A/N: This story is a peculiar little thing, if you want the truth. It's inspired by several potent forces: my desire to write something kind of different; the song Hero quoted below; the movie 500 Days of Summer (in which I actually heard Hero); random left-over (and bitter) thoughts from my raw "break-up" with a semi-close friend of five years.

I'm actually kind of proud of it, if only because I managed to whip this elusive idea into shape at a time where my brain was more than a little dead. I went about the characterization a little differently this time, so read all the way through before you decide whether or not I've done this right or not.

Soundtrack: Ultraviolet (Stiff Dylans); Hero (Regina Spektor); Hero/Heroine (Boys Like Girls); Thunder (Boys Like Girls); Bookends (Simon & Garfunkle) – but only for the very last section.

Beta-ed by Wilhelmina Willoughby, who is the most ah-mazing FF'er I know. Thank you, thank you, thank you for whipping this beast into shape, darling. Siriusly.

I hope you like it. Please review when you're done.

--

I am the hero of this story,
Don't need to be saved.
I am the hero of this story,
Don't need to be saved.
It's all right, it's all right, it's all right.
No one's got it all.

- Hero, Regina Spektor

--

Hero
By: Zayz

--

She was the kind of girl you couldn't forget about, not even if you tried.

The most obvious reason was that she was beautiful. Not just the generic blonde smiley-face that usually passed for beauty, but beautiful, with her wide smile and ability to melt you down to nothing with a single glare. She was striking in all the understated ways that mattered – there seemed to be a light and a life to her that emanated from every fiber of her being.

At first glance, she really was perfect. Skinny, curvy, with remarkably red hair and a large group of friends and admirers. And she was cheerful and quirky, with that glow of youth in every word she said, in every gesture of her hand.

She was a favorite among the teachers and a favorite among the boys. She was summer sunshine, pure and bright and wonderful, and it was so easy – almost too easy – to overlook the fact that behind the charms, the mask, she was indeed human.

She was human. She wasn't perfect, skipping through fields and garnering praise wherever she went. While the world wanted to believe there existed such a girl, she disagreed because she knew the truth.

While she was quirky and bright-eyed, she was murky too. She was hot-tempered and impulsive, a prisoner to her emotions – and there were plenty of those revving up her heart and firing up her soul. She had always been the one holding on tight when everyone else said, "Let go."

She'd had her heart broken and still carried scars; and while she flirted casually, she was cynical and wary of serious, long-term relationships. In her experience, they just didn't exist, and she didn't want to waste her time chasing what she could never have. She wanted to enjoy herself – lust without the consequences.

There were clouds behind her sunshine, darkness behind her glow. First glances say nothing about a person – nothing that matters, anyway.

She was not perfect; and maybe if he had known that, maybe if he had taken the time to stop and think, things would have gone differently.

Maybe if he hadn't been enchanted by her beauty, by the light that never seemed to go out when he caught a glimpse of her; maybe if he wasn't just like her, hot-tempered and impulsive, a prisoner to his emotions; maybe if they were normal and he had met her at a street-corner or a coffee shop, where he could've asked for her phone number and gotten to know her properly; maybe they could have been something amazing.

As it was, though, he fell head-over-heels in love with who he thought she was, he was like her in many wonderful and terrible ways, and he met her in the insulated bubble of Hogwarts instead of out in the real world. And they couldn't be something.

Maybe he was the hero of her story, and she the heroine in his, but life had other plans. It always did.

--

"Merlin, Padfoot, it's sick. I still can't believe they're going out."

Sirius, sighing as he looked up from his book yet again during study hall, looked in the direction James was scowling at.

"Mate, you're going to have to believe it, because they're pretty into each other," Sirius said.

"It's still sick," James decided, frowning. "I mean, what the hell does she see in him? She kept telling me she didn't fancy ignorant, obnoxious arse-holes."

Sirius sighed again. He was beginning to lose his patience pretty fast by this point. James was pretty lucky he'd stayed, because Remus and Peter had finally moved to another table in irritation with their poor friend.

"Look, Prongs, you need to stop being such a girl and get over it," Sirius said. "You've tried and you've failed. She doesn't fancy you."

"It wouldn't be as big a deal if he wasn't such a horrible person," James insisted. "I mean, come on. Really? Can you see her going out with someone like him?"

"I have a feeling you're going to be giving me this speech about every guy you spot her with this year," said Sirius darkly. "If so, you might want to stop because eventually, I'm going to go sit with Remus and Peter at the other table too."

James shot him a look, but Sirius didn't budge.

"Just do your Transfiguration stuff, Prongs," he said, slightly gentler. "Forget about her. She's not worth it if she keeps blowing you off."

Now it was James's turn to sigh. He pretended to go back to the Transfiguration homework as Sirius turned back to doodling on his, but the moment Sirius's attention was elsewhere, James's eyes were back on them. It made his gut sour, but he couldn't look away – he called it the Snivelly-in-a-dress syndrome, because it was horrific and yet you couldn't look anywhere else.

The boy's name was Aidan Philips.

Just after the O.W.L. exams, just after that final blow by the beech tree with Severus, Aidan had approached an emotionally sore Lily Evans and asked her out. On an impulse – and because he was particularly good-looking – she said yes and they made plans to meet up in London over the holidays. When they returned in September for sixth year, they were holding hands and publicly kissing hello and good-bye. He had a grin like he ruled the world; she had a smile that could've powered the school by itself she wanted to. They were perfect, if you happened a glance at them, Aidan's arm around her waist, Lily whispering something in his ear.

And after an entire summer of brooding and Marauder therapy-sessions, he still found this devastating, to put it mildly.

Of course, he and the boys had decided it would be better for him – as well as the rest of the school – if he could please leave Lily alone, let her go, be normal again and snog another girl just for the hell of it. And of course he had promised he would put his mind at peace. He would learn how to live without her.

But when it finally came down to it, arriving at school and seeing her play tonsil hockey with Aidan Philips right in front of his face, he was big fat baby and he knew it.

He just didn't want to live without her. He didn't know how. She was gorgeous, and witty, and clever, and yes, perfect, and he couldn't imagine a world where he couldn't chase her and she couldn't be with him somehow. He was the hero; she was the heroine. This was how he'd known the story for the entirety of their time together and he knew perfectly well that he wouldn't be able to give up on her for a trifle like Aidan Philips.

So, obviously, quitting her cold turkey was not going to be an option.

School began to settle in – new books, new classes, new (and alarming) amounts of homework – and he began to settle into his routine with her. Sirius called him a softie in a bad way; Remus kept an eye on him and gently veered his attention away from her in class; Peter helpfully abused Aidan whenever possible. However, regardless of their best intentions, none of the boys could make a significant dent in this resolution.

The plot had been laid too thick. Their history ran too deeply. All the things that she'd said, that he'd done – they layered one on top of the other and by now, he was in over his head. He couldn't get out. He was drowning in her – he wanted her so much it sometimes hurt – and there was nothing any of them could do about it.

It was almost cruel, how little effect he had on her most days. He'd pass her by, steal a glance from afar, and she wouldn't even notice, looking at something past him, right through him. And what made it worse was that she was almost always laughing. She had this eternal smile on her face, this eternal sunshine; and he, with his comparative darkness, wished he could be part of it.

Aidan only made that fact worse. He knew Aidan – they were on the Quidditch team together, Aidan a Keeper and James a Chaser – so he was fully qualified when he said that Aidan was no good for her. He was a control-freak, completely devoted to making sure he had the upper hand; it was a good quality for a Keeper, but a crappy one for a boyfriend.

Remus kept saying it was possible that this was only his Quidditch persona, that maybe he was different when he was with his girlfriend, but James knew it wasn't like that. You couldn't deflect a Quaffle with that much viciousness and pass it off as a Quidditch persona.

So now, buried in the depths of November, this was where they stood – Aidan, snuggling Lily with that smug look on his face, and James, watching as he did so, wanting to drop something heavy on them both.

