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Potter’s Proposition


James threw himself down in the chair across from Lily as she was reading her Defense Against the Dark Arts assignment. She barely looked up, then turned back to her book.

James replied, “I’m here to make you a proposition.”

“No,” Lily replied.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say yet,” he pointed out.

“I know the general gist of it,” Lily answered.

James said, “I bet you don’t.”

Lily said, “You’re going to ask me to go to the Yule Ball with you, and I’m going to say no and you’re going to ask why not and I’m going to call you a toerag and you’re going to mope about for three days and finally Sirius is going to make a joke of it and you’ll make a joke back and then you’ll swagger about the castle like it never happened, trying to impress me with some stupid story about goblin hunting or dragon boxing over the holidays, which we both will know is a lie, and won’t do you any good in getting me to change my mind but will, in fact, make me want to say no even louder.” She looked up at him.

“I was going to say chimera taming.”

“Bugger off Poter.”

“Hear me out for real now, Lily, now that I just listened to that whole string of rubbish you’ve just said,” he replied, doing the exact opposite of buggering off, but leaning forward and pulling her book away so she was forced to look at him and not the pages. “If you say yes, and you’ll go on a date with me, if you don’t like my company, and you want me to bugger off after one full evening of being with me, then I will bugger off and I’ll never ask you to marry me again.”

Lily stared at him.

“I cross my heart and I hope to die, stick a needle in my eyes -- well no, I don’t do that stuff. Blimey, that saying’s terrible morbid, inn’it? I never noticed before. But seriously, Lily. I won’t bother you about it, ever again, if you give me a chance just this once.” He stared at her, his face solemn.

Lily rolled her eyes. “I already told you I’d say no.”

“You do realize,” James said, “That if you say no that I am in no way obligated to the offer and therefore I will continue to drive you positively insane until you do say yes to me?”

“James, you’re so bloody thick… Listen to me. I. Will. Never. Say. Yes. No matter how many times you ask, no matter how many propositions you come up with. I am not interested in you in any shape, way, or form whatsoever. I find you positively, absolutely, ridiculously repulsive. I truly and sincerely dislike you. Now… bugger off.”

He stared at her, silent for a long pause - longer than she thought he’d ever taken… and he didn’t smile. Usually when she insulted him, he smiled. Usually he did that stupid grin where his lip caught on his tooth, but that didn’t come. After a hundred years of just staring, finally, he nodded. “Okay, Evans.” And he stood up and walked away.

Lily watched him as he jogged up the stairs to the boys dorm, not stopping, even when Peter said something to him by the stairs.

Why in Merlin’s beard did she actually feel sort of guilty for it?

Peter drifted over to the table, carrying his books, giving her a funny look.

Not wanting to talk about what happened, Lily quickly pulled her back from where James had left it on his side of the table and stared down at the pages, her face flushed, hoping Peter would just let her be.

Try as she might, she couldn’t concentrate the rest of the night.




Remus woke up to the feeling of his hips cracking as the transformation began. He tried to move to the floor, but found there was weight across his chest - it was Sirius’s arm, wrapped tightly ‘round him. He looked over and found Sirius asleep, laying beside him, close enough that Sirius’s nose touched Remus’s shoulder. He tried to say something, but words wouldn’t come as he shuddered, his spine making awful popping and cracking sounds. He forced his way out of Sirius’s grasp, his mind spinning over how they’d ended up there like that before either of them had transformed? Surely Sirius had ended up curled about him that way after transforming, always because the dogs had been curled about each other, though, never in their human form… Remus wish he had time to ask…

He hit the floor with a loud thump and Sirius sat up in the bed. “Rey? Rey??” he looked over the side of the bed. “Oh bugger.” And he swiftly turned to Snuffles as Remus shivered and shook into the grey werewolf.

The howl shattered the silence they’d fallen asleep in.




James was glad it was the full moon because that meant Sirius and Remus were gone and with Peter downstairs studying, he was alone in the dormitory. Pacing about, he didn’t want to admit how badly Lily Evans had hurt him. She might as well have taken a sword to his heart, he thought, and just plunged it right through him. Would’ve been easier, at least if it’d been a sword he could’ve cried without feeling like an over-emotional prat.

For all the nasty things that Evans had said to him, she’d never said anything in that tone, with that ferocity, so that before he’d always been able to make a joke of it, to laugh it off, to say she was in denial.

For the first time, he felt like he, James, was in denial instead.

He ran his hands through his hair, buckling them together at the back of his neck and flapping his elbows, trying to spend the excess energy coursing through him.

It was never going to happen with Evans.

She wasn’t ever going to come around.

He’d lover her to eternity, but she’d never love him back.

He spun on his heel, continuing his pacing. He couldn’t stand it, he hated this, he hated the way he felt, like a trapped animal, he wanted to run, wanted to get the bloody hell out of the castle and run as hard and as fast as he could, clear to the ends of the earth. He wanted to lash out, break out of the emotional cage he was trapped in, prove to Lily that she’d passed up a good thing when she’d had the chance, show her how she should have said yes.

