Chapter Twenty Five

A/N: Thanks to yo face for reviewing.

When Lily had returned to Hogwarts, everything was different again. Teddy was gone, new first years had arrived and the pressure of constant scrutiny was slightly lifted from those who had advanced to their second year, as if they had all passed some sort of test. 'Maybe it's just a ranking system,' she remembered thinking, as she uncomfortably watched the bullies move on to younger, more naïve victims. 'The further up the school you go, the easier life will get.'

Having reached her fourth year, Lily was absolutely certain this was not the case. If anything life had become even more complicated, thanks to a constant fascination with a certain wizard returning to complete his final year of NEWTs.

It was easy enough to see Scorpius on a regular basis; he was Albus' closest friend and as the only brother remaining in the school, James having graduated to a minor role in the Ministry, no one found it strange that Lily spent a great deal of time with him. However, the fact that Lily could not avoid Scorpius drew much more attention to the fact that she did not really want to.

"Lily!" Caitlyn exclaimed, clearly having been calling her best friend's name for quite a while. Lily blinked a couple of times before responding.

"Sorry, I was just…" Lily tried to think of an excuse, but Caitlyn cut across her, with the same confidence she had discovered over years of excelling in her classes.

"Daydreaming about Scorpius Malfoy, yeah." It still frightened Lily, how easy Caitlyn found it to read her mind. She sometimes wondered if the girl was a Legilimens; she certainly would not be surprised. "How long have you been pining after him now?"

"Cait, I'm not pining." Lily sighed, having had this conversation many times before. "The amount of time Scorpius spent at the Burrow over the summer, I'm just used to seeing him now. Besides, he's always with my brother so it's not like I can avoid him."

"I've seen people with their siblings' friends, Lil. They tolerate each other, because they don't have a choice." Caitlyn's insight was beginning to become a little irritating and Lily rolled her eyes in frustration, hoping that her best friend would get the message and drop the subject. Of course, her hopes were misplaced. "They don't spend every waking moment thinking about them."

"Okay, you're taking it a bit too far now, Cait." Lily was trying her best to keep a hold on her temper, but it was proving challenging. She was vaguely reminded of her mother at that moment; Ginny Potter never went in search of a quarrel, but she would not shy away from one if it presented itself. "He's my brother's best friend. That's it. That's all it is."

"Okay." Caitlyn conceded, although both of them knew that she remained unconvinced. It was a regular occurrence with Caitlyn, who often disapproved of her best friend's choices and had developed something of a mild superiority complex as of late- the two would argue, they would be silent for a couple of minutes, then the conversation would start up again as if nothing had happened.

Sure enough, it took only three minutes for Caitlyn to speak again, bringing up a new band that had been featured on the cover of Witch Weekly. Lily was not the type to follow the latest trends in music and fashion, preferring instead to concentrate on the Quidditch league tables, but she was grateful for the distraction nonetheless. Honestly, a conversation about the number of spiders found sneaking up from the Forbidden Forest at night would probably be preferable to their previous conversation.

"And then the unicorns trotted their way through the crowd and everyone was cheering and Dumbledore's ghost rose from the grave to play bass. Lily!" This shout was almost aggressive enough to knock Lily off her perch on the edge of her bed, only her last minute grasp of her bed curtains stopping her from smacking her head on the wooden floor. She was still gritting her teeth when Caitlyn continued to speak. "You're not listening again. You know, if you would just admit what you're really thinking about, we could talk about it and move on. We don't even need to talk about it that much if you don't want to, I just want to be able to talk to you without you staring off into the distance hoping he's going to appear out of nowhere-"

"Caitlyn, shut up!" Lily all but screamed, her frustration finally getting the better of her. Caitlyn blinked in response, biting the inside of her cheek in a gesture the redhead recognised from their early days at Hogwarts; it was what she had always done when she was trying not to cry. Guilt began to swarm inside her chest, angrily buzzing inside her, stinging repeatedly as she saw her friend's eyes turn glassy.

She knew that she ought to apologise, to make the argument right again. Even as a young child, when James had teased and taunted her at every turn, she had made sure that she made amends with him for throwing his Quaffle into the river near the house, just as he would do for hiding her favourite doll on the top of the cupboard where she could not see it. Her father had always emphasised the importance of never sleeping on a quarrel, the sadness in his eyes crying out the pain of a boy who had lost too many friends too young.

But Lily did not apologise. Instead she pulled the heavy drapes around her bed closed, creating a barrier between herself and her best friend and shielding her face from view. Faintly, she could hear the sound of sobbing coming from across the room, the kind of muted sound that must have been muffled by a hand or a blanket. She reached out her hand to pull the curtains apart, but paused it in midair, her infernal pride stopping her from doing the thing she thought was best.

Instead, the girl placed her pillow over her head to muffle the sound further and tried to get to sleep. Many hours of sleeplessness passed before she finally opened the curtain, to see Caitlyn's puffy, tear-stained face, her brow furrowed in a troubled sleep. 'I should wake her up, say sorry.' Lily told herself, the same thing she had thought for hours on end.

But she did not. Instead Lily herself fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt of a battle in the Hogwarts courtyard, students dying by the dozen and her father leaning against a wall, his tears dripping down onto the stone floor and mingling with the drying blood.

A/N: Sorry, I know this chapter's a bit weird, but I'll try and make a bit more sense next time. Please review!