A/N: I had every intention of continuing this story, I really did, but somehow, life got the better of me. So did writer's block. They both kidnapped me together, on this super-secret joint mission worthy of its own Mission Impossible installment, and stuffed me in a closet without my computer…until now. I think I'm on leave for a bit, so I wrote this up for you lot – it's surprisingly long and therefore took me a while, but now it's done!

Dedicated to Fierybrunette, who kept giving me those friendly nudges through PM's to get me to finish this. Thanks, love!

Read, enjoy, & review!!

Finally, at long last, ultimately – however you want to say it, really – the train pulls into the platform near Hogwarts Castle with its usual ancient, crackling puff of smoke and a loud, whiny screech that sounds like my mother trying to sing.

When the floor beneath me stops moving at around seven o'clock according to my watch, after all those hours of bumping along the track, I feel the excitement start coursing through me for the first time since I left Platform 9¾ at King's Cross. The moment I hear shuffling and voices and lots of feet outside our compartment, I spring up from the curled-up position I'd taken on my seat and I get out to grab the trunks above us.

Behind me, I hear Lily stirring from the snooze I'd been too awake to indulge in, and I assure her I'll get her trunk for her – for some reason, I'm always more lethargic before the train ride than I am after it. Now, I'm positively hyper…which basically means I'm not as snappish as I'd been with Sirius when he first wandered into our space.

It's just so enthralling; I can't even put it into intelligible words.

Thanks to my newfound energy, it doesn't take me very long to get our trunks together in the blocked-up passageway. It also doesn't take very long for Lily to emerge beside me either, rumpling her mass of fiery curls, looking like she's been through a hurricane. She stumbles slightly as she shifts slightly, clearly still struggling to wake up properly, and asks me in a bit of a mumble, "Did you sleep at all, Ains?"

"Maybe twenty-odd minutes, probably less," I say indifferently. "I can't sleep on trains."

Lily rolls her eyes. "I wish I could put you on a train every morning, then."

I snicker, and give her a small shove, which makes her squeal and lose her balance, forcing her to step on the shoe of the unfortunate soul behind her; my inability to wake up on school mornings unless Lily all but massacres me with her hairbrush is legendary throughout the school by now.

"What was that for?" she grumbles as we shuffle forward a few steps in the congested traffic. It smells like sweat, and Lily hates the scent of sweat – it makes her grumpy.

"I dunno, I felt like it," I say with a grin.

"My, you're certainly feeling better," Lily notes sarcastically.

"It's known to happen once in a while," I say casually, bumping the person in front of me along a little bit with my bag. "Just don't get used to it."

Lily takes her turn to snicker at me, and yawns again. "I'm hungry," she announces.

"I am too," I realize, my stomach choosing exactly this moment to thunder loud enough for people around me to glance vaguely in my direction. "Do you have any of those mints left in your purse?"

"No," Lily says as she checks. "I think you ate them all."

The faintest trace of a blush colors my pale cheeks now, but my tone remains light as I say, "Ah, well, at least we can save our hunger for the feast when we get inside."

"If we ever get inside," Lily groans, craning her graceful neck to peer over the sea of heads in front of us. "We're going to be stuck here for ages!"

"Maybe not," I say musingly, making a few quick mental calculations as I survey the crowd as well.

Lily turns her head to look at me, worried. "You sound very, very ominous, Ainsley Catherwood," she says. "You're not going to do anything rash, are you?"

Her eyes are imploring me not to do something stupid on the first day – Lily's never been very comfortable with my insane, and sometimes completely self-seeking, actions in a tight corner.

However, I pay this no mind, and flash her one of my very-very-ominous smiles. "Of course not," I say innocently.

Lily's about to object, but I don't wait for her to – as a better use of my time, I clear my throat, hold my trunk almost like one of those funny Muggle guns, and holler, "MOVE, people, come along now, MOVE!"