--

"Honestly, I hate him," James griped a little later, lounging about in the common room with the Marauders, homework forgotten again. "I can't believe they're dating."

"You've had a month and a half to get used to it," said Remus reasonably. "Shouldn't you…you know…get over it?"

"That's been my line all along," Sirius pointed out, pulling a marshmallow out of his bag and stabbing it with his wand. "It's not like anyone listens to me, though. Despite the fact that he's only had a handful of dates, Remus is always the love doctor around here." He thrust his wand at the fire and began to roast his marshmallow.

"Hey, where did you get the marshmallow?" Peter asked, distracted and suddenly interested.

"Nicked a whole bunch from the kitchens this morning," said Sirius casually. "You want some? I've got loads."

"Sure."

Sirius slid his bag to Peter, who rooted through it for two marshmallows. He, too, stabbed them with his wand and began to toast them in the fireplace. Then he slid Sirius's bag towards James.

"You know, you look like you could really use something sweet," Peter said wisely. "Have one."

"Moony, you want one?" James asked glumly, holding the bag out to Remus.

"I'm fine, thank you," said Remus. "But Wormtail's right. You could use a pick-me-up. Want me to roast it for you?"

"I'm lovesick, not incapacitated," said James, snatching it back towards himself and grabbing four marshmallows. "I can roast my own, thanks."

"Just offering," said Remus, his hands up.

"No, honestly, Prongsie, we need to figure out another plan of action here," said Sirius. "I mean, the plan to get over her and let her be obviously isn't going to work, so we need to come up with something else. Something better."

"We could slip Aidan poison in his pumpkin juice," James suggested.

"Tempting, but sadly, he's an ace Keeper and we need him this year if we expect to win the Cup," said Sirius.

"I still think the original plan was good," said Remus. "No one said it was going to be easy. It's going to feel awful for a little while, I know, but it's going to be better for you in the long-run. And we're here for you until it gets easier."

"And by 'we,' you mean 'me,' because I was the only one who sat there and passed the hankies as Prongs complained during study hall," Sirius pointed out.

Remus smiled angelically, but didn't respond to this.

"I say," said Peter, "that you just…I dunno, try to be friends or something. Maybe you can't date her, but you can at least be near her."

"Yeah, yeah, and that way, you can figure out first-hand how absolutely mad she is and get over her more easily," said Sirius, face brightening. "And then we'll be rid of Lily Evans from our conversations forever!"

"I have to admit, that's a pretty good idea," said Remus. "And, I mean, it could work the other way too – being around you could make her see that you're better for her than Aidan, clearing the way for you to date her."

"Brilliant plan, you guys, only one problem," said James. "She hates my guts. How am I supposed to be friends with her if she can't stand to be around me?"

"She doesn't hate your guts," said Sirius confidently. "I don't think she ever did. How could she? You're fantastic. You just made the mistake to piss her off before anything could happen – otherwise, she probably would've gone out with you."

"And I mean, it doesn't have to be anything huge, this friendship thing," added Remus. "You could just say hello when you see her in the corridor, or complain about a class. Little things like that are the starting point for any relationship, platonic or not."

"Spoken by the love doctor himself," said Sirius, eating his roasted marshmallow whole and picking up another one from his bag. "I'd say go for it. And Wormy, you're a genius."

"Yes, I am, and don't you forget it," said Peter, taking a bite of marshmallow and waving his wand severely at Sirius.

"Right, so are we all agreed on this new plan?" asked Remus. "Operation Friends?"

"Hell yes," said Sirius. "Remus, grab a marshmallow. I smell a toast coming on."

Remus rolled his eyes, but smiled and grabbed a marshmallow as well. "Fine."

The four of them lightly tapped their marshmallow-covered wands before going back to eating the marshmallows and relaxing, indulging in that mellow mood accompanying a job well done.

--

The boys decided during breakfast the next morning that Operation Friends should begin right away. Sirius said it was because they couldn't risk James not being closer to Lily before the end of sixth year, but all of them knew it was because they were sick of James complaining about Aidan with every free breath he could spare.

Remus said to start small, so today's goal was hello. Just a simple hello. Nothing difficult, just two syllables. Easy.

After breakfast, the four of them arrived to first period Charms. Sirius and James caught eyes and James followed Sirius to his seat. Sirius sat beside Lily, by a wave of good fortune involving Sirius goofing off too much around his friends and being moved to sit with someone more responsible. This would prove very useful for today's mission, seeing as James sat on the other side of the room.

The two talked inanely for several minutes, passing the time discussing the torture James had endured at last night's Quidditch practice, until Lily and Aidan walked into the room together. James glanced almost imperceptibly at her, trying to get an idea of her mood, and he found, to his astonishment, that she wasn't smiling. She wasn't holding Aidan's hand either, merely walking beside him and half-listening to whatever he was saying, her expression blank and rather bored. Perfect.

Aidan sat far away from Lily in this class and, seeing that she wasn't so lively this morning, he pecked her cheek and fled. Lily, ignoring the boys beside her as always, plopped into her seat, opening up her Charms book, pretending to be absorbed in it. Her nose was slightly pink, James noticed, insinuating that she was upset about something. Hmmm…

Sirius shot James another meaningful look and James cleared his throat.

"Good morning, Evans," he said smoothly, forcing a pleasant smile on his face.

Lily looked up and blinked, seeming confused. Her eyes – so brilliantly green – rested on James's face for the first time in a long time.

"Good morning," she said, somewhat uncertainly. A pause. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," he responded. "You?"

Lily shrugged, but something in her eyes flattened at the simple question. "I've been better."

Perhaps she felt this was a bit more honest than she had intended, or perhaps the sheer awkwardness of this short conversation had finally taken her over: either way, she flushed pink and went back to her book without another word. Sirius caught James's eye again and the two grinned widely at each other. Mission accomplished!

Fortunately, at this point, Flitwick came in – it was a minute or two before class was to start – and he started ushering all the wandering students to their desks, telling them to be ready, be ready, we're about to get going. This gave James a completely natural excuse to go back to his own seat without feeling awkward about it. The moment he sat down, he turned to Peter and Remus and quickly filled them in on the new development.

"Well done," said Remus, impressed. "You even got a bit of polite banter. This is excellent."

"My plan is working marvelously," fluttered Peter.

"And I think she and Aidan are having a rough time of it," reported James. "I mean, they walked in and the look on her face…it's something like the look she gets when Sirius starts talking to her during class, that one where she's going along with it but she doesn't want to."

"But weren't they snuggling yesterday?" asked Peter.

"Yeah, they were…but I dunno, something feels off about them this morning," said James. "I don't think they're quite on the same page. But I mean, that's not entirely unexpected. She's brilliant, he's a prat – something's bound to happen some time."

Remus smiled, but said, "Either way, I think you're on the right track here. All it takes is a hello to get a relationship going."

"You think?" Somehow, after embarking on this most impossible of tasks after years of guerilla warfare, James needed to hear this. The reassurance, the support. He was just the slightest bit delicate when it came to this girl, this one girl, and that kind of faith helped. It really did.

"I do," said Remus earnestly. "This could turn into something good, Prongs. Just…keep it up."

"I think I will." James threw a satisfied glance back at Sirius and Lily. Lily was reading and Sirius was making goofy faces, pretending to chuck things at her unsuspecting head and the like, solely for his friend's amusement. He laughed just as the bell rang and the class settled in for the day's lecture.

--

From day one, Operation Friends went quite well. Surprisingly well, in fact, considering the ambitiousness of the project. It went almost flawlessly for several weeks, that initial tentative hello transformed into something of a daily routine, usually accompanied by a short conversation less awkward than the first one.

The boys didn't plan obsessively or discuss each day as it came. Really, after the first day, they didn't talk about it much at all, figuring James would take care of it himself, sharing if he had to. Once in a while, Sirius would casually let a question or two slip about how she was, and James would casually say she was fine. And that would be that.

But the way the relationship grew was something of a miracle.

