Final Spark

FINAL SPARK

One

I temporarily forgot there's better days to come

I thought that I would give it just one more chance

-- DIDO

There were three things very wrong with Lily Evans' life.

The first was that James Potter fancied her. This was one of the Big Ones. Potter had plagued her relentlessly from the very first time she'd stepped over the Hogwarts threshold and into a shower of water-bombs that he'd fashioned out of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum. Of course, she hadn't been the only one to get caught in the cross-fire that day. Many people's earliest memories of Hogwarts revolved around getting a huge wad of something sticky and blue in their faces. However, she had been the only one to stride over to the sniggering boy -- her eyes ablaze, her hair full of gum, trailing puddles of water -- and slap him full in the face.

It had only scaled up from there.

She'd spent the first four years of her career at Hogwarts fending off practical jokes from Potter and his gang of sycophantic drones. To be fair, Lupin wasn't bad if you got him on his own, gave him a book and sat him down in a quiet corner for about an hour. Sadly, his friends had a nose for rooting him out and dragging him back into the fray. Then, in fifth year, just when Lily thought she had conquered them, Potter changed tack.

Lily was certain, right to the marrow of her bones, that Potter had only started the lovesick-puppy charade to irritate the living daylights out of her.

It worked, too.

The second thing wrong with her life was that she had an extremely long and extremely complicated Transfiguration essay due for Wednesday. It was now Monday evening and she still hadn't started it. It wasn't like her to be so behind on her work, but she'd become absorbed in a project for Professor Flitwick on Fidelius Charms and hadn't noticed the time passing.

Of all her NEWT subjects, Lily was weakest at Transfiguration. She knew she wouldn't be able to rustle up an essay just like that for the subject. This fact only made it a thousand times more irritating to watch Potter on Sunday evening, as he took a break from a raucous game of Exploding Snap with that exasperating Black to grab a quill and pull seventeen inches out of nowhere in half-an-hour.

Lily was grinding her teeth just thinking about it. She was lucky she had any teeth left, in fact, what with all the grinding she did in Potter's irksome presence -- and he was always around. By rights she should be left with only little blackened stubs at this stage. It was a thought, actually; if her teeth turned black perhaps Potter would leave her alone. Lily made a mental note to look into Teeth-Aging Charms. After she finished her Transfig essay, that is, if she ever did.

The third and final thing wrong was that there was a spot on her cheek. Right beside her left nostril. Not a small one, either, but a large, red, throbbing pustule. Lily knew she shouldn't have touched it, but she couldn't help thinking, in the primeval logic that dictates in such situations, that if she just pushed it a little it would go back in.

It hadn't.

Lily had gone through a phase, when she was about fourteen, of getting whole outcrops of pimples along her hairline and on her forehead. Potter had teased her mercilessly about them. She could still remember the hurt and shame of being called 'Pimple-face' in front of a whole classroom, while Potter leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, nodding triumphantly to a sniggering Black and a panting Pettigrew and a Lupin who refused to meet his eye.

Potter had never had acne; nor had Black. Lily had thought this a cosmic unfairness, but in fact every child brought up in a wizarding family knew about Mandrake juice acne cream. It was only when Jamila Vakil heard Lily sobbing in the middle of the night that she realised that Lily had been far more wounded by Potter's words than her indifferent attitude would suggest.

The Vakils were a pureblood family and Jamila loaned Lily some Mandrake cream the very next day. Lily, who'd been friendly with all the girls in her year before but never best friends with anyone, was best friends with Jamila from that day on.

The problem with Mandrake cream, though, was that it was a very astringent mixture. It was designed to be used sparingly, once a month or so. Otherwise, skin tended to suffer reactions to the acid, which often left worse scarring than acne. Lily could feel the spot throbbing, but she didn't dare to put any Mandrake on it. It was just one spot, after all.

She wasn't going to squeeze it, either! She wasn't. She wasn't. Lily repeated the mantra in her head until she was satisfied that she had talked herself out of such a foolhardy course of action.

It didn't solve any of her problems, though. Her essay lay before her, exactly two sentences and four words long. Her spot was still there. And James Potter didn't look ready to give up tormenting her any time soon.

Such a state of affairs, Lily decided, called for only one resolution. Chocolate.