Numerous perplexed, indignant faces twist about to get a good look at me, but I've gone into Commando mode – I'm ready to kick some arse. From the corner of my eye, I can see that Lily has gone three shades paler and is about ready to die from embarrassment, but I only let this spur me on further as I part the thick crowd with astonishing ease; I have what they call a 'Reputation' for being someone a bit dodgy, so I can usually get away with pulling stunts like this.

Regardless of what the good girls say, there's always a few perks to being the crazy one.

So, with Lily trailing along in my wake, trying her best to ignore the looks we're getting, I push my way through the stuffy train all the way up to the front, where the source of the hold-up is – a nerdy-looking first year girl whose whole trunk split open and left all her belongings scattered everywhere. Nobody's really helping her. Even the enormously fat train driver, Mr. Chuckles, (our underground nickname for him, since he's the most cheerless person since the Grinch himself), hasn't made a move to get up and do something for her.

Of course, he couldn't do anything magically, because everyone knows is a Squib and could sooner eat the world's corn population than pack her suitcase with the wave of a wand – maybe that's why he's just sitting there, sort of watching her, while she does her best to pack an extraordinary amount of things into a trunk her mother probably did up for her in the first place.

This could take a while. If no one else will, I think it's time for me to take action.

"Oy, move along there," I tell the girl briskly. "We have to get inside."

She looks up at me, terrified, and surveys me with watery cerulean eyes. Her fear actually scares me a little; never have I seen such an alarmed human being in my life. I soften a little at her apprehension.

"Or, okay, erm, what's your name?" I attempt to backtrack, rubbing my eyes briefly with the back of my hand.

"A-Angela Sharpe," the girl blusters, her little face alive with pure terror.

"Oh," I say, falsely interested. "That's a nice name."

She can't even muster the nerves to thank me – I feel rather sorry for her, but sorrier for myself. A twinge of uneasiness filters through me; am I really that horrifying? Is this what I come across as to other people? I can't really put my finger to it, but something about this bothers me, hurts me inexplicably, though I do my best to brush it off with my signature smirk.

"So, do you need some help with this?" I ask, gesturing to the open bag.

"T-t-t-that professor, the t-t-tall one with b-brown hair, s-s-said she'd h-h-help in a m-moment," Angela Sharp does her best to inform me, chattering so much I wonder if she's suffering from frostbite. "S-she had t-to take c-c-care of s-something first."

"I see…" My voice trails off as I observe her contemplatively. "That was probably McGonagall, then."

"S-s-she said to w-wait for h-her to d-d-d-deal with m-me," Angela adds, though she looks like she's ready to have herself a good faint.

"Okay," I say slowly, frowning slightly. "When did she say that, if you remember?"

Angela opens her mouth to say something, but it is at this moment when Professor McGonagall herself walks up, looking rather cross about something as she steps towards the train – she's always like that just after summer holidays.

Upon seeing me, her mouth thins to a dangerous point; I'm not sure if it's because I've forgotten how thin her mouth can go over the weeks I've been away, or if she simply spends her breaks inventing new ways to appear evil, but I'm almost positive it's the latter of the two. She's never liked me much, claiming I "waste potential" (a phrase I seem to get a lot, somehow) and I can only imagine how thrilled she must be to see me here with a first year who looks like she's been violently raped recently.

"Miss Catherwood," McGonagall says crisply, seeming to want to vomit the words. "I thought I told the train to please stay put until I came to deal with Miss Sharpe's trunk?"

"I wasn't aware of that until about four seconds ago," I announce innocently. "Lily and I were just about to get off the train." I gesture to Lily, who's wearing that smile of hers that suggests that she would really like to stay invisible right now. McGonagall looks a little less weary when she catches sight of Lily – who is a favorite because she's so damn clever – but is right back to being a dragon lady when she looks back at me.

"Well, I will have to ask you both to wait a bit, Miss Catherwood," she says.

"I-i-i-it's fine, r-r-really," Angela interjects suddenly, surprising us all by her daring. She then scuttles aside to make some room for Lily and me, and looks expectantly at us, waiting. McGonagall appears to be highly annoyed by this gesture.

