"What the BLOODY HELL happened?"

The day had begun like any other at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The sun was shining, the giant squid was basking on the surface of the Black Lake, and the Whomping Willow was swinging its branches at birds that flew too close. And yet, inside the castle, it had not taken long before the students of Gryffindor House had realized that something was very wrong.

Dorcas Meadowes was the first of the Gryffindor sixth year girls to have found her voice. The three of them were slack-jawed in the entrance hall, having pushed their way to the front of the crowd that was congregated there. Mary MacDonald spoke next, her voice coming out in a squeak.

"It—it has to be a mistake. . . . Right?"

As it was currently taking all of Lily Evans' strength to resist turning around and hexing the group of guffawing fifth year Slytherin boys that were huddled behind them, she didn't say anything. This was quite the last straw for her morning, Lily thought. She'd been up half the night revising for her Arithmancy test this morning, and all she'd wanted to do was just go into the Great Hall and pour herself the largest cup of coffee known to Wizardkind.

But of course the girls had had to stop in the entrance hall first and see what all the fuss was about. A crowd had gathered around the enormous hourglasses that held the point totals for each of the four Houses. Just last night, the Gryffindors had gone to bed secure in the knowledge that they held a comfortable lead for the House Cup. And yet, this morning—

"One hundred points," Dorcas moaned. She ran a hand through her short-cropped curls, her face absolutely desolate. "Well there goes all the points we earned for winning the Quidditch Cup. . ."

Lily shook her head in disbelief. "What absolute idiot went out and lost one hundred points in one night?"

"That's idiots, plural," drawled a voice right at Lily's ear, making her jump.

One of Lily's least-favorite people on the planet, Marcus Avery, was smirking from right behind her. He was accompanied by two of his fellow Slytherins, Adrian Mulciber and Severus Snape. She wasn't exactly wild about Mulciber, either, and as for Snape . . . well, things had been complicated between the two of them for quite some time.

"Piss off, Avery," said Lily, more out of habit than anything. She didn't have the strength to deal with Slytherins before her morning coffee.

"You heard her, move along," Dorcas snapped, shooing them with her arms.

But Avery's expression only grew more insufferable. "Just thought you'd be interested in knowing who's to blame for Gryffindor's fall from fortune," he said smoothly. "We were just on our way into the Great Hall to thank them, actually. . . ."

To Lily's dismay, a quick glance confirmed that the hourglass filled with emeralds was, indeed, the most full. With barely three weeks left until the end of term, things looked rather bleak for Gryffindor.

"We're not inter—" Dorcas began defiantly, but Mary had spoken up at the same time.

"Who?"

Lily and Dorcas both looked at her in exasperation, and Mary, seeming to have realized her mistake, winced. The three Slytherins exchanged a look of triumph, and Lily thought, not for the first time, about how satisfying it would be to punch Avery right in his smug face.

But it was not Avery who responded this time, but Snape. "Who else?" he spat, his face twisted in the look of disgust he reserved when talking about just two people. "The Gryffindor heroes, Potter and Black."

Of course. Lily thought she ought to have known. After all, if there was anyone capable of losing an immense amount of points in one go, it was certainly James Potter and Sirius Black. She could feel Snape's eyes on her, as though waiting for her to defend them as she'd done in the past, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, she very deliberately turned away from him, avoiding his gaze. She'd said all that she had to say to Severus Snape a long time ago.

"I'm going to KILL THEM!"

Dorcas had exploded without warning, and without another word, she stalked off in the direction of the Great Hall. Lily and Mary exchanged looks and immediately hurried after her. Lily could hear the Slytherins laughing behind them.

Dorcas was rather taller than both Lily and Mary, and her long legs carried her quickly into the Great Hall, leaving the two other girls to all but run after her to keep up. She didn't hesitate, but made her way directly to the middle of the Great Hall, where two dark-haired boys were sitting together eating breakfast.

Typically, the two boys made themselves the center of attention, talking and laughing so that half the Great Hall could hear them. So it was rather out of character, Lily thought, for them to be sitting on their own. They didn't seem to be talking at all, which was also surprising—Lily didn't think she'd known a moment at Hogwarts when at least one of them wasn't talking.

"WHAT did you lot do this time?" Dorcas all but screamed as she approached them.

James and Sirius both backed away from her with what looked like genuine alarm. Dorcas played Chaser alongside James on Gryffindor's Quidditch team, and usually got on with him quite well. The two exchanged brief looks before responding.

