Chance

***

Chance

Chapter one

By duva

***

Sometimes, I really don't get the way people think. Really, I mean that. Two times in my life, I have saved someone else's, and what did that do?

Make them dislike me.

Now, call me naive, but I was under the impression that saving someone's life was going to earn you at least a "thank you". But not in my case, apparently.

The first person I saved from a premature death was Lily Evans. Way back when I could still talk to her without being scared out of my mind.

She was The One, you see. I would look at her, and all the other girls would just... pale. But this occurred before that. Back when I still thought girls were worse than vermin. More precisely, our second year.

It had all been a very stupid idea to begin with. I can't remember whose stupid idea, but it was probably Sirius's. He had a certain knack for stupid ideas. Anyway, someone had come up with the clever idea of sneaking out onto the roof, with the school brooms, to have a friendly little tournament of Swivenhodge. Gryffindor first years versus Gryffindor second years.

We should have realised right away that it wasn't a good idea. To start with, we didn't have a hedge to play over. The solution? Make the people who were not currently playing act as one. And yet more stupid - we didn't have a decent ball to play with. So we'd used a Bludger instead.

You can all see where I'm going with this, can't you?

She was lucky I was the one who was currently on a broom, whopping some poor first year's butt, because I'm not sure anyone else would have been able to catch her in time. She hadn't been too happy when I informed her of this, though. In fact, I think her exact words were "insufferable big-head".

Thinking about it, that could have been the moment she stopped being worse than vermin and became The One. But that doesn't really matter, does it?

The second person I saved was someone far less likeable. So were the circumstances.

*

Looking back on it, I saw it as a breaking point. Our lives had all changed that day. Innocence had been lost, friendships had been strained.

It had made us grow up.

Funny, I thought to myself, that it had only been a few months ago.

It had done more than just make us grow up; it had forced us to grow up. A stupid prank, a rash statement, and it had nearly ended in tragedy. Of course it had changed us.

Peter had stopped blindly following me and Sirius around. No longer blind with admiration, he would look upon us as we really were, complete with all of our faults.

Remus had learnt how to put his foot down. He was no longer afraid to tell us off when he thought we were going too far. It had taken him quite a while to forgive Sirius, not to mention the time it had taken him to forgive himself.

Sirius had wallowed in guilt for a long time, wondering what would have happened if no one had stepped in. He had become less reckless, considering the consequences more than he had before. Of course, this didn't mean much, as he was still about twice as rash as a normal person, but still. It was something.

And I had realised, maybe for the first time, that I wasn't invincible. That even though I might not always agree with certain people, their opinions still counted and they should be respected.

Yes, I thought, sitting in the dark, deserted Common Room, on a late evening at the end of June. I had grown up. When I looked back upon the person I had been before, I was ashamed. Despite all of my regrets for the incident ever happening at all... I was kind of glad that it had. That something had made us all realise exactly just how full of ourselves we had been.

I was glad that I wasn't the person I had been before.

*

Who had I been before then, you ask. Well... I was still the person I had always been. James Potter, born and raised outside of Nottingham, an only child, somewhat spoiled by my loving parents. Someone with a head full of way too messy black hair and terribly bad eyesight. A proud Gryffindor who would do anything for his friends.

Unfortunately, I had also been a bit of an idiot.

I'm quite willing to admit this. Up until the middle of my sixth year, I had been a complete moron. I don't really like talking about it; I'm not proud of it, after all.

In fact, I'm ashamed of it.

I had been too sure of myself. Too proud of my talents, too full of myself.

Way too arrogant.

And so had Sirius. Now, don't get me wrong. Sirius Black is my best friend in the entire world. He's closer to me than I suspect most brothers are. But, let's face it, he had been arrogant too. Arrogant and angry. Not a good combination.

Sirius and I met way back in our first year. Before the first year had even started, in fact. I don't know why, but we just clicked instantly. Sometimes that happens. It was the same thing with Lily Evans.

Unfortunately, in that case the clicking seemed to be pretty one-sided. But that's not the point here. After all, I'm talking about Sirius, not Lily. It's just that she has a sneaky way of showing up in the midst of my thoughts, no matter what they originally were about. Now, where was I?

Ah, yes. Sirius and I. Instant connection. Best friends and all of that jazz. We were alike in many ways; both of us pure-bloods, both of us with a good head for learning, both of us too sure of our abilities. However, his background was very different from mine. While I came from a loving home with encouraging parents, his was a home filled with insults and disparagements.

It had left him angry. Angry with his parents, angry with himself, angry with the world. I think maybe that was why he chose to believe in himself so much: no one else really would. Either way, he had a lot of anger built up inside of him. And he had never been one to think through the consequences of his actions.