"Take Miss Evans back to your compartment, please, Catherwood, and stay there until you are dismissed," she orders.

"Yes Professor," I hear Lily say obediently behind me as she tugs on my sleeve. "We're going; aren't we, Ains?"

I let my gaze fall back on Lily, whose green eyes are insistent that I do what's being asked of me. I consider backing down, doing what she wants me to do, being a good citizen as everybody wants me to be…but the consideration passes, and I decide to screw it all and do something different:

I help 'Miss Sharpe.'

Yes, I help her – this surely must be a hallucination of some sort, because I usually won't help anyone, since I'm either too lazy or I don't like the person, but I accept it as I abandon my trunk and skip outside into the muggy summer air. McGonagall is about to stop me – and chastise me, I'm guessing – but when she sees me whip out my wand and smartly do a couple of charms Lily taught me when attempting to clean my room last summer, she stops.

At once, Angela's clothes and possessions fly into the trunk, obedient and harmless, and although they're a bit higgledy-piggledy yet (I haven't really mastered the charm to Lily's level yet), they're in for the most part and I close the trunk with a snap, sitting on it for good measure, beaming up at Angela and Professor McGonagall, glancing back at Lily once too.

The pure astonishment is evident in both McGonagall's eyes and in Lily's.

I can almost hear those unspoken words from everyone who can see me drumming in my ears as I continue to sit where I am – 'Are we seeing a breakthrough? Is Miss Catherwood going to finally shed her bad attitude and be the good person we all knew she could be?'

And I can also hear my unspoken answer back at their sorry selves – 'Hell no!'

"Get up, Miss Catherwood," McGonagall requests, her mouth going thin again.

"Right-o, Professor," I say, my smile cheeky as I bounce up, tucking a few unruly locks of my hair behind my ears.

I then look to Angela, who still looks fairly horror-struck. She's even more panicky than she was when McGonagall appeared – which implies that I am scarier than the strictest teacher the world has ever known, a fact that is both insulting and very, very cool. I decide to test out my limits.

With my widest, Cheshire Cat smile, I put out my hand to the little first year and say, "Hey, lay one on me."

Angela's eyes widen and she looks apprehensively at my hand, as though I'm holding a polka-dotted tarantula in it or something. However, when she's sure I don't (usually) bite, she carefully high-fives me with her little hand, and I grin.

"I'm Ainsley Catherwood, if you were wondering," I tell her.

"Hi Ainsley," she murmurs.

I have to work hard to hold back my laughter, but I salute her, and turn to McGonagall expectantly, all remnants of helpful-Ainsley gone in the split-second it took me to make the gesture.

"So can Lily and I get into the coaches now?" I ask McGonagall. "Please?"

McGonagall seems to be having a bit of an inner dilemma – she doesn't want me to leave, but she can't deny that what I did was helpful and deserves the privilege – but she says after a moment or two, "All right then, Miss Catherwood. You may go."

"Brilliant!" I beam. "Thanks, Professor!"

McGonagall spares me one of her rarer, more affectionate smirks, and says, "Hurry now; and tell those people in the back of the train that they come and find a coach now that Miss Sharpe's trunk is taken care of."

"Sure." Now, it is Lily that speaks from her original spot inside the train – she looks rather bemused, if truth be told, even as she hollers in her loud, authoritative, Lily-Evans voice, "Let's get this traffic moving now, yeah? Miss Sharpe is finished. Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

Once she's made her announcement and we can hear some signs of movement from inside the train, I give Angela Sharpe a quick little pat on her head, and grab my trunk from Lily's outstretched hand – and, together, we bound out of the train and make a mad dash for one of the good coaches that will get us to the castle faster than most of the other ones.

Okay, so I must admit; maybe there are perks to being one of the good girls too.

The rest of the school is close behind us as we clamber onto the coach farthest to the front, so Lily and I are a bit out of breath as we settle down, with our trunks between our legs. But, the moment Lily's got control over herself, she begins to giggle.

