Monday, 5:16 A.M.

Although it was early morning after a full moon and Lily wanted to let James sleep as long as possible before breakfast, she found herself slipping up to the boys' dormitory, anyway. She hadn't been able to assuage her paranoia, no matter how senseless it was, and she'd been tossing and turning all night; she wanted to get this settled so she could just calm down already. No matter how many times she told herself that it was James – because it had to be James, who else would leave a flower on her pillow? – it didn't help, and it wouldn't until she knew for sure.

So it was just past dawn and she made her way up the staircase, pushed the door open as quietly as possible, tiptoed across the floor, and crawled into James's bed, wriggling her way under the covers with him. She prodded his shoulder a bit and whispered, "James."

"Mmm?" Despite his mostly unconscious state, James smiled at the sound of Lily's voice so close, her breath fluttering across his face, and her extra weight on his bed.

Lily shook his shoulder a bit more; she needed him fully conscious for this conversation. "James, wake up."

"What is it?" he mumbled.

Figuring that was the best she was going to get, Lily decided that maybe she needed to give him more of a push before he became self-aware, so she cut straight to the punch and asked, "Did you sneak a flower up to my dorm?"

"What?" James opened one eye to regard her curiously before closing it again and snuggling further into his pillow. "No, darling, I'm afraid I didn't."

"James –"

"Shhh. Sleeping."

"I know, but this is important," Lily pressed, trying to contain the nervous shudder in her voice. "If you didn't leave it, I don't know who did."

"Some stupid blighter, I'm sure," James said on a yawn. He slipped an arm around Lily's shoulders and pulled her close. "I'll hex him later."

"But –" Lily tried again, but James interrupted her with a tired whimper.

"No," he groaned and nuzzled her neck. "Why are you still talking? Go to sleep."

Lily sighed and rubbed his back, conveying understanding and apology, but nevertheless she was desperate to figure this out, especially now that it wasn't some silly romantic gesture from her boyfriend. Sure, maybe it was some silly romantic gesture from someone else, but the fact that it hadn't been James made the whole thing menacing, somehow. She didn't like it.

"I know you're tired," she said, still attempting to keep her cool and failing spectacularly this time, "but please, I can't sleep. I couldn't all night, worrying about this bloody flower. I mean, how did it get there?"

Recognizing the strain in her voice then, James opened his eyes, now determined to fight back his tiredness to soothe her agitation. "What sort of flower?"

"A lily."

"Pfft." James rolled his eyes. Pathetic. If this was some poor bloke's attempt to woo his girlfriend, it was terribly cliché and borderline stalkerish. "And you think I'd leave that? Please, Evans, give me some credit."

"I know." Lily bit her lip, still nervous despite James's joke. Really, she'd known that he wouldn't do something like leave her namesake on her pillow; that was perhaps why she'd been so paranoid about it in the first place. "But I couldn't think of anyone else who'd do that. It's – well, it's sort of freaking me out a bit, to be honest."

James frowned. If he were less flippant and more honest with himself, he wasn't too fond of the idea, either. Whether it was just some sad little third-year who convinced some bird to sneak up to Lily's dorm with a flower, or if it was somehow more threatening than that... Well, it was either mildly annoying or something else, and at this point James had learned well enough to expect the worst.

"We'll ask around," he suggested. "As long as we're quiet about it, anyway; I'd rather we keep at least some parts of our lives out from under Skeeter's claws."

"Too true." Lily released an irritated breath. If everything that Rita Skeeter had done so far wasn't bad enough, she'd spent the last two weeks hounding James about his dead parents. It was interesting, apparently, that two members of the most prominent pureblood family had been targeted by the Death Eaters. It wasn't sick or sad or anything serious at all, no, it was interesting. Charlus and Dorea Potter hadn't been people, parents, friends; they were just another thing for Rita Skeeter to write about.

"I wish she'd just give it a rest," James muttered, a dark look passing over his face. He shook it off after a moment, though, and said, "Anyway… We'll sort this flower business out. I haven't had detention in awhile, so I might as well get back on track with a good, thorough hexing."

Lily laughed a little. "Reckon you've just grown up a bit."

James wrinkled his nose. "Ugh."

"Most unfortunate," Lily agreed with a sardonic nod. James grinned at her.

"You're a right bad influence on me, Evans," he said, squeezing her shoulder. "Really. None of this would have happened without you and your ridiculous maturity ideals. Seeing as how you fancied me fifth year, too, I dunno why I bothered growing up at all."