One of James's biggest fears from the beginning was that he would be unfavorably received. After all, their history had been complicated. He had made the mistake of trying a bad pick-up line on her back in third year – something that had worked on almost everyone else – and she reacted negatively, deciding he was another sleazy macho-man bent on getting a trophy girlfriend to show off. But he fancied her – then and later – and their relationship had been such an oddity afterward.

For years, the meat of their complexities was told in between the lines, sub-plots delicately interwoven until no one could remember where or why things were the way they ended up. The story was told behind the obvious, through a secret language, made up of flickers in the eyes, an inflection on a particular word spoken too softly to hear, an anonymous gesture pondered for but a moment before disappearing.

They were not enemies, exactly, but they certainly were not friends either. Like so much else, they fell somewhere in the middle, in the endless valley of gray between black and white. The intricacies of their eternal mirror dance shifted from day to day, week to week, term to term, year to year.

She was an enigma to him, because while she maintained a breezy, cheerful persona during school hours, she was something else entirely when he got her alone. It was as though her shadow took over, her bitterness exposed for what it was, and she shoved him away whenever she got the opportunity.

He was fascinated, mesmerized even, for two years, watching as she conducted her day as usual and flipped a switch when he asked her out again, always loudly and always with a certain obnoxious streak. He studied her, learning to read her as a child learns to read a book, and he knew her inside out by the time they were fifteen.

At first, she was two different people. One Lily was the sociable, pleasant one, giggling in the year's high society. The other was a vicious Lily, spitting fire at him if he dared to come close to her. But the two images, slowly but surely, merged into one, characteristics of each bleeding into the other, until he couldn't tell them apart anymore and she just became Lily.

Sociable Lily was light and lovely, but there was something about her expression, about the set of her mouth, that found tension behind her sweet, heart-shaped face. Vicious Lily was angry, no doubt about it, but there was something in those piercingly green eyes of hers that was tired, weary of all the tug-of-war, the constant flare-up, flare-down. She never gave up, no, but he could tell she wanted to sometimes, when something he said weighed heavy on her head and she wasn't sure how to get if off.

Vicious Lily was passionate, but so was Sociable Lily, straining to hold together her group of friends, which was beginning to splinter and bicker as most groups of girls do. She smiled, told her jokes and shared her anecdotes, but she was frustrated. He watched as, in fourth year, she made her way through the offensive line of Chasers on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, dating one, letting the affair dissolve in time for her to move on to the next one – she was listless, restless.

Sometimes, when he saw her with some guy, walking down the corridor and laughing at something he said, he could see the loneliness flicker in her, and something powerful would activate somewhere behind his guts.

He knew how this felt, this charade, walking along with someone you thought you liked but you couldn't remember the face of when they were gone. He had undergone it himself – that quest, that feeling of never being complete, breaking up with one idiot and hoping the next would be the one, the one that would end the search and make things okay again.

So, in a weird sort of way, he knew her better than almost everybody in her acquaintance. He knew that while she preened and giggled, she burned too. And as they grew up, and their childish passions simmered down into adult conscientiousness, that never changed – even if they were committed to someone else, they would always have each other, constant in that way they had, where they couldn't be friends, but they couldn't ignore each other either.

Sure, they spent a lot of their time making noise and bringing the roof down; but they had a connection, something not quite as simple as "boy loves girl and girl hates boy," and that was what made the whole thing so difficult.

Sometimes, they really were more than nothing, which made it near impossible to assess where they were going.

It felt like they were going somewhere – like these hello's and pleasantries were contributing to some greater good that floated in the vastness over his head – but with her, you could never be sure.

So all he could do was wait, watch, bumbling along his way and hoping for some bright star, some sign from someone wiser, that this was all going to be okay.

--

November transitioned seamlessly into December, bringing with it holidays and joy and a break from school to go home. The festivities carried forward into a gray, dismal January and a grayer, more dismal February. And in this small window of time, barely a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of life, something amazing began to happen.

It was subtle. It built like their back-story, told in the small things, the beautiful things. It was innocent and natural, but crept up on them like ivy spreading unchecked, chewing up the background where it originally started.

Polite hello's in Charms turned into genuine hello's in Charms, which mutated into genuine hello's in other classes – Herbology, Transfiguration, Potions. The trills in his heart – echoing in his chest like a scream in a tunnel – intensified as she came near, no matter how many times she did it, no matter how much he expected it. She made him nervous, but in a fantastic way; and for those few seconds out of the day, when she was his and he was hers, he thrived, filled with enough happiness to get him through the rest of the hours until he saw her again.

The progression was slow, almost imperceptible on a day-by-day basis, only visible once you zoomed out to watch with a bird's eye view. But, however slowly, the fact of the matter was the same:

Operation Friends was working.

Maybe they were not the best of friends, confiding every nuance of their troubled souls to one another. Maybe he didn't know her favorite flavor of pie or every pet she'd ever had. Maybe she wasn't sure what his favorite subject was or what he wanted to do when he left school. But they did trust one another, in their tiny ways.

At first, the conversation dealt mostly with school. Grades, homework, essays. Complaints, jubilation. Every morning, by Sirius's seat in Charms, the two would discuss the usual trivialities plaguing the students of Hogwarts, asking a few questions about homework, maybe going over a concept or two. It was almost expected that Lily would dump her things right away when she walked into the classroom, smiling and ready with a new anecdote to share.

It was surprisingly easy, this routine. Even though Aidan was still very much in the picture – he remained close to Lily's side and kissed her plentifully, usually in public – she never acted like that mattered. She started waving cheerfully in the corridors, approaching him just to talk during other classes, walking down corridors with him when they happened to cross paths. And best of all, it felt right – like they, for once, resisted making friction and fell exactly into place. He never had to worry that he was taking any liberties with her, because she was surprisingly open, as though she put her soul out on display for his convenience.

He couldn't exactly put his finger on it, and neither could his baffled friends, but something was indeed happening. The two of them, in such a relationship? That couldn't possibly end well.

But as this thing unfolded with all the bumbling sweetness of awkward teenagers, no one could bring themselves to spoil it, acknowledge this small, dark little truth – not when something so vast, and so lovely, eclipsed it almost completely.

--

"Hey."

At the sound of her voice – warm amidst the chill of mid-February – his head immediately snapped up from the homework he didn't feel like doing.

His ears had not been mistaken. It was indeed Lily, standing before him.

"Hey," said James, grinning. "How are you?" He immediately scooted over on the sofa and she sat down, grinning back.

"I'm all right, I suppose," she said. "Just tired, as usual."

"So what brings you to my corner o' fun this fine evening?"

"Transfiguration," said Lily.

"Oh, yeah." James made a face. "I saw your eyebrow today. Vomit green instead of blue. We should work on that."

"It wasn't vomit green," Lily attempted to defend herself. "It was…olive-y."

"It was vomit green and you know it, Lily," said James, who had in the last few hazy weeks been allowed to use her first name. "So what is so difficult about it for you? I got it pretty quickly."

She made a face. "I noticed. But I dunno…something about the wrist. I can't do it."

"What, I have to supervise wrist exercises for you now?"

She laughed. "No! I mean, unless you want to."

"Do you want me to?" he asked.

"I can do them on my own," she scoffed, her eyes twinkling with humor. "Just show me how."

Even though it was kind of like supervising her, he didn't say so and demonstrating, saying "It's kind of a flick, like this, try."

"Like…this?" She let her wrist flop like a punch-drunk dog.

"No, no…like this." Gently, he held her wrist in his hand and guided it through the motion one more time. Her skin was surprisingly cool against his.

She tried it again and again on her own, and was just starting to get the hang of it, when Aidan came strolling toward their table, an infuriating smirk playing on his mouth. Out of long-borne instinct, James's stomach clenched at the sight of him.

"Hey, Lils," said Aidan rather stridently, diving in and catching her lips like an eagle swoops down to catch a mouse.

Lily's face fell just the slightest bit at the sight of him, but she allowed him to kiss her for two or three seconds. When she gently broke away from him, she seemed the slightest bit embarrassed.

