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Sleeplessness

Lily sat cross-legged on the floor of her room, stacks of parchment surrounding her, each sheet covered in her neat curly writing. She sighed, running a hand through her rumpled curls, glancing at the clock up on her wall she saw that it was 1.30am. She wanted to scream, she had hardly had any sleep all week and she could hardly afford to get any now either. She had two NEWTs tomorrow and she still had a lot more Potions and History of Magic to cram into her head.

Lily groaned, making herself a cup of very strong black coffee to keep her eyes from sticking together and settling herself on her stomach, dragging a handful of notes towards her. Lily grimaced as she sipped the coffee, she hated the taste, but it was the only thing that would keep her awake. With a big yawn, she set back to work. Outside, it was stiflingly hot, and Lily's room had heated up over the day, making it hot, sticky and hard to breathe even in the middle of the night.


When the clock chimed 4.00am, Lily finally dumped her notes on the floor, grateful that she was head girl and therefore had her own room so she could make as much mess as she liked. With her eyelids drooping, unable to stay open any longer, Lily headed towards the bathroom, tripping over a pile of notes and falling to the floor with a thud. Lily cursed, and concluded it unsafe to go to the bathroom; she'd probably drown herself in the toilet or something. With yet another deep sigh, Lily started to pull her clothes off, stripping down to underwear. She'd shower in the morning, in other words in a few hours. The makeup removal would have to wait until then too.

Her next great feat was to reach her bed. She'd almost succeeded when she felt something big and hairy ram into her face. Lily's eyes shot open, all tiredness forgotten and when the hairy winged monster collided with her again a strangled scream escaped Lily's lips. Tripping over her bed, Lily ran for the door, her one thought to get away from the creature.

She yanked the door open and slammed it shut the second she was out of the room. She pressed herself against the door, breathing heavily. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all. She was trapped outside her room in her underwear and she couldn't go back to her room for fear of being eaten in her sleep. Suddenly, Lily heard a loud snore coming from the room next door. James.

Her state of undress forgotten, Lily scrambled towards James' room. Without bothering to knock, Lily burst in to find James sprawled in an odd and uncomfortable-looking position on his bed in just his boxers, his duvet discarded on the floor. Lily stopped, staring at his toned chest, for a second forgetting all about the monster in her room. But only for a second. Quickly discarding all thoughts of James' body, Lily hurried towards James' bed and started shaking him awake.


James was dreaming about Lily Evans. About her hair; tumbling down in beautiful red ringlets, of her eyes; so green and hypnotising, twinkling with humour; of her lips, they looked so soft and perfect, and they were moving closer and closer… James was awoken with a painful slap round the face. He shot up.

'Padfoot you bastard, I was kissing Evans!' James shouted, his eyes still glued shut. As they slowly opened and he caught sight of Lily leaning over him, his eyes glazed over with a dreamy expression and he grinned to himself as he sank back into his pillow. 'Nope she's still here…didn't get me this time…mmmm…hot…bra…'

At that he got kneed in an extremely painful place, which woke him up fast enough. In a matter of seconds he had shot up again and was now doubled over cursing loudly, even though not much force had been put into the blow. Lily stood by the bed, torn between satisfaction and terror of what was flapping around her room.

Once James had finished rolling around in pain, he pulled himself into a sitting position to find Lily Evans standing before him in nothing but a lacy black and pink bra and matching French knickers. A goofy grin began to spread across his features, until he saw the fear and panic in her eyes.

'Lily, are you ok?' Lily shook her head worriedly

'Please help me! In my room there's this big fat hairy moth! It keeps attacking me and it wants to eat me!' James couldn't conceal a grin. It was so sweet how terrified she was of a simple moth, but obliged, standing up and grabbing Lily by the hand as he headed out of his door.


When they got to her room, Lily shrank back and backed onto their common room couch, sinking into it, never taking her eyes off James who was opening the door to her room.

