A/N: Hi. Just a little thing. Maybe a beginning of something

Disclaimer: Obviously, I didn't invent these characters...

Falling snow obscured the trees of the forbidden forest. From her somewhat cold seat at her dormitory window, Lily mindlessly stared out into the white blur that was what promised to be an early November blizzard. The snow blotted out the landscape, a fair comparison to Lily's brain, completely blank after an entire day of studying potions. Lily's fair lashes, unblackened by cosmetics, blinked once, eyelids moving kilometers slower than the furious snow.

Open again, her green eyes tiredly watched the white falling, too lethargic at this point to even follow the path of what could be a single flake. At this point, even without eyes tired of pouring over potions texts carefully and microscopically annotated , Lily could have barely differentiated the fast-falling flakes from one another. Neck aching, Lily leaned forward until her forehead rested on the cool glass that separated her from the storm.

Once Lily's green eyes closed, she was given no respite from fatigue or stress. Her mind, so complacent when confronted with the blankness of the snow, began conjuring up pictures to distract her from her rest. Lily signed, and tried to force her thoughts back to something else; the snow, the potions book, the hot cocoa that had cooled while she studied, her friends, anything else but James. Why he had to come up now, Lily wanted to ask. It seemed he would never stop bothering her. First, pulling her hair and pulling much more inventive stunts, now thankfully gone from the physical world for only a few moments, yet never far from her mind. She never knew when he would come, uninvited and unwelcome.

It was hardest to think of him here. Cerebrally, Lily knew he had most likely explored every corner of the school, yet in Gryffindor tower, he was larger than life, present or not. To have him dually present in her mind and possibly somewhere else in the tower had now become dangerous, as if the feelings she sent out left a physical trance in their, smoke from a fire, that would drift down to find him. If he ever found out, it would do more than make his ears burn, Lily theorized.

As it was, hopefully, James was out of the reach of her traitorous thoughts. Lily brought her legs and feet, now almost asleep from sitting so long, up onto the window seat, conscientiously tucking up her skirt. She rubbed her eyes, as if the physical sensation could ease the pain synonymous with thoughts of him. Lily tried again, burying her eyes against the grey fabric of her shirt, fitting the hollows of her eyes into her knees, blocking him. It never worked.

Again, watching the snow, Lily found her finger tracing her name into the frozen glass. L-I-L-Y-P… what? She didn't want to marry James. Lily raged at the accusation, so similar to those from other people, except this time she couldn't avoid the truth. To be completely honest, she didn't want to marry him. Yet. The thought that she wanted him was fearful enough.

As she rubbed out the terrible letters that refused to fade on their own, Lily berated herself for pointless hope. As boundless as James' enthusiasm was for pulling pranks and creating chaos, even at the advanced age of sixteen, there was a point where he became tired of being refused. Lily had passed that about a year ago. No longer was James endlessly appearing her path, asking her out. He still managed to have a bizarre knack for popping up wherever she was going; not counting the fact that they shared most of their classes, but it was never accompanied by the dogged pursuit she had become almost used to. She had fought it long and hard, and once she had won, she had lost.