December eighteenth

It was strange not to be woken by the sound of four other girls fighting over the bathroom in the morning, and Lily was enjoying every minute of it. The sun was heavy on her eyelids for a moment, only to be blocked out by thick, gray clouds the next.

She could smell the winter air forcing itself through the window next to her bed, and she breathed in its cool, crisp scent.

Memories of the day before came to her mind and she rolled over onto her side with a contented sigh.

It actually hadn't been that bad hanging out with James and Sirius for a day. They had gone to The Three Broomsticks and Honeydukes, where both boys had tried a free sample of a newer version of Honeydukes' famous chocolate and loved it.

Lily had decided to buy them both a large box of this new chocolate for both of them. Both of them had loved it, and she had been getting into that holiday feeling where you just wanted to give everyone something.

But soon she had regretted it. James and Sirius were practically bouncing off of the walls a few minutes after they had eaten the chocolate.

Of course, she herself had also eaten a sample of chocolate and was soon bouncing away with them. It had a strange affect on them...All Lily could remember was laughing--ALOT. And she could also remember James saying to her: "Tomorrow, we probably won't even remember most of what we've talked about, we'll just remember laughing so much and this moment right now."

Freaky chocolate...Lily wondered if they were still giving out free samples...she should go down and warn people that it was inexplicably good, but with a price. And she could use the opportunity to get herself another sample...

Slowly opening her eyes, Lily peered over at her clock. It read nine thirty; she had definitely slept in.

They probably weren't serving breakfast in the great hall anymore, and Lily's empty stomach growled at her to get up and get something to eat, now.

Lily stretched her way out of bed and into the bathroom, trying her best to ignore her aching stomach.

Twenty minutes later, when she was dressed and her stomach refused to wait anymore, Lily walked quickly down the stairs to the common room.

As soon as her foot hit the stone floor at the bottom, there was a loud BANG followed by a cloud of smoke and a long string of profanities coming from what sounded like Sirius.

Lily swiped at the smoke in front of her and squinted through it.

James was sitting in an armchair looking very smug, while Sirius was sitting in a chair opposite him looked rather pissed. On the small table in front of them was a pile of steaming, soot covered cards.

"Exploding snap?" She asked as she swiped at the smoke.

James turned and grinned at her. "Good morning! Yes, and Sirius is getting his ass whooped."

Lily grinned too and turned to Sirius. "All that language over a game?"

"We were playing for money, deary." Sirius stood up. "I'm going to get a different game; exploding snap sucks."

Lily and James laughed at Sirius as he walked by and away up the boy's staircase.

James turned and looked at her. Not just looked at her, but he looked at her; if you know what I mean.

She crossed her arms. "What are you looking at, Potter?"

Laughing, he shook his head. "Nothing...you just look very pretty today."

Lily looked down at her old, worn green sweater and jeans she had had since she was thirteen and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Ok..." she looked away. You freak," she muttered to herself quietly.

"What's that?"

Turning quickly, she smiled sweetly at him. "Nothing, I'm going to try to find something to eat."

"Oh," James turned away from and leaned around the chair, reaching for something on the ground. "I already did it." He pulled out a plate full of toast, cinnamon rolls, eggs, bacon...the more Lily looked at it, the more food she would find. "I protected it from the exploding snap, so don't worry, and I kept it warm for you."

"But...why would you do that?" Lily eyed the plate of food. "And how much do you think I eat?"

James laughed. "I got everything because I wasn't sure what you liked...and I figured since you were sleeping in, you wouldn't get to have breakfast, so I got it for you."

For whatever reason, this gesture gave Lily that 'warm and toasty' feeling inside. It was as if the term 'warming up to James' was a literal one.

"Thank you," she said quietly as she took the plate from James, "that's really...sweet." For the first time in the seven years that she had known him, Lily actually had nice feeling toward James.

Not liking. Not love. No, no, no...Not that. Ever. That would never, ever happen. Now that she thought about it, the feeling wasn't that nice. Nope, not at all. After all that he had done, she wouldn't like him. Except she couldn't remember anything bad that he had ever done at the moment. But she would remember later, and come to her senses!

Lily sat down and bit into her bacon as Sirius came back down the stairs.

They stopped talking for moment to set up the chess board and Lily was left to her thoughts as she munched on her bacon. Lately, she had not enjoyed being left to her thoughts. Mostly because her thoughts told her things that she did not want to hear.

Right now, her head was trying to convince her that maybe James wasn't so bad. She fought to remember things over the years, things that James had done to make her mad.

The mistletoe, her bed collapsing, her enchanted homework, embarrassing her countless times, her green hair...the list went on and on.

But now all her mind wanted to tell her was that James apologized for all that. Her mind wanted to tell her that she had had fun with James yesterday and that he saved her some breakfast when she was starving.

"Alright, Potter, get ready to go down."

Finally, Sirius interrupted her betraying mind.

