The Trouble With Being Perfect

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved. - W. SomersetMaugham

On the Lily-scene, I laid low for the rest of the year. I was regrouping, recovering my losses, and forming new strategies. I had decided things just weren't going to work out for us this year, so I had a bit of fun with my pals, the usual wreaking of havoc and such. Since Remus was a Prefect, we got to do even more bad stuff. You might think the opposite, but he is so scared we're going to suddenly decide he's unfit company, that he'll let us go to extremes before trying to rein us in. He's really the most sensible of the four of us.

You see, Remus isn't like every student at Hogwarts, but then again, neither am I, but that doesn't make me a half-animal. Well, maybe it does, but only in certain places. I am James, hear me roar.

Back on subject, my dear friend Remus Lupin is a werewolf. That's right, I didn't stutter, werewolf. He's the kindest of people imaginable, terribly smart, scarily cunning, but kind. His entire life he has been rejected because of his condition, so when he came to Hogwarts, he was bowled over when I said I would be his friend. How could I not? He looked so lost and alone sitting in his compartment by himself, reading a book, his robes impeccably clean and starched, but showing wear. When I first sat with him, Sirius dragging along looking obnoxious, he wouldn't talk to us, until I started telling him about something silly we had done, and he finally opened up. Now, Remus goes out of his way to be friendly and outgoing to knock people away from his werewolf tracks.

We were all a little worried at the time about Prefect Evans catching on to Remus's problem. There are certain distinctive signs of a werewolf, even in human form. His eyes have this hint of wolfishness that can sometimes be scary, and his index fingers are abnormally long. Remus prowls around the tower late at night very often, he's an incurable insomniac, but so is half the population. What we're really nervous about though is her connecting his monthly illnesses, but he's disgustingly healthy the rest of the time. Lily actually kind of likes him, at least more than she does me, which makes us wonder how much notice she's taking.

Of course, the four of us as a team have things at stake if she makes the connection, not just Remus. He has the most to lose, but we're animagis, and could notice our absences on the full moons. I'm a stag, Sirius is a dog, and Peter a rat. We run around with Remus on the nights he is forced to change. We kind of keep him in line. When we were younger, he used to hope he could find the wolf that bit him, but he gave up long ago. I'm sorry for that, something died in Remus when that dream withered.

He withdrew from some of the lightheartedness that we Marauders participated in, but he was still an invaluable ally, to me, at least. I know Remus would do anything for me because I was his first friend. The four of us stuck through thick and thin and rode the waves of our first five years at Hogwarts together without a rift between us. Things started changing though. We all went home for the summer, and in 1970's magical Britain, once you left Hogwarts,it wasn't guaranteed you would see the next sunrise.

*~*~*

Things went well for me, though, but I can't say the same thing for Sirius.

He's always had problems with his family; they are singularly cruel. They are the most arrogant, obnoxious, high-handed family imaginable. They make the Malfoys look like half-bloods. The Blacks are whole-heartedly against Muggle-born acceptance into Hogwarts, Pureblood marriages with anyone besides a Pureblood, and anything Muggle. They really are ridiculous. Sirius is the sort of person that rebels against anyone who tries to place limits on him, the Blacks being the first to do so. He grinded his teeth and mentally and physically counted the hours until he got out of there each summer.

So really, it was no surprise when he showed up the first day of vacation with two trunks and a pillow with a hopeful smile. "Hey, Prongs, do you think I could stay with you guys for awhile?"

I said yes of course, and so did my parents. Awhile turned into the entire summer, Sirius officially ran away from home. He received notification of being disowned, and he didn't seem to care in the least, but I knew deep inside, he flinched.

Having Sirius live with me was bloody awesome! I'm an only child, and Sirius is closer to me than any sibling ever could have been. It was amazingly convenient to have him here already, and not worry about letting his parents know he would be staying over. We had a great time perfecting The Marauder's Map, planning pranks, and just doing our normal stuff. I tried to come up with a solution for my Lily Situation as I was calling it, and everyone in the house knew my dilemma.

Sirius tried to give me suggestions and make plans. My dad told me how he 'courted' Mum. My mother even asked 'how things were going with my young lady'.

How bleeding humiliating.

