A/N: Okay, gang, ignoring for the moment that I just called you my gang I have a couple things to clear up/say.

1. For the second chapter I put an * next to the superman reference and then forgot to actually put a key thingy. If I were unlazy/smart enough to go fix it that key would ask you all to forgive/indulge me because I figure superman is probably a really muggle thing to reference. Also, speaking of superman, anyone watch Starkid's new Bman musical? I love Brian Holden so much. Okay, done here.

2. I wanted to give a super special thanks to my very own third review: Abarraine, you wonderful reviewer you! Especially because I feel bad for posting this chapter so soon after your critique... not that this chapter is really slow per se, just that it's not exactly action/lust packed. It's a bit indulgent because I love writing Sirius.

Gah. More romance and dramatics will be coming soon and I do end on a fairly ominous note-so I hope that's something, right? Above all, I just hope my writing is somewhat amusing or at least not terrible.

Anwywho- thanks so much for reading, whoever is still reading. I like you all. Probably. THANKS!

And please review even if it's just to say 'yo' or, hell, even 'ho'. Fo' sho'... ahem... OKAY, really done here. Sorry.

Try a little lie, with a sunny smile and a witty eye

And you may find a smile in kind... and a little air between your lips and I.

-BC Camplight, Blood and Peanutbutter

"Lames!"

"What?" I yawed, feeling somewhat groggy. Last night had been rather rough. I'd tried desperately to think of a plan to make sure Lily stayed out of trouble and so far... nothing. Somewhat resigned to my failure, I started spreading butter onto my toast. Lots of butter. Hey, if it makes you feel better, right?

" That's yours and Lily's couple name."

I looked up into Sirius' gray eyes, momentarily thrown.

"A couple name? What's that?"

"It's like, when you two get together and I'm thinking. I just want to hang out with my good old pal Prongs... er I mean, James. I almost ruined it for a bit, doesn't work with Prongs, see?"

I didn't, but I shrugged and stuffed the butter laden toast into my mouth.

"So anyway I think, 'I want to hang with my old buddy. But he's over with not-really-my-buddy Evans, fuck I mean Lily... so I'm thinking, bah. Better make sure to invite them both. See, now?"

This time I didn't even bother pretending to see and merely shook my head. Peter bit back a laugh, and I could tell Sirius had already explained the concept to him.

"So how do I write for the bird to go to both of you?"

"Since when do you always invite your mates' girlfriends along? I feel like I was jipped." Marlene settled down next to Remus. I did my usual look for Lily, and tried no to be too disappointed not to see her.

"Calm it, McKinnon. Lames will be married by then."

"Lames!" The ridiculous name seemed to have finally registered. That was a horrible couple's name! Not that we needed one, but really...

"Yeah, clever, isn't it?"

"No! All you did was put an L in front of my name!"

"So you prefer Limes, eh? I thought it sounded a bit fruity myself."

"That still doesn't make sense anyway. Why can't you just write down both names?"

"Because... this way is quicker."

"You can just tell your owl where to go! You don't need to write either of our names down. And what, are we living together?" Sirius nodded. "Where are you writing this name down, even?"

"I would write one letter to both of you. The letter would start out, 'Dear Lames, blah blah blah. Now you get it?"

"Who's Lames, then?" Lily sat down next to Marlene and across from Mary who had pulled in beside me.

"Lames is yours and James' couple name!" I braced myself for certain onslaught.

"That's stupid. That would not be our couple's name."

Everyone was silent and even Lily looked surprised at what she'd said.

"Not that we'd have a couple's name. Bleh. Couple's name. Yeah, right."

Still silence. I was grinning toothily at her. Seeing my expression she once again seemed to realize she hadn't cleared up anything at all. Except, I suppose, that she was opposed to couple's names.

"Not that we would be an …er, couple. Nope. Not us. We... are not even a we. Potter and I. We are just... mates. Yep. Mates. Right, Potter? Mates."

Probably because of the fact that she had just said mates too many times I couldn't help but notice she considered me, her once sworn enemy, a mate. I grinned even wider.

"Yep. That's us, Lily. Mates."

"Evans," She reminded me coolly, looking suddenly irked.

"Mates call each other by their first names," I pointed out.

"Not true. Lots of people call each other by last names."

"Not mates."

"Yes, mates."

"Like who?" I felt like we were doing that stupid cookie jar song.

She looked around desperately, presumably to find an example, before turning back to smirk at me.

"It's better than Prongs and Mooney and all that nonsense."

"Hey! Those are cool nicknames."

"Mmhmmm, yeah. Real neat." She shot back.

"You're just jealous. Oy, do you want a nickname?" Sirius asked, flashing her his most disarming smile.

She fluttered her eyelashes and leaned into the table toward him (and, so, also toward me). I couldn't help but notice how that...er... emphasized certain assets of hers. I gulped. Sirius, meanwhile, remained perfectly smooth.