* * *

Lily left her writing materials in the alcove where she'd been writing, confident in the knowledge that no one would disturb a NEWT student's study area. When she entered the dormitory, Jamila was already dressed for bed, in red satin pyjamas that set off her silky curtain of black hair and honey-coloured skin to perfection. Lily often thought that if Jamila wasn't such a sweet-natured person -- and, it had to be admitted, not the world's greatest scholar -- Lily would have been extremely jealous of her. As it was, a little flame of envy always burned when Lily compared Jamila's petite beauty to her own ordinary self, but it was inevitably tamped when Jamila's face lit up on spotting her friend.

"Hey, Lily!" she called, waving her over with her hairbrush. One of Jamila's little foibles was her habit of brushing her hair a hundred times before bed. Jamila would often abandon an essay that was overdue because she was too tired to finish it, but she could have been suffering from acute exhaustion and she would still demand a hairbrush to finish off the day's toilette.

"How's it going, Vakil?" Lily returned. She sat down on Jamila's bed and began pulling her own long hair out of its tight bun.

"Fine," said Jamila. She stifled a yawn with a perfectly manicured hand. "Did you get your Transfiguration essay done?"

"You had to bring it up, didn't you?" groaned Lily. "No. I haven't even started it, to be brutally honest."

"Really, Lilian," Jamila admonished, tapping Lily on the head with her hairbrush. "I am all astonishment. Are you in love?"

"Lily," Lily reminded her. "I'm not in love, Jamila. Why do you always insist on thinking that's the cause of every scholastic crisis?"

"Because it always is," said Jamila, pursing her lips. "Well -- it is for me, anyway."

"Poor Lupin," said Lily. "How much of your work does he do? Fifty percent?"

"More like ... all of it?" said Jamila vaguely.

Lily couldn't help but smile. "He really is too nice for his own good. Well," she amended, "nice, but still morally bankrupt. He never stands up to those naked apes masquerading as his friends. But he'd have to be nice to put up with them teasing him all the time."

"James and Sirius are a torment," agreed Jamila. "And Remus is very nice. I've offered to pay him for tutoring me, you know, but he won't take any money. He says it's good practice, because he wants to be a teacher."

"Indeed," said Lily. She couldn't stop her lips from quirking. "You don't think he might have other, rather less philanthropic motives?"

"Oh, Lilian," sighed Jamila. "Remus knows as well as you do that I'm betrothed to Ormus Patil. I don't think --" She paused, then shook her head resolutely, so that her hair flew to and fro like a black waterfall. "No, Lily, no."

"The thing is, though," said Lily, her fingers creeping over to snatch the hairbrush out of Jamila's hand, "that Ormus Patil is at the Bombay Magician's Guild, and you and Lupin are at Hogwarts. I somehow don't think Ormus would ever find out if, say, you went to Hogsmeade with Lupin once or twice."

"Perhaps not," said Jamila. She was smiling a little. "But the fact remains that I have not been invited to Hogsmeade by anyone, much less by Remus."

"Hmm," said Lily.

"May I have my brush back?" Jamila inquired.

"I'm conducting hostage negotiations," Lily informed her. "I may be induced to return the victim in return for sufficient chocolate ransom."

"Honestly, Lilian," said Jamila, in a pained tone of voice, "if you wanted chocolate, you need only to have asked. There was no reason to bring my hairbrush into it."

Rolling her large dark eyes, Jamila leaned over the side of the bed and extracted a large, ornate cardboard box on which obese angels, unrealistic hearts and gold foil played exciting and key parts.

"Oh, beauty, thy name is Wienrich and Boettcher," groaned Lily. Jamila giggled.

"Certainly one of its less well-known names, don't you think?"

Jamila's family, as well as being pureblood and apparently universally blessed with impeccable genetics, were filthy rich. Her father had migrated to England after the Muggle Second World War, but the rest of his family remained behind in Bombay, running a lucrative real estate business. Aziz Vakil was the youngest son of four, the apple of his mother's eye and, as far as Lily could tell, a congenial but useless sort of person. He'd received a large share of the family fortune on his marriage and his sole occupation seemed to be to spend it in the most frivolous way possible. He spoiled his only daughter unmercifully, but it passed over Jamila's head for the most part and she was charmingly eager to share the spoils of being spoiled.

Lily stoutly refused most of her offerings, but it would take a will of iron and possibly raging diabetes to resist the lure of Wienrich and Boettcher chocolates. Besides, Lily had a hidden weakness for strawberry crèmes. They were the ones Jamila liked least, which helped.

"If for nothing else, I adore you for your chocolates," admitted Lily.