"I'm not sure if I should apologize or say you're welcome," Lily said, smiling as she snuggled closer into his chest. She closed her eyes and sighed contentedly when James's free arm wrapped around her waist and gripped tightly.

"Oh, well, you know that despite my complaints that it was worth it," James told her as he pressed a kiss to her hairline. His fingers rubbed gentle circles against her T-shirt. "You're quite the silver lining."

Lily's smile twitched a little more upwards and she sighed again. "I love you."

"And I'll never get tired of hearing that." James trailed his lips over her forehead. "I'll never get tired of saying it, either." His hand slid over her hips and down her thigh. "Or feeling it."

"Crazy and dizzy and stupid," Lily added, moving her own lips against the hollow of his throat. She grazed her tongue over his pulse point and felt it jump and increase, just like his heartbeat when she ran her hand over it. "Drunk and high all at once."

James grinned and dipped his head to kiss her, really kiss her. "Color me an addict, then," he murmured against her mouth.

"Addicts tend to require rehabilitation," Lily informed him, rolling over so she was on top of him. "Do I need to get you medicated?"

"Mmmm…" James's hands roamed her back while Lily's caressed his shoulders, bit his lip while she kissed her way over his neck. "Hit me up with a life-long dose of Lily Evans and I'll call you in the morning."

Lily's lips curved up against his skin. "It is morning, love."

"Oh, good." James's mouth turned up in a wicked grin. His arms locked around her waist and he flipped them over, raining kisses over her face as he did so. He yanked the covers up so the sheets of cotton billowed around them, landing softly over their heads and plunging them in blanket-coated darkness. "I love you in the mornings."

"Afternoons and nights," Lily said, smiling against his lips when they landed on hers. "Midmornings and midnights, too."

"And teatimes," James added, twining his hands around all the loose strands of her hair.

She laughed. "Especially teatimes," she conceded, and wound her legs around his hips, tugging him closer to her. "Especially all the time."

James stopped kissing her long enough to meet her eye, grinning but nonetheless serious when he said, "You're my especially."

Lily bit back another smile and ran her hands through his hair, twirling the mussed tresses through her fingers. "I'm sorry for waking you up."

"Don't be." James propped himself up on his elbows to avoid crushing her with his weight. He traced an idle finger back and forth across her collarbone. "I wish it was for a less nerve-wracking reason, but I'd never kick you out of my bed, anyway. Speaking of…"

Lily lifted a quizzical eyebrow when he trailed off with a little half-smile and a blush. She poked him teasingly in the stomach and asked, "What are you so quiet about now?"

"Well…" James took a deep breath. He knew that asking her this was something of a big step, despite the fact that he'd already told her he wanted to marry her (it hadn't been an official proposal or anything, but James thought it was close enough). This, however, was something more immediate and therefore, for the time being, it was… scarier. "You know that me and the boys are getting a flat together in June, yeah?"

"Right." Lily nodded. "Sirius said something about that in the letter he sent me over the summer – you know, when he called me a 'scarlet woman' for absolutely no good reason at all."

"Ah, right." James remembered that with a chuckle. "Well, since you proved him wrong, I was thinking that maybe – if you wanted to, mind, no pressure – you could… move in with us?"

Lily's eyes widened. "Oh."

"Oh." James watched her, trying to gauge her reaction, to get some kind of yes-or-no answer from her facial expression, but he wasn't succeeding; he'd always been rubbish at guessing games. "And, you know, then you could just be in my bed – our bed – all the time."

"And where would you be?" Lily asked, a glint of humor sparking in her eyes.

"Right there with you," James amended quickly, realizing his mistake when Lily pointed it out, "not kicking you out."

Lily thought about it, measuring the odds and ends. Of course, since her father died, her mother was off gallivanting across the globe, and her sister was married, she hadn't fancied the idea of living alone in her big, empty house any more than she fancied the idea of moving in with Petunia and Vernon, as their mother had suggested in her last letter. As if Petunia would ever go for that.

James was watching her nervously; although he couldn't determine anything from her facial expression, her silence was an entirely separate worry. He wondered if she was trying to come up with a gentle way to turn him down? Not that Lily Evans had ever been one to sugar-coat her rejections, but he thought that might have changed since she'd let go of that habit. Maybe she just wanted to let him down easy and was coming up with a way to do it, right now, as he waited on tenterhooks for her to give him an answer…

"Yes."

James blinked. "What?"

Lily smiled and ruffled up his hair some more. "Yes," she said again. "Yeah, I'll move in with you."

"Really?" His face brightened, the trepidation disappearing from his body so that he felt like he could breathe properly again.

"Yeah," she reiterated. "But I'm not washing your socks."

