I know I said I would update sooner, but things got all crazy on Thursday when I had to re-write my college admissions essay (which, incidentally, is about how Harry Potter has influenced my life), and then there was pep-rally and homecoming, so updating completely slipped my mind until this morning.

I feel I should warn you: some of the lines in this chapter are extremely cheesy. I apologize in advance for that.

As I'm sure you know, I am not JKR and I don't own the characters!

Enjoy the last chapter!

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"LILY!"

"Oh my God," I yell, as Mary knocks me over. "What?"

"Sirius," she says, panting and out of breath from running at me like a lunatic, "asked me to go with him to Slughorn's party!"

"And I suppose you said you would go," I say, trying to regain my balance.

"Yes!"

"That's really cool, Mary!"

"I know! This is going to be such a great night!" She says, smiling from ear to ear. "I'm going with Sirius, and after you get the Felix Felicis you and James will be together!"

My heart skips a beat. I had been too busy worrying about the actual act of obtaining the Felix Felicis to focus on what would happen after.

I smile just as wide as Mary. "Let's go get ready!"

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"Wow, Evans. You actually look nice!"

I look at Mary. "Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?"

But Mary isn't listening. She's too busy giggling and looking at Sirius, who sweeps into a low bow.

"Are you serious?"

He looks at me. "Good job Evans, you've finally learned my first name!" (A/N Cheesy, I know, but I couldn't resist! :D)

"You're not funny," I snap.

"I thought it was funny," Mary says, and Sirius grins at her. "Shall we go in?"

I smooth out my silver dress robes (silver was the only color I could find that didn't clash with my hair), and follow Sirius and Mary, who are walking arm in arm, into Slughorn's office.

I look around, and my nerves spike.

"Sirius, he's got about twenty filing cabinets. Which one am I supposed to break into?"

Sirius' face falls.

"I can't remember."

"You WHAT?"

"I really don't know. How could I have forgotten?"

I don't say anything, I just stare at him in shock.

"You'll just have to open them all until you find it, I suppose."

"You said 'easy as pie!'"

"Well I didn't mean to forget which one it was!"

We have to stop bickering when Slughorn approaches and introduces me to some famous person that I don't really care about at all.

I look towards Sirius, to see if he'll try to save me from this slow torture, and I find that he's way ahead of me.

He mouths the word "Run," and I do just that as there's a huge explosion from his end of the room, and everyone looks around to see what the commotion is about.

I run in the direction of the explosion, and hurtle through the open door to Slughorn's classroom, closing the door behind me.

I lean against the closed door, my eyes closed, breathing heavily. And then I hear a loud BOOM from a few feet away from me. I open my eyes.

One of Sirius' fireworks has escaped into Slughorn's classroom. And I'm stuck inside with it.

This can't be good.

I look around wildly for Slughorn's desk. Sirius had said that they key to the file cabinet would be behind it, and I wasn't going back into the party without that key.

I run toward the desk, and, instead of walking around the desk like a normal person would, I try to jump over it. And fail.

As I pull myself up off the floor, I hear another loud BOOM as the firework cracks again. This time, I use sense, and I walk around the desk, grab the key, and run toward the door.

I pull at the doorknob. The door doesn't open.

My panic increases as the fireworks get closer and closer to me, and the door still won't open.

I bang on the door.

"SIRIUS!" I scream. "SIRIUS OPEN THE DOOR!" My yells echo around the empty classroom as I keep pounding on the door, using my full weight to bang into it…

BOOM!

I scream as the firework explodes again, so close to me that it singes my elaborately curled hair.

"SIRIUS!" The door springs open as I'm about to bang into it again, and I topple into Sirius' arms. "Oh, thank God." I sigh, and Sirius sets me on my feet and quickly closes the door to the classroom.

"Are you okay?" he asks me, his face filled with concern.

"I'm fine."

"Did you get the key?" he asks anxiously. I hold up the key to show him. "Good."

