That Saturday, there was more than one game being played within the bounds of the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch. While the players dashed back and forth overhead, Lily tiptoed around the issue of 'luck', trying to ignore Sirius and his frequent gestures at her to hurry up.

James seemed, shockingly, completely oblivious to all the attempts around him. He was happy to sit beside Lily and share her sweets. She was so distracted that she barely had one for every three James ate, and he eventually noticed this, at which point he promised to buy her replacements.

Just as she was building up her courage for another try, someone to her other side called her name.

She turned to see Ted shuffling his way along the bench towards her, and taking the seat on the other side of her.

James said hello, and Ted responded but Lily was now worrying, because there was no way she could discuss her being the reason James won Quidditch matches, while in the company of a boy with whom she had been on a date.

Only one date, to be fair, they weren't exactly married. But she liked him, and even if she didn't... well, it didn't matter because she did. She really did.

"Hello, Ted!" she smiled.

"How are you, Lily?"

"I'm good, sorry about the other night!"

"Don't worry about it, wasn't your fault... Maybe next time you go flying, you should have a few professionals on standby though, just in case."

"And a net beneath me!" she laughed. It was easier to laugh at the incident here, in the light of day, on relatively stable ground, with no shadows and figures and nothing to be scared of.

She watched the rest of the match quietly, ignoring Sirius, who seemed to expect her to continue working on James in the presence of Ted, but since Lily was not actually a terrible person, she refused. Once it ended, Hufflepuff having snatched a narrow victory from Ravenclaw, Ted asked her if she fancied going for a walk, but she couldn't. She made her excuses, too much homework and not enough time to do it all, and, after kissing him gently on the cheek, she made her way up to the Tower with the rest of the Gryffindors, most of whom went up to their dormitories and retrieved books before setting up around a few tables in one corner. Lily joined them, and started work on Charms, which was barely work to her anyway.

Although they did all have work they ought to be doing, it wasn't long until they were just chatting, with their essays abandoned on tables and floors.

She already knew that Sirius wasn't the patient sort and apparently he had reached the limit, because he turned to James and in an actorly sort of voice, very clear and projecting around the room, spoke.

"So, how are you feeling about the next Gryffindor Quidditch match?"

James shrugged, obviously not wanting to talk about it, but he knew his friend well and knew he wasn't going to get off that easy.

"I suppose I'm a bit worried..."

"No need to be, not as long as Lily's going to be there!"

James smiled a faraway sort of smile and looked around at Lily.

"I don't think Lily believes that she has anything to do with my extraordinary Quidditch record."

Lily opened her mouth to speak, not entirely certain what she was going to say, but as it happened, she didn't need to as Sirius continued.

"I don't see how we can deny it. Just look at the evidence."

"C'mon Sirius, it's just a coincidence, isn't it?"

There were murmurs of agreement from the others who were involved in the plan, and Lily thought about telling them all to shut up, but before she knew it, she was speaking.

"Dunno, I think Sirius has got a point."

Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched.

"What?" James turned to look at her, seemingly completely unaware of the attention that was on him.

"Well, I think I really am an integral part of your success, how else do you explain you winning every game I'm at?"

"Pure talent?"

"Thank you, James, nice of you to say!"

"I meant me." He laughed, and she smirked back.

And that was it, she had done all she could do, and she would just have to wait and see if it would catch.

She got an answer when, on Monday morning, Professor Flitwick asked if there were any questions and James raised his hand, an innocent look on his face, and asked exactly how to cast the 'lucky charm' that Lily had used every time he had a Quidditch game. She hoped that she hadn't made a terrible mistake, but as she remembered back to the last time, she knew that she absolutely had.

Lily had to remind herself of Mary and how she would benefit from James being a little less harsh frequently over the next few days. With Lily's approval, James seemed to have embraced the idea and spent most of the time she was near him working the idea into the conversation, however difficult and unnatural it was. Still, Lily noticed, though she thought perhaps it was only her imagination, that Mary seemed a bit happier, and she found out through Sirius, that James was planning on giving the team their first weekend off in a fairly long time. Lily was a bit dumbstruck that it had actually succeeded, and she maintained the possibility that the change could be completely unrelated to Sirius's plan.