Remus Lupin was almost the exact opposite of Sirius. We had befriended him a few weeks into our first year, despite his initial shyness. He was cool and logical, and far from being arrogant, he thought way too little of himself.

He also happened to be a werewolf.

Now, he couldn't exactly help this, could he? He had been bitten as a very small boy, and he lived in constant regret of the fact that he had been so reckless.

You know, speaking of reckless, that really ought to have been Sirius's middle name. But sometimes his recklessness had been a good thing. Without it, we probably would never have become Animagi. Me, Sirius and Peter Pettigrew.

Peter was the last one out of the group that I became friends with. If Remus was shy, it was nothing compared to Peter. Still, once we got him talking, he turned out to be someone who would always listen to what you had to say. Maybe he wasn't very independent, but he was a good friend.

Ah, what a group we were.

By now, you're probably wondering what all of this has to do with the second time I saved someone's life, right?I'm getting to it.

It had happened on a cold night in the early November of our sixth year. The full moon had been up; Remus had already been tucked away safely in the Shrieking Shack, we were to join him later that night, and Sirius had just had a particularly nasty fight with his younger brother, Regulus. On his way back to the Gryffindor tower, he had run into his least favourite person. At school, at least - I'm pretty sure his mother was his least favourite person in the world. Either way, he had run into someone he'd rather have avoided. Especially at that moment.

Severus Snape, with his greasy hair and obsession with the Dark Arts. Our sworn enemy. And he had asked Sirius where Remus was. He must have been on to something by then; how could he not have been, having read all of those Dark Arts books? And Sirius, in his anger, had told Snape how to find out for himself.

When he came back and told us what he had done, I had reacted instantly. Now, don't misunderstand. It wasn't that I was all that eager to risk my life for old Snivellus, though I certainly didn't want him dead, however much I despised him. Mostly, it was for the sake of my friends.

So, I had caught up with him, and I had rescued him. When I'd gotten back to the Gryffindor tower, Snape had already told Dumbledore about what had happened, and Sirius's actions had caught up with him, and he had been sitting, pale and trembling, in an armchair right by the door, waiting for me.

A lot was said that night. Even more was said during the days that followed. Sirius was given enough detention to last him all through the year, and an official reprimand was put in his record. As for Remus, he was disgusted with himself for what could have happened, and handed in his prefect's badge the next evening.

Guess who they gave it to?

*

Of course, some things never changed. I still loathed Severus Snape, and the feeling was still mutual, now more than ever. I chuckled silently to myself as I stared into the flickering flames. Funny how saving someone's life would make that someone despise you even more. Soft footsteps from behind made me turn my head. My heart skipped a beat when I saw who it was.

'What are you doing -' a soft female voice asked, falling silent as I turned around. 'Oh. It's you,' she said in a harder tone.

I tried to smile, but somehow my mind would never quite work the way I wanted it to around her. It hadn't for the longest of times; I could hardly even remember a time when I had been able to talk to her without a nervous flutter in my stomach. Not her, not witty, elegant, charming, intelligent, compassionate, beautiful Lily Evans. I always made a fool out of myself around her.

'What are you doing up, Potter?' she asked in the same tone. I shrugged.

'Just thinking.'

'About yourself?' she asked, rather harshly, and I chuckled again.

'Yes, actually.'

She shook her head. 'Figures.'I shrugged again. 'You should be in bed, you know,' she added. 'The train leaves early tomorrow.'

*

The train, yes. It was the last day of term, and we were all going home over the summer. I never really liked the train ride. I wouldn't admit it to anyone, but I always did get a bit travel-sick on it. There wasn't much to be done about that, however, and the next day, I boarded the train along with everyone else. It was my first train ride as a prefect, and although it did have certain good points (like getting to sit in the same compartment as Lily Evans, who was the other Gryffindor prefect in our year, for over an hour), I still much preferred travelling with my friends.

So, after listening to the Head Boy drone on and on and on (what was there to talk about? All we had to do was to make sure that no one caused mayhem on the train ride, thatshould be easy enough to understand, right? I think he just liked the sound of his own voice. Or maybe he was just making the most out of his last duty as Head Boy.) I went back to my friends, who were sitting in a compartment near the end of the train, apparently playing Exploding Snap.

'Hey,' I said as I entered, sitting down next to Sirius.

'Prefect meeting fun?' Remus asked. I shrugged, and he laughed a little. 'Yeah, I know what you mean,' he said.

