Fairies

A/N: I've wanted to get this published for a while; I just never had the time. I'm happy I finally did. This story is just a bit of angst with James, and a one-shot. Though I might turn it into a whole story one day, if I ever get done with another fic I'm writing at the moment. Tell me what you think; would this make a good opener for a Lily/James fic?

Anyway, enjoy!

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The stag and the dog leaned over a hand-crafted, marble Wizard's Chess set, alone in a certain room off the seventh-floor corridor. The pieces, black and white, were slightly chipped and had the air of things that were touched often enough. Positioned in different places, knights of opposite sides were raising their voices to shout insults at each other. Cries of competition rung out inside the room, echoing loudly, in stark contrast to the silence of the sixth years playing the game.

James Potter sat across from his mischievous, shaggy haired and lively best friend, who reclined back in his chair as if it were a couch.

Sirius Black was a ladies' man, and always had that glint in his steely grey eyes, the look that told you, even if you thought you had gotten off easy, that you were screwed. These eyes hardly stood out against his long black mane that almost all the girls thought intimidatingly sexy. On the other side of the board, James was mostly the same, except taller and lankier, with messier, shorter hair, glasses and eyes that were colored a bright hazel. The two boys were quite famous for the pranks they pulled together, along with their friends Peter and Remus, who were both still sleeping; it was the middle of the night.

James and Sirius were deep in thought, which, consequently, is not that unusual for the room that they were in at the moment. James often would come up there to think. In The Room of Requirement, things could always be as he wanted them to be. The war was getting closer, and with each passing day, he became more nervous about the war that was about to strike the world he and his fellow sixth years would soon be thrust into. It didn't matter whether you were against Voldemort or not; you still had a pretty good chance of either being killed either by Voldemort himself, if you were important enough, or one of his rumored "Death Eaters". Even the name of Voldemort's supposed followers sent chills up most people's spines. It was that James was thinking about while neither chess player spoke.

Sirius Black was musing about something else entirely. For the first time in his life, he was worrying about James. Sirius' friend had stopped being so carefree, as he had been in his earlier years at Hogwarts, and was on the road to being as sullen as Severus Snape. Sure, they still did all the things they used to do, like sneaking out, smuggling mead into their dormitory, and turning the Slytherin's Pumpkin Juice to Magical Hair-Growth Stimulants, although it wasn't quite the same as before. But that wasn't what confused Sirius; it just worried him. No, it was the fact that James was allegedly "in love" that the dog didn't understand. Used to asking out anyone he pleased, just to have a nice couple of hook-ups in a broom closet somewhere, the idea of actually wanting to get to know someone befuddled Sirius. James had refused to ask out Lily since the incident at the end of fifth year.

"Come on Prongs, you've got to make your move. You can't just give up, and avoid her."

Sirius, of course, was not talking about chess.

"Pads, just make your move."

"No, James, you do something so you can make your move, yeah?"

"I bloody well can't! You know she hates me, and last year, I managed to lower her opinion of James Potter even more! I'm done, damn it!"

Best friends didn't give up that easily. Sirius scooted out his chair, with a loud squeak, and pushed past the slim red couches and across the gold and maroon shag rug over to a tapestry of a lion. He pointed his wand at it, and the lion slid down the wall with the tapestry, roaring, to reveal a huge mural of Lily, made entirely out of small iridescent squares that appeared to have been put on the wall by hand. The mural was surprisingly accurate. Mural Lily had even been charmed to blink and play with her hair every once in a while. Sirius gestured arrogantly toward Mural Lily, who flipped long, red tresses back over her shoulders.

James turned bright red, and the tapestry flew back upwards, triumphant roars of the lion mingling with disappointed sighs of Mural Lily.

"You….How….That's... that's bloody private!"

"Prongs!" Sirius talked over him, "all of us know how much you love Lily, even if we don't understand exactly! But, enough to spend, what, seventy hours, making a ten foot wide mural of her face on the wall, for God's sake!"

Mural Lily giggled.

Sirius folded his arms.

"You need to show her that you've grown up. You have… we all have, with the war… and somewhere deep in her brilliant head, Lily has to have a soft spot for James Potter. If McGonagall can let you off once or twice, Lily can damn well open her mind a bit. No one can have less soul than McGonagall."

James was not convinced, not even grinning at Sirius' remark about McGonagall. He was actually a little pissed that Sirius still did not get it.

"Padfoot, I can't just ask to be friends with her or anything. Lily thinks I'm a cruel human being fit to wipe Snivellus' shoes," he spit the name -Snivellus- with enough venom to silence Sirius for a while. When Sirius did talk again, though, it was as if James had been thrown into the real world for the first time in his life.

"Well, Prongs, you have to at least try. There's no way to tell how much time we all have left. Evans could be dead by morning, and if you refuse to do anything, she'll still have that low opinion of you when she dies."

