Um, hi. It looks like this story's not so popular. I'm hoping this second chapter will get people more interested.

Also, I noticed the first chapter got a few favorites, and that's really great. But I'd really really really appreciate it if you could review as well, please? :)

2

[SUNDAY - DAY]

I took a deep breath.

"Briony?" Hearing her name, she turned.

The inquisitive look on her face – her eyes wide, blue like a china dolls', her perfectly shaped eyebrows raised and her lips slightly parted – changed as soon as she saw who was speaking to her. Almost immediately, her eyes narrowed and her mouth set itself into an ugly crooked line.

"What?" she snapped.

I wasn't really surprised by her annoyance. I expected that this was the girl she had become, the one who never allowed herself to speak to anyone who wasn't incredibly attractive. But her short, irritable question raised many in my own mind, and my heart started going at fifteen times its normal pace. What the heck was I thinking? Why was I talking to her about this? Was I out of my mind? Was I drunk?

"Briony, I – I need to talk to you," I said. Scratch that. I'd probably OD'd on something without my knowledge.

She peered at me through the blue slits that were now her eyes. "Do I know you?" she asked, not very politely.

I didn't waste time pretending to be surprised. "Um, I'm James. James Potter?" But soon after I had said it, I realized that this girl was going to stay true to her pretty blond hair and stunning looks: even if she knew me, she wasn't prepared to acknowledge it. I sighed.

And I was right. "Uh," she said, "yeah." She paused. "No, actually. Who are you?"

I sighed again and opened my mouth to speak. But she interrupted me, which alarmed me a bit. I wasn't expecting more than a few curt syllables out of her.

"Look, I haven't got much time, so if you're done standing there and sighing like an idiot, delaying your point just so that you can check me out, I've got to go," she said, her voice rising to an angry pitch. I stared at her for a moment. Checking her out?

"Em –" I said stupidly. "I wasn't checking you out." So why were my cheeks burning? "I just wanted to ask you something about – about Lily." I felt the heat in my face intensify when I said her name. "But," I continued, and I was babbling now, "if you're busy, I can ask you later…" I stopped. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough experience in the field to be qualified to enter the Talking to Girls about Matters Romantic Department. Why the hell had I even tried?

She looked at me with a weird look that I couldn't identify. A second later, I realized she was on the verge of laughter – peals and peals of laughter, by the looks of it. "I –" I started to say. "Never mind," I concluded – with a great flourish, if I do say so myself – and turned to walk away. She didn't stop me, but I could feel her eyes – now gradually filling up with tears of mirth, probably – still on my back when I reached the armchair where my best friend, Sirius Black, was sitting, with Peter Pettigrew at his feet and Remus Lupin on the couch beside him.

He was staring at me. "Mate," he said slowly, looking at me as if I belonged in a mental institution, "are you okay?"

"Yeah," I replied, plopping myself down on the sofa beside Remus. "Why wouldn't I be?" I looked sideways to see that Remus was gaping at me as well, and then back and forth between the two. "What? What's happened?"

"It's just," Sirius continued in that same concerned, careful tone, "you were just talking to Briony Turner."

There was a pause. "And?" I finally said, trying to be casual.

No one answered for a moment. Then, "James, I would never have taken you as a man with balls the size of – " But Sirius didn't get to elaborate on whatever he had been going to compare my privates to, because at that moment there was the sound of such loud laughter from one female Gryffindor that half the common room jumped. I didn't have to look up to know who it was. I leaned forward, put my hands between my legs, and then raised them up to cradle my aching head.

"James," Remus said, "what on earth did you do?"

"I asked her if I could talk to her about Lily," I muttered, but as my voice was muffled by my hands, which were crushing my face and willing me to never speak again, I was sure they couldn't hear me and I dreaded what was coming next.

Sure enough, they asked me to repeat myself. "What?" they said together. Very articulately, I must say.

"I said," I repeated, looking up at them tiredly, "that I asked her if I could speak to her about Lily Evans. Go on, laugh at me, I'm ready," I added bitterly, bending down to put my face in my hands again.

"Oh," I heard Sirius say. "Oh." What? Was that relief in his voice?

My head shot up. "I thought you were asking her out," Sirius explained, and when I looked at him with my eyes so wide they were probably the shape and size of my glasses, he added, "You know, that probably wouldn't have been such a bad idea."