"I'm going to need a diversion!" I cry, and Sirius gives me the thumbs up. I hurry over to the nearest file cabinet and try to put the key into the slot of the middle one. It doesn't fit. I move over to the next one, and the next one…

"OUCH!" I look around. The guests of the party are all scrambling around, trying to get away from the nifflers that Sirius has let loose. I look down, and there's a niffler sniffing at my ankle bracelet. "Shoo! Get away!" The niffler doesn't listen. Instead, he bites me again. "OW, you son of a--"

Rip.

"You've got to be kidding me." I make a motion as if to kick at the niffler that just ripped my dress robes, and he runs away, as does the one that bit me. "Keep moving, keep moving," I mutter to myself, moving onto the next file cabinet.

"Lily, stop." I jump about a foot in the air.

"Mary, you scared the shi--"

"Stop. The nifflers are gone, someone's going to spot you. Sirius is trying to think up another diversion; he thought he'd only need the two. But until he does you're going to have to stop so you don't get caught."

I follow Mary across the room to where Sirius stands, looking extremely contemplative.

"What happened to your dress robes?"

"Freaking nifflers."

"I've got it!"

Mary and I look at Sirius.

"What?" she asks him.

He doesn't answer her directly. Instead, he says, "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen!" loudly, and he climbs up onto a table. All eyes turn to him, which I guess is what he was aiming for. Mary pushes me toward the file cabinet, and I walk toward them as Sirius loudly says "I would like to sing you all a song by one of my favorite singers, Celestina Warbeck!"

As Sirius sings "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love," I look at the row of file cabinets.

Which one did I leave off at?

"Lily!"

I spin around, and groan.

"Not now, Severus."

"What are you doing? Stealing from Professor Slughorn? For him?" Severus gestures toward Sirius, who's still singing.

"Oh, come and stir my cauldron…"

"It's none of your business what I do! Leave me alone!"

"You're Head Girl! You can't be stealing from teachers!"

"Would you just SHUT UP? We both know you don't care who I steal from. You're just upset that I'm friends with Black now. And you know what? He's a better friend to me than you ever were!"

This is not entirely true, seeing as Severus never jinxed a bludger to chase after me, but I need him to get away from me so I can get to the Felix Felicis.

I got the reaction I was looking for…almost. Severus looks very taken aback, and hurt, but he doesn't get away from me.

"Come on, Lily." Severus grabs me by the arm, and attempts to pull me away from the file cabinets.

Something comes over me, a kind of crazy desperation. The rationality I usually have has gone away, and the only thing I have left is a desire to get the Felix Felicis. And so, I swing back the arm that Severus isn't holding on to, and punch him square in the jaw.

"Woah!"

I look up. James is standing there, looking from me to Severus, who is clutching his face, in amazement.

"Way to throw a punch, Evans!" he says, a wide smile on his face.

"OH, NO YOU DON'T!" Severus had taken out his wand, and is pointing it at James when Sirius stops singing and runs forward, pulling out his own wand, and aiming a hex at Severus before he gets to hex James.

Suddenly, hexes were flying all over the place, and the party guests were again shuffling around to either get out of the way or to go break up the fight. In all the commotion, I'm thrown this way and that, and in the scuffle I drop the key to the file cabinet.

Like an idiot, I try to search the floor for the key, and I keep getting bumped into, stepped on, and shoved around.

I stop looking for the key. I'm not going to find it.

I've failed.

Inexplicably, tears spring to my eyes, and I want nothing more than to get out of this room.

I walk away from the party and down the Corridor, tears still running down my cheeks. I don't know where I'm going, I just know I need to get away from here.

"Hey, Evans!" I hear someone call from close behind me.

I sit down on the stone steps nearest me, and wipe my eyes. I don't want James to see me cry.

He sits down next to me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I say, although a few tears escape and betray me.

"Tell me what's wrong," he says, and though his voice is gentle, I can tell that it's not a request, it's a command.

I look up at him, and he wipes the tears from my face. The instant our eyes meet, I realize that I've been acting extremely dim. All those weeks that Sirius and I sat planning, all those times that I've embarrassed myself, they were all unnecessary. If I had been smart, I would've just gone to James and told him how I feel.