This was all too much. James stood up, and pressed his fingers onto the polished wood table that they had been using to play chess. He felt like the knight that he had, moments before, put in to action. The knight had grumbled and tried to get the player to change his mind, but had went into the battle nonetheless.

James walked over to the door, and after staring at the ornate brass handle for a moment, walked out, letting his feet take him wherever they would. Only stopping to throw on the silvery invisibility cloak, James ran his fingers over the cold stone walls and every now and then over one of the brass torch holders than, nailed to the stone, ran the length of the halls. The torches lit up the way with a modest, warm glow, casting shadows all over the wood floors. There was no outline of the boy who was creeping through the school tonight. The invisibility cloak allowed not even a shadow of its wearer. Soon enough, James was at the doors out of the Great Hall. Time had passed quickly, as he had virtually memorized the hallways.

Stopping by the doors, James recalled what Sirius had said, and wondered exactly how much time he had left. It was a rumor, mostly based on fact that Death Eaters were rounding up followers at Hogwarts; it couldn't be long now, when there were school-aged spies that could watch over Dumbledore and the rest of the student body. Lucius Malfoy, a former Slytherin, had given James looks of curiosity and malice that had hinted an interest in him on the last trip to Hogsmead, when they had brushed past each other. Highly doubting that this was because of the newest prank on the Slytherins, (painting their entire common room bright fuchsia with bombs The Marauders rolled under the door), James wondered if he was going to be asked to join Voldemort's private army. And also what Malfoy was doing in Hogsmead, when he had graduated Hogwarts roughly four years before. Was Malfoy watching the students, to see which ones could be valuable to Voldemort? Maybe lurking in dark alleys like a spider, trying to convince people to join the Death Eaters? If he were to ask James, the answer would be no, of course. All that the soon-to-be seventh year wanted to do, once out of school, was join the resistance like is parents before him. So he could try to stop Voldemort, keep all his friends, and Lily, safe… because he would kill them if somebody him; Voldemort would take the fire out of his mum's eyes, the spring out of his dad's step, and Lily's perfect hair would turn to dust…

No. No such thoughts, James admonished himself. Not now.

James pushed on the huge doors to the Great Hall, trying not to make a sound while he did it. He closed them behind him, and shivered a little bit. There was a slight draft here, though it was intended; hundreds of bodies in a single room like this would overheat if it was too warm.

The boy's thin frame leaned on one of the giant tables of the great hall, pale skin illuminated in the moonlight. His glasses were gleaming in the rays, and his bathrobe was pulled around him like a security blanket. James stopped and stood there for a second. How many times had he stood in this exact spot, laughing with Sirius and Peter and Remus? How many times had he tossed his hair, and glanced over at Lily, not knowing that none of it really mattered? The war was coming. Hell, it was here. James just wished, hoped, he was ready.

He walked over to the second window to the left of the heavy doors, and pushed out its false pane, his thin fingers catching the glass and setting it aside, for now. He would be back after dawn to creep back up to his dormitory. James wondered if that's where Sirius was, or if he was still in the Room of Requirement, where he had been left. James wished he'd had the nerve to overturn the chess board. The air outside was chilly at this time of night, the window frosted over. But it wasn't a problem. Beckoning to him, the grounds were fresh and welcoming. James happily obliged to its summons.

The sixth year put a simple warming charm on himself, and then changed to his animagus form; a stag. There was a slight burning sensation in his muscles, and he grimaced as the hands he held in front of him turned to hooves. James lowered his head to the ground, only rising when he felt the last of the transformation finishing, the fire in his blood dying out. He needed to get used to the transformation, he knew.

The silvery-white animal that had replaced the thin boy turned its bright hazel eyes toward the forest. On the edge of the Hogwarts grounds, it looked menacing and dark. But the animal bounded towards it. He slowed when he came to the trees, but found a gap in their growth and jumped into the Forbidden Forest. Those trees, almost alive the way that they were lit up, swayed dangerously, but the stag knew where it was going and kept running. The steady pace of his legs was rhythmical and determined. He trampled weeds and ducked under logs. Most of the plants that were there had wasted away, or cracked and crumbled from age. This wasn't a very desirable part of the forest, but it led to somewhere James liked to go to think. Not that the stag would stop there tonight.

Dead trees slowly started to thin, and suddenly opened up to a large meadow, filled with flowers lit up with the glow of thousands of fairies. The moon shined bright, and the stag pushed himself forward, faster and faster through the thick grass and the blossoms, not thinking at all. Now, at least, he was away from worrying about the war, the girl… All that mattered at this moment was running through the icy night air, while the moon was high, and the fairies danced to the whistling of the wind in the trees.

In a small space at the back of James' mind, he thought he might like to take Lily here one day if he could; she would surely appreciate the beauty of the forest.

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A/N: Well, that's the end, but like I said before, I might continue this story someday.

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Thank you for reading.