"Fine by me." James kissed her forehead, her temples, her cheeks. "I'll wash your socks. And I'll rub your back, and I'll give you the good pillow, and I'll cook breakfast –"

"Maybe leave the cooking to me and Remus," Lily suggested. "I'm not sure I trust the rest of you with a frying pan."

"Deal," James said and, bringing his heart-as-light-as-air kiss back to her upturned lips, the conversation was effectively ended.

Tuesday, 1:30 P.M.

Remus had been waiting outside of the Arithmancy classroom for the past quarter of an hour, chewing on his thumbnail as the clock ticked away the minutes left in the afternoon's lesson. After the events of the past couple of weeks – months, really – Remus knew that he was going to have to take some sort of initiative. Rita Skeeter had done some questionable things so far, but digging into James about his parents at every turn was that little extra too much that had led Remus to this conclusion.

So when the bell rang and the classroom began to empty, Remus caught sight of all that dirty blonde hair and he caught Dorcas's arm before she could disappear into the crowd.

"Dorcas, hey," he said, pulling her aside, "can I talk to you?"

Dorcas smiled through the skipping of her heart; what would some bloke be doing hanging 'round outside your class, if it wasn't for some heart-skipping reason? "Sure, Remus. What's up?"

Not knowing how she'd take this, Remus took a deep breath to steady his resolve and then said, "Listen, I know Rita's your friend and everything, but –"

"Oh," she said, her face falling. So maybe it wasn't such a heart-skipping reason, after all.

Remus blinked down at her, confused at the sudden slackening of her usually sunny disposition. "What?"

"What?" Dorcas tried to shake off the disappointment. "Nothing, sorry. Go on."

"Okay…" Remus regarded her curiously for another moment, but then decided to deal with what he'd meant to deal with from the beginning because, in the end, he was the only one who could. "Well, yeah, the thing is, could you get her – Rita, I mean – to back off James? She's sort of been on him all term, and all this stuff with her asking about his parents..." He shook his head. "It's not some gossip rubbish."

Dorcas shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. No matter how far Rita went for the sake of journalism, Dorcas had never been comfortable with the prospect of confronting her about it. So now she tried to play it off, ignoring that little voice in the back of her mind that told her she was laying, and she said, "Rita hasn't really done anything to him before now."

"Er – well, yeah, actually, she has," Remus said, determined to get her to see sense. How she didn't see it without his help was really beyond him. "She can't back off Lily for one second, and –"

"Oh, well, yes, if this is about Lily…" Dorcas muttered, regretting it almost immediately. What was wrong with her? She wasn't actually jealous of Remus's relationship with Lily, was she? Lily had a boyfriend, she was with James; there wasn't anything between her and any other bloke. And she liked Lily, too, so what was her problem?

Remus was just as baffled as she was. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing." Dorcas shook her head, embarrassed and wanting nothing more than to extract herself from this situation as soon as possible. "Forget it. I'll tell Rita to lay off."

"Dorcas –"

"I have to go," she said before she could blush any deeper. She made to move past him, but Remus caught her arm again.

"Hey, wait. Did I – are you angry with me or something?" he wanted to know, brow furrowed in confusion and concern. "I don't mean to be a prat about Rita, but she needs to back off and apparently the term 'morally repugnant' isn't in her repertoire, so I figured you'd be the best person to go to about this."

"Yeah, I –" Dorcas sighed and shook her hair out to hide the blush. "I'm sorry, Remus. You're right. I'll talk to her."

"Are you sure you're not – is something bothering you?" Remus pressed, failing in his attempts to catch her eye, as she was staring determinedly at his left knee.

She shrugged. "Just a long week, that's all."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Dorcas shook her head again. What was she supposed to do, tell him what was really wrong – that she fancied him and he needed to get his act together and just ask her out already? Yeah, right. "No. Thank you, but… I think I'll just go talk to Rita now."

"Okay." Remus nodded and released his hold on her arm. He wasn't sure what to do about whatever was wrong, but he figured that if she wanted to talk about it, she would, and he shouldn't push her too much. "Thanks, Dorcas."

She waved him off like it wasn't a big deal, despite her unease. She probably would have given into anything he asked of her just to get out of that corridor; she'd begun to feel uncomfortably warm. So with her promise to talk to Rita intact, she bid good-bye to Remus and made her way to the library, where she was sure to find Rita doing some research. She'd become rather engrossed in Animagi lately; she'd told Dorcas that a recent Transfiguration lesson had really piqued her interest, and now she was going above and beyond her homework assignment to find out more.

