A/N: Wow, guys, it's been so long since I actually posted a chapter up on here! Now that I am fighting through the writers block, my outlook on ATTR is a lot brighter! As for the authors note that I posted up on here last, my dad is doing okay now. He will be in a cast for another month or so, and is off work for a further 3 weeks, but he's not feeling too bad right now. Thanks to my friends for your continued support. Also, on another note, CAN YOU BELIEVE ATTR TURNED 2 ON 19TH OF SEPTEMBER?! HOW FREAKING CRAZY IS THAT?! Thank you all for reading, faving, alerting, reviewing, sharing etc. I couldn't do this without y'all.

Dedications: To seafeather-ono (I am actually rereading your story! Woo for taking a long time to upload! WOO!), KatiePotter (thanks for your love list again, mush, I love them [no pun here, nothing to see here…]. Thanks for your guess!), LeilaTheRainbowNinja (Leila! Hai! Of course I banned you from telling everyone, you FANFIC SPOILER, YOU!), Tanja88 (thanks so much! I am trying!), Future's-Past (wow, two reviews at a time, aren't I a lucky one?! Thanks so much, and your CC is great) and finally AccioPotter (thank you! I'd love it if you could review the rest of the chapters…?). Thanks so much, you guys! You all rock!

Disclaimer: I, unfortunately, do not own the Harry Potter series and such. THIS IS A SAD THING, but I do own all the things that you guys don't recognise. This makes me happier.

Chapter Twelve
In your darkest time, it's just enough to know it's there
- 'Polaris', Jimmy Eat World

Light streamed weakly through the windows in the Heads' Common Room. Lily Evans, Head Girl, stirred on the sofa, and stretched out her legs and then her arms. She yawned and sat up, pushing her flame red hair out of her eyes and then it all came back to her.

Finding poor Ellen Lockford in the corridor, being cross examined by Professor Dumbledore and Professor Tindall; staying up most of the night speculating with her friends in the Gryffindor Common Room.

Lily sat up quickly, squinting around her, ignoring the pounding that sounded in her ears when she had moved to an upright position too fast. On the sofa to her left lay James Potter, his black hair even more messy than usual (Lily hadn't thought this possible until now), his gold framed glasses hanging from one ear. He was lying on his back, arms thrown wide, face peaceful, showing none of the emotions that he had shown the previous night on patrol. Checking her watch, Lily saw that it was eleven o'clock, and contemplated waking James, but thought better of it, deciding instead to go and have a shower and get changed into new clothes. She tiptoed past the sofa that the Head Boy was sleeping on, but quickly realised that she could have woken him anyway, as she stubbed her toe on the end of said couch.

Forcing down a swear word that had bubbled up her throat, Lily hopped around the room, clutching her foot. Who would've thought that a stubbed toe could be so painful? James sat up quickly, looking around wildly for the source of the noise which had woken him, and saw Lily jumping around near the fireplace. He yawned, stretching, and then sat up, straightening his glasses while he watched her.

"Problem, Miss Evans?" he asked; Lily spun around quickly, ignoring the amusement which had come through both in his tone, and on his face.

"Oh, no problem, Mr Potter," she hissed through the pain. "Just a broken leg, you know, the usual."

He smirked at her. "Exaggerating a bit here, aren't we?" he commented, crossing his legs. "Since when did a stubbed toe mean you broke your leg?"

"Since now!" Lily insisted, testing her weight gingerly upon the throbbing foot. She winced, but didn't think that she had done too much damage, although the pain certainly suggested this.

James laughed and Lily grimaced, hobbling over to the staircase.

"Laugh all you want, James Potter; I'm going to have a shower and get changed." She said witheringly, disappearing around the corner. He chuckled for a moment before stretching again and standing up, following her up the stairs.

(When you go I'll let you be )

Twenty minutes later, once both the Head Boy and the Head Girl had gotten changed into new clothes and had gone down to the Great Hall for breakfast, the group of friends were sat at their usual end of the Gryffindor table, talking about the sign that Professor Tindall had put up outside her office that morning. It had stated that anybody who had news about the recent attacks on Hogwarts students should come to her immediately so that they could talk.

