MAYBE I WON'T DIE ALONE

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. JKR does.

"Awfully silent today James," Lily stated awkwardly. "Everything all right?"

Something felt incredibly wrong. James Potter did not pull a single innuendo joke or fart sound the entirety of their night inspection together. The redhead embraced this chilling moment for a while, but found the silence uncomfortable and abnormal. James grunted.

The Hogwarts staff and students returned from a hefty long winter vacation, and students were barely recovering from weeks of no work. Lily felt heavy bags under her eyes, yet kept a cautious wariness about the deafening silence estranging them. She knew James became more composed this year; after all, he was spending time with her alone. The awkwardness killed her.

"Ha, ha," she joked, making a farting noise with her small girly hands. James stared at her, confused. "That was funny, wasn't it," she asked, forcing a grin on her face. After James idly grunted, Lily blushed, her cheeks more scarlet than her deep red hair. Thankfully, the darkness of the night covered her burning cheeks. Fools could see through their awkward long interactions. But even though Lily was no fool, she never understood why students paired her with James Potter. In fact, it deeply disturbed her.

Still, no matter how many times she poked him, James remained resilient. They marched through the Forbidden Forest quietly, undisturbed. The night air smelled fresh; it let a nice evergreen scent cut through. Nevertheless, it was dark, and piles of snows lay like innocuous traps. A sharp scent of danger cut through the air.

Lily felt a tangible object beneath her feet, though it was not snow. She continued on with the trail, though midway, she unfortunately tripped on an inconspicuous log.

"Oh, ah, crap, I think something caught my foot," Lily shrieked. She fell down, and felt her shivering body, covered beneath a blanket of snow. James became alert immediately, pulling his partner up. Lily pulled herself up, brushing snow off her body, and felt a sharpening pain in her left leg. She looked down and saw blood, bright red blood.

"Aw, geez, it's bleeding."

"Are you ok? We could Apparate…we don't have to stay," James quickly interjected.

"No, do you think I'm stupid enough not to bring gauze?" Lily snapped, pulling out her purse and grabbed a handful of healing herbs and gauze. She winced at the cutting pain. It felt like pouring salt on a wound, yet she saw her gash slowly disappearing. Her leg still let out a sharp pain. Lily shook her leg, and grimly knew that it was broken.

"I think I broke my leg. But we're really close to the castle now. Don't worry, I can walk through this. Look who's suddenly all chatty now." Lily's eyes narrowed into slits. But a staggering sentiment of need for neediness leapt in her heart. She still saw pain in James' murky hazel eyes. He did not smile, or joke. He mumbled, and kept quiet to himself, leaving only sounds of footsteps in the imprinted in the snow.

Lily always felt uncomfortable with looking into the eyes of James Potter, or anyone for that matter. Eye contact always derived suggestiveness and aggression. Lily wished for neither. She caught a side-glance at the tall, awkward Head Boy beside her.

His eyes looked murkier than usual. She did not like the prognosis, but she knew he had been repressing tears. Clouds formed in his eyes, but she knew they never poured. It didn't take a shrink to know that, but well, she was the daughter of a shrink.

"James…" she started to inquire in a sing-songy voice. But before he replied an eerie sound emanated, not too far from their premises.

"Get back to the dorms!" But they were not students.

She stood still, then looked beyond her, using the moonlight as a faint guide in the darkness. Dark floaty figures came near them, trailing them at an alarming rate.

Lily felt a coldness crawl up to her. James pointed out his wand fervently.

"Dementors!"

"Expecto—Ex—Expecto Patr—tronum," James heaved weakly. His body wobbled, and fell short on his knees when the cloaked creatures reached him. A small silvery goose emanated from his long wand. But it did not prove strong, and lasted quite shortly. It was pitiful, yet Lily could not wander off far from the impending peril, or rather current peril. She saw James on the floor, panting heavily, yet his face completely frozen, grayer than she had saw him that evening. The cruel creature of fear toyed with him at first; mockingly stroking the stubble around his mouth, then it leaned in closer and closer.

For a kiss.

But this was no lover's kiss.

Lily watched it, slowly sucking the life, or rather soul out of James. "You're…dying," the redhead stated dumbly. She watched, and knew she had a few seconds to act.