"Hi, Aidan," she said, her tone audibly flatter.

"What's going on over here?" he inquired. Did he realize just how loud his voice really was?

"Nothing really," she said. "I'm asking Potter here how to do that wrist movement from Transfiguration. You know, the one you wouldn't show me yesterday evening."

"Hey, we had a hard Quidditch practice yesterday," said Aidan defensively. "Ask Potter – he was there, he knows."

Lily looked to James, who couldn't lie and nodded. Their captain, Diane Wenslow (incidentally a former girlfriend of James's), was in the play-until-death-or-maiming school of Quidditch. She also didn't care if she made the team practice in pouring rain, like they'd had last night. She figured what didn't kill them only made them stronger.

"Well, either way," said Lily, who didn't care much for Quidditch, "you didn't help me, so I had to find another means of getting this right. What's up, anyway? I thought you said you had something to do tonight."

"I was coming to find you, because I thought we could sit and chat a while, since we're doing a shorter practice later today," said Aidan, slightly stiff. "But as you and Potter are busy…"

"Yes, we are," Lily snapped. She clearly hadn't forgiven him yet for not paying attention to her when she'd really needed it. "I'll see you later, Aidan."

"Fine, Lily. Good-bye." Now Aidan's tone was the flat one and the two glared mildly at each other before Aidan strolled away, seeming untouched from this less-than-friendly conversation. Lily, on the other hand, was rather hot and bothered, her cheeks flushed as she turned her attention back to the task at hand.

"Right," she muttered. "So where were we?"

James, still awkward from this little scene, cleared his throat. He hated it when Aidan interrupted his alone-time with Lily, and not just for the obvious reasons. "Erm…show me that wrist motion one more time. No floppiness."

Something in his tone made her look up at him, her green eyes calculating. He looked back at her, his eyes as wide and innocent as he could muster. Then she sighed, her face going into her palm, staying there for several moments before she resurfaced.

"I'm sorry about that," she said. "I know, Aidan can be a real horse's arse when he wants to be. Forget about it. We do that all the time."

"Probably not the best basis for a lasting relationship," James remarked before he could stop himself.

At once, he felt terribly guilty for saying anything – who was he to judge a relationship he barely knew a thing about? – and he opened his mouth to apologize, but Lily surprised him by deflating a little.

"I know," she said, surprisingly sad. "Sometimes, I wonder why we're even together still. It's like we've lost something. All we do is snipe at each other."

"I'm sorry," he said. And he meant it. In all his years of dating, he'd been there before. He knew it felt awful.

"Thanks," she said.

They were quiet a minute or two, musing upon this latest development, before James cleared his throat, back in business.

"Anyway, you're really very close here," he said. "Just make sure you go to the right, not the left, and don't fall back into flop mode when you're doing the spell, or your color turns out funny. Then you'll be just fine."

She snapped back into it and he demonstrated for her once more, the two determinedly past what happened with Aidan, and within five minutes, she correctly performed the spell and made James's eyebrows successfully pink. She laughed, he groaned, and she hugged him in gratitude, her scent like a blast of watermelon and flowers.

James could say, with full confidence (and a little bit of smugness), that Aidan wouldn't be getting one of those hugs tonight.

--

"Look at them, Padfoot. It's disgusting. I still don't get what's going on with them; can't he see that she isn't happy?"

Sirius sighed. It was a little past eight o'clock in the evening. After a full day of classes, a half hour to practice new Quidditch tactics, and an early (and short) dinner, he had nothing but endless homework to look forward to. By this point, James's constant stream of remarks regarding Lily Evans was wearing his patience a little too thin.

"Look, Prongs, I'm not their life coach," said Sirius. "I honestly couldn't care less if they're dating. So what if she's not happy?"

"She's just…always happy," James said, his eyes still trained on Lily and Aidan, sitting together on the sofa mere meters away. "Particularly when she's with him."

"Don't be naïve," Sirius said scornfully. "She's not always happy – she's human."

"I know…"

"No," said Sirius, surprisingly solemn. "I don't think you do."

The two suddenly locked eyes and James had that uncomfortable swooping sensation you get when you feel like someone's going through your very soul. His eyes widened and he felt attacked, somehow.

"Sirius, I know she's not perfect," he said steadily. "Scratch that, it was bad phrasing. I suppose what I meant was that she has been visibly unhappy for a while now and I'm…disturbed by the fact that Aidan can act so normal despite her mood. Aren't couples supposed to, you know, care about the other's moods?"

"Maybe he knows, but there's no way to fix it," said Sirius. "Maybe she asked him not to talk about it. I don't know. It could be a thousand things, but it's really none of your business. She's not your girlfriend."

"But she is my friend," James countered, "and I do care if she's miserable."

"If you think she's going to magically dump Aidan because she sees what a wonderful bloke you are for harassing her about a few instances of puppy-eye, think again," Sirius responded. This mood was rare, tough, and it could only mean that he felt strongly about what he was saying. "Prongs, she's not an angel. Pretending she is will hurt you more than it'll hurt anyone else."

"She's not an angel, but I like and respect her," insisted James, slightly stung. "What's up with you anyway?"

"I'm tired and cranky and sick to death of Lily and Aidan," Sirius said flatly. "You want to drop it before I say something nasty?"

"Yeah," said James, deflating. "I suppose so."

Sirius nodded, returning back to his book, but James found himself constantly consumed by Lily and Aidan. He snuck a few more looks at them over the course of the next hour or so, in between pondering what to write next for his History of Magic essay, oddly bothered by his conversation with Sirius.

His own point was valid – Lily didn't look happy, shying away when Aidan tried to kiss her and looking very distant even as they held a conversation – but Sirius's point was also valid. What did it matter? He didn't even have the whole picture. Yes, maybe he and Lily were friends, but that didn't mean he had any rights into her more personal life. That didn't mean he was allowed to know her well.

Soon enough, Sirius announced he could not write another word tonight without being ill, so the two of them decided to call it a night and go upstairs. Lily and Aidan were still sitting on the sofa together as they left.

"Good night, Lily," James said without thinking.

Lily looked up from her book, surprised, but she smiled a real smile all the same.

"Good night," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

James smiled back, finding himself in an exponentially better mood already, and went up the stairs to the boy's dormitory. Once they were safely out of earshot, Sirius whistled.

"I'm impressed, Prongsie boy," said Sirius. "That was almost…normal."

"I know," said James, unable to keep that hint of pride out of his voice. "It's like…I dunno, like nothing ever happened before, like she never hated me."

Sirius pondered this. "Hmmm…that's probably not a good sign," he mused.

"How is it not a good sign? She doesn't hate me!"

"Just because she smiles at you, doesn't mean she doesn't resent you," said Sirius.

"You saw how she looked at me!" insisted James. "You can't fake that kind of emotion. She likes me and that's definitely a good thing."

"But you never got any closure for the past three years," Sirius reminded him. "You never talked about it. You both said some pretty nasty things to one another and just because you won a smile or two from her a little while later, doesn't mean that she forgives you. She gives those kinds of smiles to everybody. Plus, she was mad at her boyfriend, so she was ready to smile at anyone who distracted her. It's not exclusive to you."

"Remus? Did you nick Polyjuice Potion and stuff Sirius in a cupboard somewhere?" James asked, making a feeble attempt at a joke.

But Sirius just shrugged. "I'm telling you, Prongs – she didn't smile at you because she's forgiven you for everything that happened before. She smiled at you because she's trying to get past whatever she felt about you before and she's trying to make peace with you. Being friendly is not the same as being friends. Nor is it the same as insinuating she has romantic feelings for you."

Despite his words, Sirius affectionately ruffled his friend's hair. "I know it's total rubbish, mate, but that girl is a heartbreaker," he said. "You, of all people, need to know and remember it."

For Sirius, this was easy, clear as day. He said what he had to say, made his assumptions and drew his conclusion, and then he went to bed like he did every other night, collapsing on his sheets without changing and snoring softly within five minutes. He seemed right, on the surface – an outside party, looking objectively and telling his best friend that the situation wasn't as easy as it seemed.

