“Merlin, why’s Dumbledore even bothering protecting the castle?” Sirius said as they left the classroom to go to dinner. “With Slughorn shoving Veritaserum down our throats and this Dearborn bloke pretending to teach us how to protect ourselves, we might as well take our chances with Voldemort.”

The embarrassment of standing in a room with a giant picture of his own head was enough to make James want to die. What in the world had Slughorn been thinking?

After his anger at Snape had subsided, he had been fairly impressed by Lily’s courage. Of course, this had its drawbacks, since he was now more attracted to her than he had ever been before.

“There’s not much I wouldn’t do to you,” Lily threatened. There was a moment where she thought she might actually have to duel with Mulciber, until a new voice sounded in the Entrance Hall.

James had a strange moment where he felt like he had been sent back in time, watching Lily and Snape standing around as a pair in classes, feeling equal sensations of disgust and hopelessness. He picked at the corner of his textbook, angry at Dearborn and Snape and Lily and the Dark Arts and the fact that he was supposed to figure out the rest of his life in the course of a few months.

“...early estimates indicate at least 100 dead, killed late last night in a Muggle shopping center in Manchester. Death Eaters fled the scene before Magical Law Enforcement arrived...”

When Professor McGonagall asked him and Lily to stay after Transfiguration one afternoon, James found that part of being Head Boy meant that he was told bad news that the other students weren’t.

The sad truth was that Anna was right: Valentine’s Day always seemed to push the students of Hogwarts into very public and very pathetic displays of affection.

She had a very strange look on her face—slightly embarrassed and reluctant, somewhat like the one she had worn when they had spoken after the Quidditch match. James was becoming more and more convinced that she had something important to tell him...

This was justified, even if they had to use questionable means to achieve their ends. And in any case, it wasn’t as if anyone else was ever going to find out that they, and not the Slytherins, were the ones behind it all.

“Well,” she said, “I would prefer it if you’d keep calling me ‘Lily’, of course. ‘My girlfriend’ seems a little impersonal.”

Say something, you dolt, a voice in his head told him. Silence, he had learned from experience, always made you look guilty.

Another boy stepped forward, this time a Slytherin—although James thought it was probably because his friends had shoved him to the front—and the entire room went dark, shrieks echoing off the walls.

There was a very strange moment where she saw both James and Snape’s gaze shift to her and they seemed to be on the verge of withdrawing, but neither gave up their ground.

"Life is hard and tumultuous—but so it has been for all of the past graduates of this school, and so it shall remain for all that follow you.”

They were going to get out of this, they had to, they were only eighteen years old, and things couldn’t possibly end this way—not on some ordinary Saturday evening, out-of-the-blue. James simply could not accept that his life was going to end without him having some expectation of it beforehand.