Lily felt the coldness reach her. It crawled up to her body, around her, touching her, violating her, torturing her, not only physically, but in a cruel mental way also.

She thought of her happiest memory, while holding out her wand, yelling out the incantation, with every ounce of courage and confidence in her body.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

And she found herself in an oddly happy bubble of some sort. The memory touched her, unveiling a grand source of sunshine. But she saw him. She never thought that in such a moment of quick thoughts that she would see the most arrogant, bullying, awkward, cocky boy who she swore she felt disgusted with. But she knew why.

James Potter was a chore, but he was a good person. She admired him. She loved the little things about him, even in his most annoying flaw. His good values compensated his irksome behavior. His smiles were okay. And though she'd never admit it, he made her life a little brighter.

The memory appealed to her, mostly because it showed a rare moment where she saw James Potter act kindly to another human being. The first day of sixth year felt like another burden to tread through, yet first years piled in naively, almost excited. She hung around the train stations looking over the heads of students. The redhaired girl heard a faint sniffling sound coming from inside the train. She climbed back into the Hogwarts Express, completely empty except for the sound, searching room by room for the noise.

Something about Lily Evans found that needy sound attractive.

Lily walked cautiously. She approached the sound and found the source.

"I just want to go home," a skinny mouse haired boy sobbed. James kneeled by him, and listened solemnly.

"I know you want to go home. Sometimes we all do. But I promise you Hogwarts is going to be your home for the next seven years," James reasoned, giving the boy a warm pat on the back. The sixth year watched the boy cautiously, careful to not offend or devastate him even more.

Sniffling filled the awkward space in the room.

"I promise. Do you have a family?" The question lay cold in his head. The word family felt so fuzzy and typical.

"Yes, my Dad and sister," the skinny boy answered quietly. He looked at James, searching for reassurance and comfort.

"They'll write you every day, I promise, I'll contact them, see what I can do. And I promise you that this place will be worth your time," James said, letting out a goofy grin.

Lily ducked when she saw them walking out the train department. She walked out quickly and returned next to Hagrid watching over the students. The short first year boy walked out of the train with a gangly-looking James, the bridge of his wire glasses barely on his pointy nose.

The little boy joined the crowd of first years. James smirked when he saw Lily, brushing bits of dirt off his robes.

"Evans! Heh, just took care of some tough business in the train. Some kids were smoking dragon feet. With Wizarding gangs multiplying these days, you have to be careful." James ruffled his hair back, trying to look cool and composed.

"I'm sure," Lily smirked. They walked towards the castle, hungry for what waited in the Great Hall.

"So, how was your summer?" James asked coolly, fixing the crooked angle of his glasses. His feet walked sideways, his face turning to Lily, smitten and repulsively fascinated by her. She did not even look, but felt her heart gushing at what he said to the teenage boy.

"Fantastic. And don't look at me when we walk."

"Why? OW!" James walked into a light post.

"Answered."

In cold sweat, Lily felt the rush of the spell against her as she saw the scene. Her white doe ran forth, pushing the flock of Dementors away. A shield of relief veiled them. Yet the reality of it all was not pleasant, and she could not epitomize the situation in any way. She saw James on the cold ground, his eyes closed, his breath heavy, cold sweat forming on his face. His lips were chapped, deprived of life, and Lily watched him.

Lily crawled over to him and felt for his pulse. It was very weak. She slapped him, shook his hand, opened his eyes. Nothing seemed to work. She was screwed. Entirely screwed. But her blood rushed, some of it to her clever head.

And she thought of an idea, no matter how silly. She would have to carry James Potter to the castle. She stared into the distance. The castle looked close enough. Lily thought. Thinking wasn't good enough. She felt deprived of fortitude that moment, but she bit her lip and lifted him, putting on her big girl wedgie-free panties. Wincing, the Gryffindor girl threw him on her massive forearms.

The journey was long. With her broken leg, she put all her weight on one foot, balancing with a long twig on the other side, ending up dragging James' body on the ground. Not learning how to Apparate set her back, but she finally arrived at the Fat Lady's portrait after half a mile outside and several flights of stares.

