Lessons in Time Management

Lessons in Time Management

Summary: With N.E.W.T.s only a week away, Lily is beginning to regret ever agreeing to go out with James Potter.

Disclaimer: Due to the unfortunate fact that I am not JKR, I do not own these characters or anything else that you may recognize.

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Wendelin the Weird was burned at the stake 47 times, not 46.

Lily mentally cursed herself for making such a careless mistake and corrected the answer on her worksheet. She silently scanned the parchment for any other errors, her eyes darting back and forth frantically.

Draught of Peace is made with powdered moonstone, not crushed moonstone. Come on, Lily. That's O.W.L. level stuff.

N.E.W.T.s would begin in less than a week, and Lily felt completely unprepared for them. In fact, she felt sick just thinking about them. It was much more nerve-wracking than O.W.L.s had been. After all, this was supposed to be her last year at Hogwarts. How would it look if the Head Girl were forced to stay an extra year because she had failed her N.E.W.T.s? She would walk down the corridors, and people would point as she passed and whisper, “There goes that 8^th year girl.” And then there would be laughter - lots of laughter - and none of it in her favour.

She groaned and dropped her head to the table, letting her hand slide to her side, not caring that the quill in her hand left a line of ink across her worksheet as she did so. Why would it matter what condition the page of answers was in? They were all wrong anyway.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lily knew that she was overreacting. She had top marks in her year, and she was Head Girl. Surely she would do better than she was expecting to do. In actuality, she hadn't really missed too many questions on the most recent worksheet. She had answered enough correctly to pass.

But she still refused to accept the fact that she was not a complete failure.

She supposed that she'd have to give up magic and spend the rest of her life working as a waitress at a Muggle restaurant, doing things by hand.

Lily cringed slightly.

It was amazing what only seven years in the Wizarding world had done to her. When she thought about it, she had really spent most of her life among Muggles, and now here she was, spoiled by the convenience of magic.

Lily was somewhat ashamed. She had never felt inclined to deny her Muggle heritage. She was proud of what she was: a Muggle-born witch.

But it wasn't going to do much good when she failed her N.E.W.T.s. It would be seven years hard work down the drain. So much time spent doing revisions, observing, and learning for nothing. She'd have trouble finding work in the Muggle world because she had stopped attending their schools when she was eleven.

She sighed deeply and examined the wood of the table only a centimeter away from her eyes. She was really dreading the rest of the practice worksheets that she still needed to do. Of course, she was dreading the actual exams even more, but she could only worry about one thing at a time.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice someone slip into the chair across the table from her until he spoke.

“Evening, Lily,” he said cheerfully. “Not sleeping before those practice worksheets are finished, are we?”

Despite herself, Lily couldn't help but smile as she mumbled something incoherent to the table, not looking up to see who was speaking to her. She knew that voice better than she knew her own.

“What was that?” he said, leaning forward to hear. “Speak up.”

“I said, `Go away, Potter',” she repeated, raising both her voice and her head, looking at him for the first time since his arrival.

James Potter met her gaze and blinked, feigning a look of disbelief.

“Why, you can't possibly be asking me to leave,” he said, grinning. “I thought that you'd welcome a distraction. You've been revising for days.”

She smiled again at him and dropped her gaze to the table, only looking up again when she felt his foot rub up against her ankle.

It was true, she had been hoping for a distraction, but she had also slightly been hoping that one would not present itself to her because she really did need to revise. So did James, of course, but he didn't look like the thought had even crossed his mind.

“You revise too much,” said James, watching her closely.

Lily snorted. “Hello! I'm Head Girl. It's what's expected of me.”

James smirked. “Yeah, but as Head Boy, you don't see me spending every waking hour at a table in the corner of the common room with my nose in a book and a quill permanently fused to the palm of my hand, do you?”

She frowned. For a moment, she had forgotten that he was Head Boy. That ruined just about every excuse she could think of giving him.

“Come on, Lily,” he pleaded. “I've been a good boy and let you revise for almost a week now. It's so nice outside. Don't you think you could just take a little break?”

