Thoughts of him woke her up in the middle of the night.
Thoughts of her kept him from falling asleep at all.
Lily Evans' eyes flew open. She was petrified, but not because her sleep had been teeming with nightmares, as she had grown accustomed to those long ago. Lily was horrified because for once, her dreams had been pleasant, and yet she woke up gasping for air and searching her room frantically to make sure that she was at a safe distance from the false reality that her dreams had conjured.
She tried to force her eyes to focus on the familiar ceiling fan, but even though she was conscious of its presence, she couldn't help but look right through it. Because the image she had opened her eyes to escape; the image that had slithered into her dreams that night, seemed to be burned onto the ceiling.
It was a face: James Potter's face. And for a moment she felt that he was watching her, his hazel eyes boring holes through her emerald green ones. And though it was only the remnants of the dream that Lily had not yet managed to shake off, a scream struck through the silence of her quaint suburban household like a bolt of lightening.
It was the morning of September 1st 1976. If you could even call it morning, James Potter thought grouchily. The moon still hung in the sky; the bulb of a lantern whose typical flame had been temporarily exchanged for fluorescence.
It wasn't a full moon yet. Remus's furry little problem would not act up until this evening, but the poor boy was bound to feel terrible all day long. And he would be stuck in a tiny train compartment with James and Sirius who would almost certainly take up three quarters of sitting space the for their "leg room". (They only did this because it annoyed Remus to no end). Peter would probably be hunched over on the bathroom floor fighting back bouts of nausea, as per usual. Despite the tortuous train rides to and from Hogwarts, Peter refused to take the anti-motion sickness medicine on account of its taste, which he described as a cross between cream of spinach and vomit. But then again, Peter had always been one to exaggerate.
It was just his luck that he should get no sleep the night before the full moon. He could guarantee that he would not get any sleep tonight either, and classes would commence in roughly twenty-seven hours. James really needed to get at least a few hours of sleep before boarding the Hogwarts Express, or he may just walk into the wrong barrier. That would certainly be a sight. He could already see a crowd of muggles slowly backing away from the sociopath who had just attempted to run through a wall, and he was sure that Sirius's taunts would be relentless:
He would say something like, "Couldn't be bothered to stop thinking about Evans for two seconds to check where you were going?" No matter what he said, James was sure that it would be equally as embarrassing, and possibly more so.
His thoughts wandered for a while, keeping him awake and restless, and eventually they came back to Lily Evans. His thoughts always wandered to her. In fact, she was the real reason that he was still up at 3 a.m. Horrible, awful, cruel, perfect Lily Evans whom he knew would never give him the time of day. Sometimes he wished he could completely erase her from his memory, just so that he could have his mind back. Although he knew it was not true, James thought that his thoughts had not been his own since she invaded them on the very last day of third year… Needless to say, he did not fall asleep that morning.