And yet…

And yet James couldn't take this advice seriously. He wouldn't let her go. Somehow, some instinct deep inside him refused to consider any other option. She cared about him. She had to. They were getting on so well, and he'd never been as happy as he was when he was around her. There was nothing else for him. Everything he knew about love came down to her. He couldn't let her go.

Sirius didn't know, James thought, jumping under his own covers without changing. He didn't know how deeply and intensely real this was. He didn't see how she laughed when she was near him – like she couldn't stop, like she was almost too happy, walking with him and enjoying his stories.

You couldn't fake emotion like that, he knew, without feeling at least a little bit of it for real.

--

And so it went for many days, weeks, even months. February transitioned into a blustery March and a rainy April. The boys kept up with school and attempted to keep out of trouble, though it didn't always work out that way, especially when Sirius had a bright idea and the rest of them were too bored not to indulge it. The weather teetered between gray/disgusting and less-gray/less-disgusting. And James continued his quest to make a place for himself in Lily's life.

It seemed to be continuing on remarkably well. From conversations in the corridor and seeking him out for homework help, Lily began to seek him out just to talk. She sat beside him sometimes in class, even making polite discussion with the other Marauders, whom she had never really been close to.

She trusted him. This much was obvious in their day-to-day interactions. Their conversations – though usually light and affectionate – began to branch out into tender, more intimate topics as time went by. She began to unravel a little, open up and give him small peeks into her soul, sitting there with him, picking her thumb nail and talking entire Sunday afternoons away with him in the common room.

She told him about how her sister hated her, her father buried his head in the sand and her mother tried desperately to keep the peace when she went home. She told him that she wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, with the options she had and the passions she nursed. She told him that Aidan confused her sometimes, because he would act like he cared about her, then ignore her to look cool in front of his friends.

She told him that her friends – diverse and hormonal as they were – were constantly caught in the midst of drama. From stolen quills to stolen boyfriends, they kept arguing, and she was always in the middle of it all, and she wasn't sure if they would all stay together like they kept saying they would. She told him that she was so damn lonely sometimes, caught between a mess of broken allegiances she wasn't sure how to navigate around.

He almost didn't know what to make of all her confidences. It was like hunting for a Sickle and having a waterfall of Galleons on his head. She just released these personal things in this torrent upon him, her voice quiet but full of emotion, and he listened attentively, giving her room to talk and talk and talk without being interrupted.

He knew, as she told him about her dreams, her ambitions, that he had gotten to a place people didn't always get to when they were with her. She was letting him into her world, story by story, confession by confession, and he was coming in deeper than even she had intended.

He asked her once in the evening, after she talked about the latest fight she'd had with Aidan, why she was telling him all this.

"I don't know," she had said with a shrug. "I suppose…it just feels right. Safe, you know?"

So he was her safe harbor, in the evenings and on the weekends, and she spent more time with him than she did with Aidan, by early April. He felt so fiercely protective of her when he saw the two of them when they were together; beautiful though she was, there was more to her behind her sparkling exterior, and he was sure Aidan had never bothered to tap into.

He was in too far now to even consider getting out. He was sure of it, as they shared a table in the common room and read the book Flitwick had assigned. He wanted to take care of her; he knew she trusted him like she trusted few others; they were perfect together and he knew it. Aidan was the only obstacle left between them.

Sirius had it wrong. Lily wasn't a heartbreaker, nor was she playing with him, being friendly with him for no reason. There was more to them, lurking under the surface, and he knew, knew like he knew he had two hands, that he would be with her. Somehow.

--

Everything was going so smoothly and wonderfully for such a long time, maybe he should've been on the alert. Maybe he shouldn't have immersed himself, head over feet, into this girl and all that she made him feel. Maybe he should have paused, opened his eyes to the signs right in front of him and talked to his friends to figure out his next move.

But the fact of the matter was, he didn't. He honestly never saw it coming.

The fateful night came to pass in mid-April, on a particularly rainy Sunday. The sky was steel gray, the raindrops fat and unrelenting, and James sat in his empty dormitory, deciding not to take refuge in the brightly-lit common room with everyone else. In truth, he'd meant to have a little nap, rest his eyes a little before dinner with the Marauders.

Some time around five, in his hazy slumber, he became acutely aware of stomping footsteps running upstairs, accompanied by wracked, animal sobs. He tried to wake up, rub his eyes and see what was going on, but his door opened with a loud slam and revealed none other than Lily Evans. And she was crying.

"Lily?" James scrambled to sit up in bed, shock and bewilderment written all over his features. "Lily, what are you—?"

"Aidan broke up with me!" she wailed before he had a chance to finish. "H-He broke up with me d-downstairs in f-front of e-e-everyone!"

"Blimey, did he really?" He was truly outraged and horrified for her. "What, did he say why he broke up with you?"

Still crying almost uncontrollably, she collapsed beside him on his bed. By impulse, he reached out for her, and she fell into him, resting her head on his chest, limp as he squeezed her tightly, her wracked sobs and erratic breathing filling up his ears.

"H-He told me I didn't care about him," she managed. "He said I s-spent too much time with you and not enough with him. He thought he was losing me to you, because he thought I h-hated you when I didn't, and he d-decided to break up with me."

An ice cube seemed to slip down James's throat into his stomach. Merlin – they'd broken up over him! Over these past few months, as he had grown closer to her, this was indeed the course his daydreams usually took; but now, sitting here, in the actual scenario, with Lily so obviously distraught, he didn't feel quite so victorious, even as he held her body against his.

"Really?" he said uneasily.

"And maybe we have our issues, but I cared about him!" she wept. "Being with him was n-normal, and chilled-out, and easy, and I l-loved that about him. I t-tried to tell him so but he didn't l-listen! He said we'd be better off s-separated!"

With this, she broke into a fresh wave of tears and clutched him so hard he almost pushed her off of him out of sheer instinct. She didn't seem to notice, though, as she hiccupped and attempted to catch her breath, her eyes red and her nose pink and her face a wet mess.

"God, this always happens," she practically whispered. "I always screw it up. Every relationship I've ever been in, it's my fault when it's over."

"It can't be only your fault," he attempted to reason. "I mean, he could have told you that he felt distant, instead of slamming it in your face and breaking it off."

"But he did," she said, squeezing her eyes shut, her tone pained. "That's what we've been fighting about for the past…I don't even know how long. But I thought it'd be all right…I thought he was overreacting…and I was wrong. He was so angry…you'd think I cheated on him or something."

James had nothing to say to this. What could he say? This wasn't his fault either. It was Aidan. Aidan was a daft prick – how could he break up with the perfect girl when he had her in his grasp? How could he let her go when she clearly still cared about him?

"And it's not like we're involved or anything," Lily went on, sniffling and wiping her eyes as more tears flooded down her cheeks. "You and I…we're just friends, you could ask anyone."

This casual statement seemed to punch him squarely in the gut, but he managed to nod somehow. "Yeah. I know. Just friends."

"Maybe you had a crush on me once, but it's nothing to be worried about," she said, her lovely large green eyes rimmed with so much red as she looked up at him. "And now…"

She squeezed her eyes and lips shut once more, but she didn't cry this time, holding it in the best she could, looking as though she might burst from the pressure building up inside her.

As sympathetic as he could be, he put his hand on her shoulder.

"Lily, I know it burns now, but you know as well as I do that it'll go away," he said determinedly. "If Aidan can't see how amazing you are, he doesn't deserve you; and if he's not worthy of you, he's not worthy of your sadness."

Lily shook her head, running her hand through her hair, hiccupping. "No," she said. She wasn't crying anymore, but her voice was fragile, wary. "No. It's the other way around. I don't deserve Aidan. I don't deserve anyone."

"How can that be?" He was honestly puzzled by her declaration, having been smitten with her for years and years.

The smile on her face – sad, wry as it was – worried him.

"You don't know how my other relationships ended, do you." She said it as a statement, not the question it should have been.