"Ainsley, I'm so proud of you," she says, her smile vaguely sly. "You lent a hand to a person in need – and on your own free will! This is a big step in the right direction."

I roll my eyes, blushing again. "Maybe it seemed very sweet and lovely at the time, but it really wasn't – I lent her a hand because I knew McGonagall would let me get off the train before everyone else. I was more selfish than anything else."

"Well, regardless, that little Angela Sharpe got all her things collected without a nervous breakdown and everyone got out faster, all because of your selfishness; so I suppose it's selfishness that coincidentally worked out for everyone, making it unselfish after all," Lily deduces with a grin.

I release a low chuckle. "Must you be so optimistic?"

"Of course." Lily puts her arm around my shoulder, and laughs. "You've got no hopefulness to speak of; someone's got to have enough for the both of us, so it might as well be me!"

I shrug, but smirk at her. "Whatever you wish, O Hopeful Lily Evans."

She gives me a playful punch on the arm, but it is at this moment when the empty air holding up our carriage decides to spontaneously move forward a little bit, and take us closer to Hogwarts – therefore, closer to home…as well as a big table covered with dishes that could keep me happy for at least two or three hours.

I take no hesitation in letting out a whoop towards the navy-satin sky; I can already hear the feast calling out to me, and who am I to make dinner wait for me?

&

Once inside Hogwarts, we ravenous fourth years swarm the Gryffindor table along with the rest of the upper-school students. It's been a long, chilly ride in the carriages up to the castle, and the warmth of the Great Hall is pretty welcome by this point.

I attempt to pull Lily towards the Gryffindor table, already drooling although the food isn't out yet, but Lily is not in the mood to go quickly – she's looking around with the greatest fondness for the hall we are in.

"Ains, isn't it great to be home?" she asks dreamily, looking at the ceiling as though it's a dear old friend.

"Yep," I say, nodding. "They'd better have some chicken, I could use a couple of drumsticks…"

Lily rolls her eyes, but smiles. "C'mon, the Sorting is about to start; let's find Mary and Alice, shall we?"

"If you must," I say, allowing Lily to herd me forward, craning her neck to find our two other friends. "I really don't know why you're so sentimental, Lils; if Mary and Alice want us, they should come find us."

"Maybe they're thinking the same for us – don't be so sour and anti-social," Lily says vacantly, still looking around.

I pull an ugly face, but look around with her, to make the process finish with greater ease; my good deed of the night seems to have put me in quite the giving mood. A minute or two later, though, it is not our friends that catch my wandering eye.

I groan loud enough for people in the vicinity turn to glance back at me. "Lily, can we please get out of this jam and get to the other end of the table? Fast?"

"There are a couple of sixth years that won't seem to move, so I can't really do that," Lily calls back to me. "Why?"

"We've got visitors," is all I will say on the matter.

Lily looks oddly at me, and then allows her vision to fill up with the same image I am seeing. When James Potter and Sirius Black come to view, she, too, makes a very loud noise of discontent.

"Oh no," she moans. "Not again."

"Run!" I suggest, gesturing to an opening near us.

"C'mon then, Ains, come with me!" Lily grabs my hand, and together, we attempt to squeeze through the throng of people to get to the Gryffindor table. There are quite a few people – I step on several feet and get several more dirty looks – but this is an emergency situation. It's time to go.

Constantly looking over my shoulder like I have a twitch in my neck, I follow James and Sirius's progress as they see us, and begin to make their way towards us, smiling away for all they're worth, and urge Lily on. She gets the message, and we make it to the far side of the table at last, breathless as we sit down and rest. Lily looks rather worried.

"Where are Mary and Alice?" she wonders again. "I don't want to have to sit with those two hooligans; that would be unbearable."

"I know, I know," I say, biting and releasing my lower lip, deep in thought as I look for our friends. "Let's just pray they see us before the boys do."

