A/N: All right, here we go again with the housekeeping…you're doing that "not-trusting-me" thing again – have a little faith in me please! Food and bathroom were going to be taken care of very, very soon, so relax; no, the chapters won't be longer; and yes, Lily's being queer, but I know how I'm going to justify it. I merely need you to give me time. Moral of the whole story here – people need time.

Thanks for all your reviews & feedback, I do love and adore every single one of you who review, but remember – I have my reasons. :3 Enjoy this chapter, and hopefully we won't have any more housekeeping notes, lol.

And, on a somewhat unrelated post-script, I went to a hideously boring dinner party the other night, so I got a lot of solid outlining done for this, and the OFFICIAL chapter count is…42 chapters! Yay!!

With a yawn, Lily looked down at her wrist to check her watch.

Seven fifty-six – almost eight o'clock. Almost twelve hours left, and she would be free. Free. It was an entirely impossible concept here, in this claustrophobic environment; here, all she could do was take advantage of James's highly exasperating company.

Freedom, she decided, would be not having to look at this boy at all unless she wanted to – and she would use her freedom the moment she got out of here.

But until then…

She made sure he was looking off to the side before she began examining him as closely as she had the last time they fought. His expression was dark and extremely annoyed – she had rarely seen him look so bothered previous to this occasion.

His hair was hanging over his face, and she could practically see the storm cloud above his head. She had really done it this time.

With a quiet sigh, she continued to study him, while exploring herself and trying to figure out why she was feeling so horrible. It couldn't be her period, because she'd had hers two weeks ago. She wasn't on any pills or any drugs, thankfully, so she could easily rule out that possibility.

So what was her problem? Why had she suddenly pissed James off so wholly and unnecessarily?

He'd only tried to be nice to her. He'd been worried about her. She was so undeserving of his consideration.

She always had been, on her worst days when they'd rowed and she'd said something barely forgivable. And yet, he never stopped caring about her, never stopped feeling guilty about each fight even when he shouldn't.

It gave her a false sense of security that she almost took for granted, in a way; now that he'd shed his childhood naivety for an adult brain that could reason well and didn't feel guilty unless it had to, she wouldn't get off so easily anymore – something she hadn't really figured out because she hadn't spoken to him for so many months.

She could see it in his shadowy hazel eyes, still so cold and aloof – he didn't feel the least bit guilty anymore. He thought their fight was her fault.

And he was right.

Lily yawned again, a sense of deep self-disappointment and guilt washing over her and making her brain feel fuzzy.

She was tired. She was getting a little chilly. She had homework she had to do. She wanted to be everywhere but here, but Marly wasn't going to let them out for another twelve bleeding hours.

She made a mental note to kill Marly when she got out of the cupboard; this had been the worst fucking day of her life, and Marly was the "mastermind" behind it.

She wondered what Marly would want engraved on her tombstone.

Here lies Marlene McKinnon, sixteen years young, killed by the furious best friend she locked in a broom cupboard along with the best friend's least favorite person in the school. R.I.P.

Lily began twirling her hair then, chewing on her lip crossly. No, that would never do any good. Killing Marly was not going to make her feel better.

Irksome and silly though she was, Marly was one of her very best friends. Losing her would be a devastation.

It was James she wanted to kill, she thought viciously. James could use a knife in his back, or a bullet in his chest, or even arsenic in his small intestine. Anything to cause him pain.

She almost pulled a lock of her hair out at that point.

No, it wasn't James she wanted to kill either. James hadn't done anything wrong – James had actually been the one doing something right, if anything.

She was just frustrated with herself, more than anyone else. She wasn't suicidal, so she didn't want to kill herself, but she didn't want to kill anyone else either. Her murderous daydreams were merely byproducts of her restlessness at being stuck up in here; she desperately wanted to leave.

When she fought with James normally, in the common room or the corridors, at least she could run away, and ponder in private until it was time to ignore him again during class.

Here, she could do no such thing. Here, she could only sit here, with James, and endure his presence while her blood surged with such force that it frightened her.

Everything about him was making her skin crawl and her heart clench, making her want to bang both his head and hers against the door of the damn broom cupboard.

But, more than that, she almost wanted to apologize…almost wanted to bridge the gap between them, when she'd been burning the ham-fisted efforts of the original bridge they'd been making, but she didn't.

She couldn't.

She knew she wasn't big enough for that, although somewhere inside of her, a nagging sense told her that if it had been anyone but James Potter in this broom cupboard, she would have apologized by now.

Her watch told her it was exactly eight o'clock. Lily glanced one more time at the boy across from her, but he wasn't looking at her.

With a sigh, she lay her head back again, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, hoping against hope that if she blocked this out to the best of her abilities, and fell asleep for a few hours, the storm might somehow blow over between the two of them, and things would be better when she finally decided she was ready to regain consciousness.

TO CLEAR THINGS UP: The watch is white, and more visible in the dark; and once your eyes get accustomed to the lack of light, I've found that you can see the vague outline of someone whose head is, say, turned in the opposite direction from you. That's my take on it. Thanks to 5redroses for bringing that up.