"… It even said that if you were close to the person or people who had done it, you wouldn't be in trouble," Sirius said in a disbelieving tone. "I mean, come on! Of course you're going to be in trouble! What does she think we are, thick?"

Ylana bobbed her head beside her cousin. "I agree, but it's obviously a ruse that will get someone to open up to her, right? That can only be a good thing. If she can find out who it is without the Auror office getting involved, then it will save the school a lot of disruption. Wouldn't it be weird to walk around and find Aurors everywhere that you went?"

"It would put the attacker off though, wouldn't it?" Dorcas said seriously. Marlene kept silent, but nodded; Lily placed a comforting hand on her friend's shoulder. "They wouldn't be able to go out and curse people if there were Aurors there to stop them."

They considered this for a moment, before Marlene spoke.

"I say we have at least one day of forgetting about these attacks?" Her voice was timid, as if all the talk about the attacks was physically harming her. Lily instantly felt bad for them continually bringing it back up, so she nodded quickly.

"You're right, we should; Hogwarts is about more than just gossip. Come on, guys, let's go to the library and get our homework done out of the way so that we can enjoy the rest of our weekend."

Remus nodded, thinking that it was a good idea, while the other three Marauders looked at the rest of their friends in shock. Sirius looked amused, as if waiting for someone to jump out and shout 'APRIL FOOLS!'

Finally, James spoke. "Oh, you're not joking."

Ylana stared at them. "No. I think it's a great idea; that way we'll be able to do something fun with the rest of the weekend."

"The library, though?" Sirius protested. "Can't we just do it in the Common Room? I think I might burst into flames if I walk into the library."

Peter, almost as if he was on cue to do so, laughed so loudly that many people who were sitting around them looked around to see what was going on.

"Wormtail, how many times?" Sirius said in a bored tone. "Don't wet yourself."

Ylana fought down a laugh and tried to look vaguely disapproving.

"Guys," Alice whined, trying to force them to do what the rest of them wanted to do. "I will bug you all day until you come to the library with us."

The three of them looked to each other in horror.

"I'll teach you Potions," Lily wheedled, trying to convince at least James to agree with them; if James said yes, Sirius would follow. And it went without saying that Peter would go wherever his friends went.

The bespectacled boy's hazel eyes lit up behind the thin gold frames. "Really? You would?" he asked the redhead excitedly. She barely had time to nod when he was turning to his reluctant friends. "Let's get to the library, then," he commanded, and the bunch of Gryffindors quickly finished their breakfasts before grabbing their bags and making their way to the library.

( When you go I'll let you be )

Sometimes, the green light that the underside of the lake gave off around the Slytherin Common Room gave Leilani King a headache. Currently, she was sat in the lightest part of her Common Room that she could find, trying to read the book for Transfiguration. Every time she tried to read another paragraph, her mind kept drifting back to her best friend.

The truth was, since the night that Josiah Thomson had shunned Vixie Brown, neither Josiah or Leilani had hung out with her, and Leilani missed her. She knew that Josiah missed Vixie too, seeing as they had all hung out a lot throughout their years at Hogwarts with their other friend, Alexander Porter. Now, Leilani and Alexander were following Josiah's lead and were ignoring Vixie.

Leilani sighed, giving up on trying to read further, and instead looked over to Vixie. She wasn't sat with her usual circle of admirers around her, but was instead on her own in the corner of the room, head down, trying to focus on her homework. It was so unlike her that Leilani felt worried – she hadn't thought that their leaving Vixie would hurt the latter so much, but they obviously had. It humanised Vixie in a way nothing else had, at least in Leilani's eyes. She also knew that, before too long, Vixie would end up shrugging off their betrayal and would be back in the popular group that she had always been more comfortable in. In the meantime, Leilani and Josiah were lying lower than usual, and they were just trying to escape the scrutiny of the other Slytherins, as they knew that as soon as Vixie was back at the top of the food chain, she would notice them as only she could, and they wouldn't want any unneeded attention.

Until that time, though, Vixie was showing a whole new side of herself, one that Leilani hadn't thought existed. The other girl had never shown how much she valued the two of them as friends, but it showed, now that they were no longer there beside her, that she was lonely, that she did need them, maybe more than she wanted to admit, even to herself.