James walked in and looked around. There was nothing there. He poked the curtains a couple of times, but nothing moved. He cast his gaze around Lily's room. He'd never been in there before and was surprised at the amount of notes she had littering the floor. He saw that she must have just finished revising and, glancing up at the clock, felt a rush of affection for her. Poor thing, she must be absolutely knackered, no wonder she looked so tired lately…

'Have you got it?' Came a small voice from the doorway, so quiet and frightened and unlike Lily's usual self.

'There's nothing there, I think it must have flown away while you were gone.' James told her 'Go to sleep now, you must be exhausted' He couldn't resist giving her a quick hug, to which she obliged, proving the degree of her tiredness. With that James retreated, flashing Lily a quick smile as he left.


As soon as James had left and Lily had resumed the feat of getting to her bed, she felt the big hairy moth crash into her again. She screamed, running out of the room, calling for James; with whom she collided halfway to his door.

'It's back!' Lily whispered, scuttling back to the sofa, but refusing to look this time. James sighed and once again went into Lily's room to exterminate the moth.

'Lily, I've got it out of you're room, you can go get some sleep now.' James smiled down at her sympathetically.

'Did you kill it?'

'Well not exactly'

'Then where-' it was then that Lily saw the moth fluttering about the common room. A strangled scream escaped her lips as she scuttled into James' room, quickly closing the door behind her.

James couldn't help but laugh as he quickly killed the moth using a discarded copy of the 'Daily Prophet'. Grinning, he let himself into his room to find Lily cowering on the floor in the corner. He knelt down in front of her, unable to stop grinning.

'Have you killed it?' Lily whispered

'Yeah'

'Are you sure'?

'Yup. Here it is' James held out the dead moth to her in the palm of his hand. On seeing it, Lily squeaked in fright, causing James to burst into peals of laughter. Lily glared at him.

'What's so scary about it anyway, it's just a nighttime butterfly. Girls are supposed to like butterflies.'

'I do like butterflies. But that is most certainly not a butterfly. Look, it's all big and hairy and it flutters so fast and bashes into you. It's a killing machine!' James burst into laughter again, shaking his head, unable to fathom what went on in her mind.

'Well, it's dead now, so you can go get some sleep, even if it's only a few hours.' Lily shook her head worriedly.

'I wont be able to sleep, and all its relatives will come back and eat me, avenging the death of their beloved sibling!' James fought to keep his laughter under control.

'Well, uh, you can stay here if you like…' James told her uncertainly. To his surprise, she nodded vigorously. 'Well that's settled then.' James grinned and gestured to his bed: 'Clamber in.' on noticing the horrified expression on Lily's face he quickly added, 'And I'll sleep on the floor of course.'

Lily smiled gratefully at him and surprised both of them by leaning forward and planting a quick kiss on his mouth

'Thank you' she said, hugging him tightly.

'Anytime' James grinned. And he meant it. They remained like this for a minute, two minutes, three minutes… 'Uh, Lily?' James asked awkwardly, wanting to go to sleep, 'Lily?' but he received no response. She'd fallen asleep, on the floor, in her underwear, hugging James Potter. James chuckled to himself as he adjusted their position, propping himself against a wall as Lily moved in her sleep, moving her arms from found his neck to his chest and resting her head on his shoulder.

James grinned before shutting his eyes. He decided that he'd grown to like moths a great deal better than he had previously over the course of that night.


A/N: In case you were wondering, this isn't just some stupid made up phobia, and Lily is NOT overreacting, this is exactly how I reacted to a moth in my room while revising for GCSE's late at night (not quite so late though) a few days ago. And it wasn't some amazingly fit guy in boxers who saved me from it :(, it was my dad (fully clothed, thank god). Anyway, so this is virtually a true story…and I cant help being deathly afraid of moths… and yes those WERE my exact words (about it eating me and the killing machine and all...)

Blushes

Anyway, R&R please!

Thankies

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