Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the other characters that are in the Harry Potter books. J. K. Rowling does, like everyone already know.

...

The next five weeks followed the same routine as the first couple days. Lily had seen Alexander once outside of class, but had worked with him in Charms on four separate occasions since the first day of classes. He always sent a friendly hello and smile her way, even if it was the fifth or sixth one of the day.

She had also continued her rounds with James Potter. Luckily, they were allowed to delegate the responsibilities to the sixth year prefects, meaning that Lily and James had only patrolled the hallways ten times since that first day. Nothing special occurred; they caught a couple more students out of bed and managed to make some small talk. However, the majority of their time together was spent in silence. At first, it was a very awkward silence, one that neither of them was very fond of. However, as the weeks passed on, they became slightly more comfortable with each other's silence.

Tonight marked the twelfth time that Lily and James had to patrol the hallways, which made Lily groan. They had been walking for nearly twenty minutes and she was bored out of her mind. They hadn't encountered a single student out of bed nor had they even heard a suspicious noise, which often lead to her and James talking for at least a couple of minutes. Tonight was silent though.

Eventually, James said, "So Evans, if you were stranded on a desert island, couldn't do magic, and could only bring one thing with you, what would it be?"

Lily glanced at James, thinking that he was off his rocker. Where did that come from? "Um, I don't know."

"Well, pick something."

"I don't want to."

"You have to."

"No, I don't," she snapped. "And what kind of a stupid question is that anyway?"

"It's not stupid."

"Yes it is."

James paused for a moment, stopped walking, and stared straight into her bright green eyes. "Can't you pull that stick out of your ass for just one day?"

His last comment shocked Lily even more than his first. How dare he say something so rude to her! "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" she snapped, crossing her arms across her chest and staring back at him.

"It means exactly what it sounds like," James calmly replied. "Christ, Evans, you are so uptight and so concentrated on despising me that you're blind to the fact that I'm trying to be nice to you."

"Excuse me?"

"Honestly, can't you just relax enough to see that all I'm doing here is trying to make nights like tonight a little more bearable? All I did was ask you one silly little question and you snap at me and make me feel like an idiot. Would it really have killed you to put a smile on your face and answer the fucking question?" James exclaimed. Only after his speech did he break eye contact with Lily, shaking his head as he looked away.

Lily was shocked by this. James Potter had never said a single bad thing about her in his entire life and here he was, basically informing her that she was a bitch. She couldn't believe how rude he was!

"Potter, I did not snap," she retorted, "And I am a nice person and I'm not uptight either."

"Oh really?" he asked, doubtfully. "Name once instance in the past four years when you haven't called me a name or actually answered my questions in a pleasant tone of voice."

"Oh I will," she snapped, but as she began to rack her mind for examples, she couldn't think of a single one. Was she really that rude to James? But as she thought about it more, she came to the conclusion that he didn't deserve her respect nor her kindness. He was a fouled-hearted man. And she told him exactly how she felt, "James Potter, if you hadn't been such a complete asshole around me all the time, maybe I would have been a little bit nicer to you. However, you insisted on hexing everyone who got in your way!"

"Okay, fine," James admitted, "I was an immature ass for a while. What about now though? In case you haven't noticed, I haven't hexed anyone since the middle of last year, I haven't asked you out since last year, and well, and I was obviously chosen as Head Boy for a reason."

Come to think of it, Lily realized that James was telling the truth. He hadn't tried to ask her out yet, which was a huge improvement from prior years. She also hadn't seen him hex a single student. In fact, every time she saw him he seemed to be acting like a civilized human being.

Both Lily and James continued to patrol the hallways again, neither of them saying a single word. Lily was far too embarrassed and stubborn to admit that she had been treating him like rubbish.

And so they continued to walk in silence, until five minutes later, Lily finally said, "My giant teddy bear."

James gave her a quizzical look.

"If I were stranded on a deserted island, with no magical abilities, I'd want my giant teddy bear with me. My parents gave him to me for my third birthday and I've never been away from him for more than two days," Lily explained.

James smiled at her, taking her response as an apology.

"Why do you ask, anyways?" Lily asked.

"They say it tells a lot about the person," James answered.

"And what would you bring?"

"My broomstick," he replied. "That way I could fly off the deserted island and back into civilization." He grinned after he gave his answer.

"That's cheating," Lily exclaimed, but smiled. Yes, she was going to be nicer to James Potter. Sure, it wasn't going to be easy, but she was determined to try her hardest. After all, she was going to be spending a lot of time with him throughout the rest of the year. She certainly didn't want a repeat of the past five weeks; she didn't think that she could bear the silence again.

"No it's not," he replied.

"Well, it does say a lot about you," Lily stated. "It says that you're bending the rules."

"Or that I'm smart enough to think of an escape out," James said, adding, "But we all do know that I love to bend the rules too."