"But there is something else, isn't there?" asked Jamila. She sounded worried.

"Of course, you silly goose," said Lily, with as much affection as she could manage through a rich melting mouthful of pink goo. "You're the nicest and most generous person I've ever met and I'd trust you with anything."

"Even information on who you fancy?" said Jamila, her eyes narrowing.

Lily choked. "Who I fancy? What are you talking about? I don't fancy anyone!"

"But if you did, you would tell me, wouldn't you?" Jamila persisted. "I mean --" A pink tinge suffused her cheeks "-- I'd tell you."

Lily snorted. "Believe me, when the time comes that I do fancy someone, you'll be the first -- and, most likely, the last -- to know. Satisfied?"

"Yes," said Jamila. She selected a chocolate-covered coffee bean and popping it into her rosebud mouth.

An almighty clattering arose from the other end of the dormitory. Jamila and Lily shared long-suffering smiles.

"Hello Sarah, Patty," called Lily.

"Hey, bitches!" bellowed Sarah, striding down between the beds with the clang of steel-capped boots against floorboards. "What delightful sins have you been committing in my absence?"

Sarah had been brought up by strict Catholic Muggle parents, who had been horrified to learn that their daughter was a witch. Sarah had thought it the greatest joke ever. She thought most things were.

Patty trailed after her, smiling her nervous smile. Lily often felt sorry for Patty, although she felt fed up with her more often. Patty thought she was ugly, which was silly, and that she was fat -- but she was only a little pudgy, and had nothing like Sarah's momentous height or girth -- and also that everyone hated her when in fact people only tended to become weary of her endless self-flagellation.

Lily would have thought that having a boyfriend would have bolstered Patty's opinion of herself a bit, but then again, her boyfriend was Peter Pettigrew. It couldn't be more obvious that both of them had taken what they could get and not what they really wanted. The annoying thing was, if Patty would only stand up straight and relax and smile more, she'd be an attractive girl. She probably could even have got Sirius Black -- not that that would have been an achievement of any great note, Lily reminded herself. Sirius Black was the school bicycle, and as such 'discerning,' if it appeared on the list of his attributes at all, would be at the very, very bottom and hitting bedrock.

"Oh, all of them," Lily answered Sarah's question. Sarah was as odd as two left shoes, but she was terminally cheerful. "Or at least, as many as we could fit into half-an-hour."

"You'd be surprised, eh, old chap?" said Sarah, winking and throwing herself onto her bed with a distinct creak of springs. "You doing some kind of Transfig essay, Evans?"

"Yes, why?" Lily felt rather surprised. Sarah didn't take Transfiguration and she rarely paid much attention to schoolwork in general, regarding it as something to be avoided whenever possible.

"Oh, Potter was reading it aloud to Black," Sarah tossed off carelessly, engrossed in untying her eighteen-hole bootlaces.

"What!" Lily jumped up, feeling herself go red with rage. She hated when that happened, because she looked like a walking tomato. Unsurprisingly, Potter was usually the basis of her vegetable-metamorphoses.

"Lilian, don't!" cried Jamila, knowing only too well the cutting arguments the Head Girl and Boy engaged in when there was no one around to hold Lily back. No one ever tried to hold James back, because it was generally accepted that his friends were prats -- Sirius -- or spineless -- Peter and Remus.

It was too late; Lily, her hair flying wild and free, had taken a dive for the stairs to the common room and was beyond all mortal aid.

Jamila sighed and looked glumly at her box of chocolates. Lily had eaten the last strawberry crème and Jamila wasn't due another box for a fortnight. She had no idea what she was going to use to smooth over Lily's ruffled feathers when she returned from her latest fracas with James.

"That Potter's a bit of a pill, isn't he?" remarked Sarah, apropos of nothing.

"If only," said Jamila. "Pills can be swallowed. Or crushed up and put in a glass of water to dissolve. Potter is nothing like so easy."

"What does Lily see in him, then?" Sarah wanted to know.

"Blinding, red rage, I believe," said Jamila, with a thin smile.

Sarah's brow wrinkled, but Jamila had resumed brushing her hair and as such would be incommunicado to anyone but Lily for a good hour. Sarah wondered if she'd got the wrong end of the stick, which was entirely possible.

Shrugging, she returned to the chaotic complexity that was her bootlaces.

* * *

Lily stormed into the common room and caught Potter red-handed. He was in declaiming mode, but he couldn't have been at it for very long, given the brevity of Lily's essay. All the same, he appeared to be milking every word for all its worth.

