Authors Note: While I dislike long notes, I feel it necessary to make an introduction.
It's my first time writing a fanfic, but I'm no stranger to reading them.
Any reviews are most appreciated, especially those with constructive criticism!
Also, I would be thankful to anyone to catch any (and all) of my inconsistencies between this story and the published Harry Potter books. I've read them all more than several times, but we all make mistakes. :) I do intend to continue with this in the near future.
With that, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy. (This intro was longer than the story before I cut it! Consider yourself lucky!)
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As the day drew to a close and the red light of the sunset filtered in heavy beams through the thick medieval windows around the castle, it seemed strange to James that not a soul was to be found in the corridor, or any corridor he'd been wandering through, for that matter.
He sighed resignedly and sunk to the floor next to a particularly brilliant beam of the sun's display outside. The rough stone wall of the castle was cold and slightly painful through the thin material of his shirt, but he hardly paid it any notice.
The year was ending and Lily had yet to utter a single word to him in six weeks. Well, that was, of course, excluding their shouting matches and rude comments to one another in passing between classes or in the common room after dinner. The Marauders' last trick with Snape had gone too far, and Lily was convinced that James had been the ring leader.
While that might have been true, in a sense, Sirius was also an equal ring-leader in the matter. That's not to say he received no foul treatment from Evans, but it was considerably less extreme than her behavior toward James.
It had been mostly Lily. James was doing his absolute best to at least convince the girl that he was not the most horrible person in the world, but he could hardly be expected to accept her abuse without at least defending himself – even if that meant being a little ungentlemanly.
Today there had been a particularly bad confrontation. Usually James would simmer down from their rows by trouncing through the halls and chatting jovially with anyone who happened to be passing by. The only difference this time was he recognized (though not out loud, of course) that perhaps this fight was his fault, and he'd taken it too far.
He had seen Lily cry before, but never on his account.
"I'd kill him, Evans, I would, if it didn't upset you so much to lack a greasy-haired git hanging around with his prat friends calling you Mudblood all the time!" he'd yelled; quite tactless, he'd realized, in retrospect.
What had upset her more than his words, he realized later, was the ferocity with which he had delivered them. It later upset James, too. No one in their right mind would want to live knowing they'd kill someone without even a second thought, no matter what an inconsiderate, rude, evil arse they were.
But that's how much Lily meant to him. He'd known for a time now; maybe he was only fifteen, maybe he did have a different girlfriend hanging off his arm every few weeks, maybe he did have an odd way of showing his affection towards her, but somehow he always knew Lily Evans would be the girl he would fall in love with.
So now there he was: alone, beating himself up with no one to help create a distraction for him, hopelessly lost that he had made Lily Evans, his love that he was supposed to protect at all costs, fall apart in front of the entire Gryffindor common room.