"Do you think Lily hates me?" James said while looking over at her as they left their potions exam. She had been working so hard that sweat was beading on her forehead making her hair stick to her head. James smiled at her for a moment then shook his head ridding him of the thought and turned back away from her.

"She doesn't hate you…. She is probably just jealous." Lupin said matter-a-factly. James nearly choked himself. He started coughing so loud everyone in the hall stopped to look at him. "Im good" he said to everyone then turned to Lupin "What do you mean jealous?"

"Jeal-ous. You do know what that means right?" Sirius said not even looking away from a young but pretty girl who he had been flirting shamelessly with.

"You agree with him?…She can't be jealous… jealous of what?" James said as he ran into a second year nearly knocking him down. The boy said "Hey, watch it!" but James barely even noticed.

"You said it yourself, she looked upset when she saw you kissing that one broad and now your always surrounded by girls and she wont barely look at you. It only makes sense."

"No, it clearly makes no sense. She would have to care about me in some fraction of a way in order to be jealous… "

"Your just in denial, mate." Sirius said. James closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Hypothetically, if you were right…. What should I do?… although I'm still not saying I buy it."

"I dunno, Prongs. Maybe start talking to her again?" Lupin said.

"She hates me. She won't talk to me even if I begged her to."

"I didn't say it would be easy. She is stubborn you know that. But isn't it one of the things you like about her?"

James smiled but it didn't last long. His face turned grim again but said nothing more. James took one deep breath, he recognized the fact that he probably should make an effort to talk to her and just get over it.

There was just something that kept getting in the way, it was that stupid knot at the pit of his stomach that told him he wasn't good enough for her. He wanted to be with her but recently he wondered if he was right for her. He knew he could never be good enough, she deserved better than him. But if he could do anything at all to make her happy… then he would have to do it.

Recently when the students weren't talking about exams they were all discussing the war. That week alone three witches from the ministry of magic had gone missing, and everyone dreaded the owl's news each morning praying that it wasn't someone they knew who had disappeared. Many students wished that they could just stay at Hogwarts where it was safe. Although many of the Slitherin's walked the grounds confidently, smiling like they were in on some immense secret. Severus Snape, Lily noticed was apparently in on their secret. She was disgusted that anyone, especially Sev. (her former best friend) could be proud to call themselves death eaters.

All that week James hadn't had an opportunity to talk to Lily. She barely looked up from her books all week, exams were far too important to her. Not that James was seeking out an opportunity, infact he was happy for the excuse to put it off. He focused, instead, on helping Professor Dumbledore keeping the halls safe and free of hysteria (When it wasn't caused by himself of course). It seemed that through the years Dumbledore had learned to care and trust James despite his knack for getting into trouble.

The last few months had been chaos, more and more students were leaving the school and the ones that stayed either pledged their loyalty to you-know-who or were too afraid to walk in the halls alone. This is where James came in. The halls were actually quiet safe, given that no one would dare try to harm Hogwarts when one of the greatest wizards of all time was headmaster. But that didn't stop some of the wanna be death eaters from causing a bit of trouble or trying to recruit more purebloods to 'the cause'.

Soon exams were over and they were sitting in the great hall for one more dinner before they would all leave Hogwarts for the summer. Everyone felt much better now that exams were finished but it just brought into light the mess that they would have to get into when they left the school.

James sat much closer to her than usual to Lily at the Gryffindor table. Instead of being at the complete opposite sides of the table, they on the same side with only about 15 people separating them. Well, it was a slight improvement, anyway.

James was looking to see if Lily would even notice him but was distracted when he saw Bellatrix, a mean looking Slytherin girl, pointing to something up above and laughing. James looked up and noticed that someone had used a spell to create the writing "watch out, watch out where ever you are, We're coming for you Mudbloods!" to appear in the seemingly peaceful sky above. He stood up and sent a counter curse at it before even any of Bellarix's friends got a chance to truly admire it. In fact the only two people in the room that seemed to notice this turn of events was Bellatrix (who had murder in her eyes when she saw that it was James who had done it) and Professor Dumbledore who looked at him and smiled warmly. When the other Slytherins looked up they saw nothing but pink bunny hopping around and looked at Bella like she should be sent to saint Mungos for her apparent insanity.