"Ooh, I think that's Mary," Lily offers, her attention snapping up at the prospect of Mary Macdonald, her jealousy-inspiring emerald eyes brightening. "D'you think Alice is with her?"

"Maybe," I say absently, looking around myself. If I see Alice, that's a plus, because I really am just making sure James and Sirius are safely away from us – and they are. They have found their other two friends, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin, and the four of them are catching up, laughing and talking and enjoying themselves thoroughly.

Good. At least they're out of our hair.

"The Marauders are together; we're free," I tell Lily in her ear.

"Thank goodness," she responds, smiling. "And I think that was Mary – I'm going to wave her over."

With this, Lily's long, slender arm is raised up to the peacefully star-peppered sky that is supposed to be our ceiling, and she waves it about frantically, passively urging Mary to look here. And after a moment or two, she does.

"MARY!" Lily hollers so loudly I nearly topple off my bench with astonishment. "OVER HERE! C'MERE!!"

"You'd best speak up a bit, Lils, I think there might've been a few remote Argentinean villages that maybe didn't hear that," I mutter roughly, glowering at her, rubbing my poor ripped ear.

"I'm sorry, darling, but she wouldn't be able to hear me unless I screamed it," Lily tries to explain, torn between laughing at me and being very, very sorry.

"Yeah, well, if she didn't hear you, I'm going to hide in a cave when you call again," I inform her darkly.

My reaction amuses Lily; she laughs, and sour as anything, I remark, "Well, at least my auditory pains come to some use in this cruel, cruel world we live in."

She shakes her head at me, and says, "Ainsley, you are such a drama queen. Hush."

"You can't silence a revolution," I tell her peevishly, sniffing.

This time, Lily ignores me, and waves at Mary again, beaming. Mary is also grinning, seeing the stormy look on my face and the bright one on Lily's, as she parts the crowd to take a seat next to us. Lily gives a cry of delight as she throws her arms around Mary.

"Mary, Mary, you're here!" she says excitedly. "Oh, you must tell me how your hols were; how are you?"

"Fine, I'm perfectly fine," Mary responds, just as excited. "I went to Scotland for my holidays, to visit family and the like. We had some jolly fun by the sea, it was brilliant. I'm just sad to leave it, as much as I do love this place."

Lily looks about ready to burst with her joy, and she and Mary converse a bit more, rapidly exchanging various bits of news from break, while I lose interest completely and look around me, bored. Lily loves to talk the moment she gets to reacquaint with friends, but I tend to get a bit more inward during those kinds of moments.

Some call it petulant and anti-social.

Me? I call it being rational.

I mean, just because I'm not bouncing off the wall, squealing my head off as if I've won the damn lottery, doesn't mean I'm not animated or happy or any of that. I just choose to do it in a more civilized manner. Bite me, why don't you.

I muse on this, twirling my fork in my hand, wishing the feast would start and these boisterous people would just please sit down and pay some attention. We still have to do the Sorting before we even get to come close to a morsel of food. Human beings are so tiresome.

As I continue to observe my surroundings, I notice Alice Prewitt finally emerge into a huge bubble of people cluttering around the other end of the Gryffindor table, giggling with a girl I recognize from here to be Emmeline Vance. Glancing at Lily and Mary, who are still talking away at top speed, I then begin to wave my own arms around, hoping Alice will see me. Lily will appreciate this, I'm sure.

It takes me longer than it took Lily to flag down Mary, but soon enough, Alice does take notice of the loony girl searching desperately for her line of vision. Smiling, she waves back, and puts up her index finger, indicating she'll be right there. I nod at her, and go back to ignoring Mary and Lily's conversation, resuming also my enthralling activity of playing with my fork.

A couple of minutes later, Alice turns up at the table, her expression alight with interest and what I perceive as joy to see her friends again.

"Ainsley!" She says my name like a cheerleader whoop. "Merlin, it feels like forever! Come here and hug me!"

