Hogwarts, Lily decided, was not the haven she'd heard about when she was eleven years old and starry-eyed.

Not anymore, at least.

When she was eleven and going off to school for the first time, the school had charmed her (both in curriculum and appearance; Charms was her favourite class, and the castle was extraordinary once she figured out the staircases). Not even the horrid taunting she'd received because of the nature of her birth could get to her – she was literally in a fairytale. Besides, that Voldemort fellow was just some guy who had gotten all uppity about blood, and surely the magical world had progressed far enough to recognize immaturity when it appeared, yeah? Really, if an eleven year old could call something out as bullshit, then it was reasonable to assume that she would not be the only one to.

But the magical world had failed her. True, she had made excellent friends who were perpetually furious about select Slytherins calling "mudblood bitch!" down the hall in her wake, but the persecution was like no other. Lily was brilliant, as her friends were quick to assure when she had her bad days, curled up in her four-poster and wondering if it would be easier to cope in the muggle world, and she knew that – by the time that Voldemort had cost her her best friend, she was well-acquainted with the grading system at Hogwarts, and something about the fact that she could have recited a reasonable chunk of the library was no small feat either. But still, anti-muggleborn laws were being proposed every day. Only a small number of them were reviewed, and a smaller number passed, but she still couldn't truly feel at home in a place where she was constantly criticized for something she couldn't control.

Maybe if Petunia saw what being a muggleborn meant, she'd let up on me, Lily remembered thinking, the sleepless night after her OWLs had finished. It was the one and only time that thought graced her mind.

Voldemort had seemed like a distant threat for six years, though, but something must have changed over the summer before seventh year. Lily had yet to decide if it was because he'd gained power in the two short months she was away from the wizarding world, or if it was because she suddenly realized she had to go out and get a job at the end of the year – there would be no more Hogwarts to keep her safe.

"Safe" being a relative term, of course, when she'd already been put in the hospital wing three times by December ('Don't worry about me,' she told James, who was overly concerned about his fellow Head, who only had a broken arm, 'you should see Mulciber. Actually – you might not want to. He's behind the closed curtain, really rather unsightly.'); fortunately, most pureblood fanatics had the sense not to provoke her. Usually, she ignored the taunting, but James, oh, he rose to the occasion magnificently, and she wasn't about to stop him (he'd ignore her until he got in a few good hexes anyways). They'd always been sort-of friends, but ever since they started living in the Heads' dorm, they'd become best friends (at least, he'd become hers; he had the Marauders and for that, she had no idea where she stood with him). He was incredibly protective of her, despite knowing very well that she could handle herself. She suspected that was the only reason why he wasn't concerned with her wandering around the school on her own.

Admittedly, something within her had shifted when it came to the thought of him over the past three months since school started. Maybe it was the extra time they'd been spending together, but now her heart started to beat a little faster, her cheeks burn a little warmer whenever she thought of him and his tendency to do stupid things for her (the last time was just earlier that week when he got into a fistfight with Theodore Nott for trying to hex her when her back was turned; James had gotten a Hogsmeade detention that he wasn't too concerned about for some reason, and Nott had gotten in-school suspension. Apparently, there were special dorms for that).

She wondered if James would have waited up for her as she walked down an abandoned corridor, the sound of her shoes going click-click-click echoing off the walls. The castle was eerie at night, but Lily didn't think that had anything to do with the fact that a Slytherin could just jump out and curse her into oblivion at any given moment – they were sneaky, but the troublesome ones weren't that quiet, the dunces. The castle had always been eerie at night. Or so she assumed. She hadn't made a habit of sneaking out after curfew, though she certainly wasn't innocent of it. She made a mental note to ask James about it, as she was positive he would have an answer for her.

If a torch hadn't flickered in precisely the wrong way at the same time that she heard a quiet mewl from behind her, her mind might have wandered into James-territory, but as it happened, a torch did flicker in precisely the wrong way at the same time that a quiet mewl came from behind her. Spinning around to give the kitten a stern look, she sighed heavily. The new caretaker, Argus Filch, had a cat named Bernice who'd passed away only two days before, though she'd left behind a number of kittens. This one in particular, named Eleanor (Norris was supposedly her last name, though Lily couldn't be sure if that was truth or just a rumour spread by the older years for fun), was already particularly unpleasant despite only having been weaned off her mother a week ago. Lily was positive that her persistent nosiness was a genetic trait.