She found herself being once more swept up in the routine of homework being piled onto them, and classes becoming more and more difficult, and she barely had any time to think about anything not directly involved with her classes. In her brief moments of rest, like the five minutes between climbing into bed and falling asleep, she worried about what she was starting to see as her main problems.

She had been neglecting her guilt over Severus, and now that she didn't have to worry about James and the dating rumour, she was free to worry about her old best friend, who was very much isolated, and who, she feared, had been at the Lake the night she was attacked.

It terrified her, pained her, to admit to the possibility. At first she had thought that the letter would make others think he had been there, but she knew he hadn't been because, well, because he was, despite everything that had passed between them, not evil, and he cared, in a strange, sad way, about her. She knew he did.

Then she had talked to him, and found out the letter hadn't been to her but to James. She had, she admitted to herself, avoided thinking about the possibility that she had not been the intended victim, that the letter was meant to lure James to the Lake, and she knew that Severus would find it far less difficult to harm James than to harm her.

The fact that something, someone, had saved her when she fell from her broom cemented in her mind the fact that Severus was being drawn into something very dark. She knew the figures at the Quidditch pitch were the same as those who had attacked her, and she knew, though she didn't want to, that Severus was one of them.

Was that her fault?

It took a lot of determination to keep reminding herself of the words she had said to Severus the night after the Incident by the Lake. She had been thinking them for months, and had ran them over in her head like a mantra in the hours before she went to speak to him. If he hadn't insisted on staying there that night, she would have said it the next day, or the next week, whenever he approached her.

She had told him that they had chosen their ways, their own paths, she had chosen to stay in this world that might not want her, she had chosen pride in her blood, rather than shame. He had chosen...otherwise.

It wasn't Lily' fault, she knew that, but she still felt that if there were anyone in this world who might have had a chance to save him, it was her And she had failed.

It was always the case that as she was thinking this, another voice, a louder, braver, Gryffindor sort of voice spoke. It told her that it wasn't for her to save him. He didn't want to be saved, even if it looked to her as if he was drowning, she had to let him choose.

She hadn't chosen this, the separation from the person she had once thought would be in her life forever, but it had happened nonetheless and it wouldn't make the future any easier if she were to ignore it.

Though she tried to ignore it, she knew, that a day was coming, very soon now, when the choice would be more than academic. The Death Eaters were too loud to fade to silence without taking a few people with them.

She was determined that it wouldn't be her.

Though Lily thought that she was concealing quite a lot, it was becoming increasingly apparent that she was far from the only one with secrets. When Lily rolled out of bed on the next Sunday morning, having arranged with herself to have a long and extremely lavish breakfast, she saw that Karen's bed was empty. She thought back and remembered various occasions on which Karen had disappeared off on long walks, an excuse she had recently been forced to stop using because no sane person would consider going outside when not completely necessary because of the risk of freezing solid. Making a note to herself to ask Karen about it, she dressed herself, taking a bit of extra time on brushing and braiding her hair, in the way she only bothered to do on Sundays, when she didn't have classes to get to.

She thought about waking Jac, but she looked so comfortable and happy in her sleep that Lily couldn't bear to disturb her. Lynn and Beth were sitting up in their beds, starting to rub the sleep from their eyes. Lily asked if they wanted to come with her, but they had plans to go to the library and only wanted to get some toast, not the massive feast that Lily was planning, so she didn't wait for them, and, picking up one of the textbooks, she left the dormitory.

Lily wasn't a greedy person, but it was hard to be anything other than an absolute glutton when faced with the absolute feast in front of her. She piled some of everything, except the mushrooms, onto her gold plate and started to dig in, looking around the surprisingly busy Great Hall as she ate. She had her book propped up in front of her, but she wasn't quite able to bring herself to study too hard on a Sunday morning. The sunlight streamed in through the windows and Lily could see the specks of dust hanging in the air that really only seemed to exist on Sundays.

