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Lily

Lily was very glad for Alice Bell, the second year girl that had shown her to the dormitory the night before. Alice had instantly become Lily’s friend, and invited her up to the second years’ room to meet the other girls. They were all very nice and had invited Lily to camp on their floor so she didn’t have to spend her first night all alone in the castle, explaining that Peeves, the school poltergeist liked to pick on the younger students who had seemed apprehensive. Lily’s eyes had widened, “There are ghosts here?”

“Haven’t you met Nearly Headless Nick yet?” Alice Bell asked her.

Lily shook her head, “No. Is he terrifying?”

“Nick? Nawh,” Alice shook her head, “He’s really funny.”

The next morning, the girls had all gone down to breakfast together in the Great Hall, pouring over an issue of Teen Witch featuring one of the members of the new wizard band The Charmers on the cover. Lily had never realized there were wizard bands, but Alice nodded enthusiastically, “Oh yes, there are quite a few. There’s the Charmers, and the Owls…” she’d rattled off band names for some time.

They’d met up again after Transfiguration in the Great Hall for lunch time, and by then Lily was just thankful to get away from Sirius, Remus, Peter, and, most especially, James, who she kept catching staring over at her from his desk. He’d smiled at her every time she’d caught him. She craned her neck, trying to see over to the Slytherin table past the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs to see if Severus was there. She wanted to talk to him badly but he’d been missing since the feast the night before. Hoping to spot him, she chatted with Alice Bell with one eye on the door, but she never saw him.

When they went out onto the lawn for the flying lessons, though, she got her chance to talk to him for the first time since the sorting. The Gryffindors were having their lessons on the grounds with the Slytherins, who had a free second period on Thursday and had already gone outside to meet the instructor, a witch the timetable had informed her would be named Madam Hooch.

“Oh great,” Lily heard Sirius say as they crossed the grass, “We have to learn to fly with Snivelly Snape.” She looked up at the moment he was mentioned, her heart leaping with excitement and relief. Severus was on the edge of the cluster of Slytherins and she broke into a run the moment she saw him.

“Sev!” she squealed and she ran, pushing between the boys, literally shoving James out of the way. She collided with him, enveloping him in a bone-crushing hug. It seemed like it had been ages since she’d seen him. He hugged her back, though a bit hesitantly, glancing uneasily to see what the other Slytherins were looking. For the first time ever she noticed that Severus had a funny smell about him, one that reminded her of the bad part of town from which he’d come back home. She pulled back and looked up at his eyes, which were darting between her and his snickering housemates. “Are you okay?” she whispered under her breath, so quiet that only Severus could hear.

“Look at Snivelly with his girlfriend!” Sirius’s voice rang out as the boys caught up to Lily.

Severus, already red from the sniggering of the Slytherins, turned even redder. “Shut your mouth, Black!” he growled.

“Ooh,” James laughed. “You gonna take that Sirius?”

Sirius grinned, “Sorry, Sev,” he said, pointedly using the nickname Lily used for him, “I’ll let you get back to snogging with her, then.” He turned to walk away, laughing.

Severus pulled away from Lily entirely, running at Sirius’s turned back.

“Oh!” Lily cried out, “Severus - don’t!”

The desperate tone in Lily’s voice made James turn around and he saw Severus coming at Sirius, the look of an angry bull upon his face. “Oi!” Sirius!” James shouted.

Sirius turned around just time time. The next thing any of them new, the two boys had their arms locked around each other’s necks and were hitting one another quite hard like a couple of muggle boys.

“FIGHT!” bellowed one of the other Slytherin boys and they all gathered around in a circle, blocking Sirius and Severus from Lily’s view.

“Oh don’t! Don’t! Please don’t!” Lily shrieked, ducking left and right, trying desperately to break into the circle of Slytherins, plus James and Peter. Remus was standing outside of the loop, too, awkwardly rubbing his elbow and staring at Lily apologetically while she cried.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” Madam Hooch had just come from the Quidditch Equipment building by the pitch carrying armfuls of school brooms under her arms, which she dropped to the ground as she broke into a sprint, grabbing a whistle from around her neck and blowing into it frantically.