Alice knows I don't particularly enjoy hugs, but either she's forgotten or she simply doesn't care as she throws herself on me (the second person to do this to me today!), squeezing me tightly. I cough over her shoulder.

When she releases me, I say casually, "Hey Alice. And oh, that popping noise you just heard? That was only my ribcage cracking. But don't worry, or anything, I'm sure I can live without that hard, bony exterior around my internal organs."

Alice laughs, smiling affectionately at me, and says, "Sorry, Ains. Just got a bit keyed up."

"Obviously," I say. "But that's fine, really. Madam Pomfrey can give me the crowning honor of being her first patient of the new school year."

"Stop bitching, Ainsley, is it so wrong to be happy to see you?" Alice smirks at me, too used to my behavior to be very surprised.

"Yes, it is," I say dramatically, flinging my arm into space and nearly hitting the back of Mary's head. "For I am a forsaken, black-intentioned female, despaired over by her mother, despaired over by her teachers, despaired over by the few friends she has managed to retain…"

"Geez, we're certainly in a strange mood tonight, aren't we, Ains?" Alice asks, snorting as she crosses around the table to sit across from me. "What's up?"

"I dunno, I'm just tired and crabby and quite hungry," I say with a sigh.

"Doesn't Lily keep mints somewhere on her person?" Alice wonders.

"Yeah, but I ate them all on the train," I say sorrowfully.

"I missed you, Ainsley," Alice says, laughing. Then she raises her voice and addresses my companions, "Oy, LILY! MARY! Come say hello!"

At this, Lily and Mary immediately turn their heads to see Alice, and the squealing starts all over again. I don't know why I bother to even bring up my poor eardrums, which are suffering quite heavily under all this strain. My house is always quiet, full of me avoiding the obnoxious new man my mother had brought home like a bad show-and-tell presentation, and adjusting to this cheerful, energetic atmosphere after that is difficult for me every year. It puts me in quite a mood – something Alice knows but pokes fun at me for regardless.

It's a routine. What can I say?

I sigh, and sink back into my mild depression as my friends start conversing around me. I'm probably getting all sorts of looks right now – looks wondering what that crazy bitch Ainsley Catherwood is doing, being all moody – but I honestly couldn't care less. Not even if I tried, which I don't feel the need to do anyway.

I get looks all the time. I most likely deserve every single one of them. I've already accepted it, because unlike most of those people who stare at me, I know my place in the world.

With a second sigh, I lay my cheek against my hands on the table, facing the High Table that seems a million miles away from me, and I proceed to lose myself into my half-conscious day-dream.

I'll wake up when they feed me.

&

It seems to take forever – because by my definition of the word, it does – but at long, long last, the Sorting and start-of-year speeches and trifling reminders and all that finish and we are able to stuff our faces with the delectable treats courtesy of our house elves before retiring upstairs to bed.

The evening is a blur of conversation and catching up and eating – plenty of that last one – so by the time Lily, Mary, Alice, and I are trooping upstairs to wangle the password out of this year's prefects (one of them, Brendan Waters, is proclaimed to be "quite beautiful" by Mary), we are fairly exhausted.

All of us have been fed, all our stories shared (including mine and Lily's about Angela Sharpe – who was, ironically, sorted into Hufflepuff within a second and a half), and we are yawning after the long day we've had. There's nothing else left to say, and classes obviously begin tomorrow.

Bottom line: we need sleep. And we need it now.

The four of us, along with everyone else, disperse in the common room to the appropriate dormitories. A bed hasn't looked so welcoming in a long time, at least not to me. When we enter our tiny room, Alice is the first to run to her bed, which is signified by her trunk sitting beside it, and fall on it with a little thud, giggling.

"It's good to be home," she says sleepily, yawning.

"Me too," Mary agrees, falling on her own bed. "So, which one of you is going to join me in the no-wearing-night-clothes-because-these-clothes-work-just-as-well club tonight?"

"I'm game," I say, sitting on my bed rather than falling on it, grinning at my friends.

