A/N: I'm sorry! There was a promise, I know! But I'm in university now, and everything is going at warp speed! I have no time any more! Ack!

Anyway, here is the next chapter. I would have rewritten the poem excerpt in the fourth paragraph, but let's not kid ourselves—I'm crap at poetry. Please enjoy this. Review it you would like.

Disclaimer: Most assuredly not mine.

Chapter Ten: A Bad Sign

Lily pulled the duvet off of her canopied bed with a furious flourish, searching through the sheets for her favorite maroon jumper. It had been raining torrentially since the dark hours of the morning, and Lily, having lived in Great Britain for the whole of her life, was smart enough to know that the cold drizzle was not likely to stop for a while.

"Oh!" Alice—still in her pajamas, rolled over on her own bed and exclaimed, "Oh, Lily, you must hear this part; it is too romantic!"

And before Lily could protest that she had had her fill of romance, thank you very much, Alice read aloud from the letter she had received earlier that morning in owl post from the extremely prolific Frank Longbottom.

"Your lips," Alice read, "are like sun-kissed cherries. Your skin, the purest cream. Your hair is gold as honey, and your voice an orchestral dream…"

"Well, isn't that lovely?" Lily said politely, refraining from bolting to the loo and upending her breakfast.

"He's really a very talented poet, isn't he?" Alice rolled over again, this time onto her back, and, holding Frank's letter at arm's length, admired the way his manly handwriting looked from afar. "I told him he ought to write a book. A book of poems. He could dedicate it to me. Haven't you always wanted to have a book of poems dedicated to you, Lily?"

"I can honestly say… no." Lily replied as she pulled the jumper over her head and swung her robe on afterwards.

"Although, I don't suppose there's much chance of that happening to you, is there, Lily?" Alice glanced slyly in Lily's direction. "I'm sure Amos Diggory doesn't write poetry—he's not nearly as cerebral as Frank, is he?"

"No," said Lily again, deciding that boxing Alice's ears over an insult aimed at Amos was no longer necessary.

"Where are you going anyway," Alice asked, watching Lily shove her wand into the pocket of her robes.

"I'm meeting Diggory," Lily said tersely, "in one of the green houses."

"Diggory?" Alice glanced meaningfully at the window. "Can't it wait?"

"No," said Lily for a third time, heading toward the door. "It can't."

"I think you're being ridiculous, Lily. Surely Amos would understand if you just…sent him a note? He can't honestly expect you to leave the warmth of your dorm room to traipse through the mud in the cold to meet him a dirty, grimy greenhouse!"

Lily took a heavy sigh, her hand on the dorm room doorknob, and looked at Alice. "Trust me," she said, "traipsing through the mud in the cold is well worth it. And Amos didn't ask me to meet him in the greenhouse; I did."

Alice opened her mouth to reply, but a rap sounded on the thick wood of the door and it opened, knocking Lily back into a bedpost, and setting Alice on a laughing fit.

"Oh!" Peter Pettigrew stuck his head through the doorway, his eyes wide. "Evans, terribly sorry, but I did knock, you know!"

Alice jumped off her bed and scrambled into the bathroom, screeching as she went. "Pettigrew! What are you doing in here? Get out, get out, get out!"

Pettigrew's eyes grew alarmed, but he bent to help Lily up instead of running away.

"Peter," said Lily once she climbed to her feet, "how on earth did you get in here? The staircase is charmed!"

"Ah, yes, well," stammered Pettigrew, "you'd be surprised what my friends and I have figured out over the years."

Lily raised an eyebrow as Peter winked at her. "So I've been told," she said, remembering what James had said in the locker room about his friends. And of course, as soon as Lily remembered the locker room, and all that had gone on in side of it, her face grew hot as coals.

Pressing her hands to her cheeks, Lily said, "I don't want to know, Peter. I really don't want to know."

Peter nodded. "I only came up to tell you that James is down in the common room, wanting to talk to you."

"James?" Alice called from her station inside of the loo, "Ah, well, why don't we get him up here as well? We can have tea on the beds and chat like old ladies—it'll just be grand!"

Lily rolled her eyes and moved toward the door again, holding it open and gesturing at Pettigrew. "Tell James I'm ill and won't be down today."

Peter nodded again and stepped out of the door, calling over his shoulder, "Nice pajamas, Alice!"

Alice gave a final screech before slamming the bathroom door open. "Where is he? Where is the little rat! I'll kill him for coming up here! The nerve!"

Lily grinned and wrapped a striped scarlet and gold scarf around her neck as Alice turned and asked, "Why are you being so rude to Potter, anyway? What did he do in the locker room the other day? Insult you?"

"No," said Lily.

"Did he insult someone else?"

"No."

"Well then Lily, I really don't understand what all the fuss is over! You can't simply ignore him for the rest of eternity! Especially as you're about to leave your dorm room for a tryst with Amos!"

Lily snorted loudly at the word 'tryst' and did not answer. She brushed her hair out of her face, straightened the scarf around her neck, and left Alice to her poetry. She couldn't, after all, tell Alice that she knew exactly why James had sent Peter up to the dorm room to get her. He had already sent, by morning owl post, a note that had contained only three words…but three words that had thrilled along Lily's every vein, even as she'd quickly crumpled the note and hidden it out of sight beneath the bacon platter:

We must talk.

Yours, J. Potter

Lily had not been surprised to see that James' handwriting was exactly like him, bold and commanding.

Well, he was in for a very unpleasant surprise if he thought that Lily was at all like the throngs of adoring peers that crowded around him in the dinning hall or after a quidditch game and came to his every beck and call. She didn't know why she'd kissed him the way she had the other day in the locker room—she'd hardly slept at all during the past two nights—but as far as she was concerned, it was a mystery that could remain unsolved forever. Under no circumstances did she ever plan to "talk" to the rogue about it…or anyone else for that matter.