"I…no," he said honestly. "I don't."

"It's always like this," she said, so tonelessly you could never have guessed she'd spent the past few minutes crying her eyes out. "I get into a relationship for the fun, for the drama, for the hell of it; and somehow, I get attached along the way; and then the fun wears off, the bickering sets in, and they get tired of me not being what they thought I'd be. I'm not enough. And then they leave."

She blew a strand of hair out of her face and looked at him with those green eyes of hers. "No matter your best intentions, the story always ends with someone leaving and someone getting hurt," she said.

"Lily…"

"People assume that just because I'm pretty, I have to be perfect," she said, curling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tightly. "But I'm not perfect. I'm as screwed up as the rest of them. But because of some accident in genetics, I'm not allowed to make mistakes. I'm forever condemned to be the bitchy ex-girlfriend."

"You're not," he said firmly. "You've…okay, so some relationships didn't work out. I know it's horrible, because that's happened to me too. But…I don't know. You shouldn't blame that all on your own wrongdoing. When something is screwed up, it takes two to make it that way."

"You don't understand…"

"I do," he said. "I understand that you feel bitter and upset because it just happened. You always feel that way after a break-up. There's no place to put the blame, so you put it on yourself. Or, at least, that's what Remus reckons after one of us loses a girlfriend and we moan about how stupid we are – and as Remus is usually right, we'll go with that."

Miraculously, she cracks a smile and a weak chuckle, looking at him as though she'd never seen anyone like him.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she said. The color on her face, while still obvious, was calming down a little, not such a haywire pink anymore. "Merlin. What a horrible night."

"You want to sleep over up here tonight? Just…you know, for the company?" he offered innocently. "No one will mind."

She wrinkled her nose. "Where would I sleep?" she asked.

"We could…camp out on the floor in blankets, if you want," he said, blushing slightly. "I mean, not in an awkward way or anything. Only as friends."

She was silent and he, instantly, wished he had thought better of his benevolence before he opened his mouth. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He asked Lily Evans if she wanted to have a sleepover in the boy's dormitory! Sirius would have keeled over and died from laughing so hard. He felt his ears go hot and red and he found himself wishing Apparition was allowed on the school grounds…

"You know, I think I do want to," she said. "I just…don't know if I should."

"You want to stay up here with me?" He was so astonished by her statement that all he could do was stare foolishly at her.

She grinned at his confusion. "Yeah. I do. Is that…okay?"

"Yeah…I mean, I did offer." He ran a hand through his hair, mystified. "Wow. I just wasn't expecting you to say yes."

"I admit, I don't usually do this with my other guy friends," she said, "but there's something about you, James Potter. I can't put my finger on it. I just know that I'm safe with you."

"Well, I can tell you, then, that we have a special feeling-shitty-after-a-break-up snack we boys like to eat in the kitchens late at night to ease the misery," he said. "You want to come down and indulge?"

"I'd love to."

She smiled a real smile and they got off the bed. She reached for his hand first and the two of them slipped out of the dormitory, out of the common room (unnoticed by the raucous, self-absorbed Gryffindors), and downstairs to the kitchens. He had the password to get past the portrait and the house elves accosted them eagerly, ready to give them anything they wanted. He told them to get them "the usual" and they returned with a basket full of sugary treats, all the good stuff. He showed it to Lily, who laughed and nodded approvingly, and the two of them raced back up to the dormitory for a picnic.

Again, they held hands, and he could feel her warmth filling him up as though she was pouring it into him from a bottle. Despite Aidan, and the oddness of this situation, and the fact that her eyes were still rimmed with pink and she seemed to want to cry, his frenzied brain found the night's state of events to be quite perfect – him, her, sugar and a night together stretching out before them like a red carpet.

They landed on his bed and she sat next to him, her head resting against his shoulder as the two of them sharing the feeling-shitty-after-a-break-up snack. He couldn't take his eyes off of her, as she stuffed her face without remorse; somehow, she was even more beautiful here, when she was raw and uninhibited and indulgent.

Several minutes later, when about half the basket had disappeared, she said, "Thanks. That really hit the spot."

"No problem," said James, lazily chewing on a cinnamon bun. "With the four of us pooling our failed relationships, we've had plenty of time to concoct the perfect mix of deliciousness. Sticky bun?"

She giggled weakly and took a small chunk out of his bun, popping it between her lips and grinning through her full mouth. "Really?"

"Really," he said, grinning back.

"Well, your collection is a success," she said, "because I already a bit better. Thank you."

"No problem," he said easily, polishing off the last of his sticky bun. "I love sharing my break-up wisdom. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside."

"No, seriously," she said, softer, genuine. "I appreciate you taking the time to keep me company. I dunno…I suppose I could've asked someone else, maybe Alice, but you were the first one I thought of after Aidan stormed out on me. If you want me to leave, you can tell me."

James snorted. "Come on, do you really think I'm going to send you away?"

"I suppose not." She paused, seeming to ponder this whilst consuming another sticky bun. They were silent for a while, chewing together, before she decided to change everything with a few well-chosen words, smoothing out a crease in her skirt.

She said, "You know, I think I love you."

He blinked. His heart practically stopped for a moment as these words were processed one-by-one by his frozen brain.

"Sorry?"

He had to have misheard her. She couldn't have said what he thought she said. Even he wouldn't dare hope for something like that.

But she looked him in the eye and repeated it with complete seriousness: "I think I love you."

"I…erm…love you too…?" he mumbled back, feeling the red warmth in his cheeks, his hand automatically finding its way into his hair.

"No, I do," she said emphatically, her green eyes widening slightly, full to the brim with sincerity. "I mean, I was thinking about how out-of-my-mind upset I was when Aidan broke up with me, and how you were the first face that came to mind, and how I came to you before I even considered anyone else. And I thought about how every time something funny happens to me, I note it down mentally to tell you later. And how the things you say come back to me when I'm spacing out sometimes and I laugh without knowing why. I was wondering why these things happened to me, why it's you I turn to all the time, and I figured it's because I love you."

These were words he'd waited a good chunk of his life to hear from her mouth; and yet the moment he heard them, in the dark of her dormitory, in the aging evening, he found himself guarded against them. Too many years of experience, plus an overload of Sirius, made his heart just the slightest bit wary before being given away.

"You certainly didn't love me last year," he told her, remembering what Sirius had said. "Or the years before it."

"I know that," she said, turning pink. "But I mean, I didn't know you then, did I? If I had loved you before, it wouldn't have made any sense."

"You hated me because you thought I was irritating and self-centered," he pointed out. "I'm still that person, Lily. I haven't undergone a lobotomy or personality-change since you hated me."

"We've grown up since then," she said, crawling to the other side of the bed where he sat, facing him as she spoke. "We both have. That counts for something."

"You lost your boyfriend an hour ago," he reminded her gently, his hand on her shoulder. "You'd love just about anyone right now. It's not me."

There was something like hurt in her eyes, a flicker of fire igniting inside her, and it burned out before he could analyze it. But before he could open his mouth, think any further, she seized his collar and pulled him into her, kissing him deeply without any warning.

When you came down to it, past the layers of thought and confusion and rationalization, he was just a boy, and he acted as such: his hands gripped her waist and he kissed her back, his mouth full of the taste of her, his senses filled with the feel of her. After all the dreaming, the wishing, the agony of dancing around her, being here was more than anything he could have imagined.

And when you came down to it, past the layers of hurt and confusion and rationalization, she was just a girl, and she acted as such: she forgot every reason she had not to be here and put her burden on his shoulders, letting him have her, all of her.

"I want to be with you," she whispered to him as she smoothly made her way down to his neck, her breath warm on his flushed skin.

"Lily…"

Her hands shot up his shirt and rested on his bare back. They were so close that she could hear his heart beating rapidly with hers, not quite in tune but close enough. She let her teeth sink into him just a little bit and she heard that small, intimate groan from within his throat, felt something beginning deep inside her.

"Please don't leave me alone," she whispered into his shoulder.