The pain that they were putting her through was killing Leilani King.

( But you're killing everything in me )

After their slow meander to the library, the Gryffindors decided that they would pair up and each pair do a subject – that way, the next group to study that subject would have the previous pairs notes to assist them. Lily and Remus didn't like the sound of 'cheating', so they decided to say that everything that they had written.

It was this idea that led to Lily trying to teach James Potter Potions. He wasn't very good at the subject, even though he excelled in nearly everything else that he did, and this was a fact that mystified Lily. Even when trying to take notes down onto parchment from the text books that were piled in front of them, James' brain seemed to melt into goo. He just couldn't wrap his mind around the words that were in front of him, to combine to correct ingredients on parchment to create the Potion that Lily asked him to hypothetically make. Either that, or he mixed up measurements and timings.

"I just don't understand this!" he exclaimed after nearly an hour of trying, and failing, to memorise the Draught of Living Death. "This is easy stuff, and I know there's a logical way around all of this, but every time I try to remember which ingredients to use, it's like I've run into a brick wall in the dark! I just can't do this," James declared, throwing his quill down onto the desk and deciding that he would just give up.

"Come on, James," Lily said, exasperated. "You've improved since we first started, honest!"

He regarded her dubiously, arms folded across his chest as he leaned back in his chair; his coal black hair was messier than usual with all the times that he had run his hands through it in frustration throughout the tutoring session. "Really?"

The redhead paused, the expression on her face radiating guilt. "Well… Not really, no. But at least now you're trying to understand it! Before, you just didn't try and now you at least understand the sort of logical thinking that is involved to truly understand Potions!"

James narrowed his eyes and shook his head slowly at the Head Girl. "I can't believe that you're giving me that bullcrap, Lily Evans. You know as well as I do that I don't know the first thing about the stupid subject. Why did I even take it in the first place?" he questioned himself.

"Because you want to be an Auror?" Lily suggested lightly. She knew that she had made a mistake in saying those words, however, when James' face darkened.

"I never want to be that," he snapped at her. "Never."

There was a silence between them that seemed to stretch miles, until Lily finally recovered herself enough to answer.

"Okay, I won't. I'm sorry if I… I upset you, or if I offended you or something. It was just a thought, you know? Because you were so good when Ellen was attacked and you always seem to do really well in Defence Against the Dark Arts, so I thought maybe that was what you wanted to do. But of course you could do anything, really, because as much as I may hate to admit it, you're very clever."

Lily knew that she was rambling. She knew it, but it didn't stop her from talking through her backtracking.

James smiled a little, just a tug at the corner of his lips, and he unfolded his arms. Leaning forward slightly so that he could see the textbook in front of him, he spoke again in an amused tone. "Very clever, eh? That's extremely high praise coming from the top student in the school. I'm flattered, Miss Evans."

Lily smirked. "Top in the school sounds like a very nice title. I might have to adopt it now and have you all curtsy at my feet."

"Kiss the ground you walk on, that sort of thing?" James questioned, a full blown grin taking hold of his face.

"Of course," Lily responded, shrugging. "But in the meantime, I will suggest something to you to help you remember how to succeed at Potions."

"Oh?" James prompted, wanting to know what it was that she would suggest for him. Anything she said would be a great help.

"You play Quidditch, right? You're good at it – that's why you're the Captain," she began. James frowned, not sure where she was going with it.

"So this means that you have to think logically to understand where to put who, what to make them do and how to play the match, right?"

"Right…" James trailed off, more than a little lost at her words.

"So you just need to think as Potions as a Quidditch season; the match is the potion and the players are the ingredients. You need to assemble them in the correct way, the correct order, so that the match can be won. Or, in real life, the potion can be made." She concluded.

James simply stared at her for a moment as if wondering what the hell she had just said, and then he broke out into a dazzling smile.

"That, my dearest Lily, is a bloody fantastic way of looking at it. I'll definitely try it the next time that we are in the lesson." he told her. And, for the first time since he started taking the subject in First Year, he actually meant it.

So, what did you think? I'm sorry that it's way shorter than usual, but you know. I have other things on my mind and A Level is pretty hardcore.

-Lauren