'Never mind boring old prefect meetings, are you ready for an entire summer with the one and only me?' Sirius asked, grinning. I shook my head. Sirius was coming home with me. He had shown up at our doorstep on Christmas Eve in our fifth year, carrying what looked like most of his possessions, and had refused to go back home. I can't say that I blamed him. I wouldn't have wanted to live in his house, either. In fact, I was pretty much thrilled that he was now living with me. Being an only child could get very boring. However, I couldn't exactly tell him this. His head would most likely inflate so much that it risked exploding.

*

So, after a very uneventful train ride, we arrived in London, where my mum was waiting to pick us up. We went back to my house, and we did absolutely nothing. That's what you're supposed to do on your summer holidays, after all. Sure, we did some homework, played some Quidditch, caused a little mayhem, but most of the time we just lazed around the house, doing whatever we felt like. In Sirius's case, this included a lot of working on the motorbike he had purchased the previous summer. He was trying to make it fly, or something equally intelligent. Told you he had a knack for stupid ideas. I mean, a flying motorbike? How was he supposed to ride that thing undetected? Anyway, while Sirius was working on said disaster waiting to happen - er, I mean, motorbike - I did a lot of thinking. Mostly about, you guessed it, Lily Evans.

Now, as I said, I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when Lily Evans became the object of my affection, for lack of a better term. I had known her since first year, naturally, as we were in both the same house and the same year. We had never really spent any time together, though, apart from classes - I had my friends, and she had hers. However, I had always liked her - she was always nice to everyone, and was just all around likeable. Then, sometime way back, I became very aware of the fact that she was also drop dead gorgeous. She had this deep, dark red hair past her shoulders, and the most brilliantly green eyes I had ever seen. Add that to a face like a Veela and a body to die for (er, not that I checked out her body or anything!) and you've got one seriously beautiful girl. From there, it just spiralled. I started getting this fuzzy feeling in my stomach whenever I saw her, and all I wanted was for her to notice me. Problem was, she didn't seem to. I mean, obviously she was aware of my existence, but she didn't seem to think of me as anything but a fellow student. So, I had to come up with ways to get her to notice me, naturally. Which brings me to problem number two.

I was an idiot around her. My mind just went blank whenever she was around, and all I could think about was that there had to be someway to get her to notice me, to see me as I saw her.

She had loathed me for my efforts.

Well, at least she had noticed me. But not in the way I would have wanted her to. Instead of making her like me, it had made her think of me as a pathetic, bullying little cretin. That wasn't exactly what I had aimed for. I mean, she could at least have given me a chance. I was fifteen, I didn't know how to impress girls! I tried in every way imaginable, but none of them seemed to impress her very much.

Now, this brings us up to the present time. To another thing that had changed in the last few months. I no longer wanted to prove myself to her, I didn't want to try to impress her.

I wanted her to like me for who I was.

Still, this was pretty hard, considering that a) she wouldn't talk to me if she could avoid it, and b) the fact that I still found myself at a complete loss for words whenever she actually would talk to me.

I had been thinking a lot about the subject lately. Long, sleepless nights spent in front of the Common Room fire, thinking of nothing but her. I had hoped that once summer started, and I got away from her, I would be able to get my mind off of her. However, it was already two weeks into the holidays, and no such luck yet. Something had to be done, because I was going quite insane. So, I had come up with a solution.

It was time to let go.

Unfortunately, my heart didn't quite agree with my head.

*

The whole letting go project lasted about a week. During that week, I spent half of my awake time thinking about her, and the other half trying not to. It was a hopeless situation. Obviously, the letting go was not happening. I couldn't stay in this... limbo, though. Either I had to let go, or get closer. And since plan A wasn't working, I really didn't see any solution but to try to get closer. I mean, I was a decent bloke, I had brains, I wasn't a total troll - there was no reason that she shouldn't like me. Well, maybe the part about me doing a lot of idiotic things to try to impress her, but come on! It was all for a good cause.

About three days into the planning of Plan B, Sirius figured out what I was doing. It didn't matter that I tried to tell him that I was not thinking about Lily Evans - he always could see right through me.

'Poor, love-sick Prongs,' he said dramatically, flipping himself down on my bed, motor grease all over his clothes.

'Shut up,' I mumbled, going all red. Great. An idiot covering my sheets in grease was going to have a laugh at my expense.

Sirius looked at me, tilting his head a little to the side. 'I wasn't teasing you, James,' he said without a trace of humour on his face. 'I hope you know by now that I wouldn't do that. I don't want you to feel as though you can't tell me about this.'

He was right, of course. After all, he was closer than a brother to me. He had, naturally, known about my infatuation since maybe before even I did, but he had never really mentioned it, apart from little remarks that never failed to make me blush. Sure, Sirius was a joker, but he could also be very serious, and he would never have done anything to hurt me or any of our other friends - he was fearfully loyal.