"Hm...Why am so against changing my mind about James?" Lily thought as she inspected James moving his pawn toward Sirius's end of the board. "Too bad Daniel isn't here; I could ask him, he would know..."

Lily excused herself before running back up to her room. She quickly wrote a letter to Daniel asking him why he thought she was against changing her mind about James and asking him how he was doing. It only took her ten minutes to get down to owlery, mail it, and then get back up to Gryffindor tower.

The afternoon turned out to be a nice one. Lily beat both James and Sirius in a game of chess each and then attempted to teach them how to play go fish.

Sirius was still basking in his last win at go fish when they were heading down to lunch.

Lily was shocked when they came into the great hall and found that all other tables had been removed save for one. It was probably because she had never stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas that she was shocked by this.

Dumbledore was at the end of the table talking to Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey while chewing on a gingerbread man.

There were only six other students here. Two Slytherin boys Lily didn't know, a girl and boy from Hufflepuff who she was pretty sure were brother and sister, and two other Gryffindors named Cal and Cindy.

Lily, James, and Sirius ate lunch with the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs while the Slytherin's moved away from the rest of to the end of the table.

They didn't stay there for long, however, Professor Dumbledore cheerfully called them back and they sulkily complied.

Lily ate her own lunch in silence while everyone else around her chatted. She wondered when she would get a reply back from Daniel. She had chosen the fastest owl in the owlery to take it to him, so it should be at least twelve hours tops...

She must have missed something during lunch because after, when they were heading back up to their dorm, Sirius and James were trying to convince her to come out with them and have a snowball fight against the other Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors.

It took them a lot of convincing and promising to protect her to finally get her to reluctantly agree to this.

It only took them ten minutes to get ready and to get down to the lawn.

The moment that their feet came off of the stone steps and hit the snow covered grass, a snowball came whizzing right at them.

James and Lily were the only ones who thought to duck, so the snowball ended up smacking Sirius (who at least turned away) on the back of the head.

That's when the battle started. James grabbed Lily's arm and they raced away from Sirius and hid behind a giant oak tree.

Peaking around the tree, Lily and James saw that there didn't seem to be any teams; it was more like everyone was just teaming up on Sirius right now.

"How about you go help Sirius while I started to build up a good supply?" Lily moved away from James, dropped to her knees, and started making snow balls quickly.

James laughed and made a few snowballs himself before running to Sirius's rescue.

They were back surprisingly fast, Lily thought. They panted as they eyed her large pile of perfect snow balls.

"Had practice at this, Lily?" Sirius asked.

"I've had a little practice." It might have been a bit of an understatement, as Lily could remember having a snow ball fight with Daniel pretty much everyday when they were kids. They always teamed up against the other kids in the neighborhood, and they always kicked their butts.

"Right," James nodded, "so, is everyone else making teams, or is it just us?"

"We should ask," Sirius said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out. "OI! WHAT ARE THE TEAMS HERE?"

"IT'S ALL OF US AGAINST YOUR TEAM, BLACK!"

"Four on three..." James said.

"No problem," Lily said as she finished another large stack. She stood up. "Where are they?"

"Over behind greenhouse two," Sirius said.

"Ok, so we should carry as much as we can, separate, and close in around them back there."

James and Sirius stared at her for moment. Sirius's mouth was slightly open and both of their eyebrows were furrowed.

"Wow, you take snowball fights really seriously," James said with a touch of admiration in his voice.

The rest of the day (in Lily's opinion) was a lot of fun. Their attack on the others went very well for them, and they ended up winning that round. The others did come back later, however, and got their revenge. But once everyone started throwing snow around, they stopped caring who they hit, and soon everyone had turned on each other.

Lily hated to admit that yet again she had had a nice time with Sirius and James. Of course, this time there had been other people there, so it might not have been them that made her have more fun...Aw, who was she kidding? Sirius and James were the funnest people there today, and for some reason, Lily hated to admit that if they hadn't been there, the day probably wouldn't have been as much fun.

Shortly before the sun started to set behind the clouds, the Hufflepuffs and the other Gryffindors including Sirius complained of wet clothes and went inside.

But Lily had made sure before the snow ball fight had started that her clothes stayed dry with a useful little charm that Professor Flitwick had taught her back in fourth year. When James stayed out with her, she was shocked to see that his clothes were also dry.

"Did you charm your clothes to stay dry, too?" She asked, eyeing his clothes.

"Of course...I told Sirius to do it too, but he said he wanted-" James held up his hands and made little quotation marks with his fingers, "to go through the whole, normal snow ball experience."

Lily snorted. "Wow, he's more weird than I thought..."

Now, Lily did not find it at ALL attractive that James knew how to use his wand. Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. She didn't find it attractive that he was smart enough to think ahead. It wasn't attractive at all. Not one, tiny, itty, bitty, bitty, bit. Smart guys did not attract her, and James was NOT attracting her right now. OK, maybe he was one tiny, itty, bitty, bitty, bit. But that was all!

