Jealously Wears A Green Mask | Jily

6: I Hate Lilies

Not messing things up was something that Lily had always figured herself to be quite skilled at. She didn't, generally, mess up in her schoolwork, and didn't, generally, mess up her appearance. She did, sometimes, mess up the faces of those who attacked her, but that was a different matter. Her corner of the dormitory might, at first, appear chaotic, but to a trained eye, it was organized. No, Lily Evans was quite skilled at making things go her way, with the blaring recent exception of James Potter.

"But that," she enumerated to Marlene as the other girl twirled the last bit of Lily's hair into place, "should be quickly remedied."

Marlene, who admittedly was still very much floating on cloud nine, nodded patiently, despite having heard Lily's reassurances that the plan would work more than a few times over the passing hours. This was not her first rodeo, she knew Lily's pranking habits well and thus was used to hearing the redhead reassure herself over and over again that their plan was a good one. Though undeniably, Marlene acknowledged with a grimace, the stakes had never been quite this intense before...

Rather than saying as much, Marlene reached for her tube of London Witch Lipstick and tried to pull Lily's thoughts from their current spiral, "It's going to be fine Lil', James is at least ten percent more intelligent than Sirius, and even Sirius came around."

Lily smiled up at her friend, "Why yes he did; are you quite sure you don't want to go with Sirius himself? I could go with Remus, James would never have to know that that wasn't my intent all along... We could say that you were just covering for Remus and me... "

"No, no," Marlene said, still cheerful but shaking her head, "Firstoff, I have months and months to have Sirius to myself, what's one dance? Second, I put way too much effort into this to go with a second choice man, which leads me to the very unfortunate fact that I doubt James would view Remus as a real threat. Your friendship with Remus is far too established, and he sees you two together all the time. Even as messy as he is, I think James would know that he would've seen something up... plus Remus never lies to them."

"I know ... I just hate that I'm the reason that you and Sirius don't get to have a big romantic night..." Lily sighed and stood, pulling out her costume from where it was tucked on her bed, there was only an hour left till they needed to get moving in any case.

Grabbing her dress from its hiding spot atop the canopy of her bed, Marlene smiled at Lily, "C'mon Lil! What's a more perfect first date for me and Sirius than the prank of the decade!"

Sighing dramatically, Lily flung her arms wide, "I'm just not sure how you'll ever be able to top it! The best night of your relationship, your first date ... oh woe is your future! It's all downhill from here!"

She ducked from the pillow aimed with a beater's precision at her hair.

Across the tower from flying pillows, Remus sat upon a pile of fabrics that had once been his bed and rued the day he had ever decided that James Potter and Sirius Black appeared to be the right sort to befriend.

"I knew we should have cared more about our costumes from the get-go," Sirius was moaning from the center of the dormitory where, much to his chagrin, Peter was playing dress-form to Sirius's attempts at costume design. James, meanwhile, was tossing what appeared to be the entire contents of his wardrobe onto their floor. The house elves were going to go absolutely bonkers.

"Famous quidditch players?" Remus tossed out from his perch, waving his wand to summon Sirius and James' quidditch robes from the heap. Since they had been released early from classes that afternoon he had been throwing ideas out to the room at large and Sirius and James had been taking it in turns to reject them.