My pride was salved, though, when I was given my score for my OWLs. I had received an Oustanding on all of them except for Divination, but who wanted to take that floozy class anyway? I didn't really know what I wanted to do after Hogwarts, so I still had a wide-open path. I had considered everything, subsequently crossing it off my list. Mum wrote textbooks and Dad works the experimental charms department at the Ministry. He is forever trying new things at home too. Even Hubert the Horrid, our family ghost, tried to persuade him not to, but it was all in vain. The point is, though, I had no idea what to do with my life. All I really wanted was to finally snog Lily Evans. I will die a happy boy as long as I achieve that goal

Nothing of consequence really happened that summer, wait, hold that, we're talking about me...everything was of consequence. We all know the world secretly revolves around me.

Let's just say that nothing unusual in my life happened, other than the formation of Project Lily.

Project Lily went something like this: I would devote every spare minute into somehow making her fall madly in love with me. I started owling her every morning, I sent Tituba, my own owl, off at four every morning so that she would arrive at Lily's window at approximately nine am.

Lily Evans never owled me back. Sirius ran his big mouth off in front of my parents, saying she was ignoring me, and my dad looked positively pityingly at me. "Maybe Tituba got lost," he said with a smile. Dad always smiled at my owl's name, he thinks I named her after something lewd, but she's really named after the black slave who started the Salem witch burnings. I am an intellectual.

Okay, so nothing besides another rejection by Prefect Lily Evans made my summer out of the ordinary. I really need to find out her middle name.

*~*~*

My next traumatizing experience concerning the girl of my dreams happened on September first. I had decided to wait for her at the barrier, to help her with her trunk and such. My parents were standing a ways back wanting to see Lily, and Sirius was off to find Peter and Remus. Even that went wrong. For the golden boy of Hogwarts, I have a lot of bad luck. I really do. I practically want to cry when I remember this particular occasion, the witnessing of it by my parents making a bad situation humiliating.

Lily walked through the barrier and she paused, looking around for her friends. Seeing this, I hurried toward her, at the time forgetting what I had practiced saying, instead, I said, "Hi, Evans, how was your summer?"

She turned to look me up and down, leaning against her cart idly. She saw the spot of egg yolk on my robes, I could tell it, her eyes just fastened on my left side of my stomach and then she sneered, "For someone who thinks themselves a god, you're not so up on cleanliness, are you?"

She made it sound like I didn't bathe! "I just-."

"Why are you even talking to me? I'm sure anything that your simple mind processed over the summer was in one of those thousands of letters."

Now that was unnecessarily cruel. "I-."

"I hope you enjoy tormenting me, because I really find it unamusing, so one of us had better get a kick out of it."

"Torment?" I asked in a rather strangled voice, even to my own ears, and I nervously ran a hand through my hair. She has that effect on me. If possible, she looked even more disgusted.

"Grow up."

Lily Evans stalked off, apparently furious with me, and I had no idea what I had done wrong. I turned to look at my parents, and I saw it all in their faces before they carefully schooled their expressions: Lily Evans was way out of my league. Even my parents thought it, and I am their little pride and joy, the light of their lives, their reason for existing. I felt my face turn a bright red, even to my ears, but I still had my pride. I refused to hang my head like Remus would have, or stuff my hands in my pockets like Sirius, or start stuttering like Peter. I was James Potter and whether Prefect Evans recognized it or not, I was perfect. I kicked my chin up a notch and looked at my parents squarely. "I think she's a bit sore at me right now."

"I'm sure she'll come around after she's been subjected to a few weeks of that Potter charm," Dad said brightly.

Then Mum came and gave me a huge hug, "Nobody can resist my beautiful little boy."

Now that was entirely unnecessary.

Quite simply, nothing got better from there concerning Lily. Every damn aspect of my perfect life was just sparkling except for Lily. And the very worst part was that I just couldn't let her go. I saw her every single day, and every single day she just seemed to grow brighter and brighter until it hurt to look at her. Lily was so different from everyone else at Hogwarts. She seemed deeper, like everything here was a trivial matter and that there was something better waiting for her, and only she knew about it.

From watching her that year, I learned a lot about Lily Evans. I learned that she considered most of the school, myself included, shallow creatures who didn't know what was good for them. I learned she didn't like most of the people at the school, and that she didn't really care a whole lot about what they thought. But everyone just gravitated to Lily, even though she was terrible at times, because she seemed to scream of something beyond all of us.

I watched as she drew more and more people into her small group of friends. Sometimes she sat by herself, though, and wouldn't let anybody near her. When that happened, I wondered if she was really as happy as she always seemed, or if it was all an act.