Dorcas found her hidden away behind a bookshelf, pouring over a heavy tome about the history of human Transfiguration. It looked dead boring, if you asked Dorcas, so she didn't feel too bad about interrupting Rita's studies.

"Hey," she said as she took the seat across from her. "What's up?"

"Same thing as usual lately," Rita told her. She marked her page and looked across the table at her friend. "And since you usually complain about how dull I am in the library, I can only assume that you're here because you want something. What is it?"

Well, if that wasn't an opening to get this thing over with, Dorcas didn't know what was. Better to keep herself from beating around the bush; that never worked out in her favor and she always ended up saying the wrong thing.

"Right, so…" She bit her lip and then released it. "Remus talked to me a little while ago, about what you've been writing, and… Look, I think that maybe you should back off Potter and them. His parents just died and that's not usually something people are too excited to talk about."

Rita narrowed her eyes. "What do you care?" she wanted to know, and then cocked an eyebrow. "All that time you've been spending with Remus, hmm? Maybe I could write about you two instead."

Dorcas's jaw almost dropped; as hesitant as she'd been to have this conversation, she hadn't imagined that it would take such a turn. "You wouldn't. Rita, we're supposed to be friends."

"There are no friends in journalism, dear," Rita remarked nonchalantly.

"That's a new low."

"So let me write what I want to write and stay out of it," Rita said coolly. She wasn't necessarily put-off with Dorcas, but she wasn't going to exercise her patience on this completely useless subject; it wasn't going to change the way she dealt with things, although she supposed she could cut a little slack, even if it was just to put an end to this conversation. "I'll lay off the parental angle, all right? I'm sure Evans has got something new going on, anyway."

"I meant that you should back off all of them," Dorcas elucidated, thinking that this was precisely why she hadn't wanted to bring this up at all. It was pointless, and now her only real mate was miffed at her.

"Whatever, Dorcas." Rita rolled her eyes, bored, and went back to her book.

Dorcas figured that that was the best she was going to get. The topic seemed more or less closed, anyway, and as she pulled out her own homework, she hoped that it wouldn't have to be revisited.

Wednesday, 2:56 PM.

Potter had said the wrong thing.

Students were milling around the courtyard during break, bundled up against the chill November air but wanting to be free of the castle walls despite the temperature outside. Snape sat with Regulus, the latter of whom hadn't been much of a conversationalist lately, so the former was pretending to study and shooting glances over the top of his book whenever he was so inclined. And he was inclined quite often, as angry as it made him, but he couldn't help the way his eyes would flick and his gut would consequently ache.

And when he heard James Potter say the wrong thing, Snape's eyes were very much inclined.

"Lily Potter, you get back here right now!"

And Snape's eyes had snapped right back up again.

Lily was turning around, back towards Potter from whom she'd been walking away for whatever reason, and Potter had been laughing right before he said the wrong thing. Because she was Lily Evans. Evans. Not Potter. Snape couldn't imagine Lily Potter.

But Lily was smiling; it was her turn to laugh and Potter looked sheepish – sheepish; for Merlin's sake, Snape could swear that that arrogant berk was actually blushing. And then Lily was teasing him, punching him playfully in the stomach, saying something that Snape couldn't hear, and she was still smiling. Smiling at Potter because he'd said the wrong thing.

It had been an accident, Snape thought furiously. A very wrong accident. So why was she still smiling?

She was Lily Evans, so what was she smiling so brightly about?

Snape hated this. Hated it, like always, and yet he couldn't look away. Like always. Because it was the same thing, over and over again: Lily smiling, Potter wrapping his arms around her, kissing her, Lily kissing him back, running her hands through his hair. Even when Potter said the wrong thing, Lily was wrapped around his finger.

"Do you think they know anything?"

Snape's gaze swiveled around to look at Regulus, who had followed his eyes towards Lily and James at the other end of the courtyard a moment ago.

"I'm sure they don't," Snape said. "Not yet, anyway. If they did, I'm sure we'd hear about it. They're not exactly prone to walking away when they're being threatened, are they?"

"No, I guess not." Regulus shifted in his seat, plucking at his sleeve as he was so wont to do. Snape wondered what that was about but couldn't bring himself to care enough to ask; nervous habit, he supposed. "You don't think it's going too far, do you?"

"Regulus." Snape took a measured breath, not in the mood for the boy's incessant doubts."How many people have you killed so far?"

Regulus paled. "We're still at Hogwarts."

"So?" Snape shrugged and tried to focus his attention back on his book. "Narcissa got rid of that Jenkins Mudblood last year and everything was fine. I don't know what you're so worried about."