Fweet! Fweeeet! Fweeeet!

She pushed her way between the crowd of students and grabbed both Sirius and Severus around the necks of their robes roughly shoving them apart as they scrambled, trying to get at each other again. “Enough of this! Fifty points from both your houses! And detention for you both!” she shouted. The boys stopped fighting as she scolded them, glaring between the two of them, but it didn’t stop them glowering at one another, each having bloody noses and Sirius a cut lip. “Everyone get a broom,” she shouted at the rest of the students, “Arrange yourself about 3 feet apart in this area while I deposit these two with Madam Pomfrey in the castle.” She frogmarched the boys off the grounds to the castle.

Lily watched them go, worried, wondering if she shouldn’t go along with them to keep Severus company.

“I got you a broom before the best ones were taken,” James was suddenly appearing at her elbow, holding out a broom. She took it hesitantly as the entrance door closed on the castle. “He’ll be alright,” he said to her. “Sirius didn’t get many good shots in, honestly.” He shrugged and turned away, running off to where Remus and Peter Pettigrew were checking that they were at least three feet away from the other students. Lily walked over and joined the end of the row.

“You Gryffindors better watch your back,” said a large Slytherin boy from the other end of the row.

“Just let it go,” Lily heard Remus hiss to James, who’d looked angrily in the direction of the Slytherins. “It’s not worth the trouble we’ll get into.”

Lily sighed, standing there holding her broom, staring around at the other students. She’d never used a broom before, other than for cleaning, and this one was shaped very differently than any she’d ever seen before. James was one of the only ones that seemed fully comfortable with the brooms.

Madam Hooch came back across the grounds without Sirius and Severus and cleared her throat as she stood before them with her own broom, which was much nicer than any of the school brooms, which, Lily noticed, had little brass plates upon the handles with model numbers like Cleansweep 1970 and Starchaser 4 on them. Madam Hooch launched into a lecture on flying etiquette and the theory behind it. “Has anybody here flown before?” she asked.

James’s hand flew into the air, as well as a few Slytherin hands, too.

“What sort of brooms do you fly?” she asked, going around through the people who had raised their hands. The models were varying, mostly the answers were various numbers of Starchasers - most of them higher numbers than a four, though one boy said he flew a Starchaser 2 - until they got to James who said he had one of the new Nimbus brooms. Madam Hooch looked impressed, “That’s a very nice broom!” she exclaimed.

“My dad used to play for the team,” James explained, “Quidditch has always been a big deal in the Potter house.”

“Well that Cleansweep ‘70 you’ve got there is going to feel like it’s parked compared to a Nimbus, but you should be able to fly it without much trouble.” She cleared her throat, “Okay everybody, mount your brooms.”

Everyone fumbled to get the broom between their knees except James, who easily mounted the broom as though it were second nature, gripping the handle tightly. He hunched forward, standing on his tip-toes.

“Mr. Goyle, hold a bit tighter on your handle dear… there you go… Mr. Lupin, you’ve got too much of the handle in front of you, even it out a bit more. Look at Mr. Potter, you’ll see… yes, like that, much better. Okay. On my whistle, everyone kick gently off of the ground, pulling up on your broom handle slightly, then push it back down equally slightly to land again. One… two…”

Fweet!

All of them did as they were instructed, or tried to at any rate. James did a loop-de-loop in place, grinning as he came back down to stick the landing. Peter, however, had toppled over instead of taking off at all and only one of the Slytherins had managed to direct the broom back down to the ground correctly. Three of them were still stranded in mid-air. Lily, however, had done it perfectly. James was glancing over at her with an amused expression on his face.

“You’ve never flown before?” he asked.

Lily shook her head.

“So just a natural then?”

