She assumes that the common room will be empty when she enters, as the Fat Lady so haughtily reminded her that it's well beyond curfew, but the shadowy figure lying on the couch proves otherwise. She immediately begins to wipe at her cheeks, not wanting to be seen with any evidence of the tears that escaped on her way to Gryffindor Tower, but then she realizes that the figure is James Potter, whom she has nothing to prove to, and that he is, thankfully, sound asleep.

And she's angry with him for it. Whenever she and Sev have a row, which seems to be becoming more and more frequently as of late, she fancies herself a good cry in front of the fire once everyone has gone off to bed so as to not be questioned by anyone who might hear. And now, because of that git Potter, she can't do that. She considers for a brief moment to do it anyway, but it'd be a bit odd, wouldn't it, to sit in one of the other chairs and sob with Potter passed out on the sofa beside her. Especially since she imagines that Potter would probably be somewhat of a light sleeper with the wild mates he surrounds himself with and then with that big mouth of his, the entire fourth year would know about her crying by lunchtime.

So the risk of him waking doesn't seem worth it.

She wipes at her cheeks once last time and suppresses any remaining urge to burst into tears, heading towards the stairs with one last glance at Potter. But then she stops. And she stares. Because she notices that he's still wearing his glasses. And suddenly she remembers being a little girl and watching her grandmother gingerly remove her sleeping grandfather's lopsided glasses from his face, a newspaper folded in his lap.

Potter certainly doesn't have a newspaper but his glasses are indeed lopsided, and will probably be crushed should he turn his head in his sleep. She hesitates for a moment, biting her lip, but then she's tiptoeing to the sofa and gingerly removing Potter's glasses from his face with no reason other than that her gran did it for her granddad. At least that's what she tells herself. And then she's frozen in place, partly to make sure that she didn't wake him and partly because she's struck by how different he looks without his glasses. But it doesn't last very long and then she's on the move again, folding up his specs neatly and quietly placing them on the coffee table.

She's about to turn and continue her journey to her dormitory when she hears Potter begin to stir. She was right about him being a light sleeper.

She could leave, she knows that she could, but she doesn't. Instead she watches him as he wakes up, stretching and blinking and rubbing his eyes and thusly realizing that he's not wearing his glasses. She watches as he begins to feel about for them, panicking slightly as they don't turn up.

"They're right here," she tells him softly, picking them up from the table.

He's a bit startled, she realizes, as he turns to her with wide, unseeing eyes, having not initially registered her presence when he first awoke.

"Oh." She hands the glasses over. "Thanks," he mumbles, squinting at her as if to determine her identity and she suddenly realizes just how terrible his eyesight must be.

"It's Lily," she supplies, and he offers her a smile. But it's not the shit-eating grin that she knows him for, the one where he looks so sure of himself and certainly up to no good. Instead it's sleepy. And kind of charming and endearing. In a way. Sort of.

She tries to shake off the thought.

"Oh. Er, yeah, you're pretty blurry. So…yeah, thanks, Lily." He puts the glasses on and they stare at each other in the orange glow of the fire.

"I took them off because it looked like you were going to crush them," she offers as an explanation that he may or may not have been waiting for, suddenly feeling ridiculous for having removed his glasses in the first place.

"Oh," he says again after a few moments, and she almost laughs because this must be him. This must be James Potter, without an audience and tired and probably more real and soft and genuine than she's ever seen him. And she likes that. "My mum does that."

She bites her lip and doesn't know how to feel about this comparison with his mother.

And then she begins to really dig her teeth into her lip because she doesn't know how she feels about not knowing how to feel about this comparison with his mother. Because when did she ever care about what James Potter thought?

She quickly decides that she still doesn't and that she's going to bed.

And when she tells him a hurried, "Well, good night," he hops up from the couch mumbling something about going to bed, too.

He follows her up the stairs with a safe distance between them, but she can hear how exhausted he is with each heavy step. And when she stumbles on a step in the darkness, his reflex to place his hand on her back to steady her is very much delayed and no longer necessary as she's already continued to move forward.

But the feel of his soft touch lingers for much of the time that she spends lying awake in her four-poster, her row with Sev long forgotten. She wonders if Potter will remember or even think about their little encounter come morning, as insignificant as it was.

She wonders if she will as well.

A/N: Just my personal head canon for the moment that Lily starts to have a thing for James, and the moment that James realizes that Lily's a girl. Hope you liked it! Please let me know in a review :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and it sucks okay?