He also happened to have more experience in the female field than I did. I mean, sure, I had snoggeda few girls, but nothing more serious than that, despite what certain rumours might say. And Sirius... well, Sirius hadn't particularly done a lot more than snogging, either, but he had snoggeda whole of a lot more girls than I had. More than most people our age, I would say. I couldn't really say I blamed him - I mean, girls practically threw themselves at his feet. Even I, as a very straight male, could see that Sirius was pretty damn good-looking.

Anyway, all discussions of Sirius's hotness aside, he had helped me come up with a plan. The thing was,I didn't really know all that much about Lily Evans. I knew that she was Muggle-born, that her favourite subject was Charms, that she liked reading thick books and that she had a strong sense of justice, but I really didn't know what she liked doing in her spare time, what her taste in potential love interests were, or, horror, if she had a boyfriend. So Sirius had told me to go for an old classic: ask one of her friends about it.

Now, we were on our holidays, which complicated matters a bit, and I simply could not wait the four weeks it would take us to get back to school. I had to owl someone. So far, Sirius could help me. But then I was on my own again, and I ran into some trouble.

I had no idea of who to ask.

I knew who her best friend was, of course. Ever since third year, she had been practically attached to the hip to a tall Ravenclaw named Dorcas Meadowes. Normally, I would just have asked her, seeing as how she was the closest one to Lily and all that. However, I somewhat knew Dorcas from the prefect meetings, and she always struck me as kind of... strict. She looked very professional, with short, immaculate dark brown hair, and I knew that she was one of the smartest witches at school, with excellent skills in Defence Against the Dark Arts. There were rumours flying around school that the Ministry had approached her even before we took our OWL's, practically begging her to be an Auror, and it wouldn't have surprised me one bit if that was true. She didn't seem like the kind of person who would help a poor lad win her best friend over; more like someone who would give me a good kick in the crotch for asking. It had to be one of her other friends.

Faye Oldham was a fellow Gryffindor and had been friends with Lily ever since first year, but she wasn't even a candidate. I had gone on a date with her once, in early sixth year, and it was horrendous. Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, in common. It would be too awkward asking her.

She was only friends with one other seventh year Gryffindor apart from Faye, and that was Catriona Bauer. Cat was on the Quidditch team with me, and while she was nice enough, she just seemed too... tomboy-ish, or something, to be of any assistance in this case.

Michaela McCullough, in Hufflepuff, was another of her close friends. I did not know Michaela beyond being able to attach a face to the name, and for the fact that she had spent a good deal of fifth year drooling over Sirius, only to realise that he really wasn't her type when she had finally worked up the courage to ask him out in sixth year. She seemed like someone who would understand my situation, though, and like someone who would take pity on a poor, lovesick chap like me. She was a definite option.

The other definite option was a sixth year Gryffindor named Sadie Alexander. I didn't know much about her either. Sirius knew her parents - they were, apparently, very much like his own, and Sadie was every bit as much of a "blood traitor" as he was - always a good sign. She always seemed like a nice, easy-going girl to me, and that was enough, really.

So, it had to be one of them. Michaela or Sadie. Now I only had to figure out what to say. I mean, I couldn't exactly write a letter saying, Hi, you don't really know me, but I fancy Lily Evans and I know that you're her friend so would you please consider letting me know if she has a boyfriend and if she doesn't, do you think there's any chance she'd ever go out with me? Love from James. I mean, they'd think I was a right nutter. It needed to be carefully planned.

After a few days of closely thinking through my options, I had decided to ask Sadie about it, and after a few more days, I had come up with something decent to write as well. Once I had gathered up my nerve, I had sent it. However, it had taken her almost two weeks to reply. During those two weeks, I had walked around feeling constantly nauseous, and even helping Sirius with his motorbike hadn't helped take my mind off it. The Thursday two weeks before school started, though, her reply had arrived, and I had torn it open with shaking fingers.

Potter, it said, thank you very much for your letter, it gave me a right old laugh. May I ask why you don't simply ask Lily herself? She probably wouldn't kill you, though I can't make any promises. However, since you asked nicely - no, she doesn't have a boyfriend. The rest you will have to find out on your own, though. Sincerely, S. Alexander.

Damn it. I knew I should have chosen Michaela McCullough.

She didn't have a boyfriend, though. That was a good thing. A very good thing. As for finding out the rest myself...I probably could do that. There was something else in the mail that day, you see. Something that greatly helped me in my pursuit of Lily Evans's affection. A shiny, gleaming Head Boy badge, accompanied by a letter telling me that she was none other than Head Girl.

***