James pulled loose his Gryffindor tie roughly, feeling like he was being hanged by it, and flung it over the bedpost.

He turned to the door and stormed back down the stairs, his blood running hot in his veins, blind with madness, and he rushed past Lily at the table, where she was still staring at the book, pretending to concentrate, and he went right up to Annalee McKinnon and he threw himself to his knees before her. “Annalee,” he said, his voice bold, “Go to the Yule Ball with me.”

Annalee, who’d heard none of the proposition he’d posed to Lily just minutes before, looked surprised and delighted and squealed, “YES!” and she leaped forward, wrapping her arms around James Potter’s neck and he pulled her into a kiss and stuck his hands up in her hair as she ran her hands through his, her pink-painted fingernails vibrant against the rich black of his mane.

Lily stared on in disgust. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she murmured.

James stood up and pulled Annalee around so that as he sat himself down in the chair she’d been sitting in, she ended up straddling his lap, one knee on either side of him, kissing him repeatedly, their mouths moving against one another roughly and sloppily, so that Lily could see every motion of their faces as they began snogging heavily.

“Oh. my. God.” Lily stood up and slammed her book closed and went up to her room.

James was only able to see her out of the corner of his cracked eyelids, saw her slam the book, saw her storm away. The moment Lily’s dormitory door slammed closed, he ran his hands over Annalee’s hips and pulled her back. “Blimey, love,” he said thickly, “We ought to save some for Yule Ball, don’t you reckon?”

Annalee laughed.

Peter stared from the table. He looked back down at the note he’d been writing, asking Annalee to the Ball and he quickly crumpled it up in his fist, a pit of anger in his stomach.




The next morning at breakfast, James Potter and Annalee McKinnon made their first public appearance as a couple. They swept into the Great Hall, his fingers twined about hers, a gooey expression of adoration on her face, and he led her to the end of the table, where he proceeded to feed her bites of a scone covered with marmalade, which Annalee never ate, but acted as though it was the most delicious thing she’d never had in her life.

Lily sat glaring at them from her seat.

Ali stared in awe at the spectacle. “When did that happen?” She’d missed the dramatic scene the night before, she’d been off about the castle with Frank Longbottom somewhere, probably also snogging knowing them.

“Last night,” Lily answered, “And it’s so phoney, it’s sickening.”

“Why is it phoney?” Ali asked, confused.

“Because, not even an hour before he asked her to the Yule Ball and started snogging her face like it was an ice cream on a hot summer day, he’d been begging me to go with him,” Lily replied.

“And you said no again?”

“Of course I said no again. I’m always going to say not to him.”

Ali looked at James, then back to Lily, “Well, maybe he’s trying to move on. Boys do stupid things when they’re hurt.”

“Hurt! He’s James Potter, his ego could use a little denting.” Lily thought about the things she’d said, though, and realized that perhaps she’d done a bit more than a little denting. Maybe she’d bashed it right in. She shook the image out of her mind.

Ali shrugged, “Well, at least he won’t be bothering you about it anymore.”

“Yeah…” Lily agreed.

“That ought to make you happy.”

“Oh it does,” Lily nodded, “Of course it does. I’m just angry for Annalee.”

Ali looked at Annalee, then turned back to Lily, “I don’t think Annalee is very angry.” Quite the opposite, Annalee looked quite pleased as she fed James back some of the scone with the marmalade, too.

Lily said, “Well. She would be if she knew about him asking me just before he asked her!”

“Yeah,” Ali said, smirking, “She would be.”

“What are you smirking for?”

“Just… it seems like someone might be a little bit jealous,” Ali said with a shrug. “Did you think he was going to hang about forever waiting for you, then?”

“No!” Lily replied. Then she paused, “Just… I would’ve thought it might’ve taken him a bit longer than ten minutes to get over me is all.”

Ali glanced at James and Annalee and caught him spying, eyes swiveled their direction as Annalee had her eyes closed and he slipped another bit of scone into her mouth. He looked away the moment he realized Ali was looking, though, focusing quickly back on Annalee. Ali had a feeling James was less over Lily than he wanted her to think. Ali had to applaud James - he was playing his hand fairly well.

“Maybe I ought to get a date to the Yule Ball, too!” Lily said hotly.

“Maybe,” Ali smirked.

Lily looked around. “What about Tobias Clement?”

“Spoken for,” Ali said, “Frank said the Tobias and Jackson are going with the McKenna Alliston and her Hufflepuff sister.”

Lily fumed and turned, looking around the Great Hall for someone else… someone that might say yes if she asked, or better might naturally ask her if she hung around near them long enough… someone that would make James jealous… someone that would really bother him if she showed up at the Yule Ball with.

Her eyes landed on Severus Snape.