"Potter, mostly," Regulus admitted, gaining confidence. He always kept his mouth shut for fear that running away with it could only get him into trouble, but he was exhausted and his mental resolve was just about fried with paranoia. "Am I the only one who notices what happens when we do something to Evans? If she doesn't take care of it herself, we've still got at least four of them on our tail. It just seems foolhardy at this point."

Not caring to admit that he and his fellow Death Eaters tended to come off worse in those encounters, Snape merely shrugged again. "Win some, lose some. If anything, it's going to prepare you for what it's really like in the war. Not everyone just lies down and takes it, Regulus; sometimes it's that easy, and other times it's not."

"We're right under Dumbledore's nose," Regulus pointed out, as if any of them needed a reminder.

"And when's the last time Potter or Evans or any of them went to Dumbledore?" Snape countered, just as pointedly.

"They're bound to eventually."

"Regulus, war is risky," Snape said. He kept his eyes trained on the page, not really seeing it, and not really listening to Regulus anymore, either. The words Lily Potter continued to ring in his head like some sort of omen that would surely haunt him every hour from now on. "Deal with it."

Thursday, 7:10 P.M.

Regulus was not dealing with it. Not well, anyway.

He'd skived off all his Thursday lessons, claiming illness, and he'd been shut up in his dorm all day, alternately pacing and laying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, picking at his sleeve and scratching the mark on his forearm. It itched, it always itched, like some sort of rash he couldn't get rid of.

He thought about his conversation with Snape the day before, going over every word and every detail, trying to find any angle that might have given them away. He couldn't find one, but that didn't do anything to ease his paranoia. He was in a constant state of looking over his shoulder, an inability to meet anyone's eye.

He'd been fine last year, before he'd offered his arm up to Lord Voldemort, but the summer had disillusioned him, shattered him. The summer had made him unsure, but it had also made it too late for him to turn back.

As if you ever had that option to begin with, a scathing voice snapped from somewhere in the recesses of his very disturbed mind.

Regulus's hands twitched and he twisted his fingers into his hair. Twist. Untwist. Twist. Untwist. He could never stay still, he was always itching to do something, but the somethings he was supposed to do made his palms sweat and his stomach churn. He was bad at this, no matter how many times he tortured or murdered or cast the Dark Mark up into the sky.

Maybe that's why he kept having to prove himself – because everyone saw it: his hesitation, his reserve, his nausea. They all knew and they were determined to break him, to make him into one of them, like he could be nurtured to become a natural-born killer.

But it was hopeless, Regulus thought. He wanted to cry but he didn't have the energy for it. He flopped down on his mattress and pulled the hangings, shrouding himself in darkness and quiet. He wondered if he could drown in it, if he could just disappear into the abyss of his own despair, because even that would be preferable; maybe he could control his own abyss. But he doubted that, really, because nothing was his anymore. He'd given it up, it had been taken away of his own volition, his own misguided fantasies of power and glory had brought him here, and now it was too late for him to do anything about it.

It was hopeless – all of it – and he thought that perhaps it always had been.

Friday, 3:02 A.M.

Dumbledore sat in his office, awake with the portraits of his predecessors, and he gazed out the window at the pre-dawn darkness of the Hogwarts grounds. Fawkes was perched on his knee and Dumbledore stroked his plumed head methodically, like it was a sort of soothing therapy for the both of them.

"Excuse me when I say this, Albus," Phineas Nigellus remarked dryly from his painted canvas, "but I think you've rather lost it."

"Yes, well…" Dumbledore smiled idly as he continued to watch the stars. "To be honest, Phineas, I'm not sure that I ever truly had it to begin with."

A/N: I just wanted to say something about this chapter's title – "Kaleidoscope." The point is that the week is comprised of a bunch of little pieces of a bunch of different things that connect to create a sort of bigger picture. I'll let you determine that bigger picture for yourselves, but I wanted to make clear that it's not some arbitrary word; the chapter title and its contents were very much intentional.

I also realize that Snape's POV might have gotten a tad confusing. Maybe, anyway (I'm trying to look at it objectively, and I could see it sounding strange), but no worries, you'll find out eventually. As for the Dumbledore scene, they were talking about the new inductions he's planning to make into the Order of the Phoenix; that's not a big surprise, really, but I didn't want to ruin the atmosphere of the scene by going into too much detail.

Now, for the next chapter – the fun is way overdue, so we'll have Alice (uncharacteristically) tweaking about her wedding, Marlene and Lily commentating Quidditch, drunken Marauder shenanigans, and more singing to era-appropriate music.