My Apology

Chapter 2

In my heart sent, my confession, my condolence

You’re indefinite, you’re incompetent, inconsiderate

You’re so childish.

I will push you out of what is real.

Out of my head.

You can sick and drown at your residence,

Of disappointments, are of yours to come.

So embrace them, oh my shallow one, today.

He was completely insufferable. He had always been like that, to Lily’s memory. Alright, well...perhaps she was exaggerating just a little...it took more than just knowing someone for Lily to hate them. They had to do something to her to bring about her more aggressive emotions. And of course, James Potter had done just that. He had claimed it was an accident, but she was smarter than that.

Lily would never forget the traumatizing experience in her fourth year. She had walked into her potions classroom confidently, as usual. The Potions professor, Professor Finch, didn’t like anyone and was especially hard on the Gryffindors. Lily’s logic was that if she did everything perfectly, she couldn’t get into trouble. She did all of her homework, studied before classes even if there wasn’t an exam to make sure that she could mix her potions correctly. She did everything within her power to appear tolerable to Professor Finch, and so far, she was succeeding.

On that particular day the students were to be handing in a fastidious essay on antidotes. They were only given a week to write the composition, and it had to be at least 4 rolls of parchment. Lily had spent every waking minute researching for her paper, leaving the last two days to write it. When it was finished, she was convinced that it was her best accomplishment yet. Any teacher in their right mind would have to award full marks...Professor Finch, however, was not in his right mind. Still, Lily was confident that she would do reasonably well.

She had turned in her essay with the rest of the class, and their lesson proceeded as usual. After a short lecture, the students were instructed to pair up and try to make their own antidote. Lily and Prudence went about mixing their potion as they were told, attempting to ignore the odd sour smell that the cauldron next to their own was emitting. The cauldron, of course, belonged to none other than James Potter and Sirius Black.

Professor Finch, who had been looking over the essays behind his desk, suddenly spoke up. “Miss Evans, is this some kind of joke?”

Lily looked up in surprise and terror. She had never been addressed by a teacher in this manner before, and it frightened her. “I-I’m sorry, Sir?” she stuttered.

“Your parchment, young lady,” the Professor held up the first of her 4 rolls of parchment. “Is entirely blank.”

Lily felt her jaw drop and her mouth opened and closed wordlessly. She felt her cheeks growing hot as every Gryffindor and Hufflepuff in the room looked at her with astonishment.

“But that—That’s impossible!” she finally heard herself exclaim. “I just re-read it before class!”

The Professors icy blue eyes bore into her. “I do not find this amusing in the least, Miss Evans. That will be 50 points from Gryffindor and a detention. I dare say that your marks on this essay-or should I say, lack there-of- will have a substantial effect on your grade.”

And that was how James Potter had been responsible for her first detention...And for Professor Finch’s unabashed hatred for her ever since.

Of course, she didn’t find this out until later in the week, when her detention was served with Mr. Potter himself. The pair had been instructed by Filch to polish all of the trophies in the Trophy Room by hand. This appeared to be Filch’s favorite punishment...Or perhaps he just couldn’t come up with anything more creative.

“I’m sorry about your essay,” James spoke up, the minute Filch had left the room.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Lily asked, concentrating on a plaque of Head Boys and Girls of Hogwarts.

“Well...” said James, somewhat sheepishly. “I think you accidentally used the disappearing ink that Sirius and I have been working on.”

Lily forgot the plaque momentarily and turned to stare at him in disbelief. “What?”

“I know it’s not very original, but we thought it might be funny to slip it into Snape’s bag,” he continued on, apparently not noticing the look of outrage on the redhead’s face. “I didn’t know until after you had been yelled at by Professor Finch. We were going to work on it that night, and when I went to look for it, I realized that I had misplaced it.”

“You...You...” Lily couldn’t seem to come up with any worthy insults, she was that angry. “You incompetent, sorry excuse for a wizard!”

James stared at her, stunned. Finally, his expression turned to one of indignation. “ I said I was sorry! It was an accident!”

Lily glared back at him with unmasked skepticism. “Yeah, right. Just like all of those dungbombs were an accident. Just like the time Severus Snape sneezed tadpoles after eating a tart you’d strategically placed on his plate at dinner, and spent the next week in the hospital wing. I’m sure that was an accident, too.”

James snickered at that memory.

Lily glowered at him.

“I swear, we didn’t mean to!” he exclaimed, after overcoming his fit of giggles.

But Lily wasn’t listening.

From that moment on, they had been enemies. Lily would never forgive him for sabotaging her grades, and her good name. Both of which she took very seriously. And James would never forgive her for not believing him, and for calling him a ‘sorry excuse for a wizard.’

Ever since then, Lily could not find one thing about James Potter that she could possibly like. She found it completely absurd that he practically had his own fan club. Sure, he was devilishly handsome, but that just made him even more intolerable. He was tall – very tall. Not as tall, however, as his notorious counterpart, Sirius. He was the captain of the Quidditch team, and had the body to show for it. His hair was black as a raven and always unkempt. He had warm, caramel-colored eyes framed by long, dark lashes. He was the proud owner of the best smile that Hogwarts had ever seen. It was enough to make any girl on the receiving end melt into a puddle at his feet. And they did—far too often.

Lily admitted that if she didn’t hate him, she would probably love him. Not that that was a problem. She would rather curse herself than be one of those disgusting puddle-girls.

Lily secured her now normal, deep red hair into a bun at the base of her neck. Confident that it was, in fact, exactly as it was before the shampoo incident, she made her way back to the busy common room.

She found Prudence intently watching a game of wizards chess being played by Sirius and another of their crowd, Remus Lupin. Lily had always had a soft spot for Remus. He had tired gray eyes, and always had something nice to say. He had never been anything but sweet to her, despite the pressures of his friend James. In fact, all three of James’ friends were nice to her. This thought made her smile, as she was sure it probably drove him insane.

Lily took a seat beside her friend, basking in the warmth of the fire. Both boys had pensive looks of concentration on their faces, and Lily was thankful for this uncharacteristic moment of quiet in the Gryffindor common room. She decided to take advantage of this time to read.

“Has anyone seen my book?” she asked a moment later, after fishing diligently through her bag. “It’s a book of Shakespeare.”

Sirius looked up at her, a puzzled expression upon his face. “Shake what?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Shakespeare,” she corrected. “He’s a famous Muggle writer.”

“Looking for this?” a smug voice said behind her.

Lily groaned. She knew that voice far too well. Turning around, she came face-to-face with a grinning James.

“Yes,” she said simply.

“You know, Evans,” James said, rifling through the pages. “Too much reading will rot your brain.”

Sighing, Lily stood up. “Hand over the book, Potter,” she demanded.

“You didn’t say please.”

Lily glared at him and swung for the book. James pulled it back, away from her. “Tut, tut, tut. That’s not very nice.”

James held the book high above his head. Much to high for Lily to possibly reach. She jumped up and down, grabbing for it, until she was red in the face. James just laughed at her pathetic attempt.

Finally, she gave up. “I loathe you,” she seethed, before turning on her heel toward the girls’ dormitory. After a few steps she felt something pelt her in the back of the head. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned around to glare at Potter once more. He just smiled at her, innocently.

“You are the most obnoxious person I have ever known,” she remarked, bending down to pick up her book.

“Oh, ouch,” James said, putting his hand over his heart. “That hurts.”

Lily chose to ignore him and made her way up to the dormitory alone. She knew that if she stayed down there any longer, there wouldn’t be a James Potter left to speak of.