"Pretty please with cherries on tops? A nickname would just be like, the most wonderful thing a girl could get, you know?" I knew she was just playing at it, but I found myself annoyed at how much this resembled her flirting with my best mate. Sirius, either ignoring or unaware of my reaction, leaned down as well, beckoning her to come closer.

Mary rolled her eyes, Marlene snickered and Remus shook his head. Peter stared at me, seemingly the only one to notice how tightly I was grinding my teeth.

"Licks," I heard him whisper.

"What?" Lily's confusion mirrored the entire groups' until she sprang back as though she had been...

"You licked my ear!"

I couldn't help it, the idiot was not helping me win any points here, but... I joined the others in laughing. Lily looked furious, but I could see her fighting a small grin.

"Why on earth would you lick me?" Sirius waggled his eyebrows in response. "You dog."

He barked back at her, and this time she actually laughed. I stopped for a moment, reveling in Sirius getting along with her so well, even if it was a little too flirtatious for my taste. Sometimes she came off as being aloof, but I knew she wasn't, not really. I'd seen her laughing with her friends a lot. Come to think of it, she was only really ever cold around us marauders. Not anymore though. I grinned at her sincerely and her green eyes registered mine with surprise before she looked away. She bit her lip, unconsciously drawing my eye, and I wondered what it would be like to finally kiss her.

"Lily-flower!"

Hey! That was my nickname! I looked up to see Jacob swooping upon our group and was only slightly gratified to see she had neither the violent reaction she used to get when I first came up with using my nickname back in third-year, nor the fighting-back-a-smile one she usually gave me now-a-days.

It suddenly hit me—we really were becoming mates! Weird. I must not have noticed, what with her still yelling at me all of the time. Well, that's not even entirely true. Sure, we often argued, but a lot of the times she forgave me rather quickly, as though she hadn't been that mad.

The only thing was, I still think she thought I liked her for the chase or something. Mary had chastised me for as much. I made a mental note to write out a list of ways to convince her otherwise.

Lily rolled her eyes at the offending intruder and stuck her tongue out him playfully. Jacob ruffled her hair in response. How adorable. I coughed rather loudly.

All of my mates (including Lily, she's my mate now, remember?) looked at me with varying looks from disgust to knowing amusement to mere confusion as to why I was currently hacking away. I smiled at them all.

"Jacob." He nodded at me in greeting. "Here for your sister?"

"Nope. Was gonna walk Lily and Mary to Charms. They asked me for help with a certain tricky um... charm."

"Lily is the top in that class, why does she need your help?" Lily blushed at the compliment and looked ready to contradict me before Mary jumped in.

"Oh, no. It's for my sake. Lily needed help explaining it to me. We figured another perspective might help."

I knew they were lying, but provocation might as well be my middle name. I threw on my most confused face.

"Why couldn't I just help you then? You know, I may act like an idiot sometimes, but I got mostly O's last year." Sirius snorted and Remus hid his grin behind a particularly large muffin. Mary wasted no time in responding.

"I would it's just...you annoy me."

"What?"

"Yep. You're er.. condescending as hell."

"No I'm not!"

"You're like this huge macho ball of ego that spurts out bits of patriarchy and old wizarding nonsense wherever he goes. It's like you're a big black ball of gas, like um, those things in space, you know... sucking things out of other things and being all around horrible people."

Sometimes Mary goes on weird rants and I haven't the foggiest what she's saying or how exactly she's insulting me and, besides, quite suddenly I had other things on my mind. Mary had given me an idea. Don't take this the wrong way, but balls! Of course! Why didn't I think of that earlier?

"Are you going on about black holes? How are those people? And I very much doubt they are balls of gas. That makes absolutely zero sense." Sirius had stepped up to defend my honor, so I took the moment to reflect on the stupidity level of verbalizing what I currently was considering to say to Lily.

"The sun's a ball of gas," Peter supplied helpfully.

"Yeah!" Mary shouted back, high fiving Peter and confusing everyone even more.

"What in Merlin's name does that have to do with anything?"

Peter seemed to ponder the question, while Mary merely snorted.

"You wouldn't understand, would he Peter?"

Torn between two loyalties (best friend and one of the only girls who acknowledged him as an entity outside of the group) Peter froze.

"The stars are also balls of gas..."

"Yeah!"

"That still doesn't make any sense! Stop saying things Peter, and stop acting like what he says has any relevance to your weird-arse insults, Mary!"

"So, Craigs is playing in Friday's game." I finally spat out.

They all stopped arguing and everyone stared at me, then slowly turned to Lily, who appeared to be very fascinated by the palm of her hand. She was slowly flexing back and forth her fingers, trying very valiantly to ignore the awkward silence that had descended and the overt glances being thrown her way. Finally she looked up.

