Disclaimer: I just ate a rather delicious homemade dinner of store-bought chicken nuggets, gold fish, and watermelon. If I owned J.K. Rowling's rights, I think I would have been able to do better than that...

A/N: IT HAS ONLY BEEN ONE WEEK SINCE MY LAST UPDATE! Hurray for me. I'm so happy! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! Thanks to you who read chapter one last week! It means a lot to me! I've realized recently that I am a HUGE perfectionist, thus I always think that everything I have written is utter nonsense, and I always believe that I can make it better. That probably helps explain my terrible updating skills. I just never think what I have written is good enough. Yeah, it's a problem that I'm trying to work on... lol

On that note, I hope you all enjoy this chapter!

Happy reading!


Chapter 2: Amantes sunt amentes

Sign One: Extreme Case of the Eye-Rape

As a general rule, an easy way to find out if you've developed the Amare is to monitor your eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul, as the popular saying goes, so your eyes will hold all the answers as to who your infector may be. There is a simple test for this: When you enter a room, find yourself bored in a room, or simply become distracted whilst in a room, where do your eyes go? If they consistently stick to a single man, then you have most likely been infected. (For ways to prevent this phenomenon from revealing your Amare secret, turn to page 10.)

OOO

For the next few days, Lily carried around her secret like a precious chalice. She was infected, she had the Amare, and there was certain knowledge to the whole situation that left Lily feeling strangely powerful.

She could do anything. She could bloody fly if she wanted to. Just spread her wings, jump off the Whomping Willow, and straight up soar over the castle like a freaking owl. It was a marvelous feeling. After all, if this disease was going to destroy her—potentially kill her—Lily may as well live it up while she still had the chance.

Time for her to start a bucket list. A post-Potteritis-heart-breaking bucket list.

Of course, the Amare also caused her to feel rather ill at times (usually when she stumbled into the common room still only half awake to be bombarded by a James Potter sneak-attack good morning message).

Somehow, Lily managed to hide all of these conflicting emotions. After all, it wasn't as if this was her first time. She had had boyfriends before; she'd been on dates. None of this was really new. But it had been so long since she had felt this way, that this round of the disease hit her like her body held no immunity to it whatsoever. Or maybe it was because this bout of the Amare was so unexpected; James Potter was the last person that Lily had ever expected to like, let alone crush on. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. One morning, she woke up and could look at Potter without wondering what it would be like to hold him against her; the next day, she was absolutely smitten, imagining subtle ways to get closer and closer until her arm might just accidently budge up against his. It was sick, really.

On the plus side, at least she had experienced the Amare enough times before that she was still capable of carrying on normal conversation with James.

She was pro at playing it cool; the survival guide had instilled that much into her at least.

But that was made all the more complicated, because he apparently had a new girl in his life who was not Lily. She wasn't even a ginger.

And that made her feel like punching something.

"Have you ever wondered if Filch dated?"

Lily's heart rate spiked as James leaned closer to whisper this into her ear. She had to stop herself from leaning back into him after he pulled away. Sometime during the beginning of seventh year, Lily had started sitting next to James in their classes. It had started off with sharing a table in Potions—after all, he wasn't dreadful at Potions, and it was nice to have a partner that wasn't complete rubbish, especially since that was the one class Chadna and Lily didn't share. She had done it as an experiment—what would she get if she mixed herself, Potter, and a bubbling, often putrid smelling concoction?—but when she learned that she genuinely liked talking with Pighead Potter (as she had so often called him), one day's experiment turned into two, and so on it went. Eventually, Lily had just given up and started sitting with all of the Marauders in every class.

They made things lively. They made her laugh.

James made her happy.

At that thought, Lily began to fear how long this dormant Amare had been stirring in her chest.

As Professor Flitwick continued to lecture in the front of the classroom about charms to review for their N.E.W.T.s, Lily glanced over at James, looking at him sideways through the corner of her green eyes. She couldn't look at him properly right now, not ever, if the disease kept up at this rate. In the past twenty-four hours alone, she—or, more accurately, Chadna—had caught her staring at James Potter whenever he was within a fifty-foot radius. There had even been an instance where Lily had found herself looking around for him in the common room when she knew that he was actually in the library looking through books for their Transfiguration essay.