I didn't reply, probably because I was dumbstruck. I knew Sirius to be quite experienced when it came to the ladies – completely the opposite of me, I might add, and sometimes I wondered if he'd do a Briony on me, but only to feel guilty afterwards. I had known Sirius since the first day on the train, and we had been best friends ever since – he was a great guy, pretty decent, and the fact that he was so good-looking and so damn charming drew everyone to him, while I usually hung in the background trying to blend in with the walls. Still, despite his popularity, he never left my side and we had had some great times together over the years. He had been the one to get me interested in Quidditch, which was now my one comfort and solace, we had done a lot of crazy things together, and he had been sympathetic with the Briony incident in third year. Sirius had also taught me a lot about girls, and given me heaps of advice which was probably helpful but which I never followed owing to my lack of 'balls', as he put it, but I had to say that this was about the absolute worst advice I had ever been given by anyone.

"I mean, you need a break from this, mate," he went on, looking at me pityingly. "All this obsessing over Lily and knowing it's never going to happen." He paused. "You, my friend, need a fling."

I thought I was starting to understand. This was his way of making fun of me. I cracked a smile and was about to go along with it when Peter spoke for the first time. "Yeah," he said, a bit uncertainly. Peter was always saying things a bit uncertainly. "You need a break."

Seeing that he had just repeated after Sirius word for word, I realized they hadn't rehearsed this very well. But then, Peter could just be trying to impress Sirius, something we had all grown used to and learned to ignore.

But then Remus spoke up. And when Remus spoke, oh, he spoke. "Well, I don't know about that," he put in, looking at Sirius sternly, "but you do need to get over Lily. And frankly…"

"What? Frankly what?" I said nervously.

"Well –" He cleared his throat, casting a nervous glance at the other two for support. "We're kind of getting sick of you talking about her all the time."

"I do not talk about her all the time!" I yelped, half-rising from my seat. Several people in the common room looked up from books or the midst of conversations to stare at me.

"I mean," I whispered defensively, lowering myself into the couch again, "I don't always talk about her. That's completely untrue, you know it."

Sirius was the one to answer. "Then why," he said, raising an eyebrow, "do you think we're telling you this?"

"Because you're making fun of me!" I exploded, causing more pointed glances to come my way.

"Jeez, James, insecure much? Calm down. We're worried about you. And your mental health. Not to mention, ours," he added.

"Yeah," Peter piped up again, "your mental health. You do tend to obsess over things a lot of the time. Like, what about that piece of paper you found in your book last night? You haven't given that a rest all day."

"Exactly," Sirius agreed, and Peter looked triumphant at having made a point. "Just like that. About that, though –"

"I'm telling you, some girl wrote that to me!" I said hotly, sending my most angry glare at Sirius's calm face. "And anyway, that's beside the point. You were –"

"Oh, but that is the point, my friend," Sirius said cheerfully, and began to tick off his fingers. "You think some girl wrote that to you. You talk about Lily in all your waking hours. You dream about her in your sleeping ones," he said, and I could feel the heat rising to my face again, but he wasn't done. "You know you can never be with Lily, because she'll reject you before you can open your mouth." I winced, even though he hadn't been harsh. "You're desperate to be in a relationship. You need a new girl."

There was an awed silence. I broke it. "So you're saying...so you're saying I need to ask Briony out?"

"Not necessarily Briony," Sirius said hastily. "It doesn't have to be her. I'm just saying. Take your pick." He gestured around the room with a sweeping motion of his arm, as if he was the owner of a designer shop who was generously offering something to me for free. I knew he didn't want me to embarrass myself by asking Briony.

Well, I would show him. I was sick of being so invisible and angry and completely unnoticed by the one person I lusted after the most. I couldn't be this person anymore. I would do something bold, something daring. I would show Sirius and Lily and all the rest of them just how intrepid James Potter could be.

Before he could stop me, I leapt off the couch and strode across to the fireplace, where the still-giggling Briony stood chatting with another friend, and put a firm hand on her shoulder. She turned, looked at the hand, then at my face. A smile broke across her own, showing perfectly shaped, sparkling white teeth.

I leaned forward and pushed my lips hard against hers.