"Not sure what you mean, Meadowes," said Sirius briskly.

"You see, we've done a lot of things already just this morning," James explained.

"Put on clean socks—brushed our teeth—"

"—walked to the Great Hall—nearly got on a staircase that started moving and would've taken us all the way to the fourth floor corridor—close call, that—"

"—and now we're eating breakfast," Sirius concluded, waving his hand helpfully at the half-eaten breakfast plates before them. "I decided to go with the bacon this morning, but to be honest I'm sort of starting to wish I'd chosen the sausage—"

Lily didn't think she'd ever seen someone's head look more likely to explode. James and Sirius often had this effect on people, even under the best of circumstances. She shoved the ever more furious Dorcas in Mary's direction, knowing that Mary would be better at talking Dorcas back down, and decided she'd better take over.

"Listen, and I want you to keep in mind that I was up all night revising and haven't had my morning coffee yet, so think about that carefully before you respond. Were you, or were you not, the ones that lost Gryffindor one hundred points last night?"

James and Sirius exchanged looks once again. Even in her frustration and annoyance, Lily couldn't help but be impressed (not for the first time) at how much they were able to communicate without using a single word.

"Well, it really depends on your definition of—" Sirius began, but James cut him off.

"Yeah. It was us."

Lily thought her surprise must have shown on her face—she hadn't expected such a straight-forward response. Sirius looked annoyed, whether because James had confessed so quickly or because he'd interrupted Sirius mid-gag, it was hard to tell.

Dorcas, meanwhile, made an attempt to lunge at James, and was barely restrained by Mary. "How could you?" Dorcas howled, fighting desperately against Mary. "We just won the Quidditch Cup not two days ago, and you've already gone and blown our chances at the House Cup—"

"Yeah, thanks for that, Potter!" called out Avery, his smirk visible all the way across the Great Hall at the Slytherin table. Dorcas had been causing quite the scene, which was being watched with interest by quite a few students.

Sirius responded to the influx of jeers and catcalls from the Slytherins that followed Avery's words with a hand gesture that, quite luckily, went unseen by any of the teachers at the Head Table; otherwise, Lily was sure he would have lost Gryffindor even more House points.

"It's not like we set out to lose all those points," James said to Dorcas, his voice growing testy. "And besides, we'll win them back. It's not a huge deal."

Lily snorted, unable to stop herself. James turned on her with a hard look.

"Something funny, Evans?"

Severus Snape wasn't the only student at Hogwarts with whom Lily had a complicated relationship. Things between her and James had always been, well, rocky, to say the least. Still, she considered them friends. Lately, he'd taken to sitting near her in Transfiguration and trying to make her laugh during Professor McGonagall's lectures. He'd succeeded more times than she liked to admit, and every time had resulted in a stern admonishment from McGonagall. Meanwhile, he would look on with an innocent expression that fooled no one. Though she'd tried, Lily still hadn't been able to get him back; she'd actually been able to make him laugh a couple of times, but McGonagall had never called him out on it. Which wasn't actually that surprising, since James had always been McGonagall's favorite—he could get away with murder in her class as long as he kept winning Gryffindor the Quidditch Cup.

Speaking of the Quidditch Cup, Lily thought that she and James had almost had a moment during the party celebrating their win over the weekend. She'd been talking and laughing with Mary and Dorcas when he had pranced over, looking absolutely ridiculous with his Gryffindor tie wrapped around his head and an enormous Gryffindor flag draped over his shoulders like a cape. He'd grabbed her by both of her hands and started pulling her away towards an open space in front of the fireplace.

"Dance with me, Evans?"

"There's no music," she'd protested feebly, but it was hard to refuse him anything when he was looking so ridiculous and his glasses were gleaming in the firelight. So she'd let him spin her round and round until, completely dizzy and breathless with laughter, they'd finally both collapsed onto the nearest couch.

But she and James weren't always on such good terms, and the way that he was looking at her now, here in the Great Hall, made her feel like maybe now was one of those times.

She looked him defiantly in the eye. "It's just that I thought you were only capable of losing points, not winning them."

Sirius choked on his bacon. "Damn, Evans," he said, laughingly leaning across the table with his hand raised for a high-five. "That was cold."

