A/N: Yes, this is it – the last chapter of this story! It's kind of sad to see it go, I must admit, but I have a pile of other stories I intend on writing as well; it's time to move on. So, basically, now all you've got to do is read this fluffy little thing, find a way to enjoy it, and review for the last time!!

"LILY! Goddamn it, you're asleep again! What is it with you?"

"Anne, come on – that's not nice. Be gentler; maybe she'd respond if you spoke to her without cursing at her."

"Trust me, James, this is the only way to wake this girl up. She could sleep through a round of Cruciatus cursing."

I feel a poke on my arm, but it's not the normal rough kind that Anne loves to give me, which leads me to conclude that James has taken over Anne's usual job. And, when I feel a pair of temperate, perfect lips find mine, my guess is confirmed – I open my eyes slowly when they pull away and smile at the sight of his welcome face. "Good evening, Mr. Potter," I say pleasantly, even if drowsily.

I hear Anne say, "Finally!" in the background, but I ignore her and instead concentrate on James's grin and his voice saying, "You're up."

"Now." I laugh weakly and permit him to prop me up on my chair a little bit more; Anne, James, and I are sitting around a table in the Gryffindor common room, a table which has all sorts of papers, quills, and ink pots scattered across it. The clock informs me that it is two AM on Monday morning – in a few hours, we have a Potions exam and a Transfiguration exam. So, of course, I'm not sleeping and getting the slumber I should rightfully be engaging in; I am fighting to stay awake to do my job, which is helping Anne study. This time, though, James has joined us, because he is, in all honesty, as doomed as Anne is; but, on the plus side, his methods of handling me are much more satisfactory than Anne's are – something I'm not used to, but can easily adapt to.

"Will you please just stay awake now, then?" Anne requests irately, checking the clock along with me and tapping her quill on her parchment. "I have another question."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I say highly unapologetically. "What is your question?"

"Have I done the Draught of Peace right here?" She shows me the sheet she's working on. "I don't know if I have or not."

"Oh, Annie, you and I have already gone over all this," I wail. "I thought you knew this!"

"I do, but I want to make sure," she insists.

James snickers while I groan and look at her work. She has made several errors – errors that would have proved very dire if she had to physically perform what she's written – and I point them out to her. "Annie, this is pitiful," I complain.

"Well, excuse me for not being perfect," she snipes.

"Even James got it right," I tell her.

"Gee, thanks, Lil," James says, pretending to be offended.

"I'm sorry, my love, but you're hopeless with Potions," I say. "If you can get it right, I certainly should hope Anne can."

James pouts anyway, but I turn back to Anne, agonized. "If you can't remember that you need frog's legs versus grasshopper's legs, you are going to fail. That's the fact of the matter."

"It's not my fault," she protests. "This is hard work!"

"We're all doing it – you might as well do it right," I say curtly, stretching my arms and yawning. "Now please; correct yourself here and show me when you're done."

"You're working me much harder than you're working James," she accuses.

"You need more help," I say honestly. "He's rather good at his work. Surprisingly."

James blanches across from me. "How is it surprising? I've been two or three places behind you in marks for years!"

I smile tiredly. "I'm sorry," I say for the fourth time tonight already, but only meaning it for the first time. "I get nasty when I'm tired. Forgive me?"

"Oh, but you don't apologize to me, your best friend?" Anne asks crankily. "This is great, Lily, just great. I finally know where I stand in your book."

"Annie," I whine. "You're the reason I'm down here. I'm kind of mad at you."

Anne shoots me a filthy look, but she sees the truth in my words, so she says nothing more as she corrects her Draught of Peace draft. I yawn once more and James watches me.

"You look bloody awful," he says blatantly.

"I feel bloody awful," I say. "Do you have any questions for me too?"

"No, not really," he says. "I think I'm good for tonight – but can you test me on this quickly, just to be sure?" He hands me a list of spell information for Transfiguration.

"Of course." I accept the parchment from his hands and ask him a few questions on each thing he has listed. I make sure to vary the styles each time, attempting to challenge him, but he goes through them flawlessly – so flawlessly that I remember why I used to be secretly jealous of him in second year. When he's finished rattling off the complexities of Switching Spells, I glower at him and inform him of my feelings, only to have him laugh at me.