She was surprised, after her fourth potato scone, that not one of the Gryffindors in her year seemed to have made it down to the Hall. She looked beyond her own table, and smiled at Pandora, who was sitting with a friend she didn't recognise, and who immediately waved back at Lily. She didn't look at the Slytherin table, she didn't want the dark feeling in her stomach that accompanied the thought of one particular group of Slytherins to ruin her idyllic Sunday. She had eaten so much that there was no way she could pretend to still be hungry, and so she conceded that she might have to visit the Library.

She really didn't want to, Sundays were for eating and sleeping and chatting. She had ate, she would never be able to get back to sleep and there was no one to chat to, so, unfortunately, studying seemed unavoidable.

It wasn't true, but Lily felt like the colour was draining out of everything the closer she got to the Library, her book bag retrieved and hung over her shoulder heavily like a dead weight. She was saddened that the Library, which until recently, had been a pleasure to visit, now made her so annoyed. This is what exams did to a girl.

Reminding herself forcefully that she was at magic school and was walking into a room filled with books about magic, and not the sticky, dog-eared books about biology and geography that she would have been faced with at Petunia's school, she went inside. It was a tactic she often employed when she was reluctant to do her homework, when the classes seemed too hard, she muttered to herself that she was so lucky to be here, she was part of a secret world and she could, if she wanted, go and learn a spell to, say, change her into an animal.

Buoyed by the idea, she walked through the shelves and looked for a free seat. Luckily, it seemed that most of the school had stuck firmly to the eating, sleeping, chatting routine of Sundays, and there were several seats. Finding one of her usual favourite spots empty, she settled in, and pulled several books from her bag to read from. This was going to be a long Sunday.

An hour later, which Lily swore had actually been at least seven hours, she was settled into the chair, her book lay open in front of her and she was reading intently about... something to do with... well, it was Transfiguration, she knew that much.

A quick check of the book's cover confirmed that it was in fact Transfiguration and, considering that evidence of progress, she rubbed her eyes and sat back in her seat for a moment's rest.

"I don't want to!"

"Why? Are you ashamed of us, embarrassed?"

"...No."

"You paused!"

Lily turned her head to the voices, which were speaking in those hissed, but very audible, whispers of people who knew they ought to be quiet but thought no one was around to overhear.

Normally, Lily would have left, if possible, or tried to ignore it, or even coughed exaggeratedly so they knew she was there, but she was stopped by the fact that she recognised one of the voices.

Karen was behind one of these bookshelves, and Lily quickly figured out that she didn't want to do something, that the other person thought it was because they were ashamed or embarrassed, and that Karen definitely was. It wasn't a major leap to think that this person might be the reason Karen had embraced walking as a hobby.

She resisted every urge to creep closer to listen in, thinking that that seemed like a very 'Rita Skeeter' thing to do. It was at that moment that Lily noticed she was not the only one present, close enough to hear the conversation. Browsing in the Divination section was Adrian Tweedy, Rita's sometimes boyfriend – meaning she went on dates with him as a reward for bringing her particularly juicy information – and he was definitely not looking for a book on tea leaves. It was as bad as having Rita there herself, perhaps worse, because if Rita was here, she would only exaggerate it once before spreading it around, but now, Adrian would play the story up to Rita, who would then exaggerate it again, and it would be at Shakespearian levels of drama before anyone heard it.

She didn't wait to hear Karen say anything more, scrapping her chair loudly back, she stood and walked very pointedly towards Adrian, who panicked and darted away. She then pretended to be looking for a book on one of the furthest shelves, knowing Karen would be peeking through the books to see who had heard. It was crucial that she look absolutely consumed in searching for the book, so she, employing some excellent acting skills, pulled a few books down from shelves, and thumbed through the pages. Picking one, she returned to her seat.

Karen was gone, and whoever had been with her was gone too.