieking, both in shock and delight, and Lily spared one guilty glance up at the head table, where the teachers were desperately trying to figure out what was going on. Dumbledore, however, Lily realized, was not”he was still sitting at his spot at the table, his long fingers together, his half-moon spectacles perched on his crooked nose, an amused smile playing on his face. For one heart-wrenching second, she was sure that he looked towards the corner where she and James were huddled, but then his gaze slid to the side, and she breathed again.
“Time for part two,” she murmured, looking at Sirius where he sat at the Gryffindor table. Right on cue, Sirius sprang up, and flung the snowball he had packed between his hands at Remus. Remus retaliated, and then threw another at Marlene Mckinnon, who leapt up beside him, laughing, and lobbed a snowball at the Hufflepuff table.
“Yes,” Lily heard James hiss from her side, as though by common decision, almost every student in the Great Hall began shrieking and pelting snowballs at each other. Many of the Slytherins remained seated, but even they were caught in the crossfire, and Lily would later swear that she saw Dumbledore surreptitiously pull out his wand and use it to flick a few clumps of snow in their direction. Many of the other teachers seemed to be in the same mind”tiny Professor Flitwick was bowled completely over by a snowball, and he jumped to his feet and sent one right back. McGonagall looked disapproving for a moment, but then she returned to her seat, brushed the snow off, fished out her tea mug, and resumed drinking it.
“The Great Hogwarts Snowball Fight,” Lily said contentedly.
“They’ll talk about it for years to come,” James agreed, and she felt his arm tighten around her shoulders. “Do you want to go join in?” he asked her.
She paused for a brief second, and then, almost without thinking, slipped her arm around his waist and leaned her head against him. “In a little,” she said softly. “Right now, I just kind of want to look at it all.”
“Yeah,” James said. “Me too.” Together, invisible in a corner of the Great Hall, they stood and watched as their snow, ceaselessly, continued to fall.
Trickster by Willow Rosenberg
Chapter Notes: It's Valentine's Day at Hogwarts...and we are back in the prank-pulling game!------------