No more plans. No more embarrassment. No more making James jealous, or wearing skimpy clothes, or putting myself in danger, or stealing Felix Felicis. I've just got to tell the truth, like I should've done in the first place.

"Nothing's wrong," I say, and it's the truth. I don't need Felix Felicis to get James to open up. He'd followed me out here when he saw I was upset, hadn't he? "It's just--" I can't seem to get the words out. It's not, after all, that easy to tell someone that you love them. "James, I--"

"I love you too, Evans."

I blanch. "Wha-- how did you know that's what I was going to say?"

"Well for one thing, you called me James," he grins. "For another, Sirius told me."

"I'll kill him," I mutter. James just laughs. "But if he told you," I say, confused, "why did he have me do all that stuff?"

"Well," James says, looking extremely uncomfortable, "he was a bit angry with you."

"So he made me embarrass myself on countless occasions for revenge?" James nods. "And you knew? You didn't stop him?"

"Well it was funny, at first anyway. I went along with it just because… well I don't really know why. Sirius usually does what he wants anyway though, so I figured, why not? But then, at the Quidditch practice, he tried to kiss you," James' face darkens, "so I told him that enough was enough. But he didn't listen."

"That's what you guys fought about?"

"Yeah. I told him to leave you alone, but he didn't. So I hexed him."

"You hexed Sirius?"

"Yup."

James hexed his best friend. For me!

"But it still didn't work," I point out.

"Well, that was while you were at detention. He didn't do anything to you again until he came up with the plan to get the Felix Felicis."

Clearly James doesn't know about Sirius jinxing the bludger to chase after me. I decide it's unwise to tell him.

"Well, if you knew the whole time, then why did he have me try to steal the Felix Felicis? I obviously wouldn't need it to talk to you, and I didn't seem to embarrass myself, or get myself into trouble, so why'd he make me do it?"

"He needed it for a prank he's trying to pull."

"Oh, God. What kind of prank?"

James grins. "Let's just say it involves Mr. Filch, a cactus, a tube of toothpaste, a hippogriff, and a whole lot of dungbombs."

"Sirius would need a lot of luck to pull this prank off."

James laughs. "I think he's going to be a bit miffed with you for not getting the Felix Felicis."

"I would've confiscated it from him anyway when I knew what it was really for."

James laughs again. "He's probably not going to attempt this prank without it, but I still think someone should give him detention for his terrible singing."

I laugh. "He sure does know how to think on his feet."

"You have no idea," James laughs.

After we abuse Sirius' singing for a bit, we break off into a comfortable silence.

Suddenly, James breaks the silence.

"That was some punch!"

"I don't know what came over me; it just seemed like it would be a good idea."

"You have no idea, I can't wait to use some 'you got hit by a girl' jokes on him."

"Oh, don't!"

James looks at me. "Okay."

I'm stunned. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Look, James, I'm really sorry about all that stuff I said to you--"

"Oh, please. It's not a big deal."

"But you seemed so--"

"Please, Lily. It would take much more than that for me to give up on you."

As I look up at James, I know that he's serious, that he'll forget all about this mess, and that we can put all of this behind us and start anew.

"I love you, Lily."

"I love you too, James."

I put my arms around James' neck, and pull his head toward mine, and our lips meet in a warm kiss.

I feel my lips curve into a smile. I had done it! I had finally gotten James.

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Ugh, that last line makes me want to vomit. So cheesy!

Well there it is, the end of the story! I hope you all enjoyed it!

I am currently writing a new fanfic, another James and Lily fic…but with a twist! I don't know when I'll be putting it up, as I mentioned before things are really crazy around here at the moment. However, anyone who is really interested in this next story should Private Message me, and I'll notify you (via private message, most likely) as to when I'm planning on putting this fic up, and what it will be called so you can keep an eye out.

Well, thank you so much for reading and reviewing, and hopefully you'll keep a lookout for my next fanfiction!