"Count me in," Alice says sleepily, raising her hand as though she's voting.

"How's about you, Lils?" I turn to Lily, who is still impossibly standing up by her dresser, opening up her trunk. "You joining us?"

"I'll meet you halfway," Lily decides, stripping off her shirt, "by sleeping in my underwear."

"Ooh, then let's hope Potter doesn't pay you a visit tonight," Alice teases, laughing. "He'd just about die!"

Lily shoots Alice one of her death glares and chucks a pillow at her, hitting her square in the face. "Don't even joke like that," she warns, pulling her jeans off of her long legs and hitting Alice with them.

"It's true," I taunt her. "Poor thing! You're such a tease, walking around in knickers only a few meters away from him."

Lily's death glare is now given to me, but I don't care much tonight. I simply smile sweetly, surveying my friend in her lacy pink bra and white panties, hand on her slim hip, and I say, "Okay, I'm sorry," even though I'm not.

"Whatever." Huffy, Lily produces some shorts from somewhere inside of her trunk and slips them on before neatly climbing into bed – not plopping onto it like the rest of us – cuddling in comfortably. "Good night, girls. See you in the morning."

"Yeah, mhmm," Mary mumbles, so sleepily that I wonder how she mustered the energy to even listen to what Lily said.

"'Night, Lils, Ains, Mary," Alice says cheerfully, her voice also woolly as she sticks her face into her pillow, folding it around her head and making an Alice sandwich.

"Good night to anyone who's listening," I call out. Nobody answers – typical – and I'm about to go to sleep myself (even bitches have the right to be exhausted), when I hear Lily hesitantly say my name. "Ainsley?"

"Yeah?" I turn over with great difficulty, my black hair plastered all over my face, and squint to look at her in the dark. She looks wide awake. I will never know how she does this.

"I dunno," Lily says quietly, fiddling with a plastic ring she's wearing on her finger. "I just…I wanted to ask you something."

"Go on then, spit it out," I say, blinking in my attempt to keep consciousness. "I'm about to crash."

"I know." Lily exhales with a short puff, and then regards me seriously with those green eyes of hers. "Ains, I want you to make a vow with me."

"A vow?" Despite my sleepiness, my attention is caught.

"Yes, a vow." Lily returns to her ring and goes on, "A vow that, despite our hideous stalkers, we are going to make the most out of this year. We'll get through it together, and help each other out. Can you promise me that?"

I consider this, but not for very long. "Yeah, okay, that's a good idea," I say agreeably. "We're going to make the most out of this year…oh, and we're not going to succumb to our stalkers. That's the other part of the vow."

"Yes, that's perfect." Somehow, Lily manages to smile – and not just smile, but beam, a huge smile with so much light behind it that it almost blinds me. "We can do it."

"Hell yes," I concur fuzzily.

"We ought to shake on it," Lily declares. "You know, to make it official."

Grumbling under my breath, I find my hand and outstretch it across to Lily's bed, which is next to mine on the right side, and she shakes it for me. Her grip is firm while mine is limp – which is the same deal on basically everything in life for us – and it feels wonderfully warm and secure for the brief seconds we stay like that. When she lets go, I miss her weight.

"Okay, it's official," she says. "We are going to kick some arse this year."

"Don't we always?" I half-smile at her – the best I can do at the current time – and say, "I'm so tired though, Lils; so I'll see you in the morning. Of course."

"Of course." Lily laughs – maybe her exhaustion is so much that it makes her giddy, that's my only guess – and says, "'Night, Ainsel-puff."

"If I could, I would hex you into next week," I inform her. "You know I hate that name."

"You deserve it," Lily says, smirking. "But good night."

"Good night."

Satisfied with her revenge on my crack about James, Lily turns over and lays still, although I can sense she's still awake. She probably will be for a little while longer. I won't though; so I also turn over, so I can see Mary's nearly deathly-still form lying on top of her blankets still, and I close my eyes.

It doesn't take me very long until I think no more for the remainder of the night.