'What am I going to do with you, Eleanor,' Lily sighed, kneeling to the floor and holding a hand out for the kitten to rub against. Lily had always liked cats, and she was hoping this one would like her in return.

Eleanor did not come, instead turning and stalking down the corridor that she'd followed the Head Girl through. Lily dropped her hand and stood up – she was sure she was getting the kitten to warm up to her, as she hadn't swiped her paw at the offending appendage like she usually did. Maybe she was kidding herself. She probably was.

As she continued the short remainder of the walk back to the Heads' dorm, she wondered how the Hogsmeade detention had gone. James hadn't been very upset over the loss of his Saturday, and while she assumed that the only real reason why he'd even gotten it in the first place was so that the Slytherins couldn't complain he didn't get punished, but it was still peculiar.

'…this way, my sweet?' came from down the corridor, and Lily frowned at Filch's familiar rasp. Surely, Eleanor didn't report her to Filch? But it seemed she had, as Lily spun around for the second time during her walk to find the glow of a lantern lighting up the far end of the corridor, and she only ducked into an alcove leading to an empty classroom in time for his hunched figure to round the corner.

Technically, she couldn't get in trouble thanks to the Head Girl badge pinned to her chest, but it was quite late and warranted a strict talking to (and threats of bodily harm from Filch).

She closed the door behind her with a soft click and didn't dare even thinking about opening it until the light faded from the gap between the wood and the floor. Listening hard for his footsteps, she frowned when she didn't just hear him stop walking, but also heard a wheezing laugh.

'Thought you could squirm out of trouble this time, eh?' he said, to Lily's great confusion. He hadn't seen her, had he?

Her heart dropped out of her chest when she heard a familiar voice: 'I'm Head Boy, Filch, I'm not in any trouble. I'm at perfect liberty to wander the castle at night if I suspect there to be strange activity worth investigating.'

'And I suppose you conveniently thought there was strange activity, Potter?'

What the hell was James doing here? He wasn't on rounds that night and should have been in the common room. She'd specifically taken him off of duty with her because she didn't want to be left waiting for him if his detention ran long. Merlin knew that they had a habit of doing exactly that.

Lily's mind was voicing her confusion so loudly that she was surprised they couldn't hear her through the door, and she almost missed James' reply.

'Actually, yes. You should know that. After all, you're here too, so I must be onto something,' he said, and Lily could just imagine the willpower it was taking for him not to roll his eyes. Filch, on his part, didn't sound like he had a reply, so James continued. 'Unless the reason why you're here is because your stupid cat thinks that every student out of bed after curfew is doing something nefarious.'

She didn't think the belligerent tone lacing his voice was very wise, but she admitted it was effective, as the light slowly faded with Filch's loud departure. Impressive. He hadn't even threatened James once in the process.

There was a rustling of paper and a dim light flaring up ('lumos', no doubt), and then: 'You can come out now, Lily.'

Opening the door revealed a very tired-looking James, smiling at her in a similarly tired way.

'How did you –' she started, but James just held up the paper to give her a better look of the Marauders' map, which he'd shown her a week and a half ago on rounds. 'Right… are you alright, James?'

He simply shrugged and pointed his wand at the map. 'Mischief managed. Yeah, I'm alright. Long detention, but when are Hogsmeade detentions short?'

'I guess. Did you really just get released? It's half two!' Lily pulled the door closed behind her, and they set off down the hallway.

'Well, no,' he said, scrunching up his nose. 'A fourteen hour detention? That's horrifying, and I've done… well, I've gotten in worse trouble than this, that's for sure.' Lily had no idea what he was referring to, but had learned not to ask in favour of preserving her health. She was beginning to understand why McGonagall always got so riled up when he did something reckless, as Lily was certain he was secretly one of her favourite students.

'So you've been wandering?'

'Pretty much. I was in the dorms for a bit, but you didn't come back after dinner and I remembered about rounds so I decided to join you if you didn't come back when they were over,' he said, shrugging again and sticking his hands in his pockets. He fell silent, and Lily searched for something to say – it was usually him chattering away, and while the silence was comfortable, she was wondering what brought on this change.