"Transfiguration just makes sense to me," he says. "The spells and concepts are like circles – all starting from the same point and branching out. If you get the middle, starting point, then you get everything. Potions don't make any sense to me at all because it has so many different methods – it's more organic, looser. It just depends on your learning techniques, you know?"

"I hate both," Anne chimes in.

"You hate learning in general," I point out. "You wouldn't care what subject it was – you'd hate it either way because it involved work."

"True," she comments. "Very true." She dots an 'i' on her page with a flourish and hands me her own sheet. "Make sure this is right, would you, doll?"

I sigh and scan over the page. "It looks fine to me."

"Good." Anne cackles as she puts away her materials. "I'm done!"

"Hallelujah," I mutter. Anne shoots me a look, but James chuckles as he follows suit and packs up. None of my things had been out to begin with, so I simply observe as they sling their bags over their shoulders and make their way up to the dormitory stairs. I run my fingers through my hair, attempting to convince myself to get up and go to bed – I've slept on the chairs before, and they're not as uncomfortable as they look – but James takes notice; he drops his bag on the ground where he's standing and comes back to where I'm sitting. I look at him with hardly-focused eyes, and he smiles.

"C'mon," he says. Then he holds his hand out to me – it's an almost irresistible temptation. I let him entwine his fingers with mine and smoothly pull up all my weight without even changing his expression. Staggering as I come to my feet, I allow him to support me with an arm around my waist and walk me to the stairs, where Anne is intolerantly hanging around.

"You're so slow at night," she grouches.

I yawn once more. "I love you too, Annie."

"She works hard," James says on my defense. "She should be allowed to wind down some time, don't you think?"

"I'm always bitchy at night," she notifies him. "Lily's slow and I'm horrible – you get used to it."

He looks as though he'd rather not, but James nods all the same. "Okay, Anne."

She nods, exhausted herself, and asks me, "You coming then, Lils?"

"Should be," I say. "Get in bed – I'll be right up."

"'Kay," she says, not in the mood to argue. "'Night."

She waves almost drunkenly and leaves me at the foot of the staircase. I stifle my next yawn and say, "I'll see you in the morning, then," as I give James a last hug. However, as I make my way up the first step, he catches my arm, a slightly mischievous look on his face. I turn to look at him. "Yes?"

"Maybe you won't have to only see me in the morning," he says slowly.

"Why?" I want to know, alarmed.

His eyes light up. "How about you spend the night with me in my dormitory?"

I can feel my own eyes widen. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said," he says. "I want you with me."

Too tired and in-love to argue, I say, "All right, but are you sure I'm allowed to?"

He waves a nonchalant hand. "Nobody will care. I can promise you that one."

"Okay," I say, suddenly much more awake than I had been even moments before. "Let's go!"

He laughs. "I knew you'd see it my way."

Hand in hand, we dash up the stairs and we take the turn I'm not familiar with to the opposite dormitory. James opens the door carefully, making sure not to make very much noise, and we tip-toe in. The room is shadowy, so I have little chance to explore, and my eyes take a moment to adjust to the dim setting. I don't know the shape of the room or where James's bed is, but he obviously does – expertly avoiding any potential noise-makers on the floor, he guides me to his four-poster and takes the bedcover off to reveal the blanket. Grinning at me in the darkness, he bounces onto his mattress and settles down under the covers – with a similar grin, I join him, and our breaths mingle as we snuggle in together, looking for the other's arms. When James finds me, he pulls my body into his, clutching me as though I'm his source of all life, and I allow him to, far too content in his grip. My head rests in the hollow between his head and shoulder, my hair fanning out every which way, but he doesn't seem to care – he takes a few adjusting breaths and says, "I like this."

"I do too," I admit, looking up at his face. "Your bed is much warmer than mine."

I get another grin. "Really?"

"Yes," I confirm. "It's bigger too…and you're in it."

His grin widens. "Maybe tomorrow we'll test it out and see which dormitory is better."

"Maybe." I yawn but continue to stare avidly at him. "But for now, here is where I want to be."

