AN: This is waaayyy later than I meant to have this done by. Oh well. Here's Chapter 4! I own none of this!

4.

"I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid...you're as bad as he is...you make me sick..."

Her words from an hour ago were still running on an endless loop through his head.

James paced his dormitory room, waiting for the dittany he put on his cheek to finish fully healing the damage done by Snape's hex.

Lily was wrong, plain and simple; there was no way he was just as bad as Snape-it wasn't possible. And yet, she had said it, and James knew Lily to be a person who never said something she didn't mean, so that led him to a much worse train of thought: did Lily honestly think he was that awful of a person that she could liken him to a Death Eater-in-training without blinking an eye? And then did that mean he had really been deluding himself for months when he thought they were finally forging a friendship of sorts? Did he honestly have no chance with her? For the first time in almost three years, it struck him that Lily Evans might really never go out with him.

And maybe it was his fault.

James kicked his bedpost, which did nothing except make his toe throb.

He knew he had gone too far, asking her out while jinxing her friend, but he had done it anyway and now she was furious and there might not be a way to fix it and he had no one to blame but himself.

"I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid...you're as bad as he is...you make me sick..."

Her words from four hours ago were still racing across her mind, the afternoon replaying itself over and over again.

Lily sat in the kitchen clutching the butterbeer a house elf had given her when she had arrived.

She had been too harsh and she finally knew it. James wasn't nearly as bad as Severus-that had been made abundantly clear. Yet she couldn't find it in herself to stop being angry at James. Just when she'd started thinking she might give him a chance, he went and pulled a stupid stunt like this and reminded her of all the reasons why she always turned him down. Who did he think he was, strutting about the castle and smirking and never combing his hair and hexing people for the fun of it?

But then who was she to be angry when she had needed to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing when Severus had been hoisted into the air? And maybe James hadn't been lying those times he said Severus had hexed him first; today she'd seen that he was definitely capable of that.

She wasn't quite sure where she was going with those thoughts, when the door to the kitchen creaked open.

Lily jumped off the table she had been sitting on and nearly dropped her butterbeer in the process.

"Evans? Didn't expect to see you here," the newcomer said.

She recognized that voice. Of course he would wind up down here.

"I was going to say the same thing to you, Potter," she said.

James walked fully into the room and shut the door behind him. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Well you did."

There was a long and awkward silence in which neither one knew what to say so Lily continued to sip on her drink while James struggled to not mess with his hair.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked finally.

"What are you doing here?" she retorted.

"Avoiding my mates actually."

"We're both here for the same reason, then."

"You're avoiding your mates?" James asked.

"And a couple other people." The look she gave him was so pointed he would have had to have been blind to misinterpret it.

"So you're still mad at me."

"I'm not sure," Lily replied honestly.

"Look," James took a seat on the table Lily had previously been on, "I'm really sorry about what Snape-"

"What Snape did has nothing to do with you. If you want to apologize, do it for your own actions or don't do it at all," Lily snapped.

James was taken aback, but only for a moment. She was right, as usual. If he wanted to make anything better between the two of them, he had to take responsibility for his own part in everything.

"Right," he said at length. "I did some things I really shouldn't have, and said some things that were far out of line."

It was vague, Lily thought, and it was barely enough, but it was enough. For now, at least.

"We all said things that were out of line," she said. "And I suppose it would be rather hypocritical of me to stay mad at you when I could have handled things better as well."

"So are we all right now?" James asked hopefully.

"No," Lily shook her head, "but we're better than we were."

James nodded and, sensing that Lily really did want to be alone, hopped off the table and walked to the door.

"See you around, Evans."

"Thanks, Potter."

James walked out, not quite sure why she had thanked him. But she wasn't mad, and that was enough.

For now at least.