He didn't respond verbally, but she heard that groan again – resigned, aching, yearning – and she knew he wouldn't. For tonight, at least, he was hers; and she had never been so grateful for it.

--

The next morning, he awoke with a jolt at six o'clock in the morning.

The dormitory was silent save for the chorus of teenage boys snoring peacefully in their respective beds. Early morning sunshine spilled in through the thick glass window, casting its honey glow on the various heads peeping out of blankets, still on pillows. His heart was still beating fast, even now.

James stretched his arms and sat up in bed, putting on his glasses and looking around, letting the morning wash over him like a lukewarm ocean wave. Images from the previous night, sharp like photographs and vivid like real life, came back to him slowly: the feel of Lily's shirt as it slipped off her body, the unique sweetness that flooded his mouth as he kissed her, the smell of vanilla and cinnamon that hung about her, probably from all the cinnamon buns they'd eaten.

He remembered how he kissed her lusciously for several minutes before they slipped downstairs to continue, undisturbed by all the boys trooping up to bed. It was as easy as breathing, kissing her, and time stretched out endlessly before him, graciously allowing him until the end of the world to be there with her.

He murmured to her, as he sank to the floor with her, holding her face in his hands, what she had so casually said to him before: he loved her. And this morning, basking in the afterglow of being with her, he believed it.

He got dressed slowly, savoring the morning, his head still stuck in the previous night. Normally, he hated Mondays, but it didn't matter today, slipping into his school robes and going downstairs for an early breakfast. He couldn't stop smiling, couldn't stop thinking of her, and ate his breakfast alone with a sense of wonder, like he really was a new person now that she loved him.

Just as he finished his breakfast, the other Marauders arrived downstairs, mystified by this odd behavior. It was common knowledge that they usually came down for breakfast late and together. Eating early and alone meant that something out-of-the-ordinary had happened.

Indeed, the first thing Sirius said upon sitting at the table was, "Spill, Prongs."

"Spill what?" James had been staring blankly at his glass of orange juice and woke up with alarm. "Did I drop the juice?"

Remus rolled his eyes. "He means, tell us what's going on," he said. "Something has obviously happened."

Peter scrutinized his friend for a minute or two, then said, "It has to be Lily. It just has to be."

"Is it?" Sirius's head whipped back to face his friend. "Is it Lily?"

"Maybe," said James, blushing.

"It is!" said Peter victoriously. "Merlin, how do I know these things? I am so brilliant…"

"I heard about her break-up with Aidan," said Remus. "It was pretty vicious. Is that what you're so happy about? Lily is a free agent?"

"No, no, that can't be it," said Sirius. "That would explain excitement and giddiness, but not eating alone and daydreaming. This has to be something bigger…"

"She loves me," James said before he could stop himself, that bright smile from the morning returning in full form. "That's what it is, she loves me."

Remus narrowed his eyes. "You don't mean to say…"

Sirius and Peter's eyes widened with surprise. "Prongs…!"

And there, over the boys eating breakfast, he explained the strange events that had transpired the night before.

When the whole story was through, from the initial shock of seeing her in his dormitory, to going downstairs to kiss, to sneaking back upstairs several hours later, the Marauders were effectively speechless. Only Sirius could recover within thirty seconds of the conclusion.

"Merlin's beard, James Potter, I hardly know how to respond," he said, shaking his head, his long dark hair flopping over his eyes. "This is…unexpected."

"I told you," James couldn't resist saying. "I told you it wasn't over. I told you she cared about me."

"Then where is she?" asked Remus looking around. "I don't see her here. She has class today…and she's usually here by now…"

"She'll be here," said James happily, stealing one of Sirius's sausages and taking a bite. "Merlin…can you believe she loves me?"

"Somehow, I have a bad feeling about this," said Remus, frowning slightly. "The timing isn't right. She's not the kind of person to leap to another boy after a break-up. And she'd been really keen on Aidan."

"I'm going to back off from the situation now," announced Sirius. "I mean, nothing I say is going to make a difference to Prongsie's ickle lovesick mind. So I'm happy for you, mate – snogging her has always been your greatest ambition – but I don't have anything else to say now. I just hope it works out."

"It will," James vowed, feeling some of that warmth in his face again as he thought of that first wonderful kiss. "It has to."

--

The glow of the morning wore off pretty quickly, as the day went on. James fully expected to see Lily smiling and ready to hug him, maybe give him a peck on the cheek, before first period; but she came in a minute after the bell, flushed and harried, and didn't even glance once his way. Her eyes were red again – she looked like she'd cried – and she wouldn't catch his eye. It was disconcerting, and gave him a knot in his stomach he couldn't explain.

She acted much the same for the rest of the day. He tried to catch up to her in the corridor like they always did, say hello and ask how she was, but after a night of drinking in no one but him, she sped up and darted out of sight. It was a sock in the gut to see her avoid him this way, drained all the happiness out of him as though it were being vacuumed, and he became uneasy, not to mention confused.

The previous night was many things – surprising, emotional, pivotal – but it had also held hope, promise. She told him that she loved him and they spent a good portion of the night together, kissing in the dark, empty common room. It takes four lips to kiss and two of them had been hers: it wasn't just him, she had wanted it too.

He had saved her, hadn't he? He had saved her from herself, from a night of being alone and thinking she'd done everything wrong. He had been her friend, platonic and steady and there. She was the one who took that and twisted it, bringing up her feelings for him and consummating the relationship she knew he had always wanted. She was the one who said she loved him.

And now, she was ignoring him, as though they were really back in fourth year, as though she had never said or done or felt what he knew she had.

It was definitely disconcerting.

He knew better than to talk to Sirius, after the veiling of his backing-off policy that morning, so the day was a strangely empty, lonely one without her. He went through his usual routine, laughing with his friends and trying to care about the meaningless tasks set before him all day, but he was only going through the motions and he knew it. And his friends, loving him as they did, silently stood by him and hoped for the best, unsure what the future would bring.

And thus the balance stood for five long days.

By Friday, he felt drained, tired. All the sparkle from the weekend was long gone, leaving him sullen and upset in its wake. She had steadily avoided eye contact for five days and he didn't know what to make of it. She'd tantalized him for years, dangling herself in front of him but never letting him have her; and then, when he finally won her, she flew away again, lingering so close, but so out of reach.

She didn't know what she did to him. She couldn't, because no half-sane person would have put him through that miserable, muddled week if they knew what it did to him.

However, resolution did come for him by Friday night, in the common room, just before dinner.

It was an evening typical enough, as most of the big ones were: Remus was helping Peter with homework, Sirius was doodling and half-listening to this, James was playing with a yo-yo and staring at the ceiling, his thoughts wandering but mostly lingering on her. They were settled in the corner, where it was easy to survey the entire common room, as well as the portrait hole.

And if it hadn't been for a chance flick of his eyes to the left at just the right moment, he wouldn't have noticed it: Lily, climbing into the common room with Aidan, and kissing his lips quickly before slipping inside.

The image of this lone action, simple and horrible as it was, activated a switch in his brain like he couldn't believe.

"Oi, Prongs, what's up?" asked Sirius, noticing James rising to his feet as though shocked from the back. "Are you okay?"

"I'll be right back," he replied, almost as if in a dream, walking quickly with single-minded determination toward the portrait hole, the scene of the crime.

Then he saw them: Lily and Aidan, finishing up their conversation by the stairs leading to the dormitories. She kissed him again; he touched her hair; he left and she turned around, relaxed and contented, only to freeze at the sight of him before her. Immediately, the muscles in her face tightened and that look became clearer:

It was guilt, plain as day.

"James…"

She said his name softly, and this made him feel even worse, something black from a place deep inside him slipping into his blood stream. His head almost hurt; it was difficult to feel such a rush of strong emotion in such a miniscule moment.

"What? Now it's okay to speak to me?" he asked her, more viciously than he had intended.

Her features seemed to shrink into her face, but she didn't say anything. This worked for him, because he had plenty to say to her.