"Red alert," she heard Black mutter. Potter immediately dropped his arms and stuck the hand holding her essay behind his back, adopting an expression of meek innocence which, given that even in the womb Potter had been neither meek nor innocent, was in essence a bleak failure.

Lily chewed her lip to prevent herself from spewing out all the obscenities that were clamouring in her brain in front of the first-years.

"Nice essay, Evans," said Potter in earnest tones. "I mean, you're clearly valuing quality over quantity --"

Lily's teeth were leaving indents in the insides of her cheeks as she strode up to Potter, reached around behind him and ripped the parchment from his hands. She was shaking with suppressed rage.

"You know, Evans," Potter was continuing, clearly because he harboured some sort of suicidal tendency, "I could -- er -- give you a hand with that if you want --"

Black sniggered. That, for Lily, was the last straw. She could have handled the situation with something approaching grace, and at least in silence, if Black hadn't made her absolutely certain that they were both mobbing her up.

"Potter," said Lily, in a voice that almost squeaked with anger and probably, if not examined too closely, passed for sweet, "I do not want a hand from you. I do not want anything from you. In fact, I would like it very much if you did not exist in my world at all. I told you at the beginning of the year that you were to confine your comments to me to matters pertaining to the Headship. I am at a loss to see what my essay has to do with that. I feel that it has nothing at all to do with it. Perhaps you need a reminder? Is some sort of memo in order?"

Her voice had scaled up as she spoke and at last she had to break off to catch her breath. She stood panting and glaring directly into his face; it was terribly annoying that he was exactly the same height as her, particularly as Lily was quite tall herself. It would have given her some small measure of satisfaction if the growth spurt Potter had been anticipating for years had never occurred, but the powers that be had refused to take pity on her.

"Um, no?" Potter ventured, going for the safe option.

"Excellent," said Lily, with a wide, false smile. "So you're clear, then. You are not to speak to me again, ever, under any circumstances, unless Dumbledore asks you to or you have a question for the Head Girl. Good."

Potter ruffled the back of his hair, looking uncertain. Lily hated when he did that and she hated the way his hazel eyes would go sort of opaque behind his glasses when he was around her. She hated him so much she could barely contain it and if she didn't leave now she wouldn't be able to keep the desire to smack him in the mouth under any sort of control.

"Er," he began, and Lily turned on her heel with a yelp of fury and hurried away.

* * *

James watched her leave in typical bemusement.

Sirius smirked at him from the sofa, on to which he'd thrown himself with no care for its current -- and now previous -- occupants. He'd taken to wearing Remus' jeans under his robes. Given the length of his legs, they gave him the appearance of a disturbingly attractive spider. He rustled the Daily Prophet sports pages and remarked, "That was smooth, mate."

"Oh, shut up," snapped James. "You were no help."

"Sorry, was I supposed to be?" said Sirius, making a moue of his mouth. James debated throwing something at him, but there was nothing to hand except Lily's desk and even Sirius' patented ducking skills would be put to the test by that one.

James flumped onto the sofa, on top of Sirius' legs. With a grunt of annoyance, Sirius drew them out and curled them underneath himself. James buried his messy head in his hands.

"What am I going to do?" he demanded, his words muffled by his fingers.

"Didn't quite catch that," said Sirius, yanking the horoscopes from under James' thigh.

"I said, what am I going to do?" yelled James. Sirius winced.

"Right, I'm here, not in Qualalumpur," he pointed out. "Also, I'm lost. Do about what, exactly?"

"Lily, you dolt!" exclaimed James. This earned him some rolled eyes from the assembled first-years. "What are you making faces for?" he directed to them. "Shouldn't you be in bed? Yes, you should. Skedaddle!"

With a few grumbles, they did his bidding, although not with as much alacrity as James could have desired.

"Now," he addressed Sirius, "you're basically the expert on girl's minds around here. Tell me, what I am I doing wrong?"

"Existing, I gather," Sirius suggested. At James' grimace, he added, "Look, I actually don't know that much about girls' minds, Prongs. Only their knickers and the getting into of. For psychology you need Moony. He knows all the theory," he finished with an unkind grin.

James walloped him, but not with much feeling. He was too distracted, although Sirius, being permanently cock-of-the-walk, surely deserved a good duffing-up at any given time.

"Where is Moony, then?" he asked. Sirius shrugged.