Lily rolled her eyes and sighed instinctively. She then immediately felt bad about it and hoped that James hadn't seen it. Being nice to him was going to be difficult. Every bone in her body was telling her to make a witty remark or ignore him completely.

Instead, she asked, "Would you rather lose your sight or your hearing?"

"My hearing," James answered. "You can still play Quidditch if you're deaf, but you can't play without your eyes."

"Always relating everything to Quidditch," Lily dully stated. The minute the words left her mouth she regretted them. Why was it so hard not to be mean to him? Every thought that popped into her head seamed to be putting James Potter down. It was stupid really, after all, her comment could be constructed as a simple statement. Lily knew that it was her tone that made it bad though. Her pure attitude towards him was just so hard to change.

James simply cringed and said, "You don't like Quidditch very much, do you?"

"Oh, I like it," she answered. "However, I think it's a bit of a sexist sport. I mean honestly, did you even realize that there is not a single girl on any of the House teams? My guess is that you don't allow girl on just because you all are afraid that we'll get hurt or something, which is just stupid."

James cut off her rambling though by saying, "Actually, Gryffindor has a girl on the team."

"What?"

"Yeah, she's a third year, Hannah Parker. Great flyer that girl is," James explained. "She's our new seeker. I heard that Ravenclaw has a girl this year too, some fifth year girl is one of their new chasers."

"Oh," Lily dumbly said, "I hadn't realized."

"That's probably because you're just getting your information from that Hufflepuff bloke, Alexander Leavitt," James replied. He then immediately looked away, as if something on the wall was suddenly very intriguing.

'We mostly talk about schoolwork," she said, as if she needed to explain why she was talking to Alexander. "I'm helping him with Charms, that's all."

"Yeah, okay."

"Really, we've only talked about Quidditch once," Lily insisted.

"Evans, I hate to burst your bubble, but what you talk about with your, um, friends, is really none of my business. I mean, well, you and I can talk about whatever because well, we have rounds," James stammered. This was the most tongue-tied Lily had ever seen him. "What I am trying to say is that he's a nice enough kid and a decent Quidditch player."

Lily had a confused look across her face and paused for a moment before saying, "Yes, he is a good guy."

The rest of the evening went by rather quickly. After getting off the slightly awkward topic concerning Alexander, Lily and James talked a bit more. There were still many silences, but they both knew this whole talking and being nice thing was new to them and decided to give it some time.

They arrived back in the Gryffindor common room; only a few students remained, including the Marauders. James said goodnight to Lily before hurrying over to his friends. He made the distinct effort not to watch her ascend the stairs leading to the girls' dormitory.

"How'd it go?" Remus asked.

"Surprisingly well," James answered.

Little did James know, but that was exactly what Lily was thinking as she opened the door to the room she shared with the four other Gryffindor seventh year girls. She was glad to see that her two roommates, Cheryl and Stacey, were not in the room. This way she could explain her night to Camilla and Libby without having to worry about them overhearing.

Lily didn't expect Camilla to harshly asked, "So what did Potter do this night that was so revoltingly Potterish?"

Lily was taken aback for a minute, unsure of what to say. James Potter most certainly did not act in a revolting manner. If anything he made her see that she was the one being revoltingly cruel.

Before Lily could say a word, Libby cut in and said, "The Marauders minus Potter decided it would be a really great idea to charm Camilla's quill to not absorb any ink. We spent nearly an hour having to deal with them."

This didn't surprise Lily at all. They were so immature. How could she have possibly doubted herself into believing that James Potter made a valid argument during rounds? He was a Marauder and the Marauders were notorious for their pranks. There was no changing that. Lily could only imagine him telling all his little friends how he managed to make her apologize. They were probably having a big laugh about it now.

"They are all such asses," Camilla screamed with frustration. "Even when I explained to them that it was my only quill, they told me that the only way they'd remove the charm was if I promised to take notes for them for the rest of the week. To make matters even worse, only after we spent thirty minutes searching for the anti-charm, those gits decided to tell me that they had invented the charm themselves! God, I could just strangle them sometimes."

"Camilla, I'm sorry," Lily said, understanding written across her face.

"It's not your fault that they have a combined maturity level of a five year old," Camilla replied. "It just sucks because I had no choice but to give in."

"You're not really going to take notes for them, are you?"

"They didn't say anything about them being very good notes," Camilla answered, a bittersweet smile spread across her face.

"Seriously though, Potter try anything this night?" Libby asked.

Lily thought about the night some more. She was still debating whether or not James Potter had actually been genuine with her or if he just wanted a good laugh to share with his friends. Her heart was telling her it was the former, but with her friends' opposition staring her straight in the eye, Lily allowed herself to be convinced that James was up to no good.

"He's an ass, that's all I'm going to say."