Lily and James Potter: There's a Fine Line between Love and Hate

Chapter 3: Pranks All Round

Lily Evans

"Stupid, moronic, idiotic, pathetic and immature!" I listed off my adjectives for Potter, Black and their prank.

"I thought it was quite funny actually." Alice ytold me.

"Yeah, but what I want to know is, if they did it in 2nd year, why have they repeated it?" A frowning Penny asked.

"I dunno, my only guess is that they have planned something alot bigger than previous years." Alice said.

"Enough about their prank what about ours?" Eva asked.

"What about ours?" I asked confused.

"When's it supposed to happen?" Eva asked impatiently.

"Lunch." Alice told us. Just then McGonagall came along with our timetables. Once she had handed them out we compared each others to see what classes we had together.

"I've got Charms with Ravenclaw, Double Potions with Slytherin, Transfiguration with Ravenclaw, Defence Against the Dark Arts with Slytherin, Herbology with Hufflepuff, Arithmancy with Ravenclaw and Ancient Runes with Hufflepuff." I read out my timetable

"Same!!!" Alice squealed, clearly excited that we had the same classes.

"What about you guys?" I asked turning to Eva and Penny

"We're all together for DADA and Charms but other than that me and Eva are together for all our classes but not with you guys." Penny told us. Just then my timetable was taken from my hands, I turned around to see who had taken it and came face to face with none other than Potter and Black.

"Would you look at that Padfoot, Lily has exactly the same timetable as us, apart from the fact that we aren't taking Ancient Runes or Arithmancy." Potter said before passing my timetable to Black.

"What!?" I screeched before snatching both Potter's timetable and my own. I then proceeded to double check every single lesson, thinking it couldn't possibly be true, only to find that I did in fact have the exact same timetable, aside from Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, as both Potter and Black.

"That's great, just great you've already managed to ruin my final year at Hogwarts and lessons haven't even started yet!" I hissed, before shoving his timetable back into his hands and turning back to my breakfast.

I didn't hear them leave so after about a minute or so i looked over at where they had previously been sat and saw them all talking to Potter, who looked very dejected. Was I too harsh? Now I feel bad- Wait what? Am I feeling sorry for Potter? No Lily, you must not feel bad for Potter. I told myself firmly and with that in mind I began to make my way to charms with the others

*****************

James Potter

"Don't worry mate, she'll come around." Padfoot told me in an attempt to cheer me up.

"Yeah, besides prank stage 2 is due to start soon so we need to make our way to charms." Moony put in. I cheered up a bit at the thought of the second part to our prank. When we arrived at charms we immediately went and took our usual seats on the back row, directly behind Lily and her friends. A second after we had taken our seats Professor Flitwick walked in.

"Morning class, morning." He said as he walked over to his desk and stood on a huge stack of books so as to be able to see over it.

"Now today we will be going over..." I quickly zoned out, knowing that Moony would fill me in later on. So while Professor Flitwick droned on my eyes wandered over to the back of Evans' head and as I watched her long red hair move ever so slightly I started to think to about the possibility that we might not end up together and the more I thought about it the more likely an outcome it became. I mean, it's our final year at Hogwarts and we still hadn't gotten together so maybe we just weren't going to. At the start of every year I always said that it woud be the year Evans and I got together and then at the end of every year, when I failed to make her fall in love with me, I would always say that there was always next year. The problem was at the end of this year there isn't going to be a next year so the chances are if we don't get together this year I won't ever see her again.

"Prongs....Hey, Prongs!"

"PRONGS!"

"What?" I snapped, looking up to see Flitwick frown in our direction because of Sirius' yell.

"We're supposed to be making our tea cups dance." Remus told me wearily, nodding in the direction of his own tea cup, which as already dancing across his desk.

"Oh, right, ok." I said, turning to my own stationary tea cup. I was about to attempt the charm when I had an idea.

"Hey, Moony, why won't Evans go out with me?"

"Because-"

"Because you're a completely idiotic moron." Sirius interrupted.

"Yes, thanks MOONY!"

"Anytime." Ignoring Sirius this time, I turned to face Remus.

"Anyway I was actually going to say it was because she thinks you're too immature and a bit of a bully."

"You know that's basically what I said." Again I ignored Sirius.

"So what would I have to do for her to consider me mature?"

"Pull fewer, maybe no, pranks."

"Oh, well then I guess you two won't end up together 'cause there is no way that you would ever give up pulling pranks!" Ignoring Sirius for a third time I thought about what Remus said.

"Well...I guess I could cut down to slightly fewer pranks." Sirius just gaped at me while Remus shook his head.

"You can't just cut down slightly, you need to stop altogether."

"What you mean, like, none at all?"

"None at all." Now I couldn't decide. I mean I know that I'd always said she was the one and that I would do anything for her but oulling pranks was part of who I was, something that I had always done as far back as I could remember. Noticing my indecision Remus spoke up again.

"If she's really worth it, if she's really the one like you've always told us then you'd do this."