Then, her melancholy would fade as soon as it had come, and she would be her normal self again. I liked watching her and listening to her. She seldom grated on my nerves the way other girls do. I absolutely abhor the way some of them think they're really cute, so they act like a complete moron. Really! Personally, I find a conversation with someone who doesn't giggle when I blink rather attractive.

To me, Lily was everything perfect in the world. To understand that, you have to realize that there's not a whole lot going right at the moment. A wizard, Voldemort, is reputed to be the next Gindelwald, and everyone is running scared at the moment. Nothing was done to leash him in the beginning, and he's rapidly running out of control. He doesn't like Muggles or anything to do with them. He and his little group, called Death Eaters, regularly kill and torture Muggle-borns. That makes me scared for Lily, she's a Muggle-born, but you wouldn't know it. Sometimes, those eleven years in the beginning completely foils their adaptation into the wizarding world, but not Lily. She is like a fish in water here. She's adept in my world, and I'm very glad. I feel proud watching her even though I know I have nothing to do with her success. She's at the top of all of her classes, smarter than most of the Purebloods.

Definitely smarter than Sirius.

He nearly got us all killed the end of that year. I almost died without snogging Lily.

As mentioned above, Remus is a werewolf and transforms on full moons, that's a given. Sirius, our terribly insane friend, really lost his grip on humanity for a day or so, leading him to do something absolutely horrifying. He led a Hogwarts student into Remus's lair. On purpose.

Sirius is the best of people until his family is drawn into the situation. The Blacks are a constant tender rib for my friend, and there is someone who absolutely loves to bring them into mention: Severus Snape.

You didn't really think that lake scene would be the last of him, did you?

This time, though, nothing was my fault, and I actually think I rose a bit in Lily's eyes. I progressed from the scum that clings to the scum on the bottom of your shoe to the original scum. Thank God.

It was just a bit of rash retaliation on Sirius's part...retaliation for years of gibes and barbs from Snape and everyone in Slytherin. He casually let it slip about the entrance to Remus's transformation place, The Whomping Willow, and let the inborn desire of Snape's to see others miserable do the rest. I caught him before he got in, though, and dragged him away. That entire night was a mess. Remus got out, and I had to help Sirius corral him again, and then I had to deal with Sirius, not to mention an unconscious Snape. I didn't have my wand; I dropped it somewhere, so I had to drag him up to the castle. Lily was in the entrance hall with a few friends when I opened the incredibly heavy door.

She thought I had done it for a minute. Needless to say, she yelled. Somehow, I managed to explain that I had merely found him and brought him back, and I could see her eyes widening as she looked between me and Snivellus, as if to make sure that really was Severus Snape I was rescuing. "I...Well...You'd better take him to the infirmary, don't you think, Potter?"

I'm buff, I'll be the first to admit, but there was no way in the ninth level of hell I could drag him up half a dozen flights of stairs. Never be deceived, Snape is solid. I had to ask for help. God, did I hate that. "Can I use your wand? I don't have mine."

"Do you expect me to believe you saved him without you wand?"

I could see her ready to pick me apart. I just had to say it. "I could tell you how I did it on a Hogsmeade day." Did I just say that? Oh, shit, I did! Holy, God, I really blew it again!

"There is nothing you could tell me that I want to know that bad, believe me." Lily levitated Snape and stormed off without another word to me. Let's just say I wasn't surprised by this behavior, I was used to it by now, itwas normal Lily stuff.

Somehow, that night worked itself out okay. Sirius got in tremendous trouble, but he honestly deserved it, even I have to admit. A lot of our pranking died that night when we realized how serious one of them had turned out. It took several months, but Remus finally forgave Sirius. Peter never was quite the same, though, he always looked at Sirius warily, as if he was never sure what he would do next. As for Sirius, I could tell that he felt the full impact of his actions. He had never looked quite as grave as when he apologized for the jeopardy he had put me in and asked if I hated him. Of course I told him no, there's nothing that could make me hate any of the Marauders. Snape was forced not to tell by Dumbledore. If anyone else found out, Snape would be expelled, and that was all there was to that.

Except for Lily.

I could see the questioning glances she had now and then, and I knew that her not knowing everything that had happened was like an acidic potion dripping on her nervous. She was curious about me. Okay, so not technically about me, per say, but still, it was a start. Through an entire year, one thing hadn't changed.

Lily Evans still fascinated me.

I still had to have her.