He nods. "Same goes for me."

We are silent then, calming down and getting comfortable for a few seconds, and James is satisfied with stroking my cheek. I'm holding his hand in both of mine, playing with his fingers and such; we're happy. The night outside isn't completely still – sounds of nocturnal animals fooling around are still audible – but inside the castle, the only things I can hear are the choruses of snoring around me. My eyes seek out his hazel ones, and he tilts his face down to mine – we are about to kiss when he stops himself, his nose touching mine, but our lips a few centimeters apart.

"It's times like these when I wonder why we wasted so much time trying to hate each other," he says, almost conversationally. "I don't know how I lived so long without doing this."

"Pride, I suppose," I answer sadly. "I was always too proud to say I cared once I had decided I didn't – it was embarrassing, and I didn't know what would become of me if I told you."

"I wonder if things would have been different if we'd starting going out in fourth year," he speculates.

"Of course they would have," I say. "I wish I'd gone along with you, in retrospectively; we could've had ages." There's harsh regret in my tone – I truly hate myself for depriving me of him all these years.

He catches on to it. "It's not a bad thing that you didn't," he says. "We were silly back then; we would have overwhelmed each other. We're old enough to handle it now."

"I…" I bite my lip and exhale as I continue to look at him. "I don't know, James. I'd always been afraid of relationships because I'd seen what happened with Anne – she would like someone, one of them would end it, they'd both be upset, and then they'd kind of move on. But I realized that your past loves never leave you, and you carry the broken shards of you around and give them to the next person, who will most likely break them again; I didn't want to think about such an existence. That was mostly why I stayed away from any kind of commitment – I wanted to stay whole for the person I was meant for."

"This is where you're going to have to trust me, Lily," he says gently, his fingers in my hair now. "I see where you're going with that, but sometimes, you've got to take the chance, you know? Maybe you have to fall apart to rebuild yourself. Maybe you have to accept that I can't really live without you."

I smile wryly. "I think I am going to trust you on that one, because I need you too. I trust you, you goof."

He smiles. "Merlin, you have no idea how much I love hearing you say that."

"What, that I trust you?" I giggle. "I'll say it however many times you want me to."

"Even a million wouldn't be enough." He lightly brushes his lips against mine, sending pleasurably chilled shivers down my spine. "I love you."

Three simple words – that's what they are, and they make me feel so warm and tingly that I feel as though I'm about to explode. I don't, however; instead, I say, "I love you too."

His mouth lingers just above the corner of my own, and he waits. I don't know for what, but I can't take it – I kiss him. I kiss him slow and deep, savoring the taste of him and committing it to memory; I meet no resistance on his side, which helps considerably. He picks me up and places me on his front, his hands on the small of my back. We keep kissing until I get dizzy from air-deprivation and am forced to pull away to stay alive. Breathless, we look at each other, and I see a reverence in his face that makes me want to cry and wonder how the hell I got so lucky.

He tucks my hair behind my ear and says softly, "You're beautiful, Lily."

I chew on my lip as I always do when I'm practically lost for words. But then they come to me – the words that explain what he's been changing in me for the past few days that we've been inseparable. "I'm only beautiful because you make me beautiful," I tell him.

His eyes are alight and dazzling with affection, but we don't snog again – he kisses me delicately, but briefly, and then lets me rest my cheek on his chest. I tangle my legs up in his and his arms become my covers while his body becomes my mattress as we start to drift off to sleep together. Something hot has melted in my abdomen area, making me pleasantly lukewarm and lethargic, and I know that tonight, I'm going to get the best sleep I've ever had. At this moment, I am a princess in her royal bedchamber, and I don't need anybody besides my prince.

Maybe I hadn't believed in happily-ever-after when I turned thirteen, but now I know that they do indeed exist – whether I'd previously been the Fairy Godmother or even the leftover Stepsister in the story is no longer relevant, because my happy ending came for me anyway and transformed me into the heroine I'd always wished I could be. I smile to myself as I realize that so long as James Potter stays with me, I'm going to wake up every single day and be gorgeous, radiant Cinderella for the rest of my life.

That feeling is, to me, what truly defines a real fairytale.

Much love,
Zay