"Don't do this James, don't you think that if she was the one then she would like you as you are." Now I was just confused.

"I need to think about it." Was all I said before turning back to my tea cup.

"Speaking of pranks we aren't going to see stage two of ours in action because we've had a practical lesson." Remus pointed out.

"Oh yeah." Sirius agreed, "Do think that means we won't get detention for it then."

"Why wouldn't we?" I asked.

"Because the other teachers will probably assume that Flitwick already gave us one."

"I wouldn't count on it." Remus said.

"And why not?"

"Because teachers do talk to each other about things that happen in their classrooms."

"So?"

"So Flitwick will undoubtedly find out about the prank and the other teachers will undoubtedly find out that we have not been punished." Sirius didn't seem to have an argument for that.

*************

Lily Evans

My first morning back at Hogwarts hadn't been too bad considering James Potter had been in all of my classes. It was in fourth period things went down hill. Alice and I had just taken our seats in Transfiguration when McGonagall walked into the classroom. As she began telling us how to transfigure our appearance words started to appear on the blackboard. However this wasn't the strange part, the strange part was that the words weren't notes on McGonagall's lecture. No instead, when the words had become clear they formed the question; Will you go out with me Lily Evans? JP. I stood up and spun around to face him and hissed;

"I would rather walk, barefoot, across burning hot coals while being pecked to death by crows!" I used the same response from when they had done this in fourth year before sitting down and facing the front with a scowl on my face.

"Detention, Mister's Potter, Black, Lupin and Pettigrew." McGonagall said. She then shifted her gaze to me.

"And ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Evans, for disrupting the lesson." My jaw dropped. I had never, and i mean never, lost a single point in my entire time at Hogwarts until now and it was all Potter's fault.

****

"I hate him. I hate him. I hate him." I told Alice as we made our way to D.A.D.A.

"Oh, lighten up. So he asked you again? So you lost a few points? So what? I thoght we weren't going to be as bothered by this stuff anymore?"

"It's not the fact that I lost thr points it's the fact that it was Potter's fault."

"Just his fault? Not the other's too?" She raised one eyebrow in disbelief.

"It will have been him that chose the message."

"Yes, but it will probably have been Lupin that actually did the magic."

"Yes, but unlike the others Remus isn't a bullying toerag."

"You know when you resort to insults it means you've lost the argument."

"Does not."

"Does to."

"Does not."

"Does to."

"Does no-"

"Hey, Evans." I ignore Potter and continue to D.A.D.A. That is until he catches up to us and starts matching our pace.

"Hey, Evans I'm sorry about Transfiguration. You weren't supposed to get into trouble for it."

"No? Well, then what was supposed to happen?"

"You were supposed to say yes." It's at this point he ruffles up his hair.

"Oh no, that can't be right because never will that ever happen." I say coldly before stalking into the classroom.

****

"Did you hear about what The Marauders did?" Penny asked as I sat down.

"What? With the message on the blackboard?"

"No, with the text books. They removed all the writing from all of the text books, you know like they did in third year, but obviously we didn't know because we had a practical lesson first period and they were all back to normal at the start of second."

"What's the point? They're just repeating previous pranks?"

"I take it you got the same message as fourth year?"

I didn't bother to reply as Professor Atera had just walked in.

******************

James Potter

"I think I'll do it." I said as i sat down next to Sirius at lunch.

"Do what?"

"Give up pulling pranks."

"WHAT!?" He shouted.

"A little quieter, Padfoot."

"Sorry, but you can't be serious!"

"No, that's you." I smirked.

"Oh ha ha." He responded sarcastically, "but come on you're not really gonna give up pulling pranks are you?"

"Yeah."

"Does this mean I can stop to?" Remus piped up.

"Aaah, Moony, how could you!? You intend to desert me just when I need you more than ever?" Sirius gasped dramatically. Remus just rolled his eyes.

"No, I just figured that if Prongs is gonna quit we may as well all quit."

"But this is supposed to be our last year!"

"So?"

"So we're supposed to make it count." Just then there was a massive bang and loads of fireworks were shooting all over the place, some were even chasing Slytherins. Once the last of the fireworks had died down and there were very few Slytherins left in the Great Hall Dumbledore stood up and turned to face us as he had a beakfast.

"Mister's Potter, Black, Lupin and Pettigrew I believe you now have two more detentions; one for the text book incident and one for now."

"But the fireworks weren't us." I called out. Dumbledore peered at the four of us for a few seconds before speaking.

"Ok, I shall retract the detention for the fireworks but you still have another for the text books." The four os us nodded and Dumbledore sat down.

"Why'd you reckon he believed us so quickly?" Sirius asked as chatter broke out once more, everyone speculating at who had pulled the fireworks prank.

"Probably because we almost always own up to our pranks." Remus replied, however I was only half listening as I stared at Lily and her friends whispering to each other with their heads bent close together. I think I just figured out who was behind the fireworks.