Lily bit her lip and stared longingly out of the window, watching the birds fly by against a perfectly blue sky. She turned her eyes back to James who was looking as pathetic as he possibly could in an attempt to win her pity. Shaking her head, she glanced miserably at the stack of papers she still needed to complete and then focused her attention on the window again.

She was currently cursing herself for finally agreeing to go out with James so close to the most important exams she would ever have to take in her lifetime. She had successfully rejected him for over two years, and yet she chose now to finally fall for him. Why couldn't she have waited another month at least? Then she wouldn't be in such a dilemma.

Releasing a deep sigh, Lily met James's eyes and frowned.

“I can't, James,” she said finally. “I have to revise.”

Surprisingly, James didn't seem the least bit offended or even upset by her decision. Instead, he leaned back in his seat and propped his feet up on the table, folding his hands behind his head.

“That's fine,” he said. “I'll just have to sit here and continue to try to persuade you.”

Lily groaned in exasperation.

“James, can't you just let me revise until N.E.W.T.s are over?”

“Nope. I'm tired of letting you revise.”

“Don't you have friends to go play with?”

“Nope. Remus and Peter are doing revision, and Sirius is in the kitchens testing the house elves' baking skills.”

Lily looked up again.

“Baking skills?” she repeated, not quite sure if she really wanted an explanation.

James shrugged. “Yeah, he left with an armful of everyday items - shoes, books, an owl - and is going to see if the house elves can replicate them in the form of baked goods.”

“You have a weird best friend,” Lily stated, shaking her head incredulously and attempting to return to her homework.

“I've never denied it,” James replied. “Lily, what are you doing?”

“Revising,” she mumbled absently, scanning the textbook in front of her for the answer to a particularly difficult question.

James removed his feet from the table and leaned forward in his seat again. He reached over and closed her book.

Dumbfounded, Lily spluttered and opened the book again.

James immediately slammed it shut.

Lily opened it, staring at her boyfriend defiantly, as though daring him to close it again.

He stared back, cocked a grin, and closed the book once more.

“James Potter,” Lily cried out in frustration. “What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?”

“Keeping you from doing revision,” he replied. His steady gaze was slightly unsettling, and Lily had to fight back the urge to smile at him. “You look worn out. I'll bet you haven't even been sleeping.”

She opened her mouth to defend herself, but James held up a hand to stop her.

“I won't bother you about that,” he continued. “For now,” he added as an afterthought. “But I really do think you should take a break. It's not healthy to spend so much time worrying and working and not eating or sleeping.”

Lily bit back a small laugh at his motherly antics and rolled her eyes.

“Fine,” she said. “I'll take a short break, but I'm not leaving the common room, and I'm going back to working in fifteen minutes.”

James threw his hands up. “I suppose I'll take what I can get.”

“Damn right you will,” Lily muttered.

James grinned at her.

He got up and walked around the table to where she was seated. Tugging on her arm, he hauled her to her feet, settled himself in the chair in which she had just been sitting, and pulled her down onto his lap.

“I've missed you,” he murmured into her hair.

Lily sighed.

“James, I've only been revising for a few days,” she told him. “It's not like I haven't seen you or talked to you or anything. I've just been concentrating on my studies a lot.”

“And is that more important to you than I am?” he asked, twisting her around so that he could see her face.

“Of course it is,” she replied teasingly. “I can't think of anything that's less important to me than you are.”

Grinning, James ran his fingers along her jawbone. Lily sighed and leaned into his hand.

“You don't really mean that, do you?” He smirked, knowing that she wouldn't be able to lie to him again.

“Merlin, I hate you.” She sighed again, giving in. “Of course not.”

James cupped the side of Lily's face with his hand and brought her mouth down to his, kissing her gently and slowly. She closed her eyes and returned the kiss.

“I'm so tired,” she mumbled, leaning her forehead against his once they had broken apart.

He chuckled quietly. “Maybe if you slept more, you wouldn't be so tired.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“But I need to revise, James. In fact, I should probably go back now.”

James tightened his arms around her waist to prevent her from going back to her work. She squirmed slightly but soon gave up.