The whole thing was so embarrassing, that Lily no longer trusted her eyes. So, no matter how hilarious or charming Potter may be—even if he was talking about Filch, who had long perplexed Lily and Chadna—Lily could not look at him. He was a disembodied voice.

"What could possibly make you think of that right now?" Lily asked quietly, rolling her eyes and blatantly ignoring how her heart swooped at his grin. And why aren't you sitting with lovely Felicity right now? She allowed the shorter layers of her hair to fall into her face, masking her view of James behind a fiery curtain.

Chadna snorted quietly, having heard James's question. "Why do you think he's such a git?" she asked pointedly. "The Amare ruined him." At that, Chadna winked at Lily.

Lily kicked her in the shins underneath the cover of the desks.

"What is that? That Amare you're always going on about?" Sirius Black asked in an undertone, his feet propped up onto his desk as he leaned backwards in his chair as if he wasn't currently in class. There were two Ravenclaw girls who were staring at Sirius with glassy eyes, obviously not paying any attention whatsoever to the professor. They would probably fail to notice a Dementor, the way they were behaving.

Amare, sign one.

Lily and Chadna shared a knowing look, both shaking their heads as if only an imbecile didn't know what the Amare was, before Lily said, "You call yourself a wizard, and you don't even know a simple Latin word."

"Ah," James breathed, catching Lily's eyes unexpectedly. There was a nice golden twinkle to his hazel orbs that demanded Lily's attention against her will. "Amantes sunt amentes."

If she wasn't so aware of James's presence right then and her own blood pounding in her veins, Lily would have been fairly certain that her heart had stopped. Flat out stopped. Exploded into tiny fragments. Latin was not a dead language; it was very much alive.

"Speak English, mate," Sirius drawled, "Those lesser than our caliber are probably weary of your flighty pronouncements."

"Wouldn't mean yourself, would you, Sirius?" James replied, pushing the back of his dark-haired friend's chair so that Sirius's feet slipped off the desk, and he fell forward with a loud bang.

The group all stopped momentarily, looking at their professor innocently, as if they hadn't just disrupted the lesson. Lily waited for Flitwick to start up again until she turned back to James and asked, "So, what does that mean?"

"Thought you were the Latin expert, Evans," he teased back, tapping the side of his glasses as if he were an intellect himself, like Merlin.

Remus Lupin, a sandy-haired boy who was the quieter one out of James's best mates, leaned around Chadna to quote in a very bookish manner, "Lovers are lunatics."

Lily laughed out loud, paused, grabbed her quill and poised it over her notes, and then when she realized that Flitwick hadn't noticed or cared, she dropped her pretenses and said to James, "Always the romantic, you are."

Unknowingly, Lily gazed at the boys—or, more accurately, one boy in particular—as the four laughed (Peter Pettigrew had such a high pitched laugh that it was a miracle Flitwick didn't cast a charm to stop the teapot-sounding hiss). But James's laugh was like the rush of a waterfall, Lily thought. And he had a little dimple that came out at the left-hand corner of his mouth that she had never noticed before. As her hand came up to cup her cheek in order to give her head better support for staring at James, Lily realized what was happening. She quickly dropped her hand into her lap and snatched her head to the front of the classroom as if Flitwick had just made knickers appear out of thin air.

Which, in Lily's defense, had happened before—curtsey of James, though, and not Flitwick.

Just then a small piece of balled up paper floated into Lily's lap. With a suspicious glance at Chadna who had just set down her wand, she opened it, making sure to read it underneath her desk so that James couldn't see it. Knowing Chadna, who knew what the paper could read.

You're eye-raping again.

Lily mentally growled at herself, closing her fist around the note.