Turning her head to survey him with narrowed eyes, she chewed on her words until they slipped out of her mouth. 'Are you sure you're alright? You're not yourself…'

He turned to face her with a startled expression on his face. 'What?'

'Eloquent,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'You're not yourself is what I said. You're usually happy,' is what she settled for, after a moment. She couldn't think how to put his usual behaviour into words.

At least… she couldn't think of how to tell him that he usually lit up from the inside out with that stupid mischievous spark in his eyes, and his stupid grin. She didn't know how to tell him that he made people feel happy themselves, and that he was a contagious specimen that really should be investigated into, because it couldn't be possible that he warmed up a room just by walking into it. Lily couldn't say that, because he'd harp on her sudden fondness for him and never tell her anything.

'Something's happened, hasn't it?'

If it was possible, he deflated a little bit. Slowly, he shook his head.

'I don't believe you.'

'Believe me. Nothing did happen, it's just… I don't know,' he sighed, as Lily gestured for him to continue. 'It occurred to me earlier that I have no idea what the hell's going to happen after we leave school.'

'What d'you mean?' She asked, frowning.

He sighed heavily, stopping dead in the middle of the corridor and running a hand through his hair. He looked agitated, as if he had been trying to figure out his entire life over the past couple of hours. 'It's just… I've known since Voldemort started cropping up in the Prophet that I would fight him after I got out of school. What he's doing – what he's done – is stupid and wrong, and I can't just sit back and let other people handle it.

'The only problem is… I don't know how. I've been so sure about this that I haven't given any thought to what I'm going to do to actually help. I guess being an Auror would be a good place to start, but I'm appalled at the Ministry right now,' he said, clenching his jaw and apparently thinking of something that Lily didn't know of.

She shook her head minutely, then when it was clear he hadn't noticed, said, 'Why's that?'

He scoffed, scowling. 'The Prophet hasn't reported this, no doubt because the Minister is trying to keep it quiet, but Voldemort's gotten spies into the Ministry.'

Lily gaped – how could he possibly know that? His father perhaps. Hadn't James mentioned his father had been an Auror? Or was he still…? Quiet, Lily, he's talking!

'Yeah, I know,' he said, 'it's ridiculous. Minister Baudin's good, he's heading in the right direction, but for the love of Merlin, he can be really thick when it comes to the public opinion. I know he must think that keeping that a secret is going to keep the public calm, but when this gets out? I don't even want to think about it.'

'Is it possible that he doesn't want the spies to know he knows about them? Then he can keep an eye on them without having to deal with figuring out who's the new spy,' she said, tilting her head.

He was silent for a moment, then shrugged. 'I guess, yeah… yeah, that makes sense…' he frowned, considering the possibility. Lily let him do this in silence, taking his arm and guiding him off to the dorm gently, thinking that it would be nice to avoid being caught by Filch again. It was only a matter of time before he set Eleanor on the case again.

Once she'd said the password ('Tolkien,' as a reference to their shared love of Lord of the Rings) to the portrait of a woman who looked alarmingly like Julie Andrews (Lily was certain she wasn't a witch, but maybe Mary Poppins was), James stumbled into the common room without so much as a tap from Lily and busied himself in the small kitchenette that accompanied the room as a Heads privilege. Lily, in the meantime, sat sideways on the couch and crossed her legs, watching him with a frown.

Something was bothering her about what he'd said. 'I've been so sure… I don't know how to actually help…'

'Do you really think that you're not helping?' tumbled out of her mouth before she could bite the words off. He froze in his actions, putting down the two mugs and resting his hands on the counter.

Suddenly, Lily was afraid she'd said something wrong and hastened to amend herself. 'I mean, of course right now you're not out in the world and fighting in the battles that we hear about in the news, but James,' she saw his head turn to the side slightly. 'Look at me.' He turned slowly, meeting her eyes with a reluctance that she'd never seen from him before.

'James,' she said, 'don't ever think that you're not helping. Right now, while we're still in school, you're doing everything you can. Hell, didn't you just serve a detention for beating up someone who tried to curse a muggleborn?'