“I guess so,” she answered. She’d felt wobbly and uncertain about how she’d done, but apparently it hadn’t been too terrible as James Potter, who seemed to have an impressive history with flying, found it within himself to at least halfway compliment her on it. She clutched her broomstick with a strange mixture of pride and something else she couldn’t quite name. She glanced over at him a couple more times as Madam Hooch got the stranded Slytherins down and righted Peter.

“Okay. Again,” she instructed.

This time in the air, James flew literal circles around the other students, laughing happily as the wind whipped through his already messy hair. Lily watched, hovering about ten feet off the ground on her broom, as James went by, grinning with all of his teeth showing. Of all the times she’d seen him smile, she thought, he looked best when he smiled on a broomstick. Perhaps it was the wildness of his hair, or maybe it was because of how thoroughly he was in his element, but he didn’t seem like such a phony arse when he was flying.

“Mr. Potter!” Madam Hooch called, “If you don’t mind stopping your showing off, I would rather like to complete a lesson down here on the ground!”

“Sorry, Madam Hooch,” James answered and, looking at Lily, he added, “I couldn’t help showing off a little.” He winked at her and slowly started to come down to land smoothly on the grass.

“Everyone down please,” she commanded waving her hands and each of them slowly lowered to the ground as well, though none were even as close to being as smooth as James had done.

They repeated this cycle for some time until everyone was able to take off and land in synchronisation with a certain graceful air that hadn’t been there when they’d begun. James was obviously by far the best of them, though he refrained from showing off any further skills for them. At least not until Sirius returned with Severus right behind him, more than halfway through the lessons. They had both already flown before so it didn’t take terribly long to get the class back into synchronisation. As the sun was starting to set behind the castle, Madam Hooch announced that the lesson was over and started shouting instructions about how to return the brooms to the broom shed.

“James,” Sirius’s voice echoed over, “Prove how good you are, mate.” He wound up his arm and into the air went flying what looked like a Drooble’s bubble gum ball as he chucked it off into the sky.

There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. James shot off the ground, leaning forward on his broom and crouching down to stream the air over his back in a way to increase his speed and he stretched out one arm as he circled back around, backing the broom up and with a soft crack the gumball landed safely in James’s palm.

Madam Hooch looked a mixture of angry and amazed as James flew back to them, dropping the gumball onto Sirius’s hand. “It was one of the red ones,” he said, “Makes it easier to see.”

Sirius laughed, “Lucky shot.”

“So throw it again if you think so,” James answered with a swaggering air as he swept the arms of his robes up. His eye caught Lily’s for a moment and he announced, “One day I’m going to be the greatest seeker the league has ever seen. I’ll finally bring glory to Britain.” He puffed out his chest, “I’m just that bloody good, don’t you think?” he asked Lily.

She stared at him for a moment, and said, “I think you’re just arrogant.”

James stared right into her face. “Throw it again, Sirius, and put some elbow into it.”

Madam Hooch looked as though she wanted to stop them from it, but another part of her, the part that won, wanted to see if he could do it again.

Sirius wound up good and hard and the gumball soared across the grounds. James took off, faster than smoke, and shot after the gumball. It looked as though he’d undershot, however, and he was going to miss it… and then he stretched, bringing his feet up to the broom and practically standing on it to give himself a bit more height and leaned as far over the front of the broom as he could, sending it into a spiral, but wrapping his fist around the gumball before he did, and, doing a sort of head-over-heels barrel roll, he managed to right himself and fly back, again tossing the gumball into Sirius’s palm.

Madam Hooch and the other Gryffindors were clapping while Severus and the other boys in Slytherin, as well as Lily, looked thoroughly unamused.

James dropped the broom to the ground and looked at Lily. “What do you think now?” he demanded. “There’s no way you can see what I’ve just done and not think it’s some incredible flying!”

Lily’s eyes were cold. “Still arrogant,” she stated simply, and she shoved her broom into his hand and walked back to the castle.