“No, you're not going anywhere,” he told her. “Your fifteen minutes aren't up yet, and I won't let you go a second sooner than necessary. And for both of our sakes,” he added, “you may not want to fidget like that.”

Lily smirked and wriggled in his lap again, knowing exactly what she was doing to him. James gritted his teeth and pulled her into another kiss, this one much fiercer than the previous.

They had been dating for a little less than a month, and Lily had been surprised by just how happy James made her. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she had agreed to go out with him back in fifth year. Would she have felt the same way that she felt now? Would they have still been together after two years?

She doubted it. James had been different in fifth year. He had changed somewhere in the middle of sixth, and even though Lily had still refused to go out with him, she had definitely noticed the change, and her feelings toward him had begun to change as well.

She sighed contentedly and played with the hair at the nape of his neck, but she broke the kiss when someone cleared his throat loudly behind her, not missing the groan of protest from James. Frowning, Lily turned to face Sirius Black, who was standing over them and holding something in his arms.

“What do you want, Black?” James grumbled even thought they all knew that he wasn't as angry as he pretended to be. He couldn't get angry at Sirius for something as trivial as interrupting him and his girlfriend. “Can't you see that we're busy?”

“You know, I thought you seemed a little preoccupied,” Sirius shot back with a grin. “How's the revising coming along, Lily?”

Lily flushed slightly and mumbled something about her fifteen-minute break.

Sirius laughed and held up the strange-looking thing in his arms.

“Look what the house elves made,” he said happily.

“Er…what is it, Padfoot?” James asked, screwing up his eyes and tilting his head to the side to look at it.

Sirius sighed and pointed from what seemed to be an oddly shaped loaf of bread to the owl on his shoulder.

“Don't you see the resemblance?” he asked.

Lily was the first to understand. She began to laugh.

“Is that a loaf of bread shaped like an owl?” she asked. “That's pretty good.”

“I'll say,” Sirius replied. “You would have liked the cake that looked like my Potions textbook, but I ate it before I made it up here.”

Lily gaped. “You ate the whole cake on the way here?”

Sirius shrugged. “It's a long walk,” he said defensively. James nodded in agreement.

“Right, well,” James interrupted. “If you're quite finished with your little show and tell, you can go up to the dormitory and watch Remus and Peter do revisions because Lily and I need to finish something before her fifteen minute break is up.”

Sirius smirked and looked from Lily to James. Lily felt herself blush again.

“Alright, fine.” Sirius turned and began the journey up the staircase with the owl-shaped bread still in his arms. “But don't forget that I'm the godfather of your first kid.”

James shook his head as soon as Sirius had left and smiled.

“You know, I think he's really expecting us to conceive a child in the very near future,” he told Lily.

“Brilliant for him,” Lily replied absently.

James's rolled his eyes and stared hopelessly at the back of her head.

“Lily, what are you doing?”

“Revision. My fifteen minutes are up.”

James heaved a great sigh and rested his head on her back.

“I don't suppose I could talk you into another break?” he asked, his voice muffled.

Lily shook her head.

“James, when was the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy created?”

“1692.”

She stiffened as she finally located the answer in her textbook.

“How did you know that?” she asked, turning around to face James again.

He grinned at her. “Lucky guess.”

Merlin, she hated James Potter and his natural ability to absorb facts and details without having to revise until his brain rotted.

“I hate you,” she told him.

“No, you don't.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Take a break. You're so tired that you're delirious.”

“No, I know perfectly well what I'm saying.” She paused. “But I really am tired.”

James pulled her head to him, forcing her to rest her head on his chest. She struggled to escape, but he held her tightly.

“I need to revise,” she whined.

But before she had time to blink, she had sunk into a deep and dreamless sleep, and her homework was left to be completed some other time.

But it wasn't like she'd do terribly. She was Head Girl, after all.

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A/N: Hi, all! So I figured that after a year, I'd be nice and finally put a new story up. It's just a one-shot, but I have other stories in the works. My beta is currently working on my three-shot, so I'll post that soon enough. Look forward to it.

I hope you enjoy this one. It's just a fluffy little nonsense piece that I had to write. Nothing special, but please read and review.

Cat

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