"What are you thinking?" James asked her.

Lily shook her head to clear her mind. Let's just say it didn't work. "What? Why?"

"You're making this face, like you're concentrating on something...no, it's more like you're--I dunno--battling with your thoughts or something. You do it a lot though."

Hm...What was he talking about? Lily was sure that never 'battled with her thoughts'...

Nevertheless, Lily decided not to argue it. Instead she shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know; I don't remember what I was thinking about."

She moved away and sat down against the enormous tree trunk of the oak tree behind her. "So, James," she asked him as he sat down across from her, "how come you stayed here for Christmas?"

To her surprise, James blushed and looked away. "Er, my parents went to...Ireland to see my sister."

She had the distinct feeling that James was lying. And she hated to think about why he had stayed at Hogwarts (or maybe she should say who he had stayed at Hogwarts for?). She dropped the subject with a shrug.

It was quiet after that. Lily looked away towards the icy lake, but she could feel James eyes on her. It was probably only about ten minutes, but it felt like much longer with the silence.

Finally, Lily decided that she better confirm her dread with James.

She turned to him and finally broke the silence. "Do I really have to kiss you?" She asked with a touch of rudeness. But she was the one that was being forced to kiss someone who didn't like. Not one little bit.

James bit his lip and looked away. "Er...yeah, I think that's the idea of it..."

"You think?"

"Well, Remus made up the spell; I'm not sure how to undo it…" He glanced at her quickly, testing her response.

But Lily ignored him. It was strange; she wanted to keep being mad, but she was sick and tired of being pissed all the time. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered what it would be like to kiss someone who was in love with you. It would probably be better to also be in love with that person. But she wasn't in love with James. Not at all.

Of course she was still mad about it, she was tired from her long day...Tomorrow she would wake up and be pissed as hell...yes...

James interrupted her thoughts as he stood up. "Lets get some dinner, I'm starved."

After their quiet supper, a warm bath, another quick game of chess in which she crushed Sirius again, and a warm mug of hot chocolate that James had brought them, Lily was ready for bed.

But as soon as she closed the door of her dorm, the brown owl that she had sent off earlier that morning landed on her windowsill and started tapping the glass of her window.

Lily immediately sprinted to the window and held it open for the owl who hopped in quickly.

He hooted at her and stuck out his leg towards her. Lily gently pulled the letter off of its leg and held open the window for the owl because it seemed anxious to leave.

Once it was gone, she closed the window and sat on her bed, tearing the letter open as she went.

Lily read quietly to herself.

"Hey Lily, when I saw your letter, I figured you either missed me already, or you must have a question about James. Turns out I was right. Big surprise." Lily shook her head, "Shut up Daniel..." She found her spot and continued quietly to herself.

You might not like my answer, but here goes: you don't want to give James a chance for two reasons. One) you're stubborn as a mule; when you know you're right, there is no convincing you otherwise. You think that if you confess to having feelings for James, (don't look at my answer like that, you know I'm right.) that you will be wrong. You have tried to convince yourself so hard that you don't like James that you don't want to tell yourself that you were wrong.

That brings me to my second reason. Two) you're also afraid of rejection. Somewhere in your mind, you're telling yourself that James is setting you up and even if he wasn't, that it would never work. Sometimes you don't think that you're as pretty as the other girls. You're wrong, and if you don't believe me, ask James what he thinks.

Now, I'm not going to tell you what I think you should do, and I'm not going to try to predict the future, or predict what James is going to do, but I will say this: I am 99.9 percent sure that James really does love you. Or at least has feelings for you. It's obvious from the way he looks at you.

By the way, I'm doing fine, and my mom and dad say hi. See you soon,

Daniel

PS: I'm thinking of becoming psychologist or something like that...what do you think?

Daniel

She knew he was right. Somehow, Daniel was always right. She was so stubborn, she was fighting herself. Somehow, she had to put a stop to it. Somehow, Lily had to figure out what was right.

Was Daniel right saying that she had feelings for James? Immediately her mind screamed NO at her, but...maybe...just maybe it was wrong...

A/N: Thanks to: Virginia Forever: Wow, I totally did not notice that, thank you for pointing it out! I'm going to fix it right now!, LadyKnightSusan, Rider Arya Svit-kona, Smeckles92, Pappy's Girl, crazy1freak: Thanks, I couldn't remember which he was, everyone always says something different!, Messrs Padfoot and Prongs, wishfuldreams11, Deannasmith, The viEns of hIStorY, IluvvRemus, Luna's Best Friend, Izabella Pheonix: Yes, very much a filler, as was this one. As for your other question...I can't think of an answer so just keep reading please! Lol., cali4me92, Sterling Fire Kittie: No, I didn't name him after Daniel Radcliffe. But yay! I wondered if someone would catch that about Daniel. Thanks!, and this is my reality.

Ok guys, I know this chapter was boring as a pile of crap, but I'll make the next one better. Thanks for reading! )

Elvenmuggle