The Amare handbook did suggest alerting a best friend to the infection, because he or she would be able to keep you from making a fool of yourself, stopping you from alerting the world to your uncleanliness. But, frankly, Lily felt like crumpling up the paper once more and chucking it down Chadna's uniformed shirt. However, the more rational part of her brain that hadn't completely succumbed to the Amare yet sighed and thanked Chadna for her persistent friendship.

And, of course, Chadna was perfectly in her rights to stop Lily from making a fool of herself, the know-it-all Indian princess. But it was his entire fault, after all. It was his fault for being so bloody annoying, wiggling his way into Lily's everyday thoughts like some really handsome Flobberworm if there ever was such a thing. Infecting her with the disease like a tapeworm.

A Flotapewarm, as she liked to think of it, which was actually really disgusting sounding, and why did she ever think that was funny? If Lily had decided to chance a look at James now—which she wouldn't even if he started dancing the Macarena right then and there—she would have seen him playing a game of magical hangman with Sirius and a bottle of ink that he had bought that caused the little hanged man to actually sway in the gallows.

That was what the Amare was doing to her.

Amantes sunt amentes.

If there had ever been a more intelligent saying that James Potter had ever uttered, Lily couldn't think of it.

It was just so hard not to look, because his warmth was right there beside her, and his hazel eyes were full of glinting golden specks and smoldering autumn foliage. Lovely foliage that reminded Lily of evening sunshine rays, crinkling leaves, and hot rain.

His eyes were like rainforests.

And Lily's were rapists, shameless rapists, as Chadna enjoyed calling them anyway.

In fact, Lily was so caught up in not gazing at the boy who had infected her that she completely missed Flitwick's announcement that class had ended for the day. As students began to pack away their books, wands, and notes, Lily sat in her chair with a steady gaze still directed at the front of the room. So intensely was Lily trying to distract herself from being distracted by James that she jumped when Chadna slammed her book onto her desk just as Sirius called out, "Alright, Evans?"

Lily caught Chadna's smirk as her friend helped her pack away her things. "Absolutely spiffy, Black."

James bent down to observe Lily's face. "Sure about that, Lily? You do look a bit peaky." With a grin, he attempted to feel her forehead, but she swatted his arm away. He simply deterred, however, and patted her cheek fondly instead, which did bring on a rather feverish feeling for Lily. "Temperature seems fine," James announced to the group.

"Her cheeks do seem a bit pink," Sirius brought up then.

Affectively having gathered all of her belongings without so much as a stutter in her steps—a miracle considering that her infector was standing there beside her, jesting her, and touching her face—Lily straightened up quite gracefully. "As touched as I am by your sincere altruism—"

"And, our Lily's back, gents," James interrupted her then with a flourish of his arms, and Lily replayed how he had said 'our Lily" as if it were a one-hit wonder.

Shouldn't he be saying "my FeeFiFoFum" or something equally ridiculous?

"Yes, she's a little walking dictionary once more," Chadna tutted, rolling her brown eyes at Lily like the two normally would have done whenever the boys were being particularly loquacious. Which was often. At least Lily could still appreciate that fact.

"Don't you four have something better to do than play doctor?" Lily asked them, her eyes expertly skipping over James as she observed the marauders.

All four of them paused, looking at each other. It was scary, actually, how easily they were all able to get onto the same brain wave. "I think Peter would look quite good as Madam Pomfrey, actually," James started, eyeing Peter, the shortest and roundest of the four, as if he were the most interesting specimen in Care of Magical Creatures.

"Considering he's a boy and all," included Sirius.

"Put a dress on, and he's identical," Remus chimed in.

Peter, looking highly affronted, narrowed his watery eyes. "Thanks, Lily. Look at what you've got them started on. If they try to fit me in a dress—"

"—we'll make sure to take pictures," Sirius finished, draping his arm around his friend. "Can we perchance borrow that flowing one of yours, Chadna?"

"Which one?"

"You know. The one with those purple things that look like circles…"

"Polka-dots?"

"Yeah, the one with those dots," Sirius amended, and the whole conversation was so ridiculously funny because no one was acting as if Sirius Black acquiring after a style of dress was abnormal, that Lily grinned at James over her shoulder as the group exited Charms.

