Title: Lily Awareness
Ship: Lily/James
Name/Pen Name: Cat/Placid Destruction
Word Count: 1830
Theme #/Theme: 6/The Ever Reliable Daily Prophet
Challenge count: 3/7 finished

Content: PG
Spoilers: Books 1-5
Warnings: None
Summary: Lily wakes up one morning to find an article about herself in the Daily Prophet, and she thinks she knows who's behind it.

Disclaimer:I don't own it.

Lily Awareness

Breakfast time at Hogwarts was the time when students normally sat around the Great Hall, some eating, some reading the Daily Prophet, some finishing homework, and some doing a combination of the three. Some students talked with their friends or studied for their exams. Others, like the Marauders, were a bit more creative with their spare time.

On one particular morning, Lily Evans sat at the Gryffindor table, eating and reading the newspaper like she did every morning. She didn’t have friends to talk to as they usually rolled out of bed too late for breakfast, and her homework was finished, naturally (she wouldn’t be Head Girl otherwise). It was just another quiet morning.

Lily enjoyed the mornings. They were peaceful and relaxing. Never having been one to sleep late, she usually woke up early and sometimes took a walk around the lake if she was too early for breakfast. In previous years, it had been the only time when she could escape from James Potter, who was anything but a morning person.

But James hadn’t been bothersome lately. It had been almost a year since the last time he had asked her out, and he had actually been friendly toward her during that time. Lily didn’t find the new James dreadfully pompous or annoying. She actually kind of liked the new James.

She glanced down the table quickly, as if afraid that he’d be able to read her thoughts from wherever he was, but she couldn’t find him. It was no surprise that he wasn’t in the Great Hall that morning. He never was. In fact, it was a rare occasion when he managed to wake up in time to make it to his first class in time. Even McGonagall scarcely seemed to notice anymore when James and Sirius waltzed in to class ten or fifteen minutes late. After nearly seven years, she had finally given up on them.

Shrugging off the fact that James and his friends were not present for breakfast, Lily returned to the Daily Prophet.

She was halfway through an article about a Muggle who had reportedly noticed several people “walking through a wall” at King’s Cross Station between platforms nine and ten earlier that year when the article came to an abrupt stop in mid-sentence and changed topics. Lily frowned and reread the last part of the article before deciding that it was a printing error and moving on to the new article, the first line of which nearly made her choke on her pumpkin juice.

The article was about her!

Lily Evans, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’s current Head Girl, has allegedly broken up with her boyfriend of nearly six months. When questioned, Brain Miller, Evans’s former boyfriend in question, said that Evans broke up with him after a candlelit dinner in Hogsmeade last Saturday. Her reason was that she realized that she was actually head-over-heels in love with James Potter, Hogwarts’s current Head Boy, Gryffindor Quidditch captain, and all-around good guy. Myles reported that he had reason to believe that the only reason Evans had agreed to go out with him in the first place was to make Potter jealous. Evans and Potter have eagerly fueled a love/hate relationship since arriving at Hogwarts in their first year. After playing hard to get for nearly three years, Evans has apparently given into Potter’s charm and good looks. It is still unclear if the Head Boy and Girl are currently dating in secret and, if so, for how long.

Lily finished reading and sat staring at the paper, mouth agape and her eggs forgotten, her fork hovering somewhere between her plate and her mouth. Then it clattered down on the table, and she was brought back to reality.

Students all around the Great Hall were looking at her, whispering and giggling. She could hear someone reading the article aloud and knew that that was why she was receiving so much attention from her peers.

Her cheeks burning, Lily tried desperately to return to her newspaper and breakfast as though nothing had happened, but she found herself going back to the article to reread it again and again. She checked for the journalist’s name, but one was not provided.

It was true that she really had broken up with her boyfriend on the last Hogsmeade weekend, but there had been no candlelit dinner and it had been a mutual decision. They had both been ready to move on and see other people. Most importantly, she had no intentions of dating James Potter, and to even suggest that she had agreed to go out with Brian to make James jealous was ridiculous.

Why would the Prophet even cover something as ridiculous as that? Didn’t they have more important things to talk about? What about the rest of that Muggle’s story or the recent attacks by Voldemort?

No, Lily was suspicious. This wasn’t normal.

And she became even more suspicious when the Marauders wandered into the Great Hall. Remus always came to breakfast, and sometimes Peter did, but never all four of them. And yet, here they were. This was odd.

Lily met them at the end of the Gryffindor table closest to the door, her arms folded across her chest and a copy of the newspaper in her hand.

“What do you think you’re playing at, Potter?” she snapped at an extremely tired-looking James Potter.