"I…I almost don't even know where to start, telling you all the ways you have screwed me over," he practically spat at her. "I mean, what was I to you? A game, a passing fancy just for the hell of it? You used me. You come up to my room, cry on my shoulder and eat my post-break-up snack basket, and you tell me you love me. You knew how I felt about you and you manipulated me, because you felt like rubbish and needed someone easy to get you through the night. And then, just like that, after all the things you said and did with me, you turn around completely and ignore me – only to kiss Aidan and presumably fix up your relationship, just because it suits you!"

She was silent, closing her eyes and looking tired, weary. Her bright, happy exterior – the one he knew so well – had finally fallen all the way off, leaving this rawer, more unpleasant side of her behind. "I know," she said so quietly he almost didn't hear her.

"How could you do that?" he demanded. "How could you make me believe you cared about me, if all you were going to do was go behind my back and make up with Aidan? You can't take back your part of what we did that night. You can't forget about it. I mean, maybe you can, but I can't. Maybe you lied to me, but I meant everything I said to you. I honestly believed that I loved you. I'd tried so hard to be friends this year, so you would trust me and we could maybe be something later; but this was cold, you know that? Rejecting me outright is one thing; leading me on is another entirely."

"I'm sorry!" she burst out. Her voice was shaky; she was close to tears. "It's not…it's not like I planned to hurt you or anything!"

"But you did, didn't you" he retorted bitterly. "You did hurt me."

Her lower lip trembled the slightest bit and the sight of it made him ill. She looked so genuinely upset, like she had the night Aidan had broken up with her, and he hated that. He hated that she could get teary-eyed and make him pity her even when he was angry with her. He hated that she had that kind of control on him. That was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

"Look, I'm sorry," she said, resignedly. "I am. May I please explain what's going on, before you say anything else?"

"I suppose so," he said roughly, though he really did want to know what she had to say. All the easier for him to shove more of the situation in her face.

She took a deep breath, running her hand through her hair, and said, "Well, after Aidan broke up with me on Sunday, I was upset. I was hurt and surprised and you were the first person I thought of when I tried to figure out my next move. I do feel safe with you. And I thought being safe was all I needed."

She took another breath, only now meeting his gaze. The last, dim rays of daylight hit her face at the loveliest angle, making her look so breathtakingly sad that something in his throat caught. It was unfair, how he could notice this despite the open wound still oozing in his stomach.

"I also meant what I said that night," she said solemnly. "I was serious when I said I loved you. I did. This latest thing with Aidan…it made me realize just how messed up I am, how I'm never going to be able to sustain a committed relationship, because no matter what I always end up doing something wrong. You know me better than anyone and being there in your dormitory, I loved you for loving me despite all the reasons you had to run away screaming. And when you said I didn't, it was only because of Aidan, I was affronted. I wanted to prove to you that it was you I wanted. That's how we got involved in the rest of the evening.

"But afterward, I woke up with you on my mind and I freaked out," she went on. "I couldn't believe that all these half-shameful things I'd been feeling for you all through this year came out in the open. I panicked, to put it lightly."

Her green eyes had never been greener as she softened all the way down to nothing here, stripped clear of any cover for her feelings, any safety net she could hide in.

"You have always expected so much of me, James," she said to him softly. "I told you before – just because I'm pretty, doesn't mean I'm perfect. You've lived a lie. I'm not perfect. Commitment scares the living daylights out of me and I woke up terrified that you were going to do that thing you do, where you put me under a spotlight and rationalize all the moronic things I do and adore me. I couldn't face that. I was so tired of the expectations people have for me."

His mouth was completely dry. "I don't…"

"You do," she said sadly, resolutely, brokenly. "You do and you know that. I love you, I do, but that scares me. I know Aidan is not perfect, but he is what I need right now. He's easy to maintain. He was feeling neglected, so he made a scene and all he needed was a bit of sweet-talking two days later. You're much more complicated than that. You wouldn't let me get away with it and I needed a break."

She bit her lip and came forward, as though she wanted to touch him but didn't dare to.

"I'm not saying what I did was right," she said gently. "I thought that by not saying anything, I could figure things out and find a good way to tell you what was going on. Obviously I was wrong, and I'm sorry. But I've already told you, I'm not perfect. I can't be. This is who I am, James. I am a horrible, selfish person."

"You aren't," he insisted, almost desperately. "You're not flawless, but I'm not asking you to be. Quirks don't bother me. I…I love you."

"Do you love me now, as I push you away to make my own life a little less complicated?" she demanded, voice trembling. "Did you love me when I ignored you all week? I am a horrible, selfish person underneath all the smiles. You have never seemed to understand that."

They were silent again, mulling this one over. But the quiet was so awful that he broke it before he was ready to, just so he didn't have to hear it, spiraling around him and somehow mocking him. He felt the fight leak all the way out of him, as he watched her in front of him, upset but also resolute; the anger was gone and he was left with everything else.

"So…this is it?" he asked bitterly. "You want to just pretend you and I never became anything, that you and Aidan are happy and get to ride off into the sunset?"

She closed her eyes again. She suddenly looked so much older than her seventeen years, her skin paper thin, like she could fall apart at the slightest touch.

"Yes," she said when she opened her eyes. "It doesn't feel right, dating you now. I'm so tired. Maybe some other time, in some other place, we could try…but I can't do it here. Please don't keep chasing after me; I don't want to hurt you again."

She leaned in, her scent as sweet as it had been Sunday night, and pressed her lips lightly against his cheek, barely touching him and yet burning the flesh she breathed upon.

"I really am sorry," she said, before turning around and disappearing into her dormitory.

He lingered there at the foot of the stairs for several minutes, his head whirling as he took in the weight of her words. She had tried to be gentle, but in the end, the truth was ugly and cruel and she couldn't save him from it. Strong as he was, he felt like all the air had been let out of him, as though he was drowning in himself.

This girl had forever been his biggest weakness; and walking back to his worried friends and their sympathy, she felt like a curse.

--

He was the kind of boy you couldn't forget about, not even if you tried.

The most obvious reason was that he was passionate. Not just the taking-risks-for-the-sake-of-taking-risks passionate, but passionate, with his intensity and sensitivity and his ability to open up so widely for a girl who might use his deepest secrets against him in horrible ways. He was striking in all the ways that mattered – there seemed to be a light and a life to him that emanated in every fiber of his being.

At first glance, he seemed like a goofball. Messy, loud; scarily ardent and wickedly clever. And he was cheerful and quirky, with that glow of youth in every word he said, in every gesture of his hand.

He was the special favorite of all his teachers, the punch-line to jokes among his year. He was the chaos of autumn, bright colors and noise and temperament that challenged those around him, and it was so easy – almost too easy – to overlook the fact that behind the charms, the mask, she was indeed human.

He was human. He wasn't perfect, always jumping through leaf piles and garnering praise wherever he went. While the world wanted to believe there existed such a boy, he disagreed because he knew the truth.

He'd had his heart broken and still carried scars; and while he threw himself head-first into every relationship he was in, he was wary of getting his heart broken yet again. In his experience, he was the one who kept trying when the other gave up, and he ended up being the one getting hurt while the other seemed just fine. He wanted something lasting, fulfilling – love without the bullshit.

There were clouds behind his sunshine, darkness behind his glow. First glances say nothing about a person – nothing that matters, anyway.

He was not bullet-proof; and maybe if she had known that, maybe if she had taken the time to stop and think, things would have gone differently.

Maybe if she hadn't been so deeply insecure; maybe if she had taken the time to consider who and what he tried to be for her; maybe if she hadn't tired herself out and thought so little of what she meant to someone else; maybe if she wasn't so much like him, idealistic and hopeful, ready to believe that this person was the magic fix-all to her problems; maybe they could have been something amazing.

As it was, though, she fell head-over-heels in love with him, she was like him in many wonderful and terrible ways, and she met him in the insulated bubble of Hogwarts instead of out in the real world. And they couldn't be something.

Maybe she was the heroine of his story, and he the hero in hers, but life had other plans. It always did.

-FIN-