Not Him | Jily

Chapter One

'I told you already!' the redhead hissed to her best friend, who shook her head impatiently, 'I don't like him!'

It was a month into their sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and not once had James Potter so much as flirted with Lily Evans - in fact, he had been quite the gentleman, and unless that was his new way of trying to make her date him, using some form of reverse psychology, maybe Marlene was right and he had changed. Afterall, he no longer accompanied his simple displays of affection with incessant invites on dates and the ceaseless flow of compliments, and certainly no more melodramatic proclaims of his love for her.

Yet something in Lily was awfully hesitant to believe it.

If he had been anyone other than James Potter, maybe she would have accepted at least one date, just to see where it would take her - but this was James Potter. Arrogant, cocky, pompous, conceited James Potter.

She'd be lying if she said she didn't miss the attention more than she should for a girl who had rejected the same boy at least once a fortnight for the past four years, but that was the thing: four years. She hardly remembered what it was like to have a life that didn't involve avoiding James Potter and his friends as much as possible - so it wasn't her fault that her school life felt somehow empty and uneventful.

'Looking good, Evans,' he would always say in passing, to which she would always reply with a quick, 'I know.'

But missing the almost constant attention did not mean she would date him. Not now, not ever.

Marlene McKinnon rolled her eyes and brushed a blonde lock out of her blue eyes, 'I'm just suggesting you try to be a little friendlier instead of pulling a face every time he holds open a door for you,' unlike Lily, she was calm as she spoke, as if they were merely discussing their Defence Against the Dark Arts homework.

Defensively, Lily huffed, she did not 'pull a face' whenever he did something nice for her...did she? She didn't mean to...

Lily dug the palms of her hands into her eyes, rubbing them, and leaned against the cold stone wall in the hallway just outside of the Great Hall, 'He's just constantly pestering me to go out with him,' she paused, correcting herself, 'was. I'd have to be an idiot to go out with someone that desperate! And now that he's stopped, doesn't that make me seem like the desperate one if I start liking him? It doesn't work,' she took her hands away from her eyes and looked at Marlene sighing, 'I don't mean to be so rude about it, but he does already have half the girls in the school drooling over him already. If he wants a girlfriend, he has a whole fanclub to choose from. Merlin, he could ask out a second year and they'd say yes.'

Of course James would never do such a thing, but sometimes it really seemed as if she was the only girl to ever even dream of rejecting him. Oh, how she had heard the whispered conversations about her: 'If that were me-', '-and she says he's stuck up', 'ungrateful', 'doesn't the mudblood know how lucky she is?'

Marlene opened her mouth to protest, but Lily continued, raising her voice a little; not because she was angry, but to stop Marlene from interrupting before she had finished.

'He's so full of himself. He walks around the corridors hexing people like he owns the damn place! And all his friends do is laugh and egg him on,' Lily scoffed. She was friends with Remus, and she didn't think Peter was that bad, but she had never met anyone more infuriating than Potter and Black, 'I'm pretty much the only person that doesn't want to go out with him, and he can't accept that: he thinks that everyone has to like him. He's going to carry on pestering until I finally say yes, and not that I ever would, but if I did, he'd probably dump me the next week anyway! He'd be crazy to think I'd ever actually go out with him! I've never met someone so immature. He's an idiotic, arrogant toe-rag!'