The entire Hall seemed to get silent. The whole school was watching, interested to see what would happen to the couple now that their secret was out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lily,” James replied, looking genuinely confused. “What am I playing at what? What?” He only seemed to be getting more confused by the second.

“This!” Lily cried, throwing the newspaper down on the table, knocking over a glass of pumpkin juice.

James retrieved the now soggy Daily Prophet and read the article that she pointed to. His facial expression changed quickly from confusion to surprise, back to confusion, and then settled on a nice combination of the two emotions as he read.

When he finished reading, he placed the paper back on the table and turned back to face Lily.

“Well?” she said impatiently.

“Lily, I have no idea where that came from. I swear I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Lily was beginning to believe him. After all, James really did look surprised by the article. She didn’t think that he could have faked that expression quite that well.

“You’re sure?” she asked, not quite as angrily as before.

“Quite.”

Now Lily was back to being confused again. She had thought for a moment that James had returned to his desperate attempts to make her go out with him, but he hadn’t.

“Well, if the article’s even partially true, you’re both single now and are free to go out with each other,” Sirius Black added cheerfully.

James sighed. “No, I think Lily’s made it perfectly clear that she doesn’t-”

“Wait a minute,” Lily said slowly, her eyes narrowing at Sirius. “Unless you have really good eyesight or can see through things, how did you know what the article said?”

Remus buried his face in his hand and shook his head miserably.

Sirius responded immediately. “You caught me, Lily. I can see through things. I read the article while the newspaper was closed. You sure are smart. Now I see why they made you Head Girl.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!” Lily snapped. “You wrote that article. You put it in all of the students’ newspapers. You wanted to spread rumours that James and I were dating so that maybe I’d be pressured into actually agreeing to it.”

Sirius smiled nervously and tried to quiet Lily by leading her out of the Great Hall by the elbow. The other students were on the edge of their seats watching the scene.

“Let go of me!” Lily exclaimed, snatching her arm away from him. “You’ll stay here and explain everything.”

He sighed. “Alright. It’s pretty much like you said. It’s just that James has given up, but I didn’t want to. You’ve been civil toward each other, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. You still wouldn’t go out with him, and since he’s stopped asking, I thought I’d just give it a little push.”

“Little-?”

“Shh, Lily,” James interrupted. “Let’s hear what else he has to say for himself.”

“Don’t be mad at James,” Sirius continued. “It was all my idea. I was just raising the school’s Lily awareness level.”

“Lily awareness?” Lily repeated.

“That’s right,” he replied enthusiastically. “To make the school more aware of Lily.”

“I helped,” Remus added.

Lily gaped. “You helped?”

“So did I,” Peter added.

Remus shrugged. “He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. In fact, he was just trying to help.”

“And if it makes any difference,” Sirius interrupted. “Remus didn’t really know what he was helping with. He didn’t really want to know. Peter and I wrote the article and Remus helped us get it in all of the newspapers. It was just because I knew that James still fancies you, but he’s not going to do anything about it anymore because you’ve rejected him too many times. I only wanted to help.”

For the first time, Lily began to smile. Sirius made to hide behind James in case she was going insane and was about to hex him into the next century.

But she didn’t. Instead she asked, “Which one of you two dolts thought that my boyfriend’s name was ‘Brain’?”

“Brain?” Sirius repeated, coming out of hiding and checking the article. “I said ‘Brian,’ you idiot. Can’t you spell?”

“I’m sorry, Sirius,” Peter stammered. “I must not have been paying attention to what I was writing.”

There was a rustle of newspapers around the Great Hall as everyone checked the spelling themselves.

“Don’t you lot have anything better to do with your time?” Sirius snapped. “Why don’t you mind your own business for once?” But no one seemed to pay him any attention.

“Thanks to you, I’m probably going to be late for Charms,” Lily said angrily.

Sirius waved it off. “You’ll get over it.”

James grabbed Lily’s wrist and pulled her in the opposite direction as she took a step toward Sirius.

“Come on. I’ll walk you to Charms,” he said. “I’m going in that direction anyway. When we get there, I’ll help you think of an excuse for being late.”

Lily gathered her books and left the Great Hall with James, casting dirty looks at Sirius over her shoulder.

“Doesn’t he have Potions next?” Peter asked when the two were out of earshot. “That’s in the complete opposite direction of Charms.”

Remus smiled and clapped Sirius on the shoulder.

“It looks like your plan may work after all,” he said. “Just promise me that next time you’ll come up with one that’s a little less risky to your health.”

“Deal.”

Nice!

"Sirius responded immediately. “You caught me, Lily. I can see through things. I read the article while the newspaper was closed. You sure are smart. Now I see why they made you Head Girl.” This was bloody hilarious!

Thank you so much! I'm really glad that you enjoyed it.