Fall in Love With Me.

Act One. Part One.

a/n: well after a few years it appears i will never truly escape fanfiction writing.

Lily Evans is a beautiful woman, an elegant red head who knows what she wants in life and takes it; unfortunately, that's not James Potter. No matter how hard he tries, she just won't go for him, not even on a first date despite many pleas. James, ever the optimist, looks on the bright side.

"At least she doesn't hate me anymore, right, that's good. And friendship can lead to romance, right?"

"Oh Jamsie, you sweet stupid boy, it's about time we tell you about this," pause for effect, "she doesn't like you, mate, it's okay, you can cry on my shoulder, bring it in."

James dramatically rolls onto his back on his four-poster bed, groaning, "Sirius, have I ever told you that you're horrible."

Ever so graceful, Sirius exhales a cloud of smoke and starts coughing unattractively. Remus smiles and shakes his head while grabbing the cigarette from Sirius' writhing form.

"Surprisingly, he has a point, you've spent your whole time at school trying to get her and she hasn't budged."

James stares at Remus and back to Sirius who's drinking water as if his life depends on it, and then he directs his attention to the fourth body in the room. Peter just nods wearily in agreement with Remus.

"Wormtail, I cannot believe you aren't taking my side... This is truly eye opening for me,"

Under his breath, Remus mutters, "Finally."

"I now realize," James continues, raising his voice pointedly at Remus, "I must try even harder to get Lily to fall in love with me!"

He sits up and scrambles around his area for paper, a quill and ink. Of course, this will be used to plan his newest "Lily please love me" scheme.

"I must admit that your determination is admirable, Prongs." Sirius says with his signature bark of a laugh.

Remus takes in a breath of tar, shaking his head while Peter giggles.

"What's the nearest holiday?" he asked staring down at the parchment he found, and just as Wormtail begins to open his mouth, James cuts him off, turning back to his friends, "my lovely marauders, valentine's day is coming up, and I am going to make the most of our last valentines at Hogwarts!"

James' borderline insane smile is met with radio silence.

"Thoughts?" he pushes.

"Mate, there's about a month until valentine's day..." Peter points out.

James groans, "is there really no confidence for me?"

"Prongs, we support you completely and we always do, however ," Sirius sing-songs, "confidence is not a marauders guarantee."

"Says you, there's no situation you enter without unearned confidence, Pads." Remus teases, earning a pout and a sad puppy-dog face from Sirius.

"James, don't you have practice with McKinnon about now?" Peter interrupts.

James practically hops out of bed, "fuck, McKinnon's gonna have my head!"

James finds a lot of comfort on days like these, joking around with his friends with no homework on the weekend, even if they're just bullying him.

"You're the captain, just threaten to kick her off if she talks back." Sirius jokes earning a sock to the face from James and he's out of the room.

As James travels down the courtyard hallway, he sees a fuming figure pacing back and forth and he can basically hear the speech that awaits him.

' James Fleamont Potter, you told me to meet you for practice on Sunday at 5:30pm, but it's currently 7 fucking pm. If you're always going to be late, fucking schedule for later so I'm not waiting in the freezing January cold, you prat! ' yells imaginary McKinnon.

A shiver runs down his spine and he slows his pace, considering just turning around and hiding in his dorm room until she calms down.

"I need to speak to Sirius." an icy voice speaks softly.

Incredibly confused, when James turns his head, he's met with cold grey eyes.

"Huh?" James says stupidly.

Never in James' existence at Hogwarts has Regulus willingly spoken to him, actually, Regulus has never spoken to him at all. Once a young and naive James Potter tried to befriend him, hoping that he would be like his brother and that they would join hands and ride off into the sunset as best friends and the fifth marauder. No. Regulus stared at him as though he was the scum of the earth and quickly walked off. It left a huge dent in his tiny child pride and the teasing he endured that week was no help. Even so, James' pride recovered, and he instead used his energy into keeping Regulus away from Sirius, but there was never much of a need for that.

"I need to speak to Sirius." he repeated without falter.

"Um, why?"

"It's none of your concern, where is he?" the younger boy demanded as if it was his birthright.

James wasn't going to take it, why should he give into Regulus' nasty attitude? For all he knows this is some sort of sick trick from his family to hurt Sirius and he would never forgive himself for being the idiot who just let it happen.

Straightening his back, he replied with a firm, "It's none of your concern."

Now, it was Regulus' turn to look confused, though it's only a split second, but James caught it and relished in his break of character.

"If anything, the location of my own brother is more of my concern than it is yours, Potter." he sneers.

"I don't care, not unless I hear a good reason for why you should speak to him, so unless you're ready to fess up, I have an angry friend to attend to." and without a second look, James walks up to an even angrier Marlene and accepts his fate.