Lily peered over the banister of the stairway down into the common room. A few students were curled up in armchairs and hunched over stacks of papers piled on tables, but there was nary a sign of the dark haired-head that Lily had come to know and loathe, so she rushed down the stairs and out of the common room, relishing in the rare escape from one of James' lectures.

Alas, it was not to be, for as Lily tripped down the main stair way that lead into the entrance hall, Lily also nearly tripped over James Potter, who had his back against a wall and his legs stretched out before him along a step. James held up his hand to examine his nails, apparently quite at his leisure.

"Bit wet outside for a stroll, don't you think," James remarked dryly.

It was all Lily could do to remain upright; she was so startled to find him there. Her heart seemed to have swooped up into her throat, and she had to clutch the banister to keep from falling over.

"You!" she exclaimed, beside herself with anger—or so she told herself, anyway. For surely it was only rage—white-hot rage—that was making her knees shake and her cheeks burn. "What are you… How dare you… Why aren't you off with Pettigrew and your other little mates?"

"Wait around for you like a fool while you creep off?" James Potter grinned at her in a manner she found most insolent and stood up. "Not likely. I'm not an ass. I knew you'd mutiny. You're the type. Now, why won't you talk to me? And where do you think you're going in all this rain?"

Lily, furious that now she was going to have to have a confrontation with him before she'd had a chance mentally to prepare for one—she'd spent all night preparing mentally for a confrontation with quite a different fellow—spat, "None of your business! I don't have to tell you anything. You don't own me. Now get out of my way."

Potter seemed to find her ire highly amusing—which only served, of course, to increase it.

"Far be it from me," he said with a chuckle, "to stand in the path of a know-it all like you, Miss Brainiac. I'm certain you're off on some important mission to broaden horizons. Perhaps someone else needs a push in the right direction?"

Lily stood on the step above his, inwardly seething. She was so angry she couldn't think of a word to say.

"Poor Miss Brainiac," James said. "First Alice with Longbottom, and now some new victim. How are you ever going to find your own true love, when you are so busy helping people find theirs?"

Lily was not, by nature, a violent creature. But she had really taken all she felt she could, and his snide remark sent her right over the edge. How could he—how could he be so cavalier about it, after what he'd told her about Amos Diggory only two days before?

And so she jammed her hand into her pocket, grabbed her wand, and yelled the spell for jelly-legs. James' eyes widened momentarily before the red jet of light from the spell hit him square in the chest. Then, as he crumpled to the stairs, his legs nothing more than pillars of pudding, she brushed past him and ran the rest of the way down the steps and out of the entrance hall, ignoring his cries of, "Lily!"

Lily did not turn around until she was halfway to the green houses. The hem of her robes and her shoes were soaked through with water kicked up from the soggy grass beneath her feet, and Lily's breath came out in puffs of white steam, but she hardly noticed.

What was it about James Potter that managed to discompose her so? She had never met anyone who was as capable as he seemed to be of arousing the worst in her. She was deeply unhappy with the insolent young man, but she could hardly think of him any longer. Really, how could she with the odious task that lay before her? There were far more pressing matters at the moment… and the primary one was that Lily stood staring at the grimy glass door to greenhouse number two.

Lily took a deep, steadying breath, and reached up to brush her hair off out of her face. She was not at all happy with what she was about to do. But there was a chance—there was always a chance—that James Potter had underestimated Amos Diggory…or even that Amos had learned his lesson, had grown as a person during the past two days. Maybe he simply was playing along with his friends…and with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Maybe he—

The door in front of Lily jerked open and Amos stood looking out at her with a puzzled expression on his face. He gestured inside, offered a quick peck on her chilled but flushed cheek, and stood looking at her expectantly.

Finally, after gazing at Amos for some time, and wondering how on earth she could ever—ever! —have thought James Potter handsome, when Amos Diggory was so clearly a superior physical specimen, Lily summoned her courage and said, "I'm afraid I've received some very bad news, Amos."

Amos, who was studying an empty terracotta pot, looked unconcerned. "Really, my love? Don't tell me Alice and Frank have broken up. We'll really miss them at the next study group."

"It isn't Alice and Frank," Lily replied from her place by the door. She kept her gaze trained on a dead leaf resting on top of her left shoe. "It's actually about Professor Dumbledore."

Amos looked up sharply from the dirt-encrusted pot, his blue-eyed gaze very penetrating indeed.

"Did something happen to him?" He asked quickly, "Is Dumbledore gone away from Hogwarts?"

Lily winced. She did not like the eagerness in Diggory's voice, nor the anticipation that lit up his face at the thought of something being wrong with Albus Dumbledore.

"No, Professor Dumbledore is all right so far as I could tell," Lily continued with some irritation. Really, this was not going at all as she'd planned. Perhaps she was not acting disturbed enough. What she wouldn't give for Alice's flair for drama! "It's just that…there's been a terrible development involving the library."

"Library," said Amos, hardly paying attention, "what library?"

"The school library." Lily said, "The one that my careless spell destroyed! I've just had a talk with Professor Dumbledore and he's regretfully informed me that because of it I'll…I'll no longer be…"

"No longer be what, my pet," asked Amos, looking up again.

"Well, I'll no longer have a position of authority at Hogwarts… Dumbledore has stripped me of my duties. No more patrolling or scheduling. No more weekly meetings with the Headmaster. In fact, Professor Dumbledore hinted that I probably won't have many chances to speak to him again this year."

The terracotta pot Amos was holding crashed to the ground, shattering into hundreds of tiny shards. He did not appear to notice, however. He stood exactly where he was, staring very intently at Lily, as all of the color drained out of his face.

Lily thought, with a sinking heart, that this was not a good sign.