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“Potter’s looking at you again, Lily.”
Mary’s sing-song lilt distracted the sixth year girls’ study group from their Arithmancy calculations.
“He fancies himself infatuated with me,” grumbled Lily, without looking up from her notes. “That toe rag wouldn’t know love if it hit him in the face.”
“You could give him a chance, you know,” whispered Dorcas. “What if you said yes to a date? Then it goes bad and you never have to do it again.”
“Whose side are you on?” Lily muttered. “If I go on one date, he’ll just use it to propose to me.”
“Then you publicly humiliate him by turning him down, silly,” Mary countered. “It worked for Narcissa Black when she turned down beastly Goyle.”
“I heard she’s marrying Malfoy though,” said Dorcas, crinkling her nose in disgust.
“Malfoy’s got more gold than Midas,” Marlene whispered. “I’d give that freak a go if he let me buy half of England.”
“Potter’s got gold too,” Mary added. “Make him take you to Madam Puddifoot’s and order everything on the menu.”
“Would you all stop it?” Lily hissed. “One date would kill me. It might kill him.”
The girls quieted down for a few seconds. While Marlene and Dorcas returned to their notes, Mary tilted back in her chair.
“Then do it,” Mary urged quietly, as a grin like the Cheshire cat’s appeared on her face. “Make him fight the Giant Squid for your love.”
Lily snorted at her friends’ antics and finally let herself look up from her books. There she found James Potter, sitting on the other side of the common room and staring at her with his goofy, lopsided smile.
“If you go on one date with him,” Mary said, “and he steps one toe out of line, I can make him suffer at the next Quidditch practice.”
James waved brightly at Lily and winked at her. She turned to Mary, with narrowed eyes and suspicion in her heart.
"What is it you’re really after, Mary? Did he put you up to this? Is he torturing you too? Because if he is, I swear, this time I’ll really hex his bollocks clean off—”
“It’s for a trade,” Mary muttered, as her chair legs came back down to the floor with a snap. “If I convince you to go out with him once, he’ll train the new Chasers by himself, minimum ten hours a week. My mum and dad are thrilled I’m Gryffindor’s Captain, but they’ll be pissed if I don’t have enough N.E.W.T.s for a good job if the Holyhead Harpies don’t recruit me.”
“Mary—” Lily protested.
“Please?” Mary put her hands together, as if in prayer. “Just one date? You can even feed him to the Giant Squid if you want, I’ll find another Chaser.”
Dorcas and Marlene were shifting in their seats. Lily knew there was more to it.
“What did he promise you two?” she asked, turning to her other traitorous friends.
“A purebred Kneazle,” Marlene said at once, with a dreamy smile.
“A year’s supply of Sleakeazy’s,” said Dorcas, looking pointedly away from Lily.
“That toe rag,” Lily snarled. She pushed away from the table and marched up to Potter, whose manic grin hadn’t left his stupid face.
“Evans,” Potter said coolly. “What brings you here?” From his side, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew gave her half-hearted waves.
“Are you bribing my friends for a date with me?”
“So what if I am?” Potter crossed his arms over his chest. “Does that make me a bad boy?”
“It makes you an insufferable—”
A curious first year with wide eyes looked up at Lily before she could curse Potter into oblivion. Potter’s shit-eating grin only got wider.
“You’ll just have to be nice to me, huh?”
Lily took a deep breath and forced her lips into a smile. “All right, Potter. We can go on a date.”
“We can?” Potter stood up and ran his hands through his messy hair. His friends all dropped their quills and gaped up at him.
“We definitely can,” Lily said sweetly. “But I require a chaperone.”
“Okay,” Potter said breathlessly. “Sirius—”
“Actually, what do you say to having Kingsley here be our chaperone?” Lily suggested, with a smile down at the shocked boy. “It wouldn’t hurt to show him how an upstanding gentleman behaves.”
Potter gawked down at tiny Kingsley Shacklebolt. “Are you—really?”
“Really,” Lily confirmed. “And if even the slightest thing goes wrong, Kingsley can help me feed you to the Giant Squid.”
“Deal.” Potter extended his hand to Lily, and then to Kingsley. “Saturday lunch on the lawn. Kingsley can kick my arse and feed me to the squid.”
The first year pumped his fist, apparently excited over the prospect of feeding an older boy to the lake’s resident cephalopod.
Lily harrumphed, turned around, and returned to her astonished friends.
If she was very lucky, in a few days’ time, James would wash up on the shores of the lake, covered in ink and algae, and would never ask her out again. It wasn’t as if there could be any other outcome, Lily thought, as her eyes met Potter’s.
If possible, his grin had become so wide she thought it would split his face in half.
If only.