"Oh, Craigs, was it? Hmmm."

"Yep. It's Slytherin versus Gryfinndor and he's one of their chasers so..." She didn't respond, only kept flexing back her damn fingers. I tried again. "I heard he insulted you." Lily looked momentarily panicked and threw Sirius an accusing look. He simply shook his head and kind of shrugged.

"Right. Herbology. You heard about that, then? How many details?"

" Just that he insulted you." She visibly relaxed. "So what did he do anyway?" Part of me, the non-logical ridiculously optimistic part, hoped she would actually tell me the truth.

"He... uh...called me... fat."

"He what!" Marlene looked furious. Mary choked on the bread she was currently scarfing down to prepare for what was supposed to have been a walk to "Charms".

Peter, meanwhile looked, like Marlene, enraged on Lily's behalf. I wondered blithely if he were just better at acting than Remus and Sirius (who were currently doing a very good job of keeping their expressions placid) or if he really thought Craigs had done this on top of everything else. For a moment I considered that possibility and let that emotion take over my expression so that Lily still thought I believed her.

"Want me to hex him for you?"

"What? No, you violent buffoon! Hexing people is not always the answer. Besides, I...er, already worked it out."

"How?" I was genuinely curious to see how she would answer.

"I put a heavy-weight charm on his school-bag. Though, sadly, I think it just helped him train for quidditch. So, sorry about that."

I laughed with the others and tried to imagine that this was reality. The other true story was just some impossible scenario from a screwed up world where people were violently discriminated against for something as stupid as blood purity. A world where Craigs hadn't threatened Lily's life in addition to hurting her physically and emotionally. Where I could just consider him an individual bully, not a small part of an entire organization.

Annoyingly, everyone's weird expressions made, even for a moment, believing her version of the story impossible. Jacob looked uncomfortable, Remus was throwing me concerned glances and Lily was blushing... a lot. Even if I wanted to be that delusional idiot Lily naively thought I could be, these guys would have tipped me off in half a second. I sighed, resigned to being, well, slightly genius.

Fine, not even slightlygenius. My friends are all just really obvious at everything.

I knew what I had to do now anyway. Make sure that Craigs couldn't be set up for their idiotic plan. Have my beaters go after him specifically. Ensure that Lily couldn't risk getting expelled for some prank that was sure to be poorly executed and destined to end horribly. Balls—Quidditch, yeah?

I grimaced slightly as I watched the three conspirators walk off after making awkward goodbyes. Only Mary was walking normally. Jacob's eyes were darting around everywhere and I swear Lily looked like she was moments away from rolling on the ground in some James Bond sort of move.

While Sirius started to discuss what Mooney and Marlene would be named if they were still a couple (oddly enough, not terribly awkward considering how cleanly things broke off) I tried to evaluate how well my interaction with Lily had gone. Yes, this was normal for me, and yeah, I know that makes me weird. Remember that leaking-logic thing? Well, er...physics (that's a thing right?) dictates there must be something to fill empty... and in place of logic there's a whole lot of crazy. Right. Anyway...

She'd called me a violent buffoon-that's about 5 points down.

She'd considered us mates- 5 points up again.

She'd accidentally referred to as as a couple... implicitly, but whatever -1000 points up.

Plus I had an amazing plan to deal with the Craigs problem. I grinned and let myself join in on Sirius' mad rantings. Marlene had appeared to have left somewhere in the midst of their argument.

"We would not have been called Maroony! That sounds ridiculous!"

"I understand where Remus is coming from, let's do last names instead. How about Lupkin?"

"I hate you so much, Prongs."

"Well, I, on the other hand love you. Dear sir, I do very much agree. Lupkin is waaay cuter than Maroony."

"Well, now, Padfoot. I think you are missing the point."

"Oh, what ever do you refer to?"

"Well, that is their last name. They still need a first. Maroony Lupkin is the cutest, I'm sure." Remus glared at me.

"That doesn't make any sense. You can't use Lupin without Remus. You two idiots don't call me Mooney Lupin."

"Oh, yes we do."

"He didn't know?"

"You guys, I do believe he didn't know."

"Oh dear, Peter, I fear you're all too right. Mooney Lupin didn't know." Remus shook his head at our antics.

"Fine. Padfoot Black, then? How's that sound?"

"Good job, Mooney! Padfoot is black." I winked at him.

"Fine, Prongs Potter, wanna play it that way?"

"Ugh! You want to what Potter? James did you hear that?"

"I did. I did indeed. Maybe I shouldn't have winked?"

"Oh, shut up."

"Hey, do me!"

"I'm sure he would, Peter, but he just about told us he's got his eyes set on Prongs here." We all laughed , blissfully unaware that at this very moment sinister plans were being made. Nope, not simply by Lily's crack-head team, but another, much more dangerous one.