"The library," they chorused together. James shook his head. "If it was anyone else, I'd say he's shacking up with some girl between the stacks, but the only reason he ever takes girls there is to actually tutor them."

"Yes," agreed Sirius. He locked his hands behind his head and whacked James in the face with his elbow. "He's such a disgrace. He's learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from me."

"On the contrary, there's not much to learn and I've memorised it," a dry voice came from behind them. Sirius whirled around with a guilty expression, hitting James a second clout. James groaned quietly.

"Yes," Remus confirmed, sitting in an armchair and picking at his holey woollen jumper. He always changed out of his robes after class ended, although he'd soon have to take up wearing them full-time unless Sirius deigned to return some of his jeans to him. "You have about one tenet, Sirius Black -- treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen, right?" His quiet tones leant something of his innate revulsion to the phrase, but not quite enough to affect Sirius in any lasting way.

"Well ... it works," Sirius defended himself.

"It does," Remus allowed. "That is one of the sad things about humanity, I think."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd --" began Sirius, but James, irritable enough about eating Sirius' elbow twice, wasn't about to let him start casting aspersions on his and Remus' virginity.

"Quality, not quantity," he interrupted in a fierce voice.

Sirius rolled his eyes, but wisely forbore to say anything. He wasn't the most sensitive of beings, but even he knew that there were some buttons you just didn't push. At least, not too often.

"Anyone seen Wormtail?" he asked instead.

"Is he with Patricia, maybe?" suggested Remus.

"Nah, I saw her going upstairs before -- erm, Lily came down." James' voice trailed off to a mumble, but Remus' shrewd eyes had already spotted his blush.

"What did you do this time, James?" he sighed.

"What do you mean? How do you know I did anything?" James protested.

"Call it an educated guess," said Remus, the sides of his mouth twitching. "So Lily came down and you ignored her entirely, is it?"

"Not quite," James muttered. "She ..."

"She told him to bugger off in no uncertain terms," Sirius supplied helpfully.

"Well, she didn't put it like that," James objected.

"That was the nub and gist of it, mate," said Sirius, studying his knuckles.

James harrumphed. "You get the picture, Moony. Sirius said I should ask you what I'm doing wrong. And don't say existing. That's taken."

"I wasn't going to," Remus assured him, although his brown eyes were glinting suspiciously. "To be honest, James, everything you've ever said to Lily has been the wrong thing to say --"

"What, everything?"

"How do I put this?" said Remus. "Yes. You spent the first four years of school mocking everything she said, did, wore and wrote, and then you spent the next two fawning over her in a what is a most despicable manner, really. The beginning notwithstanding, a girl like Lily doesn't want to be treated like she's some kind of fragile doll."

"Not like Vakil, eh?" Sirius butted in, waggling his eyebrows.

"Exactly,' said Remus, sounding unperturbed. "All girls are different, naturally, but there are some general types. Lily's fiercely independent. She probably wants to be treated as an equal, if not a superior. And, James, you bought her a teddy bear last Valentine's Day."

"It was a nice teddy bear," said James defensively.

Remus struggled visibly. "Yes, it was," he managed at last. "And it would have been perfect, if Lily was five. But she's not. Do you get what I'm driving at, here?"

James shook his head. "Um. Bigger teddy bears?"

"No!" exclaimed Remus. "Forget teddy bears altogether. Pretend they were never invented. Look, this is how it is: You don't have the right to buy Lily anything. You aren't her boyfriend and she doesn't fancy you. I'd hazard a guess that she was pretty insulted when you bought her that."

"I wouldn't even have to guess." Sirius sniggered. "I saw her face that morning."

Remus shook his head at Sirius. James was looking utterly woebegone.

"Perhaps you should just move on, James," said Remus. "This crush has gone critical. I think you need to re-evaluate why you fancy her in the first place. Because in the first place, back at the very start, you seemed to hate her guts. Why else would you torment her so?"

James bit his lip.

"Have a bit of a think," said Remus in a kind voice. "There's plenty of girls in Hogwarts who don't have such close and personal knowledge of what an utter bastard you can be. Better to start small, eh?"

"Yes, do. I'm tired of hanging around virgins all the time," complained Sirius. "It might be -- catching, or something."

"Sirius. Shut up."

"Yeah, shut up, Sirius," James echoed, scowling. "No one's stopping you from starting a club with Peter if we're cramping your style so much."

"Oh, please," said Sirius, but they noticed that he didn't make any off-colour comments for the rest of the night.

To be continued ...