He grinned back, and her eyes felt like singing.

Chadna and Sirius continued discussing which color palette would look best on Peter—much to Peter's dismay—and the conversation must have been getting rather feisty, because their strides got longer and faster. Peter's protests to the whole situation got shriller and shriller as the discussion progressed, but pretty soon there was a rather large gap between everyone else and Lily.

And James.

"You never answered my question, you know," James brought up, matching his walking rhythm to her own.

Lily smiled, suddenly in a rather bright mood. "I think Peter needs blue. It would bring out his eyes."

"Not Peter's cross-dressing," he said flippantly, "Filch."

She threw him a sideways glance. "Because that's such a better image."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you had ever actually seen Peter in a dress."

"And you have?"

His eyes sparkled pleasantly. "No, but I have seen the man without pants, and the whole idea is similar, really."

There was a brief, perplexed pause. "In what ways are those similar?"

James waved the matter off as if it were obvious, his hand brushing against Lily's own. Hogwart's hallways were far too narrow. "Both show way too much of his leg."

They were both laughing now in joyous harmony, a vibrato that had a magical quality of its own as it transformed the air into moving, glittering particles, and the sun seemed to be casting a dusty rose haze into the castle; the whole situation was so beautiful to Lily that she shoved James lightly in the shoulder. "You're far too charming, Potter," she commented lightly, without thinking, although perhaps that was what friend-Lily would say to friend-James on a normal occurrence.

She couldn't quite remember their correct friend protocol at the moment. And, frankly, she didn't care. Because she was Lily, and he was James, and together they were Jalily, or something equally as fruity as that.

Oh, dear Merlin, she had just mashed their names.

"Charming, eh?" James questioned.

Lily didn't miss the snarky grin that flashed across his face. "I've heard it through the grapevine," she replied simply.

"Feel free to inflame my ego by giving me names of these admirers," he insisted, jogging to get ahead of her so that he could now walk backwards and keep her in his line of precious-sights at all times.

She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "The knights in armor on the third floor, the talking mirrors on the first, Chadna's delirious cat. So, they're all inanimate objects, you see."

"Except for the cat."

"Yes, but Mora is delirious."

"I don't know what worries me most," James began, as he expertly maneuvered himself through the dip in the stone floor that most students tripped on but that James was able to gracefully walk through (while walking backwards, of all things), "the fact that you hear voices from things that cannot speak, or that fact that Chadna's psychotic beast is the only living thing at Hogwarts that finds me charming."

"Definitely the latter."

He tipped an imaginary hat off at her. "I would have to agree, Miss Evans."

As they neared the first set of staircases they would have to go up in order to return to their common room, James gave up his ability to walk without seeing and ended up beside Lily once again. And though she had been facing forward during the entire delightful conversation, Lily now found herself stumbling over her own feet as her eyes kept darting sideways to catch a look at Potter.

For some reason, her vocal chords felt oddly hoarse, as if this conversation had taken a heavy toll on her body. She tried to clear her throat as silently as possible in order to coax it back into shape so that it would hang in there until she reached the safety of her dorm. Or the boredom of her dorm. She wasn't so sure anymore.

And her brain seemed to be hurting as well.

As did her eyes.

When the two made it back to the common room and James headed up to the boys dormitory in order to change into his Quidditch practice gear—in which the captain looked particularly good in, Lily felt like pointing out to anybody and everybody—Chadna suddenly reappeared at Lily's elbow.

"You left me with him," Lily hissed as soon as she could no longer follow James's body with her eyes, "You just bloody left me with him!"

Chadna plopped herself into one of the best armchairs by the fireplace. "You loved it."

It was very hard for Lily to contain her smile. "Did not."

"Did so," Chadna quipped back, "and that's final, Lily."

With a dignified humph, Lily threw herself down beside her dark-haired friend.