'Well, yeah, but that wasn't because you're muggleborn, it was because –'

'Don't you dare try to write that off as defending my honour, James Potter, you know as well as I do that he would not have tried to curse me if I wasn't muggleborn,' she said, fixing him with a fierce look. 'Did you, or did you not, just serve a detention for beating up someone who tried to curse a muggleborn? — Excellent job, by the way.'

He snorted at the addition, rolling his eyes with a smile tugging at his lips. 'Yes, that I did.'

'And that's all you can do,' she said, stressing each word in the hope that she'd get through to him. 'Nobody's asking you to go off and fight Death Eaters, or go raiding houses for them – James, nobody's asking you to go off and get killed. Except for your hero complex. Don't interrupt –' she shook her head, cutting him off. 'You do have a hero complex, and while that's not a bad thing, not in wartime, you do stupid things because of it, and you cannot stand there and tell me you're not an idiot sometimes.

'You don't know where you're going – so what? Neither do I, and I'm set on the same thing that you are. I want Voldemort defeated as much as you do. The difference between us is that I'm fighting him - for my own rights, my own life - because I'm as good as dead whether or not I do, but you? You're doing it because you want to. Are you going to tell me, James, that that isn't helping?'

James stared at her with an intensity in his eyes that Lily had never seen before – not when he was looking at her in class, or when he was socking a right hook into a Slytherin's jaw for threatening his friends, or when she was tossing hexes about in Defence Against the Dark Arts (where he was notably transfixed with her on a semi-regular basis; how he got top marks in that class would only be questionable if he hadn't proven he was adept with the material outside of class). Maybe it would have made her uncomfortable in the past, but there was something strangely comforting about it.

But then, things were very different now.

'No,' he muttered, after a long pause. 'No, I guess you're right.'

'You guess? Of course I'm right,' she said, standing up and crossing over to him. 'When the time comes for you to do more than punch people and get detention – when you're laying down your life for people like me – then you get to consider the possibility that maybe you're not doing enough. But promise me that before you go and mope about it, you're going to let me slap some sense into you.'

She must have done something right, because the corners of his mouth were twitching as though he was trying not to laugh. 'Oh, I can promise that easily,' he said, eyes glittering.

'Good,' she said, the ferocity not quite gone from her eyes. 'Because whatever we end up doing, we'll do it together, got it?'

'Lily Evans,' he said slowly, giving up on trying to keep himself from smiling. His grin spread across his face and the light in his eyes brightened, and Lily found it hard not to match him. 'Was that your way of asking me out?'

Feigning innocence, she took a step back from him and shrugged, turning around to head up the stairs to her bedroom. Once her back was turned, she let her smile take over her face because yeah, in retrospect, that's what it sounded like. She found that she really really liked the idea.

At the foot of the stairs, she turned around and fixed James, who was still leaning against the counter watching her go with an incredulous expression, with a look. 'Why did you really come find me in the corridor?'

'Because I can always count on you to slap some sense into me.'

'Right you are.' Although she made to ascend the stairs, for a moment she lingered in the arch of the stairwell, half turned to watch him out of the corner of her eye with a curve to her lips and a sparkle in her eyes. A balloon of pride and giddiness began to swell in her chest, and - funnily enough - it felt like even though the source was only right there, the only way she could keep it under control was the sight of him. As though she knew she couldn't let him in on the secret at the same time as she laid it all out for him to see.

It was remarkable, really, how she could feel so… happy, even in the darkest times. And it was all - well, at least partially - because he made her feel that way.

She could tell that he was watching her too, but she couldn't see the particular look in his eyes. Even so, it wasn't a surprise when he stepped forward, just once, letting her retire to bed but simply asking for an olive (as the branch had been extended long ago). 'Lily?'

'Yes, James?'

'Was that your way of asking me out?'

'Yes, James.'

'Really?'

'Goodnight, James.'

If this seems familiar to you, then you might've read it before! I posted it originally on my tumblr blog under a Read More cut a number of years ago and then proceeded to delete my blog quite a while later (rest in peace). So, aside from my pages document it was lost to the void. I've now edited it with quite fresh eyes & I find that I'm still happy with it so here! Have it.

Hope you enjoyed!