"L—Lemon Dr-dr—drops," Lily breathed, spreading her body on the floor next to James.

"Proceed," the Fat Lady mumbled, her hair in curling rolls. Pulling back her big girl nonbunching panties, Lily stood up and continued to drag him, until he was finally in the homely common room. She embraced the warmth of the cackling fire, praising in the name of safe arrivals and massive forearms.

Resting her partner on an armchair, Lily threw an old curtain over him, and marched, or rather, limped, to the lavatories. She stood there for a moment, and contemplated on whether she should have called Madame Pompfrey up. She felt his pulse and decided against it, setting clean clothes she stole out of his room and canned food near on the table adjacent to him to rid a bubbling guilt climbing up her throat.

She took a long, well-deserved bath in the prefect's restroom, not caring if perverted ghosts were ogling her at all. The soap and water sank in her skin, cleansing it and relieving every nasty bit of the dementor's touch.

Lily slipped into her silk pajamas with little cookies on them, and walked back to the common room in bunny slippers and a cup of coffee in her hand. Every aching sore in her body was gone.

She found her bespectacled partner sitting by the fire sulking and wiping what looked to be tears on his face.

What a person.

Did he honestly forget how she dragged him from flights of stairs, from the dark forest?

"Coffee?" she interrupted, offering her cup to James, in attempts to be a good person. Dirt caked his face and robes. James took off his thin wiry glasses and put them on the table, rubbing his dirt from his eyes. Blood smeared his face. Lily kindly reminded him. He ignored her.

"Did you drink it?"

"No," she lied. He took it from her and sipped it greedily. "Look, you can't stop hiding this, ok?" There came a time when lying and protecting someone's feelings worked. This was not one of them.

"Hiding what exactly?"

"That alpha male, manly crap. Repressing your emotions. My father's a shrink. I can see right through you."

"Really?" he asked uninterestedly, refusing to face her. She felt for the first time in her life, James Potter acted passive-aggressively towards her. The feeling was unfamiliar and eerie, like a piano chord with incompatible notes. She always remembered him as a friendly face, obnoxious, but he always made an effort to communicate. Lily remembered a point in their fifth year when James did not stop asking her out. It annoyed her to the point where she hexed a muting spell on him for days, refusing to give the countercurse to anyone. She slowly thought out her answer and spoke clearly.

"Yep. The five stages of bereavement. Anger, compromise, depression, denial, acceptance. You don't think there's a problem, and you've hidden yourself by not saying a word. You're obviously depressed. Right now you're angry at me, for trying to tell you that there's something bothering you. You're not quite at acceptance yet," she stated gently. He sat, crossed leg on the floor. She did not want to touch him, nor show any physical affection. Instead, she kept him by her eyes, staring long and hard until he looked up.

"And bargaining?"

"We both know you bargained your own life when the Dementors came. Your Patronus wasn't even your stag. You've lost someone," Lily concluded, pausing for a second, and continuing with more compassion in her voice, "Who was it?"

James sensed surrender on his part. She might as well push him against the wall, glare in his eyes and force out a confession.

"My father," James mumbled, looking into the bloody palms of his hands.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"It was just so soon. Christmas break started to end, and the Healers told us he was going into remission. Then two days before the new year started he got really sick, and I mean really sick. Coughing up blood everywhere, his eyes barely opening. I didn't want to look at him, see him suffer so much. But when I finally said my last words to him, he…"

"He?"

"He was too weak to answer. Just pet my hair and said 'I love you James. You and your mother.' I've never dealt with this crap before. His funeral was yesterday… I could barely croak a freaking eulogy."

"You can't blame yourself for this."

"I'm not blaming myself. I'm just saying that I could've done better to help him."

Lily hesitated. She did not want to argue, and popped an innocuous question instead. "Would you like to tell me more about your father?"

"He was a great man…" James talked about his father the next few hours. Laughter and tears fell out of him, and Lily smiled at her first real accomplishment. She awkwardly hugged James reluctantly, and suggested that he shower before going to class. Sometimes words do not have to be said for people to know how you feel. But it's always nice when they are.

"Hey Evans?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks," James said.

"You're welcome."

End

A/N: Filled it with lots of dialogue