"You're doing it again," Chadna announced suddenly, which vaguely broke through Lily's reverie about the lovely time she had just spent with James, replaying the conversation in her head, digesting every word, every action, every blink of the eye just in case they revealed some hidded meaning that she had failed to notice during their walk—

"He may be changing behind that door, Lily, dear, but you do not have x-ray vision," Chadna interrupted her friend's thoughts again. It was only when Lily snapped an annoyed look at friend that she realized that she had been staring longingly up the boys' staircase.

"Bullocks," Lily muttered, dropping her mortified face into her hands. "Did anyone see that?" she mumbled, her words a bit muffled as they escaped between the gaps of her fingers.

Chadna just patted her on the back. "Don't worry, it's adorable in a really pathetic way."

Lily seemed to bristle from underneath her friends sympathetic touch. Pathetic? She was not pathetic.

Was she?

No, she was a raging lioness during mating season. Powerful, beautiful, and she had just had an f-ing fantastic dialogue with James Potter, and Chadna was sitting here and ruining it without giving her friend any praise on how coolly she had handled the Amare...

Yeah, well, Lily could do anything; she was cool. She had played it cool. She had been an icicle—a rather witty icicle, she had thought. She was a mask of mystery, a women of disguise, a girl without fear, hand her a Dementor and she'd throw you a Patronus.

"You just wait until the Amare has struck you," Lily prophesized, "You'll be drooling all over the castle, and I'll have to wipe up the goo that follows in your wake."

Chadna laughed, the laugh of the healthy, the carefree. Though she may be healthy of the Amare, Chadna didn't have the burning desire inside of her like Lily, the warming secret that seemed to fill her lungs until she thought they would burst. It was strangely wonderful.

And frightening.

And upsetting, because Felicity Cassidy was a bitch.

"Thank you, Lily, for that picturesque image of myself," Chad exclaimed, fanning herself with her hand and batting her long eyelashes mockingly. "Even more of a reason to innocently play around instead of getting hung up over someone."

Play around too much, and the Amare will punch. That was a quote from the survival guide. Lily and Chadna had seen enough girls "innocently play around," no strings attached, until—wham—it hit them. And then they became glassy eyed eye-rapists, and the boys who had been too afraid to commit were left to wonder why their girls had turned into Egyptian zombies over night.

The most terrifying thing about the disease was that the intense staring was just the first sign. It only got worse and more uncontrollable from there until the three deadliest of words had spilled from your mouth at the most inopportune moments. In fact, Lily remembered Emmeline Vance (a Gryffindor graduate of two years ago) who had become notorious for blurting out "I love you" in the middle of the last Quidditch game of the season as her boyfriend had been knocked off of his broom and had hurtled towards the ground at neck-breaking speed.

Fortunately, Dumbledore had slowed him down, and the boy's concussion had been so bad that he hadn't even remembered his girlfriend's announcement.

Maybe Lily could give FeeFiFoFum a concussion.

There must have been something to see in Lily's face as she had this uncharacteristically violent thought, because Chadna read Lily's mind with ease. "Felicity really isn't that great, you know."

Lily crossed her arms. "She's alright," was her half-hearted response, although deep down Lily was currently devising up ways she could use her Head Girl power to bring Felicity to her pale, skinny knees.

"Oh, please," Chadna declared, "if you gave James the time of day he would come flying straight at you."

"I give him the time of day!"

"I'm not speaking about literal time."

Lily glared and continued to unleash her glare until a thought hit her, and it was so wonderfully simple that she couldn't believe it had taken her a full three days to think of it.

James had liked her once before—or, more than once, if anyone was actually interested enough to keep count. If he had liked her before, Lily must have had something that he desired. And unless someone had transfigured her into a haggard old woman without her knowledge, Lily still was in possession of that desirable attribute. She still had it.

All she needed to do was to remind James why she was such a catch.

She was going to give James Potter the time of day.

"So, do you suppose I should go up and tell him that it is currently 5:13?" Lily asked.

"You are such a tit," was Chadna's only reply.


A/N

: Aaannnddd, that's chapter 2, folks! Please review, tell me what you think. Feel free to give advice, constructive criticism, praise, whatever. I'll try to update with chapter 3 as soon as I can!

Have a GREAT weekend!

-HeyLookTheSnitch