She leaned forward to high-five him, still looking James dead in the eye. James raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"Oh please, Evans. I may be a Marauder, but I'm also a steadfast and loyal Gryffindor." He clasped one hand dramatically to his heart. "When my House is in need, I can rise to the occasion and—"

"—lose one hundred points in one go?" Lily interjected with a sweet smile.

Dorcas and Mary both laughed; Lily was glad to see that Dorcas was no longer quite so homicidal.

Meanwhile, James had narrowed his eyes in obvious annoyance, though his tone remained light. "Your lack of faith in me is wounding, Evans. I'll have you know that I can win points. In fact, I could win more than you any day."

"You'd better," Dorcas spoke up fiercely. "Because I didn't train all year to win us the Quidditch Cup just to have you two prats undo all of that work in one night! I can't believe—"

Lily wasn't really listening to Dorcas, because James' words had given her an idea. She turned it over in her head, considering. Normally she probably wouldn't have even considered voicing it, but the prospect of continuing to give James a hard time was just too enticing to pass up.

"Do you really think so?" she asked James abruptly, interrupting Dorcas in the middle of her tirade.

"Think what?" he asked quickly, obviously glad of anything that would cut short Dorcas' harangue.

Dorcas looked even more annoyed than before, but she and Lily had been friends too long for Lily to be too worried about it. She knew Dorcas well enough to know that all of her anger would pass by lunchtime today. Unlike Lily, Dorcas didn't hold grudges.

"That you can win more points than me," said Lily, struggling to keep her voice casual.

"Oh, that. Of course I can." His tone was dismissive. She could tell he was still annoyed by her harsh words from earlier.

Trying to repress her excitement, she sat down next to him at the table, squeezing herself between him and a third year boy who gave her a startled look. She only had to stare him down for a moment before he scooted over to give her more space. Then she turned her attention back to James.

"I have an idea. Let's have a competition—let's see which one of us can win the most points before the term ends."

Lily could tell she had his attention. In the six years she'd known him, she'd never known James Potter to turn down a competition. As for Lily herself, well—she never turned down a competition, either. The chance to show up James was one that she didn't feel like she could miss. After all, she always enjoyed knocking him down a few pegs, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so.

James smirked and raised his eyebrows challengingly. "That's hardly a competition—I already know I'd win. So, what would be in it for me?"

She hesitated—she hadn't thought that far ahead yet. "Er—the loser owes the winner a Butterbeer—?" she suggested half-heartedly, but James was already shaking his head.

"No, no." He waved the suggestion away with his hand. "You're thinking too small, Evans."

"If she loses, she could go on a date with you," Sirius suggested around a mouthful of bacon.

Lily made a face. "Ew," she said flatly.

James had asked her out in the past, and she had always turned him down—her answers growing increasingly sarcastic and impertinent each time. To be honest, it was a wonder he still talked to her at all, given some of the things she'd said to him. At the end of the last school year, James had attempted to ask her out while in the midst of attacking her former best friend, Severus Snape. Besides resulting in the end of Lily and Snape's friendship, Lily had told him, among other things, that she would rather date the giant squid. At the time, it had been a very dramatic event for everyone involved, but a year on, Lily felt like it had all worked out for the best. She'd finally been able to see Snape for what he was, and James had definitely mellowed over the past year.

James stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Now that's interesting." He paused. "But I understand how, knowing I'm going to win, you wouldn't want to make that bet—"

Lily certainly hadn't foreseen such high stakes for herself when suggesting this competition, but she wasn't about to back out now. "No, no, I'll do it," she assured him. Mimicking James' own cocky attitude, she added, "We won't get anywhere close to a date."

James didn't seem perturbed by this. He continued tauntingly, "And, in the almost entirely unlikely scenario that you manage to win—what do you get out of it?"

Lily had her answer ready. "When I win, I get your Ridgebacks t-shirt."

At that, Sirius gasped aloud, and James stared at her in genuine astonishment. "You wouldn't!"

"And I'm going to wear it to their concert in London this summer." She blinked innocently, fighting down a smirk. "Unless of course you—what was it?—wouldn't want to make that bet, knowing I'm going to win."

James shook his head, glowering at her. "Minx. Fine, you have a deal." He held out his hand for her to shake. "But I'll be the one wearing that shirt to their show, thank you very much."

Lily smiled sweetly as she shook his hand. "We'll just see about that."

A/N: To be honest, I had no intention of writing this story, but then the idea just wouldn't leave my head! There will probably be at least 2 or 3 more chapters. I'd love to hear any thoughts in a review!